Category Archives: Rationalism

Rationalism is the philosophical stance according to which reason is the ultimate source of human knowledge. It stands in contrast toempiricism, according to which the senses suffice in justifying knowledge.

In one form or another, rationalism features in most philosophical traditions. In the Western tradition it boasts a long and distinguished list of followers, including Plato, Descartes, and Kant.

Rationalism continues to be a major philosophical approach to decision-making today.

How do we come to know objects --through the senses or through reason? According toDescartes,the latter option is the correct one.

As an example of Descartes' approach to rationalism, consider polygons (i.e. closed, plane figures in geometry). How do we know that something is a triangle as opposed to a square? The senses may seem to play a key role in our understanding: we see that a figure has three sides or four sides. But now consider two polygons -- one with athousand sides and the other with a thousand and one sides. Which is which? In order to distinguish between the two, it will be necessary to count the sides -- using reason to tell them apart.

For Descartes, reason is involved in all of our knowledge. This is because our understanding of objects is nuanced by reason.

For example, how do we know that the person in the mirror is, in fact, ourself? How do recognize the purpose or significance of objects such as pots, guns, or fences? How do we distinguish one similar object from another? Reason alone can explain such puzzles.

Since the justification of knowledge occupies a central role in philosophical theorizing, it is typical to sort out philosophers on the basis of their stance with respect to the rationalist vs empiricist debate.

Rationalism indeed characterizes a wide range of philosophical topics.

Of course, in a practical sense, it is almost impossible to separate rationalism from empiricism. We cannot make rational decisions without the information provided to us through our senses -- nor can we make empirical decisions without considering their rational implications.

Further Online Readings and Sources "Rationalism vs. Empiricism" at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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Rationalism in Philosophy - thoughtco.com

Lebanon Daily News 2:10 p.m. ET March 17, 2017

Support for removing Title X money from LFHS

If you're unsure about where or how to submit a letter to the editor, all of the answers can be found here. Erin Collins, Lebanon Daily News

An employee of the local birth control clinic, Lebanon Family Health Services, spoke out against passage of H.J. 43. (2-24-17) She said the law could limit family planning resources for hers and other clinics funded with Title X government money.

She said in the past 15 years, because of various local efforts and access to reproductive healthcare, Lebanon County has seen a 24-percent decrease in teen pregnancies. Title X Family Planning Agencies have been receiving funds since 1973. Why did it take over 30 years to lower the teen pregnancy rate?

She failed to mention minors don't need parental consent to get the free contraceptives and the organization also refers women for abortions.

The writer also said research has found that for every dollar spent on public family planning services $7.09 is saved on expenditures which would otherwise go toward pregnancy, delivery and child care.

In 1990 the Guttmacher Institute (the research arm of Planned Parenthood,) published a study of women receiving birth control devices through government programs at that time. It addressed the cost of government service to unplanned children but never looked at future government revenue coming from future income produced by these unplanned citizens. This means fewer new taxpayers and more costs taking care of the elderly.

In 2016 the Obama Administration issued a regulation preventing states from taking away Title X funds from organizations like Planned Parenthood and Lebanon Family Health Services. H.J. 43 would nullify this but would not eliminate family planning services to women. In recent years, several states have adopted reforms to direct federal Title X family planning money to county health departments, community health centers, or other providers, instead of organizations engaged in objectionable activities such as those provided by Planned Parenthood and Lebanon Family Health Services.

-Colleen Reilly, Lebanon

Has the Russian Revolution washed up on America's shores?

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), born in Algeria to Sephardi Jews, formulated the philosophy known as Deconstructionism. Derrida grew up during the War for Algerian Independence. As a young man he moved to France and was educated there. In the Post Modern World, Deconstructionism redirected the humanities and social sciences.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a triumph for rationalism and was carried out by Russian intellectuals before it went to the dark side. Leo Tolstoy, a monarchist, was named Hero of the Revolution. This is the reason the phrase Godless Russia appeared for decades in American political discourse. The terms anarchist and nihilist are often used in connection with Derrida.

America's worst fears peaked in the 1940s and 50s called the Red Scare. This was the period of McCarthyism and the travesty perpetrated by federal prosecutors on trumped-up charges of treason resulting in the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Public school teachers were required to take loyalty oaths.

Why are these matters important? They are important because Steve Bannon, known to be President Trump's right hand man and chief policy strategist, if not a deconstructor, is the chief wrecking ball leading a team of other wrecking balls in President Trump's government. Perhaps this is the reason the positions in the top two tiers of the state department bureaucracy have not been filled. Maybe the specter of the Russian Revolution of 1917 with the grim companions, anarchy and nihilism, has finally washed up on American shores.

-Richard D. Slick, Palmyra

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Letters: Strong words for LFHS, Trump admin - Lebanon Daily News - Lebanon Daily News

This early work by the 18th centurys master of the diabolical arts depicts a passage from the Roman classical poet Lucans Bellum Civile. Pompey, about to commit himself to civil war, dreams of his late wife, his enemy Caesars daughter Julia. Though famed for kindness, youth and good looks, Lucan imagines her returning as a Fury.

It predates the Fuseli of the 1780s, when works such as The Nightmare, with its demon crouched on the chest of a sleeping beauty, established him as the go-to man for all things satanic and saucy: a dark relief from rationalism.

Created in the 1770s when the Swiss artist, spurred on by Joshua Reynolds, learned his craft in Rome. It shows Fuseli shaking up the kind of subject matter the eras neo-classicists loved with timeless sex and violence.

While the figure-hugging drapery recalls classical and Renaissance statues, with her hook nose and claw-like hands murderously poised, this witchy Julia seems to owe as much to folklore as she does the classics.

Part of Elizabeth Price Curates, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, to 1 May

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Henry Fuseli's Julia Appearing to Pompey in a Dream: hell hath no Fury - The Guardian

The heckler's veto The Hindu Basic unity amidst diversity notwithstanding, India is a land of cultural contrarieties, coexistence of many religions and anti-religions, rationalism and bigotry, primitive cults and materialist doctrines. The compulsions of history and geography and ... and more »

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The heckler's veto - The Hindu

BombThrowers: The Obama administration sicced the Internal Revenue Service on Tea Party and conservative groups and slow-walked their applications for tax-exempt status, an important attribute for any new nonprofit organization.

But good-government group Judicial Watch discovered that Obamas IRS granted a Satanist group yes, Devil-worshippers official nonprofit status in a mere 10 days from start to finish. Maybe Saul Alinsky paid tribute to Lucifer in Rules for Radicals for a reason.

The Somerville, Mass.-based nonprofit is called Reason Alliance. It carries on business in Washington State as the Satanic Temple of Seattle.

The Reason Alliance applied for tax-exempt status on October 21, 2014 and received it on October 31, 2014, according to documents Judicial Watch obtained from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The group is focused on setting up chapters of the After School Satan Club.

Documents obtained by Judicial Watch include the process of establishing an after-school Satan club at Point Defiance Elementary in Tacoma. The entity behind the club is a nonprofit called Reason Alliance, which is based in Somerville, Massachusetts, and operates in Washington State as the Satanic Temple of Seattle. Its director, Lilith X. Starr, established the Point Defiance Elementary Satanic club, the records show. In its application the club states that its purpose is character development and that adult instructors are vetted by the Satanic Temples Executive Ministry. Children ages 5-12 will develop basic critical reasoning, character qualities, problem solving and creative expression, according to the Satanic Temple filings included in the documents.

These servants of the Despoiler of Souls explain on their website why they feel it necessary to do what theyre doing:

Its important that children be given an opportunity to realize that the evangelical materials now creeping into their schools are representative of but one religious opinion amongst many. While the Good News Clubs focus on indoctrination, instilling them with a fear of Hell and Gods wrath, After School Satan Clubs will focus on free inquiry and rationalism. We prefer to give children an appreciation of the natural wonders surrounding them, not a fear of everlasting other-worldly horrors.

Well, thats just super.

In other really, really exciting IRS news, media reports indicate that the National Policy Institute Inc. has forfeited its tax-exempt status after failing to file legally required informational returns. The suspension by the IRS was automatic after NPI didnt come up with the mandatory paperwork for three consecutive tax years.

According to the IRSs Automatic Revocation of Exemption List, which isnt exactly easy to read, the organization appears to have been stripped of its tax exemption as of March 13 this year. NPI, which is headquartered in Whitefish, Mt., is led by the somewhat notorious white-supremacist Richard B. Spencer.

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Obama IRS rushed like a bat out of Hell to give Satanist group tax-exempt status - Canada Free Press

New Delhi [India], Mar. 14(ANI): In the wake of the recent attack on Kannada writer Yogesh Master, Congress leader and legal advisor to the Government of Karnataka Brijesh Kalappa condemned the attack, stating that such attacks are common with writers who preach rationalism.

Master, the author of a controversial Kannada novel Dundhi, was attacked on Monday by unidentified persons, who smeared his face with black oil.

To this regard, Kalappa, in an interview with ANI, highlighted similar events in the past and alleged that certain right-wing organisations in Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra have chosen to oppress rationalist thinkers and writers by such attacks.

The only way these (right-wing) organisations can match a writers intellect is by resorting to violence, be it Govind Pansare, Narendra Dabolkar or M.M. Kalburgi. I urge that the culprits need to be punished immediately and attacks of such nature need to be curbed, said Kalappa, drawing parallels to the recent Ramjas College row in Delhi.

With regards to the recent assembly polls in Goa and Manipur, the Congress leader slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), stating that the Modi Sarkar has not learnt any lesson from the severe rap they received from the Supreme Court.

The Prime Minister has time and again re-iterated the partys objective to achieve a Congress-free India. This is the concern, rather than taking the country forward or developing the economy. In both Goa and Manipur, the BJP is trying to stifle democracy with money, said Kalappa. (ANI)

This is published unedited from the ANI feed.

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Congress slams 'right-wing' groups for attack on Kannada writer - India.com

Actor Kamal Haasan, in his latest interview to a Tamil channel, reiterated what he has been betraying all his public life: an intentionally shallow understanding of Indic cultural issues. It seemed as though he was trying too hard to project himself as a progressive individual.

He stated contemptuously that India is a nation which honours a book, the central theme of which revolves around gambling away a woman as if she were an object. In the same interview, he also claimed that his film Viswaroopam was never subjected to extra-constitutional censorship by Islamist forces. He declared that Dravidianism was here to stay. He took to task the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and showed a fondness for both Mahatma Gandhi and EVR who were poles apart ideologically.

And then he also flaunted his love for Marxism in the interview. The actor, who is known for artful rendering of Hollywood scenes unto Tamil masses as innovations, has thus positioned himself as the voice of the progressives in Tamil Nadu.

So, what explains Haasans over-explaining things?

Haasan is a representative sample of an interesting species in Tamil Nadu. Members of this species are born in upper caste families, claim adherence to rationalism, make shrill leftist remarks and revel in Dravidian rhetoric. Such individuals are happy to support Islamist forces. And curiously enough, they endorse Gandhi, Communism and E V Ramaswamy (EVR or famously known as Periyar) a weird ideological hodgepodge if there was one.

For decades, Tamil drama artist and writer Gnani Sankaran had adhered to this template and has been more Dravidian than Dravidian radicals. And yet despite the intellectual servitude he keeps getting reminded about his Brahmin origins. All this leads us to wonder as to whether such intellectual regression an almost unthinking submissiveness towards Dravidian ideas of racial superiority evolved as an upper caste response towards the threats emanating from Dravidian parties.

If you thought this was bad please rest assured that it can get even worse.

The elder brother of Kamal Haasan, actor Charu Haasan, who identifies himself as an atheist has acted in an evangelical docu-drama, which claims that the coming of Jesus has been foretold in Vedic literature and that Tamil classics including Thirukural are actually Christian literature. One can see where the worldviews of Haasan brothers converge whether they do it intentionally or ignorantly.

In the case of Kamal Haasan and Tamil milieu, the situation is a disturbing caricature of Germany of the 1930s. There is a new neo-Luddite trend in Tamil secessionist forces, which uses tools of anarchy to portray every development project and every incident happening as conspiracy against Tamils. This is derived from the rich Dravidian rhetoric that claimed North enjoys as South erodes.

Interestingly, while the early Dravidian secessionists claimed that the South was neglected in the industrial development their present evolutes the Tamil secessionists claim that every development project was an effort to steal the natural resources of Tamils by Delhi imperialists.

Dravidian parties have fallen in line with the Tamil secessionists, who in turn are also supported by well-knit Islamist organisations.

It is in this context that one has to see the recent interview of Kamal Haasan, who made all the right noises for the above combination: Hatred for Indic traditions, an abject surrender before the Islamists and reassertion of Dravidian Tamil identity.

That the actor has chosen to speak only after the demise of J Jayalalithaa is also significant. Though it is a telling commentary on the bravery of the aging matinee hero, it also shows how radical forces in Tamil Nadu are attempting to take over the vacuum created by the death of Jayalalithaa.

Kamal Haasans interview has to be seen not just as a specimen of intellectual ossification but also as an indicator of the coming danger Luddite Tamil fascism hands in gloves with Islamist fundamentalism.

In fact, a section of Kollywood has been very vocal in inciting the students against development projects in the state, and is trying to make jallikattu movement dangerously secessionist.

However, the silver lining is the flak that the interview has received from the vast silent majority of Tamils. His half-baked understanding of the Mahabharata has been mostly laughed off. It is this silent majority which shall save Tamil Nadu from secessionists and pseudo-rationalists like Kamal Haasan. Alas, the only problem in Tamil Nadu is that the leadership vacuum continues!

Also Read: The False Symmetries Of Hey Ram

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Kamal Haasan's Recent Interview And What It Says About Tamil Nadu - Swarajya

Humans are getting more and more peaceful. Violent deaths from all causes (murder, war, etc.) have declined massively throughout human history.

But to what do we owe this increasing peace? Enlightenment philosophy? Commerce? Or the rise of governance by states?

Harvard social psychologist Steven Pinkers book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined provides a magisterial, comprehensive, and generally persuasive explanation of the peacefulness phenomena, yet the book contains a big omission.

Pinker claims but fails to prove that early states significantly increased human welfare by reducing the rate of war death.

In his attempt to make this argument, Pinker compares the rates of war death in stateless societies, prehistoric and contemporary, to state societies, mostly from the 20th century. The rate of war death was three to four times as high in the stateless societies as in the state societies.

There is one big problem with this comparison: can we really believe that the only salient difference between Neolithic peoples or tribal Papuans and 20th-century Europeans is the existence of a state? What about commerce? What about Enlightenment rationalism?

In fact, later in his book, Pinker supplements his state-pacification-process argument with a humanitarian-process argument about the role of commerce and growing empathy (due in part to Enlightenment philosophy) in spreading peace from the 18th century onward.

But Pinker doesnt provide the relevant comparison for evaluating the role of the state: the rate of war death in prehistoric stateless societies versus the rate of war death in prehistoric state societies.

Pinker might fall back on the data showing that the rate of violent death in medieval and early-modern Europe and in 15th-century central Mexico was still below that of prehistoric and contemporary stateless societies. (These figures include homicides, not just war deaths.)

But medieval and early modern Europe still had access to the legacies of Christianity, Roman law, and the long-distance trade made possible by medieval fairs and the navigation technology of the time. Central Mexico under the Aztecs was also a commercial society with trade, navigation, and division of labor.

We know that these factors probably had some pacifying effect, however limited. And while the state may well reduce the rate of private violence, that leaves unsettled the question of whether it increases or reduces the rate of death from civil and external wars.

Further, there is an important conceptual problem for the claim that the rise of the state improved human welfare by reducing violent deaths. If the state were such an obviously desirable technology, why wasnt it adopted everywhere voluntarily?

If the state were such an obviously desirable technology, why wasnt it adopted everywhere voluntarily?

After all, early states arose almost exclusively out of conquest, as Pinker concedes. They started as roving bands of armed robbers, who eventually found that converting robbery into regularized taxation would destroy less wealth and generate more revenue over the long run. Autonomous peoples do not go into subject status willingly. As Pinker himself puts it,

People in nonstate societies also invade for safety. The security dilemma or Hobbesian trap is very much on their minds, and they may form an alliance with nearby villages if they fear they are too small, or launch a preemptive strike if they fear that an enemy alliance is getting too big. One Yanomam man in Amazonia told an anthropologist, We are tired of fighting. We dont want to kill anymore. But the others are treacherous and cannot be trusted. (46)

Pinker interprets these comments as establishing the reality of a security dilemma, in which each side is better off fighting given what each other side is doing, even though all would be better off if all sides disarmed.

If the security dilemma is such a horrible fate, why didnt the Yanomami simply submit to one of the other tribes? Why keep fighting? If you dont fight anymore, your war deaths will be zero. Presumably, the reason is that the Yanomami would rather run the risk of dying in battle than accept the certainty of being enslaved. General John Stark of New Hampshire might have been expressing a universal human impulse when he said, Live free or die; death is not the worst of all evils.

If death is not the worst of all evils, or if states actually increase war deaths relative to stateless societies with similar economies and philosophies, advocating a state maybe even a world government to end anarchy between states may be a bad way to advance human welfare.

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Why don't humans kill each other like we used to? - Learn Liberty (blog)

When one discusses the midcentury-modern architecture of Palm Springs, its best to be specific. On the one hand, there are those archetypes of classic California modernismperhaps best exemplified by Richard Neutras famed Kaufmann Housethat echo the language of the International Style, all glass and steel and elegant rationalism. But then theres another, more playful school of modernism, one that embraced historicist elements, purely theatrical effects, and no small portion of camp to conjure a suitably sybaritic mise-en-scne for the leisure class at play. To the surprise of absolutely no one familiar with interior designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard or his sumptuous settings, the effervescent British expat selected a prime example of the latter for his own Palm Springs hideaway.

Bullard and his partner, property developer Michael Green, soak up the sunshine in a 1963 house by James McNaughton, a Hollywood set designer who found the ultimate canvas for his flights of fancy in the desert sands of the Coachella Valley. With an arched exterior canopy that segues into interior colonnades, the structure looks a bit like an early maquette for Wallace K. Harrisons Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. The analogy is apt, given the unapologetic drama of the design, which is centered on a semicircular living room that is completed in a bowfront wall of glass overlooking the swimming pool and a black-banded terrazzo floor that was originally intended for dancing.

Its all a bit mad but divine, Bullard says of the house. Hugh Hefner supposedly owned it in the 70s, then Roger Moore, who had it tricked out in fabulous James Bond finery. This place was built for relaxation and fun, so we use it in that spirit.

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Bullard largely preserved McNaughtons floor plan, restoring sections of the home that had been altered over the years. To make the place more accommodating for visitors, he converted a pool cabana and what had been a lavish dressing room into additional guest quarters. Bullard also transformed an erstwhile library into a seriously plush screening room bathed in emerald-green lacquer and furnished with topographical de Sede Terrazza sofas covered in Ultrasuede.

During the holidays, we hole up there with our dog, Daisy, a bunch of screeners, and a lot of candy, the designer says. (For those unfamiliar with Hollywoods mysterious customs, screeners are copies of the latest movies that are distributed by the studios to industry bigwigs and apparatchiks at the end of every year, in advance of awards season.)

Bullard describes his interior appointments as a mix of swinging 60s with a touch of disco 70s. In specific terms, that vision translates into a roster of stellar furnishings by Vladimir Kagan, Willy Rizzo, Paul Evans, Milo Baughman, Angelo Mangiarotti, Karl Springer, and Charles Hollis Jones, among other avatars of groovy modern furniture. There are also more idiosyncratic pieces, like the Pierre Cardin stools at the bar and the living rooms vast zebra-skin rug (a gift from model Cheryl Tiegs, it once graced Andy Warhols Factory).

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Martyn Lawrence Bullard's Sumptuous Palm Springs Hideaway - Architectural Digest

"To put it in a nutshell, Joo Carlos Espada tells us, his book "aims at providing an intellectual case for liberal democracy." This aim puts The Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty on a crowded shelf of mostly desiccated husks. What gives his work vitality is his wish to clarify why European democracy differs from England's and ours, and his search for what is common among various figures from the past 60 years whom he admires, and earlier thinkers similar to them.

These goals lead him to defend the substance and conditions of our Anglo-American life of liberty, not to attempt to explore freedom's deathless merits. To accomplish his task, Espada briefly discusses a large number of philosophers, statesmen, and scholars. This breadth means that he does not attend to scholarly minutiae, chains of philosophical abstraction, or detailed questions of policy. Each of his discussions is interesting, although some are more telling or reliable than others. I would especially recommend his remarks on Karl Popper, Michael Oakeshott, and Edmund Burke. His discussion of Alexis de Tocqueville is as good a 20-page presentation of what matters in him as one is likely to find.

Espada's concern is more with tradition than principle. John Locke's principled arguments promoting free government were useful in Britain and America because they entered countries that already practiced or defended limited government and the rule of law. In France, however, the "effect of the importation of Locke's doctrines," Espada tells us, quoting Anthony Quinton, "was much like that of alcohol on an empty stomach." Lockean principles came to light there as a wholesale reordering or destruction of traditional ways.

In general, indeed, the Europeans made themselves dizzy with rationalistic schemes. Their hope, stemming from Descartes, not to ground politics and morals on anything that we merely assume is, however, doomed to fail. In fact, it leads finally to relativism. For if all is not completely rational, then it seems that nothing is. Along the path to such relativism, however, came the disasters of the Marxist and Nazi attempts at total amalgamation and control. These were liberty's very opposites.

If the Anglo-American tradition of liberty is vital to liberty's existence, how can liberty prevail where this tradition never existed, or is now withering? Espada's answer to this pressing question is not simple, partly because of what he has in mind with "tradition." Sometimes he points to matters that were, or are, primarily English, quoting John Betjeman and T.S. Eliot on peculiar English tastes that range from "boiled cabbage cut into sections" and dartboards to Tennyson's poetry and Elgar's music. Other times he includes American practices advocated or instituted by Madison or noticed by Tocqueville. Occasionally, he points to tradition as attachment to one's own familiar routines. But we can see that such attachments could, in many places, as easily be illiberal as liberal.

What we most usefully learn from Espada's approach is that liberty requires (or is strongly aided by) a public and private disposition to allow competitive spheres of social, political, and economic influence rather than social and political monoliths; a proclivity to let people lead their lives without much interference from others; and support of government that is "limited and accountable." These dispositions and their objects are broader than "traditional" ways simply, and we can see how several concrete practices could be compatible with them. Espada, however, does not explore the varied ways to advance these liberal dispositions.

To what degree are these dispositions the seedbed or material of liberty, and to what degree are they liberty itself? Espada's intelligent discussion of liberty's tradition leads him to downplay some of its concrete institutions and principles. There is occasional mention, but little discussion, of religious toleration, a free and responsible press, free speech, good character, and the rule of law. There is mention, but little analysis, either of the place of expanding economies in modern liberal countries or of their disruptive effects on traditional ways.

Some of these practicessay, religious tolerationcould perhaps be dealt with within the general dispositions I just discussed. Some omissions might also be explained by Espada's wish not to identify liberal democracy with any current political party or movement, or to allow figures who range from Hayek to Oakeshott to near-socialists and social democrats such as Raymond Plant and Ralf Dahrendorf exemplify the Anglo-American tradition. Liberal democracy covers a wide range. Nonetheless, it is important to discuss these practices because instituting them clarifies areas where the limits, accountability, competition, and variety in authority that Espada connects to liberal democracy must be won and defended, and cannot merely grow. Tradition, habit, or "political culture" are not enough to support them, whatever their importance. This is especially clear with religious toleration and competitive economies.

In general, Espada downplays the place of principles, or the revolutionary ground, of American and even British liberty. He is taken with Hayek's notion of spontaneous order, and is wary of the schemes of founding and constructing that he believes belong to the hyper-rationalism that is one of liberalism's enemies. Yet the United States was founded explicitly, England had its own principled revolution in 1688, and the Locke (or Lockean) principles that thrived in welcoming Anglo-American traditions or practices are not identical with those traditions. The meaning and benefits of equal rights, religious toleration, voluntary action, liberated acquisitiveness, and limited government all needed to be rationally explained, justified, and defended, even in welcoming situations.

Indeed, relativism or irrationalism arises not only from an extreme reaction to reason's disappointed hopes but from eschewing reason in favor of guidance from race, nation, tribe, or other identities. From Nietzsche on, in fact, relativism is defended by some thinkers themselves. Liberal democracy deserves (and its founders present) an intellectual defense that can bring out what is true in it, even if this is not the whole truth about human affairs. Espada offers little defense of liberty itself, or even of the liberal way of life, beyond its moderation and the growth in economic and other information it might provide. He writes thoughtfully about the possibility of truth in the absence of comprehensive certainty, but he reaches no firm conclusion.

We should also point out that liberal democracies do not rely completely on already-friendly soil. They also produce resources with which to buttress their traditions, and favor practices that are conducive to them. Among these are virtues of character such as responsibility, tolerance, and industriousness that citizens need in order to live successfully in liberal democracies, and the attraction of friends and family that reasserts itself even amidst liberalism's geographic dispersal. In this regard, restless American individualism buttresses free government somewhat differently from the mixture of tradition, respect for authority, limited government, and "inner contentment with life which explains the Englishman's profoundest wish, to be left alone, and his willingness to leave others to their own devices."

It is not clear why the basic goals of liberal democracy could not be approached within several "traditions" were these virtues and natural charms to assert themselves, within limited, accountable institutions. Liberal principles must be asserted and defendednatural rights examined as true guides not arbitrary onesif one is to see why we should protect them, and how, when their traditional soil seems increasingly barren.

One virtue of Espada's wariness of rationalistic schemes is his distrust of experts and his keen sense of the current gap between ruling elites and many of the people they purport to help. This view informs his discussion of the European Union. Here we should remind ourselves that "experts" do not understand better than their clients the ends they serve, that much specialization is false, and that legalistic or pseudo-philosophic expertise in "just" distribution and "correct" behavior is often mere political imposition.

We cannot take freedom for granted todayanywhere. Liberalism cannot rely on practices, traditions, or dispositions alone, but also requires reasonable, convincing argument. Still, Joo Espada is correct to point to the importance of liberal traditions, and to the importance of the writers and statesmen who defended them. This thoughtful book will be valuable for all lovers of liberty.

Mark Blitz is Fletcher Jones professor of political philosophy at Claremont McKenna College and the author, most recently, of Conserving Liberty.

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Stand on Tradition - The Weekly Standard