Seventy years ago this November, Vladimir Lenin created the modern totalitarian state, transforming simpler forms of tyranny into history's most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror.

Seventy years ago this November, Vladimir Lenin created the modern totalitarian state, transforming simpler forms of tyranny into history's most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror.

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.

The state, the state apparatus, is not an abstraction.

In most of history, societies have not been free. It's a very rare society that is free. The default condition of human societies is tyranny.

To be sure, debates will linger about whether Medicare is too large or too small. Debates remain about the allocation of Medicare dollars. But December 8, 2003, demonstrated that there is no debate about this most fundamental fact: Medicare must survive.