Though on the whole I give a positive mark to this column, I'm not entirely comfortable with the Athenian/Visigoth model of virtue as painted here.
"Athenians place great value on tradition, social restraint, and continuity. To an Athenian, bad manners are acts of violence against the social order." I consider this overstated and conducive to rigidity.
"A modern Visigoth is interested only in his own affairs and has no sense of the meaning of community." Community comes about BY people being interested in their own affairs and trading peacefully with others to maximize their own lives. It is not necessary, in my opinion, to obsess about "the meaning of community", and in my observation, people who do usually have some agenda which involves running other people's lives.
Though on the whole I give a positive mark to this column, I'm not entirely comfortable with the Athenian/Visigoth model of virtue as painted here.
"Athenians place great value on tradition, social restraint, and continuity. To an Athenian, bad manners are acts of violence against the social order." I consider this overstated and conducive to rigidity.
"A modern Visigoth is interested only in his own affairs and has no sense of the meaning of community." Community comes about BY people being interested in their own affairs and trading peacefully with others to maximize their own lives. It is not necessary, in my opinion, to obsess about "the meaning of community", and in my observation, people who do usually have some agenda which involves running other people's lives.