When does a State become illegitimate

The  preconditions for such a state of affairs are:

1) State control of the press.There are moves afoot with this re the fallout of Leveson and bearing in mind that the internet is the 21st century version of the press the various government crackdowns on 'hate speech', increasing systematic concerted intimations and threats of imminent legislation and government intervention to bring pressure to bear on internet platforms to censor and delete 'offensive content' all point to a chilling effect on fee speech which is inimical and incompatible with the principles of a free country.

2) Overbearing taxation and regulation.This is on a continuum as it is hard to say at what point  such invasive and oppressive state encroachment tips over into the totalitarian -on principle if the gov steals just one penny in tax it has crossed the line, the principle has been established that it has a right to do so and the rest is just a matter of time - it's incremental  purloining is intended to soften people up like the lobster being slowly boiled -by the time they realize what is happening it is too late and they have conceded their liberty on the installment plan.

The question of when such a state has crossed the line is therefor somewhat academic, a judgement call, but the seeds of totalitarianism are present in all so called liberal democracies, mixed economies with their mixed contradictory premises -be they social democracies,welfare states or whatever extant variants and mongrelized combinations and it would have been better for all nations under such systems to never have gone down those roads of statism in the first place so inexorable and inevitable would be their final place of destination and unless the process is reversed and such institutions are purged of those statist elements authoritarian totalitarianism can be the only outcome.

When the state gets so large, its military so powerful and unassailable from within a revolution of any sort is not practical and would indeed be an act of self destruction leading to  inevitable defeat and great loss of civilian life to no purpose whatsoever and of course to consequent  outright military dictatorship with the mask of democracy quickly whipped away to reveal the true nature of the beast lurking behind it.

The winning of hearts and minds is therfor the only way forward and that will be a hard slog indeed should anyone even try to undertake it. Vasts sums of money would be required,a massive pardon the expression, re education process undertaken and a protracted period of time stretching into decades and beyond needed to even stand any chance of a success.

Changing a whole culture is a monumental task over a generation or 3 so only someone with rare fortitude vision stamina and  organizational skills need apply. Only the groundwork can be laid now and that is being done by ARI and other satellites and the individual efforts of bloggers and youtubers and we take our humble place with that fraternity not making any extravagant claims about being vanguardists, just contributors to the cause - and judging by our lamentable to non existent stats very humble ones at that!

I should point out in conclusion that changing hearts and minds always has to come first before anything else and that would implicitly obviate the use of force and more importantly it must be stressed that force even if successful in overthrowing the existing polity would not lead to anything better, indeed to far worse outcomes because the cultural groundwork would not have been laid and to attempt to impose liberty at the point of a gun is self contradictory on its face and would involve the substitution of tyranny with another every bit as dictatorial.