“If persons do not behave in accordance with their own economic self-interest, objectively defined and measured, on what basis do they act?... The economist is well-equipped to recognize mush for what it is, and when noneconomists hypothesize that persons want to ‘do good,’ he quickly detects the absence of predictive content.”
“Is Constitutional Revolution Possible in Democracy?” in Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy
“Once the memory of the past grows dim, we will forget who we are and why we exist as a people. Poised ready to relish the pleasure of the moment, without regard for how we became a free society, we risk losing all.”
Solveig Eggerz in Joseph Baldacchino Educating for Virtue
“Surely what matters in a dogma – religious, political or any other kind – is not the motive of those who advance it, but whether it is true or false.”
Ted and Virginia Byfield in “Orthodoxy” in British Columbia Report August 18, 1997
“We do not read Aristotle to find out what people used to think, but for guidance on the issues of today.”
Here I quote myself, from October 1996.
In my latest National Post column I call Erin O’Toole’s flipflop on gun control a test case of whether populism, as one way of making the electoral system more responsive to popular wishes, actually brings better or more honest policy.
“To remain ignorant of things that happened before you were born is to remain a child.”
Cicero, quoted in Andrew Nikiforuk School's Out: The Catastrophe in Public Education
“I cannot understand how a man who is not a Roman Catholic can regard a real Roman Catholic with absolute neutrality. A man who really thinks that a wafer is God Almighty, and who really believes that rational men owe any sort of allegiance to any kind of priest, is either right – in which case the man who differs from him ought to repent in sackcloth and ashes – or else he is wrong, in which case he is the partizan of a monstrous imposture.”
James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty Equality Fraternity
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the idea of national strategies where governments reform citizens is bad, including if one targets “Islamophobia”.