Bob Wilson’s latest continues a running battle between the would-be Natural Lawmen and the so-called Natural Outlaws. Wilson, of course, is one of the Outlaws.

The origin of the debate is another Loompanics publication, The Myth of Natural Rights by L.A. Rollins 1983, which was an all-out attack on the natural rights/laws concept and was for the most part pretty convincing. Unconvinced, however, were some of the boys over at New Libertarian, including Murray Rothbard, George H. Smith, and NL editor Samuel Edward Konkin III. A theme issue of NL (“Showdown at the NL Corral”, NL No. 13, April 1985), pretty much favored Rothbard, Smith, and Konkin, but Wilson and others came back in NL No. 15 (Aug/Oct 1985) with an Outlaw rebuttal.

This might have been the end of it if Konkin hadn’t indulged in one of his most obnoxious habits in that issue—inserting footnotes to the text to rebut the rebuttal as it goes along. This irritated Wilson so much that he expanded his NL article into the present booklet so that he could develop his arguments more fully. Considering the excellent result, perhaps we should thank Sam for the favor.

The crux of the argument is whether or not there are laws of human behavior and morality which can be deduced by observing history and society and then used to govern our affairs in a more efficient and judicious manner. If there are such laws it could be a boon for the anarcho-libertarians. If everyone agrees and observes these laws, then society might be managed with a less authoritarian structure. Of course it could also be a boon to authoritarians, who might use natural laws as an excuse to strengthen scriptural and statutorial laws.

Wilson’s position is that there is no evidence to support the concept of natural law, that there is no consistency among those claiming there are such laws, and that there is no way to scientifically test any natural law nominee. This is a prosaic way of stating the argument. Wilson is on the attack and his razor wit and slashing sarcasm lay waste to the pro-natural law case. Typical of his ridicule is the booklet’s subtitle, “Or Don’t Put a Rubber on Your Willy,” a Monty Python version of Roman Catholic edicts on contraception, which Wilson uses many times to demonstrate the subjective and arbitrary character of a supposed “law of nature.”

Woven in are the familiar Wilsonian themes of agnosticism, cultural relativism, value imprinting, the liberating effects of technology, and the uncertainties ushered in with quantum physics. All neatly dovetail with his attack on the cryptic authoritarianism of the natural lawyers.

One of Wilson’s main points is that everything is part of nature, but that mystical (i.e., unprovable) ideals and ideologies such as natural law are themselves the most unnatural. I can’t resist quoting the words of John Robert Ward, amateur philosopher and professional custodian of my acquaintance, who expresses the same idea in this way: “What is is, and the rest don’t matter.”