Why almost all conservatives today are liberals and don’t realize it

“Ryan on happiness” thread, be sure to see Dean Ericson’s tremendous summing up of the issue.

As he points out, today’s conservatives think that freedom—including the freedom to define one’s own happiness—is all that’s needed. But if individuals are to make good individual choices for happiness, they must first follow the rules of the good. As George Washington put it in his first inaugural address,

[T]he propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.

