Bastiat

U.S. election year 2004. Time to think about government, and about those wanting to work within it. Time to think about how much and how hard we want it from government, or how much and how hard we'd like to let government have it. Time to think about what Bastiat had to say...

What is freedom? It is the sum total of all our freedoms. To be free, on one's responsibility, to think and to act, to speak and to write, to work and to trade, to teach and to learn —this alone is to be free.

There are too many "great" men in the world; there are too many legislators, planners, founders of societies, leaders of nations, fathers of their country, etc. Too many people place themselves above mankind in order to guide its footsteps; too many people make a career of being concerned with mankind.

...heavy government expenditures and liberty are incompatible.

People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they don't know is that the burden inevitably falls on them.

The solution of the social problem lies in liberty.

...is it so difficult to allow men to experiment,
to feel their way,
to choose,
to make mistakes,
to correct them,
to learn,
to work together,
to manage their own property and their own interests,
to act for themselves,
at their own risk and peril,
on their own responsibility?
Do we not see that this is what makes them men?

You would like to be generous and you cannot be so effectively; what I venture to ask of you is that you be just. Keep your fortune, but let me keep mine. Respect my property as I respect yours.

France, the 1900s. USA, the 21st century. No need to agree with everything he said to admit it: Frédéric Bastiat is ever timely.

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Victor S. Movseedaeng
Hadrian Cyphre

 mm.ix.viii / mmiv.iv.xx
© 2000-2004 Eduardo Adrian Oliveira