Let’s say you carelessly drop Ted Kennedy’s health-care plan on your foot and it breaks your toe. In the old days, you’d go to your doctor (or, indeed, believe it or not, have him come to you), he’d patch you up, and you’d write him a check. That’s the way it was in most of the developed world within living memory.

When President Obama tells you he’s “reforming” health care to “control costs,” the point to remember is that the only way to “control costs” in health care is to have less of it.

by historical standards, we’re loaded: We have TVs and iPods and machines to wash our clothes and our dishes. We’re the first society in which a symptom of poverty is obesity

A society of children cannot survive, no matter how all-embracing the government nanny.

if Europe’s a guide, at least as many people will retreat into apathy. Once big government’s in place, it’s very hard to go back.