Frederic Bastiat was an economist and writer in France in the early 1800s. His short book/ long essay The Law is one of the best pieces of political science writing I’ve read in a while. I loved this book. The Law is about the purpose and place of law in society, and Bastiat makes his case so clearly it brings me to tears.
One of the sections I particularly enjoyed was his critiques of other well-known French political theorists like Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Condillac. He examines the pessimistic worldview that informs their visions of society, in the end saying,

Oh, sublime writers! Please remember sometimes that this clay, this sand, and this manure which you so arbitrarily dispose of, are men! They are your equals! They are intelligent and free human beings like yourselves! As you have, they too have received from God the faculty to observe, to plan ahead, to think, and to judge for themselves!

I also thought Bastiat’s critical look at classical education to be pretty perceptive. The case he makes is this: that classical education necessarily focuses on ancient thought, and that “antiquity presents everywhere ‚Äî in Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome ‚Äî the spectacle of a few men molding mankind according to their whims, thanks to the prestige of force and of fraud”. Learning about these ancient societies is not a problem per se. The problem arises when thinkers and teachers “offered them for the admiration and imitation of future generations… They took for granted the grandeur, dignity, morality, and happiness of the artificial societies of the ancient world.”

Some other great moments: the tired, dangerous notion of the “great man”; that “a science of economics must be developed before a science of politics can be logically formulated”; and some relevant, challenging words in light of our misadventures in Iraq and elsewhere:

I defy anyone to say how even the thought of revolution, of insurrection, of the slightest uprising could arise against a government whose organized force was confined only to suppressing injustice.

Read this book.