{"id":26932,"date":"2015-07-14T01:00:21","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T05:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26932"},"modified":"2017-03-30T13:22:01","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T17:22:01","slug":"qotd-lenins-moment-of-clarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/07\/14\/qotd-lenins-moment-of-clarity\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Lenin&#8217;s moment of clarity"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>There is not very much good to say about the life and career of Vladimir Lenin, but give the pickled old monster this much: He cut through more than two centuries\u2019 worth of bull and straight to the heart of all politics with his simple question: \u201cWho? Whom?\u201d Which is to say: Who acts? Who is acted upon? Even here in the land of the free, meditating upon that question can be an uncomfortable exercise.<\/p>\n<p>The foundation of classical liberalism, and of the American order, is not the rule of law, a written constitution, freedom of speech and worship, one-man\/one-vote democracy, or the Christian moral tradition \u2014 necessary as those things are. The irreplaceable basis for a prosperous, decent, liberal, stable society is property. Forget Thomas Jefferson\u2019s epicurean flourish \u2014 John Locke and the First Continental Congress had it right on the first go-round: \u201cLife, liberty, and property.\u201d Despite the presence of the serial commas in that formulation, these are not really three different things: Perhaps we should render the concept \u201clifelibertyproperty\u201d the way the physicists write about \u201cspacetime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kevin D. Williamson, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/383154\/property-and-peace-kevin-d-williamson\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Property and Peace&#8221;, <em>National Review<\/em><\/a>, 2014-07-20.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is not very much good to say about the life and career of Vladimir Lenin, but give the pickled old monster this much: He cut through more than two centuries\u2019 worth of bull and straight to the heart of all politics with his simple question: \u201cWho? Whom?\u201d Which is to say: Who acts? Who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,41,13],"tags":[715,1108,217],"class_list":["post-26932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-constitution","tag-lenin","tag-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-70o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26933,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26932\/revisions\/26933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}