On liberty and legal plunder ...

It’s not socialism. It’s just an “income shift” from the rich to the poor.

At least, that’s what Montana’s Sen. Max Baucus called it on the Senate floor — adding that the health-care bill passed by Congress “will have the effect of addressing [the] mal-distribution of income in America.”

Fellow Democrats are probably worried about Baucus letting the cat out of the bag, but they needn’t worry. America already bought the “pig in the poke” known as health-care reform, and it doesn’t seem as though even now very many people are paying attention to the con game that has been played on them.

Who cares if Baucus accidentally told the truth? The deed is done, and the loot is being divided up. It’s time to celebrate the “fundamental transformation” of America that is under way. And Sen. Baucus isn’t the only Democrat suffering from “foot-in-mouth disease” anyway. Former Gov. Howard Dean seems to have the same malady.

On CNBC’S “Squawk Box,” Dean said, “When [wealth distribution] gets out of whack as it did in the ’20s and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. This [health-care reform] is a form of redistribution.”

But much more serious than the “foot-in-mouth” problem of Baucus and Dean is the affliction of Barack Obama and his gang of Chicago ward heelers known as a White House staff. Call it “hand-in-pocket disease.” Or call it socialism, if you dare.

Nineteenth-century French philosopher and economist Frederic Bastiat had another name for it — “legal plunder” — and if you want a real education, you are invited to read Bastiat’s essay on “The Law” in its entirety on the Internet (http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html).

The book first appeared in 1850, two brief years after Karl Marx published “The Communist Manifesto,” and though Bastiat never mentions Marx by name, “The Law” totally discredits his socialist philosophy.

The concept of the book is that “the law” is intended as a way for people to band together to collectively protect their individual rights. When law is applied fairly, it acts “to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.” However, Bastiat recognized that two forces conspire to pervert the law: “stupid greed and false philanthropy.” Both, of course, are at work in health-care “reform” legislation.

Bastiat fashions stupid greed as “a fatal tendency” among people that “when they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others.”

He distinguishes therefore between property and plunder as the two forms of wealth acquisition, noting that property is acquired through man’s “ceaseless labor” (mental or physical) and that plunder is acquired “by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others.”

Just as water tends to run downhill, so too does mankind follow the path of least resistance, and so — to avoid the pain of labor — “it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work.”

“It is evident, then,” he concludes, “that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.”

Despite Bastiat’s clear warning, however, modern government has turned aside from the proper role of protecting property from plunder and has instead become an instrument of plunder itself. Thus, Barack Obama could say on the campaign trail in 2008, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody” — and still be elected president.

Bastiat, however, was dead on when he said that plunder is a “fatal tendency” of mankind, and at some point turning the U.S. government into a mechanism for plundering wealth from one group of Americans to be consumed by another group of Americans will destroy the republic.

Most people, of course, would not be a party to theft, so it is vitally important that those who benefit from plunder do not ever let it be discovered for what it is. That’s where Bastiat’s second force comes in — false philanthropy, or what he calls “the seductive lure of socialism.”

He might as well be speaking of the United States of Obama. Are homes being foreclosed on because of bad financial decisions? Scold the banks and forgive the loans! Are banks and insurance companies going down the drain because of greed and selfishness? Bail out the banks and reward their selfishness! Are jobs being lost because the country has removed all incentives for creativity and productivity? Spend billions on road projects to put people to work for a month or two! Call it a “stimulus” program, and no one will realize that it’s a lost cause.

Finally, that brings us to the one-two punch that President Obama used against the nation last month. First, nationalize health care in ways that people don’t even begin to understand. Claim that you can spend billions of dollars for millions of new patients with unlimited access to health care and that by doing so you will lower the deficit. Then, while people are trying to figure out just how much money you lifted out of their wallet, move quickly and nationalize the student loan program so that billions of dollars will be available to cover up the huge hole you have just created in the economy.

Of course, it’s socialism. Just don’t say it too loud.

None of this manipulation and lying would have come as a surprise to Bastiat, who was much more prescient than Nostradamus ever dreamed of being. In fact, when Bastiat speaks of “the most popular fallacy of our times,” you are almost sure he is talking about 2010, not 1850.

“It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just,” he said. “It must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat again: These two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.”

Did you hear that?

Repeating for those who have ears but do not hear: “A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.”

Yet... Yet... Millions among us stubbornly insist that they can surrender decisions over their very own life and well-being to the government and yet maintain their freedom. Well, you are free — free to do whatever the government lets you do. Free to be indoctrinated. Free to march in lockstep. Free to receive the welfare, education and morality that the government feels you should have.

And everyone who thinks he knows what is best for you, every socialist in the Senate or the White House, will tell you it is for your own good, and for the good of society.

The dirty little secret of socialism, however, is that it is not about a better society; it is about bigger government. It might as well be called “governmentalism,” but for the fact that no one would tolerate such a movement. After all, if you call a mosquito a butterfly, you are much more likely to find willing victims for it than if you call it a bloodsucking leech.

But no matter what you call it, government that steals from you to reward someone else is your enemy. Do not be fooled by your own “stupid greed” or someone else’s claims of “false philanthropy” and give in to the temptation of legal plunder. Seize back your liberty.