The Law Has Been Perverted

Here I Encounter The Most Popular Fallacy Of Our Times. It Is Not Considered Sufficient That The Law Should Guarantee To Every Citizen The Free And Inoffensive Use Of His Faculties For Physical, Intellectual And Moral Self-improvement. Instead, It Is Demanded That The Law Should Directly Extend Welfare, Education, And Morality Throughout The Nation. This Is The Seductive Lure Of Socialism. And I Repeat: These Two Uses Of The Law Are In Direct Contradiction To Each Other.

The Impulses Of My Heart Are The Voice Of Nature, Which Is Never Mistaken. The Institutions That Stand In My Way Are Man-made And Are Only Arbitrary Conventions To Which I Have Never Given My Consent. In Trampling These Institutions Underfoot, I Shall Have The Double Pleasure Of Satisfying My Inclinations And Of Believing Myself A Hero

And This Is What Has Taken Place. The Delusion Of The Day Is To Enrich All Classes At The Expense Of Each Other; It Is To Generalize Plunder Under Pretense Of Organizing It.

This Question Of Legal Plunder Must Be Settled Once And For All, And There Are Only Three Ways To Settle It: (1) The Few Plunder The Many. (2) Everybody Plunders Everybody. (3) Nobody Plunders Anybody.

You Compare The Nation To A Parched Piece Of Land And The Tax To A Life-giving Rain. So Be It. But You Should Also Ask Yourself Where This Rain Comes From, And Whether It Is Not Precisely The Tax That Draws The Moisture From The Soil And Dries It Up. You Should Also Ask Yourself Further Whether The Soil Receives More Of This Precious Water From The Rain Than It Loses By The Evaporation?