The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) is a compelling ethical starting point: “Do not initiate force against others.” This resonates because it reflects our intuitive sense of fairness. But its simplicity is also its greatest weakness.

A Brief History of the Non-Aggression Principle

The Non-Aggression Principle emerged from Enlightenment liberal thought and was later codified within classical liberal and libertarian traditions. Most notably, Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand brought it to prominence in the 20th century, with Rothbard embedding it at the core of his anarcho-capitalist vision. It gained further traction among libertarians and voluntaryists as a moral axiom for a stateless society: a clean, intuitive rule that promised maximal individual liberty and minimal coercion.

Today, the NAP is embraced by various factions on the political right, especially those disillusioned with state overreach. For many, it functions not just as a principle but as a moral identity, a boundary between ethical and unethical action, between civilized behavior and tyranny.

But therein lies the danger: when a heuristic becomes dogma, it resists refinement, even when reality demands it.

The Limits of NAP as Practiced

The primary flaw of the NAP is that it is applied too narrowly by most of its advocates. It fixates on physical violence while ignoring non-physical forms of aggression, many of which are far more insidious, subversive, and socially corrosive.

What does the NAP miss?

Deception (lying, misrepresentation, fraud)

Manipulation (emotional coercion, gaslighting)

Ideological Subversion (weaponized narratives that erode trust or institutional cohesion)

Reproductive Parasitism (seduction or reproduction without reciprocal responsibility)

Informational Warfare (propaganda, censorship, reputational destruction)

Commons Exploitation (free-riding, overuse, or externalizing costs onto others)

Each of these constitutes a form of aggression, imposing a cost without consent, even if that cost is not physically visible. More crucially, these non-violent aggressions are rarely isolated; they often act as the first stage of broader conflict. By eroding trust, destabilizing institutions, and disrupting reciprocal norms, they lay the groundwork for violent escalation. What begins as informational, emotional, or institutional subversion frequently ends in physical confrontation. All such actions degrade the very fabric of cooperation, trust, and reciprocity that the NAP seeks to protect.

Now consider the following cases, which many NAP adherents would label “initiation of force,” but which under Natural Law are morally obligatory responses to prior aggression:

Quarantining a contagious person: Not aggression, but self-defense against biological threat.

Expelling squatters from public land: Not violence, but restoration of property and intergenerational trust in the commons.

Censoring violent ideological subversion: Not tyranny, but defense against institutional warfare.

Restricting pathological religious movements: Not persecution, but reciprocal protection of the informational commons.

Prosecuting serial deceivers: Not harassment, but the restoration of trust through holding liars accountable in public for the harm they cause.

Banning market actors who externalize harm: Not overreach, but the enforcement of symmetry in exchange.

Intervening to prevent blackmail: Not aggression, but rightful defense against coercion masked as mere exposure. Blackmail is a form of extortion that weaponizes information to extract compliance, and responding with force to neutralize such threats is not only permissible, it is morally required.

Stopping those who bait others into hazard: Not aggression, but a necessary preemptive defense. When individuals deliberately provoke or lure others into dangerous situations, whether through manipulation, entrapment, or ideological grooming, they are initiating harm by proxy. Responding with force to interrupt or prevent such baiting is not a violation of non-aggression but a fulfillment of moral responsibility.

Each of these scenarios exposes the NAP’s limitation. By reducing morality to a prohibition on direct violence, the NAP permits parasitism by non-violent means.

That said, many of these examples also reveal why some are wary of expanding the definition of justified force. Governments often do overreach, even when the use of force is warranted. What begins as a legitimate defense against indirect aggression can easily morph into unjust domination if unconstrained by principle. And as members of the public, we should have no reasonable expectation that state actors, whose role is to exercise authority according to Natural Law, will in fact act according to it.

It is only through our own ability to use force against them, to reform or replace government when necessary, as recognized in the Declaration of Independence and Western common law, that we keep government accountable. A government cannot be held accountable unless we the people hold it accountable.

Of course, many libertarians and anarcho-capitalists will respond by suggesting we simply abolish government entirely, offering elaborate arguments for stateless order. But they overlook a fundamental reality: the vast majority of people want and need governance because they cannot govern themselves.

Absent a new planet for the self-governing to escape to, or mass elimination of those who can’t, there will always be a persistent demand for governance.

What is rarely acknowledged is that there is a market for governance. Just as markets exist for goods, ideas, and relationships, there is a marketplace for reciprocal institutional order. The existence of that market signals a social demand that cannot be ignored or moralized away.

Part of the problem is that many NAP adherents do not recognize that the commons is a real, tangible thing, one that undergirds the very concept of private property. They often treat the commons as disposable or irrelevant, not realizing that without a shared commons for mutual defense and trust enforcement, individual rights, including property rights, will eventually dissolve. We did not build civilization by protecting only our personal claims; we built it by defending the commons that make those personal claims possible.

Because of this blind spot, many NAP adherents fail to perceive attacks on the commons as aggression against them. This leaves them vulnerable to the slow erosion of their language, culture, institutions, and civilization, each of which exists precisely to enable the continued creation, acquisition, and defense of property, value, and even personhood itself. When you fail to defend the commons, you ultimately fail to defend yourself.

Therefore, if the NAP is to evolve into a genuinely useful long-term ethical framework, it must be applied more broadly, accounting for all vectors of cost imposition, not just physical violence. But this broader application requires hard limits to prevent abuse. Those limits can only be reliably established through the formal structure of Natural Law: grounded in truth, reciprocity, and decidability.

The Cost of Moral Disarmament

In the West, many are lamenting the end of our high-trust commons and civilization. But what they forget, or refuse to acknowledge, is that we once had high trust because we ruthlessly enforced it.

High trust was not built on kindness or unconditional tolerance. It was built on strict norms: thieves were hanged, the untrustworthy were shamed or exiled, and entire classes of parasitic or subversive behavior were met with swift, reciprocal punishment.

Westerners became too nice. Too agreeable. Too conflict-averse. Too detached from the responsibility of enforcing our own values. And while we pacified ourselves with an increasingly narrow view of the Non-Aggression Principle, our adversaries, internal and external, found aggressive strategies that slipped beneath its threshold.

They deployed ideological subversion, manipulation, seduction, and deceit, forms of aggression the NAP is unequipped to address. And because we refused to respond, we allowed these tactics to take root.

You do not preserve a high-trust civilization unless you are willing to defend it, socially, legally, and yes, violently when required. Cooperation must be enforced, not assumed.

But there is hope. Green shoots are emerging. Men, and increasingly, women, are waking up to the fact that some groups do not want a high-trust civilization. They want to replace it with systems where parasitism, predation, and nepotism thrive.

Our civilizational immune system is reactivating. The antibodies are returning. The gatekeepers are sharpening their blades. The era of unearned tolerance is coming to a close.

Why Natural Law

The Non-Aggression Principle is incapable of addressing the broad spectrum of human behavior, including the disparities between desperate cultures that are either incapable of or unwilling to limit their aggression. We need a broader moral and ethical standard, one that encompasses all forms of asymmetry and cost imposition. Natural Law offers that framework. It tests every act by three criteria:

Is it truthful (testifiable)?

Is it reciprocal (symmetrical)?

Is it decidable (resolvable by due process)?

The NAP was a noble attempt to systematize ethics. But it’s incomplete. Natural Law is not just broader, it’s operational. It doesn’t rely on moral feelings but on forensic accountability.

If we want to live in a cooperative, high-trust, sovereign society, we must grow beyond NAP moralism into Natural Law realism.

Why the Narrow View Persists

Many adherents of the Non-Aggression Principle remain fixated on physical aggression alone. This fixation often stems from a desire for moral clarity, simplicity, and personal insulation from responsibility. By defining aggression solely as visible, bodily harm, one can maintain the illusion of righteousness while ignoring the indirect or systemic harms that still impose real costs on others.

This narrow view appeals to those who distrust complex moral systems or institutions. It functions as a psychological escape hatch, a way to avoid the burdens of adjudicating nuanced conflicts, confronting uncomfortable truths, or assuming civic responsibility. And perhaps most critically, it reflects a short time preference, an aversion to the long, arduous work of defending against slow, subtle, and continuous forms of aggression.

When dealing with direct physical violence, moral judgment is simple, response is immediate, and resolution is finite. But when facing deception, manipulation, subversion, and fraud, defense becomes an ongoing, emotionally draining task. Many who cling to the NAP’s narrow formulation are, in effect, overwhelmed by the complexity of moral responsibility over time. They retreat into a rule that simplifies reality, even if it fails to govern it.

In contrast, those of us within the Natural Law tradition insist on a full accounting of aggression. We understand that harm is not limited to fists and firearms, it can come through lies, subversion, manipulation, fraud, seduction, and the destruction of shared norms. We do not privilege visible violence while ignoring its preludes. We trace causality, demand testifiability, and insist on reciprocity, no matter how abstract or ideologically protected the behavior.

Where the NAP offers moral comfort, Natural Law demands moral computation. It requires that every act, norm, and institution be accountable, measured by its impact on the commons, on cooperation, and on sovereignty.

This is the standard required if civilization is to endure.

Conclusion

And if you’ve read this far, perhaps something inside you has already begun to stir, that intuitive sense that maybe, just maybe, the boundaries of aggression are wider than you’d once thought. It doesn’t mean the Non-Aggression Principle is wrong. Far from it. It’s a noble impulse. A necessary foundation. But as you’ve now seen, the world is not always kind enough to remain within its bounds.

Rather than abandoning the NAP, consider upgrading it. Let it evolve. Let your understanding deepen. What if the principle you hold dear is just one part of a much larger, more intricate framework, one that accounts for every form of aggression, not just those easy to see? What if the clarity you’ve always sought isn’t lost in complexity, but revealed through it?

Natural Law does not ask for your belief. It offers you understanding. A sharper lens. A complete accounting. You don’t need to reject what you’ve known, you need only be willing to see further.

And when you’re ready, study Natural Law. Not as an ideological dogma, but as a tool for calculating actions. Not as a challenge to your convictions, but as their fulfillment.

Noah Revoy Senior Fellow, Natural Law Institute https://naturallawinstitute.com/