Reading Michael John McCrae’s commentary on the impending trial of Lt. Col. West brought up one of the special burdens of being a military man, the burden of professionalism. Since each of them might feel obligated to die for their country at some point in their career, it should come as no big surprise that they are sometimes offended at the sight or sound of a civilian criticizing the performance of one of them to their face, rather than to the civilian Commander-in-Chief or to Congress or the Senate. If allowed to go on unimpeded, this kind of civilian hectoring, sometimes called “direct civilian control,” would turn military men into variants of politicians, which (I hope I need hardly add, given the history of OAS countries other than the United States) would not be the best thing for democracy.

Because risking one’s life is part of the job, the armed forces have a professionalism that is unique. Other kinds tend to be more easygoing as far as interactions with non-professionals are concerned. One of these I know well, having been raised in the home of a practitioner of that calling: stock brokerage.

In the investment field, there is a professionalism required because the usual rule of thumb used to distinguish professions from other callings is applicable to this field: the need to act on knowledge that is counterintuitive. If “turning into the skid” is part of the regular routine, then the field is a professional one.

The main difference between other sort of professions and the military is that “client control” is more pervasive. Instead of having a sort of client representative as Chairman of the Board and client control being confined to there, the client calls the shots all the time and the professionals in the investment field have to live with it. Often by cultivating a dark side, a ‘crooked’ side.

So it really should be no wonder that the average military man despises the average stockbroker. “You want that [a stockbroker] in the family? For what purpose – in order to have my grandson cultivate a poltroon side!?”

Obviously, this disdain prompts a rebel-ish reaction among stockbrokers. The most job-bound just lump the military man into the “stupid client” category; the more raffish tend to fall in with the peace creeps. Since “crook” in the investment field serves the same psychological purpose as “butcher” does in the medical field, undoubtedly one of the flaunts is bragging about one’s corrupt nature.

It’s possible that such resentments – ones that are definitely not confined to the status of the investment professional relative to other professions’ - can be socialized in a way that will not (normally) hurt your career. Thanks to the salability of gold and gold mining shares, and the investment man or woman’s respect for business, there is a perfect ideology whose dark side is compatible with a stockbroker’s dark needs: goldbugism.

The price of gold is rising (although I would expect this trend to be clipped now that Saddam Hussein has been captured.) So are goldbugs’ sales efforts: I’ve been getting spam letters that are hustling junior gold stocks instead of junior entertainment companies.

The goldbug point of view, on the surface, looks like a typical stockbroker’s “story”: the U.S. economy is vulnerable; gold is the traditional haven for bad times; look at how well gold did in the 1970s; the ‘00s “might very well be” the new ‘70s; etc. This is a variant of the typical broker’s script, and it usually depends upon hooking the bandwagon effect.

But what’s different in the goldbug world is that the center of it contains a real ideology whose “solution” to modern woes is the restoration of the gold standard. This is one of the few market sectors with a belief system - restoration of minimal government - that is truly hard-core.

I have to disclose that such a belief makes the typical goldbug somewhat less than professional unless they’ve been “burned and learned.” If you see a rise in the price of gold as an indication that civilization will go through a harsh cleansing process followed by a restoration of sound money, you’re going to be too optimistic about gold’s prospects at times. If you’ve been through that world and have seen a side to the goldbugs that sounds either Platonic or smarmy, that’s why; for the true believer, though, the normal professionalism of the rest of the investment field is where the smarm is.

What this implies, if you’ve picked up on the me-up-you-down relation, is that the goldbugs are at the bottom of the social scale in the investment field. And being at the bottom is where they thrive and are comfortable.

Since gold seems to be coming back, we’re going to be hearing from all of them more and more frequently. I’m not just referring to sales scripts, but also to their underlying world-view. And that world-view is business-friendly anarchism.

Including, I have to say, the “no-standing- army” part of it. Chances are, given the recent victory of the United States in Iraq and the capstoning of it by the capture of Saddam Hussein himself, this part of goldbug ideology will be suppressed in the near future, but it is there, and will re-surface when the U.S. gets itself into a rough spot.

You’ve been warned!