Milton Friedman on what's most important in politics

A very good insight:

“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”

It's not enough to just elect reasonably good people. Example: the current Republican House and Senate.

Conservatives need to change the culture, so that even bad politicians wouldn't betray conservative principles. We need militancy and we need to take no prisoners. This is a culture war, in every sense of "war" except for the shooting. We need to fight ruthlessly (within the bounds of law and ethics).

Conservative Republicans demanding defunding of Planned Parenthood don't really mean a lot. We expect them to do that, and frankly they've been rather slow about it.

We'll know we're winning when Nancy Pelosi demands defunding of Planned Parenthood, because Planned Parenthood has been shown to be so evil that even Pelosi's constituents won't abide it.

I would not have thought that possible before the Center for Medical Progress videos. I'm not quite so pessimistic any more.