인생 백년이 이리도 허무한가?
무학산

내 마음 속에 간직된 윤정희는 25세인데 신문에는 쭈구렁 바가지 할머니가 있었다. 서글프기도 하고 성이 나기도 해서 신문을 찢어 버렸다. 병들어 모르는 자는 아쉬움이 없겠지만 남은 자는 가슴이 아프도다. 작년에는 신성일이 가더니…인생 백년이 이리도 허무한가? 세월은 잠시도 가만히 있지 않고 제 갈 데로 가는구나. 제행무상. 제법무아. 허무적멸. 유위전변.
  
  그러나 어쩌랴. 할배는 늙어가고 손자는 커가는 게 인간사이거늘. 날 수가 정해진 인간이 무한을 원하는 것부터가 잘못일 터이다. 마침 위로가 될 성경 구절이 있다 ≪육신은 모두 의복처럼 낡아지는 법. 영원한 법칙이란 반드시 죽는다는 것이다. 무성한 나무의 잎사귀들이 어떤 것은 떨어지고 어떤 것은 돋아나듯이 살과 피를 가진 인간 세대도 어떤 이는 죽고 어떤 이는 태어난다. 모든 행적은 쇠퇴하여 사라지고 그것을 이룬 자 역시 그 행적과 더불어 스러진다≫ –집회서 14:17~19-  (발췌)

--->무성하던 나뭇잎이 하나둘 지고 겨울이 다가오고 있다. 생명은 생로병사를 피할 수 없다. 백년도 못 사는 인간이 천년의 시름을 안고 살고 있고, 또 천년을 살듯이 기고만장 하기도 한다.

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김문수


 문재인은 야당복이 있다고 합니다. 어제 청와대 만찬을 보며 그런 생각을 지울 수 없습니다.
  
  첫째, 문재인은 위기 때마다 황교안 제1야당 대표의 도우미 노릇으로 위기를 탈출했습니다. 한기총대표 전광훈 목사는 청와대 앞에서 154일째 철야 노숙투쟁을 하며, "주사파 문재인 하야"를 외치고 있습니다. 그런데, 황교안이 자유한국당 대표로 문재인의 만찬에 참석하여 독안에 든 쥐에게 퇴로를 열어 주었습니다.
  지난 번 7월 18일 문재인의 항일죽창 투쟁 때도 황교안이 공연히 문재인에게 5당 대표회동을 제안하여 문재인의 반일종족주의 난동에 동참했습니다. 문재인의 잘못된 반일소동에 동참하여 도우미 역할을 함으로써 지소미아 파기까지 내닫도록 했습니다. 브레이크를 밟아야 할 때, 가속기를 밟아버렸습니다. 이번에도 마찬가집니다. 황교안 대표는 전광훈 목사와 함께 문재인 퇴진투쟁을 주도해야 마땅하지 않습니까?
  
  둘째, 여야 양자회담이라야 마땅하지 왜 계속 5자회동을 합니까? 지금 대한민국에 야당이라면 자유한국당과 우리공화당뿐이지 않습니까? 어제 손학규가 황교안에게 소리 지르는 행태는 문재인의 2중대 본색을 드러낸 것 아닙니까? 이렇게 나올 줄 몰랐습니까?
  
  셋째, '여야정 상설국정협의체'를 살리자는 문재인의 제안에 "긍정적으로 검토하겠다"고요? 지금은 '문재인 퇴진ㆍ주사파 척결투쟁'에 앞장서야 할, 황교안 자유한국당 대표가 문재인과 비공개 회동을 하면서 도우미 노릇할 때가 아니지 않습니까?
  
  넷째, 지금보다 국가위기가 심각하지 않았던 이회창, 박근혜 어느 야당 대표도 지금처럼 5자회동이나 비공개 회동을 하며 대통령의 도우미 역할을 한 적이 없습니다. 핵미사일을 흔들어대는 김정은의 대변인 노릇하고 있는 문재인과 투쟁하지는 못할지라도 도우미 노릇 계속하는 야당대표는 국민의 엄중한 심판을 면치 못할 것입니다.

白丁    2019-11-11 오후 9:56

8석 보스 유승민이 건방지게 통합조건이라는 걸 제시하며 109석 제1야당 대표 황교안을 갖고 놀고있다. 제 주제에 흡수 입당 받아주어도 황송해야 할 마당에…황교안은 배알도 없나. 진작 짐작은 했으나 이정도로 한심한 쪼다일 줄은 몰랐다. 한국당 싹수가 노랗다. 유승민 받아들이는 순간 폭망할 줄 알아라. 김문수가 희망이다. 김지사님이 제대로 정신박힌 인물 규합해서 당 하나 만들었으면 좋으련만... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “북한 선원 강제추방으로 파생되는 모든 문제의 책임은 대한민국 정부에 있다” 20개 인권단체 공동성명 “북한은 강제송환 선원의 생명을 해치지 말라” 이지영 국제문제로 비화되고 있는 문재인 정권의 북한 선원 2명 강제북송에 대해 북한인권단체, 변호사단체, 납북피해자가족단체, 민간대북방송 등 20개 단체(이하 20개 단체)가 공동성명서를 발표했다. 이들은 성명서에서 “고문위험 국가로의 추방·송환·인도를 금지한 유엔고문방지협약 제3조 등 국제법과 국내법을 위반하고 북한 선원 2명을 성급하게 ‘추방’한 데 대해 대한민국 정부를 규탄한다”고 밝히며 다음과 같이 요구했다. ▲ 남북한 사이에는 범죄혐의자 인도에 관한 협정이 없으므로 강제송환은 불법이며 이에 관여한 정부기관 책임자들과 관계자들은 책임 추궁 대상이다. ▲ 북한 선원 2명을 북한으로 ‘추방’한 것은 대한민국 정부이므로 북한당국이 두 사람을 어떻게 취급하는지 추적하고 확인하는 것은 대한민국 정부의 책임이다. ▲ 북한당국은 송환된 두 사람의 현재 상황과 앞으로의 계획을 공개하고 고문이나 비인간적 처우를 하지 말아야 하며, 사형 등 극단적인 처벌을 하지 않아야 한다. ▲ 유엔과 유엔회원국들의 우려 표명을 요청한다. ▲ 대한민국 국회는 진상조사를 해야 한다.  (조갑제닷컴 발췌) ------------------------------------------------------------------ 귀순 오징어잡이배서 노트북·스마트폰 발견 정부가 귀순 의사를 밝힌 북한 선원 2명을 강제 북송한 것을 두고 논란이 계속되는 가운데, 국정원이 이들이 타고 온 어선에서 용도를 알 수 없는 노트북과 전자기기를 발견했던 것으로 11일 확인됐다.  이날 국회 정보위 핵심 관계자에 따르면, 국정원은 해당 어선에서 중국산 '레노보(Lenovo)' 노트북, 북한산 스마트폰(모델명 평양 2418), 미국산 '가민(Garmin)' GPS 장치, 8기가 용량의 SD 카드 등을 발견했다고 정보위에 문건으로 보고했다. (조선일보 발췌) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 이들이  레노보 노트북과   미국 가민 업체   지피에스가있다는게  신기함  레노보는  중국산 이지만  가격이 높음   미국에서도 보통  1500불 선,   가민도 미국 돈으로  수백불 하는데  북한으로 치면 고가 이런걸  가난한  어부들이 가지고 있다는게  의심스러운데  이들이 혹시  고위간부들  자식들이 아닐까? 북한에서 비상사태가 발생하고 이들이  비밀 자료를 컴터에  가지고  탈북한게 아닌가 싶다  이에  문빨갱이가   다급하게  수사도 제대로 안하고   바로 돌려보낸것이 아닌가  뇌피셜 해본다   / 일베 전라도는정신병+212019.11.12 10:05:29  노트북하고 메모리 카드 가져왔다는 건 북한 군부대 기밀 문서 털어서 가져왔다는 거지.. 그래서 북한 새끼들이 즉각 송환하라고 데프콘 떨어진 거고 통일부 새끼들 거짓말로 둘러대면서 탈북자들이 자발적 송환 원했다고 새빨간 거짓말 해대는 거임. 16명 살인은 처음부터 허구였고... 북한 군인 2명이 노트북과 메모리카드에 핵심 기밀 담아서 탈북한 거임. 3년전에도 북한 군인이 USB에 북한 보위부 명단과 업무 내용 가지고 탈북해서 NHK에 넘겼음. (검색하면 나옴) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WHIG Posted 19/08/2011 at 13:02 | Permalink @Michael Petek – what Keynesians, including Skidelsky, never seem to appreciate is the role of saving and capital formation. The Keynesian fixation with demand and demand management never deals with the supply side of the economy. If saving increases, the long run interest rate will fall and investment will become cheaper. This will promote longer-term economic growth, as Hayek et al have argued. The Keynesian idea that growth comes through high levels of demand is simply nonsense (see e.g Stephen Kates’ work on Say’s Law). These positions are further complicated by central bank control of interest rates, which Hayek realised. With a central bank currently creating inflation (via QE and by running low rates) or at the least preventing the necessary deflationary adjustments, it’s evident that prices will not fall – therefore we have stagflationary effects, albeit currently more moderate than those of the ’70s. Moreover, central bank control of interest rates also mean there is not a proper (i.e. market-determined) price of saving as interest rates are distorted by government manipulation. Government is currently forcing dissaving by running effectively negative interest rates; this has dire consequences for the long-term growth of the economy and the reallocation of resources from inefficient to efficient areas. I don’t see how ‘future expectations’ affect the Keynes-Hayek debate. The Keynes-Hayek debate is between those who believe an economy can be managed successfully and those who do not. 저축의 역할에 관한 케인즈와 하이에크의 차이를 간결하게  설명한 글. 출처 iea ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 조선업 10월 수주, 中 제치고 압도적 1위.. 점유율 86% ---다행히 반가운 뉴스도 있다. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Way You Look Tonight https://youtu.be/tWsJHwBTJAE Frank Sinatra - The Way You Look Tonight (Lyrics) https://youtu.be/1gab2Vuz2Nk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ nitp   Scientists just discovered fasting triggers stem cell regeneration and halts tumor progression https://www.getholistichealth.com/78599/fasting-stem-cell-regeneration-tumor-progression/ …   Is this analogous to the stressors that trigger resilience that @nntaleb talks about? Anyone?   과학자들의 발견에 따르면 단식은 스템 셀을 재생시키며, 종양을 저지한다.     @npandey25 A ritual or a routine in the Hindu culture (not religion) that coincides with this thought is called eka-dashi. One does a fast every eleventh day. The layman confuses it with a religious practice. The wise understand that it was a scientific need summed up for the citizens.   @secoemolhado hormesis   @thereal_willsav Nassim talks explicitly about the benefits of fasting in anti fragile (Anti)Fragility and Convex Responses in Medicine  https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.00065.pdf ------------------------------------------------------------- Warren Mundine AO‏인증된 계정  How did Aboriginals, survived in this country of bush fires for 60k of years? They survived ice ages, rising & lowering of the seas & droughts. I cry every year of the loss of lives & properties. When are so called technically advanced ppl going to listen to how they did that? 호주의 원주민들은 관목숲 화재, 빙하기, 해수면의 증감, 가뭄 등을 어떻게 극복하고 살아남았을까? 왜 우리는 그들에게 그 방법을 묻지 않을까? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quillette‏  "If a worldview treats all discordant knowledge as threat, then it is an ideology. Its adherents learn to see themselves as guardians rather than seekers of the truth. The practical consequences of such a worldview can be devastating." 하나의 세계관이 모든 이단 지식을 위협으로 여기면, 그것 은 이데올로기이다. 그리고 그 세계관의 추종자들은 지식 의 탐구자들이 아니라 수호자들이 된다. 그러한 세계관의 결과는 파괴적이다. 'Sad Radicals' by Conor Barnes https://youtu.be/zRStWNhkQcA ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quillette "America’s 330-million people cannot permanently out-produce and out-earn China’s 1.4-billion. And seldom has the world seen a great power that strictly minded its own business, especially when that power was in its ascendancy." 미국의 3억3천만 국민은 언젠가 중국의 14억 인구보다 생 산량이나 소득에서 뒤처질 수 밖에 없다. 또 수퍼파워를 지 닌 대국은 그들의 융성기에는 특히 그렇지만, 세계에 대해 간섭을 해왔다. https://quillette.com/2019/11/11/why-taiping-2-0-isnt-in-the-cards-a-reply-to-chinas-looming-class-struggle/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Valeria‏  ‘So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.’ T.S.Eliot 어둠은 빛이 될 것이고, 고요는 춤이 될 것이다. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 법의 지배라는 이상의 쇠퇴 이소노미아, 영어의 아이소노미는 만인의 법 앞의 평등과 지도자의 책임을 가리키는 말이었다. 정치적 이상으로서 아이소노미라는 단어는 민주제보다 더 오래된 단어이다. “자유인이 되기 위해 우리 모두는 법의 하인이 되어야 한다.”는 키케로의 말은 법 안의 자유를 가장 간결하게 표현한 일이다. 1870년 무렵부터 법의 지배라는 원칙은 좌파들에 의해 공격받기 시작했다. 법률 실증주의자들에게는 특정 시점의 대중의 구체적인 의지가 정의의 유일한 기준이 되었다.   The Decline of the Rule of Law   Friedrich A. Hayek   Political wisdom, dearly bought by the bitter experience of generations, is often lost through the gradual change in the meaning of the words which express its maxims. Though the phrases themselves may continue to receive lip service, they are slowly denuded of their original significance until they are dropped as empty and commonplace. Finally, an ideal for which people have passionately fought in the past falls into oblivion because it lacks a generally understood name. If the history of political concepts is in general of interest only to the specialist, in such situations there is often no other way of discovering what is happening in our time than to go back to the source in order to recover the original meaning of the debased verbal coin which we still use. Today this is certainly true of the conception of the Rule of Law which stood for the Englishman's ideal of liberty, but which seems now to have lost both its meaning and its appeal.   There can be little doubt about the source from which the Englishmen of the late Tudor and early Stuart period derived their new political ideal for which their sons fought in the 17th century; it was the rediscovery of the political philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome which, as Thomas Hobbes complained, inspired the new enthusiasm for liberty. Yet if we ask precisely what were the features in the teaching of the ancients which had that great appeal, the answer of modern scholarship is none too clear. We need not take seriously the fashionable allegation that personal freedom did not exist in ancient Athens: whatever may have been true of the degenerate democracy against which Plato reacted, it certainly was not true of those Athenians whom, at the moment of supreme danger during the Sicilian expedition, their general reminded above all that they were fighting for a country in which they had "unfettered discretion to live as they pleased." But wherein did this freedom of the "freest of the free countries," as Nicias called it on the same occasion, appear to consist – both to the Greeks themselves and to the Elizabethans whose imagination it fired?   I suggest the answer lies in part in a Greek word which the Elizabethans borrowed from the Greeks but which has since gone into disuse; its history, both in ancient Greece and later, provides a curious lesson. Isonomia, which appears in 1598 in John Florio's World of Wordes as an Italian word meaning "equalitie of lawes to all manner of persons," two years later, in its Englished form "isonomy," is already freely used by Philemon Holland in his translation of Livy to render the description of a state of equal laws for all and of responsibility of the magistrates. It continued to be used frequently throughout the 17th century, and "equality before the law," "government of law," and "rule of law," all seem to be later renderings of the concept earlier described by the Greek term.   Equal Laws for All The history of the word in ancient Greek is itself instructive. It was a very old term which had preceded demokratia as the name of a political ideal. To Herodotus it was "the most beautiful of all names" for a political order. The demand for equal laws for all which it expressed was originally aimed against tyranny, but later came to he accepted as a general principle from which the demand for democracy was derived. After democracy had been achieved, the term continued to be used as a justification and 'later, as one scholar suggests, perhaps as a disguise of the true character of democracy: because democratic government soon proceeded to destroy that very equality before the law from which it derived its justification. The Greeks fully understood that the two concepts, although related, did not mean the same thing. Thucydides speaks without hesitation of an "isonomic oligarchy," and later we find isonomia used by Plato quite deliberately in contrast to, rather than in vindication of, democracy.   In the light of this development the celebrated passages in Aristotle's Politics in which he discusses the different kinds of democracy, even though he no longer uses the term isonomia, read like a defense of this old ideal. Readers will probably remember how he stresses that "it is more proper that law should govern than anyone of the citizens," that the persons holding supreme power "should be appointed only guardians and servants of the law," and particularly how he condemns the kind of government under which "the people govern and not the law." Such a government, according to him, cannot be regarded as a free state: "for when the government is not in the laws, then there is no free state, for the law ought to be supreme over all things"; he even contends that "any such establishment which centers all power in the votes of the people can not, properly speaking, be called a democracy, for their decrees can not be general in their extent." Together with the equally famous passage in the Rhetorics, in which he argues that "it is of great moment that well-drawn laws should themselves define all the points they can and leave as few as may be for the decision of the judges," this provides a fairly coherent doctrine of government by law.   How much all this meant to the Athenians is shown by the account given by Demosthenes of a law introduced by an Athenian under which "it should not be lawful to propose a law affecting any one individual, unless the same applied to all Athenians," because he was of the opinion that, "as every citizen has an equal share in civil rights, so everybody should have an equal share in the laws." Although, like Aristotle, Demosthenes no longer uses the term isonomia, the statement is little more than a paraphrase of the old concept.   17th-Century Rediscovery A characteristic dispute between Hobbes and Harrington, from which, I believe, the modern use of the "government by laws and not by men" derives, indicates how alive these views of the ancient philosophers were to the political thinkers of the 17th century. Hobbes had described it as "just another error of Aristotle's politics that in a well-ordered commonwealth not men should govern but the law." Harrington countered that the "art whereby a civil society is instituted and preserved upon the foundation of common right or interest" is "to follow Aristotle and Livy … the empire of laws, not of men."   To the 17th-century Englishmen, it seems, the Latin authors, particularly Livy, Cicero, and Tacitus, became increasingly the more important sources of political philosophy. But, even if they did not go to Holland's translation of Livy where they would have found the word, it was still the Greek ideal of isonomia which they met at all the crucial points. Cicero's Omnes legum servi sumus ut liberi esse possumus [we are all servants of the laws in order that we may be free] (repeated later, almost word for word, by Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Kant) is perhaps the most concise expression of the ideal of freedom under the law. During the classical period of the Roman Law, it was once more understood that there was no real conflict between freedom and the law, their generality, certainty, and the restrictions they placed on the discretion of the authority, which was the essential condition of freedom. This condition lasted until the strict law (ius strictum) was progressively abandoned in the interest of a new social policy. As a distinguished student of Roman Law, F. Pringsheim, has described this process 'which started under the Emperor Constantine:   The absolute empire proclaimed together with the principle of equity the authority of the imperial will unfettered by the barrier of law. Justinian with his learned professors brought this process to its conclusion.   Struggle for Economic Freedom When it comes to show what the Englishmen of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries made of the classical tradition they had rediscovered, any brief account must inevitably consist mainly of quotations. But many of the most telling and instructive expressions of the central doctrine as it developed are less well known than they deserve. Nor is it generally remembered today that the decisive struggle between King and Parliament which led to the recognition and elaboration of the Rule of Law was fought mainly over the kind of economic issues which are again the center of controversy today. To the 19th-century historians the measures of James I and Charles I which produced the conflict seemed antiquated abuses without topical interest. Today, some of these disputes have an extraordinarily familiar ring. (In 1628 Charles I refrained from nationalizing coal only when it was pointed out to him that it might cause a rebellion!)   Throughout the period it was the demand for equal laws for all citizens by which Parliament opposed the King's efforts to regulate economic life. Men then seem to have understood better than they do today that the control of production always means the creation of privilege, of giving permission to Peter to do what Paul is not allowed to do. The first great statement of the principle of the Rule of Law, of certain and equal laws for all and of the limitation of administrative discretion, is contained in the Petition of Grievances of 1610; it was caused by new regulations for building in London and the prohibition of the making of starch from wheat which the King had made. On this occasion the House of Commons pleaded:   Among many other points of happiness and freedom which Your Majesty's subjects of this kingdom have enjoyed under your royal progenitors, Kings and Queens of this realm, there is none which they have accounted more dear and precious than this, to be guided and governed by the certain rule of law, which giveth both to the head and the members that which of right belongeth to them, and not by any uncertain and arbitrary form of government…. Out of this root hath grown the indisputable right of the people of this kingdom, not to be subject to any punishment that shall extend their lives, lands, bodies, or goods, other than such as are ordained by the common law of this land, or the statutes made by their common consent in Parliament.   The further development of what contemporary Socialist lawyers have contemptuously dismissed as the Whig doctrine of the Rule of Law was closely connected with the fight against government-conferred monopoly and particularly with the discussion around the Statute of Monopolies of 1624. It was mainly in this connection that that great source of Whig doctrine, Sir Edward Coke, developed his interpretation of Magna Carta which led him to declare (in his second Institutes):   If a grant be made to any man, to have the sole making of cards or the sole dealing with any other trade, that grant is against the liberty and freedom of the subject … and consequently against this great charter.   We have already noticed the characteristic positions taken on the critical point of executive discretion by Hobbes and Harrington respectively. We are not interested here in tracing the further steps in the development of the doctrine and shall pass over even its classical exposition by John Locke, except for the rarely noticed modern justification which he gives it. Its aim is to him what contemporary writers have called the "taming of power":   Laws made and rules set … to limit the power and moderate the dominion of every part and member of society.   The form in which the doctrine became the common property of an Englishmen was determined, however, as is probably always true in such cases, more by the historians who presented the achievements of the revolution to later generations than by the writings of the political theorists. Thus, if we want to know what the tradition in question meant to the Englishman of the late eighteenth or early 19th century, we can hardly do better than turn to David Hume's History of England which indeed is to a large extent an interpretation of political progress from "government of will" to "government of law." There is particularly one passage, referring to the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641, which shows what he regarded as the chief significance of the constitutional developments of the 17th century:   No government, at that time, appeared in the world, nor is perhaps found in the records of any history, which subsisted without a mixture of some arbitrary authority, committed to some magistrate; and it might reasonably, beforehand, appear doubtful whether human society could ever arrive at that state of perfection, as to support itself with no other control, than the general and rigid maxims of law and equity. But the Parliament justly thought that the King was too eminent a magistrate to be trusted with discretionary power, which he might so easily turn to the destruction of liberty. And in the event it has been found that, though some inconveniencies arise from the maxim of adhering strictly to law, yet ,the advantages so much overbalance them, as should render the English forever grateful to the memory of their ancestors who, after repeated contests, at last established that noble principle.   Later, of course, this Whig doctrine found its classic expression in many familiar passages of Edmund Burke. But if we want a more precise statement of its content we have to turn to some of his lesser contemporaries. A characteristic statement which has been attributed to Sir Philip Francis (but which probably occurs in the Junius letters) is the following:   The government of England is a government of law. We betray ourselves, we contradict the spirit of our laws, and we shake the whole system of English jurisprudence, whenever we entrust a discretionary power over the life, liberty, or fortune of the subject to any man, or set of men, whatsoever, on the presumption that it will not be abused.   The fullest account of the rationale of the whole doctrine which I know occurs, however, in the chapter "Of the Administration of Justice" in Archdeacon Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy:   The first maxim of a free state is, that the laws be made by one set of men, and administered by another; in other words, that the legislative and the judicial character be kept separate. When these offices are united in the same person or assembly, particular laws are made for particular cases, springing oftentimes from partial motives, and directed to private ends: whilst they are kept separate, general laws are made by one body of men, without forseeing whom they will affect; and, when made, must be applied by the other, let them affect whom they will….   Parliament knows not the individuals upon whom its acts will operate: it has no case or parties before it: no private designs to serve: consequently, its resolutions will be suggested by the consideration of universal effects and tendencies, which always produce impartial and commonly advantageous regulations.   Here, I suggest, we have nearly all the elements which together produce the complex doctrine which the 19th century took for granted under the name of the Rule of Law. The main point is that, in the use of its coercive powers, the discretion of the authorities should be so strictly bound by laws laid down beforehand that the individual can foresee with fair certainty how these powers will be used in particular instances; and that the laws themselves are truly general and create no privileges for class or person because they are made in view of their long-run effects and therefore in necessary ignorance of who will be the particular individuals who will be benefited or harmed by them. That the law should be an instrument to be used by the individuals for their ends and not an instrument used upon the people by the legislators is the ultimate meaning of the Rule of Law.   Since this Rule of Law is a rule for the legislator, a rule about what the law ought to be, it can, of course, never be a rule of the positive law of any land. The legislator can never effectively limit his own powers. The rule is rather a meta-legal principle which can operate only through its action on public opinion. So long as it is generally believed in, it will keep legislation within the bounds of the Rule of Law. Once it ceases to be accepted or understood by public opinion, soon the law itself will be in conflict with the Rule of Law.   As the establishment of the Rule of Law in England was the outcome of the slow growth of public opinion, the result was neither systematic nor consistent. The theorizing about it was mainly left to foreigners who, in explaining English institutions to their compatriots, had to try to make explicit and to give the appearance of order to a set of seemingly irrational traditions which yet mysteriously secured to the Englishman a degree of liberty scarcely known on the Continent.   These efforts to embody into a definite program for reform what had been the result of historical growth at the same time could not but show that the English development had remained curiously incomplete. That English law should never have drawn such obvious conclusions from the general principle as formally to recognize the principle nulla poena sine lege, or to give to the citizen an effective remedy against wrongs done him by the state (as distinguished from its individual agents), or that English constitutional development should not have led to the provision of any built-in safeguards against the infringement of the Rule of Law by routine legislation, seemed curious anomalies to the Continental lawyers who wished to imitate the British model.   The demand for the establishment of the Rule of Law in the Continental countries also became to some extent the conscious aim of a political movement, which had never been the case in England. Indeed, for a time in France and for a somewhat longer period in Germany, this demand was the very heart of the liberal program. In France it reached its height during the July monarchy when Louis Philippe himself proclaimed it as a basic principle of his reign: "Liberty consists only in the rule of laws." But neither the reign of Napoleon III nor the Third Republic provided a favorable atmosphere for the further growth of this tradition. And although France made some important contributions in adapting the English principle to a very different governmental structure, it was in Germany that the theoretical development was carried furthest. In the end it was the German conception of the Rechtsstaat which not only guided the liberal movements on the Continent but became characteristic of the European governmental systems as they existed until 1914.   This continental development is very instructive because there the efforts to establish the Rule of Law met from the very beginning conditions which arose in England only much later – the existence of a highly developed central administrative apparatus. This had grown up unfettered by the restrictions which the Rule of Law places on the discretionary use of coercion. Since these countries were not willing to dispense with its machinery, it was clear that the main problem was how to subject the administrative power to judicial control. It is a matter of comparative detail that in fact separate administrative courts were created to enforce the elaborate system evolved to restrain the administrative agencies. The main point is that the relations between these agencies and the citizen were systematically subjected to legal rules ultimately to be applied by a court of law. The German lawyers indeed, and with justice, regarded the creation of administrative courts as the crowning achievement of their efforts toward the Rechtsstaat. There could hardly have been a more grotesque and more harmful misjudgment of the Continental position by an eminent lawyer than A. V. Dicey's well-known contention that the existence of a distinct administrative law was in conflict with the Rule of Law.   Limits to Coercion The real flaw of the Continental system, which English observers sensed but did not understand, lay elsewhere. The great misfortune was that the completion of the Continental development turned on a point which to the general public inevitably appeared merely a minor legal technicality. To guide all administrative coercion by rigid rules of law was a task which could have been solved only after long experience. If the existing administrative agencies were to continue their functions, it was evidently necessary to allow them for a time certain limited spheres within which they could employ their coercive powers according to their discretion. With respect to this field the administrative courts were therefore given power to decide, not whether the action taken by an administrative agency was such as was prescribed by the law, but merely whether it had acted within the limits of its discretion. This provision proved to be the loophole through which, in Germany and France, the modern administrative state could grow up and progressively undermine the principle of the Rechtsstaat.   It cannot be maintained that this was an inevitable development. If the Rule of Law had been strictly observed, this might well have caused what David Hume had called "some inconveniences," and might even substantially have delayed some desirable developments. Although the authorities must undoubtedly be given some discretion for such decisions as to destroy an owner's cattle in order to stop the spreading of a contagious disease, to tear down houses to prevent the spreading of fire, or to enforce safety regulations for buildings, this need not be a discretion exempt from judicial review. The judge may want expert opinion to decide whether the particular measures were necessary or reasonable. There ought to be the further safeguard that the owners affected by such decision are entitled to full compensation for the sacrifice they are required to make in the interest of the community.   The important point is that the decision is derived from a general rule and not from particular preferences which the policy of the government follows at the moment. The machinery of government, so far as it uses coercion, still serves general and timeless purposes, not particular ends. It makes no distinction between particular people. The discretion conferred is a limited discretion in the sense that the agent is to carry out the sense of a general rule. That this rule cannot be made wholly explicit or precise is the result of human imperfection. That it is in principle, however, still a matter of applying a general rule is shown by the fact that an independent and impartial judge, who in no way represents the policy of the government of the day will be able to decide whether the action was or was not in accordance with the law.   No Permanent Achievement The suspicion with which Dicey and other English and American lawyers viewed the Continental position was thus not unjustified, even though they had misunderstood the causes of the state of affairs which existed there. It was not the existence of an administrative law and of administrative courts which was in conflict with the Rule of Law, but the fact that the principle underlying these institutions had not been carried through to its conclusion. Even at the time when, in the later part of the last century, the ideal of the Rechtsstaat had gained its greatest influence, the more deliberate efforts made on the Continent had not really succeeded in putting it into actual practice as fully as had been the case in England. There still remained there, as an American observer (A. B. Lowell) then described it, much of the kind of power which "most Anglo-Saxons feel … is in its nature arbitrary land ought not to be extended further than is absolutely necessary." And before the principle of the Rechtsstaat was completely realized and the remnants of the police state finally driven out, that old form of government began to reassert itself under the new name of Welfare State.   At the beginning of our century, the establishment of the Rule of Law appeared to most people one of the permanent achievements of Western civilization. Yet the process by which this tradition has been slowly undermined and eventually destroyed had even then been underway for nearly a generation. And today it is doubtful whether there is anywhere in Europe a man who can still boast that he need merely keep within the law to be wholly independent, in earning his livelihood, from the discretionary powers of arbitrary authority.   Socialist Inroads The attack on the principles of the Rule of Law was part of the general movement away from liberalism which began about 1870. It came almost entirely from the intellectual leaders of the socialist movement. They directed their criticism against practically everyone of the principles which together make up the Rule of Law. But initially it was aimed mainly against the ideal of equality before the law. The socialists understood that if the state was to correct the unequal results which in a free society different gifts and different luck would bring to different people, these had to be treated unequally. As one of the most eminent legal theorists of Continental socialism, Anton Menger, explained in his Civil Law and the Propertyless Classes (1890):   By treating perfectly equally all citizens, without regard to their personal qualities and economic positions, and admitting unlimited competition between them, it was brought about that the production of goods was increased without limit, but also the poor and weak had only a small share in that increased output. The new economic and social legislation attempts therefore to protect the weak against the strong and to secure for them a moderate share in the good things of life. We know today that there is no greater injustice than to treat as equal what is in fact unequal.   A few years later, Anatole France was to give wide circulation to the similar ideas of his French socialist friends in the much quoted gibe about "the majestic equality of the laws, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, to steal bread." Little did the countless well-meaning persons who have since repeated this phrase realize that they were giving currency to one of the cleverest attacks on the fundamental principles of liberal society.   The systematic campaign which during the last sixty years has been conducted against all the constituent parts of the tradition of the Rule of Law mostly took the form of alleging that the particular principle in question had never really been in force, that it was impossible or impracticable to achieve it, that it had no definite meaning, and, in the end, that it was not even desirable. It may well be true, of course, that none of these ideals can ever be completely realized. But, if it is generally held that the law ought to be certain, that legislation and jurisdiction ought to be separate functions, that the exercise of discretion in the use of coercive powers should be strictly limited and always subject to judicial control, etc., these ideals will be achieved to a high degree. Once they are represented as illusions and people cease to strive for their realization, their practical influence is bound to vanish rapidly. And this is precisely what has happened.   The attacks against those features of the Rule of Law were directly determined by the recognition that to observe them would prevent an effective control of economic life by the state. The economic planning which was to be the socialist means to economic justice would be impossible unless the state was able to direct people and their possessions to whatever task the exigencies of the moment seemed to require. This, of course, is the very opposite of the Rule of Law.     Concept of Justice Abandoned At the same time, another and perhaps even more fundamental process helped to speed up that development. Jurisprudence abandoned all concern with those metalegal criteria by which the justice of a given law can alone be determined. For legal positivism the concrete will of the majority on a particular issue became the only criterion of justice applicable in a democracy. On this basis it became impossible even to argue about – or to persuade anybody of – the justice or injustice of a law. To the lawyer who regards himself as a mere technician intent upon implementing the popular will, there can be no problem beyond what is in fact the law. To him the question whether a law conforms to general principles of justice is simply meaningless. The concept of the Rechtsstaat, which originally had implied certain requirements about the character of the laws, thus came to mean no more than that everything the government did must be authorized by a law – even if only in the sense that the law said that the government could do as it pleased.   Years before Hitler came to power German legal scholars had pointed out that this complete emptying of the concept of the Rechtsstaat had reached a point where what remained no longer formed an obstacle to the creation of a totalitarian regime. Today it is widely recognized in Germany that this is exactly where that development led.   But if there is now a healthy reaction under way in German legal thinking, the state of British discussion on this crucial problem seems to be very much where it was in pre-Hitler Germany. The Rule of Law is generally represented as either meaningless or requiring no more than legality of all government action. According to Sir Ivor Jennings, the Rule of Law in its original sense, "is a rule of action for Whigs and may be ignored by others." In its modern sense, he believes, it "is either common to all nations or does not exist." In Professor W. A. Robson's opinion it is possible to "distinguish 'policy' from 'law' only in theory" and "it is a misuse of language to say that an issue is 'nonjusticiable' merely because the adjudicating authority is free to determine the matter by the light of an unfettered discretion; and equally incorrect to say that an issue is 'justiciable' when there happens to be a clear rule of law available to be applied to it." Professor W. Friedmann informs us that in Britain "the Rule of Law is whatever Parliament, as the supreme lawgiver, makes it" and that therefore, "the incompatibility of planning with the Rule of Law is a myth sustainable only by prejudice or ignorance." Yet another member of the same group even went so far as to assert that the Rule of Law would still be in operation if the majority voted a dictator, say Hitler, into power: "the majority might be unwise, and it might be wicked, but the Rule of Law would prevail. For in a democracy right is what the majority make it to be."   In one of the most recent treatises on English jurisprudence it is contended that in the sense in which the Rule of Law has been represented in the present discussion, it "would strictly require the reversal of legislative measures which all democratic legislatures have found essential in the last half century." That may well be. But would those legislatures have regarded it as essential to pass those measures in this particular form if they had understood that it meant the destruction of what for centuries, at home and abroad, had been regarded as the essence of British liberty? Was it really essential for social improvement that law after law should have given ministers powers for "prescribing what under this Act has to be prescribed"? About one thing there can be no doubt: this is essential to the progress of socialism.   [This article was originally published in The Freeman: April 20, 1953 (part I), May 4, 1953 (part II).] -----------------------------------------------------------------