Ron Bailey writes,

In my view, human prehistory and history has been a more or less random search for social institutions that increasingly discover and conform to our evolved natures. My contention is that is manifestly the case that liberal institutions, e.g., respect for persons, free markets, the rule of law, religious tolerance, and democracy, do contribute to human flourishing. I suspect that a scan of my brain might find that that conclusion amounts to a sacred value for me.

Read the whole thing, which is a report on a conference on neuroscience and ethics. I only excerpted the last sentence.