The underlying problem with your attempted rebuttal of the anarchist’s position here is that you mischaracterized it. This made it impossible for you to adequately address it. Upon further inquiry into anarcho-capitalism, you will find that to equate the anarchist with a pacifist is to make use of a straw man. Though the principle of consent is an important one, it does not in any way trump that of natural rights. On the contrary—the use of force would be a necessary component of any anarcho-capitalist society as without it there would be no protection or deterrent against the abuse of natural rights. To say anarchists (or libertarians for that matter) “give supremacy to the idea of consent” is to completely mischaracterize their position—especially based upon your use of the concept of consent, as you have used it to include any use of force whatsoever.

Hence, the use of force is not what makes “all governments unjust” per se, but rather the use of unjust force. For example, a “government”* (or any enforcement authority) which apprehended a wrong-doer and compelled him to make restitution for his crime would not be acting unjustly. However, were the government to apprehend an innocent bystander behaving peacefully upon his own property and compel him to contribute to whatever services it (or the majority of its advocates) wanted to perform, it would be acting unjustly, and the bystander would have every right to use force to resist the unlawful/immoral infringement upon his natural rights (just as this right was had by the American revolutionaries fighting against the British government).

*[NOTE: I use quotes here as we have not yet defined what is a government]

Thus, your examples of the just use of force are inapplicable and do not in any way critique an anarcho-capitalist’s position. As your remaining argument is more extensively articulated in your second post on this topic, I will respond to it there.

As to your second point, I agree that the majority of liberty-minded individuals do not take the concept of consent to mean that any and all forms of government violate natural rights. However, many libertarians have a problem finding a consistent theory of property rights without falling into the fallacy that individual property rights are incompatible with any government taxation. For an example of this, see Murray Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty (http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp).

Finally, I wholeheartedly agree that the national government has become insulated from the people’s control and has lost sight of the concept of individual rights.

I concede your point as to proportionality generally. Specifically, I disagree that punishment is always a form of just compulsion, in that such a categorization requires that one sufficiently define the “crime” of which one is accused. Further, “harm” is often a term used as a sword with which to attack liberty.

However, your point is well-taken. However, I don’t believe the majority of liberty-minded individuals convert the concept of consent to anarchy. I think the underlying assertion of most is that valid authority is not coercive by nature and by method. Valid authority being defined both by the founding documents of our republic and, in my estimation, the judeo-christian ethic. However, the cry recently arising that consent of the governed is glaringly absent in modern government, has it genesis deeply rooted in the false choice afforded the average American. We live in a representative republic and are, as a matter of course, denied our right to consent or refuse how our lives are run and our funds applied. We are not afforded choice, and are removed from the process altogehter. We are fundementally ignored as a people, and are thus left only to assume that we are being nudged in a form of soft despotism. Thus, we are relegated to, in ana absence of true alternative, claiming an absence of our own consent. My overwhelming feeling is of one being herded rather than one being heard.