"The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’ ” This was Sigmund Freud’s famous lament to Marie Bonaparte almost a century ago. It’s not clear that decades’ more research by psychoanalysts and social scientists have resulted in any further progress in answering the question. Indeed, for all one knows, there’s been regress in our understanding.

But here’s a question that’s easier to answer: “How should a woman be treated?” The answer isn’t complex or deep. A woman, like a man, should be treated with human decency, according to the rule of law, and free of the abusive, unjust exercise of power. And you don’t need to have plumbed the depths of the female or male psyche to live in accord with these principles of civilized life and the maxims of a free society.

What you may need to do instead is go back to basics. Yes, it’s a time of social turmoil, of cultural upheaval, of generational confusion. But none of these is an excuse for ignoring simple truths about how we should treat one another.

So let us repair to Lord Acton, less pompous but more pointed than Freud: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Let us repair to Michael Oakeshott, less pretentious but more sensible than Freud: “The rule of law bakes no bread, it is unable to distribute loaves or fishes (it has none), and it cannot protect itself against external assault, but it remains the most civilized and least burdensome conception of a state yet to be devised.” Let us repair to James Madison, less concerned than Freud with the depths of the human psyche but more helpful for the medium range in which our common life is lived: “As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: so there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.”

Power tends to corrupt—so we should, in both the public and the private spheres, be on guard against, and erect sturdy guardrails against, the corruptions of power. The rule of law is crucial to a civilized society—so we should go out of our way to uphold and strengthen it to the extent possible. Republican government presupposes decent and admirable qualities among its citizens—so we should be serious about strengthening character and inculcating virtue.

These are the simple truths that are central to a decent and liberal society. We 21st-century sophisticates need to resist the temptation to slide by these old-fashioned truths on our way to plumbing murkier depths. After all,

The fundamental things apply

As time goes by.