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Either fraternity is spontaneous, or it does not exist. To decree it is to annihilate it. The law can indeed force men to remain just in vain would it try to force them to be self-sacrificing.

Frederic Bastiat

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Frederic Bastiat
Age: 49 †
Born: 1801
Born: June 30
Died: 1850
Died: December 24
Economist
Essayist
Magistrate
Philosopher
Politician
Baiona
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
Force
Spontaneous
Doe
Vain
Self
Indeed
Trying
Remain
Would
Sacrifice
Annihilate
Men
Exist
Sacrificing
Either
Decree
Law
Fraternity

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Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense of punishing injustice?
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It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.
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What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
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The law is the collective organization of the individual's right to lawful defense of his life, liberty and property. When it is used for anything else, no matter how noble the cause, it becomes perverted and justice is weakened. Thus, the law has become perverted by stupid greed and false philanthropy.
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The solution of the social problem is in liberty.
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Repetition may not entertain, but it teaches.
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Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.
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The law commit legal plunder by violating liberty and property.
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Legal plunder has two roots: One, as we have just seen, is in human selfishness the other is in false philanthropy.
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Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal.
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When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.
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No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate).
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There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
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