The Need for an Objective Law to Uphold a Free Society

[A]ll laws must be based on individual rights and aimed at their protection.


“The Nature of Government,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal


Under objective law, what is the fundamental difference in the scope of private action versus government action?


A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted.

“The Nature of Government,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal




[W]hen men are caught in the trap of non-objective law, when their work, future and livelihood are at the mercy of a bureaucrat’s whim, when they have no way of knowing what unknown “influence” will crack down on them for which unspecified offense, fear becomes their basic motive, if they remain in the industry at all—and compromise, conformity, staleness, dullness, the dismal grayness of the middle-of-the-road are all that can be expected of them. Independent thinking does not submit to bureaucratic edicts, originality does not follow “public policies,” integrity does not petition for a license, heroism is not fostered by fear, creative genius is not summoned forth at the point of a gun. Non-objective law is the most effective weapon of human enslavement: its victims become its enforcers and enslave themselves.


“Vast Quicksands,” The Objectivist Newsletter

An objective law protects a country’s freedom; only a non-objective law can give a statist the chance he seeks: a chance to impose his arbitrary will—his policies, his decisions, his interpretations, his enforcement, his punishment or favor—on disarmed, defenseless victims. He does not have to exercise his power too frequently nor too openly; he merely has to have it and let his victims know that he has it; fear will do the rest.


“Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason,” The Voice of Reason

The Distinctions MUST Remain Clear

I was doing some reading on inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. This is what I found under my Google search and Answers.com:

Some philosophers and political scientists make a distinction between natural rights and legal rights.
Legal rights (sometimes also called civil rights or statutory rights) are rights conveyed by a particular polity, codified into legal statutes by some form of legislature (or unenumerated but implied from enumerated rights), and as such are contingent upon local laws, customs, or beliefs.
In contrast, natural rights (also called moral rights or inalienable rights) are rights which are not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of a particular society or polity. Natural rights are thus necessarily universal, whereas legal rights are culturally and politically relative.
Blurring the lines between natural and legal rights, U.S. statesman James Madison believed that some rights, such as trial by jury, are social rights, arising neither from natural law nor from positive law but from the social contract from which a government derives its authority.[1]

The social contract is where the government over a particular person derives it power or authority. Americans understand that government is granted power by the person's consent. We are a nation that is ruled by laws that protect individual liberties, which are defined by our Bill of Rights.

Some have thought that this does disservice to international concerns, such as human rights. This is not necessarily so, as specified laws protect a particular nation-state, providing its definitions of custom, norms and "morals".

America has protected itself by understanding the dangers of uniting political and religious agenda. Jefferson's separation of Church and State was to prevent such authoritarial ideology. Jefferson believed in inalienable rights, that were based on natural rights, while Madision understood that the social contract was to be upheld by the rights of citizens within a particular nation state.

Distinctions about these two issues must remain clear, otherwise, we dissolve boundaries of civil rights, and social norm and custom which help to create identification to the people who live within a country's borders.