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Veytia, a portly figure with a bushy mustache, seemed an unlikely Eliot Ness, but he was credited with reducing violence and hailed as “the terror of every criminal” in a laudatory corrido, or ballad.

Don’t misunderstand my tone as laudatory: In 17-plus years as prime minister across four decades, Netanyahu has continually outdone himself in viciousness, criminal depravity and shamelessly immoral or amoral statecraft.

This was enough to trigger a cascade of laudatory coverage of Kennedy for meeting the bare minimum of common sense.

With the leadership mantle passing from the former president to his understudy, Mondale offered a laudatory summation of the Carter administration.

Ever since, there has been a cottage industry of conservative academics writing books and essays supporting Strauss, which almost invariably receive laudatory notices in right-wing vehicles like National Review or the Claremont Institute.