Hat tip to Neal Boortz:
“The Law” is an 1849 book by Frédéric Bastiat. It was published one year after the third French Revolution of 1848. The essay was influenced by John Locke’s “Second Treatise on Government” and in turn influenced Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson”. It is the work for which Bastiat is most famous.
In The Law, Bastiat states that “each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property”. The State is a “substitution of a common force for individual forces” to defend this right. The law becomes perverted when it punishes one’s right to self-defense in favor of another’s acquired right to plunder.
Bastiat defines two forms of plunder: “stupid greed and false philanthropy”. Stupid greed is “protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits” and false philanthropy is “guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public works”. Monopolism and Socialism are legalized plunder which Bastiat emphasizes is legal but not legitimate.
From “The Law” is this quote:
“The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… 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. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.”
Let’s compare and contrast Bastiat’s statements - which I totally agree with - with some in today’s political circus.
First is the media’s current Cutest Socialist, wife of Presidential candidate Barack Obama, Michelle Obama:
Most Americans, she said, don’t want much.
“They don’t want the whole pie,” she told the women. “There are some who do, but most Americans feel blessed just being able to thrive a little bit. But that is becoming even more out of reach.”
“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”
Isn’t that nice of elite Michelle Obama. She is so enlightened that she knows just how much of the pie to take from you and give to a complete stranger. After all you should feel blessed just being able to thrive a little bit, and certainly thrive no more than others.
Then from the Hildabeast herself:
“Many of you are well enough off that [President Bush's] tax cuts may have helped you. We’re saying that for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We’re going to have to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”
“We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society. ”
Hillary Clinton, the “smartest woman in the universe”, is another Socialist, just like Michelle. Quit hoarding all the pie, you evil Conservatives, and free give what you have so that a complete stranger can have some pie without expending the effort to earn it themselves. After all it’s on behalf of the common good.
Breda, over at The Breda Fallacy, sums it up perfectly with this statement:
Dear Michelle Obama,
If you so much as try to touch my piece of pie, I will stab my fork through the back of your fucking hand - twice, if it’s pumpkin.
And God help you if it’s à la mode.
and this graphic:
Wow! I just HAVE TO make one of those for myself. I think I will. Here goes:
Remember when elitist Obama told a San Francisco moonbat audience, “It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations…”?
