Pocket paradigms

GK Chesterton the British liberal and populist, argued that the only place a practical politician could start was with the ideal. Any other commencement of the political journey invites the creation of illogical and unsatisfactory remedies. The ideal provides a constant and necessary navigational marker from which one can compute a compromise's true cost in distance and time. Without such a marker, a purposeful trip becomes mere random motion. In politics, this can -- over the years -- produce directionless compromises lumped upon each other leaving us finally, with a system that nobody wanted. - Sam Smith