Never, in the history of the Republic have the roles of the various Assistant Secretaries of State become so magnified, and so crucial to national security.
   Everything of merit, they will do. Everything that goes wrong, they will be blamed.
   Laisser les bons temps rouller!
J Morose

    Freud was wrong.
    Life is stories. Some stories last only a day. In fact, most of them. Most are finished almost as soon as they are told. But by the end of the day they have to be told. Maybe even more than once. When you see that idiot in her SUV with that cellphone to her ear, you can bet your last dollar there's a story involved...a story that couldn't wait. To have stories, to tell them and to hear them is to be human.  In their telling life goes on...until the next story. The story is the most basic human expression of hope.
    But other stories have legs, as they say in the business. A first kiss, a first love, a trip to Disney World, a war no one expected, the loss of a loved one, a sickness, an accident. All these stories take some time in the retelling, for they must be mulled over and over and over in the mind before they can be spoken out loud, or put to paper. These are stories with plots and chapters.
    In anthropological terms, stories are "survival enhancing", not just for an individual, but for a family, a community, even a peoples. Without stories and an outlet for stories, life changes. It becomes darker. It can become meaningless.
    Let me give you two examples and you will see what I mean.
    In 1978 the people of Iran lived under a benign despot called the Shah. He was a king with near absolute power, had a secret police, an army that jumped as his command, and a cosmopolitan Islamic nation that had the highest standard of living in the Middle East. Most of the people scarcely noticed the awful power the Shah possessed, for he rarely used it against them. The Persian people have the most mellifluous language in the world, even more so than Arabic, a delightful and gregarious personality, enjoy good food and wearing colorful attire. They loved to shop, ski, hunt, and sit at cafes drinking chai or kafe...and tell stories.
     But there was something in their personality that made them feel that it wasn't enough. Indeed, it wasn't enough, but that is a different story. While they were the most modern of Muslim states, Barbara Walters insulted the Shah by telling him on national television that he was moving too slow on liberating women. She made him look petty to the world. Many Persians traveled abroad to get educations in pursuits for which there were no jobs in Iran. There was only oil and oil-related industry in Iran. And rug-making. Underwater basket weaving in the Persian Gulf was but a dream, several generations away from ever being a reality, although southern California universities had been giving degrees in that discipline for years. So, many young Iranians were disgruntled, and being young, took their anger out on the recently belittled head of the nation without clearly thinking about the alternatives. (This is not intended to be an allegory about the most recent election in America, but it may fit. Time will tell.)
    As with all modernizing Islamic nations, there was an underbelly of disquiet among Muslims who generally dislike anything modern, especially the clothes women wore, with all those bumps and bulges that are supposed to be left unseen under Moslem teachings (sic).
    End of story. In 1979 the Persian people invited back the Ayatollah Khomeini, who had been in exile in France, and very quickly a revolution established him as supreme leader, an Islamic Republic was announced, and all of sudden, almost over night, every woman in Iran was wearing a long black, loose fitting smock that went all the way down over the ankles and a matching head scarf.
    I'm not sure when the women (and most men) of Iran actually began to regret that little foot-stomping fit they threw back in '78. But we know they did at some time shortly thereafter. Only it was too late.
    That was almost thirty years ago, and while the itch to be free of those drab rags and other restrictions over their public lives grows daily, the boot of oppression on their neck grows heavier and heavier with every passing day. Why this is so is because they invoked certain natural laws of totalitarianism that take on a life of their own. Even the French and Spanish pale when up against middle Eastern bureaucrats.
    The point of this little excursion into ethnic teat-fits is why that 30 year mark is so important. You see, in Iran right now, over half the population have never known life without that black garb and the religion police. To them, life, while dull, is also normal. Iran is at a crucible, for every day a little bit of the memory of how things used to be dies out, replaced with a generation who has known nothing else. In another twenty years it will almost all be lost.
    What saves Iran is her stories. All they have now are the stories...the stories told by mothers to daughters inside their homes, where they can still pull out old clothes from the wardrobe and play dress up and dream just a little. But at 30 years, even these exercises can become risky, for school children are taught to snitch out their own parents, just like they are in Massachusetts, or to eavesdrop other school children to find out who's having forbidden thoughts and dreams.
    Right now Iran survives on her stories. Her future rests on those stories, for they are all they have. At least that's how my side of the coin looks at it. Socialism, of course, doesn't see things this way. But now you understand what the anthropologists mean by "survival-enhancing."
    Onto Case No. 2. Let's go to any of the east European Soviet Bloc countries in the mid-1980s, before perestroika, glasnost and the fall of the empire. Forget Russia here, for at the time of their revolution the people had no memory of freedom, even limited freedom, so they simply jumped from the tsarist frying pan into the Bolshevik fire. This explains the quaint little folk belief among some orthodox country folk that even in heaven there is a "grief room" where a person can look down upon, and share the misery of their children still left behind.
    By 1985 in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and East Germany the communist had been in charge for just over forty years...not that much longer than where Iran now sits. Still, one would have had to be over fifty to recall any sort of life before the Red Army swooped in to liberate them. And in a nation where life expectancy from that earlier generation was scarcely over 60, that ain't a lot. Moreover, like Russia, 80% of their peoples (except Germany) were rural folks who really had no memory (stories) of gay clothes, shoes, and sidewalk cafes with kafe and cakes in the first place. Uneducated country folk, not college professors, were the quickest to dump Christianity (proving Lenin wrong), and Slovakia's secession from Czechoslovakia proved they kinda liked what socialism was selling...you know, the taking from city folks and giving to country folks.
    Had it not been for the church, especially in Roman Catholic east Europe, by 1985 there were almost no stories that could be told to children about how life would someday be without imperial communism. I recall throughout the 1990s visiting Orthodox churches and watching great-grandmothers teaching 5 and 6 year old's how to cross themselves and genuflect...because neither their parents nor grandparents, had any knowledge of these rites. How can anyone see such a thing and not be moved? Were it not for the samizdat network, bootleg "Dallas" TV shows, rock and roll and blue jeans there would have been no dreams of an afterlife at all.
    So, what about the stories? Here's yet another way stories keep life, and hope, going. You see, when friends gather at the end of the day, over coffee, they have to tell their stories of the day's events. Only there were none. What can a clerk in a communist system say? That he saw an interesting signature or a misspelling on the document he was about to rubber stamp? Under communism the lucky ones got to work in mills or plants or mines and die before they were 50 from black or brown lung, or get killed in a roof fall. At least they had stories. Things were interesting.
    For every front line worker in the mines, driving a truck, swinging a scythe,  there were armies of clerical "support" just pushing papers from one stamping station to the next. Their only real job under socialism was to be at an appointed place at an appointed time. That was what they called "full employment". There was this great Samizdat art from Russia (we're looking for it now to put on our website) that illustrates this. It was of a three-tiered puppet, showing one man at the bottom with a pick, and above him four men with pens, and above them another eight, also with pens. Thirteen men to dig one hole. Get it?
    Worse than no work at all, these people couldn't even sit around and complain about the boss. All the walls have ears under socialism, you know. Get used to it.
    When there are no stories all hope is lost, and that is where the Soviet Empire was after forty years. And it could be seen on their faces. There is something about despair that deadens the eyes and is worn like a fifty pound weight around the neck. People spoke of alcoholism among the Soviets, and I suppose there was a lot, especially on the job. But in their saloons, where men in America would go to curse their boss or their fate, Russian men would simply look down into the bottom of their glass, take long swallows and drink themselves into a stupor. Bruckner's 6th, anyone? They reminded me of old honky-tonk bars where there would always be that one single cow-poke in a dark corner, staring down the neck of a Blue Ribbon and pumping nickel after nickle into the juke-box, listening to Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams". But even here, the Russians had to keep their music to themselves.
    It is true, the management class gets to have its stories. It was probably the only reason many people joined the Party in the 50s and 60s. I suspect especially among the young who voted for the socialists, many see the coming socialism as an exciting time because they will be in the forefront, part of management. To be short and to the point; 'taint so. Oh, there will be bushels of titles to pass around, but socialist management is not all it's been hyped up to be. In the little puppet example above, they are the eight guys at the top; glorified clerks.
    But even as life at the middle may have stories, still cultural memory is lost, and this is where socialism, even among it greatest dreamers, like Al Gore, make their biggest mistake. The loss of cultural memory, among anthropologists, is "culturally endangering", and under socialism, while it may not be the intent, it is definitely the result of socialism.
    When I spent my first winter in the USSR, in 1991, every host I had, from Kiev to Kharkov to Moscow to Gorkii, first took me out to see the architecture of the pre-Soviet days, as a way to compare the crap they had to live and work in. Even top party bosses acknowledged this...but it was 1991 and they knew the handwriting was on the wall. They were only schmoozing me.
    When I travel there, even now, I still try to stay at the old Party hotels, where ever they may be. In Sofia, I always stay at the Rila, where at one time there was a pool of sunfish in front of a protected drive, where Black Maria's would drive up and discharge their prestigious passengers, escorted by waiting security guards. It was not a place strangers could go in to just "look around." That pool was first only fetid water, then an empty yard for dogs to crap in and gypsies to sleep in, and is now an outdoor beer cafe. That's progress.
    But inside the hotel? First class bedrooms looked out into the mountains, from the front of the hotel, while second class looked out over the peeling paint of smaller buildings behind the hotel. Foreigners always got first class. And first class, in 1990, at the time of the fall, was a square queen sized bed, standard commie issue, a door onto a 20" balcony with loose railing, which could never be entirely closed...nor would you want to for even in the winter there was only one setting on the heater...hot, and some chance of gas poisoning. There was a mini-fridge, which in 15 years, I've never known to freeze water. The tub is a thing of beauty, deeper by 6 inches than American tubs, and hooked up to a series of external pipes that allow the bather to take a shower, assuming he can figure out the four knobs in the right sequence...and the city is allowing hot water that day.
    Point number one, is, 1990, when communism fell in Bulgaria, this was as good as it got, even though there had been real luxury there in 1940. This was for the bosses, the elite of the elite. This is where they brought their babes! Bulgaria started out with a Waldorf Astoria and ended up with a Motel 6 in just forty five short years. Historians will try to tell you that history does not go backward, but it does. Europe proved it in the 5th Century. So did the Soviets in the 20th....taking us to Point number two.
    While the management class of socialism may have stories, after a fashion, making their status survivable in the anthropology sense, they have no power over cultural memory. Think of it this way. In the thinking of Al Gore's socialism, he loves luxury, and believes it should be held for the leadership (only) to enjoy. In truth he sees this as a hereditary form of nobility, a la the French, for not in Al Gore's wildest dreams (not to mention Tipper's) does he not also imagine his grandchildren and great grandchildren occupying a similar status in a future socialist regime.
    You see, Gore lives in  a mansion now, and so will his great grandchildren...only their will be more like a Motel 6 by comparison. And they will never know.
    If the death of stories and loss of hope were a cake, the loss of cultural memory will be its maraschino cherry.
VB
  

  Remember the old Kingston Trio classic, the Merry Minuet? Seems it needs an update.
  Can anyone rhyme "They're rioting in Reykjavik, they're bombing Mumbai" ?
StGeorge

    We wrote earlier that the Entertainment industry would highlight the starker differences between the hot tub wing of the Democrat Party and the more austere Amber Socialists-With-An-Edge. We also predicted who would win, although we 'don't know how long it will take the contest to play out.
    But it will be Economic policy by which the New Direction (or Change, to coin a phrase) will be defined. The theme of this new socialism will be set by its Economic direction.
    So, which way will it go?
    I just wrote (Part IX) about the irony of the New Socialism, since  it will do many things for all the wrong reason cultural conservatives have wanted to see put into place for many years now. We are at the front end of what may be a deep, deep recession. This recession was, for the most part, the creation of the hot tub Leftists and their allies in the Black Congressional Caucus, a small criminal scam which, shall we say, got out of hand. Way out of hand. Greed in all the expected places helped.
    Two things will come of this. First, power over consumer spending now rests firmly in the hands of the consumers. For the first time in twenty years consumers will have to make choices based on actual availability of cash, and not on an endless supply of debt. Second will be how the new government wants to facilitate or debilitate new consumer spending, and in what sectors. In other words, we're not sure the administration will want us to shoot out of this recession anytime soon, as long as they control who will grow out of it, and who will sink. I say this because they probably don't have to worry about voter wrath since (it's our opinion) elections won't matter for awhile. Until the people (forget the GOP) can figure out the Democrats can win entire Republican districts out of whole cloth, voting won't matter. Honeymoon or no honeymoon, the Obamailis can make this last as long as they wish.
    Let's look at these things in sequence. We (I've) been screaming since the Reagan Administration when RR strolled to the mic and urged Americans to spend. Can't you be a little more clear, Mr President? After, what they spend on can matter greatly to the safety and security of the House, and in turn, the Republic. Pres Bush urged us likewise, and whether we know it or not, the hot tub Democrats actually liked the idea, so long as they were getting a nice slice of the pie. In fact, since Reagan led us out of the last real recession in 1983, jobs growth has doubled, there has been strong measurable gains in average income per households, so the Democrats have doubled their ability to "spread the wealth". Still, they have been been able to maintain the rhetorical high road by saying the economy is in the crapper and it has all been the GOP and their rich corporate friends' fault, as always, skinning the little guy...just as welfare recipients were lining up to buy their second car. They got away with this because the media wouldn't expose the lie, and the Republicans felt it more important that they suck their thumbs in a corner rather that create their own bull-horns to spread the truth. An oafishly humble (I hate oafish humility, by the way, don't you?) President didn't help. We've already written about what happens when one's honor (M'Cain) or one's association with God (Bush) becomes a vanity. The same for humility. When it harms your country, you need to pause and reflect.
    In any case, the American consumer is now the final arbiter about the spending side of the economy, and this in turn will negatively effect tax revenues both at the state and federal levels. What we know is that we will not likely see a shrinkage in either's bureaucracies, where all the waste is.
    Probably as much as 20% of the American consumer economy has been dedicated to profligate spending the past two decades. If there is a real politics then there is also a false politics, and likewise, if there is a real economy there is also a false economy. Using the Aristotelian yardstick of the Good End, a false economy is that group of activities that steer men away from their own good end. For instance, when condom use goes up (which is good for some district's economy, i.e., jobs, tax base) other elements of the moral culture goes down. The House is in more trouble, not less. Fast food twice a week is a treat. 15 times a week, a disaster. How many young working kids...they even target this group with advertising...spend 30% or more of their average weekly income by eating out rather than bagging lunches, thus saving what, two-three thousand a year? Or how about how much we spend on our kids, especially in electronics? Cell phones, I-tunes, phone-photos, video games, have all launched even more business lines that steer those kids away from the long term objectives of their own futures. They already can't tell time with clocks that have hands (unless Mom and dad taught them). Now, because they can't read a map, or even use MapQwest, which requires reading, they just pop in a Garmin. But they all have MySpace or somesuch where, suddenly, at thirteen, they start advertising their newest underwear..to total strangers.
    And just who's paying for all this? Mom and Dad, or Dad through Mom only Dad doesn't live here anymore. Forget pre-sweetened cereal, Hollywood and Pop Music have all grown in leaps and bounds because of what Mom and Dad spend to entertain their kids. Has anyone ever heard of earning a thing? And then there's China, whose collectivist heart races every Back-to-School Season, because hand-me-downs have become anathema in American society. The list goes on. Point is, kids don't earn any of these things, thus the jeopardizing the future of their House.
    And young adults are not much better. Ever see a 48" Toshiba flat screen in an unswept studio apartment that requires sitting on plastic lawn chains and eating off one of those big circular wood wire-spools telephone companies discard? How will that guy re-prioritize in the coming dark days?
    It will be interesting to see how all this plays out, for if the kids have their way, Mom and Dad will be driving '78 Pontiacs before they'll give up their cell phones. Fourteen is a tough tough age to finally hear the word "No". And the Obamailis sure don't want to lose them once they turn eighteen. The effects of a re-prioritized economy on the youth that helped them get into office is but one of many existential crossroads for the new socialism.
    But we know Congress is already pulling for a new stimulus package after the New Year, but like the last one, it will do little other than improve the overall temperament among citizens about getting something for nothing. No matter what Congress does, we expect the consumer economy to constrict considerably...again for all the wrong reasons.
    In the long run, 10-20 years for starters, socialism will require the economy to constrict and that will be in just the profligate places I've outlined. Big Fast Food has been in cross hairs of the health nazis for years, and they surely will be big winners under the new socialism. We've already written about where the Entertainment industry is likely to go over the next generation, especially if there is a puritanical edge to the new socialism, as we expect there will be.
    But as explained, it will be helpful to the new government if it appears the people are making these choices rather than themselves. Therefore, while the pirate wing of the Party will want to explode out of this recession as quickly as possible, so that Reid doesn't have to opt for a cheaper gravy on his roast beef, the new socialism may want to drag this out and squeeze every advantage out of it. Congress may well have to settle for DiGiorno's and a microwave.
    But this is only the matter at hand now. This will eventually pass. Someone, we know, actually has a schematic of a 20-30-even 40 year plan over there. It's the sort of thing people like Ayers do just for sport. It's one aspect of planning and governance the Clinton's absolutely missed. Both lived for the moment and could never see past their most immediate appetite for even an day. While we're curious about all the Obama appointments coming from the old Clinton administration, and while Obama's explanation is entirely plausible (that he is the idea guy and they are tried and proven action guys), it could be that many of them from the Clinton days left their jobs "unfulfilled", shall we say, seeing so much more promise, in a socialist sense, than they ever could ever realize under the Clinton's. If I were a dedicated socialist I would have found working for two spoiled children very frustrating. A second shot at the ring may be in the offing. This is merely a speculation, mind you.
    As to the central theme of the new socialism, I believe if you look at European bourses you will get a glimmer of how they envision it. The market will be less diversified, and far less numerous. (This will take years.) Big winners of course will be those industries that find favor with government. I repeat what I wrote before, that the socialist do not want to own these industries outright, but over the next 30 years for many internal management reasons there will be an inexorable pull in that direction. This will be the case in part because of what has already taken place, which is government's equity stake (ownership) in banking and lending, and soon to be automobile industry.
    Banking, like steel, oil, raw materials, is a foundational enterprise in a free economy. A central part of the engine. Communism doesn't actually need banks except to carry on international trade (or, as they found out by the 1970s) as a way to steal back what even their poor workers could save, by way of savings accounts. Hot tub socialist, like the facsists of the 30s, really don't mind some industries and businesses being very, very wealthy, including executive salaries and other perqs, as long as they are friends of the families. (Hitler knew he was secure once he brought the Krupps over to his side.)
   So Reid & Co really have no problem with enormous personal wealth being created for executives inside their orb. Just look at Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. The problem they face are twofold: One, what to do about companies that were the enemy while outside their orb, but suddenly allies once inside their orb? Again, Reid & Co will have no problem realigning their thinking. But will Waxman make nice? And how about the Obamailis? Executive compensation for them is a philosophical issue, just just one of patronage. It has been a major issue with them for a very long time, and merely pushing the tax rate back to 89% won't quite fix the problem as they see it. As long as the tax code is the tax code, they know their client corporations will always find ways around it, just as they did in the 70s.
   This brings about problem #2; and that is what to do about all those other giant corporations that have not come under the government umbrella. True, most are consumer companies, like Proctor & Gamble, Microsoft, Big Oil and Big Health (which we think will fall next). They will constrict as the economy constricts. But as long as there are companies out there with no government fingers around the throat, companies inside the government orb will be looking for ways to match their executive colleagues...even if they have to cheat. As we saw with Fannie Mae, et al, some members of Congress are easy to bribe. The Obamailis, we suspect, will not be so easy, thus creating a problem. How it will be resolved will be anyone's guess.
   Since we believe the theme of the Obama socialists will be to re-distribute income into whatever "equitable formula" it deems fit (all this is as yet unrevealed) we believe they will move to limit at the federal level executive compensation across the board. Unconstitutional? Of course. But when did that stop Congress? And how will it stop how some judges would rule on the case, even now, let alone the new Court as set up in the next four years? I just hope Roberts, Scalia and Alito all check their brake linings regularly.
   That done, the new socialism can pick and choose what industries will get most favored status. We believe a reoriented health care industry will be among those. To be sure, R&D, not only in drugs, but also medical technology, will all but grind to a halt within 30 years, by then, who will know how it used to be? That's always been the unintended beauty of socialism...kill cultural memory through attrition.
   Second will be transportation. More precisely, the environment. The current bail out of the auto industry is being played up by the Right as a bail out of Big Labor, which it is, but they are missing the new role environmentalists will play. Global warming may be a hoax, but it has worked as good advertising at the most elemental of levels, so will work for many more years, even as air and water quality actually gets worse (which they will) by say 2030. Anyone who has visited the old Soviet Bloc and seen the black skies (worse than Pittsburgh in 1950) and rivers than run red (worse than strip mines from the 1940s, now long gone), and the undrinkable tap water (to this day), and areas the size of Kansas totally denuded due to nuclear mishaps, has to scratch his head and ask why it is that it is that form of government American environmentalists want to adopt in order to achieve their goals. It's a complex issue, and among modern environmentalists, laced with an incredible amount of incredible stupidity. But we know the new Obama socialism will be inheriting a mature, developed, and clean industrial base, so industrial expansion or development is not a central theme of theirs. In fact, reducing it, will be, for that is one sector they expect to pick up several thousand new workers for the upcoming Happy Pappy works programs. But the short answer, the reason the skies and water will worsen anyway will be one word: Bureaucracy. It just happens and there's nothing they can do about it.
    But in the meantime, state-to-state auto travel will diminish considerably. Thousands of interstate motel and gas station exchanges will dry up like so many old Humble stations in the Mojave. Gasoline will go back to 3.50-4.00 a gallon, and even in-town driving will be discouraged, as the new gas taxes will pay for other forms of mass transportation, many of which will make so sense at all. I can see trolleys, sure, in St Louis, maybe even say Omaha (maybe). But Lincoln?
   If environmentalist have their way, and we can't say just yet they will, by the way, they will try to force a migration away from the cities, a shut down of suburbia, and a return to the farms...with disastrous results. The kibbutzification of the Midwest will be a thing to see. New Harmony, Indiana, anyone?  Shakertown? But it will be tried, and if there are any successes, more to come. Ask again in 2040.
    Finally, as mentioned, we believe the Obamailis desire a constriction of the economy so as to be able to provide labor for the new infrastructure projects they have in planning stages already...at a deflated wage rate. New rising businesses under this regime will be those companies that can get these new contracts. Plus that, all the labor shifts from private to public sectors will also be away from non-union work to union work, too, no matter what state rules say. See how it will work?
    Again, without an external catastrophe, this will take years to develop. Like hair, it will not be seen to grow just by looking in the mirror each day.  Right now we're just watching and taking notes. The point is, if there is to be a counter strategy, it has to be put into action by next mid-terms, with expected results by 2012. As to what an action plan will actually look like, we think it best to cover our cards for now.
Vassar Bushmills
  
   

     Socialism has to fail, we all know this. And it, like all other authoritarian forms of government, fails because of two natural, two immutable natural laws.
     About the first, part of our on-going analyses about socialism have been about how the natural law of bureaucracies always kill it in the end. This is a common theme but requires a little deeper analysis. There is a simple logic to this, for the First Law of Bureaucracy is that they will (must) always subordinate the primary mission of the organization to their own primary mission, which is first, to survive, and then, grow. The First Ancillary to the Prime Directive of Bureaucracies is that there is always room for one more desk. (For full scientific detail, Google Parkinson's Rule. Better still, read it.).
     In the end, a bureaucracy can never solve problems or attain goals for it is in its nature to merely tend to them...in perpetuity.
     Enough said.
     But the exploration of the nature of bureaucracies carries us into the nature of Evil and Good themselves. Bureaucracy is a necessary linchpin to understanding Good and Evil in government. And we are not required to grab up the Bible, or the Qu'ran or any other religious text to determine this. Aristotle will do. You see, that which will carry man to a good end is Good and that which will lead to his demise is Evil. Or "Bad" if you prefer.
     Now, although we all call bureaucracies "necessary evils" they are not really Evil. But those who would use them knowing the end game are. And those who would use them under the delusion they do not destroy also are invoking Evil, for the end for man is still bad. Ignorance is not a defense. But it is not for us to ascribe a certain place in hell for malefactors who bring this bad end about. As the uncommonly wise sage Barack Obama said (and he's been quoted by so many others), that is above our pay grade. What separates socialism from say, General Motors, who certainly has destroyed itself these past thirty years because of bureaucratic structures it was unable and unwilling to control, is that, in a free market, there is a leaner structure willing to step in to replace. Free markets provide a safety line for Man, if not some men, or the corporation. No such safety net exists in the state sector, for no competition exists or even allowed, so when bureaucracy kills the state, it is more or less absolute...although even there, there will always be another sort of power to step into the vacuum. Man loses in the end. (By the way, none of this makes sense if you believe that some people are foreordained to be bosses over some other people. Then, the bad end for Man is just one big Oops for you. Better luck next time.)
     Why this is important is that once you accept that there is actually a Good and an Evil out there, you have to understand that they can never sit at the table as equals. I recall Sam Donaldson of ABC always said that the USSR was entitled to their opinions, too, as if to say that Good and Evil should sit at the table as equals.
     This can never be. Good and Evil are locked in everlasting warfare, but they can never tie. One must always be on top, or at be least ascending. Battles rage, one is on top for awhile, then the other. Until the very End neither can actually win. But while Evil can never win totally, Good will win in the end..and both instinctively understand this. Evil can sure win a battle, even a war, and drive Good into retreat, even hiding. But it instinctively shrinks away when Good stands firm and matches Evil toe-for-toe. Good is better than Evil...and Evil knows it!
     The question before us now: Is this what we are seeing now in America...Good in full retreat? Evil has generally been in retreat since July 4th, 1776. Is this the big turnaround? This is why seeing the One Big (and only) Chance for Mankind to reach out to find his Good End take a giant step backwards is so damned aggravating to me. Why should Mankind have to wait another what, decade, century, millennium before all the pieces come together again? Damn, damn, damn. Say it ain't so, God.
     Oh, well. Why Evil cannot win in the end is because of that second immutable law: No matter how tightly Evil ties its nets, or how broadly it casts them, there will always be a minnow that will escape. You can find allusions to this in the New Testament such as when Herod killed all the babies...but One. Still more examples can be found throughout history and literature. It is a common theme. Even Machiavelli alluded to it. But since I direct this at younger ears (for specific reasons), a better way to understand this can be found in the literature of Tolkien (Ring Trilogy), Lewis (Narnia), or even J K Rowling. Evil just can't touch all the bases it has to in order to win...because man will always instinctively be driven toward Good and away from Evil. There will always be someone there to screw the pooch.
     Leaving hobbits, Solzhenitsyn called them "wreckers". From 1918 forwards every year there was a crop failure in the USSR, and the Stalinists said it was due to "wrecking" by counter-revolutionaries. Like Sauron, it was in Moscow's nature to look in all the wrong places for just who it was that was peeing in their Cheerios.
     This second immutable law that destroys socialism can be written thus: No matter how authoritarian, no matter how totalitarian a regime, the people always reserve unto themselves one single power, and that is is to deny the master power what it wants. The people may be forever denied what they want for themselves, and forever changed in ways they could never imagine (this is the scary part, as Russia is proving now), but they have that one absolute power to deny socialism what it wants. This and this alone, even if bureaucracies did not exist, would in the end, kill it outright.
      Then Good would come out of hiding.
Vassar Bushmills
    

      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
      

      A little change of pace here, as we could do a piece on virtually every aspect of life that will be affected by socialism. Key of course, is the economic impact, which we're holding til next to last. Likewise the spiritual death that eventually occurs under socialism. And I'm sure you're wondering about the environment impact of socialism (Clue; long term and short term won't jibe.) In fact, look out your window as you drive around town and just ask yourself whether that motel/gas station intersection at the interstate exchange will still be there in 10, 20, and 30 years. Check small businesses at the strip malls. And unless you're over 50, have you ever seen a street car? The picture of life definitely will change. We advise client companies to look up and down the line in their business, both on the supply side and the sales/service side and ask that one simple question: How will socialism affect them, for it will trickle down to us.
     But how it will change life in America will depend on just exactly what the central theme of the new socialist regime is. About the coming regime, we can only guess what their central purpose will be. I've already alluded to two, but "getting even" as a policy goal will not last past the first bureaucratic generation, so we need to look at more substantive ambitions.
     Remember, pure socialism  is a very noble ideal, at least as noble as religion. But it's flaws are both naked and inherent, for not even the most perfect human, let alone any group of human managers of the system, can ever hope to match the perfection of the ideal of socialism for more than say, one day. It begins to fall apart almost as soon as it is instituted, and that is because of inherent human frailty and that cancer we call the bureaucracy. Socialism can't get any bigger than a bridge club without a bureaucracy and that's a fact. It's their deal with the devil, only, unlike private business, they want to make it. You see, they like the idea of having lots and lots of people working for them, even after it is long apparent they they are the real hirelings.
     Standing opposite Socialism-as-God is Religion, which states that the ideal of perfection exists elsewhere, beyond our grasp as a standard of conduct and behavior for us to only try to copy. All religions recognize human frailty and have built-in forgiveness. Socialism on the other hand assumes humanity's mass perfectibility. This is sheer illusion. But as false god, socialism is not evil.
     Standing opposite Socialism-as-Socio-economic System is free market democracy, which, like religion, is also built on the innate frailty of human behavior. This is why we have the Rule of Law, which punishes wrong-doing and rewards honorable conduct. Similarly, free markets reward hard work and merit and punish sloth. It is also why we deify the individual House as the major building block in free society and  free economy. To enslave men to the state, however, is evil.
     Although, I am quite sure there have been little bewhiskered men and women in university offices since the late 1800s who believe, as a religion, this ideal we called socialism, their "movement" is scarcely any larger than their office. I've known several. They make great coffee partners, are usually quite humble, soft-spoken and can become great friends. This is why I have always had a grudging respect for Vladimir Illiych Ulyanov (Lenin), the Old B****d Himself. He was as close to pure Marxist (more so than even Trotsky) as an in-the-cross-hairs leader could be, yet, by 1924, even he had realized it wouldn't work as set out on paper. So, he suddenly died. (Looking over one's shoulder is not a natural attribute of socialism, but it does seem to work out that way, doesn't it? This is why I think socialists are always so unhappy...they're always looking for someone to get the drop on them.)
     Marx himself devised a socialism that was get-even, for Marx was nothing if not defined by the people he hated, who was just about everyone. Lenin out-marx'd Marx in the sense he took Marx's pure ideas and actually tried to turn an agrarian despotic nation into an industrial power house. Industrial might, owned and operated by the state was, from the very beginning, the "theme" of Marxist-Leninism. All the things that just sort of tagged along, anti-religion, a prohibition of private small business, collectivization of the farms, were simply part of the logic of Leninism. Socialism requires the ownership of the means of production, and it follows, that socialism also requires the ownership of the feeding of the masses who do the producing. Follow the logic.
    Then along came Mao, who got in all sorts of hot water with the purists in Moscow, because he redefined the Leninist line toward agrarian reform. Industrial growth came second. In theory he was right. The Russians didn't understand that "sky determines" and the Chinese sky was different than the one over Moscow...on the few days of the year you could find it through the belching smoke.
     At the same time the Euros were conjuring up their own versions of socialism under their own national skies. Their skies were defined  by royal lines and aristocracies unlike the Romanovs. Some were absolute, and some were rather warlike and belligerent. They had a much better developed capital structure, and much broader middle class. In short, they were more advanced than the Roosskies, a fact which infuriates the Russians even to this day. For one, they believed you don't have to own the means of production as long as you can control it. That's more civilized, so sayeth the French.
    Moreover, unlike America, the aristocrats of  Europe were (still are) deathly afraid of the people, both as potential rioters (the French Revolution) and carriers of disease, as when shaking hands. Socialism provided a perfect buffer, especially since the capitalists, and not the royals had to pay for it. The rubes in Calabria got indoor toilets and aristocrats got their peace of mind, and a new emerging state management class got their ten percent to keep the buffer solid. That ten percent is up over 50% now and the whole thing is about to explode, only the management class has all but replaced the royals, who are dying out at a fast clip, in terms of who gets to use the privileges, fast cars, box seats at Monte Carlo and get-out-of-jail-free cards.
    In short (and this is in keeping with several laws of bureaucracies) after about 60 years, the Euros state class has completely bought into the notion that the European manufacturing and production system is a bottomless well, which can be drawn from endlessly.
    It's not for me to say how all that will play itself out, except to say the Europeans have a penchant for trying to assassinate each other every forty years or so. They're overdue.
    Before moving back to America I have to mention that other "ism" of Europe, fascism, which never had a chance to show history how it would have fared, as they both decided to interrupt their progress by making war on everyone, and interestingly, for totally un-socialist reasons.
    So try to imagine how Germany might have fared had Hitler not remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936, or try out any of those other "leibensraum" ideas he had, in Austria, Sudentenland, etc.
    His killing of the Jews was also an un-socialist idea as it didn't quite fit any of the existing Darwinist/eugenics justifications for putting otherwise healthy people to sleep. By comparison, Stalin's starvation of three million in the Ukraine a few years earlier, (for which Walter Duranty of the New York Times got a Pulitzer Prize by saying it didn't happen), was by the book. But what we do know is that had Hitler continued carting off Jews to camps inside Germany (since he hadn't overrun Poland) no one in Europe would have lifted a finger to stop him...just as they were unwilling to do anything about mass murder inside Iraq. In fact, we note that "not doing anything about mass murder" has now become recognized as patriotic and high minded in some elitist circles in America, and was part of the propulsion that fueled this last election and socialism's sudden appearance in America's future. Keep that in mind. It really isn't that hard to put several thousand people to sleep if you put your whole mind to it and vain professionals and the bureaucracy are involved. They can always be relied on to pull the trigger.
    I can say without equivocation that German bureaucracy is just as inept and cancer ridden as Italian, Russian, French, Thai, Persian, Chinese and American bureaucracy. So it would have imploded in its own time had there been no militaristic side to the Third Reich.
    But what is most interesting about German and Italian fascism is that they were both thug regimes only posing as socialists, out to do nothing more than steal all they could, live as lavishly as possible, sate every appetite, and poke every little boy they could scrounge up on Friday night. Socialism was simply their keys to doing it legally.
    It is this aspect of socialism we need to look at closest, for even in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc, the cult of personality and sheer avarice drove their leaders behind gated cities-within-cities and near orgiastic indulgence, each according to the nature of their skies, from Honeker to Ceauscescu to Brezhnev to Zhivkov.
    What we have always been dealing with in America is "socialism as a means to something else", something more craven and puerile... something very personal to the "users" of socialism. America is after all, the greatest jewel in the crown.
    I've already stated that most of the Democrat Party are of this sordid, craven kind of "user-socialist". They are in this line of work because, considering their temperament, it's a good gig, easy work, indoors, short hours, lots of babes, celebrity, the list goes on. They may believe some of that socialist stuff, but much like the Roman Church just before Luther hung that paper, if believing it too hard meant they had to give up even one ruby ring on their pinkie, they wouldn't.
    They don't want to own the means of production if it means that production will be less varied, or less income producing, i.e., generating fewer revenues. Remember the bad days a thousand years ago when most white people were slaves, too? If your little plot didn't produce, his lordship the baron didn't get enough receipts, and if you kept it up, he'd simply kill you and put another wretch in you place. (The world was full of wretches in those days.) Bottom line: Like landed barons, they (Congress) don't want to see their "business" go down. The greatest problem facing their brand of socialism, as we've already stated, is the one enemy they don't see, and the effect that bureaucracy has on the overall economy. In due course, it will sink under the weight of its own shite...and what's worse, Congress won't see it coming. Unlike banks, bureaucracies won't rat themselves out. They will simply keep demanding more and more, even when there is no more to be had. This is already happening in Europe. Remove the power of the people to reform it and it will destroy government. The only question is when.
    If there had still been a communist regime in Moscow when Obama won the election there would have been a sudden, but desperate sigh. Their enemy finally having been vanquished, they would say "What now?" Since 1945, the sole purpose of the USSR was to defeat Amerika, laying aside, indeed, losing the playbook Lenin had originally drafted for that worldwide workers' paradise. Who talks about worker's anymore? Ever hear Obama or Reid or Pelosi mention workers?
    The Democrat fat-cat socialists have pretty much the same problem. With the Republicans vanquished, with constitutional conservatism gone into hiding as any kind of counter force, "What are we fighting for, anymore?" is about all they can ask.
    Our guess is that the Dems will continue to march just as if it were still 2000, in full "take-back Washington" mode. That's all they know, and that's all they know in terms of keeping their plate filled with other people's beef tips.
    We've also stated we think this faction of the socialism party in America, the Swedish Lites, will lose when they run headlong into Obama's brand of socialism, which clearly is leaner and meaner. Though there's plenty of appetite there, too, I have yet to sense any appetite for the high-calorie diets of the pirate wing of his party.
    I just can't say what his theme will be. I know he doesn't want to own the means of production  but alliances in the environmental movement especially will cause his administration to stagger in that direction anyway. The tax base will have to shrink, which means a cheaper kind of gravy on Harry Reid's roast beef. Just watch how it will happen. They will be in control...but won't be in control, if you know what I mean. The bureaucracy will refuse to shrink in size, but will be willing to shrink in income...but only if the private sector "sacrifices" more. So look for that kind of shrinking trade-off.
     Just look for an emerging theme in the coming months as to just what Obama's socialist ideals are. I'll be back to comment every time I spy something of interest. It will be interesting to report on this aspect in another year.
     What a year it will be.
Vassar Bushmills
   

      Moses Sands dictated a long piece to me three years ago about the special role of the Constitution's "protectors" as he called them. (Click the link to read it.)
      It all came home to me last week at a black tie affair with businessmen I'd known for a few years; all self-made men, all believers in American exceptionalism, all wearing flag pins, and all hugging the Constitution as if they were personal friends.
      It began with a talk with a construction executive, the kind of fellow you just want to stand up and yell "Hoorah for America" when you hear his story; high school grad, common laborer, saved his nickles and dimes, promoted to foreman, then at age 38, bought the company. Knows his business inside and out. Millionaire by 45.
      Everyone was commiserating over the election. But he had set his nose into the wind, scenting opportunity. I hear this a lot from the cup-is-half-full crowd; there's money to be made in them thar coming bad times. It will all rebound in about two years, he said. Yeah, I said, but "they" will still be in power. How will a better economy get them out of power? No answer.
     What if the new government doesn't want the economy to rebound? After all, they'd caused this mess in the first place. Was it intentional? Could be. What if they want to shuffle 20%-30% of the private sector labor force over to public sector work projects, then keep them there once the work runs out. (Even in the USSR, the work eventually did run out.) Again, no answer, just a quizzical look. Maybe my voice was beginning to crack.
      It didn't get heated, there were no fingers thrust into the chest, but it did draw a crowd. He went on about how when the economy turns around there will just naturally be a move back away from socialism. Our watchers nodded in agreement. They weren't worried. So, I argued, will we just as quickly get rid of national health care as we established it in the first place? We'll have it before the next mid-terms, most likely. In by 2010, out by 2012, is that the plan? That's one peg of free markets gone for a generation or more. The crowd groaned. Hadn't thought of that.
      What if government decides to move into management of the banks and next year, the auto industry once they bail them out? Is Big Oil far behind? Who's to stop them? What if, instead of telling corporations what to do government decides to go ahead and own them outright? That could easily happen within eight years if all the votes are in Congress. We no longer have any say in the matter.
      And finally, what happens to small business, your construction business say, when government controls your clients? Just who's feet do you have to kiss in order to get contracts? Just what sort of lapel pin do you have to wear to get work?
       Yes, we all know what happens eventually. But "eventually" can mean forty years.
      After a few more give and takes, I went to the meat of the issue. What about the little guy? Blank stare.
      I followed, have you ever considered what the real purposes of socialism is? It is to take the dream away from the little guy. They can deal with you in due course, any way they want. They can shut you down, put you in jail, confiscate your property, or just let you attrit yourself out of business slowly. What they care about is that no one step up to replace you, and that takes time...a generation or so.
      Hushed silence.
      We failed the Constitution, and we've failed all those little guys out there because we forgot that the Constitution was written for them, the common man...and not us, the un-common men who benefited from it. It is us, un-common men of achievement and understanding about the free market, who the Constitution relied on to protect both it and the common man, by reaching around with a handshake to those at the bottom of the hill. After all...every single one of us arose from the bottom of that very same hill.
     We failed. Instead we basked in the glow of our achievements and neglected the shoulders we're standing on. Now we're standing naked and alone, just like Kruschchev said, like over-ripe fruit waiting to be plucked.
      Blank stares. In fact, embarrassed silence.
      I hope they're right and I'm wrong. I just don't see how, not with protectors of the Constitution believing it was all written for them ...post-success instead of pre-success.
      Next day I donated my tux to Goodwill. I don't suppose I'll be invited back.
VB

     I thought about this while watching on of those insipid commercials for a local ambulance chasing law firm that does personal injuries law suits. It was about how good the attorneys feel about doing "good" for the clients. And I suppose there is joy all around...except for the dear departed, or poor Mama lying comatose in ICU...if the jury award is a few hundred thousand or more.
     But if you've been wronged, screwed or injured for less than $10,000, that same high profile firm will dump the case into the lap of a newbie intern, whose only objective is to get a settlement as fast as possible. No matter how good the case, time, not justice will be of the essence, and the indifference that now defines the profession will become visible for all to see.
     I left the profession in 1979 for that reason (I am of John Edward's generation, only a little older. My generation got worse as it went on.)
     But over the years I have taken clients who have fallen through the cracks, usually from poor representation, rebuilt their cases, and found (vetted) attorneys who could get them back into court. We've had some success and some failures but I've been able to keep my fingers in enough to see the moral chasm between lawyers and the people has widened.
     In short, there are two kinds of lawyers out there. It comes down to what they see in the mirror each morning.
First, there is the person who, because he/she delayed gratification for three years and paid a lot of money for a law degree, sees a professional who is licensed to work in a fairly exclusive field and entitled to receive better pay than an auto mechanic for that work.
     But then there is the person who, when he sees himself in the mirror, sees a member of a different class, a person apart from the rest of the community. In fact, a Levitical class, if you will. Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe, for instance, have always stood for the general proposition that only those trained in law can understand the Constititution, and there must be an elect clergy that stands between the citizens and their understanding of their own freedoms. Socialists also feel this way but for slightly different reasons. Elitists feel this way and wannabe patricians and aristocrats feel this way, for even more different reasons. Many theologians feel similarly about the New Testament.
     Still others of this group, the more mercenary, believe the current constitutional set-up, with legislatures representing the people, and writing laws is too messy a process. Stan Chesley, the Cincinnati class-action lawyer, once wrote that lawyers and judges were better suited to write the laws of the land. I recall the story of a dirt-poor fellow I knew who found a million dollar antique in a barn, got rich, built a business, then spent the rest of his life trying to sell the notion that what no more than good luck was in fact shrewd business sense.
     This has also been a rising belief among American trial lawyers for some time, that they posses this same sort of magic potion. But it has also become a belief among many jurists of the Left, which explains the rather strange (if you stop to think about) symbiotic relationship between Left wing lawyer-academicians, left wing judges and pirate plaintiffs' lawyers....each thinking they hold the hole Ace.
      At this juncture of American history, each of these factions believe their idea of paternalism is best and will out in the end. But only one will, and that will be the one that will not ally itself with others or compromise its own set of principles in order to get there.

      Now for the rest of the story. Under socialism, true socialism, lawyers will run to get coffee. In the 1970s Japanese business men did business face to face without attorneys. Again, lawyers there fetched chai (tea). The US bar associations threw up such a howl that finally lawyers were admitted to the inner sanctums of Japanese business, and as expected, tried to become the central hub to things that were beyond their ken. The Japanese economy began slowly to sink into the muck from that time on. Indeed, world business has been forever sidetracked from it's two major purposes, making things well and selling things well, all because lawyers insisted on a place at the table.
      That may be about to end. If the nature of American business changes, especially if the federal government takes a major stock-holding position in US companies, or even eventually owns or directs them, trial lawyers will be SOL with regards to those entire companies, and new laws will be written to reflect that new insularity. The trial lawyers will be left to sue the beejeezus out of what also will be a dwindling small business class...for nickles and dime rather than millions.
      Oh, there will still be lawyers, of course, but mostly in government. And although they won't be wearing little Mao jackets, they will be dressed rather drably, the loose fitting tweed uniforms of scribes who tend to templates drawn by someone else. There will be no more limos, power lunches or the laying of secretaries across oak desks, for those things are all signs of station...and attorneys will no longer have that one thing. They will have fallen back to their natural place on the pecking order of human accomplishment...just below aluminum siding salesmen.
      If I write this with some glee, it's true, for this series has been as much about the fate the useful idiots of the soft left have inflicted on themselves as it has been about speculations as to how socialism will effect the spirit of freedom still beating in most Americans. The great truth is, if it takes three generations for true American-style democracy to re-emerge, and free markets are once again re-opened, American trial lawyers will not be there to see it...not by a damn site, for it will have been the judgment of history that they be taken to a nearby oak and hung until they are dead, dead, dead, those viper-tongued sons of Satan. (With thanks to Judge Roy Bean.)
BChumm
    
     

      Probably no group of issues will lay out the starkest differences between Swedish Lites and Socialist Ambers than the coming culture wars between the two wings of the socialist party in America.
      As we wrote earlier, much of this will be carried on outside the usual tabloids of kiss-and-tell politics and salacious celebrity news, as the information sources of the new regime will be managed before these fireworks get out of hand. But no matter, the ordinary citizen, conservatives and Republican one and all will have very little to say about it anyway. We will just notice a change in television format or movie fare.
      For background, remember that the Swedish Lite wing of the American Left envision an America established along the line of the European social democracies. Stupidly they are accomplishing this just as their European models are about to implode under the weight of their own bureaucratic excess. Culturally, they see an America where every city has a zoned sector for prostitution, a needle park, abortion clinics and various assisted suicide facilities. only they see it with the glitter of Broadway and the glitz of Vegas...and the jiggle of roller bladers at Huntington Beach.  Europe doesn't quite have the gay colors of America. Try chiaroscuro. They have the plainer temperament of socialism, sort of like pigeons roosting in New York after choking on the pollution for fifty years. It's in their blood. For some sense of these lives in hues of grey and brown, I suggest "The Lives of Others", the dubbed film about life under the East Germans, especially the scene of the overweight prostitute the Stasi major invites to service him at his apartment. Have you ever visited a European brothel? Remember the bright and dark scenes of Berlin in Woody Allen's "Casino Royale"? It's like an unlit alley in east Berlin.  There's no music, no Yahoo, whooo--eee, Howdy Partner! Or so I've been told by people who frequent those places. European pleasure palaces are not where randy fellows go to hoorah. They are either for sour German victims of socialism, or drunks.
      Since the American Left has utilized all the elements of the popular culture; film, music, television, even video games, to finally obtain the defeat of the moral and constitutional right, they naturally assume they can continue in this same direction, again, unaware their European models are about to come unraveled. In their minds things should continue much as they always have. They see years and years ahead of endless wealth creation (and taxation) by the beautiful people in the arts sector.
      Having been focused entirely on the Republicans, they've been ignorant of that threat from their "further" left, but yessiree bob, it's right there, waiting in the wings. In one sense the cultural and religious Right have to root for the hard Left in this battle. For one, they will accomplish in the culture many of the things we wish we could have done ourselves (but had to keep putting it off because we might lose lose our tee time) and two, once in total charge, the Swedish Lites in America, unlike their European brethren would suddenly and harshly turn fascist, for under no circumstances are they going to allow that fat, juicy teat they're gorging themselves on be jerked out of their mouths. As we've said before, Pelosi & Reid & Co are bandits more than true socialists. The size of the looted Jewish art collection in Austrian points to the simple fact the thieves were more bandits than socialists.
       Hardcore socialists are more predictable if not more strident. More than that, true socialism is puritanical, even to the point of eccentricity if they are indeed adding a little Islamic lemon to their caravan tea. (This remains to be seen.)
       We believe you will not recognize America entertainment in thirty years. There will still be film. I have seen dozens of really fine Soviet films from the Stalin and Brezhnev era. Even without captions they are very good. Hollywood will still find and hire fine cinematographers. There will be great scripts. And visual excellence. But don't look for sex, bare T&A, a celebration of gayness, or even a celebration of diversity. One unending theme (and morale) in socialist film will be the virtue of sameness in people, dour and tight lipped, looking neither right nor left. Other than the screed film against capitalism and selfishness, masterfully portrayed, this is what you will get.
        Worse, the celebrity business in Hollywood will be seriously diminished. I have nothing personally against that Hilton girl, but she's history. And at her age, so will be her fortune. What will People Magazine and the Yahoo Home page do?
        Television will turn dreary, its coming down taking several years by a kind of attrition. Your grand-children will yearn for stories as ribald and festive as "Father Knows Best", so keep those old VHS's. As we said, 24/7 news may also fade away, as the last thing the state will want you know is what is actually going on in the world. Read a book. But cable will be filled with BBC like horticulture and nature programming, and yes, the ever-popular Weather Station, which will claim an even greater part of Americans' attention in coming years. Weather, world weather, will replace war and strife...until a new capitalist enemy emerges. "If if snows, it leads."
         The same for music. Hip-Hop, Gangsta Rap etc had immense public utility for the Left, but will have no place in socialism. I can't see black music going back to the Mills Brothers or The Platters, but with a full-employment economy, and almost none of them private music entrepreneurs, your guess is as good as mine as to where pop music will go. Paul Mauriat?
         And save that $300 on that X-Box 360 for you'll find yourself selling it this time next year for $50 just for half a tank of gas. First, your kids won't have time, and second, the range of games will fall back to the dark ages of Pong.
         It ain't good, girls and boys. At least it ain't if you're on the pop side of the culture wars.
         What hath the useful idiots wrought?
         On themselves?
BChumm

    We've already mentioned the two socialist strains, Swedish Lite and Socialist Amber. They could have two serious head-to-head-collisions in the next 4-8 years. One of those, addressed today, is Education. The other, Entertainment, will be addressed tomorrow.
     It has been charged by conservatives that the dumbing down of American children has been intentional. Even at the college level, the educational detours offered to students, to steer them away from being a part of any sort of productive role in society, has also been, in our view, intentional. Co-opting the best and brightest minds into vain and frivolous pursuits has always been a high priority with socialists who seek to gain control, even back to the 1930s when they penetrated British public schools, for they know that once the student matures and confronts the frivolity of his own choices, his own vanity will not allow him to publicly recant. So, they have secured either his steadfast followship...or his eternal silence. Whitaker Chambers and David Horowitz are but exceptions that prove the rule.
     Higher education has always been a bigger scam than either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.
     Again, it is with some sorrow and trepidation, rather than delight, that I can report to you that the current low state of public education in America will change drastically if the harder-edged form of socialism succeeds in America in the coming years. It will take 15-20 years to come to full fruition, so men like myself will not live to see it all unfold, but if you are younger than 50, you will be able to say, you heard it here first.
     At the Sands Institute our first ambition is to re-instill into American school children, at a time when it really matters (around the 4th Grade), a love of the heroes that made America possible. The 4th, 9th and 12th grades should be a succession of pep talks about the Constitution and the possibilities that exist to individuals because of it. Moses Sands had a schtick about teaching American history and government with enthusiasm. He called it the "shoulders we stand on" lectures. We have undertaken to design three curricula that do just that, and with the coming socialism, may very well have to take the endeavor dark. It will be our chief fundraiser, once that mechanism is in place (thesandsinstitute.org). If you go there, please leave a note. It's only just up, and still embryonic. I think we have an 8-10 year window.
     Now it is clear as to why a hungry Left, looking to create more and more dependence rather than independence, would intentionally understate the purposes of the Constitution, and minimize, even poke fun at, our founding heroes. Fighting that is our center piece at The Sands Institute.
     But the fact that a greater number of 1st and 2d graders cannot read by age 8, compared with their counterparts in 1950, including black children in what were then segregated schools, cannot be laid at the feet of a true socialist agenda.
     The same goes for the sciences and math. Socialism places a high priority on both, and will accelerate, not lessen, in these endeavors in coming years. So, the avarice of Swedish Lites, aided by the narrow-minded incompetence at NEA, will soon run head-long into true believers who have a completely different set of educational priorities. There's no question in our minds who will win.
     And the structure of public schools will change considerably, and although we have not yet read his educational treatises, we believe the Dept of Education will play a more prominent role in steering education toward a new streamlined socialist model, and William Ayers will be prominent in designing and managing those new models.

      In K-thru-12 we can expect a slow pulling back from existing pre-school baby-sitting programs, replaced by more streamlined European models. First and foremost will be far more strident requirements that kids learn to read, and learn to read on time. This means the NEA will learn there's a new sheriff in town, and failure will not be tolerated. Nor will extra money be offered up as incentives, as everyone in the education system has always known that if reading were the goal they'd always alleged it was, it would have been accomplished thirty years ago and at 1/10th the cost.
      There will be a show-down of sorts and the teachers' unions will lose. (More about useful idiots as we go along, for it is a constant thread in all our comments about how life will change under socialism. Just wait til I discuss Hollywood.) Inept teachers will be fired. Teachers themselves will have new criteria for things such as repetition and rote memory work....boring things they really don't like to do.  It will take ten years at least to clean the recalcitrant sludge from the gutters....a thing citizens themselves could have done had they just set their whole minds to it, or had the leadership to convince them it was something that needed to be done. This way their children will still be able to read much better, only parents will have no say in what their children will read.
      Children will be constantly tested, but more toward streaming their talents toward their most productive talents. It will no longer matter that Mom and Dad want Johnny to be in the band. If he can't show any measurable talent for the clarinet by a certain age, he won't be able to get in. Later, in say 30-40 years, exceptions will be made, depending on who you know in the party, but in the early years the rules will be a strident as TB test.
      Interestingly, competition will once again be encouraged, so expect to see more boys than girls at the blackboard doing speed math drills. (There's another 3 billion shot to hell.) In fact, most feminist-based school programs will be tanked unless they show some merit in advancing the education mission for students other than girls.
      It is impossible to say just how the new curricula will work out, and how long it will take to be in place. 10-15 years is only a guess.
What we do know is that the tolerated ineptness among teachers will no longer be tolerated. The same goes for teachers with their own personal agenda, which includes teaching the Constitution with enthusiasm. (Obama has already said what he thinks of the Constitution.) Nor will squeaky-wheel parents any longer get any grease. And finally, God will be run completely out of public schools, which, by the way, within 20 years, may be the only allowed form of matriculation in America. (A note on preventing that below.) To be sure, there will be private schools for select member of the political class, or can I be so bold, the nomenkaltura?, but those will also be based on the same rigid educational models. Those schools will be more about separating the classes than about streamlining curricula. From what we've learned from Imperial Communist east Europe, at about Year 40 this separate status begins to take on the appearance of an inherited birthright. A noble bloodline was almost ready to emerge there when the people revolted in 1989.  That yearning is great among the Swedish Lites, but less so among Obamailis, who will go a generation demanding merit...their version of merit.
     About athletics, it's hard to say about the changes, since much of it depends on the changed (diminished) status of college and professional sports over the next 40-50 years. We think it will be drastic, but not for some time. I'm quite sure that by 2040 the old Auburn-Alabama game will have lost some of its spark. We will see fewer, actually zero, students staying in school just to get their grades up so they can play at Tech. They will have long since been sent off to a vocational school (another conservative idea the socialists will steal). The new schools won't have the patience to see just how high some kid can jump, if he can't also read, write and cipher up to snuff.
    Also, advertising and peoples' ability to pay to see sporting events will have much to say about the salaries drawn by professional athletes. We expect advertising to change considerably, sadly again, by government mandate rather then by households and parents who've just said "No" to Coors Lite. One of the big three major league sports will fade into almost obscurity, we just don't know which. Our bet is baseball...unless Hugo Chavez gets a cabinet post after he retires as president-for-life in Caracas.
     China, another great facilitator of our profligate spending ways, will get a huge financial comeuppance when American public schools all start wearing uniforms. Again, it is with sadness that this will come about by state edict rather than local parental choices. But either way, China loses.
      On into higher education, the useful idiots in academe will once again be shown how the gods punish by first answering prayers, for degree programs in Underwater Basket Weaving at Southern Cal will be out. In fact about thirty percent of public university curricula will be unceremoniously tossed out the door, and once again, it's sad to say almost of all of it will be the same courses of study conservatives would like to have seen passed over to the pay-as-you-go format, but were too timid to fight for.
      We think home-schooling will be a thing of the past, but have recommended that parents form their own schools now, and if they can take say 20%-30% of public school children out they can change both the dynamic of  socialism, described herein, as well as state and local tax structures. If private schools in America become too big fail (to coin a phrase), the socialists will either lay back, or try legal/armed intervention. This could be significant if socialism is to survive, or the Constitution is regain the high ground. We see an eight year window. Laisser les bons rouller!
      I could take this another 5000 words, but why bother?

      Dumbing American kids down in grade school and high school, then steering them to narcissistic pursuits in college was a good solid Left-wing plan for achieving power, but I really doubt if the Pelosi's & Reid's and their cronies in the NEA seriously considered what they would do once power was achieved. Continue on or change course? Our view of the Swedish Lites of this wing of the socialist party in America is that they only wanted to be able to pluck the golden goose ever so slowly, never thinking it might someday be bald and ready for the oven. (They never do plan that far ahead, as the banking crisis has proved.) They are more bandits or facsists than true-heart socialists. It is why they always lose in the end.
      The condition American education is in today is unsustainable, and a battle looms, but we have given the edge to the people with an edge, for we know that hard core Marxists already have a plan. Pelosi & Co don't. They're forever locked in take-over mode, never considering what happens once it all gets took. Barack Obama stands poised to steal everything the Democrat Party has worked for, lo! these two score years, and take the whole shebang down another path altogether. The Mensheviks come to mind, for some reason. I have laid the Obamailis' plan out (as I see it) in simple terms, and it is rather draconian, but I think it's best to paint the ugliest picture possible, especially to you under-50 crowds out there, for you will be able to watch this all unfold....and take notes.
      It is a dynamic situation, as the Swedish Lites will kick up quite a dust over a broad front, especially once Hollywood realizes what's in store for them. It will be quite a melee, only we may not get to see it. Sadly, I believe ordinary citizens, the late un-lamented Republican Party and the very few conservatives I've talked to lately who actually believe the Constitution is for the common man, rather than uncommon conservative like themselves...will have very little to say about it.
      Much of what socialism will achieve in the short run, say one generation, will be things conservatives and families would also like to have done themselves. This is why I am so melancholy, for they will get some compliance from strange quarters. But in the second generation we (you) will get to see the great difference in the results between, one, (ours) offered with a hope of liberty, and two, offered with the hopelessness of state servitude, where there's always no hope, no how (Johnny Cash), except for the ruling class.
     If it sounds like I'm rooting for the Obamailis to win...well, if we can't...yes. The sooner the better.
VB
     

    Crime will go up.
    I could stop here, for in truth, reported crimes will go down. In other words, crime will go up because you will sense that it has gone up. It will go up by word of mouth. Nobody goes to south Philly who doesn't have to, but there will be new places you have felt free to go to before but have now been warned off, sort of like old speed-trap towns in the days before the interstates.
    There is no Euro model, or even Soviet model to guide us here, although the fascist models may provide some insights as to how this might happen.
    To put this into context, America has a greater crime rate than Europe because of three major reasons; 1) average Americans have more things worth stealing than Europeans do, 2) Americans live in more single-dwelling houses than in Europe, who mostly live in multi-dwelling complexes, and 3) much of what comprises crime in America, such as drugs, prostitution and pornography, are legal in Europe. So, we can't really find a Euro-based situation that mirrors crime (and so-called poverty) in America.
    Moreover, middle classness runs much, much more deeply in America than in Europe, as witnessed by the fact that the "poverty class" in America physically live much better then the lower working classes of Europe; cars, television, home entertainment, etc. Also, as reported to me by an importer who buys in Europe and sells on eBay, there are all sorts of collectibles to be had in Europe at garage sale prices simply because the lower working classes there can't afford to do things such as collect. Even the most menial wage earner in America can afford to collect something; porcelain figurines, ball caps, NASCAR memorabilia, you name it.
    You might want to add that we have a a type of underclass also not found in Europe, despite the fact the Euros began importing foreign workers to sweep their streets and wash their cars about thirty years ago. Our underclass are full-fledged citizens but have lived on state-created "reservations of poverty" for over 40 years now. With the possible exception of North African youth in France, there is nothing comparable. And their underclass can't vote. The good news, these reservations will begin to disappear in a very short while. The bad news, not necessarily in the manner constitutionalists may have hoped, by an end to state paternalism and better education and opportunity for the poor. Many street youth will find themselves wearing uniforms, or at least Obama has suggested that. Unlike the faint-hearted liberals of the Carter era, when they threw open the asylums, chronic drug addicts, old folks without families to tend to them, the chronically disabled will begin to disappear...behind the walls of institutions or just disappear. As we've been watching with assisted suicide programs in various states (Oregon, Washington) the state will more and more get involved in the decision making process of what is and what is not a quality life, and when it is best to "let go". (States in general will lose much of their sovereignty, about which we will write more later.) It is no leap at all to jump from assisted suicide to euthanasia to eugenics, which incidentally, was always a founding principle at Planned Parenthood, particularly in the black under-classes. We found this thinking, by the way, in the Indian Wars day when Phil Sheridan and Custer informally adopted a program to "eradicate" Indians by killing off their birthing machines. The so-called "battle" at the Washita in Indian territory in 1868 was just such a massacre, causing Johnny Cash to write, "With victories he was swimmin', he killed, children, dogs and women, but the General, the don't ride well anymore."
    The point of this aside is to note than it is easy to "redefine" a massacre into a battle, or later, at Little Big Horn, a battle into a massacre, when it suits the government's purposes, and if the people are more or less willing to go along with the outcome. Ending the purposeless life of the slums is just such an outcome.
    With so many apples in the air at once, this is where the Swedish Lites of the Congress will be wading into uncharted waters...but where Socialist Ambers, like hardcore Marxists, can afford to be indifferent, since they will achieve their end no matter what; a compliant populace and a quiet, unpublic way to dispose of many chronic urban eyesores, from the homeless, to the retarded, to the drug afflicted and chronically unemployed.
    Crime will go up all because the internal security mechanisms among citizens will be heightened, not because of government reports. Not able to rely on the reports of government, people will begin to re-evaluate crime only in terms of what the see in their personal lives, which will actually achieve a socialist end by causing people to stay closer to home. Government will be totally disbelieved in every matter within 10 years, ironically the result of the past 10 years' efforts by the Left to destroy credibility only of the GOP. It will reach back to bite them. Cynicism will be replaced by something even deeper and darker, utter disbelief. Even in Sweden the government is more or less ignored for after 50 years, it has little to tell them they care about...this is how small their lives have become.
    Moreover, the nature of crime will change. Crimes against property will decrease by citizen versus citizen. The same with crimes of violence. Remember the two old competing lines that "if you out outlaw guns, only criminals will have guns" and the alternate, "only government will have guns." When government takes guns away from the people, they will eventually take them away from criminals as well. Only government wins in the gun wars.
    Crime rates will be made to appear to go near zero, the government keeping its own set of internal books as to what's really going on. As I said, you will not go to certain places because of word of mouth, not because the government warned you of any danger. The only danger they will warn you about is the weather, whose 24/7 service will most likely replace cable news in a few short years.
    What crimes that will be reported, albeit always under-reported, will be a new class of crime, "crimes against the state". We don't know how that will play out just yet, i.e., just what a crime against the state, or public order, or decency, may actually be, but there will be many..and again, emanating from Washington, not from Helena or Hartford.
    I don't mean to harp, but yes, with the creation of a national police force, much of what is now "illegal" will simply become legal, especially in those kinds of crimes the population have always considered to be universally criminal, such as thuggery, rape and theft. I don't have to go back to the SA and Ernst Roehm to prove this, for it is true of every national police force. All one need do is look at UN peace keepers in Africa. Bullying will be their leitmotif, so some young Wagner might want to come up with a catchy march. The state class will be outside crime, so to speak, although they will take care of their own, just as the Vegas mafia did in the 60's.
    What is worse, as legal thuggery goes up, the people's ability to defend themselves will go down. Again, no one will care about the Bronx or south central LA, but thuggery will also show up in rural, small town fly-over America. Every small town has some rent-a-cop or third shift night watchman who wants to get even for not being on the police force. He'll be the first to enroll. Only this won't get out on the local or regional news. As we already reported, controlling the information will be very very important...to make sure no one in Hometown, Nebraska ever knows what's happening in Pleasantville, Indiana.
    At this point, the issues begs for a discussion on the Second Amendment, which we may address later.
    But really folks, don't you think you can figure it out for yourself? If you own a weapon, any weapon, and there is a piece of paper in government control that says you own it, they can come get it. Right? The only questions are when, and how.
    Just don't think that your NRA brothers in Iowa will necessarily know it. This is why we led this series with the Information segment, (Part III). With Rush and talk radio gone, with Drudge gone, with Fox either gone or co-opted, with internet/email communication narrowed significantly, you may never know. Don't you still wish you'd kept those hard lines? And with gas at 5.00 a gallon, you just won't be able to drive to Iowa to report it. Pigeons anyone?
    We of course can hold back much of these coming attractions with a fillibuster-secure Senate, but that prospect is drawing nigh as they are about to steal one in Minnesota and Alaska and don't be surprised at the surprising Democrat turnout in Georgia. Vote stealing fingerprints were all over the 2004 election. In the 2006 election everyone just yawned, saying the Republicans had it coming. "Let the Justice Department handle it. It wasn't our Secretary of State," (which, by the way, is our opinion as to how the 2006 and and this election may have seriously been compromised. The numbers just don't add up.) With that history, 2008 was really a shoo-in. Moses Sands told me a long time ago that if I thought teat-fits were a product only of the spoiled Left, "Think agin".
    Now it's time to reap the whirlwind...or get off your duffs and go save Minnesota.
Vassar Bushmills

    When you woke up November 5th you may have been surprised to see it all seemed like business as usual. Even though you knew there had been a momentous "Change" (The official mantra of this new era, expect to see it on a stamp w/i four years), as promised, there was a comforting sameness in your world; on television, in the newspapers, at the mall and grocery store. Only on the news shows does the beat go on, and seriously, who bothers to watch that anymore?
    It will be the same on the day after Obama is inaugurated.
    But soon after that things will begin to change, if ever so subtly. In Part III, about the flow of information we described how this seeming lack of change in your life is supposed to play out, and why, over time, you will actually know less and less about what's really going on...anywhere.  The first 20 years are crucial. For socialism to work, even in Sweden, there has to be a veil of secrecy between the real players and the people.
    America becoming a socialist nation is a case of first instance, as the lawyers call it. It's never happened before. So how we will navigate the seas of socialism will be a work in progress. To be sure, we've had some heavy doses of socialism since the New Deal, in the 1930s (only we didn't know it), and we never really did get rid of...70 years worth. But we've never had the Full Monty.
    So how "Change" will occur depends on 1) the true intentions of the in-coming Players, and 2) how deftly they manage their manipulations in the early days, and 3) how much resistance they get first, from the people, and secondly from the de-frocked useful idiots in the press, Congress, and the public at large donors once they find out that instead of a wedding all they got was a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'm with the Messianic Army. (I never get tired of poking a finger into the ribs of those about-to-be jilted maidens, that while Lenin and the Bolsheviks fought a vicious 4-year civil war with the tsarists... first, he dispatched all the liberals and mensheviks and other commie-lites that had helped them attain power...just so he wouldn't have be looking over he shoulder and listening to all that caterwauling.)
     There are three basic types I can think of on short order. First, and most prominent in the minds of wannabe-American socialists is the European model, what I call Swedish Lite. All over Europe now, it's a benign, cancerous sort of nanny-socialism, where everyone just sort of goes around in a life of tranquil bliss with never a worry in the world, as long as that life isn't too broad. Imagine how much nicer that would be in a country where there was sunshine nine months out of the year? That's how the Americans Left sees European socialism. They have better wines, manners, history...but we have more sunshine and beach houses. Swedish-Lite is where the state doesn't own the means of production but controls most of it. You can still be rich, but only with a state license to be rich. That sort of thing. (More on this, as we go along.)
     Second is the Soviet model itself, communism, which is Socialism Dark, where everything is torn down, then rebuilt from scratch....and usually by people who don't know much about building. But what they do build, the state owns it all. This is how most Americans growing up in the 50s saw communism, and because of  the USSR, the Iron Curtain countries, and Mao's China, it was all very real. We can dispense with this model rather quickly....unless there are some real paranoid psychopaths behind this new Change. (We doubt it.) Euro-Socialism Lite's beef with Soviet-style communism is that the USSR was run by (duh!) Russians who, by European standards were oafish and barbaric in the first place. ("Scratch a Russian and you'll find a Tartar" didn't get into the lexicon of put-downs accidentally.) They handled Marx like an ape might handle bone china. To most left leaning Euros and Americans, it was homo Rus and it's imprimatur that brought down the USSR. (We disgaree.)
     The Soviet experiment was closer to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror than anything seen since. We don't think that can happen here.
     The third possibility is what I call Socialism Amber, socialism with an edge. That edge can come in all sorts of varietals; just look at any Sam Adams menu and you'll see how many you can have. I remember a little mini-brewery beerhaus in Estonia where, it would have taken a month just to try all the different brews. (That was a post-communism addition to the city, by the way.)
     We've already been given some hint as to the edge the Obamailis may bring to government, most prominent among them "getting even". Only how, and on what account? Getting even itself carries on many different shades of dark...er, amber...as there is the getting even as expressed by Reverend Wright, who we consider no more than a carny con-artist (but who may prove to be just the opposite) and Louis Farrakan, who has shown time and time again (in the Sudan) that blackness is always subordinated to his version of Islam, especially if the blacks are Christians. He is a virulent hate-monger. Both have deeply guarded secrets, but both also have gotten rich by telling other people they can "get even" just by watching others being brought down. Talk about cheap pick-me-ups. The election of Obama, with nothing else, was an act of getting even for millions of Americans...who now must reap the whirlwind. They won't like it, but it will be too late. So we will see all the ways getting even will play into governance in the coming days.
     One will have to parse very carefully the words of Obama and his closest associates; to Obama's openly expressed favor for Islam if he had to make the choice, to the notion that many of the poor, welfare dependent blacks will have to sacrifice under the New Change. He said it, and of course they weren't listening, and clearly never thought was part of the bargain, but it remains to be seen how those straight words and twisted perceptions finally become untangled. (We also note only as an observation, that as soon as the election results were known, beginning with that speech in Chicago, Michelle has taken 3 full steps back, into the shadow of her husband. Just like a dutiful Muslim wife? Our first words on Obama almost a year ago was that his connections to Islam were simply too many, albeit murky, to trust. We will watch and wait. But if so, then getting even may become very dark, indeed,)
     With that in mind, getting even can become even a greater source of concern if, as hinted, those young men who are suddenly going to have to go out and find work, find that work in the new national police component of AmeriCorps, a la Farrakhan's private army. When a president enters office already feeling the need for a Praetorian Guard, there is room for worry.
     (We're making a list of get-evens which we may report later. Feel free to submit.)
     Finally, I note in a serious but also mocking way about Bill Ayers and other old 60's radicals who may now be Players, and who will haunt the back porch of this administration (Sol Alinsky's works and deeds need to be looked at more clearly and with more dispassion, considering the fact he may have defined the only way constitutionalists will be able to retake their republic, i.e., community action); their brand of Marxism is also a get-even Marxism. But in truth, get-even Marxism in America is pure Marxism, for most radical Marxists bear the same social pathologies and insecurities as did Marx himself; an incredible, almost narcissistic self-love and selfishness, a despising of any achievement and rewards by any man he considered beneath him intellectually (which was almost everyone). This covered the entire economic spectrum, from industrial capitalist to the petty bourgeoisie, excluding only the poor lamentable worker. They were the only people Marx could both feel superior to and rest assured who would never rise above him economically, although he was a terrible mooch. Communist noblesse oblige. Ayers probably couldn't get a date with the Homecoming Queen either.
     The social psychology of hardcore Marxists and Swedish Lites alike are an interesting subject, which I've enjoyed poking fun at for years. Both came from that group of Americans who Moses Sands described as defining themselves entirely by what they were against and who they were not; the banal, the  mundane, the common...and just why is it those guys still get the bigger car, house and the prom queen? Isn't it ironic that those who worship Darwin the most like the applications of his natural selection laws least?
     We expect a competition between the Swedish Lites and Socialist Ambers in the coming months. It all depends on where Obama stands and we are fairly certain he is Amber. While they share certain views about the hoi polloi, the America mob, the masses, and the entire idea that men and women can do very well all by themselves, thank you, there is a real difference in wanting to rule the mob out of envy and wanting to rule the mob out of revenge. It's a deep psychological difference, but in coming months it will be palpable. The Lites, Al Gore comes to mind, who we've called the Calvera the Bandit of the environment, sees all this stuff that someone else built and suddenly thinks he can manage it better....for a 10% cut of the pie. Lawyers do this all the time. What a sweet gig! The Clintons, Pelosi, Reid are all cut this same way. Their compassion for their fellow man is as shallow as a pool of warm spit. "Liberals cubed", we once called them. Meists, one in all.
    In the European model of Swedish Lite, we saw an ancient privileged royalty and aristocracy replaced not by the mob, but by a group of layabouts with law degrees just as the Democrat Party represents today. Although originally created to be a buffer between the aristocracy, who certainly wanted no repeats like Paris in the Terror, by the 1950s, with a diminishing privileged class they became the permanent state class, but with a taste for the aristocrats' Privileges, which they like very much.
    But America had no such aristocracy, so we had to create one out of our private sector industrialists, who around 1900 seemed to fit that insufferable model very well. But Bill Gates?...who still eats hamburgers and wears blue jeans? Can anyone buy a $10,000 hamburger? The European models for aristocrats go so far back almost no one can remember their more common origins, when they still ate roast with a bowie knife. Their sense of superiority and privilege really seems like it's in the blood line. So, how can you replicate such a hatred for the upper crust in a short 200 years? Easy, in America we had to teach our children to pee on the shoulders they stand on. Teach them to hate, and hate with gusto the very people who gave them every sensibility and every comfort they own. We've been doing this for about 40 years now. Bill Ayers was in one of the first graduation classes.
    That is one reason Swedish Lite was never likely to work here, even with our failed public school system dedicated to indoctrinating children that their parents are fools. Socialist Amber, however, will be a bit more harsh and therefore longer-lasting, although it too will face some serious crucibles. Socialism was designed in Europe for more or less homogeneous white societies, only now, since nobody there wanted to do menial labor, they have taken a dusky hue from all their guest workers, mostly from the Middle East. Their one-size-fits-all, cookie cutter bureaucracies could not respond to the social and legal waves this has created, but also has denied the people to take direct action themselves. Bureaucracies always tend to ignore that which they have no answer to, and which requires new or resourceful thinking.
     In the the end what will kill both Swedish Lite or Socialist Amber, is what killed the USSR and is now drowning the EU, both singularly and collectively. It is not homo Rus but homo Bureaucraticus.
    This is why socialism, like the bad guy, always gets it in the end. The only question: What will be left in its wake?

    Oh, as a footnote, you'll note that fascism and nazism are also forms of socialism. The difference between fascism and Swedish Lite, quite frankly, is little more than temperament, namely one is in northern Europe (Apollonian) while the other is in southern Europe (Dionysian) and so are more prone to wearing black shirts and carrying night sticks...when sober. Obama has shown several traits similar to the "sawdust ceasar" of fascism, but we'll wait and see. Nazism is a brutal, totalitarian version of fascism (also with a serious get-even edge) but not something we sense just yet. But as early studies showed with marijuana use back in the 60s, i.e, that a high rate of users went onto harder drugs the same can be true (we believe) about socialism in general. When things unravel or go bad, rather than look for solutions in more democracy, the tendency is to go onto to the harder stuff. A rereading of William Golding might be in order. Just a note.
VB

    When you woke up Wednesday morning you may have been surprised to see it all seemed like business as usual.
    And it will be the same on the day after Obama is inaugurated.
    And so it will continue.
    Soon after, though, things will begin to change, but the whole point is that you will not notice. There is actually a plan out there, actually more than one as we believe the Obamailis are not on the same page as the Democrat leadership in Congress. It will take a year to sort that out, only you will find yourself more and more out the loop.
    So let's begin this how-things-will-change discussion with how the flow of information will change. As we all know a leftish press changes changes the ways it reports depending on who's sitting in the White House. I recall all sorts of cute articles, one from Natural History in the 1970s especially, about the quaint and piquant life style of New York's street people in the mid-1970s when Carter was in the White House. The day after Ronald Reagan was sworn in, they suddenly became "homeless" and a national disgrace.
    Similarly, when Clinton left office in 2000 all the stories was about his leaving office, not about the in-coming Bushes. Now it's all about the in-coming Obamas and nothing about the exiting Bushes. Get it?
    I'm sure you can think of another 100 examples. But these are examples of a gushing MSM. That will change and change rather suddenly, for they will be split asunder between those members of the press who still want a good story, especially a titillating, shocking tell-all kind of a story, and those who are willing to trade away what little professionalism and respectability they still have in order to be media insiders with the new regime. Every newsroom, from New York to a local NBC affiliate in Omaha will have its own Walter Duranty, and that person will be the chosen one for getting approved news out. If you were ever in the USSR in the 1980s and watched "Vremiya" (The Times), their national news station, you will know what I mean; car wrecks, fires, laying of wreaths somewhere, but never a word about Chernobyl, or that union leader in Poland, or about some people in Germany trying to tear down a wall in Berlin.
    The rest of the media, alas, will be farmed out to dog shows and garden clubs and other manure-like human interest features that already afflict prime time news. To be sure, there will be attack media dogs to send out against known enemies of the new regime. Sarah Palin will be in their cross hairs forever, but also look for Bobbie Jindel and other as yet unknown luminaries to be singled out. There will also be attacks made on threats to the new realities of socialism, e.g, home schooling, the new "rich business" sector, i.e, businesses too small to be Big Business but having already been politically re-defined by the Obamailis as something other than small business. Remember in the 1970s when the media went after religious sects like the Amish and Menonites who ran their own schools? Only this time, it will stick. News will be used, just like Goebbels used it, to celebrate some things, make you hate others, and put you to sleep with boredom about the rest. After 70 years in the USSR it was all somnambulence.
    The point is, the only relevant media will be an arm of the new regime, doing it's bidding. There will no longer be any independent media out there, digging around, asking questions. They will all be approved or they will be running to get coffee for Brian Williams.
    That leaves the alternate sources of news, such as talk radio and the internet. But talk radio will probably succumb to the Fairness Doctrine unless the GOP can filibuster it. We expect M'Cain will cross the aisle yet one more time to prevent a filibuster, for God knows, he shown in more ways than we can calculate, that he hates his enemies more than ever loved the Constitution...or a free America, for that matter. Talk radio will lose.
    This includes local talk radio, although I doubt the Democrats really care that much what some local radio hack is saying about them, or local politics. In fact, they may throw conservatives and local talk a bone and make them exempt. Sure, a few of the luminaries such as Limbaugh may go to television or XM, but the whole point is, the new regime and the Democrats will hold the big ace hole-card (we can't say "Ace of Spades" anymore) in that they can use the same sorts of filters Yahoo and Google developed for the China market, and actually limit the flow of information on the internet. Look for it. Look for limits being placed on YouTube, FacePage, MySpace, as well the publishing of  camera-phones pics. When Drudge finds it harder and harder to get info, so will Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity...and so will everyone who wants to know anything other than approved news. Can you spell "samizdat"?
     This won't happen over night. As I said, it will come slowly, so that no one will notice. The truth will still be out there, we will all know it is out there, only we won't be able to find it. But they know, in time, our children will stop looking.
     We just got an email from the Christian Coalition stating that this is still a center-right nation, and exit polls proved it. Excuse me, but when the Red Army marched into Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, et al,  in 1944, they were still Christian nations. Somewhere between 1960 and 1980 they almost quit being one, simple because almost everyone forgot what being a Christian even was...except that it was bad. That's how it happens when a center-right nation finds itself under the boot of a left-left government.
     If you're used to knowing what's going on, and far too many Americans don't seem to care, which is why we're in this fix, without access to news, real news, it's like being locked away in a dark jail.
     Hold that thought. It gets worse.
VB
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     Yesterday I was contacted by a reader about a comment I made in my posting, "Rush Limbaugh wants to rebuild Conservatism" In it I made the comment "women are born socialists unless...". It was intended to be a grabber, so thanks for grabbing, Curricula. I have on the drawing board a little more extensive look at this subject, but promised a response right away.
      I'll preface it by saying that in his (our) 2004 article on Democracy in Iraq, Moses Sands made the comment that a woman would not send her son, husband or boyfriend next door to defend her neighbor, so she is pretty much anti-war by nature, regardless of the threat.  That did create a little firestorm from some women, even on the right, and I learned, in reading their responses, that once certain buttons are pushed, such as that comment, the rest of the article is neutralized. Some people just cannot get past it.
      Moses' point in that comment was to note that a women can turn banshee when defending her children and home, but she only turns mean once the door's been kicked in. By that time, it's usually too late. It is the man, the husband, and it is his nature, to view threats further away and go there to defend his house. To the edge of town, to the water's edge, to the other shore. Men do that because they see threats in different ways than women, and to protect their families, they will leave their women, kicking and screaming if they have to, to go fight it. If you have ever watched wartime romance films you'll note that this is the theme of at least 80% of them (and 50% of all westerns)...for the wife, girl friend, mother always have to let their men go...then sit down at the kitchen table and have a good cry. It is why those blue star pins are so important, even in these days. They serve too who sit and wait.
      Moses concluded by saying that in such matters it is the man who usually wins out, and marches out to meet the enemy, for there is, in anthropological terms, a survival benefit to his behavior.
      This is why a complete House, made up of a man and a woman, is such a fundamental building block of human liberty and the Constitution. One of the things men do well is sally forth to defend it. It is why a majority of women without men are such a threat to the Constitution, and if you noticed, they voted overwhelmingly for the anti-constitutional candidate in last week's election.
       Moses was right.
       But my comment that women are "born-socialists" was, as I said, a grabber. It came with an equivocation, for if a woman finds her security inside her home, and her home is a family enterprise, then socialism has no place in her life, except as some sort of abstraction. (We all think socialist thoughts every time we see an unfairness that cannot be immediately remedied.) Women are not born socialists, in the sense they know what it is and then cling to it. Most men and women have no idea what it is fully. (We're trying to lay that out now, in terms of how it affects lives.) But women wil vote socialist, and not just on national defense, but other kinds of security, child care, education, domestic security. And their children, as we saw in the election, will mirror Mommie's voting patterns. It s in the nature of women-without-men to empower government.
      The reasons are simple and while mostly common sense, are also biological. As nurturers, women/mothers need protection, which historically had been provided by the male. (Not necessarily a "strong" male as in many homes the woman always wore the pants. The ideal is an integrated home for like as not, as a team, it generally works out fine in terms of passing on a strong home to the next generation.) With the advent of feminism, many women found themselves moving forward without men on purpose, while more often, they lost them through divorce. Some feminists see this as perfect state of nature, for one, because they are socialists in the starkest sense and like the idea of a non-sexual, non-cohabiting protector anyway. But we think this is a crippling blow to liberty as we've known it.
    The U S Constitution enabled men and women to do what no other form of government ever has. Besides being married, they could actually build something together they could pass on. We call it the House, but you can call it the family corporation if you prefer. Half a family makes for a lousy corporation and almost nothing good is passed on or is lasting. This idea of the House is man's greatest dream...not hooking up in a Coors saloon.
    The net result is that women with full families have husbands and community to protect them and their brood, so they can then do for the family corporation what they do best. The role of  government in their lives comes way down their list of priorities. In fact, in most households, government is a net pain in the butt, beginning with taxes.
     The tough thing about socialism is that while it is voted in, it doesn't stay voluntary. It's almost impossible to throw it out the same way it was put in. Socialism is a form of governing, and it is all about the State (and the elites who run the State...for the people). The people are more like drones in a beehive. Pursuing life, liberty and happiness is a kind of selfishness that takes away from the purposes of the State. Divorce is good for the state, as is easy sex, and no personal accountability. The Pop Culture is also good for the State, so advertising is good for the State if it leads men and women (beginning with children) to stray from the purposes of the family corporation. Men should go to sports bars instead of waste their time at Home Depot getting tools for the house and yard.
    We are quite certain this republic cannot long survive with half the males laying up in bars watching the NFL, and only occasionally hooking  up or getting into some relationship that ends up badly, leaving one or two kids to be raised by a single Mom. The odds favor socialism in that family's life and future. Advertising is generally against marriage, as they make more money, far more money, by causing families to detour from the main purpose of their House. Science is against marriage as it invokes God, Who science unofficially (for now) is opposed to. Maybe only Home Depot is for marriage and few churches.
    Something has to give, but as we've been saying, a restoration of the Constitution is not going to happen spontaneously.
    Cheers
     Vassar