Throughout history the influence of Aristotle’s philosophy (particularly of his
epistemology) has led in the direction of individual freedom, of man’s
liberation from the power of the state . . . Aristotle (via John Locke) was the
philosophical father of the Constitution of the United States and thus of
capitalism . . . it is Plato and Hegel, not Aristotle, who have been the
philosophical ancestors of all totalitarian and welfare states, whether
Bismarck’s, Lenin’s or Hitler’s.