https://RationalAmerica.com/tags/reason/Recent content in Reason on Rational AmericaHugoen-usMon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 -0400https://RationalAmerica.com/posts/2026-09-07-the-secret-of-sane-government-what-every-voter-nee/Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 -0400https://RationalAmerica.com/posts/2026-09-07-the-secret-of-sane-government-what-every-voter-nee/<p>The fluorescent lights hummed. The hearing room smelled like stale coffee and nervous deodorant. On the agenda: whether to extend a school mask mandate that expired at midnight. Nobody on the committee had opened the department&rsquo;s epidemiological bulletin that morning. Nobody had read the expert testimony from the week before. But everybody, it turned out, had an opinion.</p> <p>In under forty minutes they voted to let the mandate lapse. The director of public health — seated, unmiked, in the back row — never got asked a single question.</p>