Now for good or ill, California is the place where trends tend to be set in Western civilization - if civilization indeed it is. California, for several generations now, has been the newest, biggest, most experimental place in the newest, biggest, most experimental part of liberal Western capitalism - which is itself a new experiment for mankind.

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.

Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.

A dugout is much superior to a conventional manufactured canoe because you can get soaking wet without bothering to capsize it.

The problem isn't a Congress that won't cut spending or a president who won't raise taxes. The problem is an American public with a bottomless sense of entitlement to federal money.

There are twenty-seven specific complaints against the British Crown set forth in the Declaration of Independence. To modern ears they still sound reasonable. They still sound reasonable, in large part, because so many of them can be leveled against the federal government of the United States.

When a private entity does not produce the desired results, it is (certain body parts excepted) done away with. But a public entity gets bigger.