Frederic Bastiat Summarizes Conservatism
Writing by abuhatem on Wednesday, 28 of May , 2008 at 1:37 am
Bastiat summarizes conservatism (well, precisely the natural right classical liberalism school of it) thus at the very end of his great work The Law. This succinct sentence wholly describes the natural and spontaneous order:
God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!
And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.
For the nation which came up with the awful Rousseau, it is indeed refreshing that the French are also home of De’Maistre and Bastiat (combine the two and you get a traditionalist conservative!).
Category: Political philosophy
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