Socialists Fear All Liberties

by Frédéric Bastiat

　　Well, what liberty should the legislators permit people to have?Liberty of conscience? (But if this were permitted, we would see thepeople taking this opportunity to become atheists.)

　　Then liberty of education? (But parents would pay professors toteach their children immorality and falsehoods; besides, according toMr. Thiers, if education were left to national liberty, it would ceaseto be national, and we would be teaching our children the ideas ofthe Turks or Hindus; whereas, thanks to this legal despotism overeducation, our children now have the good fortune to be taught thenoble ideas of the Romans.)

　　Then liberty of labor? (But that would mean competition which, inturn, leaves production unconsumed, ruins businessmen, andexterminates the people.)

　　Perhaps liberty of trade? (But everyone knows -- and the advocatesof protective tariffs have proved over and over again -- that freedomof trade ruins every person who engages in it, and that it isnecessary to suppress freedom of trade in order to prosper.)

　　Possibly then, liberty of association? (But, according tosocialist doctrine, true liberty and voluntary association are incontradiction to each other, and the purpose of the socialists is tosuppress liberty of association precisely in order to force people toassociate together in true liberty.)

　　Clearly then, the conscience of the social democrats cannot permitpersons to have any liberty because they believe that the nature ofmankind tends always toward every kind of degradation and disaster.Thus, of course, the legislators must make plans for the people inorder to save them from themselves.

　　This line of reasoning brings us to a challenging question: Ifpeople are as incapable, as immoral, and as ignorant as thepoliticians indicate, then why is the right of these same people tovote defended with such passionate insistence?