The Law

Good thought provoking book. Definitely one to have on your bookshelf.

Bastiat is a magnificent thinker and writer. His ideas about the role of law and law as the protection against plundering by some against others, and the perversion of law to aid the powerful at the expense of the less powerful, are timeless. He wrote around the time of the 1848 French Revolution and was personally in the thick of it as an elected official, and passionately interested in persuading his fellow countrymen not to pursue self-defeating economic policies such as trade tariffs, monopolies and misguided government “philanthropy” — all of which he argues — successfully in my view— to be unjust to society in general. His fear, he writes, is that the revolutionaries were itching to sock it to the people they saw as socking it to them, and in the process of doing so would repeat the same mistakes as the government they were ousting, and thus set the stage for the next revolution, ad infinitum.

Bastiat crams a lot of wisdom, logic, and common sense into just fifty-five pages. Don’t let this deter you from reading the book but Bastiat is French and died on Christmas Eve, 1850. Yet his words resonate today. He was a great admirer of America because of its freedom and Constitution and the protection of individual liberties. In the foreword to the book written in 2007 by Loyola College economics professor Thomas J. DiLorenzo, however, Lorenzo speculates how Bastiat would have reacted to America’s Civil War. “It is unlikely that he would have considered the U.S. government’s military invasion of the Southern States in 1861, the killing of some 300,000 citizens, and the bombing, burning, and plundering of the region’s cities, towns, farms, and businesses as being consistent in any way with the protection of lives, liberties, and properties of those citizens as promised by the Declaration of Independence.” Bravo. No political correctness or revisionist history there. DiLorenzo goes on to say, “Anyone who reads this great essay along with other free-market classics, such as Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson and Murray Rothbard’s Power and Market, will possess enough intellectual ammunition to debunk the socialist fantasies of this or any other day.” Nuff said. Maybe I will just add a quote directly from Bastiat. “Nothing can enter the public treasury, in favor of one citizen or one class, but what other citizens and other classes have been forced to send to it.”

Prescient book for what happened to the U.S. At the time this book was written, the author considered the U.S. one of the most just nations, but he described perfectly what happens, and did happen, when you have an increase in the size of government, and the power of the legislators to legally plunder the citizens through the laws they enact.

This tiny book is written with breathless anticipation of knowing one does not have long to live. Bastiat wrote The Law in a concise and compelling in a way so that at times, I could only read a few pages before needing to put it down to think about what he had written. The book makes a case that we own ourselves, our past, present, and future. Loved the book. This book makes a great gift to young thinkers, it is about 1/4 thick and easy to tote around.

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This proto-libertarian writing by Bastiat stands along with Alexis de Tocqueville as the greatest 19th century political writing contributions to our country. Bastiat is easier to read and much faster. The whole of it in a sitting can be trying to read, though it did sparkle throughout. In any event, Bastiats view would likely be a libertarianism that few would suggest today. For example, even most modern libertarians and conservatives with libertarian streaks like lead-free paint. He might say it interferes with individual property and liberty rights. I really do not know where he would hold on that because though it would interfere with private property, but lead paint clearly was a threat to us, particularly small children and a 20th century Bastiat might appreciate it. Heres a taste of Bastiat I copied onto my computer: Law was the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. [T]he common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission that that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force—for the same reason—cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy. . . [E]very time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. . . We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want to religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain. Like or love it? Youll like or love him. Offended and love Obamacare and federal governments growth? You will think he is a proto-wing-nut.

This is probably the best book out there when it come to the philosophy of individualism and individual liberty. All principles are as true today as when it was written.

There are others that can and will write much more intelligent reviews, but Im writing this in support of the book and the ideas in it. To only boost the reviews by a micro fragment. In the United States, we have pastors and religious leaders telling us that we are to obey the laws that the state decrees because it is Gods will. That if man left to his own devices and desires will only seek atheism and destruction. Nothing can be a worse lie. It is the worse lie because it subjects man under other mens desires, making the many individuals of a country lower than the minority - the real inequality. This is cruel. It is the worse lie because it deviates reality that God has appointed and allows a few to override truth to use the force of law to their benefit. This is cruel. Personally, incredibly, at the end of reading this short book, I was not angered at politicians, though they are at the center of this issue. I was angered at so-called church leaders giving lies about what has been established before mans arrival, that is good as declared by the Creator, and calling it evil. They teach this to the masses, who sit in hours upon hours through these contorted messages that believe there is something bigger, better than this docile and passive lifestyle. Sadly, most people will never know that what they know inside of themselves is true. Religious leaders will never allow it. I find myself not wanting to fight against the politics of the day, but the religion that supports the state. Law is justice; it is to protect life, liberty, property. Thats it. To violate any of those is injustice. There is no gray area, no middle ground. Justice or injustice. Religious leaders in their warped mind tell their audience that legal plunder is ordained by God. Legal plunder is an injustice. God did not setup man to be violated by others: Existence, faculties, assimilation - in other words, personality, property - this is man. They perverse the law. They tell people of another religion. That officials that are ordained by God - the enlightened ones - however that occurred so that they have higher elevated thinking nobody knows, are to subject them by force a philanthropic spirit, but really is only their selfish will. So, somehow Gods salvation is not enough that we must play revolution roulette because we allow a group of men to take part in Gods acts. As if, God did not do enough in His decrees that we ought to subject ourselves to another god. Pastors, reverends, priests - most espouse that man needs to have guidelines by the state. Yet, you cant have guidelines by the state and keep liberty; it will all end in destruction, ironically. Yes, what they preach is a violation of what is true, of Gods Law. As Bastiat states: And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun - reject all systems, and try liberty - liberty , which is an act of faith in god and in HIs work.