The Sandra Bullock movie “Miss Congeniality” hilariously lampooned the vapid plea for “world peace” by beauty contest contestants. But that’s really what libertarians want.

First and foremost, libertarians want an end to the most destructive government program of all, war.

But libertarians also recognize that forcing people to purchase things they don’t want or need, like “public” education, health care programs or bankrupt retirement plans, forcibly prohibiting peaceful activities like taking medicine without permission from a doctor or accepting a wage below the arbitrarily imposed government minimum, or forcibly mandating people to associate with others against their will are all just as unpeaceful, i.e. warlike, as sending armed men in government costumes into a field to slaughter each other.

In all of these cases, force is initiated against the innocent, which is, by definition, war. Peace is not possible until all legalized aggression is abolished, and peace reigns over all human endeavors. To the obtuse cry, “There ought to be a law,” libertarians respond “Let there be peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.”

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.