I decided to tell them how I would hope to respond to Strangers in Their Own Land if I were an eighteen-year-old Louisianan sitting in their seat that day. If I were interested in government, I told them, I’d want to know why U.S. surveys reflect a declining faith in government, and I’d want to check out the “best-practice” states around the world and to figure out what they’re doing right. Why does Norway, another oil state, with roughly the same size population as Louisiana, have the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, $800 billion, while Louisiana, also rich in oil, remains our nation’s
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