"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"

Frédéric Bastiat (via fuckyeahemergence)

(Source: haereticum, via hatredismymuse)

"I do not, as is often done, use the word in any vague, uncertain, approximate, or metaphorical sense. I use it in its scientific acceptance — as expressing the idea opposite to that of property [wages, land, money, or whatever]. When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it — without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud — to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed."

-Frederic Bastiat, “The Law” 

Walter Williams talked about gang rape in a lecture. I posted it on Facebook and someone laughed at the fact that I would compare taxes to rape, yet what he didn’t understand is that Williams is describing, as Bastiat is here, the person from whom taxes are taken is not benefiting, than it is plunder. 

Bastiat even mentions in “The Law” that if every person received the equal amount he/she put into taxes, than it would not be an injustice or plunder. 

"

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As as result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.

We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

"

- Frederic Bastiat

Confusion of Terms, The Law

Two things that blow my mind:

A. This shit still happens, and it’s mainstream thinking. The socialist thinking that is.

B. This book my friend let me borrow a couple months ago has a forward by Walter E. Williams, whom I happen to be watching a lot of videos of lately before I recognized his name in the book. Which was just now. 

Mind blown. 

"

Actually, what is the political struggle that we witness? It is the instinctive struggle of all people toward liberty. And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties - liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, of labor, of trade? In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice.

It must be admitted that the tendency of the human race toward liberty is largely thwarted, especially in France.

"

Frederic Bastiat

The Law