Freedom in One Lesson

78.

Inhibiting Infractions
of the Moral Law,
Not Promoting Them

One of the most seminal questions about government concerns the appropriate limits on government-enacted law.

If we follow the rationale of Locke as well as America’s founders, all citizens, if given the choice, would prefer to have a very limited government. Through the joint defense of everyone’s rights, government can benefit all citizens. But benefiting some at the expense of others does not expand the “general welfare” referred to in our Constitution’s preamble.

Today, lawmaking seems constrained only by those parts of the Bill of Rights still in vogue with the Supreme Court. But such limitless ability was condemned by prerevolutionary thinkers (such as Algernon Sydney as well as John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, authors of the widely influential Cato’s Letters) and America’s founders as tyranny.

Leonard Read’s “Law versus Tyranny,” from his 1975 book Castles in the Air (Read 1975a), revisits the crucial distinction between a government that is a blessing to its people and one that is “out of bounds,” imposing harm on the many whom it is supposed to serve. Because such foundational issues seem to be all but ignored today, it is worth reconsidering his logic.

Does reason govern law? . . . Were reason to govern, it would seem, at the very least, that we should have a sounder conception of what law is than is now the case.

. . . What is law? Is it a body of legal edicts backed by force? Or a consciousness of moral obligations? . . .

. . . Which takes precedence, a body of legal edicts backed by force-the club—or a consciousness of moral obligations? I say, . . . the latter . . . [not] an outpouring of legal edicts . . . designed to control the affairs of society.

. . . I proudly profess to being a moralist or an ethicist. I subscribe to the proposition that there are laws of nature and the universe, of Creation, that should be discovered and respected. I believe that all man-made laws—legal edicts—which go beyond codifying and complementing the moral law serve not to bind men together but to spread them asunder, creating chaos rather than harmony, tyranny rather than peaceful order.

Fundamental to my faith is the rejection of government as the sovereign power. This puts me on the side of the writers of the Declaration of Independence. . . . By proclaiming the Creator as the endower of men’s rights, they proclaimed the Creator as sovereign, denying government that ancient and medieval role. Moralists!

. . . Moral values [are] the correct vantage point from which to look for improvement, refinement. . . .

What are the foundations of morality? . . . My foundations are the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. The Golden Rule, in my view, is the prime tenet of sound economics and, doubtless, the oldest ethical proposition of distinctly universal character. Let no one do to others that which he would not have them do to him; that would be just about the ideal, economically, socially, morally, ethically. . . .

There are moral values which are appropriately reinforced by man-made law, and other moral values which do not lend themselves to legal implementation. Let us examine the Ten Commandments to find where man-made laws are appropriate, that is, where they are complementary to the moral law, and where not.

Man-made laws—legal edicts backed by force—are inappropriate when directed at what the individual thinks or believes or does to himself. A man’s inner life can only be impaired, never improved, by coercive forces. Government is but an arm of society and its only proper role is to codify and inhibit injuries inflicted on society, that is, on others than self. Self-injury is subject to self-correction—none other!

Take the Commandment, “Thou shalt not covet.” Enforce this by a man-made law? The absurdity is obvious. Envy is the root of many evils—stealing, killing, and the like—yet it cannot be done away with by the gun, billy club, fist, or any other physical force. . . . The you’s and I’s—society—may lament the ills many people inflict on themselves but we cannot correct them by legal concoctions.

The moralist concedes that there is good and evil in the world . . . that there is a moral law by which one may distinguish the good from the evil. But he knows that he is powerless to relieve any individual of the certain consequences of that person’s immoral actions. . . . Such human enactments would be inconsistent with the moral laws of cause and consequence—would indeed be a form of tyranny, an invitation to lawlessness in the mistaken belief that one might violate the moral law with impunity.

. . . Government out of bounds, minding your and my business. . . . Law? Not the way a moralist would define it! These are tyrannies.

Clearly, the moral law takes precedence over the legal edicts of civil law. The latter serves a useful purpose provided its limited role is understood and heeded. When statutory law invades the domain of the moral law, it is itself ineffective and it paralyzes moral action. . . .

Coercively enforce an observation of the Golden Rule when only self-enforcement is possible? Nonsensical! Can the government stop covetousness by making it illegal? Of course not! The role of civil law should be limited exclusively to inhibiting such injuries as some inflict on others, never directed at injuries we inflict on ourselves.

My moral code is founded on the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments, and I would call upon the civil law to help enforce only these: “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not steal,” and “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”

. . . Each of these evils inflicts injuries on others and thus becomes a societal problem. Such destructive behavior should be inhibited, insofar as possible, by the organized and legal arm of society—government.

All . . . stand against the murder of one by another . . .

. . . Killings by the millions is not so much frowned upon. Why? These are done in the name of a collective. . . . I didn’t do it; the nation (or some other abstraction) did it! . . . What is the explanation for this calamitous trend? In my view, omnipotent government, that is, government, not the Creator, as sovereign.

. . . Not one in a thousand would steal a penny. . . . Full respect for private property at the you-and-me level! Yet, people by the millions will ask the government to do the taking for them. . . . Plunder at the impersonal level! Why? The same old reason: government out of bounds, that is, government as sovereign. . . .

Those who cherish liberty are well advised to respect and defend the rightful claims of others. . . . Observe that “Thou shalt not steal” presupposes private ownership, the bedrock or foundation of individual liberty. . . . To disregard this moral law is to deny being one’s own man. . . . Merely observe how the fruits of individual effort are increasingly expropriated by the collective, how our options of ownership are being diminished. And the way to reverse this dreadful trend is to heed the Commandment against theft. Government’s role here, as in the case of murder, is to inhibit these infractions of the moral law, not to promote them.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness” means not to misrepresent or defraud or falsify. Make a contract, keep it. Let all representations be truthful. . . . False witness, having to do with injury to others, rationally warrants that the civil law help rescue us from this evil.

Leonard Read urges a return to government in which legislative law is a complement that supports the moral law rather than a substitute that undermines it. In doing so, he echoes our founders’ increasingly abandoned views as well as those who shared those views after the founding, such as Henry David Thoreau, who writes, “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterwards” (Thoreau 1849).

The complexity of our modern world often disguises foundational questions, cloaking, for example, the vast difference between, on the one hand, the small logically defensible role of government in our lives and liberties and, on the other hand, the reality of a nearly omnipresent government. Leonard Read, following a distinguished line of forebears, sees that the result does not benefit citizens but instead undermines moral law and, as a result, society. His conclusion bears repeating:

To my way of thinking, morality, once shattered, destroys the people and whoever or whatever presumes to rule. It is only the consciousness of moral obligations that binds men together.