Enjoying the view from Limbo
Whatever one thinks of the ultimate validity or political importance of the right to free speech, there is an ironclad condition that must be understood as essential to the concept, and no free speech defense which ignores or seeks to limit this condition can amount to anything but a self-contradiction.
You may appreciate a man’s talent for making money, but you must never admire him for it. For this would mean regarding wealth, or the getting of wealth, as the gifted wealth-getter himself does, namely as a mark of personal greatness. On the contrary, one could do worse than to adopt the following as a general rule: No extraordinarily rich man — especially...
According to progressive morality, which is really progressive politics, to disagree with or disrespect someone’s choices and attitudes — provided they are the correct choices and attitudes of the moment — is to violate his rights. This is tantamount to saying that rights are essentially protections against being judged. To judge a person’s preferences (in relativist lingo, his “lifestyle”) is thus inherently to...
Today we continue our meandering stroll through the lexicon of politically correct ideas and language, attempting to make sense, or at least to clarify the nonsense, of progressivism’s unceasing effort to turn language — our only means of converting the impenetrable realm of private understanding, i.e., nature, to a semi-communicable form — into a tool of mass social engineering, i.e., artifice. Rights (1)...
A dear friend sent me an e-mail the other day in which he lamented the incoherence of “modern conservatives” (his well-chosen term), with their endless compromises on fundamental principles, their willingness to support politicians who contradict everything these people claim to believe in, and their unwillingness to defend free markets and property rights with consistency and clarity. His thoughts, perfectly in line with...
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