Paradise Lost - California

Paradise Lost | The Weekly Standard: "Even in his first gubernatorial incarnation, as he marched to the left, he could come across as a kind of New Age conservative, pinstriped and looking for all the world like a young Churchill in the glow of a parliamentary speech. On alternate days he would make his “small is beautiful” philosophy seem to apply to state government, which to the sober-minded raised questions about his credibility. In this January’s “State of the State” speech to the legislature, Brown, strangely complimenting his audience for their fiscal discipline, treated us to more of his philosophical eclecticism. He quoted the biblical story of Joseph, cited the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, and, as the pièce de résistance, offered this from Montaigne: “The most desirable laws are those that are the rarest, simplest, and most general; and I even think that it would be better to have none at all than to have them in such numbers as we have.”"

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