All laws must be objective and objectively justifiable:
one must know clearly, and in advance of taking an action,
what the law forbids them to do and why,
what constitutes a crime and what penalty they will incur if they commit it.
The retaliatory use of force requires objective rules of evidence to establish that a crime has been committed and to prove who committed it, as well as objective rules to define punishments and enforcement procedures.Men who attempt to prosecute crimes, without such rules, are a lynch mob.
If a society left the retaliatory use of force in the hands of individual citizens, it would degenerate into mob rule, lynch law and an endless series of bloody private feuds or vendettas.
If physical force is to be barred from social relationships, men need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights under an objective code of rules.
This is the task of a government
of a proper government
its basic task,
its only moral justification
and the reason why men do need a government.
A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control—i.e., under objectively defined laws.
When people are caught in the trap of non-objective law,
when their work, future and livelihood are at the mercy of a bureaucrat’s whim,
when they have no way of knowing what unknown “influence”
will crack down on them for which unspecified offense,
fear becomes their basic motive,
if they remain in the industry at all and
compromise,
conformity,
staleness,
dullness,
the dismal grayness of the middle-of-the-road
are all that can be expected of them.
Independent thinking does not submit
to bureaucratic edicts,
originality does not follow “public policies,”
integrity does not petition for a license,
heroism is not fostered by fear,
creative genius is not summoned forth at the point of a gun.
Non-objective law is the most effective weapon of human enslavement:
its victims become its enforcers and enslave themselves.
That which cannot be formulated into an objective law,
cannot be made the subject of legislation
not in a free country,
not if we are to have “a government of laws and not of men.”
An undefineable law is not a law,
but merely a license for some men to rule others.
An objective law protects a country’s freedom;
only a non-objective law can give a statist the chance he seeks:
a chance to impose his arbitrary will
his policies,
his decisions,
his interpretations,
his enforcement,
his punishment or favor
on disarmed, defenseless victims.
