A Rendezvous with Reality

‘REALITY, as Oscar Wilde should have said, “is the name we give to our mistakes.” It is at any rate the name that politicians, journalists, and intellectuals give to their mistakes. In the last 20 years we have been repeatedly assured by all the wise men that “reality” required us to raise taxes in order to balance the budget; somehow “reality” never asked us to cut spending for the same purpose.

Not that such “reality” is the argument solely of liberals and statists. On some issues—notably drugs and illegal immigration—conservatives and libertarians are equally quick to resort to it. To justify drug legalization, for instance, libertarians say that no amount of official interdiction will halt the drug trade—in other words, the “reality” is that the war on drugs is lost.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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‘REALITY, as Oscar Wilde should have said, “is the name we give to our mistakes.” It is at any rate the name that politicians, journalists, and intellectuals give to their mistakes. In the last 20 years we have been repeatedly assured by all the wise men that “reality” required us to raise taxes in order to balance the budget; somehow “reality” never asked us to cut spending for the same purpose.

Not that such “reality” is the argument solely of liberals and statists. On some issues—notably drugs and illegal immigration—conservatives and libertarians are equally quick to resort to it. To justify drug legalization, for instance, libertarians say that no amount of official interdiction will halt the drug trade—in other words, the “reality” is that the war on drugs is lost.