The Scum of the Earth

Many people say that one ought to respect the law even when it is senseless, destructive, and vicious. This claim is prima facie nonsense. The nonsense is even more palpable when one understands how laws are made and the kind of people who make them. A sounder guideline would be that the law should be presumed to be unjust and harmful until good reasons are advanced to show that it is not. We’re not dealing with philosopher kings here, amigos, but with politicians who are manifestly the scum of the earth.

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Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute and Editor at Large of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, the University of Economics, Prague, and George Mason University. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.