The Spirit Of Liberty

clipped from www2.timesdispatch.com This is not a blindingly new insight. During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church raked in sackfuls of loot by selling indulgences to sinners. In a similar fashion, these days you can salve your environmental conscience by purchasing carbon offsets. That has worked out well for folks such as Al Gore, who says he counterbalances his jet-setting ways by "purchasing verifiable reductions in CO2 elsewhere." Yet the studies that purport to prove something about some people often simply restate what is true about most of them. It's not that only conservatives are judgmental and only environmentalists are inconsistent. Everybody is both, to varying degrees -- and when we laugh at the failings of our political opponents, we are also laughing at ourselves. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right. --Judge Learned Hand.