Difference between revisions of "A Non-Libertarian FAQ"

: This quote is one of the central ideas of "The Law", a piece of philosophical propaganda full of errors and uncompelling arguments. Let's start with a simple demonstration of its ambiguity. Did men make laws to support or suppress life, liberty, and property? At first glance, since we like those three glittering generalities, we'd say support. But if we change the generalities and keep the "logic" the same:<br>"Death, enslavement, and indigence do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that death, enslavement, and indigence existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."

Now, Bastiat does get more specific. If you read a few sentences further into "The Law", he presumes natural rights from god, a simple fallacy of reification (pretending an idea is a real thing.) But the real source of rights is might. Individuals don't have rights to protect their lives, liberty and property: they have minuscule powers to attempt to create such rights. Law is an attempt to benefit those within society by creating rights through conventions that reduce in-society conflict and utilize combined powers efficiently. Bastiat has the tail wagging the dog: collective rights being justified by individual rights, when in actual society individual rights are produced by collective might.

It's hard to accept philosophy like this which starts by preferring imaginary rights to basic observable facts of society.