Man Is Born Free - Period - Everywhere He Need Not Be in Chains

I live in Canada where we have a supposed democracy with the British Monarch as the theoretical head of state. You may live in the USA where your President is the head of your supposed democracy. It doesn't matter and it doesn't matter either whether people live under a Monarchy, an Oligarchy, a Military Junta, or the Political-Party-Archy that Canada and the USA both truly are. The real problem in our badly ailing society is simply that the rule-of-law is a horribly bad system. Man is born free. We can build a much better public protection and justice system simply by enshrining real freedom and recognizing that people have fundamental human rights that need protection.

The rule-of-law is a horribly bad system. I'm sorry that you've been force-fed a lot of hogwash about the rule-of-law being the glue that holds society together and that without law there would be ANARCHY. Well, I don't fear any word or concept just because those that want to keep us in chains try to convince me it is a bogeyman idea. Anarchy simply means 'no king' and I suppose that would be fine as long as we still had a public protection and justice system that worked. However, I'm actually don't favor the notion of living in an anarchist state but as I've already stated, the actual government or lack or government doesn't matter at all. We simply need decent justice and sadly, the rule-of-law is utterly incapable of doing that job.

Law had an ignoble beginning when a supposedly noble person stabbed a sword into a commoner's guts and proclaimed to everyone else that from now on, his word was law. I'm sorry but that is the whole truth of the matter. After many years of abuses at the vicious hands of many different nobles, the Magna Charta asserted that above the nobles and kings, a theoretical over-king named 'law' was the absolute ruler. However, the sad and simple fact remains that we commoners still have the law's word stabbed into our guts whether wielded by a king or a judge. That first vicious noble at law's disgraceful beginning did not have the right to inflict his word: he only had the wrongful power to do so. And today the law still doesn't have right to inflict itself on us: it still only has the wrongful power.

Wouldn't chaos ensue without the rule of law? What could possibly replace the rule of law? If you've even read this far, maybe you're asking these questions.

First of all, you have to understand exactly how the rule of law actually works. Under law, the actual wrong that a criminal has committed doesn't really matter. The court is only deciding whether the government prohibition was affected by the action. Think of the term 'law breaking' as an actual physical act of snapping a law over your knee like a dry twig and you'll have an accurate mental picture of what the judge is really deciding. Law's ONLY concern is whether the government's word was broken. Let me put this concept another way. At a murder trial, the victim's body is just physical evidence of how the law against murder itself was violently harmed. The rule of law is a ridiculous theory when you dare to think about it rationally.

Let's take this line of thinking a step further against the rule of law before I begin to point out the much better alternative to law. You as an individual person do not have the right to tell me what I can or cannot do and punish me if I do or don't. And your nation consists of X-million people who similarly do not have the right, but together they amass the power. Tyranny is defined as using power without the right to and regardless of how benevolent a tyrant claims he is, it is still tyranny. So at the very bottom line, the rule-of-law is and will always be just tyranny.

I could go on here to outline precisely how the rule-of-law actually hurts us all and how the twisted rule-of-law concept is even the basic reason why crimes against humanity like the Nazi holocaust occurred in history and why similar could easily happen in the future. But this article isn't meant to read like a rant. I'm writing to point out a preferable method of administering public protection and real justice.

Neither you personally, nor your government possess the right to enforce law but individually you do have the natural right to protect yourself and that right could easily be gathered within the community and lent to a justice and policing system to logically grant both the power and the right. Before you ask, NO, the police and courts do NOT act in your protection in the slightest. They are 'upholding the law' and that is a whole different thing to actually offering you protection. In truth, what police and courts really protect is only the system's power to be a tyrant. (I could go on here to show how that seemingly small distinction really means that the law is endangering you and all of us but I'll save that for another article).

To design an entirely new and effective system of justice and public protection, and one that would fit so seamlessly over the current rule-of-law apparatus that most people wouldn't even notice the difference, we need only to rethink where the justice system derives its authority to act. Instead of basing our protection system on the government's awesome but illegitimate power, we must found our justice on the valid presumption that people have human rights and that these must be defended.

Just think about it. We could easily have the cake of our safe and ordered society and eat it too with the flavorful icing of actual freedom. I'll end here by repeating my title, which you probably realize is my take on Jean-Jacque Rousseau's famous lament. Man is born free - period - everywhere he need NOT be in chains.

I'm Russell Twyce and my many blog posts on several websites offer my unique perspective on a wide range of topics including fiction, politics and law.