Sublime

The growth of politics is the opposite of the growth of liberty. When liberty grows we get increased individual enterprise and expansion of free markets. We create more goods, services, and benefits to society. The pie gets bigger. But politics is not about creating more goods, services, and benefits to society. Politics is about dividing them up.

Classical Liberalism has had a good run. Now it’s about to get run over by a bus full of stupid “post-capitalist” political trends—the new socialism, the new nationalism, the new trade war mercantilism, and the new social media platforms that drive this bus.

to participate in the great decisions of government. There was, Lippmann brooded, no “intrinsic moral and intellectual virtue to majority rule.” Lippmann’s disenchantment with democracy anticipated the mood of today’s elites. From the top, the public, and the swings of public opinion, appeared irrational and uninformed. The human material out of

“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free,” Tocqueville wrote, “but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.” To acquire the art of self-government, he believed, citizens have to be together. They have to come out of the isolation of their individualism and experience government at a level local enough that it brings them

Americans talk like conservatives but want to be governed like liberals. The Tea Party–era sign saying “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” is perhaps the most famous example of this divided soul. Americans like both the rhetoric and reality of low taxes, but they also like the programs that taxes fund. They thrill to politicians who talk

Government and politics are different. Government is . . . words fail me . . . government. Politics is the fight over who runs the government. And the fix is in because, as you may have noticed, every time politicians stage that fight a politician wins.