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By Root 250 0

collection of masterminds, passing laws not because they are right or moral, but because they can. Writing of the French Legislative Assembly, Frédéric Bastiat, a statesman and pioneering advocate of classical liberalism, noted, “It is indeed fortunate that Heaven has bestowed upon certain men—governors and legislators—the exact opposite inclinations, not only for their own sake but also for the sake of the rest of the world! While mankind tends toward evil, the legislators yearn for good; while mankind advances toward darkness, the legislators aspire for enlightenment; while mankind is drawn toward vice, the legislators are attracted toward virtue. Since they have decided that this is the true state of affairs, they then demand the use of force in order to substitute their own inclinations for those of the human race.” He added that there “is this idea that mankind is merely inert matter, receiving life, organization, morality, and prosperity from the power of the state. And even worse, it will be stated that mankind tends toward degeneration, and is stopped from this downward course only by the mysterious hand of the legislator.”14 Thomas Jefferson put it this way: “All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating of these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one … As little will it avail us that they are chosen by ourselves. An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.…”15

The mastermind is served by an enthusiastic intelligentsia or “experts” professionally engaged in developing and spreading utopian fantasies. Although there are conspicuous exceptions, longtime Harvard professor and political theoretician Harvey Mansfield explained that modern intellectuals have “monumental impatience … with human complexity and imperfection.… They believe that politics is a temporary necessity until the rational solution is put in place.”16 Of course, the rational solutions are not rational at all. While intellectuals are obviously smart, they are not smart enough to have conquered the social sciences and use them to rejigger society. They are posers to knowledge they do not and cannot possess. Meanwhile, intellectuals are immune from the impracticability and consequences of their blueprints for they rarely present themselves for public office. Instead, they seek to influence those who do. They legislate without accountability. Joseph Schumpeter, a prominent economics professor and political scientist, was a harsh critic of intellectuals. He wrote, “Intellectuals rarely enter professional politics and still more rarely conquer responsible office. But they staff political bureaus, write party pamphlets and speeches, act as secretaries and advisers, make the … politician’s … reputation.… In doing these things they … impress their mentality on almost everything that is being done.”17

For the rest, transforming society becomes a struggle between the utopia and self-determination and self-preservation, since the individual must acquiesce to centralized decision-making. Apart from brute force, the mastermind has in his arsenal a weapon that provides him with a predominant advantage—the law. Bastiat explained that “when [the law] has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own proper purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real appeal was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect