Two things you should know about the 2010 platform of the Iowa Republican Party:

(1) The document of some 12,000 words and almost 370 planks is a fascinating and provocative read. The work is a great candidate for any time capsule so people 100 or more years from now can see how their ancestors approached issues of public policy.

(2) The news media in general, and The Des Moines Register in particular, continue to ignore party platforms as irrelevant to the 2010 election.

The state convention of the Iowa GOP came and went with news coverage given to the nominations of Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds for governor and lieutenant governor. Little or no news coverage was given to the GOP platform.

There seldom is.

"A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home." - James Madison

The U.S. government has a history of commandeering military technology for use against Americans. We saw this happen with tear gas, Tasers, and sound cannons, all of which were first used on the battlefield before being deployed against civilians at home. Now the drones - pilotless, remote-controlled aircraft that have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan - are coming home to roost.

Drones, a $2-billion cornerstone of the Obama administration's war efforts, have increasingly found favor with both military and-law enforcement officials. "The more we have used them," stated Defense Secretary Robert Gates, "the more we have identified their potential in a broader and broader set of circumstances."

Now the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is facing mounting pressure from state governments and localities to issue flying rights for a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to carry out civilian and law-enforcement activities. As the Associated Press reports, "Tornado researchers want to send them into storms to gather data. Energy companies want to use them to monitor pipelines. State police hope to send them up to capture images of speeding cars' license plates. Local police envision using them to track fleeing suspects." Unfortunately, to a drone, everyone is a suspect because drone technology makes no distinction between the law-abiding individual and the suspect. Everyone gets monitored, photographed, tracked, and targeted.

Democracy breeds gullibility. Lord Bryce observed in 1921, "State action became less distrusted the more the State itself was seen to be passing under popular control." The rise of democracy made it much easier for politicians to convince people that government posed no threat, because they automatically controlled its actions. The result is that the brakes on government power become weakest at the exact time that politicians are most dangerous.

Blind trust becomes a substitute for informed consent. But mass trust in government compounds the political damage brought about by pervasive ignorance.

The bias in favor of trusting government brings out democracy's worst tendencies. The normal defenses that people would have against alien authority are undermined by a chorus of politicians and government officials continually reminding people that government is themselves, and they cannot distrust the government without distrusting themselves.

I knew the time would come. America's public schools and ideologically monolithic universities have spawned a generation woefully uninformed in the most elementary facts about free markets, socialism, and communism. Personally, after teaching this material for years, I'm getting an inordinate number of questions about communism in particular, as that word is bandied about like crazy -- the result of America's decisive lurch leftward since the election of November 2008.

There's so much to say, especially about communism in practice, where the story is unprecedented misery: a death toll of 100 million to 140 million human beings since 1917. That's twice the combined corpses of World War I and World War II.

But what about communism as a theory?