A Few Notes on Tyranny

We’re about to get a new Supreme Court justice who never knows when to say no to executive power. With Sam Alito comes the usual heavy breathing on the left, and a couple peeps of protest from the right. Me, I’m maintaining a smiling detachment about the whole affair. Alito is a worse judge than I hoped for, but probably a better one than most of us had any right to expect. I say this because the last thing I fear in this country is the dictatorship which Alito’s detractors say he represents.

Imagine for a moment an unlikely combination of a bad election, a few bad Supreme Court decisions, and a compliant Congress. Safely