A "world government" subservient to a set of objective laws, and restricted to those functions proper to a government, would be the best of all possible worlds. It's what I imagined in my college days.

This would be the scenario that actually fits your analogy of a formal police force protecting a town.

Maybe someday something like this can be set up. I'm not holding my breath, considering that even America has retained only a dim idea of what a government can and should do, never mind the socialists and totalitarians that litter the rest of the planet.

Unfortunately, all we've got right now is the United Nations, which is corrupt, has absolutely no moral compass, and is largely concerned with looting the most productive members of its organization.

So the analogy that actually fits closest to the real world situation is the lone cowboy hero in a town under attack where the sheriff and his posse are a bunch of amoral and cowardly thugs on the take from the bad guys. We're not talking "Cops," we're talking "High Noon."

When no one else is willing to do the job, or willing to do it right, I'd bet the wife and children having their lives threatened would be damn glad to see that cowboy show up. Check this out. Hell, maybe Clinton deserves a little credit after all for his own cowboy routine.

(My favorite movie government solution is still the robot police force from "The Day The Earth Stood Still."

"We have a system, and it works.")