The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible - Bastiat Institute

120 Chapter 21 • “Give Me Your Past or Your Future!”
You exist in time;
future, present, and
past. To lose your
life is to lose your
future. To lose your
freedom is to lose
your present. And to
lose the harvest of
your life is to lose the
portion of your past
that produced it.
Extract from
Jonathan’s Guiding
Principles.
The present-day
delusion is an attempt
to enrich everyone
at the expense of
everyone else;
to make plunder
universal under
the pretence of
organizing it.
Frederic Bastiat,
1850
Brainstorming
• Does your life, liberty, and property,
correspond to your future, present, and past?
• In what way is a thief the same or different
from a tax collector?
• Why?
• How will the government use the product of
your labour, and your past labour to control
your future?
• Are small scale and large scale immorality
treated differently?
• Examples?
• Ethical issues?
Commentary
Your past is a part of the product of your time,
energy, and talent. Your present is your current
freedom of choice. Your future is your life to
come.
What does a thief steal from you? If you
labour in exchange for money, that money
belongs to you, and someone who initiates force
to take it from you is a thief. This is true whether
it is one thief acting alone or a large gang of
elected thieves acting together. Gangs may
implement laws to take from you, but this does
not make it morally right.
Do people in distress need our forced help?
You and I are able to decide for ourselves whom
we should help. Likewise, we should allow our
fellow citizens to make the same decision. So
who is promoting this offensive idea that we are
too unfeeling to help our neighbours when they
are in distress? These are the same offi cials who
are bound to special interest groups.
If money is not forcefully collected from
everyone, how are people in distress to be
helped? Our chosen religious organisations or
charities are particularly capable of distributing