A vast majority of people today have a very infantile view of law that is more akin to a child obeying their parents than to an adult interacting with another adult; if the government made a law, they reason, then it must therefore be immoral and wrong to disobey and/or ignore that “law”. They do not understand that there can be various forms of law, specifically the differences between universally objective moral laws and man made agreements that can be better called subjective statutes and policies, so without that nuance, they believe all laws to be equally binding in status. Unfortunately, the same use of force that holds criminals accountable for immoral actions against other people also holds loving and moral people accountable for failing to obey subjective policies that have no bearing on objective right and wrong. This therefore causes those who use force (e.g., police forces) to enforce subjective statutes and policies, to violate the natural rights and liberties of those loving and moral people who do not conform to them, making them agents and perpetrators of immorality rather than peace officers enforcing objective morality.
But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
Also:
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.
In the first place, it erases from everyone’s conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.
No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them. The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it.
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
What is the purpose of law then? According to Frederic Bastiat, it is the collective right to self-defense that is based upon the individual’s right to self-defense, where self-defense is defined as the right to secure our person, family, and property from external interference, aggression, and plunder.
It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men make laws. What, then, is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
Nature, or rather God, has bestowed upon every one of us the right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property, since these are the three constituent or preserving elements of life; elements, each of which is rendered complete by the others, and that cannot be understood without them. For what are our faculties, but the extension of our personality? and what is property, but an extension of our faculties?
If every man has the right of defending, even by force, his person, his liberty, and his property, a number of men have the right to combine together to extend, to organize a common force to provide regularly for this defense.
Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual—for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or of classes.”
~Frederic Bastiat, “The Law”
The logical fallacy at play that enables and perpetuates the inversion of law into a tool of immoral action to thrive and continue is the “appeal to authority” logical fallacy, and the vast majority of people mentioned earlier who do not make a distinction between objective moral laws and subjective agreements, policies, and statutes, allow this inversion to happen, and they are the ones who enable it to continue as well.
The appeal to authority is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone cites an authority figure or institution as evidence for the truth of a statement, without providing any underlying reasoning or justification. This fallacy can be used to assert the validity of an argument by association with an esteemed or respected source, rather than through evidence-based reasoning.
In the context of Bastiat’s critique of law and governance, citizens who unwittingly perpetuate the inversion of law described in “The Law” might use appeal to authority as follows:
1. Accepting unexamined decrees: Citizens may accept laws or regulations without questioning their underlying justification or morality. They might simply assert that the government or a particular institution has decreed something, and therefore it must be true.
2. Defending actions based on institutional prestige: When confronted with criticism of a government’s policies or actions, citizens might argue that “the government knows best” or “it’s not my place to question the authority.” This dismisses concerns about the potential harm caused by those actions and shifts the burden of proof onto others.
3. Using euphemisms to legitimize oppression: Authorities may use technical jargon or abstract concepts to justify laws or policies that, in reality, serve only to maintain power over the population. Citizens who repeat these euphemisms without questioning their meaning may contribute to the perpetuation of injustice.To illustrate this with an example:
Citizen: “We need stricter gun control laws to prevent accidents and keep our communities safe.”
Questioner: “But don’t you think that limiting individual rights to bear arms infringes on personal freedoms?”
Citizen: “No, I’m sure it’s for the greater good. The government knows what’s best for us, and they’ve done studies showing that stricter gun control laws reduce crime rates.”
In this example, the citizen appeals to authority by referencing an unnamed institution (the government) without providing any evidence or reasoning to support the claim. They rely on an assumption that “the government” has a higher understanding of what’s best for society, rather than questioning the morality and effectiveness of the policy itself.
By perpetuating the inversion of law described in Bastiat’s work, citizens may inadvertently contribute to the erosion of individual rights and liberties.
~Llama3.1
What is our legal remedy, how do we move on from these immoral systems that hold unjust power over us? There’s a legal maxim in “Black’s Law (1910), and two sections from John Locke’s 2nd Treatise on Government, that provide the answer. Remember that John Locke provided the primary philosophical framework that America’s founding father’s drew upon to draft the Declaration of Independence , the US Bill of Rights, and the various State and Federal Constitutions.
Legibus sumptis desinentibus, lege nature utendum est.
When laws imposed by the state fail, we must act by the law of nature. 2 Rolle, 298. ~Black’s Law, 2nd Edition, 1910
John Locke makes it clear that if one is not able to find a fair and impartial judge and/or system of fair judgment in a situation that may be time constrained due to the immediacy of the threat, it automatically places a person back into what he calls the “state of Nature” (quote: “want of a common judge with authority puts all men in a state of Nature”). According to section 222 quoted below, one can also be placed into this same “state of Nature” when the law has been inverted into making plunder a right, where the nation’s laws and courts are securing the so-called “right” of plunder and punishing the actual right of self-defense against war and plunder.
“And here we have the plain difference between the state of Nature and the state of war, which however some men have confounded, are as far distant as a state of peace, goodwill, mutual assistance, and preservation; and a state of enmity, malice, violence and mutual destruction are one from another. Men living together according to reason without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of Nature. But force, or a declared design of force upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war; and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, though he be in society and a fellow-subject. Thus, a thief whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat, because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which if lost is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defence and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority puts all men in a state of Nature; force without right upon a man’s person makes a state of war both where there is, and is not, a common judge.”
~John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Chapter III, §19
For clarity sake, here are the definitions of the state of Nature and the state of War according to John Locke from §19 above:
State of Nature: “Men living together according to reason without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of Nature.”
State of War: “But force, or a declared design of force upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war.”
“Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.”
~John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Chapter XIX, §222
I put forth that it is therefore our moral duty, responsibility, and obligation, and not just a possible option that we are free to choose, to withdraw ourselves from such a governmental and (in)justice system when it converts plunder into a right and self-defense into a punishable crime, and to return to the “state of Nature” by taking all of our rights back, including the right to personal defense against external interference and aggression, into our own hands. This is easier said than done, right? I’m not saying that we need to start a revolution and physically fight back against tyranny, but at the very least we need to acknowledge the problem, set healthy boundaries against the problem, acknowledge our right and set intent to practically return to the state of Nature to govern our own affairs, and search for ways to reclaim our personal power over our lives one small step at a time; Rome wasn’t built in a day, and this problem won’t be solved in a day either.
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