Jonathan Gruber

While there are conservative enclaves within the major media, they are few. Our mammoth bureaucracy—22 million municipal, county, state and federal employees—has a vital interest in the preservation and growth of government.

Add up the beneficiaries of all social programs, and the number now approaches 100 million. They don’t tend to stay committed to folks who will take away what they have come to depend upon.

Higher education is dominated by tenured leftists and radicals. The Ivy League is “No Conservative Need Apply” country.

Our popular culture, from movies to music to TV, is dominated by the left. Conservatives in Hollywood meet in catacombs.

There are conservative judges and justices on the courts, but few counter-revolutionaries. The decisions that come down either advance or confirm decisions handed down half a century ago by the Warren Court.

Yet, as Herb Stein observed, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” From Illinois to Puerto Rico to France, Italy and Greece, debt-ridden Western social welfare states seem to be coming to the end of the line.

Like the shepherd boy in Aesop’s fable, the right has often cried, “Wolf!” This time, the kid may be right.