The Law
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The Law is one of the most important books ever written on the uses and abuses of law. While short, The Law has proven itself time and time again to be life changing to those who read it. Walter Williams an economics professor at George Mason University put it thusly:
I must have been forty years old before reading Frederic Bastiat's classic The Law. An anonymous person, to whom I shall eternally be in debt, mailed me an unsolicited copy. After reading the book, I was convinced that a liberal-arts education without an encounter with Bastiat is incomplete. Reading Bastiat made me keenly aware of all the time wasted, along with the frustrations of going down one blind alley after another, organizing my philosophy of life. The Law did not produce a philosophical conversion for me as much as it created order in my thinking about liberty and just human conduct.
He goes on to say:
Many philosophers have made important contributions to the discourse on liberty, Bastiat among them. But Bastiat's greatest contribution is that he took the discourse out of the ivory tower and made ideas on liberty so clear that even the unlettered can understand them and statists cannot obfuscate them. Clarity is crucial to persuading our fellowman of the moral superiority of personal liberty.
If you are looking for a single book that once read will provide you with many hours of thought and may perhaps change the way you look at life and your interactions with others, this is it..
 Write a Review of The Law
What are Laws For?, March 14, 2006
Reviewer: LOLDavid
from Los Angeles, California
Frederic Bastiat's "The Law" produced by FreeAudio.org is one of the best free audio books available. Bastiat's brief treatise on law is a passionate cry for his belief that law should only be put in place to maintain life, liberty, and property. He denounces legislators and philosophers who seek legalized plunder, moral coercion, and numerous other methods of force through law which encroach on liberties. The production quality is professional and Marvin Payne's narration is superb.
Are you being robbed by our goverment?, February 17, 2006
Reviewer: cliffwhitaker
from Memphis, Tennessee
The sound quality if very good. The issue is with sibilance. The listener, if you can, should turn the treble down a bit. The reader is easy to understand with good modulation in his voice. Seems to have a real passion for what he is reading. There is a forward and and introduction to “The Law,” that seem overly long. However, the book itself is well worth the wait.
The author, Bastiat, is a Frenchman writing during the 1840's—just after the American and French Revolutions yet before the American Civil War. He has a good perspective on Liberty, Justice, how the law interacts with these concepts, and the American experiment with Democracy. Bastiat is a Liberal in the classical sense. This means that he believes in limited government. By limited government, he means that government should only act to protect the life, liberty, and property of the individual. The is government is not to engage in redistributing wealth or teaching morality according to Bastiat.
Bastiat does a good job of arguing for limited government and against socialism. His main point is that Liberty and Property are God given prior to the existence of Law. The Law was created out of the collective right of defense of individuals to defend their liberty and property.
The problem with Law, according to Bastiat is that often times it is corrupted so that what you end up with is legalized robbery. He means that when the Law take ones property (or money) and gives it to someone else, either through welfare or subsidy of one industry or another, the result is legalized theft.
Bastiat complements the United States during his time, because he felt that the Law here was closest to the way it was intended to be. Keep in mind, when Bastiat was writing, the United States had no income tax, the federel goverment consisted basically of the department of war and the department of state. There was no FBI, CIA, FEMA, EPA, DEA, HUD, SSI, etc., in the United States. The federal goverment was not expected to take care of us when we were poor, old, or sick. Neither was the Federal Govermnet expected to make us fine moral people. Bastiat would be horrified if he could see
America as it is today. Now everyone from the Conservative Christians on the Right to the Humanist Liberals on the Left, expect the Federal Goverment to solve their problems. We are as Socialistic now as the French goverment he was complaining about then.
Even if you do not agree with Bastiat, it is time well spent listening to this audio book. He will make you consider the Rights that we are giving up here in the "Land of the Free"
- Published:
2002
- LearnOutLoud.com Product ID:
T006936
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Philosophy
Political Philosophy
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Law
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