I sometimes encounter the idea that, were it not for laws against assault, I would race down the street, waving some weapon or other (and Heaven knows I've got some choice in that matter), striking down women, children, and the infirm. Let us clear up something.

I avoid such behavior not because the law has established moral behavior, but because I have the moral law within me.

Kant: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.

Laws are poor ways to create behavior; they are much more successful when they codify what people already believe. Examine Prohibition, that rousing success, and its modern counterpart, the War on Drugs. People who choose not to obey those laws are persecuted to ludicrous extents, and yet the behavior continues. Drug use is down among teens but steady elsewhere. The Eighteenth Amendment did not stop people from drinking bootleg hooch and listening to the jazz. Now the morality of environmental laws, affirmative action, and minimum wage is debatable. Even for one like me, who is rather uncomfortable arguing anything but a priori principles. But such laws cannot succeed if they do not reflect the behavior people would tend to engage in in any case.

Such laws can only occur in a society that has sufficient capital to focus on such things, rather than being preoccupied with the wolf which is right outside the door. Decent societies progress, in charity and in wisdom. A society unready for such laws might not survive them.

Too Hegelian a view of history? Tant pis, man.