Genre: Nonfiction--Philosophy & Politics
My Rating: 9.5
Summed Up:
Frédéric Bastiat, nineteenth-century French philosopher lays out the proper place of the law and government in a free society. Rather than staying within the proper bounds, Bastiat saw that the law had been perverted. “The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law becomes the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guild of the evils it is supposed to punish!”
The natural rights of man—i.e. life, faculties or the freedom to use your abilities, and property—exist outside of all laws, government, and society. Because these exist and man desires to protect them, he organizes to do so. Thus, proper law is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. The use of force is given to us to defend our individual rights, not to destroy the rights of other. Just because this individual force has been organized to a collective force does not change this fact and does not give the laws and those who make it the latitude to destroy individuals rights.
Just governments should allow individuals to freely labor and protect the fruits of their labor from attach. If government stayed to this role, then no one would have any argument with it. No one would blame the government if they were unsuccessful. Rather, all would appreciate the invaluable safety provided by such a government. This type of government, however, rarely exists because of the tendency common among people that, when they can, “they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man—in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.”
As Bastiat explains, “man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor,” but, “since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain—and since labor is pain itself—it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work.” When does this theft by one group from another cease? Only when it becomes more dangerous and more painful than labor, i.e. when all the measures of the law are there to protect property from such plunder. Unfortunately, laws are often made that make such plunder legal. Such perversion of the law has occurred due to two reasons: “stupid greed and false philanthropy.”
People naturally rebel against laws that allow legal plunder of their life, liberty, or property. But, if laws were “restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties,” not favoring one group or another, “if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual’s right to self defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder—is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent?” In short, “if the law were confined to its proper functions, everyone’s interest in the law would be the same” and no one would attempt to use it to restrict the rights or steal the property from others.
You can read my review of The Law here.
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