“Now if I have set this idea before you with any distinctness and success, you see that civil liberty consists of a set of civil institutions and laws which are arranged to act as impersonally as possible. It does not consist in majority rule or in universal suffrage or in elective systems at all. These are devices which are good or better just in the degree in which they secure liberty.”
Read More“That is, the experts are not always disinterested, and they sometimes use their powerful positions to find ways to avoid the consequences of their own innovations. Court-ordered busing to achieve school integration, for example, involved many children, but few whose parents were the judges, lawyers, and activists who promoted this remedy.”
Read More“Neither the inflation of the 1970s nor the transformation of America’s industrial heartland into its Rust Belt was inevitable, she argues. Both were direct, foreseeable consequences of short-sighted choices: demanding that monetary policy accommodate irresponsible fiscal policy, and labor and management agreeing to enrich one another by fleecing customers and shareholders ever more brazenly.”
Read MoreFor FDR the ‘Forgotten Man’ was the victim of an unfair society left behind in the capitalist economy. Only a robust central government had the power to right this wrong. For William Sumner the ‘Forgotten Man’ was one who would be required to ultimately pay for it.
Read More“By pragmatism’s own metaphors, their philosophy is like an acid that dissolves dogmas. The problem with acid is that it never knows when to stop burning. That’s why liberals are constantly discovering new crises that require more government solutions. Suggesting to activist liberals that maybe some day they could just go home and get a real job elicits nothing but bewilderment or rage when you bring it up.”
Read More“..the hectoring self-righteousness that grievance studies professors display in faculty senates is now an increasingly common feature of the U.S. Senate. Thus, Judiciary Committee hearings on a Supreme Court nominee became a venue for the same contempt for procedural fairness and epistemological humility as a campus sexual harassment tribunal run by the campus Women’s Center’s Grand Inquisitors.”
Read More“In doing so, we stop comparing our condition favorably with known, existing alternatives, and begin comparing it unfavorably with hypothetical possibilities. On the political supply side, public officials compete to be visionary and idealistic, to promise those transformations that will be the most fundamental. Those citizens increasingly disposed to believe that their glass is half-empty welcome or even demand such boldness.”
Read MoreWilliam Voegeli wrote an important book, Never Enough which I highly recommend. In National Review he writes Why the Liberal Elite Will Never Check Its Privilege Speaking of Orwell, his observation that all leftist political parties are “at bottom a…
Read MoreWilliam Voegeli wrote an important book, Never Enough which I highly recommend. In National Review he writes Why the Liberal Elite Will Never Check Its Privilege It turns out that “social justice” amounts to noblesse oblige, simultaneously strengthening the obligations and…
Read MoreFrom William Voegeli in The National Review, Hillary’s Empty Moralism Is a Reflection of the Greater Progressive Movement Though conservatives find liberal sanctimony insufferable, complaining about it is beside the point. Self-righteousness is the only kind of righteousness liberalism now affords…
Read MoreI attended a Hillsdale College Free Market Forum in Atlanta last week. I was able to meet Don Boudreaux from Café Hayek, one of my daily go to blogs, and Ronald Pestritto, a history professor at Hillsdale. Ron authored three…
Read MoreFrom William Voegeli in The National Review, Hillary’s Empty Moralism Is a Reflection of the Greater Progressive Movement It has now been more than a century since progressivism reconfigured American liberalism by discarding the Founding’s commitment to constitutional structures and limits,…
Read More“The modern undergraduate assigned The Federalist Papers usually makes the reasonable assumption that faction is dangerous because political fragmentation and contentiousness are to be avoided. The real point of Federalist 10 is counterintuitive: Republicanism is imperiled when society is not…
Read MoreFrom Never Enough by William Voegeli “The broader social problem was that the alleviation of poverty, whether from government programs or the advance of capitalism, had liberated people to pursue private goals, which, though not necessarily antisocial, were apt to be asocial…
Read MoreFrom Never Enough by William Voegeli “According to Sidney Milkis, “FDR’s deft reinterpretation of the American constitutional tradition” gave “legitimacy to progressive principles by embedding them in the language of constitutionalism and interpreting them as an expansion rather than a subversion of…
Read MoreFrom Never Enough by William Voegeli “Etymologically, “compassion” means to suffer together. “Together,” however, is different from “identically.” Compassion is not the same as selflessness, and not really the opposite of selfishness. Rather, it provides a basis for helping…
Read MoreFrom The Weekly Standard, Liars Remorse by Wiliam Voegeli Excerpt: The gullibility of the millions of Americans who have been helped by Obama-care, but can be led to believe it’s harmful, goes without saying. Such sentiments confirm that today’s Democrats…
Read MoreFrom the October 2014 issue of Hillsdale’s Imprimis, William Voegeli writes The Case Against Liberal Compassion Excerpt: It follows, then, that the answer to the question of how liberals who profess to be anguished about other people’s suffering can be so…
Read MoreIn the June 2011 Commentary Wiliam Voegli writes Why Corporations Love Regulations (requires subscription- also in hard copy) The industrial policy of Japan was once heralded as the epitome of the success of central planning, government by the experts. Now…
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Regulatory Competitive Advantage
Beyond the issue that regulations that add complexity are part of the problem they seek to solve, regulations are often used as competitive leverage of one corporation over another. While limited debit card fees to 12 cents may create a…
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