Sublime

I am persuaded that the only means which we possess at the present time of inculcating the notion of rights, and of rendering it, as it were, palpable to the senses, is to invest all the members of the community with the peaceful exercise of certain rights:

These days, most of our arguments about justice are about how to distribute the fruits of prosperity, or the burdens of hard times, and how to define the basic rights of citizens. In these domains, considerations of welfare and freedom predominate. But arguments about the rights and wrongs of economic arrangements often lead us back to Aristotle’s

“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free,” Tocqueville wrote, “but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.” To acquire the art of self-government, he believed, citizens have to be together. They have to come out of the isolation of their individualism and experience government at a level local enough that it brings them fac

What happens when a nation willfully ignores perhaps the most fundamental lesson of economics and hopes that rent seeking will equal real prosperity? This does. What happens when a nation either loses, or prevents, a stabilizing middle class? This does. What happens when a government—any government—gets so out of touch with the governed? This does.

The task of government was not to stop selfish striving—a hopeless task—but to harness it for the public good.