An essential component of beauty is being undermined and will soon be practically eliminated, and that is scarcity. If there is only one right way of doing things, every other way is wrong. Anybody can complain, blog and find fault; the real intellectual might try to solve problems. Capitalism and democracy are sometimes equated, but ... get over that fairy tale. ... There's long been a mostly unrewarded group in the middle: people with great taste in music ... ... email, cell phones, working nights and weekends, "working out" ... What are we trying to prove? The demand for truthful answers to the most essential questions is more and more often dismissed as "partisan" or, worse, "unpatriotic" ... integrity made to seem weak ... what could be more terrifying than the prospect of a society that no longer has the desire, the will, the energy or the ability to distinguish between the truth and the spin that our leaders would prefer us to believe? 2003's Ideas: The Most Overrated and Underrated | 
