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Bastiat's "The Law" (Occasional Paper, 123)

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I read "The Law" as part of my Civics course this year in highschool, and I'm SOOOOOOOO glad it was required. At 16, I'm scared to death at where my country is heading and this book contains the answers for a government and law system that'd make a country I'd be proud of in every way. This is a book I'd buy in bulk and stuff in newspaper boxes if I had the means -as it is all my friends are going to get it for Christmas along with a glowing report from myself. Heck, who needs to wait for Christmas, ELECTION DAY IS COMING!

This book was originally in a pamphlet format and is a wonderful short summary of what the natures of law and government are and what they should be. But because of this format, many of his arguements are brief, and he acknowledges that not all of them are complete.

He starts out stating the gifts of God to man are: life, liberty and property. Bastiat insists that man is allowed to defend himself, his liberty, and his property, and that "the Law" was created to ensure that society would be allowed to make use of their God-given gifts.

Then the he goes on to explain how "the Law" is abused by men. He states there are two basic ways of living, the first is to work hard and produce, and the second is to plunder and live off of others. When man finds that plundering is easier than work, he will plunder. The only thing that will stop him is if there are consequences that he will have to deal with and dangers that he must risk. Bastiat shows how tempting it is for man to use the law to plunder (how "legal plunder" is the taking of property, which -if done without the benefit of the law- would have been a dealt with as a crime). He goes on to explain how this "legal plundering" will ruin a society and cause economic turmoil.

Bastiat then goes into socialism, and how it plays out in society. He gives examples of various socialist writers, and points out how they view mankind as some raw material that is to be controlled and manipulated. Frederic Bastiat shows how they divide mankind into two classes, with themselves as the nobler of the two, and the rest of man as evil masses that are to be shaped and guided by their own uses of "the Law" and made to be good. They consider themselves to be above the rest, and capable of making better choices than the rest of the world.

Even though it was written in the 1800's, Bastiat writing is extremely relevant today, and deals with the issues of welfare, government schools, and other subsidies of the law that are not to be. He states that "the law is justice" and that "the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning" for justice only exists when injustice is absent. It clearly defines socialism for what it is and gives various examples of the results of it. This book has to be (as another reviewer has said) the liberal's worst nightmare.
SO READ IT! USE IT! SHARE IT!

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. 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.

I was given this book by a family member who is an avid supporter of Ron Paul. Apparently, this brief work by Frenchmen Claude Frederic Bastiat (1801-50) has largely influenced Paul's economic and political principles. Bastiat succinctly argues that the responsiblity of the law is to protect life, liberty, and property, and nothing more. Anything beyond this, according to Bastiat is a perversion of the law. He refers to socialism in all it's forms, including most taxes and tarriffs, as legal plunder, or false philanthropy. He also has plenty of scorn for those demagogues of all ages who feel they know what is best for the masses. In essence, this is an enthusiastic defense of personal freedom, and small government. In this regard, it seems to be a typical libertarian treatise, which is certainly nothing new, but Bastiat would seem to be one of the original proponents of this philosophy, whatever that is worth. I can't say I wholeheartedly embrace every aspect of the libertarian worldview, but I would certainly recommend this as valid and interesting food for thought.

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

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.

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 bill assistance, or internet domain monopolies if they read this book in time to become immune to the excuse-making and false moralizing of socialism? So do we put the govenment in charge of our kids, our sick grandparents, and our businesses, so we can finally be more "free?" You read Bastiat and be the judge

The Law is the most basic and most essential book available about economic justice and liberty. If you could read only one book on these subjects, read The Law. In order to properly understand the concept of law, you must understand it in its pure form, and in its perverted form. Bastiat makes this distinction clear. The book is priceless for that insight alone. Bastiat's fault lies in the foundation he lays for his concept of law: the consent of the governed. This concept is essential to the nature of basic American government, but I believe it is false. Romans 13:1,2 says

"Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.
2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves."

Read on to verse 7 for yourself. The point is, the proper foundation for government is NOT the consent of the governed, but the fact that "The powers that be are ordained of God."

Bastiat's concept of the proper function of law fits very nicely upon this foundation. The consent of the governed concept is easily replaced, and logical consistency and cohesiveness are not lost.

Aside from that, The Law cannot be outdone. Bastiat's fault hardly takes away from the value of his work. One of the best quotes is "Because we do not want the government to educate our children, they think we do not want children to be educated." Sounds like today's headlines. I plan to order a box full of The Law to hand out to friends. But I prefer the edition published by The Foundation for Economic Education (www.fee.org).

I wish that every Canadian would read this book.

You may vary your words and speak of many things, but the words of this Man will always be known for the truth of what this man was and still is !! Read the BOOk !!

Very informative and concise. Everyone should read this book, it is still as relevant today as it was when Bastiat wrote it in 1850.
Explains in detail Bastiat's feelings on the importance of needing The Law and morality in a free society, and how Bastiat felt that the government was using "The Law" to become too much an active participant in the economy, and not devoting enough attention to protecting life and liberty of the people.

My eyes were glued to this book for the entire hour and a half it took to absorb this genius's work. Bastiat breaks down every single error of government without wasting a page of space. Ten dollars hasn't taught you this much since your first library card.