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To: robertpaulsen
...classic liberalism tempered by reason and the good of society.

I would respond that too often, 'tempered by reason' translates to the imposition of some reductionist scheme on human society.

And the 'good of society' too often translates into the politico-economic good of a power-holding faction.

IMO, classical liberalism has been 'tempered by reason'; indeed, it was the application of reason to the study of history that led to the creation of 'classical liberalism' through the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries. And it has certainly been for the 'good of society' that America enjoyed such governance for the first 150 years of the Republic - we are still living off that political moral capital, imo.

171 posted on 10/30/2003 10:26:48 AM PST by headsonpikes (Spirit of '76 bttt!)
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To: headsonpikes
"classical liberalism has been 'tempered by reason'"

I disagree. Laws that are based solely on the concept of "force or fraud" leave no room for reason or reasonableness.

The 'pureness', the metrics if you will, of such laws are what attracts people to the philosophy which embraces it.

Reasonableness is a messy concept. Ask HG.

172 posted on 10/30/2003 10:51:38 AM PST by robertpaulsen
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