How Far Do Private Property Rights Go?

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Photo by J. Amill Santiago on UnsplashMany see Thomas Jefferson’s iconic “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” as having derived directly from Aristotle’s “Life, Liberty, and Eudaimonia.” For those of you not familiar with Greek, eudaimonia literally translates to the state or condition of “good spirit.” It represents the combination of the eu (meaning good) with daimon (meaning spirit).

Aristotle used the term in his Nicomachean Ethics, his tome devoted to the “science of happiness.” As a result, we commonly equate eudaimonia with happiness. Aristotle was all about living the good life, and by “good life” Aristotle alludes to a morality of higher Continue Reading “How Far Do Private Property Rights Go?”

Back at the Old Pizza Stand

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In the opening scene of 1962’s The Music Man, Harold Hill, con man extraordinaire, unexpectedly bumps into his old friend and accomplice Marcellus Washburn. Marcellus has since married a “nice comfortable girl” and settled down in the idyllic Midwestern town of River City (“Gone legitimate, huh? I knew you’d come to no good,” laments Hill). When he asks Harold if he’s still pitching steam automobiles, Hill shakes his head “No” and says, “I’m back at the old stand” whereupon he pantomimes conducting a band.

I can’t say Hamburg had the stubbornness of River City, Iowa, (after all, Hamburg is the “Town that Friendship built”), but I can attest to an idyllic feeling growing up off South Park when it had only two lanes. And like the magical concluding scene of The Music Man, my brother and I (and maybe even my mother and father, too), couldn’t wait to Continue Reading “Back at the Old Pizza Stand”

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