We've long been collectors of communist art, as our work has been taking us to the old Soviet Bloc for over 20 years. Since the early 90's I've been making tongue-in-cheek out-loud wishes that the US postal service would hire all the old Commie artists to design our stamps. They were not only better, but in a word, they were more manly. I'm sure you've had quite enough of the drawings children hang on the the wall of their 1st Grade classrooms appear on stamps...both in the US and the UN. Or how about flowers, (every type know to man), ribbon stamps to breast cancer, gay awareness, the three R's (Respect, Respect and Respect)...how many can I list? And the art quality. Gad! You know the artists had to be kin to someone in the front office at the Chicago Regional Headquarters to get that contract. I've seen better art tagged to the sides of freights cars.
      Well, that may all be over, for what we know about socialism is that the tactics it uses to get to a place is not the same it uses once in power. To be sure, no one clued Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters about it, but the mommification of America is about to end. Of course, the great irony is that this is what the conservative social right has been hoping to see for years.  
      Alas, for all the wrong reasons will our prayers be answered, and that, sisters and brothers, is the theme of today's sermon.
      We continue to allude to the coming collision of Socialism Lite, or Skirt Socialism, whatever you want to call it, and Socialism With An Edge, which is a much more pure and leaner, meaner form. We believe this is the type socialism Obama will bring to American politics and for the next 4-8 years, we can watch the tug of war play out. And even if we are out tof the loop as the media becomes a genuine lapdog of this new regime, we will be able to tell by the public art, for example, who's winning. In commercials, posters, stamps, (Visit our art gallery at the sandsinstitute.org, as we will be offering downloads of some really great Commie art.), and public venues it will all be apparent who's winning.
      This is no small matter. We can only guess at this early date whether there is a hidden under belly of Islam in this regime, but the signs are there. But true socialism (versus the nude beach/hot tub socialism of California) has always had a austere, manly countenance. Islam merely carries it to another (higher?) level of puritanism, not seen in blue America for a generation at least. We think one of the underlying reasons the college youth have adopted the imagry of socialism (without ever really knowing what it means, or what they are giving up...until it's too late) is that it involves a kind of regimentation they never got at home. Some of it will be superficial, Commie chic, but socialist handlers know how to cull the wheat from the chaff, just as they did in the 1960s. With so many more to work with, the cadres will be sizeable, and pervasive.
     Expect to see the cadre-ization of many institutions inside academia, and out, unlike anything we've ever seen before outside the Cultural Revolution in China. No Red Guard mind you (unless it gets out of hand) but a toned-down youth, both in speech and dress, spreading a quiet, brooding fear, far and wide. (The dailyCuss will likewise cool it, the serious screamers finding fewer and fewer venues as time goes by. A few might even get it, and also see they've been had. Again, too late.) True feminism will rejoice as men will behave as men, and true women will also behave as men...not mommies. And yes, there will be Mao jackets or othere uniform of some sort. Never forget, the drop-out culture and hippies wore uniforms, too. It's part of the schtick.
     But again, the irony is that there will be a tacit approval of much of this, especially out there in socially conservative fly-over country. As they (we) watch hard-core socialists turn on the purveyors of filth on Madison Avenue and Hollywood, they will quietly cheer as they watch oh, so many actors, actresses, screen writers and directors get theirs...and dozens of product lines disappear from television altogether. Overnight. When rappers start to lose both the 'Hood and the Gangsta culture, they will quietly cheer as they have to don uniforms and join the new National Police Force...or migrate to Venezuela with what's left of their millions. As universities are quietly cleansed of about 30% of their curricula that have absolute no market value except inside academia (and as socialism redefines "market value"), they will issue whispered cheers as all those grad students, professors and deans have to take clerical jobs inside the newly-formed Department of Social Awareness. (A little lesson here: It was the Iranian students who came to the US to get degrees in absolutely worthless pursuits, who then returned home to find no available jobs for experts in Renaissance Music Studies, who first empowered the return of Ayatollah Khomeini from Paris. See how that always works out in the end?) As PacMan Jones or Ron Artest end up doing three-to-five with the new One-Strike and You're-In-Stir Policy of professional sports, they will quietly hoorah. Thank God! Finally. As condoms are no longer distributed in public schools, as b-j's under the stairwell are punished as crimes, as truant officers once again roam the neighborhoods (in squad cars), as sex education is replaced by the teaching of hygiene with the "new language" of sex taught in the more discreet language of Queen Victoria, they will breathe a sigh of relief. As school uniforms replace that $1500 a year for new school clothes, they will once again cheer, as China sighs. As public high schools are emptied of about 30% of their students in favor of vocational training...in barracks...they will once again feel safe to send their kid to school.
     Then, after about twenty years of this cheering, and suddenly God is banished from all public places, they will say "Wait a minute." When the husband loses his job or is demoted because he was seen in church, or his wife wore a cross pendant, they will say "What's this all about?" When, as grandparents it finally dawns on them that, except for those few who have been tapped out by the state, their children had to adopt their very same position in life, they will quietly scream "Damn, what did we do?"...just before they roll over and die. They will die with the pain of the knowledge that they voted in a caste system back in Ought Eight that excluded their children from anything but drudgery. Among older Slavic Christians who paid their dues for all those years there is an unorthodox folk belief that even in heaven there is a "grief room" where they can look down on earth and see how their children are bearing up under the weight of misery brought on by the Imperial Communists. Heady stuff, huh?
    All the things we could have done, but were too busy to do, for all the right reason, from saving our House, our community, our nation, will have finally been done anyway, but for all the wrong reasons, condemning our children and our childrens' children to a life of hopeless servitude, and worse...buckets of blood should they ever want to take it all back.
Bernard Chumm