The road to civilization is built on cooperation, not competition as the world tells us. It's a simple formula imho and much time and effort is expended in complicating things beyond comprehension.
Unfortunately, Uncle Sam is unable to live by ANY of those principles and so thwarts humanity's movement to a more civilized state.
Rule by force is the disease, who and how are symptoms.
As long as 'the majority' accepts that these people get to use violence to control those people because reasons, we can expect a varying degree of enslavement contingent on how well we beat the bullies to back off of us.
People that kill to stay in power don't accept peaceful transitions to new holders of that power.
source