Posted on 07/09/2015 5:29:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
Barbarians at the gate usually don't bring down once-successful civilizations. Nor does climate change. Even mass epidemics like the plague that decimated sixth-century Byzantium do not necessarily destroy a culture.
Far more dangerous are institutionalized corruption, a lack of transparency and creeping neglect of existing laws. All the German euros in the world will not save Greece if Greeks continue to dodge taxes, featherbed government and see corruption as a business model.
Even obeying so-called minor laws counts. It is no coincidence that a country where drivers routinely flout traffic laws and throw trash out the window is also a country that cooks its books and lies to its creditors. Everything from littering to speeding seems negotiable in Athens in a way not true of Munich, Zurich or London.
Mexico is a much naturally richer country than Greece. It is blessed with oil, precious minerals, fertile soils, long coastlines and warm weather. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens should not be voting with their feet to reject their homeland for the U.S.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Ping
His article title for this piece at NR today is more ominous (and accurate?) ... America, Like Greece, May End with a Lawless Whimper
No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.
Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing.
But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man — in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.
Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property.
But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder.
Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain — and since labor is pain in itself — it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it.
When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.
It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
It is as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for everyone to suffer a cruel retribution — some for their evilness, and some for their lack of understanding.
The Law - Bastiat
The Law doesn’t apply to the Left. We all know it.
Hillary? Lois? Foreign Invaders?
You said it
Very well said.
BTTT
Respecting the law means respecting those that created the laws. And since the left have no use for the Constitution, they have no use for the laws created by it.
Pretty simple really. There really is only two ways to fix it. 1) The Justices of this country abiding by the same laws they are supposed to uphold and 2) true conservatives in the legislative, executive and judiciary who believe in the Constitution and not their ideology or the piece of the action they get for voting a certain way.
Spot on.
Proven by the trend that now WE, who believe in rule of law, economic liberty and individual freedom, are the Evil Ones.
Bastiat sure understood human nature.
Why does VDH's concluding sentence make me think of this ....
Currently, the biggest destroyers of the rule of law and respect for law in our country sit on the Supreme Court, on Capitol Hill, and in the Rainbow House.
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