Most of the people who have grabbed hold of climate change and greenhouse gases, pollution, oil dependency - they have another motive, and their motive is to attain the appearance of virtue without having actually done anything virtuous.

The real slums are another matter. The bad parts of Tondo are as bad as any place I've seen, ancient, filthy houses swarmed with the poor and stinking of sewage and trash. But there are worse parts - squatter areas where people live under cardboard, in shipping crates, behind tacked-up newspapers. Dad would march you straight to the basement with a hairbrush in his hand if he caught you keeping your hamster cage like this.

Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

The inherent purpose of American government is let people seek their own goals and to encourage them to be responsible on the various adventures they have on their way to those goals, good, bad, and otherwise.

In England, all the English car companies were beginning to circle the drain in a series of well-deserved failures and bankruptcies, earned by making lousy products with very poor production at high prices. So, the government, back in the '70s, nationalized all the British car companies. The result was British Leyland, a name that perhaps doesn't resonate much with you.

And, by the way, how come all the people who were so in favor of unilateral nuclear disarmament are so opposed to unilateral protection against nukes?