Part 6: Essays on Natural Law and related Topics

6.1. Introduction
6.2. Natural Law and Natural Rights (James A. Donald)
6.3. The Nature of Natural Law (Mortimer J. Adler)
6.4. Ius Gentium: Natural Law or Positive Law? (Don Borland)
6.5. Natural Law and the Rule of Law (David F. Forte)
6.6. Natural Rights (Ronald Cooney)
6.7. History of International Law (Joan M. Veon)
6.8. The Philosophy of Law and Justice necessary to sustain a Free Nation (Gordon Neal Diem)

6.9. Political Correctness: The Scourge of Our Times (Agustin Blazquez & Jaums Sutton)
6.10. Why 'Political Correctness' cannot be Correct (Marc Berley)
6.11. Political Correctness (Philip Atkinson)
6.12. Inching towards Socialism (Linda Bowles)
6.13. Niccolò Machiavelli (Richard Hooker)

6.14. Concept of the European Union devised by the Nazis (Arthur Poortvliet)
6.15. The Ominous Parallels: Nazism and the EU (Mark Taha)
6.16. Heil Health (Pierre Lemieux)
6.17. The EU Constitution (Democracy Forum)
6.18. Sleepwalking into the European Superstate (Sir James Goldsmith)
6.19. Corpus Juris (New Alliance)
6.20. The European Court of Justice (New Alliance)
6.21. Towards a Euro-Police State? (New Alliance)
6.22. Breton Political Prisoners (Niall U'Aislainn)

6.23. Quotes from modern and historical sources

Natural law is contrasted with positive law.

• Positive Law = Laws enacted by a society.
• Example of a positive law would be a 55 mph speed limit.
  
• Natural Law = Natural Rights.
• Inalienable &endash; they can't be taken away.
• Universal and unchanging.

The ideas of Natural Law incorporated in the American Declaration of Independence come from the English philosopher John Locke. Locke believed that nature had endowed human beings with certain inalienable rights that could not be violated by any governing authority.

Legal philosophers in the natural law tradition have argued that where positive laws are in conflict with natural law they may not be treated as valid law. Gustav Radbruch, for instance, asserted that certain Nazi laws had been so morally iniquitous that they ought not to be treated as positive or valid law.

Radbruch was a German professor of law and legal philosopher. During the 20’s the social democrat Radbruch had been minister of Justice and had devoted himself to the abolition of the death penalty. In 1933 the Nazis removed him from the judiciary.

He is most famous for the Radbruch'sche Formel (Radbruch's formula) which states that where statutory law is intolerably incompatible with the requirements of justice contained in natural law, statutory law must be disregarded in justice's favour. He developed this principle in response to the Nazi era, and the principle has been accepted by Germany's Federal Constitutional Court in a variety of cases.

In his “Fünf Minuten Rechtsphilosophie” (Five minutes philosophy of law) he describes, from minute to minute, his sudden change from a positivist standpoint to the position of natural law. He wrote amongst others:

The are principles of law which are stronger than any statutory law, so that a statutory law which is in conflict with them, is not valid. These principles are called natural law.

Today, Natural Law is the basis of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Natural law and natural rights follow from the nature of man and the world. We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.

Natural law has objective, external existence. It follows from the ESS (Evolutionary Stable Strategy) for the use of force that is natural for humans and similar animals. The ability to make moral judgments, the capacity to know good and evil, has immediate evolutionary benefits: just as the capacity to perceive three dimensionally tells me when I am standing on the edge of a cliff, so the capacity to know good and evil tells me if my companions are liable to cut my throat. It evolved in the same way, for the same straightforward and uncomplicated reasons, as our ability to throw rocks accurately.

Natural law is not some far away and long ago golden age myth imagined by Locke three hundred years ago, but a real and potent force in today's world, which still today forcibly constrains the lawless arrogance of government officials, as it did in Dade county very recently.

The opponents of natural rights often complain that the advocates of natural rights are not logically consistent, because we continually shift between inequivalent definitions of natural law. They gleefully manufacture long lists of “logical contradictions”. Indeed, the definitions we use are not logically equivalent, but because of the nature of man and the nature of the world, they are substantially equivalent in practice. These complaints by the opponents of natural rights are trivial hair splitting, and pointless legalistic logic chopping. It is easy to imagine “in principle” a world where these definitions were not equivalent. If humans were intelligent bees, rather than intelligent apes, these definitions would not be equivalent, and the concept of natural law would be trivial or meaningless, but we are what we are and the world is what it is, and these definitions, the definitions of natural law, are equivalent, not by some proof of pure reason, but by history, experience, economics, and observation.

In this paper I have used several different definitions of natural law, often without indicating which definition I was using, often without knowing or caring which definition I was using. Among the definitions that I use are:

• The medieval/legal definition

Natural law cannot be defined in the way that positive law is defined, and to attempt to do so plays into the hands of the enemies of freedom. Natural law is best defined by pointing at particular examples, as a biologist defines a species by pointing at a particular animal, a type specimen preserved in formalin.

(This definition is the most widely used, and is probably the most useful definition for lawyers).

• The historical state of nature definition

Natural law is that law which corresponds to a spontaneous order in the absence of a state and which is enforced, (in the absence of better methods), by individual unorganized violence, in particular the law that historically existed (in so far as any law existed) during the dark ages among the mingled barbarians that overran the Roman Empire.

• The medieval / philosophical definition

Natural law is that law, which it is proper to uphold by unorganized individual violence, whether a state is present or absent, and for which, in the absence of orderly society, it is proper to punish violators by unorganized individual violence. Locke gives the example of Cain, in the absence of orderly society, and the example of a mugger, where the state exists, but is not present at the crime. Note Locke's important distinction between the state and society. For example trial by jury originated in places and times where there was no state power, or where the state was violently hostile to due process and the rule of law but was too weak and distant to entirely suppress it.

• The scientific / sociobiological / game theoretic / evolutionary definition

Natural law is, or follows from, an ESS for the use of force: Conduct which violates natural law is conduct such that, if a man were to use individual unorganized violence to prevent such conduct, or, in the absence of orderly society, use individual unorganized violence to punish such conduct, then such violence would not indicate that the person using such violence, (violence in accord with natural law) is a danger to a reasonable man. This definition is equivalent to the definition that comes from the game theory of iterated three or more player non zero sum games, applied to evolutionary theory. The idea of law, of actions being lawful or unlawful, has the emotional significance that it does have, because this ESS for the use of force is part of our nature.

Utilitarian and relativist philosophers demand that advocates of natural law produce a definition of natural law that is independent of the nature of man and the nature of the world. Since it is the very essence of natural law to reason from the nature of man and the nature of the world, to deduce “should” from “is”, we unsurprisingly fail to meet this standard.

The socialists attempted to remold human nature. Their failure is further evidence that the nature of man is universal and unchanging. Man is a rational animal, a social animal, a property owning animal, and a maker of things. He is social in the way that wolves and penguins are social, not social in the way that bees are social. The kind of society that is right for bees, a totalitarian society, is not right for people. In the language of sociobiology, humans are social, but not eusocial. Natural law follows from the nature of men, from the kind of animal that we are. We have the right to life, liberty and property, the right to defend ourselves against those who would rob, enslave, or kill us, because of the kind of animal that we are.

Law derives from our right to defend ourselves and our property, not from the power of the state. If law was merely whatever the state decreed, then the concepts of the rule of law and of legitimacy could not have the meaning that they plainly do have, the idea of actions being lawful and unlawful would not have the emotional significance that it does have. As Alkibiades argued, (Xenophon) if the Athenian assembly could decree whatever law it chose, then such laws were “not law, but merely force”. The Athenian assembly promptly proceeded to prove him right by issuing decrees that were clearly unlawful, and with the passage of time its decrees became more and more lawless.

The Greeks could see that we could recognize actions as inherently lawful or unlawful, without the need of the state to tell us. (They had lived through some excellent examples of lawless states.) But how is it that we know? They came out with an astonishingly modern answer, a line of reasoning that we would now call sociobiological.

Aristotle and others argued that each kind of animal has a mental nature that is appropriate to its physical nature. All animals know or can discover what they need to do in order to lead the life that they are physically fitted to live. Thus humans are naturally capable of knowing how to live together and do business with each other without killing each other. Humans are capable of knowing natural law because, in a state of nature, they need to be capable of knowing it.

This theory was demonstrated rather successfully in the “Wild West”, which history shows was not nearly as wild as many modern cities with strict gun control. Beyond the reach of state power, property rights existed, businesses functioned. (Kopel, 323 -373)

Modern sociobiology uses the phrase “social animal” to mean what Aristotle meant by “political animal” and what Aquinas meant by “political and social animal”. In modern terminology, ants and bees are “eusocial” which means “truly social”. Humans, Apes, and wolves are “social”.

The problem of “how do we know natural law” is no different from the other problems of perception. The arguments used by those that seek to prove that we cannot know natural law, therefore natural law does not exist, are precisely the same as the arguments that we cannot know anything, therefore nothing exists, and many notable philosophers, such as Berkeley and Bertrand Russell, who started out arguing that natural law does not exist ended up concluding exactly that &endash; that nothing exists.

Philosophers usually try to reason from reason alone, as is done in mathematics, though it was long ago proven that this cannot be done, except in mathematics, and perhaps not even there.

To draw conclusions about the world one must look both without and within. Like the chicken and the egg, observation requires theory and observation leads to theory, theory requires observation and theory leads to observation. This is the core of the scientific method, in so far as the scientific method can be expressed in words.

Natural law derives from the nature of man and the world, just as physical law derives from the nature of space, time, and matter.

As a result most people who are not philosophers or lawyers accept natural law as the ultimate basis of all law and ethics, a view expressed most forcibly in recent times at the Nuremberg trials. Philosophers, because they often refuse to look at external facts, are unable to draw any conclusions, and therefore usually come to the false conclusion that one cannot reach objectively true conclusions about matters of morality and law, mistaking self imposed ignorance for knowledge.

Although many philosophers like to pretend that Newton created the law of gravity, that Einstein created general relativity, this is obviously foolish. Universal gravitation was discovered, not invented. It was discovered in the same way a deer might suddenly recognize a tiger partially concealed by bushes and the accidental play of sunlight. The deer would not be able to explain in a rigorous fashion, starting from the laws of optics and the probabilities of physical forms, how it rigorously deduced the existence of the tiger from the two dimensional projections on its retina, nonetheless the tiger was there, outside the deer, in the objective external world whether or not the deer correctly interpreted what it saw. The tiger was a discovery, not a creation, even though neither we nor the deer could prove its existence by formal logic. And proof of its concrete external existence is the fact that if the deer failed to recognize the tiger, it would soon be eaten.

A determined philosopher could obstinately argue that the perception of the tiger was merely an interpretation of light and shadow (which is true), that there is no unique three dimensional interpretation of a two dimensional image (which is also true), and that everyone is entitled to their own private and personal three dimensional interpretation (which is false), and would no doubt continue to argue this until also eaten. Something very similar to this happened to a number of philosophers in Cambodia a few years ago.

Natural law was discovered (not invented, not created, discovered) by the stoic philosophers. This was the answer (not their answer, the answer) to the logical problems raised by Socrates. The doctrines of the stoics were demonstrated successfully by experiment, but political circumstances (the Alexandrine empire and then the Roman empire) prevented a clear and decisive experiment.

Frequently politicians or revolutionaries use natural law theory, or some competing theory to create institutions. Such cases provide a powerful and direct test of theories. Advances in our understanding of natural law have come primarily from such experiments, and from the very common experience of the breakdown or forcible destruction of state imposed order.

The bloody and unsuccessful experiment of Socrates disciple, Critias, showed that the rule of law, not men, was correct. This renewed the question “What law, who's law.” Not all laws are arbitrary, there must be laws universally applicable, because of the universal nature of man. Laws governing human affairs, or at least some of those laws, must derive from some objective and external reality, not subject to the arbitrary will of the ruler or the people. If this was not so, then it would be impossible to make an unlawful law. Any law duly decreed by a legitimate ruling body, such as the Athenian assembly, would necessarily be lawful, yet history shows that this was obviously false. Some laws are clearly unlawful. Proof by contradiction.

“There is in fact a true law &endash; namely, right reason &endash; which is in accordance with nature, applies to all men, and is unchangeable and eternal.æ (Cicero) Cicero successfully argued before a Roman court that one of the laws of Rome was unlawful, being contrary to natural law, creating a legal precedent that held throughout the western world for two thousand years. Although it was frequently violated, it was rarely openly rejected in the West until the twentieth century.

The arguments and reasoning of the Stoics were generally accepted, but not thoroughly put into practice and therefore not vigorously tested, for over a thousand years.

A philosopher can choose to disbelieve in Newton's laws, but this will not enable him to fly. He can disbelieve in natural law, but political and social institutions built on false law will fail, just as a bridge built on false physical law will fall, just as the deer that does not notice the tiger gets eaten, just as the Marxist philosophers who voluntarily returned to Cambodia to aid the revolution were for the most part murdered or tortured to death by the revolutionaries. The most extreme failure in recent times was the attempt of the Cambodian government to increase the rice harvest by central direction of irrigation, also known as “the Cambodian Autogenocide”.

During the dark ages, the knowledge of natural law, like much other ancient knowledge, was kept alive by the church. This knowledge proved very useful. Hordes of armed refugees wandered this way and that, thus tribal and customary law was often inadequate for resolving disputes. Sometimes a king would rise up and impose his peoples customary law on everyone around, but such kings came and went, and their laws and institutions faded swiftly.

In those days the church persistently and rightly claimed that natural law was above customary law, and that customary law was above tribal law and the law of the kings (fiat law). Natural law was taught in the great Universities of Oxford, Salamanca, Prague, and Krakow, and in many other places.

In England the theory of natural law led to the Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution, the declaration of right, and the English Enlightenment. It was the basis for the US revolution and the US bill of rights.

The next major advance in our knowledge of natural law after the dark ages came with the Dutch republic. The success of this experiment is almost as illuminating as the failure of Critias. The failure of Critias showed that the rule of law, not men was correct. The success of the Dutch Republic showed that the medieval understanding of natural law was sufficiently accurate.

The long revolution by the Dutch against Spain obliterated or gravely weakened those people and institutions responsible for enforcing customary law and fiat law, and little was done to replace these institutions for two generations. But it is everyone's right and duty to forcibly uphold natural law, thus in order to get a law enforced, or to get away with enforcing it oneself, one’s lawyer had to argue natural law, rather than customary law. Thus the Netherlands came to be governed predominantly by natural law, rather than by men or by customary law.

Society ran itself smoothly. This showed that natural law was complete and logically consistent. Of course since natural law is external and objective it has to be complete and consistent, but our understanding of natural law is necessarily incomplete and imperfect, so our understanding of it might have been dangerously incomplete, inconsistent, or plain wrong. The experience of the Dutch strongly supports the belief that our understanding of natural law, the medieval theory of natural law as interpreted by medieval lawyers, is fairly close to the truth. If natural law was just something that somebody made up out of their heads, it would not have worked. Internal inconsistencies would have lead to conflicts that could not be resolved within natural law, requiring the man on horseback to apply fiat law or customary law to resolve them. Incompleteness would have lead to unacceptable lawless behavior. None of this happened, powerful evidence that natural law is not just something invented, but something external and objective that we are able to perceive, like the tiger, like the law of gravity.

For a long time people advocated natural law merely because they thought that if people pretended to believe it, it would lead to less bloodshed and other desirable consequences, and no great effort had been applied to the assumptions and methods of natural law theory. Now people started to advocate natural law because they had convincing evidence that our understanding of it was true. Thus came the English enlightenment, John Locke and Adam Smith.

John Locke made a major advance to our understanding of natural law, by emphasizing the nature of man as a maker of things, and a property owning animal. This leads to a more extensive concept of natural rights than the previous discussions of natural law. From the right to self defense comes the right to the rule of law, but from the right to property comes a multitude of like rights, such as the right to privacy “An Englishman's home is his castle.” Further, Locke repeatedly, in ringing words, reminded us that a ruler is legitimate so far as he upholds the law.

A ruler that violates natural law is illegitimate. He has no right to be obeyed, his commands are mere force and coercion. Rulers who act lawlessly, whose laws are unlawful, are mere criminals, and should be dealt with in accordance with natural law, as applied in a state of nature, in other words they and their servants should be killed as the opportunity presents, like the dangerous animals that they are, the common enemies of all mankind.

John Locke's writings were a call to arms, an assertion of the right and duty to forcibly and violently remove illegitimate rulers and their servants.

This provided the moral and legal basis for many great revolutions, and many governments. After the American revolution the North Americans were governed more or less in accordance with natural law for one hundred and thirty years.

John Locke was writing for an audience that mostly understood what natural law was, even those who disputed the existence and force of natural law knew what he was talking about, and they made valid and relevant criticisms. In the nineteenth century people started to forget what natural law was, and today he is often criticized on grounds that are irrelevant, foolish, and absurd.

Today many people imagine that natural law is a code of words, like the code of Hammurabi, or the twelve tables, written down somewhere, on the wall of an ancient Greek temple, or some medieval vellum manuscript, perhaps revealed by God or some divinely illuminated prophet. Then when they find that no such words exist, no such prophets are recorded, they say there is no such thing as natural law, because no one wrote down what it was.

Natural law is a method, not a code. One does not reason from words but from facts. The nearest thing to a written code of natural law is the vast body of natural law precedent. But a precedent only applies to similar cases, and is thus rooted in the particular time and circumstances of the particular case, whereas natural law is universal, applying to all free men at all times and all places.

In the middle ages the Medieval scholars defined natural law in a deliberately circular fashion. There was “Ius Divinum”, “Ius Commune”, and “Ius Naturale”. “Ius Divinum” means, more or less, the divinely revealed will of God. “Ius Commune” means, more or less, the long established customary law of nations, peoples, and states that are generally regarded as reasonably civilized.

Note that “Ius Naturale” does not derive from the customs of civilized peoples. Instead it provides with a ground on which to judge which peoples are civilized. It does not derive from the divinely revealed will of God. It provides us with a ground to judge the plausibility of claims of divine revelation concerning the will of God.

“Ius Naturale” is the law applicable to men in a state of nature. It precedes religions and kings both in time and in authority. “Ius Naturale” does not derive directly from the will of God. As Hugo Grotius pointed out in the early seventeenth century, even if there was no God, or if God was unreasonable or evil, natural law would still have moral force, and men would still spontaneously back it with physical force. God could not create men as they are, and at the same time make natural law other than what it is. A God that claimed to do that would be a mere tyrant, unworthy of worship.

Natural law derives from the method and approach then called natural philosophy. For thousands of years advocates of natural law would start with what is now the standard rationale for sociobiology, by pointing out how the wolf and the deer each have natures and inclinations appropriate for the kind of life they needed to live and to take proper care of their offspring. Today, in the language used by modern sociobiologists natural law is the ESS (Evolutionary Stable Strategy) for the use of force, employed by our species and by like species, applied by us by means of reason to problems and circumstances that confront us today. In older language, it comes from the tree of knowledge, which made us as gods.

Although natural law is an integral part of Christianity, at least of the Christianity of Aquinas and Locke, Christianity is not an integral part of natural law. If you went through Locke's second treatise of Civil Government and substituted the phrase “chance and necessity” for the phrases “divine providence” and “judgment of heaven”, there would not be any great change in the meaning or force of his argument.

Many of the key themes of modern sociobiology first appeared in Locke's treatises on government, for example Second Treatise §79-81, First Treatise §56-57. Some parts of the second treatise are often consciously or unconsciously echoed on Public Broadcasting System nature and science videos whenever they discuss the family lives and social interactions of non human animals.

Locke and the other Christian advocates of natural law believe that natural law is in accordance with the will of God not because they claim a divine revelation concerning the will of God, but because they believe that the nature of man and the world reflects the will of God.

The stoics and Grotius believed in a universe governed by chance and necessity, as do most modern advocates of natural law. Aquinas and Locke believed in a universe that reflects the will of God. It makes little difference. The stoics and Saint Aquinas started from the same facts and came to the same conclusions from those facts. They merely used slightly different language to describe their reasoning.

Throughout most of our evolution, men have been in a state of nature, that is to say. without government, hierarchically organized religion, or an orderly and widely accepted means of resolving disputes. For the past four or five million years the capacity to discern evil lurking in the hearts of men has been an even more crucial survival capability than the capacity to discern tigers lurking in shadows.

The primary purpose of this capability was to guide us in who we should associate with, (so as to avoid having our throats cut in our sleep), who we should make alliance with (to avoid betrayal), who we should trade with, (to avoid being cheated), who we should avoid, who we should drive away, and who, to make ourselves safe, we should kill.

It would frequently happen that one man would, for some reason good or bad, use violence against another. When this happened those knowing of this event needed to decide whether it indicated that the person using force was brave and honorable, hence a potentially valuable ally, or foolish and eager for trouble, hence someone to be avoided, or a dangerous criminal, hence someone to be driven out or eliminated at the first safe opportunity to do so. Such decisions had to be made from time to time, and making them wrongly could be fatal, and often was fatal.

A secondary purpose of this capability was to guide us in our own conduct, to so conduct ourselves that others would be willing to associate with us, ally with us, do deals with us, and would refrain from driving us away or killing us.

Not all things that are evil, or contrary to nature, are violations of natural law. Violations of natural law are those evils that may rightly be opposed by force, by individual unorganized violence.

The Medievals took for granted that natural law was morally and legally binding on freeholder, Emperor and Pope alike, and during the dark ages and for a little time after, men often attempted to enforce natural law against the Holy Roman Emperor, and these attempts were sometimes successful. On one occasion the Holy Roman Emperor was briefly imprisoned for debt by an ordinary butcher, locked up with the beef and mutton, and held by the butcher until the bill was paid, and this action was mostly accepted as lawful and proper, though such actions were safer against some emperors than others.

The definition of natural law that I have just given is similar to that used in the middle ages, but this definition is not obviously scientific. It fails to show that natural law is legitimately part of science. To show that the study of natural law is part of science &endash; part of sociobiology, it is necessary to restate the definition in the same value free, game theoretic, terminology that Reeve & Nonacs would use to describe the social contract in wasps.

Here follows a definition of natural law in properly scientific terms, value free terms:

An act is a violation of natural law if, were a man to commit such an act in a state of nature, (that is to say, in the absence of an orderly and widely accepted method of resolving disputes), a second man, knowing the facts and being a reasonable man, would reasonably conclude that the first man constituted a threat or danger to the second man, his family, or his property, and if a third man, knowing the facts and being a reasonable man, were to observe the second man getting rid of the first man, the third man would not reasonably conclude that the second man constituted a threat or danger to third man, his family, or his property.

Note that in order to define natural law in a value neutral fashion we require three people, not two.

This is well illustrated in the recent events in Dade county, Florida (September - October 1992, three months before I wrote this), where property holders gave other property holders guns in the well founded expectation that those guns would be used to prevent, rather than to facilitate, unlawful transfers of property. To define natural law in Dade county you would need one looter or one corrupt official, and two home owners. In value free language, one Dade county home owner and one corrupt official is a property dispute. Two Dade county home owners and one corrupt official is natural law in action. Two Dade county home owners with nobody bothering them is spontaneous order, and of course part of the definition of spontaneous order is that it is a stable order that arises spontaneously from the action of natural law.

The scientific definition is equivalent to the medieval definition because of the nature of man and the nature of the world. The two definitions are equivalent for our kind of animal, because if someone uses violence “properly”, and reasonably, he does not show himself to be dangerous to a reasonable man, but if someone uses violence “improperly”, he shows himself to be a danger. This is obvious by direct intuition, and there is also overwhelming historical evidence for this fact. For example compare the American revolution with the Russian or Cambodian revolution. The surviving American revolutionaries prospered. The communist revolutionaries were soon executed by their new masters. Almost everyone who played a significant role in the 1917 revolution was executed or died from brutal mistreatment.

The varying definitions of natural law are clearly consistent on the issue of individual violence. On the topic of collective violence, the questions of what are just grounds for making war, how may a just war be conducted, and what may a just victor do with an unjust loser, the various definitions of natural law often seem cloudy and contradictory. There are two reasons for this apparent cloudiness. One is that there is no natural definition of a collective entity, so it all depends on what gives the collective entity its substance and cohesion, how the individual is a participant in the acts of the collective entity. The Nuremberg trials contain extensive discussions of this point. The other reason is that there is a large difference between what the victor should do and what the victor may lawfully do. The victor should be magnanimous and lenient, as at Nuremberg, but may lawfully be strict and harsh. On the questions that most commonly arise in practice, all the different definitions of natural law give clear, consistent and straightforward answers: The usual reason for war is that one group defines another group as enemy, and then uses organized collective violence to seize the property of the members of that group, and to enslave or kill them. In such case it is open season on the aggressor because they constitute a clear danger to their neighbors. In a just war it is lawful to napalm bomb enemy civilians in a defended city, though not to intentionally target enemy civilians, unlawful to bombard an open city, and unlawful to massacre prisoners under any circumstances, though individual prisoners may be executed for broad reasons. It is sometimes lawful to refuse to take prisoners, depending on the circumstances. The contradictions usually evaporate when we ask the questions that we are actually interested in, about the kind of situations that actually occur in practice. Arguments about whether a given military action was in accordance with the laws of war usually involve appeal to the facts, and arguments about the intentions and capabilities of the combatants, rather than appeal to differing concepts of the laws of war, indicating that our uncertainty concerning the laws of war is less than other sources of uncertainty.

When we apply the value free theory of iterated non zero sum two player games to the value free theory of evolution we get such value loaded concepts as trust, honor, and vengeance (Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby). In the same way, when we apply the value free theory of iterated three player non zero sum games we get such value loaded concepts as natural law.

Natural law theory is a valid part of science, because any n person natural law statement about values can be expressed as an explicitly scientific, value free statement about rational self interest, evolution, and n + 1 player game theory. It is also a valid part of the study of law and economics.

In many fields of academia, straying in the direction of consideration natural law is apt to make your grants dry up, perhaps natural law theory tends to delegitimize most grant giving authorities.

Those academics who study sociobiology have been a little braver, perhaps because those who work in the hard sciences are sometimes better at looking after their own , or, as in the case of E.O. Wilson, they simply did not realize they were poking a hornets nest. Also hard science people sometimes seem to be tougher, more obstinate, stubborn, and intransigent than fuzzies.

The existence and force of natural law has been continually disputed by those who claim that the state should exercise limitless power over individuals.

Early in the seventeenth century Thomas Hobbes argued that the nature of man was not such that one could deduce natural law from it, or rather he argued that the natural law so deduced placed no important limits on the power of the ruler to do as he pleased, to remake society as he wished, that social order was purely a creation of state power.

Hobbes claimed that in a state of nature, it is a war of all against all, and life is “poor, solitary, nasty, brutish, and short”. This of course is a direct contradiction of the usual natural law argument that man is a social animal, adapted by nature to live mostly peaceably with his fellow men, and do business with them quietly.

Therefore, Hobbes argued, the state is entitled to unlimited power, and right is whatever the state, through its laws, says is right, and wrong whatever the state says is wrong. An “unjust law” is a contradiction in terms because the will of the state is itself the standard of justice, thus the ruler can do no wrong. The ruler is answerable to God, but everyone else is answerable only to the ruler.

Hobbes saw rights as a creation of state power. Therefore, in order that we might have more and better rights, state power should be as absolute and total as possible. The state should pervade and dominate every relationship in order to provide everyone with justice and rights, and suppress any form of association that it does not create and control, and the state should silence any criticism of its absolute power (so that we might be more free).

“Another infirmity of a Commonwealth is the immoderate greatness of a town, [...] also the great number of corporations, which are as it were many lesser Commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man. To which may be added, liberty of disputing against absolute power by pretenders to political prudence; which though bred for the most part in the lees of the people, yet animated by false doctrines are perpetually meddling with the fundamental laws, to the molestation of the Commonwealth, like the little worms which physicians call ascarides.”

There are some people who read Hobbes, like his reasoning, like some of his conclusions, and discard the conclusions that the twentieth century has shown to be catastrophic. This is inconsistent. If you agree with his assumption that man is not a social animal, then his conclusion that the institutions of a totalitarian state are necessary and desirable, are necessary for people to be free, follows logically.

Hobbes is often called the first atheistic political philosopher. This statement is misleading. There were plenty of political philosophers before Hobbes who had little use for religion, or were hostile towards Christianity, and made little pretense of Christianity. Hobbes was, or pretended to be, a conventional Christian. What made Hobbes different is that he saw religion as a threat to the moral omnipotence of the state. Hobbes argued that subjects of Leviathan should submit not merely their actions but “their Wills, every one to his Will, and their Judgments to his Judgment.” Hobbes's Leviathan was to define the meaning of all words, including, indeed especially, the meaning of the words good and evil. Thus Hobbes's state was to be God, and man could have no other gods before the god of the state. What made Hobbes different is not that he was cynical about Christianity (there were many political philosophers before him more cynical than he) but that he was the first in the sophist tradition to propose what Plato had proposed: to divert religious impulses towards the state, as was eventually done on a large scale during the twentieth century, most vigorously in Nazi Germany and in the Communist countries.

Hobbes claim that in the state of nature life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” can be observed to be false. It is true that during the dark ages, spontaneous order often failed, with bloody consequences, but even a few examples of spontaneous order suffice to demonstrate the existence and force of natural law, just as any number of non tigers cannot disprove the existence of tigers, but two tigers are sufficient to prove existence. In fact a state of nature is very rarely the war of all against all, as Locke pointed out. Spontaneous order held much more often than it failed. Natural law was the norm, both morally and in practice. Of course was not effective all the time, but it was effective often enough that its existence is an indisputable fact. Hobbes history was simply wrong. He took the dramatic events of history, and ignored the commonplace, and treated the dramatic events as the norm. In addition, those dramatic and bloody breakdowns of order that did happen during the dark ages were often the result of armies of refugees fleeing the lawless and criminal activities of states.

Hobbes also argued that even if men know what is just, they will not always do what is just, and that this will often lead to war. This is of course true, but that argument does not lead to the conclusion that men should submit to absolute power. Quite the contrary. As Locke argued, and as the twentieth century dramatically showed, inequality of power does not lead to less use of unjust force, but to greater use of unjust force. Human wickedness is an argument for liberty, not an argument for absolute forms of government.

This argument is no longer used by the modern successors of Hobbes. To conclude for absolutism, it is necessary to argue, as Hobbes argued, that men *cannot* know what is just use of force, and must be provided with an arbitrary definition of justice by some authority possessing a single will, as Hobbes argued. To argue for absolutism from human evil, as both Hobbes and De Maistre also argued, is foolish, and these days nobody makes that argument, regardless of their political persuasion.

If the war of all against all occurs because men cannot know what use of force is just, then indeed law is a creation of the state, as Hobbes argued, and the state is above the law, as Hobbes argued, and social cohesion derives from the will of the ruler, as Hobbes implied. But if violent conflict occurs because of simple uncomplicated evil acts by evil men, then his arguments are invalid, and the arguments of Bastiat and Locke apply &endash; law is collective self defense, thus the state must govern under law, it is not the source of law. The state cannot justly use force in ways that would be illegitimate for an individual in a state of nature. Social cohesion derives from arrangements to ensure that people apply retributive force justly and that the use of such force can be seen to be just, what nineteenth century people called “due process and the rule of law”. Social cohesion does not derive from a single central will, contrary to Hobbes arguments and assumptions.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries natural law was accepted in men's heads and in courts of law, as it always has been accepted in men's hearts. The advocates of absolutism were defeated, first intellectually, then politically, and then by force of arms. Kings who claimed to rule by divine right were killed or forced to flee.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 guaranteed an Englishman's right to bear arms (a right now lost), and more importantly, prohibited the state from using what we would now call a police force. The people were armed, state was unarmed. Individuals, not the state or the mob, applied lawful force when needed. This worked well, disproving the doctrine of monopoly of force, which derives from the absolutists, notably Hobbes.

In the medieval period the state had never had a large role in maintaining order. Often it was a source of disorder. The Glorious Revolution eliminated its role in enforcement for about two hundred years, while legitimizing its role in judgment.

In a society where there is pluralistic use of force, there needs to be respect for natural law, and natural rights, in order to avoid strife and civil war. Similarly a belief in natural rights tends to result in pluralistic use of force, because people obviously have the right to defend their rights, whereas disbelief in natural rights tends to lead to an absolute monopoly of force to ensure that the state will have the necessary power to crush peoples rights and to sacrifice individuals, groups, and categories of people for the greater good. Conversely a monopoly of force leads to the denial of natural rights (by making it safe and profitable to disregard natural rights) and the disregard of natural rights necessitates a monopoly of force to avoid frequent violent conflict.

For a society where there is plurality of force to work peaceably and well, there needs to be both respect for natural rights and also a substantial number of people with a strong vested interest in the rule of law.

A yeoman was the lowest rank of landowner, one who worked his own land or his families land, in modern terminology a peasant farmer. A villain was a sharecropper, a farmer with no land of his own, semi free, more free than a serf, though not directly equivalent to the modern free laborer. Naturally yeomen had a strong vested interest in the rule of law, for they had much to lose and little to gain from the breakdown in the rule of law. Villains had little to gain, but less to lose. People acted in accordance with their interests, and so the word yeoman came to mean a man who uses force in a brave and honorable manner, in accordance with his duty and the law, and villain came to mean a man who uses force lawlessly, to rob and destroy.

In practice free societies only arose where there was no monopoly of force, the most notable and important examples being seventeenth century England and eighteenth century North America. England, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, exemplified the medieval ideal of liberty under law, and Kingly rule under law. In the English speaking world, government started to display disregard for natural rights about fifty years after they introduced a police force, about the time that people took power who had grown up in a state where police enforced the law.

The best present day example of a society with strong social controls and weak government controls, a society with plurality of force, is Switzerland. (Kopel, p278- 302) In peacetime the Swiss army has no generals, no central command. Everyone is his own policeman. By no coincidence Switzerland is also the best modern example of the right to bear arms. Almost every house in Switzerland contains one or more automatic weapons, the kind of guns that the American federal government calls “assault rifles with cop killer bullets”. Switzerland has strict gun controls to keep guns out of the hands of children, lunatics and criminals, but every law abiding adult can buy any kind of weapon. Almost every adult male owns at least one gun, and most have more than one, because of social pressures and the expectation that a respectable middle class male citizen should be well armed and skillful in the use of arms. It is also no coincidence that respect for property rights in Switzerland is amongst the highest in the world, possibly the highest in the world. Switzerland also has lower tax levels than any other industrialized country.

Today the state is losing cohesion and its ability and willingness to maintain order and enforce the law is visibly diminishing. We can once again expect to see armed conflict between the modern equivalent of villains and yeomen. Indeed we are already seeing it. The recent L.A. riots (April 1992, eight months ago as I write this) are often described as a race riot, and to some extent they were. Yet there was as much violence by unpropertied Mexicans attacking Mexicans possessing small businesses, as there was violence by unpropertied blacks attacking Koreans possessing small businesses. Black shop owners had their shops looted and burnt by blacks in the same way as Korean shop owners had their shops looted and burnt by blacks. This was an attack by villains on yeomen, caused by the flight of the police, and only partially a black versus Korean race riot.

Plainly, some kinds of society are more natural than others. When the state attempts to impose an unnatural form of society, it requires a large amount of coercive violence to impose this form, and the state undermines its own cohesion in the process.

At the time that Locke wrote, natural law was about to become customary law, because the state was disarmed and the people armed. For the most part the common law of Locke's time was already consistent with natural law, but on some matters judges had to perform contortions to render the form of common law consistent with the substance of natural law. Much common law came from Roman law, and the law of the late roman empire was often quite contrary to natural law. Freedom of association is a right under natural law, a crime under Roman law. Under the law of the roman empire any association not compulsory was forbidden. In order to avoid repudiating roman law without violating natural law, the English courts had to perform elaborate contortions, and today the 59th sole prerogative of the holy roman emperor still lives on in America, in the form of the concession theory, which holds that a corporation is a part of the state, a portion of state power in private hands. This bizarre and convoluted legal fiction is highly inconvenient for businessmen, vastly lucrative for lawyers, and is a dangerously potent weapon in the hands of irresponsible bureaucrats and lawless judges.

Under the code of Justinian a corporation is a fictitious person created by the fiat of the holy roman emperor. Under natural law a trust is created by the promises that the officers of the trust make to it. (In the Latin of the early dark age “trustis” meant “band of comrades”.)

Hobbes argued that what we would now call civil society was nonexistent, or should not exist, or existed only by the fiat of the state. He argued that voluntary and private associations should be suppressed, as a threat to the power of the state, and hence a threat to order, or should only exist as part of the apparatus of the state.

Locke argued that the legitimate authority of the state was granted to it by civil society, that the state existed by the power of civil society, that this was its source of power morally and in actual fact.

Until the twentieth century Locke's position was widely accepted as self evident. When the state was unarmed and the people armed, as in eighteenth century England and America, it was indeed self evident. During the nineteenth century the utilitarians and the absolutists argued that the state derived its power from its capacity for large scale force, and only that, and that in order to impose the greater good on reluctant groups and individuals the state should have a total and absolute monopoly of all force. They therefore argued that the power and authority of the state came from force alone, and should come from force alone, that the state did not derive its substance from the civil society, that what appeared to be private and voluntary associations in reality derived their cohesion from the power of the state, and therefore the state could and should remake them as it willed, that contracts derived their power from the coercion of the state, not from the honor of the parties to the contract, and therefore the state could decide what contracts were permissible, and had the power and the right to remake and change existing contracts.

In the twentieth century this view came to widely accepted. People came to believe that civil society only existed by fiat of the state, that the state existed because its army and police were armed, and the people were unarmed, that the state existed by force. Even people who loved freedom, such as Hayek, reluctantly accepted this idea as true.

During decolonization the U.N. created governments in accordance with this false idea, the idea that all a state required to exist was firepower superior to that of private citizens, and that with superior firepower it could create a civil society, if needed, by fiat. The newly created governments attempted to remake or eliminate civil society in accordance with this false idea.

As a result of this false idea, in the third world and in the former soviet empire, a number of governments have collapsed or are close to collapse. Leviathan derives his cohesion from civil society, Without a strong civil society the police, the army, the bureaucracy and the judiciary tend to dissolve into a mob of individual thieves and hoodlums, each grabbing whatever he can, and destroying whatever he cannot. It is civil society that holds the state together. The state does not hold civil society together. Civil society is not a creation of the state. The state is a creation of civil society.

Locke has been proven right, Hobbes proven wrong, by an experiment much vaster and bloodier than that of Critias, but equally clear and decisive.

Many states have attempted to use something other than the civil society to provide the glue that hold them together, to provide them with the cohesion they need. Some have succeeded for a time, usually by using religion or the personal charisma of the leader in place of civil society. Those rulers that succeeded in using these substitutes put very great effort into their substitutes, showing that they were conscious of the weakness of their building materials, and, more importantly, showing that they were conscious that the state cannot hold itself together. It must be held together by something external to itself. It cannot give order to the rest of society, it must be given order by something outside itself.

Rulers that use something other than civil society to provide cohesion for their states are in practice a danger to their neighbors, and an even greater danger to their subjects. For this reason civil society is the only legitimate material from which a state may be made. A state based on something else is illegitimate. The neighbors of such states rightly and reasonably regard themselves as threatened, and so they should seek, and for the most part they have sought, to undermine, subvert, corrupt, and destroy such states, and to assassinate their rulers. History has shown that not only was Locke correct factually, he was also correct morally. Not only are states normally based on civil society, they should based on civil society.

The Soviet Union used the religion of communism to give their state cohesion, while the state obliterated civil society and physically exterminated the kulaks (the Russian equivalent of the English yeoman). When the rulers had faith, they were a danger to their neighbors. When they lost their faith their empire eventually fell, and their statist society is collapsing as I write, showing that democracy without economic liberty is worthless and unworkable, whilst Chile, Taiwan, and Thailand show that economic liberty eventually leads to all other liberties, because most natural rights are derived from the right to property. A civil society can only exist if there is a reasonable degree of economic freedom, if property rights are respected.

During the nineteenth century the advocates of limitless state power made a comeback with new rhetoric, (the utilitarians) or the same old rhetoric dressed in new clothes), and in the twentieth century they were politically successful, but militarily unsuccessful.

The absolutists keep adopting new names as each old name starts to stink, but in the nineteenth century, the time when they were intellectually most successful, they mostly called themselves romantics, identifying themselves with the then fashionable artistic and cultural movement, although most of the political “romantics” were no more talented at poetry or painting than Hitler was, and most of the real romantics were not political absolutists, far from it. When the fascists came to power the “romantics” totally disappeared, mostly calling themselves relativists. The name relativist failed to shake the stink of the gas ovens where the Jews were exterminated, and they are changing it yet again. Since the extermination camps set up again, in what used to be Yugoslavia, relativists have almost disappeared. Soon there will be few relativists, they will all be Post Modernists, or some such.

The absolutists argue that because people have different conceptions of what counts as right and wrong. they need a supreme power to forcibly define justice, and without that definition they wind up in conflict.

It logically follows from this that since people tend to create and impose a concept of justice and right by interacting with each other and by forming the associations that constitute civil society , then all of civil society must be subordinated to the ruler, so that his arbitrary and absolute definition of justice shall suppress all others.

By this reasoning every decision where we judge others and act accordingly must be made under the supervision of the state, which means that every aspect of civil society must subordinated to power of the state. (Absolutists phrase it differently, saying that every aspect of society must be provided with a common arbitrary definition of justice by the state, mere men being incapable of knowing the difference)

Hobbes concept of inalienable rights and the fascists concept of natural law is just as logical as the usual concepts of inalienable rights and natural law, indeed more logical. We cannot decide between these two different conceptions of natural law by pure reason, but we can easily decide by appeal to facts.

If disagreement on the nature of good is a common cause of violent conflict, then the absolutists are correct. If violent conflict is almost always a result of ordinary everyday uncomplicated, easily recognizable evil, then natural law is correct.

As Locke pointed out in his essay on toleration, holy wars are not about the true path to salvation, they are just like any other war. A group defines another as enemy, and uses organized violence to steal their land and gold. Their cause is not differing conceptions of the good, but simple uncomplicated evil. Saint Thomas Aquinas pointed out the same thing four hundred years before Locke, though he expressed himself more diplomatically.

Disagreement on the nature of the good is only a problem with minor and unimportant matters, not worth fighting over, and when the state is absent or weak, precedent on such matters swiftly becomes customary law. For example on the American frontier conflict consisted of mostly of fair fights conducted more or less in accordance with the code duello, and the rest was mostly straightforward uncomplicated ordinary everyday evil, simple crime, no deep philosophizing required.

The Lex Mercatoria, the customary law governing trade between different jurisdictions, shows that people have from diverse cultures and languages have no great difficulty in agreeing on what is lawful, in order to conduct business with each other. (B.L. Benson, RC Ellickson).

If the state abandons the principle that the law should be general and uniform, and instead concocts a vast multitude of special particular rules, treating one category of person very differently from another, so that one type of property can be seized in one circumstance, and another kind in another circumstance, so that a particular category of person is given a monopoly privilege of some category of business, such as taxi driving and others are excluded or have to work for the privileged and hand over the bulk of their takings to them, then in that case, in the case where generality and uniformity are abandoned, then indeed there can be no agreement &endash; not because men do not know what is just, but because such rules are unjust. When the rules are very particular and non uniform, then the particular groups harmed or benefited by particular rules will come into severe conflict, and this will make it necessary for the state to intervene and supervise in a multitude of matters that should be private matters between one man and another. It will become necessary for the state to take over and supervise civil society in detail.

The more a government violates the principles of uniformity and generality of the law, the more arbitrary and complex its laws become, then the more it comes to resemble an absolutist government, and the more it suffers from problems for which political absolutism appears to be the solution.

Every so often, a ruler such as King James II or Adolf Hitler, attempts to put the theories of the absolutists into effect. The theories and doctrines are immediately seen by their true face, and everyone utterly abhors them.

The absolutists then concoct a new name, and dress their doctrines in new plumage so that they sound like the normal actions of the state to sustain the rule of law, rather than what they truly are, the use of violence by the state to crush the rule of law.

Regardless of the name, and regardless of the rhetorical flourishes used to make the doctrine sound different from what it is, their doctrine remains the same: that justice is whatever courts do, that any law whatsoever is lawful, that right and wrong is what the law says it is and the law is whatever the nation says it is. This is the doctrine of absolutism, and anyone who advocates this doctrine is an absolutist, no matter how many names he thinks up for himself. Because these ideas acquired a bad odor in the seventeenth century, people are always finding new and different ways to express these ideas, so that they sound different, whilst remaining the same, but each new form of expression again acquires a bad odor when some ruler puts it into action.

The doctrine called relativism is the same as seventeenth century absolutism, but the rhetoric that the “relativists” used to defend it sounds superficially like the rhetoric used by the opponents of absolutism, just as the name sounds as if they are opponents of absolutism. In particular, the “relativists” aped John Locke's Letter concerning Toleration, but where Lock was arguing for the liberty of the citizen, the “relativists” used similar sounding language to argue for the license of nations. The “relativists” opposed Locke, while draping themselves in Lockean symbols.

In the same way the “Post Modernists” use a name that claims that their doctrine is entirely new and unconnected with what went before, and they claim that to examine modern doctrines and compare them to medieval doctrines is a foolish waste of time (“Studying dead white males”), and that one should not compare the current doctrines of “Post Modernists” with the earlier doctrines, even earlier doctrines preached by the same people. When they defend their two thousand year old positions with three hundred old arguments, they liberally decorate their arguments with meaningless and irrelevant references to the latest fashions and newest music stars, so as to give the sound and appearance that these doctrines and arguments are brand new, and absolutely unconnected to earlier doctrines.

The absolutists / romantics / relativists / post modernists continually change their name and plumage in a vain effort to escape their past, but the stink of piles rotting dead lingers on them.

The utilitarians have a more plausible and attractive appearance. They say that any act of force and coercion by the state is proper and lawful if it aims for the greatest good of the greatest number. Sounds pleasant and reasonable, does it not? Such a doctrine would be sound if the world were not what it is. and we were not as we are. It would be a fine doctrine if humans were intelligent bees instead of intelligent apes, but we are not, and it is not.

It is not sensible to ask: How shall “we” act to maximize “our” happiness? This is a nonsense question because individual desires necessarily conflict. The sensible question is: Given that individual desires conflict, how can we avoid too much violence? We can keep the peace collectively. It is impossible to pursue happiness collectively.

Utilitarianism has two serious problems, problems that most utilitarians regard as advantages. The idea of the greatest good for the greatest number implies that someone should be in charge, with the authority and duty to sacrifice any one persons property, liberty, and life, for the greater good. It also assumes that a persons good is knowable, and that other people can judge this good for him, make decisions on his behalf, and balance that good with other peoples good. Since any one person is expendable, then there can be no such thing as human rights, as Bentham frankly argued. Clearly the doctrine of the greatest good is going to be highly attractive to those intellectuals who envisage themselves as being in charge of deciding what is good for other people, deciding whose property shall be confiscated for the greater good, who shall be imprisoned for the greater good, or for his own good.

Many people have attempted to construct utilitarian arguments for limiting the authority of the state, most notably John Stuart Mill, but their arguments are always feeble, implausible, strained, and forced. It is even difficult to make a convincing utilitarian argument that rape is unlawful. Feminist utilitarians who attempt to construct utilitarian arguments against rape have been forced to make unreasonable assumptions about males and male sexuality. The “rights” deduced by these convoluted, elaborate, and unconvincing rationalizations are not rights at all, but are akin to what some utilitarians call “positive rights”.

Utilitarian critics of socialism find themselves arguing that socialism leads to slower economic growth, when it is clear that in their hearts what they want to argue is that socialism leads to slavery and lawless violence by the state, but they cannot express the thought within a utilitarian framework, because slavery and lawless state violence are meaningless concepts within utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism contains false implicit assumptions about the nature of man and the nature of society, and these false assumptions lead utilitarians to the absurd conclusion that a good government should create and enforce a form of society that in practice requires extreme coercion and intrusive supervision by a vast and lawless bureaucracy, leading to events and consequences very different to those intended.

What utilitarians mean by society is the exact opposite of “civil society”. Utilitarians continually use phrases like: “Society wants ...”, “Society creates this rule in order to ...”. Utilitarians imagine, consciously or subconsciously that society exists as reified entity, a supreme being capable of itself having desires, ends, and means, capable of consciously planning specific measures to achieve specific desired goals.

This single entity is above the selfish individualism of ordinary mortals, and so rightfully possesses the limitless right to use force and coercion. They imagine that this being would welcome the enforcement of the rules that it commands. If this divine being existed, then utilitarianism would make sense, but there is no such entity.

Actual individual people need no rules to force them to pursue their own ends, and when rules are enforced on them, violating their rights for the sake someone else's ends, they invariably surprise the utilitarians by vigorously resisting such rules, thus a state that bases its legitimacy and cohesion on utilitarian principles rather than on natural rights and the rule of law, requires a very high level of violence and coercion, violence that tends to constantly increase and become more severe.

The greater good is unknowable because “Society” is not a conscious entity capable of experiencing that good. Attempts to create a simulation of this deity, using elections and like methods, have been seriously unsuccessful. The state tends to behave remarkably as if it was simply a group of mere mortals, men with their own urgent needs and desires, fallible, weak, and prone to evil, pursuing their own personal goods, no different from any other organization.

Plainly therefore the state is just another group of people, and must rightfully be subject to the same law as any other person or group of people. It has no superior right to use force to achieve its goals, and if you grant it such a right, it will in the end result in the loss of your property and in slavery.

“Society” does not exist, rights do exist, not as arbitrary fiats of the state as the utilitarians claim, but inherently as a result of the nature of man. No conflict exists between civil order and individual rights. Both concepts are based on the same fundamental principles.

The real issue is not “what is the nature of good” as utilitarians pretend. The real issue is: Are rights a discovery by individuals that enable them to get along peaceably with other individuals, or are they a creation of a supreme being such as a reified society or reified state, that imposes peace on a vicious multitude with no inherent knowledge of good and evil, thus forcing on them the peace that slaves of a common master possess.

Today instead of frankly arguing that human rights are nonsense, as Bentham did, modern utilitarians use elaborate euphemisms, such as “positive rights” and “positive freedom”. No two people seem to mean the same thing when they make distinction between positive and negative rights and liberties, and their meanings seem to change rapidly from one paragraph to the next. The effect of this supposed distinction is always to destroy the meaning of “liberty” and “right”, and usually to legitimize as slavery as liberty. This supposed concept is mere fog.

Often a “positive right” is in practice the precise opposite of a right. A “negative right” is the right to be left alone, for example “An Englishman's home is his castle”, “freedom of speech”. A “positive right” is usually a government guarantee that it will supervise, direct, and control you for your own good, for example the “right to employment”, of which Marxists are so fond. (Or used to be fond back in the days when Marxists existed outside American universities.) You will notice that the “right to employment” enjoyed by the workers on Cuban sugar plantations is in practice very similar to the “right to employment” that they enjoyed when they were slaves on those plantations. If they run away from the employment that the benevolent state has so kindly assigned to them, they will be hunted down, and, if captured, returned, beaten, and set to work again. In the same way the “right to employment” enjoyed by the workers on Russian collective farms was very similar to the “right to employment” that they enjoyed on these farms when they were serfs. Of course these modern slaves also have the “right” to a guaranteed fair wage, and so forth. Unfortunately they are not guaranteed that there will be anything in the shops for them to buy with their guaranteed fair wages. Indeed in rural areas they are not guaranteed there will be any shops at all. They are not permitted to go to the shops that the elite goes to, and they are not permitted to travel any significant distance from their place of employment, rendering their “salaries” utterly meaningless. “positive rights” ape the forms of a free society, without the substance.

Since the fall of communism we have heard less talk about positive rights and positive freedoms. A right is only a right if, as with the rights to life, liberty, and property, you can rightfully use necessary and sufficient force to defend yourself against those who interfere with your exercise of that right. A right is no right at all if it is granted to you by the benevolence of your masters.

Authoritarian utilitarians started by trying to transform the meaning of “good”, and they have continued to try, with some success, to change the meaning of words so as to make it impossible to express thoughts that question the legitimacy and authority of the state. They have partially succeeded with “law”, They are having some success with the word “right”. Thus in America civil rights now means almost the opposite of natural right. For example being for “gay rights” now means that you are opposed to freedom of association. Being in favor of freedom of association is now understood to mean that you are against the right of privacy. It is difficult to express the idea that the state should neither force people to accept homosexuality, nor use force to suppress homosexuality. It is now difficult to express the idea that sexuality is not the proper business of the state, that force and violence is the proper business of the state, not sin or social exclusion. This perversion of the word “rights” makes everything the business of the state, directly contrary to the normal meaning of “right”. Some people today find it very difficult to comprehend the meaning of the ninth amendment, because the language has been so perverted as to make such subversive ideas inexpressible.

The utilitarians have constructed an artificial language in which it is impossible to express such concepts “the rule of law”, “natural rights”, or any idea or fact that would reject the limitless, absolute, lawless and capricious power of the state, and they seek to impose that language on the world.

Utilitarians usually argue in the same way that Marxists and behaviorists argue. They translate any statement you make into utilitarian speak, and then state their translation: “What you are really saying is...”. Since utilitarian speak is incapable of expressing any statement that would contradict the limitless and absolute power of the state, your statements are turned into nonsense, and they then contemptuously point out that what you are saying is nonsense.

How could one express in utilitarian speak the idea that the condemnation orders issued by the government against home owners in Dade county September 1992 were unlawful, that the home owners had the right and the duty to resist attempts to evict them with all force necessary, that their effective and successful resistance was lawful regardless of what pieces of paper the government manufactured? If I attempted to say this in utilitarian speak I would end up saying that the government had not done its paper work correctly, or that government reallocation of land would be suboptimal!

When a utilitarian attempts to speak about such matters he wants to claim that the government broke its own “rule based procedures for property allocation” (rule based utilitarianism), in order to conceal from himself his own intuitive knowledge that the government acted lawlessly. His rationalization is plainly false. The governments actions were a result of consistently applying the governments utilitarian rules on substandard housing. The hurricane made just about everyone's housing substandard. The government obeyed their own unlawful rules, violating the rights of their subjects. The violent wrath of their subjects was so great, that the government back tracked and chose to respect the property rights of their subjects, in violation of their own “rule based procedures for property allocation.”

Those of us who seek to protect and restore freedom must avoid using the words our enemies seek to impose on us. The only way to escape from this trap is to use the language of natural law, the language with which a free society was envisioned and created, the words for which so many people killed and died. If we submit to using words that prevent us from expressing the thought of limits to government power and authority, then there will be no limits to government power and authority.

Words carry with them systems of ideas. The only system of ideas capable of repudiating limitless and absolute state power is natural law. It is impossible to speak about limits to the power and authority of the state except in the language with which such ideas were originally expressed. No other language is available.

If someone rejects the language of natural law, refuses to use such words, pretends not to comprehend them, and rejects them as meaningless, then he is not interested in using words as a medium of communication. He is merely using them as a method of control. It is pointless to attempt to communicate with such a person.

It most doubtful that other peoples good is knowable in principle. It certainly is not knowable in practice. In practice, whenever any organization makes a serious attempt to ascertain the greater good it is submerged in a flood of paperwork, and to defend itself against this flood of paper it strangles everything it touches in red tape. It unavoidably finds itself imposing, by increasingly lawless violence, a procrustean and arbitrary concept of the good. If I take a slight detour on my way to work I go through rent controlled East Palo Alto, where I can watch my tax dollars at play, and observe this destructive process in operation.

The most dramatic and devastating demonstration of the difficulty of knowing the greater good, and the most famous and best known, was of course the attempt of the Cambodian government to increase the rice harvest by central direction of irrigation. This led to irrigation ditches being dug in nice neat straight lines without regard to small scale topography, with the result that they failed to transport water, it led to wetland rice being planted on land that remained dry, dry land rice being planted on land that became submerged, and so on and so forth. The peasants, foreseeing death by starvation if they continued to pursue the greater good, selfishly sought to pursue their own individual good, contrary to the decrees of their masters. Their masters imagined themselves to be responsible for feeding the peasants, so they were reluctantly forced to use ever more savage terror and torture to force the starving peasants to pursue the greater good. For the sake of the greater good, the peasants were forced to watch their starving children murdered, for the sake of the greater good they were forced to maim and break those they loved with crude agricultural implements, for the sake of the greater good they were brutally and savagely tortured, for the sake of the greater good they died horrible and degrading deaths in vast numbers, all for the greatest good of the greatest number.

Similar, though less extreme, events have occurred throughout the vast majority of the third world. Cambodia was merely the most monstrous of these of these events, but there have been many others, smaller in scale but equal in horror and depravity. In countries where people live close to hunger, most of the third world, state intervention to improve people lives has invariably resulted in mass starvation, these catastrophes being most photogenic in Africa. This mass starvation has often resulted in resistance the these benefits and improvements, which has resulted in extraordinarily brutal terror and torture, to extort continued submission to government aid. Especially entertaining is the suffering of the unfortunate recipients of government to government aid. One notable example is the World Bank resettlement program in Ethiopia, where hundreds of thousands of people who failed to appreciate the generous aid their Marxist government provided them were resettled in extermination camps built by the World Bank, and shipped to those camps in cattle trucks supplied by the World Bank (Bandow, Bovard, Keyes). Another amusing example of your taxes at work providing the greatest good for the greatest number was the World Bank's Akosombo dam project (Bovard, Lappe 35 37). Most attempts to determine the greatest good for the greatest number have had similar outcomes, it is just that in affluent societies the consequences are less flagrant, less brutally obvious. In a poor society an attempt to provide the greatest good for the greatest number usually results in starvation, death, torture, and maiming. In an affluent society it merely produces poverty, fatherless children, homelessness, street crime, and discreet police violence.

Stalin tried simple utilitarianism until 1921, meta rule based utilitarianism from 1921 to 1928 and rule based utilitarianism from 1928 onwards. The problem was not errors specific to Marxism, as non Marxist socialists argue. Nor was it errors specific to socialism, as non socialist utilitarians argue. The problem was the basic assumption that the state could pursue good ends by force and coercion. In the social fabric, means are ends.

In order to argue that Stalin's analysis of utility was incorrect, utilitarians find themselves rationalizing that the Soviet Union failed because of economic errors. But this is plainly false. The Soviet Union did not lose cohesion because of economic errors. Loss of cohesion came first, economic problems came later. It suffered economic stagnation as a result of loss of social cohesion.

Mises criticism of the difficulty of economic calculation under socialism is true but irrelevant. No doubt the central plan was full of defects, but the Soviet economy did fine despite the central plan. The economy only began to falter when government organizations started raiding each other. Armed raids by one government agency to seize stuff under the control of another government agency became commonplace, rendering the plan irrelevant.

Mises theory of human action is correct, but the important thing is not to apply it merely to allocation of resources, as Mises did, but to questions of good and evil, lawful and unlawful, as Hayek did. Knowledge of the rights of man is more important than knowledge of what area should be planted with cabbages.

Whether a government consciously intends to destroy free enterprise or not, free enterprise cannot survive the destruction of the rule of law by the state, as Hayek pointed out. The rule of law is not merely a matter of the government applying its own rules in a consistent manner to all its subjects, as Stalin did in the great terror. The rule of law is not rule based utilitarianism, it is fundamentally incompatible with any form of utilitarianism. The concept of the rule of law is inexpressible in utilitarian speak, and is meaningless within the utilitarian philosophy.

Even if it were possible in principle to determine the good of others, and impose that good on them by force, history shows us that it is not practical. When one considers utilitarianism in real life, it necessary to laugh, so as to avoid weeping.

Whereas the absolutists produce mere hills of corpses, and then hygienically process the hills into useful products like soap and lampshades, the utilitarians produce them in mountains, but the utilitarians shake the stench more easily, blandly professing their good intentions and casually waving away the tens of millions of murdered women and children.

Whenever the ugly ideas of the absolutists are put into practice the absolutists change their name and rhetoric, from absolutist to romantic to relativist to post modernist, Whenever the pleasant and attractive ideas of the utilitarians are put into practice, the utilitarians shrug their shoulders and say, “but that is not what we intended, it was all a mistake, Stalin's analysis of utility was faulty. If our ideas were put into action properly all would be well,” claiming that professed good intentions outweigh any number of foul deeds. By their fruit you will know them. Since the Cambodian irrigation project and the World Bank African assistance program the utilitarians have been unable to shake the stink quite so easily, and some utilitarian factions are now trying out new names. The phrase “the greater good” is at last starting to sound like a polite euphemism for lawless state violence. People are becoming embarrassed to use it, whereas a decade or so ago there was no such embarrassment.

In the west, for the last four hundred years, society been shaped by ideas, with a lag of roughly one human lifetime between the idea and the social order. Today statism continues to grow at an ever accelerating rate, but the rationalizations that justified statism are no longer believed. The professors can fail students who disagree with them, but they can no longer convince. One can now endorse facts that tend to support natural law in a university without facing physical danger, which was not the case ten years ago. E.O. Wilson was physically attacked because his work could imply that some social orders were natural and some unnatural. Tooby and Cosmides were not attacked. The professors still summon the mob to attack the unbelievers, but the mob no longer comes.

Tooby and Cosmides do not put their politics in their science, for good politics does not make good science, but they do put their science in their politics, for good science does make good politics. They have campaigned for most of the things that Wilson was falsely accused of campaigning for.

The state commands and spends ever more wealth, intrudes into our lives in ways that are ever more intimate and detailed, exercises ever greater power, backed by ever more severe punishments, often for deeds that it only declared illegal a few years ago, while at the same time the states capacity to coerce, to collect taxes, and to generate legitimacy continues to decline at an ever accelerating rate. Ever fewer people listen to political speeches, or feel identification with the winning party. People are less inclined to imagine that voting can make any difference, less inclined to believe that legislation or courts possess moral authority. Both trends are driven by simple and powerful forces that are easy to understand. Numerous books, both serious (public choice theory) and humorous, and even a television series (“Yes Minister”) have explained these forces and why they are unstoppable. These two trends will inevitably collide in the not very distant future, are already beginning to collide. The states every increasing use of lawless coercion will collide, is already colliding, with its ever decreasing capacity to coerce. Dade County, the citizens militia in the L.A. riots, the tax revolt in Italy, all foreshadow the coming collision. The citizens of California noticed that the only Koreans who were murdered in the L.A. riots were unarmed. There were no casualties amongst those Koreans who defended their property with gunfire. Gun sales have risen accordingly.

This collision will recreate, over several decades, a situation where there is plurality of force. Free societies have only arisen where there is plurality of force. Of course plurality of force does not guarantee a free society. It merely makes it possible. Social collapse is also possible. During the coming crisis we must keep our eyes fixed on the simple ancient truths of natural rights and natural law. We must discriminate between those who use force lawfully and those who use force unlawfully, and must act accordingly, we must discriminate between those who deal honorably and those who deal dishonorably, and must act accordingly. If we do that then we will have a functioning civil society.

The Greeks, in their war with the Persians, demonstrated that the true unity that comes from common adherence to the rule of law is more powerful than the appearance of unity that comes from common submission to centralized authority.

Aristotle (350BC). Politics, Book 1 Chapter 2
Bandow, Doug. (1989). “What is still wrong with the world bank?” Orbis (Winter): 73 - 89
Barkow, JH, Cosmides L., Tooby J. (1992) “The adapted mind, Evolutionary psychology and the generation of Culture”, Oxford University Press.
Benson, B.L., (1990). “The enterprise of law, justice without the state”, Pacific Research Institute, ISBN 0-936488-29-8
Bovard, James. (1988). “The World Bank vs. the World's Poor.”, The Freeman (May): 184 - 187
Ellickson, Robert C., (1991). “Order without Law, How Neighbors Settle Disputes”, Harvard University Press.
Keyes, Alan. (1986). “Ethiopia: The U.N.'s Role”. Statement by the Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs before the Subcommittee on African Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington D. C., US. Department of State, Current Policy No. 803 (March 16): 2
Kopel, David B., (1992) “The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy”, 278 -373
Lappe, David et al. (1981). “Aid as an Obstacle”, San Francisco Institute for Food and Development Policy.
Locke, John, (1689) “A letter concerning toleration”
Locke, John, (1690) “Two Treatises of Government”
Reeve, H.K. & Nonacs, P., (1993) Nature, 363, 503
Xenophon. Memorabilia

Source <http://jim.com/rights.html>

Most people are confused by the use of the term "natural law." They understand what the laws of nature are &endash; we learn these when we study the natural sciences. But some writers use the term "natural law" in the singular as if it had something to do with matters of right and wrong, almost as if it were the voice of conscience. It is hard for most to understand how a natural law has anything to do with moral matters.

Let us first be clear that by "natural law" we mean principles of human conduct, not the laws of nature discovered by the physical sciences. Many thinkers who espouse natural law see it at work in both the human and nonhuman realms, but their main interest is in its special application to man. According to these thinkers, the natural law as applied to physical things or animals is inviolable; stars and atoms never disobey the laws of their nature. But man often violates the moral rules which constitute the law of his specifically human nature.

The idea of a natural right order to which all things, including human beings, should conform is one of the most ancient and universal notions. It is a major principle in the religious and philosophic systems of ancient India and China, as well as in classical Greek philosophy. Plato calls it "justice" and applies it to the human soul and human conduct.

In Western society, especially from the Roman jurists and the theologians of the Middle Age on, we find the doctrine of the natural moral law for man. It is the source of moral standards, the basis of moral judgments, and the measure of justice in the man-made laws of the state. If the law of the state runs counter to the precepts of the natural law, it is held to be unjust.

The first precept of natural law is to seek the good and avoid evil. It is often put as follows: "Do good unto others, injure no one, render to every man his own." Now, of course, such a general principle is useless for organized society unless we can use it to specify various types of rights and wrongs. That is precisely what man-made, or positive, law tries to do.

[Correct, but positive law is not derived from the higher norm, but derived from facts and based upon the will alone. Human law, on the other hand, observes the higher norm and is ascertained through reason]

Thus, the natural law tells us only that stealing is wrong because it inflicts injury, but the positive law of larceny defines the various kinds and degrees of theft and prescribes the punishments therefor.

[Human law does the same, but wih the observance of the higher norm and based upon the reason (what is reasonable?, and not "what is useful to me?)]

Such particular determinations may differ in various times and places without affecting the principles of natural law. Neither Aquinas nor Aristotle thinks that particular rules of laws should be the same in different times, places, and conditions.

[As long as they are in accordance with the higher norm and based upon the reason]

You may ask how the natural law is known. Through human reason and conscience, answer the natural-law thinkers. The natural-law doctrine usually assumes that man has a specific nature which involves certain natural needs, and the power of reason to recognize what is really good for man in terms of these needs.

[The higher norm in general can be detected with the conscience (the 6th, non-physical sense), and what is just in a particular case can be ascertained through reason]

Christian thinkers, such as Aquinas and John Locke, think the natural law is of divine origin. God, in creating each thing, implanted in it the law of its nature. The phrase about "the laws of nature and of nature's God" in our Declaration of Independence derives from this type of natural-law doctrine. However, this particular theological viewpoint is not always found in writers who uphold the natural law, for these include such pre-Christian thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, and such modern secular philosophers as Kant and Hegel.

[Mortimer of course refers to the American Declaration of Independence. The Scottish Declaration is around the corner]

There has been much opposition to natural-law philosophy from the very beginning. Indeed, one might say the opposition came first, for the idea of natural right or justice was developed in ancient Greece to counter the views of the Sophists, who were "conventionalists." These men believe that law and justice are simply man-made conventions. No action is right or wrong unless a particular community, through its positive laws or customs, decrees that it is right or wrong. Then it is right or wrong in that particular place and time &endash; not universally. By nature, the Sophists say, fire burns in Greece as it does in Persia, but the laws of Persia and of Greece, being matters of convention, are not the same. The "conventionalist" or "positivist" doctrine of law has come down all the way from the ancient Sophists to many of our modern law-school professors.

You ask whether natural law is relevant to modern conditions. My answer is that if justice is still relevant, then natural law is. Indeed, interest in natural law has increased especially during the past half century, with its experience of the kind of positive laws which have been imposed by totalitarian regimes. On what grounds could a decent German citizen in Nazi times justify his opposition to the laws of the land? On private sentiments or merely personal opinion? Even purely inner resistance to iniquity must be rooted in firmer grounds. "A law which is not just is a law in name only," says Augustine. And Aquinas adds:

"Every human law has just so much of the nature of law as it is derived from the law of nature. But if in any point it departs from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of the law."

The naturalists, as that name indicates, affirm the existence of natural justice, of natural and unalienable rights, of the natural moral law, and of valid prescriptive oughts that elicit our assent, both independently of and prior to the existence of positive law. The positivists deny all this and affirm the opposite. For them, the positive law &endash; the man-made law of the state &endash; provides the only prescriptive oughts that human beings are compelled to obey. According to them, nothing is just or unjust until it has been declared so by a command or prohibition of positive law.

If this is a fundamentally erroneous view, as I think it is, its ultimate roots lie very deep. They rise from the most profound mistake that can be made in our thinking about good and evil. It is the mistake made by those who embrace an unattenuated subjectivism and relativism with respect to what is good and bad, right and wrong.

Neglecting or rejecting the distinction between real and apparent goods, together with that between natural needs and acquired wants, the positivists can find no basis for the distinction between what "ought" to be desired or done and what is desired or done. From that flows the further consequence that there is no natural moral law, no natural rights, no natural justice, ending up with the conclusion that man-made law alone determines what is just and unjust, right and wrong.

This positivist view is as ancient as the despotisms that existed in antiquity. It was first eloquently expressed in the opening book of Plato's "Republic" where Thrasymachus, responding to Socrates' mention of the view that justice consists in rendering what is due, declared and defended the opposite view &endash; that justice is the interest of the stronger. Spelled out, this means that what is just or unjust is determined solely by whoever has the power to lay down the law of the land.

[Positive law is thus the Law of Nature, or the right of the strongest. Natural law, on the other hand, is based on the strongest right]

The positivist view is recurrent in later centuries with the recurrence of later despotisms. It was expressed by the Roman jurisconsult, Ulpian, who, defending the absolutism of the Caesars, declared that whatever pleases the prince has the force of law. Still later, in the sixteenth century, the same view was set forth by another defender of absolute government, Thomas Hobbes, in "The Leviathan"; and later, in the nineteenth century, by John Austin, in his "Analytical Jurisprudence."

Neither Austin nor the twentieth-century legal positivists who follow him regard themselves as defenders of absolute government or despotism. That is what they are, however &endash; perhaps not as explicitly as their predecessors, but by implication at least. The denial of natural rights, the natural moral law, and natural justice leads not only to the positivist conclusion that man made law alone determines what is just and unjust. It also leads to a corollary which inexorably attaches itself to that conclusion &endash; "that might makes right" &endash; this is the very essence of absolute or despotic government.

Source <http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/adler_naturallaw.html>

Aristotle divides law into natural law and positive law. Natural law is determined by our understanding of what we are, or our human nature. Positive law is determined simply by the will of the lawmaker. Under natural law something is forbidden because it is wrong, being unsuitable to our human nature, properly understood. Under positive law something is wrong because it is forbidden. The two kinds of law are clearly quite opposite. Aristotle might say they are contraries.

Natural law, however, is more fundamental. Positive law cannot change or abrogate natural law. Positive law is concerned with human activities or behaviour that natural law has not ruled on. Positive law, as St. Thomas says, can only add to natural law; it cannot subtract from it. Thus, another way of looking at the division of law into natural law and positive law is to say that positive law is law that is additional to natural law.

In the light of this division of law, how are we to characterise that order of laws that is called the ius gentium? According to St. Thomas, ius gentium is something added to natural law. This would seem to place it squarely within positive law. Yet, St. Thomas makes it quite clear that something is forbidden under ius gentium because it is contrary to reason, i.e. because it is wrong, not wrong simply because it is forbidden. In that regard, then, ius gentium resembles natural law rather than positive law.

The resolution of the problem here lies, as is often the case, in a distinction to be made. St. Thomas retains the strict sense of natural law of what we immediately understand about ourselves in the light of our human nature, but makes a distinction within positive law. He points out that there are two ways in which something may be added to what we intuitively, as it were, know should be done. Thus he says:

“ &endash; something may be derived from the natural law in two ways: first, as a conclusion from premises, secondly, by way of determination of certain generalities. The first way is like to that whereby, in sciences, demonstrated conclusions are drawn from the principles. The second mode is like to that whereby, in the arts, general forms are particularised as to details; thus the craftsman needs to determine the general shape of a house to some particular shape.” [I-II, 95, a. 2. c]

Positive law, then, taken in the broad sense of what is posited by reason and will over and above what we know naturally, as it were, includes both ius gentium and positive law in the strict sense &endash; what is determined by the “art” (political prudence) or even mere will of the civil government. It is only in this narrower area of positive law that something can be wrong simply because it is forbidden. Ius gentium is distinct from natural law, taken in the strict sense of the absolutely first or self-evident principles of morality. But when natural law is taken in a broader sense of what is intrinsically suitable to human nature fully considered (what is within ethico-political science), ius gentium rather belongs to natural law than to positive law. For

“the law of nations is indeed in some way natural to man, in so far as he is a reasonable being, because it is derived from the natural law by way of a conclusion that is not very remote from its premises.” [I-II, 95, a. 4. ad 1]

Both natural law and ius gentium, therefore, have the force of law beyond national and political boundaries. There are many important social institutions, indeed, that St. Thomas identifies as pertaining to ius gentium. Perhaps the two most important are marriage and property. Hence, the folly of those who would attempt to deny the special bond of the marriage contract, because it is something natural to human nature. “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder” is the scriptural admonition regarding the natural obligation taken on in the marriage-covenant. The civil law (positive law) simply has no authority to dissolve it. Similarly, those who attack the institution of property in land and goods mistake badly the basic requirements of our rational nature. It seems also that St. Thomas included in ius gentium the institution of free trade, provided it is fair trade. For he places “just sales and purchases” amongst the conclusions to be derived from natural law.

The ius gentium is clearly an area of law that deserves much closer study. It is unfortunate that it tends to be overlooked because of an uncritical and simplistic interpretation of the division of law into natural and positive. It is even more unfortunate that its precepts then tend to be relegated to the status of the merely conventional.

Source <http://www.cts.org.au/2000/iusgentium.htm>

No one disputes that judges must uphold the rule of law. Every judge claims that as a sacred duty.

Even the plurality in Planned Parenthood v. Casey made such a claim while upholding the right to an abortion. True, they in effect admitted, Roe v. Wade was a decision that was without legal and constitutional justification. But, the plurality declared, both on the basis of stare decisis (regard for precedent) and in the face of popular opposition, they must uphold what was the flawed decision in Roe. Why? To uphold the rule of law.

For his part, Justice Scalia tells us that he must stick to the text of the Constitution with only the most specific level of historical example to illuminate the text. Why? To uphold the rule of law. Justices Kennedy and O'Connor embrace the school of “legal process” that binds judges within the interstices of the technique of judging. For them, that is the rule of law. Chief Justice Rehnquist often defers to the legislative judgment, lest he substitute his own view of appropriate policy for those who have legitimate discretion in deciding such matters. Otherwise, he would be violating the rule of law. And Judge Bork famously decried the use of the unwritten natural law as a source for a judge s decision-making. That too would violate the norms of the rule of law.

In particular, judges who claim that the written law is the touchstone of their legal authority assert that it is the best protection against judicial usurpation and judicial activism. They are known as positivists, relying only upon the law as “posited” by the Constitution or the legislature. They, like Judge Bork, assert that judges who avow a natural law provenance for their decisions are unbounded and subjective. As Justice Black declared, a “natural law” approach would “degrade the constitutional safeguards of the bill of rights and simultaneously appropriate for this Court a broad power which we are not authorized by the Constitution to exercise.” Adamson v. California, 332, U.S. 46, 70 (1947).

Yet it has been the positivism of the Supreme Court since World War II that has led to the most massive and unapologetic assertion of judicial power in our history. Roe v. Wade is not an example of natural law jurisprudence gone awry. It is an example of untrammeled positivism. Although positivistic jurisprudence begins with the modest declaration that judges should stick to the text of the Constitution as it is given to them, its very premise legitimates the extension of judicial power far beyond the text.

The essence of the positivistic justification is that the assertion of the will by an authoritative law-maker legitimates the force of the law. Of course, if a judge recognizes that the legislature is that authoritative body, the judge's decisions will be concomitantly limited. If he recognizes the text of the Constitution as the source of the authoritative action of the collective will, then that will limit his function.

But if it is the will that legitimates the exercise of power, why should the judge posit that will in someone else? Once the judge realizes, as the legal realists noted, that judges do indeed make law, and once he accepts that fact as legitimate, he has agreed that his own will is indeed an authoritative source of the law. And once he accepts that moral proposition, there is nothing (except perhaps the constraints of tradition) to prevent him from venturing outward from the text to rely upon his own notions of right and wrong policy to make the law.

History indicates that it is natural law, not positivism, that provides a surer limit than does positivism. As Justice Frankfurter indicated in contesting a positivistic theory of the incorporation of the Bill of Rights, “In the history of thought 'natural law' has a much longer and much better founded meaning and justification than such subjective selection of the first eight Amendments for incorporation into the Fourteenth.” Adamson v. California, 332, U.S. 46, 65 (1947). But the connection of judicial restraint to natural law is not merely a function of the historical record. It is an aspect of the internal workings of natural law itself.

A judge operating under the norms of natural law is more respectful of his limitations under positive law than even a positivist is. A positivist must acknowledge that the will is the authenticator of the law. But a natural law judge knows precisely, as Hamilton said in Federalist No. 78, that he is empowered by “neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgement” in his functions. Without will as an authenticator, a judge has no authority to supersede authoritatively passed positive law.

Long ago, St. Thomas Aquinas enunciated that truth. Not only did a judge act unlawfully, he said, when he decided a case on his subjective knowledge instead of the facts as presented to him in court, but such a judge has no authority to decide outside of the written law at all. That is why Aquinas requires a judge to give reasons, so that the objective basis of his judgment can be known. (Summa Theologica, Pt. II-II, q. 60, art. 5, q. 67, art. 1).

Positive law contains both rights deriving from natural law and rights or entitlements deriving from positive law, Aquinas argues. Most policies of any regime are neutral in terms of the natural law. Any number of choices are available before the lawgiver. Those myriad choices are emplaced in the positive law. A judge gains his authority by the lawgiver only to effectuate the written law of the lawgiver. If he does more than that, if he goes beyond the positive law as handed down to him, his judgment is “perverse.” (Summa Theologica, Pt. II-II, q. 60, art. 5, art. 6).

But what about those rare instances when the lawgiver himself, in the positive law, violates the norms of natural law? What if a state legislature does that, or the police? The logic is inescapable. “If the written law contains anything contrary to the natural right, it is unjust and has no binding force.” Just as a judge has no authority to make new positive law, the lawgiver has no authority to make positive law contrary to natural law. And if a judge should enforce such a law, the judge himself would be acting unlawfully. Justice Frankfurter realized this when he struck down evidence gained by police emptying the stomach of an unconscious man. Such an action, he said, “shocks the conscience.” Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 172 (1952). “Conscience,” in Frankfurter's sense, was not a subjective distaste, but the conscience of a judge, rooted in the verities of natural justice. No policeman, no judge, could exceed that limit.

Chief Justice John Marshall made the lawfulness of a judge's decision the centerpiece of his argument in Marbury v. Madison, the very case that concretized the right of the Supreme Court to review acts of Congress. It would be a “crime,” Marshall said, if the Court, after swearing to uphold the law, should enforce an act that was not truly law. “How immoral to impose [an oath] upon [judges], if they were to be used as the instruments, and the knowing instruments, for violating what they swear to support?” 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 180 (1803). The Court, Marshall insisted, has no authority to do such a thing.

Thus, the very premise of judicial review in America is rooted in the structure of natural law. And in that, both judicial restraint and the rule of law are truly maintained.

Source <http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/onprin/v4n2/forte.html>

The concept of natural rights no doubt has its origin in the Roman Stoic idea of a “law above the law,” of an unwritten law which precedes and is superior to man-made law. Christian philosophy, in the persons of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, developed and refined the natural law idea, and it was a significant tenet of the eighteenth century Enlightenment. The doctrine has come down through the centuries as one of the major arguments against arbitrary and unrestrained governmental power.

In much the same way is the belief in the natural rights of man a belief in “rights above rights.” Likewise, natural rights have been used in the resistance to unjust authority. Natural rights were partial justification for the Glorious Revolution of 1688, for the American Revolution (the Declaration of Independence cited man's “unalienable rights”), and for the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. All of the revolutions since the eighteenth century have drawn at least some of their power from appeals to natural rights.

The connection between natural rights and natural law is instantly recognizable. Both exist prior to the State, and both transcend it. Natural law, like the law of the State, provides protection for the individual's rights from violation by another individual, or &endash; and this the State does not do &endash; by the state itself. Natural rights and natural law are the final arbiters of liberty. Finally, natural rights and natural law are both denied by those who exalt the State over the individual citizen. those who make the State all and the individual nothing. It is to this, as it is to all forms of Statism, that natural rights make a direct and implacable challenge.

The common delusion of the defenders of unlimited governmental dominion is that the State confers upon the individual whatever political and economic rights he may enjoy. This was certainly the view of Thomas Hobbes, the defender of absolute monarchy and the author of the Leviathan. Hobbes, in 1651, argued for the complete sovereignty of the king as ruler and lawmaker. Hobbes sought to repudiate natural law by placing it on equal terms with the civil law. He states in the Leviathan, “The law of nature and the civil law contain each other, and are of equal extent.” In other words, natural law (and by extension, natural rights) is as high as, but no higher than, civil law. The sovereign makes civil law, and in Hobbes' kingdom there can be no law higher than the decrees of the sovereign. He, in effect, is the law.

Whatever the political repercussions of a system like that which Hobbes postulates, there are certain moral and ethical questions which it poses. Hobbes' felt that morals and ethics had no place in determining whether or not a system of government was good or evil. Such a judgment, according to Hobbes, could not be made, or if made, could not be proved. The correlation between Hobbes disavowal of natural law/natural rights and objective morality is palpable and direct. Hobbes realized that the acceptance of unalienable rights of life, liberty, and property would compel one to make a moral judgment of a political system which violated those rights. Having given the sovereign absolute authority to make laws, Hobbes goes on to say that no ethical determination can be made about the sovereign's action, about its goodness or evilness. Ethics, to Hobbes, are purely subjective and inapplicable in political affairs. The sovereign, it would seem, is above both law and morality; or, like Nietzsche's superman, “beyond good and evil.”

Hobbes wrote in defense of authoritarian rule by one man, the monarch. Monarchy was, in Hobbes' day, the most widespread form of government. With the gradual decay of the monarchical form, and the general democratization of governments, came the belief that it was not the leader of the nation who was sovereign, but the people themselves. The divine right of kings had become, as Herbert Spencer observed, the “divine right of majorities.” But whether they represented the interests of monarchy or democracy, the enemies of natural rights had the same intention &endash; to deny the individual any rights but those granted by the State.

Of the type of thinker who spoke for democracy and against natural rights was the great utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham. No statist in economic concerns, Bentham was curiously inconsistent when it came to limiting, or not limiting, the State's sphere of influence. Government's function, as Bentham saw it, was “creating rights.” He considered natural law and natural rights “fictions,” and in his first work, the Fragment on Government, he castigated Blackstone for a contrary belief. Bentham's antipathy to natural rights sprang from the conviction that natural rights were obstacles to reform, and he was against checks and balances and a system of separation of powers for the same reason.

Bentham thought, with the faith of the statist in the ability of government to solve all human problems, that by making the act of legislating as easy as possible, the State could deal more readily with society's dilemmas. Bentham did not see what others, most notably the Framers of the Constitution, saw so penetratingly: that the power of the State to achieve good was equaled by its power to achieve enormous harm, that in seeking the former one necessarily braved the latter. Bentham did not perceive the difficulty inherent in placing all right-giving power in the State's hands. He failed to understand that the capacity for bestowing rights could become the capacity for withdrawing rights. Finally, Bentham, like Hobbes before him, was incorrect in assuming that the State could create rights out of nothing. The State is a delegated authority, and what power it has derives from the individuals who comprise it. Such being the case, it is absurd to assume that the State can bestow rights on its own creators. The State may give order to rights, define them more clearly, and protect them with laws; but it can no more grant rights to the members of society than a child can grant rights to his parents.

The ethical arguments in favor of natural rights are perhaps even more telling. If it is true that men have only the rights the State has seen fit to give them, what is to stop the State, at any time and for any reason, from taking back those rights? Furthermore, how can we say that the State acts wrongly if it chooses to take that action? By the logic of the opponents of natural rights, the Nazi regime had a perfect justification for recalling the rights, including the right to life of 6,000,000 human beings, and should not be condemned or thought of as evil for simply exercising the prerogative to which, as a state, it was clearly entitled. Thus, the denial of natural rights quickly resolves itself into a rejection of the ethical differences between governments, making a slave &endash; state the moral equal of a republic.

We now arrive at the final question, “What are the natural rights?” Although it cannot be answered precisely, that does not mean it is unanswerable. As has been said before, natural rights precede the State and hence are a priori in character. Natural rights are every man's at birth and are not State-granted. If each man has an equal claim to liberty, that is, the use of his rights, he can be limited in his freedom only by the claims of other men to an equal share of liberty. The circle of rights around every man extends as far as it may without intruding on the rights of other men. For this reason are the “rights” granted by the State bogus rights. A right to receive welfare, for example, is invalid since it requires the abridgment, however partial, of the rights of the citizen who is compelled to pay for the welfare benefits given to someone else. Natural rights, by contrast, require no abridgment of another individual's rights to exist, but are limited only by the same natural rights of another person.

In Making his ethical choices, man is guided by a code believed to have the sanction of God; and experience has shown that the good life to which his instinct impels him can be achieved only if he makes his decisions accordingly. The Ten Commandments have been called the Word of God; they can also be described as natural law, and natural law has been described as nature's way of applying means to ends.

It is necessary to ... describe the two main schools of thought &endash; naturalist and positivists (in international law).

The leading naturalist writer was the Dutchman Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), who is often regarded as the founder of modern international law; and Suarez (1548-1617), Gentili, an Italian protestant who fled to England (1552-1608), and the Englishman Zouche (1590-1660). There is one thing these writers agreed on and that was "that the basic principles of all law (national as well as international) were derived, not from any deliberate human choice or decision, but from principles of justice which had a universal and eternal validity and which could be discovered by pure reason; law was to be found, not made. These principles of law were called natural law [1]. Natural law was originally regarded as having a divine origin, but Grotius wrote that natural law would still have existed even if God had not existed [2]; instead, Grotius considered that the existence of natural law was the automatic consequence of the fact that men lived together in society and were capable of understanding that certain rules were necessary for the preservation of society,&endash; i.e. prohibition of murder. The theory of natural law has a long tradition, going back to Roman times [3], and is still the official philosophy of law accepted by the Roman Catholic church... [4] Having religious overtones [5] and being incapable of verification, the theory is suspect in a scientific and secular age... the theory of natural law must logically lead to a much more radical conclusion, namely, that an unjust rule is not law at all and can be disregarded by the judge [6]; but this is a conclusion which no modern legal system would accept...[7]

footnotes:

1 The natural law tradition started in ancient Greece with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and has a metaphysical origin. Plato distinguished two worlds:

&endash; the lower (physical) world, which contains the objects. This world is visible, and the objects can be detected by the five physical senses.

&endash; the higher (metaphysical) world, which contains the ideas. This world is invisible, and it is here were the (ideas of the) natural rights reside (the text above refers to these ideas as principles), which can be detected by the sixth (non-physical) sense: conscience. How and in what form these natural rights must be applied in particular cases (what is just?) can be determined by reason, and produces human law. This lower norm must always be derived from the higher norm (the ideas or principles of law) and may not deviate from that higher norm.

In this context the words 'nature' and 'natural' therefore refer to the ideas, which exist naturally, and should not be understood in the more common sense of the words. Natural law is also not based on the nature of man, who is according to the one tradition good, to the other bad (but in fact is neutral).

2 Natural law has a metaphysical origin (see 1), not a divine one. Grotius wrote in reaction to the medieval religious authors (especially Aquinas), who had (of course) attributed a divine origin to natural law, and interpreted Plato's ideas as a higher power. For that reason they referred to natural law as the 'law of God'. Natural law is in itself, however, not religious, but perfectly neutral, otherwise it could never be universal and eternal.

Note that there is an important difference between Natural Law (the strongest right) and the Law of Nature (the right of the strongest).

3 See 1 above: the natural law tradition actually goes back to ancient Greece: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

4 In its divine form, after the work of especially Aquinas.

5 Only the religious variant, the original variant has metaphysical overtones (see 1 above).

6 Lex injusta non lex est.

7 Since they are all based on positive law only.

 After Grotius's death the intellectual climate became more skeptical, and international [8] law would have lost respect if it had remained based on the theory of natural law. Men were beginning to argue by 1700 that law was largely positive [9], i.e. man-made; consequently, law and justice were not the same thing, and laws might vary from time to time and from place to place, according to the whim [10] of the legislator. Applied to international law, positivism regarded the actual behavior [11] of states as the basis of international law. The first great positivist writer on international law was another Dutchman, Cornelius van Bynkershoek (1673-1743), who was to some extent ahead of his time; positivism had its roots in the eighteenth century but was not fully accepted until the 19th century. Unfortunately, apart from collecting the texts of treaties, little attempt was made to study the practice of states scientifically until the 20th Century.

footnotes:

8 Applies to national law as well.

9 The word 'positive' in connection with positive law should not be interpreted in the more common sense of 'good'! Here, 'positive' is a form of the Latin verb 'ponere', which has some 37 (more or less) different meanings, the one applicable here being that of 'to lay down'. Positive law is therefore law which is laid down [by Man], in short: man-made law. Positive law is therefore never derived from a higher norm, which is the cause of chaos (since natural law forms part of Man, this can only result in order).

10 Perhaps the better word for 'will'. Positve law does not recognize the existence of a higher world, only the lower or physical world.

11 Since positive law (or positivism in general) does not recognize a higher world, man is the measure of all things. The lower norm is derived from facts only, and the facts can be determined by observing the actual behaviour. This is the immoral and destructive nature the positive law philosophy, for this method can only work in a perfect society (which only exists in the higher world, but which is not recognized by this tradition.

Now suppose the observer takes his position in a more or less good society. He will then observe and ascertain the fact that the majority of the people discard theft as wrong. He will conclude that not stealing is norm-al, and thus the norm.

Now suppose he takes his position in a rotten society, like the Third Reich. He will then observe and ascertain the fact that the majority of the people accept routing of other peoples as right. He will conclude that ethnical cleansing is norm-al, and thus the norm!

 Swiss writer Emerich de Vattel (1714-69), attempted to combine naturalism and positivism [12]. He emphasized the inherent rights which states derived from natural law, but said that they were accountable only to their own consciences for the observance of the duties imposed by natural law, unless they had expressly agreed to treat those duties as part of positive law. Vattel exercised a strong and pernicious influence on many writers and states during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries...

footnotes:

12 A combination of natural law and positive law is not possible, because they are two different and opposing quantities. Human law, derived from the higher norm and based upon reason is quite different from positive law, derived from facts (actual behaviour) and based solely on the will are incompatible.

Natural law:

Principles (higher norms) found with the conscience
> human law (lower norm) based on reason

Positive law:

Facts (actual behaviour) found by observation
> positive law (norm) based on the will

The survival of the Free Nation partly depends on the successful implementation of a justice system able to resolve disputes without resorting to legislative acts as the foundation for law. The current American experience is primarily one of courts of law basing decisions on statutory, codified law. But the philosophy-of-law literature supports the possibility of a system of justice based on principles, rather than on statutes and on the statism necessary to enact statutes.

The historic literature identifies three alternative foundations for judicial systems. First, the historical, philosophical and “pure science of law” alternatives focus on higher principles as the foundation for law. Second, the positivist and utilitarian alternatives focus on statute. And third, the sociological and functional alternatives focus on the needs of human litigants.

Historical or “common law” legal philosophy believes judicial action develops from mankind's intuitive feelings about what is right and wrong. Common law descends from the “folk moot” of first century Germany. Early German kings merely administer an already existing, uncodified body of common law existing within the collective mind of the community. Even after conquest, victorious kings enforce the local “folk moot” common to the conquered people rather than impose the legal code of their own home territory. Justice is the rule of law in accordance with the established and traditional “folk moot,” not the statutory will of kings. The common “libertarian” beliefs of the Free Nation founders are the “folk moot,” “volksgeist” (Georg Hegel, 1770-1831), “organic connection” (Carl von Savigny, 1779-1816), or “ancient moral tradition” (Edmund Burke, 1729-1797) upon which the Free Nation's common law can be based.

Philosophical legal philosophy believes judicial action is a means to attain society's primary a priori goals. Justice is the extent to which judicial decisions approximate these ideals. In the Free Society, the primary goals of “freedom of action,” “freedom from coercion,” and the guarantee of those “absolute rights of individuals... that appertain and belong... to men... in a state of nature” (William Blackstone, 1723-1780) establish the ideals to be protected and promoted in judicial decisions. Society's primary goals, not statutes, serve as the basis for legal decisions.

“Pure Science of Law” philosophy combines the historical and philosophical philosophies. Law in human society is derived from a “grundnorm,” (Hans Kelsen, 1881-1965?) or basic norm, from which all other legal norms are developed. Justice is adherence to the “grundnorm,” or “highest general value and general world view” (Gustav Radbruch, 1878-1949). The “grundnorm” provides the legitimacy for all other legal norms and all judicial decisions. A “grundnorm” or “highest general value” may be the libertarian principle prohibiting the using force or fraud against another. With this “grundnorm” in place, no statute law is necessary.

Positivist and utilitarian legal philosophy believes judicial action reinforces the purposeful will of the sovereign. Assuming the purposeful will of the libertarian founders is codified in a constitution or minimal set of statutes, positivist jurists use their “coercive power to compel men equally to perform their covenants” (Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679) in accordance with the constitution or enacted statutes. But, should the constitution or statutory law be “amended” to become more statist and utilitarian &endash; perhaps to insure the “happiness of society” rather than the happiness of each individual (David Hume, 1711-1776) or to insure the “greatest happiness of the greatest number” (Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1842) &endash; future judicial decisions reinforce this new statist will of the new sovereign, and abandon the older, and more libertarian, will of the founding sovereign. With this change in focus, freedom in the Free Nation is threatened or lost.

Sociological legal philosophy sees law as a means for society to direct its own destiny; law serves the needs of society (R. von Jhering, 1818-1892). The sociological law is a “living law” (Eugen Ehrlich, 1862-1920) legitimized by popular acceptance. Sociological law is based on what current society needs and desires, rather than based on transcendent ideals. Justice is a decision that has popular support. If the flesh becomes weak, support for the libertarian ideals of the founders also becomes weak. A Free Nation momentarily frightened by external aggression, internal disruptions, or human frailties, may find its legal system also twisting in the winds of human vagaries and will find its legal system unable to defend the “libertarian” ideals upon which the Free Nation was founded. Freedom may collapse in the face of a panicked citizenry demanding a suspension of some or all of the ideals of freedom &endash; perhaps to implement a military conscription program in the face of war.

Functional legal philosophy sees the law simply as “what courts decide” (Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1841-1935). Functionalism emphasizes the consequences or effects of judicial decisions (Roscoe Pound, 1870-1964). Justice is “distributive justice” or “fairness to all;” justice involves adjustment of losses and benefits, and the distribution of risks among those best able to bear risks. The aim of adjudication is not reflection of the “folk moot,” reinforcement of society's primary goals, or conformity with the “grundnorm;” instead, the aim is fairness for all competing interests before the law. In the quest for fairness, first principles may be lost. Thus, functional legal philosophy also threatens the “libertarian” ideals of the Free Nation.

Which philosophy of law is best for a Free Nation? A legal system based on functional, sociological, positivist or utilitarian legal philosophy should be avoided. The best assurance for a continuing Free Nation is a legal system based on historical (“common law”), philosophical, or “pure science of law” philosophy.

Unfortunately, Western lawyers, jurists, juries and citizens have training and experience in more functional, sociological, positivist and utilitarian judicial systems; few have the training or experience in the historical, philosophical or “pure science of law” systems necessary to insure the long-term survival of the Free Nation. There is, therefore, an immediate need to educate and re-educate lawyers, judges and prospective jury members in philosophical-based law to insure a fully functioning judicial system for the newly founded Free Nation.

Cowan, Thomas. The American Jurisprudence Reader. Oceana, 1956.
Friedrich, Carl. The Philosophy of Law in Legal Perspective. U. of Chicago, 1963.
Lloyd, Dennis. Introduction to Jurisprudence. Praeger, 1965.
Murphy, Walter and Joseph Tanenhaus. The Study of Public Law. Random House, 1972.

Source <http://libertariannation.org/a/f61d2.html>

Does anyone know the origins of Political Correctness? Who originally developed it and what was its purpose?

I looked it up. It was developed at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany, which was founded in 1923 and came to be known as the "Frankfurt School." It was a group of thinkers who pulled together to find a solution to the biggest problem facing the implementers of communism in Russia.

The problem? Why wasn't communism spreading?

Their answer? Because Western Civilization was in its way.

What was the problem with Western Civilization? Its belief in the individual, that an individual could develop valid ideas. At the root of communism was the theory that all valid ideas come from the effect of the social group of the masses. The individual is nothing.

And they believed that the only way for communism to advance was to help (or force, if necessary) Western Civilization to destroy itself. How to do that? Undermine its foundations by chipping away at the rights of those annoying individuals.

One way to do that? Change their speech and thought patterns by spreading the idea that vocalizing your beliefs is disrespectful to others and must be avoided to make up for past inequities and injustices.

And call it something that sounds positive: "Political Correctness."

Inspired by the brand new communist technique, Mao, in the 1930s, wrote an article on the "correct" handling of contradictions among the people. "Sensitive training" &endash; sound familiar? &endash; and speech codes were born.

In 1935, after Hitler came to power, the Frankfurt School moved to New York City, where they continued their work by translating Marxism from economic to cultural terms using Sigmund Freud's psychological conditioning mechanisms to get Americans to buy into Political Correctness. In 1941, they moved to California to spread their wings.

But Political Correctness remains just what it was intended to be: a sophisticated and dangerous form of censorship and oppression, imposed upon the citizenry with the ultimate goal of manipulating, brainwashing and destroying our society.

My first conscious exposure to Political Correctness was in 1959 &endash; the first year of Castro's revolution in Cuba &endash; while attending an indoctrination session at a neighborhood elementary school in Havana. There I learned for the first time of the claimed superiority of life in the Soviet Union vs. the U.S.

There I also learned that the word "compañero" (filtered version of the communist "comrade" &endash; Fidel was denying his communist preferences) was the correct way to refer to the other members of the new Cuban society-in-the-making.

Mr., Mrs. and Miss were no longer acceptable, and their further use could reveal that you were not a Fidelista. Since repression and violations of human rights came roaring in right behind Castro's sweep down from the mountains in 1959, objection or rejection of Fidel Castro's revolution would (and still will) land you in a lot of trouble. You could easily lose your life in those summary executions at La Cabaña prison under the direction of Che Guevara.

But don't worry about Che. Che was later transformed and cleansed by the masters of Political Correctness. His likeness became a revered icon of the far left, with T-shirts and posters still adorning the campuses of America.

The same techniques were used to cleanse one of today's "heroes," Mumia Abu-Jamal (even if he was convicted, by overwhelming evidence, of killing a cop).

And under the pervasive guidance of Political Correctness that took hold from elementary school to university, from the media to the arts, from the country fields to factories and offices, Cubans learned to say what it was safe to say. Always in line with the overpowering state. Always following the dictums of the only political party left: the Communist Party.

The self-censorship resulting from Political Correctness easily trampled freedom of speech. Political Correctness has succeeded in Cuba by creating a uniform political discourse that has lasted for 43 years.

Political Correctness has given the state (Castro) complete control of speech. That is the main reason why the U.S. media cannot extract the truth of what Cubans really feel when they interview regular citizens and deceptively present their comments as valid to the American public.

The same was true in the former Soviet Union and the former satellite countries. The same continues in the remaining communist world.

It's nothing new. The U.S. media must know that, so why don't they openly report that fact instead of misleading the public? Perhaps that is the reason why the American people are so uneducated about the Cuban tragedy and acted regrettably during the Elian Gonzalez affair.

With profound dismay, I have seen how the scourge of Political Correctness has taken hold in the U.S. It is very well entrenched in our educational system, at scientific, religious and community levels, the media, the workplace and even our government.

It is changing the American society from within, and the citizens of this nation are increasingly censoring themselves and losing their freedom of speech out of fear of Political Correctness repression.

It is the nature of Western Civilization to be civilized &endash; respectful of others and concerned with correcting injustices. We don't need Political Correctness to make us think we are not civilized on our own and must have our thoughts and words restricted.

In December 2001, in Kensington, Md., an annual firefighters Santa Claus festivity to light the Christmas tree was objected to by two families. The city council, in the name of Political Correctness, voted to ban Santa from the parade. Fortunately, due to citizen outcry, the decision was reversed in the end and many people protested by dressing up as Santa.

Logically and respectfully, how can one person's benign icon be objectionable to the point of banishment? Offer to add other people's icons. Make it a broader celebration. That's the Perfectly Correct American way.

The rulers of Political Correctness reach absurd levels when they refer to the betrayal of America by the spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg &endash; executed in 1953 &endash; as "non-traditional patriotism"!

We see shameful situations created in our schools and universities in America that have fallen prey to Political Correctness. Some professors, students and publications are being attacked for expressing a point of view that differs from that imposed by a fanatical far left, under the guise of Political Correctness.

In schools and workplaces we see that "diversity" has degenerated into reverse discrimination, where often the less qualified are admitted and the incompetent cannot be fired. We have seen characters like Rev. Jesse Jackson shamelessly blackmailing and threatening to boycott entire corporations if they don't hire those selected by him or simply make "donations" to his organizations.

Our Constitution requires the separation of church and state, which has always discouraged our public education system from teaching religion. However, in December 2001, while Christmas cards, symbols and decorations were being objected to for the first time in American public schools in Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Oregon, in an elementary school in Texas, a girl was allowed to give to her classmates an overview and show a video about her Muslim religion.

And in January 2002, a public middle school in San Luis Obispo, Calif., had its students pretend to be warriors fighting for Islam. Another school near Oakland, Calif., also encouraged 125 seventh-grade students to dress up in Muslim robes for a three-week course on Islam.

This arbitrary double standard was applied in the name of Political Correctness following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

According to Ellen Sorokin's "No Founding Fathers?" published by the Washington Times on its front page on Jan. 28, 2002, even our Founding Fathers have fallen victim to the travesty. The article says of the New Jersey Department of Education's history standards,

"The latest revisions to the state standards have disappointed educators across the country, who said the board's exclusion of the Founding Fathers' names is 'Political Correctness to the nth degree.'"

Sorokin points out that "the standards specifically note that students should identify slavery, the Holocaust and modern Iraq as examples in which 'people have behaved in cruel and inhumane ways.'" Conveniently, communism is absent from that short list.

In another article by Sorokin, published by the Washington Times on March 10, "Report Blames Anti-Americanism on College Teachers," she presents two examples of upcoming courses for next spring and fall. They are "'The Sexuality of Terrorism' at University of California at Hayward; and 'Terrorism and the Politics of Knowledge' at UCLA, a class that, according to its course description, examines 'America's record of imperialistic adventurism.'"

Recently, a historic photograph of the New York firefighters raising the American flag over the ruins of the World Trade Center was going to be made into a sculpture as a memorial.

But history's revisionists used Political Correctness to dictate that other minority faces replace some of the faces in the historical photograph! Fortunately, in the end that didn't fly either, due to the outcry of firefighters and the public.

For people with the background and firsthand experience of living inside a totalitarian communist society, the tilt and goal of the dictators of Political Correctness in America are obvious.

The beneficiaries in the end will be the fanatic believers in the totalitarian state, who, in spite of the dismal failure of communism and the 100 million people exterminated pursuing that criminal system, have not given up.

Political and religious fanatics, as demonstrated by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the subsequent war in Afghanistan, are extremely dangerous in today's world.

All citizens who cherish liberty must reject the scourge of Political Correctness. Freedom of speech must be preserved in America if we are to continue to be free.

Let's say it: Castro is not a 'president,' as the U.S. media's Political Correctness calls him. Castro has not been democratically elected to anything in Cuba. The correct word to define him is 'tyrant.' He is not just a 'leader,' as the U.S. media also calls him. He is more of a criminal Mafioso-type character.

Why criminal? Because he has caused the deaths of more than 100,000 Cubans. Thousands have died through his support of guerrillas in Central and South America. Thousands of blacks were killed by Castro's soldiers in Africa. Castro in the 1980s introduced the use of bacteriological weapons to kill blacks in Angola.

How many thousands have died in America as a result of his drug trafficking into the U.S.? How many thousands have died all over the world due to terrorists trained in Castro's Cuba?

Former Soviet colonel Ken Alibek, who defected to America, was once in charge of the Soviet Union's production of biological weapons. In Alibek's 1999 book, "Biohazard," he revealed that with the help of the Soviet Union, in the 1980s Cuba created laboratories to produce chemical and bacteriological weapons of mass destruction &endash; just 90 miles from U.S. shores.

The information about Castro's involvement with bacteriological weapons also comes from various independent sources. We must not forget either that Cuba is on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist nations.

Why Mafioso? Well, Castro is like an untouchable godfather, surrounded by bodyguards and thugs and a private army of about 40,000 soldiers for his personal protection (roughly the size of the entire army of Cuba prior to 1959).

He stole foreign and national properties in Cuba. He has become one of the richest men in the world, according to Forbes magazine. He has created a despotic and corrupt elite to exploit the Cuban people and keep himself in power. He has made the Cuban people hostages and slaves of his corrupt regime.

The U.S. media do not call Al Capone "the former leader" of the Italian Mafia. Why the double standard with Fidel and other far-left regimes? The answer can be traced to where the sympathies lie &endash; with the elite dictating Political Correctness in America.

It's one thing is to be educated, considerate, polite and have good manners, and another to be forced to self-censor and say things that are totally incorrect in order to comply with the arbitrary dictums of a deceiving and fanatical far-left agenda.

Let's preserve our freedom and say NO to the scourge of Political Correctness.

Source <http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/4/4/121115.shtml>

What is 'Political Correctness'? It is the inane but dangerous thought and speech code that threatens the free speech and intellectual curiosity of so many students and their teachers at colleges across the country &endash; closing rather than opening minds.

Who started 'Political Correctness'? Oddly enough, professors motivated by the credo that "all things are relative."

The original and current purveyors of 'Political Correctness' not only say there is no Truth (with a capital T). They go as far as saying there are no truths. There are, they argue, no "correct" answers, just different ones. They celebrate difference rather than individual pursuits of excellence.

We see this aspect of 'Political Correctness' in classrooms all over America &endash; from elementary school classes to seminars at the country's elite colleges. We see it when little Julia's teacher tells Julia's mother that she doesn't correct spelling because she doesn't want to "hurt her students' feelings" and because she is "celebrating all the different ways the children choose to spell." (It's not really choice, of course, but that's another important matter for another time.)

Students are increasingly taught that there is no correct answer to any question. They are taught, rather, that there are only different answers, and where difference is to be celebrated, any notion of correctness is to be avoided.

Now, this is the heart of 'Political Correctness' &endash; and of the educational movement of which it is part. It forbids students to assert the correctness of certain answers, or the greatness of certain poets. As Kurt Andersen recently observed in The New Yorker, in an article entitled "Kids Are Us," we are not teaching children to grow up. We are refusing to teach them to deal with the burden, consequences, and rewards of discernment, judgment, and competition. As Andersen writes, "What do we tell nice children about their ugly scribbles and cockamamie ideas and pointless stories? That they're all just great, no better or worse than any other child's &endash; which carried full-strength into the adult world, becomes an undiscriminating hyperempathy, where Maya Angelou is a great poet and Marianne Williamson a philosopher."

Anderson's observation is, unfortunately, accurate.  Moreover, the people who administer the codes of 'Political Correctness' at schools across the country take the principal of 'hyperempathy' one step farther: to be 'hyperempathetic' in one respect requires being selectively unempathetic in others. It is fine to tell very young children that all their finger-paintings are great for their feeling and energy. But children do need to grow up, and telling children ten years later that one essay is as good as another is to consign them to a world in which, in the last analysis, nothing really matters because nothing really makes a difference.

On the one hand, the purveyors of 'Political Correctness' "celebrate differences"; on the other hand, they obliterate a whole host of important differences. As they see it, some people ought not to be judged for their skills because they will be harmed by competition. They outlaw the statement that Shakespeare is a better poet than Maya Angelou. The statement, they say, is "politically incorrect." It is 'unfair,' or 'irrelevant,' they say, to compare them. What they compare instead is social relevance. We have, they claim, been trained &endash; 'indoctrinated' and 'constructed' are their words &endash; to think that Shakespeare is better.  To claim that Shakespeare is better than Maya Angelou, they conclude, is "politically incorrect." They go even further. Shakespeare's plays, they say, are not instances of great literary art. They are products of an oppressive culture, and therefore "politically incorrect."

There is a problem here, of course. You might think to call it a logical inconsistency, but it is actually a case of intellectual dishonesty. For how can the very people who assert that there are no facts and that no answer is correct, assert also that there is a code of opinions and answers that are, politically speaking, "correct"?

The purveyors of the code known as 'Political Correctness' try to have it both ways. Indeed, they try to have it every way.

Hypocrisy is built into the very notion of 'Political Correctness.' What the purveyors of 'Political Correctness' deem correct is correct.  Anything that goes against their bias they deem "politically incorrect." Theirs is a childish response to the world. They are, as Andersen writes in "Kids are Us," teaching children to remain children in a world that will &endash; nevertheless &endash; be peopled by a large proportion of adults. Adults, furthermore, will go around trying to know things, and making judgments about quality &endash; whether it is a comparison of two automobiles or a comparison of two job applicants. Where job applicants are concerned, the first questions will be: "who knows more, and who is likely to learn more, and more quickly?"

The purveyors of 'Political Correctness' close their eyes to these facts. They are rampant relativists who hold that no one can know anything and that the only thing more foolish than believing that facts exist is making the effort to pursue them. At the most extreme level, they hold that reality does not exist; we have, rather, they say, only our subjective impressions of what exists, a collection of cultural and political preferences and biases. All systems of aesthetic judgment, like all systems of morality, they say, are merely different. And one can either prefer one (exhibiting bias) or celebrate differences (as in so-called 'multiculturalism').

When it comes to their political interests, the purveyors of 'Political Correctness' assert their ability to know what is "correct" and what is not. But they cannot really establish any criterion for correctness &endash; their allegiance to relativism will not allow it. All finger-paintings are, after all, equal &endash; except in the eyes of the beholder, who happens to be the child's mother. All they are doing, in the end, is asserting what, politically, they think &endash; what, politically, they will.

The question is: how do the keepers of 'Political Correctness' get away with such duplicity?

The answer is that they never assert or defend with reason the "correctness" of their claims. They only excoriate the "incorrectness" of others &endash; especially good-hearted people who strive to make accurate aesthetic judgments: that Shakespeare is a better poet than Maya Angelou, for example.

Shakespeare is, we must remember, the best of all poets ever to write in English. There is no shame in losing out to him. But the purveyors of 'Political Correctness' do not like to let him stand at the top of the hill. They call him just another dead, white, European male. (You've heard the phrase. And you've likely heard the acronym: DWEM). It is as if deadness is something the purveyors of 'Political Correctness' hold against him. Yet, in truth, his deadness reminds us of the dreary fact &endash; mortality &endash; that unites all humanity. We are all the same where death is concerned.

Of course, the purveyors of 'Political Correctness' are in the business of seeing differences only where they want to see them.  And in pursuing their bias they make trouble in our lives. Pointing out differences, they create divisions between students who could otherwise get along, lining up students of different ethnic backgrounds and making them fight battles they did not wish to fight &endash; telling students that Shakespeare's poetry is oppressive, rather than encouraging students to enjoy and learn from it.

At schools where Shakespeare is still taught, the purveyors of 'Political Correctness' do what they can to denigrate his importance within the history of the English language and human thought. They see those who praise Shakespeare rather than bury him as "politically incorrect" monsters. In classes around the country, they call good-hearted students politically-charged names. And in a community dominated by a code of 'Political Correctness' these names mainly stick.

To say that Shakespeare is a better poet than T. S. Eliot is, of course, to render an aesthetic judgment, and an accurate one. Eliot himself would have to admit the truth. To answer differently would be ludicrous. The purveyors of 'Political Correctness,' however, consider the judgment that Shakespeare is a better poet than Maya Angelou as a racist statement, rather than a realistic aesthetic judgment. Yet one may, of course, according to the dictates of 'Political Correctness' celebrate Maya Angelou and assert her superiority. One is permitted &endash; nay, encouraged &endash; to say that she is more worth reading today than Shakespeare.

Here the hypocrisy of PC takes its most extreme form. Purveyors of PC will, in the final analysis, not even allow others their judgments. When their justification of their right to judge is shown for the hypocrisy it is, they get mean. They celebrate "difference," but they will not allow people truly to be different &endash; to think differently, and to say what they think. They will not even allow those who celebrate Shakespeare to celebrate him in peace.

'Political Correctness' sees everything 'in terms of race, class, and gender.' And anyone who refuses to see the world through these subjective, and often hateful, lenses is branded with a hateful name. Shakespeare is a misogynist, they say. He does not render women with respect, they say &endash; ignoring the many examples of fine women from Rosalind to Cordelia. Because it suits their broader political purpose, they ignore the clear cases in which Shakespeare's female characters are morally and intellectually superior to their male counterparts.

The keepers of 'Political Correctness' demand that people see only certain things in certain ways. They are as dogmatic as religious zealots, often more fierce and less edifying.

'Political Correctness' is a powerful form of censorship, a pervasive form of anti-intellectual thought control, an ugly form of racism, an a hypocritical form of absolutism.

It's about time we all see 'Political Correctness' for what it is.

And it is about time we all see the harm it does &endash; and to whom. It hurts those very people &endash; children &endash; who are encouraged well past an appropriate age to encounter the world as if it were a kindergarten class in finger-painting, where everyone gets heaps of praise for whatever he or she does. It is not, of course. The world is a place in which some people do some things better than others, almost always because they work harder at it than anyone else. Michael Jordan is a great example here. He knows that innate talent is not enough. Desire, practice, daily effort, and only these, win the day.

'Political Correctness' is not a laughable fad that will soon disappear from America's classrooms. It is, for the moment, here to stay. Teachers with tenure and administrators with power are behind it. Although the general mood of the American public might suggest that it is, of late, something we are beginning to take lightly, PC is a powerful consequence of years of planning by its purveyors.

'Political Correctness' will be around for a good long while. So best to know it for what it is.

While celebrated by purveyors as a list of objectively offensive things one may not say, 'Political Correctness' is really a subjective list put together by the few to rule the many &endash; a list of things one must think, say, and do. It affronts the right of an individual student to establish his or her own beliefs. It enforces a dangerous way of looking at the world &endash; in black and white, say, rather than in liberal swathes of multifarious gray.

Source <http://www.gofast.org/argos-spring-1998/article2.htm>

What is Political Correctness?

Political Correctness (PC) is the communal tyranny that erupted in the 1980s. It was a spontaneous declaration that particular ideas, expressions and behaviour, which were then legal, should be forbidden by law, and people who transgressed should be punished. It started with a few voices but grew in popularity until it became unwritten and written law within the community. With those who were publicly declared as being not politically correct becoming the target of persecution by the mob, if not prosecution by the state.

The odious Nature of Political Correctness

To attempt to point out the odious nature of Political Correctness is to restate the crucial importance of plain speaking, freedom of choice and freedom of speech; these are the communities safe-guards against the imposition of tyranny, indeed their absence is tyranny. Which is why any such restrictions on expression such as those invoked by the laws of libel, slander and public decency, are grave matters to be decided by common law methodology; not by the dictates of the mob.

Clear Inspiration for Political Correctness

The declared rational of this tyranny is to prevent people being offended; to compel everyone to avoid using words or behaviour that may upset homosexuals, women, none-whites, the crippled, the mentally impaired, the fat or the ugly. This reveals not only its absurdity but its inspiration. The set of values that are detested are those held by the previous generation (those who fought the Second World War ), which is why the terms niggers, coons, dagos, wogs, poofs, spastics and sheilas, have become heresy, for, in an act of infantile rebellion, their subject have become revered by the new generation.

The Origins of Political Correctness

A community declines when the majority of its citizens become selfish, and under this influence it slowly dismantles all the restraints upon self-indulgence established by manners, customs, tradition and law. As each subsequent generation of selfish citizens inherits control of the community, it takes its opportunity to abandon more of the irksome restraints which genius and wisdom had installed. The proponents of this social demolition achieve their irrational purpose by publicly embracing absurdity through slogans while vilifying any who do not support their stance. The purpose of the slogan is to enshrine irrational fears, or fancies, as truth through the use of presumptuous words, so public pronouncement:

• Dissembles the real nature of the claim
• Identifies any dissenters as enemies of the truth
• Acts as an excuse for any crimes committed in its name

For example the slogan Australia is Multicultural is a claim that:

• Different cultures are compatible
• People who contradict this claim are blinded by prejudice against other cultures
• People who contradict this claim are trouble-making bigots, which makes them enemies of the community, if not humanity, and deserving persecution.

Which is an attack upon truth, clear thinking and plain speaking.

From Bourgeois to Racist

Naturally as the restraints shrink the rebellion grows ever more extreme in nature. When the author of Animal Farm wrote an article in 1946 about the pleasures of a rose garden, he was criticised for being bourgois. George Orwell mentions this in his essay 'A Good Word For The Vicar Of Bray', published in the Tribune, 1946. Now, in the late 1990s, the results of being bourgeois (but labelled racist, sexist etc.) are losing your job, your reputation, being jostled in the street, risking judicial penalty and perhaps receiving death threats. And it is this very extremity of reaction that has won media attention and the name Political Correctness, though the reaction will become even more unpleasant with the next generation.

Parental Values Always Attacked

The inevitable target for people impatient of restraint must always be parents, because these are society's agents for teaching private restraint. So the cherished notions of the parents are always subject to attack by their maturing off-spring. This resentment of tradition was observed in his own civilisation by Polybius (c. 200-118 BC), the Greek historian, who said:

"For every democracy which has enjoyed property for a considerable period first develops through its nature an attitude of discontent towards the existing order,.."

Tyranny Grows

Once a community embraces tyranny the penalties can only grow in severity. This gradual increase is easily seen by the example of Toastmasters. As the members of the club became more concerned about the delights of socialising and less concerned about the disciplines of public speaking, they became more intolerant of citizens who were earnest about learning the art of rhetoric. Once members who did their duty by truthfully pointing out the shortcomings in another members performance were just labelled as negative or discouraging; later this became a risk of being socially ostracised. Now (since 1998) unpopularity can result in being permanently ejected from the club by a majority vote.

Australian Experience of PC Tyranny

In my country the tyranny erupted with the persecution of public figures such as Arthur Tunstall for uttering truths that had become unpopular, either directly in a speech, or indirectly by telling jokes. The maiden speech of the federal member of parliament for Ipswich contained so many disliked truths that the rabble escalated the ferocity of their attack and extended them to her supporters, introducing terror into Australian politics. Anyone who watched the TV coverage (1997/8) of Pauline Hanson's political campaign will have seen the nature of her opponents; a throng who looked and behaved more like barbarians than citizens of a civilised community. And any mob who chants "Burn the witch" (when she spoke outside an Ipswich hall after she had been refused entry) leaves no doubt as to their intent or character.

Widespread throughout the Community

Revealing the extent of the mob's support, their sentiments (suitably refined) were enthusiastically echoed by the media and the administration. And in an unprecedented act of cooperation, all the political parties conspired to eject Ms Hanson from the federal parliament in the election of October 3rd 1998. This was revealed by the how-to-vote cards of the parties involved in the seat of Blaire, which all placed Ms Hanson last. This was a public admission by both the major parties that they would rather risk losing the election than allow this forthright woman to keep her seat in parliament.

International Experience of PC Tyranny

And it is not just in Australia but in every western democratic country popular demands have been made for restrictions on expression. Bowing to the clamour of the electorate, politicians in these countries have enacted absurd laws. The Australian community wide declaration of irrational hatred displayed by the persecution of Pauline Hanson, paralleled the Canadian experience of Paul Fromm, director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression Inc., and the examples of the national soccer coach of England and a prominent public servant in Washington, USA confirm the hysteria is everywhere.

Inevitable Impact

Recognising the pathetic nature of the hysteria that is taking over the community will not halt its impact. Once expression gets placed in a strait-jacket of official truth, then the madness that occurs in all totalitarian states is obtained. Life, in private and public, becomes a meaningless charade, where reality shrinks, delusion thrives and terror rules.

Examples of Denying Freedom of Speech

Evidence of this effect is amply demonstrated by the Soviets, who embraced Political Correctness with the Communist Revolution. The lumbering, pompous, impoverished, humourless monster this Nation became is now History. And it should be remembered that in 1914 Tsarist Russia was considered, at least by Edmund Cars, a French economist who then published a book about the subject, to be an economic giant set to overshadow Europe. The SBS television program "What Ever Happened To Russia" which was broadcast at 8.30 pm on 25th August 1994, detailed the terrible effect the Bolshevik's oppression had on their empire. And SBS further detailed the terrible crimes inflicted upon the Russians by their leader Stalin, in the series "Blood On The Snow" broadcast in March 1999.

An Old Witness

Helen, a member of Parramatta writers club in 1992, was a citizen of Kiev during the Red Terror, and described living with official truth and the constant threat of arrest. Knowing the content of the latest party newspaper was critical to avoiding internment, as public contradiction, either directly or indirectly, meant denouncement to the KGB. If you complained about being hungry when food shortages were not officially recognised, then you became an enemy of the state. If you failed to praise a Soviet hero, or praised an ex-hero, then again your fate was sealed. The need to be politically correct dominated all conversation and behaviour, as failure meant drastic penalty. Uncertainty and fear pervaded everything, nobody could be sure that an official request to visit Party headquarters meant imprisonment, torture, death, public reward or nothing important.

Living with such a terrible handicap naturally destroyed all spontaneity of thought or action, rendering the whole community mad. The awful effect this had upon Helen's sanity was made clear when she escaped to Australia. Here she encountered the free press, which had an unpleasant impact upon her. One day she read 'The Australian' newspaper which happened to carry two separate articles about Patrick White, one praising, the other denigrating, this well known writer. Poor Helen found herself turning from one to the other, which was she to repeat as correct? She nearly had a nervous breakdown.

Political Correctness is Social Dementia

Unless plain speaking is allowed, clear thinking is denied. There can be no good reason for denying freedom of expression, there is no case to rebut, only the empty slogans of people inspired by selfishness and unrestrained by morality. The proponents of this nonsense neither understand the implications of what they say, or why they are saying it.

Social Decline grows worse with each Generation

Political Correctness is part of the social decline that generation by generation makes public behaviour less restrained and less rational.

Source <http://www.users.bigpond.com/smartboard/pc.htm>

It is difficult to understand the long-range implications of current events. This is to say, it is difficult to know whether a current event is part of a historical sidetrack, a cultural fad or a mainstream trend. Smart people have called our attention to this reality. For example, the late Ayn Rand described the insidious process which takes a society, inch by unremarkable inch, to socialism: "The goal of the 'liberals' &endash; as it emerges from the record of the past decades &endash; was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot &endash; by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli. (The goal of the 'conservative' was only to retard that process.)"

When the federal government took over the task of inspecting luggage at airports and terminals, it added more than 30,000 new employees to its payroll. Most of them will become dues-paying members of government unions. They will become unremovable, overpaid wards of a government monopoly. They will become predictably dependent upon and grateful to the advocates of big government and higher taxes. They will become Democrats.

Surely there can no longer be any doubt that America is well on its way down the slippery slope to socialism. The government continues to grow in size, power and arrogance as it asserts increasing sovereignty over the lives and behavior of its subjects. The noose tightens, and the rabble wear it like a badge of honor.

Our progression on this path is so subtle that only in retrospect, when it is too late to resist, will we understand that our freedoms have been irretrievably forfeited and our Constitution irreversibly abandoned. In the words of Irish philosopher Edmund Burke, "The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts."

The idea of socialism is attractive. Its basic seductive premise is the same as that of modern liberalism: The government is responsible for implementing altruism throughout society. The government must control all available resources with a view toward equality and fairness. The government must fight the selfish impulse of people to keep the fruits of their own labor. Everyone, impelled by "compassion and caring," must sacrifice for the common good, so that all may share and share alike.

This noble-sounding doctrine is often expressed this way: "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need." So what if it's the creed of communism! However, there are a few problems when one descends from the political pulpit and attempts to translate this ethereal concept into practice.

Given a choice, people are disinclined to immolate themselves in service to others. The sacrifice of the fruit of one's hard labor for the achievement of a larger social goal is not natural behavior and cannot be maintained on a voluntary basis. Sooner or later, it requires force, which will not come openly, but like a thief in the night.

What comes to mind is the observation of Lord Chesterfield that "... arbitrary power ... must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were, step by step, lest the people should see it approach."

The massively cruel and ruinous communistic experiment of the Soviet Empire would not have been necessary if philosophers and intellectuals had not ignored a basic truth about human nature: Human beings, as a derivative of the instinct to survive, are innately driven to act in their own self interest. Not withstanding propaganda, conditioning or brute force, any government or institution which runs head on against the grain of this basic human drive is doomed to fail.

We seem not to have learned a basic lesson of history: Capitalism harnesses human self-interest; socialism exhausts itself trying to kill it.

The bureaucrats, who seize and dole out other people's assets, initially see themselves as humanitarians. Eventually, they conclude they are indeed superior to others, and treat themselves accordingly. They make laws to which they are not subject; they vote themselves and their wards privileges and benefits. They no longer serve; they rule a nation of the government, by the government and for the government.

Source <http://www.townhall.com/columnists/lindabowles/lb20020108.shtml>

Among the most original thinkers of the Renaissance is a brilliant and slightly tragic figure, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527). Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, his name would be synonymous with deviousness, cruelty, and willfully destructive rationality; no thinker was every so demonized or misunderstood than Machiavelli. The source of this misunderstanding is his most influential and widely read treatise on government, The Prince, a remarkably short book that attempts to lay out methods to secure and maintain political power.

His life spanned the greatest period of cultural achievement in Florence to its ultimate downfall. This period was marked by political instability, fear, invasion, intrigue, and high cultural achievement as the tiny states of Italy, including the Papal States, were pulled into the politics and wars of Europe by the immense gravity of two large states, Spain and France. His life began at the very start of this process: in 1469, when Ferdinand and Isabella married and through this marriage created a new, large kingdom of Spain composed of Castile and Aragon, Machiavelli was born to a wealthy Florentine lawyer. In his lifetime, he would see the efflorescence of Florentine culture and political power under the brilliant political genius of Lorenzo de'Medici. He would also see the twilight of the Medici power as Lorenzo's son and successor, Piero de'Medici, was thrown from power by the Dominican monk, Savonarola, who set up a true Florentine Republic. When Savonarola, fanatic about reform, was himself thrown from power and burned, a second Republic was set up under Soderini in 1498. Machiavelli was the secretary of this new Republic, an important and distinguished position. The Republic, however, was crushed in 1512 by the Spanish who installed the Medicis as rulers of Florence once again.

It seems that Machiavelli really had no political commitments or political stripe: he seems to have been on nobody's side politically. For when the Medici came to power, he began to work overtime to get in good with them. It seems that either he was ruthlessly ambitious or believed in serving in government no matter what political group or party was in charge. The Medici, however, never fully trusted him since he had been an important official in the Republic. They imprisoned and tortured him in 1513 and eventually banished him to his country estate at San Casciano (all this torture and imprisonment, however, didn't stop him from trying to get in good with the Medicis). It was during his exile in San Casciano, when he was desparate to get back into government, that he wrote his principle works: the Discourse on Livy, The Prince, The History of Florence, and two plays. Many of these works, such as The Prince, were written for the express purpose of getting a job in the Medici government.

The tremendous innovation of both the Discourses on Livy and The Prince was Machiavelli's uncoupling of political theory from ethics. Throughout the Western tradition, as in the Chinese tradition, political theory and policy was closely linked to ethics. Aristotle summed up this connection when he defined politics as merely an extension of ethics. Throughout the Western tradition, then, politics had been understood in terms of right and wrong, just and unjust, temperate and intemperate, and so on. The moral terms used to evaluate human actions were employed to evaluate political actions.

Machiavelli was the first to discuss politics and social phenomena in their own terms without recourse to ethics or jurisprudence. In many ways you could consider Machiavelli to be the first major Western thinker to apply the strictly scientific method of Aristotle and Averroes to politics. He did so by observing the phenomena of politics, reading all that's been written on the subject, and describing political systems in their own terms. For Machiavelli, politics was about one and only one thing: getting and keeping power or authority. Everything else &endash; religion, morality, etc. &endash; that people associate with politics has nothing to do with this fundamental aspect of politics &endash; unless being moral helps one get and keep power. The only skill that counts in getting and maintaining power is calculation; the successful politician knows what to do or what to say for every situation.

With this insight, Machiavelli in The Prince simply describes the means by which individuals have tried to seize and to maintain power. Most of the examples he gives are failures; the entire book is suffused with tragedy for at any moment, if the ruler makes one miscalculation, all the authority he has so assiduously cultivated will dry up like the morning dew. The social and political world of the The Prince is monstrously unpredictable and volatile; only the most superhuman calculative mind can overcome this social and political volatility.

Throughout The Prince and the Discourses, it's clear that Machiavelli has praise only for the winners. For this reason, he admires figures such as Alexander VI and Julius II, universally hated throughout Europe as ungodly popes, for their astonishing military and political success. His refusal to allow ethical judgements enter into political theory branded him throughout the Renaissance as a kind of anti-Christ. In chapters such as "Whether a Prince Should Be True to his Word," Machiavelli argues that any moral judgment should be secondary to getting, increasing and maintaining power. The answer to the above question, for instance, is "it's good to be true to your word, but you should lie whenever it advances your power or security &endash; not only that, it's necessary."

It might help to understand Machiavelli to imagine that he's not talking about the state so much in ethical terms but in medical terms. For Machiavelli believed that the Italian situation was desparate and that the Florentine state was in grave danger. Rather than approach the question from an ethical point of view, Machiavelli was genuinely concerned with healing the state to make it stronger. For instance, in talking about seditious points of view, Machiavelli doesn't make an ethical argument, but rather a medical one &endash; "seditious people should be amputated before they infect the whole state."

The single most articulated value in the work of Machiavelli is virtú (Latin virtus), which is related to our word, "virtue." Machiavelli means it more in its Latin sense of "manly," but individuals with virtú are primarily marked by their ability to enforce their will on volatile social situations. They do this through a combination of strong will, strength, and brilliant and strategic calculation. In one of the most famous passages from The Prince, Machiavelli describes the proper orientation towards the volatility of the world, or Fortune, by comparing Fortune to a lady: "la fortuna é donna," or "Fortune is a Lady." Machiavelli is referring to the courtly love tradition, where the lady that constitutes the object of desire is approached and entreated and begged. The ideal Prince, however, for Machiavelli does not entreat or beg Lady Fortune, but rather physically grabs her and takes whatever he wants. This was a scandalous passage and still is today, but it represents a powerful translation of the Renaissance idea of human potential to the area of politics. For if, according to Pico della Mirandola, a human being can self-transform into anything it wants, then it must be possible for a single, strong-willed individual to order the chaos of political life.

Despite his hopes that the Medicis might prove to be those ideal rulers that could unite Italy, they did not remain in power for long. When Guilio de'Medici left Firenze to become Pope Clement VII, the subalterns that he left in charge of the city managed it very poorly. The people soon overthrew the Medici rule and established the Third Republic of Firenze in 1527. Machiavelli saw his chance and tried to get a position in the new republic, but the new rulers distrusted him because of his long association with the Medici. So on June 22, 1527, only a few months after the establishment of the Third Republic, Machiavelli died. That same year, Rome was sacked by Emperor Charles VII and the pope was forced to ally with Charles. In 1530, the pope and Charles led a punitive expedition against Firenze and crushed it as an independent state. Three years after the death of Machiavelli and two years before the publication of The Prince, the state that Machiavelli worked so hard to help and believed so much in blinked out of existence.

Source <http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/REN/MACHIAV.HTM>

"... is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be possible to make them believe by force."

"For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer."

"Therefore a wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and kind of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then he will always find them faithful."

"... a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil."

"Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity."

"We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed."

"You must know there are two ways of contesting, the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man."

"If men were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince legitimate reasons to excuse this non-observance."

"One prince of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never preaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is most hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of reputation and kingdom many a time."

"And here it should be noted that hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad ones, therefore, as I said before, a prince wishing to keep his state is very often forced to do evil; for when that body is corrupt whom you think you have need of to maintain yourself &endash; it may be either the people or the soldiers or the nobles &endash; you have to submit to its humours and to gratify them, and then good works will do you harm."

"And a prince ought, above all things, always to endeavour in every action to gain for himself the reputation of being a great and remarkable man."

"... because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity (bold, daring) command her."

The current European Union is consistent with the plans and the design for a European Economic Community, as it was developed at that time by leading national-socialists under the chairmanship of Dr. Walter Funk, Nazi Economics Minster and President of the German Reichsbank [National Bank].

In the summer of 1942, when the Nazi-armies had overrun the whole of Europe and a large part of the Soviet Union, the Reichsbank came with plans for a postwar monetary union. The central Reichsbank, in co-operation with the Economics Department, unfolded a plan for a monetary union for a large part of Europe, with the Reichsmark as the dominating currency. The German Nazi-plan for the European economical and monetary unification is described in a book which was published in Berlin in the same year under the title Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft [European Economic Community]. The book contains essays, written by important Third Reich industrialists, bankers and economists, and was published by the Berlin Industrie und Handelskammer [Chamber of Commerce and Industry] in co-operation with the Wirtschafts Hochschule [School of Economics] in Berlin. The Nazi-blueprint for a united Europe shows a staggering resemblance with the structure of the European Union, as we now know it. That is the conclusion of an article, published in the International Currency Review, a specialised magazine which is practically only read within the world of banking.

Co-authors of the book were amongst others the above mentioned Walter Funk, who gave a description of the economic character of the new Europe; Dr. Emil Woermann, professor at the University of Halle, who described the future agricultural policy; Dr. Anton Reithinger, who worked with IG Farben, he gave an account of the new industrial Europe; state secretary Gustav Koenings, who gave a description of a European traffic policy; and Dr. Bernhard Benning, managing director of the Reichs Kreditanstalt A.G. [Reichs Credit Institute Plc], he drew up the economics policy of the Nazis: the problem of the European exchange rates and how to achieve one European currency. The book further contains essays about a unified labour market, a unified agricultural market and general principles of European co-operation. It is also remarkable that the authors preferred to keep Great Britain out of the united Europe, and that they also had plans for a European Central Bank, which would be dominated by Germany. Competition must be fought, it is freedom of way for the big industries, who, in the Nazi-vision on Europe, will be in charge.

In November 1932, during a congress in Rome, the occult Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg put plans on the table for the economic restructuring of Europe. These ideas were on a wide scale propagated in Germany. Nazi newspapers like "Die Deutsche Volkswirtschaft" [The German Economy] even campaigned for a United Europe. In 1938, one Daitz, a German ambassador, also wrote a book in which he pleaded for an economic and political unification of Europe. He too had a much influence on high Nazis. Walter Darré, the Reichsbauerminister [Reichs Farmers' Minister] pleaded in an early stage for far-reaching European environmental measures; measures which would make current environment protectors lick their lips. Apart from that, the Nazis were the first who established nature reserves in Europe; all this by the express request of Hitler.

Two years later, in 1940, the Reichsbank published a design for a European monetary union, where the Reichsmark would become the most important currency in the German Economic zone, and together with the dollar one of the world's standard currencies. In July of the same year plans were lying ready for the foundation of a Bank for European Payments, which would serve as the centre point for the postwar monetary system. All payments between the member states would run via this European bank, which would also stand surety for large export credits. This bank would also have certain rights over the financial management of the individual central banks of the member states. In short, influential Nazis wanted to change Europe into a federal superstate in which the sovereignty of the individual member states would practically be abolished.

According to the International Currency Review, the Maastricht Treaty finds its roots in the German way of thinking in the last [19th] century; where national interests must be subordinated to the interests of the greater good, over-ruling the state's decision makers. It is important to realize that this doctrine eventually lead to the first World War. The Maastricht Treaty destroys sovereignty. There are practically no differences between the Europe of Maastricht and the economic blueprint for Europe as it was at that time proposed. There are strong indications that attempts were made to wipe this book (published in 1942 ) off the face of the earth. Of the massive publication during the Nazi-era, only two editions still exist, and then only in form of copies: one in the British Museum and one in the staatsbibliotheek [State Library] Berlin.

This article was published in Kleintje Muurkrant ['Concise Wallposter']no. 323, Juli 17, 1998

Source <http://www.stelling.nl/kleintje/323/Nazis.htm>

It's often claimed &endash; not least by our opponents &endash; that Nazis and Fascists are nothing more than extreme xenophobic nationalists, totally opposed to 'good' international bodies like the EU. In the words of the song, "It Ain't Necessarily So".

Back in 1942, a book called "The European Community" was published. Its principal author, a Doctor of Economics, had argued in 1940 for a "Central European Union" and "European Economic Area" and for fixed exchange rates &endash; the Euro in all but name. In this book, he wrote that "No nation in Europe can achieve on its own the highest level of economic freedom which is compatible with all social requirements... The formation of very large economic areas follows a natural law of development ... interstate agreements in Europe will control [economic forces generally]... There must be a readiness to subordinate one's own interests in certain cases to those of [the EC]".

One of his co-authors wrote that the "classic national economy ... is dead ... community of fate which is the European economy ... fate and extent of European co-operation depends on a new unity economic plan". Another observed that "We have a real European Community task before us ... I am convinced that this Community effort will last beyond the end of the war".

The last words explain things. The principal author was Nazi Economics Minister and war criminal Walther Funk. The other two were respectively Nazi academic Heinrich Hunke and official Gustav Koenig. Nor were they just eccentrics. Goering's orders in 1940 were followed by a project for the "large-scale economic unification of Europe". Goebbels, in the same year, compared Germany's road to unification in the nineteenth century with Europe's in the twentieth, believing that "in fifty years' time [people] no longer think in terms of countries".

Note: Walter Funk was sentenced to life imprisonment, but released from Spandau prison in 1957; he died in 1960. Had the prosecution been able to prove that he knew the origin of the large deposits of jewellery and dental gold deposited by the SS, then he would have been hanged. Notwithstanding his record of cultural genocide he was consulted many times by the architects of the European Economic Community and well paid for his efforts.

Ribbentrop, in 1943, endorsed plans for a European confederation. Seyss-Inquart, Gauleiter of Holland, spoke of "The new Europe of solidarity and co-operation among all its people ... will find ... rapidly increasing prosperity once national economic boundaries are removed."

Their collaborators felt the same way. Quisling himself stated that there was no opposition between European economic co-operation and National Socialism, Vichy French Minister Jacques Benoist-Mechin that France had to "abandon nationalism ... take place in European Community with honour."

In the words of Rodney Atkinson, "The European Community was therefore intended by the Nazis ... as a common cause against British ... economic systems of trade and free exchange". Mr. Atkinson goes on (in his book 'Europe's Full Circle') to kindly provide us (pages 92-93) with a list of parallels between "Hitler's Europe" and "Today's Europe".

• Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft

European Economic Community

• European Currency System

European Exchange Rate Mechanism

• Europabank (Berlin)

European Central Bank (Frankfurt)

• European Regional Principle

Committee of the Regions

• Common Labour Policy

Social Chapter

• Economic and Trading Agreements

Single Market

A few further quotes may be of interest &endash; "The Germans alone can really organise Europe... The future will belong to the Germans when we build the House of Europe... The Anglo-Saxon economic system, the classic national economy, is dead... It is important to establish a European Single Currency core in order to stand firm against Anglo-Saxon values".

I just quoted, respectively, Goebbels, Kohl, Hunke, and (in 1996) Belgian Finance Minister Philippe Maystadt. No, I'm not just indulging in cheap jibes or insinuating that all Europhiles are closet Nazis. Obviously they don't share Hitler's racial paranoia. No doubt they see themselves as good liberal-minded democrats. However, all totalitarian regimes stand for concentrating power in central hands. They're all prone to meddle in people's private lives and pursuits and to issue directives without properly consulting a free parliament first. In short &endash; the Eurocrats may not be totalitarians but they are totalitarian-minded in their behaviour.

For further details, I recommend,

Atkinson, Rodney. Europe's Full Circle

Laughland, John. The Tainted Source

Jenkins, Lindsay. Britain Held Hostage

A final thought: the Nazis used referenda to seduce power out of the hands of the people's representatives and concentrate it in the hands of a few. With the prospect of a UK referendum on the single currency and the dangers of concentrating economic powers in the hands of a virtually unaccountable European Central Bank &endash; remember: NEVER AGAIN!

Source <http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~iits/newalliance/nazieu.htm>

Review essay published in The Independent Review, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Fall 1999). Edited version reproduced in the National Post/Financial Post, October 2, 1999, under the title "Fascism and the Campaign to End Smoking".

From the vantage point of a late-twentieth-century observer, the public health policies of the National Socialists who ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945 seem surprisingly modern. Those policies are illuminated in Robert N. Proctor's most recent work, "The Nazi War on Cancer" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), which documents the war on cancer and other public health campaigns by the Nazis. A historian of science at Pennsylvania State University, Proctor has written extensively on medicine, public health, and their relations with politics and, especially, with National Socialism.

The Nazi government was known, and admired, for implementing the most progressive public health policies in their time. State-of-the-art research and regulation were applied to occupational, environmental, and lifestyle diseases. Cancer was declared "the number one enemy of the state." Nazi policy favored natural food and opposed fat, sugar, alcohol, and sedentary lifestyles. The existing temperance movement against alcohol and tobacco became more active under the Nazis, who were involved in what Proctor calls "creating a secure and sanitary utopia."

Not surprisingly, American narcotics officials of the time admired the Nazi war on drugs. Today, admiration would probably go in the other direction.

The longest chapter of Proctor's book is devoted to tobacco, "a focus justified," explains the author, "by the startling fact &endash; heretofore unnoticed &endash; that Nazi Germany had the world's strongest antismoking campaign and the world's most sophisticated tobacco disease epidemiology" (pp. 9-10). It is well-known that Hitler himself was a rabid antismoker, but the antismoking movement and interventionist public policies of the Nazi area involved much more than Hitler's personal whims. Tobacco was attacked as a "relic of a liberal lifestyle" and as "masturbation of the lungs." It was in Nazi Germany that medical researchers, some with strong Nazi connections, first established a statistical link between smoking and lung cancer. Antismoking crusaders published magazines like Auf der Wacht (On Guard) and Reine Luft (Pure Air). Half a century before the Environmental Protection Agency enrolled junk science against "environmental tobacco smoke," antitobacco activist Dr. Fritz Lickint coined the term "passive smoking." (He also thought that coffee was a carcinogen!)

Many antismoking controls were enacted, including restrictions advertising and bans on smoking in many workplaces, government offices, hospitals and, later, in all city trains and buses. Women could not legally purchase cigarettes in certain places. "The German woman does not smoke," proclaimed a Nazi slogan.

In 1941, the Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research was created under the direction of Karl Astel. A dedicated Nazi who committed suicide in April 1945, Astel thought that opposition to tobacco was a "national socialist duty" (p. 209). As president of the University of Jena, he banned smoking in all university buildings. It is at Astel's Institute that Proctor traces the most path-breaking scientific work on the relations between smoking and cancer.

Proctor is puzzled and distressed by the fact that "Public health initiatives were pursued not just in spite of fascism, but also in consequence of fascism" (p. 249). But his book is weak on the analysis of this issue: in the closing chapter, where he tries to address it, he does not go much farther than stating that German fascism was a complex mixture of the good and the bad. Fortunately, the extensive documentation provided by the author does gives us the means of pushing the analysis beyond where he left it.

Let us recall that fascism is based on the subjection of the individual to the collective. As Benito Mussolini wrote about the twentieth century, "For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism, it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and, hence, the century of the State" (Italian Encyclopedia 1932). The German brand of fascism, National Socialism, was characterized also by racist (as opposed to purely nationalist) beliefs. Let us recall further that, everywhere in the West, public health doctrine has drifted from public-good concerns, such as sanitation or contagious diseases, towards a frontal attack on individual choices and politically incorrect lifestyles (see my review of a book by Jacob Sullum's For Your Own Good, in The Independent Review, 3 [Winter 1999]: 460-465).

The relationship between fascism and public health is probably more symbiotic than Proctor admits. After reading The Nazi War on Cancer, the careful reader will be well positioned to understand why fascism requires strong public health policies. For the fascist State needs "valuable human material" &endash; or, as we would say today, healthy "human resources". Nazi slogans reported by Proctor are more explicit than what present-day crusaders would dare to employ: "Your body belongs to the nation!" "You have the duty to be healthy!" "Food is not a private matter!" Again anticipating today's health fascists, the Nazis' National Accounting Office outlined the so-called economic costs of smoking. Erwin Liek, sometimes called the father of Nazi medicine, thought that curing cancer required moving from "care of the individual" to "cancer prevention on a large scale &endash; for the entire people" (p. 25).

The public health mixture becomes more powerful with the added ingredient of racism supplied by the German brand of fascism. Public health campaigns contribute to the preservation not only of a population of taxpayers and conscripts, but also of the "German germ plasm." But this additive was not really required, as collectivism would have sufficed: "Germany's physician-führers," Proctor notes, "were less concerned about the health of the individuals than about the vigor of 'the race,' the so-called folk community" (p. 122).

Proctor takes care to distance himself from libertarians who would see fascism's invisible fist in today's repression of smoking: "My intention," he writes, "is not to argue that today's antitobacco efforts have fascist roots, or that public health measures are in principle totalitarian &endash; as some libertarians seem to want us to believe" (p. 277). This is just logic: if F (fascism) implies P (public health), it does not follow that P implies F. Of course.

But society does not live by logic alone, and one must inquire whether the logic of human action &endash; what Ludwig von Mises called "praxeology" &endash; traces institutional connections that tie public health and fascism in closer ways. Besides the fascist Leviathan's need for healthy subjects, I suggest that still other connections help to make sense of the disturbing evidence produced by Proctor.

One such connection is that both fascist policies and the modern public health ideology require a powerful state. State power is the common denominator, and a necessary condition, of both fascism and strong public health controls. Proctor reminds us that public health concerns were well known in the Weimar period and that the world's first state-supported anticancer agency was founded in Germany thirty-three years before the Nazis gained power. But, he writes, "What was new in the Nazi period were augmented police and legislative powers to implement broad preventive measures" (pp. 21-22). The police powers implied by fascism allowed the public health ideology to show its real nature.

The Nazi state apparatus had a "Reich Health Führer," with which office the name of Leonardo Conti, a strong antitobacco activist, remains associated. Under Conti, central registries had been established for many diseases and addictions. Nazi Germany was a transparent society, where individuals were prevented from hiding their lives from the state &endash; as absurdly illustrated by the 1938 ban on attic storage. Thousand of "registered" alcoholics felt victims of the sterilization program under the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring. While many of the health fascists were prosecuted and condemned at Nuremberg, Conti escaped by hanging himself in his cell.

Thus, fascism naturally leads to public health tyranny, which in turn requires extensive state powers. Such is the logic of political institutions and the growth of state power. The main danger of the present public health movement does not lie in its fascist roots so much as in its capacity to justify and call for tyrannical government power.

Perhaps there is, in the moral field, a neat connection between the morality of an action and the goodness of the intentions underlying it. But, contrary to what Proctor seems to assume, there is no such correlation between human intentions and their social consequences. Since Bernard de Mandeville and Adam Smith, economists have appreciated that egoistic intentions can lead to good consequences for others. Similarly, good intentions can lead to undesirable consequences: as Friedrich Hölderlin wrote, "What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven." It is therefore not surprising that the good public health intentions of the Nazis had some awful consequences; or that such a bad ideology as fascism lead to some good consequences in terms of public health.

Or did it? Can we say that Nazism produced good public health measures? Perhaps, but only if we are blind to the costs they imposed on individuals. In fact, there are no public health consequences that are good in themselves regardless of their costs. Even if we accept that smoking contributes to lung cancer, this does not justify prohibiting adults to do what they want with their own lives. Against the twenty thousand German women who perhaps were saved from cancer by Nazi paternalist policies, one has to count not only the aggressions and deaths brought about by the political power necessary to effect this outcome, but also the cost to these women in terms of their own liberty and dignity.

Another issue looms behind Proctor's description of German life under the Nazis. Despite the tyrannical powers of the state, despite even the war, power was never completely centralized in Germany, contentious issues continued to be debated (at least within the Aryan tribe), cancer research was pursued, and the tobacco industry fought tooth and nail against the prohibitionists. Physicians cooperated with the regime, most often willingly, just as Christopher Browning's "ordinary men" murdered Jewish women and children (Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992)). In other words, life maintained an appearance of normality. Just as it does today.

Of course, there is a difference of degree between the Nazi tyranny and the quiet administrative tyrannies under which we now live, but perhaps future observers will wonder how, at the end of the twentieth century, an apparently normal life could coexist with the accelerated onslaught on our liberties.

Despite his lack of a firm grip of political and economic issues, despite his naïveté about Leviathan and public policy &endash; or perhaps because the apparent objectivity that may be conveyed by these shortcomings &endash;, Robert Proctor has produced a remarkable piece of scholarly research that is bound to influence public health debates.

Source <http://www.pierrelemieux.org/artproctor.html>

Treaties are written by civil servants. Constitutions are written by the citizen's representatives. But in the case of the EU-Constitution the voices of the citizens have not been heard.

The draft EU Constitution is a poor compromise. It satisfies the power hunger of politicians and institutions, but ignores democracy.

The draft constitution compromise will move a lot more decisions from the Member States to Brussels and weaken our parliamentary democracies. The wish for more transparency is ignored even though a majority asked for it. The European Parliament do not gain the powers taken from the national parliaments. Civil servants in the EU will behind closed doors take over from elected members of parliaments and the electorates.

We began with an attempt to simplify the treaties. But we ended with a complicated constitution. We did not bring the EU closer to the peoples. We forgot the citizens.

Normally, a constitution limits what politicians can do between elections and referendums, protecting citizens from abuse of power. But this Constitution is a tool for the politicians to use against their electorates.

Politicians will be given almost unlimited powers, which they can use without reference to their electorates. Not one single decision will be moved back even if that is the wish of the vast majority of citizens in every Member State.

Through legal personality the EU will operate like a state, personalised with an EU president and foreign minister. The treaties will be turned into a state constitution. A simple regulation decided by the Commission or a working group in Brussels will have primacy over the national constitutions.

Any doubt on whether a competence rests with the EU or with the nation states will be decided by the Union itself.

In legal terms, the EU will become closer to a centralised French unitary state than a German federal system. The Union can even establish further competences of its own through the new revolutionary clause in Art. 24.4 allowing all decisions to be moved from unanimity to qualified majority.

There will be no areas left in the nation states in which the EU cannot interfere. The national parliaments will be transformed into provincial chambers. National democracies will be emptied. The powers taken from national parliaments will not be given to the European parliament, but will disappear in a complicated power play in Brussels. Civil servants behind closed doors will take the decisions previously controlled by the national parliaments.

The European Parliament can amend proposals and block laws but cannot decide anything without a proposal from a non-elected, unaccountable Commission. In the Council the power is moved from the smaller to the larger states. We will have a directorate of the big member states ruling the EU. Germany and eventually Turkey will be the major winners and may be able to block a decision favoured by all other states in the EU.

The losers are those who are not here: the voters. The electorates of our member states. They will lose the right to have the last word over all public affairs. They can continue to have national elections but cannot amend laws. They can then have European elections but still cannot amend their laws. They will have a European government that they can neither elect nor select.

Here the power is with the strongest prime ministers in the European Council making a deal amongst themselves to give important posts to those who can no longer be elected in their own country. We are going to lose our national democracies without gaining a federal democracy. Therefore every honest federalist should also refuse to take part in this crime against our electorates.

Monsieur Giscard d`Estaing,

You never allowed normal democratic working methods in this Convention. You refused to take onboard a proposal for transparency signed or supported by almost 200 members of the Convention.

We are a small group of opponents in this Convention who have delivered a minority report to be included in your written report to the Prime Ministers. We propose a different vision: a Europe of Democracies, where all power rests with the electorates. They elect the national parliaments who then elect their Commissioners in Brussels. In our vision, all member states and their commissioners are equal.

You now pass a constitution which will limit our democracies. Put it to the peoples in referendums. Ask them if they think civil servants in Brussels and politicians of the past are better placed to decide. Let the peoples decide.

Source <http://www.bonde.com/index.phtml?aid=11688>

This is the full text of a speech given by Sir James Goldsmith at the 1996 Referendum Party Conference in Brighton. Although several years have passed, and sadly Sir James is no longer with us, his comments are as relevant as ever. Never forget the venom with which he was attacked by the political class for expressing views with which the majority of ordinary people have no quarrel. The politicians arrogantly claim that only they are qualified to decide upon the future of the nation yet, as Sir James pointed out, their self interest overrides any commitment they might feel to their own nation.

His comparison of the formation of the EU and of Bismark's Germany certainly gives food for thought, and it is instructive to see how much of that which he forecast has come true, and how nothing as changed as far as the inexorable progress towards a single European state is concerned.

It is also salutary to read the comments made by leading Conservative and Labour politicians at the time, and also to read Sir James' comments on the nature of any referendum. How right he was.

Of course it was a party political speech, but one that came from the heart, and whose main points are as true today as they were then. Indeed it is only thanks to Sir James that we have the prospect of any sort of referendum on the single currency.

We are here today for only one reason. We want the people of this land to be able to make the most important decision a country can face &endash; whether or not it should continue as an independent nation.

We seek no power for ourselves. We are not politicians and do not want to become politicians. We are people drawn from every walk of life, from every region of the nation, and from every major political party, left, right and centre. Among us are doctors, teachers, businessmen, housewives, farmers, fishermen, and others.

We represent a broad diversity of views. But we are united in one unshakeable belief. We reject the idea that this country's destiny as a proud and sovereign nation can be brought to an end through the backroom dealings of politicians.

The sovereignty of this nation belongs to its people and not to a group of career politicians. It is the people and they alone who must decide, after a full debate and a public vote, whether Britain should remain an independent nation or whether her future will be better served as part of a new country &endash; the single European super-state, also known as a federal Europe.

Our purpose is to fight to obtain that right to decide. And when the decision has been made, the Referendum Party will dissolve.

The issue that faces us is of such enormity that we all find it hard to grasp. As we go about our daily lives in a normal way, how can any of us believe that our history as an independent nation is being quietly and surreptitiously brought to an end? And yet, that is what is happening.

Consider for a moment the qualities that define a sovereign nation &endash; those that distinguish it from a vassal state or from a province of a larger nation or empire. They are the right to pass laws in our own land, the right to run our economy for the benefit of our people, the right to determine our own foreign policy to organise our national security and to control our own borders.

Each of these fundamental national rights has either already been abandoned or is now under imminent threat. When our political leaders assure us that they will never allow us to be part of a federal European state, alas, they are not telling us the truth.

Already they have signed treaties which have surrendered an indispensable part of our sovereignty. And they did so without explaining the facts to us and without our consent. British judges have confirmed, the supreme law of this land is now European law... Already laws passed in Westminster are no longer supreme. As British judges have confirmed, the supreme law of this land is now European law.

Already we have signed away the right to run our economy for the benefit of our own people. The Governor of Germany's Central Bank puts it concisely. Referring to economic and monetary union, he says and I quote, "it will lead to member nations transferring their sovereignty over financial and wage policies as well as in monetary affairs..."." It is an illusion to think," he adds, "that states can hold onto their autonomy over taxation policies".

So much for our control over our financial and wage policies, our monetarv affairs and our taxation policies.

And the governing European political caste has put forward proposals to transfer to Brussels control over our foreign policy, our national security and our frontiers.

This is not a personal view. The facts are out in the open. Chancellor Kohl's foreign policy spokesman is both clear and honest. He explains that Germany's ruling party wants what he calls "a country", a federal Europe which will have one Parliament, one Government, one Court of Justice, one currency, into which would be fused up to twenty-five existing European nations including our own. He goes further and proclaims that nation states have already lost their sovereignty and that that sovereignty, in his words, is no more than, I quote, "an empty shell".

Remember, according to the Treaties that we have signed, all this is irreversible. Chancellor Kohl constantly repeats to us that it is irrevocable, indeed forever. Think about that. In an association of countries, when one of them disagrees strongly with the others, it can withdraw. And if the other countries find it impossible to work with that country, they can expel it. But, in an irreversible union, things are wholly different. A country can neither withdraw nor can it be expelled. Otherwise, it would not be an irreversible union. Therefore, such a country can only be subjugated.

When I referred earlier to the "governing European political caste," I was not just referring to continental politicians. The bulk of our own must be included. It was the Conservative Government which signed away our rights to self-government and which, through weakness, has systematically given into the demands of the Eurocrats.

The Labour Party, for its part, has just discovered Heath's version of conservatism. Like Heath, it turns its back on the nation state and favours the creation of a politically integrated and corporatist Europe. The Labour Party is a source of bewilderment. It proposes referenda allowing the Scots, the Northern Irish, the Welsh, the residents of the greater London area, among others, to express themselves on how they want to be governed. It even puts forward the idea of a referendum on electoral reform.

But it refuses a clean, clear and fundamental referendum on whether the United Kingdom herself as a whole, should be governed by Westminster or by Brussels.

The Lib-Dems are uncomplicated. They proclaimed and I quote: "We are super-nationalists".

In the European arena, our Conservative, Labour and Lib-Dem MEPs, along with the parties to which they are affiliated, all support abandoning our powers of self-government and campaign for a federal Europe.

As for the grandees, the political establishment, they fully endorse the slide to federalism. Only a few weeks ago, one former Prime Minister, one former Deputy Prime Minister, three former Foreign Secretaries and the British Vice President of the European Commission, jointly signed a much publicised proclamation to this effect.

Before the war, it needed Churchill, overriding the active hostility of the establishment, to provide the strength to come to the rescue of Europe. During the cold war, it took outsiders like Reagan and Thatcher, or before them, Ernest Bevin and Hugh Gaitskell, to provide the guts to face down the threat of the Soviet Union.

And now, yet again, the establishment exhibits its habitual weakness.

The British people have been offered no choice. No matter which major political party they turn to, the result will be the same.

To understand what is happening to us, we must both ask and answer the question &endash; how is it possible that our politicians have accepted a constitution for Europe that is so totally contrary to our tradition of democracy.

The fundamental premise of a true democracy is that Parliament makes the law, the Judiciary interprets the law, and the Executive governs within the law.

That is the basis of the separation of powers and of the system of checks and balances on which our democracy is built. Ultimate control rests with the people who elect Parliament and, therefore, indirectly, the government.

The European constitution is based on a wholly different set of ideas. The European Commission has been granted what in Euro-jargon is called "the monopoly of initiative". That means that only the Commission is empowered to put forward proposals concerning the governance of the European Union.

Remember when Jacques Delors, the former President of the European Commission, addressed the Trade Unions Council here in the U.K. in 1988. He told us then that 80 percent of our national laws would be made in this way.

The Commission is unique in another way. It is the only institution in a supposedly democratic community which has the right not only to create laws but also to execute them. This is totally contrary to our idea of democracy.

And what is more, the Commission has been granted the right to act in secret and its members, the Commissioners, are unelected bureaucrats without any democratic legitimacy. They are the people that can produce laws which are supreme over the laws passed in Westminster.

This antithesis of democracy is complemented by two other similarly conceived institutions and they happen to be the two other most powerful political organisations within the European Union. They are the European Court of Justice and the European Central Bank.

In a democracy a normal Court of Justice consists of judges who interpret the law. The European Court of Justice is quite different. Only a minority of its fifteen members would qualify as judges here in the U.K. The others are politicians, academics and consultants who have benefited from political patronage. They do not interpret the law; they make it.

The European Court of Justice is a political court with a political agenda. Its rulings, time and again, are based on principles that the Court simply creates and which have no legal basis in the Treaties themselves.

As one of its former judges, Judge Mancini, has admitted, the European Court of Justice, is a court with a "mission." That mission is to create a federal Europe.

Of course, as usual in the E.U., it carries out its business in secret and there is no appeal against its judgments.

The European Central Bank, also, will be populated by unelected civil servants who will have absolute power. They will be subject to no political or democratic control of any kind.

That, also, is written into the Treaty of Maastricht. This particular group of civil servants will dominate all the economies of Europe.

Let me remind you that, as has been made quite clear to us, once economic and monetary union is in place, what happens to interest rates, wages, inflation, growth and therefore jobs, will be decided in Frankfurt.

Just think of that &endash; interest rates, wages, inflation, growth and jobs. And remember that the Governor of Germany's Central Bank has already told us that we can also kiss good-bye to our control over our financial and wage policies, our monetary affairs and our taxation policies.

What is more, the Eurocrats are now planning a "Stability Pact" which was proposed last year by Germany and the principles of which were approved by the European Union last month in Dublin.

This will mean that Brussels will set the rules also for spending and borrowing and will establish what is known as the "broad economic guidelines". Brussels will be granted increased rights to exercise what they call "multilateral surveillance". Most of these constraints will apply whether or not we opt out of the single currency.

What is more, it is proposed that those who are either "in"or "out" of the single currency will be obliged to submit what they call "convergence or stability programmes" which will be subject to scrutiny by European institutions rather than by our own Parliament.

Our Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kenneth Clarke, has agreed in principle to grant that control to Brussels without even seeking prior discussion by Parliament.

Let us be quite clear. The consequence of all this domination by Brussels will mean that neither the Conservative nor the Labour Party, whichever is elected, will have the legal power to run our economy.

So their principal electoral promises and manifesto proclamations are empty of substance.

Three Committees, the European Commission, the European Court of Justice and the European Central Bank, consisting of unelected bureaucrats, have been or are being handed almost total power over the lives of all the peoples of Europe.

Insofar as we are concerned, the overwhelming majority of those powers has traditionally been in the custody of our Parliament, our Court of Law and our Government.

Now they have been or are being abandoned silently deceitfully and irreversibly by our politicians and without our consent. We have been encouraged to sleepwalk into surrendering our nation.

Let us never forget the assurances given to us by Heath's Conservative government when it took us into Europe. These are the shameful words that were printed in his official White Paper, I quote: "There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty". &endash; Never again should we trust such people.

Let me explain how all this has come about. As we know, the construction of the European Union was designed by Germany assisted by the elite civil servants of France.

It draws the bulk of its inspiration from Germany's constitutional heritage. The ethos of that constitution is drawn from Prussia, and Prussian political thought was moulded principally by the German philosopher, Hegel.

So the key to understanding the institutions of the European Union is to understand how the German constitution, itself, came about.

I seek your indulgence to remind you of this essential piece of history, essential to grasping what is happening to us today. Essential to understanding how we find ourselves bound by a constitution alien to everything we have respected and stood for during, as Hugh Gaitskell said, a thousand years of our history.

Hegel, the philosophical father of the German constitutional tradition, believed in the State and despised the people &endash; or "rabble" as he often called them. He wrote and I quote: "The people... do not know what they want. To know what one wants is the fruit of profound insight and this is the very thing that the people lack." "We should venerate the State as an earthly divinity", he added.

He explained that only the bureaucrat is the true servant and master of the State. Hegel considered that elected bodies, such as Parliament, were only useful to perfect the process of subordinating the people.

Prussia began to unify the independent nations of Germany in 1834. At that time, they were still independent monarchies. The first step was to create a common market or customs union known as the "Zollverein" englobing nineteen nations. The peoples of the various German nations were told that its purpose was to form a large and free trade area. After some armed struggles, the common market was converted, in 1867, into a political confederation.

The peoples were told that this would help to consolidate and to develop that common trading area whilst maintaining substantial independence for the participating nations.

Four years later, in 1871, the trap was closed. The Confederation was expanded and converted into a single German superstate dominated by Prussia. The Parliament was no more than a democratic looking front whereas real power was concentrated into the hands of the leading civil servants.

The principle of irreversibility was made absolute. No nation could withdraw from this new German superstate.

I am telling you all this because it relates directly to the way the European Union has been created.

Remember what happened.

First came the Common Market. We, also, were told that its purpose was to form a large and free trade area.

Then we moved on to a grouping of nations and we, also, were promised that we would retain essential national sovereignty.

Of course, a Parliament was established but real power was, also, concentrated in the hands of the leading civil servants.

The principle of irreversibility was also introduced prohibiting any nation from leaving the European Union.

And now the trap is being closed. We, also, are being led blindfold into a federal super-state.

The French civil servants, who are both the servants and the political masters of the French state, acted as handmaidens in this enterprise. They were flattered, suborned and rewarded.

And they are vain and arrogant enough to believe that by collaborating with Germany, they will become the co-masters of Europe. They seem incapable of understanding that they are just being used.

As someone who is half French, let me assure you that one day they will be judged by the French people, the true ones, not the elites, and that the verdict will be severe.

That is how the European Union was created in total contradiction with the fundamental principles of British democracy.

It placed all real power into the hands of unelected civil servants and did so with the help of fools, weaklings and worse.

Hegel would have been content. The power of the civil servants will not be polluted by the people. "The rabble" as he called them will have no influence.

Well, we are the rabble. And we have had enough. As Edmund Burke said in 1784, "there is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue." We have reached that limit.

So we will fight in every part of this nation and, through our example, we will be present in the struggle for democracy in every nation of Europe.

We will field candidates in every constituency in which the leading contender, whatever his party, has failed to demonstrate that he favours a referendum on the fundamental issue concerning our future relationship with Europe.

We are not interested in what politicians say. We look at what they do and why they do it. Almost every day, I receive letters from Members of Parliament swearing allegiance. They tell us that, deep down, they have always wanted a referendum and that it would be unfair for us to field a candidate against them.

Then we check their voting record and we find that time and time again, whenever they have been offered the opportunity to vote for a referendum, they have either voted against or run away and abstained.

We place no trust in those who put their careers above the interest of their nation...

We place no trust in those who put their careers above the interest of their nation, those who alter their views so as to be re-elected or to obtain promotion.

Indeed, one of the big problems that we will face will be that as the nation becomes increasingly aware that it has been deceived, so the leading politicians will change their tune and try to mislead us yet again.

Look at Tony Blair. In 1983, he stated and I quote: "We'll negotiate a withdrawal from the EEC which has drained our natural resources and destroyed jobs".

But later, the Labour Party changed its tune. I quote: "Labour supports progress towards economic and monetary union..."

Blair followed. He said: "If we want to maintain our global role, we must be a leading player in Europe." "Pro-Europeans must be persuaders in the debate about Europe's future."

But at the Labour Party' Conference, Tony Blair vowed to build, I quote,"... a new and constructive relationship in Europe".

Of course, that was just an elegant way of avoiding the issue. It means nothing.

The questions to be answered, Mr. Blair, are: does the new Labour Party believe in repatriating power or does it believe in a federal Europe? And why is it that the Labour Party is willing to offer referenda on so many subjects but not on the one of paramount importance? Those questions remain unanswered.

John Major is also an interesting political phenomenon.

In November 1991, he said there will be no referendum, I quote, "because we are a parliamentary democracy."

A few days later, he confirmed his firm commitment. I quote: " the government does not intend to hold a referendum on the outcome of the Maastricht negotiations".

A few months later, he repeated: "... I am not in favour of a referendum in a parliamentary democracy and I do not propose to put one before the British people".

In May 1994, he said: "I have not changed my mind".

A few months later, he said and I quote: "... I made it clear that I did not rule out a referendum".

A few days after that, he stated: "I have said that I am not prepared to close the door on the possibility of a referendum". "I do not propose to rule a referendum out...".

On June the 29th 1995, he said: "... I repeat what I have said in the House before"

On March 1st 1996, he said: "I have made it clear to the House on previous occasions that I believe that a referendum on joining a single European currency could be a necessary step. My position has not changed".

And all this has continued during last week's Conservative Party Conference. John Major and Ken Clarke walked, paraded on the stage holding hands. Michael Portillo proclaimed that the Party's three policies were: "unity, unity and unity". How's that for a single issue party.

Malcolm Rifkind, our Foreign Secretary, attacked the Labour Party saying, I quote: "Ask yourselves why Tony Blair and the Labour Party have refused to commit themselves to a referendum? Whilst we trust the people, the people can't trust Labour". End of quote.

You seem to have forgotten, Mr. Rifkind, that on the 17th of June this year, you said to "The Times" newspaper that you ruled out a referendum on Britain's relations with Europe. That was a confirmation of what you said only a month earlier to the "Daily Telegraph".

Michael Howard, the Home Secretary for his part, proclaimed that Labour, I quote: "want to sell this country to a federal Europe." "We have", he added, "a simple answer to this. Never".

Those are noble sentiments, Mr. Howard. But how do you reconcile them with the fact that you yourself used to work as a member of the Executive Committee of the European movement?

Let me remind you that it was the European movement which spearheaded the selling of this country to a federal Europe. And did so with funding from the propaganda budget of the European Commission. Mrs. Edwina Currie is now a leader of that movement.

And, Home Secretary, have you forgotten that it was your government, with your support, that signed the Treaty of Maastricht which, effectively, surrendered this country to a federal Europe?

Home Secretary, you are reputed to be a skilled and hard working lawyer, a Queen's Counsel no less. When you voted for the Maastricht Treaty, were you unable to understand the terms of the Treaty despite your great legal experience? Were you unable to understand that Maastricht was selling the country irreversibly into a federal Europe?

During the Lib-Dem's Party Conference, referring to the fact that neither the Tories nor the Labour Party dared debate the European issue, Paddy Ashdown said and I quote: "So Britain will be asked to vote without knowing what it is voting for. This is a conspiracy perpetrated on the British people by their politicians". End of quote. I do not agree with Paddy Ashdown's policies but on this issue, he is honest and speaks the truth.

Are these the people, both Conservative and Labour, that we are going to trust when they make a whole new and contradictory set of promises?

And what is more, promises which will be irreversible and will bind the British people forever.

Let us now turn to the government's current policy. As we have seen, it calls for unity in the Conservative Party. But how can a party unite honestly behind a non existent policy?

One wing of the party wishes to maintain national sovereignty whilst the other seeks to integrate Britain into a European super-state.

Only those who cannot understand what it means to believe strongly in anything could ask people, holding totally different views on a vital national issue, to unite.

If you cut through the political jargon, this is what the call for unity really means &endash; it means let's just avoid the issue.

The government's official White Paper setting out its negotiating position for the intergovernmental conference illustrates the way the government thinks. Its title is hopeful. It is called "A partnership of nations". The document itself starts well. It makes for good public relations. But when it reaches Clause 12, it collapses into the usual compromise and double talk.

In effect, Clause 12 explains that the government will not say "NO" to the consensus of Eurocrats. Clause 12 says that the government will concentrate, I quote, "on achieving sensible amendments" and avoid "pressing ideas" which would stand no chance of "general acceptance".

In other words, if a sufficient number of Eurocrats say boo, we all fall down.

Has the government forgotten that for the moment, it still possesses the right of veto which protects our vital national interests?

The government, of course, would answer that under the circumstances, its position is necessary.

It was one of our greatest Prime Ministers, William Pitt, who said:"Necessity is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves".

Let me now address a number of questions about the Referendum Party that people rightly ask themselves.

Firstly: The Referendum Party is a single issue party, they say. And so it is. But can there be a bigger and more determining issue?

The other parties have no issues. Their electoral promises are almost totally empty.

How can it be otherwise when the very powers needed to make good on the bulk of their promises are being handed to Brussels?

Until we have settled the fundamental question of who governs Britain, Westminster or Brussels, the gesticulations of all political parties are no more than that, gesticulations.

The Referendum Party stands for the issue from which all policies inevitably flow. It is the only issue which counts. And we, in the Referendum Party, want the people to decide that issue.

The other parties just seek the power of office. But that power will be in Brussels. So they will only get the privileges and not the power. Perhaps privilege without responsibility is what suits them best.

Secondly: Some suggest that a vote for the Referendum Party is a wasted vote. Wrong. It is the only vote which counts.

A vote for the Referendum Party is your chance to decide whether Britain will bring home her right to self government.

A vote for the other parties is a vote for Brussels.

Thirdly: It is said that it could be disloyal for a member of the other political parties to vote for the Referendum Party Wrong again. We are not competing for power with the other parties. We seek no power for ourselves.

The issue that we fight for is to allow you, not the politicians, to make the decision that will dominate our future. It is well above party politics.

We do not ask people to abandon their traditional parties. Once we have obtained a fair referendum, the Referendum Party will dissolve. That is written into our constitution.

We can all then return to our traditional parties and, if we have so decided, the parties will once again have the legal power to govern this nation.

Voting for the Referendum Party is your decision, reached in private. You can decide whether power should come home. What is more, it provides us all with a guarantee. It ties clown the parties. They will have to respect the will of the people. They will not, once again, be able to promise one thing and do the opposite.

And this would be fully understood in Europe. Our politicians would be armed with a clear mandate from the people.

The fourth point concerns the claim that we are Little Englanders. The truth is blindingly obvious. The Little Englanders are those who would transform this ancient nation into a mere province of the European Union.

If elected, our candidates would form an ad-hoc coalition with those MPs of the other parties who also favour a referendum. Together, we would enact a fair Referendum Bill and then we would resign.

Let me pay homage to those MPs from the left and from the right who have fought for a referendum. They have put nation above party; they have sacrificed their own careers; they have confronted conventional wisdom and they have accepted with fortitude the consequent abuse. And they have stood firm.

They restore dignity to politics. They stand out as honest men, indeed heroes, among so many of their colleagues who float with the tide, trim and alter their views to obtain advancement and demean themselves to gain easy popularity.

It is the politicians who put their career first, who reassure us.

When critics say that we have minimal political experience, our answer to them is Halleluia.

When critics say that we, in the Referendum Party; have minimal political experience, our answer to them is Halleluia.

My last specific comment concerns the wording of the question to be submitted to the electorate in a referendum.

We are convinced that the question must address the fundamental issues of our relationship with Europe.

We must not let the politicians get away with a false referendum.

For example. a question limited to the single currency would fail to address all the other vital issues: our right to legislate, to run our economy, to control our foreign affairs, our national security and our frontiers.

Like illusionists on the stage, the politicians, both Labour and Conservative, will hold out their right hand for us to look at and they will keep their left hand well hidden. In the right hand, will be the suggestion that they might grant us a referendum on a single currency.

In their left hand, they will hide the reality of our loss of sovereignty on all the other fundamental issues, which inevitably will force us into a federal Europe.

Just look at the Conservative pledge for a referendum. It is limited to the single currency and sidesteps all the really important issues about our independence.

It requires that the Conservatives win the next general election; that the Cabinet approve it; that Parliament vote for it. Not in a free vote but with a three line party whip. In other words, as was the case with Maastricht, MPs will be forced to vote in favour, no matter what they believe.

Only then would this limited referendum be submitted to the people.

The government would be committed to campaigning for a "yes" vote. All its machinery of power and its massive propaganda capabilities would once again be brought into play. The members of the government would not be able to vote according to their conscience. They would have to support publicly the single currency or resign. And the result of the referendum would only bind the Conservatives for one term.

That is the government's idea of a fair referendum.

And what of the Labour Party which the pundits forecast will win the next election? What would they do? No doubt, just proceed to a federal Europe without a public debate, nor a public vote.

From opinion polls, it would seem that the people of this country in varying proportions, hold four principal views about Europe.

They are: that we should become an integral part of a federal Europe; or be part of a family of sovereign European nations which would cooperate when we can do things better together than separately; or that we should return to being a member of EFTA, the European Free Trade Association, which was our original concept; or finally that we should just get out.

In our view, the referendum should be multi-optional. It should accommodate the existing diversity of views.

The exact words would be determined fairly and constitutionally.

If you elect members of the Referendum Party, we will negotiate with the pro-referendum MPs in the other parties so as to obtain such a multi-optional referendum. Before closing, I would like to make a brief personal statement &endash; and here I speak only for myself.

The members of our Party are free men and women representing a multiplicity of views. If we obtain a referendum, each of our views, including mine, will be just one among many others.

Here are mine.

I believe in a new Europe. A Europe that draws its strengths from its extraordinary diversity. A Europe that is built on its true pillars &endash; its ancient nations.

We would be members of a family of sovereign nations which would cooperate for their mutual benefit.

And there should be the strictest possible institutional control to ensure that this spirit of cooperation should never again be allowed to grow into the malignancy which produced Brussels and the other European institutions.

The peoples of Europe must be liberated from the control of the bureaucracy and power should return where it belongs &endash; to Westminster.

We just cannot stand by and see this nation surrendered...

People ask why I am doing all this. You know why. I am doing it for the same reasons as you. We just cannot stand by and see this nation surrendered. We are just not built that way.

We all know that it will draw on every ounce of our energy, that it will be costly, that we will be abused, misquoted and even ridiculed by our opponents.

But that will not deter us. We do not fear abuse. Nor even do we fear failure. Although we prefer success.

And we deserve no thanks. Because as we see this tragic accident unfolding before our eyes, we are unable to be passive. We have no option other than to fight.

Chancellor Kohl has said that within two years, he will make European integration irreversible. He stated, and I quote: "This is a really big battle but it is worth the fight". Chancellor Kohl reminds us regularly that by irreversible, he means forever.

Let me make just one promise, just one vow. We, the rabble army, we in the Referendum Party, we will strive with all our strength to obtain for the people of these islands the right to decide whether or not Britain should remain a nation.

Let us borrow Chancellor Kohl's words and accept his challenge. Yes, indeed, this is a really big battle but it is worth the fight.

Source <http://www.bullen.demon.co.uk/sirj1996.htm>

Britain has a unique system of parliamentary democracy backed by our Common Law. The latter has been adopted, in various forms, by other English speaking nations, notably the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Rep. Ireland and Malta. Our legal system is unique in that it embodies our concept of the individual's freedom (Power of the People as embodied in our Common Law) and makes our laws quite different to those of our friends in Continental Europe. These ancient rights are now under imminent threat from Brussels under a proposal known as 'Corpus Juris' ("CJ").

1. Our Common Law, as far back as 1215 with Magna Carta, states that a citizen can only be judged by his peers (Section 39). These rights protect the individual against arbitrary conviction and imprisonment. Our Common Law recognises several vital rights to the citizen:

• The right of Habeas Corpus (that the accused must be taken to a public court within a very short period of time, usually 24 hours, and the accusers must produce their evidence then and there).

• The right to Trial by Jury at which jurors can in fact even disregard the law if they think it would give an unjust conviction. The jurors are thus 'sovereign'.

• If found innocent, the accused cannot be tried again on the same charge ('double jeopardy').

• In other words our process is 1) suspicion, 2) investigation, 3) arrest, 4) charge.

2. Under the Continental system, known as the Inquisitorial System (often loosely referred to as the Napoleonic system) things are quite different:

• In Europe the sequence of events is 1) suspicion, 2) arrest, 3) investigation and 4) charge. In other words the citizen can be arrested and imprisoned without anyone having to produce any evidence against him. There is therefore:

• No Habeas Corpus so one can be imprisoned for very long periods (weeks, months, occasionally years) without any evidence being produced against you.

• No right to Trial by Jury as their system involves judgements being made by a career judiciary who are the judges and prosecutors and who are, to all intents and purposes, 'colleagues' (a quite separate body of lawyers makes the defence and are often treated as inferiors).

• In most instances the accused can be tried a second time for the same offence, since the prosecution has the right of appeal against acquittal.

In April 1997 a seminar was held in San Sebastian, Spain, to discuss a proposal for the 'Criminal protection of the financial interests of the European Union' (CJ) under the auspices of the Directorate General XX of the European Commission. Subsequently there have been numerous attempts at denying that the European Commission has been involved in these proposals and that the meeting was just a non related discussion group.

"The objectives of the seminar were twofold: to seek to call the attention of jurists in general to the need for effective protection of the Community budget, particularly in connection with fraud against subsidies; and to make known the contents of the CJ for protection of these financial interests, which has been conceived as the embryo of a future European Criminal Code"

The proposals aim to:

• Introduce a "single legal area" within the European Union.

• Introduce a European Public Prosecutor ("EPP") with national public prosecutors being "under a duty to assist" him or her (Article 18.5).

• There will be a "Judge of Freedoms" whose function is ostensibly to protect the citizen's rights, which however do not include the right to demand that evidence be produced. This means, of course, that an enforceable arrest warrants can be granted without there actually being any evidence at all, since there is no right to verify it at that stage...

• A European Warrant of arrest shall be issued by a national judge on "instructions" of the EPP, and any police force in any member State can be required to enforce it.

• A suspect can be imprisoned without charge for 6 months, renewable for a further 3 months without any limit to the number of renewals.

• The 'trial' shall be heard by professional judges, specifically without "simple jurors" or "even lay magistrates" (a clear and specific reference to the British trial system where the crucial decisions are taken by ordinary people).

• An accused can be retried on the same charge if found innocent (i.e. the prosecution can appeal against an acquittal).

Source <http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~iits/newalliance/cj.htm>

Did you know that under the terms of our EC membership, the European Court of Justice has the final say in interpreting treaties and legislation? It can require member states to take "any necessary measures" to comply with its judgements, and can impose penalty payments "as seen appropriate" (i.e. unlimited) for non-compliance. Euro-apologists try to tell us how much we need the Court to make EC membership workable for everyone. We reprint the views of various legal authorities.

"Member States' courts... were bound to apply Community Law. It could not be overridden by domestic legal provisions however framed without being deprived of its character as Community Law" (EC Court, Case 26/62).

"The supremacy of Community Law when in conflict with national law is the logical consequence of the federal concept of the Community" (H P Ipsen, 1964).

So much for Edward Heath's reassurances that there would be no erosion of essential sovereignty!

"The transfer by the States from their domestic legal system to the Community legal system of the rights and obligations arising under the Treaty carries with it a permanent limitation of their sovereign rights... against which a subsequent act incompatible with the concept of the Community cannot prevail" (Case 6/64).

This just shows the undemocratic nature of the EC &endash; it would be illegal to renegotiate the membership Treaties to return lost powers to natrional governments.

"Once the Community has set up a common organisation of the market for a single product, Member States may no longer regulate the market at all" (Case 83/78).

No chance of different arrangements to replace the disastrous Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy?

"The acquis communautaire is the entire body of Community Law, including Treaties, all secondary legislation, decisions etc... by virtue of the concept, member states commit themselves to the goals of the Community as well as its Law" (Cases 161/78 and 44/84).

The Maastricht treaties state that this shall be maintained "in full" when it is revised following the 1996 Inter Governmental Conference, thus militating against the return of lost decision-making powers).

"No provision of municipal law may prevail over a Community law. The validity of a Community act or its application remains unimpaired, even if it is alleged that the basic rights of the national constitution were violated" (Case 11/70, re: an alleged violation of the German national Basic Law by a Community regulation).

This would invalidate the constitutional 'safeguards' that Germany insisted upon when signing up for the Maastricht treaties, such as the "right" to avoid the Single Currency. Now what about our constitutional safeguards?

And although the European Commission's propaganda in schools claims that the Court has no powers to overturn the decisions of British courts, our courts are already obliged to work within the rulings of the European Court [under section 3.1 of the European Communities Act, 1972]

Source <http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~iits/newalliance/eccourt.htm>

The Amsterdam Treaty was signed by New Labour without proper Parliamentary or public debate. It proposed new EC powers:

• "approximation of rules" (joint laws) on criminal matters, such as police and courtroom procedures

• preventing conflicts of jurisdiction between member states

• enabling national police forces to operate in another's territory and EC agency Europol to co-ordinate criminal investigations

• co-operation on the training of police officers (indicating moves towards a common system)

The European Court would explicitly have the final say in these matters &endash; its brief already: "to organise the peoples of Europe in a manner demonstrating consistency".

Few would object to free co-operation between national authorities in the fight against crime, but with Interpol in existence, why should another policing body be created? The answer, of course, is that it would exist for political purposes.

Although the Treaty of Amsterdam spells out national "rights", these can be set aside by other provisions in the Treaty and even taken away from the UK. Anything which is seen towards implementing a policy decision already agreed can be pushed through by majority voting (QMV)!

The small print also says that co-operation between governments should only be used as a last resort (Article 43.1). implying that they should be putting cross-European legislation in place. As the UK policing and criminal justice systems are different to those on the continent, what is more likely to change?

The European Commission is already considering a legal initiative, "Corpus Juris", whereby:

• a European Public Prosecutor, whom national PP's are under a duty to assist, is set up

• a European warrant for arrest, issued by the EPP, would be valid throughout the EC

• the "safeguards" are purely procedural, and there are none that there is any hard evidence.

Under this scheme, the judiciary both handle the investigation casework and run the trial. Says criminologist Torquil Dick-Erikson:

"This is the essence of the Inquisition and it is in fact no different from what we in Britain call the Police State... where the police decide who is guilty and send them directly to prison... if you want to get off, you have to convince the prosecutor himself, the very person who put you in the dock"

In an article in the European Journal, Dick-Erikson articulated how the Commission might use the opportunities of the Treaty to get these measures through!

The threat of arrest without a warrant also goes against Habeas Corpus which has been in our legal system for 300 years. Under EC proposals (Daily Mail, 29.8.97) someone accused of fraud could be held without trial for 9 months instead of 4 days under English law. (The EPP would deal with fraud cases, but what is to stop the brief being expanded for 'consistency'? Interestingly the Corpus Juris defines 'fraud' as any offence against the financial interests of the EC, and the small print makes it an offence to not co-operate with EC officials).

Under laws implementing the EC money laundering Directives, it is an offence NOT to report anything that "might be suspicious", with up to 14 years' imprisonment! Dr. Michael Levi, University of Wales believes:

"It appears... as if the foundations of the international finance-police state are being laid."

New Labour loves 'human rights' &endash; so what protection would the 1950 (pre-EC) European Convention give? In theory, a person stands as "innocent until proven guilty"- but loopholes exist. It is watered down by a clause that permits retro-active action if what was "not a crime" might under 'generally accepted principles' be considered one &endash; this is very woolly and subject to interpretation. As EC Law must be obeyed, there are no opt-outs here!

Under Directive 91/439, the first EC id cards are coming. From 1998, new and amended driving licences will have your photo and the 'EU Flag'! Tony Blair is dropping the proposed Union Jack as this will "help the Northern Ireland peace process" Any relation to "Cool Britannia" and watering down national identity is purely coincidental, of course.

The Commission's K.4 Committee responsible for Europol wants to push through plans for compiling registers of those innocent of any crime! Apparently they were so drastic that they met with strong objections &endash; even from within the European Parliament!

But 1998 sees a new UK Data Protection law setting up an unaccountable authority that can demand to see information held in almost any 'filing system' (except 'police' or '100% personal') &endash; incl. address books, mobile phones, cameras &endash; not just computers. And again, guilt can be presumed in some cases!

Source <http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~iits/newalliance/policing.htm>

Six political activists of the socialist republican Emgann group in Brittany are facing another Christmas in jail without trial on conspiracy charges related to a bombing campaign by ARB (Breton Revolutionary Army).

These political activists, who have been working for an independent Breton state, were arrested on the flimiest of pretexts on suspicion of being involved in a bombing outrage which happened on Wednesday, April 19, 2000. At around 10am a bomb exploded at the McDonald's restaurant of Quévert, a little town near Dinan; a woman (Laurence Turbec) who was just starting work was killed. The Security Service inquiry said that the dynamite used for this bomb attack came from Plevin in the centre of Brittany, where a commando of ETA and the ARB (Breton Revolutionary Army) stole eight tonnes of dynamite last year. The French political parties accused the ARB and Emgann (a political movement) without a single shred of evidence. To date no organisation has admitted responsibility. A few days later the ARB issued a statement denying any involvement in the Quévert affair, and they accused the DSI (French Secret Service) of involvement.

A few days after the journalist who had received the ARBs declaration is arrested by the DNAT (National Directorate Against Terrorism) and eventually freed. The day after are arrested Gael Roblin, Emgann's leader and his wife, Kristian Georgeault, Emgann's national secretary for the domestic affairs, his wife and their daughter Solenn, the only journalist of the only monthly newspaper all in the Breton language 'Breman' (Now), Anne Riou, the wife of Denez Riou who had been already jailed for the Plevin affair, and a few other members of Emgann. They are questioned for four days without sleeping.

The people arrested are sent to Paris, and the wives of Kristian Georgeault and Gael Roblin are finally set free. Each week after, people are arrested until the end of June. One man, who was supposed to be the "computer scientist of the group" is set free. On July 11, Solenn Georgeault is set free. The only evidence against her is an anti-globilization leaflet voicing concerns against McDonald's, found in her flat. It appears that at this date that there is no evidence linking this crime with the people who have been jailed. (Not even brought to trial yet!)

On July 7, the National Directorate Against Terrorism is alleged to have created evidence for another affair involving Muslim terrorism, and to have sent to jail for six years an innocent man. In jail some the Bretons have to stay in solitary confinement, haven't got the right to read Breton books or magazines. Just after Quévert's crime the opponents of the Breton movement attacked a dictionary, the only one published only in Breton, although this dictionary was published five years ago.

The Quévert affair and the French state's response to it are impossible, because there are too many pieces of proof which undermine it. The French media did everything possible to propagate the bomb attack theory and attempted to put the whole blame onto the Breton movement. Impartial observers of the Breton scene do not believe that the ARB, which is responsible for around 350 Breton Language protest actions in Brittany, none of which killed or even injured anyone, would have suddenly decided to kill an innocent working woman without any reason at all. Furthermore knowing that such an action would set back the Breton independence movement by decades. However the French police services are used to doing such things to eliminate political opponents. (Cast your minds back to the French secret service bomb which sank the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, in Auckland Harbour in New Zealand, which killed one person?)

To date (December 10, 2002) there have been no charges made against these Breton activists and there are no plans to bring them to trial! The six are Alain Solé, Pascal Laizé, Kristian Georgeault, Stéphane Philippe, Gaël Roblin, Jérôme Bouthier.

Many of the prisoners are now facing their third Christmas in detention and despite demonstrations and support for their release or at least their relocation to prisons closer to their homeland the French government remain unmoved.

The longest serving prisoner is Alain Solé, who is facing his fourth Christmas in captivity. Despite severe medical problems and concern for his deteriorating health, the latest information the Celtic League has is that he was moved last month from Fresnes to Nanterre which has no suitable medical facilities.

Source <http://www.clannasaor.com/forum/read.php?board=1&id=25>

1. The highest good for any creature consists in acting in accordance with its nature. (Seneca)

2. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant [...] There should be different experiments of living, that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them. (John Stuart Mill; On Liberty)

3. If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. (John Stuart Mill; On Liberty)

4. We must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.

...

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone.  And reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. ... being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses.

...

For in the state of nature ... a man [may] do whatever he thinks fit for the preservation of himself and others within the permission of the law of nature; by which law, common to them all, he and all the rest of mankind are one community, make up one society distinct from all other creatures.  And were it not for the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men, there would be no need of any other; no necessity that men should separate from this great and natural community, and by positive agreements combine into smaller and divided associations. (John Locke; Second Treatises of Government)

5. We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (Thomas Jefferson; First draft of the Declaration of Independence)

6. There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please. (James Otis)

7. It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them. (Thomas Jefferson, 1779)

8. Each of us has a natural right &endash; from God &endash; to defend his person, his liberty, and his 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. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend &endash; even by force &endash; his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right &endash; its reason for existing, its lawfulness &endash; is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force &endash; for the same reason &endash; cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces? If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all. (Frederic Bastiat)

9. The usual road to slavery is that first they take away your guns, then they take away your property, then last of all they tell you to shut up and say you are enjoying it. (James A. Donald)

10. Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other &endash; or at least no more accurate &endash; definition of a despotism than this. (Lysander Spooner, “Trial by Jury”)

11. The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided. (Harlan F. Stone, 12th Chief Justice)

12. All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void. (Marbury vs Madison, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 174, 176, (1803))

13. An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no right; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed. (Norton vs Shelby County118 US 425 p.442)

14. The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and the name of law, in in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it. No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it. (16th American Jurisprudence 2d, Section 177 late 2nd, Section 256)

15. To embarass justice by a multiplicity of laws, or to hazard it by confidence in judges, are the opposite rocks on which all civil institutions have been wrecked. (Goethe)

16. Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations &endash; entangling alliances with none. (Thomas Jefferson)

17. The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home. (James Madison)

18. The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. (James Madison)

19. Fear is the foundation of most governments. (John Adams)

20. Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder. (George Washington)

21. Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master! (Thomas Jefferson)

22. It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds. (Samuel Adams)

23. The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. (James Madison)

24. One man with courage is a majority. (Thomas Jefferson)

25. I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution. (Thomas Jefferson)

26. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. (John Adams)

27. Our citizens may be deceived for a while, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light. (Thomas Jefferson)

28. They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. (Benjamin Franklin)

29. When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil. (Thomas Jefferson)

30. Two races, equally free, cannot live under the same government. (Thomas Jefferson)

31. We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends &endash; the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it. (Friedrich Engels)

32. One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. (Plato)

33. In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free. (Edward Gibbon)

34. A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul (Unknown)

35. It is often easier for our children to obtain a gun than it is to find a good school. (Joycelyn Elders)

36. Maybe that's because guns are sold at a profit, while schools are provided by the government. (David Boaz)

37. When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. (Unknown)

38. I would rather live in a society which treated children as adults than one which treated adults as children. (Lizard)

39. We hate our politicians so much that even if they tell us they lied, we don't believe them. (Peter Newman)

40. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. (Unknown)

41. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. (H.L. Mencken)

42. An election is nothing more than an advance auction of stolen goods. (Ambrose Bierce)

43. You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. (Charles Austin Beard, historian)

44. They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. And then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up. (Rev. Martin Niemoeller, a Protestant minister in Nazi Germany, in 1945)

45. When they took the fourth amendment, I was silent because I don't deal drugs. When they took the sixth amendment, I kept quiet because I know I'm innocent. When they took the second amendment, I said nothing because I don't own a gun. Now they've come for the first amendment, and I can't say anything at all. (Tim Freeman)

46. I am convinced that we can do to guns what we've done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control. (George L. Roman)

47. The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless. (Unknown)

48. When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both. (James Dale Davidson)

49. If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual. (Frank Herbert)

50. Virtually all reasonable laws are obeyed, not because they are the law, but because reasonable people would do that anyway. If you obey a law simply because it is the law, that's a pretty likely sign that it shouldn't be a law. (Unknown)

51. It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. (Unknown)

52. The welfare state reduces a citizen to a client, subordinates them to a bureaucrat, and subjects them to rules that are anti- work, anti-family, anti-opportunity and anti-property... Humans forced to suffer under such anti-human rules naturally develop pathologies. The evening news is the natural result of the welfare state. (Unknown)

53. If CON is the the opposite of PRO, does that mean that CONgress is the opposite of PROgress? (Gallagher)

54. I do not believe that the government should have its long nose poked into the private consensual relationships between people. (John Anderson)

55. The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. (Fredric Bastiat)

56. They [The makers of the Constitution] conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone &endash; the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. (Unknown)

57. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial ... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. (Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis)

58. Tariffs, quotas and other import restrictions protect the business of the rich at the expense of high cost of living for the poor. Their intent is to deprive you of the right to choose, and to force you to buy the high-priced inferior products of politically favored companies. (Alan Burris)

59. Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river. (Nikita Khrushchev)

60. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt. (John Philpot Curran, 1790)

61. Truth and news are not the same thing. (Katharine Graham)

62. I'm a politician, and as a politician I have the perogotive to lie whenever I want. (Charles Peacock)

63. Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations. (John Dewey)

64. The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this. (Albert Einstein)

65. A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. (Barry Goldwater)

66. Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! (Patrick Henry)

67. No man has ever ruled other men for their own good. (George D. Herron)

68. A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity. (Unknown)

69. Our liberty depends on freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. (Unknown)

70. That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves. (Unknown)

71. The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills. (Unknown)

72. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. (Thomas Jefferson)

73. Our forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation. (Fletcher Knebel, historian)

74. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer... (Unknown)

75. Prohibition ... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes ... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded. (Abraham Lincoln)

76. Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. (George Santayana)

77. Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. (William Pitt, 18 Nov 1783)

78. It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there is service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be master. (Unknown)

79. I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics. (Ayn Rand)

80. I oppose registration for the draft ... because I believe the security of freedom can best be achieved by security through freedom. (Ronald Reagan)

81. Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others: The Constitution of this Republic should make a special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom. (Benjamin Rush)

82. The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets. (Will Rogers, 1920's)

83. Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state. (Unknown)

84. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. (Unknown)

85. It could probably be shown by facts and figures that the only distinctly native American criminal class is Congress. (Mark Twain)

86. Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. (Voltaire)

87. It's illegal to say to a voter "Here's $100, vote for me." So what do the politicians do? They offer the $100 in the form of Health Care, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps, tobacco subsidies, grain payments, NEA payments, and jobs programs. (Don Farrar)

88. If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence ... and the courts must abide by that decision. (US vs Moylan, 1969)

89. Love your country but fear its government. (N.E. folk wisdom)

90. Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action. (Unknown)

91. To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. (Thomas Jefferson)

92. It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. (George Washington)

93. Be wary of strong spirits. It can make you shoot at tax collectors ... and miss. (Robert A. Heinlein)

94. If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools. (William Penn)

95. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. (Henry David Thoreau)

100. Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. (P.J. O'Rourke)

101. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. (P.J. O'Rourke)

102. Our government gets more than thugs in a protection racket demand, more even than discarded first wives of famous rich men receive in divorce court. Then this government, swollen and arrogant with pelf, goes butting into our business. It checks the amount of tropical oils in our snack foods, tells us what kind of gasoline we can buy for our cars and how fast we can drive them, bosses us around about retirement, education and what's on TV; counts our noses and asks fresh questions about who's still living at home and how many bathrooms we have; decides whether the door to our office or shop should have steps or a wheelchair ramp; decrees the gender and complexion of the people to be hired there; lectures us on safe sex; dictates what we can sniff, smoke, and swallow; and waylays young men, ships them to distant places and tells them to shoot people they don't even know. (P.J. O'Rourke)

103. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. (P.J. O'Rourke)

104. The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job. A pretty scary idea, I'd say. (P.J. O'Rourke)

105. A child growing up in an excessively safe environment may never learn that he is one &endash; not until he gets married and has a wife to tell him so. (P.J. O'Rourke)

106. In fact, safety has no place anywhere. Everything that's fun in life is dangerous. Horse races, for instance, are very dangerous. But attempt to design a safe horse and the result is a cow (an appalling animal to watch at the trotters.) And everything that isn't fun is dangerous too. It is impossible to be alive and safe. (P.J. O'Rourke)

107. Some people are worried about the difference between right and wrong. I'm worried about the difference between wrong and fun. (P.J. O'Rourke)

108. Italy is not technically part of the Third World, but no one has told the Italians. (P.J. O'Rourke)

109. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then gets elected and proves it. (P.J. O'Rourke)

110. Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty &endash; their power and privilege &endash; to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians. (P.J. O'Rourke)

111. When a thing defies physical law, there's usually politics involved. (P.J. O'Rourke)

112. People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need politics, they have jobs. (P.J. O'Rourke)