Supportive Writings
Thomas Carlyle
on the importance of striving to achieve ideals and uphold principles
“... it is never to be forgotten that Ideals do exist; that if they be not approximated to at all, the whole matter goes to wreck! Infallibly.”
“No bricklayer builds a wall perfectly perpendicular, mathematically this is not possible; a certain degree of perpendicularity suffices him; and he, like a good bricklayer, who must have done with his job leaves it so.”
“And yet if he sway too much from the perpendicular; above all, if he throw plummet and level quite away from him, and pile brick on brick heedless, just as it comes to hand -! Such bricklayer, I think, is in a bad way. He has forgotten himself: but the Law of Gravitation does not forget to act on him; he and his wall rush down into confused welter of ruin!”
Thomas Carlyle: "On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History" (1841)
Alasdair MacIntyre
on the current threats to a virtuous society
"... parallels ..have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages.”
“If my own account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we have reached a turning point.”
“What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope.”
This time, however, the barbarians are not awaiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament."
Alasdair MacIntyre: "After Virtue" (1981)
Sir William Blackstone
on the rights of persons that underpin our system of government and law
1. The right to personal security
“The right of personal security consists in a person's legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation.”
“his natural life, being ...the immediate donation of the great Creator, cannot legally be disposed of or destroyed by any individual, neither by the person himself, nor by any other oh his fellow-creatures, merely upon their own authority.”
2. The right to liberty
“Next to personal security, the law of England regards, asserts, and preserves the personal liberty of individuals … that ... cannot ever be abridged at the mere discretion of the magistrate.”
“All of us have it in our choice to do every thing that a good man would desire to do; and are restrained from nothing but what would be pernicious either to ourselves or our fellow-citizens.”
3. The right to property
“The third absolute right, inherited in every Englishman, is that of property: which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all his acquisitions, without any control or diminution.”
Sir William Blackstone: "Commentaries on the Laws of England" (1750s)
John Locke
on the rights of persons and the duties of government
On the rights of all persons
“Man being born … hath by nature a power not only to preserve his property — that is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men.”
“[Every person has] liberty to follow [their] own will in all things, where that rule prescribes not.”
“[No person can] be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, and arbitrary will of another man.”
On the duty of government
“[Government exists for] the preservation of [the] lives, liberty and estates [of every person].”
“[Governments must] ensure that every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.”
“The end of government and of law is not to abolish or restrain but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”
“[Government does not have] absolute arbitrary power. [It] cannot assume to itself a power to rule by extemporary/arbitrary decrees.”
John Locke: “Second Treatise on Government”(1689)