Hegseth: You there! Jackson! I want plans on how to invade Greenland on my desk by the end of the week!

Johnson: [Looks at filing cabinet full of plans for invading every other country] Oh, yeah, sure thing, sir. Gonna be a few all-nighters, though. Me and the boys are gonna need some pizzas and a few bottles of Mountain Dew and some cinnamon dipperz.

Hegseth: No problem! Just take it out of the Preventing Kids From Being Thrown Into The Orphan Crushing Machine fund! You’re a good man Jackson!

Johnson: Sir, yes sir.

Hegseth: [takes enormous swig out of family-sized plastic bottle of bourbon]

There are people who, disturbed by “big government” today and its tendency to curb the advantages they might gain if their competitiveness were allowed free flow, demand “less govern- ment.” Alas, there is no such thing as less government, merely changes in government. If the libertarians had their way, the distant bureaucracy would vanish and the local bully would be in charge. Personally, I prefer the distant bureaucracy, which may not find me, over the local bully, who certainly will. And all historical precedent shows a change to localism to be for the worse.

—Isaac Asimov, Nice Guys Finish First, collected in The Sun Shines Bright, 1981

Harvey Milk took a bullet for his cause. Can Pete Hegseth say the same?

There are people who, disturbed by “big government” today and its tendency to curb the advantages they might gain if their competitiveness were allowed free flow, demand “less govern- ment.” Alas, there is no such thing as less government, merely changes in government. If the libertarians had their way, the distant bureaucracy would vanish and the local bully would be in charge. Personally, I prefer the distant bureaucracy, which may not find me, over the local bully, who certainly will. And all historical precedent shows a change to localism to be for the worse.

—Isaac Asimov, Nice Guys Finish First, collected in The Sun Shines Bright, 1981

My mom made money as a lobbyist when I was a kid.

She lobbied on behalf of family farms that wanted to limit the use of bovine growth hormones, either because they had moral objections to pumping their cows full of steroids or because its use gave advantages to factory dairy farms over small family operations.

Lobbying is a disease on democracy, but there are moral cases for its existence in certain circumstances.