It's Sunday afternoon in New York City and I am at the St. Regis Hotel for tea and sandwiches with my wife, Lauren.  A woman is playing the harp.  When I look up and see paintings near the ceiling I feel that I am in the Sistine Chapel.  I was there in 1970 with Lauren, whom I married in 1972.  America was capacious then, affording the upper-middle class luxuries that should be cherished rather than scorned. We spent three months in Europe at five dollars each per day.  That was before we tried to imitate the Continent and our dollar was devalued.  That was before the glorious possibilities of socialism turned our country into a welfare state. "Do you know that Obama wants to turn America from a democracy into a collectivist state?" I ask my wife. "How?"  "Well, he's violating the fundamental principle of democracy that the majority rules.  He's turning America into an aristocracy of the unaccomplished.  He uses minority status as a...(Read Full Post)