Mark Steyn manages to write a coherent, original, and amusing essay tying together various trends that have ticked him off.

One of the reasons I'm in favor of small government is because there's hardly anything the government doesn't do worse than anybody else who wants to give it a go. Usually when I make this observation, I'm thinking of, say, Britain's late unlamented nationalized car industry. But when the government of a G7 nation can't run a small marijuana sideline as well as a college student with a window box, that seems to set an entirely new standard for official underperformance. Big government goes to pot, in every sense.

Instead of its hugely wasteful ''war on drugs,'' the U.S. government might have been better just to legalize them, give the contract to the government of Canada, and in three months the entire drug market would have collapsed and guys would be huddled in darkened alleys saying, ''Hey, man, do you know where I can get some butterscotch pudding?''

He adds in runaway environmentalism and the Endangered Species List, racism and affirmative action, Gray Davis giving out drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants, the U.N., and the Bush-haters.