The other day, an acquaintance mentioned to me why the rule of law often takes away our freedoms more often than it guarantees us with a free and safe society. And, whereas, we all enjoy standardization and the rule of law, as it provides stability to all we are and all we’ve built, it would be naïve to put more faith in it than it deserves. One must always be skeptical of the rule of law, or those who are making the laws, and their true motives.
You see, I too have mixed emotions about the rule of law. In the US for instance most of our laws, rules, and regulations have specific, and significant agendas, individuals, business interests, and power players behind their creation. Each one breeds new laws, case law, more lawyers, additional tightening, new loop holes, and complications. Today, it is an utter mess. In this on-going and never ending process freedoms can often get crushed along the way.
Further, the laws have become such that we are protecting people from themselves, even the most ignorant, and thus, eventually only an ignorant person is going to want to live in this great nation and society, as that greatness blurs into bureaucracy and stifled freedom. So, there needs to be some bureaucracy reduction in a ‘big way’ and perhaps, we need to be thinking here more often as we move the ball forward, expand our civilization and society.
Okay so, the reason I say I have mixed emotions about the rule of law is because this is a wonderful and awesome nation to live in, and anarchy, at least complete anarchy is not any good either on the other side of that spectrum. Not that it’s an either or proposition of course, just an observation from my opinion. Indeed, I am convinced that any free thinking man has thoughts on this as well. I’ve been observing some of the things our society does which defies logic and common sense, all in the name of the Law!
If the system is corrupted, and if regulations are made to allow one business to promote itself over a competitor, and if laws are made to help one class of people over another, then in actuality we don’t have fairness. If the rule of law isn’t fair, why do we have it? If the system has corrupted itself, and it can no longer be trusted, then is following all of the laws the responsible and ethical thing to do? By following such laws you are agreeing to them, then you are agreeing to live in a corrupt system, and thus you are rewarding corruption.
A society and civilization always gets more of whatever rewards. And there lies the conundrum of the rule of law. Philosophically speaking our laws could be extremely simplified from this point, as they are far too complex. We perhaps should be using a larger degree of common sense. Politically correct laws serve no free man, nor do laws created to manipulate a system into further decay. Indeed I hope you will please consider this from a philosophical perspective.
FYI and in full disclosure; I am not an anarchist, do not subscribe to any religion, have no use for criminality, and I believe in real justice. Please take this article as a philosophical discussion.
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