Dear Friends,
It seems to me, to seek freedom by regulation, is like trying to breathe underwater. So many modern intellectuals foster the inane notion, more regulation will attain more freedom, it has become a meme. The Black Lives Matter movement demands separation or the races and requires regulations to enforce it, Campus student associations demand safe spaces enforced by rules so they don’t have to hear opposing views, gay and lesbian groups demand the freedom to marry by forcing others to marry them with laws, government claims it needs to have total surveillance of us so we can live the American dream, the list is tiresomely long and growing. People today swim in a swamp of logical absurdity. Regulation is to liberty as water is to breathing.
Almost everyone wants freedom. It is a basic drive of the human being. We seek liberty for ourselves and our children but at the same time desire to limit the actions of criminals and those with evil intent. Intellectuals use this basic conflict to get us to back more and more regulation. Despite the demonstrable proof that most regulation does the opposite of what it is supposed to do we continue to add to it. The amount of regulations we have to live under grows at an exponential rate because of this. Even as we desire more freedom we demand more regulation. We drown ourselves and our economy in red tape.
In a society of sociopaths no amount of regulation would be enough and in a civilization of saints no regulation would be necessary. In the same way, regulations don’t really stop the people with evil intent, Evil people care nothing for law and so laws just give the sociopath and psychopath a leg up on their victims. Alternatively, those of us without evil intent are severely limited by the regulations, since we follow the law, we have to live under them and so are limited in our economic, social and family outcomes. Greater regulations only help those with evil intent but damage those who are good.
More laws don’t stop crime, more laws create more criminals, because as the body of law increases limiting the possible actions of everyone, people will be forced to break the law either out of ignorance or malevolence. In a total state everyone is a criminal. Where everything is outlawed everyone must be a criminal, the closer we get to the total state, the more criminals there will be. Those who seek a total state will point to the greater criminality their laws create to pass more laws. It becomes a self effecting loop. The only logical end is the total state.
It is no coincidence that those who most vociferously call for more regulations, to create more freedom, are from the statist side of the political spectrum. Both the right and left have a statist side and an anarchist side. It is from the statists that we hear if government limits us we will have more liberty. The fall back is always to increase the power of the state. They argue that liberty can be forced on a society by law, morality can be enforced by regulations and honesty can be created by oversight. All of which are logical fallacies.
Honesty cannot be created by oversight, oversight simply undermines honesty by making the dishonest appear honest. Such a system undermines the incentive, moral and societal, to actually be honest. In such a society it is better to appear honest than to be honest. Morality enforced by fiat is an absurdity since morality is not extrinsic but intrinsic. Morality is something we incorporate within us growing up, not something that smothers us, like a regulation from without. It is either within us or not but cannot be injected like a vaccine. Most of all… the cause of liberty is never advanced by limiting law. Liberty by definition is a lack of government regulation. Law is the opposite of liberty.
Obviously I am not calling for anarchy, basic laws must remain else our civilization will devolve into a war between the immoral and moral, strong versus the weak. Civilization is fostered best where the people are taught morality, honesty and virtue as children. Human beings, you and I, are evil by nature, the civilization in us is a learned trait. Our intrinsic civilization in us is the result of our parents, religions and societal pressure. Law, regulations and punishments are only effective if kept to a minimum. Too much regulation and virtue is undermined, too little and chaos ensues. The social Fibonacci sequence then in civilization is to create a society where people are inculcated with self control as children. To expect people to be held in check by law, even onerous law, who are incapable of controlling themselves, is as crazy as trying to breathe underwater.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
