On March 4th, retired US Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote the infamous "Roe vs. Wade" decision legalizing abortion, died at age 90.

When he was appointed to the court in 1970 by President Richard Nixon, he was considered to be another conservative like Warren Burger, his fellow Minnesotan. Needless to say, he didn't stay conservative for long.

Ironically, Blackmun was Nixon's third choice, after the Senate rejected judges Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell.

The death of a liberal icon seems an appropriate time to deal with this question:

Despite the ever-increasing number of laws that are supposed to make things better, why is everything, in fact, getting worse?

First off, let us consider that there are basically two ways to view the abstract concept of law. The first way is the traditional conservative view, which is that law is a purely negative construct. Law exists solely to prevent injustice from being done. Certainly, most of the Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights embody this view.

These collections of laws are negative restrictions on man's behavior, or the actions of the government, as opposed to expressing what is "good." They intone what should not be done, as opposed to what would be good if it were done.

For example, the first amendment does not say that free speech necessarily leads to good things being said. It merely states that Congress will not restrict it.

The second viewpoint implies that law should make things "better." This, of course, is the liberal position, and is quite different from simply preventing injustice.

At best, the liberal argues, the conservative approach is neutral with regard to improving the lot of mankind. Nothing good is added; nothing good is removed. Why not use the law to improve things?

Sad to say, the answer is glaringly obvious: It doesn't work.

In a misguided effort to improve the mother's quality of life, more than 1 million abortions are performed each year. In order to allow "death with dignity," physicians might now act as hired killers. In order to prevent race/sex discrimination, organizations can be forced to hire on the basis of race/sex only. In order to foster "competition," great and successful companies are broken up, usually to the detriment of the consumer.

Even though he should be bolstered by the undeniable fact of his opponents' perpetual failure, the conservative seems unable to muster arguments against the liberal view. Thus, the liberal view triumphs everywhere and always, and things continue to get worse. More laws are passed every day to make things better, but the things affected by the laws continue to get worse.

Why is the conservative powerless to stem the onslaught?

Briefly, the answer is tied up in a concept born during the Reformation--the nation state. These days, the words nation, state, and country are essentially synonymous, but they should not be.

A country is simply the largest independent political unit. A state is a geographical division that is governed by the same set of laws. A state may also be a country, of course. A nation is a group of people who have their own sense of individual and distinct identity, culture, language, religious customs, traditions, AND the willingness to fight to maintain their existence.

For example, we often hear of the Sioux "nation," even though they did not possess a state with boundaries. The Armenians are a nation that has also been, at times, a country and a state, and even a stateless nation.

Under a nation state, a person's natural loyalty to his nation is now transferred, or at least mirrored to a political unit.

As such, although the conservatives correctly identify the errors and problems of this country, they are unable to stop the endless series of laws that continue to make the situation worse. This is because they see, as do almost all people of the modern Western world, their own state to be their nation. Thus blinded, they cannot oppose efforts to improve their nation!

In a worst case scenario, Hitler was able to rise to power on the backs of the Prussian nation identifying with the "state" of Germany.

The second law of thermodynamics implies the increasing entropy of the universe. As popularly described, entropy is the attribute expressing the disorder or randomness of a system.

No one would dispute that this country is doing its best to prove the second law.