FOR THE COMMON GOOD: Every so often, Tom Wolfe writes in The Painted Word, you read something in the newspapers that so suddenly and completely gives away the truth about a movement or a person that you cannot believe what you are reading, that the usual filters and templates did not catch the errant thought before it could be made public. In San Francisco, Hilary Clinton had such a moment when she gave away the game. To wit,

"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

The common good as determined by whom? Who is the we in this statement, and who is the you? And who determined that Senator Clinton is one of the we who gets to decide? Unless I miss my guess, Senator Clinton is saying that she, among others, to be sure, will not return to the taxpayers of this country money that belongs to them in the first place, and that she is doing this because she has something better to do with it in mind. But what really grates here is her assumption that the money is hers to begin with, that the taxpayers exist solely to provide her and the rest of her statist chums with funds.