"Nationality, without race as a plea, is like the smoke of this narghile, a fragrant puff."

 Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred: Or the New Crusade (1847)

If America is, as some would have us believe, nothing but the idea that all men are equally endowed with a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, one wonders what need men have for laws, schools and opinion columnists in newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times.  Apart, perhaps, from some stringent statutes against murder and negligent homicide, it seems that men governed by this bare idea could be left to exercise this liberty, and pursue this happiness, in the manner that seems best to each man.   Indeed, claiming the summit of a journalistic dung heap and crowing like an overbearing cock seems like an affront to equality, especially when these barnyard busybodies have their own narrow and bigoted notions about how these bare ideas should be clothed.Continue reading "Prepare for the Wilderness"