 Such a government is minimal, limited to protecting us from criminals and foreign aggressors, and enforcing individual rights and contracts with the help of the police and armed forces, using objectively defined civil and criminal laws and courts. Someone who violates his contracts, or engages in fraud, is guilty of the “indirect” use of force, in that he obtains a value from another without that person’s consent (1963a: 111). Accordingly, the government may use or threaten force only in retaliation against those who initiate or threaten force directly or indirectly. A government that tries to enforce the brother’s keeper principle—“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”; or that drafts citizens into the armed services or “public service”; or that forces them, directly or indirectly, to become more virtuous, well-mannered, healthy, or wealthy, violates rights. Statism in all its forms, from unlimited democracy to a mixed economy to dictatorship, is at odds with our status as independent, rational beings, as ends in ourselves. Statism also destroys ability and fails to fulfill anyone’s needs for long, because “[t]o deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion” (1973a: 32). The fountainhead of all progress is the human mind, and the mind does not function well when forced.