I'd meant to bring this article by Thomas Fleming of Chronicles to readers' attention. The ancient world had many vices, but as Fleming shows,it was more free in several respects than we are today -- which is less a defense of the ancient world than an indictment of how reflexively statist modern man has become. Here's an excerpt:
Most of the state functions we take for granted were completely absent. Athens as a city-state had no public schools or universities, no social workers, no social security, no agency to regulate marriage and divorce. All of these functions of welfare and moral regulation were under the control of the families themselves or, where families had problems, of the phratries and demes. Athenian citizens paid market duties and import tolls, but no taxes on their income or wealth—an income tax was the badge of servitude for Greeks and Romans alike. Think of this as you file your tax returns. The real Athens offers a truly Jeffersonian vision that is very compatible with the American constitutional system in theory though not in practice.
See also Roderick Long (1) (2).
