Walter Russell Mead....................

Faithful readers will realize that WRM is this blogger's favorite pundit.  Here is a smattering of excerpts from recent posts:

On the variance between how we think government should work and how it really works:
"Rot and corruption at the intersection of the health care industry and the political system are already destroying much of the good Obama’s health care experiment hoped to do, and the toll will only mount."

On arguing about the relationships between the People and their government:
"The New England tradition, rooted in Puritan experience and theology, wants a strong state run by the great and the good to serve as the moral agent of the conscience of the community. It is the duty of the state to make the people better, and without a strong and moral state to guide development and regulate behavior, the rich will become greedy and the poor will get lazy and fat."

"There’s a New York tradition, rooted in the middle colonies, that looks to the state primarily to promote the development of the economy."

"There’s a Virginia tradition that worries about the centralism that both the New England and Hamiltonian traditions support. Jeffersonians speak for small business rather than big business, and for parts of the country that are far from the centers of financial and cultural power. In this view, an overweening government is a danger worse that (almost) any problem it tries to solve. The Virginia tradition looks to limit the power of government as far as possible and keep that power as close to the local level. It prefers state power to federal power and thinks the New England model is a “nanny state” approach, while the New York model quickly turns into crony capitalism in which large and well-connected business interests and plutocrats use the power of the state to advance their private objectives."

On being careful what you wish for:
"A new piece in the Wall Street Journal reports that many colleges are cutting back on the number of hours worked by adjunct professors, in order to avoid new requirements that they provide healthcare to anyone working over 30 hours per week. This is terrible news for a lot of people; 70 percent of professors work as adjuncts and many will now have to cope with a major pay cut just as requirements that they buy their own health insurance go into effect"


On the fact that local politics aren't so rosy either:
"But we haven't even started the conversation about a criminal class of politicians who have fastened vampire-like on cities throughout this country. Detroit and New Orleans are the most high-profile examples, but they are not the only places where american kleptocracies prey on the poor."