Letter to the Editor

Dear Mr. Friedlander: Your disagreement with Mr. Dean over respect for the MBTA copyright serves to illustrate the dichotomy between the legal and the moral seen so often as a result of our many irrational laws. Laws properly are instruments for the protection of individual rights. When they instead abrogate these rights or create non-existent ones, it does not constitute force (or faith) for an individual to attempt to secure his rights by his own actions or to reject those fallacious rights erected by government. Meanwhile, as Mr. Dean points out, one should work to change the immoral laws responsible for the present situation. It may not be wise to follow this position to the letter in all cases (e.g., risking a lawsuit by violating the MBTA's alleged copyright), but one could not be accused of a moral breach for not doing so, as long as government is holding a gun. Any reader who is still dubious should imagine whether he, as owner of some industrial firm, would strive to obey some of the present "equal opportunity" laws, or whether he would reject them and try every way possible to hire men worthy of the employment he was offering.

Jerrold Meyer
Committee to Defend Individual Rights
Madison, Wisconsin