Tag Archive for Bastiat

Required Reading

The Law - By Bastiat is a key to reaching those who misunderstand the role of government.

If.

If we could persuade our brothers (sisters) to engage in a thought process that exists outside the politically expedient norms.  If we could UN-indoctrinate the children of selfishness; those who feel it is their right to plunder through government for their personal comfort.

If, with what little comprehension remains for the respect of our nation’s founding, we could encourage enough of our current generational weak-link to read The Law By Frederic Bastiat, it might be easier to bring our nation back to the glory once given it by our creator.

It begins

The Law

The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose!
The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!

If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it.

Life Is a Gift from God

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life—physical, intellectual, and moral life.
But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production—in other words, individuality, liberty, property—this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.

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.

The entire book in PDF form is available from Foundation for Economic Education.
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