Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: bankwalker
CONSIDER Soviet dissident Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's observations on Western "rule of law"

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale than the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.

If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required. Nobody will mention that one could still not be entirely right, and urge self-restraint, a willingness to renounce such legal rights, sacrifice and selfless risk. It would sound simply absurd. One almost never sees voluntary self-restraint. Everybody operates at the extreme limit of those legal frames.

94 posted on 02/10/2018 2:05:07 PM PST by GoldenState_Rose
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 91 | View Replies ]


To: GoldenState_Rose

Justice (for both sides) v. Law.

There’s a real daily problem, no matter the system.

e.g. Comey (Mr. Ethics Instructor...)


103 posted on 02/10/2018 2:42:00 PM PST by Paladin2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 94 | View Replies ]

To: GoldenState_Rose
Everybody operates at the extreme limit of those legal frames.

This is the stock-in-trade of the modern post-American megacorporation. IMO we have the 19th century industrial monopolists to thank for it.

112 posted on 02/10/2018 3:20:35 PM PST by Mmmike
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 94 | View Replies ]

To: GoldenState_Rose
Watch out neo-liberals...Solzhenitsyn is our guy not your guy.


124 posted on 02/10/2018 4:30:55 PM PST by mac_truck (aide toi et dieu t'aidera)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 94 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson