Let’s play a game. See if you can spot the missing idea from Bonnie Kristian’s recent column about bad government. You can read that column in The Week by following this link.

If you didn’t read it, I can summarize it briefly. Kristian begins the article with the story of a Florida home-owner named Sandy Martinez who was cited by local authorities for parking her car on the lawn in violation of a local ordinance.

There's no good street parking at her house, so when her car, her sister's car, and her two adult children's cars are all at her home, the space constraints sometimes put two wheels of one vehicle on the grass. For this, the city fined her more than $100,000, plus nearly $65,000 for other minor housing code violations: cracks on the driveway and a fence that got knocked down in a squall. Martinez couldn't afford to repave the driveway, which was still functional. She was waiting for insurance reimbursement to fix the fence. And she tried to resolve the parking fines only to discover, months later, they were still accumulating daily. Now her collective fines are so large she could only repay them by selling her house, but then she'd still have to pay off her mortgage, and she'd have no home.

Bonnie Kristian, quite rightly, sees this heavy penalty as unreasonable. And then she says:

This is the kind of small injustice that keeps me libertarian. . . . It is ludicrous this could happen in a country which imagines itself free.

Libertarianism is, as you probably know, an ideology the demands reduced government, reduced regulation, and increased “Liberty.”

So, to summarize, Kristian observes government being done badly, and concludes that government should not be done at all. What possibility did she overlook?

If you said, “The possibility of good government,” give yourself a reward. If you said, “The possibility of genuine freedom — including the freedom to associate and cooperate,” give yourself extra credit.

Bonne Kristian is a smart and insightful writer. But here, she is blind to the most important details. The city where Sandy Martinez, like every other community, needs organization and regulation. Fining her $100,000 for parking on her own lawn is serious overreach. It’s bad government. But a local zoning board needs to be there. Otherwise, Martinez’ neighbor might start a tire fire or begin butchering steers in the front yard.

The solution to bad government is not no government. It is good government. And yes, good government probably means less government overall than we have today.

The recent popularity of libertarianism is a serious threat to America’s future. The call for personal liberty above all else is an abdication of the principles that America was founded on. Yes, there was a big cry for Freedom and Liberty at the time of the revolution, but that only meant freedom from the rule of the British king. The country was founded on a citizen-led society with plenty of rules. Here’s how Alexis de Tocqueville described the America he observed in the 1830s.

They did not claim that a man in a free country has the right to do everything; on the contrary, they imposed on him more varied social obligations than elsewhere; they did not have the idea of attacking the power of society in its principle and of contesting its rights; they limited themselves to dividing it in its exercise. They wanted in this manner to arrive at the point where authority is great and the official is small, so that society would continue to be well regulated and remain free.

Tocqueville says here that the citizens in early America knew how to engage with the authorities around them. They didn’t see the government as an adversary. They saw it as their own business.

If Sandy Martinez had been a member of the city council in her city, the ordinance that cost her $100,000 wouldn’t have ever been adopted. Supposing she hasn’t the time or the personality to run for office, Martinez still could have sought help from her representative or the mayor’s office. And if the penalty against her was discriminatory, she could have sought relief from the excesses of one government office through the services of another government office.

Good government is hard work. But bad government is intolerable, and no government is disastrous. We have no choice but to be more involved.