Posted BY: Joe Strader

In “The Law,” Frédéric Bastiat writes that a nation’s laws, which should protect private property, can also be used to plunder property. It is much easier to take others’ wealth using legalized theft than violent plunder.

According to Bastiat, “Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” The law, when morally applied, protects life, liberty, and property. Immoral law can be written to plunder those same rights. There is no greater evil to society than “the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.”

Trending: How Disney Fuels Racism

The benefit from this conversion accrues to the insiders who write, enforce, and judge the laws for their own benefit and protection. These laws are used to steal wealth, enslave men, and even end life. They are used against political enemies and helpless citizens.

When laws become immoral, the human desire to exploit others has no restriction, especially because lawmakers write provisions to protect themselves. All that remains of justice is a perversion: Perverse ends defined by perverted law that protects its perverse creators.

Full Story