[lbo-talk] Colbert on Daily Show yesterday, post-Bush bashing

[Carl Remick]

>From: info at pulpculture.org
>
>As for the audience, half the time I don't think it was that they disagreed 
>because they are lackeys, but because they didn't actually get the subtlety 
>of the humor. E.g. when he said something about the government that governs 
>least, governs best and that's why the Iraq government is so great. I don't 
>think they even got that one. part of that was because colbert sucks at 
>delivering his lines.

"That government is best which governs least" is one of the most durable 
pieces of boilerplate in the chop shop of American political cliches.  It 
has been variously attributed to Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, but was 
actually used by Henry David Thoureau in "On Civil Disobedience."  And 
Thoreau himself apparently stole it.  According to one web source the line 
"first saw print in 1837, in the editor's introduction to the first issue of 
United States Magazine and Democratic Review."  
<http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:r4YhPE6TtoMJ:www.geocities.com/peterroberts.geo/Relig-Politics/TJefferson.html+government+is+best+governs+least&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=8>

The White House press corps may not have any well thumbed copies of "On 
Civil Disobediance" at hand or any back issues of United States Magazine and 
Democratic Review lying around, but I would have to think they recognized 
the joke.

Carl