In a religiously uniform culture, it is natural for people to take for granted the truth of the prevailing religion and its associated metaphysical propositions.

Because reputation lags achievement, we should expect people to reach the zenith of their reputation well past the zenith of their productive output

We have a tendency to assume people are a unity, and thus good people all good, etc. But the fact that Hitler was good to dogs and children isn't a paradox.

The Constitution has to be interpreted loosely, otherwise it becomes a straitjacket. You can't interpret it literally. You can pretend to, and go digging around in 18th Century dictionaries to figure out what 'cruel and unusual punishment' meant or what the 'right to bear arms' meant, but that is all fake really. The Constitution has to be interpreted in light of modern needs, and that's what they (the strict interpreters) end up doing in spite of all their investigations.

But Friedman seemed to share Friedrich Hayek's extreme and inaccurate view that socialism of the sort that Britain embraced under the old Labour Party was incompatible with democracy, and I don't think that there is a good theoretical or empirical basis for that view. The Road to Serfdom flunks the test of accuracy of prediction!

The confidentiality of the judicial process would not matter greatly to an understanding and evaluation of the legal system if the consequences of judicial behavior could be readily determined. If you can determine the ripeness of a cantaloupe by squeezing or smelling it, you don't have to worry about the produce clerk's mental processes.

In a religiously uniform culture, it is natural for people to take for granted the truth of the prevailing religion and its associated metaphysical propositions.