Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with their Moms?

I finished the book Freakonmics by Levitt and Dubner. It is fascinating. Freakonomics deals with the "hidden side of everything". If morality represents how people would like the world to work, then economics shows how it actually does work. This central idea is explained through chapters like: What do School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?; How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents; Where Have All the Criminals Gone?; and What Makes a Perfect Parent?

One of the most important lessons I learned concerns the idea of "conventional wisdom". Conventional wisdom follows the path of least resistance. However the most obvious answer to a question is not always the right one. The easiest way to explain something usually serves convenience and not truth. Generally people accept conventional wisdom because it helps explain an uncomfortable reality in an easy-to-swallow manner. Our current administration has done this at almost every turn. Our domestic and foreign policy are driven by conventional wisdom: the war on terror; immigration; the war in Iraq; and the suspension of civil rights in the name of national security. What has become the easiest and most acceptable way to explain our actions and policy in this land and other lands no matter how atrocious or ethically diabolical is to say that we do it in the name of national security.