It bears repeating. Billy sends out an email on something "profoundly simple and simply profound," i.e., on the essence and nature of man's natural rights. This turns on the fact that our minds are our unique and exclusive mode and method of our survival. Look: we don't have wings, or dominating natural weapons like claws or fangs or poisons, or enormous speed and agility. We're not like other animals, equipped in such ways for survival. Because of what we are, we have to think our way through the world. We have to identify by a process of reason the values that sustain and further our lives. There are, however, two crucial aspects of this on which are founded the entire domain of politics -- which is nothing more or less than the study of how to treat each other in social contexts: 1) Reason is not autonomic. It doesn't work except by a deliberately self-initiated process. 2) It is not infallible. It can and does fail, sometimes. Neither of these two things relieves us of the responsibility to think at all times to the best of our ability. Here's the thing: some people are sometimes better at it than others....