Quote Of The Day

If government systems are the only variable, or even the most important and decisive one, then how come it's so damn hard bringing third world countries into the first world? There are plenty of African and Latin American welfare states that are indistinguishable on paper from their European cousins and yet we don't see Swedens and Denmarks all over the place. And of course no one can deny the salience of this point when it comes to poor benighted Iraq. What a happier place the world would be if fixing Iraq merely meant installing the most fashionable system from Europe these days, whatever that is.

Jonah Goldberg