Sublime

don’t know how to do the right thing. I don’t even know what’s right. I have no answer. But I sure smell something wrong with the government . . .

Bertrand Russell wrote, “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd” (Russell 1929, p. 58).

Sa conclusion fut la suivante: le but ultime de toute législation était le bien du peuple; plus il y a de bien, mieux c’est. Bentham était le père de l’utilitarisme, la doctrine selon laquelle, dans toute prise de décision (légale et personnelle), le but poursuivi devrait être le bénéfice total (utilité) maximum, peu importe l’identité des

What matters is that without Reasons, we are subject to an entirely utilitarian logic, which doesn’t leave much room for humans or nature. It’s a logic that tells us humans to just be reasonable and submit to compromise, rather than Reasoned and principled. It’s the logic of might makes right, where utilitarian power outweighs greater good.

such "fairness" that, as we have seen, triggered the credit crisis of the late 2000s. The common law is under attack, the means of attack is legislation,

Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Mill held that truth emerges from an unfettered competition of ideas and that individual character is most improved when allowed to find its own way uncoerced. That vision was insufficient for 20th-century American liberalism.