"Rather than accept either administrative law or legislation, Leoni calls for a return to the ancient traditions and principles of “judge-made law” as a method of limiting the State and insuring liberty. In the Roman private law, in the Continental Civil Codes, in the Anglo-Saxon common law, “law” did not mean what we think today: endless enactments by a legislature or executive. “Law” was not enacted but found or discovered; it was a body of customary rules that had, like languages or fashions, grown up spontaneously and purely voluntarily among the people. These spontaneous rules constituted “the law”; and it was the works of experts in the law – old men of the tribe, judges, or lawyers – to determine what the law was and how the law would apply to the numerous cases in dispute that perpetually arise.
…
A great defect in Leoni’s thesis is the absence of any criterion for the content of the judge-made law. It is a happy accident of history that a great deal of private law and common law is libertarian – that they elaborate the means of preserving one’s person and property against “invasion” – but a good deal of the old law was antilibertarian, and certainly custom can not always be relied on to be consistent with liberty. Ancient custom, after all, can be a frail bulwark indeed; if customs are oppressive of liberty, must they still serve as the legal framework permanently, or at least for centuries? Suppose ancient custom decrees that virgins be sacrificed to the gods by the light of the full moon, or that redheads be slaughtered as demons? What then? May not custom be subject to a higher test – reason?
The common law contains such antilibertarian elements as the law of “conspiracy,” and the law of “seditious libel” (which outlawed criticism of the government), largely injected into the law by kings and their minions. And perhaps the weakest aspect of the volume is Leoni’s veneration for the Roman law; if the Roman law provided a paradise of liberty, how account for the crushing taxation, the periodic inflation and currency debasement, the repressive network of controls and “welfare” measures, the unlimited imperial authority, of the Roman Empire?"
I’ve never done this and I probably won’t again but I want to past my response that I gave to this Fleming character here because I have a feeling he is going to delete it after he reads it and I don’t want to lose it.
To TJF & Mr. Fleming,
Well the mentality I am receiving from both of you is rather pathetic. From you TJF, there is nothing but more general statements which not to long you go condemned me for having. You do not cite your statements concerning other thinkers and claim I should listen to those have ‘done their homework’ which you obviously think is yourself. You have shown nothing concerning your knowledge of the history of thought and seem content to show it that way. Therefore you will be treated like another internet heckler who thinks they can breath hot air in my face and pass it off as intelligent discourse. From you Mr. Fleming, you seem to be content in ambiguity. You think yourself so inflated that that the mere mention that you have friends who agree with on Mises therefore infers that Mises’ philosophical work is trash. To the both of you I say this, you seem so bizarrely euphoric that you criticize Mises while saying ‘I don’t want to devote my time to this man.’ Frankly between one claiming that he has ‘done his homework’ and yet doesn’t want to become an expert on Mises and the other who thinks that the mere fact that he has cronies who agree with him, neither of you have actually presented a foundational argument against Mises. To both of you it is sufficient enough that you are merely criticizing the man and cannot be bothered with actually knowing the man for how much can you know about the works of the man if you think that Mises thinks that ‘libertarianism is morally neutral’ and I would add something that TJF moronically put up but his sentences are so general that they could be aptly applied to any individual in this world and therefore are devoid of any explanatory value. I would say shame onto both of you being such intellectual novices in your arguments but you can’t shame the shameless.
To Mr. Richert,
I think it was incorrect comment by Mises to say the Church needs to ‘transform’, the church merely needs to retain its once liberal tradition which has been cast into the shadows. Also my point about the ambiguity is exactly what Mises was discussing. It has been used to justify socialist measures. Some of the first communist societies in the west used the bible to justify their millennialist views.
‘In his earlier comment, Mr. Cain tried to save Mises by invoking Murray Rothbard.’
I’m not trying ’save’ Mises. I merely stated that I consider myself a Rothbardian and therefore don’t agree with Mises on ethical positions. Neither did Rothbard but Rothbard didn’t think of Mises’ work as trash.
‘Rothbard’s language there (despite the bit about fascism) is much more pleasant than Mises’ language, but his purpose is the same. He wants to enlist the weight of the Church (since he could not enlist the Church Herself) in support of capitalism. Thus he attacks and/or downplays aspects of Catholic social teaching that he sees (quite rightly) as inimical to classical liberalism and sows confusion by claiming that “There is, first of all, no official and specific ‘Catholic position’ on capitalism.”
It is in light of this memo and the method Rothbard uses therein that we need to evaluate any of his “sympathetic” discussions of Catholicism, including his work on the Salamanca School. Rothbard wasn’t attempting to show that the roots of capitalism could be found in a group of Spanish theologians in order to inform capitalism by the teachings of the Catholic Church; he was attempting to enlist the weight of the Church (since he could not enlist the Church Herself) in support of capitalism.’
So you theorize that Rothbard first hated the Church then used or created the motif of the School of Salamanca to try and ally with the Church? Firstly, you have obviously taken the discussion away from its original premise which is that Mises wanted to destroy Christianity because now you are invoking Rothbard’s writings, not Mises’. Second, Rothbard wasn’t a theologian. He admired certain parts of the church and disliked other parts. Certainly one doesn’t have to like everything about the Church especially with its darker moments. He was very fond of individuals who progressed individual liberty and disliked those who retarded or tried to extinguish it. The Church played home to both these mentalities at different times and sometimes at the same time. The Church is not a single entity with a singular position or idea on a matter. You should read Rothbard’s History of Economic Thought which is littered with church officials who progressed liberalism. Rothbard’s favorite was St. Aquinas who was second only to Aristotle.
Wait, how can you have faith in a definition? Words are just communication, so they mean (i.e., are defined as) whatever the speaker intends them to mean. A norm of communication is that the listener is assumed to interpret the words the same way as the speaker means them, but of course this isn’t always the case. When there are differences in interpretation it immediately stops making sense to talk about “the” definition.
Right. When you communicate using words, you have faith that the user will interpret the word exactly how you intended it. You also have faith that your interpretation is correct, in relation to some (non-existent) “true” definition.
Christ was a rebel to the state which ended up murdering him. He defied the law as well as the religious order of the day. He changed beliefs on an afterlife and claimed he was God. If this is not a story of individual freedom and the principle of self-ownership, I don’t know what is.
Christ, as judged by existing “objective” moral standards (law and religious dogma), was so immoral he deserved to be put to death. What’s this say about “objective” moral values?
There is no virtue in blind obedience. If you are a Christian because you were told to be one, your Christianity is value-less. Again, Christ rebelled against the existing order, and he did so in a non-aggressive and non-violent manner. In fact, detailed readings into the form of church institution that Christ advocated was not a formal, members-only type institution, but more like anarchy. It was the Roman Empire that created the formal, exclusive, “expert”-led church and then used it to foment power.
Libertarianism and Christianity aren’t in conflict, although libertarianism and certain religious organizations might be. I should remind you that the Catholic Church rails against homosexuality and homosexual marriage, yet a significant number of its members engage in homosexual (and pedophilic) behavior and its response is not to disaffiliate them or “crack-down” on such behavior, but to conceal it from the public.
Finally, duty is generally regarded as anti-libertarian; however, I don’t see it as such. Moral duties are consistent with libertarianism, so long as they are not enforced with aggressive violations against life or property. In other words, not performing one’s duty is immoral; however, coercing one to perform a duty is also immoral. This is a proper place for manners or non-aggressive sanctions, like boycotts, social ostracism, etc.
Most people do, but I don’t. I think one of the highest barriers to clear thinking is the belief in “true” definitions. The very fact that we coin new words to describe things immediately dispels that notion, but people soon forget. I say, don’t forget!
However, there is much social pressure to treat words as having a “true” definition, even though dictionaries (which are treated as authorities on the “true” definitions) simply catalog all the definitions in common usage.
Rather than argue over the meaning of a word - which can really only be an argument about which usages are common or more useful or clear (a separate issue entirely!) - what you want to do is get at what the person means by the word.
That may partially be due to the social pressure I mentioned above, or just the forgetting. Argue on the forums long enough and it becomes clear that people need constant reminding of the issues I mentioned above in order to avoid talking past each other. Sometimes - especially with communists and their definitions of “capitalism” - the friction against making the realization is palpable. Ideologues can often have a great deal invested in certain words having certain definite meanings (“Aye, but no true capitalist would…”). I might even say that that error is the main reason they became an ideologue. (Of course, “ideologue” is itself a perfect example of a word that means different things to different people.)
Language is such a lame excuse for representing thought. Why can’t we change our outward appearance in millions of potential combinations, like octopi?