perfidy

Despite the unmedicated ravings of one commenter, I think any objective observer would conclude that I did not take advantage of the weekend absence of both my compatriots.

International treaties that have been given the thumbs up by the senate have the force of law - they are not part of the constitution, any more than a regular statute is part of the constitution. A simple senate vote could pull us out of the Geneva convention (not that we should.) There is some debate on how treaties should be interpreted, and that is a matter for the supreme court - but there is no question that a treaty can not invalidate part of the constitution itself. The ICC treaty would violate the fourth, among others. No treaty could remove the right to bear arms. 

International laws of war, with the exception of the Geneva convention, are rather amorphous. And the Geneva convention deals largely with issues of POWs and the like. There are no treaties, just precedents, and arguments.

The general militia is not the first line of defense. The Constitution provides for an Army and a Navy. If some foreign power can fight their way through that, (hard to believe) *then they'd have to deal with the general population, half of whom own guns. Would you want to attempt to occupy a nation where half the people own guns and don't like you? Even in hellholes like Somalia and Afghanistan, gun ownership is not that prevalent. The general militia is the last line of defense, just as it was in colonial times. (Though more often called into action then.) It is the last line of defense against foriegn invasion, and against domestic tyranny. Of course, the first lines of defense are free press, free speech, elections, democratic institutions, the constitutional amendment process, and the general habits of living in a free soceity.

Go pick Dad up from the airport. Why couldn't he have flown into National? I don't want to haul my ass out to Dullas in rush hour.

Mike is on Sabattical. Johno on injured reserve. I have the whole website to myself!! Muwhahahahaha! Now the only person I have to contend with is Judson, and his inane comments. I will rule! I will make the most outrageous right wing statements, and no one will resist!

Sorry, did I say that out loud?

It looks like certain types are always going to quote him out of context to make their own political points. Perhaps he missed an opportunity to shut up, but shouldn't we want our leaders to be discussing matters of policy? I thought that's what they're supposed to do.

Amazon is reporting that it has received over one million orders for the new Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix book, due out June 21. That's twice the number it received for number four, H.P. and the Goblet of Fire. I personally can't wait for Amazon to ship mine, so I have mine on reserve at the local Borders.

If you look just at the quote from the Guardian, there is sense there. Before the libervation, we had good reason to believe that Saddam was developing or had developed WMD. Compare the situation to North Korea. North Korea, despite its nastiness, does not either sit on, or threaten neighbors that sit on, a natural resource essential not merely for us, but for the entire free world. Which of two vile dictatorships do you target first? That is not shallow thinking, in my opinion. We seem to have a list of nations that we would like to do something about. It makes sense to prioritize that list based on a combination of immediate threat, geopolitical significance, and ease of operations against them.

...to jump to conclusions. I would be interested in seeing the complete transcript. The Guardian mentions that recently Wolfowitz was quoted as saying, "for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on: weapons of mass destruction." The transcript shows that the actual quote was,

"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." (emphasis mine.)

Wolfowitz continues,

"there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two."

Not quite what the Guardian, and others, have tried to make it out to be. I would not be surprised to find that something similar was happening here.

[Moreover] The administration has been very clear about aims, and reasons, throughout this whole thing. The only thing that they obscure is actual plans, which would be foolish and irresponsible to reveal.

In the comments to Mike's post, Judson accuses me of being a clueless suburbanite. Yes, I now live in an almost crime free neighborhood. And no, I would not choose to move to Mike's neighborhood, or to Anacostia in DC. But I have lived in bad neighborhoods. When I lived in Columbus, there were gun fights in the alley behind my house. A sixteen year old was killed in a drive-by at the stop and rob on the corner half a block from my front door while I lived there. And when I lived there, I had a gun. I would have recommended that everyone in that neighborhood get a gun. But personal experience is not the only justification for having an opinion, or why bother to have a civilization?

Relaxing gun restrictions will not have any effect on how many guns are in the hands of criminals. Criminals, being criminals, do not care about gun laws. Law abiding citizens, being law abiding, do. When you relax the laws, you allow the good people to own guns. In Virginia, no one has ever had a Concealed Carry permit revoked for using their weapon inappropriately. In Florida, out of thousands of permits, I believe two have been revoked - and one was revoked because the permit holder committed a non-violent felony, and had his permit pulled. Law abiding citizens do not shoot people just because they have guns. If they did, we would all be dead, because half the households in this country have guns. 

American society is not one of the most violent in the world - we don't even make the top ten in the industrialized world. (Study by University of Leiden, in the Netherlands.) England, at the top of the list, has a violent crime rate that has skyrocketed over the last decade. Which, coincidentally, is how long they've had a total ban on gun ownership. Then, think of the third world - Sudan, Congo, Sierra Leone, and the like. We are completely non-violent in comparison. (Switzerland has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. Everyone there is legally required to own not just a gun, but assault rifles.) 

I do not approve of violence. I think it is a terrible thing, as any sane man would. Of course it is the last resort. But the purpose of putting guns in the hands of citizens is to deter violence from criminals with guns. Arming citizens would do nothing to increase violence - they have no desire to commit crimes. I have two guns, but I am not about to go out shooting someone because of the evil influence of my guns. Only if they came into my home, or threatened my family, would I even consider using them. The Supreme Court has ruled that the police have no requirement to protect people. Mostly, they clean up the mess after a crime has been committed. I don't want to wait for them. While a gun does not offer perfect safety, it certainly increases my chances. And it certainly increases the chances for Mrs. Buckethead. 

It is our responsibility, as citizens, to create a safe society. And if we aren't armed, the gangbangers and thugs aren't going to listen to the sweet voice of reason.

Can you imagine what the founding fathers would think of federal taxation now. The taxes they saw as tyrannical were chump change compared to what we get saddled with. If someone lets you know a good work on that subject, pass it on to me. 

I am a law abiding citizen. Married, kid, dog cat, house, the very model of the upstanding citizen. (Now.) I have nothing to fear from the police. Yet every time I see a cop, I get a twinge of fear in the small of my back. Go figure.
 

John Lott, who wrote the book "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago Press) has studied the linkage between gun ownership, particularly in areas with shall issue concealed carry laws, and reduced crime rates. The more restrictive the gun laws, the higher the violent crime rates. Cities tend to have the most restrictive gun ownership laws, but not all cities. On the bad side, look at DC - which has the most restrictive gun laws in the country, or what has happened to crime rates in England since the complete ban on weapon ownership. "The counter-argument might be that homicides won't disappear if guns are removed, and will still be accessible if they are banned. I say give it a try." It has been tried, and criminals still have guns, and citizens cannot protect themselves. This policy is a failure. If people in your neighborhood were armed, adnd were able to defend themselves, the criminals (who are not completely stupid) would change their behavior. Where gun restrictions are relaxed, this is what happens. 

And that is merely the pragmatic argument. Mike, I'm surprised at you - you would forfeit your right to defend yourself? You would meekly wait for the police to arrest the people who kill or rob you, long after it would do you any good? Guns allow you to defend yourself from the thugs in your neighborhood - even many of them. Despite your formidable infighting skills, only a gun would allow you to face down five or six drug addled violent teenagers. 

[Moreover] You can have my Kimber .45 Semi-Automatic when you pry it from my cold, dead, hand. 
 

I apologize for the over-the-top characterization of your arguments, I have sacked the overzealous aides responsible for the phrasing of my remarks. Nevertheless, I felt that your statement, "The weaknesses of the Soviet bloc economies did not develop until the mid 1970s." was flatly untrue. We have a run and gun type methodology here, as you may have noted in the running battles between Mike and I. Despite the occasional drop of bile, Mike and I will sit down to a comradely beer as soon as we are in the same zip code. Your opinion (and I have enjoyed reading your comments over the last few weeks) is certainly worthy of consideration. It just happened that you were wrong. 

In your lengthy comment, which I posted below, you revise and extend your first remarks. Saying that Soviet economic situation only became exploitable in the late seventies is a different thing. In many respects, your comments make my point - which is that Reagan won the cold war, and another point, which was that the weakness of the Soviet economy existed before the late 70s. I will work around to this in a minute.

But first, some thoughts on your comments. You ask the question, do economies that can't grow fail? They don't fail of themselves, they fail when they come into direct conflict with a more capable economy. While this sounds like rank social Darwinism, we have seen this time and again. A great power which can no longer compete must fail, or become a backwater. 

Your example of Prussia is interesting. Prussia for years remained an economic backwater. In pre-industrial warfare, a small nation could become a power all out of proportion by a high degree of mobilization, and inspired leadership. Frederick the Great was a military genius, and one reason he was successful is that he was willing to commit his troops to decisive battle when most of the powers of the age were locked in a mindset of limited warfare of maneuver. In this sense, Frederick prefigured the genius of Napoleon. But the economic backwardness was a permanent brake on the ambitions of Prussia. Prussian leaders ameliorated this situation somewhat by absorbing more economically vital regions of Germany through military power. But the Junker class resolutely kept the Prussian vaterland in a state of economic backwardness. Prussia was destroyed by the unleashed monster of Revolutionary then Napoleonic France. Would a more economically powerful Prussia been able to resist? Possibly, but the only nation that successfully resisted Napoleon took a rather different path. 

England was a rising power. Though the primary focus of England was on Naval power, the real source of her strength was financial. By copying the financial system of the Netherlands and then improving it, they laid the groundwork for the industrial revolution. But the full economic benefits of the Industrial Revolution did not really take hold until after the Napoleonic wars. In all of its eighteenth century wars (except one - yay, us!), and in the Napoleonic wars, England's powerful economy allowed it to prevail. It provided the navy, it subsidized economically backward but well populated continental allies, and allowed the Royal government to borrow money at rates well below anyone else. 

You mentioned, "Spain, as a world power, could have survived had it not been for the changes in warfare. New defensive methods made waging war against cities long and costly." Who instigated those changes? The Dutch, and later the English. Maurice of Nassau completely reinvented the European army. The British adopted and improved on this. And invented the modern navy. Why did these nations take the lead in the revolution in military affairs? They had societies and economies that were open to change and innovation. The closed economy of the Spanish, kept alive on life support from New World gold and silver, had the plug pulled eventually. 

How did the tiny Netherlands hold off the Hapsburg empire that was half of Europe, for ninety years? Part of the reason was their advances in military technology. But the biggest part was finance. The Spanish broke themselves on Dutch mercantile savvy. No matter what the Spanish destroyed, the Dutch could afford to rebuild, again and again. And eventually, the Spanish ran out of American silver. The result was a Spain impoverished for centuries. 

When you speak of Eastern Europe, you say that the government implemented reforms under cover of détente. But these were not reforms, as you yourself state in the next couple sentences. What it was, was a shift of production goals, using the same totally inefficient system of central planning. There was no change in the apparatus of the communist economies, in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. Same five year plans, same endemic misreporting of economic data, same shortages of staple goods. I would argue that the Blue Jeans revolution was not a desire for actual levis, but rather for the freedom that the levis symbolized. That the governments of the Eastern Bloc attempted to bribe their citizens with material goods - after the political protests of 56 and 68 - tends to support this. (And if the Yugo is the prime example of a communist economy surmounting inherent structural problems, well, damn.) 

The reason that in the west, "High levels of defence expenditure became steadily less burdensome to the US as growth increased in the 1980s," was a result of Reagan's economic policy. That the Soviet economy stagnated was a result of the political ideology of the Communists. It stagnated quicker, because the leadership made the strategic error of trying to use an inadequate tool to achieve too many goals. If they had continued to limit consumer production, the instruments of state terror could have kept the people in line - but the result would have been the same. There is no way that the Soviet economy could have kept up with the west, especially as computer technology became more and more prevalent in the west, instigating the immense productivity boom of the nineties. 

Soviet growth was not exceptional - it was unstable, in that it couldn't continue. But the pressure that Reagan put on the Soviets, both through political, military and economic means, pushed them over the edge. The Soviets were spending over 30% of GNP on defense in the late eighties, in a vain attempt to keep pace with the Americans. We were spending 5%. 

Of your four possibilities for the fall of the USSR, the first two really ignore Soviet history before Brezhnev. The fourth is wrong, I think, and for some of the same reasons. In the last years of Tsarist Russia, the economy was booming. Industrial production, investment, agricultural yields were all growing at high rates. The revolution put an end to all that. Between the revolution, the civil war, the disastrous first years under Lenin's economic plan, then the purges and famines of the thirties - these tragic blunders set the USSR back decades. So, while there is debate about how high Soviet GNP growth rates were in the fifties and sixties - given the constant misinformation that lower level officials fed to their superiors - they were on the steep part of the growth curve. 

China dodged the bullet of communist economic decline, and achieved double digit growth rates when they introduced real market reforms - again, on the steep part of the curve, when gains are easy. If the best that the Soviet Union could do was on par with the growth of the mature industrial economy of the US, that is pathetic. The problems of the Soviet Union went far beyond those of the Tsarist regime. Brezhnev never made any structural changes to the Soviet economy - just changed production goals in the five year plan. And by the time of Gorbachev, it was too late. 

While I believe that the Soviet economy was limited from the start, that is not the sole reason that the Soviet Union fell. The Soviet economy was limited because of the political ideology of the Communist rulers. In the absence of the west, an isolated communist system could have survived indefinitely. North Korea limps on, while its people starve, because the west has no driving need (yet) to directly oppose that lunatic regime. If Brezhnev had made the decision to continue to limit consumer production, and used the instruments of state terror to keep the populace in line, he might have prolonged the demise of the Soviet system. But the decision of the west to fight communism (and the fact that their political/economic system is so much more productive and flexible) is what doomed communism in general. The actions of Reagan and Thatcher in particular led to the actual downfall.There were other times when the west could have exploited significant economic weaknesses in the Soviet Union. The twenties and thirties, right after WWII, up to the mid fifties, at least in Eastern Europe. No one actually did, though. And Kennedy almost got us all killed a couple times in the sixties, when the Soviets were probably at their strongest in relation to the west. But Reagan used the freedom that is essential to both our politics and economics to defeat the Soviets. This is appropriate, and good.

I must not think bad thoughts posted a lengthy commentary to my Reagan post, I reproduce them in their entirety, so that I may respond to it. 

While I can admit that my point is debatable, calling it absurd is unreasonable and insulting. This is long. I feel I need a broad base by which to deal with the critique--that my opinion lacks merit. I am embarrassed that I must prove that my opinions is worthy of consideration. 

First, I am not complaining that there were no structural problems with the Soviet economy until the 1970s. What I am claiming is that they did not become exploitable until the communists attempted to ameliorate their economic structure. 

My point was that the need to use consumerism to placate calls for political reforms exposed limitations of the Soviet economy. Did those limitations always exist? Yes. Were they fatal? This is a highly debatable point.

Do economies that have limited capacity for growth ultimately fail? Gerschenkron would say no: they apply a combination of political pressure and force in order to maintain acceptable levels of production. This is especially true of states that have agrarian economies. Prussia, for instance, achieved substantial worldwide influence starting from a feudal economy. The feudal lords (Junkers) joined the state in a project of Central European conquest; the serfs remained a disenfranchised underclass. The undoing of Prussia was not the economy or the political system, but the ambition of the political class in international affairs. They were not inhibited by the structure of the economy. One reason why was because the Junkers learned to coexist with other economic elements in the emerging German state (the Ruhr coal and steel barons.) (See Arno Mayer, Persistence of the Old Regime.) 

Spain, for a counterpoint, became a world power through the discover of the New World. The precious metals that it received financed military expansion on both land and sea. What Spain did not do was invest in production--the Spanish economy remained fixed in feudal agricultural modes and had little chance of expansion. However, its undoing was not immediate. Spain, as a world power, could have survived had it not been for the changes in warfare. New defensive methods made waging war against cities long and costly. From the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries Spain waged war in highly urban areas: for almost eighty years in the Northern Netherlands, and for thirty years in the German Rhineland. Furthermore, Spain committed itself to maintaining dominance in the Mediterranean (as a defense to the expansion of Islam.) In the Spanish case the circumstances that were encountered led to its demise (a slow death while it could barely keep control of its empire.) New World gold flowed through Spain, barely touched by the Spanish themselves, and passed on to foreign merchants and bankers who produced armaments for the crown. (See Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road.) 

The demise of Spain corresponded to the ascent of the Netherlands (or more properly, the United Provinces.) The Dutch perfected merchant capitalism. They introduced financial innovations and greatly expanded the scope of banking (Amsterdam Bank, Wisselbank.) They introduced the concept of private ownership of public services (a popular cry was that anyone could buy stocks in the Dutch East India Company.) Most economic historians would agree that Amsterdam was the "center of the world" until 1690. The economy had no limitations. Why did it decline? The Netherlands failed to industrialize because the economy had been so well perfected--no one willed such change. There were no financial impediments to industrialization. Even after Britain soared ahead on the innovations of Arkwright, the Dutch made no attempt to emulate British factories. (See The First Modern Economy, van der Vries.) 

Do communist economies ultimately fail? China is a glaring example of how they might not (of course, the jury is still out.) What has impressed some economists and brought chagrin to the doomsayers is that the Chinese government has proven to be very adaptable to Western intrusion, adopting "limited market reforms" where other communist nations have failed. Some fear that China will marry capitalism to authoritarianism (a point which I would dispute, but that is nonetheless allowable.) 

China might be sui generis. How about other communist economies? The collapse of Yugoslavia is almost impossible to explain by reference to economics. There exists a near consensus that national identity played the dominant role in the collapse of Tito''s state. I haven''t the qualifications to debate this point. I would only point out that Yugoslavia succeeded better than other communist states at producing for the world market, overcoming some of its economic shortcomings. 

Eastern European states present the most glaring example of state collapse of the Soviet type. But there appears to be consensus on this issue. Following the 1968 revolutions the hardline communists, after purging their ranks, focused on placating the populace by providing them with consumer goods. It was under the conditions of detente that these governments attempted economic reforms. This worked for a while. However, making consumer goods accessible meant keeping purchasing costs low at the expense of the state. In essence, the state financed consumption. This is a bad sign for any economy: one wants to sell a lot at home to keep production costs low and make back money through exports. The other side of the equation did not work well either: the goods that they produced generally flowed only within the CMEA through exchanges of goods rather than monetary transactions. By the late 1980s the states could not finance consumption or increases production of consumer goods. Consumer issues drove political protests. The trope of the "Blue Jeans" revolution is so pervasive as to be stifling. (See Rothschild, Kaser, Ash ... hell, anyone who is serious about Central and Eastern European studies.) The big exception to this story might be East Germany, which had always been highly endowed with consumer goods (in order to invite comparisons with West Germany; this has probably fueled as much of the current animosity toward Germans as has WWII.) Nationalism (desire to reunite with other Germans) did more to lead to the collapse of Honecker''s government. 

What about the USSR? Was its demise genetic? After a review of the literature, there appear to be four prevailing opinions. First, Brezhnev undertook economic reforms that led to stagnation in the 1980s that brought the downfall because the Soviet system was incapable of making the necessary political reforms (closest to my opinion.) Second, related to the first, that the stagnation became problematic because of how Gorbachev handled it. Third, that the communist regime had only limited potential from the start (closest to your opinion.) The fourth is surprising. I was not aware of it until I reviewed the lit. It basically says that the problems of the USSR were inherited from the previous governments. The collapse of the Soviet Union should, in this context, be seen as the demise of an Asiatic Russian empire that failed in its European ambitions. (This last view is new to me, but it is somewhat attractive.) There are other views that put the collapse more clearly in the politics rather than economics. 

The current guru of economic history, Niall Ferguson, would place the collapse in about the same era as I would:

"From 1950 until around 1974, the Soviet Union enjoyed real GNP growth rates compared to those of the US; indeed in the late 1950s and late 1960s they might even have been higher. But from the mid-1970s Soviet growth lagged behind. High levels of defence expenditure became steadily less burdensome to the US as growth increased in the 1980s. But the Soviet defence burden rose inexorably because the arms race accelerated while the planned economy stagnated. ... The advantage lay with the side capable of paying for armaments without stifling civilian consumption and living standards in the long run." (The Cash Nexus)

Ferguson clearly places consumerism into the mix. The USSR did experience extraordinary growth up until 1970. Brezhnev and other state planner realized that this growth was unstable. Reform of production was becoming critical. However, these reforms could not take place simply through normal economic planning.(G Schroeder) They required greater involvement by workers, either through economic incentives or through political power. The latter was clearly impossible:

"A lesson from ... the Brezhnev years was that tinkering with the command economy would make little fundamental change in economic performance. Some degree of marketization was required. But the more radical the economic reforms that one envisaged, the more likely it seemed that political reform would need to proceed them. The general secretary is not the tsar. If he trods on his colleagues'' toes without reducing his dependence on them, he could be removed from the Politburo." (Lieven)

Walter Laquer points out that poverty was pervasive in the Soviet Union. However, the people who lived in shacks and picked wild berries were not the ones to revolt. The ones who did were those of the "middle class" (professionals), the ones for whom "there was enough bread, and virtually everyone had a television" during the 70s and 80s. 

The Brezhnev years are difficult to come to terms with. He set out reforms that some would credit with setting the stage for Perestroika. Others, while acknowledging this fact, also point to the muddling of the reforms--that they led to stagnation. (S Cohen) 

Consumerism was the only carrot that the communists held out to Soviet citizens. Financing consumption placed greater demands on the economy, further negating the effectiveness of investments in production. The need to engage in production for consumers greatly taxed the Soviet system, displacing pressure from the political arena into the economic. Laquer, however, points to an unwillingness on the part of the political classes to engage political reform rather than on the inability of the communist economy to adapt; the decisions to postpone political reforms intensified economic problems. It is in this context that Reagan''s policies must be seen.

I've always hated that name. It has a whiff of fascism. Lileks has some thoughts on the topic of Rudolph - noting that now he's Eric Robert Rudolph, so he must be guilty. Lot's of other good stuff in there, including the filthiest joke ever broadcast. 

In my more paranoid moments, I share that visceral distrust of government. When I'm on my meds, that feeling makes me conservative - if you distrust the government, you want less of it. One thing that has continually puzzled me about the left is their fascination with government conspiracy theories, side-by-side with an unwavering faith that if we gave the government all the power, things would magically transform into the socialist utopia.

And speaking of distrust of government, that is why the anti-federalists insisted on the inclusion of the second amendment. The federalists didn't demurr, because they distrusted government too, just not quite as much. The armed rebellion of the founding fathers would not have been possible had not large members of the populace had guns. They understood that ownership of guns bred the kind of moral capacity that they wanted in citizens - the self reliant yeoman farmer concept. If you are responsible for your own defense, and that of your family, you are not a dependent of the government. Your are not a subject, you are a free citizen. It breeds independence as a mindset. 

Perhaps in Eric Rudolph, it bred a little too much independence. But there's always going to be wackos. Out of a quarter plus billion people, we have generated a few home grown terrorists over the last couple decades. Out of vastly smaller population, the Palestinians generate several a month. If fundamentalism has something to do with terrorism, we don't really have it here. 

[btw: Mike, do you personally not want to own guns, or do you believe that I should not own a gun?]

Mike, I could let it go at an agree to disagree, but I won't. Consider this thought experiment. Equality of outcome has been magically decreed. One guy, we'll call him Mike, is a hard working teacher at a city college somewhere in the midwest. His income is relatively low, even though he has five advanced degrees in anthropology, history, paleontology, particle physics and basket weaving. He has spent a great deal of effort to gain this knowledge, because all he has ever wanted to do is teach. Another guy, we'll call him Steve, is a technical writer in our nation's capital. Though he has not earned a degree, since he got married and realized he needed a career, has worked very hard to develop one that will provide a decent income for his family. He has no particular attachment to technical writing, though he doesn't mind it. His interests lie outside his career - money has been the primary driver for career. His income is now substantially above the national average.

These two people have made different choices, because, well, they had the freedom to do so. Now the magical income leveler is voted in, and now everyone has the same income, same medical care, same everything. Mike's income jumps dramatically. Steve's is cut in half. 

Is it fair because it balances out? Because one person benefitted and one did not? While Mike did not personally come to suburban northern Virginia, and put a gun to Steve's head to get the extra money, his agent the government did. Mike could have chosen a different career path. A man of his clear ability and intelligence could have devoted himself to a career track that resulted in money. He did not. That is not a reason to steal money from someone who did. Do not take this to mean that I believe their should be no government administered social safety net, for those who run into truly bad times. But freedom means you make your bed, and then you sleep in it.

Mike, I was just illustrating that if class were the dominant pattern in our society, it would overwhelm other arrangements. Voting patterns are one way of seeing what a group of people feel are their interests.

Well, that is a tough one. America is an ideal. Americans are those who hold those ideals. They include, but are not limited to, the these beliefs: that we each have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that we all should have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to bear arms; in the idea that government exists to benefit the people, not the other way around; independence and self-reliance; in rule of law and that we are all equal before the law; and a generalized hatred of the French. Well maybe not the last one.

But that is the core of it. People who do not agree with the things on that list are, at least in some sense, un-American. I freely cribbed these concepts from a couple of pages I found on the IN-TER-NET. Check 'em out.

Well, the problem with the FCC is that it is deregulating the top of the market without deregulating the bottom. It is impossible (and I know people who have tried) to get a broadcast license for radio or TV in this country, unless you are already part of a large network. Cable TV provided a loophole, which is now being closed. While I am not against allowing large companies to merge in principle, the flip side is that you must allow new entrants into the field. As older dinosaurs calcify and grow stagnant, new dinosaurs move in. However, if you lock out the bottom of the market, you assure that the current players will stay there forever. 

We never truly deregulated broadcast media. That is the problem.