Sunday, June 19, 2011

The State is "all bad" precisely because it is that entity within society claiming the right to do unto us that which we are barred from doing unto each other, as Rockwell incisively points out. It owes its very existence to the exemption it carves for itself from the natural law. Thus, the question at hand is not libertarianism's "romantic infatuation" with the invisible hand; it is statism's utopian attachment to the iron fist in the velvet glove.

It is the statists, moreover, who "compartmentalize" sin. Self-interest and unfettered greed go "all the way up" to those who claim to be exempt from it.

Society isn't "all good and all natural." But since individuals within society don't claim for themselves the rights the State claims for itself, the incidence of societal disorder tends to be sporadic and its ramifications localized. State disorder, by contrast, is as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. Not only do we accept it as as a fact of life--the price of civilization (such as it is); we cease to recognize its intrinsic criminality.

Does the State otherwise prevent some societal disorder? Surely it must, if only by accident. The issue is whether it prevents more than it preserves.

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