“And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims. Subsequently, however all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer.” – Aleksander Solzhenitsyn — Quote from A World Split Apart, Harvard Commencement Address, 1978
The Editors’ Quote of the Day:
As a race, we probably deserve the gulags. Seems like more and more of us are screaming for them. Looks like we are going to get what we want, again. I bet if we try really hard, we can actually outdo Venezuela in our slide.