This category is designed for those individuals who have completed many of the courses or who have dedicated a good portion of their lives to the study of conservative principles and policies.
The courses contained herein offer greater points that can be used towards the advanced and upper level University of Conservatives certificates.
- Federic Bastiat's (1801-1850) famous distinction between illegal and legal plunder, which is at the center of his analysis in The Law .
The purpose of government, he says, is precisely to secure individuals in their rights to life, liberty, and property. Without such security men are reduced to a primitive life of fear and selfdefense, with every neighbor a potential enemy ready to plunder what another has produced. If a government is strictly limited to protecting men’s rights, then peace prevails, and men can go about working to improve their lives, associating with their neighbors in a division of labor and exchange. Bastiat writes:
"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply.
"The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen."
"Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law—which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.
"See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
