Liberty and equality are the uncontested “values” of the modern world. They have been paid lip service to by all the parties, including the Communists, who did so much to smother them in the course of the twentieth century (hence the ubiquitous “people’s republics” that brought untold misery to a third of the globe). Some have even argued that we [...]
Equality as a moral or political imperative, pursued as an end in itself is the antonym of every legitimate conservative principle. Contrary to most Liberals, new and old, it is nothing less than sophistry to distinguish between equality of opportunity and equality of condition. I Let us have no foolishness, indeed.* Equality as a moral or [...]
We have been hearing a great deal about income inequality in recent days, particularly from Senator Bernie Sanders. Part of this interest is fueled by many examples of excess at the top. J.P. Morgan Chase, after a year immersed in scandal, decided to award its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, $20 million in compensation for 2013. [...]
Throughout time, our settled norms of political discourse adopt philosophical notions that are simply considered unchallengeable by the majority of humanity. A few hundred years ago, the idea of divine kingship was a well-accepted worldview, alongside the idea that only kings had the right to rule over countries. A few decades ago, it was also widely [...]
James Kirke Paulding affirmed the preeminence of place, tradition, and orthodoxy in the antebellum North even as he forces of capitalism, Evangelicalism, and materialistic modernity eroded the gentrified and agrarian culture of the Hudson River Valley. Paulding never wavered from his belief in prescriptive truth and the transcendence of place. He derided American democracy, viewing [...]
By identifying and attempting to ameliorate democracy’s paradoxical excesses toward conformity and individualism, Alexis de Tocqueville sought to make democracy safe for liberty and to promote an ennobled, rather than a debased, form of equality. Among conservatives and liberals alike, the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville is perhaps the most often quoted political theorist of [...]
In 1808 Hendrick Aupaumut—a Mahican leader and former captain in the Continental Army—wrote to Thomas Jefferson of his people’s struggle to find a “Sure habitation” in the rapidly expanding new nation. Captain Hendrick’s story is immediately recognizable to anyone with a passing familiarity with United States history: We were compelled to move from place to place… [...]
“For all I am of poet,” says the stranger to the two men climbing the mountain of Purgatory, the Aeneid was my mama and my nurse; without it, all my work weighs not a dram. And I’d content to spend an extra year— could I have lived on earth when Virgil lived— suffering for my [...]
Like most everyone I could not help but be moved by the musical Les Miserables. It seemed a powerful story of redemption, and I even found myself feeling sympathetic to the young revolutionaries as they sang their final stirring anthem from the barricades. I am afraid that is where my sympathy for the Jacobins ends. [...]
That a French socialist economist is trashing the American economy for fomenting inequality should hardly be news. But Thomas Piketty is enjoying some moments in the popular press, before returning to the usual comfortable sinecure for the left—academia. Why? Well, we are told, economic inequality is on the march again, and must be stopped. Stopped [...]
Political correctness identifies a syndrome we all recognize, but is hard to define. It can be best described as a set of attitudes rather than an ideology, since viewed philosophically it is completely incoherent. It can perhaps be traced back to the French Revolution, in the aftermath of which various slogans became fashionable—mostly involving “Liberty” [...]
“The thing that is in danger is the whole structure of society, and it is necessary to persuade thinking men and women of the vital and intimate connection between the structure of society and the theological doctrines of Christianity.”–Dorothy L. Sayers, “Creed or Chaos?” “But what is a practical joke in a world of nonsense, [...]
On Irving Kupcinet’s Chicago television program, Malcolm X and this commentator participated in a discussion of public affairs, a few months ago. Now Malcolm X—or Malcolm Little, as he was born—has been murdered before hundreds of people. Revolutions do, indeed, devour their own children. Somewhat to my surprise, I found Malcolm X to be a [...]
It’s staple fare in opinion pages and textbooks these days that “inequality” has been on the rise in this country over the past generation. President Obama’s economic policy, for what it’s worth, has been based on this premise. The introduction to Obama’s first budget, back in 2009, went on at length: […]