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Tyranny

“A Few Bad Apples”: A Mocumentary*

(*sprouted from an intended Documentary) [In light of the talking heads that have surfaced recently from the constitutional shallows to take credit for the demise of Osama bin Laden, we disclose a(n aborted) simulation meant to explore in greater depth those constitutional shallows. Of course, one prefers not to mock others, but when “those others”

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Beware the Optimates!

After nearly four centuries of Republican government, Rome began its century-long descent toward tyranny1 beginning about 133 BC with the murder of the Gracchus brothers.2 Perhaps the chief facilitator of that descent was the conservative/traditionalist group of elites in the Roman Senate—a group that came to be dubbed the optimates (“the best”).3 They claimed to

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The Romance of Ayn Rand

(OR: Ayn Rand Romanticized) Mark Sanford, the recently beleaguered Republican governor of South Carolina, presented his pitch for the current relevance of Ayn Rand in Newsweek, November 2, 2009. He wrote, “What strikes me as still relevant is [The Fountainhead’s] central insight—that it isn’t ‘collective action’ that makes this nation prosperous and secure; it’s the

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