Free Republic

What exactly has birthed the Pajama Boy aristocracy — our overclass of pretentious, inexperienced, and smug 30-something masters of the universe? Prolonged adolescence? Affluence? The disappearance of physical chores and muscular labor? The collapse of traditional liberal education and the triumph of the therapeutic mindset? Disdain for or ignorance of life outside the Boston–New York–Washington corridor? Political correctness as a sort of careerist indemnity that allows one to live a sheltered and apartheid existence? The shift in collective values and status from production, agriculture, and manufacturing to government, law, finance, and media? The reinvention of the university as a social-awareness...

George Deukmejian, the most self-effacing California governor in modern history, characteristically entered the office in 1983 with just a few modest goals - mostly balancing the budget, toughening crime laws and building new prisons for an increasing inmate population. Eventually, nearly two dozen prisons were built as the inmate population skyrocketed from about 20,000 to more than 160,000, and like all big political decisions, the massive prison construction program had unforeseen consequences. As spending on prisons ballooned from well under $1 billion to nearly $6 billion, and as prison payrolls expanded from 9,000 to 45,000 employees, membership in the California...

<p>Students of history might recall that the American revolution against Great Britain was touched off, at least in part, by the British Parliament's habit of imposing heavy taxes on colonial subjects, who were politically powerless, in lieu of taking the heat for levying heavier taxes on Britons themselves.</p>