Lysander Spooner Quotes
Legally speaking, there are no such things as 'public rights,' as distinguished from individual rights. Legally speaking, there is no such creature or thing as 'the public.'
Spooner, Lysander. An Essay on the Trial by Jury. John P. Jewett and Company, 1852, p. 207.
While this principle is widely accepted in modern America, in the early 20th century this was a view considered radical, socialist and even communistic by many of the leading businessmen in the nation. For a president to utter these words, much less a Republican President of a rich, upper class background.
Note the use of the phrase “against the government.” One of the unique aspects of the American Constitution and The Bill of Rights is that the government is considered a potential and even probable infringer on the liberties of the people. It is almost as though the government was the potential enemy. Modern libertarians state this very explicitly and it is ever present in the views of both the right and left wings of American politics. Most centrists recoil at the thought that some citizens see the government as the enemy, but even in America there have been times where the government has infringed on the rights of citizens only to have the courts or future administrations and Congresses correct the error.
Most politicians and philosophers would argue that liberty is both an individual right and a group right. However there are money who do not recognize group rights and feel that they are inimical to individual rights.
The Catholic view on the subject varied from time to time, even with the same Pope. See {360616} for another quote from this Pope that gives a different point of view.
Lysander Spooner was an American individualist anarchist. He was also an abolitionist, entrepreneur, essayist, legal theorist, pamphletist, political philosopher, Unitarian, writer and a member of the First International.
