And, going back to the subject of "Stupid, If Not Deplorable" on November 13, we note today from Slate the following tempest in a teapot:

Well, not really, Slate, we counter. The word, should, is correct, but the statement impliedly supposes that should means must. In the law, the two terms are not synonymous. The statute of which the piece speaks is advisory only, not compulsory. So the answer should be instead "Yes", Senator Obama broke no law. And were it otherwise, then we might as well simply accept that the completely crazy Congress of 1998 which passed this silly law was indeed inclined toward the fascism which such a law, if at all compulsory, would clearly imply.

The statute in issue, 36 USC 301, states:

We wholeheartedly support Senator Obama in this small bit of rebellion to tradition, assuming that is what it was. We would feel much better were all the candidates to follow suit.

For our Government today, in our estimate, stands as a complete disgrace to democracy, and in need of a thorough and complete overhaul. This Administration is a complete disgrace to democracy around the world and at home, and has been for six years. It obtains support from a bunch of neo-Bircher types abroad the land and runs with it as if that Neanderthal mentality represents the majority of us. It does not; it did not in November 2000.

This country is at this time no longer a democracy, but rather a dismocracy.

The Pledge and pieces of bunting are fine as long as they mean something, as long as they symbolize a vibrant Constitution. If they come to symbolize taking away rights from anyone, not just some group with money or political power, but anyone, of purchasing with impunity a desirable result through outright bribes of officials or promises of support, rather than having law and fairness determine the outcome of matters, of using force to accomplish "democracy" abroad rather than allowing it to be self-determined, then we spit on it. It is worthless. It is not democracy, but dismocracy--fascism.

At present, we do not see much evidence of the Constitution in operation at all, in our courts, in our daily lives. The flag thus becomes a piece of hollow cotton at this juncture, thanks to what has been done to that which it symbolizes, that is the evisceration of Constitutional rights in this country. If you have money to buy a result, you can sure obtain it. Otherwise, you might as well take a hike.

There are people hurting in this country; there are record foreclosures, brought about by a mortgage industry and business climate in general run amuck, little different from organized crime in this country in the 1950's; as we consume and waste the great bulk of our enforcement resources on fighting an offensive and ridiculous and meaningless and endless war on Terrorism abroad and at home against bogeys du jour, a war which long ago the public stopped supporting, especially for its abuses of Constitutional liberties, after the bulk of the country had been sold a load of goods by a bunch of liars in the Administration, liars who cannot stand peace, see it as a threat to their continued power and wealth, but want, for purely political reasons of acquiring and sustaining more wealth and power from the private sector, to reinvigorate the Cold War mentality, a load of goods that the country needed this protection against this bogey, 19 madmen, must have it, much as they needed fallout shelters in the 1950's and 1960's, much as they cannot live without a new car.

There will come some change in this country, as the people are fed up. This is not 1960 or 1950, 1980 or 1970. The country by and large no longer wants warfare, hasn't since the latter 1960's, especially wars precipitated to maintain a sick, decrepit, socialized, government-supported defense welfare state, one too helpless, too stupid, to find new and constructive means of support for itself and its employees, alternative to the manufacture of the instruments of war.

Such change, and recognition of the broad desires of the country, can come the easy way, through a new Republican or a Democratic Administration, one committed to serving the people and the Constitution, unlike the present one, or it can come the hard way, through open revolt, as it did in the latter 1960’s and early 1970’s. But it will come--and it will come soon.

It will not come through faith-based initiatives and other such mealy-mouthed meaningless domestic "policies", actually advertising campaigns geared to tell the bulk of the country to go to hell while the rich get richer at the expense of the ever increasingly burdened and diminished, both economically and psychologically and in terms of basic human dignity, middle and lower economic classes. Even the professional classes, those not involved with corporate America, can scarcely earn a living anymore, thanks to the new fascism abroad the land, encouraged and promoted by this Administration at home and abroad. It is shameful.

It would be far better to have a government responsive to and serving its people rather than lording over it and denying rights and privileges promised under the Constitution, leading on eventually, inexorably, to open revolt.

Fewer concerns by "conservative bloggers", i.e., fascists, on how something looks on a candidate, or on a citizen, and more concern about substance and what the country actually stands for under its Constitution, will stand them well in the end. Should it have been left solely to this mentality, the same Army of neo-Birchers whose latter-day leaders were responsible for enactment of 36 USC 301,—(shall we call it the Delay-Hyde-Army-Barr?--that is De-HAB Group)--the same mentality which gave us the Patriot Act, we would have no doubt not only had a compulsory law in 1998, with criminal penalties attached to it for non-compliance, but also a reversion to the 1930’s practice of straight-armed salutes, the true preference of the De-HAB crowd and their little neo-fascist, neo-Bircher army of "conservative bloggers".

All we would like to know is where we can get a drink of water, in this befouled open water…

Sharks figured a good deal in the tales told at Norfolk yesterday by survivors of the Greek steamer which foundered off Hatteras Saturday. An English seaman said he couldn't swim but grabbed a piece of timber and kept afloat, "fighting off sharks that nipped his ankles." He seized a stick, he [indiscernible word], and thrashed them off. Another man was pulled through a lifebelt by a shark, and drowned as a result--though it does not appear that the shark itself actually inflicted any direct injury upon him.

Maybe this tends to prove the contention of William Beebe and other authorities on marine biology that there is no such animal as "a man-eating shark." A shark which can be fought off with a stick is scarcely the ferociously slashing creature the old yarns of our youth had let us to expect. And sharks that nip your ankles might almost be described as playful fellows. But in any case we have a notion that we don't want them for our companions in the water. They go too far in their play, obviously, when they yank a man out of his lifebelt and leave him to drown. And, moreover, we'd just as soon be eaten as scared to death.

The news that Dr. Cordell Hull, while grieved by the coup d'etat in Brazil, proposes to do nothing but keep his hands off the situation, re-confirms our opinion that the commonsense of our Cordell is always to be trusted.

When you come to that, there isn't really anything else we could do as a nation. That is, unless we are prepared to send down an army of a million men to heave Senor Vargas out and replace him with a dictator of our own choice. The Monroe Doctrine has little applicability in the premises. For that doctrine contemplates simply the use of arms for active conquest of a South or Central American nation by a European nation. And nothing of the sort has taken place. It is quite impossible, indeed, to be sure that Italy and Germany are primarily responsible for the overturn. For revolution and dictatorship are much more native to South America than democracy. And even if Germany and Italy are primarily responsible--they've accomplished their end, not by arms but by propaganda. Not by using guns and ships but by winning the consent of at least a good part of the Brazilians.

And what Brazil does internally is strictly a matter for the judgment of the Brazilians, no matter how much we may hate to see fascism established in this hemisphere.

It has been done so quietly that most of us are still unaware that staid England, whatever the name of the government which sits in power, is further advanced along the way of socialized legislation than we are in these New Deal States. The latest step in that direction--made ironically by a government called Tory--is the "issuance" of a bill which provides for immediate government control of all coal mines in the country, and for complete government ownership by 1942.

Well, we have been doing things about coal over here, too. We have a law and a commission which was supposed to bring order out of chaos in that devil-ridden industry. But mark now the contrast between our way and the English way.

Our bill was cooked up by a legislative tyro, Senator Guffey, in a few weeks. The English bill is the result of long study by a Royal Commission dating back to the earliest [indiscernible words] government. Our commission is made up mostly of politicians, appointed not because they were exceptionally qualified for the job but because they had served Senator Guffey or somebody else well. The English commission will be made up of men carefully picked for their knowledge of coal. And of men, too, steeped in the long English civil service tradition--the tradition that their primary loyalty is to the public interest. And finally the English bill carefully specifies the objectives for which the commission is to work. Ours will have to be wrought out so as to suit John L. Lewis.

Nor, if the President will seriously entertain proposals of economy, is that all. Pending at this moment is a bill offered by Senator Byrd to consolidate HOLC and FHA, two Federal agencies which deal with the homeowner, at a neat little reduction in cost of $24,500,000 a year. There are 20 or more other agencies which Senator Byrd is convinced could be consolidated to the saving of a whale of a lot of money in the aggregate.

Nor is that all. It is notorious that the Federal Government operates with a superfluity of working personnel, some 850,000 civilian employees, most of them good Democrats, at present being attached to the payroll and stumbling over each other's feet in the labyrinthian offices that make up official Washington. It is notorious that cushy jobs are always available for political has-beens, and that the party in power pays its campaign obligations out of the public treasury. If the President really wants to economize, and at the same time improve the quality and the ethical standard of government service, opportunities surround him on every hand. If, we say, he sincerely wants to economize. Enough adverse evidence has accumulated over the last four and a half years to bring his sincerity in that respect squarely into question.

Our new Carolinas Forum won't be as harmonious as Impresario David Ovens' Charlotte Musical Festival, but it has its points of simplicity. It will hire a hall and give voice. But in more respects than that, the idea is somewhat the same. People were weary of musical recitals when Mr. Ovens came along with the festival to give them a great show and a great variety. People are weary, too, of stuffed shirt lecturers, speeches, and exhortations. They like a show, and a chance to talk back.

That, we gather, is the idea of the Forum. Speakers will be experts, figures of national renown in their fields. They'll say their pieces. Then the audience will rise, one by one, like a series of finger-pointing interrogation points, and toss questions at them.

Gadzooks, gents, we think you have something there! Who hasn't longed after listening to some provocative (or dull) speaker, to rise and cross-examine him? Or to snear at such across on his own account? Maybe even all that hullabaloo about John Andrew Rice might have been avoided if the audience had been permitted to ask him a few pointed questions.