THE MYTH OF THE RULE OF LAW by John Hasnas

Um interessante texto para juristas e não-juristas e em especial para aqueles (comum no anglo-saxonismo) que levantam a bandeira to "THE RULE OF LAW". Encontrado a partir de outro texto interessante Locke, Smith, Marx and the Labor Theory of Value, STEPHAN KINSELLA (o jurista libertarian anti-propriedade intelectual).


THE MYTH OF THE RULE OF LAW, by John Hasnas

Na conclusão:

The fact is that there is no such thing as a government of law and not people. The law is an amalgam of contradictory rules and counter-rules expressed in inherently vague language that can yield a legitimate legal argument for any desired conclusion. For this reason, as long as the law remains a state monopoly, it will always reflect the political ideology of those invested with decisionmaking power. Like it or not, we are faced with only two choices. We can continue the ideological power struggle for control of the law in which the group that gains dominance is empowered to impose its will on the rest of society or we can end the monopoly.

Our long-standing love affair with the myth of the rule of law has made us blind to the latter possibility. Like the Monosizeans, who after centuries of state control cannot imagine a society in which people can buy whatever size shoes they wish, we cannot conceive of a society in which individuals may purchase the legal services they desire. The very idea of a free market in law makes us uncomfortable. But it is time for us to overcome this discomfort and consider adopting Socrates' approach. We must recognize that our love for the rule of law is unrequited, and that, as so often happens in such cases, we have become enslaved to the object of our desire.

No clearer example of this exists than the legal process by which our Constitution was transformed from a document creating a government of limited powers and guaranteed rights into one which provides the justification for the activities of the all-encompassing super-state of today.

However heart-wrenching it may be, we must break off this one-sided affair. The time has come for those committed to individual liberty to realize that the establishment of a truly free society requires the abandonment of the myth of the rule of law.

Was it Bush or AlJazeera ? No, a salesman without a permit to do business.

Problema que se pode encontrar em qualquer social-democracia.

Mencken e a democracia

Já conhecia estas (em baixo) de Mencken mas não esta (via LRCblog):

"democracy...the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.”

outras:

“There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.”

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right.”

Democracy has an “ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. . .When the national safety is menace. . .all the great tribunes of democracy. . .convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity.”

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. . . On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”