Comment on The Belmont Club"The armies of the night"

Regarding Screaming Dr Dean, what he is practicing is the Leninist theory of Democratic Centralism. The Leader sets the agenda for the Political Bureau then the Politburo sets the agenda for the Central Committee and then the Central Committee sets the agenda for the Party Congress which sets the agenda for the public legislature. In theory everyone gets to debate until that is they receive a directive from above. Of course if you babble a viewpoint contrary to what is later set as the agenda determined by higher authority then there will be consequences.

On two occasions Dean delivered veiled threats. Once by saying he was not criticizing Senators but only their policies, because it was expedient to do so. His phrasing made it clear that he had no problem with personally attacking politicians he disagreed with if they did not prove cooperative. The second time at the end when he said "We can be polite" he again implied that was a choice and that he could direct his army to go knock on doors and be impolite.

Charles,
(who once thought Norman Mailer was smarter than his father)
Great post. Welcome home. Reminded me of Mark Twain discovering how much smarter his father became over time.

Nahncee,
You are correct in that the people in that hall will send each other most of those emails. We face the same problem. Much as we want to reach out our efforts must be tempered or they end up in the spam folder.

Leo Linbeck III,
(who discussed “the competency trap”)
The phenomenon has a biological analogue. The more specialized a species is to exploit a niche the more fragile is its position. Change is a natural process. Either you adapt or perish.