This is a literary essay I wrote in response to "the law" by Frédéric Bastia. I am passionate about this.
“The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes- naked greed, and misconceived philanthropy.” We all know about greed and many of us even experience it for ourselves, whether we want to admit it or not. But I myself had to look up what philanthropy was, and then misconceived philanthropy. Philanthropy I found under a few definitions and the one I felt worked best for the subject it here pertains to is “an effort to promote human welfare”. The idea of misconceived philanthropy isn’t exactly new to me. But, the idea that it is one of the causes that has perverted justice first in France and now here in our very own America is awfully enlightening; yet so very obvious at the same time. With greed being one of the causes of perversion, would there not be something on the other side of that? Satisfying the greed of others? When you put the two groups of people together, the ones who want to take and the ones who want to give, you result in the greedy receiving without much thought or cause, do you not; especially when the ‘pity me’ card is played.
In politics then, when the greedy find the do-gooders who will be more than willing to give life and limb and first born child to feed them, or pay their rent, or bail them out of debt, or supply them with health care without anything to earn it or return it, they take that easy road. “Now, labor being in itself pain, and man being naturally inclined to avoid pain, it follows, and history proves it, that wherever plunder is less burdensome than labor, it prevails; and neither religion nor morality can, in this case, prevent it from prevailing.” If you give anyone the option of being sustained without any labor on their part, they will take it. Would you? It would be no luxurious life, but you wouldn’t have to do anything for it! You would be a free man, yes? Wrong. I would not take it myself because I have dreams. Dreams that would not be able to be achieved on plunder, but true labor. “Men can only derive life and enjoyment from a perpetual search and appropriation; that is, from a perpetual application of his faculties to objects, or from labor. This is the origin of property. But also he may live and enjoy, by seizing and appropriating the productions of the faculties of his fellow men. This is the origin of plunder.”
However, when you rely on what the government will socially supply you, that is where you are stuck. You cannot progress; you cannot make your own choices! (Totally hypothetical example) Say I want to send my child to Paradigm to get a true education, but I rely on the option to feed my child for free at public school because I am relying on pay and support from the state, because I don’t work and I don’t want to work if I can just be given what otherwise I would have to work for. I can’t send my child where I choose for schooling. Say I want to move into a bigger house. I cannot if the government is supporting me. They want to support me, but they don’t want to pay that much. So I’m stuck in a trailer or apartment or even a fair home with others living on subsistence from the government whom some in society would label as “lazy junkies”. And for an example of the now, if I plundered my education and degree from the government because no child should be left behind and they will give me a degree at the bare minimum I can do without taking hold of my own education and actually learning, it doesn’t matter how hard I labor after getting that degree I could be stuck with the “junkies” anyway! Though, I do believe that there is always a smart and careful way out of that.
My point is that on plunder- which is people taking from those who do work in the name of those who don’t work- what you get is what you’ve got and your options are limited. On labor, what you earn is yours and you can do whatever you want with it! My suggestion is you are careful with it so you don’t mess it up and leave yourself with the only option of plunder.
The words of Frédéric Bastiat are some of the truest you could get. My misunderstanding is how others could misunderstand. It is plainly there. Don’t provide the option of plunder and people will work or die. Start young and early in life with the education, to teach them to take responsibility and work for what they want and need. People are naturally good, that good just needs to be encouraged and grown upon. “Whatever God does, is well done; do not pretend to know more that He; and as He has given organs to this frail creature, allow those organs to develop themselves, to strengthen themselves by exercise, use, experience, and liberty.”
This is important because, as Bastiat puts it “…the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue on entirely contrary!” By the cause of the people! “Law is justice”, made to protect our rights to life, liberty, and property, or the pursuit of happiness and steps in when injustice threatens those rights. One common misconception concerns the right to life. People are often confused on what that means and what should be protected. We have the right to live, to not have our lives taken by another. Law should protect our life itself, not our way of life. Having laws concerning and forcing religion or marriage is simply not justified. Using an in-class example, even laws forcing the pledge one way or another is an injustice. Frédéric says “Depart from this point, make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, industrial, literary, or artistic, and you will be lost in vagueness and uncertainty; you will be upon unknown ground, in a forced Utopia, or, what is worse, in the midst of a multitude of contending Utopias, each striving to gain possession of the law, and to impose it upon you; for fraternity and philanthropy have no fixed limits, as justice has.” This has happened!
But the people whom are so enwrapped in their own greed, and ‘doing good’ for others always attempt to misguide the law, and succeed because those two groups together so easily get what they want. It is not the law’s job to protect your desire to not contribute to your own welfare, or to get whatever you want how you want it, or even to get it for another. Not even natural law has anything to do with that. That is the sole individual’s responsibility. That covers the same issue with property. The property that is singly yours, what you own, should be protected by law from damage by another or being taken unrightfully by another. What ever you do to ruin or loose it is your own responsibility. “So far from being able to oppress the people, or to plunder their property, even for a philanthropic end, its mission is to protect the people, and to secure to them the possession of their property”
The Founding Fathers switched the term property for the pursuit of happiness for their purposes in The Declaration of Independence, and that takes more clarifying. As was discussed in class, we have the right to pursue happiness, not the right to automatically be happy or have everyone have to make us happy. If you are unhappy, that is not a violation of your rights! You simply must exercise your right to pursue what will make you happy, find it, and increase upon it and I wish you the best of luck on your journey. Everyone deserves to be happy, and has the naturally given, unalienable right to search for and create that happiness for themselves.
The last duty of law to protect is our liberty. Protect it, rather than take it away. “Once for all: liberty consists not only in the right granted, but in the power given to man to exercise, to develop his faculties under the empire of justice, and under the protection of law.” And I believe the protection of all of the other rights protects our liberty. Our freedoms to ownership and our freedoms to choose our lifestyle and it affect us in our own way. Though to add, the protection of liberty does not rule out the right the government is given to lawfully establish and enforce consequences in protection of another’s rights if you abuse your liberty and threaten those rights. For example, killing or stealing.
People really do make politics more important and a bigger deal than they need be, or for the correct purposes should be. We should reserve to making the laws under the guidelines Bastiat places. At first things may be a bit scary, with everything falling apart, not being used to the system and having to establish a new national paradigm. But through the generations our country will be much better supported and I can predict less conflict. There is no perfect form of governing, but perhaps Bastiat comes closest to the most effective.
