This Question of Legal Plunder Must be Settled Once and For All

This is my final post from the writings of Frederic Bastiat’s, “The Law.”  Hopefully, through the discussion of the fundamental,, God given freedoms, which Bastiat has provided for us in “The Law,” you are able to more clearly identify the means by which the legal system is perverted resulting in the usurpation of the freedoms of individuals and the institution of a socialistic system of government.

Since the encroachment of tyranny, on our  freedoms, moves slowly over time, we may not even be aware of what is taking place and we may be fully accepting of the government’s desire to “solve today’s crisis” without questioning the real costs to the individuals, who are not the targets of the “help,” but who will pay the cost nonetheless.

Let Bastiat’s words encourage us to commit to a review of the literature of freedom which will enable us to identify the threats to our God given “unalienable rights, to life, liberty and the pursuit of  happiness.”

For Freedom’s Sake.

Bastiat writes:

How to Identify Legal Plunder

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.

Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals.  If such a law—which may be an isolated case— is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.

The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.

Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.

Legal Plunder Has Many Names

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole—with their common aim of legal plunder—constitute socialism.

Now, since under this definition socialism is a body of doctrine, what attack can be made against it other than a war of doctrine? If you find this socialistic doctrine to be false, absurd, and evil, then refute it. And the more false, the more absurd, and the more evil it is, the easier it will be to refute. Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task.

The Choice Before Us

This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it:

1. The few plunder the many.
2. Everybody plunders everybody.
3. Nobody plunders anybody.

We must make our choice among limited plunder, universal plunder, and no plunder. The law can follow only one of these three.