There follows an excerpt from a paper prepared by Larry P. Arnn, President of Hillsdale College. His work is thought-provoking. To read the entire paper click Hillsdale College
“A Work of Recovery”
“Should we build our political institutions upon the elimination of greed? A caution stirs the mind immediately at the thought of it.
James Madison writes in The Federalist Papers about faction, about our making combinations to serve our interests, even when those interests do not correspond to the public interest. One will read in vain to find the chief author of the Constitution suggesting that faction, much less greed, could ever be eliminated. Rather, he writes that "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place." In other words, we must build our political institutions to operate around the problem of human vice, to mitigate that problem by discouraging vice, but also to place our interests in alignment with the public interest. "Liberty," writes Madison "is to faction what air is to fire." To eliminate the effects of self-interest would be to eliminate freedom itself.”
“Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.”
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