All I can add is that I desire to widen the scope beyond mere terror or domestic disturbance. I would consider that as neighbors and fellow citizens, we can train darn near everyone (children, elderly, etc) on basic emergency response thinking and decision-making. When I lived in Everett, WA, I was heartily surprised to see such an endeavor in that community centered around getting everyone willing up to date on basic first aid, what to do in case of a fire, earthquake or volcanic eruption spewing ash in the area. We likely will have more Katrinas, Andrews, terrible wildfires, earthquakes, and terrible disasters from God’s will and that of our enemies.

The resilience gained in many more citizens having a basic skill set to handle some or most of such matters on an instinct other than “RUN” would be well worth the effort.

As part my of my schoolwork, I have been reading a good deal about the response of citizens (in this country and beyond) to disasters. While most people do not flip out and instead maintain a good head on their shoulders and do what they can, a great difference can be seen in communities and neighborhoods where such skills were disseminated through the Scouts, Civil Defense Auxiliaries, and similar groups.

What you said. The Chrysler-Mercedes
merger being a classic prime example. The differing corporate “cultures” negating any supposed logistical and/or design “syngeries” that were not only hoped for but built into the very financial projections which served as the entire basis upon which to justify the merger.

I have to also note that this deficiency is shared by a fair number of corporate executives, who often count on the “synergy” that will result from an acquisition/merger, not grasping the negative synergies that will almost surely come with it. For instance, if you’re not a very astute designer of organizations (and in some cases even if you are) the addition of mass will also extend the length of the OODA loops and make you more vulnerable to nimbler competitors.

These lessons contradict most of what people claim to know about America, modernity, and how the world works.

True.

Part of the problem is visionary and part is the natural tendency of pols and bureaucrats to resist sharing power. Look at how officialdom in various countries treats people who want to photograph the Brooklyn Bridge or ride their horses near the power plant or whatever. The intelligent response would be to encourage photography and recreation, because the more alert people are around the harder it is for terrorists and saboteurs to do anything. However, the typical response is to try to suppress all independent activity or subject it to centralized control. This alienates the very people who could most readily help the bureaucrats, but it satisfies bureaucratic incentives that favor restriction and centralization.

I think we are in agreement. Neither political party gets it.

The key component of any American victory in war is the will of the American people.

The American people are seperate and apart from both our elite leaders and elite political factions.

Big government Republicans like Bush only see the American people as a factor in general elections to be placated like any other interest group.

Lefties like the ones controlling the Democratic Party don’t see the American people at all. They are under the thrall of transnational progressivism.

See this on Republican big government conservatives:

The Bush Administration and American Nationalism
by Tom Holsinger
November 20, 2002
http://strategypage.com/strategypolitics/articles/20021120.asp

and see this on the Transie influence on American Leftists:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmYwY2JlM2E4MTkzMGU3OWNjNDhiMzQwMzI3NWZmZjQ=

Hoagland is not some academic kook; as a Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter and the Post’s former foreign editor, he’s about as Establishment as you can get. The point is not conspiracy, but worldview – sovereignty really is passe for the upper reaches of our society. This is going to be the central political problem for the rest of our lifetimes. As John Fonte put it in a recent paper, “The struggle for power between transnational progressives and liberal democratic nationalists could go either way, but it will be the main ideological event of the twenty-first century.”

and

“Global Governance vs. the Liberal Democratic Nation-State: What Is the Best Regime?”

http://pcr.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=5599

By mass I mean multi-million person armies engaged in Somme- and Kursk-scale conventional battles.

All the stuff you are describing will require a multi-faceted response.

But it cannot be top-down, hierarchical and by-the-book.

If it is, we will die.

We need a networked, decentralized response, with a lot of responsibility on “first responders” both formal and informal.

That model of threat and response, oddly enough, looks more like the 18th Century USA than the 20th Century USA.

So we already better equipped both culturally and to some degree legally / institutionally to face the current threats.

But too much of what we are doing or trying to do takes us in the wrong direction.

It depends greatly on what you are talking about when you say mass.

We are fast approaching an era of do it yourself GPS and television seeker cruise missiles that can be built by $10,000 a year American hobbiests.

The reaction of the BATF to high powered model rocket hobbiests using sun seeking CCD camera’s to assist in recovery of their rockets was something I got to see at the Space Acess Society conferences at the time (Late 1990’s).

The Science Fiction author John Ringo takes it even farther when he did a pod cast at the future & you blog back in April 2009.

http://www.thefutureandyou.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=457411

Topics: Smart missiles smaller than insects; military tanks becoming robots; personal headup displays for soldiers; experiments with brain implants for soldiers; war going open-source; Chinese experiments with warfare in low earth orbit; the never-ending utility of bayonets; the bizarre fact that there is no such thing as a Chinese journalist; and the possibility that we will develop faster than light travel. He also describes his worry that a future teenager huddled in his mother’s basement may write a biological virus which will wipe out all of humanity.

The failure of virtually anyone to grasp the significance of Flight 93 is just one example of this intellectual, and ultimately moral, failure.