According to the classic liberal-arts ideal, learning promises liberation, but it is not liberation from demanding moral ideals and social norms, or liberation to act on our desires—it is, rather, liberation from slavery to those desires, from slavery to self.
All members of the human family [must] be respected and protected irrespective not only of race, sex, and ethnicity but also of age, size, location, stage of development, and condition of dependency. To exclude anyone from the law's protection is to treat him unjustly.
Do you want to know why people are trapped in poverty in so many inner cities? The picture is complex, but undeniably a key element of it is the destruction of the family and the prevalence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and fatherlessness.
If we want limited government, as we should, and a level of taxation that is not unduly burdensome, we need healthy institutions of civil society, beginning with a flourishing marriage culture that supports family formation and preservation.
Indeed, even unanimity of belief does not guarantee its correctness.
Let Republicans be mindful of their heritage. It was moral conviction—and the courage to act on moral conviction—that gave birth to the Republican Party and made it grand. Now it is old but need not be any less grand.
Limited government is a key tenet of classic liberalism—the liberalism of people like Madison and Tocqueville—although today it is regarded as a conservative ideal.
Moreover, the concentration of economic power in the hands of government is something every true friend of civil liberties should, by now, have learned to fear.
Sometimes people fail to recognize and respect human rights because they have self-interested motives for doing so. In most cases of exploitation, for example, the fundamental failing is moral, not intellectual.
The family, based on the marital commitment of husband and wife, is the original and best ministry of health, education, and welfare.
The two greatest institutions ever devised for lifting people out of poverty and enabling them to live in dignity are the market economy and the institution of marriage. These institutions will stand together, or they will fall together.
To countenance abortion is not to respect women's 'privacy' or liberty; it is to suppose that some people have the right to decide whether others will live or die.
What happened with slavery is now happening with embryo killing: the people who used to defend it as a 'necessary evil' to be resisted or lessened by means other than legal prohibition now promote it as a social good—something that law and government should not only tolerate but embrace and even promote.