The correct diagnosis and treatment of an ailment begins with a unified theory.- Gregory House, M.D.

        We at the Sands Institute analyze things for a living, but from the street, the alleyways and sewers. This I consider to be our long suite.
        We don't just analyze what is broken, we analyze what needs to be done to fix it. Even when.
        And also by Whom.
        Right now the best minds agree, America's fate lies in the Whom of the matter. Everyone out there knows the What.
        Finding these Whom's is the only real job before us right now.

        (This is long, but certain things need to be said, for the record. If you don't like interesting explanations, go to The Bottom Line, below.)
       There was a theory came out of Harvard in the late 60s based on the idea that Cro-Magnon man (homo sapiens sapiens- HSS) died out twenty five thousand years ago notwithstanding, or maybe even because of his superior intellect. The theory was that he was so independent he was unable to live cooperatively alongside his hybrid neighbors...us... regular homo sapiens-HS, Man.
       It suggested there was a fatal flaw in the genetic design of Cro-Magnon that made him something of a loner, roaming the wilderness, taking on saber-tooths with a club and things of that sort. He was less communal and less able to live the sedentary existence that we now have come to know as the normal lifestyle of the West. HSS was a risk taker, and maybe even a bit of a thrill seeker. He stirred the pot. His independence, along with his higher intelligence, so the theory goes, was literally bred out of his progeny as he mated with other hominids, making those children more suitable for living in walled communities, tilling the soil and generally joining in for mutual defense.
       If all that's true, ironic, isn't it, that this immense intellect and independence lessened Cro-Magnon's long term survival chances, while his weaker, hybridized off-shoot, HS-Man, found safety in numbers, their (our) individual "weakness" proven to be a surprising enhancement to their collective overall survival chances.
       Still, that's the theory. And the Cro-Magnons who refused to join this mixed gene pool died a solitary death.
       Chew on that for awhile.

       At the time of that theory (I was in law school) I recall leftists liked its communalist twist. It seemed to infer that the idealized American, John Wayne at the time, was the one who was really out of place in America. Instead, nature had really bequeathed the world to Cro-Magnon's halfbreed stepson...Sidney. Indeed, in hindsight, it seems by then the Left had found this to be an effective way to redefine the foundations of American civilization, as a doctrine to preach to its radicalized legions; the Alpha male in American society was a modern cave man, a brute...a stupid brute. Re-define Alphie and we have it made, they thought.
        Well, what of it? you may ask. Because he dressed up in animal skins, had no recorded language and lived in rock shelters, notwithstanding his inexplicable intellectual and artistic talents, to us Cro-Magnon was just a cave man. That's all. An insurance company mannequin.

         Maybe we should make more of it, a lot more, for it seems, as a metaphor for human social and political progress, the Alpha-HSS Cro-Magnon was...Wow!

       Consider this; in those thirty years this "cave man" thinking has led us to the common mocking term, "knuckle-dragger", which applies to certain physical specimens, but with limited mental capabilities...football jocks and Marines come to mind. This is how we've been conditioned to view the physical side of the modern Alpha-male. The current notion fostered in academe is that those who can, read a book. Those who cannot play football (or enlist, per John Kerry). I think we all know this viewpoint by now, for our day-to-day culture is filled with the subtler side of its symbolism and innuendo.
       But the hard truth is that this running attempt to describe the Alpha male as being no more than a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal is a lie. Neanderthal was another beast altogether. Cro-Magnon stood even more erect than we do (except the Marines), and about two inches taller. He truly was football team material, only Notre Dame football, not Mount Pleasant High.
        But wait, there's more. His brain was larger. HSS-Cro-Magnon-Alpha was not just a 3-letter jock...but also president of the History, Latin and Science Club.
        This is the truth the Knuckle-Draggers Defamation League doesn't want us to know. Still, for the past three decades it has been no accident that they (and we all know who They are) have defined him as Moose from Archie comics, a dunce, but worse, one who is more apt to use brute force than diplomacy or fists than words. He is more willing to attack...without cause...than to negotiate. He is an acquirer, not a sharer. He is a glutton. In the end, he is driven by passion and appetite, not reason.
       I can go on. He thinks mostly of food, sex and sports. He can eat a cheeseburger the size of a Slovak's hat, wash it down (responsibly of course) with a six-pack of Coors, then belch the alphabet and clear out an entire auditorium with a single squeeze of his sphincter. His idea of male enhancement is a 60" Hi-Def. It wouldn't take much more to convince us that the American Alpha male, after all is said and done, is a a bully, a wife beater, or rapist who would rather spill his sperm in the parking lot of a TGIF than read Chaucer, and of course, a homophobe...unless he should become a Jesuit first, at which time he would rollover (sic) and become a pedophile.
      Bottom line: We have to get to him in time.
      (Note: As we proceed from element to element of Alpha-ism, do not confuse the term Alpha-male with the contemporary use of the term Uber-male, for modern Ubers are one and all Betas...yes even, no, especially Bill Clinton...only having first been re-branded by other Betas to look and sound like Alphas...but only in a photograph where Alphas are not allowed  to stand side-by-side for purposes of comparison.)
      Alfie then is someone we do not want our children to be like, and we have been advised to re-arrange the way we raise children so as to make it so. In compliance with this advice the past 30 years, from early school years on, we have channeled momma's little Alpha into this stereotype, in the schools and popular culture, defining his adornments, his physical culture, so as to identify and separate him, by feeding certain of his appetites and talents while denying or failing to develop others, all with a view to narrow his choices...so that, by 18-to-25, he will become what someone who did not have his best interests at heart wanted him to be...or more to the point, he would not try to become what some others feared he might.
       In this manner, over many years, the Alpha male has been defined first by his physical characteristics, then channeled into the appropriate professions; police, fire-fighting, the military. If his athletic skills and the shaking out process from high school to professional levels find him still standing, we can be sure that his speech patterns, his garish attire, his bling, will still define him as a knuckle-dragger, only a rich one.

      So why have we allowed ourselves as a society, now risen, now civilized, to purposely define the highest expression of our kind as being a beast, and by inference, all those who came after him still carrying some of his most glowing attributes?
      Why have we split him in two, sending his physical side to a kind of living perdition, an object of either gladiatorial entertainment or communal protection, while hiding his intellect under a peach basket of conditioned appetites?
      Why have we decided the Alpha brain and the Alpha physique cannot occupy the same body?
      And why did we conveniently wait until all the building was done before we decided the complete Alpha package was no longer of any use to us?
      It has always been that way, from the beginning, that's why.

      There have always been a lot of Darwinian and moral questions about this theory, as I laid it out, above. Why would nature prefer a weaker species, which seems to be a very un-Darwinian claim to make? Yet she did, it seems. Did the HSS strain survive in HS-Man? Arguably, yes. After all, "A" is for Alpha, A-student and Athlete. And as for Cro-Magnon's refusal to settle down and join the herd, was that an act of selfishness (a moral choice) or was he just biologically (genetically) driven? As Bill Clinton might say, that depends on how you define "selfish".
      The Harvard conclusion seemed to ask whether America's vaunted image of individualism was (is) in fact one of self-destruction, even as the history of Man has already proved the alternative collectivist image to be nothing but.
      Just to keep you awake I'll try to avoid debating the biological questions here, (in part because it's not my strength), and offer only my own socio-political conclusions, with a view toward answering the questions raised in the title: Has America's Alpha males been corralled and steered off into less-threatening niches in society, penned up like animals in a zoo? And has the political Alpha male been out-and-out assassinated?
      The short answer to the last part of that question, about the political Alpha, is that he cannot be killed off. He can be removed from the constitutional political process, and that part of the equation may already be true, but he cannot be killed off. If removed from the one he will simply arise in another, a more ancient form that has been known to history since the first sharp-pointed rock was lashed to a wooden pole. And that's a worry.
      The problem is, we won't find the answer of either of these questions inside the two biological legs of the HSS Alpha strain, superior body and superior intellect. History proves that there has to be a third leg of Alpha-ism that is outcome determinative, for smart does not make a man good. Nor does being the most skilled with a basketball, a spear, or a rifle.
      Just think of the possible variations. Assuming that the HSS strain ran throughout HS-humankind in short order, it would have appeared randomly, an A-physique with a B-mind, all the way down to O-mind (Moose from Archie) to the A-mind with B- all the way down O-body (Steven Hawking). And speaking of Hawking, we are reminded that there are glaring shades of A-intellects, and bodies (Michael Jordan). I think I'm a pretty smart fellow...until I sit down with Charles Krauthamer, or Bill Buckley. Visit any research laboratory and you will quickly pick up on the pecking order, and scent, among geniuses. Just ask Antonio Salieri, Mozart's unwilling foil.
      The contemporary notion is that the two A-attributes cannot be found inside the same body (and it is even hinted in modern pop culture that it never did). This is absurd, yet, scanning the pop press the past thirty years, you are not apt to find them. Only in the cinema are they found regularly, but even there only under controlled and contrived circumstances (see below).
      For those who have a sense of history, it would seem incongruous that so suddenly the A-mind would take leave of the A-body (or was it the other way around?) after having been together for millenia. Why so all-of-a-sudden when only a generation ago we had national athletes who actually had read a book? Can anyone recall a fellow named Richard (I'm not allowed to write D**k on TownHall) Kazmaier? Heisman Trophy winner, 1951...Princeton!!? How about Pete Dawkins, Heisman 1958...Army? He went onto Oxford and Princeton. How about Rev Bob Richards? University of Illinois, ordained minister, and Olympic champion. Bill Bradley, Princeton. Or more down to the "lesser" pursuits of perhaps "simpler" men, how about Squadrons VT-3, -6 and -8, who flew unprotected torpedo bombers to certain death at the Battle of Midway, thus opening up the Japanese carriers to destruction by later waves, and a victory that turned the tide of the Pacific war? Yale men! Hell, why not just visit any university department lobby and see how many law grads, English and History faculty members, physicists and mathmaticians died...in combat!..1942-1945.

THE V-ALPHA
      Sometime after their time, 1970 is about as good as any other starting point, it was determined that it would not be good for America to see Alpha males portrayed as both high physical and intellectual specimens. I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist but how else do we explain this dramatic shift in what comprises a hero, a real man, an unyielding defender of virtue who has read a book, when all of a sudden, Snap! that dog doesn't bark anymore, and no one reports or laments it?
      Some Sidney, or group of Sidneys, had to have decided that it's better we separate the Alpha. The scheme they seemed to have settled on was by putting the A-mind over the A-physical...showering the athletic Alphies with money and face time on TV and magazines (celebrity), while granting the more subtle power over process for the finer minds.
      This isn't new in the world. In fact it is ancient. But it's also what America was formed to avoid, the corralling of better minds and bodies and putting them under the thumb of a collection of a type of Beta's, just as the world had seen repeated, time and time again, since the rise of empire in the Near East four thousand years ago.
      So, who is this special type of Beta? What is it?
      This is where we find that third leg of Alpha-ism, which some argue is not biological (beginning with Aquinas) but rather from God, while others (von Hayek) infer it is indeed Darwinian. No matter, they came to almost the same conclusion (and by remarkably similar routes)....for both concluded that it is what men with do with their talents, both physical and intellectual, that determines the course of their lives and the lives they touch. It is what men do that is 1) passed on and survives them versus 2) that which is burned to ash. This is true of the individual man, his House, or his nation in the broader sense.
      That special essence can go by any name, but since I can't find a suitable one beginning with "A" I will choose the "Virtuous or V- Alpha", involving all the things over the years that come down to us not just as virtues, from character, integrity, honor, honesty, (again, see the Boy Scout Law), but also an unyielding defense of them.
      I can't say why, but these differences are not just handed out. You can't be appointed a Virtuous Alpha. You can't be awarded an Alpha medal with V-device. I can't declare you to be anything, Alpha to Omega, either intellectually or morally/philosophically/spinally. You either are or you are not, and the proof, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in the pudding.
     You see, unlike the raw attributes we acquire physically or mentally, and which are genetic or biological in origin, this third leg of Alpha-ism, seems to be acquired. Learned. Acquired by merit, and like Christianity, available to anyone who enrolls.
     Maybe there is a biological mechanism in us somewhere that is like a treated skillet, where things either stick or are repelled, even from an early age, you know, as you often hear from grandparents, "He was always hard-headed, even as a baby."
     Still, "hard-headed" does not necessarily mean Good. We all know people who are just as defiant in protecting that hole in their soul as the ones who will defend Mother's honor. In the current political climate they are the ones we know who will not outgrow it. They are the ones who will not allow the film to be lifted from their eyes as life's experiences are supposed to dictate. Experience grinds both ways. Maybe the rigid defenders and the rigid haters of Good are cut out of the same cloth. I can't say.
     What I can say is that one sort of conduct leads to survival, while the other leads to destruction, and science bears this out.
     For that reason, even as a Providentialist (one who believes God's fingerprints are all over the American experience) I still like the von Hayek argument more, for it is one the Darwinists cannot automatically shut their minds to, as they are wont to do when an Invisible Hand is sneaked into the debate. Aquinas, following Aristotle, argues than Man chooses virtue(s) because they provide him the final Good End, a reward beyond earth. I believe this too. No matter, von Hayek would argue that Man chooses virtue because those virtues lend themselves to the furtherance of the survival of his society or culture, through his progeny....and then goes on to outline in very "scientificky" language why a free society, with free markets, and democratic institutions etc., provide access to these survival-enhancing virtues in spades compared to all other political systems.
     Von Hayek has both history and cultural anthropology on his side in this argument, as anthropology (a real science when handled by real scientists) has the expanse of history to prove, repeat PROVE, that certain practices by a society can keep it alive...indefinitely, while others can kill it dead'rn a mackarel.
     That's what I meant by special type of Beta above, for in the top-down, class-based, or state-based society (from empire to kingdom to modern socialist state), even while they have Alpha minds a'plenty on hand to run their enterprises, in time, a very short time indeed, especially in bureaucracies, the Alpha-intellect is turned away from the mission of building, or even effectively tending to the needs of society, i.e., getting water to the city, blood to the hospital, spare parts to the factory, or doing good in general, to pursuing personal missions of acquiring status and power within the organization. It is statism's fatal flaw.
     If this sounds remarkably like the heart-beat of a capitalist in a free market system, it isn't, and there are cogent reasons for it. Bureaucracies breed on personal, and petty, selfishness. So do private entrepreneurs (or capitalists ) you say. And you'd be right...only, the entrepreneur steals no one else's money (Marx disputes this, but I am right on this point...just ask Charles Krauthammer.), and once he oversteps, he is thrown down...and replaced by an entrepreneur who is more measured in his step. Usually it is his House and his House alone that suffers. Collateral damage is minimal.
     On the other hand, the bureaucrat is a hireling, and no matter what the sector, private or public, when he eventually brings the walls down around him (as he almost always does) he destroys something that he did not build and was not his to forsake, or destroy. This is fiduciary duty at its simplest, and in its most moral context...and so simple a notion that virtually every immigrant who hired onto that first job in the factories and mill towns immediately knew, and were forever grateful for.
     So just what is the socialist's beef? Well, envy, jealousy, and class arrogance, to name a few...but all are driven by a deep selfishness, I think. Karl Marx came up with a theory that was untested, so it is not for me to say that underlying his hatred of the achievement class in 19th Century Germany was a knowledge that the system he wanted to create would crash and burn and destroy the underpinnings of civil society in the process.
     Karl Marx would have had to have a deep understanding of world history to see that his "new order" was just a spin-off of the old orders that had come before him, the main difference being the different type of intellects that would be managing it. Clearly he didn't have that kind of insight. So, in the end Marx may just have been stupid, you know, not duh-stupid, but stupid nonetheless.
     But modern Leftist cannot he held so blameless, though arguably much more stupid. After nearly a century of Marx they have every reason to know the system(s) they wish to impose on others will self-destruct. So, among this brood, there has to be other compelling pathologies driving them. Selfishness is one, and it can trump any risk when one does not believe in a  final judgment, for instance. To that person, the career in the front office, whether at Enron, the Department of Agriculture, or the White House, is a mere crap shoot. "If I win this insider game, I'm in gravy until I get out (to get out quick, with wealth is usually the game plan...think George Stephanopolous here), and if I can get out, get a place in  Barbados, and the whole company (or country) falls after I'm gone...BFD."
     This is but the selfish scenario. Still others are driven by other pathologies, deep anger and bitterness, with still different games that can be played out. We're watching now as these often antagonistic impulses find themselves on the same team to push the Alpha male and his values into imprisonment. Regardless of the pathology, and there are several, all seem to be driven by some anger, resentment, envy, bitterness toward Alphas and their achievements. The removal of religion from their lives simply means there are no longer any perceived consequences to their acts other than throwing snake-eyes with the dice. Moses Sands often commented that modern atheists don't so much disbelieve in God, (the big Kahuna-Alpha of them all), as hate Him for what He can do that they can't, and rule in ways they can't.

     In America there has never been an unhappier class than this "smart" class. But it is also why this war between the single Alpha and the collective Beta has persisted from the beginning of time. Only history says little of the role of the moral Alpha, until that relatively narrow chain of philosophies and their histories, which some say began at the Cross, led up to that assemblage of men in Philadelphia in 1776. (I only say this to remind you that the Founders too were standing on shoulders...and they all knew it.) 
     This struggle has been going on since the beginning of time, and I'll always argue that God prefers Virtue to Vice (for even what the anti-theists might call "selfish" reasons). In this place called America the choices are glaring in their simplicity, easy to discern...and if given that choice Man will choose virtue most often...for it is instinctive (animal like) for him to choose behavior that will provide for the collective survival of his kind. In this regard I have always wanted to politely debunk Rush Limbaugh's insistence on America being the home of the hard core individualist. Limbaugh seems to be missing a collective essence, which, in a word, is goodness. (Adam Smith, by the way, did not neglect this element in Man's pursuit of self-interest.) I know it is mere semantics, but the greatest power we have ever had is the collective strength of our moral center as we move forward in pursuit of our own self interests. It is in this context, first and foremost, above our creativity, economic strength, even liberty, that we separate ourselves from the rest of the world, and history. (See DeToqueville's comment about America being "good".)
      But of late there seems to be a counter-argument...and across a broad spectrum of human activity. This is why things are getting scary now. After all, our ideal of "nobility" today and the French definition of the 11th Century certainly aren't even close to one another...anymore.  So maybe "craven and perfidious" are now viewed differently as well...even seen as higher, not lower expressions of human conduct? OK, that's a bit much, as we know this not to be the case since Democrats still go to such great lengths to disguise these things. But just consider all the survival-endangering things we seem proud of these days. Bastardy. Divorce. Atheism...no, anti-religion, which is far more sinister. (Make you own list).
      And what about envy? Jealousy? Pride? They scarcely try to hide it any longer. So, in due course, shame also hobbles down. And what about lying...one of the most self-destructive acts on earth? Today, lying can be justified for just about everything, beginning roughly in the second grade. (Could a PhD be just around the corner for a young student wishing to show the correlation between the rise of dishonesty, and the rise of divorce, and the fall of Sunday school attendance among children...or will you just take my word for it?) Then there's narcissism, although none dare use that term...especially in front of Mom. But wenn is wie eine narcisstische gebt....(if it walks like a narcissist...). Look at this from the pop culture point of view...you know, man, forever tattoos were un-cool. Now they're cool. 'Nuff said. Are virtues now being rated no more highly than fashion, in with the spring, out with the first cold winds of autumn?
       We are at that point in American culture when one can find oneself in a room filled with liars and feel totally naked and out of place just for being something else. In fact, when these worlds collide, there have been all sorts of me-too psychological tests to show which of the two groups is more likely to prevail, which probably explains the modern Republican Party and  their incessant desire to be invited to cocktail parties filled with just this sort of media maven.
      So despite what clear-headed anthropologists declare to be behavior that is survival-endangering, still, we may now live in an age when that conduct is actually held up and exalted as the chosen path to modern humanistic righteousness. These are dangerous waters indeed, especially if the un-virtuous and anti-virtuous outnumber us.
        
       A LITTLE HISTORY
       Alpha's have always built societies, not just the military and political framework, but their infrastructure, the arts, everything we know to use as a classification for civilization. But if Alpha is a builder of societies, then how does he so quickly get relegated to a subordinate, even captive role of outcast?
       The answer is easy, actually, for nature has never favored the notion that bloodline trumps all. For thousands of years before America was formed, Nature favored the case for what would be known as the American approach, where merit, not power, lifts all ships....and we have just shown how the moral roots of merit are acquired. They are learned. A meritorious father cannot implant that particular seed in his children with his blood. He can, however, from his knee.
       Throughout history men have looked at themselves like thoroughbreds, and that in their seed the strength of their line continues. History proves otherwise, although, we'll never know for sure, since so many daughters, or second and third sons were by-passed in the order of ranking. It was a horribly ineffectual process...still is, even in private business (where a merit-based free market society seems to sort things out judiciously).
       The American free-market merit system presumes this, in fact. All that a man can pass to his children is his economic wealth, which they can do with as they wish. History shows they generally dissipate it, the entire House having to start over again in roughly three generations. This law applies even to the Kennedy's by the way, although with immense wealth it may take longer. But not since Papa Joe has any Kennedy actually added to the family nest egg. They have all been a net drain...which cannot be said about Abe Goldberg's son, Marvin, who he passed his jewelry store onto in 1982.
       But when one passes not just wealth, but land the size of New Jersey, with other people tied to it, and power (military and political), things are different, as history also shows.

        From the date of America's first settlement, up until sometime in the 1960s America was an Alpha-created and -dominated culture. And by Alphas, I mean both kinds (stay mindful of the third leg of Alpha-ism); 3-letter athletes with degrees in Engineering and C-student high school grads with an innate native aptitude for building things, getting things done and for blazing new trails to get there. Top to bottom, from small town business to the top of the highest corporate skyscraper in Chicago, that's what free markets were all about...unfettered opportunity for the best to rise to the top. It was only for the Alphas to define the size of the pond they wanted to swim in.
     In fact, through the span of Man's history it does seem that it had always been Alphas that first built a thing, and sometimes, yes, as with the European tribes, those first "builders" were the ablest fighters, the best riders, the most lethal swordsmen, as well as the most ruthless leaders, in keeping with the spirit of the times. It's their barbarism we like most to look back upon today, with disdain, forgetting, I think, to consider the native intelligence required in managing tribal and military affairs, and leadership in battle. The European nations were not built upon the backs of weasley little back-stabbers. That sort of Beta-blood lineage came later with the settled princedoms, as it always did, from China to the Indus Valley to Rome, onto the noble houses of Europe, whose own notions of protecting their bloodlines made hemophiliacs of them all.
     In the days of building, before the days of administration and lazy hazy days on the royal barge, nation pioneers and nation builders were all HSS Alphas, and so important is that fact that even today, the most effeminate French layabout will just about kill to be able to prove he has even the tiniest drop of Merovingian blood coursing through his sclerotic veins.
     What happens, of course, as we know from Rome, by the 2nd Century, it was mostly Beta emperors who sent out Alpha generals to do battle on the Danube or in Germania or Britain...in part, to keep them out of town. The history of Europe from the death of Augustus on is one of weak, or bad, or sniveling princes (with precious few exceptions) sending out better men than they were to pursue some petty advantage, while lounging about on the royal barge, dining off the levies of their military and their tax collectors. (Sound familiar?)
     It follows that the corralling of Alpha citizens by Beta nobility has a long tradition in history....histories that have always ended in collapse, era by era (e.g., feudalism), empire by empire, even nation by nation. The common denominator was always the relegation of Alpha males to subordinate status, and their inability to exist outside narrow politically defined arenas, the military or rebels. (The rise of scholarship, primarily under auspices the Church, provided yet another avenue in the Middle Ages.)
     It is no different in modern times and under modern systems, as we have written here so many times; the USSR was created by a genuine Alpha, but quickly (by history's standards) fell into ruin. The speed of its fall was as likely laid at the feet of bureaucratism (B is for Beta) as the Marxist-Leninism it hosted.
    History's most searing question has been: Is there an antidote to this cycle of Build-Enslave-Collapse? 
    Of course there was, and America was it. In the span of two hundred years America has had more Alpha presidents than France has had kings...in a thousand. (Can you see a kind of re-direction for history here?) It's true. You can look it up.
     In the days of absolute monarchies, there were no other outlets for Alpha-ism other than the military...or crime. Imagine the pent-up energy. This "divine law of nature and kings" persisted all the way up until a few religious dissenters decided to flee Europe for a free wilderness across the ocean.
     Jump ahead three hundred more years to upstate New York. In the 1950s, when Robert Moses began building the giant power plants along the Niagara River gorge. His engineers noticed young Mohawk Indians who just came to watch, running willy-nilly, playing games of tag, along the steel girders at hundreds of feet above the ground. Before long the Mohawks had become the best high steel workers in the country. Anthropologists later concluded that the high pay and respect the Mohawks received for this special skill was a "substitution" for the military prowess that they had long been known for in the Iroquois Confederacy before the Europeans came.
     The same can be said for the farmer or villager in Europe, once set free in the wilderness of the American colonies. Just consider what building one's own House laid open for him in America. Free enterprise and a Constitution enabled these men and women to pursue without state interference a thing that never existed in all prior history. This was the perfect outlet for the Alpha male and the Alpha-built household, without having to become warriors or criminals. And it was a perfect system built on constant renewal, where new Alphas could rise from the bottom without bloodshed, or thrones toppled.
     Now for the rest of the story. After generation upon generation of non-English (even Irish), non-European foreigners, from every corner of the globe, America has proved rather conclusively that this thing called American Exceptionalism is indeed a successful "substitution" that applies the world over, denied everywhere else, except here. (Again, I argue for the Hand of Providence here, but even if I could not, Darwinists would still not like the outcome that these mere facts would require them to draw.)

       THE ALPHA MALE IN CINEMA
       I debated including this here, as possibly a separate piece, but felt it belonged, as it explains a special characteristic of Alpha-ism among the middle class, and the C-student, who we speak of so favorably on our blog.
      You probably haven't noticed, but the Alpha-hero male has been dumbed down considerably since the 1970s. It's worth a comment.  
       From the beginning, Hollywood idealized the image of our Alpha male, but his image hasn't gotten much positive press since John Wayne died. But Hollywood knows what academia won't say out loud, and that is its entire industry is built on this single ideal of the American Homo sapien sapiens Alpha-male doing his thing, and his thing, even in the most simplistic of vehicles, and with the "stupidist" of names (Rambo), is to stand on principle, defend honor, Mom, apple pie, the American way, and fight for the right. It's a formula that never quits on giving at the box office. Hero in any language stands for "Virtuous Alpha".
      Do the math. If Hollywood leaned more toward comedies and romances with Jerry Stiller and Meg Ryan, or histo-dramas about QEI, they'd be no better off than Barbara Streisand, if the only people who bought her records agreed with her politics. They'd all be sleeping at a Motel 6 instead of mansions.
      But the public never really knows about the identity of the man behind the image up there on the screen. Some do transcend the screen. We know John Wayne because John Ford crafted him. And Eastwood was directed by Eastwood. Even Redford directs Redford, which shows that politics has little to do with what HSS can do with both physical presence and a mind.
      Oh, John Wayne smart? You bet, and that's what Betas hate most about the "common Alpha" male, his kind of smarts had little to do with books. It's Redford who proves it...on screen.
      But this is The Rub that defines modern politics today, so pay attention. Movie-goers have always understood the native intelligence of the man who sees that something needs to be done, and does it. In the real world it's a higher expression of intelligence than book larnin', since, as a rule, most of the book learned can't, don't and won't do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. (Remember that town in "High Plains Drifter" that Clint Eastwood painted red? Can you tell me one thing different between those towns folks and the modern Republican Party?)
      America was built by common-sensical men who paved the road for more learned men to come behind them, and both Alphas and Betas naturally understand this. Common sense is the most survival-enhancing form of intelligence yet discovered. Math, science, engineering, even philosophical textbooks are filled with its teachings. But boy, do we hate that word "common" nowadays.
      Since common sense requires direct observation and experience more than book-learning, a bone of contention has arisen that persists today as to which is the most important to society and its advancement, experience or education. I won't argue that here, but in peace time the latter figures seems to figure more prominently than the former; the arts, literature, etc. But in times of trial, when action is called for more than words, there is no doubt which is the more survival-rewarding. Hollywood was able to reduce that to a simple, clean formula, whether it was the Evil Empire or a cow town with a greedy rancher trying to take over.
      But Beta's don't look down upon (although they pretend to) so much as resent the ability of a person to be able to do what some Alphas can do, such as allowing their presence, their stature (their scent) to reduce a long paragraph into a few words. Search academic literature and you find a long-standing hatred for the intellectual skill to quickly reduce a proposition to a simple formula composed sometimes of only one word, such as Go, Move, Stay, Yes, No, Nuts. (Ronald Reagan had that. Barack Obama does not.) Being a lawyer by training I'd been conditioned to believe that to be short on words was to be un-lettered. But it never took, for in my own life I first learned the opposite rule at age 12, with a broekn nose. I learned then (twice in fact, being a slow learner) that some people and situations allow no time for negotiation, which anyone who ever got caught in a lie (as I, and most every would-be lawyer, did) needs. As a rule, moral Betas require a world that allows them to talk their way out of a jam. So their moms made it the law of land. Civil society has hobbled down since.
     Of course, being a man of few words doesn't make a man smart. Anyone remember Chauncy Gardiner (Chance the gardener)? Kenneth Roberts also introduced such a character into his Arundel stories, a slow-witted mumbler who became mayor. But for over 70 years young men have flocked to see just two actors, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood say very little and say so very much at the same time.
     And it hasn't stopped. The movie western may be dead, but somewhere around George Lucas's thirty-first birthday American youth lost its love affair with our original folk hero. But the cowboy's underlying virtues never skipped a beat. Maybe the new sci-fi hero wasn't 6'4, and in a 10 gallon hat, but there was still that indefinable essence.
     But in simplicity there can also be a threat. I watch action-hero films today and try to picture Gable, Cooper, or Jimmie Stewart in them, as well as the Duke or Clint. (I also try to picture a modern Kate Smith being allowed to sing in front of a camera, and choked up just a little when I recently watched a Scottish woman do just that.) Can you imagine Clark Gable having to do a St Vitus dance and triple somersault under a hail of machine gun fire in order to get an audience of young men to come see him?
     Something has changed and it's not just technological.
     Today Hollywood keeps its stars under wraps, so you're never really sure whether you're seeing real men or mere actors. For all I know Brad Pitt and Harry Reid use the same kind of hankie. But while the scripts (writers) still portray Alphas who fight for a noble cause, and who can also think...they must now think fast enough to stay ahead of car crashes, explosions, and machine gun fire...in fact too fast in order to make the story seem believable.
     This is probably the Writers Guild-studio gimmick used to make their modern celluloid Alpha-males seem other-worldly, comic strip (or today, video game) surreal in nature. We're watching Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote, not Destry.
     This keeps peace in the Progressive family, by keeping the male audiences boxed in with stereotypical sentiments and formulaic pyrotechnics for the Alpha-hero. It's a kind of conditioning. Diminish the hero's role of thinking with fast action and fireworks. If Hollywood will keep him untutored and in a sweaty uniform, or able to maneuver a 16-wheeler like it was the Piggly-Wiggly Dodge Charger at Darlington, the political and academic front will continue to keep him corralled. Keep the movie Alpha attractive to the small-town, small business class and we'll keep the Beta-Sidneys doped up on anger, narcissism, condescension, and Marx....and send them off to Wharton.

      Of course this Leftish logic is flawed. Just consider the type of persons who almost universally employ these negative images in this first place. It's what Beta's do once in charge. They protect their turf with the power of the mob.
      They attempt to describe stupid men prone to violence and aggression when, more often than not, Alpha's are neither. There is a big difference between the man who is willing to use violence when forced to, but does knows how, and the one who uses it with relish, as a first, rather than last foot forward. Indeed, throughout the animal kingdom, it is the Beta males, as an act of trying to emulate the Alpha, who engage in gratuitous aggressive displays, loud beatings of the chest...while almost uniformly returning to type in order to actually gain status...i.e., figuring out someway to stab the Alpha in the back. Alpha heroes (John Wayne) were notoriously slow to anger or violence.        Never forget the many years of war gaming done at the Department of Defense. When pressed up against it, it was always the Liberals who went nuclear first. (Lesson: watch North Korea and Pakistan carefully...and prayerfully.)
     I would love to post a list for comment of history's greatest, and most infamous, leaders and conquerors, then compare against a list of Alpha attributes, especially intellectual and moral. Alexander? Probably. Napoleon? Not sure (After all, he did suffer from Napoleon complex, only no one knew it at the time.) Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin? No, but a discussion as to why not would be fun. Karl Marx? Probably not; like Hitler, a deep pathology. Lenin? Probably. How about Maggie Thatcher, one of the toughest Alpha "males" I ever saw? TR? FDR? Reagan? Bush II? Bushel-Britches (Clinton?) Obama?
     Try other famous men. Make your own list of notables. Scientists. Inventors. Engineers. Edison, Einstein, Jonas Salk, Freud. John D. Henry Ford, J P Morgan, Bill Gates.
     How about religious leaders? Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Gautama Buddha.
     Closer to our political origins, consider the Founding Fathers, few of whom ever fought in battle? Washington was most definitely an Alpha male, but what about Franklin? Adams? Jefferson? George Mason?
     Is there a common thread? Within the context of what they have risked, clearly there is. It's interesting to consider the Founders in this context, men who were less physical, less tall, less strong, less Adonis-like examples of Alpha-ism. They were not hunks, and they clung to characteristics that were more moral and philosophical than intellectual but were still the highest expressions of manhood. I ask you, would any Beta ever, in the greatest reach of your imagination, pledge his "fortune, life and sacred honor" for any single thing? I doubt it. (And yes, this means the Left also has it's Alphas, just as the prisons do, and knowing who they are is important to our cause. Bill Ayers comes to mind. Barack Obama does not...yet.)

       The old saw goes that no one knows of God's existence more than the Devil. It's only to Old Clootie's benefit that he can convince us that God does not exist. But he knows better.
       The same is true about Beta's knowledge of Alphas. This is why so many young Alpha males start getting doses of Ritallin by third grade. The point is, by slapping an A- or a B- on people changes the way we look at them...forever (especially that fellow in the mirror) for it explains much of who or what they are that transcends the events that surrounded them. That's why we wade through biographies of great and purportedly great men.
     What we must never forget is that every male undergoes this sort of almost instantaneous scrutiny every waking moment of his life. And they all know it. Every second we are sizing up the other guy and re-evaluating ourselves accordingly.
 
   THE BOTTOM LINE:
     All theories of government can be reduced to a simple rule, a First Rule, or Prime Directive:
                       
       Some say the people who have the minimum skills to understand the blueprint of their House and build it is now in a minority.
       I can't say. What we do know is both the blueprint and the virtues have been under assault, and that assault has been directed at the basic building block of freedom, the Alpha-builder.
       If indeed, he and she are no more, at least in sufficient number, (we believe this not to be the case), then everything is lost, and there's no hope, no how.
       This is where we are now, searching for that soul, that essence, center, foundation...some even call it "spine"...that defines the nation of Alphas trying to protect their own creations.

       Robert Ardrey once wrote that Man was "not a fallen angel but a risen ape." The free American is, by and large, a risen Beta, by having acquired through work and virtue, not blood, Mankind's most desired status; that of creator, builder and owner.
       Here is where we steer away from the biological characterizations of the Alpha and Beta, and define the sort of Alpha behavior that defines the free, civilized Man and Woman. Biologically, we all have our limitations. I loved basketball, but no team I ever heard of was ever looking for a 5'10 post-up center with a great hook shot. Athletically, as most of us are, I'm somewhere between Lambda and Omega. The same for music. The big bucks go to those blessed with extraordinary talents. 
       Once set free to build upon our skills and dreams, we can then let bloodlines dictate how much higher the pinnacle we can climb; to superstar athlete, or maybe only to second string guard at a Division II university, instead of a 5'10 post-up kid with a hook shot; from an elite intellect peeping into the mysteries of the cosmos, to a research scientist at a major university, to a corner pharmacist. Statism provides for one slot, with a queue of thousands trying to get it, to be tapped out, while an Alpha will say to hell with that and just keeps on creating more slots.
      You can easily see why the Constitution provides the better yardstick, for it declared that we all can find that Alpha within us...and by God, we almost all have it, and if not us, our children, or their children...and build something with it. I can find no other form of government that encourages, or even allows this.

     It's in America that Alpha-ism becomes more of a choice than a biological lock-box.  Remember my mentioning the Founding Fathers earlier; smallish men willing to risk all for an ideal of freedom? On the intelligence scale, Alphas one and all. But there were ten times as many "intellectual Alphas" in the colonies unwilling to take that same leap in 1776. What separated them?
     Our Founders were men with ordinary frailties in most ways, in some ways petty and petulant. Hamilton was downright hard to like, while Jefferson and some of the other southern aristocrats-turned-democrats, were equally difficult to suffer. Yet a few simple, easy to acquire (it's been shown) attributes cemented them all together, rendering the ultimate expression of the political Alpha-human.
     What generally separates the political Alpha and the political Beta (besides the obvious...a banner) is that the Alpha can and will stand alone if need be. The Beta needs to form a committee, for there is no dark place he will enter alone. An Alpha will tell you (proudly) he is a communist or socialist (I know dozens), a Beta will say he is a Progressive. An Alpha will tell you he is a conservative (proudly). A Beta will tell you is a "conservative...but". We all know them too.
     Because of those men, American have heard tales, read stories, histories, then later trotted off to movie houses even before talkies, just to watch heroes mimic what those small fearless, principled men pledged back in Independence Hall in 1776... to look Evil in the eye, and refuse to bend or compromise on principles. Can Harry Reid, John Kerry, or Mitch McConnell, tell me how or why things have changed today? We still live in a harsh world filled with evil men and intentions. So why do we now confront it so differently?

     Were I better trained as a scientist I could argue that this Alpha quality is indeed biological. No one knows knows why some people won't budge on a thing while others fold like dirty laundry. Is it due to conditioning...does the Bible, or stern parenting, wise grandpas, make us less willing to compromise and veer away from the right...or is it a vestige of an instinct that science says no longer belongs to the line of homo sapiens? "Even as a boy he was just hard-headed as Hell."
     No matter, it is these qualities the Constitution always presumed would protect the rest of us and could always be found in abundance in a genuinely free society. At the time the math always favored the Constitution, for it knew that only Alpha males and females would undertake to build their House from scratch, and do the necessary things to protect it, and pass it on, and make common cause with their neighbors in order to protect this holy process. The Founders knew and understood the essence of liberty, and that it would make economic and political Alphas of the vast majority of us, for in the building and owning of our House we become self-employed entrepreneurs, our House our corporation. In America even today most of us merely sell our services part time to General Motors, or the local bank. Our House was always our profession.
     It's this inner urge to work for ourselves, to be our own boss, that is the cultural demarcation between the Alphas or Betas. Interestingly, since it details how far back the conditioning of the political and economic Beta goes, being one's own boss, even the inner need to be, is a peculiarly American condition (although I sense it in the Chinese as well), and explains why the American small business sector defines (defined?) the American economic system in ways that no Marxist has ever yet shown to me he understands.
     The average Englishman or German still cannot just start a business (strict legal conditions), nor has any desire to, the freedom to do this long absent from their culture. In the past fifteen years the internet has provided lots of new opportunities there for making a few bucks, and a kind of spiritual lift does arise for those caught up in the dreariness of their regulated world. I know a corporate manager in Frankfurt who makes about three thousand Euros a year on the side selling on eBay and you'd swear he was talking about his son's first soccer goal to listen to him talk about it. Jackpot!
     But it's like Mary Kay or Amway to them. Only in the old Soviet Bloc do you see all those years of pent-up desire to be out from under the boss's boot and engage in commerce like the Americans do. And outside of Russia, where the mafias parcel out "business licenses" like they still do in Jersey, the governments just haven't caught up with them. The dynamic of eastern Europe is much like it was in St Louis or Chicago in 1900.
     The Alpha strain to be one's own boss runs very deep in America, especially among those with European backgrounds, but also the Asians, and interesting, the newly arrived Latinos. Only one group seems excluded, and we can thank the political Betas for this, for no where was this seed ever planted, on either of their plantations.
 
     It is true, this body of principles is so simple even a cave man could understand it and Mitch McConnell has yet to convince me why, as a God-fearing Christian, it is more politic to abide a lie than stand firm against it, to name only one principle. Just how congenial do Senate rules require one to be? Does anyone remember that the sainted Ted Kennedy once killed a young woman in a cowardly manner, then spent millions to beat the rap? Does time really heal all wounds?
       I had an interesting talk not long ago with a retired Marine, who had seen and done much in this 28 years with the Corps, and later in various private arenas involving a lot of protocol, both nationally and internationally. He'd shook the hands of heads of state.
       He was one of those individuals we all like, who could discuss Stravinsky and the Bolshoi while chewing Red Man. He sort of reminded me of Moses Sands.
       In that discussion, on a topic at least as serious as this one, which I will write about later, he said, speaking of the political class, that they were "passed civilization" and that it is us, the ordinary citizens who are the civilized ones in all this mess. To him, that was the great lie that is being sold in the media.
       Every justification for every political act the past several decades has been to carry us to a higher level of civilization. Our gun ownership is uncivilized. Our crime rate in uncivilized. Our poverty level is uncivilized. On and on.
       Yet, he went on, tell me one aspect of that new civilization anyone really wants to be a part of? Show me one noble house in history that was ever the essence of civilization. Haute couture, sure. Haute cuisine, maybe. But you know, ci-vil-i-zation. (He stressed each syllable.) Do we lay a Mozart at the feet of the Hapsburgs? Rembrandt at the feet of who? Phillip of Spain? What noble house gets the credit for Beethoven, Decartes, Shakespeare, Mill, Adam Smith.
       And how about our self-proclaimed more civilized? Who wants to be like them? Rich, yes. But like them? Do you know one single person who wants to grow up to be like John Kerry? Reid? Harry Pelosi? Mitch McConnell? I recall that Bill Clinton wanted to grow up to be like JFK, but who wants to be like Clinton?
       (On that point, as a role model Obama remains to be seen, and many believe he has a large audience who does want to be like him. But he may also be a fad, just like the Afro.)
       These people are not, and never were a reflection of civilization, but rather a scene from "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum", or vignettes from a satrap's seraglio, things "civilization" never sees or hears, even in whispers. It is their stage, their roles as actors, and those scenes they want to perpetuate....not civilization.
       I won't go onto to tell you my friend's solution.
       But what we're seeing isn't just a sign of a republic in decline, it signals a falling in true civilization itself....when a culture begins to worship itself. We're not the first to go down this path, but we are the first of our kind. We are the first Alpha-built society that seems to have allowed itself to be trapped and captured.
       Because I am a Providentialist, I believe it is not in the Grand Design that this American experiment should fall.  In fact, we are at the point of marching forward toward our greatest age of liberation yet...once we pass this test. There is so much about ourselves that we never knew that we are only now begining to see. For 200 years we've grown and developed almost entirely on raw instinct, unaware, perhaps even a little indifferent to the political trends that infected the political class in Washington. Because of this presumptuous attack by the Left, we are now learning more about ourselves, and the Constitutional promise. More than at any time in our history since the 1890s, we revisiting the basic notions of American liberty and the special beacon America is...for somewhere around 1900-1910, no doubt spurred on by the mass migrations coming into this country, we began to view America again through class-coloured glasses, just as it had been before the Revolution. Progressivism may be all about the state, but at its heart it all about class...intellectual Alphas with the souls, and jealous envy of Betas.
 
     This has been a long-winded way of explaining why certain men and women need to stand up and lead. As much as I wish that new leadership could come from the grass roots, the lower reaches of our political culture, I don't think it can soon enough, for if yhey rise too fast the risk of populism and its resultant dictatorial bent is too great. Indeed, Obama himself is a result of a kind of bureaucratic and academic populism, Beta through and through (based on what we've seen of him so far), especially in the get-even category, which populists are famous for.
    Still today, here and now, we find ourselves searching for just a few good men and women inside the political world with those special V-qualities that comprise the Whom of the entire matter of America's survival and restoration, which is where I opened this essay.
Vassar Bushmills