In my latest National Post column I ask what the point is of trying to build a Conservative Frankenstein’s Monster with blue brain, red heart and green hair, brought to life by a jolt from a polling machine, when conservatism is the reality-based philosophy that believes in coherent rules.
“These sentences are difficult for the modern reader, who is accustomed to think that the term ‘human nature’ does not correspond to any demonstrable empirical data. But for Spinoza, as for Aristotle, this was not so; nor is it for some contemporary neurophysiologists, biologists, and psychologists.”
Erich Fromm To Have and To Be
“statistics, a term which for most people is synonymous with ‘migraine.’”
William Watson in National Post Nov. 27, 2001
“Suspicion: The most powerful reason why some persons want to coerce conscience – for example, to force medical workers who object to abortions to participate in them anyway – is to have as much company as possible in their own bad conscience.”
J. Budziszewski "Underground Thomist" Feb. 25, 2019
“The common belief of the age [the 18th century] that human nature was forever the same referred essentially to the raw biological nature upon which the environment operated.”
Gordon S. Wood The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787.