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" &amp;quot;Lord, you&amp;#039;d think there&amp;#039;s less fools in this world.&amp;quot; \u2014 Guy Clark, &amp;quot;Rita Ballou&amp;quot; Let&amp;#039;s wander the op-eds today, shall we, because there&amp;#039;s some real entertainment to be found there, by cracky. Let&amp;#039;s start in Detroit, where one Nolan Finley has a big ol&amp;#039; man crush on Dr. Ben Carson, with whom Finley plans to join in an ongoing seminar through which he and Carson will undertake to give all Americans \u2014 but especially African Americans \u2014 a course of Negro Lessons. (We dealt here with Dr. Carson, whose career is admirable, and whose economic ideas are crazy-nutty-bananas a while back.) Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog caught Finley writing one of the most singularly disreputable paragraphs that ever sprung from a singularly disreputable topic sentence. Carson said at the prayer breakfast that &amp;quot;in this country, one of the founding principles was freedom of thought and freedom of expression.&amp;quot; Blacks have never fully enjoyed that freedom, first because of slavery, then Jim Crow, and now due to self-imposed sanctions on what African Americans can think and say politically and still keep their street cred. Carson deals in this saga of intellectual disenfranchisement all the time, in his high-profile television appearances, his well-remunerated speaking engagements, and his several books, including various NewYork Times bestsellers, not mention, as Steve does, the fact that The Man kept Dr, Carson down sufficiently this year that he had the opportunity to get in the president&amp;#039;s grill at the National Prayer Breakfast. We should all be so oppressed, I&amp;#039;m thinking. But let&amp;#039;s look also at the key to unlocking the vast power of black conservatism, as explained by Nolan Finley, champion of Oppressed Best Selling Authors everywhere. If he got in the Michigan Senate race as a conservative Republican, Carson would test whether blacks are willing to extend to an African-American icon the freedom to think for himself. In other words, if you happen to be and African American, and you look at Carson&amp;#039;s support for a &amp;quot;flat tax,&amp;quot; which he&amp;#039;s borrowed from such essential African American economic theorists as Steve Forbes and Neal Boortz, and you think, wait, why am I paying the same percentage of my income in taxes as Steve Forbes is, you are not &amp;quot;thinking for yourself.&amp;quot; Worse, you would be letting down Nolan Finley, expert in &amp;quot;street cred.&amp;quot; But, against all possible odds, Finley places only second in today&amp;#039;s I Wrote This On Mushrooms Derby. The House Cup goes to our old pal, Jim DeMint, who took to the pages of the Washington Times to explain that he problem with the Republican party is that it has not yet taken up residence amid the spiders and stalactmites \u2014 and, who knows, judging from this piece \u2014 huge puddles on bongwater in his mind. We don&amp;#039;t need the bells and whistles, because our ideas work. They&amp;#039;ve been proved in states such as Tennessee, where the income tax was eliminated and the economy boomed. We&amp;#039;ve seen states such as North Dakota open their energy resources to development and create tens of thousands of new, well-paying jobs. We&amp;#039;ve seen states such as Texas pass tort reforms that encouraged doctors to move in - improving health care and lowering costs for everyone. I certainly think this is a winning strategy. Adopt the health-care reforms that have made Texas  a health-care paradise, North Dakota  an environmentalist&amp;#039;s dream, and the economic genius of Tennessee, where the unemployment rate is booming along with the economy. Create the United States of Jim DeMint&amp;#039;s dreams. And watch him send all his money to the Caymans and move to St. Kitts. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17912/today-in-op-eds-032213/>