Bastiat’s Reaction To The Floyd Protests

What follows is a series of Tweets that Twitch streamer Bastiat posted earlier today, republished here with his permission. His original twitter thread can be found here.

As a believer in individual liberty, I understand the desire to write off a demonstration by saying that “damage to private property is also terrible,” because this damage truly does hurt innocent people, and because protection of private property is essential to our freedom.

But without freedom from arbitrary state violence, our property rights are already hollow. The same state that engages in unaccountable violence today breaks into your house without a knock, kills your pets, and seizes your property without charge as “civil asset forfeiture.”

Federally, our authoritarian President is now reinvigorating the militarization of the police forces engaging in all of this, seizing property from its owners to build a pointless border wall, and continuing to build up the vast machinery of warrantless domestic surveillance.

And beyond authoritarianism at home lies the monster that threatens the freedom of the whole world, the Communist Party of China and its red fascism. America must make its promise of freedom real so that we can take on the multi-generational project of standing up to the CPC.

If we believe in individual liberty and the prospect of building a better America that can defend freedom all over the world, we must start making government accountable for its use of force and violence at home, from the federal government on down into our local communities.

And for these reasons, we should stand with those who are, as we speak, fighting against authoritarian policing in America – just as loudly, just as assuredly, and just as unreservedly as we would stand with those who are fighting against authoritarianism in Hong Kong today.

BNN would like to thank Bastiat for allowing us to republish his thoughts about these historic protests.

-BNN Editorial Board