The Economist has a piece this week on Dmitry Medved’s role in the “succession” going on in Russia. I previously posted on this issue, which has some qualities of farce. Russia is a country being run by the former secret service of the USSR. Our own CIA, as demonstrated by the recent NIE, has ambitions along this line but nothing like the competence of the old KGB
Since you link and read Instapundit, you’ve perhaps seen this already today. Putin and his disciples could easily be inserted for Brown and Co., as could most any of the US elite party leaders. Some call it the good ol’ boy network, some say the ‘inner circle’, but it’s pervasive human behavior the world over. And to me it’s shown repeatedly when some ‘outsider’ flips to ‘insider’ as soon as their nameplate is nailed up on their congressional office door. The corporate world is another gleaming example. Selling out is certainly an appropriate term, in that, money is usually involved, whether upfront or in the back years of the ‘contract’. Another reason a Tom Coburn is such a rare occurrence since he’s had to work up through this systematic perniciousness. Not easy to stand outside the inner crowd. I’ll also give credit to Ron Paul in that regard.
Pertaining to Brown’s signing of the EU Treaty reform:
…To join in fellowship with others is a good thing, but because it is a human thing it has the possibility of being terrible, even monstrous. That is the inner circle of Europe with its circle of stars. It makes grown men and women want to be part of it – to enjoy its lavish pensions and perks, to feel specially precious, to secretly enjoy their snobbish elitism, and to simultaneously feel self-righteous because they are helping to establish a new world order of high-sounding platitudes. Never mind that it will be a disaster because it ignores political science.
That is why Mr Brown signed the treaty. It is irrelevant that he did not sign it with the other plenipotentiaries. He is with them. He is too afraid to be without them. He is too afraid to stand alone for the freedom of the British people.