Democracy and Capitalism have worked together (along with a rich, underpopulated continent and plenty of cheap and even free labor), to create an enormous amount of wealth and opportunity, as well as unprecedented political freedom and economic prosperity. The result has been an enormous middle class and the promise of unending and widespread progress.

But the party is over, for a variety of social, historical and technological reasons, and America, along with the rest of the world, is moving into a period of decreasing expectations and economic decline. I believe this decline and its worst effects can be managed and mitigated, if we continue to rely on what has always been the secret of our success--free markets and a free electorate. But the price we will have to pay is a diminution of our standard of living--not to third world standards, but neither to the unrestrained consumerism we felt we were entitled to during the middle of the last century.

The problem is that America, for all its bounty, has always promised more than it could deliver, and for the first time in history this reality is starting to become clear to large numbers of people. The American middle class suddenly feels powerless, helpless, and under siege. It feels victimized and abused. They refuse to accept that this situation arises from the greed and mismanagement of the class elites they have always wanted to join and whose mores and ethos they ape, or from their own unrealistic expectations and ignorance of history. They need someone to blame their troubles on, and with the Communists no longer available, the Liberals and the foreigners and ethnics will just have to do.

They have gone on a search for scapegoats, both among the poor, who they depict as a throbbing mass of sloth, crime and degradation, and an imaginary intellectual elite they have convinced themselves are endeavoring to enlist this underclass in order to steal their stuff.

What we are seeing is the rise of the Dictatorship of the Middle Class, or the 21st century version of Fascism. Whether this will happen or not is still to be determined. When we look for historical examples, we can see how in the US, France and Britain this was avoided after the Great Depression. In Germany, Italy and Spain it was not.

Cheers. 8)