"How complacent we become when we sit secure, hedged round by laws and protections a government may provide! How soon we forget that but for these governments and laws there would be naught but savagery, brutality and starvation. For our age-old enemies await us always, just beyond our thin walls. Hunger, thirst and cold lie waiting there, and forever among us are those who would loot, rape and maim rather than behave as civilized men. If we sit secure this hour, this day, it is because the thin walls of law stand between us and evil. A jolt of the earth, a revolution, and invasion or even a violent upset in our own government can reduce all to chaos, leaving civilized man naked and exposed." - Louis L’Amour, Fair Blows the Wind
Saturday, July 17, 2010
"The thin walls of law." Great quote I found at SurvivalBlog.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
18 comments:
Is this the voice of an Eastern city dweller? Didn't Louis L'Amour write Westerns, describing how Americans traveled West leaving all government behind, and for the most part were wildly successful?
The Hobbesan war of every man against every man sounds like majority rule by voting to me.
Very true. Great quote
"forever among us are those who would loot, rape and maim rather than behave as civilized men."
Sounds like most upper-management executives (and their butt-kissing flunkies)in our corporate police state.
In the historical West, the consequences were immediate and painful, unlike today.
Angelo Codevilla has a terrific post up on American Spectator that y'all might enjoy.
http://alturl.com/pbzuu
In this clash, the ruling class holds most of the cards: because it has established itself as the fount of authority, its primacy is based on habits of deference. Breaking them, establishing other founts of authority, other ways of doing things, would involve far more than electoral politics. Though the country class had long argued along with Edmund Burke against making revolutionary changes, it faces the uncomfortable question common to all who have had revolutionary changes imposed on them: are we now to accept what was done to us just because it was done?
Louis L'Amour lived the life of the western heroes he worte about. he was a true American and his stories give voice to the way things ought to be.
I like his books, but somehow I don't feel protected by government. The enemies are on our side of the "wall".
Spoken (written) like a true statist.
To anybody who actually believes that without an institution insisting on a territorial monopoly on the use of force the inevitable result is "savagery, brutality and starvation" I say you have fallen into the govt propaganda mind trap.
How much of your lives are spent engaging in voluntary, peaceful cooperation with others where you find mutual value in doing so? How often to you think, "If it weren't for the law, I'd hit this guy over the head and take his money"?
Most of your lives are spend, in other words, in successful self-government.
Anon you may want to actually read his books before you tell us what they were about.
Or did you read them but learn nothing?
That would be sad.
ANON: the western "pioneers" didn't leave all law behind - they left *GOVERNMENT* behind.
You should note the difference between "law" and "government" -- a chasm as deep and wide as that dividing G*d and religion.
Our forebears brought their law with them, and (for the most part) enforced it themselves,
DD
Don't mean to clutter your thread, but can we have an update on Absolved?
http://mises.org/journals/jls/3_1/3_1_2.pdf
Old but good paper about the not so wild wild west, and living the life of Private Property Anarchism.
You should note the difference between "law" and "government" -- a chasm as deep and wide as that dividing G*d and religion.--DD
Government is the social control of force; law is a universal principle of action. To claim there is an inherent antagonism between the two is to deny there can be a universal principle of social control. The Ten Commandments are eloquent testimony to the folly of such an idea.
MALTHUS
The words of Uncle Al are truth. It's always "the other guy" that governments are set up to control. Not you.
Government is a much greater threat to my well-being than anything it purports to protect me against.
Government takes over a third of my income and uses it for purposes that are at best useless and at worst destructive. The few things it does that are beneficial could be provided better and at lower cost by the free market.
Government regulations have made it difficult to earn an honest living or engage in simple enjoyments without running afoul of some stupid, incomprehensible law.
Government interference in the economy has turned what was once a robust, productive nation into an incipient third-world economic basket case.
Government schools have produced multiple generations of people who can't read, write, figure, or think.
Government enforcers routinely threaten, coerce, abuse, and murder innocent people for no other reason than that they can get away with it.
And--worst of all--by indoctrinating people with its lies, government has gulled the mass of people into a state of dependency in which they are helpless in the face of an emergency, so that when the government finally and inevitably does collapse of its own foul weight of contradictions, the resulting chaos will be much worse than it had to be.
The government and its "protections" be damned, sir!
"ANON: the western "pioneers" didn't leave all law behind - they left *GOVERNMENT* behind.
You should note the difference between "law" and "government" -- a chasm as deep and wide as that dividing G*d and religion."
I suspect I agree with you -- that the true law is things like the English common law, containing rules about how to treat neighbors with fence disputes which the marketplace of peacefully arbitrated solutions has already decided upon. Correctly acting law only collects and popularizes the already evolved and working principles, it doesn't invent and impose fresh new rules from above. However, language has been systematically perverted by government so that these concepts don't have their own words, and are therefore hard to think about. If you're ready to think about law as a separate thing from what any State wants, consider making up new words to label your ideas. You might start with making up a new word for "correct law" that doesn't assume it's a creature of the State.
Mr. L'Amour was refering to the Law as opposed to the government ass anyone who has read his novel and/or short storiess can attest.
Louis L'Amour wrote: "A jolt of the earth, a revolution, and invasion or even a violent upset in our own government can reduce all to chaos, leaving civilized man naked and exposed."
Damned good thing I am not civilized. More'n one knothead I'd have liked to have shot but know too much about the conditions in TDC. SHTF and I just might be more likely to take some people out.
One of Hollywierd's most pernicious myths is of the townspeople cowering in fear when the bad guys ride into town. Horseshit! You didn't travel out west the Mississippi unless you were made of pretty stern stuff. And when you factor in the high percentage of War of Northern Aggression veterans that would have been present, one thing you DON'T wind up with is a bunch of mewling panseys cowering in fear.
Got an idea for a T-shirt.
If you're here legally
Welcome!
If you're here ILL-legally
RUN LIKE HELL
Whatcha think all?
Bad Cyborg X
Good T-shirt idea!
Post a Comment