“How do you win? You don’t. But the game goes like this: you can’t win and you’re not supposed to. The very question makes people upset. The real crisis facing the West is the absolutely nonnegotiable public demand for comfort without the price of guilt or responsibility in any form; which in its extremity amounts to a rejection of life. We don’t want the earth with its intemperate seasons and gritty soil; with its unrequited love or shattered hopes. We want it just so. And we want it from government, our new god.”

Excellent, Fernandez. Gimlet-eyed truth in crystalline prose.