Craig Helsing, who runs BMW's Washington Office; and Jim Pinkerton, one of the country's smartest men and a serious columnist; have been holding a series of lunches for the past seven years at which authors discuss their latest book.
This week's luncheon featured Joshua Muravchik and his book, "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism."
Regular Mullsters know my rule on reading non-fiction books: They must (a) have pictures, or (b) I have to be in it. As it was not likely I would be included in a book about Socialism, I was pleased to see it has a section of photos.
Muravchik was the chairman of the Young People's Socialist League from 1968-1973. In one of those perfect ironies which help us understand the existence of God, he is now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
He holds that in its early days, Socialists opposed a shrinking ruling class which was gathering increasing amounts of land and methods of production (wealth), to the detriment of greater and greater numbers of workers, whose labor - its only class-asset - was fundamental to the success of the ruling class.
Does any of this sound familiar? Sure it does. From your college days. When you grew a scraggly beard and smoked unfiltered cigarettes to demonstrate your independence from - and your anger at - the ruling class as you sat in the sun complaining about the noise the campus maintenance men made mowing the lawn of the quad (which was formed by buildings worth millions of dollars donated by wealthy industrialists) while you were cutting the classes which cost your parents about ten grand a year, plotting how to get that cute brunette from your Western Civ. class into bed:
"Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat." - The Manifesto of the Communist Party; Karl Marx and Fredrick Engles; 1848.
Ok, so it's not exactly, "Good authors, too, who once knew better words; now only use four-letter words, writing prose. Anything goes." But there you are.
In the end - the end being less than 20 years ago - given a choice between lowering the upper classes and raising the lower classes, the lower classes preferred the latter, and Socialism - under the weight of western television and the Internet - collapsed.
Which brings us to the current tomfoolery on the part of America's last remaining Socialists (if you don't count the news rooms of major U.S. daily newspapers and the faculty lounges of major U.S. universities): The Democrats in the House and Senate of the United States Congress.
Congressional Democrats are hell-bent on having this fall's elections turn on THE BOSSES versus THE WORKERS.
The Congressional Democrats are all but dancing in the hallways over the drop in the stock markets. They tell the national press corps at every opportunity how this is all going to be placed at the feet of the President.
Nevertheless, two charter members of the national press corps, the New York Times and CBS News, released a poll this week which asked, among others, these two questions:
Q12: Do you think George W. Bush cares about the needs and problems of people like you?
Yes 68
No 27
Q13: Do you think George W. Bush shares the moral values most Americans try to live by or doesn't he?
Yes 80
No 14
After three weeks of nearly every Democrat on Capitol Hill trying to pin WorldCom and Enron on the President, two-thirds of Americans still believe the President "cares about the needs and problems of people" like them.
Even after nearly three weeks of hysterical coverage of Harken Energy, 80 percent believe the President "shares the moral values most Americans try to live by."
Congressional Democrats, who telling the press they will play the Class Warfare Card this November, are bluffing. They don't have a Class Warfare Card in their hand to play.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Karl Marx and Cole Porter, Muravchik's book, photos and posters. It's a good one!
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