If men were angels, they would not enter government to wield coercive power for narrow interests

Don Boudreaux quotes from Butler Shaffer’s September 1975 University of Miami Law Review article, “Violence as a Product of Imposed Order". Shaffer argues:

If the political philosophers are correct in concluding that the nature of men is such that they will, given the opportunity, seek to take advantage of other men and to impose their will upon them, it is then not unreasonable to assume that these same men would seek to gain control of a monopolistic instrument of coercion such as the political state in order to effectuate such a design. Nor is it so incredible that such men would, in order to make the social environment more conducive to their own purposes and objectives, seek to redefine the terms and conditions of the “order” that the state is mandated to preserve. Given these human tendencies, it can be seen that there exists the possibility that men and women of differing political, economic, and social persuasions will begin to modify the concept of “order” so as to embrace an ever-widening range of subject matter. The result of this process would be that “order” is no longer solely perceived in terms of the “hygienic” function of eliminating acts or threatened acts of aggression and violence, but instead is perceived as including the organization and structuring of human relationships in order to permit some men, through the use of state coercion, to make the behavior of other men more predictable for their objectives. That such, in fact, has been the history of man’s efforts with political processes cannot be denied by any realist.

James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper #51 in 1788:

But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

Two hundred years later and we are still dealing with Madison's paradox. And after two hundred years of experience, there are still a sizeable minority who believe that government by its nature is inherently above being captured by narrow interests.