The word certainly appears often enough here so at least some people have an idea that there is.  My thesis for this diary is that there is one and that it is at the heart of the primary battle we all wish would go away.  Furthermore, it would be in the vital  interests of that establishment to either defeat Senator Obama before he becomes the official nominee or certainly after he does.  For some strange reason these are goals shared by John McCain and Hillary Clinton.  Is it coincidence or is it part of the big picture?  It pays to look the anatomy and physiology of  the establishment meme.  Just what do we mean by an "establishment" in this context?

From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

a group of social, economic, and political leaders who form a ruling class (as of a nation).

Too often the concept congers up images of some conspiracy pulling the strings on the puppets that make up our society.  Are there real people to flesh out the idea? Look below and explore this with me.

Wikipedia tells us that the concept of a "permanent war economy" originated in 1944. Such a war economy, it was predicted, would be one in which there would be a post-WWII arms race. It was argued at the time that:

the USA would retain the character of a war economy; even in peacetime, American military expenditures would remain large, reducing the percentage of unemployed compared to the 1930s.

The concept was also used by U.S. businessman and Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson to refer to an institutionalized war economy, a semi-command-type economy which is directed by corporation executives, based on military industry, and funded by state social spending...whereby the collusion between militarism and war profiteering are manifest as a permanently subsidized industry.

Wilson warned at the close of the war that the U.S. must not return to a civilian economy, but must keep to a "permanent war economy." Wilson was made Secretary of Defense under Dwight D. Eisenhower, and was largely instrumental in reforming the Pentagon as an instrument for facilitating a closer relationship between the military and industry.

To liberals and libertarians, the question of freedom is not even a question. We not only take our freedoms for granted, but we also take for granted that we have a fundamental right to take them for granted! We take for granted that all people have a fundamental right to personal and political freedom!

The American and French Revolutions were liberal and libertarian, and so were the fights against slavery and for suffragism. Liberals and libertarians continue to fight for the freedom of the GBLT community, and for oppressed minorities everywhere. Many of us dream of a world free of warfare, hunger, and deprivation. Many of us dream of a world where everyone has a birthright to peace, justice, and opportunity, and where the human community never fails to provide compassion and support to those in times of crisis. We dream large because our ideals are large. Those who ridicule us as unrealistic would have also ridiculed those in the Eighteenth Century who dreamed of freedom from despotic monarchies. We so take for granted the freedoms we have that we often forget the intrepid efforts of those who had to fight to win them for us.