I open my column today with something about how you never win — never really win. Just when you think you’ve cinched the case for an open economy, and the open society, the socialists and collectivists are back on top. You have to keep making the case, struggling, striving, all the time: in every generation, every year. Freedom often seems more exceptional than normal.

Thought you might like this note from a reader:

Jay,
I was Dr. Russell Kirk’s assistant a year before he died. Dr. Kirk loved T. S. Eliot (whom he was friends with). He often quoted Eliot’s saying: “There is no lost cause, because there is no gained cause.” How true. Whatever is worth fighting for is something we will always have to fight for.

And would you care for something lighter? I have an item in my column about a lady who said, “It takes two to tangle,” rather than to tango. She did not know what tangoing was. And I think “two to tangle” is a superb phrase! In any event, reader writes,

Jay
Once, when I was working a computer help desk, I was trying to talk a user through his computer problem. I was trying to get him to enter some text, and I was spelling out a command.
Me: “X”
Him: “X”
Me: “T”
Him: “P”
Me: “No, T”
Him: “P”
Me (enunciating as clearly as I could): “T”
Him: “P”
Me (because I’m a ham radio operator and can’t help using the international phonetic alphabet): “No, T as in Tango.”
Him: “What the heck is a Pango??!”
For once I was speechless.

Lovely.