There was no justice for a murder victim without a family to demand vengeance. Before we rush to condemn the Germans as savages, we should recall that even at Athens during its Golden Age, it was the family’s responsibility to bring charges against someone who had murdered one of its members.
Every animal seems to “know” the two commandments of nature: Survive and propagate, and each creature seeks to preserve its own identity and to transmit it genetic heritage through time.
The civil right to choose the sort of education your children receive remains of paramount importance….
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Ancient Romans, more than any other Indo-European people, attempted to restrict the natural duty of self-defense and the natural desire for revenge, but even there the primitive traditions of self-help yielded only gradually to a centralized legal apparatus.
A number of friends, real and virtual, on Facebook have listed the books they most enjoyed or profited from reading this past year. I was surprised how many were books about books, that is, tertiary rehashings of movements or developments for which there are superior first-hand sources.
Rather few people have any idea about what conservatism is or was and how it evolved. I don’t blame anyone for not caring, because it is not worth the effort.
For several hundred years, ordinary people have been taught to regard such practical necessities as surviving and defending themselves as rights that derive from nature. Theories of natural rights are, alas, a poisoned chalice, since every assertion of right can be met with a counter-assertion
