National Union: Tough on crime, tough on kids!

For the past two decades, the National Union has been tough on street punks. But for 2010, they're tough on kids before they even get onto the streets or are old enough to become punks. Appealing to moms and dads to instill tough love in their kids, the NU advocates corporal punishment, "obedience" and "respect for authority".

Spanking, of course, plays to the NU's balls-to-the-wall, forged-in-the-fire, testosterone-fueled advocacy of manly values. Another way to mold impressionable young boys into tough men. Everyone knows that being spanked at home and caned at school helps to build manly, macho character.

Although the death penalty has been abolished (like much of the civilized macro-world, certain US states notwithstanding), per Article VII of the Constitution of Patria, the NU is not only committed to bringing back the death penalty, they promise a return to public executions. Because nothing says tough on crime more than firing up the electric chair, public hangings, or even beheadings in the town square, and on national television to boot.

1989: Spark of Liberation

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" As many visitors to Patria know, Patria's "Dharmic Revolution" - its unique micronational movement to embrace Hinduism, Sanskrit, yoga, New Age and Eastern-based spirituality - was inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the mostly non-violent (Rumania excepted) democratic revolutions that swept the former Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe in the latter part of 1989 as the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union imploded.

In Patria, the momentous events of twenty years ago were an inspiration to focus inwardly, to begin a spiritual quest, and to tear down walls within that might as well have been made of brick and fortified with machine gun-toting guards. The bland, dishwater-dull centrist, small-l liberal, and small-c conservative parties that had governed Patria for decades and formed the bulk of the 43rd Congress were turfed out of power almost as swiftly as the monolithic Communists of the old Warsaw Pact. Perhaps not coincidentally, in late 1989 an election for a new Congressus Patriaë was on the horizon. In the 44th Congress election of 1990, the Spiritual Regeneration Movement, Chakra Party and the now-defunct New Forum of Patria - new parties that could not have been imagined on the ballot four years earlier - rose up to meet the challenges of a new consciousness and Patria's post-Cold War longing for spiritual values.

Just as there are many Germans who grew up in East Germany and two decades later still long for the pre-November 1989 days of job security, guaranteed housing and child care, cheap (if seldom available) consumer goods, unsafe at any speed Trabant cars and the discredited leadership of Erich Honecker, there are many citizens of Patria who still long for the old days of the boring, secular, but nominally Judeo-Christian republic. The rightist, tough-on-crime, macho-man National Union panders to much of this nostalgia, at least to the populist perception that law and order has crumbled, crime has gone out of control, and Patria has become irreversably feminized by hatha/raja/bhakti yoga, Hinduism and New Age spirituality.

Swine flu: Patria not buying the fear-mongering

"This ain't 1918, folks"! That sums up Patria's take on the H1N1 (aka swine) flu fear-mongering. It's only a mild strain of flu, and for most people the worst that will happen is that they will get sick for a couple days, recover, and have a strengthened immune system. Don't worry, or don't worry too much. And don't be in a rush to get a H1N1 shot. Trust your own immune system more than any vaccine, particularly one that has been rushed into production without adequate research into potential side effects. The best way to prevent flu and stay healthy through the 2010 election campaign is to take the usual precautions (wash or sanitize hands frequently, cough/sneeze into your sleeve, avoid hanging out with sick people, stay home if you are sick, etc.) rather than inject some unproven and possibly toxic stuff into your body.

Patria vividly remembers the 1976 Swine Flu farce and the useless shots that didn't protect against what was hyped as a killer flu but stuck millions of Americans with Guillain-Barre paralysis. Just another brutal experience in the 40th Congress (1974-1978).