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Howdy!
It seems to me that everyone doing and studying some politics should read this remarkable work - The Law (by Frederic Bastiat).
Unfortunately, the world has gone deeply in the "wrong" direction, the one that Bastiat would call "socialism" (what is socialism is another topic but he obviously means some state socialism like the one in the USSR. Just for your reference, I happen to believe in another definition of socialism, for example). Anyway, let me quote some of his thoughts for you and see how they fit in today's world, USA included.
Sounds familiar?
It seems to me that everyone doing and studying some politics should read this remarkable work - The Law (by Frederic Bastiat).
Unfortunately, the world has gone deeply in the "wrong" direction, the one that Bastiat would call "socialism" (what is socialism is another topic but he obviously means some state socialism like the one in the USSR. Just for your reference, I happen to believe in another definition of socialism, for example). Anyway, let me quote some of his thoughts for you and see how they fit in today's world, USA included.
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder...
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. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them. The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them...
Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general...
For there are two kinds of plunder: legal and illegal...
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim — when he defends himself — as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder, and it is of this, no doubt, that Mr. de Montalembert speaks...
Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism...
Sounds familiar?
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