Tagged: John Locke

Religion Causes War, Part One

One of the most wearisome bromides of our dogmatic scientific atheists is the claim that religious belief — which they conveniently weave together with the question of the existence of God — causes wars and oppression. This is used as a rhetorical argument to undercut belief in a divine being, on the grounds that the extremes of religious enthusiasm cause men to fight...

The Self-Government Machine

How much of the challenge of political philosophy is rooted in deficiencies of available language? How many essential truths have failed to reach the ears they needed to reach at the critical moment, merely because the individuals who saw those truths lacked universally familiar points of reference with which to communicate their lightning bolts with sufficient precision, or at least with the shattering...

The Last Line of Defense: Property

“Property is theft.” Proudhon’s classic anarchist paradox is more than a catchy slogan for international leftism. It encapsulates a complete and comprehensively absurd view of humanity, one which finds its contemporary apotheosis in President Obama’s more prosaic rendition, “You didn’t build that.” In other words, “You didn’t build that” is just “Property is theft” without the irony. By speaking his true mind without...