[Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity, and Other Fables of Evolution by David Stove (Encounter Books, 1995; xv + 345 pp.)]

Rep. Antonio Parkinson (D) said ... “Let my people go. I’m deada‑‑ serious. If you’re constantly beating on us, let us out.”

The federal income tax, which we recently paid, is the crown jewel of a massive welfare-warfare state. Without it, it would be well-nigh impossible for the government to run up some 37 trillion dollars of debt. (It’s actually much more but the government does the counting).

As kids we may remember the old trope—often seen on TV or in movies—where a stronger kid would overpower a weaker kid and use the weaker kid’s hands and arms to hit him, asking mockingly, “Why are you hitting yourself?”

We’ve been taught to worry about stupid people in power. That’s the wrong fear. Broken systems don’t survive because nobody is smart enough to see through them. They survive because the people best-positioned to expose them are usually the people most rewarded for keeping them intact. The threat isn’t a shortage of intelligence, it’s intelligence that’s been bought—quietly and gradually, through incentives and status and the slow comfort of institutional belonging. This includes, it should be said, the intelligence of whoever is making this argument.