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#8
in a Series on the Constitution
The Meaning of Justice
By Timothy B. Lewis of the Constitutional Freedom Foundation -
6/9/04
The first seven articles I called “Constitutional Primers” since
they were designed to reacquaint people with our constitutional
roots and to show how far we have removed ourselves from our
founding philosophy.
One of the characteristics of the great civilizations that have
risen and fallen throughout history, is the fact that over time
they departed from their basic founding principles. Drunken by
the success caused by the principles established by their
forebears, later generations became blinded to actual cause and
effect relationships. They seemed to assume that prosperity was
somehow their natural birthright regardless of what they
themselves did and the principles they followed.
Both the departures from their founding principles and the
results caused thereby were very gradual -- so much so, that at
any point along the way, the resulting effects on the psyche of
the people was almost imperceptible. Only in cumulative
hindsight could the results be seen. Any call of warning along
the way was easily dismissed as being irrationally reactionary.
It seems to be a part of human nature that political wants
almost always overpower political needs over time. Unless direct
and immediate negative societal repercussions come about because
of a particular political change -- which they seldom do –
people tend to be totally blind to the probable indirect and
delayed negative consequences of that change. As David M. Whalen
once observed: “...much of what we would like to think of as
inconsequential is often hugely consequential.” [1] This failure
on our parts is what unwittingly causes perverse incentives and
costly unintended side effects.
It is a willful type of blindness similar to that of an
inexperienced teenager who quickly dismisses and ignores the
warnings of his parents about the natural consequences of
certain choices he wants to make. He is in no mood for
self-restraint -- his impetuous wants obscure any sense of
needs. He truly believes that his parents simply don’t know what
they are talking about -- that somehow things have fundamentally
changed since they were teenagers. But he eventually discovers
that some things just don’t change and such is the nature of
fundamental principles.
I my opinion, it is impossible to change our direction back
towards the original political principles that caused our great
American success story without a firm understanding of where we
came from. But these principles are no longer generally taught
by our history and political science teachers because they are
no longer generally believed by them. They are simply passed off
as principles that have outlived their usefulness in our day and
age and are quickly glossed over in order to address things
which, in their opinion, are “really” important. Obviously, I
disagree.
Perhaps there are other things that could be included in the
Primer series, but for now, I would like to draw things to a
close and change gears a little bit. Before closing off the
series, in the next three articles I would like to talk about
three interrelated topics – justice, equality, and rights –
which frequently arise in political debates but which are not
well understood. Because I have not found a lot of materials
from the founding era on these topics and rely primarily on more
contemporary writers, I will not call these articles
“Constitutional Primers.” Nevertheless, I hope you will find the
final articles to be thought-provoking and useful even if on
some points you personally disagree.
What Is Justice?
Socrates once mused: “...justice, if only we knew what it was.”
[2] From the outset, I must admit that due to the nature of this
topic, whatever I say about it will necessarily be inadequate.
So please consider the thoughts and arguments expressed here as
just a starting point for your own further exploration of the
subject. The only reason I take a stab at it here is because the
word “justice” is used all the time to argue for legal change.
On its face, it is a very impressive word that naturally carries
a lot of respect, but its meaning is illusive – and before one
is convinced that, in its name, a particular proposal to change
the law should occur, one should ponder its meaning a little
more carefully than we tend to do.
For much of our discussion I will rely upon a very interesting
book by Thomas Sowell entitled The Quest for Cosmic Justice. All
of my quotations will be from that book unless indicated
otherwise.
If you haven’t noticed by now through the various articles to
date, I am simply serving the role of a weaver of what I
consider to be many silken threads of fine quality, produced by
others. Jacques Barzun observed: “...it could be said that no
subject of study is more important than reading. In our
civilization, at any rate, all the other intellectual powers
depend upon it.” [3] Over the years I have read lots of things
and whenever something strikes me as being both important and
true (or at least very close), I save it for future use and try
to weave it together with the great thoughts, observations, and
insights of others into a piece of cloth which has a pleasing
and insightful pattern for myself and others to see. This is how
I view my role as a teacher. If you can weave a better and truer
pattern, by all means do so and share it with others. Through
this process we enable all who will, to stand upon the shoulders
of giants and see further and more clearly down the dangerous
road which lies before us.
Our Lack Of A Universally Understood Meaning of the Word
“Justice”
“One of the few subjects on which we all seem to agree is the
need for justice. But our agreement is only seeming because we
mean such different things by the same word. Whatever moral
principle each of us believes in, we call justice, so we are
only talking in a circle when we say that we advocate justice,
unless we specify just what conception of justice we have in
mind. This is especially so today, when so many advocate what
they call ‘social justice’ -- often with great passion, but with
no definition.” [4]
Cosmic Justice
I believe that “cosmic justice,” as Sowell uses the term, refers
to the perfect type of justice that only an omniscient God could
render – rewards and punishments that are fairly and equally
earned and deserved when all relevant things are properly taken
into consideration. Inherent human limitations, however, make it
impossible for us to achieve this type of justice through human
law, even though many times it seems that people are arguing for
this type of justice and promote policies they think will render
it through our human laws. But our human legal systems should
not try to dispense cosmic justice since we do not know all the
critical relevant facts or understand all the complex causal
interrelationships involved or even know definitively what
cosmic justice really is.
Whether somebody merits or deserves something is a very
difficult thing for us to accurately determine. For one thing,
we are not knowledgeable enough about all the critical factors
or smart enough, even if we knew what they all were, to perform
the complicated calculus necessary to understand how all of the
complex interrelationships among the various variables should
affect our ultimate conclusions. Merit or deservedness
necessarily focuses on a consideration of inputs. God is capable
of perfectly considering all these things, but we are not. With
all the limitations that we face as mere humans, the best we can
reasonably do is judge primarily based upon outputs, rather than
inputs.
For example, as a teacher, whenever I give a test, there is a
broad distribution of scores. I have very little ability to
judge the individual merits of any particular student’s score
based on an assessment of inputs. All I can reasonably do is
judge based upon outputs – i.e. the relative test scores each
student produces. Students sometimes come to my office and
complain about their grades saying that they dedicated huge
amounts of time to their studies and deserved better grades than
they got. This may be so, but how am I to judge that? Maybe they
were lying to me when they said how much time they spent. Maybe
they spent as much time as they said they did, but studied very
inefficiently – daydreaming, talking to friends while in the
library, reading at the same time they were watching several
television programs, etc.
Let’s say that I believed one student who got a “C” actually
studied at the best of his abilities for ten hours for a
particular test while another student who got an “A” studied
only two hours for the same test. Was the grading necessarily
unjust from an inputs standpoint? No, because we haven’t
adequately considered all the relevant inputs, just a few. For
example, the “C” student may have been lazy (mentally) for most
of his life and read very little on his own, choosing instead to
watch T.V., play sports, etc. The “A” student, on the other
hand, may have spent most of his growing-up years with his nose
buried in one book or another. His voracious reading habits
allowed him to read and comprehend things easily. Such reading
introduced him to various facts, figures and interrelationships
that allowed him to see the connection of various dots and to
improve his logical and rational thinking skills in the process.
His efforts may have enabled him to quickly distinguish between
relevant and irrelevant information in making decisions. His
personal efforts probably caused his brain to become wired
differently than the other student’s. And all of this paid
dividends later in life when he only had to spend two hours of
study in my class compared to the ten spent by the other
student. So were the two relative grades just or unjust? And who
knows how many other critical variables I left out of the
analysis?
And so it is in the rest of the real world of human society.
Because of our human limitations, most people try to judge
primarily on outputs rather than inputs. For example, in
determining guilt or innocence, the judge in the criminal court
won’t care what type of childhood you experienced, she and the
law expect law-abiding behavior from everybody; the marketplace
won’t care how much time and effort you expended in trying to
build a better mouse trap, it only cares about whether or not
you actually succeed in doing so; etc. That may not be justice
in a cosmic sense, but that is the practical reality of life.
Sometimes a reasonable assessment of inputs can be done, in
which case they too are considered. For example, your employer
will be primarily concerned with the quality of the job done but
will also be concerned about how much time you spent in
performing that job relative to your fellow employees. If the
quality of your work matches another employee’s but he can
perform the same high-quality work in only half the time it
takes you to do the same thing, then naturally, your employer
will consider him to be a more valuable employee than you
because of his relative efficiency in the use of inputs (i.e.
time) compared to yours. Arguably, this would be a more just
judgment than just looking at outputs, but there are still other
variables being ignored in the comparison that might have some
bearing on the ultimate judgment. For example, how were both
employees raised by their parents – did one have an advantage
over the other? Etc.
Sometimes “justice” and “fairness” are looked at as synonyms.
Concerning fairness, Sowell observed:
“Ask ten people what ‘fairness’ means and you can get eleven
different definitions. Expecting government to promote
‘fairness’ is just giving politicians more arbitrary power....As
long as human beings are imperfect, there will always be
arguments for extending the power of government to deal with
these imperfections. The only logical stopping place is
totalitarianism – unless we realize that tolerating
imperfections is the price of freedom.” [5]
Traditional Justice
Madison observed:
“No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his
interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably,
corrupt his integrity....Is a law proposed concerning private
debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on
one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the
balance between them.” [6]
So according to Madison, impartial and disinterested judging
between competing interests equals one aspect of justice.
“Cosmic justice is not simply a higher degree of traditional
justice, it is a fundamentally different concept. Traditionally,
justice or injustice is characteristic of a process. A defendant
in a criminal case would be said to have received justice if the
trial were conducted as it should be, under fair rules and with
the judge and jury being impartial. After such a trial, it could
be said that ‘justice was done’ -- regardless of whether the
outcome was an acquittal or an execution. Conversely, if the
trial were conducted in violation of the rules and with a judge
or jury showing prejudice against the defendant, this would be
considered an unfair or unjust trial -- even if the prosecutor
failed in the end to get enough jurors to vote to convict an
innocent person. In short, traditional justice is about
impartial processes rather than either results or prospects.”
[7]
I presume that Sowell would say that cosmic justice would be
frustrated when a murderer is acquitted even though he would say
that “justice was done” from a traditional standpoint assuming
the judicial process was fair and impartial. One prime notion
that most people have about justice is that when a law is
broken, an appropriate punishment must follow.
Structural Justice
In Federalist No. 51, Madison also said:
“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil
society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be
obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.” [8]
What did Madison mean by the word “justice” in this statement?
To answer this we must consider what the focus of the discussion
of Federalist No. 51 was – separation of powers and checks and
balances. Throughout it he discusses the potential abuse of
power by men and how the federal system of shared/divided powers
(horizontally and vertically) was designed to limit the ability
of majority factions to arise that could oppress the minority.
[9] If men were angels there would be no need to set up
structural inhibitions to the abuse of some towards others, but
since our motives lack angelic stature, the next best thing is
to set ambition against ambition and set natural rivalries in
opposition to one another in order to keep them in check. [10]
He talks about protecting human rights [11] and about the equal
application and protection of the law for all people. [12] For
want of a better name, I will call this “structural justice”
since the purpose of our structural framework of government is
to prevent injustice from occurring to a certain extent.
Interestingly, Madison seems to recognize a possible trade-off
between justice and liberty. He appears to be warning us that
there are practical limits to the ability of human law to
promote justice and that if we don’t recognize those limits, we
will unwisely sacrifice too much liberty in our pursuit of an
unattainable level of justice. This naturally leads us into a
discussion of “social justice.”
Social Justice
Madison further observed:
“The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of
property is an act which seems to require the most exact
impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which
greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant
party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with
which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved
to their own pockets.” [13]
So Madison argued that justice requires equality of tax burden
and that taxing one group unequally to benefit another group
would amount to injustice.
Lincoln tended to agree with Madison when he observed:
"What is the true condition of the laborer? I take it that it is
best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast
as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to
prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than
good....I want every man to have the chance -- and I believe a
black man is entitled to it -- in which he can better his
condition -- when he may look forward and hope to be a hired
laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and
finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system."
[14]
"The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family
relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all
nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to war
upon property, of the owners of property. Property is the fruit
of labor -- property is desirable -- is a positive good in the
world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become
rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and
enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of
another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself,
thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from
violence when built." [15]
In ancient Rome, Cicero observed:
"Our history teaches us that when a government is honest and
just and virtuous, taxes are light. But when a government
becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant, and violent; it
is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives
honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to
perpetuate self." [16]
George Bernard Shaw (a socialist playwright) similarly
understood that: "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can
always depend on the support of Paul.” [17]
Since “social justice” envisions the redistribution of wealth,
of necessity, it flies in the face of Madison’s and Lincoln’s
notion of justice. Balint Vazsonyi lends some interesting
perspective on the idea of social justice.
Vazsonyi was a Hungarian refuge who was able to escape to the
United States during World War II. He saw what life was like in
his homeland first under Nazi German occupation followed by
communist Russian occupation. Both regimes looked very much the
same to him – both had the same basic social goals and were very
frightful, repressive and depressing. Drawing from his
experiences, he wrote a very interesting book entitled America’s
30 Years War – Who is Winning. In it he discusses America’s
departure from its political and philosophical roots. Concerning
the subject of social justice, he said:
“[The words ‘social justice’] are among the most successful
deceptions ever conceived. Ask a variety of people to define
what ‘social justice’ means, specifically, and you will get as
many answers as people queried. Ask the same person at different
times and you will get different responses. All ‘definitions’ of
social justice boil down to any of the following:
(1) somebody should have the power to determine what you can
have, or (2) somebody should have the power to determine what
you cannot have, or (3) somebody should have the power to
determine what to take away from you in order to give it to
others who receive it without any obligation to earn it.
“If millions upon millions have been deluded into searching for
‘social justice,’ it is because ‘social justice’ displays the
irresistible charm of the temptress and the armament of the
enraged avenger; because it adorns itself in intoxicating
clichés and wears the insignia of the highest institutions of
learning. Like a poisonous snake, it radiates brilliant colors.
Like the poppies in The Wizard of Oz, it lulls the mind to
sleep.
“The easiest targets happen to be civilized people, who care
about the fate of others....Hayek traces the origins of the
usage to German theorists and argues persuasively that ‘social,’
far from adding anything, in fact drains all nouns to which it
is attached of content or meaning.* * *
“Advocates of social justice point to the downtrodden, the
dispossessed, the disenfranchised. Advocates of social justice
insist that, in order to demonstrate a social conscience, a
person must resolve to eliminate poverty, eliminate suffering,
and eliminate differences among people. The assumption is that
society can and will reach a state in which all its members
enjoy just the right quantity and proportion of attributes,
possessions, and good fortune in relation to all other members,
and to their own expectations.
“Special attention must be focused upon the word
‘eliminate’....What are the practical implications?
“In order to eliminate poverty, agreement must be reached on
terminology. Poor by what standard? Poor in Albania or Zaire is
very different from poor in Switzerland or the United States.
Poverty, then, is relative, and in relative terms, there will
always be ‘poverty’ as long as some people have more and others
have less. Two possibilities arise. One is to establish the
authority which will take possession of all goods and distribute
them evenly among the populace. This would have to be a
continuous process because the more gifted and more industrious
will keep accumulating more than the others. The second option
is to concede that it is all nonsense.* * *
“The ultimate nonsense is the search for social justice. This is
not to insult the millions of highly respectable people who have
been deluded into adopting social justice as their goal. But the
truth is, if subjected to honest scrutiny, the very concept
flies in the face of both reason and experience. Worse still is
the presumptuous implication that, were social justice possible,
certain persons are better able than others to judge what it is.
(Incidentally, how does such an implication square with the
doctrine that we are all the same?)
“‘Social justice’ generally means that justice must prevail in
the social sphere. But society is in constant flux; its state
undergoes constant change. Thus, if a state of justice exists in
a given minute, it is unlikely to exist in the next. There will
be either more or less justice. How do we monitor performance?
What are the measurements.” Who judges the data? And, even more
troubling, what of the choice between a static and a dynamic
society? Most favor a dynamic society for obvious reasons. But a
dynamic society produces variable states of social justice.
“According to the only theory in existence, to attain a
satisfactory state of social justice, social tensions – the
source of dynamism – are to be eliminated (there is that word
again!). Once that is achieved, society will of course be
static. We have to work diligently, the prescription goes, to
attain a state of being with no social tensions.
“The state so characterized is known as ‘communism.’
“Unwittingly, perhaps, in many cases, but persons who advocate
social justice advocate communism. Taking social justice to its
logical conclusion, nothing less will suffice....The essence of
communism is social justice – the elimination of poverty, the
elimination of suffering, the elimination of all differences
that erect walls between people. The essence of communism is the
global village in which everyone benefits equally within an
interdependent and socially conscious world. The essence of
communism is the rearing of children by the village. Even
Hitler’s version, which he called ‘national socialism,’ was
intended to deliver great and lasting benefits to the masses,
once a few million redundant [and perhaps, uncooperative] people
were, well, eliminated.* * *
“Social warfare clearly undermines domestic tranquility. But the
even greater evil is that it fuels discontent and induces a
permanent state of hopelessness by setting unattainable goals.
And unattained they shall remain, except of course in communism
– if you believe the theory.
“Perhaps some do.
“But the rest of us need to face the fact that the Rule of Law
and the Search for Social Justice cannot exist side-by-side
because social justice requires that those who possess more of
anything have it taken away from them. The Rule of Law will not
permit that. It exists to guarantee conditions in which more
people can have more liberty, more rights, more possessions.
Prophets of social justice – communists, whether by that or any
other name – focus on who should have less. Because they have
nothing to give, they can only take away. First, they take away
opportunity. Next, they take away possessions. In the end, they
have to take away life itself.” [18]
“That ‘social justice’ was as much Hitler’s slogan as it is
today the battle cry of American liberals, has been long
forgotten.” [19]
In considering the origin and implications of the term “social
justice,” one should consider what Lord Acton once observed:
“Few discoveries are more irritating that those which expose the
pedigree of ideas.” [20]
Socialism – How Its Meaning Has Changed
In Hayek’s original 1944 edition of The Road to Serfdom, he
said:
“[S]ocialism means the abolition of private enterprise, of
private ownership of the means of production, and the creation
of a system of ‘planned economy’ in which the entrepreneur
working for profits is replaced by a central planning body.”
[21]
However, the meaning of language evolves and failed ideas tend
to have the unfortunate habit of resurfacing and evolving along
with the language used to describe them, which makes clear
discernment and analysis more difficult. In the preface to the
1976 reprint edition of his book, Hayek observed:
“At the time I wrote [the book in 1944], socialism meant
unambiguously the nationalization of the means of production and
the central economic planning which this made possible and
necessary....[But now,] socialism has come to mean chiefly the
extensive redistribution of incomes through taxation and the
institutions of the welfare state. In the latter kind of
socialism the effects I discuss in this book are brought about
more slowly, indirectly, and imperfectly. I believe that the
ultimate outcome tends to be very much the same, although the
process by which it is brought about is not quite the same as
that described in this book.” [22] In the Preface to the
1994 edition of the book, Milton Friedman, who, like Hayek, was
also a Nobel Laureate in economics, said:
“The free market is the only mechanism that has ever been
discovered for achieving participatory democracy. Unfortunately,
the relation between the ends and the means remains widely
misunderstood. Many of those who profess the most
individualistic objectives support collectivist means without
recognizing the contradiction. It is tempting to believe that
social evils arise from the activities of evil men and that if
only good men (like ourselves, naturally) wielded power, all
would be well. That view requires only emotion and self-praise –
easy to come by and satisfying as well....Surely that is one
answer to the perennial mystery of why collectivism, with its
demonstrated record of producing tyranny and misery, is so
widely regarded as superior to individualism, with its
demonstrated record of producing freedom and plenty. The
argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate
emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and
sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument. And the
emotional faculties are more highly developed in most men than
the rational, paradoxically or especially even in those who
regard themselves as intellectuals.” [23]
Friedman wrote his preface after the Berlin Wall had fallen, the
communist governments of Russia and eastern Europe had
collapsed, and after western Europe – and to a lesser degree,
America – had developed into welfare states. Recognizing, as
Hayek did earlier, the same transition or change in the
governmental expression of the notion of social justice, he
said:
“‘What produced this unexpected check to collectivism?’...two
forces....First,...the conflict between central planning and
individual liberty....Second,...its inefficiency. Government
proved unable to manage enterprises, to organize resources to
achieve stated objectives at reasonable cost. It became mired in
bureaucratic confusion and inefficiency....
.Unfortunately, the check to collectivism did not check the
growth of government; rather, it diverted its growth to a
different channel. The emphasis shifted from governmentally
administered production activities to indirect regulation of
supposedly private enterprises and even more to governmental
transfer programs, involving extracting taxes from some in order
to make grants to others – all in the name of equality [,social
justice,] and the eradication of poverty....” [24]
To illustrate his point, the story is told that on a tour of
India once, Milton Friedman observed a lot of men constructing
an irrigation canal with hand shovels but no heavy equipment. He
asked the government official giving him the tour why they did
not make the work more efficient by giving the workers heavy
earth-moving equipment to use. The official answered “because we
want to create more jobs through this project.” “I see” said Mr.
Friedman, “then why not give them all teaspoons instead of
shovels?”
In contrast to free market business, government projects are not
very concerned about cost and efficiency because the prime goals
of each group differ. Today, the government’s prime goals seem
to be social in nature whereas the prime goals of free market
business are economic in nature.
But as economist Henry Hazlitt observed, the best way to achieve
full employment is not to look at that as the direct goal but as
an indirect goal that will naturally come about on its own if
society’s direct focus is on the full and efficient production
of goods and services. [25] After all, real increases in wages
are driven by increases in the efficiency of production [26]
since such efficiency creates a bigger economic pie to divide
among its various contributors. So unwittingly, the real wages
and economic well-being of those Indian workers were being
artificially kept down by their government’s insistence upon
making them work so inefficiently for the sake of achieving full
employment.
The Indian officials weren’t doing this maliciously – they
thought they were acting in a socially responsible way in
pursuing what they thought to be social justice. But can’t
everyone quickly see that had every man in India been given a
teaspoon and a job on that canal project, life would be
miserable for all those workers and their families? The whole
nation’s productive capacity would be dedicated to that one
project. Consequently, nothing else in the country could be
accomplished and the economic pie created that year to be
divvied up among everybody, would be very small and
unsatisfying. If instead, had only a few people been assigned to
that project and been given good equipment to get the job done
quickly and efficiently, everybody else would have been freed up
to produce other things like food, shoes, cars, etc. The
resulting economic pie to be divvied up among everybody in this
alternate case would consequently be much larger and more
satisfying to each individual contributor.
Despite the disdain many hold for the “profit motive” in free
market systems, it naturally forces people to think in terms of
efficiency of production; and these resulting increases in
efficiencies, cause the economic pies created by such economies
to be much larger than those created in countries where their
economies are more heavily regulated and controlled for the sake
of achieving “social justice.”
Ultimately, one has to decide for one’s self which is best – (1)
producing more for all to enjoy but with vast disparities in the
distribution of benefits among the populace because of differing
intellect, talents, abilities, drive, inclinations, etc., or (2)
producing less for all to enjoy but with an equal (or at least
less unequal) distribution of these lesser benefits among all of
society. And one’s sense of justice is but one aspect to be
considered in that overall philosophical question. The next
article on equality will delve into this matter further.
Social Democracy
Today, pursuing the notion of social justice, many European
countries are called “social democracies” which, to borrow a
term from the various beer commercials on television, amounts to
“socialism-lite” or simply, the new meaning of socialism as
Hayek indicated. As discussed above, whatever the name, the same
social goals serve as the prime motivators.
The phrase “social democrat” even existed in Fredric Bastiat’s
day (1850). He made fun of the phrase as being an oxymoron or,
contradiction in terms. He said: “So far as they are democratic,
they place unlimited faith in mankind. But so far as they are
social, they regard mankind as little better than mud.” [27]
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote an interesting book first published
in1835 called Democracy in America. He showed amazing
clairvoyance concerning the future regarding the type of
despotism we should expect to see in mature democracies, or
social democracies, which turn away from classical liberalism
(freedom) and turn toward heavy government regulation to promote
various social goals. Said he:
“[I]f despotism were to be established amongst the democratic
nations...it might assume a different character; it would be
more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without
tormenting them.
“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary
[protective, guardian-like] power, which takes upon itself alone
to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate.
That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It
would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that
authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it
seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood....[I]t
provides for their security, foresees and supplies their
necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their
principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the
descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what
remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the
trouble of living?
“Thus, it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of
man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will
within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the
uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for
these things; it has predisposed men to endure them, and
oftentimes to look on them as benefits.
“After having thus successively taken each member of the
community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the
supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It
covers the surface of society with a network of small
complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most
original minds and the most energetic characters cannot
penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not
shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced
by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting:
such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it
does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes,
and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be
nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of
which the government is the shepherd.
“[They] are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they
want to be led, and they wish to remain free: as they cannot
destroy either the one or the other of these contrary
propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They
devise a sole, tutelary and all- powerful form of government,
but elected by the people. They combine the principle of
centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them
a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the
reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man
allows himself to be put in leading-strings [chains], because he
sees that it is not a person or a class of persons but the
people at large, who hold the end of his chain. “By this system,
the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough
to select their master, and then relapse into it again....[They]
are quite contented with this sort of compromise between
administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people...”
“[This arrangement seems] less degrading: because every man,
when he is oppressed and disarmed, may still imagine that,
whilst he yields obedience, it is to himself he yields it....”
[28] (emphasis added)
F. A. Hayek observed: “[T]he most important change which
extensive government control produces is a psychological change,
an alteration in the character of the people. This is
necessarily a slow affair, a process which extends not over a
few years but perhaps over one or two generations.”
[29]
In depressing fulfillment of both de Tocqueville’s and Hayek’s
predictions, I recommend you read Life At The Bottom – The
Worldview That Makes The Underclass (2001), by Theodore
Dalrymple, a prison doctor who chronicles what life is like in
the growing and violent underclass of present-day England where
the welfare state provides for everyone’s basic needs.
A decade and a half after de Tocqueville’s book, in an acerbic
jab at the socialist writers of his day in France, Fredric
Bastiat observed:
“They divide mankind into two parts. People in general — with
the exception of the writer himself — form the first group. The
writer, all alone, forms the second and most important group.
Surely this is the weirdest and most conceited notion that ever
entered a human brain! In fact, these writers on public affairs
begin by supposing that people have within themselves no means
of discernment; no motivation to action. The writers assume that
people are inert matter, passive particles, motionless atoms, at
best a kind of vegetation indifferent to its own manner of
existence. They assume that people are susceptible to being
shaped — by the will and hand of another person — into an
infinite variety of forms, more or less symmetrical, artistic,
and perfected....[They] look upon people in the same manner that
the gardener views his trees....And just as the gardener needs
axes, pruning hooks, saws, and shears to shape his trees, just
so does the socialist writer need the force that he can find
only in law to shape human beings....[In most books on French
philosophy, politics, or history] you will probably find this
idea that mankind is merely inert matter, receiving life,
organization, morality, and prosperity from the power of the
state.***
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not
safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies
of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and
their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they
believe that they themselves are made of finer clay than the
rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left
undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction
because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The
legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a
saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the
organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue
that place them beyond and above mankind; if so, let them show
their titles to this superiority. They would be the shepherds
over us, their sheep.***They think only of subjecting mankind to
the philanthropic tyranny of their own social inventions. Like
Rousseau, they desire to force mankind docilely to bear this
yoke of the public welfare that they have dreamed up in their
own imaginations.***
“By what right does the law force me to conform to the social
plans of [the politicians of my day]? If the law has a moral
right to do this, why does it not, then, force these gentlemen
to submit to my plans? Is it logical to suppose that nature has
not given me sufficient imagination to dream up a utopia also?
Should the law choose one fantasy among many, and put the
organized force of government at its service only? Law is
justice. And let it not be said — as it continually is said —
that under this concept, the law would be atheistic,
individualistic, and heartless; that it would make mankind in
its own image. This is an absurd conclusion, worthy only of
those worshippers of government who believe that the law is
mankind.” [30] (the italicized emphases were his and the
underlined ones are mine)
A Major Sea Change In The Law: Rather Than Just Prohibit Harmful
Intrusions Into Other People’s Affairs, The Law Started Trying
To Make People Be Good To Each Other
In nineteenth century America, when people contracted with one
another, they were free to custom make their relationship
unencumbered by a lot of governmental intrusion. People were
free to be kind or rude to one another. They were free to be
charitable or stingy towards one another. They had a wide berth
to determine how they would treat one another under the dictates
of their own personal consciences. The founders were content to
leave such matters in the sphere of moral persuasion/liberty
with the ultimate determination of justice occurring on the
judgment day between God and man. However, more than a century
later, this was no longer considered to be sufficient.
James W. Ely, Jr. tells us:
"The emergence of the business corporation, coupled with the
workings of a free-market economy, exacerbated disparities of
wealth and concentrated tremendous economic power in relatively
few hands....Consequently, by 1900 the focus of lawmakers
shifted markedly from the promotion of economic growth to its
regulation. Legislators sought to redress the unbalanced social
and economic situation by, in essence, mandating a
redistribution of property in favor of those viewed as
disadvantaged.....The political and intellectual triumph of the
New Deal seemingly settled this conflict by assigning property
to a secondary status with only limited constitutional
protection, a development that allowed a wide sway for economic
regulation. * * * [G]iven the framers' concern with protecting
property as well as the nearly 150 years of Supreme Court
activity in this field, the relegation of property rights to a
lesser constitutional status is not historically warranted. The
framers did not separate property and personal rights.
Significantly, the language of the Fifth Amendment unites
safeguards from both liberty and property." [31]
So starting with the early twentieth century’s efforts to
regulate child labor, minimum wages, and workplace safety, etc.,
motivated by a sense of social justice, government became more
and more willing to inject itself into the contractual relations
between individuals. The trend really got steam rolling forward
with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In effect, the law started
taking on the very ambitious goal of trying to socially engineer
people to be good to each other through the force of law. Rather
than being satisfied with the more modest goal of prohibiting an
individual from interfering with someone else's legal rights, it
starting mandating certain affirmative conduct on the part of
individuals to benefit their fellow man -- or in other words, it
added affirmative action to the traditional goal of
anti-intrusion.
But the more we take things like this out of the field of moral
persuasion and place them in the field of legal mandate, the
more we experience what Frederic Bastiat called “philanthropic
tyranny” or “indirect despotism.” Said he: “Usually...
these gentlemen — the reformers, the legislators, and the
writers on public affairs — do not desire to impose direct
despotism upon mankind. Oh no, they are too moderate and
philanthropic for such direct action. Instead, they turn to the
law for this despotism, this absolutism, this omnipotence. They
desire only to make the laws.” [32]
According to Webster’s dictionary, the word “despot” originally
meant “master;” “despotic” means “tyrannical;” and “tyranny”
means “oppressive and unjust government.” The fact that a
particular form of government purports to be representative in
nature (rather than run by a dictator), does not preclude it
from becoming despotic — this, I think, is what Bastiat was
saying.
Walter Williams, an economist, likewise said: “Democracy gives
an aura of legitimacy to things that once were considered to be
tyrannical.” [33]
The Effects of Social Justice on Individual Incentive and
Economic Prosperity
One of the problems with crossing this threshold – i.e. going
beyond the traditional anti-intrusionary legal focus and
affirmatively forcing people to be good to each other – is that
there is no logical stopping point. Once we inject the
collective social conscience in one instance, then why not in
the next ad infinitum? It is reasonable to expect that no matter
how far we go, there will always be some sense of injustice or
unfairness remaining that people will want to eradicate next.
Degree by degree, the frog will eventually get cooked and our
economy wrecked. Again, each increase in temperature will hardly
be noticed but cumulatively, the strength and vitality will be
sucked out of the frog’s body. Each change in favor of one side
of the bargaining table comes only at the expense of the party
across the table – the employer.
Through legal mandate, as we artificially impose more costs on
doing business, fewer people will think it worth the risk of
pursuing their entrepreneurial tendencies. Rather than starting
their own businesses and supplying jobs both to themselves and
others, they will ask somebody else for jobs. The economy will
lose its strength and become anemic.
Also, as we continue to legally stack the deck in favor of one
player, at some point the other player will simply opt out of
the game and refuse to play by such rules. After all, how can we
force employers to employ if they see more resulting costs than
benefits? If we ever get to a point where the economy stalls and
refuses to budge even when all the experts say it should begin
turning around, remember this discussion about the legal
environment of business. It really is possible to inadvertently
trade economic prosperity for our sense of social justice.
Along these lines, we should take some hints from Europe whose
legally mandated welfare states are more extensive than ours.
Their average unemployment rate is about twice what ours is. By
virtue of the relatively more extensive “social justice” imposed
by their laws, it is too costly for European employers to expand
their employment bases relative to ours.
Returning to Thomas Sowell on the issue of “social justice” and
its detrimental effects on individual incentive: “What ‘social
justice’ seeks to do is to eliminate undeserved disadvantages
for selected groups.” [34] Of course, the difference between
“deserved” and “undeserved” may be in the eye of the beholder.
When “rules and standards equally applicable to all
are...deliberately set aside” to promote “social justice,” it
will go contrary to traditional justice. [35] I presume he would
view “social justice” as some sort of crude human attempt to
achieve somebody’s conceptualization of “cosmic justice.”
“...the question is not what we would do if we were God on the
first day of Creation or how we would judge souls if we were God
on the Judgment Day. The question is: What lies within our
knowledge and control, given that we are only human, with all
the severe limitations which that implies?
“One of the many differences between human beings and God on
Judgment Day is that God does not have to worry about what is
going to happen the day after Judgment Day. Our decisions do not
take place at the end of time, but rather in the midst of the
on-going stream of time, so that what we do today affects how
others will respond tomorrow and thereafter.” [36]
In other words, we as human beings not only have to concern
ourselves with justice, to some extent, but we also have to
concern ourselves with systemic incentive structures that will
impact human conduct in the future in a positive way. Besides
the dilemma of pitting one type of justice against another,
sometimes, we may have to make compromises between justice,
however we conceptualize that term, and freedom, general
economic prosperity, general safety, and/or other worthy goals
sought to be achieved through the law. Pursuing social justice
may throw a giant monkey wrench into the economic works causing
system-wide breakdown. Russia would be just one example of such
an occurrence.
Is it really “just” to impose, through the law, economic make-up
calls to benefit some people currently in the name of “social
justice,” if the overall effect over time is to create
generalized poverty for our posterity because of the resulting
damage to systemic economic incentive structures? Again, this is
not just an academic question. Russia has already tried it and
reaped a very bitter economic and social harvest as a result.
Justice At All Costs? No, There Are Practical Limits To The
Law
Sowell says:
“...‘justice at all costs’ is not justice. What, after all, is
an injustice but the arbitrary imposition of a cost – whether
economic, psychic, or other – on an innocent person? And if
correcting this injustice imposes another arbitrary cost on
another innocent person, is that not also an injustice?” [37]
With inherent human frailties, innumerable physical constraints,
and inherently conflicting goals and objectives, the best we can
reasonably hope to accomplish is to develop a system of general
rules and procedures which, all things considered, optimizes our
mix of freedom and overall societal justice, reasonably
minimizes (but can never totally eliminate) injustice, and
promotes the greatest amount of peace, harmony, order and
prosperity throughout society. But unfortunately, we are easily
tempted to go farther than this with the law and to start trying
to play God with it when we are very ill-equipped to do so.
General Justice vs. Perfect Individual Justice (or Cosmic
Justice)
For the sake of making the law simple, knowable, and
predictable, it must be comprised of rules that seek to achieve
the best general results with few exceptions. On the other hand,
if we were to try to achieve cosmic justice on an individual
basis, we would have to take a microscopic view of everything in
each case creating exception after exception which, in turn,
would gobble up the general rule by making the law overly
complex, unknowable and unpredictable. And what good is the law
when we cannot clearly discern where the various lines or limits
are?
James Madison wisely observed:
“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made
by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that
they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be
understood...or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who
knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow.
Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a
rule, which is little known, and less fixed?” [38]
Unfortunately it is a fact of life that there is not always a
satisfying solution to every problem. We know that any human
system of law will allow some injustice to exist and when such
injustices are perceived, it seems to be our habit to clamor for
a perfect solution to the problem as if it were really possible
to do so. But we should not be so quick to change the rules so
as to try to totally eliminate the possibility of that
particular injustice ever happening again. This is because in
the process, we will incur horrendous opportunity costs and
probably cause even more injustice to occur in other sectors, as
I will try to explain further below.
First, let me define “opportunity costs.” In economics, these
represent the net benefits we forego by allocating scarce
resources towards one particular venture instead of somewhere
else. For example, if I had $20,000 to spend and decided to
spend it on a new car, the opportunity costs to that decision
would be all of the foregone benefits I could have derived from
that money had I spent it elsewhere. I could have invested in
the stock market to save for retirement and earn future income;
I could have renovated my house; etc. But by spending it the way
I did, the cost I paid was all of the foregone benefits I could
have enjoyed had I spent it differently. Thus, to spend the
money wisely, I should look for the option which produces the
most net benefits relative to any other option open to me.
Applying that concept to the law, we should avoid focusing
entirely on any particular legal goal or benefit we hope to
achieve (i.e. freedom, justice, rights, economic prosperity,
peace, order, safety, etc.) to the exclusion of all others.
Rather, we should choose the legal path which optimizes our mix
of these, and other things.
The War Analogy–There Will Always Be Some Unavoidable
Casualties
Perhaps an appropriate analogy to further explain these ideas
would be that of war. Imagine a general who would never enter
any battle unless he knew with certainty that every man under
his command would survive the battle. Such a general would never
engage the enemy for fear of losing some men in the process. If
the military were filled with such decision makers, no battles
would ever be fought and we would lose the war, and our
freedoms, by default.
In reality, generals have to be willing to sacrifice many
innocent lives for the sake of saving more innocent lives and
defending the mother country. Of necessity, they must do their
own cost/benefit analyses and try to accomplish the most
societal good at the least societal cost and leave the ultimate
judgment of perfect justice, reward and punishment to God.
I remember as a boy seeing a war movie involving a battleship.
The ship was hit by a torpedo and it was taking on water in
several compartments. The camera was positioned at the hatchway
of one such compartment and I could see waist-high water quickly
rising on several men struggling to get to the hatchway in order
to escape to safety. All of a sudden my view of the scene was
closed off by the hatchway door being slammed shut and the
locking mechanism turned in order to seal off that compartment.
I remember feeling a sense of horror for the men behind that
hatchway door but upon further reflection, I could see that
there was no other reasonable choice to be made under the
circumstances. Unfortunately, sometimes in life instead of
having to choose the better of two goods, we must choose the
lesser of two evils–and this is never a very satisfying
proposition.
The man who closed the hatch could have given those men a chance
to escape that compartment, but at the possible cost of allowing
the entire ship to sink causing all of the men on board to lose
their lives and not just the unlucky ones in that flooded
compartment. Was it inherently fair and just that those
particular men locked inside the compartment should die while
the others on board survived? Not particularly. But considering
the constraints involved, the best the Navy could do was to
enact rules of operation that would maximize the potential for
survival of the ship and to minimize the potential for the loss
of life. It was humanly impossible to come up with a set of
rules and procedures that would produce cosmic or perfect
justice under the constraints of the particular circumstances
present.
The man who closed and locked that hatchway door will probably
have nightmares for the rest of his life over what he did, but
he made the best practical decision open to him under the
circumstances. He couldn’t afford to wax philosophic regarding
cosmic justice – the best he could practically deal with was
damage control and maximizing general justice to the survivors.
And so it is with many of the rules of criminal law. The
criminal may have been raised in terrible circumstances that
contributed to his criminal tendencies. He may have been abused
during his childhood; he may have been terrorized in his
neighborhood; he may have grown up in abject poverty. But be
that as it may, for the sake of promoting safety and peace
throughout society as a whole, we must expect certain levels of
civil behavior from all members of society regardless of their
backgrounds. Human systems are pretty good at promoting damage
control and generalized justice, but not so good at promoting
perfect justice to every individual involved.
Critical Thinking
During your life you will probably be exposed to many people –
teachers, students, writers, politicians, etc. – who will
passionately argue for legal policy changes for the sake of
producing what really amounts to cosmic, social, or perfect
individual justice. Every time somebody falls through a crack in
the system and injustice follows, you can expect the story to
make the nightly news. Why? Because they too seem inclined
towards the pursuit of cosmic justice. They want you to rise up
en masse to demand that the law be changed, and many times the
tactic works.
But before being so easily persuaded, sit back and evaluate the
situation a little more carefully. Ask yourself such questions
as these: “Considering human nature and inherent constraints,
what practical consequences could one expect to see if we were
to make the proposed change? Would these consequences be all
good? If certain negative consequences can be foreseen, how do
they stack up against the positive consequences we can
reasonably expect to achieve from the change? Do the expected
costs (including opportunity costs) outweigh the expected
benefits or vice versa?”
Force yourself to stand back a little ways from the idealism and
emotion expressed and take a pragmatic look at the situation
with a wide peripheral view that is long term in nature. Take
the type of blinders off that so often constrict our vision when
our heartstrings are tugged. It is good to be compassionate and
pursue high ideals through the exercise of individual conscience
and choice, but let us never lose sight of the practical
realities and limitations we face in designing and implementing
a forceful legal system to pursue those ideals.
The law cannot effectively produce all of the good we wish it
to. Not everything that is good or bad should become the subject
of human or positive law. Some things are beyond our reach and
in our attempt to reach for them, we may forfeit other good
things that were actually achievable. It is easy for us to go
too far with the law and do more net harm than good – all while
giving ourselves self-congratulatory pats on our backs for our
basic humanity and goodness. Let us not be so content with what
sometimes turn out to be only hollow, and perhaps even
counterproductive, symbolic gestures.
The Rubik’s Cube Analogy
The law creates many complex interrelationships like those
involved in a Rubik’s Cube. It is impossible to move one square
on the cube without affecting other squares as well. Nothing can
be done in isolation, yet it is very easy for us to look at
things in isolation and ignore what happens elsewhere on the
societal Rubik’s Cube -- when we tinker with some of the legal
squares on that cube, other types of squares representing
economics, prosperity, freedom, peace, safety, order, race
relations, etc. may be inadvertently thrown out of kilter in the
process. These are known as “unintended side effects” and
“perverse incentives” – both of which are created when people
fail to see that certain things are inextricably connected. We
need to think broadly before we decide on the propriety of any
particular legal policy since any policy has more than just one
consequence.
Conclusions Regarding the Conflicts Among the Various
Subcategories of “Justice” and Other Worthy Legal Goals
So it may not be “just” in a cosmic sense for Bill Gates to have
as much wealth as he does relative to other members of society,
but that does not mean it would be economically wise to try to
change things through the law by “cutting him down to size,” so
to speak. The vast mass of Americans (including you and me and
our posterity) would probably end up to be net losers in the
long run, just like the Russians, were we to be so rashly
reactive and pursue our perceptions of social justice
categorically and absolutely at all costs. And I am not so sure
“justice” would be the real motivating force behind such
inclinations – it might very well be petty greed and envy that
truly motivates us.
Sowell said: “Envy was once considered to be one of the seven
deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues
under its new name, ‘social justice’.” [39]
Personally, I don’t begrudge Bill Gates and others whose wealth
far exceeds my own. I am content to leave to God the ultimate
judgment of the moral obligations inherent in that wealth.
Through the incentives inherent in a free market system,
geniuses (for whom I am very grateful) have invented and created
things that have elevated most of our standards of living beyond
what even the richest kings could enjoy not too long ago. Within
almost all of our reach, are personal computers that are far
more powerful than those used to get men to the moon and back.
At our finger tips through the world wide web, we each have
access to a wealth of information that we can use to better our
individual lives. Science has cured most of the childhood
diseases and continues to make our lives better.
And relatively speaking, how poor really are our “poor?” In
America, our “poor” are far more likely to be obese than
malnourished. Most have access to cars, televisions, microwaves,
etc.
It seems to be an unfortunate part of human nature to only want
to look above us and feel cheated because others have more than
we, rather than look below us at the billions who have far less
and to feel grateful as a result. We tend to justify our
resentments under the notion of “social justice.” But if our own
notion of social justice were applied against us by those who
are below us, we too would have to be humbled by the force of
law for it could be argued that we in America each have more
than our fair share considering the world as a whole. And just
like Bill Gates, we too, have individual moral obligations
regarding our relative surpluses.
“At a minimum, it is necessary to understand the distinction
between established prospective rules for the behavior of
flesh-and-blood human beings toward one another and trying ad
hoc [i.e. for this case only] to retrospectively adjust the
cosmos to our tastes.
“Not only does cosmic justice differ from traditional justice,
and conflict with it, more momentously cosmic justice is
irreconcilable with personal freedom based on the rule of law.
Traditional justice can be mass-produced by impersonal
prospective rules governing the interactions of flesh-and-blood
human beings, but cosmic [or social] justice must be hand-made
by holders of power who impose their own decisions on how these
flesh-and-blood individuals should be categorized into
abstractions [e.g. rich, poor, advantaged, disadvantaged, etc.]
and how these abstractions should then be forcibly configured to
fit the vision of the power-holders. Merely the power to select
beneficiaries is an enormous power, for it is also the power to
select victims – and to reduce both to the role of supplicants
of those who hold this power.” [40]
“But, whatever one’s vision of a just world, what is crucial is
to recognize that (1) different visions lead to radically
different practical policies, that (2) we shall continue to talk
past one another so long as we do not recognize that cosmic
justice changes the very meaning of the plainest words, and that
(3) whatever we choose to do, it should be based on a clear
understanding of the costs and dangers of the actual
alternatives, not simply the heady feeling of exaltation
produced by particular words or visions.” [41]
The Fable of the Dog and the Bone
“There is an ancient fable about a dog with a bone in his mouth.
He looked down into a pool of water and saw a reflection that
looked to him like another dog with another bone – and that
other bone seemed to be larger than his bone. Determined to get
the other bone instead, the dog opened his mouth and prepared to
jump into the water. This of course caused his own bone to drop
into the water and be lost. Cosmic justice is much like that
illusory bone and it too can cause us to lose what is attainable
in quest of the unattainable.” [42]
The Need for Balanced Perspective
I find it interesting and disturbing when I hear people
criticize this country for one inadequacy after another. Are we
perfect? Is there really “justice for all?” Or course not, but
we should never lose sight of the overall forest for the trees
-- one tree being injustice, another, inequality, etc. For as
William Bennett said, whatever may be America’s many faults, we
should never forget that
“we have provided more freedom to more people than any nation in
the history of mankind; that we have provided a greater degree
of equality to more people than any nation in the history of
mankind; that we have created more prosperity, and spread it
more widely, than any nation in the history of mankind; that we
have brought more justice to more people than any nation in the
history of mankind; that our open, tolerant, prosperous,
peaceable society is the marvel and envy of the ages.” [43]
In short, when comparing the fruits of our efforts to other
parts of the globe, our imperfect attempt to optimize our mix of
societal benefits, should breed national optimism and pride, not
pessimism and contempt. Americans who contemptuously rail
against our country for this imperfection or that, show quite a
disproportionate and imbalanced perspective. We should all be
careful not to be taken in by it.
If you personally sense injustices before your eyes and feel a
moral obligation to address them by expending personal resources
of your own free will and choice, then by all means, do so. But
you need to be very careful before deciding to use the force of
law in such a venture rather than just voluntary individual or
collective action. The dynamics of things differ dramatically
depending upon whether (1) free will and choice or (2) force, is
used. As cautioned by our economist friends, we need to fully
consider perverse incentives, opportunity costs, and probable
unintended side effects before arriving at our ultimate
conclusions.
_______________
[1] . David M. Whalen,” The Affinity of Literature and
Politics,” Intercollegiate Review, vol. 37, Fall 2001, p.25.
[2] . Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, The Free
Press (1999), p.1.
[3] . Jacques Barzun, Begin Here, The Forgotten Conditions of
Teaching and Learning, p.21.
[4] . Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, p.3.
[5] . July 27, 2003 newspaper column entitled “Random thoughts.”
[6] . The Federalist Papers, No.10, paragraph 13.
[7] . Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, pp.8-9.
[8] . The Federalist Papers, No 51, paragraph 16.
[9] . Id. paragraphs13, 14 & 17.
[10] . Id. paragraphs 6 & 8.
[11] . Id. paragraph 15.
[12] . Id. paragraph 17.
[13] . Id. No.10, paragraph 14.
[14] . Abraham Lincoln, 3/6/1860; Collected Works 4:24.
[15] . Abraham Lincoln, 3/21/1864; Collected Works 7:259.
[16] . Cicero, quoted in A Pillar of Iron, p. 102.
[17] . The Columbia World of Quotations; http://www.bartleby.com/66/27/53527.html
[18] . Balint Vazsonyi, America’s 30 Years War – Who is Winning,
Regnery Publishing Co. (1998), pp. 53-59.
[19] . Id. pp. 102-103.
[20] . Quoted by F. A. Hayek, Road to Serfdom, University of
Chicago Press, (1944), p.3.
[21] . Id. p.37.
[22] . Id. 1994 edition, pp. xxiii-xxiv which includes the 1976
Preface.
[23] . Id. 1994 edition, pp.xi-xii.
[24] . Id. pp. xii-xiii.
[25] . Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, pp.71-72.
[26] . Id. pp.58-59.
[27] . Frederic Bastiat, The Law, (1850), p. 58.
[28] . Alex de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (1835), Part
II, Book IV, Chapter vi entitled “What Sort of Despotism
Democratic Nations Have To Fear.”
[29] . F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, (1944), preface to the
1956 edition, p. xxxix.
[30] . Frederic Bastiat, The Law, (1850) pp. 33-34, 52, 62-63, &
71.
[31] . James W. Ely, Jr., The Guardian of Every Other Right: A
Constitutional History of Property Rights, Oxford University
Press (1992), pp. 8-9.
[32] . Frederic Bastiat, The Law, (1850), p. 55.
[33] . Walter Williams, Radio address 11/29/02.
[34] . Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, p.9.
[35] . Id..
[36] . Id. pp. 21-22.
[37] . Id. p.28.
[38] . The Federalist Papers, No. 62, paragraph 16.
[39] . Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, p. 77.
[40] . Id. pp.45-46.
[41] . Id. p.47.
[42] . Id. p.48.
[43] . William Bennett, Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War
on Terrorism.
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