Edmund Burke was born in Dublin on this day--January 12--some 273 years ago. He is often called the father of conservatism, but the central passion throughout his writings and speeches is opposition to arbitrary power, especially in the hands of the government, with its "officious, universal interference" in people's lives.
It occurred me last weekend that children should not grow up without a thorough exposure to the great cartoon from 1962, "The Jetsons." Its celebration of technology and commerce, its retro-style optimism, its hilarious dovetailing of bourgeois normalcy with gizmo-crazed futurism, its complete absence of political correctness (excluding, of course, the atrocious 1990 movie by the same name) – all combine to make this one of the great cartoon achievements of any time.
Wilhelm Röpke made it his life's work to help construct and defend the free society, to diagnose the ills of capitalism, and to suggest concrete solutions. Röpke was never shy about criticizing the abuses of the body politic which endangered its health and rendered it defenseless against infections from the far Right and far Left. Röpke favored untrammeled free trade, regional liberties, and respect for traditional peoples and ways of life.
When individuals are not owners of resources, they are not able to assess their value; and when resources are publicly owned, their use will be systematically hasty and imprudent. When we realize that public ownership leads to systematic haste and imprudence, we get a hint that the inability of assessing the value of resources has deleterious consequences for most of us, with no one to blame except perhaps those who insist on keeping the institution of public ownership in force.
One's chance of winning a top prize in one of the rigged state lotteries is so close to zero as to be indistinguishable from zero. In California's feverish drive to take more money from a citizenry that is already overtaxed, officials are looking for an even better bet for the state: selling tickets to games that have already been decided.
Now that the economy is in a slump, many of the workers who gave up their welfare benefits are finding themselves without a job. Many of the industries that were most likely to hire former welfare recipients have been those worst affected by the recession. These workers are finding that they have no legal right to a resumption of welfare payments because the disgraceful Aid to Families with Dependent Children program was abolished.
The American nation state has effectively served as the church of this religion in the United States. The American "Vatican" is Washington, D.C., also a unique governing jurisdiction within the boundaries of a nation-state, like its Roman counterpart. Led by its economic priesthood, the American government administers the affairs of the nation to achieve a secular salvation for all its citizens--the attainment of a new heaven on earth.
In uncertain times such as today, it is too easy to look the other way when the federal government expands its power and curtails our freedoms. In a fit of rhetorical frenzy, the attorney general himself told a Senate panel that those who scare "peace-loving people" with "phantoms of lost liberty" are themselves aiding terrorists.
Successful people who earn their wealth through free and peaceful exchange may choose to give some of it away, but they'd be no less moral and no less debt-free if they gave away nothing. It cheapens the powerful charitable impulse that all but a few people possess to suggest that charity is equivalent to debt service or that it should be motivated by any degree of guilt or self-flagellation.
The events of September 11, and the response to them by the Bush administration, make Elizabeth Anscombe’s classic essays newly pertinent. Her essays present the most influential account
