The views of important thinkers become distilled into folk beliefs that shape our societies. John Locke and Karl Marx are two thinkers whose enormous influence can be described using this model. "the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute" -- Maureen Dowd, the New York TimesMaureen Dowd's statement is Marxist. No, she did not advocate revolution by the proletariat. She did not say that we ought to have a Communist state. But her famous remark that someone in a particular class of victims has "absolute" moral authority is derived from "folk Marxism," as will...