In today’s Impromptus, I have a chance to talk about the Clinton years, in contrast to the Obama years (which are of course still in infancy, or maybe toddlerhood). (Boy/girlhood?) (Probably depends on whether Obama gets two terms or one.) In brief, I say, “For many conservatives, Clinton’s carnival years may wind up preferable to Barack Obama’s sober, state-aggrandizing years.”

A reader writes me with a paragraph from Rodney Stark’s book The Victory of Reason:

Ironically, perhaps no monarchs in history were more conscientious, honest, or hardworking than Charles V and his son Philip II. Between them they built the Spanish empire and ruled it for more than eighty years. Nearly every day they rose early and worked diligently at administering this sprawling entity. Had they been wastrels or playboys, they might have done much less damage to the economies in their charge. In contrast, the French kings were relatively lazy and far less sincere, and under their regime France fared rather better than Spain in terms of economic progress. That is the greatest irony of all: Given despotic rule, rampant government corruption provides for degrees of freedom that do not exist under honest tyrants.

Our reader also supplies a passage from C. S. Lewis — now, this is heavy-handed, if we’re talking about Clinton and Obama. Even more heavy-handed than the above passage! But, like the Stark bit, it is interesting to know, IMO:

If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.

Now, again, please don’t get your knickers in a twist: I’m not comparing anybody to an inquisitor. I’m basically using the occasion to enjoy a little Lewis, etc. Cool? (Maybe not.)

P.S. Remember how we used to ridicule “midnight basketball,” the V-chip, AmeriCorps, etc.? Those initiatives seem positively heavenly compared with “Government Motors,” the “stimulus package,” the takeover of health care, etc.