The Rule of Law Versus Welfare Totalitarianism

This chapter sets out the road that leads from human freedom as presupposed also in science to the moral obligation of treating every person always as an end in itself and from there to natural freedom rights and hence natural law. We show how we thus obtain a clear and precise conception of the rule of law and how science and the rule of law complement each other as the pillars of modernity. We then elaborate on why implementing the rule of law in the guise of the modern constitutional states leads to two dilemmas: the Hobbes dilemma and the West Berlin, East Berlin dilemma. Due to these dilemmas, the constitutional state degenerates into the welfare state and from there to welfare totalitarianism. Against this background, we explain the current development towards actually existing postmodernism in terms of the conjunction of four elements: (1) political scientism; (2) intellectual postmodernism; (3) welfare state; and (4) crony capitalism.