The anniversary of Boris Yeltsin’s historic visit to a Texas grocery and Constitution Day shared the weekend — fitting, really. As Yuval Levin writes:
The Constitution was not only the product of a complicated web of compromises, it established a system of government that works by weaving such webs in an ongoing way, and so by compelling accommodation, negotiation, and constructive tension rather than simply empowering majorities.
A grocery store accommodates diverse preferences instead of directing tastes. Items don’t exist on the shelves because everyone wants falafel, but because 1 percent of customers buy falafel every time. A political system that neither overrides nor elevates minority interests (economic, religious, cultural, etc.) allows, among myriad other things, its citizens to produce and purchase an array of goods that a bureau could never imagine, let alone make profitably.
Video killed the radio star, and Pudding Pops ended the USSR.