Oren Cass has a rip-roaring critique of the drift of the current administration toward legalizing, expanding, or removing guardrails from around the worst industries in our country: sports gambling, marijuana, and crypto-scams.

Democratic capitalism requires, at a minimum, political and cultural leaders who elevate and ratify the public’s common sense and morality as a check against the shameless pursuit of unproductive or downright harmful profit. Embracing a laissez-faire attitude unmoored from virtue would be bad enough; a White House that actively cheerleads for ways to ruin your life will accelerate our social decay. Placing vice on a pedestal is its own road to serfdom.

Democratic capitalism requires, at a minimum, political and cultural leaders who elevate and ratify the public’s common sense and morality as a check against the shameless pursuit of unproductive or downright harmful profit. Embracing a laissez-faire attitude unmoored from virtue would be bad enough; a White House that actively cheerleads for ways to ruin your life will accelerate our social decay. Placing vice on a pedestal is its own road to serfdom.

This is about as conservative a sentiment as is on offer these days.

© National Review