Negative Space: nitrous oxide

Thus the fundamental dogmas of democracy are gradually overhauled by men of vision. The idea that government should be an agency of sharply limited powers has been abandoned, and in place of it we have the idea that government should be omnipotent and is generally infallible. The idea of equality before the law gives way to the aforesaid Social Justice, the essence of which is the principle that all property is the rightful possession, not of those who have earned it, but of those who haven’t earned it. And the idea of universal suffrage begins to be conditioned by the idea that there is a right way to vote and a wrong way to vote, and that those who vote wrong are traitors to the Republic. — H. L. Mencken (The Baltimore Sun, November 6, 1938)