When a population feels alienated from the legal system under which it lives, because that system fails to protect it from real dangers while lending succor and encouragement to every possible kind of wrongdoing, the population may well lose faith in the very idea of law. That is how civilization unravels.

To make up for its lack of a moral compass, the British public is prey to sudden gusts of kitschy sentimentality followed by vehement outrage, encouraged by th…

It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it-in other words, by becoming civilized-that men become fully human.

In a democratic age, only the behavior of the authorities is subject to public criticism; that of the people themselves, never.