Free Republic

(Excerpts from the introduction) I must have been forty years old before reading Frederic Bastiat's classic The Law. An anonymous person, to whom I shall eternally be in debt, mailed me an unsolicited copy. Reading Bastiat made me keenly aware of all the time wasted, along with the frustrations of going down one blind alley after another organizing my philosophy of life. "The Law" ... created order in my thinking about liberty and just human conduct. 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...

WASHINGTON: In sponsoring the recently enacted Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act (CARS), Betty Sutton, a Copley Township Democrat, had her biggest moment as a U.S. House memeber. Better known as ''cash for clunkers,'' this federal program provides vouchers of up to $4,500 to U.S. residents toward the purchase of new, more fuel-efficient vehicles when trading in a vehicle that gets no more than 18 miles per gallon. The trade-in vehicles can be any age, and while many of them still work perfectly well, they must be scrapped. The federal dollars are in addition to a dealer-designated scrap value...

Doing no harm is the ancient tradition of Western civilization, stretching from ancient Greece to the present Judeo/Christian world. Doing Good requires a “problem” needing a remedy. Doing No Harm has no such trigger. Revolutions always crash and burn, if modeled after the French Revolution, anyhow. The people suffer, and the leaders of the revolution install themselves as all-powerful despots. The American Revolution was different, because it applied the concept of Doing No Harm. The American Revolution also contained a mind-set typified by Edmund Burke’s conservatism. See previous Freeper post. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-rlc/2205205/posts The current Revolution promulgated by the president and the...

The Proper Function of the Law And, in all sincerity, can anything more than the absence of plunder be required of the law? Can the law -- which necessarily requires the use of force -- rationally be used for anything except protecting the rights of everyone? I defy anyone to extend it beyond this purpose without perverting it and, consequently, turning might against right. This is the most fatal and most illogical social perversion that can possibly be imagined. It must be admitted that the true solution -- so long searched for in the area of social relationships -- is...

A common starting point for examining conservatism is Edmund Burke(b 1729- d.1797), English statesman, and notable thinker, born in Ireland. As a young man, Burke traveled extensively in France. Burke’s philosophy and world view would fill many pages. The most important thing to know is that he was a staunch opponent of the French Revolution, while strongly supporting the American Revolution. Burke’s antipathy can best be understood by learning what took place in France in the time span from 1789 to about 1845. The events that took place in the early years of this time span are commonly referred to...

http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basSoph.html http://jim.com/econ/contents.html

The last section of this excerpt addresses our latest voters. 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...

Frederic Bastiat Perverted Law Causes Conflict 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. To know this, it is hardly necessary to examine what transpires in the French and English...

God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! 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...

<p>CONOMICS AND BRILLIANT WIT do not usually go hand in hand, but in a hilarious piece of satire, a French economist has published a devastating rebuttal to all the industries that plead for government protection from competitors' lower prices. If you've ever been seduced by the anticompetitive laments of the steel lobby or the dairy farmers, you owe it to yourself to take a look at this marvelous spoof.</p>

Taken from the "That which is seen, and that which is not seen." by the French economist (Claude) Frederic Bastiat, 1801-1850. ================================================= "We will suppose that there is but one plough in the world, and that two farmers wish to borrow it. "Farmer Peter is the owner of the only plough which is to be had; Farmer John and Farmer James wish to borrow it. "Farmer John, by his honest, his property, and good reputation, offers security. He inspires confidence; he had credit. Farmer James inspires little or no confidence. It naturally happened that Farmer Peter lends his plough to...

The other night a local talk-radio host, usually a polite conservative, was discussing whether American corporations should be allowed to "outsource" jobs. But his good manners deserted him when a caller said, "As the nineteenth-century economist Frederic Bastiat said, --" The host cut him off right there: "I don't want to hear some eighteenth-century [sic] economic theory." He immediately went on to the next caller. I was shocked. A conservative who'd never heard of Bastiat? Didn't even know what century he'd lived in?

A year of legal theft in review By Craig J. Cantoni December 31, 2004 Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) wrote that "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." That was certainly true in the United States in 2004. As an example, millions of Americans under the voting age of 18 opened presents from grandma and grandpa on Christmas Day, 2004. Instead of finding a gift, they found a bill for $96,000, which is what each person under the age of 18 will have to pay for grandma's and grandpa's Social Security...

1) Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. ............Mark Twain 2) I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. ........Winston Churchill 3) A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. .............George Bernard Shaw 4) A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. ............G. Gordon Liddy...

Why are Florida's hurricanes a "plus"? It's simple. According to St. Petersburg Times reporter Joni James, "Construction creates thousands of jobs, insurance provides for billions in consumer purchases, and new facilities built to higher standards might help offset future storm-related losses." This kind of reasoning, often put forth by poorly trained economists, doesn't even pass a simple smell test. Think about it this way. Using Cochrane's statement, if "from an economic point of view, it (hurricanes) is a plus," would the country have been even better off if the entire East Coast shared Florida's damage and destruction? If it would...

The Dallas Fed has an active economic education program, focusing on high school teachers of economics. Whenever I address a group of teachers, I invariably find myself extolling the virtues of Frédéric Bastiat as the greatest economic educator of all time. I tell them that if Bastiat isn't their patron saint, he should be. To increase familiarity with Bastiat, I asked my colleague, Bob Formaini, to write this short primer. &#8212; Bob McTeer President and Chief Executive Officer Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Frédéric Bastiat: World-Class Economic EducatorCurrent policy debates are, with few exceptions, echoes of past intellectual disagreements....

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....

What is money? This is a question for the ages. Humanity has risen into complex society and experienced tremendous economic development and high cultural achievement through the use of money. It has foundered or even been destroyed when money has been undermined. Ignorance of the nature of money should therefore be the central economic issue for society.Frédéric Bastiat was a French businessman who lived during the first half of the nineteenth century (1801?1850). In the last few years of his life he was elected to the national assembly and began a prolific career as a writer on topics of economics,...

The Doctrine of the Democrats ~ The strange phenomenon of our times -- one which will probably astound our descendants -- is the doctrine based on this triple hypothesis: the total inertness of mankind, the omnipotence of the law, and the infallibility of the legislator. These three ideas form the sacred symbol of those who proclaim themselves totally democratic. The advocates of this doctrine also profess to be social. So far as they are democratic, they place unlimited faith in mankind. But so far as they are social, they regard mankind as little better than mud. Let us examine this...

ECONOMIC CLASSICS Economic Sophisms by Frederic Bastiat (Economic Classics No. 3 -- July 1995)    This economic classic is intended to inform Members and staff about the early economic wisdom of Frederic Bastiat. Bastiat was widely known for his wit and logic. His chief method of argument was the method of exaggeration. This piece focuses on increasing economic prosperity by decreasing the government's involvement.Planned Chaos by Ludwig von Mises (Economic Classics No. 2 -- January 31, 1995)    It is remarkable that in the face of all available evidence, many Americans, especially "opinion makers," remain wedded to the "interventionist" school of...