Sublime

“The Republican party,” he wrote, “must be known as a progressive organization or it is sunk. I believe that so emphatically that I think that far from appeasing or reasoning with the dyed-in-the-wool reactionary fringe, we should completely ignore it and when necessary, repudiate it.”

Indeed, I will argue that liberty in the broad sense requires judges and officials, when applying legal principles, to assert norms of reasonableness. Otherwise, self-interested people will use law to claim almost anything.

Policy-making does, however, often require Aristotelian phronesis, particularly the ability to recognize salient facts that require invoking the exception clause of a guiding picture.

By contrast, modern political philosophers—from Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century to John Rawls in the twentieth century—argue that the principles of justice that define our rights should not rest on any particular conception of virtue, or of the best way to live. Instead, a just society respects each person’s freedom to choose his or her own

If those with the information needed to make a fully informed decision are also the most biased in their reasoning, rational deliberation seems like an unattainable political ideal.

First, she squarely took on the “racism” taboo that disarms conservatives so effectively to this very day: “Democrats denounce and abuse white people, and Republicans act embarrassed about having whites vote for them. Why are white votes bad?9 […] Rule of thumb, Republicans: If you aren’t being called ‘racist’ by the New York Times, you’re losing.

It was the proposal of a fanatic.

sound.

presented the Durkheimian vision of society, favored by social conservatives, in which the basic social unit is the family, rather than the individual, and in which order, hierarchy, and tradition are highly valued. I contrasted this vision with the liberal Millian vision, which is more open and individualistic. I noted that a Millian society has d