The Campaign for Liberty, Tea Party, and 9/12 movements have organized around the idea gaining back our freedom and nation by getting the right people elected to national, state, a local positions.

My question is: As long as the unelected global elites control the power, wealth, and the system, how is electing or unelecting anyone going to make a difference? We’ve been playing this game for decades with nothing but loss after loss of liberty. … Suppose we actually did get Ron Paul as President, and had numerous victories in local elections, how much power will they really have within the global elite’s system? How many of our new representatives will be easily turned with bribes, black mail, and threats? How effective could they be against the onslaught of media propaganda against them?

Instead of blaming the messenger, I think the concern is genuine, though I don’t know anything about a “global elite.” The people who support violence against me live in my neighborhood. In any case, I responded.

I feel that voting for people to represent your interests is one of the least effective means of achieving political success. It is always a lagging indicator of political opinion. The voting myth states that to have political influence, you must delegate it away. The alternative, I think, is to represent yourself and your interests.

Some refer to it as “direct action.” Taking direct action, rather than relying on a middleman to solve problems, has many advantages. You become familiar with the resources around you, building de facto institutions and learning your own capabilities or strengths.

Some specific examples of direct action are passing out flyers about issues that concern you rather than waiting on the media to give it attention. When someone raises money for a charity instead of asking a politician for tax dollars, that is direct action. When someone starts a book club rather than attending a government classroom for an education, that is taking action. One method of direct action, agorism, seeks to build alternative institutions that deligitimize the state’s interference in that area of the marketplace.

Direct action does not spend time fighting over platforms or building a consensus, wasting time and money. Different groups can operate independently without the need for confrontation, unless their goals really are diametrically opposed. Direct action can be taken whenever you see fit.

These two methods of activism can be applied together. Think of all the hours wasted debating on who to vote for, what platform proposal to adopt, which bylaw to strike. Yet, voting itself takes just a few minutes.

We can spend an hour a year voting and the rest of our time taking action. If you’re interested, you might want to check out DFW ALL for other ideas.

She said, “Forcing me to get a license on my property is like using the aggression of the law to take what is rightfully mine.” Quoting from Bastiat’sThe Law , she said, “When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it — without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud — to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.”

Mayor Bill Lanford then responded to Katy. In one exchange he said, “I want to rebut the idea that your property is yours and we have to leave it all alone. That’s not true; that’s not true. It never has been true.” The mayor also admitted they were committing an act of violence by using force against residents, saying “We forcibly take your tax money; we make you pay taxes.” Calling liberty a “half-truth,” he said aggressive force is necessary to create a sense fear, or what he deemed “responsibility.”

Katy responded, “I do fundamentally disagree because before there were laws, we had rights. Our rights are derived from property; our rights are derived from God. When we keep putting registration on people, when we keep asking people to pay taxes on things they have worked so hard to own, then we are violating people’s rights.”

During a break in the meeting, I interviewed assistant city manager Chuck Barnett. I asked what should happen to someone who refuses to obey or pay the fine. He said it was acceptable to imprison someone who does “challenge the system.”

We’ll try to better organize opposition to the proposal next time. The council did not set a hard date for reintroduction, so we don’t know when it will be heard again. The most frustrating thing for me was to hear little principled opposition, like debating with a pirate how deep the sword should go. That’s election politics. I can only hope that the council members ask themselves what is it about their psychology that they are willing to use force against peaceful people.

I forgive them, of course, for their transgressions, but it is still wrong.

Let me state for the record that I, too, want to live in a clean, safe neighborhood, a neighborhood that is welcoming to all people, and a neighborhood that is safe from violent individuals. After all, that’s why you and I are all here tonight. Although my primary objection is to the means used to collect this money, I do believe that the rates are already too high as well. However, seeing that the discussion tonight is about the tax rates, I will limit my remarks to just that.

If we kept the government to its proper functions, then the city government could be run on a fraction of its current budget.

As the French philosopher and pamphleteer explained, the role of government is the protection of life, liberty and property. And when the government violates those bounds, then individuals must bear the unintended consequences that inevitably follow from that decision. It’s what he called the seen and the unseen. The unseen consequences may be less obvious but none the less relevant. He offered a tremendous insight into why this must be so. For the sake of time, I won’t go into those now.

Take the case before us. I grant you that increasing taxes will generate more revenue, which will provide for more city services. Now, let’s investigate for just one minute what could be the unseen consequences of increasing taxes.

Individuals would have spent that money how they saw fit to improve the lives of their children and their families. We have all dealt firsthand with the increasing burden of consumer prices for gasoline and groceries as the Federal Reserve continues to devalue the dollar with its inflationary policies. Families could have used that money to buy school supplies, to save for the future, or to invest in their business or themselves. Someone may decide to start a new business because the city is seen as more tax friendly, and then new jobs are created. By allowing everyone in the city to improve their lives ever so much, hasn’t the general welfare of the people also improved? They may not have used the money how I saw fit, but the point is that I can never use that money to best improve their lives as they could themselves. Allowing free people to live freely, that is how we have come to enjoy the greatest abundance that the world has ever known. It’s what makes this discussion over how much wealth to take even possible.

I would even go so far to challenge the idea that the quantity of government services is a measure of community’s values. I believe that a government should not be measured by the services it provides, but by the rights it protects.

With freedom comes the responsibility for how we use that freedom. Once we have the courage to accept that, we automatically become part of the solution by honoring our peaceful neighbor’s choices and no longer trying to control them. When you think about it, that really is the good neighbor policy. Thank you.

Two other residents gave testimony opposing a tax increase after me, but they were also commenting on their desire to increase the quality and quantity of various city projects. One individual told me that he appreciated my comments, and we had a quick discussion about Debra Medina’s proposal to end property taxes and the Texas Liberty Campaign. The next meeting is Monday, Aug. 31, when the vote will likely occur.

We spent the first half hour discussing how to clarify a caucus’ process of rescinding its election of an at-large director and any possible vacancy election. (In the last summary, I mistakenly said that a vacancy would be filled by the executive board.) The next discussion of the night was a procedure for safekeeping official records.

In the officer’s section, the general consensus of the group approved adding a responsibility that officers must complete miscellaneous duties assigned by the executive board. In keeping the organization as independent as possible, we approved removing the sections that makes the chairman and treasurer responsible for TxLC’s compliance with state or federal laws. We also like extending the notice for an election to fill the vacancy of the chairman from 10 days to 14.

The next meeting will be tonight at 7:00 exclusively to hear testimony from anyone not on the committee. There’s another opportunity to provide testimony before the convention at 7:00 Friday night in person in San Marcos or by phone. The conference number is (218)862-7200 and the code is 732261. I don’t believe I’ll be at the convention this weekend, so I plan to make this the last summary. Best of luck everybody and have fun.

We first discussed news that national Campaign for Liberty board members are considering establishing official state charters with the CFL branding, a significant structural shift in the organization. The CFL originally balked at that idea just before the first senate district conventions in February, in part, because of the expense involved. It was unclear as to why this shift in thinking has occurred. Nothing has been made final, and the next board meeting is not currently scheduled until after the TxLC state convention later this month.

We also fielded questions about the caucus election system.

The first business of the night was a motion to strike director term limits, which failed. We then clarified that officers shall hold their officer until a successor is elected. This was seen as a precaution in case a convention is delayed for some reason.

We also provided an opportunity for a caucus to rescind its election of a director. The position would then be filled by the executive board.

A motion passed to hold a testimony-only meeting on Thursday and at least two more regular meetings before the state convention. We adjourned about 9:15 until Thursday at 7:00 p.m.

We first discussed the method of selecting directors at the state convention. One method we proposed said a caucus shall select one director for each full 10 percent it represented of the state convention and an additional director if the remaining fraction of the caucus was greater than five percent. That motioned failed by a slim roll call vote.

Instead, the motion that succeeded called for caucuses to select one director for each full 10 percent it represented of the state convention; further, the voting power of each director would then be scaled to be in proportion from the number of directors to the total size of the voting executive board members, which equals directors and voting officers. This passed on a roll call vote.

[For example, the voting strength of each director would be found by multiplying the director's total caucus percentage by the number of directors elected at the convention, which is then divided by the total size of the executive board [directors plus voting officers] and then divided again by the number of directors elected from that individual’s caucus. The vote strength of an individual voting officer is inversely proportional to the size of the executive board. I hope I got that right.]

A motion carried to elect the chair of the calender subcommittee, which was approved several meetings ago for scheduling any amendments proposed before the convention. Read King and I were elected co-chairs. Members then temporarily postponed discussing how caucuses select their directors.

Moving to the bylaws article on standing committees, we first adopted a membership committee with the power to validate new members, to maintain a membership registry, and to administer elections to create or reconsider regions and regional organizations.

We then created a strategy committee to submit ideas to the executive board in order to adopt non-binding strategy recommendations. The technology committee and rules committee sections were approved as written. A finance and fund raising committee was proposed and accepted in order for the organization to accept donations and report on funds.

An advocacy coordination committee was also chartered with the responsibility to stay abreast of state-wide issues, to maintain an issues library, and to prepare a regular newsletter. Finally, we approved a seventh committee for affiliate organizations.

The executive board article was adopted, for the most part, as written. An attempt to strike proxy voting from the executive board was denied. However, a motion passed that said proxy votes shall not be recognized in consecutive months or for more than three months per year. This granted some leniency in cases of an emergency or other events that took away from a board member’s responsibilities. The complete article was then adopted as amended.

The method of selecting directors from the caucus was then readdressed to allow for caucuses to choose any method, such as single transferable vote or random selection, to select their directors. We then adjourned.

The next meeting is scheduled for July 14 at 7:00 p.m. The agenda is to take testimony from outside members and begin tinkering with any faulty or confusing language. If you’d like to testify, let me know and I’ll get the number for you.

The first business of the night was to consider Article VII on parliamentary authority, which we unanimously adopted as written.

The second motion was to adopt Article IX Section I, concerning ratification, as adopted. The question was whether the bylaws approved at the upcoming state convention should be ratified on an up-down vote by senate districts or should SDs be permitted to conditionally ratify. We OK’d an amendment explicitly limiting ratification to a yes-or-no vote. There was talk of default ratification if a senate district did not take any action, but some felt that set a bad precedent. Then, there was talk of delaying ratification until after the first regular state convention. There was not action taken on this.

The main motion to adopt the section as amended was then approved without objection.
The next section concerned amendments. It was moved to strike absentee electronic voting from the amendment process. Some feared electronic voting would be uninformed if voters hadn’t heard the debate, analogous to congressman voting on bills they haven’t read. The amendment passed.

We added some incidental clarifications to the second paragraph of the amendment section. We approved a motion to say that all state conventions shall be held within 100 miles of Austin. It was meant to protect the executive board from purposefully calling a special convention that would be dominated by any one region. Austin was seen as the most equally burdensome for regions throughout the state.We deliberated on a time span to hold the regular state conventions. We settled that the convention shall begin no earlier than Jan. 15 and no later than March 7 of each odd-numbered year. Based on a roll call vote, we agreed that conventions will also have to be called on a weekend. The argument against went that the quorum rule would prevent a rouge convention.

Next, we lowered the requirement for calling a special convention to 10 percent of the TxLC membership, provided that no more than a quarter of which is called from a single county. If more than 30 percent of the state membership make the request, then there is no additional requirement. The intention is to prevent a single large county from calling a special convention. An unsuccessful amendment was moved that no more than eight percent of the calling members can hail from a single county if the 30 percent exception is not met.

After a clerical amendment, we then adopted the first paragraph under Convention Committees under Article V. In the same article, we adopted the quorum and roll call sections as written. The roll call could later be amended if we are able to streamline an electronic voting system for the convention.

We discussed the cumbersome nature of the open meeting requirement and some of the concerns on exactly what constituted a meeting.

A few minutes after 10:00, we adjourned until tomorrow evening at 7:00, when we will take up the meeting requirements again.

We called our fourth meeting of the Bylaws & Structure Committee Monday night. Robert McDonald, the chair of the committee, announced that Nathan Withers had stepped down from the committee, leaving 29 members remaining. We did have 15 participants tonight and held a quorum for most of the evening.

Robert asked if anyone objected to holding additional meetings since we are fast approaching a self-imposed July 8 deadline for an initial report. We are having an additional meeting on Thursday, July 2, and possibly a meeting on Sunday in addition to our two regularly scheduled Wednesday meetings.

The first motion of the night proposed we adopt Article III Section 2 A on the formation of regional groups, which read:

Individual TLC members in each county in Texas may caucus together and choose by majority vote of a majority of members in that county to associate with other counties to form a single Region. All counties in a Region must share a geographic border with at least one other county in their Region, and each county may be associated with only one Region. A vote to reconsider a county’s participation with a Region shall be ordered on written demand of 20% of the TLC members the affected county, except that such a vote may not be ordered more than once every two years, unless the count of TLC members in the affected area has increased or decreased by more than 50%.

It was amended to add an exception, “A request for exceptions to this clause may be approved by the executive board on a case-by-case basis if the request originates in the county or region in question.” This was added in case less populated regions or counties that did not share a border wanted to combine into a single organization. The main objection to approving the Section 2 A was that it was overly complicated as compared to the structure of the national Campaign for Liberty. Another option was proposed to convention every two years and then elect delegates to the state convention, much like the method of was used for the first convention. It was then argued that the regional organizations already exist so it would be no more burdensome to approve the original wording.

The motion passed as amended on a voice vote.

Article III Section 2 B was proposed for adoption as written. An amendment to allow for reconsideration of regional formation once a year was not seconded. The motion passed on a voice vote.

The next motion was to approve part C. An amendment to strike the maximum number of regions that are recognized at the state convention was approved, as was the motion as amended.

Part D, Powers and Regional Organizations, was the next action. A amendment was proposed to strike any reference to a regional organization’s legal status with respect to the statewide organization. It passed unanimously. A second motion was proposed, out of legal concerns, to restrict non-TxLC members from joining local TxLC organizations. It was opposed because some local organizations may find the flexibility necessary to organize and train with non-TxLC members. The amendment to substitute was rejected.

A third amendment was proposed to strike the entire paragraph which began “Regional Organizations shall.” Some thought it better to make such a power explicit. Additionally, a roll call vote on an amendment to the amendment to send the entire issue to the legal subcommittee was voted down 56-44 percent based on SD voting strength.

The motion to strike the entire second paragraph in question was approved with 50.9 percent of the vote. The third paragraph was accepted as written.

Without objection, we then struck Section 3, Individual Non-Voting Membership.

Next was Section 4, Affiliate Membership. An amendment was forwarded to substitute these membership requirements: (1) be an organization of natural persons; (2) have organization, operation, and 2/3 of members in Texas; (3) be current on membership dues; and (4) be approved by the board of director as holding values and goals congruent with the TxLC. A further amendment, which I believe past, was made to submit the affiliate membership section to the drafting subcommittee.

A motion to reconsider Section 3 was not approved on a roll call vote of 79-21 percent. It was understood that we may revisit the issue if time allows. Section 4 was then renumbered to Section 3 and was then moved, I believe, to the drafting subcommittee.

The next section, Removal, was unanimously submitted to the drafting subcommittee.

We then moved back to the regional powers language. The motion was to add the 10th amendment aspects that had been set aside in the previous conference call until we found a more appropriate section. Instead, at approximately 9:45, we approved adjournment until Wednesday for tuning of the language.

As always, you are invited to listen in or testify at any of the meetings. Our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday at 7:00.

Article I

The general consensus was to refer to the organization as “TLC” in the bylaws. The opinion was that by using the phrase “hereinafter TLC” and not “hereafter TLC” it only limited that abbreviation to the bylaws document itself and allowed for other abbreviations to be used for Web domains or other purposes. Though, it was mentioned, “TLC” might carry more weight since it is officially referenced in the bylaws.

Article II

It was stated that the original idea behind combining the purpose and powers sections was to prominently display the manner in which the state organization is restricted to selected enumerated powers.

The first motion of the meeting was to strike Article I Section 2 on powers from the bylaws. It was thought that by leaving it as it were, the bylaws could be interpreted to only allow for networking technology. It was not seconded. A motion to postpone the section on powers as written passed on the understanding that the enumerated powers and the 9th and 10th Amendment aspects would later be added to the document where it were deemed more appropriate. As I understand it, there was no objection to the wording, in and of itself, only the placement of the wording.

Article III

For the sake of expedience, the next motion proposed forming a legal subcommittee of five to research such issues as the definition of “residents,” the legal liability of having minors as voting members, and other issues. Sean Cheben was the only nomination for the chair. A motion was passed without objection that he be allowed to choose the others who join the subcommittee.
Another motion called to strike the first paragraph of Article III for the sake of streamlining the document. An amendment was made to move the paragraph to the powers section in Article II, which was earlier postponed to add elsewhere later. The amendment and the amended motion were approved.

A motion was approved unanimously to strike the proposed “Pledge to follow the law/nonviolence” section. A substitute non-aggression pledge, it was argued, would be better suited in a separate code of conduct to be produced after the bylaws.

A motion was put forward to change the age of voting members to 18 years of age. An amendment to substitute was proposed that would say a member should be “of an age to be eligible to register to vote in Texas.” This would allow for individuals disqualified from voting or those who choose not to register to vote in government elections to be TLC members. The amendment failed, and the main motion was voted down 54-45 percent based on state senate district voting strength. Many were still interested in including minors as full members but favored taking the time to research the legal liability of full membership for members and alternative approaches of including minors, such as requiring a legal guardian being present. A motion, which passed, was made to move Article III Section 1 A to the legal subcommittee.

A motion was made to add the phrase “, and to forswear the use of illegal means in furtherance of the said purpose on behalf of the TLC” to the membership requirements. The objection to the motion was that the bylaws should deal with the procedure by which actions are taken and how they are taken. The consideration of the legality of the action being considered is not relevant to the procedures of the bylaws. The motion was referred to the legal subcommittee.

The next motion proposed was to adopt Article III Section 1, excluding the sections already sent to the legal subcommittee. The objection settled around a lack of a dues requirement in Article I. The motion passed by the slimmest margin of any vote yet, 50.44-49.56 based on SD voting strength. There were seven individuals in favor and six against. Most likely, some members will propose a minority report with any suggested changes to the final report, and our scheduling subcommittee will begin hearing amendments from members not on the bylaws subcommittee sometime by mid-July.

For the final business of the night, the issue of quorum was raised again. The concern was that a lack of quorum hurt the legitimacy of the committee’s actions and that those members who have not participated could stall future efforts if they wanted to rehash past debates. Over 50 percent of the voting strength was represented, and 15 of the 30 members were present tonight. A motion was called that here forward, not including the current meeting, any members who misses three consecutive meetings without permission of the chairman shall be removed from the committee. It passed without objection.

There will be a conference call on Monday and Wednesday of next week. If you are interested in listening or testifying, then let me know and I’ll get the number for you.

Without objection, we approved the creation of a calender subcommittee to hear outside amendments to the bylaws preliminary report that the committee will prepare prior to the state convention. This moves our schedule forward a bit. I recall that we are going to try to have the preliminary report done by July 9 for people to begin reviewing and amending.

The calender subcommittee was formed to allow outside amendments to be considered by the bylaws committee before to the start of the convention and to streamline the hearing of those recommended changes. People will still have two more opportunities to propose ideas while at the convention. The creation of the calender subcommittee was originally recommended by the convention committee in order for a greater number of people to give their input and still complete the work in time at the convention. You can read more about the recommendations and the proposed differences between the rules of first and second convention on the OCATI Wiki.

The second motion was that we adopt Jeremy’s hybrid proposal, which was discussed last week, as a framework for the bylaws. An amendment to consider the other proposals failed on a weighted vote with only about 25 percent support.

The third motion was to form a subcommittee charged with filling in the partial proposal adopted in the previous motion. That passed with one or two votes against. That subcommittee of five is supposed to report back at the next meeting on Wednesday so we can begin making changes.
We adjourned at 9:10 p.m.

I encourage everyone to visit the OCATI Wiki to catch up on some of the topics discussed here.

Overview

The conference call started at 7 p.m. on Tuesday after being called to order by Robert McDonald, the chair of the bylaws committee. He had taken a poll of the committee by e-mail to set up the best time for the greatest participation, so that’s how he arrived at that time and date. By my estimate, 15 to 18 people were on the call at any one time. The committee set a new meeting for next Wednesday and the conference call adjourned at about 9:15.

Topics

Meeting times:
Robert said he plans to hold 10 of these conference calls before the next convention at the end of July. There would be one each week for the next four weeks and then two each week for some three weeks. I don’t remember that anyone objected to that. He also wanted to limit each call to between two and three hours.

After asking the group of when the best time to meet would be, Robert said he intends to hold the meetings on Wednesday at the same time.

Quorum:
There are about 30 members of the bylaws committee, including any new members that have been added since the convention. At the start of the call, I recall that only 12 members had called in, and the question came about if the committee needed a quorum to pass any motions. The judgment of many familiar with parliamentarian procedures was that Robert’s Rules of Order states that there is no minumum number of members required to be present for an organization in the formational stages, and so it was permissible to conduct business. However, if participation was lacking, the opinion was that any committee reports presented at the next convention should note the general level of participation in forming the recommendations.

Since these reports are only recommendations, then it was felt that more harm would be done by not completing the tasks assigned to us at the convention.

Organizational structure:
The basic questions of what should this organization look like is still being debated. There are a total of at least four competing drafts, in addition to Jeremy Blosser’s compromise plan that he talked about at Friday’s Meetup. Two proposals (which are not on the OCATI wiki yet) came in Tuesday, so I didn’t get a chance to read those. You can read some of those plans here.

The drafts range in scope from a bicameral state organization to an initial unicameral structure, from a state body with more responsibilities to a state body that has virtually none, and from a fully engaged organization from the start to an organization that limits its scope and build on its successes.

In my opinon, this is a proxy debate on another concern. The crux of the matter is still deciding how much responsibility should the state organization have. We are hoping for the resolutions committee to provide that input, but that has not happened yet. Thus far, the general direction of the committee, I believe, has been to leave as much of that direction for the members themselves to decide by making the bylaws hospitable to whatever actions individuals deem necessary and worthy of their resources, a true marketplace of ideas.

Membership:
The particulars of the call then moved to membership. Most of the bylaws drafts followed the Robert’s Rules format, and the first two articles, name and purpose, had already been answered at the convention. The third section under Robert’s is membership. A motion carried that said individuals should “affirm” that they support the purpose statement of the organization in order to become members.

One of the drafts stated that a members should “do no harm” if his or her beliefs are in contradiction to the actions of the organization. But that didn’t receive support, in part, because it was interpreted that a member would be prohibited from acting counter to a policy stance that the state organization took, if any.

The next question was by what means would an individual affirm support. The idea was that individuals should overtly commit to supporting the the purpose statement. That could be as simple as ticking a check mark on an online form or sending a secure digital signature, for the purposes of protecting the integrity of membership voting. I don’t recall that the exact means were approved.

The last item was the age of members. One idea was to make the minimum age for “voting members” to be 16 years old, leaving the possibility of non-voting membership to those under 16. There were legal concerns that the state organization could be held responsible if a minor who was a full-fledged member committed some act of vandalism, for example, under the color of the Texas Liberty Campaign. The question was tabled, for now, until we’ve gotten some legal opinions.

That was the end of business, and the committee was adjourned until next Wednesday.

Conclusion

The most contentious issues have yet to be addressed. Some of those issues are membership dues (if any), the overall structure and scope, the checks and balances in place, the means of communication to members, the role of a spokesperson (if any), the method of affiliating with other groups (if any), the different levels of membership (if any), and the responsibilities and formation of standing committees (if any).

Also, I hope you’ll take a look at Jeremy’s plan. It provides a light footprint but allows for the organization to begin taking actions statewide that would allow for us to grow our ranks and build on our successes. Some of those actions are accepting donations, provide a means of communicating with members, establish membership requirements, and calling a state convention. After a certain membership threshold is met or at the request of the members, a state convention would be called to consider altering these responsibilities. (I’m sure Jeremy can speak more to these points than I can.)

If there are any specific questions that you have for me or any of the proposals, please forward those to me and I will try to get some answers.

The edition I’ve chosen to read was reproduced by the Foundation for Economic Education in 1998 and includes an introduction by Walter E. Williams and a forward by Sheldon Richmond.

The Law

Only two paragraphs long, this section highlights the dramatic reversal that the rule of law has taken in post-Napoleonic France, and no doubt elsewhere. In part he says, “The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!”

Life Is a Gift from God

He claims that life consists of “the physical, intellectual, and moral life.” By applying our mental faculties and harnessing our natural resources, all of which he believes a higher supernatural being is responsible for creating, we are able to convert our labor into products.

Now these three foundational principles (life, faculties, and production) stair-step onto one another into what we call life. It’s not all so different than another logical sequence that justifies the three stages of freedom, that is life, liberty, property. Life is freedom in the future tense; liberty is freedom in the present; and property is the freedom to posses one’s past.

Insightfully, he says that these three principles did not come about because of the existence of law, well no more than law came before the existence of life itself. Rather, law came about because of the existence of these principles.

What is Law

He said, “It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.”

He says that if a person possess these natural individual rights, then he or she shall have the right to defend these rights. If that is true, the logical extension is that a group of people may get together to defend these rights collectively. He calls this a collective right. But the term has much different meaning that it does today, where a collective right like the claim to free education actually usurps individual rights because an individual’s property must be seized in order to fund that act.

In fact, today’s collective rights are more akin to privileges than actual rights. As more and more actual rights are being ignored, we are given these revocable privileges in their place. These privileges are subject to the state’s discretion and outright termination.

Bastiat said that no group of people has the right to infringe on the right of another individual because no person in that group has that right to take another person’s life, destroy his property, or enslave him. A group does not conjure rights above and beyond those of its individual members.

He said, “It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.”
“A Just and Enduring Government” A government formed with that understanding, Bastiat said, would be just and tolerant, “whatever its political form might be.”

‘When successful, we would no have to thank the state for our success,” Bastiat said. “And, conversely, when unsuccessful, we would no more think of blaming the state for our misfortune than would the farmers blame the state because of hail or frost.”

The Complete Perversion of the Law

Bastiat warns of the law straying from its original intent, “The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. … The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.”

He says there are two main culprits for this perversion of law, “stupid greed” and “false philanthropy.”

A Fatal Tendency of Mankind

“When they can,” he said, “[people] wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. … This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man—in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.”

I believe human beings are morally neutral, neither good nor bad by default. The philosophy one holds and the actions one takes are what define a person’s morality. This desire to live at the expense of others is very real. It’s also dependent on a very short-term outlook. In the long run, trade and mutual cooperation are the greatest means of advancement.

But in short-term survivalist cultures, complex and paradoxical ideas like comparative advantage are not fully realized because people are not willing to lend themselves to reason for survival. The cause for that rejection of reason is controversial itself, having to do with superstition and rituals more than anything else.

Property and Plunder

Man has two choices, Bastiat reminds, production or plunder.

Our wants and needs, which include all the possible wants and needs of every future generation, are infinite. He said that since “man is naturally inclined to avoid pain—and since labor is pain in itself—it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work.”

The solution then is to make plunder more painful than production. As a consequence, “the proper purpose of law is to use power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency ….” Knowing this, those plunders then take the reigns of law to become the “invincible weapon of injustice.”

Victims of Lawful Plunder

Bastiat claims that there are two types of classes, and each has drastically different purposes. “Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.”

This not some radical new chain of thoughts, after all. As more and more people get wise to the fact that their own wealth is being taken, they seek to take part in it themselves. Eventually , or inevitably, this pyramid scheme runs out of suckers to pay for it. Then, we have a circumstance that too many hard-working Americans find themselves today, with their wealth drained, their self control stripped, and their will power crushed.

The Results of Legal Plunder

At it’s core, legal plunder turns justice on its head and manipulates our strong sense of allegiance to the state.

“There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate,” Bastiat said. “This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to
decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them”

(Part 2 to follow with “The Fate of the Non-Conformists”)