The American people wanted this. They voted for it. They had a choice. But Barack Obama is cool. He's hip. He's not a rich old white guy. What? You want policy? Go work at the Heritage Foundation!

The change in term from "liberal" to "progressive" is significant. It was probably also overdue as a matter of truth in packaging. "Liberal" is a commitment to certain values, one of which is a respect for the two not always consistent values of popular sovereignty and personal liberty. In a society that attempts to maintain those values, liberalism is at home. Progressivism, on the other hand, is for a society run by the most "knowledgeable" and "enlightened" in the interest of "social justice". Steal an election? That's OK; it's for social justice. Does a conservative protestor get beaten up? It's for social justice. Does government allow a tax exemption for left-wing social groups but deny it to right-wing social groups? It's for social justice. Does the government form a paramilitary organization with over 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition and 2700 armored vehicles outside the regular military chain of command? To prevent anyone from interfering with social justice. That is an overriding principle, and none of the scruples of liberalism will be permitted to interfere with it. It is not liberalism. Hubert Humphrey was a liberal. Joe Lieberman is a liberal. These guys aren't liberals; they're progressives. And progressives are just this side of national socialists.

What's more is that this intelligence-gathering apparatus of the IRS is not coming out of the traditional intelligence culture of the US, which was mostly military-based. The military have fairly clear internalized limits on what they would do. The IRS has no limits. It's like the purchase of 2700 tanks and 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition for DHS. That's more tanks than Hitler invaded France with in 1940; it's more bullets than the military orders. Why is the government forming an armed force separate from the military, one whose loyalty appears to be personal to the president and not to still-institutionalized loyalty to the Constitution? The world has seen the formation of such forces before--the National Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), later split into the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and Committee on State Security (KGB). It also saw the formation of Protective Squads (SS) and the Secret State Police (Gestapo). If this is not what the administration is now forming, there's only one other possible explanation, if anything even more alarming because it could mean we're about to get into a huge secret war somewhere.

It doesn't matter; all the Democrats have to say is, "We're the party of the little guy; the Republicans are for the rich," and something close to the majority they need will vote for them. If they're a few thousand votes short, they can gin up enough fraudulent votes to cover it. The press won't report it, and the people don't care. Millions upon millions of people don't vote--and nowadays, those millions are not urban blacks, who are voting 120% for Obama.

A. The Constitution was not for the most part written by deists. The only deist with a significant part in the writing of the Constitution was Franklin. Most of the Framers were either Anglicans (the Episcopal Church hadn't formally been organized yet) or Congregationalists, with a sprinkling of Presbyterians; the first speaker of the House was a Lutheran. B. It's not just the street culture; it's black street culture grafted onto an urban tradition of Irish political machines and their chicanery. The Daleys created Obama. Obama, growing up in an Oriental home in Indonesia and with his white grandparents in Hawaii, wasn't really part of the black street. They just adapted the old Irish hustle to blacks.

The military no longer has people like Douglas MacArthur, who was twice cashiered by presidents whose political mold he would not fit. Instead, officers go along to get along. As Cerrano says in "Major League", they "have no marbles."

Our troops were not defeated in the field in Vietnam. There weren't more than two or three battles in which we didn't get the better of them. But we lost the war, because of the political component--the North Vietnamese, whether by their own will or by the compulsion of a totalitarian government, were prepared to endure an extended war, while the American people, led by the political Left which sympathized with the North, were not.

Romney lost, above all, because he came across like a rich guy looking out for other rich guys.

Who was the last unabashed conservative to run for statewide office in Massachusetts? I can't remember one. Maybe Ray Shamie? Even he was just sort of a moderate conservative.

isn't it great how that works? Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are now faculty members in good standing at prestigious universities. Alger Hiss was restored to the Massachusetts bar; all he'd done was be a Soviet agent high in the State Department. Pas d'ennemi a gauche.