two parties and whose outeomes are determined Ijy bribery, isrninduced (bullied or bribed) to pass a bill. In many cases,rnCongress is not even consulted by the federal judges and bureaucratsrnwho have taken law and public administration intorntheir own hands.rnWhen liberal theorists like Seymour Martin Lipset speak ofrndemocracy, they do not mean either everyday democracy orrneven majority rule; what they have in mind is the vast coercivernapparatus of a state that regulates every moment of our privaternand public lives according to a theory that no one understands.rnWhen, in a classic work of obfuscation {Political Man), ProfessorrnLipset faces, however briefly, the light of day, he concedesrnthat high voter turnout is not necessarily a good thing forrndemocracy. Similarly, when the Trilateral Commission in arn1975 report on The Crisis in Democracy spoke of the postwarrnAmerican regime, their version of democracy was a conspiracyrnof elite classes that might have been dreamed up by RobertrnWelch:rnFor twenty years after World War II presidents operatedrnwith the cooperation of a series of informal governingrncoalitions. Truman made a point of bringing a substantialrnnumber of nonpartisan soldiers. Republican bankers,rnand Wall Street lawyers into his administration. . . .rnEisenhower in part inherited this coalition and was inrnpart almost its creation. He also mobilized a substantialrnnumber of midwestern businessmen into his administrationrnand established close and effective working relationshipsrnwith the Democratic leadership of Congress….rnBoth Johnson and his successor were viewed with arncertain degree of suspicion by many of the more liberalrnand intellectual elements which might normally eontributerntheir support to the administration. The VietnamrnWar and, to a lesser degree, racial issues dividedrnelite groups as well as the mass public. In addition, thernnumber and variety of groups whose support might bernnecessary had increased tremendously by the 1960’s.rnTruman had been able to govern the country with therncooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Streetrnlawyers and bankers. By the mid-1960’s, the sources ofrnpower in society had diversified tremendously, and thisrnwas no longer possible.rnThis report, authored in 1975 by Michael Crozier, SamuelrnI luntingdon, and Joji Watanuki (like Herodotus I include thernnames to preserve the memory of infamous men), suggests thatrnby the 1970’s the main political problem, at least as politics isrnconceived of by the Trilateral Commission, was how to reconstituternthe stable governing coalition of the Truman and Eisenhowerrnyears. The Vietnam War, among other things, had splitrnthe elite class, opening up American politicals to the kind ofrndissidence and protest that had characterized labor strugglesrnand populist movements in the transitional period between thernCi’il War and the New Deal. The task ahead was to make therncountry (and the wodd) safe for “a relatively small number ofrnWall Street law’ers and bankers.”rnHow they did it would be a long story, but Maneur Olson hasrndone a superb job of analyzing much of the phenomenon of interestrngroup politics, which is at the heart of modern democraticrnsystems. However, that they did it cannot be doubted byrnanyone who compares the public reaction to Vietnam with thernpublic responses first to the war against Iraq and the war againstrnthe Bosnian Serbs. There is no substantial opposition to thesernlawless and brutal wars, neither from the political class that runsrnthe government nor from the information class that controlsrnthe media and the universities. And there is not a drop of irony,rnwhen Presidents Bush and Clinton have described their dirtyrnlittle campaigns in the language of global democracy.rnVast numbers of real Americans are still attempting to eonductrnhonorable lives in the spirit of everyday democracy. Tornsome extent we have been bought off with middle-class welfarernprograms that undermine the moral foundations of our independence,rnbut many of us are doing the best wc can to take carernof ourselves and the people who depend on us, even under thernincreasingly hostile pressure of high taxes and intrusive government.rnThe theory of democracy is on the point of making the realityrnimpossible, as fewer and fewer managers exert control overrnmore and more of the world’s population and resources. If thernfietive support of 250 million Americans can justify forced busing,rnaffirmative action, the ban on school prayer, and the rightsrnof AIDS-infectcd homosexual doctors to practice medicine inrnpublic hospitals, just imagine what our ruling class will be ablernto do when it speaks in the name of a global population ofrnbillions. crnKulchurrnby Harold McCurdyrnOur next-of-kin, the chimpanzees.rnDrag chattering monkeys from the treesrnAnd snatch chimp babies from the crookedrnArms of their mothers, to eat uncooked.rnTheir genes and ours are so much the samern(Over 90 percent), where is the shamernIf, as the talk is, some ChinesernDine on aborted fetuses?rnThey say it’s a diet that freshens the skinrnAnd keeps the wrinkles from coming in.rnWe in America freshen the brainsrnOf Alzheimer patients with fetal remains,rnAdvanced anthropoids, refined by reliancern(“Doctor knows best”) on medical science.rnJANUARY 1996/11rnrnrn