'Apparatchiks' like Nuland always know on which side to butter their tongue.

Troy doesn't cover the half of it: when Boxer left the Marin County Board of Supervisors for Washington, the IQ of both rose!

The "least dangerous branch" lost the right to that label when Marshall decided that SCOTUS alone had the right to bear the chevron of interpretative infalibility: the power to decide what the Founders had penned in the U.S. Constitution. That chevron now 'Chevron' has been hoisted by the "Adminsitrative State" planted in the political humus from the compost heap of SCOTUS  created by the Statist Majority led by Scalia (whose statist views are sometimes cloaked in what erroneously passes for 'conservatism.') 

I don't buy your binary choice for 'most trusted.' Our system doesn't work but not because of Marshall's original distortion, but rather almost wholly because Congress is a feckless flock of Public Choice poster children. If our government can not function without the delegation by Congress not only of legislative but also executive and judicial powers to the Administrative State, then Congress has allowed our government to grow beyond the span of control designed by the Founders. And "woe unto you, lawyers!"

No it's not trivial! It is as perfect an example of societal breakdown as the IMEMINE texter confronted by KW. My experience -based educated guess is that the subject path is designated as 'multi-use' and not merely a bike path. Society gets by on the cheap in building such paths because there is an assumption--false though it is today--that the competing users (walkers/talkers/bikers/runners/dog exercisers/roller bladers/-- the ear-bud oblivious etc.) will act in their respective activities fully aware of others engaging in a space-competing activity. It is the government councils full of men with no chests of any gender who impose on public spaces these false assumptions the competing users will watch out for the other guy on such paths where experience teaches such assumptions are baseless. But it saves on building a bunch of single-use designated paths which this same self-centered society would fight until the last environmentalist expired at the podium.

And exactly how do you propose to end those programs?

Of course it can. Who/what will stop it? The courts? "Corporate responsibility?" C'mon...............

You are right about the "coming crisis" but I see no evidence in our culture or common history to suggest that a "deep bench" of "best solutions" trumps the ever stronger central government's ability to weather any crisis it creates. 

How does a "deep bench" get us there?

Of all the changes wrought by the welfare state, a degraded, dependent culture will have the deadliest impact and will be the hardest to reverse. Yet the culture must be changed. This can occur only if government-created incentives that encourage people to live at the expense of others are replaced by market-created incentives.

Read more: http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-paradox-of-the-welfare-state#ixzz2SKRQtVBD

Can you even imagine a government report with that much candor today?  If the American family continues to disintegrate can you even imagine economic growth or education reform?

Amen. AMEN! We are currently running that grave risk. And losing.

Getting back to the original question is it seems to me, always a good thing in these long discursive threads. I cut off Howellis quote at this point only because I think the average person does not know the cost of his entertainment choices, only the price.

Neil Postman wrote a really good book on 'half' of the difference: AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH. It seems to me without accurately stating the etymology of 'amuse'--in the sense that the term entertainment is being used in this thread--it nicely breaks into two parts: a-muse. And thoughtlessness, the absence of thinking, is what most popular entertainment is all about. NOTE: I did say 'popular' entertainment. 

I would throw this log on the fire: we are as un-thinking in choosing to "a-muse" ourselves as we are in making political and moral choices. Does it matter that Narcissus chooses to gaze into his digital reflection rather than into some "Walden Pond"?

Ontos:

How long are you going to make me wait? Can't I have all your comments now? It's not fair.

Dr. Rahe:

What did the WSJ respond when you pointed out to them what you've pointed out to us?

How do you deal with anyone with "ADD" (Attention Demanding Disorder)? Pay no attention to them, and when they or others 'demand' to know why you have positioned yourself far from the madding crowd, be prepared then to debate the folly of them and their 'followerhood.'

Do you think the firing of Rice is a sign of the wussification of America, or is it evidence that we’re evolving, at least in this respect?

Why 'either/or'? Why isn't it 'both/and'? 

I take it you used 'evolving' to suggest a change to something better than; and wussification to suggest a change to something worse than. I don't understand 'evolving' to suggest something better so I have no problem staking out the position that we are 'evolving by wussification.'

Rutgers did the right thing. Eventually. John Wooden was a better coach and a better man than Rice is or will ever be; and Gen. Patton was a better General Officer than say a politician like Martin Dempsey. But we live in different times--'wussier' times--and that's just the way it is. The good ship USS Wussy has already sailed and all the acculturated are on board.

Sometimes? What do you fear concerning the generation 'we're' raising at all the other times? 

No. No. No. A sad day for the country would be SCOTUS pulling another ROE out of their bag of tricks and saddling the entire country with a decision--either way--that the country needs to reach eventually. On its own.