Guess why I’m posting this:

Mr. Goldberg, I am an avid reader or your National Review columns. I have not written before today. It struck me that what you describe in today’s column can be referred to as “Vic Tayback Disoder”. There was an old Star Trek episode where the Enterprise stumbled upon a civilization that had recreated 1920′s era Chicago and the planet was run by warring gangster factions. I believe this episode was called “A Piece of the Action”. The people on this planet had found an old Earth satellite with a gangster movie and apparently had decided this was the way to for their civilization. The end result was that Kirk presented the Federation as an extra-planetary gang and left the planet with the assumption that the Federation would return for its tribute. Vic Tayback was one of the warring gangster leaders. When Kirk was asked at the end how wise it was to leave this planet in the hands of these greedy criminals he replied that with time the burden of responsibillity would shape these gangsters into responsible civic leaders. Hence what I call “Vic Tayback Disorder”. This sounds very similar to what you wrote about today. Unfortunately, there was no follow-up episode so I don’t think we’ll ever know how that turned out. Maybe we will finally see the end result in the real world, circa 2008.