By what greater union will the middling and inferior ranks in England and the rest of the UK be freed from the power of an aristocracy - financial more than hereditary the past century or more - that has always oppressed them?

"EVERYTHING today works to increase the power of the state, no matter who is in charge and no matter what their stated policies might be. It’s a function of what Burnham called the managerial revolution, whereby more and more tasks and complications are created by the permanent, self-perpetuating bureaucracy of “experts” who run things."

The Brazilians pithily say, "Create problems in order to sell solutions."

Adam Smith, countering those who claimed liberty down to the last hundred for themselves, but who rigourously denied it ot their people.

Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, a man who would have made slaves of his fellow Scots, is still revered by Scottish nationalists.

EVERYTHING today works to increase the power of the state, no matter who is in charge and no matter what their stated policies might be. It's a function of what Burnham called the managerial revolution, whereby more and more tasks and complications are created by the permanent, self-perpetuating bureaucracy of "experts" who run things.

Presidents and Cabinets and Congresses are about as significant as hood ornaments on a car, when compared to this sea-change.

She really owed her victory to the Sex Pistols and the punk rockers who saw no future under Callahan's English Dream of 20% unemployment even as the government imported cheap help to drive the buses. When the youth of Inner City London abandoned the Labour Party in favor of the Tories, she had to do something in the face of her party's unexpected victory.

I wish that were the case, Dr Wilson. However you neglect one important area, that of diversity. The power elite wastes no time in proclaiming any other culture -- no matter how barbaric -- as superior to our own. That's why dance evolved no further than disco, singers now bray, howl and ululate sheer gibberish into amplified spaorts arenas, writers produce "graphic novels" in the hope of selling movie rights, and fashion design falls somewhere between slave threads and porno. Poetry and storytelling can be found on the sidewalk of your local library, as the government makes room for videos and books on the occult.

In the spirit of "colere," I asked my students what - physical, intellectual or spiritual - they tended, guarded, cultivated or tilled. They grinned and could come up with nothing. I did, however, find out that each of them -Southern, white, rural late teenagers - had as their favorite music "rap."

I would say that this applies just as well to Reaganism and to Bushism, the latter going without saying.