What’s “The Swamp”? Here’s the Best Definition Ever

“Drain the swamp,” promised President Donald Trump. What is the swamp?

Nearly two centuries ago, economist and thinker Frederic Bastiat came up with the best definition ever:

What, then, is the law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. … since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individual groups. … But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.

In this one paragraph, Bastiat sums up why we need a government — and why a government that goes too far is a disaster.

The whole point of government — and the law — is to protect the lives, liberty and property of individual persons. Without that law, people would have no recourse for standing up to gangs, thieves, frauds, rapists and murderers. You’d be at the mercy of everything and everyone, and your only protection would be to take shield in the menacing, ruthless gang or mafia/mob of your choice.

However, once a government starts to go beyond the function of protecting lives, liberty and property for individual persons, the government itself turns into a legalized gang. That’s what we have today. “The swamp” really refers to civilized plunder, or gang warfare under the guise (and protection) of government force. You might argue that it’s better than the alternative of anarchy where there would be literal gang warfare. But what you cannot ignore is that today’s politicized gang warfare is fundamentally the same.

In essence, we have an army of politicians and supportive bureaucrats in possession of untold sums of money (including debt) that does not belong to them. Whenever you put people in charge of plundered wealth, what else do you have a right to expect other than the moral and social equivalent of a swamp? Of course there’s a swamp! $20 trillion worth…and counting.

Once our federal, state and local governments went beyond their proper scope of protecting life, liberty and property for individuals, that’s when all hell broke loose. It happened only very gradually in America, compared to other countries, because America had (and to some small extent still respects) important protections such as the First and Second Amendments. Nevertheless, we had to get to the point of the corrupt swamp sooner or later, because government — for decades now, going back at least to the New Deal of the 1930s and more accurately, the early 20th Century (when the Federal Reserve first formed) — has been utilized to destroy its own objective. As Bastiat so eloquently phrased it, government “has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder.

What does it mean to say government is used to destroy its own objective? To force some to pay for the health care of others. Or for the retirement/disability/unemployment pensions of others. Or for the child care of others. Or food stamps of others. Or even for the roads or highways of others, if you want to be consistent about it. The only thing that government does to protect and benefit everybody is to maintain a police force and a military, as well as civil/criminal courts to uphold private contracts and settle civil or criminal matters.

That’s more than enough for governments to handle. Honesty and integrity will never be guaranteed, because human beings will always possess free choice and free will. Nevertheless, limiting government to its proper functions is the only way to drain the swamp and to keep government from turning against its own functions. Thinking you can drain the swamp by replacing one bureaucratic regime with another is worse than futile. We’ve already tried that by replacing Democrats with Republicans, and vice-versa. Witness the results.

Frederic Bastiat understood this crucial point two centuries ago. It’s unclear that anybody holding higher office or sitting on a higher court today, in the United States or anywhere else, even has a clue. It’s so very sad that human beings must learn these lessons all over again.

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