Law

"Statism is a pathology of human thought and behavior that causes people to passively and obediently lie on the ground while the rulers and their obedient servants walk all over the people, and enslave their labor and torture them with impunity."

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."

"Within classical liberalism, two theories of the origin of the State have struggled for domination: the naturalistic theory by which the State evolves from Society; and, the external conflict one by which the State may be considered to be a continuing act of war committed against Society by a separate group. The former is called the consent theory of the State. The latter is known as the conquest theory of the State. These are not merely historical suppositions. They are analytical approaches intended to call into question or to confirm whether the State can ever claim legitimacy. If the State in its very genesis requires the mass violation of human rights, it becomes far more difficult to ethically justify the institution than if it arose from mass agreement."

"In short, the State is not a physical entity that exists independently. It is an abstraction that has emerged many times and in many forms throughout human history. Sometimes it has been lauded as the ideal expression of Society, as in Plato's The Republic. At other times, it has been excoriated as a vicious parasite riding on the back of Society…"

"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure."

"We should never doubt that nationalizing the moral life is the first step toward totalitarianism."

"And thus we see the government is at once both protector and predator. It is not that governments begin in virtue only to end in sin. Government begins by protecting some against others and ends up protecting itself against everyone."

"Statism is the Utopian ideal that just the right amount of violence used by just the right people in just the right direction can perfect society."

"I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of the progress. We know of so many cases where men have adopted trusteeship, but none where the State has really lived for the poor."

"Passionate nationalists, like passionate socialists, ultimately believe that the State can love you, and if the right people take it over, the divisions that are inevitable in a free society will be knitted together by some government initiative. But that is not love, it is lust. It is a lust for power and victory for your vision over all others."

"The State acquires power at the expense of freedom, and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates."

"The fact is—and this is something the state worshippers are prone to overlook—that the comforts, emoluments, and adulation that go with political office have great influence on political policy; for the state consists of men, and men are, unfortunately, always human. And so, liberalism mutated into its exact opposite by the end of the nineteenth century. Today it is the synonym of statism."

"This is the fulfillment of statism. It is a state of mind that does not recognize any ego but that of the collective. For analogy one must go to the pagan practice of human sacrifice: when the gods called for it, when the medicine man so insisted, as a condition for prospering the clan, it was incumbent on the individual to throw himself into the sacrificial fire. In point of fact, statism is a form of paganism, for it is worship of an idol, something made by man. Its base is pure dogma."

"To a large degree it has been and remains big businessmen who are the fountainheads of American statism."

"It is important to remember in this context that statism exists whenever there is a government which initiates force. The degree of statism, once the government has done so, is all that is in question. Once the principle of the initiation of force has been accepted, we have granted the premise of statists of all breeds, and the rest, as you have said so eloquently, is just a matter of time."

"When people say 'let's do something about it', they mean 'let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.' And that somebody is invariably you."

"Statism is not a modern invention. Even before Plato, political philosophy concerned itself with the nature, origin, and justification of the state… It is only within recent times… that the mass of people has consciously or implicitly accepted the Hegelian dictum that ‘the state is the general substance, whereof individuals are but the accidents.’"

"Statism—the subordination of the individual to the state—leads inevitably to the most hideous oppression."

"The state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The Individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence."

"The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else."

"The policy of seeking values from human beings by means of force, when practiced by an individual, is called crime. When practiced by a government, it is called statism—or totalitarianism or collectivism or communism or socialism or nazism or fascism or the welfare state."

"Government is the only form in which we can envisage the State, but it is by no means identical with it. That the State is a mystical conception is something that must never be forgotten."

"In short, the difference between Communism, fascism, and democracy and all other statist systems, are of degree, not principle. The principle is that the state owns everything (including you), and you can use property only if the state allows it."

"Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate. When the framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that 'all men are created equal' and 'endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights', they referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon which this nation was built. The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity, any more than they lost their humanity, because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away."

"It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few. … They...consequently are instruments of injustice. The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a contract with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist."

"The existence of law is one thing; its merit and demerit another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry."

"The positivist thesis does not say that law's merits are unintelligible, unimportant, or peripheral to the philosophy of law. It says that they do not determine whether laws or legal systems exist. Whether a society has a legal system depends on the presence of certain structures of governance, not on the extent to which it satisfies ideals of justice, democracy, or the rule of law. What laws are in force in that system depends on what social standards its officials recognize as authoritative; for example, legislative enactments, judicial decisions, or social customs. The fact that a policy would be just, wise, efficient, or prudent is never sufficient reason for thinking that it is actually the law, and the fact that it is unjust, unwise, inefficient or imprudent is never sufficient reason for doubting it. According to positivism, law is a matter of what has been posited (ordered, decided, practiced, tolerated, etc.); as we might say in a more modern idiom, positivism is the view that law is a social construction. Austin thought the thesis “simple and glaring.” While it is probably the dominant view among analytically inclined philosophers of law, it is also the subject of competing interpretations together with persistent criticisms and misunderstandings."

"Legal positivism has become one of the main forces which have destroyed classical liberalism because the latter presupposes a conception of justice which is independent of the expediency for achieving particular results. Legal positivism, like the other forms of constructivist pragmatism of a William James or John Dewey or Vilfredo Pareto, is therefore profoundly antiliberal in the original meaning of the word, though their views have become the foundations of that pseudo-liberalism which in the course of the last generation has arrogated the name."

"[A]ll men have original equal rights which government did not give and cannot justly take away."

"The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an 'equalizer'. Egalite implies liberte. And always will. Let us hope our weapons are never needed — but do not forget what the common people of this nation knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny."

"There can be no proper relation between one who is armed and one who is not."

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States."

"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."

"In a constitutional government the fighting-men have the supreme power, and those who possess arms are the citizens."

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

"There is no law written or unwritten, no part of the statute or common law of our country, which denies to a man the right of possessing or wearing any kind of arms.... Every man has a right to possess military arms, of every sort and kind, and to furnish his rooms with them."

"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."

"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside."

"And thereupon the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, pursuant to their respective letters and elections, being now assembled in a full and free representative of this nation, taking into their most serious consideration the best means for attaining the ends aforesaid, do in the first place (as their ancestors in like case have usually done) for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties declare... That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law"

"If you must, hang. Reasonable people may disagree. You have a right to hang–you do not have a right to compromise someone else’s life away. Vote your conscience even if other jurors browbeat you. Your principles are at stake. Principles cannot be compromised–only abandoned. Vote your conscience. Hang with pride."

"In fictione juris semper cequitas existit: A legal fiction is always consistent with Equity."

"Fictions are allowed against all the King's subjects for the furtherance, but never for the hindrance, of justice."

"Fictions of law must be consistent with justice."

"When Courts adopt a fiction they must necessarily support it."

"It is unconscionable in a defendant, to take advantage of the apices litigandi, to turn a plaintiff round, and make him pay costs where his demand is just. Against such objections every possible presumption ought to be made, which ingenuity can suggest. How disgraceful then would it be to the administration of justice to allow Chicane to obstruct Bight; by the help of a legal fiction contrary to the help of the fact!"

"Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son should love him or he any son?"

"A fiction of law shall never be contradicted so as to defeat the end for which it was invented, but for every other purpose it may be contradicted."

"No fiction shall extend to work an injury, its proper operation being to prevent a mischief or remedy an inconvenience which might result from the general rule of law."

"If this statement by Judge Cooley is true, and the authority for it is unimpeachable, then the theory that the Constitution is a written document is a legal fiction. The idea that it can be understood by a study of its language and the history of its past development is equally mythical. It is what the Government and the people who count in public affairs recognize and respect as such, what they think it is. More than this. It is not merely what it has been, or what it is today. It is always becoming something else and those who criticize it and the acts done under it, as well as those who praise, help to make it what it will be tomorrow."

"The corporation is not a person; it is a legal fiction backed up by guns and police and jail cells and taxing authorities and the regulators called government."