July 21, 2007
by Evans Munyemesha

Here I now take a look at Statutory Law, which shall henceforth be referred to as simply law in this article. Law is one of the political institutions(or legal fictions) that man has erected for himself, promising himself that life would be better with it. We have heard something similar to this before when the socialist intellectuals proclaimed from their university mountaintops that socialism was the answer to our social problems and a vehicle to our economic progress. But this acceptance of socialism, under whatever name and form, and as documented in the Black Book of Communism, ended up consuming 45 to 72 million people in China, between 1.3 million and 2.3 million in Cambodia, 2 million in North Korea, 1.7 million in Africa, 1.5 million in Afghanistan, 1 million in Vietnam, 1 million in Eastern Europe, and 150,000 in Latin America. The lesson, though, has not been learned.

While legitimate law could not truly have its origin in the head of a lawmaker, for like language and custom, it emerges spontaneously in society, nonetheless law as promulgated by the lawmakers has an established and privileged position in society principally due to the endorsement of the political powers, directly through legislation, and indirectly through toleration of its destructive tendencies by popular opinion.

The always misguided popular opinion has led to the rather dubious general perception that any ill in society could be remedied by law, and thus citizens must be compelled to obey an endless array of contradictory, inconsistent, redundant, discriminatory, and dehumanizing laws through the intimidation of, or tacit force of, the law enforcers.  This corruption of perception in the eyes of the public is aided by the pervasive insistence and false claims of the lawmakers that the improved conditions in society are due to their tireless efforts in lawmaking. Nothing could be more propagandistic and viciously false. Were we to admit this claim as true, the claim that more laws lead to a better and freer society,  for argument's sake, there would still be the questions of how lawmakers have acquired the special status whereby they are exempt from the power of some of the laws of their own making? It is against the law for a private citizen to carry a firearm on federal property, but the lawmakers are exempt from this law.   

It is defensible on rational grounds to assert without necessarily supplying proof that law, like any other state invention and intervention, interferes with the harmonious relations of people in society. If it is remembered that the emergence and consequent encouragement of law was due to the real need in the direction of common interests of citizens in opposition to unscrupulous interests and savage living conditions, it now seems peculiar that compulsory law and the exertion of stronger forms of legal pressure have excluded totally voluntary associations in societies and contributed to the cultivation of a mentality akin to ?political gangsterism'where private negotiation is supplanted by legal intimidation. The absence of voluntary associations must mean that individuals who would otherwise spurn invidious and incomprehensible law for whatever reason are now forced to live under conditions or terms contrary to their own interests.

To be sure, those who wish to make us less obese, drug-free, more virtuous, more educated through public schools, more responsible, more charitable, and indeed better citizens, by the force of the law do not see the absurdity in doing so. The law from Congress could not be the most appropriate instrument, morally, reasonably, or logically, in the fight against barbarism for the law itself is barbarous.

My main interest on this subject, briefly, has been to solely show definitively how, by compulsion or violence, law, or the organized confusion of pieces of legislation, achieves ends different from its intended ones. From the outset, let me be plain, I acknowledge that the struggle for social freedom by the individual is rightly justified, and as a cause, merits the attention of all classes of all races as the slavish and oppressive government conditions under which the great number of these individuals have lived had bred grounds for disorder or rebellion. And as such, the question of seeking some means of relief became of paramount necessity for the stability of society as a whole.

Strangely though, the means of relief sought, while on the surface appeared noble, even innocent, yet under the microscope of an incisive eye, have proved to be ruinous. Instead of curing the ill, they create their own ills. Rising out of the brutality and immorality of living conditions that sought to turn man into a human machine; conditions that are an affront to mankind, law promised to free the citizen from the shackles of capricious power and other atrocious practices by appealing to definite and lofty principles. Nonetheless, not unlike every other illusion that has descended upon us from the mouths of jurists and social reformers, the movement for the law was warmly welcomed to the eventual detriment of its intended beneficiaries.

(Article Continues Below)

The law, powerfully organized, cunningly managed, regimented through the discipline of propaganda, and by habit, accepted and revered, has come to control every detail in almost everything we do in society, e.g. wage rates, hours of work, consumption of alcohol and certain plants, marital arrangements, ownership of property, taxation of gifts and inheritances, breastfeeding in public, freedom of expression and the press, travel to Cuba, etc. All this invasion of the law enforced mostly by high school graduates could not make us any freer. It perennially disturbs the social equilibrium of society, leading to other ills that the lawmaker is unlikely to foresee or anticipate.

In an attempt by the citizen to relieve himself of the chains of his ruler, through law, he finds himself in new chains bearing a different name. I attribute this turn of things to the citizen's aversion to good study. He would rather read gossip columns and tabloids than acquaint himself with the true laws that are everywhere affecting his life. The arrogance of his ignorance must necessarily lead him to accept apparent relief from the very thing that will bind him further. The citizen ought to be reminded not to accept regulatory power in anything.

The free society, properly understood, and its ideals striven for, will secure the gifts of liberty without some government regulation of any kind. The citizen, for his own good, must reject the noxious falsity that society regulated by the lawmaker  will enhance his condition. Instead, he must choose free relations with whomever he pleases; and by free relations, I mean nothing but that government at all levels and its law must step aside and allow individuals to direct their own lives in conformity to naturally existing law which is invulnerable to the passions of ambitious mad men. This rejection of law and of government intervention in any society rests on the fact that, both the law and government intervention have no just foundation; nor have they proved advantageous over the judgments of free individuals in a free society.

Is the citizen any better now than he was before the law became fashionable? I believe he is not quite so. When the citizen in any economy is not at liberty to choose for himself with whom he wishes to associate, he is hardly free. His pursuits are unavoidably under the control of another, and under such conditions, he is no better than what he were before. Under this arrangement, the life of the citizen is taken over by the lawmaker in alliance with the political powers. As the organization of society comes under the control of the lawmaker, its smooth operation depends entirely upon fulfilling the demands and stipulations of the legislatures. He who expresses an opinion unpleasant or dangerous to the lawmaker is invariably taken to be a threat to ?national security' , and therefore, in the eyes of the lawmaker and his followers, means ought to be found to punish, silence, exclude, convert or sabotage the livelihood of such a one. As a consequence, legislated society must be antagonistic to the free individual. But, how has this come about?

The citizen's mistaken belief that his true interests could be justly represented by another, ---such as the Romneys, Obamas, Clintons, Giuliuans, McCains, and a whole host of political prostitutes---and  indeed, his ignorance of himself that has hindered him from seeing his being drawn further into the abyss of serfdom and misery. The corrupt and immoral authorities of legislatures to which he has submitted, feels an interest in obstructing the practice of his duties, even when he knows them. Time, with the influence of ignorance, aided by his corruption, has given them a strength not to be resisted by his enfeebled voice.

From here we may judge rightly that the envy and jealousies the citizen betrays for every thing that deviates from those rules to which he has been accustomed, his scrupulous respect for what he understands not, for antiquity, for the most absurd and ridiculous institutions of his own making, are all because he's been taught to hold reverent anything immediately connected with authority; his credulity suffers him to believe the interested advice, and spurns at those who wish to show him the danger of the road he has set himself on.

The citizen, in short, whether from sloth or from terror, having abnegated the evidence of his senses, is guided in all his activities and enterprises, by imagination, by habit, by puerile opinions, but above all, by the influence of authority, which knows well how to deceive him, to turn his ignorance to esteem, his sloth to advantage. Thus imaginary, unsubstantial systems, have supplied the place of experience, and reflection.

The citizen , intoxicated with the belief of the marvelous, has surrendered his experience, and taken credulity for his guide, thus, consequently, adopting everything and all that is laid before his feet by other men whose sole interest is to continue him in that lamentable state of wretched ignorance. Thus the citizen has continued so long in a state of blinding misery, because he has been inattentive to the teachings of universal laws which would dispel his ignorance; he has neglected their instructions because he holds experience in contempt, chasing, on the contrary, the fanciful and the marvelous and the pretensions of audacious presidential hopefuls who claim to speak with higher powers in the air.

He invests himself in the pursuit of the most trifling hypotheses, of which he has never dared to examine either the principles or the proofs, because he has been accustomed to hold them sacred, to consider them as the most perfect truths, and which he is not permitted to doubt, even for an instant. In this manner, he is first deceived into belief, and then forced into submission.

Let us leave this matter with some questions: Has the citizen's condition improved now that he has baptized himself with the fire of the law? If true laws emerge directly from pre-existing laws that have always been there, and are not subject to forgery, caprice, and repeal, of what use are our Parliaments? If we observe that in any discipline or science all useful laws are discovered, why is it that in the ?science of politics', they have to be made?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider the following:

1. Make a donation of $1 or more to help keep this website active.


   click here

2. Click Here to Subscribe to the Free Populist Party Newsletter

Evans Munyemesha [send him email] is author of soon to be released libertarian book, "Poverty: A Treatise On Its Principal Cause"