Mission Statement

The Bastiat Society promotes the fact that the world is getting better, and that it's the creation of wealth through business that is doing it.

The Society's argument can be simply stated:

• Trade is a fundamental and virtuous human activity.

• Peaceful and profitable trade creates wealth.

• Wealth makes the world better.

• Those who create wealth through trade are not villains, but are the true owners of the moral high ground and benefactors of the human race.

Instead of abandoning the moral high ground to glib academics, politicians, and other condescending moralists, the Bastiat Society reclaims the moral authority of peaceful and profitable business.

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Our Philosophy

The great strength of capitalism is that it is an economic system wherein everyone has the opportunity to be successful without ever thinking about the intellectual and cultural context that makes success possible.  We do not have to know everything.  We just have to know something useful to other people - and have the sense enough to use it for our mutual benefit.

Unfortunately, an economy built on limited individual knowledge is also capitalism's greatest weakness.  It leaves those within the system vulnerable to those who claim that their perfect knowledge or theory is more important than individual knowledge or the individual will.

If individuals who benefit most from capitalism – the wealth creators – do not understand the intellectual and cultural institution that make business possible, what chance do they have to withstand a steady series of attacks from the intellectuals, populists, collectivists, and religious extremists who desire to bring capitalism and the life of the individual to an end?

That is why we formed the Bastiat Society: to educate other wealth creators on their right to the moral high ground, and to help them understand the intellectual and cultural institutions that are necessary for individual success. Our motto is, “Those who work in freedom should know how freedom works.”

We call on successful business people everywhere to join us in an organization unlike any other in the world – a society of principled wealth creators, the benefactors of the human race, committed to reclaiming the moral high ground and the life of the individual.

Would you like to start a chapter?  Click HERE to find out how!

A Brief History of the Bastiat Society

2004
Bastiat Society founded in Charleston, SC by Walter LeCroy and Ben Rast

Hosted a conference on Globalization and Free Trade

2004 - Present
Hosted monthly meetings with guest speakers.

2005 - Present
Directed six Liberty Fund Conferences for business people.

Co- sponsored events with the Initiative for Public Choice and Market Process at the College of Charleston

Beginning in 2011
Announced a chapter-based expansion plan.