Legal plunder...

     I found this great article over at American Thinker... We the Serfs, by John Lilly. Here is an excerpt... 

     "The Obama administration has managed to move us back in time to the medieval days, where the king reigned supreme, and the fruits of the serfs' (taxpayers, producers in society, the middle class, entrepreneurs, etc.) labor belong to the government, who determine how much we shall keep.

     "Frederick Bastiat wrote The Law in 1850 at the time of the French Revolution. His deductions are as relevant today as they were at that time. 

     "Our life -- physical, intellectual, and moral life -- is a gift from God. Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor. Every day I work, a day of my life is used up, never to return. The compensation that I am paid in exchange for that day's labor is equivalent to that piece of my life that is now gone. If I have a right to life, then I have a right to that compensation which I have exchanged for a portion of my life. This process is the origin of property. 

     "But man may also live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the product of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder. Since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain, it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. 

     "The proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this tendency to plunder instead of work. The law should protect property and punish plunder. The law, whether made by one man or one group of men, operates with the sanction and support of a dominating force, and this force must be entrusted to those who make the laws. 

     "Legal plunder occurs when the law takes from one person and gives to another. The law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. If such a law is not abolished, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.

     "As Frederick Bastiat noted in The Law,  

But it is upon the law that socialism itself relies. Socialists desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. Socialists, like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their own weapon. And when once the law is on the side of socialism, how can it be used against socialism? For when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help.

     "When law and force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing but a mere negation. They oblige him only to abstain from harming others. They do not violate his life, his liberty, or his property. They safeguard all of these. They are defensive; they defend equally the rights of all. The Constitution lists negative rights."

     To read the complete article, click here.