On Human Nature  

If man is a rational animal, it is surely odd that he so often debates questions whose answers must be presupposed before the debate can take place. (I use the term “man” here in its primary dictionary meaning, to denote …



Pure Tolerance: A Critique of Criticisms  

Ever since men climbed down from the trees and found it necessary to establish ground rules, they have fought over what those rules shall be. They have fought longest, and perhaps most bitterly, over the most fundamental rule of all—the …



A Grammar of Equality  

Equality, wrote Alexandre Dumas the younger, brought kings to the guillotine and the people to the throne. Like most felicitous phrases, this is no more than a partial truth. New tyrants rather than “the people” often ascended to the momentarily …



The Higher Reaches of the Lower Orders  

There is only one serious question in political philosophy: What manner of men do we take ourselves and others to be? All other issues—not least the next fundamental question, By what right does any man or class command the services …



Four Fragments on Politics  

Of Democracy When asked how in the real world I distinguish a democratic from a nondemocratic state, I answer with a single question: who is the leader of the opposition? For without a political opposition, and the commotion it produces, no …



Fables from Aptheker  

THE NATURE OF DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM, AND REVOLUTION, by Herbert Aptheker. New York: International Publishers. 128 pp. $1.25. Every once in a while I seek a bit of comic relief from the burdens of our Kafkaesque world. One unfailing source has been, …



A Conservative Gargoyle  

Bad books are easily ignored. They may waste an unwary reader’s time, but this is a minor irritant. Really bad books, however, are noxious: they insult the intelligence of readers; they also injure the cause they avowedly seek to promote. …