She also defended law enforcement officials who got convictions by withholding evidence or falsifying confessions. It is terrifying to think that abo… - Charlie Kirk

I can’t help thinking of the famous words shouted by General La Rochejaquelein fighting against the first French Revolution: “Friends, if I advance, follow me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me!

The willingness of, for example, generations of the elite to fight those devastating wars over oil-rich regions is a perverse side effect of the mingling of private interests and public power. Just as government subsidies for pharmaceutical purchases start looking like a great idea if your family is in the pharmaceutical industry (or, like Medicare Part D architect and former senate majority leader Bill Frist, the hospital management industry), your family being in the oil business just might make you more willing, on a subconscious level, to tolerate great sacrifices (on the part of others, including taxpayers) in the name of keeping the black lifeblood of industry flowing.

Republican senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa put it well in the New York Times when he wrote, “Over the past few months alone, the Defense Department has had to explain why it’s been paying $14,000 for individual 3-D-printed toilet seat lids and purchasing cups for $1,280 each. These are just the latest examples on a long list of unacceptable purchases made by the department, including $436 for hammers in the 1980s, and $117 soap dish covers and $999 pliers in the 1990s.