Legal Plunder

I found a cute little video that describes some basic foundations of freedom and liberty.

The money quote, of  course, is Bastiat’s shown above:

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

I suspect that we’ve been here for awhile now.  But if you wanna check to  make sure that we’re still here, wait for someone to make the case that healthcare is a fundamental human right.  Or, even better, attack you as a cold blooded bastard for wanting a policy that would allow people to die in the street.

The same can be said for Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

6 responses to “Legal Plunder

  1. Or, even better, attack you as a cold blooded bastard for wanting a policy that would allow people to die in the street.

    At least now we all agree on what you want. Now it’s just an issue of whether that makes you a patriot or a sociopath.

    • At least now we all agree on what you want.

      It isn’t even hard to draw you out….

      You are presenting the exact logical fallacy that I describe. The only way that you can prosecute your side is to describe me as wanting people to die in the street. You cannot, with a straight face and honest heart, believe that. In fact, this gets to the exact root of the argument we make that claims conservatives are more charitable than liberals and Christians more so than atheists.

      It is demonstrable that my demographic cares more for the plight of the less fortunate than your demographic does.

      Further, your position is that it is perfectly okay to rob your neighbor to the east at point of gun in order to contribute to the relief of your neighbor to the west. The difference is that you get enough such looters to vote that such robbery is not “illegal.”

      Then you call it moral.

  2. I don’t even need to look up the guy’s bio to know that he was probably born into great wealth and looked down on anyone who wasn’t.

    Plunder is an interesting choice of words, in any event, because it’s often what the wealthy do to everyone else under the guise of “deregulation”

    • I don’t even need to look up the guy’s bio to know that he was probably born into great wealth

      I don’t know dude.

      I share the same views and came from the most modest of roots. A school teacher for a dad and a bank teller for a mom.

      I was dirt poor in college and when I took my first “real job” I took a pay cut from my college job.

      I’ve had every single thing that COULD be turned off, turned off; heat, electricity, water and phone. For a stretch I lived in a 400 sq foot studio apartment and slept on the hardwoods because I couldn’t afford a bed.

      looked down on anyone who wasn’t.

      I honestly think this is your problem. You think that someone who “has” and doesn’t feel that it’s okay that you dictate their charity is somehow a snob, or a bastard.

      Let’s put it into an academic setting. Do you think that we should take points from the “A” student and give them to the failing one? Or, even better, do you think that we are doing the failing student a favor in preparing them for life by ignoring their “F” and giving them a “C”, or even an “A”?

      Plunder is an interesting choice of words, in any event, because it’s often what the wealthy do to everyone else under the guise of “deregulation”

      I suspect we are not talking about the same thing when we each use the word regulation.

      By regulation, I mean that set of enforced rules that gives you the guarantee that when I sell you a bushel of wheat you are, indeed, getting a bushel of wheat and not half a bushel with some rocks underneath.

      When I hear the left mention regulation, I hear that I must make a bushel of wheat available to the poor at such a price as they can afford to buy their fill of it.

  3. I put health care up there with education, police protection, and the legal system as something everyone should have guaranteed to be available. This isn’t plunder any more than it’s plunder when business owners make loads of money off stuff their workers produce, while paying workers only what the market will bear. In fact, the latter seems more like plunder for me. In every state in the industrialized world but the US health care access is guaranteed, there are no medical cost bankruptcies (it’s the majority of ours), conservatives strongly support it, and health care costs are cheaper than in the US. Insurance companies don’t plunder the population to drive up costs and limit care – overruling doctors. So to me, guaranteeing health care is protection from plunder!

    • I put health care up there with education, police protection, and the legal system as something everyone should have guaranteed to be available.

      Right, I know. And this is where you are wrong.

      Education should be made available to children because they are not in control of the choices made in their behalf. This is why I am in favor of S-CHIP and other childhood protections. After all, hundreds of thousands of children are born to democrats every year!

      😉

      Police protection and legal systems are put in place to guarantee our liberty. They are there to make sure that nobody TAKES from us. Your vision of health care is one where someone is coerced to provide for another man. And that is tyranny, not Liberty.

      This isn’t plunder any more than it’s plunder when business owners make loads of money off stuff their workers produce

      For every dollar that Bill Gates has, or Jobs had when he passed, they each created at least as much wealth in the hands of each of their customers. No one coerced me to purchase the iPhone. I felt the trade was at WORST equitable and most likely I would have paid even a dollar more. The money that Jobs had is a representation of the wealth he created in each of his customers.

      The same is said for the business owner. I suspect that you would teach for even a dollar less than you make. Your employer is making you rich in the same way you make them rich. They just do it in aggregate.

      So to me, guaranteeing health care is protection from plunder!

      You can only provide that protection by first stealing the money to buy it.

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