An observation...
It's coming on another election year, I'm coming toward the end of what will be my penultimate academic term of life as a professor (one more to go in Fall 2008), and I'm thinking a lot about political and moral philosophy. The following two statements ring loud in my mind:
"Liberalism is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities, and hence, it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded on this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak." ~Jose Ortega Y Gasset
"The modern Conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy -- that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." ~John Kenneth Galbraith