PRESTOPUNDIT

The new U.S. political chromatics is just wrong. It emerged during the 2000 election and has stuck. The Democrats, however, should be red, not blue. And for the Republicans, blue is perhaps fitting enough ..

Red is a warm color. It is emotional, even sensual. Red is the natural color of romance .. It is no accident, then, that red has been the color of the Left. The Left is romantic politics. In Europe, the Left parties are still red. In Europe, the First of May is celebrated as worker solidarity day. It is a day of Leftist parades, a sea of red ..

The true blues strive to resist any impulse to view government as romantic force. They believe George Washington's claim: "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence -- it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearsome master." Adam Smith said that the rules of justice are like the rules of grammar. They tell us don'ts. Don't steal, and don't write, "I loves you." The rules of justice and of grammar are blue; enforcing them is a dull business of sifting through tangible materials, to be carried out dispassionately. Smith said we may normally satisfy the rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing, just as we satisfy the rules of grammar by writing nothing. Smith distinguished the rules of grammar from the rules for truly beautiful writing. Those rules are ill-defined and deal with intangibles. And you can't satisfy them by writing nothing. They are akin to the Left's notion of "social justice," a sublime realization of collective beauty. Because "social justice" doesn't work as a system of justice, David Hume called it "the vulgar definition of justice." ..