I think it's also valuable to see that a shared value system is very helpful in maintaining a social order, even in the direst of circumstances, and that such an order can be maintained in the absence of authority, at least in small groups like this.

Clearly there was a consensus arrived at in their decision, versus it being a case of somebody taking charge and directing the matter from there, in the leader-driven manner that is so popular in this country. There was no out-group (except for the dead), so everybody in the in-group was part of the social franchise, so no "Lord of the Flies" scenario could arise, no tyrants appearing amid the ashes of the wreck. They survived with their civility and dignity intact. Fortunate for them that they were all Catholics -- I think that helped them work well together.

Oh, my. These GOP darlings are priceless, busy buffing their jackboots. Sadly, their war on America won't end with this election. Apparently worshipping Mammon isn't enough; they worship Thanatos and Caesar, too, these good theocrats. How little has changed over the decades...

"War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties; the minorities are either intimidated into silence, or brought slowly around by a subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them really to be converting them. Of course, the ideal of perfect loyalty, perfect uniformity is never really attained. The classes upon whom the amateur work of coercion falls are unwearied in their zeal, but often their agitation instead of converting, merely serves to stiffen their resistance. Minorities are rendered sullen, and some intellectual opinion bitter and satirical. But in general, the nation in wartime attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war. Loyalty - or mystic devotion to the State - becomes the major imagined human value. Other values, such as artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed, and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them." -- Randolph Bourne (1918)

Oh, it's probably going to get worse leading up to the election. Hell, somebody might even set the Reichstag on fire. Anything to destabilize things leading up to a vital election.

By why are those tactics suddenly not working? If anything, one could have expected that equating Democrats with anti-American, vaguely foreign, radical subversion would have been more potent this year than any other

Well, they've been using those tactics since about 1948, almost without fail, and after 60 years, maybe the tactic is getting a little shopworn? Especially in an America that has seen its stature diminished on all fronts, a far cry from the Pax Americana of the last century (in retrospect, not so peaceful) its strength drained from it by the same reactionaries who claim to uphold its cardinal virtues, even as they undermine everything America stood for.

I'm glad to find them floundering. Let's hope for a brighter future for this country, and, yes, a genuine realignment and a restoration of our country. I'm so glad Obama's teflon candidacy and smart campaigning has opened up a new front in our political culture.

Are Scandinavians really in the vanguard of religious thought?

Wait, isn't that an oxymoron? What does thinking have to do with religion, when contrasted with the ineffable verities of faith?

As for the godless Communism often invoked by the un-Christian Christianist cold warrior types (e.g., Christ-as-Caesar/Warlord/Capitalist), I'd dispute that those societies were really atheistic -- rather, they simply dragged God down and made Him the State. The State became God-on-Earth, with the power of life and death over the citizens of those states. That's really what the State ultimately is -- God on Earth. All-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing. The Communist narrative follows the same arc as the Christian one, with its own holy books, its own prophets, its own heretics, its own holy wars, its own paradise, and its own hell.

Good for the Scandinavians for pursuing a democratic socialist utopia, for finding a happy medium between the State-as-God of Communism and God-in-State of outright theocracy (which seems to be the goal of the mouthbreathers in the GOP's brimstone base).

Christian values aren't even honestly practiced by the supposedly most Christian of our biblically literalist numbers; if they were, the US wouldn't be a capitalist wonderland; rather, it would resemble something more like a giant Amish community, and that would be too damned communist for the supposedly godly Christianists to stomach. I mean, a Christianity where wealth isn't worshipped? How un-American is that?

We'll see where America's particular crazy train takes it, but odds are it won't be as peaceful or profitable as what the Scandinavians enjoy. I don't think they'd want any American expatriates, anyway.

I think somebody needs to make a better electronic voting machine, undercut the clearly-questionable Diebold. It shouldn't be so hard -- if we're able to do electronic payments ala credit cards WITH a handy receipt for the transaction, surely someone can apply that to a voting machine that prints a handy-dandy receipt and, thus, a paper trail. Just shows were the priorities are -- economic transactions get a paper trail; political transactions (ala voting), no paper trail? Bullshit.

Seems like that would scuttle any GOP/Diebold electoral machinations, versus them simply being like "Oh, well! We just can't have a paper record with electronic voting. Oh, and the GOP wins, again! Woo hoo!"