I teach the kids a lot about the concept of governmental legitimacy. Basically speaking, if a people governed believe that the government has the right to lay down laws, for whatever justification, then they are more easily governed. The belief of the governed is what matters most, though; for thousands of years hereditary monarchy was [...]
Some good things did come from Harvard, and one is an idea that you’ll likely see at a Yale tournament near you in the fall. Policy Mike was staying with me for the weekend so he could judge the Harvard policy tournament, and at one point he mentioned how judging speech left him feeling very [...]
For the last two days the weather has been somewhat like a snowglobe; we’ve had gentle falling snow that never seems to accumulate. The snow powders the earth, and then the temperature just edges above freezing, so it melts; and then it drops another two degrees, we slip below the edge of freezing, and the [...]
It’s elections like that that make me wonder why people make political predictions. I suppose predicting the future and having others listen makes people feel smart. I never make predictions, even as extempers always ask me for them. This year is an especially good example; I can make a really compelling argument why no one [...]
So I had an utterly useless vacation between Christmas and New Year’s. It was useful in the sense that I avoided the psychic despair that comes upon everyone sitting around faking it in a non-retail job that week. Retail folks, of course, are in the middle of hell on earth, but that brand of hell [...]