The death benefits fiasco is outrage in a bottle, the evil that seems Lex Luthor than legislative. A government that refuses to pay death benefits to men who died for their country is like a Republican flat point in an Oliver Stone fever dream. What's next, drowning orphans to save on laundry?

You can blame the left or right, but that misses the point, which is how evil presents itself. It's rarely hair raising or shocking. It's big, it's boring, it's bland, indiscriminate government. For big government to work, you must be subservient to the slab. It's the one-size-fits-all that socialists extol as they avert their gaze from the horror's rot.

When big government moves, it does so slowly but surely, rolling over those that cannot suppose because it's not supposed to see them.

A small, agile government would handle death benefits, for it understands priorities. You don't fund NPR while a widow weeps. You don't pay federal inmates while a widow weeps. You don't complain about reusing gym towels while a widow weeps. You don't set up barricades to block the views of monuments while a widow weeps.

You don't do anything while a widow weeps, except deal with the widow.

Any essential employee in any private company could tell you that. But the government is public, as the shutdown exposes the underbelly of unlimited bureaucracy. It's the triumph of the nonessential over the essential.

If we've learned anything from this slimdown, this may be the first non- essential administration ever. I'd say furlough all of them, but what they do in their free time might be worse.