Claude Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

He was also a strong supporter of free trade. He “was inspired by and routinely corresponded with Richard Cobden and the English Anti-Corn Law League and worked with free-trade associations in France.”

In The Law, Bastiat explains that if the privileged classes use the government for “legalized plunder” this will encourage the lower classes to revolt or use socialist “legalized plunder” and that the correct response to both the socialists and the corporatists is to cease all “legalized plunder”.

Bastiat also explains why his position is that the law cannot defend life, liberty and property if it promotes socialist policies. When used to obtain “legalized plunder” for any group, he says, the law is perverted and turned against the thing it is supposed to defend.
Liberalism

Because of his stress on the role of consumer demand in initiating economic progress, Bastiat has been described by Mark Thornton, Thomas DiLorenzo, and other economists as a forerunner of the Austrian School. In his Economic Harmonies, Bastiat states that, We cannot doubt that self-interest is the mainspring of human nature. It must be clearly understood that this word is used here to designate a universal, incontestable fact, resulting from the nature of man, and not an adverse judgment, as would be the word selfishness.

Thornton posits that Bastiat, through taking this position on the motivations of human action, demonstrates a pronounced “Austrian flavor.”

One of Bastiat’s most important contributions to the field of economics was his admonition to the effect that good economic decisions can be made only by taking into account the “full picture.” That is, economic truths should be arrived at by observing not only the immediate consequences – that is, benefits or liabilities – of an economic decision, but also by examining the long-term second and third consequences. Additionally, one must examine the decision’s effect not only on a single group of people (say candlemakers) or a single industry (say candlemaking), but on all people and all industries in the society as a whole. As Bastiat famously put it, an economist must take into account both “What is Seen and What is Not Seen.” Bastiat’s “rule” was later expounded and developed by Henry Hazlitt in his work Economics in One Lesson, in which Hazlitt borrowed Bastiat’s trenchant “Broken Window Fallacy” and went on to demonstrate how it applies to a wide variety of economic falsehoods.

Below are some of Bastiat’s famous quotes that are being shouted out in various forms today, including on this web site.

“When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.”

“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

“People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them.”

“Law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.”

“The plans differ; the planners are all alike…”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.”

“If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper. When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in the general welfare. Then jealousies between man and man, city and city, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world.”

“Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation.”

“It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.”

“The sort of dependence that results from exchange, i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent on us. Now, this is what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural interrelations is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely.”

“…the statement, “The purpose of the law is to cause justice to reign,” is not a rigorously accurate statement. It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.”

“But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind under Providence.”

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.”

“We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

“Since law necessarily requires the support of force, its lawful domain is only in the areas where the use of force is necessary. This is justice.”

“Every individual has the right to use force for lawful self-defense. It is for this reason that the collective force—which is only the organized combination of the individual forces—may lawfully be used for the same purpose; and it cannot be used legitimately for any other purpose.”

“Law is solely the organization of the individual right of self-defense which existed before law was formalized. Law is justice.”

“The law is justice—simple and clear, precise and bounded. Every eye can see it, and every mind can grasp it; for justice is measurable, immutable, and unchangeable. Justice is neither more than this nor less than this. If you exceed this proper limit—if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, literary, or artistic—you will then be lost in an uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it upon you. This is true because fraternity and philanthropy, unlike justice, do not have precise limits. Once started, where will you stop? And where will the law stop itself?”

“Law is justice. In this proposition a simple and enduring government can be conceived. And I defy anyone to say how even the thought of revolution, of insurrection, of the slightest uprising could arise against a government whose organized force was confined only to suppressing injustice. …”

“As proof of this statement, consider this question: Have the people ever been known to rise against the Court of Appeals, or mob a Justice of the Peace, in order to get higher wages, free credit, tools of production, favorable tariffs, or government-created jobs? Everyone knows perfectly well that such matters are not within the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals or a Justice of the Peace. And if government were limited to its proper functions, everyone would soon learn that these matters are not within the jurisdiction of the law itself.”

“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”

“It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion—whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government—at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.”

“Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!”

“And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.”

This story is an exact reprint from Liberty Legal Foundation.

I agree that it is appalling that the Federal government has granted its agents clearly unconstitutional authority to write secret warrants and threaten private citizens for doing nothing more than reporting what the Federal government is doing to its own citizens.

As an attorney I’ve often seen witnesses change their story. When this happens I always ask, “Why?” What happened to make them deny what they had said earlier? The answer to that question often tells you more about what is really going on than their original testimony told you. This is true of the Mormon Food Storage story we reported earlier this week.

Last week the Oath Keepers’ web site reported that Federal agents had shown up at a Tennessee Mormon Food distribution facility and demanded a list of customers that had purchased food for long-term storage. On Monday I passed along that story to all Liberty Legal members, along with my comments and recommendations. Almost immediately we began getting e-mails telling us that the Oath Keepers had “pulled the story.” We also got messages ranging from “the story has been debunked” to “the story isn’t true” to “this never happened.”

What really happened is the Oath Keepers put a notice up stating that their witness that had originally told them about the federal agents visiting the LDS facility had changed his story and now denied that federal agents had demanded any lists. The Oath Keepers are a very trust-worthy organization that doesn’t want to represent facts that they can’t prove. Once their witness changed his story the Oath Keepers reported that fact. This does not mean that the original story isn’t true, or that the witness didn’t report different facts to the Oath Keepers before changing his story.

I don’t know what happened because I wasn’t there. What I do know is that Rand Cardwell, the Oath Keepers Officer that reported the story, and Oath Keepers as an organization, have both been scrupulously honest sources of information in the past. The fact that they pulled their own story when their source changed his story supports my conclusion that Oath Keepers are a trustworthy source. Their web site emphasizes that they will now require video or documentary confirmation of any facts before running such facts in the future. They explain that this will prevent such incidents of changed-stories in the future. Nothing in the Oath Keepers web site states that the incident didn’t happen. It simply explains that they can no longer prove that it happened.

So, I’m back to my question: Why would the LDS facility manager tell one story to one person, then change the story later? Two answers are likely. First, he almost certainly didn’t anticipate the amount of attention this story would get. Second, he almost certainly didn’t know that he could be charged as a criminal for telling the truth about an event of public interest. That’s right, under the Patriot Act the LDS facility manager could have been criminally charged for telling ANYONE that Federal agents asked him about his customer list.

Now, I don’t know that the LDS manager was threatened with criminal charges. But it seems to fit the facts. I have little doubt that Rand Cardwell was telling the truth, that the LDS manager initially reported that Federal agents asked for a customer list, and that the Federal agents became threatening in order to obtain the information. I believe that the LDS manager later changed his story. I know that the Patriot Act gives Federal agents the right to press criminal charges against a person that tells any third party about the Federal agents’ attempts to collect information. So, it seems likely that Federal agents asked for the list, the LDS manager told the Oath Keepers, the story exploded on the Internet, the Federal agents threatened the LDS manager in order to get him to change his story, and he did exactly that.

Whether I’m right or not, we should all be appalled that the Federal government has granted its agents clearly unconstitutional authority to write secret warrants and threaten private citizens for doing nothing more than reporting what the Federal government is doing to its own citizens. These aspects of the Patriot Act are undeniably unconstitutional, regardless of whether they were used against the LDS manager in this particular case.

Finally, my message from Monday was intended to encourage you all to invest in long-term-storage food, and make sure no one outside your trusted circle knows you are doing so. Regardless of what happened or didn’t happen at the LDS facility, I still encourage you to invest in food carefully. It just makes sense.

The “Indefinite Detention?” Act has now passed both the Senate and House. Please visit our site to see how your Representative voted. Disappointingly, both Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul failed to vote on this critical legislation.