In a context absent government: A random stranger walks into your yard, grabs a chicken from the coup, and proceeds to walk away. You are faced with a choice. Either you can allow this stranger to walk away with your chicken or you can confront him. Lets say you allow this person to take the chicken. Next morning you awake to this stranger in your chicken coup again. These chickens being part of your livelihood, you cannot simply allow this behavior to continue. You confront the stranger and demand your chicken back. To which the stranger replies, to what law of nature do you derive ownership of this chicken? Seeing as there is no law of nature that you have derived ownership of the chicken, at this point you both have equal claim on it. Without enforceable law to settle this dispute, you are again faced with a choice. This time you can allow the stranger to walk off with the chicken, or you can take it back by force. The former will obviously lead you back to square one, so you choose the latter. You take your chicken back by whatever means you find suitable for the situation. Next morning you awake to the stranger (or the strangers relative if you decided to kill the stranger) with a gang of individuals. The stranger walks into your coup and takes your chicken. Being outnumbered you are again faced with a choice. You can allow the behavior, or you can resist and reap the consequences. Without government, without the enforcement of law and order these types of scenarios would play out everywhere. Indeed it is the very behavior we know our ancient ancestors had to deal with. The very behavior that drove them to form government (whether as shamanism, priesthood, state level government or even international establishment). The question is simply what do you do? Is there an alternative (that is conducive of survival) to gathering a bunch of friends, deciding the chicken is yours, and forcing the strangers to return it? Because if thats what you choose to do... You just established government. And not only have you established government but also a law that inhibits the actions of others. It is ideal to think that natural law (life, liberty, property) exists in the natural environment. But the name is misleading. Natural law is really gods law. And remember who is the enforcer behind natural law: god. All men are created equal and endowed by their created with certain unalienable rights. Including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (changed from John Lockes life, liberty, and property). Thus natural law is heavily reliant upon religion. These are the reasons I reject the notion of natural law: 1) it does not exist in nature, only in a context of enforcement (government). 2) to accept the notion of natural law you must also accept creationism.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 19:13:57 +0000
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