"Well, I ask the impartial reader, is it not childishness, and more than that, dangerous childishness? Is it not inevitable that we shall have revolu… - Frédéric Bastiat

The delusion of the day is to enrich all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalize plunder under pretense of organizing it.

because we desire to see those activities, on the one hand free, and on the other seeking their own reward in themselves. Thus, if we think that the State should not interfere by subsidies in religious affairs, we are atheists. If we think the State ought not to interfere by subsidies in education, we are hostile to knowledge. If we say that the State ought not by subsidies to give a fictitious value to land, or to any particular branch of industry, we are enemies to property and labor. If we think that the State ought not to support artists, we are barbarians, who look upon the arts as useless.

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.