[灌水]Foreword of The Law《法律》前言

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The Law
法律

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The Law Mp3

By Frederic Bastiat
作者 弗雷德里克·巴斯夏

Translated from the French by Dean Russell
译者 迪安·罗素
Foreword by Walter E. Williams
前言 沃尔特 E.威廉姆斯
Introduction by Richard Ebeling
简介 里查德·艾伯林
Afterword by Sheldon Richman
后记 希尔顿·里查曼

Foreword
前言

Walter E. Williams
沃尔特 E.威廉姆斯

I must have been forty years old before reading Frederic Bastiat’s classic The Law. An anonymous person, to whom I shall eternally be in debt, mailed me an unsolicited copy. After reading the book I was convinced that a liberal-arts education without an encounter with Bastiat is incomplete. Reading Bastiat made me keenly aware of all the time wasted, along with the frustrations of going down one blind alley after another, organizing my philosophy of life. The Law did not produce a philosophical conversion for me as much as it created order in my thinking about liberty and just human conduct.
读到弗雷德里克·巴斯夏的经典之作《法律》时我已经40岁了。那是一个匿名人邮寄给我的一个 副本，我永远欠这个人一份情。在读了这本书这后，我深信人文教育(liberal-arts education) 没有遇上巴斯夏的《法律》是不完整的。读巴斯夏的《法律》使我强烈地思考所有浪费掉的时间, 思考一次次挫折之后是如何走入迷途的，思考我的人生哲学构成。《法律》没使我的人生哲学发生多少转变， 更多的是让我反思什么才是自由和正义的人类行为。

Many philosophers have made important contributions to the discourse on liberty, Bastiat among them. But Bastiat’s greatest contribution is that he took the discourse out of the ivory tower and made ideas on liberty so clear that even the unlettered can understand them and statists cannot obfuscate them. Clarity is crucial to persuading our fellowman of the moral superiority of personal liberty.
很多的哲学家都对自由的阐释(discourse on liberty)作出过重要贡献，巴斯夏是其中之一。 但是，巴斯夏的最大贡献在于，他将自由的阐释带离象牙塔，使没有受过教育的人都能理解 ，以及使国家主义者(反对自由市场经济的人)(statists)不能混淆视听。清晰对于说服我们那些以道德至上 来诠释个人自由的同胞至关重要。

Like others, Bastiat recognized that the greatest single threat to liberty is government. Notice the clarity he employs to help us identify and understand evil government acts such as legalized plunder. Bastiat says, “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.” With such an accurate description of legalized plunder, we cannot deny the conclusion that most government activities, including ours, are legalized plunder, or for the sake of modernity, legalized theft.
和其它人一样，巴斯夏认识到政府是对自由的唯一最大威胁。请注意他在帮助我们区分和理解罪恶的 政府行为如合法掠夺时所用的清晰描述。巴斯夏指出，" 看看法律是否夺取属于一些人的东西去给本不属于他们的另一些人！看看法律是否通过牺牲一个公民的利益 来使另一个公民受益，而这个受益人不犯法是不能做到的！" 在对合法掠夺如此准确的描述下， 我们无法否认这个结论：多数政府行为，包括我们自己的，都是合法掠夺，或用现代点的话说，叫合法偷盗。

Frederic Bastiat could have easily been a fellow traveler of the signers of our Declaration of Independence. The signers’ vision of liberty and the proper role of government was captured in the immortal words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men. . . .” Bastiat echoes the identical vision, saying, “Life, faculties, production— in other words individuality, liberty, property— that is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.” Bastiat gave the same rationale for government as did our Founders, saying, “Life, liberty and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it is the fact that life, liberty and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” No finer statements of natural or God-given rights have been made than those found in our Declaration of Independence and The Law.
巴斯夏容易与《独立宣言》的缔约者是同一路人。这些缔约者对自由的观点，对政府要 扮演恰当角色的观点，被表述成这些不朽的语言："我们认为，这些真理是不言自明的， 即人人生而平等, 造物主赋予他们若干不可剥夺的权利，其中包括生命权﹑自由权和追求 幸福的权利。为了保障这些权利，人类才在他们之间建立政府. . . ." 巴斯夏以同样的观点呼应，他说："生命、工具、生产，换名话说个性、自由、财产——这才是人的定义。 不管那些政治领袖如何奸诈狡猾，上帝赐予的这三个礼物早于任何人类法例，并且高于一切！" 巴斯夏同我们的先驱一样对政府作了同样的解释，他说："生命权、自由权和财产权不是因为人类创造了法律才存在。 恰洽相反，事实是先有生命权、自由权和财产权，才使人类制定法律去保护这些权利。" 对大自然或上帝赐予权利的陈述，没有比《独立宣言》和《法律》讲得更好的。

Bastiat pinned his hopes for liberty on the United States saying, “. . . look at the United States . There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person’s liberty and property. As a consequence of this, there appears to be no country in the world where the social order rests on a firmer foundation.” Writing in 1850, Bastiat noted two areas where the United States fell short: “Slavery is a violation, by law, of liberty. The protective tariff is a violation, by law, of property.”
巴斯对自由寄望于美国，说道：". . . 看看美国。在对每个人的自由权和财产的保护上， 世界上没有一个国家的法律是被保持在恰当的范围内。由于这一原因，似乎世界上没有一个国家的社 会秩序是建立在牢固的根基之上。" 在1850年，巴斯夏发表文章指出美国的两个不足："奴隶制， 在法律上与自由权相违背。关税保护，在法律上与财产权相违背。"

If Bastiat were alive today, he would be disappointed with our failure to keep the law within its proper domain. Over the course of a century and a half, we have created more than 50,000 laws. Most of them permit the state to initiate violence against those who have not initiated violence against others. These laws range from anti-smoking laws for private establishments and Social Security “contributions” to licensure laws and minimum wage laws. In each case, the person who resolutely demands and defends his God-given right to be left alone can ultimately suffer death at the hands of our government.R
要是巴斯夏今天还活着，他定会对我们失败使法律保持在恰当的范围大失所望。在一个半世纪 的历程中，我们已建立了超过5万部法律。它们大多允许国家使用暴力对付那些没有使用暴力侵害他人的人。 这些法律从为个人而设的反吸烟法(anti-smoking law)到许可证法(licensure law)，从社会安全"贡献"法 (Social Security "contributions")到最低工资法(minimum wage law)，比比皆是。 在每种情况下, 坚决要求和捍卫他的上帝赐予的权利的人，极端情况下都可能丧命在我们的政府手中。R

Bastiat explains the call for laws that restrict peaceable, voluntary exchange and punish the desire to be left alone by saying that socialists want to play God. Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations. To them—the elite—“the relationship between persons and the legislator appears to be the same as the relationship between the clay and the potter.” And for people who have this vision, Bastiat displays the only anger I find in The Law when he lashes out at do-gooders and would-be rulers of mankind, “Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don’t you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.”
巴斯夏通过"社会主义者"(socialist)想要扮演上帝，解释对法律乱喊乱叫(the call for laws)限制了和平的、 自愿的交流，并且惩犯了独善其身的愿望(the desire to be left alone)。社会主义者视人民为原材料， 可以对其进行社会化改造。对他们——这些精英——"人们与立法者的关系就像陶工与陶土的关系一样。" 对于有此观点的人，巴斯夏显示了他对这些好人、这些可能的人类统治者的唯一我能在《法律》上找到的愤怒 "啊，你可怜众生！你以为你很了不起！你视人性如此渺小！你要改造一切！你为什么不改造你自己呢？ 这就足够了啊！"

Bastiat was an optimist who thought that eloquent arguments in defense of liberty might save the day; but history is not on his side. Mankind’s history is one of systematic, arbitrary abuse and control by the elite acting privately, through the church, but mostly through government. It is a tragic history where hundreds of millions of unfortunate souls have been slaughtered, mostly by their own government. A historian writing 200 or 300 years from now might view the liberties that existed for a tiny portion of mankind’s population, mostly in the Western world, for only a tiny portion of its history, the last century or two, as a historical curiosity that defies explanation. That historian might also observe that the curiosity was only a temporary phenomenon and mankind reverted back to the traditional state of affairs—arbitrary control and abuse.
巴斯夏是一个乐观的人，他认为对自由的精心辩护可以挽救这个世界；但历史没有站在他那一边。 人类的历史，是被这些自私的精英通过教会，多数通过政府，系统地、恣意地滥用和控制的历史。 那是一个悲惨的历史，有成千上万不幸的人们被屠宰，大多数是被他们自己的政府。 历史学家书写距今两三百年的历史，可能会看到自由只在一小部分人中存在，大多数是在西方世界， 对于这一小段历史, 上一两个世纪，历史出奇地做出了令人难以置信的解释。历史学家也许还会观察到 这出奇仅是一个短暂的现象，人类很快又返回到传统的恣意控制与滥用状态。

Hopefully, history will prove that pessimistic assessment false. The worldwide collapse of the respectability of the ideas of socialism and communism suggests that there is a glimmer of hope. Another hopeful sign is the technological innovations that make it more difficult for government to gain information on its citizens and control them. Innovations such as information access, communication, and electronic monetary transactions will make government attempts at control more costly and less probable. These technological innovations will increasingly make it possible for world citizens to communicate and exchange with one another without government knowledge, sanction, or permission.
但愿历史会证明这些悲观的评价是错误的。对"社会主义"(socialism)和共产主义的崇拜在世界范围内倒塌， 给了我们一线希望。另一个希望的迹象是技术创新，使得政府获取公民信息和控制他们变得 更加困难。这些创新如信息获取、通信和电子货币交易，会令政府控制的企图更加昂贵和更不容易。 这些技术创新，使得世界人民彼此交流越来容易，而不经政府的知晓、核准、或允许。

Collapse of communism and technological innovations, accompanied by robust free- market organizations promoting Bastiat’s ideas, are the most optimistic things I can say about the future of liberty in the United States. Americans share an awesome burden and moral responsibility. If liberty dies in the United States, it is destined to die everywhere. A greater familiarity with Bastiat’s clear ideas about liberty would be an important step in rekindling respect and love, and allowing the resuscitation of the spirit of liberty among our fellow Americans.
共产主义的倒塌和技术创新，加上健壮的自由市场机制推动着巴斯夏的思想， 是我能讲述关于未来美国自由的最乐观的事。美国人肩负捍卫自由的重担和道义上的责任。 如果自由在美国夭折，她注定会在任何地方消失。 进一步地熟悉巴斯夏关于自由的清晰思想，是至关重要的一步，她将重新燃起人们对尊重和爱的追求， 她将让自由的精神在大地上复苏。

---- Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
---- 沃尔特 E.威廉姆斯是乔治梅森大学的经济学教授

---- Death is not the stated penalty for disobedience; however, death can occur if the person refuses to submit to government sanctions for his disobedience.
---- 死邢不是对违法的宣判；尽管如此，如果一个人拒绝履行政府对他违法的制裁可以被判处死邢。

[此贴子已经被作者于2007-5-13 21:52:09编辑过]

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