Orange seems to be a pretty good colour at the moment. After all, the soundest thing to ever come out of the Liberal Democrats was called The Orange Book. Now there is a website by some classical liberals (rather than Liberal Democrats) called The Orange Path. The authors claim that liberalism is “bright, zesty and Orange”. They point out that:
Whether knowingly or accidental, some of the landmark texts of classical liberal scholarship have orange front covers – a curiosity easy to overlook. The University of Chicago Press published FA Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty in 1960, Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom in 1962/1982 and James Buchanan’s The Limits of Liberty in 1975 – all liberal, all free, and all undeniably orange
Well, whatever. The point is that The Orange Path is a useful resource, aimed at helping the left to understand classical liberal ideas. Take a look.
Unfortunately Northern Ireland bucks that trend, where liberal philosophy is as scarce as whiskey at a Methodist tea party, and sporting orange or green flags in certain thoroughfares is like waving a red flag at a bull.
In the essay on the Orange Path site, i’ve tried to tread very carefully around this issue – but in the context of the time the trend is perfectly consistant.
The origins of the Orange Order are traced to a shift in power from authoritarian monarchy to a more democratic, parliamentary rule.
Bright, zesty, and orange?
Is it a soft drink?
A return to the traditional Liberalism of Gladstone and Asquith is long overdue.
An Asquithian Lib Dem party would be a force to be reckoned with, but alas Charles Kennedy, whose ideology seems more Leftist than Liberal, will notbe the one to do it.
Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson” is another orange tome.
Indeed it is, and an excellent book too.