Conrad Blackís prison routine allows him time to think and write, which is a good thing in view of the enormous waste that results from his dubious imprisonment.

This week Lord Black takes aim at the myth of American exceptionalism promoted in this recent Richard Lowry and Ramesh Ponnurus essay (Walter McDougall has examined the origins of this myth in detail in the first two books of his fine three-part series on American history). In challenging the myth, Lord Black takes dead aim at a common topic on this blog ñ the overcriminalization of American life:

The wages of this [Cold War] victory have included the stale-dating of the authorsí claim that America ìis freer, more individualistic, more democratic, and more open and dynamic than any other nation on earth.î It is more dynamic because of its size, the torpor of Europe and Japan, and the shambles of Russia.

But Americans do not do themselves a favor by not recognizing the terrible erosion of their countryís education, justice, and political systems, the shortcomings of U.S. health care, the collapse of its financial industry, the flight of most of its manufacturing, and the steep and generally unlamented decline of its prestige.

.   .    .   Rampaging and often lawless prosecutors win 95 percent of their cases (compared to 55 percent in Canada), by softening the pursuit of some in exchange for inculpatory perjury against others, in the plea-bargain system. The U.S. has six to fourteen times as many imprisoned people as other advanced prosperous democracies, and they languish in a corrupt carceral system that retains as many people as possible for as long as possible. There are an astounding 47 million Americans with a ìrecord,î and the country glories with unseemly glee in the joys of the death penalty. Due process and the other guarantees of individual rights of the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments (such as the grand jury as any sort of assurance against capricious prosecution) scarcely exist in practice.

Most of the Congress is an infestation of paid-for legislators from rotten boroughs, representing the interests that finance their elections and exchanging earmarks with their colleagues like casbah hucksters.  .   .   .

Lord Black can sure still turn a phrase — ìcasbah hucksters.î Ha!