George Rebane

Ruminations joins a small group of local blogs that have launched the Bastiat Triangle Alliance.  This is a declaration of the shared social and economic philosophies propounded by Frederic Bastiat, the 19th century French thinker and political philosopher.  Bastiat is considered one of intellectual precursors of what came to be known as the Austrian School that was one of the first to counter the challenges of Marxian economics. This school gave rise to such 20th century economists and luminaries as Ludwig von Mises, Frederick von Hayek, and Milton Friedman.  The latter two Nobelists went on to become the pillars of our country’s Chicago School of economists promoting ideas of free markets and free peoples.

A basic tenet of the Alliance is that rapidly advancing technology, globalization, and the growing ‘dumbth’ of our American electorate has put in place an insidious environment of social values and thought which seeks ever greater government interventions, using other people’s money, to shelter us from our own risky behaviors and solve an increasing number of our everyday problems.  We wish to call attention to the apparently invisible and incremental process by which this is happening and highlight its cost of abrogating what the Founders considered our “natural rights”. 

The top right-hand link will download a more complete statement of purpose for the BTA.