Law and politics
Law and politics"While every law restricts individual freedom to some extent by altering the means which people may use in the pursuit of their aims. Within the known rules of the game the individual is free to pursue his personal ends and desires, certain that the powers of government will not be used deliberately to frustrate his efforts."
- Friedrich Hayek
What is law? Webster says that is, “The collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense”(Law). Each of us has a natural right to defend our person, our liberty, and our property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two (Felkins). Every person has the right to defend – even by force – his/her person, liberty, and property. On this basis, an individual can’t lawfully use force to destroy another person. Furthermore, the people of a nation (possibly through elected officials) should have the right to choose which laws are just and which ones are not.
If a nation were founded on this basis, it seems that order would prevail among the people. Furthermore, such a nation would have the simplest, easiest to accept, most limited, nonoppressive, just, and enduring, government imaginable – whatever its political form might be. Under such an administration, everyone would understand that they possessed all the privileges as well as all the responsibilities of their existence. No one would have any alliance with the government. When successful we would not have to thank the politicians for our success (Donald). Moreover, conversely, we would no more think of blaming them for our misfortune than would the farmers blame them for a poor harvest due to inclement weather.
Unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective. It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it is supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights, which its real purpose was to respect. It has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense (Spooner). As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose – that it may violate property instead of protecting it – then everyone will want to participate in making the law, to protect their selves.
There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its domain (the protection of every person’s liberty and property) than here in America (ACLU). As...
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