Academic

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: ?I am not indulging in a figure of speech: I think it?s a pretty useful heurist?

By Glenn Reynolds

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: “I am not indulging in a figure of speech: I think it?s a pretty useful heuristic: If you?re not willing to have somebody hauled off at gunpoint over the project, then it?s probably not a legitimate concern of the state. This is the sort of talk that gives the (always well informed, excruciatingly sober, generally sensible) folks at The Economist the howling fantods, inasmuch as they seem to operate under a kind of distributed version of the divine right of kings ? always asking whether the rulers rule wisely, seldom asking whether they have the right to rule at all, and never asking whether and how much we actually need them. That?s why The Economist is the in-house newsletter of The Establishment. That and those great classifieds.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on September 25, 2010 (boomark / email).