Bastiat, Frederic in the United States

“The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”
—Frederic Bastiat

Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a legal philosopher of law, through his book “The Law”, about how France was being falsement seduced by the promises of socialism.

The limits of law

He wrote: “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.”

Because “Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent” and because “law is justice” (see Law is Justice: Bastiat), the real purpose of law is the defense of liberty, life and property. According to Bastiat, law is “the collective organization of the individual right of lawful defense.” Each person should has the right to defend them. A group of people have “collective right” to defend these rights together. Thererore, “the principle of collective right—its reason for existing, its lawfulness—is based on individual right. And this common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute.”

He wrote that “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.” Therefore:

“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.”

According to Walter E. Williams (from hte George Mason University, Virginia), “Bastiat’s greatest contribution is that he took the discourse out of the ivory tower and made ideas on liberty so clear that even the unlettered can understand them and statists cannot obfuscate them. Clarity is crucial to persuading our fellowman of the moral superiority of personal liberty….Like others, Bastiat recognized the greatest single threat to liberty is government. Notice the clarity he employs to help us identify and understand evil government acts such as legalized plunder….If Bastiat were alive today, he would be disappointed with our failure to keep the law within its proper domain. Over the course of a century and a half, we have created more than 50,000 laws. Most of them permit the state to initiate violence against those who have not initiated violence against others. These laws range from anti-smoking laws for private establishments and Social Security “contributions” to licensure laws and minimum wage laws. In each case, the person who resolutely demands and defends his God-given right to be left alone can ultimately suffer death at the hands of our government. (Death is not the stated penalty for disobedience; however, death can occur if the person refuses to submit to government sanctions for his disobedience).”