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21 " it is arguable that the most molecular word in political discourse, the noun that denotes something on which all else depends and builds, is neither “justice” nor “freedom” nor “equality.” It is “family.” Without the nurturing and disciplining done in intact families, individuals are apt to be ill-equipped to exercise the freedom to become unequal, and therefore are handicapped in the pursuit of justice for themselves and others. "
― George F. Will , The Conservative Sensibility
22 " John Cochrane notes: “Rich people mostly give away or reinvest their wealth. It’s hard to see just how this is a problem.…Look at Versailles. Nobody, not even Bill Gates, lives like Marie Antoinette. And nobody in the US lives like her peasants. "
23 " At this point, the Grumpy Economist becomes the Incredulous Economist: “If the central problem is rent-seeking, abuse of the power of the state to deliver economic goods to the wealthy and politically powerful, how in the world is more government the answer? "
24 " identity politics is valid, then the idea that education should make the educated a member of a larger intellectual culture is invalid. If the premise of identity politics is true, then the idea on which America rests is false. If the premise of identity politics is true, then there is in no meaningful sense a universal human nature, and there are no general standards of intellectual discourse, and no ethic of ennobling disputation, no process of civil persuasion toward friendly consent, no source of legitimacy other than power, and we all live immersed in our tribes, warily watching other tribes across the chasms of our “differences.” No sensible person wants to live in such a society. "
25 " But when democracy, meaning the process of majority rule, is the supreme value—when it is elevated to the status of what the Constitution is “basically about”—the individual is again at the mercy of the strong: the strength of mere numbers. Sandefur says progressivism “inverts America’s constitutional foundations” by holding that the Constitution is “about” democracy, which rejects the Framers’ premise that majority rule is legitimate “only within the boundaries” of the individual’s natural rights. "