The other evening, I watched C-SPAN coverage of the Cato Institute’s 25th anniversary dinner. It was interesting to observe various speakers pulling from their pockets small, leatherette-bound booklets, published by Cato, containing both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. They held them up and recited the oft-quoted mantra of the evening: "free markets and limited government." The ceremony reminded me of nothing so much as the practice in China, during the Cultural Revolution, of true believers carrying – and quoting from – the little red book of Chairman Mao’s aphorisms.
