{"id":1316,"date":"2009-01-18T17:55:30","date_gmt":"2009-01-19T01:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=1316"},"modified":"2009-01-18T17:55:30","modified_gmt":"2009-01-19T01:55:30","slug":"from-smith-to-darwin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/from-smith-to-darwin\/","title":{"rendered":"From Smith To Darwin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s no rule that says secular conservatives have to be libertarian (or anything approaching that state of belief), and indeed for any number of reasons they do not (the good Mr. Hobbes comes to mind), but I was, nevertheless, struck by this passage from Matt Ridley\u2019s much-commented upon (and terrific) London <em>Spectator<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spectator.co.uk\/archive\/features\/3213246\/part_2\/the-natural-order-of-things.thtml?SelectedIssueDate=10%20January%202009\">piece <\/a>on Charles Darwin:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIdeas evolve by descent with modification, just as bodies do, and Darwin at least partly got this idea from economists, who got it from empirical philosophers. Locke and Newton begat Hume and Voltaire who begat Hutcheson and Smith who begat Malthus and Ricardo who begat Darwin and Wallace. Before Darwin, the supreme example of an undesigned system was Adam Smith\u2019s economy, spontaneously self-ordered through the actions of individuals, rather than ordained by a monarch or a parliament. Where Darwin defenestrated God, Smith had defenestrated government.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Food for thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s no rule that says secular conservatives have to be libertarian (or anything approaching that state of belief), and indeed for any number of reasons they do not (the good Mr. Hobbes comes to mind), but I was, nevertheless, struck &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/from-smith-to-darwin\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1317,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions\/1317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}