The kicker, for me, is that the people who complain most about state coercion are not fighting the Stalins and Hitlers of this world. They are fighting mild taxation and regulation imposed by social democracies. In their minds, these minor annoyances have supplanted property confiscation, beatings, shootings, disappearances, imprisonment, and enslavement, as our Top Bad. That's just how oppressed these people are.

It would be absurd for a person who objects to the wearing of shoes to lump all shoe wearers together and conclude there is no difference in the philosophies or methods of such people, as IMO Nock does here. Yet people who imagine the primacy of the individual over society and therefore categorically reject coercion of the individual by society to enforce minimum standards of compliance (as all societies do), not only make that mistake, they seem to genuinely relish doing so. My theory is that it is done not as serious social commentary or criticism, but for rhetorical purchase, as when leftism and fascism are conflated by the enemies of the Left.

There are meaningful differences between states. States can be dictatorial or Democratic. They can have as their goal social good, or kleptocracy. They can be directed at economic growth or military conquest. They can have wide-ranging views on private property, from disallowing private property, to worshiping private property as a God, and in some cases even allowing the owning of one human by another as private property. They can be captive to a single religion, or tolerant, or intolerant, toward all religion. This is not idle observation or trivial distinction. States have existed at the intersection of these principles for millennia, and they have risen or fallen, or both, based on them. Citizens have left one for another, based on these distinctions. Usually, when citizens object to the constitution of a state, when it's not just compete foolishness, it is usually over exactly these kinds of distinctions.

If you want to live in a state that is never coercive, I suggest you find one and move there. I claim they don't exist in nature, and with good reason. The idea that the rights of an individual should take precedence over the social whole, is a case of mistaking cause for effect. We have rights because our fellow citizens, i.e. society as a whole, defines and protects them for us. It is absurd to imagine that the resulting set of necessarily-circumscribed rights would include the right for such an individual to demand foundational changes to society itself (against the will of a majority) that bestowed those rights on the individual to begin with. It's not that you don't have a choice; you do. But your right or remedy in this regard is limited to leaving that society.

In any case, since all modern states employ coercion, isn't it pointless to act like that is a useful, let alone essential, distinguishing feature or taxonomic difference among them? It would be like insisting that the fundamental axis of classification of people is whether they can fly like birds. So few of us can do that, that no sensible person would seriously propose it. It's just not a distinction that helps, or even affects, say, a tailor, an athletic coach, or a physician. Otherwise, of course, they'd be all over it.