Highlights from the GCTP Library
Friedrich A. Hayek wrote the book “The Road To Serfdom”, which was subsequently condensed and published in the condensed form by Readers Digest.
It tells the story quickly in cartoon form, how big government can quickly bring a country to serfdom.
The GCTP library page is [here], and the links on it for the condensed format is here:
The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek in cartoons
Monday, Aug. 23rd at 6:30PM at Hontz Hall in Gas City, the Grant County Tea Party will host a candidate debate. Sen. District 19 candidates Rep. Travis Holdman and Dem. Robert Couse and House District 31 candidates Dem. Joe Pearson and Rep. Kevin Mahan will be participating in the debate. Please make every attempt to attend this very important discussion and hear what your candidates think about the issues impacting us.
The GCTP welcomes you and your family and friends to this meeting and to the other meetings and events that we’ll be hosting. There is no better time to get involved. Don’t delay…join us now!
Please make plans to attend the next Grant County Tea Party meeting on Monday August 9th at 6:30PM at American Legion Post 368 in Van Buren. State Senator Mike Delph will be the special speaker. The discussion topic will be about illegal aliens in Indiana. Senator Delph has authored illegal alien bills for the last three sessions of the Indiana State Legislature. The Senator will discuss his plan to introduce a similar bill when the legislature meets this coming January. Please do not miss this opportunity to meet and hear one of your elected officials in person. So, please bring family and friends with you and get involved with the Grant County Tea Party!
First Friday is this Friday, Aug. 6th. The theme this time is World Festival & Latino. Please come to downtown Marion from 5 to 9:30 PM and enjoy the First Friday celebration. While you are there, make sure you stop by and visit the Grant County Tea Party booth as we will be there enjoying the event and this fantastic weather. Please stop by as we would love to meet you and explain more on what we are about.
The Grant County Tea Party is supporting a Discharge Petition to repeal the Healthcare bill that threatens our country.
Please visit the link below and sign NOW!!!
A Press Release describing the petition is located at this link [here].
A explanation of a Discharge Petition and how this is important in the legislative process is located [here].
A copy of the “Thank You Letter” sent to Representatives who sign the discharge petition is [here].
Again, please help the effort by signing the petition now at the link here:
Highlights from the GCTP News and Views page, [Political Blogs]
From American Spectator, this excellent article on the Political System we need to change.
As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.
When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.
Although after the election of 2008 most Republican office holders argued against the Troubled Asset Relief Program, against the subsequent bailouts of the auto industry, against the several “stimulus” bills and further summary expansions of government power to benefit clients of government at the expense of ordinary citizens, the American people had every reason to believe that many Republican politicians were doing so simply by the logic of partisan opposition. After all, Republicans had been happy enough to approve of similar things under Republican administrations. Differences between Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas are of degree, not kind. Moreover, 2009-10 establishment Republicans sought only to modify the government’s agenda while showing eagerness to join the Democrats in new grand schemes, if only they were allowed to. Sen. Orrin Hatch continued dreaming of being Ted Kennedy, while Lindsey Graham set aside what is true or false about “global warming” for the sake of getting on the right side of history. No prominent Republican challenged the ruling class’s continued claim of superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as irritable children who must learn their place. The Republican Party did not disparage the ruling class, because most of its officials are or would like to be part of it.
Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.
Please plant to come to our next meeting which will be at Hontz Hall in Gas City Park on Monday, July 26th, starting at 6:30PM . This will be a fantastic meeting, so please invite your friends, family and neighbors. As always, there will be opportunities to purchase items such as shirts, yard signs and bumper stickers. This is a great opportunity to meet the members of the Grant County Tea Party and to get plugged in. This is an awesome time to be a part of our movement. Please don’t put it off any longer.
See ya on Monday!
A new Grant County Tea Party brochure is available for viewing and printing.
Read it on the screen, or print it out to give to others. The brochure was developed by GCTP members.
The link is here: GCTP Brochure
The design is color, tri-fold, double sided. It looks pretty good in black and white as well.
Grab yours now!
Highlights from the GCTP Library
Frederick Bastiat’s book, “The Law“, was written in 1850, and
certainly studied by the Founding Fathers.
The full book:
On the GCTP Online Books page here:
http://www.wewantamericaback.net/site/?page_id=568
This is a short synopsis from The Cougar Report.
——————————
#6 The Law by Bastiat 1850
ABOUT
Bastiat’s The Law is a manifesto of individual liberty, justice and
limited government. It was written over 150 years ago in support of
human rights and against centralized control. Bastiat places special
emphasis on the operation of a just State and the problems with a
welfare state.
Many libertarian organizations use Bastiat to advance their cause.
HISTORY
At this point we are making the transition from the Founding to 19th
century political thought. Although Bastiat does not make huge
philosophical leaps from the founders, do note the different threats
to liberty that Bastiat is talking about. From this point forward
beware of any changes in political thought, as we approach
progressivism these changes become very important.
When Bastiat was writing this short book, many members of the
intellectual and political community in Europe were turning towards
statism as a legitimate political and economic system.
MY ANALYSIS
The Law stands out among the other texts in the reading list because
it was written by a foreigner about political economy in general, not
an exclusive analysis of American policy. Even more interesting is
that this text is more applicable today than many of the other
documents on the list. A century and half after it was written,
Bastiat’s book offers clarity on numerous topics, from economics to
government to personal liberty.
The person who first introduced me to Bastiat may have changed my
political philosophy indefinitely. Not only was Bastiat’s analysis
important in organizing my philosophical and political views, but it
also offered innovative arguments in favor of the utilitarian and
moral benefits of personal and economic liberty.
Our Founding Fathers and Bastiat would have agreed that the greatest
single threat to liberty is the State. No doubt Bastiat could have
helped Jefferson pen the Declaration of Independence. In the words of
Walter Williams:
The signers’ vision of liberty and the proper role of government
was captured in the immortal words “We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these
rights, governments are instituted among Men. . . .” Bastiat echoes
the identical vision, saying, “Life, faculties, production— in other
words individuality, liberty, property— that is man. And in spite of
the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God
precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.”
We see again the republican ideal of individual liberty as the ends of
government. In Bastiat’s time the French Government was experiencing
many of the political-social-economic shifts that the United States is
going through today; that is why The Law is such an applicable text.
As far as protecting “Natural Rights,” Bastiat insists that, “The law,
I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an
entirely contrary purpose!”
His argument is a simple syllogism: define good law, explain how the
law has become perverted, and then provide a solution. Accordingly, I
will break down the text into his definitions, his explanation and his
solution.
DEFINITIONS:
* What are our natural rights?
“Each of us has a natural right—from God—to defend his person, his
liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of
life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent
upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but
the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an
extension of our faculties?”
* What is Liberty?
“Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its
rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful
self-defense; of punishing injustice?”
* What is Justice?
Justice is the protection of life, liberty and property.
* What is Law?
Given that natural right to defense, law is “the collective
organization of the individual right to lawful defense.”
* What is a Just and Enduring Government?
A government that correctly uses authority to protect natural rights.
PERVERSION:
* How has the law been perverted?
“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.”
* A Fatal Tendency of Mankind
“But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When
they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others.”
* Property and Plunder
The Origin of Property:
• Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by
the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This
process is the origin of property.
The Cause of Plunder:
• “Now 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. History shows this quite
clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can
stop it.”(Note: the problem is systemic rather than moral. A solution
must be a solution changing the structure of government)
* Victims of Lawful Plunder
“Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims.
Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who
make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter—by
peaceful or revolutionary means—into the making of laws.” (Note:
Lobbying is a product of redistributive plunder)
* The Effects of Legal Plunder
“…it erases from everyone’s conscience the distinction between justice
and injustice.”
“When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the
cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his
respect for the law.”
SOLUTION:
* The Choice Regarding Plunder
• “The few plunder the many.” — “This system prevailed when the
right to vote was restricted. One would turn back to this system to
prevent the invasion of socialism. “
• “Everybody plunders everybody.”–“We have been threatened with
this new system since the franchise was made universal. The newly
enfranchised majority has decided to formulate law on the same
principle of legal plunder that was use by their predecessors when the
vote was limited.”
• “Nobody plunders anybody.”– “This is the principle of justice,
peace, order, stability, harmony and logic.”
* Socialism is not the Answer
“Since the law organizes justice, the socialists ask why the law
should not also organize labor, education, and religion. Why should
not law be used for these purposes? Because it could not organize
labor, education, and religion without destroying justice.”
* Law is a Negative Concept
“It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent
injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice,
that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when
injustice is absent.”
* The Solution
• “A science of economics must be developed before a science of
politics can be logically formulated.”
• Immediately following the development of a science of economics,
and at the very beginning of the formulation of a science of politics,
this all-important question must be answered: What is law? What ought
it to be? What is its scope; its limits? Logically, at what point do
the just powers of the legislator stop?
* Legislative function
• “The existence of persons and property preceded the existence of
the legislator, and his function is only to guarantee their safety.”
Conclusion:
For Bastiat, the true essence of a just government is individual
liberty. Not too big a deal when compared to Jefferson’s Declaration,
Publius’ Federalist Papers or Washington’s cardinal speeches.
However, Bastiat places special emphasis on legal plunder:
redistribution of property as the government sees fit. Undoubtedly,
there is a certain level of this going on in the United States. Is it
a problem?
Please make plans to attend the next Grant County Tea Party meeting on Monday July 12th at 6:30PM at Sirloin Stockade in Marion. When entering, tell the hostess you are with the Grant County Tea Party as we will be meeting in the conference room on the west end of the building. You are welcome to enjoy a meal while you are there or just come to the meeting. This will be a working meeting so please bring family and friends with you and get involved with the Grant County Tea Party!
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