1) agreed. The second amendment exists because of the expressed understanding that government force can only be moderated by private force. That being said, vigilantism has its own issues. Private Justice is difficult because a thug can just murder someone and then lie about the deceased and claim self defense. In the case of a functioning government, this is mediated in courts. But our government has not been functioning towards it’s intended purpose since at least the early 1900s. The intentionally designed counter is the “right to abolish” said government as per Jefferson.
You can’t refuse to call the government’s bluff for over 100 years and expect them to take you seriously anymore.
But when the alternative to private Justice is no Justice… the choice must always be Justice.
2) the scenario I’m referring to happens in every third world tribally oriented society you can name on a regular basis. Yes, arbitration can and does often happen. But arbitration is a skill and a relies on a set of cultural precepts that many cultures don’t have. Even in the more advanced and reasonable societies, look at scenarios like the hatfields and mccoys.
3) totally agreed that government cannot be any better than its median member and its median voter.
I wrote a whole article that I called the “stake in franchise amendment” that was a proposed solution to this. I took a page out of Robert Heinlein and the American founding and basically stipulated some requirements including marriage, children with the same spouse, total renunciation of dual citizenship, etc in order to vote.
Long/short: it is better to have a functioning government than no government. But it is better to have anarchy than an expressly evil government. The check to that is supposed to be public force. This is why the “let’s be reasonable” republicans who want to “negotiate” with people who want to enslaved us are traitors. What we have now is an anarcho-tyranny, wherein we have the worst of both worlds between anarchy and tyranny. We have to have external vigilance and arbitrate on our own like an anarchic state, but still have the taxes/regulations of a nanny state on top of it.
I just don’t agree that the proper end state will be actual anarchy. But I agree that that’s preferable to what is going on right now.