How Politicians Pervert the Law and Liberty is The Casualty

By Brannon Howse

There are tens of thousands of federal and state laws. Many of these laws are leading us down the path of socialism or the redistribution of wealth. The reason we have so many laws is that we have so many politicians that don’t understand the purpose of the law.

Fredrick Bastiat wrote his book, The Law in 1850 when France was going through one of its many transitions in government. Bastiat proclaims that the purpose of the law is to make justice reign or more precisely to eliminate injustice. The law is simply the organization of justice, it is a collection of people coming together to do as a group what we can do as individuals which is protect our life, liberty and property. 

The law, nor government, gives us our liberties for if they do then what the government gives the government can take away. The law exists to protect our God given liberties.

For justice to fully reign we must stop the politicians from making an unjust living for themselves or their special interests through the work of the taxpayers. We must stop the politicians from being involved in plunder. Bastiat describes plunder this way:

“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.”

Bastiat explains that the two reasons politicians use the law to plunder is for the purpose of greed and/or philanthropic purposes. Bastiat writes:          

You say: ‘There are persons who have no money,’ and you turn to the law. But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk. Nor are the lacteal veins of the law supplied with milk from a source outside the society. Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens and other classes have been forced to send it in. If every person draws from the treasury the amount that he has put in it, it is true that the law then plunders nobody. But this procedure does nothing for the persons who have no money. It does not promote equality of income. The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.”

When the law is used to take from one and give to another, this can be called nothing less than socialism, the re-distribution of wealth. So, these “do gooders” use the law, and the force that makes it the law, to steal from one citizen the fruit of his labor in order to give to another.

Some may argue that if we leave the people unto themselves then some will starve, some will not have clothes, some will not have healthcare, and medical treatment.  However, the reality is if the government would get out of the way and fulfill its limited purpose, prosperity would be distributed to far more people because the choice would be to either work and eat or not to work and not to eat. Today, our government rewards laziness and irresponsibility through our growing welfare state. Bastiat writes:

Under such a regime, there would be the most prosperity -- and it would be the most equally distributed. As for the sufferings that are inseparable from humanity, no one would even think of accusing the government for them. This is true because, if the force of government were limited to suppressing injustice, then government would be as innocent of these sufferings as it is now innocent of changes in the temperature.

Bastiat, nor am I, arguing against generosity, compassion and charity. What I am arguing is that the purpose of the law is not charity. Charity is the role of individuals, non-profits, ministries and churches. Charity is not the purpose and reason for the creation of the law and civil government. If the government would fulfill its limited and specific purpose, not only would prosperity be available to every able-bodied individual through his own work but the level of prosperity would be so great that charities, ministries and churches would be flush with the needed resources to be involved in charity and good works.

The purpose of the law and civil government is to reward those involved in right living and to punish the wicked. In America the purpose of the law has been turned on its head as those who are involved in right living are punished through a punitive tax system that rewards with a monthly welfare check those involved in all sorts of irresponsible, destructive and often illegal and immoral behavior.

So what would a nation look like that rejected socialism, plunder and big government for freedom, liberty and the proper use of the law? Bastiat tells us when he writes:

If a nation were founded on this basis, it seems to me that order would prevail among the people, in thought as well as in deed. It seems to me that such a nation would have the most simple, easy to accept, economical, limited, nonoppressive, just, and enduring government imaginable.

America is the longest running constitutional republic in the history of the world. Unless we return to the proper, limited, and fundamental purpose of the law are freedoms will not long be secured.  

By Brannon Howse Email: Brannon@worldviewweekend.com Click here for bio and archived articles