I read Government At Its Worst figuring Chuck Colson had found some anecdote about the power of government gone awry. I was not disappointed.

His poor friend decided to rehabilitate a campground for noble purposes. His first mistake? He pulled his permits. He went to one government agency and announced what he was doing. It’s a shame , really. If you are not in the correct state and under the guidance of adequate legal advice, you can’t rehab squat.

The fault does not lie in government bureaucrats, politicians, cops or stupid laws. The fault lies in the system of government we use. The U.S. Constitution is fundamentally flawed. It allows government to control markets instead of separating them from government like it does with religion.

Peaceful association with others is the right of all human beings, but it is not a right enumerated in the Bill of Rights and we can count on well meaning folks to use government to crush that peaceful association to get what they want.

Even those well-meaning but shortsighted folks are not to blame. The system is to blame. As long as we allow people to win arguments thorough non-peaceful means (like government) we will have people taking advantage of those violent means.

I can’t count the times have I heard, “The government should do something,” or “It’s too important to leave to the market.” Perhaps I have heard those phrases more often than you have.

So, what is Peaceful Association?

It basically means that if your idea is so great and so beneficial to all human beings, then you shouldn’t have any trouble convincing those affected human beings to agree with you. You shouldn’t have to use government to force people to your view point.

If you think your idea is great and beneficial to all human beings, but you cannot sell it to everyone, then perhaps it’s not as great and as beneficial as you thought it was.

If you want to protect the poor from their own folly and start a social security system for them, then you should peacefully convince them of the merits of your idea, not force them to participate because you (or some expert) know what’s best for them.

The Golden Rule says we need to treat others as we wanted to be treated. If we treat others as adult human beings who can make their own decisions (with good or bad results), then we pave the road for being treated that way by others.

If our system of government is based on the principal that the best ideas must be supported by force then we have doomed ourselves to live in a society where human beings will not treat each other with dignity or with respect.

We reap what we sow. And, in the U.S. we sow disrespect for human beings.