God bless teh Poles. And God judge the goof who designed a keyboard layout that makes “teh” come out very durned time I try to type “the”.

Two things about the Kagan article that hit me with the force of insta-revelation.

First, autocracy is not only legitimate, but preferable in principle to its advocates. Why I never got that, that they have an arguable and respectably moral brief, I can’t tell you. I would admit that much more human progress has occurred under autocracies than democracies: they’ve been running for at least 6000 years and we have a hard time claiming 300 (personally, I don’t count Rome, Athens or Germanic tribes in the woods: your mileage may differ).

The second is the shaky metaphysics of “the marketplace”. Kagan does such a concise job of locating all of us liberals (Amcn. conservatives & “Liberals” & NeoCons, whatever–just leave Pat BooCannon out of it, OK?) [tight.smile] … choking chust chokingk, mon…

Where wass me? Ach, misplaced faith in a metaphysically dynamic marketplace Entity. Face it, folks, Adam Q. Smith didn’t confuse markets with The Force, we do. Us’ns da NeoKons. We hier Solid conservatives. heck, a few of the flightier Libertarians have been known to Theo-pomorphize The MARKET.

I think I’m going to stop.doing.that.now.

(BTW, if you LOVE good port, and a lighter, brighter substitue sounds interesting, try Kindzmarauli, a semi-sweet red varietal from Georgia. TO DIE FOR!

(not literally, we hope)