Plunder, politics and a prized writer

Who is Frederic Bastiat, and why is he saying those wonderful things about me?

All right, that is an exaggeration.

Bastiat actually isn't saying anything about me.

Actually, Bastiat is dead, and has been for 156 years, so he isn't saying anything about anyone.

But the good news for me is that Bastiat's memory is kept very much alive by those who admire this 19th century French philosopher-writer-economist. And as a result of a series of coincidences, and hopefully a bit of talent, I have the privilege of being a finalist for a prize given in Bastiat's name by the International Policy Network.

I'll tell you about that in a minute, but first I want to tell you more about Bastiat.

Like most of you, I had never even heard of him until a reader clued me in earlier this year. I had just written the first of two columns about the "entitlement mentality" in the United States, and was sorting through a particularly large stack of e-mail responses when I came across one by Glenn Oppel of Helena.

He very generously complimented me on my column, which was called "Will Karl Marx have the last laugh?" but more importantly, he advised me to read an essay by Bastiat called "The Law" (available online at http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html).

I did so, and was instantly hooked.

Bastiat was essentially a contemporary of Marx, and likewise wrote about economics, but fortunately had nothing else in common with him. Marx lived from 1818 to 1883 and wrote the seminal "Communist Manifesto" with Friedrich Engels in 1848. Bastiat lived from 1801 to 1850, and wrote his spirited defense of capitalism ("Capitalism and Interest") in 1849.

Perhaps, if Bastiat had lived longer he would have been able to debunk Marx and save the world from the great Communism Experiment which left more than 100 million people dead over the next 150 years.

Or perhaps not. One thing you learn from reading Bastiat is to take everything concerning human behavior with a grain of salt. Like P.T. Barnum, Bastiat was convinced there was a sucker born every minute, but he also understood that a great deal of human ingenuity is spent on finding ways to take advantage of suckers, resulting in even more mayhem.

One of his most famous essays, known as "The Petition of the Candlestickmakers," takes the form of a plea "from the manufacturers of candles, tapers, lanterns, sticks, street lamps … and from producers of tallow, oil, resin, alcohol, and generally of everything connected with lighting" to the legislature.

Their request, quite reasonable on the surface, is that the chamber of deputies should "pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bulls-eyes, deadlights, and blinds - in short all openings, holes, chinks and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses."

The argument is simple: The candlemakers and the others are suffering from unfair competition from a rival - the sun - and need the state to engage in protectionism "to encourage industry and to increase employment." The less sunlight that gets into houses, the more people will need to buy candles!

The concept is so beautifully absurd that no one could fail to be amused by it, and yet the unfortunate truth is that such protectionism has not become less common in the 150-plus years since Bastiat lampooned it, but more common.

Indeed, on this point as many others, Bastiat is more relevant than ever. That first essay of his I read, called "The Law," establishes in beautifully simple language the dignity of the individual, the rightful role of the state as an extension of the individual, and the perversion of the law which has led unscrupulous men to use the state as a weapon against the individual.

I can't try to explain all of Bastiat's thinking in one column, but suffice it to say that he holds it self-evident that we are endowed by our creator with certain rights, and that among these are life, creativity and the ability to use our creativity to make and own property.

As he says, "in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. 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."

He then defines law as "the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense," and says, "Each of us has a natural right - from God - to defend his person, his liberty and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two."

Unfortunately, as he goes on to explain, the law is not constrained to do only what it is naturally intended to do, but rather can be perverted by two causes: "stupid greed" and "false philanthropy." Both result in what he calls plunder - "seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others."

It was about this time as I was reading "The Law" for the first time that a light bulb went off in my head. It was as if I were reading the operating instructions for life itself. Bastiat, I realized, wasn't just talking about the law, or economy - he was talking about human nature, and he had hit the nail on the head.

The next two paragraphs were the roadmap to cultural collapse, and the way to get out of it. All in five sentences. Believe me, I was mightily impressed.

Here they are:

"Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain - and since labor is pain in itself - it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it.

"When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor."

Bingo. End of story. We've got the problem outlined and the solution delineated. Now what are we waiting for?

Pratically every column I have written about a social problem for the past two years can be easily understood from the perspective of Bastiat's "Law."

Illegal immigration? It's plunder squared - first by the employers who exploit these workers, then by the illegal aliens themselves who wish to plunder the rights of American citizenship without having earned it.

The war against terror? It is the collective battle by all of us to do what any of us would do individually - defend our lives, our liberty and our property.

The nanny state? It is the sad result of "false philanthropy" - the government giving money to the poor by stealing from the rest of us. If you take money from me to do something for me which I would do on my own anyway, that is fine. Police, water, fire departments - these all make sense as the collective manifestation of fundamental needs that all of us have as individuals. But when you take money from me involuntarily and give it to a third party, and I get nothing from it, that is called plunder, not taxation.

And, as Bastiat points out, there is a dangerous likelihood that the plundered classes will eventually try to "seize the power to make laws" in order to themselves share in the making of plunder rather than to be its continued victim. If you don't think that sounds familiar, perhaps you had better spend more time reading about Congress.

In any case, thanks to Mr. Oppel's e-mail back in April, I was interested to see another e-mail arrive at my in-box in June soliciting entries for the International Policy Network's Frederic Bastiat Prize in Journalism. The purpose, as it said, was to "encourage and reward writers whose published works promote the institutions of a free society: limited government, rule of law brokered by an independent judiciary, protection of private property, free markets, free speech, and sound science."

I immediately determined to enter my column on Karl Marx's influence on the modern American state, and the follow-up about health care as an entitlement. The third entry proved to be an easy choice as well - a column I had written about the Supreme Court's unhappy decision to greatly broaden the ability of government to seize private property with the power of eminent domain.

Earlier this month, I was informed that my columns had been selected as one of six finalists out of more than 250 entries from 40-plus countries. Winners will be announced in November, with a possible first prize of $10,000 (you can see the details at www.bastiatprize.org).

Yep, the money would be nice, but I am already very much a winner for having been selected in such distinguished company (one of the other finalists had written for the New York Times and the Financial Times of London, and two of them had been published in The Times of London).

Moreover, the many dialogues with readers that ensued in the weeks after each of those columns appeared were also quite rewarding. I am happy to have so many kind and conscientious readers who keep me informed about their own thinking, and aren't afraid to tell me what they think of mine.

This week, I hope each of you who has time will let me know what you think of Bastiat himself. Many of his works can be read online, and they are not only thoughtful, but quite entertaining. Visit bastiat.org as a starting point, and click on the English version.

Happy reading. I think you will discover that Bastiat is himself the prize.