[in Politics,] When There Is No Reason

The Great Society Went Wrong For Three Major Reasons. First, The Self-organization The Johnson Administration Promoted Turned Out To Be Not The Pooling Of Family And Community Resources Into Shops And Businesses, But Political Pressure For Government Handouts. Second, The Great Society Failed To Anticipate The Perverse Side-effects Of Handing Money Out To People Who Have Done Nothing To Earn It. Third, While The Great Society Was Showering Money On The Poor, The Supreme Court Was With Childlike Glee Smashing To Bits Traditional Methods Of Maintaining Law And Order.

My Mother Cared More About How You Reasoned Than About The Conclusions You Reached.

Partly Because Of The Desperate Economic Situation In The Country, What Were Once The Leading Institutions Of Conservatism Are Constrained.

But The Thought Leaders On Talk Radio And Fox Do More Than Shape Opinion. Backed By Their Own Wing Of The Book-publishing Industry And Supported By Think Tanks That Increasingly Function As Public-relations Agencies, Conservatives Have Built A Whole Alternative Knowledge System, With Its Own Facts, Its Own History, Its Own Laws Of Economics.

If You Watch A Movie From Between The End Of The Second World War And The Mid-1970s, Whenever Anyone Steps Out In A White Lab Coat, They're There To Offer A Solution. They're There To Tell You How The Laser's Going To Save The Day. They're Going To Give You James Bond's Array Of Tools. After About 1975, Whenever The Man In The White Lab Coat Steps Out, It's To Come Up With Some Crazy Idea That's Going To Bring Ruin On Everybody. "let's Clone Dinosaurs!" And The Last We See Of Him Is Disappearing Down The Gullet Of The Tyrannosaurus Rex.