Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only
Some day 83-year-old Associate Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court will die. It may be tomorrow. It may be in a decade. But it will happen. The dream which animates his professional life, however, is dying before our eyes. Justice Breyer dreams that Supreme Court Justices, while
He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and
All social relations create vulnerabilities and dependencies that are subject to abuse. This is a fundamental fact about the social nature of humanity, a baseline from which all specific arrangements need to be judged. Most of our public debates,however, take the posture of implying that the mere occurrence of
One of the themes of Greg Sargent’s 2018 book, An Uncivil War, is that our politics is caught in a “downward, self-reinforcing spiral.” Unsurprisingly, the two parties view each other as the primary reason we’re caught in a dysfunctional tailspin. From the Republican point of view, “Democrats regularly
I want to see The Economist do well. With a few gap years, I’ve subscribed to The Economist for well over a decade—ever since I could enjoy the still-expensive student price in grad school. I place a high value on having an old, venerable institution with deep journalistic
Welfare state capitalism also rejects the fair value of the political liberties, and while it has some concern for equality of opportunity, the policies necessary to achieve that are not followed. It permits very large inequalities in the ownership of real property (productive assets and natural resources) so that the
The Liberal Currents Podcast LC Podcast #4: Adam Rust on the California Gubernatorial Recall Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 31:52 Subscribe Share Apple Podcasts Stitcher Google Podcasts Spotify RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in
In designing a curriculum or writing a textbook, the primary considerations have to be, first, to whom is the material addressed, and second, what it is hoped they will do with the information. The second question is important as it has two basic answers: some courses are designed to impart
The Liberal Currents Podcast LC Podcast #3: Adam Gurri on Institutional Provincialism Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 31:50 Subscribe Share Apple Podcasts Stitcher Google Podcasts Spotify RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window
It’s easy—far too easy—to get drawn into the candidate freak show of the current California Gubernatorial Recall Race. The candidate statements in the Official Voter Information Guide contain a treasure trove of monomaniacs and narcissists with no one in their life who loved them enough to stop
It was once said that the role of boredom in political life is rarely appreciated. This is especially true when it comes to assessing the political right, which is often conceived of by its liberal opponents as stodgily committed to upholding tradition and convention even in the face of looming