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Entry: NY Times Not Ready for Prime-Time Link: http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/ny_times_not_ready_for_prime_time#23999 Post contents: I don't favor an attempt to read Natural Law into our founding. That's the strategy of Harry Jaffa, the godfather of the neocons. It leads directly into the attempt by Ramesh Ponnuru to ground the pro-life case in a universalist crusdae for human rights. The real conservative tradition is to focus on the PARTICULAR forms in which rights have come down to us through our own INSTITUTIONS, with philosophical and rhetorical reference to the idea of universal rights (and DUTIES! let's remember) but NOT to privilege some utopian formulation at every turn over the REAL, historic form in which recieved them. Hence Burke's insistence on the "rights of Englishmen." Frank, please get hold of David Gress' "From Plato to NATO" to see just how dangerous to real liberties and historic institutions which protect it for us to focus on things like the "Rights of Man." And remember which side was right in the Vendee! Sent at: 2008 08 30