Uma “ditadura” não precisa envolver um ditador efetivo. Tudo o que era necessário, dizia Bastiat, eram “as leis”, promulgadas por um Congresso ou um … - Frédéric Bastiat

when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help.

Another effect of this deplorable perversion of the law is, that it gives to human passions and to political struggles, and, in general, to politics, properly so called, an exaggerated preponderance. I

When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it — without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud — to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.