Happy Birthday to the great Frederic Bastiat!
Sadly, a lot of people today don’t know who he is, which is a real shame, because he’s one of the most perceptive minds ever to challenge the moral legitimacy of state power.
In Bastiat’s time, he warned that the law, once intended to protect lives and property, had been hijacked into a weapon for legalized plunder. More than 200 years later, you’d think we’d have learned.
Alas, not so.
If anything, those in power have perfected the art of perverting the law to serve every appetite for corruption and greed.
Consider the explosion of eminent domain abuse. Cities have bulldozed entire neighborhoods—leveling the homes of working-class families who’ve lived there for generations—to hand the land over to developers promising “economic revitalization.”
The victims don’t get much choice: take the compensation (often pennies on the dollar) or watch the wrecking ball anyway. (We actually have a choose-your-consequence style book for teens that deals with a very similar storyline!)
The law, supposedly a guardian of property rights, becomes the engine that destroys them.
In The Tuttle Twins Learn About The Law, we introduce kids to the idea that there’s no difference in these two depictions of theft. One is not moral simply because the theft is happening within “the law.”
Or look at the government’s perpetual states of “emergency.”
During the pandemic, governors and bureaucrats declared that they could suspend constitutional rights indefinitely—shuttering businesses, banning church services, and arresting people for the crime of earning a living. Somehow, the law transformed overnight into a tool to criminalize normal life.
Even now, politicians are concocting new ways to ration energy, regulate speech, and confiscate wealth—all under the banner of the “public good.” They’ll tax your paycheck, inflate away your savings, and then pat themselves on the back for their generosity when they dole out stimulus crumbs or so-called entitlements.
Bastiat would have called this exactly what it is: legalized looting.
And here’s the most dangerous part: Most kids will never hear any of this in school. They’re taught to assume that whatever the law permits must be righteous—and whatever the state commands must be obeyed.
They don’t learn to question whether the law itself has been twisted into something it was never meant to be.
That’s why books like The Tuttle Twins Learn About The Law (which is based on Bastiat’s The Law) matter more than ever.
Our books and curricula give kids the tools to see through the façade—to understand that real justice isn’t defined by whoever holds the gavel or signs the bill.
Real justice is rooted in the idea that every individual has the same rights, and no government has the moral license to violate them in the name of progress or security.
If more families took the time to teach these principles early, we’d have fewer citizens willing to trade away freedom for empty promises. We’d have more people ready to stand up and say what Bastiat said: that when the law becomes the accomplice of injustice, it’s our duty to call it out.
One of the best ways to inoculate the rising generation against the indoctrination of the would-be tyrants and social engineers of today is to teach them about the past.
All the perversion of law and justice that we see today is just a rewrapping of methods that wicked men and women have used since the beginning of time to destroy the health, wealth, and happiness of everyday people.
But kids won’t know that unless their parents teach them.
Our America’s History books and curriculum are about to go on major sale. It will be the best pricing you’ll see on these life-changing resources all year, so don’t miss out!
(More details coming tomorrow, so stay tuned!)
In honor of Bastiat’s birthday, let’s do more than remember his words—let’s act on them!
I want to help parents raise a generation of kids who are historically literate enough to know that the law can be twisted into an instrument of theft and oppression. Moreover, I want them to know what they can (and should!) do about it when they see things slipping in that direction.
It all starts right here, with parents like you using our resources to teach the things kids won’t learn anywhere else.
— Connor
