Defiance of Law

Alexander M. Goldfinger

[Reprinted from The Gargoyle, November 1962]

The Governor of Mississippi defied the order of the United States Courts to admit a Negro to the State University. Most Americans, including the governors and public officials of other southern states condemned the actions of the Governor of Mississippi. Most of the condemnation stemmed from the firmly held belief that liberty and freedom can be achieved and held only under a rule of law and not a rule of men.

As the President said in his televised speech concerning the Mississippi incident, we may disagree with the law and with the order of the court, but the way to change the law is not to disobey it. Disobediance of law leads to anarchy, lawlessness and tyranny.

Whence came this conception that a rule of law and not a rule of men is best for the preservation and advancement of human lives and institutions?

Pragmatically, over countless centuries our forebears lived under various .conditions. Sometimes and at some places, the whim and caprice of a ruler determined the well-being and even the life or death of the subjects. If the ruler was benevolent, then safety and well-being were enhanced, and if the ruler was less than benevolent, then the lives and fortunes of some of the subjects were adversely affected.

Always, under the rule of men, uncertainty and fear were bound to permeate the behavior of the governed. Freedom seeking individuals sometimes rebelled against tyrannous conditions. By trial and error they learned that if their rights and obligations could be determined and made known so that human behavior might conform, certainty and safety would be promoted.

So, written or unwritten constitutions, rules and guides delineating rights and obligations became the goal of liberty loving men in all stages of civilisation.

"But", said some who opposed the strict rules and regulations of human conduct, "rules constrain human behavior and thus limit and diminish man's accomplishments." To a degree, this cannot be gainsaid. But ever seeking, ever striving for greater freedom, man learned that he must limit his freedom to act so that his behavior would not violate or infringe another's equal freedom to act.

So, the conception of corresponding rights and obligations were accepted and enshrined in the "laws" of all men, from the most primitive to our "enlightened" nations of today.

When we think of laws, we usually mean those rules and regulations which men, for their own freedom and usage have adopted. We usually think of legislative enactments.

For countless centuries men have observed their environment, the universe in which they lived and died, and have noted that in this universe there are orderly phenomena. Seasons change and recur, day follows night, birth follows conception and many others. Their perception and inquisitiveness made clear that throughout the universe causal relationships exist; a given result will follow a given cause and the. result may then be the cause of a following result.

Men noted that these causes and effects always bore the same relationship and so, in his mind, man thought of them as "natural laws."

Whether the thought of man-made legislative type laws or nature's orderly universal "natural laws" proceeded one another in man's evolution is perhaps disputable. But that Man's observation and conclusions that in nature there is order and that certain causes inevitably have certain results or effects must have influenced man's need and desire to formulate and "legislate" laws for his and his fellow-man's behavior.

With what reverence and acceptance does this and proceeding generations accept those ancient laws for human behavior, the Ten Commandments and The Sermon On The Mount.

But, notwithstanding that "natural laws" and man made laws are intertwined in man's consciousness, man has not yet taken the final step to correlate man-made with natural law. Man has learned that the "law of gravity" in nature will not allow him to jump from a height without falling, but he hasn't "learned that monopoly of land by some will lead to inequality of opportunity and poverty of others.

In regulating his relationships with other human beings, man ultimately will learn that cause and effect chains exist, not only in nature but in human relationships.

It is not strange that the defiance of law by the Governor of Mississippi evoked so much adverse criticism. The concept of living under and abiding by laws is so deeply engrained in most people that they quickly react to open defiance of constituted law.

If only they could sense and react to defiance of natural, that is, nature's laws and realize that only by adopting man-made laws that are consonant with nature's laws can man live in harmony with his fellow-man and in harmony with nature.

Mo better way can be found to snake man conscious of the "opportunity of integrating man-made with, natural law than a reading of the chapter "The Law of Human Progress" in Henry George's Progress And Poverty."