I came across a big runaway lawnmower as I recently walked along a country road in Switzerland. Or so I thought.

On further inspection, I saw a distant worker with a joystick controlling it remotely. Safely away from passing traffic, he used this remote-controlled lawnmower to neatly mow down weeds on the shoulder of the road. As I gazed slack-jawed at this contrivance, he must have thought, “Oh, another backward American.”

Switzerland is famous for its banking and pharmaceutical industries, but it’s also a technology center. It’s especially well-regarded for its machinery. The machine-tool industry of the northeastern United States Continue reading →

What do you call an exclusive eight-person club whose secret debates control the country and whose members are ages 68, 83, 62, 61, 56, 66, 77 and 79?

In America, you call it the Supreme Court.

The justices are old because they have lifetime tenure. Most never retire. Instead they die in office, as one did last winter at age 79, often after extended illness.

I’m not exactly young myself. In fact, I’m older than Continue reading →

A former Republican candidate for president and current political pontiff, Mitt Romney, recently took to the pulpit here in Aspen to pontificate at one of those sacred Aspen shows where stale old people recite stale old ideas, as pontiffs do, while the congregation obediently genuflects.

Romney’s particular idea was that as an upstart unapproved by anyone except the people, Donald Trump might destroy the Grand Old Party that is run by the Romney-approved regulars of the Republican establishment.

Other Republican establishmentarians are also tsk-tsking. George Will says Trump has driven him out of the party. Bill Kristol is recruiting someone to run on a third-party ticket. The Bush dynasty has withheld its endorsement.

To them I say: Spare me your sermonizing.

It is you, Republican establishmentarians, who have destroyed the Republican Party. Continue reading →