[Peregrino]

Originally Posted by tonyz

Interesting read. Thanks for posting. One tiny excerpt below.

“It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.

In the first place, it erases from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.

The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because law makes them so.”

Unfortunately there is no allowance for a populace both ignorant and complacent. Ask the average "citizen" to explain the difference between "malum en se" and "malum prohibitum" and watch their eyes glaze over. Explain the difference and ask where the duty to comply lies and watch their heads implode. Don't even try to engage them in a philosophical examination of the morality of complying with or ignoring unjust laws. Too many will default to the drone's stock "Nuremburg Defense". A people without a strong moral compass will always eventually acquiesce to tyranny. A people with a strong moral compass will usually prefer liberty. I say usually, because freedom is by far the more difficult course.