Install
First Principles
75 posts, newest first (page 3 of 4).
Equity Versus Equality, Why Swapping One Word Changes EverythingThe case for equity at its strongest, then five answers showing why equal treatment is the only rule a free people can administer. Pius XI Put Subsidiarity in Writing in 1931, and Washington Should Read ItParagraph 79 of Quadragesimo Anno says a larger body wrongs a smaller one when it takes over what the smaller can do, the logic of the Tenth Amendment. Chesterton Called Tradition the Democracy of the Dead, and He Was RightChesterton's line in Orthodoxy gives our ancestors a vote against the oligarchy of the living, and it survives the objection that the dead were wrong too. Buckley Policed the Fringe, and the Right Grew Stronger for ItIn the early 1960s William F. Buckley Jr. drew lines against the John Birch Society's leadership and Ayn Rand's circle, and the movement was better for it. Frank Meyer, the Ex-Communist Who Married Liberty to VirtueFrank Meyer left the Communist Party, joined National Review and argued that virtue must be chosen freely to count, a bargain still shaping the right. The 1953 Book That Told Americans They Already Had a Conservative TraditionRussell Kirk's The Conservative Mind gave American conservatism a family tree from Burke to Eliot, and it changed what the movement believed it was. Sowell on Cosmic Justice, and Why Fair Rules Beat Engineered ResultsThomas Sowell's 1999 book separates fair rules from the dream of undoing every accident of birth, and only the first is compatible with liberty. Sowell's Two Visions Explain Why Smart People Talk Past Each OtherA Conflict of Visions argues political quarrels rest on unspoken assumptions about human nature; naming them turns shouting matches into arguments. Friedman's Four Ways to Spend Money Explain Every Government BudgetYour own money on yourself is spent carefully; other people's money on other people is spent carelessly twice over, and most government spending is the latter. Friedman's 1970 Essay on Business Responsibility Still Answers Its CriticsFriedman's 1970 essay says executives who spend shareholders' money on social causes tax without representation; read closely, it is no license for fraud. Friedman Argued That Economic Freedom Comes Before Political FreedomCapitalism and Freedom's first chapter says a free economy is a condition of political liberty, because it disperses power and lets dissenters earn a living. Nobody Designed the English Language, and Hayek Called That Spontaneous OrderLanguage, common law, money and markets grew from human action, not human design, and that fact should make every would-be redesigner humble. Hayek Wrote Why I Am Not a Conservative, and He Had a Point Worth FacingHayek's 1960 postscript charged conservatives with fearing change and lacking principles; an American conservative can answer it, and learn from it. Why the Worst Get on Top, Hayek's Most Uncomfortable ChapterChapter 10 of The Road to Serfdom argues central planning selects for ruthless people, because only they will do what planning requires. The Invisible Hand Appears Once in The Wealth of Nations, Here Is WhySmith's famous phrase appears a single time in his 1776 book, about investment, and it means something more modest and more powerful than critics think. Before The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith Wrote a Book About ConscienceThe father of economics was first a moral philosopher, and his 1759 book on sympathy and the impartial spectator explains the market he later described. Self-Interest Rightly Understood Was Tocqueville's Answer to SelfishnessTocqueville found Americans who taught that serving neighbors serves oneself, a modest doctrine that built a remarkably public-spirited people. Tocqueville Saw Soft Despotism Coming, a Power That Never Says NoIn 1840 Tocqueville described a new tyranny that softens and directs the will, keeping citizens in perpetual childhood. His cure was local liberty. Burke Versus Paine, the Argument That Defined Left and Right for GoodThe 1790-1791 clash between Burke's Reflections and Paine's Rights of Man set the terms of the left-right divide. Here they are side by side. The Little Platoons Passage From 1790 and What It Asks of Us NowOne sentence in Burke's Reflections makes family, parish, town and club the first schools of public affection, and France showed what follows when they go. Burke's Doctrine of Prescription Says Old Institutions Deserve a HearingBurke held that institutions which have lasted carry a presumption in their favor, because survival is evidence they solve problems no planner can list. Ordered Liberty Is Not a Contradiction, It Is the Only Kind That LastsLiberty without order collapses into license and then tyranny, so conservatives defend freedom and the habits and institutions that keep it alive. From Cicero to Aquinas to Jefferson, the Long Road of Natural LawThe idea that a moral law binds rulers and can be known by reason runs unbroken from the Stoics to the Declaration and the Birmingham jail. Blackstone's Three Absolute Rights and Why Every Founder Owned His BookBlackstone taught colonial lawyers that security, liberty and property are absolute rights, and that ten guilty should escape before one innocent suffers.
Other categories
- The Constitution and the Founders
- The Courts and the Rule of Law
- Economy, Taxes and Free Markets
- Big Government and the Administrative State
- Border, Immigration and Sovereignty
- Faith, Family and Life
- Education, Parents and Kids
- Culture, Media and Free Speech
- Crime, Policing and Justice
- The Second Amendment
- National Security and Foreign Policy
- Energy, Environment and the Land
- Health Care and Personal Responsibility
- American History and Heroes
- Elections, Civic Action and the Comeback
- Life, Work and Money