I've just returned from an extended, nearly month-long, vacation, up to the northwest. I went into Vancouver, which was pleasant but as soon as I got in I noticed that the green traffic lights were flashing.

I figured out what that meant, but asked anyway. That means, "Proceed with caution." Most of the time they turn green and then start flashing. "Proceed with caution." Just how servile are these people?

This is the nanny state writ large, or at least writ in flashing green lights. I have not been so irritated since the scourge of the "Baby on Board" placards in the 80s, which meant that the driver had no intention of being responsible and was expecting you to be responsible for her.

I am a Texan, and have always been a Texan and will always be a Texan. You couldn't pry me out of the state. But I have to confess that once you get out of Texas and the surrounding states the driving gets a lot better. People simply don't act like the proctologists' delights that we find here.

Seattle was delightful and in every way. For the time I was gone there was one, just one, day of bad weather. I'm told that's unusual. I'm not complaining. The food was wonderful--lots of local produce that the chefs knew how to handle. I even had lunch at the top of the Space Needle and it was quite good, which was pleasant. Food at attractions normally is excused from an attempt at high quality.

The people were delightful too. And the drivers considerate. I could love it there. Except that it had the sense of being Shangra-la. I have friends in the area who tell me of the protests at military bases there. In Texas a military coffin nearly stops the airport with people standing in respect. Who is minding the store? People in Texas or people in the northwest? Because freedom is never a sure thing, nor a secure thing--it must be cherished, and fought for, and defended all of the time.

We are possessed, for now, of an amazing thing--a free and liberal (in the good sense of the word) democracy. A place unprecedented in history where freedom of action is not yet dead. (Although the next fight will be the battle between the mutually exclusive freedom of action and freedom of consequence, the leftist freedom.) And I could see living in Seattle, in that wonderful bubble, and thinking, "It won't happen here." Well, it always does.

Washington, Oregon--lovely, wonderful, enchanted places. But Texas? People here are paying attention.

Except when they're driving.