In the 1950s, Sen. Joe McCarthy made guilt by association a repugnant alternative to dealing only with facts. Bernard Madoff shows us "innocence by association" may be even more dangerous. How dare you treat a Goldman Sachs or a Lehman Brothers or a Fannie-or-Freddy or a Bernard Madoff like a used-car salesman? Don't you know Bernard Madoff was president of Nasdaq and has enough well-made money to crowd any possible thought of fraud out of his deeply religious heart, mind, and soul?"

That was then. That was until mid-December. Just as surely as Sputnik One erased the rule that "All that goes up must come down," and just as surely as 9/11 erased America's snug feeling of invulnerability between two vast oceans, the Madoff Excruciaton has scrambled the rules of trust. From now on, the used-car salesman may find himself in line between the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and the president of the Federal Reserve; all prepared to face the same kind of "caveat-ing" by the "emptor." This is good. This is healthy, and this is long overdue.

There was once a halfback at the University of North Carolina who was awesome in the sense of that word before the youth snatched the word and sucked the strength out of it. His name was Charlie "Choo-Choo" Justice and he could run, pass, kick, and dart through hordes of defenders like an eel zipping through vaseline.