Pursuing praxis

I discovered an interesting paragraph on the Wall Street Journal’s online opinion homepage, a single short paragraph, halfway down the right side, titled About Us. It says:

We speak for free markets and free people, the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith’s "Wealth of Nations." So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands for free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.

I found it after doing a window search for ‘collectivist’, while looking for David Boaz’s May 28 editorial entitled Our Collectivist Candidates (which I did not find on wsj.com, but is posted on Boaz’s Cato Institute page).  

Now, I’ve liked the WSJ for many years. I got my first subscription when working in Boston, and it sucked up untold hours of my non-working time. Good stuff. I never read about their mission statement, political or economic philosophy (though you can guess it, especially when comparing its contents with the SF Chronicle or NY Times).

But here it is - and it’s good! I like that it explicitly lumps together kings, collectivists, dictators, bullies, and majorities. Because all those people can claim is some combination of the authority to use force (via other people under his control) or the ability to be force, by sheer dint of taking up space like a herd of cattle and threatening to trample you by having more people on ‘their’ side. The former has simply coopted and coordinated the latter.

I also like that the individual is explicitly mentioned, although I might wish for ‘individual rights’ to be mentioned as well, but it’s only a paragraph. And they link to a 1951 editorial entitled A Newspaper’s Philosophy (which is under About Us and not Our Philosophy …) that does:

On our editorial page we make no pretense of walking down the middle of the road. Our comments and interpretations are made from a definite point of view. We believe in the individual, in his wisdom and his decency. We oppose all infringements on individual rights, whether they stem from attempts at private monopoly, labor union monopoly or from an overgrowing government. People will say we are conservative or even reactionary. We are not much interested in labels but if we were to choose one, we would say we are radical. Just as radical as the Christian doctrine.

We have friends but they have not been made by silence or pussyfooting. If we have enemies, we do not placate them.