I'm 5'7" and 145 lbs on a good day. The only reason for my success is that the schoolyard bully is not the guy making the rules. I'd likely be dead already (or in a gang against my will) in a place like Somalia.
Then consider a place like Pakistan where politicians of nearly every political party are having their gatherings literally bombed by people with actual big clubs.
You're playing with hyperbole here and it's not helping the argument.
Edit: To be clear, the point is that something will have a "biggest club", and we want that something to be under the control of the population at-large and not under individuals. Having that "biggest club" under the tender care of "no one" is just a subset of the case of having it under individuals, after all the bleeding is done...
The WBC, the Tea Party, and the birthers aren't squashed by the club only because the government doesn't consider them a serious enough threat.
Anyone who is considered a serious threat is brutally beaten, tortured, detained, etc. whether or not their actions were noble (i.e. PFC Manning), or likely cases of mistaken identity, false accusations (Guantanamo, etc.), or living in the wrong part of the world (Iraq, etc.).
Of course, you also don't have to be considered a "real threat" either to feel the weight of the club. Simply act out of line with the law, regardless of whether the law is just or not, and you will feel it smashing down upon you. Just because we have fancy formal proceedings before we hit you in the head doesn't mean the club has somehow disappeared. Its impact is just delayed, that's all.
Past uses of the club included having the wrong color of skin or being of the wrong nationality (blacks a few decades ago, Japanese during WW2). All of these happened during times when we supposedly lived in a "free, civil and open society". The big club is always there, just sometimes it doesn't care about you.
Watch yourself. http://th05.deviantart.net/fs70/200H/f/2010/027/5/7/Obama__y...
This might surprise you, but I agree completely. I do feel that it's better on the average (at least for the U.S.) than the counterexamples you might see elsewhere of where government is ineffective or nonexistant.