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The Law, by Bastiat
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"The law organizes justice.  It could not organize labor, education, and religion without destroying justice."

"Law is force ... and consequently, the proper functions of the law cannot lawfully extend beyond the proper functions of force."

"Law and force .... within the bounds of justice impose nothing but a mere negation.  They oblige one only to abstain from harming others.  They are defensive; they defend equally the rights of all."

--- Frederic Bastiat


Lesson 61 - Fundamentals of Morality Part V Print E-mail

 

Let us examine this in a different way.

Any act of theft is an act that entails a molestation and a violation of an owner in respect to something he or she owns.  It is thus by definition, an immoral act.

Let us now consider the thief who steals $1.00 from individual A, $10 from individual B, and $100 from individual C.

In considering these varying acts of theft, we will quite naturally tend to view each act a little differently.  Normally, we will be inclined to say that the theft of $100 from individual C is a more serious and harmful act than the theft of $1.00 from individual A - and normally the thief as well will tend to value his theft of $100 more than he will value his theft of $1.00.

To us as observers, the act of theft may have no particular meaning or value one way or the other.  After all, it was not our $1.00 or $100, and nor were we the thief.  We ourselves neither gained nor lost anything as a result of the thief's act.

This is to exercise a value judgement, and falls into the area of utility, or subjective opinion. 

Each act of theft however, is in fact the same.  Each act is equally immoral in principle.

 



 
 

Fundamentals of Liberty