The answer:
      An ounce of courage.

      This isn't a comment, but a poll.
      Elements of the Democratic Party have done and are doing, and will do things that got the Rosenbergs hung, especially in the area of conspiring to overthrow the Constitution of the United States.
      Admit it, they really are.

      Our poll, excluding Joe Lieberman, who's already established his bona fides in this area, who will be the first to flip and also expose an ounce of courage?

      So far, with mixed reviews from our staff, we've had Joe Biden and Bill Clinton nominated as early candidates to yell, "Enough is enough".  
      Interesting.
      What's your opinion?
Bernard Chumm

     Yip Harburg wrote this song in 1931, and by the end of the decade had been recorded by several artists. You can listen to the lyrics (by Bing Crosby) at YouTube, but we like Rudy Vallee's version better.
     No matter, during the Great Depression it had become a genuine socialist marching song, a drumbeat that drew tens of thousands of American into communism's service before the war.
     OK, listen to the words, bookmark it, as, over the next 4 years, you watch millions of dam builders, railroad workers, small business employees, and soldiers thrown into unemployment, and bread lines, by the very came socialists this song begged to come rescue us all in 1931.
     The big lie finally exposed.
 Bernard Chumm

     In Honduras, the about-to-leave President Zelaya tried to pull a Chavez and hold onto power. The Supreme Court disagreed. So did the majority of people. The army stepped in. He's out...and guess who claiming foul? Guess who's meddling? Well, sure, Ugo, but also Hillary and Obama.
     In September, 2008 I wrote this about then-candidate Obama and the Democrat Party:

          "In the 1960s-70s, the American Left adopted the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" line of political alliances and began hugging communist dictators, hoisting their flags as a big "in yer face" to the establishment. In those days the Democrat Congress kept these radicals at arms length as useful idiots, then were forced to turn their backs and hold themselves blameless as those dictators turned genocidal. It had become a matter of face, and a slow down-hill slide since. For you see, ever so subtly, the party of the Civil Rights Movement, did not want to have to belly up to the truth of the obverse of that line, namely that "the friend of my enemy is my enemy".
      They have now. The American Left was always indifferent to the massacre of innocent life if it brought about a desirable political end, even back to the days of Stalin and Walter Duranty. By the 60's they had enlisted an army of cannon fodder from the more affluent sectors of American society who simply could not, by a tortured self-delusional teat-fit sort of logic, allow themselves to see the end results of things they set into motion. Today those armies have swollen, probably in numbers, but most certainly in decibel levels (thanks to the internet). So now it is official...
      ...the friend of their enemy is now officially their enemy. To hell with the old sentiments of the civil rights movement. To hell with the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." To hell with John 15:13, once upon a time a liberal call-to-arms. The answers are no longer blowin' in the wind. You see, the 'friend' of their enemy happens to be human liberty in Iraq (and elsewhere). The Iraqis know it and are grateful for it, but the Democrats, Obama, dailyKos, et al, will have none of it."

   Seems I nailed it.
VB

   This new sign erected over the House Financial Services Committee gallery.
BC

   Two lessons about moral cowardice learned from last night's House vote on Cap and Trade bill:

   1) Most Democrat congressmen (and eight Republicans) voted against their own best interests, and against their own constituents' will on a bill none had read and will deny all responsibility once the fine print is revealed, should it become law, in whole or in part. That is a kind of arrogance and cowardice we've all come to expect these past few years. We should not hold ourselves blameless in allowing things to have moved this far down the path to self-destruction.
      On these Yea-votes, the main reason they voted that way could be that Obama has promised them re-election, notwithstanding voter anger. Obama needs this legislation, so promises the ultimate kickback, and with one-party rule, repeat RULE, on the horizon; that's a swift kick.
      By crossing that line they have become aidders and abettors in the socialist/fascist conspiracy that is the Obama administration. They now ride in his boat...but with only one oarsman. If it should prove un-seaworthy and they find themselves adrift in fast, high muddy water in need of a lifeline, he will leave them for gator bait, just one of many lessons learned at Alinsky's teat.
      It may prove to be the most stupid vote Nancy Pelosi ever brought to the floor of that House on this account alone, if voter ire can prove more powerful than Acorn (and others') stealth and thuggery. If so, most of those 219 aye-votes, and a dozen or so "permitted" nay-votes, just for being in the same party, will find themselves back to hanging shingles in seventeen months.

   2) Notwithstanding the overwhelming GOP votes against it (with 8 turncoats), this vote was a culmination of over ten years of cowardice...repeat COWARDICE, by the GOP...by effectively ignoring a crime for over a decade, then screaming bloody murder when the punishment, to be levied against us, has been shown to be draconian and painful.
       Let me explain this more clearly, for already, the stalwart, nay-saying end of the GOP is getting kudos from Rush Limbaugh, among others, for standing up...way tardily and rather tepidly I might ad, and yelling "Ouch" last night when for at least a decade the proper cry should have been "Liar, Liar, pants on fire!"
      I was in state government when the major environmental legislation was first passed, Clean Air, Clear Water, EPA, 1968-1970. I was a movement environmentalist then, with something of a regional cachet. I was in the papers.
      By the Clinton Administration, 1993, air quality in this country had improved by 95%. Repeat, 95%! So much so that the environmental movement apparently had to come up with new problems to solve that would justify spending roughly ten times more money to reduce air pollution 1% more than the aggregate spending to reduce it the first 95% those first 20 years.
      The Global Warming Scam arose out of that need. In 1992 Rush Limbaugh had a famous debate/confrontation with Al Gore on ABC's Nightline, so we can use that as good a jumping off date as any. (We like to call Gore the Calvera, from The Magnificent Seven, of environmentalism, "If God had not intended them to be sheared, He would not have made them sheep.")
      Rush said it well enough, but in hindsight could have said it better, for Al Gore lied through his teeth and we'd all been better off had Rush said that, plainly, to Al Gore's (and the nation's) face.
      Let's break the lie down.
      The fact (or non-fact) of global warming exists at three levels: 1) Does it, or did it ever exist; 2) If it did, was it man-made, or an occurrence of nature, or both, and 3) Can Man do anything to alleviate it?
      Understand that last night's Cap and Trade bill was a legislative lip-service attempt to alleviate it, so was predicated on the assumption that Man, no, the United States, can alleviate global warming, no matter what its cause. This is not do-goodism, it a lie, and the liars know it.
      In the 1980s air pollution (remember the ozone layer and aerosol spray cans?) was forever associated with global warming, or "climate change" as it is called now, but no credit was ever laid at the feat of air quality improvements from the 1970s, for it is a lagging indicator of global temperatures. It is entirely plausible that improving air quality would eventually slow down, even stop rising temperatures from that giant shield of pollution covering the earth, but it would not be instantaneous. In fact, it took almost thirty years to stop it...if it actually did at all.
      Problem is, only about a third of the globe the US joined in this effort back then. Western Europe, Bermuda, and one Pacific atoll, that's about it. Visiting Russia for the first time in 1991 I was stunned at the dark cloud that hung over the Polish border and eastward, enduring all the way into Siberia (I'm told) and as far south as the Black Sea (I saw for myself). It was worse than anything I'd ever seen flying out of Pittsburgh in 1971. I spent a winter in Russia then, and never saw the sun once, and the snow was a coffin-colored grey...all the way to Gorki.
      That cloud has only now begun to dissipate, for still the sky darkens when one leaves the alpine airspace of Austria for Hungary and Serbia. Trucks with '57 Fiat engines, farm tractors, and old commie cars still chug along the highways, and factory smokestacks without scrubbers still belch smoke that could even curl Pelosi's false eyelashes. In Russia, rivers still run red with acid and toxic waste, where generally things are much worse than the Balkans. And in China and India, the air is getting worse, not better, for theirs are economies with boots still going up the stairs, not bedroom slippers coming down. (Paul Harvey) They have no intention of slowing down.
      So, while two thirds of the globe hasn't improved in terms of air quality, still mysteriously, around 1998 global air temperatures leveled off and have have even retreated some the past nine years. The world is getting cooler, not warmer. Did America do this?
      The point here is, the stated chief cause (air pollution) of a global warming that ceased almost warming ten years ago (1998) has been proved not to be the cause of global warming after all. So then, what is the cause?
      Well, there's cow flatulence, which, is "man-made", they say, because there wouldn't be so many of them if we didn't raise them to eat. If we were all vegans there might be just enough cattle to fit into all the state-run zoos in the world, putting PETA in the uneasy predicament of actually favoring killing off all the cattle in the world just to keep us from eating a few of them at a time as renewable resources. (Now there's a life-is-a-precious-thing policy I can chow down on!)
      And now there's carbon, which composes about 19% of the human body, and so much of the atmosphere that every time we breathe in oxygen we "breathe out" carbon dioxide, which plants then breathe in so as to breathe oxygen back out, thus completing the cycle. Stunning in its simplicity, eh? I learned that in eighth grade. Congress still hasn't for that is exactly what Congress wants to tax in order to alleviate global warming. Maybe eighth grade ain't what it used to be, but Obama actually said all that crap with a straight face, so I assume he was serious.
     And what do we do about all those people who, from 1960 into 2000, or maybe last week, who told us that air pollution, American air pollution, was the main cause of global warming? What do we do with scientists who are wrong? Who didn't read the tea leaves correctly. Who fudge the numbers, jimmy the system, feed the models with made-up stuff? Who lie? And what do we do ("should be do" is more appropriate) about the politicians and bureaucrats who egg them, and have lured them into this life of scientific apostasy and sin with money, power and fleeting prestige?
     On the issue whether global warming exists now, or ever existed in the past thirty years, there is a majority of scientists who agree it did exist. Around 65% I'm told, but certainly not a consensus, as Henry Waxman allows. But when it comes down to "does it exist now?", that number falls below 50%, for even the most politicized of scientists can't deny the fact that global temperatures have been dropping for nearly a decade. They just simply have to find ways to spin the fact in such a way they can continue to get grant money, which means keeping the political "discussion" (Obama's favorite metaphor for shooting people who disagree with you, as in Iran) moving forward.
     And as we've found out, over the years there has been a lot of scientific cheating going on, such as placing thermometers next to the tailpipe of  '51 Studebakers rather than hanging them in a pine tree in the forest to get a clearer sense of real temperatures. (Computer modeling "scientists" are not like real scientists in that they really don't like having to trudge out into nature to check those things every day. It's more preferred to stop off in an alleyway on the way home from Moe's after a few drams of Guiness.)
     For the longest time, because we believed science was incorruptible and never cheated, no one really double-checked these processes. Now we do.
     At no time was there ever a consensus in the scientific community that global warming is a fact. You don't have consensus until you get into the 90%-95% range of agreement. There is more of a consensus that Al Gore is a fool than his own opinions about global warming.
     So then, let's look at whether global warming, if it existed at all, was man-made. Here the numbers fall into the 25% range, which is a minority, and nothing like a consensus, unless we're only counting left-leaning scientists with no neck.
     From everything from cow farts in Africa to termites in the Brazilian forests, from sunspots to minor variations in the way the world spins on its axis, all natural causes, we've had to come to the conclusion that Man, tops, is responsible for maybe 10%-15% of the world's pollution...and worse, in trying to answer the question whether Man can do anything about it, we have to draw the conclusion that the United States and Europe, even if we returned to an aboriginal state, could only effect about 1% of it...for nothing we do will stop China and India from burning just about everything, Indian brahmas and Masai longhorn from lifting their tails and tooting, Brazilian termites from exhaling as they chew, or that lucky old sun, from still doing what he's always been doing.
     Think about it, we reduced air pollution in the US by 95% between 1970 and 1990, yet worldwide pollution didn't drop more than a degree.
      So let's indict the analysts instead of the users or producers of energy. After all, the people who said air pollution was the major cause of a non-existent global condition (and they were wrong times two) are now telling us it wasn't really air pollution after all but other things that are the real problem, but we should now (keep on) believing them because they are being really diligent in updating old news, even though most of these same folks were telling us in the 70s and 80s that global cooling and new ice age (remember Carl Sagan?), not warming, would be our next environmental catastrophe?
     Yes, I know things would be much better if we resorted to the old biblical practice of throwing prophets over cliffs once they'd proven to be wrong more than once. I'm about to revisit that whole theme, in fact. I have pictures of Mussolini and his lady-friend dancing in my head right now.
     But first, as Shakespeare said, we have to shoot the liars. Well, that's not exactly what Will said, but he was in the ballpark.
     You see, the global warming hoax has been moved along as a long, oft repeated, and easy-to-believe lie. Actually, up and down the political and scientific ladder, more than one lie. And the biggest lie of all was known, "out there" as they say in the press, since Al Gore wrote his first book.

     Last year we opened a website, GreatAmericanZeroes.com where we hoped to hang liars. It hasn't gone very far because, in part, we couldn't keep up with the lies with our small staff. But I wrote an opening essay on the nature of lying, which you may want to look at, as reminder of the types of lies out there.
    Consider lying for a moment. We all know the lie when someone states a thing to be so when he knows it not to be so. That is the ordinary, "Mommy, I didn't take a cookie from the cookie jar" lie. It's the kind of lie that not only Bill Clinton, but any cheating, lying husband would tell his wife when he came home from a business trip with gray slacks with side zipper in his bag instead of his big boy, fly-in-the-front Robert Halls he left with. You know, the think-fast, CYA lie.
    Now, it took awhile to believe Science would engage in that sort of lie, the eye-bulging whopper, in part, because of the peer review system and the Scientific Method, not to mention a rigorous kind of ethics in science lawyers only talk about (and insist on in others in court) but never seem to be able to summon in themselves. But then again, no one ever really considered statistical modeling to be a science, no more than it was a math. Statistical analysis is math every bit as much as Madonna is blond.
    As Mark Twain said, there are lies, damned lies, and Democr...er, nope, Statistics. Statistics was always the brothel where Science and Politics meet on Saturday night in a sleazy hotel just off Baltimore Street. Their off-spring are many...and every one's name begins with "B".
    So, as we're learning, now that we're able to track down some of those little B-is-for-bastards, B-is-for-Bureaucrats, in the global warming presentations over the years, it's stunning just how many of them are lies...falsified studies, reports, skewed result, etc...and most served as the bulwark of the early studies that buttressed global warming theories, especially as input for computer models.
    But still, the far greater lie, and the one Rush Limbaugh allowed to pass with Al Gore back in1992, was the most notorious of lies, and that is when we insist a thing is a fact and 1) we know we can't prove it. At that point it has to be a faith (a religion) or a lie, only a faith can't be disproved either. (I've just given you a short course in the mathematics of lying, by the way.)
    That is the Viral Lie, a lie that would have a life expectancy of less than a minute in ordinary social intercourse, yet is found everywhere in politics...and the courtroom. In both, it is a lie of conscience, a lie of vanity. And today it's catching.
    Now these kinds of lies have for years been associated with the political arena, but when it insinuates itself into the science (also medicine) community, with the seeming "approval" of the Scientific Method, then our entire civilization is at risk, which is a much greater threat than anything a little dirty air can bring about.
    There's a Pulitzer Prize out there for someone who wants to track these Class B lies throughout the global warming debate. And while you're at it, look into second hand smoke, which has already transferred billions from the private to the public sector. For it is the same model, the same scam.

     I'll bet you thought this was going to be a rant about these lies and liars.
     No, it's about those who abide the lies, and a quick inquiry into why allegedly smart people do indeed indulge such lies in others...when it is their sworn duty to resists them.
     The lie of global warming has been out there, growing more twisted for over 16 years, yet, Republicans, most of whom are lawyers, and who are supposed to have at least passed the required Evidence courses and know something of hearsay, primary evidence, secondary sources, what's admissible and what's not, allowed these things to pass without comment for sixteen years!.
     The question becomes, do they, as lawyers or congresspersons, really know anything about lying then? Did they just see all these lies as "evidence" being proffered up by one side of the argument, and when, upon looking around found no one to rebut it, just let it ride? Did they forget that in the adversarial courtroom called Congress it was their duty, their sworn duty, to do the rebutting in the first place?
     Last night's vote was a culmination of twelve years, and yes, I'm including that sainted class of '94, of sitting idly by while a lie as big as Clinton's ego was being floated under the noses of their own constituents, without some much as a "by your leave" in rebuttal.
     You didn't have to be an environmental expert to see this in the plainest of terms. The Enviro-lobby, Al Gore, the entire Democrat party passed whoppers around that a third grader could have spotted. My sons knew how to spot that kind of lie by the time they were twelve.
     So, when the big vote came up last night all Boehner & Co could carp about was tax increases and lost jobs and the general unfairness of having to vote on a law that hadn't even been writ yet. My suggestion; instead of trying to indict a fellow for a tax injustice, why not hang the sumbitch for telling dastardly lies?
     High taxes and lost jobs are not the crime here, they are the punishment, our punishment, not yours, Congressman. The crimes were the lies, the damned lies and statistics we hired you Casper Milquetoasts to expose.
    You didn't just fail. You chickened out....not yesterday, but years ago, sinking a little deeper with each passing year of not calling down thunder on this lie. That's a hook Marxists have used since the 1930s...once you run a dirty smell under a fellow's nose once or twice, and for whatever reason, he doesn't cry "Fart"...he's forever barred from crying "Fart" without losing face, for having missed it the first time. This failure (actually it's an attempt to appear cool) is a vanity just as big as the Al Gore vanity of saying a thing to be so he cannot possibly know to be so...and the Left plays that vanity like a Stradivarius, for it is all build on cowardice.
     The Dems have known they owned the House GOP for 16 years. Always did. Smartest people in the district, my sister's black cat's arse. They're cowards and you can pile all the J.D.'s in Congress on top of another and you still can't build a single spine. Bill Buckley was right, we'd do better by electing Arnie Aardvark out of the phone book to their seat...just anyone with enough sense to spot a confidence man and a pair big big enough to call him on it..
   
      Now you know where I stand. I started this essay out trying to be analytical and now am mad as hell. I need a beer. No, three.
      To hell with just coughing up that chronic whine about lost jobs, taxes and all the other GOP nostrums. These are liars, even criminals, (since that's what liars become when you indulge them long enough) and even if it cost your jobs (it probably will anyway, count on it) stand up and say so. All you have to lose is your job and all you have to gain is your self-respect.
Vassar Bushmills
    
     

     

       The death of the King of Pop yesterday was reminiscent of the death of the Manchu Dynasty in China in 1912 in one major way. With a single stroke, a lot of people who were otherwise engaged in worthless endeavors, suddenly lost their rice bowl.
Bernard Chumm

       First, we should all know that five months ago Mark Sanford knew he was not a rising star in the Republican Party even if we did not. So let that notion go. He knew yesterday had to come at some time, his wife knew, and I suspect, even the rest of his family. I just wish it had been some other tomorrow.
       His reasons for infidelity can range from just being a swinging horn-dog to a loveless marriage built around political careerism. I'll leave that answer to the muckrackers these nest few weeks.
       It's just as well. They say love is a kind of madness, and the sweet aroma of sex to an almost fifty-something certainly is, and there are times and places when a man will risk almost everything, including family and career to bathe...just one last time...in that scented pool in the secret garden.
       Mark Sanford was, probably still is, an able politician with a conservative bent, but true conservative never, and it's best we found this out sooner than later, for in a time of real war against an evil that has set out to destroy the very essence of liberty in this land, a true conservative would have passed on the Latin broad and clung to the cross of Liberty, standing firm at the wall.
       Instead, at a time when all our forces need to marshaled at the barricade, Cap and Trade, health care, Iran, all the marching bands and cheering throngs suddenly stopped and fixed their eyes on Columbia...where they will dutifully remain until all the really serious threats have been safely sneaked past our guard posts.
       With a selfishness that truly does seem to bespeak the era, Mark Sanford couldn't wait...and with impeccable timing...if you're a Democrat....drove a lance into the body of the republic in a maner in which his self-centered little sould could never imagine.
VB
      

    A postscript to my post just a few minutes ago, the White House announced it had rescinded the hot dog offer to Iranian consular officials around the globe.
    Since we're doing  insights today, another good one was gained here on Day 12 of the Green Intifada.
    Known, even congratulated for his wisdom, sense of justice, fairness and righteous indignation, especially as regards the rights of Man, it was none of these things that caused the president to turn away in dismay and disgust and finally withdraw the tongs and fork of civility.
    It was good old public opinion, with a little squeeze from the press...a very little squeeze (Thanks Major Garrett).
    At least we know what really winds his clocks.
    So now it's Business-As-Usual in the Democrat-Obama White House...redux.
    Didn't he promise against that, too?
BC
   
   
  

     We have to ask this question a second time.

     Candidate Obama told us that he wanted to rebuild America's image abroad. Since then he's given the finger to the British Prime Minister, the Queen, the entire British Isles, President Sarkozy, and apparently German Chancellor Angela Merkel doesn't like him out of sheer common sense. Respect, repeat, "respect" for Obama is dwindling twice as fast in Europe as it is in Iowa.
     So, did he lie during the campaign? We doubt it. Apparently, candidate Obama didn't give a hoot in hell about our relations with the First World (there's that vaunted doublespeak again). It's the Third World where he wants to repair our sullied image; the Arab street, the Kenyan street, the Indonesian street, etc. But not actually "the street", mind you, for Democrats in general and socialists in particular could care less about better relationships with the man-in-any-street, or "the drones" as they are affectionately thought of in Washington. It's the Petty-Potentate-at-One-UN-Plaza crowd who Obama wants to repair America's sinking image with...as one statist to another. Outside of a few pajama-clad bloggers in Ames, I don't think that's what Iowa voters had in mind either.

     With that in mind, I'm trying to sort out what and who he was talking about by defending his tepid inaction about the bloodshed in Iran at yestderday's press conference.  VB stated correctly that Obama was waiting to "see how things played" in Iran, i.e., to see who wins, and "Hey, guys, the hot dog invitation still stands", while Tehran's streets run red.
     Who was his intended audience in defending this strange (and cowardly, per Vassar Bushmills) statements yesterday? His defense of "appearing not to meddle" was so as to deny Tehran's government from claiming US or CIA or worse, Obama involvement in ginning up the street riots in the first place. Tehran did anyway.
     But to who that mattered?
     Europe had already "meddled" more by decrying the slaughter in tones that befit major players. Who was Obama fearful might be convinced or swayed by this charge of meddling? Not the Iranian people. They already know better. They know their own minds even in the Great One doesn't. We doubt even the Sunni Muslim world ( a huge part of the Arab street) would either, for they don't really like Iran very much, anyway. Those two guys in bathrobes in Ames? A strawman?
     My only guess is Hezbollah in Lebanon. Maybe he's afraid that the Hezbollah street in Beirut and environs will believe this dirty CIA-Obama lie. They might, you know.
     But why?
     Simpatico, or fear?
Bernard Chumm

    Moses Sands said several times that things always come in twos, sometimes threes. Years ago he said that in every fight there are three parties, two sides which are committed, and a third which sort of saunters over to the side waiting to see who's getting the upper hand...or as Mr Obama says, "see how things play out."
    You see, from his point of view it makes no sense to take a side if that side is the one who is more apt to lose. The Left congratulates this position as "pragmatism" when their guy's in charge, but in a world when good finds itself pitted against evil, or liberty against tyranny, this pragmatism is nothing more than cowardice. This isn't the Steelers versus the Colts. It's the planting of a deeply held value into the ground, as a position from which one will not retreat. It is a position of Men, and every American president has had to at least try to fake it, just like sincerity, in order to insure that circle in never broken.
     It's what the townsfolk did when the bandits lined up against the sheriff in High Noon and a hundred other westerns. They were secretly rooting for Gary Cooper, but they didn't want to overly-aggravate the bad guys, either, just in case they should kill off the sheriff. They wanted to put themselves in the position to sidle up to the winner, no matter who it was, so as to secure themselves. Life among average folks usually works out that way.
     This is what weak townspeople do, by the way. A kind of cowardice, not really to be scolded, but rather pitied, it is founded on a lack of experience of looking evil in the eye...and spitting in it, when the situation calls for it. To do so requires not only experience, but the skill to confront confidently...and townspeople usually don't have it.
     So why then does the President of the United States, the putative leader of the Free World, who professes to have none of those shortcomings, and every imaginable "skill" covering his back, amble off to the side like an ordinary frightened citizen?
     Because he is just like them, that's why. He is ordinary, oh so very ordinary...so ordinary he was described by many great authors so many times years before he was born, and today, as then, way, way out of his league, trying to walk among Men.
     I am speaking about Iran, by the way...or am I speaking of much more?
VB

       From the very beginning, we asked the question whether Barack Obama was 1) a true-believing Socialist, (with an edge), 2) a marionette for some unseen puppeteer behind the curtain, or 3) just a another shill for still a different ring of thugs merely out to clean out the treasury...or 4) a combination.
       Can't make up our minds yet, but watch Acorn as it has gone global. It has all the makings of a criminal enterprise that would have sent Ian Fleming or the writers at DC and Marvel Comics reeling. No wonder Jessie Jackson hates Obama. Their target isn't just the American cash box, but the United Nations' as well.
       We still don't know whether Barack is its CEO or just its Ed McMahon (RIP), hawking sweepstakes tickets. Stay tuned.
Bernard Chumm

      If you haven't seen, heard or heard about it, Barbara Boxer, hereinafter never referred to as "Senator" on this site, did a Scarlett O'Hara by requiring a testifying member of the Armed Forces, Brig Gen Michael Walsh to refer to her as "Senator", not "Ma'am" as military protocols require.

      The press, even friendly press, were a bit embarrassed, and laid it off to Boxer's "feistiness" (Left-wing speak for "petulence"). It was much more, however.
      I believe Ms Boxer read Vassar Bushmill's piece last night on the Alpha male, for she did exactly what a Beta does when 1) in a position of power and 2) in the presence of an Alpha-male...she cut him off at the knees as quickly as possible so as to require a kind of public, very public, genuflection to her rank. (Incidentally, The United States Senate is not in the military's direct chain of command.)
      Think back. You've seen this hundreds of times, at college, in the workplace, and always from the same sort of person...always relying (throwing the dice) on the good manners of their victims to let them get away with it. Barbara Walters and her crew on  "The View" did the same thing to Glenn Beck a few days back, and while Beck claims to have taken the high Christian road, we beg to differ. Had he seem the ambush coming (and he should have) he could have sliced and diced those broads...just like Jesus did to Satan in the Wilderness...without one single "shucky-durn" or "H-e-double-toothpicks". In ten seconds he could have turned the entire issue to be about them and their thin (sic) positions.

     It's a sad thing to have to say, but forget Republicans, forget conservatives, but to all honorable men, if you are going to appear in any public venue alongside the ruling elite, you are going to have to adopt the street vigilance of a kid on the lower East Side. Expect an ambush. Prepare for it.

     We all wish Gen Walsh had had the presence of mind to say "No...er, Ma'am" and proceed. There are a dozen ways he could have done so, and left Ms Boxer with her pantyhose down around her ankles.
     First, he would not have been in contempt of Congress had he respectfully declined (and wouldn't Boxer's comeback have been even a more printable moment)? Referring to members of Congress exclusively by that title is not required by either House/Senate rules, nor military protocol. Nor is obliging the single whim of a sitting congressperson.
     Beyond that, and depending on how far he wanted to push the envelope, (he would have first considered whether his bosses in the Pentagon would have backed him up, and/or, whether it was worth being a career-ender), he could have struck a blow for freedom and good manners. How would Sec. Gates have handled a screaming-Mimi Boxer on the phone after the exchange?
     And how about the Republicans on the committee? En masse, they could have risen and with an extemporaneous comment about the obseemly behavior of the woman from California, about-faced and walked out. Yeah, I know, don't look for that anytime soon. I'm quite sure Barbara Boxer could have brought a baby seal into the committee chamber and clubbed it to death with a baseball bat, and the GOP members would simple have looked at one another as if to ask each other whether it was OK to gag on camera. I've seen this among corporate little-leaguers man times..."What to do, what to do!!?"

     Visibly resisting this sort of pompous and aristocratic display isn't just theater. The Pompous Class expect what it seems they always get, total and complete compliance. Sure, maybe Boxer will receive a phone call from Reid later on. But a public resistance, no matter how polite, puts the onus on the offending party, especially the abject teaty-baby Boxer, but also the Dems to come up with a spur-of-the-moment Plan B retort, which they usually don't have. Or they can retreat.
     While we lament the bad manners by Ms Boxer, we regret even more the lack of any show of spine by the real defenders of the offended party (the GOP, not Gen Walsh), while institutions and honor continue to hobble down.

Bernard Chumm

    "I'm sorry, ma'am, er, Madam Senator, but I have to respectfully decline. I know full well how hard you've worked for your title, it's drilled into us daily, and while I've worked very hard as well, I fully appreciate the intellectual differences in our class.
   "It's just that we are are a simple minded lot down here among the citizen-soldiers, and I was summoned here to to answer specific questions about things that are within my expertise, limited as it is. When, as you ask, that I also remember special names all of you require, Your Lordship here, Your Grace there, Lady Bottomly, and others, it clutters this poor mind and I am unable to perform the principle task to which I am assigned. This is why the military granted all of us license to simply refer to you as gentlemen and gentle women, sirs and madams.
   "I hope you will accept my declination of you request as that from a simple soldier, just doing his duty."

 
   
      

    A recent poll (6/17/09) stated more Americans were concerned about the budget deficit than they were the economy, or any other leftist cause. You can look it up.

    This can be significant, for as Moses Sands reminded me about the 1990 Nicaraguan election, when the people threw out the communist Sandinistas. As a way to chide Americans, Moses pointed out that the Nicaraguan people had figured out the fine print of the socialist contract, and rejected it, which he was unsure the American people would even be able to figure out, let alone reject.

    He put it this way:
    The Communists offered the people all sorts of things they'd always been denied, but with strings:
    Education, but you can only read what we say you can read. Si!.
    Better housing, but you can only live where we say you can live. Si!
    Jobs, but you must work where we tell you to work. Si!
    Where do we sign up?
    The fine print, to be disclosed later... Oh, and this contract shall be binding on your children and your children's children.
    No, no, no!

     The deficit, and it's gonna be a whopper, is a contract on our children and our children's children, and it seems the American people are beginning to figure this out.
     VB

   

     In March I wrote here that we should look for there to be a shrinking (bulldozing) of suburbia in order to placate the enviro-mass transit bloc. Smaller cars, yeah. Less sprawl, yeah. More mass transit, a la those pitiful looking electric streetcars you still see plying east European cities, yeah.
     We called it, and you can look for the first Mugabe-Blades (bulldozers) in Flint, Michigan, soon. It's already been declared a success, so look for Phase Two, against less rundown neighborhoods coming to a city near you by 2012.
     Only one question lingers; will Michael Moore come to Flint's aid once again?
VB
    

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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