My god. This book empowered me. I am going to buy five and hand them out during my speech about state sovereignty, come the 13th.
Agreed David. This has got to be one of the best that I've ever read, and one that I try to re-read periodically.
I enjoyed Bastiat's work as well. I purchased the complete works of Bastiat (here at LvMI) and what I've read thus far is great. Highly recommended to spur Economics students' thinking.
Where will you be giving your speech?
David Phaup: My god. This book empowered me. I am going to buy five and hand them out during my speech about state sovereignty, come the 13th.
bastiat is the king of common sense and clear thinking in the realm of economics.
Everytime I read it I get more out of it. A truly remarkable piece of work. I picked up the Bastiat Collection from the store, also and would highly recommend. I've only read the first volume so far but would say that there are several works of equal quality and importance as The Law. That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen and Government are two that come quickly to mind and are both must reads.
This book was the one that made me go from Minarcho to Anarcho. It was his treatment of the superman (I believe is how he stated it); those (elected officials) who are seen as smarter/ more moral than we. It was a powerful 75 pages.
Michael,
It sounds like you're on the right track. It bears noting that Bastiat's concept of legal plunder is related to what Ralph Raico calls "[classical] liberal class conflict" theory in his lecture series "History: The Struggle for Liberty." Before Marx's class conflict theory (which runs roughly opposite to its predecessor), it was common for members of the classical liberal (i.e. libertarian) school of thought to refer to two classes: producers, those who live off of their own toil, and plunderers, those who live off of the fat of others using the machinery of government. In fact, Marx's opening to the Communist Manifesto, his most famous and direct declaration of his class theory, was virtually plaigarized from a work by one of the followers of Jean-Baptiste say, who was an influential classical liberal thinker.
You're also quite right about the importance of the intellectuals in the struggle between liberty and statism. Toward the end of his book Socialism, Ludwig von Mises argues that ideas will always determine individuals' political views, and that no amount of pure evidence will convince socialists that their system is malicious. This was incredibly prescient of Mises, writing in 1922. Nearly a century of subsequent experience--which has given us the contrast between East and West Berlin or between America and the USSR, and which has raised the body count of socialism by tens or even hundreds of millions--seems to have done nothing to sway public opinion.
-Christopher
Hello, my name is Ben, and I'm a recovering conservative. I've been putting off reading The Law for quite some time and man have I missed out. If only I had discovered it years earlier. As a conservative, I considered the "law" to be sacred and absolute. It did not need moral justification because it is the law and is therefore right. Bastiat destroys this statist fantasy by demonstrating that laws are often nothing more than special privileges and protections to the politically-connected. He helped me realize that the only just law is that which protects life, liberty, and private property. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty,and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. Sheer poetry. Mandatory reading for all recovering conservatives.
Hello, my name is Ben, and I'm a recovering conservative.
I've been putting off reading The Law for quite some time and man have I missed out. If only I had discovered it years earlier. As a conservative, I considered the "law" to be sacred and absolute. It did not need moral justification because it is the law and is therefore right. Bastiat destroys this statist fantasy by demonstrating that laws are often nothing more than special privileges and protections to the politically-connected. He helped me realize that the only just law is that which protects life, liberty, and private property.
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty,and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
Sheer poetry. Mandatory reading for all recovering conservatives.
Law is a strange concept to most people. ...so is morality. The reason I believe that most people will equate law with morality has nothing to do with a moral philosophy and principled analysis.
"There's no one coming. Should I just run this red light?" "You shouldn't do that." "Why not?" "Because you might get a ticket."
How often do we analyze things as good or bad rather than good and evil? We don't run the red light (or break ___ law) not because we believe doing such is evil, but because we have equated it with the risk of something we don't want, usually the risk of getting caught and penalized by the law enforcement agency. Over time this conflation remains as the person begins to investigate things from a good/evil perspective.
We believe that which is bad is also evil - we create the principled justification to reconcile two conflicting moral systems. We could say, "Breaking the law sets a bad example to others, who are less responsible than us" or "You may not agree with every law, but our common agreement to follow them all is what creates civil society". We are simply trying to present our own weakness as strength. We have no real good/evil rationale for why the law exists; however, rather than admit this to ourselves and admit that our adherence to the law is driven by weakness and fear, we justify the law in terms of good and evil. Then we can view ourselves with pride - we were strong enough to resist temptations contrary to our moral fabric.
At the same time there are laws that tons of people break, which are not viewed as immoral, simply because there is relatively no risk of being caught, and if so, the penalties are meager. For example, the law dictates we declare what we've purchased on the internet and pay the sales tax. However, there is absolutely no enforcement of such or penalty for non-compliance. Surely, very few people would consider such people evil.
Of course some who are completely wrapped in the statist paradigm and have completely equated the law with morality would call them evil, yet I question if even these people actually pay the sales taxes. I think the people who believe the law represents morality but break it anyway come to view society as an evil, scary place in constant decline. They are also filled with self-guilt and powerlessness. How can they get others to behave morally, when they themselves lack the will-power to behave as such? They long for a totalitarian government that can not only stop others but stop themselves from illegal activity. They long for someone strong enough to force people to stop being evil. These people are sick.
I don't think that most people ever reach a moral philosophy at all. They simply chase what they believe is good. When they encounter something they want but that is forbidden by law and entails a significant risk of being enforced, they, rather than admit they are too weak to overcome the power of law enforcement and attain what they want, declare what they want to be evil. Thus, their decision not to pursue it is not an admission of weakness, but a display of strength - to resist what one naturally desires because it is would have bad effects on others.
Check my blog, if you're a loser
Michael :I used to consider myself a conservative, but now I am seeing myself more as a classical liberal.
I wouldn't worry too much about the labels.
Michael :The problem I have with conservatism is that conservatives tend to be realists on the international sphere and thus are prone to wars which lead to the erosion of liberty and prosperity for people
what do you mean by this statement. If anything they have a less realistic grasp on international politics.
I think if you want to be accurate its a IR term (International Relations).
You can read up on it here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(internaational_relations)
Also I have the same feelings regarding labels. I do detest being called a conservative. Maybe we are more sympathetic to the left, maybe we simply think of the words in their initial meaning.