Quotation of the Day…
… is from pages 245-246 of the original edition of Walter Lippmann’s sometimes deeply flawed but profoundly insightful and important 1937 book, The Good Society:
The problem that perplexed the liberals arose from the fact that they had very good reason for feeling that nobody – no king, no parliament, no collection of voters, and no judge – was good enough or wise enough to be trusted with the authority to modify the rights upon which the security of property and of transactions and of the person depended.
DBx: Yes.
The true liberal gives a strong presumption of legitimacy to spontaneously evolved rules, even though recognizing that these rules will never be perfect in the sense that, were god to rule humanity, the deity could improve them. It’s almost always better to endure the relatively slight imperfections of evolved rules than to suffer the far worse imperfections of diktats consciously designed and imposed by force. The knowledge required for the latter to be improvements over the former is vast. And the authority – even if chosen democratically – to impose diktats is dangerous.
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