The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

302 THE FREEMAN Mayonly with situations that may arisein futuro. Such laws ought to laydown general or abstract principles,and they ought never to operateretroactively. Laws of generalprinciple and of universal applicationare, as the Latin word indicates,the only true leges. Theseare to be distinguished from privileges,or private or special rights,which the Latin privatum-leges orprivilegium describes. Privilegesgranted· in special situations or toparticular groups are bound to resultin the deprivation of rightsin all other situations and to allother groups. Only where virtuallyall members of a society agree thatthe granting of special privilegesor rights to persons holding aparticular status is desirable andin the interests of all groups oughtthey to be granted. If granted,they ought to be clearly defined asa special privilege. For a privateright to one group of necessity imposesnew corresponding burdensupon all other groups who arebound to respect it or give it effect.What is the privilegedgroup's meat may well become thenonprivileged or underprivilegedgroup's poison.To illustrate, discriminatorylaws against the Negro - in education,in employment, in theownership or use of propertyareof a character which cannot besupported in a free society forthey specifically deny to one groupof persons .within the communityrights to which all other groupsare admitted. The white man whoclaims a right to be free from thepresence of black men in his neighborhoodseeks to deny to the blackman the same right which he assertsfor himself. That right is theright to live where he wishes, andit is a right that ought to be enjoyedby all men regardless of theircolor. The determination of whereeach wishes to live ought not to bethe subject of a penal law. If theblack man wishes to purchase ahouse in the white man's neighborhood,it is an abridgment of hisfreedom to prohibit him so doing.If the black man wishes to send hischildren to the school in which thechildren are predominantly white,it is an assault upon the blackman's freedom and, indeed, uponthe freedom of all members of thecommunity to prevent him fromdoing precisely that.But if the black man is to befreed from the shackles of hiscolor status, it cannot be by thecoercion of the white man. Thewhite man, no less than the black,is capable of being enslaved. Thus,it is no less an abridgment of thewhite man's freedom to deprivehim of the right to sell or disposefreely of his property to whomeverhe chooses than it is to prohibitthe black man from purchas-