Under the affect of instructing like this — which stems from classical training — there got here a time when everybody wished to place himself above mankind so as to organize, manage, and regulate it in his own way. Here again we find the thought of equalizing fortunes by regulation, by drive. Thus does Mentor prepare his scholar to mould and to manipulate — probably with one of the best of intentions — the individuals of Ithaca. And to persuade the student of the knowledge of those ideas, Mentor recites to him the instance of Salentum. It is from this sort of philosophy that we receive our first political ideas! We are taught to treat individuals a lot as an instructor in agriculture teaches farmers to organize and have a tendency the soil.
Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not solely among those who profit from them but in addition amongst those that suffer from them. This fact, combined with the deadly tendency that exists in the heart of man to satisfy his needs with the least possible effort, explains the virtually common perversion of the legislation.
Moral Schooling
Southeastern Louisiana University
To know this, it is hardly essential to examine what transpires in the French and English legislatures; merely to understand the problem is to know the reply. The followers of Rousseau’s college of thought — who think about themselves far superior, but whom I consider twenty centuries behind the times — is not going to agree with me on this. But common suffrage — utilizing the word in its strictest sense — isn’t a kind of sacred dogmas which it is a crime to examine or doubt. Another impact of this tragic perversion of the law is that it provides an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics normally. Thus, if there exists a legislation which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or theft, in any type no matter, it should not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires?
It is to be identified, nevertheless, that protectionism, socialism, and communism are basically the same plant in three totally different levels of its development. We must make our selection among restricted plunder, common plunder, and no plunder. The acceptance of those arguments will construct authorized plunder into a whole system. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everybody else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it. Then abolish this law directly, for it’s not solely an evil itself, but additionally it’s a fertile source for additional evils because it invitations reprisals. If such a regulation — which can be an isolated case — just isn’t abolished immediately, it’ll spread, multiply, and develop into a system. This legal plunder could also be only an isolated stain among the many legislative measures of the folks.
This is so true that, if by probability, the socialists have any doubts in regards to the success of these mixtures, they may demand that a small portion of mankind be set asideto experiment upon. And one socialist leader has been known seriously to demand that the Constituent Assembly give him a small district with all its inhabitants, to try his experiments upon. In truth, these writers on public affairs start by supposing that individuals have inside themselves no technique of discernment; no motivation to motion. The writers assume that persons are inert matter, passive particles, immobile atoms, at greatest a type of vegetation indifferent to its own method of existence.