Posted on 11/11/2008 2:26:23 PM PST by Loud Mime
Please let me know if you would like on this list
--------------------- Earlier I covered another segment of Bastiat's article "The Law." The entire essay is worth reading; you may find it at the source.
Bastiat is great. Read the Law a few years ago online and searched desperately for book form before finally getting it as a gift. Even more relevant today than it was when it was written.
Bastiat’s The Law is one of the best books ever. After more than 150 years it as relevant as the day that it was written. Short book. Get it. Read it.
ping
We second that.
I read the last paragraph to an Obam-butt in my local coffee haunt, then asked him “Is this how Obama won the election?”
I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the United States.The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men,all equal and alike.
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power,which takes it upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate.That power is absolute,minute,regular,provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent...but it seeks...to keep them in perpetual childhood.
Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself.
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in it`s powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends it`s arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians, Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.
By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large.
This does not satisfy me; the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience.
Alexis de Tocqueville
All Bastiat, I might add.
Thanks for the ping!
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This is what our nation was founded on....the common Law.
The behemoth called 'government ' operates on administrative law.
This difference in laws is what the Founders meant when they wrote one of the purposes of the Constitution was 'to secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity'
Unfortunately, most Americans don't bother learning the difference.
You're welcome, by the way.
Awesome quote.
For a few minutes I thought it was your writing...I was VERY impressed!
The part about keeping men in childhood is jaw-dropping. It is so true, and so relevant of today’s Emperor Zero.
Thank YOU!
Several of his works are downloadable on Project Gutenberg:
“Essays on Political Economy”
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15962/15962-8.txt
“What is Free Trade?”
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16106/16106-8.txt
“Sophisms of the Protectionists”
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20161
Thanks
bttt
That’s a beauty!
Joe, zevon, it’s my pleasure to invite you both to join us on what I believe to be the best thread on FR.
Thank you for the invitation. I think I may need to smoke a little weed to get in the proper frame of mind for such philosophical exchange.
You long-haired, whacko hippy! ;-)
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