Feeling Good About Yourself Is Not The

So What Exactly Are The Rewards Of Resentment. It Is Always A Relief To Know That The Reason We Have Failed In Life Is Not Because We Lack The Talent, Energy, Or Determination To Succeed, But Because Of A Factor That Is Beyond Our Control And That Has Loaded The Dice Decisively Against Us.

The Loss Of The Religious Understanding Of The Human Condition—that Man Is A Fallen Creature For Whom Virtue Is Necessary But Never Fully Attainable—is A Loss, Not A Gain, In True Sophistication. The Secular Substitute—the Belief In The Perfection Of Life On Earth By The Endless Extension Of A Choice Of Pleasures—is Not Merely Callow By Comparison But Much Less Realistic In Its Understanding Of Human Nature.

Obesity Is The Result Of A Loss Of Self-control. Indeed, Loss Of Self-control Might Be Said To Be The Defining Social (or Anti-social) Characteristic Of Our Age: Public Drunkenness, Excessive Gambling, Promiscuity And Common-or-garden Rudeness Are All Examples Of Our Collective Loss Of Self-control.

In Claiming That Prohibition, Not The Drugs Themselves, Is The Problem, Nadelmann And Many Others - Even Policemen - Have Said That "the War On Drugs Is Lost." But To Demand A Yes Or No Answer To The Question "is The War Against Drugs Being Won?" Is Like Demanding A Yes Or No Answer To The Question "have You Stopped Beating Your Wife Yet?" Never Can An Unimaginative And Fundamentally Stupid Metaphor Have Exerted A More Baleful Effect Upon Proper Thought.

The Idea That Freedom Is Merely The Ability To Act Upon One's Whims Is Surely Very Thin And Hardly Begins To Capture The Complexities Of Human Existence; A Man Whose Appetite Is His Law Strikes Us Not As Liberated But Enslaved.