"Ossies" and "Wessies" are the German slang terms for Easterners and Westerners, referring to theаDeutschlanders who spent many years, respectively, under communism and capitalism. Theyаremain in steady use in unified Germany. In fact, according to Reuters,

Nearly a quarter of western Germans and 12 percent of easterners want the Berlin Wall back —— more than 15 years after the fall of the barrier that split Germany during the Cold War, according to a new survey.

And

47 percent of the easterners agree with the statement that the West "acquired the east like a colony," while 58 percent of the westerners back the statement that "easterners tend to wallow in self—pity."

Coming a decade and a half after unification, the data show the dismaying cultural damage inflicted by communism in the course of four and half decades. Not that the Wessies haven't been heavily influenced by socialism themselves. Perhaps that is one reason why the Ossies have not been able to respond as aptly to the incentives of capitalism as the Chinese have done. Lacking the massive subsidies of German welfare capitalism, and starting from an economic baseline much closer to starvation that the Ossies, the Chinese have become avaricious capitalists.

It appears that "shock therapy" approaches to undoing the cultural ravages of communism are preferable to "kinder and gentler" gradualist approaches. few are going to turn down a free ride, and they will resent small pressures much more than a big bang, to which they have no choice but to conform. In the long run, they will be happier.

I still remember vividly a conversation I had with a young woman a number of years ago, a Wessie whose phsyician father had moved to the East for idealistic reasons following unification, bringing his family along and subjecting her to finishing high school in the east. She was herself a super—achiever, who had moved to New York City to be among the finest practitioners of her particular art. She had found the Ossies bitter, proud, contemptuous of the Wessies, and consumed by jealously, all the while expecting a free ride, and resenting the inadeuqcies of what was given to them.

Sounded like Democrats to me. Still does.

Thomas Lifsonа 3 26 05