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The most evil man I’ve ever personally experienced was almost elected lieutenant governor of Alabama. I met him years before that, though, when he was about to run for his first office. Our first meeting at his office was surreal.

He had the coldest eyes I’ve ever seen. His voice was flat and monotone. But he had a presence that you might expect from a senator or a governor. He seemed to feel entitled. He seemed to feel superior. Strangely, none of his words matched what I felt in his eyes. He talked a good game about morality and ethics and feeling guided by his Christian faith to run for office. The scary thing is that I think he believed what he was telling me. I’ve worked with enough charming liars to know the difference. This guy felt evil, like a psychopath.

I didn’t work for the guy, but he was elected to his first office and became a powerful man in state politics. I heard plenty of things about him from friends inside his campaigns that gave me a great relief that I never worked for him. I felt a sigh of relief when statewide voters barely rejected him.

What I’m about to say is terribly unfair, because I don’t have enough facts to know the truth about this man. I’m well aware of that. But I get the same feelings about Rick Perry that I got from that psychopath long ago. I think he’s scary.

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Black cats are said to be a source of bad luck, but this black cat seems to be incensed at being blamed for the stupidity and ignorance of politicians. You can’t blame her, can you?

Campaigning in Iowa — although he pretended it wasn’t campaigning — Barack Obama lamented the state of the economy. He claimed that his administration had things turned around until … well … you read it:

“We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again,” Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. “But over the last six months we’ve had a run of bad luck.” Obama listed three events overseas — the Arab Spring uprisings, the tsunami in Japan and the European debt crises — which set the economy back.

I covered this just a few days ago. The late, great sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein famously wrote that those who did everything in their power to stop creative people from advancing civilization would blame the problems on something besides themselves:

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I have a certain old friend who’s very bright and thoughtful. He’s a respected attorney with a responsible government legal job. I have a lot of respect for his intelligence and his intellectual honesty, but our ideas about politics and society are strongly opposed.

When I wrote Sunday about the idea that taxation is theft, he strongly disagreed, arguing that the idea was impractical and “naively idealistic.” He referred to what I said as an “untennable radical position.” I don’t want to re-argue that debate here. Instead, I want to look at other radical positions that seemed pretty untenable when they were first proposed.

Hundreds of years ago, it was taken for granted that kings had special rights that ordinary people didn’t have. He was seen as having his power from God and any opposition to the king was opposition to God. It was called the “divine right of kings.” The king had rights that made him little short of being a god in his kingdom. No one was allowed to judge or oppose the king except for God Himself.

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