Thread by @ThyConsigliori

25 March 2021 #MAGAanalysis

The Law

I tried and failed to put together a selection of quotes from Bastiat's great work. I figured out why. I'd end up quoting the entire book. I just can't choose.

2) So I what decided was just to talk about the book and its impact on me. I promise you this. If you open your mind - and we'll talk about that in just a moment - this small, fast reading little book will hit you like a sledgehammer the first time you read it.

3) You can have the book for free. It was published before copyright law protections, so it's just in the public market. Back in 2012 I bought a hard copy after Ron Paul mentioned it as his favorite book in an interview. Here's the PDF:

fee.org/media/14951/th…

4) It's not the shortest book on the list. #s 2 & 3 are, I think as short as or maybe shorter. #8 is not long either. Short books can have outsized impact. But I can tell you this, for sure. This book hit me harder, faster, than any I've ever read.

5) Why do we have law, at all? Why are we not lawless? Don't let me get started talking about James Fennimore Cooper. He didn't make the list. I have been obsessed with reading his work lately. In one of his books, he portrays the other side, lawlessness, literally.

6) Cooper shows a man who lives not above, but completely outside the law, and his entire family too, and presents them heroically, without judgment. They are smart, competent, deadly enemies to have, honorable friends to have. All outside the law.

7) Bastiat is no story teller. He is an analyst. One of the greatest that ever lived. But it's impossible to fail to feel the story as your read The Law. Bastiat explains to us what The Law is, why it exists, and how government grows to be the greatest law breaker.

8) His term for this is Legal Plunder. That's how he got me. No author on this list, or that I've ever read, has given me so far reaching an idea in just two words as Bastiat does. Legal Plunder. Those two words changed my life.

9) If you convert Bastiat's book from a civilizational analysis into a science fiction story in your mind as you read it, you'll see a nation whose government is literally Of the people, FOR the people, BY the people. I can't prove the Lincoln read Bastiat. I'm sure he did.

10) Why do we have law? It is for a very simple reason and is answered in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Jefferson tells us that governments are instituted among men to protect the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Period. That's it. That's why.

11) In The Law, Bastiat picks up on precisely this. He includes the Constitution's clarity over the right of property. Remember, our Constitution dates to 1789, long before Bastiat's 1850 work. He focuses on Property as opposed to the Pursuit of Happiness.

12) As I incorporated @shestokas guidance into my thinking, I analyzed our basic rights down to just these four.

1) Life
2) Liberty
3) The Pursuit Of Happiness
4) Property

13) Bastiat does NOT include #3. I think I know why. In 1776 when Jefferson was composing our Declaration, slavery prohibited the right to property for all men. Slavery disallowed the rights to life and liberty from slaves, let alone the right of property.

14) If you give a slave the right of property, the right to own the rewards of his own work, he is no longer a slave. Jefferson wanted to free all the slaves in 1776. He could not. Slave owners had to join those who opposed slavery in order to fight and win our Revolution.

15) Bastiat knew that. He understood perfectly why our 1776 document had those three rights, not including property. He understood perfectly why our 1789 document enshrined the right of property. His vision was of a nation where all rights were embodied as law.

16) I am thrilled to include Bastiat's work as #7 on my list. Now I have the painful confession to express that I gave up - PARTIALLY - on Bastiat in 2016. Bastiat's vision of law, legal and lawful law, is an ideal. I now realize that it will never happen on earth.

17) You are imperfect. I am imperfect. Our communities, towns, cities, and states are imperfect. We will NEVER have perfect laws. Laws are imperfect.

Rights are perfect.

Therefore, our laws may only strive to protect our perfect rights...imperfectly.

18) Bastiat takes a pass on the right to pursue happiness. His rights are only three. Life, liberty, property...that's it. Let's imagine he's right. I mentioned that above. If you're going to truly read Bastiat, you have to do that. You have to imagine he might be right.

19) Have you heard of the "suspension of disbelief?" How is it that, on a larger screen in a movie theater, or a small screen (no matter how large) in your own home, you watch movies as if they were happening in real time before your very eyes?

20) I don't know the answer. I simply do know that it does occur. We suspend disbelief. We love movies. We love TV shows. We watch them as if we were watching reality revealed. As if they were the truth, the news itself.

21) The Law. Who among us faces it as a lingering question? Is our law adequate? Have we brought our law as close to that "more perfect union" that Lincoln was always going off about? Do we continue to perfect our law, moving closer to our ideal?

22) Know what? I love the law. I'm not just talking about Bastiat's wonderful book. I love the law itself. I love that we have law. I love that it is an aspiration. We join together to institute laws among men so that we may be free. Law and freedom. There can be no separation.

23) Do you know that your own freedom is a product of law? Without the law we can only be strong, not free. Freedom lowers our burden. You may be both weak and lawful...free. You can look at the strong and say fie on you. I am lawfully free. You may not abridge my rights.

24) Bastiat understood both our Revolution and our Constitution. After you read his book, you'll put it away, you must. You'll let it slide into your subconscious where it must reside. All that is to the good.

25) What you won't do is forget. It's not possible. If you read Bastiat, you will remember that you did. You will have an ideal toward which we must strive. You will have an ultimate ideal.

26) As you can literally see, I raise my fist. Why? I raise my fist over freedom. Come to take my freedom? You will face my fist. I'm not boxer. I do not throw a good punch. But I can clench my fingers together into a fist. Beware of my fist.

27) Bastiat does NOT talk about the fight of freedom much. I'm not sure why. I suspect there's something about his ideal of law involved. How do we win the law? How do we take its imperfection and perfect it more? You won't find these answers in his work.

28) What you will find is a full throated refutement of Socialism. Socialism is evil. It's core principle is legal plunder. No other writer has so well explicated that fact. Bastiat knows what freedom is, what it isn't, and leads us towards its ideal.

29) America is, today, no Bastiat nation. We do NOT live up to his strictures. Yet, it is our strictures of freedom he describes. That is a conundrum. The Law. You must read it, and read it for yourself.

30) How? You read it as if his every assertion was right. You grant your author that right of being, maybe, actually right. The Law. How do you NOT read this book? And assuming you did, how do you NOT take direct action?

I say you must.

Thread ends at #30.

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Thread ends at #30.

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