Government is force. Anyone who disagrees is invited to try peaceful noncompliance with government. Try not paying taxes, smoking cannabis, working for less than minimum wage, or do anything peaceful that’s against the government’s rules. If they find out and you continue to peacefully refuse to comply, they will eventually assault you and put you in a cage (euphemistically called arrest and imprisonment). If you go one step further and use self defense with a gun (the only realistic way to defend yourself against police), you’ll probably end up getting shot.
Government does things that would be considered criminal if done by ordinary people. It repeatedly takes your money with the threat of force (arrest, or death if you resist that) and calls it taxation. It forbids acts between consenting adults for their own good (any black market activity, any regulated activity). It murders people and calls it war. It prevents the free association of its subjects with other people in the name of restricting immigration. Practically everything it does would be considered criminal if done by an ordinary person.
Even the most minimal night-watchman state, funded by voluntary donations, would still be coercive. At the very least, it would have to prohibit any competing protection services. Otherwise it would risk being competed out of existence.
That government is evil shouldn’t be a controversial point. Economists justify government on the grounds that public goods cannot be produced voluntarily and hence coercive government measures are justified.
Philosophical anarchism is the position that government is a necessary evil, to be done away with if there were a viable alternative. This should be the default position on government, held by any decent person with an intact moral sense. (I go further and advocate market anarchism as a viable alternative.)
Government is force, and force should be used sparingly if it must be used at all. It seems to me that most people have forgotten this; they would prefer profligate use of government over sparing use. Thus, people need constant reminding that government rules are backed by coercive police power (and that markets are voluntary). In most cases, markets can solve whatever problems government is supposedly solving, and much more efficiently to boot. As such, we ought to be doubly reluctant to use government: for both moral and economic reasons.
Despite incredible advances in knowledge and technology over the past few decades, 