Category: Fleming

2

Restricting Self-Defense

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. 

38

Another Year of Reading

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.

4

Self Defense–Some Conclusions

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