If you have not read any Bastiat, you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.
I re-read (probably for the third time in English) Bastiat’s The Law a few weeks ago.
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… [M]any persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred… it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it.
Bastiat is one of my favorite political philosophers: the clarity with which he writes, the ease with which he exposes his theses is unrivaled. You could draw a thousand parallels from this, or any other passage of his.
If everyone had read some Bastiat, and really taken his advice to heart, I think this world would be a much better place for everyone in it.
The Law is my favorite political book of all time. I have read it probably three or more times as well. My favorite translation is definitely Dean Russell’s at bastiat.org.
If I were in a position of some importance at a college and could recommend three books that all students should have read before enrolling in their first class, they would be The Law, The True Believer, and The Law again.
Based on nothing but his very, very minarchist philosophy and my love of every Bastiat writing I’ve read, I think/hope he would have ascended to anarchism if his life hadn’t been cut tragically short by tuberculosis.