Speaking of the Locker Room, I noted praise down there for George Will’s column on the Tuscon shootings. I didn’t bother to read it until it appeared in today’s N&R print edition.

The key passage (emphasis mine):

A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment. From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress. It actually is the crux of progressivism. And it is why there is a reflex to blame conservatives first.

I also like the history lesson: The assassins of Presidents Garfield and McKinley were “executed, not explained.”