Living in our modern society has become a very difficult matter

This is a very tough world for an idealist. particularly one of the political variety.

My friend Mick has what he considers a perfectly consistent philosophy. He is opposed to big labor, big business and big government. In his eyes, any of the three gaining the upper hand results in a dysfunctional society.

I've got four words that I think put the lie to his ideal:

"Nature abhors a vacuum."

Two of the most opposite systems of government would appear to be communism and libertarianism, and neither is workable in the real world on anything more than a very small scale.

Communism's "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" can work in a small community where everyone knows everyone else and has chosen to be there.

But if you live in Indiana and are making shoes for people in New Mexico, it's difficult to maintain incentive. There's no real incentive to work any harder than necessary.

Libertarianism has a very different problem. Without a government to regulate economic transactions, the only possibility of the system providing the greatest good for the greatest number is if everyone is essentially moral.


In a community of limited size, public opinion can be an important factor. It's why many small towns dominated by one business with local ownership did well, because the man with the power had daily contact with the people he employed.

But when the ownership is in New York -- or even worse, in Shanghai or Berlin -- all that matters is the bottom line. Nobody in ownership cares how the folks in Smalltown USA are making it.

So if business goes unregulated, the rich become richer and everybody else struggles to get by.

And with folks on the far left wanting the government to do everything for everyone and those on the far right wanting the same government we had when we were a coastal nation of 3 million people, nothing works.

We have two major problems facing us, and they go to show just how prescient H.L. Mencken was.

Writing in 1922, Mencken said that our system of government would fall within a hundred years because of ignorance and greed.

Ignorance? More than 60 percent of American adults never read books. And when it comes to their video entertainment, far too many people would be perfectly satisfied with a strict diet of nudity and explosions.

Greed? Billionaires who couldn't spend all their money in a thousand years fight against any kind of increase in their taxes, and they're battling to eliminate the one thing that has stood between us and a permanent aristocracy -- the estate tax. I'm not even sure they're doing their own descendants any real favors.

Andrew Carnegie had it best. He said once a man had made his fortune, the next part of life was giving it away to charity. In Carnegie's opinion, anyone who didn't give away his money was a loser at the game of life. When it came to his own children, he said he would leave each of them $50,000 (about $1 million today), which would get them a good step up in anything they wanted to do, but would not allow them to lead an idle life.

Many of the moguls from his era started charitable foundations -- Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller all have played a large role in that respect long after their lives ended. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, two of the richest men in the world, are setting up their own foundations to do the same now and in the future.

They will do a great deal of good, but private charity can't solve all the problems of the world. So we have two choices. We can either find a way to help them or we can just let things deteriorate to the point where problems become less soluble than they are now.

***

As Donald Trump's quest for the Republican presidential nomination becomes more and more bizarre, it looks as if there may be one unforeseen circumstance.

In the long run, it's still very unlikely that Trump or Ben Carson will be the nominee. But the longer they eat up the oxygen in the campaign, the easier it is for a true extremist like Ted Cruz to stay under the radar for a long time.

That's really scary, since Cruz is slick, has big money backing him and has at least the experience of being a first-term U.S. senator. Of those who have a chance of being the nominee, he is the farthest to the right, including making an appearance at a conference run by a minister who thinks gays should be put to death.

Anything that helps him is not a good thing.

***

Tea Leoni

I don't watch television shows on anyone's schedule other than my own anymore. The last one I sat in front of the TV at the same time each week for "appointment television" was "The West Wing" starting in 1999. Even with that show, which is one of my all-time favorites, I stopped watching after four years and caught the last three seasons on DVD later.

I watched 10 seasons of "Smallville" and seven of "Mad Men" without ever sitting through commercials. In fact, the only live TV I watch at all is when I'm in the same room with my wife while she watches Home & Garden TV.

That won't change, but I'm still always happy to find a new show to watch. I have liked Tea Leoni ever since "Deep Impact" and "The Family Man," and today I started watching episodes of her series "Madame Secretary." Leoni plays a former CIA analyst working as a professor at the University of Virginia who is asked by the president to become Secretary of State.

Basically Leoni plays a likeable, ethical version of Hillary Clinton.

I've seen four episodes so far, and I'm enjoying the show more with each episode. Maybe part of it is the fact that both of my children work for the State Department, or maybe it's just that it is an intelligent and entertaining show.

Those are rare.

Too rare.