http://lexrex.com/informed/otherdocuments/thelaw/main.htm

If you've read this and have some thoughts to share, I'd enjoy a discussion. :)

I have read this. There is nothing that I could possibly add to "http://lexrex.com/informed/otherdocuments/thelaw/main.htm".

I think you were making a joke, but I was quite serious. If you follow the link, you will find Bastiat's treatise on law, which is what I intended the discussion to be about.

I read the following:



If that's his basic position and the rest of his book is just a justification of this position then I basically agree. I'm not sure if I agree with his specific justifications, but overall I agree with his conclusion.

I've known this since my early teens. It's not news to me.

I wish I'd known it that long. I'm glad you enjoy it as well.

If that's his basic position and the rest of his book is just a justification of this position then I basically say: (smile!)

1. Pervert as a verb is transitive. "The law IS perverted" would make more sense.
2. Make is a transitive verb too. Again, it would make sense in the passive.
3. Become is present tense; change of tense here is not warranted; and if it is the present tense, then since it's third person singular (the law), it is in conjugated incorrectly.
4. This sentence needs a verb.
5. (Unmarked but obvious) each sentence is an exclamation.

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The law of ideas is language, syntax in particular. It may or may not be true that law has been perverted, but the author is doing the language in the rear big time.

I care about language more than about law. Law is logical, it is almost immediately obvious what is against the law and what is not, especially if someone spends some time in the society of a particular set of laws. Language ought to have been the same way, and I wonder about the capacity of a person to recognise a perverted or ineffectual or unjust legal system, when he or she can't recognise the workings of another system, which is much simpler than law, and which has been with the author much longer than the author's awareness of law.

Please call me an egghead, or a pedantic nit-picker or any other name. I also know names. We can have a mud-slinging contest if you like.

I would like to avoid that. If you want to enter into that, I'll read the article and give it my best and tell you precisely what I think of it.

For starters:

It is not the function of law to punish the evil. That is the function of religions, deity and morals.

Law is a system of consensus of rules that define how each one in a society should behave. If you say law is perverted, then you say that the consensus is perverted. Law is applied to all, and it is made by the representatives of most. If law was made a different way, then law would be the will of a few. I don't think that's the case.

Perversion means, broadly, "deviation from the norm." The law is made by the representatives of the most, so it IS the norm, by definition. Therefore law is not perverted.

I also enjoy the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, who was philosophically very similar to Bastiat.

Havent seen you in a while Spidercmb

Hey mirrormirror...I was waiting for a download to finish and got bored. How have you been?

Pretty good. How are you doing?

Getting by.

That's good to hear

Dont judge bastiat on a translators poor work probably done after he died. And dont judge my bad grammar either, I have an excuse at the moment..

You will find Bastiat's intended meaning of the word below...

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pervert
1a. to cause to turn aside or away from what is good or true or morally right