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Aug. 14, 2006
Ideas Have Consequences
I've enjoyed re-reading a couple of books this summer. One is Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver. At the time I read it about four years ago, I thought it was so good that I bought a copy for each of my oldest two boys. There are so many good thoughts in it, it's hard to choose one thing to write here. Weaver quotes De Tocqueville concerning different social ideals:
In ages of faith, the final end of life is placed beyond life. The men of those ages, therefore, naturally and almost involuntarily accustom themselves to fix their gaze for many years on some immovable object toward which they are constantly tending; and they learn by insensible degrees to repress a multidue of petty passing desires in order to be the better able to content that great and lasting desire which possesses them...This explains why religious nations have often achieved such lasting results; for whilst they were thinking only of the other world, they had found out the great secret of success in this.
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