Libertas

“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” ~ Frédéric Bastiat

Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

I reread The Law today. For such a profound book, I’m at a loss to describe it. Nothing comes close to giving it justice. After reading it, I clearly see the world of politics in a new light.

Such a simple little book destroys the claims and pretensions of politicians of both Left and Right.

Before, as a conservative, there was a general feeling of what I was for or against, but there was no inherent logic to the set of beliefs I held. I suspect that is also true for the modern liberal. We are told what to support and what to reject, but if asked why, how many would be able to explain the underlying philosophy of modern Conservatism or Liberalism.

It’s more a feeling or sense of bigotry. If those people are for it, I’m against it; if they’re against it, I’m for it. If my party is for it, I’ll support it.

It’s party over principle not necessarily because we reject principles, but because we are never taught and never have a chance to subscribe to principles. So, as a conservative, who believed in small government, laissez-faire economics, a “humble” foreign policy in 2000, I could easily follow along with the rest of the Republicans and support George W. Bush’s “Compassionate” Conservatism, the Patriot Act, and War on Terror after 9/11. It was so easy to move from one position to another.

How many liberals are doing the same with Obama? How many were up in arms over the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but are silent now that their party and president is in power? Where is the liberal anti-war movement now? Did they really care about the war and innocent victims in Iraq and Afghanistan or did they just hate Bush?

How many conservatives are guilty of the same hypocrisy of rightly condemning the bombing of Serbia under Clinton and the nation building of Somalia but then supporting Bush’s invasions and rebuilding of Afghanistan and Iraq?

What does it mean to be a conservative? What does it mean to be a liberal? Do conservatives or liberals even know what Liberalism means or stands for? How can people who claim to be liberal support the welfare State? How can they support Big Government? How can they support centralized planning and call themselves liberals?

All this confusion and nonsense is swept aside after reading The Law, because Bastiat teaches a simple principle: what an individual may not do, the collective may not do.

The Law is to protect life, liberty, and property, and no more! Any law that does not is illegitimate. Any law that takes from one group to give to the other is nothing but legalized plunder. This happens either through outright greed or misplaced philanthropy. But even in the case of philanthropy, it is unjust and immoral, because it is plunder. It is just as immoral and unjust to forcibly take against the will of an owner by the State as it would be by a gang of thieves.

Now we have something clear. Which party or politician rejects wholeheartedly legalized plunder? Which party or politician condemns the income tax or property tax?

Dr. Ron Paul

Which party encourages true Liberty?  Which party or politician consistently protects life, liberty, and property? None (except of course, Ron Paul)

Bastiat is a true gentleman and does not condemn the motives of his political opponents, much like Ron Paul does not. Instead he addresses and rejects the ideas and policies of force by the State. He rejects the idea that politicians can or should “manage” the  people “as if they were clay in the potter’s hand.”

His standard is liberty and the rejection of any force that goes beyond the protection of life, liberty and property. This idea too belonged to the Founding Fathers and citizens of the early Republic, but we do not live in that Republic. We live in a nation where the law is perverted, plunder is legalized, mass murder is sanctioned, and freedom is dismissed in favor of security.

Is it too late to reclaim it now that the law has been so perverted?

The Constitution is in shambles; the Republic is long gone. We live in an empire of lies and greed, but I at least can see through it’s propaganda. Frédéric Bastiat has given me that.

Recommended Books:

The Law by Frédéric Bastiat (Free Download)

Economics In One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt