Reaction.

• Position: Letter to the editor

Now that I live next door to San Francisco I get the impression that everyone views it as a utopian Mecca. Progressivism has so thoroughly infiltrated our culture that it's taboo to criticize the City by the Bay. But it needs criticizing. It remains a highly dysfunctional city, a filthy city, a fiscal basket case, and politically nasty.

--reason.com commenter "brandy-buck" in response to "San Francisco's Darkest Hours" (October)

As Ronald Reagan once put it, "Defense is not a budget issue. You spend what you need." Ronald Reagan was also an overrated embodiment of empty and desperate Republicanism striving for a hero. What a country needs for defense always culminates in what defense contractors want. This makes war and defense a business of...