Keeper of the Clown Bell

So I'm clicking around the Internet and reading some opinion and editorials when I came across something that really floored me - I mean it shocked my conscience. Many is the time that I've read Thomas Friedman with frustration as he builds what seem to be a series of well form arguments only to be capped off with a completely illogical conclusion or "solution" to the problem he just defined. In short, I have always thought of Freidman as a schmaltzy and, in an almost innocent way, earnest idiot. That was then, this is now. "There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today." Not wicked enough for you? How about this? "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important polici