Musing on the latest abuses of the Transportation Security Administration, George F. Will recalls a column by the late William F. Buckley Jr. Faced with disastrous service on a commuter railroad, Buckley wrote, “In a more virile age, I thought, the passengers would have seized the conductor and strapped him down on a seat over the radiator to share the fate of his patrons.” But he had “nonchalantly walked down the gauntlet of eighty sweating American freemen, and not one of them had asked him to explain why the passengers in that car had been consigned to suffer.”


Buckley went on:

Every year, whether the Republican or the Democratic Party is in office, more and more power drains away from the individual to feed vast reservoirs in far‐​off places; and we have less and less say about the shape of events which shape our future. From this alienation of personal power comes the sense of resignation with which we accept the political dispensations of a powerful government whose hold upon us continues to increase.

And here’s the part that sent me looking for the anti‐​depressants: Buckley wrote this jeremiad in 1961.