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First Principles
75 posts, newest first (page 2 of 4).
Made in God's Image, the Idea Behind Every Claim to Human DignityGenesis 1:27 gave the West its belief that every person has equal worth no ruler grants or removes. Here is the argument, and why secular rivals fall short. The Value of a Thing Is Not the Labor in It, and Menger Answered MarxMarx said value is the labor embodied in a good. Menger's 1871 answer explains prices, diamonds, water and profit without calling anyone a thief. Nozick's Basketball Example Still Answers Rawls's Veil of IgnoranceRawls built the strongest case for redistribution in 1971. Nozick answered with a basketball star and a quarter, and the answer still stands, with caveats. Levittown Built a Nation of Homeowners, and Ownership Built CitizensLevittown turned renters into owners with assembly-line homes and GI Bill loans. Its exclusion of Black buyers was wrong, and the case for ownership stands. Public Choice Theory Studies Politicians as People, Not as AngelsBuchanan won a Nobel for treating officials and voters as people with interests. His ideas explain Washington and argue for limits over better rulers. Bastiat Called It Legal Plunder When the Law Takes From One to Give AnotherBastiat's 1850 pamphlet The Law gave us a simple test for plunder by statute. Read its passages, its French setting and the best objection to it. Booker T. Washington Built Tuskegee on the Dignity of Work and OwnershipBorn a slave in 1856, Washington built Tuskegee on skilled work and property. His record, his critics and his partner Rosenwald deserve a fair hearing. John Paul II's 1991 Encyclical Weighed Capitalism After Communism FellCentesimus Annus asked whether capitalism won in 1989 and answered with a careful yes, with conditions. Read sections 42 and 48 and see why they matter. Whittaker Chambers Told Americans the Cold War Was a Contest of FaithsA former Soviet agent testified against Alger Hiss, then wrote Witness to argue that communism was a rival religion, man without God. Roger Scruton Made the Love of Home a Serious Political PhilosophyScruton argued that oikophilia, the love of home, is the root of conservatism, and that it answers both the globalist and the angry nationalist. C. S. Lewis Warned About Men Without Chests in a Book About SchoolbooksLewis's 1943 lectures began with a dull English textbook and ended with a defense of objective moral values that every school still needs. Richard Weaver Said Ideas Have Consequences and Traced Them Back CenturiesWeaver's 1948 book blamed modern decline on abandoning universal truth. His argument, his case for property, and the fair charge that he was too sweeping. Robert Nisbet Saw Lonely People Turn to the State for BelongingNisbet's 1953 book argued that when family, church and town weaken, people seek belonging in the central state. What that implies about loneliness now. Irving Kristol and the Liberals Who Followed the Evidence RightwardA one-time Trotskyist founded The Public Interest in 1965 and led intellectuals who watched Great Society programs fail. His record and his critics. Wilhelm Röpke Defended Markets and Warned They Need Something Beyond ThemAn exiled German economist argued that free markets live on moral and social capital they do not make, and his ideas helped rebuild West Germany. Oakeshott Said Being Conservative Is a Temperament Before It Is a ProgramOakeshott described conservatism as a disposition to prize the familiar. His skepticism is a useful friend but a limited guide for Americans with a creed. Six Myths About Ayn Rand and Her Uneasy Place in the Conservative MovementRand is called the movement's philosopher, yet she rejected its religion and called herself no conservative. Six claims tested against her record. Every Totalitarian Regime Went After the Family First, and Not by AccidentFrom the Jacobins to the Bolsheviks to Mao, revolutionary states weakened the family because it is a loyalty they do not control. The family checks power. Solzhenitsyn's Line Through Every Human Heart Is Where Conservatism StartsA prisoner of the Soviet camps found that evil does not sort people by class or party, and that finding is the root of the conservative distrust of utopias. Populism and Conservatism Agree on Who Gets Ignored, Not on Every RemedyPopulists and conservatives share a cause, the forgotten citizen, but conservatives insist constitutional limits bind friends as well as foes. Mises Showed in 1920 That Socialism Cannot Calculate a Single PriceWithout private ownership of factories and land there are no prices for them, and planners fly blind. Mises proved it in 1920; the Soviet century confirmed it. Peel and Disraeli Show How Conservatives Reform Without WreckingBritain's Conservatives in the nineteenth century showed that conserving an order can mean changing it first, a lesson Burke stated and Peel and Disraeli lived. Markets Reward Serving Strangers, and That Is a Moral AchievementA market lets you prosper only by meeting other people's needs on terms they accept, which makes it a moral order, and Sandel's critique does not overturn it. Property Rights Are Human Rights Because People Hold Property, Not ThingsA property right is a person's claim to keep what his work produced, so the slogan setting human rights against property rights falls apart.
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