All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

The talkers and writers resent being left on the sidelines by the doers.

Subsidies are a shell game, not a net addition to national wealth.

Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options

If increased government spending with borrowed or newly created money is a 'stimulus,' then the Weimar Republic should have been stimulated to unprecedented prosperity, instead of runaway inflation and widespread economic desperation that ultimately brought Adolf Hitler to power.

Many of the words and phrases used in the media and among academics suggest that things simply: happen: to people, rather than be being caused by their own choices and behavior. Thus there is said to be an 'epidemic' of teenage pregnancy, or of drug usage, as if these things were like the flu that people catch just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Stupid people can cause problems, but it usually takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe.