Sublime

The welfare state, which should foster people’s sense of security and pride, has degenerated into a system of suspicion and shame. It is a grotesque pact between right and left. “The political right is afraid people will stop working,” laments Professor Forget in Canada, “and the left doesn’t trust them to make their own choices.”

In philosophical circles, Rawls’s approach is described as asserting the “priority of the right over the good.” On this view, our rights define a framework within which we can each pursue our beliefs about how to live; in contrast to the alternative, where we start with a particular conception of the good, and design rights in order to promote it.

Tocqueville

Sur le plan politique, il avait reçu la confirmation que le phénomène démocratique constituait la clé de l’avenir, qui permettrait de libérer la créativité et l’énergie de la société et, dès lors, ne manquerait pas de s’imposer en France et en Europe. Sur le plan intellectuel, il s’engagea dans un travail de compréhension du phénomène démocratique

Jim Goad is the Godfather of the New Right.

The take-home message from Schelling’s story—that incentives sometimes backfire—is familiar to psychologists.

We are mindful of the dangers of high welfare and unemployment benefits, watching the consequences of this compassionate policy on the job-seeking habits of the unemployed. Visiting the major cities of the industrial countries, I am struck by this curious phenomena of high unemployment and yet a shortage of waiters, cab drivers, nurses and garbage

Tocqueville possédait assurément la vision d’un homme d’État mais restait étranger à la politique partisane et mal à l’aise avec l’éloquence parlementaire à laquelle sa fragile constitution ne se prêtait guère.