I had the privilege this evening of attending the twentieth anniversary gala dinner for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. I’ve known Fred Smith, CEI’s founder and president, for a long time. We worked together at the Council for a Competitive Economy before CEI was founded. He’s really an amazingly energetic and effective proponent of liberty and limited government. And he’s made CEI a remarkably good counterbalance to Ralph Nader’s movement to make life colorless, boring, and dull. (And at the same time that life would be stripped of virtually every pleasure by the humorless Naderites, we would get no increase in safety, but rather the opposite. Free-market capitalism is not only more fun, it generates longer, better, healthier lives within which to experience an ever wider array of the pleasures of life.)
(Although the event was black tie, the dinner presented me with the opportunity to wear my recently acquired white tie, evening tails, and black silk top hat. I regret that there are so few opportunities in Washington to dress properly. So I called Fred and asked his permission beforehand to be a bit overdressed.)
Hey! Post a picture! We want to see!
I second that. 🙂
Alas, no photos were taken. And none, I fear, would have been posted.
Tom: If I remember correctly the “tux” was actually invented/introduced in Washington DC. I can report that white tie remains strictly de rigeur in Mobile, Alabama. Many more men own tails than own their own tuxedo.
Jule Herbert/Orange Beach AL
Thanks for that information. I’ve learned something new. I’ve wondered why white tie is so rare in D.C. (And it is overall a smarter look, anyway; in Germany a tux is called a “smoking,” which I gather was because it was originally a semi-formal smoking jacket.)