Sunday, October 03, 2010

Deficient Definition

John J. Miller wrote today of an NY Times story about the "long ago texts" tea partiers are digging up.

What "long ago texts"? The Constitution? No, Friedrich Hayek.

Miller mentioned parenthetically:
Check out Zernike’s jaw-dropping attempt to define “the rule of law,” which is apparently a term she hadn’t heard until recently.
Of course I had to check it out:
...“the rule of law,” Hayek’s term for the unwritten code that prohibits the government from interfering with the pursuit of “personal ends and desires.”
This description of "rule of law"
did indeed drop my jaw.

The author could have saved herself some embarrassment by doing an online search for this mysterious phrase.

Don't the legacy media
have access to Wikipedia?

2 comments:

Charlie McDanger said...

That's why I love the U.S. No one is above the law.

Well, maybe the executive branch, but that's about it. Okay, perhaps government contractors in Iraq, but that's all. Of course we're leaving aside CIA/FBI...that's national security at stake.

Oh and then there's...um, yay America!

John Enright said...

Right. Forgotten concept. Dusty idea from the past. No wonder the Times hasn't heard of it.