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Sympathy and Wonder | City Journal city-journal.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from city-journal.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The End of ‘Whig’ History and the Twilight of Nations Commentary From the 17th to the 20th century, “Whigs” shaped an Anglo-American culture based on the universal principles of the European Enlightenment individual liberty, free speech, property rights, rule of law, free enterprise, and democratic governance. “Whig” histories were affirmative accounts of national origins that celebrated a progression from troubled or divided beginnings to more just and democratic stages of shared civic development. Whig historians told stories of people and institutions that strived to become better over time. Up to the late 1960s, Whig history was commonly taught in schools throughout the nations of the “free world.” The development of the nation was regarded as something citizens could be proud of.
Lord Acton: Libertarian Hero [Originally published April 4, 2006, at LewRockwell.com] “You would spare these criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice; still more, still higher, for the sake of historical science.”1 Thus ends a long passage of a letter from John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, First Lord Acton (1834–1902) in which appears his famous aphorism regarding power’s tendency to corrupt its possessor. In a few words to a fellow historian, who regarded his critic as the “most learned Englishman now alive,” his vast historical knowledge, passion for justice, and love for his Church are fused and brought to a fine point.2