Are you being robbed by our goverment?
Reviewer cliffwhitaker
February 17, 2006
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"