No Aggression, No Exceptions

Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy
'Cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy
--The Rolling Stones

Ron Paul notes that liberty rests on one simple principle. No person or group of people may act aggressively against the person or property of someone else.

If society permits exceptions to that rule, then people with criminal intentions will flock to those exceptions in order to gain cover for their violent acts.

It is easy to construe that modern societies construct government to provide such cover. There are several reasons why government is attractive in this regard. Being a large institution endowed with powers of force, government offers scale economies for expropriating property that smaller criminal organizations cannot match.

Government also offers opportunity for criminally-minded principals to contract with strong armed government agents to do the dirty work. This arrangement affords a certain degree of causal ambiguity for perps. Casual observers can have trouble determining just who's behind the violence. The strong armed agents are often far more visible than principals who fund the crime.

Finally, government provides a means for rationalizing away violent behavior. Because most individuals do not view themselves as violent individuals, the cognitive dissonance problem that arises when people seek to aggress on others requires the concoction of an intermediary that is doing good things with a sort of 'benevolent force.' Thus, government acts in the name of social justice, equality, national security, et al in manners marketed as non-aggressive. Cognitive dissonance problem solved.

Being the popular exception to the non aggression principle, government has, predictably, wrought levels of death and destruction that smaller bands of criminals can only imagine.

Compromising the non-aggression principle is not possible. No aggression, no exceptions.