(Discussing the power of Midwestern philanthropy):

None of this happens naturally in a free-market economy, because the efforts cost money that will never be fully recouped. But it has happened nonetheless thanks to one of the few advantages that Ord does have over Chicago, Dallas and New York: it is in a state with some of the most generous wealthy people in the country.

Previously, I envinced my skepticism about the viability of a libertarian-Democratic coalition-- not because there is anything wrong with Democrats, but simply because there are so few libertarians that I find it hard to imagine it would be worth any major party's while to try to attract them. Matthew Yglesias makes the same point, in even stronger language:

Meanwhile, I don't see any reason to believe it would be smart for a major political party to deliberately aim at the votes of some libertarian constituency. The reason is that, to a decent first approximation, about zero percent of the electorate is primarily motivated by a principled opposition to state coercion. We're not literally talking about zero people, I know some of them, and some write blogs, but it's genuinely a rounding error in the scheme of things. You do have some people who adhere to the Economist-style center-right politics of the American elite consensus, and this view has some similarities with libertarianism, but this genuinely is an elite consensus voting bloc rather than a libertarian one. It's also not seriously accessible to the Democrats over the long-run because a core element of the consensus is a fairly deep-seated loathing of progressive activism and progressive activists. It's worth understanding that, at the end of the day, there's much less libertarianism in American society than people sometimes think.

For those of us (hi, Will!) who know that Han Solo shot first, check out this beautiful rant from John Scalzi on Star Wars and George Lucas.