ABSTRACT
The deepest anxiety amongst ordinary people in a community arises when they perceive a threat of
collapse of order and security; lest the lives of their families have no protection against armed intruders
or rampaging mobs; and lest their property, their food stocks, and their savings become vulnerable
to seizure or destruction without hope of restitution. This has been so for at least 12,000 years, since
people first set up agricultural communities and villages, when survival and prosperity began
manifestly to depend upon confidence that their crops and domestic animals would safely mature to
provide their food, and that women and children would not be abducted while the men were hunting
or working in the fields-in other words, that there was internal security under a rule of law with a
collective means to enforce it. Then, as a village agricultural community became more prosperous
than the nomadic tribes outside, external security also became essential lest the hungry tribesmen
swarmed in to seize the animals and fertile fields and put the villagers to death or into bondage. Thus
security and the rule of law were from the start and still remain the foundations of civilized society.
