Liberalism in its political instantiation, for all of its appeal, is so powerful a theory that it probably works better in opposition than in governm… - Stephen L. Carter

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Liberalism in its political instantiation, for all of its appeal, is so powerful a theory that it probably works better in opposition than in government. Modern liberalism has become what liberal philosophers not long ago would have derided as a “comprehensive view” -- a theory that believes itself able to give an account of how every institution of the society should operate, and even, alas, how people should think. Add to that a dash of triumphalism, and you wind up with a government impatient with the tendency of human beings to resist having too much forced on them at once.

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About Stephen L. Carter

(born October 26, 1954) is an American law professor, legal- and social-policy writer, columnist, and novelist. He is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where he has taught since 1982. He earned a B.A. from Stanford University in 1976 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979. After graduation, Carter clerked for US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Stephen Lisle Carter
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Additional quotes by Stephen L. Carter

These children...well, they have no concept. None. All they want to do is win. That is your culture. America spoils chess, as it spoils all things. Art? What art? Winning, all you Americans can think of is winning. Winning and getting rich. Your country is too young to have so much power. Too immature. Yet, because of your power, everybody pays attention. Everybody. You are teaching the world that only one thing matters!

We live so much of our lives in chaos. Human history can be viewed as an endless search for greater order: everything from language to religion to law to science tries to impose a framework on chaotic existence. The existentialists, sometimes wrongly described as disbelieving in an underlying order, saw the risks and the foolishness of the obsession with creating one. Hitler showed the risk, as did any number of populist tyrants before him. I teach my students that law, too, shows the risk, when we try to regulate a phenomenon—human behavior—that we do not even understand. I am not arguing against law...but against the Panglossian assumption that we can ever do law particularly well. The darkness in which we live dooms us to do it badly.

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