Last evening I was in my den trying to get a decent buzz going while the television in the other room was going on and on about "land acquisition" by The State. It was then that I overheard an Honourable Member of Parliament use a very interesting word to describe those whose lands get acquired - and the word he used was "oustee." Quite a word, huh? How would you like to be an oustee?
And there it was, in the news this morning, the report, only to be expected, that thousands and thousands of oustees have descended upon New Delhi to protest their ousting.
So let me quote Bastiat again:
The law is no longer the refuge of the oppressed, but the arm of the oppressor! The law is no longer a shield, but a sword! The law no longer holds a balance in its august hands, but false weights and false keys! And you want society to be well ordered!
Bastiat went on to add what happens when the Socialist Principle of Legal Plunder becomes the law:
Your principle has placed these words above the entrance of the legislative chamber: "Whosoever acquires any influence here can obtain his share of legal plunder."
And what has been the result? All classes have flung themselves upon the doors of the chamber, crying: "A share of the plunder for me, for me!"...
And are you not appalled by the immense, radical, and deplorable innovation which will be introduced into the world on the day when the law itself is authorized to commit the very crime that its function is to punish - on the day when it is turned, in theory and in practice, against Liberty and Property?
You deplore the symptoms that modern society exhibits; you shudder at the disorder that prevails in institutions and ideas. But is it not your principle that has perverted everything, both ideas and institutions?
Socialism can never work. Their principles are perverse. The don't understand the manner in which society functions - and they never did. Their ideas are, quite literally, "anti-social." They schemed up an Utopia completely divorced from reality, from human nature itself, from the history of civilization, from "natural law," from the laws of Economics. They misuse State power; they misuse force - and this is what "legal plunder" is all about. Chaos and confusion must be the inevitable result. Along with complete moral degradation and the collapse of civilization.
There is another inevitable consequence - of which Bastiat warned: and that is - the people would lose all respect for the laws, the State and its institutions.
What, indeed, is Law? The other year, a student of Law gave me this answer: "Law is an instrument of social control." He is being taught the principles of oppression.
So let us hear Bastiat on this subject:
Hence, if anything is self-evident, it is this: Law is the organization of the natural right to legitimate self-defence; it is the substitution of collective force for individual forces, to act in the sphere in which they have the right to act, to do what they have the right to do: to guarantee security of person, liberty, and property rights, to cause Justice to reign over all.
And if there existed a nation constituted on this basis, it seems to me that order would prevail there in fact as well as in theory. It seems to me that this nation would have the simplest, most economical, least burdensome, least disturbing, least officious, most just, and consequently most stable government that can be imagined, whatever its political form might be.
And as to "political form," Bastiat was a great critic of Rousseau - whom he considered to be not ahead of his time, as his followers claimed, but "two hundred centuries behind." Bastiat sat in the legislative chamber alright - but he exhibited only disdain for legislators, those whom Roussseau elevated to such great heights, so far above mankind. Bastiat wrote:
Their faith is in the legislator, not in mankind. Ours is in mankind, not in the legislator.
Roche writes: "Bastiat warned that political power was the cause of France's social decline and could never provide solutions to the problem. He asked that Frenchmen look outside the political arena and concluded:
...there is only one remedy: time. People have to learn, through hard experience, the enormous disadvantage there is in plundering one another....
And this goes on until people learn to recognize and defend their true interests. Thus, we always reach the same conclusion:
The only remedy is in the progressive enlightenment of public opinion.
Property and Liberty are but two sides of the same fundamental idea: Liberty is connected with the act of production, while Property is connected with the thing produced. Then follows Exchange, and Competition. A harmonious Society is formed. And all becomes clear.
I hope my reader now realizes where our greatest error lies - in handing over to this Socialist State the monopoly over education. Today, the minister in charge of this is a socialist lawyer. We have a lot more suffering in store for us. More chaos. More confusion. More social disorder.
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