You say There are persons who have no money, and you turn to the law. But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk. - Frédéric Bastiat

Each of us has a natural right – from God – to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

Chateaubriand said of history: There are two consequences in history: one immediate and instantaneously recognized; the other distant and unperceived at first. These consequences often contradict each other; the former come from our short-run wisdom, the latter from long-run wisdom.

need not involve an actual dictator. All that was needed, said Bastiat, was “the laws,” enacted by a Congress or a Parliament, that would achieve the same effect: forced conformity.