A free economy is an economy run by free beings. And free beings are responsible beings. Economic transactions in a regime of private property depend not only on distinguishing mine from yours, but al...
Western democracies did not create the virtue of citizenship; on the contrary, they grew from it. Nothing is more evident in The Federalist than the public spirit that it puts in play, in opposition t...
We value modesty partly because we value desire, and look with suspicion on those habits which untie the knot of individual attachment. Havelock Ellis put the point tendentiously, but (as I shall argu...
The pursuit of absolute or ideal beauty may distract us from the more urgent business of getting things right. It is well and good for philosophers, poets and theologians to point towards beauty in it...
The most interesting aspect of this culture of repudiation has been the attack on the central place accorded to reason in human affairs by the writers, philosophers and political theorists of the Enli...
The great benefit of philosophy, which is also its great weakness, is that all its steps are taken in the spirit of doubt.
The ease with which large producers can transfer their costs is the glaring abuse through which the market – otherwise one of the core values of conservatism – condemns itself.
The dead and the unborn make their presence known through traditions, institutions, and laws.
The contradictory nature of the socialist utopias is one explanation of the violence involved in the attempt to impose them: it takes infinite force to make people do what is impossible.
Kant’s position is extremely subtle – so subtle, indeed, that no commentator seems to agree with any other as to what it is.
In discussing tradition, we are not discussing arbitrary rules and conventions. We are discussing answers that have been discovered to enduring questions. These
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argued that self-interest can solve this problem. Given a free economy and an impartial rule of law, self-interest leads towards an optimal distribution of resourc...
Human beings, in their settled condition, are animated by oikophilia: the love of the oikos, which means not only the home but the people contained in it, and the surrounding settlements that endow th...
Furthermore, we can understand those basic freedoms as rights partly because we can understand the reciprocal duty to respect them. My right to life is your duty not to kill me: and duties of non-encr...
Even socialists steer away from any criticism of the real corporate predation, which is the predation on future generations in which we too are involved. Like
But, because of the unwise provisions of the Treaty of Rome regarding freedom of movement, it has led to the mass emigration of the professional classes, and to the loss of the educated young from cou...
The power of jealousy is one of the most important facts to be taken account of in the derivation of sexual morality. In a world where sexual prohibitions are of diminishing force, we should not be su...
When the Communist Party took over Eastern Europe, its first work was to destroy the civil associations that it did not control.
The worst mistake in politics is the mistake made by Lenin – the mistake of destroying the institutions and procedures whereby mistakes can be recognized. Something
The market-based legal order of the Brussels bureaucracy helped to fill the legal vacuum created by communism, and was warmly received on that account. But, because of the unwise provisions of the Tre...