Bump
But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed citizens – then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it is safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. Second Amendment, anyone?
I never looked at it in terms of the Second Amendment - or, the literal sense of being disarmed, before. I always looked at "disarmed" and "defenseless" in the sense of the moral code of the time. The victims are being disarmed by their own sense of right and wrong, their own virtue in other words. (As we will see later, Rearden is going to run head first into this particular dilemma.) At the risk of getting ahead a little bit, it's called "The Sanction Of The Victim". It's a code where the honest are punished for being honest, and the dishonest are rewarded for their dishonesty. The honest and the virtuous play along with the system because they believe in obeying the law, and the thought of going against the system is repugnant to them, while the looters have no such compunction against using the system against the virtuous. They are thus "disarmed" and defenseless, until they get wise to the fact that the system is being used against them. I think that's what's happening with those who are disappearing.