By Liberal Tradition, I am referring to an intellectual current that begins in the Renaissance, takes ideological shape in the 17th and 18th centuries and is decked out as a complete ethical, political, and economic theory by such writers as Adam Smith and the Utilitarians, and ultimately spawns its socialist mirror image in Marx.
“Not those eat caviar who can afford it,” goes a Serbian proverb of what I have always thought is great perspicacity, “but those who are accustomed to eating it.” In some roundabout way, this saying explains why the less money I have in the bank, the more unanimous the general opinion that I am and have always been rich.
No argument can be put forward for abortion that cannot be applied to infanticide. When does a woman’s right to control her body stop? If she gives birth in the wild, does a mother have a moral obligation to nurse a newborn and warm it with her body?
Back in November 1972, I was 17 years old and seven months shy of voting. But I campaigned against Proposal B, an initiative in Michigan that would have legalized abortion. We defeated it, with 61% voting Nay.
“People spend their lives collecting documents to prove their identity,” my wife says grimly. “And when they die, it all goes in the bin.” That’s just what we’ve doing for the past few weeks, collecting documents.
Why would Bill Gates buy farmland in North Dakota? Should he be permitted?
In the 20th century the most powerful and difficult transitions in human life have been turned into political war zones in which the different sides routinely invoke the power of government to establish and enforce their points of view.
Today’s announcement of the Court’s decision to overturn Roe and to return they regulation to the states was long overdue, but the defenders of innocent life are making a serious mistake, if they think the war is over. We have not only not even won a major battle, but the reliance on the Court shows how weak we rally are.
Socially, Palermo is divided into classes, the lower and the middle. The aristocracy, which has a presence and a political voice in Venice or Rome, has no influence in Sicily, and neither does the great business wealth that has all but displaced nobility throughout Europe.
In addition to his legacy of materialism, hedonism, and the myth of the social contract, Epicurus also bequeathed a cynical attitude toward truth. While Aristotle and his students studied nature to find out how natural processes work, Epicurus and his disciples were only interested in attaining a serenity that was only possible in a godless universe.
Want to reduce irrational violence? Empower parents and shut down Hollywood.
Augustan England
