Law vs. Tyranny; L.E. Read

Lord Keynes, in 1938, speaking of the time when he was twenty, said of himself and his friends: We repudiated entirely customary morals, conventions, and traditional wisdom. We were . . . in the strict sense of the term, immoralists . . . we recognized no moral obligation, no inner sanction, _to conform or obey. Before heaven we claimed to be our own judge in our own case. So far as I am concerned,it is too late to change; I remain and always will remain, an immoralist . . . . In a recent comment on that pas sage, Henry Hazlitt suggests that "it is the spread of precisely this attitude since then to ever-widen ing circles that helps to explain the moral and political decay In the last few decades." As to which takes precedence 1974 LAW VERSUS TYRANNY 633 a body of legal edicts backed by force, or a consciousness of moral obligations - I say, contrary to Keynes, the latter. In describing himself as an immoralist, Lord Keynes was saying that no moral laws or ethical imperatives are to stand in the way of desires and ac tions or to otherwise restrict his thoughts and deeds. And the re suIt is an outpouring of legal edicts inspired by him and his disciples and designed to control the affairs of society.

Now to my faith. I am a moral ist. I subscribe to the proposition that there are laws of nature and the universe, of Creation, that should be discovered and respected. I believe that all man-made laws legal edicts - which go beyond cod ifying and complementing the moral law, serve not to bind men together but to spread them asunder, creating chaos rather than harmony, tyranny rather than peaceful order. Fundamental to my faith is the rejection of government as the sovereign power. This puts me on the side of the writers of the Dec laration of Independence: ... that all men are ... en dowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. By proclaming the Creator as the endower of men's rights, they pro claimed the Creator as sovereign, denying government that ancient and medieval role. Moralists! Being a moralist also links me with Walter Lunden, F. A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, and an encouraging number of other moralists and eth icists of increasing influence. How ever, this does not mean that all of us see precisely eye to eye. That would be as undesirable as it is im possible. Why? It is our differ ences that serve as steppingstones to truth, an infinite pursuit. We agree on being moralists, not im moralists, moral values being the correct vantage point from which to look for improvement, refine ment. Thus, let each share what ever his best thoughts reveal - the upgrading procedure, that is, learning from each other, ca.tholic ity the rule.

Foundations of Morality What are the foundations of morality? Moralists have varying answers to this question.My foun dations are the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. The Gold en Rule, in my view, is the prime tenet of sound economics and, doubtless, the oldest ethical pro position of distinctly universal character. Let no one do to others that which he would not have them do to him; that would be 634 THE FREEMAN October just about the ideal, economically, socially, morally, ethically. Admit tedly, this is more a goal than a likelihood, but it is goals we are considering. There are moral values which are appropriately reinforced by man-made law, and other moral values which do not lend them selves to legal implementation. Let us examine the Ten Command ments to find where man-made laws are appropriate, that is, where they are complementary to the moral law, and where not. Man-made laws -legal edicts backed by force - are inappro priate when directed at what the individual thinks or believes or does to himself. A man's inner life can only be impaired, never improved, by coercive forces. Gov ernment is but an arm of society and its only proper role is to cod ify and inhibit injuries inflicted on society, that is, on others than self. Self-injury is subject to self correction - none other!

Take the Commandment, "Thou shalt not covet." Enforce this by a man-made law? The absurdity is obvious. Envy is the root of many evils - stealing, killing, and the like - yet it cannot be done away with by the gun, billy club, fist, or any other physical force. Might as well pass a law against stress or worry or despair or man's thoughts about the hereafter or against suicide for that matter. The you's and I's - society - may lament the ills many people inflict on themselves but we cannot cor rect them by legal concoctions. The moralist concedes that there is good and evil in the world - in man - in any man - that there is a moral law by which one may dis tinguish the good from the evil. But he knows that he is powerless to relieve any individua.l of the cer tain consequences of that person's immoral actions. Would he try to enact legislation to the effect that a person shall not be burned if he touches a hot stove or drown if he stays indefinitely under water without air? Such human enact ments would be inconsistent with the moral laws of cause and con sequence - would indeed be a form of tyranny, an invitation to law lessness in the mistaken belief that one might violate the moral law with impunity.

Protective Prohibitions Here are a few samplings of prohibitions by a government out of bounds, minding your and my business: driving a car without seat belts, staying away from school, working for less than $2.00 an hour, laboring more than 40 hours a week, keeping stores open on the Sabbath, exchanging the fruits of one's labor for gold, on and on. All in the name of protect1974 LAW VERSUS TYRANNY 635 ing the you's and me's against our selves. Law? Not the way a mor alist would define it! These are tyrannies. Clearly, the moral law takes precedence over the legal edicts of civil law. The latter serves a use ful purpose provided its limited role is understood and heeded. When statutory law invades the do main of the moral law, it is itself ineffective and it paralyzes moral action; it creates a vacuum. Coercively enforce an observa tion of the Golden Rule when only self-enforcement is possible? Non sensical! Can the government stop covetousness by making it illegal?

Of course not! The role of civil law should be limited exclusively to inhibiting such injuries as some inflict on others, never di rected at injuries we inflict on ourselves. My moral code is founded on the Golden Rule and the Ten Com mandments, and I would call upon the civil law to help enforce only these: "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," and "Thou shalt not bear false witness." Conceded, killing, stealing, and bearing false witness inflict self injury: the destruction of one's soul, the loss of neighborly respect, the reduction of propects for co operation. However, each of these evils inflicts injuries on others and thus becomes a societal problem. Such destructive behavior should be inhibited, insofar as possible, by the organized and legal arm of society - government. Mass Murder All but the mentally deficient stand against the murder of one by another and more or less agree that one means of minimizing the practice is to oblige the murderer to pay the penalty for his crime.

Mass murder, on the other hand - killings by the millions - is not so much frowned upon. Why? These are done in the name of a collective and thus are thought lessly regarded as impersonal. I didn't do it; the nation (or some other abstraction) did it! Witness the Crusades in the name of Christianity or the Thirty Years' War in Central Europe, or what goes on more and more in our time. 1 The Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," is no less broken when done in the name of a collec tive than when one man kills an other. What is the explanation for this calamitous trend? In my view, omnipotent government, that is government, not the Creator, as sovereign. 1 For further reflection on this com plex matter, see my "Conscience on the Battlefield." (Copy on request.) The Thirty Years' War witnessed the slaugh ter of millions of people "to the glory of God"! See Grey Eminence by Aldous Hux ley (New York: Harper & Bros., 1941).

636 THE FREEMAN October Only those who reason clearly from cause to consequence stand foursquare in support of "Thou shalt not steal." True, not one in a thousand would steal a penny from a child's bank or a neigh bor's goose or another's loaf of bread. Full respect for private pro perty at the you-and-me level! Yet, people by the millions will ask the government to do the taking for them - billions upon billions of dollars annually. Plunder at the impersonal level! Why? The same old reason: government out of bounds, that is, government as sov ereign. "The king can do no wrong; therefore, what he does for me at the expense of others is right." Sound reasoning? Hardly! Those who cherish liberty are well advised to respect and defend the rightful claims of others. As Santayana wrote, "The man who is not permitted to own is owned." Observe that "Thou shalt not steal" presupposes private owner ship, the bedrock or foundation of individual liberty. Why this asser tion? How possibly could one steal were nothing owned! To disregard this moral law is to deny being one's own man; disobedience invites enslavement - being owned.

Merely observe how the fruits of individual effort are increasingly expropriated by the collective, how our options of ownership are being diminished. And the way to reverse this dreadful trend is to heed the Commandment against theft. Government's role here, as in the case of murder, is to inhibit these infractions of the moral law, not to promote them. "Thou shalt not bear false wit ness" means not to misrepresent or defraud or falsify. Make a con tract, keep it. Let all representa tions be truthful, whether they pertain to persons or to goods and services. False witness, having to do with injury to others, ration ally warrants that the civil law help rescue us from this evil. To my way of thinking, moral ity, once shattered, destroys the people and whoever or whatever pres umes to rule. It is only the consciousness of moral obligations that binds men together. This is one reason why I a.m an unabashed moralist and why I hope that our tribe may increase in number and improve in consciousness. Amen!

~ A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK J 0 H N C HAM B E R L AIN Gibbon for Moderns Gibbon for Moderns is the title chosen by Peter P. Witonski for his one-volume abridgement of Eighteenth-Century Edward Gib bon's famous history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire (Arlington House, $8.95). And, as part of his didactic purpose, Wit onski adds a brief notice that he is presenting the more important pa.rts of an always fascinating his torical work for their "lessons for America today." Since Rome, with its eastern ex tension in the Byzantine Empire, lasted for a couple of millennia, the "lessons" that are to be learned from Gibbon, Mommsen or any other historian of the rise, spread and decline of Latin civilization have a thousand faces. More than thirty years ago an American newspaper man, H. J. Haskell of the Kansas City Star, wrote a de lightful book called The New Deal I in Old Rome. His "lesson" was that Henry Wallace, Harold Ickes, Rexford Tugwell and Franklin D.