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Bonus Quotation of the Day…

… is from page 24 of the 1998 Liberty Fund reprint of John Maxcy Zane’s 1927 volume, The Story of Law:

Each one of the community was driven to conform to customary ways of acting.  This fundamental instinct is still as intense in us as in the original man.  It is for law the most important instinct of the animal man, for upon it and not upon force or authority, has depended the growth and development of law.  But it fixes, once and for all, the important fact that law cannot be changed any faster than the mass of the community changes in opinion or belief.  The most absolute despot that has ever lived, the force of legislation or the irrefutable arguments for change, cannot impose upon men a change in law until the mass of the community is ready to accept or has already accepted the change.

Unlike legislation, which is the result both of human action and of human design, law is the result of human action but not of human design.

This truth, explained so eloquently by Zane in his book, lies at the heart of why I regard voting in political elections to be far less important than most people think voting to be.

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