From Charles Cooke at National Review, Our Illiberal Moment:

To be adequately maintained, classical liberalism demands three key virtues. Humility, so that each of society’s competing factions might comprehend that it will not always hold power. Tolerance, so that the habitual reaction to a difference of opinion is the shrug rather than the bayonet. And forbearance, so that the immediate rush of victory can be subordinated to longer-term ambition. Little by little, we are losing all three and, as they go, forgetting the good practices that have built, sustained, and improved our remarkable society for generations.

There is a reason we all know that scene from A Man for All Seasons, in which Sir Thomas More berates William Roper for his willingness to bend the rules (“And when the last law was down — and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?”), and that reason is that it is timelessly true. We may fancy ourselves to be more advanced than the Tudors, but we still cannot cut down the rules that protect the Devil without cutting down the rules that protect the saints. 

 

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