Hmm, think of it in terms of evolution. People try different things and find what works for them. In most cases, people can't explain where the law came from, it's tacit, it's just part of their culture, what you grew up with. It's enforced by the groups you belong to. It's a simple as in a family the parents are in charge and the children listen up to a certain age. Or the church you go to might have rules for belonging to it and they enfarce those rules. In that move, "The Cathedral by the Sea," the guild required men to marry by a certain age and if they didn't kicked them out of the guild.
The difference is that between bottom-up, local government and top-down, centralized government. The difference too is that much of that social order has been replaced by the state.
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler
Helena (01-12-2019)
That's true. It freezes the law. As a people change, it will apply to them less and less. That may mark the decline of a culture into a civilization (forget who made that distinction between culture and civilization).
As CCitzen says, it can be changed, amended, but it's not really a people changing it, but the government created by that constitution, politicians (leaders not representatives) changing it to serve their self-interests.
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler
CCitizen (01-13-2019)
I think his point was that the constitution no longer has the force of custom and ingrained behavior. A written constitution is a constitution that has ceased to exist as a moral force in men's lives. Now de Maistre was old school. "This craze for a constitution"...for him a constitution was a way of life not a legal text.
Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.
~Alain de Benoist
Chris (01-12-2019)