What is the Law?

This question is fundamental to every civilization, whether it be the Greek, Roman, the U.S. today, The European Union, Russia, China, Japan, India etc. While the question may sound simple, the answer isn’t quite so. What is even more complicated is the lack of consensus among the population of any civilization on not only the definition of the law, but what the true, valid purpose of the law is. This post will define what the law is, as well as the purpose of the law. Additionally, this post will explain why the definition and purpose posted here is the most legitimate one.

Definition of the Law

The law is a set of rules and regulations that people must follow. Some laws apply to specific groups of people, such as minimum voting age laws, while others apply universally, such as the right to defend one’s property and body. In order for the law to have any effect, it must be written. Any law that is not physically written down anywhere is invalid and has no effect.

Historical, Perhaps Pre-Historical Context

Formal, or at least written, laws didn’t always exist. Generally speaking, in the state of nature, people have precious fundamental assets, such as life and property, even in the absence of any formally written laws. This state of nature has always prevailed, even in the days preceding the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, the earliest recorded in history. In those ancient days and prior, property usually meant ones dwelling, food supplies, weapons, and tools. Each family was typically on its own to defend itself and all its assets. Intrinsically, each family would not tolerate theft, murder, arson etc., things that are(still) considered crimes in most parts of the world. Furthermore, any family that went out in nature to hunt would generally not tolerate restrictions or interference on the right to hunt, by anyone else. However, through human nature, conflicts of various kinds arose; such conflicts include theft, physical assaults on other people, war to a more extreme degree, arson, and many other activities, which again, eventually became formally recognized as crimes. Therefore, in order to better protect people’s rights, lives, property, and other assets, laws were created, and written down, to codify and formalize the protection of people’s rights. It is precisely because humanity wanted to protect its rights, liberties, property, and other assets that laws were created in the first place. This established an understanding and agreement to respect the individual rights of others.

Purpose of the Law

The purpose of the law should be nothing other than to protect the rights and liberties of every individual. That’s it. Any law that falls outside the scope of protecting individual rights and liberties is invalid, and therefore must be rendered null and ineffective.

Frederic Bastiat’s book, The Law, is the inspiration for the explanation of the purpose of the law.

As Bastiat states, the purpose of the law is to protect fundamental individual liberties. Nothing more, nothing less. As Bastiat elaborates, any use of the law for anything else, such as redistributing wealth through taxation from some to others, which is commonly referred to as welfare as of the time of this writing, is illegitimate because such laws violate the liberties of those who are taxed and thereby, forced to pay against their will. Therefore, such welfare laws are illegitimate, and should therefore be rendered illegal and null. Unfortunately, as of the time of this writing, such welfare laws are on the books and effective; many other such laws are also on the books which fail to do nothing outside of protecting liberties and rights. The existence and enforcement of such laws is one big factor pushing today’s civilizations across the world in the same direction as the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations – total demise.

This post’s stated purpose of the law is also objective, meaning that it can, and should, be applied universally. Every nation, society, and whatever other subdivision of humanity, can and should use the law for this purpose, and this purpose alone. Any use of the law outside of protecting individual liberties is invalid, and must therefore be rendered illegal and void.

In the context of today’s times, there sadly exist far too many laws, both in the United States and everywhere else in the world, that fail to stay within the boundaries of doing nothing other than protecting fundamental individual liberties. Many posts on this blog will be about those such laws, with the greatest emphasis on ones that have the greatest ramifications regarding civilization’s trajectory toward total demise, much like the Greeks and Romans of the past. As such, many posts that pertain to such commentaries will link back to this post for a general, philosophical reference – this post can also be thought of as the fundamental moral compass.