Your political view should be based on not how this would work for you in your current position in society, but imagine you are behind a veil of ignorance. You are picking policies for a society and then everything's going to be scrambled up and you're not going to know where you fall on the spectrum.
Because if wise people, if good people, if people who try to live and act with virtue, if they don't seek public office, if they don't participate in public life, if they don't vote, if they don't speak out, you know what is happening? They're ceding that floor to the people who are not.
I think a lot of people assume that the common good means finding the kind of least common denominator that we can agree in like just splitting the difference or kind of finding like going down to the basics. I think that is a huge mistake. The philosophers that I study and love the ancient Greeks like Aristotle believe that the common good the good itself is something that you're moving towards. It's like a common goal and nobody is there yet.
When morals are put aside where ideology doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is that you support the leader, you know, so there is a breakdown in society, and and then suddenly anything goes, and I think it's a very dangerous path to take.
But now you're not talking about abolition, you're talking about the first amendment. You're talking about the right to petition the government which is protected. And so he becomes a defender of the abolitionists not on necessarily on the grounds of abolition but on the grounds of free speech.
The second sentence is a mission statement for our nation a nation in which the governor comes not from the divine right of kings or the sword of conquerors, but by a social contract that's signaled in the very first word of the sentence.
James Wilson is the first to argue, no, they have zero, they have no authority over us at all. Now, this is such a groundbreaking argument that one of his mentors reads it and says, James, you're a young man, you have a, you know, big career ahead of you, don't put this out there yet. It's too bold.
4mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
