Added to the Molinari Institute’s online library: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1856 Speech on Affairs in Kansas (representing Emerson at his most anarchistic).
Money quotes: “The judges give cowardly interpretations to the law, in direct opposition to the known foundation of all law, that every immoral statute is void,” and “I am glad to see that the terror at disunion and anarchy is disappearing.”
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Prof Long, Are you a fan of George Kateb?
I heard his lecture on “Democratic Individuality and the Meaning of Rights” in the spring of 1988 (there are reasons, not having to do with Kateb in particular, for the specificity of memory on this), and subsequently read it when it came out in print, but while I recall liking it my memory is vague on the details (other than the oddness of his use of Kundera’s “lightness of being,” which is just asking for the obvious communitarian response, which in fact someone predictably gave), and I haven’t read his other work.
“I am glad to see that the terror at disunion and anarchy is disappearing.”
Oh, if only that line of thinking had made it out of the 19th century.