… is one that I used in this long-ago (from 3 June 2004) post here at the Cafe. It’s from page 135 of Will Durant’s 1939 book The Life of Greece:
The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs; diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought; superstitions cancel one another and reason begins.
DBx: Opponents of free trade literally are unreasonable. No matter how “progressive” they fancy themselves to be – a fancy fueled by the asinine yet apparently attractive notion that society progresses the more individuals’ wills and actions are bent (with force, if necessary) to conform to the will of the state – opponents of free trade are peddlers of backwoods stupidity grounded as firmly in ignorance and inability to reason as it is in atavistic fears and superstitions still lingering from our tribal past.
