Opinion

A few weeks ago while Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky talked about how democracies die and what can be done to save ours, both professors introduced a powerful concept: Using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law as a strategy.

As the U.S. recovers from a pandemic, with workers in services and manufacturing in short supply across the economy, here’s what no one sensible thinks America urgently needs: a huge new federal Civilian Climate Corps.

Yet that’s exactly what Democrats want to create as part of their plan to expand government into every corner of American life. It isn’t enough to lecture Americans about the supposed perils of climate change. Now they also want to tax you and other Americans to pay your children to spend years lecturing you.

Politicians just don’t learn.

People die as police fight drug dealers. Marijuana dealers form gangs and fight among themselves.

It’s so stupid. Especially because marijuana is relatively harmless.

Finally, some states legalized it, hoping to put an end to the black market. But legalization hasn’t ended the violence.

Why? Because many states impose so many unnecessary rules.

California is one of the worst.

As I listened to the testimony Tuesday of Capitol and Washington D.C. police officers who were attacked by the violent mob in Washington on Jan. 6, I wondered how many of the terrorists bothered to get their coronavirus vaccines. Guessing wildly, I’m going to say: Not many.

I couldn’t help thinking it because there’s an overlap between anti-vaxxers and the rioters. Both were and are guided by disinformation intentionally distributed to pit Americans against one another — by forces internal or external, or both. We used to call that propaganda. Now, too often, we call it politics.