The tide is carrying us towards the unlimited development of government action, towards an unlimited compression of true freedoms.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 231 à 232 (in French)
La République française, March 4th, 1848

In this article, Frédéric Bastiat delves into the issue of education in France. He will later develop his ideas on the question upon the education reform of 1850, but we can already see his two main  criticisms, viz. that an education based on Greek and Latin studies is obsolete and that the government monopoly on the question is harmful.

Today’s quote is of a more universal reach and heralds the issues we are facing today and could be summed up in the following phrase: dictatorship of the majority. While France is now living under the 5th Republic, we have not been able to adopt a constitution that would seriously circumscribe the attributions of government. Over the years, legislation and regulation have only increased, bloating the attributions that government grants itself on the grounds that a majority is in favour of it. As a consequence, we ended up in a situation where no single topic is considered to be the responsibility of individuals and government made itself responsible for everything, thus becoming guilty of all the woes hitting society.