Posted on 08/29/2010 1:10:10 PM PDT by Jacquerie
The Results of Legal Plunder
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.
In the first place, it erases from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.
No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.
The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them.
Perverted Law Causes Conflict
As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose — that it may violate property instead of protecting it — then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious. To know this, it is hardly necessary to examine what transpires in the French and English legislatures; merely to understand the issue is to know the answer.
Is there any need to offer proof that this odious perversion of the law is a perpetual source of hatred and discord; that it tends to destroy society itself? If such proof is needed, look at the United States [in 1850]. There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person's liberty and property. As a consequence of this, there appears to be no country in the world where the social order rests on a firmer foundation. But even in the United States, there are two issues — and only two — that have always endangered the public peace.
I hope I have the fortitude and character to choose the moral course and not accept this plunder of fellow citizens by my government.
Natural Law ping!
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G716
“Socialism Is Legal Plunder”
“Mr. de Montalembert has been accused of desiring to fight socialism by the use of brute force. He ought to be exonerated from this accusation, for he has plainly said: “The war that we must fight against socialism must be in harmony with law, honor, and justice.””
“But why does not Mr. de Montalembert see that he has placed himself in a vicious circle? You would use the law to oppose socialism? But it is upon the law that socialism itself relies. Socialists desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. Socialists, like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their own weapon. And when once the law is on the side of socialism, how can it be used against socialism? For when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help.”
“To prevent this, you would exclude socialism from entering into the making of laws? You would prevent socialists from entering the Legislative Palace? You shall not succeed, I predict, so long as legal plunder continues to be the main business of the legislature. It is illogical — in fact, absurd — to assume otherwise.”
Free Download:
“Essays on Political Economy”
Author: Frederic Bastiat
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15962/15962-8.txt
“...But how is this legal plunder to be identified?
Quite simply.
See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them,
and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong.
See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another
by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime...”
thanks for ping.
It’s hardly considered plunder when it is your own money you are receiving. Just my 2 cents...
Tell you what, just cash the checks and send the money to me. That way you know the money will be spent helping a fellow citizen rather than being spent on building mosques and paying for the luxurious retirement of Palestinian terrorists or African dictators.
I promise to spend the money at the local grocery store and to provide honest wages for my doctor. I promise.
i wouldn’t give it up voluntarily, but support any legislation to phase it out — pay older seniors, options for middle group and no new comers.
America's Founders never intended that citizens should join together and pressure their representatives in government to pass laws to do that which, if done individually, would be a crime and in conflict with "Creator's law" (Blackstone)!
How far we have strayed!!!!
“...did your answer in Post #5 derive from James R. Evans book, “America’s Choice,”
or from the Stedman & Lewis book, “Our Ageless Constitution”?...”
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It is from Frédéric Bastiat-The Law
as quoted from the link given as the article source:
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
Oh, how we have strayed...
What are these two issues? They are slavery and tariffs. These are the only two issues where, contrary to the general spirit of the republic of the United States, law has assumed the character of a plunderer.
Slavery is a violation, by law, of liberty. The protective tariff (a duty or import tax) is a violation, by law, of property.
Even so today. We're still slaves in that the spoils of our labors, in totality, are not our own due to the income tax and more and more tariffs are being levied upon America's citizens under the auspices of global markets.
JMO
It is a dilemma isn't it? The government gives trillions to cronies and supportive constituents and when it comes time for us to get a few scraps we are loath to take our share of the plunder.
The correct moral stance should be to say NO to the tax collector. The problem though with that stance is that it makes your betters angry at you. The penalty for making the ruling class angry is prison.
The Machiavellian answer is to go Galt and avoid contributing to the system. This is the correct moral stance and the wise path to follow.
The problem with paying taxes is that it affirms our acceptance of the system and makes us complicit in our own enslavement.
To fix the system all we have to do is say no more. I have gone Galt as much as I can without risking prison.
Thanks for the ping!
Love Bastiat!!
Excellent and worth posting. That all FReepers would read it, learn it and pass it on.
Expanding the voting franchise is not without its risks. Here’s an interesting article by John Lott on the damage:
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/op-eds/FoxNewsBiasAgWPol052608.html
Yeah, what a horrible decade.
WWI, income taxes, popular election of Senators, prohibition, women voting, what were they thinking?
Today, Mark Steyn on Rush’s show summed it up.
The Left will decimate our military while our interest payments increasingly go to build up China’s Army and Navy.
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