How is it that the law enforcer itself does not have to keep the law? How is it that the law permits the state to lawfully engage in actions which, if undertaken by individuals, would land them in jail? These are among the most intriguing issues in political and economic philosophy. More specifically, the problem of law that itself violates law is an insurmountable conundrum of all statist philosophies. The problem has never been discussed so profoundly and passionately as in this essay by Frederic Bastiat from 1850. The essay might have been written today. It applies in ever way to our own time, which is precisely why so many people credit this one essay for showing them the light of liberty. Bastiat's essay here is timeless because applies whenever and wherever the state assumes unto itself different rules and different laws from that by which it expects other people to live. And so we have this legendary essay, written in a white heat against the leaders of 19th century France, the reading of which has shocked millions out of their toleration of despotism. This new edition from the Mises Institute revives a glorious translation that has been out of print for a hundred years, one that circulated in Britain in the generation that followed Bastiat's death. This newly available translation provides new insight into Bastiat's argument. It is a more sophisticated, more substantial, and more precise rendering than any in print. The question that Bastiat deals with: how to tell when a law is unjust or when the law maker has become a source of law breaking? When the law becomes a means of plunder it has lost its character of genuine law. When the law enforcer is permitted to do with others' lives and property what would be illegal if the citizens did them, the law becomes perverted. Bastiat doesn't avoid the difficult issues, such as why should we think that a democratic mandate can convert injustice to justice. He deals directly with the issue of the expanse of legislation: It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our sentiments, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things. Law, because it has force for its necessary sanction, can only have the domain of force, which is justice. More from Bastiat's The Law: Socialism, like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds Government and society. And so, every time we object to a thing being done by Government, it concludes that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of education by the State - then we are against education altogether. We object to a State religion - then we would have no religion at all. We object to an equality which is brought about by the State then we are against equality, etc., etc. They might as well accuse us of wishing men not to eat, because we object to the cultivation of corn by the State. How is it that the strange idea of making the law produce what it does not contain - prosperity, in a positive sense, wealth, science, religion - should ever have gained ground in the political world? The modern politicians, particularly those of the Socialist school, found their different theories upon one common hypothesis; and surely a more strange, a more presumptuous notion, could never have entered a human brain. They divide mankind into two parts. Men in general, except one, form the first; the politician himself forms the second, which is by far the most important. Whether you buy one or one hundred, you can look forward to one of the most penetrating and powerful essays written in the history of political economy.
Excellent read. Ahead of his time, but like all before us (6 generations of Americans and 22 countries around the world) he was unable to connect the dots and unravel The Great Fraud perpetrated by foreign for-profit subcontractors “acting” in their roles however, on behalf of the foreign U.S., Inc and U.S.A., Inc (and the newest iteration U.S.A., LLC) now bankrupt invalidated for cause having no force or effect of law, found in breach of their respective service contracts (Constitutions). Best go read the Clearfield Doctrine, “they” are not your government and their franchises and affiliates thereof aren’t either (again foreign service subcontractors). There are excellent highlights and Bastiat calls it like it is if you know what to look for. If you know for example that you are not a “legal PERSON”, whereby Maxim of law a fiction, a mere thing has no authority over the living man/woman. You must status correct and i object to their unlawful and illegal conversion to claim your lawful internationally protected persons and expatriate from their bs as no evidence anywhere exists that you’re alive, the crooks made sure of it. No valid Oath of Office, and no adequate liability coverage means none of these actors ever assumed a “public office” and may not re-present as though the are anything other than a private for-hire service subcontractor in the business of proving “essential government services” and subsequently have no signature authority, no force or effect of “law”. Did you know their “BAR” and all other “private memberships” thereof (British Accredited Registry…doesn’t sound very American and no ABAR you are incorporated into the Crown Templar too) is actually incorporated as an entertainment company? Yeppers! “The Merry Men” of old with smoke and mirrors to boot. Are you entertained? I wonder what all the “volunteers” current incarcerated or held in prison will think of all this? Limited purely administrative “courts of equity” have no business in our shores and the True Bill is due and owing. There is no statute if limitations for fraud and “Fraud vitiates everything” Once discovered it is void and must be expunged as though it never were. Expunged these imposters now! Yes, buy this book and reserve your rights timely and without prejudice.
A book everyone should read.
Published by Eden Kollçinaku , 5 years ago
.
A Primer on Political Economy for ALL TIME
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 19 years ago
I became aware of Frederic Bastiat's work during the time of the "Agenda for America" in the middle 1990s, a time when the Republicans took over Congress, and for the first time since the late 1960s, there was a sense that REAL political change was in the offing. We now know that was not the case. Newt Gingrich notwithstanding (and I still have is "Essential Reading List" in my files, things did not change radically. Perhaps we should be thankful, for it is quite clear that the Founding Fathers (yes, they were men--although perhaps there was a female to male crossdresser amongst them) intended the three branches of government (Legislative, Judicial, Executive) not so much to work in harmony but to slow the pace of change to a rate by which REAL change would not register a 6.0 on the Richter scale of political-economic change! Frediric Bastiat's THE LAW was published shortly before his death, and after the great revolutions in Europe of 1848. In it, he sought to explain (and succeeds magnificently) the difference between Capitalism and Socialism, and why a nation should prefer the former as its economic system. The main basis for socialism, which he called LEGAL PLUNDER, and which we call "taxes" for the social good, is revealed in all its naked truth as larceny perpetrated on one group by another. One does not need to be a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, Skull & Bones, or any other elite political-social group to understand Bastiat's arguments, or their implications. This hornbook can be read by a 10th grader (and ought to be required reading for any High School diploma, as well as participation in Junior Achievement!). That many of my colleagues with Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctoral degress have never heard of this classic work is just short of a national travesty! If you think Greenberg, Milton Friedman, John Stuart Mill, or Marx and Engels had an edge on political-economic theory, you MUST read Bastiat. Keep it alongside your Constitution, when you find yourself forgetting the principles that have made America a great Nation.
A Classic Model for Free Society
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
Bastiat warns us not to kid ourselves about a kind, gentle, caring government. Like George Washington, Bastiat reminds us that law means force, and that any appeal to the law is ultimately an appeal to force. In appealing to the law, therefore, we must ask ourselves if we would be justified in using force to vindicate our appeal. Life, liberty, and property, Bastiat argues, are the rights which God has given to each individual by virtue of the fact that the individual exists, and that with or without government, an individual is justified in defending his or her life, liberty, and property. Ideally, governments should exist to defend these three basic God-given rights. As an individual, I cannot spend all of my time defending my life, liberty, and property, nor can my neighbors. Government is born when my neighbors and I come together to hire a sheriff to defend these rights full-time for us. The sheriff's authority to defend these rights on our behalf is derived from the authority of each of us individually to protect ourselves in these rights. Because government derives its authority from the aggregrate authority of individual citizens, government should not be allowed to do for me what I cannot legally do for myself. This is the foundation of Bastiat's argument, and when taken to its natural conclusion, it shows us that redistribution-of-wealth schemes that the government forces upon some members of society to benefit others are a potential threat to a free people. Social security, welfare, and other government entitlements are all examples of this. Bastiat referred to such government programs as "legalized plunder" which ultimately creates far more social problems than it solves. The recent presidential race has shown us just how weak and dependent Americans have become. Just as Bastiat predicted, every little social group is clamoring to get its own share of government entitlements, and politician are clamoring to pander to these groups in exchange for political power, even if it means continuing the disastrous economic course of deficits and staggering public debt which may someday threaten the country with bankruptcy and economic collapse. We should learn the lesson of communism--it isn't government's job to take care of us. Being responsible for our own subsistence, including the inherent risks involved in such responsibility, is the price we must pay for freedom and prosperity. If we succumb to the lure of government-provided security by means of legalized plunder, we will one day find ourselves bereft of the freedom which we once took for granted. Bastiat's classic shows us how to preserve a free society and avoid the consequences of legalized injustice
Bastiat's 'the Law
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
Does the government take care of you by making sure you are left free from interference by others? Or does it give form and substance to your freedom by making sure you are given, by the government, enough Maslowian scaffolding to get you within jumping distance of the last triangle of self-actualization at the top of the pyramid of your desires? That's always the question. I'd be free if only someone would pay off my mortgage, or do my homework, or abort my inconvenient child for me. Here in this book is a very good template to evaluate these alternative viewpoints, especially appropriate for smart high school kids, since it furnishes ammunition to carry them through most of the garbage they will find littered in their books, written on their classroom walls, and mincingly elaborated by their discontented, yet strangely power-hungry liberal law professors, all of whom will basically insist on refuting the truth of what Bastiat identifies as the central fact of state power: That the government is "not a breast that fills itself with milk." High school boys especially like that part. Yet this is what so many people think--and Keynes even monkeyed together some funny looking math to show how dollars taxed away and then re-spent by the government become supercharged, and are better for the economy than un-taxed and un-respent dollars held privately. Here is where he meets our Founding generation--all of whom saw how dangerous it was to cede too much function to any government, which of course would need more and more money to fund these activities. Am I straying from the point? No. Just look at our political contests: craven beg-fests for votes based on what the government can spend on you, or how the internet will bring it all "closer" to you. For your benefit. And if someone wants to take less from people in the first place, that's "spending [by the government] on the richest 1%"--who of course have had much more taken from them to begin with. Bastiat explains, in universal terms not hinged to any particular group of pilgrims, kings, or communists, how the law is enlisted in the plunder of the many by the few who control the law, and how law must be continually twisted into unjust forms to keep up the subsidies, the taxes, the programs, all designed to treat the same population differently. His greatest example, though, is to contrast liberty with the perversion of law, (and here he partakes in some cultural non-relativism) by using the image of a tribe of natives who flatten the noses, pierce the ears and lips, bend-up the feet, and depress the foreheads of their newborns, insisting these are signs of beauty. The same thing is done to our laws and our liberty by the socialist plunderers, according to Bastiat, unforgettably according to Bastiat. Would the next generation of any country be more or less likely to make a world-and-life-view out of sucking up to government employees for their prescription drugs, family planning, education, utility
Concise, Powerful, Elegant Defense of Liberty and the Law
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
When I read F.A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," I thought I had read the most inspired and compelling book ever to discredit socialism and other collective-isms. I was wrong...very wrong. I cannot believe Bastiat wrote "The Law" in the middle of the 19th century since it has so much applicability to the 20th (and soon to be 21st) century. If ever there was a concise and powerful argument for defending Liberty and the Law against every social engineer, this has to be it (only 75 pages!). Bastiat is a master of words and the analogy. Every lover of freedom who wishes to get a nutshell understanding of why Liberty and Law matters ought to read this book. Every enemy of freedom (e.g. liberals, socialists, communists, etc.) ought to fear it.
The most common sense logic written on government.
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
I read this book in 1980; at the time I was chairman of the democratic party in my county. I really began to do some serious soul searching. I finally concluded I was going to leave my party, as It no longer represented it's founder Mr Thomas Jefferson. This small simple easy to read book totally changed my life That same year I met Jim Hansen, he was making his first run for congress from the state of Utah, I made a deal with him, I would vote for him if he would read The Law by Bastiat. He promised, and I did. I received a nice letter from Jim after he was elected. " Never read a book that has so impressed me". P.S. "Find Yourself another copy, Im keeping Yours". Jim.Best three dollars ever spent. Ron Steele Moab, Utah
ThriftBooks sells millions of used books at the lowest everyday prices. We personally assess every book's quality and offer rare, out-of-print treasures. We deliver the joy of reading in recyclable packaging with free standard shipping on US orders over $15. ThriftBooks.com. Read more. Spend less.