Syndicated conservative radio talk show host Neal Bortz was asked by a caller to recommend a book that would delineate the positions and differences between conservatives and liberals. Bortz Replied that one of the best explanations of the differences between liberals and conservatives is contained in Frederich Bastiat’s treatise titled “The Law” written around 1850.
We intend to outline some of the main points made in this treatise: Bastait maintains that the proper function of the law is to protect man's basic God-given rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In other words, to protect man’s natural rights.
Since man is entitled to protect these rights on his own the law is intended to help him to do what he is entitled to do on his own. Note that these natural rights occur in nature and require no effort by other people for an individual to exercise them.
They are available equally to everyone and one person’s exercise of these rights does not keep another person from exercising them also.
The basic break between the liberals and the conservatives comes in the liberal insistence that the law include additional functions such as enforcing philanthropy, welfare, education and morality.
This sounds great except that these additional functions are totally incompatible natural rights and liberty.
You cannot protect a man’s natural freedoms while forcing him to provide charity, welfare education and all of the other things the liberals want from the law.
In fact, as more functions are added to the law the more it becomes a vehicle for legal plunder and the less a vehicle for protecting individual rights and freedom
The reader should note that as the U.S. Constitution was originally meant, the Founding Fathers intended that the law protect only man's natural rights life, liberty, the accumulation of property and the pursuit of happiness.
Every possible step was taken to keep the government within the boundaries of protecting individual rights and freedom.
As the years have gone by, the politicians have added laws and regulations to force us to provide welfare, education, health coverage, retirement benefits and many other things that are outside the legitimate function and capability of the law.
This has led to a mad scramble by the various factions to pass laws and regulations get in on the legal plunder.
The interstate commerce clause and the general welfare clause have been used to extend the function of the central government to the point that about two thirds of our federal budget is for things that are outside the original function of the constitution.
These are the things that Bastait and the founding fathers would consider legal plunder. It would greatly benefit all of us if we could rescind those laws and regulations that are illegitimate go against the proper function of the law.
The most natural way to determine if a law is really legitimate and not a form of legal plunder is to see if the action allowed by the law would be allowed to an individual.
In other words, the state should not be allowed to do anything that would be illegal for the individual.