Liberty Lost

We're not gonna take it
Never did and never will
We're not gonna take it
Gonna break it, gonna shake it
Let's forget it better still
--The Who

While giving lipservice to the notion of liberty, our country increasingly enacts policies to destroy it. One of the more cogent theses on the relationship between liberty and policy was elaborated by Frederic Bastiat in his 1849 pamphlet The Law. Bastiat, a French economist, wrote The Law to express the reason behind his concern over France's ongoing slide towards socialistic government.

Drawing from thought processes articulated centuries earlier by John Locke and others, Bastiat argued that individual freedom is the basis for productive life, and that this freedom is expressed through the preservation of property rights. Three dimensions reflect these rights. First, individuals have the right to their living and breathing selves. Their lives cannot be ended for the benefit of others. Second, individuals have the right to their wherewithal to produce. People cannot be forced into slavery for benefit of others. Third, individuals have the right to the fruits of their labor. Personal property cannot be forceably taken for the benefit of others.

To Bastiat, the role of policy, or the law, should be to help individuals defend their property rights. When individuals are unable to fend off threats on their own, then government should intervene, coercively if necessary, to ensure property rights are upheld.

If the scope of law is redefined to promote property appropriation and redistribution rather than individual property protection, then, Bastiat argued, governed society heads down a slippery slope that is difficult to reclimb. Bureaucrats are charged with determining who gets what. Special interest groups lobby for their piece of other people's wealth.

While proponents of redistributive law argue that such policy promotes stability, reason suggests the opposite. The redistributive environment is prone to corruption, sense of entitlement, and despotism. Incentive to produce and innovate falls. Standard of living under such conditions is certain to decline. Throughout history, such conditions have promoted instability and have led, perhaps without exception, to either internal revolution or external takeover.

Sadly, Bastiat died of tuberculosis soon after publication of The Law. Were he to visit the U.S. today, Bastiat would surely express concerns similar to those he conveyed to his homeland long ago.

Liberty, he would observe, is in decline.