...have to be awfully smart, someone once said, to believe something so stupid

Michael Barone explains some of the lessons of the past 25 years in a great column covering the major themes of my adult life. I'm see why some think I'm idiot now. Now I know why.

These lessons have been widely learned and widely applied, by George W. Bush but also to a large extent by Bill Clinton. But not, curiously enough, by those who see themselves as the best and the brightest, our university and media elites. They would still like to see America's power reined in, as it was in the 1970s.

They are insouciant about the costs that larger and more intrusive government and higher taxes impose on the economy. They think that leniency and subsidy are the appropriate responses to deviant and self-destructive behavior. They think our most important right is a right to kill our unborn children. You have to be awfully smart, someone once said, to believe something so stupid. And to be so blind to the clear lessons of the past quarter century of history.