“All serious political and moral philosophy, and thus any serious social inquiry, must begin with an understanding of human nature. Though society and its institutions shape man, man’s nature sets limits on the kinds of societies we can have. Cicero said that the nature of law must be founded on the nature of man (a natura hominis discenda est natura juris).”
James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature
In my latest National Post column I say Western alienation is a real problem with legitimate origins and needs serious action not mindless anger or mindless scorn.
“that scarce resource Love.”
Dennis Robertson, urging economists to find ways to minimize the demands public policy places on altruism, quoted in James Buchanan What Should Economists Do?
“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the industrious out of it. You don’t multiply wealth by dividing it. Government cannot give anything to anybody that it doesn’t first take from somebody else. Whenever somebody receives something without working for it, somebody else has to work for it without receiving. The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for half of the people to get the idea they don’t have to work because somebody else will work for them, and the other half to get the idea that it does no good to work because they don’t get to enjoy the fruit of their labor.”
Adrian Pierce Rogers, Ten Secrets for a Successful Family (1996) (according to http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/you_cannot_multiply_wealth_by_dividing_it Rogers, a conservative American pastor and author who served three terms as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, is often credited with “You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it” but that formulation predates him and is of unknown origin).
“man’s capacity for love is severely limited by his imperfect nature. Far better, then, to economize on love, to reserve our dependence on it to those relationships where even our imperfect natures are capable of sustained action based on love. Far better, then, to build our economic system on largely impersonal relationships and on man’s self-interest – a motive power with which he is generously supplied.”
Benjamin A. Rogge (in some publication from The Freeman; my old note identifying the source is alas now incomprehensible)
In my latest Epoch Times column I puncture the surprisingly widespread notion that the 2019 Canadian federal election is, like all the others, the single most important and pivotal turning point in our lifetimes in deciding who we want to be as a nation going forward or backward united for the sake of the children into light or darkness as we … zzzzzzzz...