The Consequences of Unlimited Personal Choice
William Murchison: “Unlimited personal choice, alas, hasn’t turned out to be the blessing its acolytes, half a century ago and more, made it out to be. … Accusations of rape, whether false or true, flood the media as 19- and 20-year-olds wade through the moral morass of the ‘But I Wanna’ era – and their elders employ political, as opposed to moral, analysis to the problems that arise in consequence. What are the rules? Are there any rules? Should there be? What kind, in that event? Americans squabble over these matters because nothing like cultural unity exists anymore. Pretty much everyone, in [Edmund] Burke’s words, lives and trades ‘each on his own private stock of reason.’ What I say goes! Except when another ‘I’ finds the first ‘I’s’ interpretation mischievous, insulting, wrong, whatever. The fighting commences at that point.”
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