Showing posts with label Socialism in America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Socialism in America. Show all posts

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Why You Can't Kill Liberalism

It's like a cat from Hell with not nine lives but 666 lives....

The story comes from Family Security Matters.



Liberalism Not Going Away Any Time Soon


Obamacare continues to manifest itself as a complete fiasco, with the number of people losing their medical coverage vastly outpacing those who have acquired Obamacare insurance. And for those few who have actually signed on, drastically increased costs and severely reduced coverage are the most common rewards for their efforts. It is extremely telling that so many people are genuinely surprised that this is their fate. Have they no grasp of history, and the inescapable failure of the collectivist state? Or is it more likely that they never considered any possibility other than the rosy promises, now proven so fraudulent and hollow, made by Barack Obama and his fellow champions of socialized medicine.

The immediate effects of Obamacare's "Phase One" are so dire that most have been too caught up in the moment to consider just how much worse things can become if this disastrous venture is not immediately halted, and a deliberate course back to sane, working medical treatment instated in its place. Those tragic stories of self-employed individuals whose insurance policies were suddenly cancelled represent only the initial signals of far larger and more grievous problems eventually affecting Americans. With the medical insurance business now in a shambles, and many more regulations and mandates yet to be handed down from ham-fisted Washington bureaucrats, not only insurance, but all facets of medicine in America risk being negatively impacted.

Doctors are opting for early retirement, and taking with them years of experience in dealing with sick people. It is dangerously naive to expect that they will simply be replaced by a new generation of Obamacare physicians. With such chaos inflicted on medical practice, university costs skyrocketing, and the guarantee of more choking federal regulations overtaking the profession, the notion of young talented people lining up to fill the vacancies of aged practitioners is simply not reality. Nor can the many advances of medical equipment and therapies be expected to continue unabated. While a free-market medical industry once resulted in this nation's healthcare being the envy of the world, the monstrous dispassionate bureaucracy that has supplanted it only portends stagnation and atrophy for the field of medicine.

Considering the magnitude of the catastrophe, it is indeed telling evidence of liberal medical "expertise" within the Administration that Obama and his cronies are still desperately attempting to undo their errors by putting a band-aid on this cadaver. It also further highlights their mindless devotion to the mirage of collectivist utopia, despite a miserable historical track record of failure. The verdict is in. America can only expect more of the same from this political cabal.

It is noteworthy that a previously unanticipated optimism is effervescing on the right, even as Americans are forced to confront the grim reality that always lurked behind those glowing assurances of liberalism's promised land. In the past few weeks, several prominent conservative voices have speculated that Obamacare may actually represent a death blow to the entire liberal agenda. But although this scenario may be tempting to contemplate, especially as it contrasts so starkly against the ugly realities of the day, it is risky for Americans to entertain such a possibility. The window of opportunity for a resurgence of conservatism may indeed be open, but many pieces must be put in place in order for our circumstances to result in something good.

America will not merely revert to its former glory in a vacuum, and despite public abhorrence with the current situation, those forces who worked so tirelessly to bring it to this point will not merely dissipate into the mists after having been thoroughly discredited. Rather, they see their predicament as an obstacle to be overcome. Though the former veil of deceit has been removed, they will merely redouble their efforts to concoct a new in its place so as to continue their transformation of America.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1990s, international "experts" made similar assertions on the prospects for a glorious and unalterable future for the world. The threat of worldwide communism had suddenly vanished, essentially leaving the United States as the world's lone superpower. Former jockeying for position on the world stage had ostensibly been replaced by conditions of such profound constancy that some high level academics were actually declaring "The End of History."

It should have been obvious to those deep-thinkers that, the human condition being what it is, any fleeting appearances of stability have always been a mirage. Far too few anticipated, back in the last years of the Twentieth Century, the enormous looming groundswell of militant Islam, and how it would eventually proliferate not only within its middle-eastern cauldron, but in every land where it could project itself. Post-Soviet Europe quickly became preoccupied with its own idealistic pursuit of a "European Union." Now, those once glowing forecasts of harmony and prosperity in Europe have been choked out by the realities of socialism, and lacking its own identity or vision for a worthy future, the cradle of Western Culture faces the prospect of eventual extinction.

Similarly, forecasts of liberalism going into permanent remission in this country are dangerously short sighted. While the debacle of Obamacare has indeed been an enormous setback for the left, its devotees have no intention of giving up the fight. Obama's non-apology of last week should serve as ample proof. Forced to engage in damage control, once his many promises that "If you like your present policy you can keep it" proved to be so many lies, he stalled and obfuscated, and eventually offered a faux "apology" for what the American people had experienced, as if he had only been a spectator the entire time.

This is indeed a momentous opportunity for conservatives to seize the moral and philosophical high ground, offer real measures by which the foul tide of liberalism can be driven back, and tirelessly confront those liberal Democrats who would stand in the way of doing so. It is most certainly not the occasion to "rise above the rancor" or "seek common ground with the left. Such efforts would only amount to throwing liberals a lifeline by which they can rebuild their facade of beneficence and salvage their prospects in next year's mid-terms.

Passivity or a half-hearted symbolic effort will rightly be perceived by the American people as typical GOP posturing. Election Day 2014 is barely eleven months in the future. Americans need to be clearly shown who is endeavoring to preserve Obamacare in all its ugliness, and who possesses sufficient character and spine to face the leftist political machine and its media minions, and prevail over them for the sake of the nation.


Wednesday, February 20, 2013

American Education: Rotting the Country from the Inside

In my opinion, it will take 50 plus years for us to regain a conservative hold back on this country and to turn things around from the Leftist agenda of the past century.  Yeah, 50 years.  But you might as well make that 100 years or NEVER if we don't correct the insanity of the public education system in this country.  Until we rip the indoctrination of our children out of the hands of the Bill Ayers and the other revolutionary Communists in this land, we will never regain our place in the world.

This is an excellent recap of an interview from over at The American Thinker.


American Education: Rotting the Country from the Inside


The day after Barack Obama's re-election, unrepentant terrorist-turned-"education reformer" Bill Ayers posted an open letter to the president on his blog, focused on educational matters. Specifically, it was a straw man-filled plea to resist private influences in public education, in the names (naturally) of "freedom" and "democracy."

Perfectly echoing his intellectual forbear, John Dewey, Ayers tells Obama that "[w]hen the aim of education and the sole measure of success is competitive, learning becomes exclusively selfish, and there is no obvious social motive to pursue it." (See my discussion of Dewey's near-identical remarks, and their meaning, here.)

Ayers even concludes his post by citing his hero by name. Reminding Obama of the progressive University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where Ayers, Obama, and "your friend Rahm Emanuel" all sent their own children, he urges Obama to universalize this schooling through the public system, and concludes:

Good enough for you, good enough for the privileged, then it must be good enough for the kids in public schools everywhere -- a standard to be aspired to and worked toward. Any other ideal for our schools, in the words of John Dewey who founded the school you chose for your daughters, "is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy."

In a typical leftist projection, Ayers, one of America's foremost living experts on the methods of destroying a democracy, argues that only by following his prescription may democracy be saved. And, in a perfect parallel of the modern progressive ratchet, in which government causes a problem through regulation and then advocates more regulation as the solution to the problem, Ayers responds to the death of education under the hundred-year influence of Dewey ("the father of modern education") by proposing to salvage the public schools by infesting them with even more Deweyism.

And make no mistake about one point: Ayers is invoking Dewey not merely as a respectable cover for his subversive agenda. Deweyism is his subversive agenda. Ayers and his fellow "reformers" are to Dewey what Lenin was to Marx. Marx was an intellectual who wished to undermine Western civilization. Lenin was a thug who sought to bring Marxist principles into full practice through propaganda, armed revolution, and sophisticated lies. Likewise, Dewey hated American liberty and individualism and wished to undermine them through socialist education. Ayers is Dewey's less civilized, more "practically minded" disciple.

Having laid the groundwork regarding the methods and goals of Ayers and the Weather Underground (WU) in Part 1 of this interview with Larry Grathwohl, we turn now to the significance of this radicalism in today's terms, particularly with regard to modern education.

DJ: Several members of WU and SDS, most famously Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, but also Howard Machtinger and others, have become prominent childhood education and "children's rights" activists and theorists. What do you make of this?

LG: Having failed to accomplish their goal of destroying capitalism and U.S. imperialism when they went underground and began their strategic sabotage, it is my belief that they decided to accomplish this goal by infiltrating the educational system and using it to their own [ends]. Reflecting on this, it is obvious that Bill Ayers, as an example, has been a professor of education and thus has been teaching our teachers for at least three or four generations. As you pointed out in your article, "Good News: You May Be Spared Execution," the result of this has been that many students and individuals have been educated to believe that the United States is an evil empire and should be punished if not eliminated. This means that many will simply give up and comply with whatever the future may hold or impose upon them when people like Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are able to succeed in their ultimate goal of the destruction of the U.S.

So it is my conclusion that what the WU failed to accomplish when they went underground and began their strategic sabotage is now being accomplished through the educational system and the political means that they have gained by supporting such people as Barack Obama and his Chicago supporters. I tell people today that we are losing our freedoms because of the attacks that emerge from the left and are targeted on all of our basic societal organizations. God is eliminated from the classroom; the history of our country is no longer being taught, but rather a revised edition which depicts our people and our nation as enemies of the world and of all that is good and right. This includes church, religion, veterans, educational institutions, and any organization that supports the greatness of our country and the strength of its institutions.

Presently, our president tells us that there is no economic problem, that the national debt is not something to be concerned about, and that the Constitution is outdated and needs to be replaced or at least revised. And because of this educational problem, there are people who no longer know what the Constitution is or the reasons for its existence, so how can these people be expected to defend it? This has been accomplished through control of the classrooms and through the constant political babble that the left puts out and that people are simply unprepared to defend [against].

DJ: What would you say to Democrats, Republicans, and academics who point to Ayers's years of "academic respectability" as an argument against identifying him with the statements or actions of his radical days?

LG: Bill Ayers has never apologized for or recanted on the goals of the WU from the 1970s and '80s. Furthermore, he has stated that his only regret was that the WU didn't do enough. There are pictures of him leaving the courthouse when he was exonerated for his crimes while part of the WU and he states, "[G]uilty as hell, free as a bird, isn't America wonderful?" Bill and Bernardine have continued their political activities in regards to their support for the Occupy Wall Street movement, in which Bill has led classes on how to disrupt and defy authority. Bill and Bernardine have participated in the activities of Code Pink, which has been involved in the Middle East and in creating the turmoil in that part of the world. ...

Bill Ayers has not changed his ways, has not changed his goals or his objectives. He is now traveling around the country, giving talks to people, telling them that they are very close to changing this country and making it into what he wants it to be and that they should not give up at this point. He also tells them that they cannot completely depend upon Barack Obama to create this new order and that they must not fail because they are so very close to accomplishing their mission of changing America forever.

DJ: Would you willingly allow your own child to attend a school or school board in which the teachers were trained, and the educational goals set, by Ayers, Machtinger, or likeminded others? If not, why not?

LG: My answer to this question is no. Absolutely not. I want my children and grandchildren to be educated in a way that they have the ability to make up their own minds about issues without having been indoctrinated into the Bill Ayers way of thinking. It is my belief that teachers today are more interested in teaching social resistance rather than reading, writing, and arithmetic. The result is that we have a tremendous number of young people who are unable to read or write, or add and subtract. They are, however, very capable of protesting when they think that their individual rights have been imposed upon [and] feel that they are being punished if they have to do homework and learn the basic precepts of our country and our government. In many cases they don't even know that the Constitution exists, and if they do, they are taught that this is a document written by old white men 200 years ago and that it is meaningless in today's world.

I encourage people to send their children to private or parochial schools, and if this is not possible, they should home-educate their children in order to assure that they learn the true history of America and the necessary tools to be a good citizen and be able to contribute and to succeed in our society.

Author's note: There are a hundred compelling reasons for removing your children and grandchildren from the public schools, regardless of any practical or financial inconveniences this may cause you. If the one you have just heard from Larry Grathwohl -- that the progressive revolutionary intentions and methods of Bill Ayers are being woven into the mainstream of modern education, in effect establishing the re-education camps of the WU's hopes -- is not forceful enough to move you, then I give up.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Holger Asks Why #57 - Tax the Rich?


Holger Asks Why....



Why is it that these Russian peasants aren't happier in this photo?  The Bolsheviks not only taxed the rich in Russia to give to these people but then the property of the rich was taken away and spread amongst the people.

So why aren't they smiling?



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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Today's American Marxist Spotlight: Kirstin Roberts - Chicago Teacher, Communist

Today we shine the light on one of America's Marxist socialists.  No, it's not some Russian-looking hulk of a man standing in the shadows...it's a school teacher from Chicago, a member of the Chicago Teacher's Union and she's intent on transforming America into a land of collectivism.  May I present, Kirstin Roberts.

Let's look at part of the bio of Ms. Roberts:


Kirstin Roberts
Early Childhood Educator


PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
February 2010-present
Teacher in a CPS Preschool for All classroom
Belmont-Cragin Early Childhood Demonstration Center, 6100 W. Diversey, Chicago
In a Reggio-Emilia inspired program, worked as part of a collaborative classroom and grade level team to plan and implement curricular goals and lessons for a diverse group of 3-5 year old children.

So, there you have it...a teacher in the midst of 3-5 year old children...but instead of showing the kids pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, let's look at what Kirstin Roberts' ideology is more about as she is actually an Officer with the International Socialists Organization:


The International Socialist Organization (ISO) is committed to building an organization that participates in the struggles for justice and liberation today--and, ultimately, for a future socialist society.

The misery that millions of people around the world face is rooted in the society we live in--capitalism, where the few who rule profit from the labor of the vast majority of the population.

A world free of exploitation--socialism--is not only possible but worth fighting for. The ISO stands in the tradition of revolutionary socialists Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky in the belief that workers themselves--the vast majority of the population--are the only force that can lead the fight to win a socialist society. Socialism can't be brought about from above, but has to be won by workers themselves.

So, there we see how good old traditional capitalist American families send their kids off to school to learn all about the American Dream or....wait...are they listening to Marx, Lenin and Trotsky?

What does Kirstin do on the weekends?


Madison & Midwest Marxism Conference
Saturday, Nov. 17, 10am- 7:30 pm
Sunday, Nov. 18, 12-2 pm
UW Campus


Talks and speakers include:
GLOBAL CRISIS, GLOBAL RESISTANCE
Joel Geier is Associate Editor of the International Socialist Review and writes frequently on the economy and on the revolutionary socialist tradition.

EDUCATION AND CAPITALISM: THE FIGHT FOR EDUCATION JUSTICE
Jeff Bale is the co-editor of Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation (Haymarket Books 2012) and is assistant professor of second language education at Michigan State University.

CLASS STRUGGLE UNIONISM: REBUILDING THE LABOR MOVEMENT
Kirstin Roberts is a member of the Chicago Teachers Union.

Finally, let me leave you with a video that has Kirstin Roberts featured in it - it's a Socialist Conference at Northwestern University in Chicago where journalists are gathered, but you see, in the Socialist Utopia of Kirstin Roberts' world, not everyone is welcome - after all, there is no free speech in a Marxist society.  Did I mention that Kirstin Roberts is a school teacher for K-6 children?





Notice the "you going to do it on your own" threat?

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Saturday, August 18, 2012

The ‘Chains’ of Progressive Politics

A story from Family Security Matters.



The ‘Chains’ of Progressive Politics


The uproar over the "chains" comment made by Vice President Joe Biden continues, and rightly so. The comment Mr. Biden made while addressing a predominantly Black audience at a campaign rally in Danville, VA - a town on the border of swing states Virginia and North Carolina - was not only racist in nature (whether intentional or not), it was also operational. That is why President Obama, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, senior campaign advisor David Axelrod and the full contingent of Obama campaign mouthpieces issued statements in defense of Mr. Biden; statements that refused to condemn the language.

True, it is a documented fact that Mr. Biden has a long and incredible history of making racially insensitive gaffes, but a cursory examination of the stage at the event shows that the dais was adorned with teleprompter hardware, meaning that his talk was scripted. Whether Mr. Biden chose to go off script we will never know, but his perceived gaffe certainly achieved four things:

1) It changed the subject from the nomination of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate;

2) It changed the national dialogue from a serious dialogue about the ideological crossroads a which our nation stands (Liberty v. Democratic Socialism), back to the inanity of yet another Progressive Chicago Machine smear side topic that has nothing to do with the very real issues facing our country this election cycle.

3) It got the race-baiting slavery innuendo out there for the media and Progressive activists to feast on;

4) And, most importantly, at a time when the Obama Administration's Justice Department is under fire for myriad racially charged actions of "social justice" bias, it afforded Mr. Obama to state - for the record - that he and his campaign do not engage in racial politics.

To the last point, a greater affront to the truth has never been uttered by a President of the United States. Mr. Obama's entire "social justice" crusade is an exercise in divide-and-conquer, Alinsky-inspired racism. The fact that Mr. Obama intentionally went out of his way to defend the racist words of Mr. Biden - the man who said, on camera, "In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking..." - suggests that that there is some semblance of agreement with Mr. Biden's statement regarding the "chains" of slavery.

And why should we not feel that the President may identify with Mr. Biden's so-called "gaffe"? Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, spent twenty years in the pews of the Trinity United Church of Christ, a church that preaches Black Liberation Theology, identified by DiscoverTheNetworks.org as:

"...closely related to the broader phenomenon of liberation theology, which calls for social activism, class struggle, and even violent revolution aimed at overturning the ‘capitalist oppressors of the poor' and installing, in its place, a socialist utopia that will finally enfranchise the poor and downtrodden. As an extension of this movement, black liberation theology similarly seeks to foment Marxist revolutionary fervor but one founded on racial rather than class solidarity."

Now, I am not one who signs on to the blatant impossibility that someone can sit every Sunday in a church pew listening to - arguably - a dynamic speaker like Rev. Jeremiah Wight and not take anything from it. The congregation at Trinity United Church of Christ isn't like a congregation that attends out of a sense of obligation. It is a congregation that is engaged; that feeds off the message being delivered. To believe that Mr. and Mrs. Obama "didn't take anything away" from their time at Trinity United Church of Christ is to believe in the tooth fairy.

This is why I believe that Mr. Obama defended his Vice President; there was a part of him - and maybe a large part of him - that agreed with what Mr. Biden said. Given the dogma of Black Liberation Theology the argument can be made successfully.

But I digress...

While the President may or may not (ahem) agree with the statement Mr. Biden made - contemptible at best, racist in the least, it was an operational statement. What do I mean by an operational statement? Mr. Biden's statement served several purposes, as stated above. It is a tactic used by unscrupulous lawyers, opportunistic Chicago politicians and disingenuous tyrants.

Just as a dirt-bag lawyer will blurt out something that he knows the jury is not supposed to hear, so too did Joe Biden blurt out something that the Obama campaign could never officially sign on to. After all, Mr. Obama ran in 2008 as a post-racial candidate who wanted to unite the country after the evil and divisive years of George W. Bush (a man who, incidentally, takes his Christian compassion quite seriously). No, the reality of the matter is this: just like the dirt-bag lawyer, the Obama campaign wanted that statement out there so that they could capitalize on the racial component; the racial antagonism that it would achieve; the win-at-all-cost, slash-and-burn Alinsky-style politics of divide-and-conquer.

A quick examination of David Axelrod's history of smear-and-destroy politics adds yet more credence to this argument.

Mitt Romney has stated that he believes Barack Obama is a good man, a good family man, a "nice guy." And while I sign on to the fact that Mr. Obama cares for his family, I would counsel Mr. Romney to open his eyes to the fact that Mr. Obama is only a "nice guy" to those who share his Progressive, "social justice," Black Liberation Theology mindset. To everyone else, he is simply another power hungry Chicago politician; a Chicago politician with a very anti-American agenda. And just like the rest of his ilk - just like every other grafting Chicago Progressive - he and his team of Axelrod, Jarrett, Plouffe and Cutter will stop at nothing to retain power.

To wit, I ask you...if Mr. Obama and his team were willing to throw his spiritual mentor under the bus for political gain, who is really willing to push Grandma over the cliff?

Monday, June 11, 2012

Death Is Yours...If You Want It

A jaw dropping article, "Death Is Yours...If You Want It" resides over at PatDollard.com - I've excerpted it in its entirety below.  This is absolutely spot on.




DEATH IS YOURS...IF YOU WANT IT


I am an expatriate in reverse. I left America to find America. When I returned, I found America a writhing, swollen, tumor infested beast, wriggling in the throes of death.

That was nearly 20 years ago. It takes a long time for a bloated bureaucracy to die.

Now I sit on my front porch and monitor the decay from an iPhone, like some detached scientist, keeping data, talking notes, bookmarking doom, plotting charts that prove my hypothesis: We’re all going to die.

I am a prognosticator, a Nostradamus, ready to flip to the last page of the Mayan calendar. A false profit.

Of course we’re all going to die; humans weren’t meant to be immortal. Thank God for that. The problem is we are all dying of loss, a loss of self, a loss of responsibility, a loss of personal dignity. Premature rigor mortis. We still live and breathe and pump cholesterol clogged blood through our veins. But outside we die a nanosecond at a time as the world passes by, microscopic oblivion ex utero.

When nearly 50 percent of the taxpayers pay no tax at all and demand that the 10% of the highest earners who already suffer 70% of the tax burden pay more, when we give up basic freedoms for the “comfort” and “security” of government “protection,” when we eschew freedom for “safety,” only death is inevitable. The death of individuality. The death of rational thought. The death of a way of life we couldn’t possibly have had anywhere else. The death of a country.

So I sit here on my porch, watching it all, trapping the images in these words, photographing in hi definition the end.

It’s a God-damned comedy of horrors.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The news is filled with cannibalism. A man takes synthetic bath salts and chews off the face of another man in broad daylight on a Miami causeway. Both are naked. No one knows why. A gay porn star mails pieces of human flesh to political offices. He sends videos to fans. He blames Hollywood.

The paranoid fear the zombie apocalypse is nigh. It’s been here for decades, if not a century. We just never noticed.

Zombie politicians began devouring our lives, our freedoms, our human-ness long before the images of freaked out psychopaths scrolled across our 50-inch TV screens, the very ones on which we watched Jeopardy and American Idol and Jersey Shore, while zombie cannibals in our local municipalities and state capitols and the District of Criminals gutted us from within. And it wasn’t even surreptitiousness. The gutting occurred before our very eyes. We were just too blind to see. Now we live on life support: HDTV, Xbox, takeout Chinese. We get fat from Big Gulps and digital over-stimulation, as we bleed our insides out into government coffers, knowingly.

We are not sheep: we are slaves.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

When I lived in Germany in the early 90s, a soldier “fighting for my country” in a guard shack, I’d walk around the villages and cities of my adopted country and meet people who were in denial. When you start two world wars and eviscerate the population of a continent, you no longer have a sense of self. Socialism was rampant. Kids graduated from high school expecting the government to cradle them. Government assistance checks were a badge of honor. If you were a young woman and uncomfortable with your bra size, a government boob job magically transformed your confidence. A good day was drinking your way through breakfast and lunch and dinner and collapsing on a bench at a bus stop. Four years in the pit of a cradle to grave society taught me there was no better place on earth than America.

But what I came back to wasn’t what I had left. I’ve seen federal government agents kill American citizens for no reason at all. I’ve seen young people no longer embrace the values my parents taught me: work hard, be your own man, expect nothing but what you earn by the sweat of your own brow. It’s as if I came back only to find I was still living in the apathetic society I’d left behind in Germany. I returned to participation trophies for being born and people spending $100,000 to earn sociology degrees so they can never earn more than $50,000 a year.

I came back to madness.

It’s accelerated beyond belief these past four years. My iPhone wants to replace “people” with “proletariat” as i type. Free has now replaced freedom as the fundamental purpose of life in America. Satire is now reality; we’re living a Ray Bradbury novel, an Ayn Rand prophecy, a George Orwell realization.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Aphorisms for our times race through my head. Weird scenes inside the dumb mind. Something wicked has already come. What rough beast slouches toward Washington to make you bow down.

We’ve been living in strange times for as long as I can remember. I was born during Vietnam; I now write during Americanam. The yoke of government is so locked around our necks I fear we may never break free.

The days ahead are dangerous. When a sitting president who has accomplished nothing but corruption and anguish and doled out more than your fair share of abuse has a chance to win re-election, we may already be over the cliff.

In these spend times we are nearing end times. The center cannot hold. It’s already beyond being off axis.

In the coming 5 months we have a decision to make. Do we let our country die? Do we let our way of life die? Do we let ourselves die?

Choosing Mitt Romney over Barack Obama is infinitely more palatable than continuing on this path of destruction we follow. We have great sacrifices to make. We will have to retire later than we planned. We will have to expect less government entitlements than we were “promised” when we were forced to give the government our money to fund them. Then more money. And still more money. (Hell, every year we vote to tax ourselves locally for infrastructure projects many of us never see come to life, because often that money is diverted to other expenditures, just like the entitlement taxes we pay.) We will have to make the biggest gut check of our lives. We will have to hold the limbs of the people we elect to take over this monstrosity to more than just a fire; we will have to tie them to a rack and torture them, if necessary, to right this sinking ship.

I don’t know if we have the stomach for it. I don’t know if we are brave enough. I don’t know if we can disconnect from the shroud of unreality we create for ourselves to get through every second and minute and hour of every day.

But we must. If we don’t, it’s all over. And the death throes our country has been experiencing for longer than I’ve been alive will accelerate.

And it will entirely be our own fault.

We’ll have to live with that, until we don’t. Live, that is.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Why Won't "Liberals" Own the True Designation As Socialists and Communists?

An excellent article here over at Family Security Matters that addresses the amazing inclination of Leftists in America to still shun the label of "socialist" or "Communist" even though they are now completely out of the closet ....finding a complete sense of freedom to espouse their faith in the "Movement" while Barack Hussein Obama is in power.  I remember in 2008 many using the statement...."Obama is the most liberal man to ever run for the Presidency" ....well, that was a flat out lie - Claire McCaskill is a liberal, Barack Hussein Obama is a Marxist socialist.  The article talks about how the term "socialism" is repressed - just another example of the deception of the Left in this country.



Alias Marx and Alinsky


Calling socialists liberals is as deceptive as calling goose gizzards foie gras. It fools no one but the epistemologically blinkered. The term liberal allows liberals to pose as concerned, generous and forward-thinking individuals and to act under what was once an honorable term for anyone who advocated or endorsed liberty. And as any well-read American knows, liberals do not advocate liberty. Quite the opposite.

The subject here is the devolution of the term liberal, not its evolution.

Even out-and-out communists are called liberals. President Barack Obama is called a "liberal." The late Senator Ted Kennedy was called a "liberal." Barney Frank is a liberal. Obama's cabinet is largely staffed by liberals (unless outed, as self-confessed communist Van Jones was). Communism and socialism still carry a bad reputation, so everyone, including the Main Stream Media, and even well-intentioned pundits and commentators friendly to liberty, use the term liberal. The MSM, however, does it to dodge the reputation. Others use it from habit or ignorance, or because calling liberals socialists or communists in drag might open a can of worms they couldn't handle. This is courtesy carried to a fault. Underlying the fault is a fear of the inevitable clash between those who advocate freedom, and those who do not.

Obama's campaign slogan, "Forward," is simply a Progressive marching order. "Forward" to what? To socialism. To communism. To a command economy and a slave state, one half governed by bureaucrats, the other half by an alliance of Islam and quivering religionists of various stripes, willing to pay jizya to Islam in order to be granted their "religious freedom."

The Washington Post trumpeted "Forward" with no reservations or even curiosity about its Communist and Nazi origins. But then the Washington Post has been in the Saul Alinsky camp for over a generation.

One Alinsky benefactor was Wall Street investment banker Eugene Meyer, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer and his wife Agnes co-owned The Washington Post. They used their newspaper to promote Alinsky.

Agnes Meyer personally wrote a six-part series in 1945, praising Alinsky's work in Chicago slums. Her series, called "The Orderly Revolution," made Alinsky famous. President Truman ordered 100 reprints of it.

In 1989, The New York Times waxed poetic about Alinsky's powerful friends, and also provided some important information in the course of a review of a biography of Alinsky by Sanford D. Horwitt:

By the end of World War II Alinsky had won a measure of national renown. His ''Reveille for Radicals'' (1945) hit the best-seller list, and he secured the fervent support of important liberals like Agnes E. Meyer of The Washington Post and the retail magnate Marshall Field 3d. Though it undercuts his larger portrait, Mr. Horwitt shows that much of Alinsky's acclaim rested upon his promise that social reform and a democratic revival could take place through what Meyer called an ''orderly revolution,'' which would bypass the new power of the unions and reject the growth of an intrusive New Deal state. Thus ''Reveille for Radicals,'' which ostensibly celebrated social conflict, was panned by most of the left but acclaimed by Time, The New York Times and other mass circulation publications.

Neither Time, nor the Washington Post, nor the New York Times has changed its tune. If anything, they have grown more shrill from the standpoint of endorsing not just Alinsky but socialism. But they repress that term socialism, and deny they are of the Left. They'll admit only that they're "progressive" because, you see, they're "humanitarians." Well, so were Pol Pot, and Mao, and Stalin, and Lenin, and Hitler. So are Robert Mugabe, and Hugo Chavez, and Ahmadinejad, and all the Kings of Saudi Arabia.

But, what are uncountable millions of dead of humanitarianism, when "progress" has been made, and man has been nudged "forward" into impoverished, straight-jacketed societies?

Let's set the record straight. Liberals are fundamentally collectivists. Specifically, either socialists or communists. Their policies and programs are demonstrably socialist or communist, whether one is speaking of Social Security, Medicare, the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and innumerable regulatory and confiscatory programs and policies, practically every bit of legislation that has been entered into The Congressional Record and The Federal Register for the last one hundred years. The term liberal should be retired, put out to pasture, and substituted with the appropriate and correct terms.

Here is a sampling of definitions of the term liberal:

1. Having, expressing, or following political views or policies that favor civil liberties, democratic reforms, and the use of government power to promote social progress3. Of, designating, or belonging to a political party that advocates liberal social or political views, esp. in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company) 1985. (This is the first definition. Root meanings connected with generosity, open-mindedness, tolerance, etc., follow it. This is a significant order.)

6a. Of, favoring, or based on the principles of liberalism. 6b. Of or constituting a political party advocating or associated with the principles of political liberalism; esp. of or constituting a political party in the United Kingdom associated with ideas of individual esp. economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reform designed to secure those objectives. Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (G. & C. Merriam Company) 1967. (Meanings connected with generosity, tolerance, etc. precede the political meanings.)

II. 1. Any person who advocates liberty of thought, speech, or action; one who is opposed to conservatism: distinguished from radical. 2. Liberal party, a party in English politics formed by the coalition of the Whigs and Radicals about 1830: opposed to Tory. The Practical Standard Dictionary of the English Language (Funk & Wagnalls Company) 1939. (Meanings connected with generosity, etc. precede the political ones.)

And finally:

3. (Polit.) Favorable to democratic reform and individual liberty, (moderately) progressive (the Liberal Party). The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Sixth Edition, 1976. (Here, too, meanings connected with generosity, etc., precede the political definition. This is an acceptable condensation of the term from the two-volume Compact edition of the OED, 1971, whose entry is about half a foot in length in very tiny print, most of whose information is not relevant to my purpose here.)

Notice that the older the dictionary, the more liberty-linked the definition is. The American Heritage definition marks the end of the road for the term liberal, stressing the use of government power to promote social progress. Social progress is a catch-all euphemism for the collectivization of society and the assumption of more and more power by the government. It does not mean the liberation of men from other men's alleged needs or claimed "rights," but the forced or legislated chaining of all men to each other's alleged needs or alleged, government sanctioned "entitlements." It is the devious and misleading byword for incremental socialism, or Progressivism.

You will never hear Brian Williams of NBC or Bob Schieffer of CBS counter George Will or Charles Krauthammer with a statement, "But, we the Left don't think that's a good policy" You will never hear them admit that they are of and for the Left. That would be "telling," as a con artist's "tell" is a warning that he's about to scam you.

One could say that today's liberals are the true conservatives, that is, those who wish to preserve the status quo of the welfare state and government power over individuals and their property, and any and all socialist programs and policies now in force.

And what do the designated "conservatives," or the "right wing," stand for today, that is, those who identify themselves as Republicans? Nothing, except for a watered-down version of what Progressives, socialists and communists have created over the course of a century, most often accompanied by an appeal to "tradition" and religious faith. All Progressive legislation is altruist and collectivist in nature. Conservatives have never challenged the moral foundations of Progressivism. They can't, because they subscribe to the same morality. They will never confess that Progressives have elevated the state to take the place of a deity, and that men should live for the secular deity's moral code of self-sacrifice and obedience to the state's commands. Also known as The Ten Thousand Commandments.

Social progress implies there are social problems to be solved and overcome. What are the problems? In the beginning, it was a concern - and not an actual problem - of working conditions at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Reformers wailed over the fact that factories employed children and women, neglecting the fact that children and women would otherwise have perished in poverty and disease at the outset of the Revolution, and in fact did perish in the centuries preceding the Revolution. By the millions.

The Abolitionist Movement identified slavery as a major social problem. The result was the Civil War. But the "problems" were numerous, and continue to be numerous and otherwise fictive or imaginary. In search of the City on the Hill, or Utopia, or a "just and fair" society, problems are naturally endless. The sole alternatives as the means to correct or ameliorate them have been: voluntarism or force. Progressivism chose force, because too many people thought the problems were not problems at all. Force bypasses volition or voluntary action.

Successes were many, beginning with the Interstate Commerce Act (1887), and the Sherman Antitrust Act 1890). Progressives never spoke with one mind and differed sharply over the most effective means to deal with the ills generated by the trusts; some favored an activist approach to trust-busting, others preferred a regulatory approach.

A vocal minority supported socialism with government ownership of the means of production. Other progressive reforms followed in the form of a conservation movement, railroad legislation, and food and drug laws.

More recent social "problems" led to the endless "war on poverty," and the "war on drugs." Having nearly exhausted the major "social problems," Progressives or socialists are reaching deeper into the bottomless pit of "problems" and coming up with concerns with "wars" on obesity, salt, sugar, smoking, gender inequality in the workplace, in insurance, in the military, on incandescent light bulbs, sexism, ageism, and so on. Name a norm established by men without government supervision or guidance, and Progressives are against it. They immediately wish to abolish the liberty, or subject it to controls, regulation, and licensing. All for the sake of one's "fellow men," in the name of that prettified version of mob rule, "democracy."

All this goes on, and has been going on, more obviously, since the late 19th century. But Progressivism, a.k.a. socialism, has been advanced by intellectuals and writers ever since, say, Rousseau and his contemporaries in the 18th century. It has been disparate in means and ends ever since, but during the 19th century coalesced into a behemoth of an ideology posing as a love for the poor and other alleged victims of freedom. It no longer asks men to "love their neighbors"; it commands that they fetter themselves to each other in the name of "social progress."

Progressivism inculcates in its minions an obsessive-compulsive psychology. Just as Muslim men are obsessed with sex because Islam, on the one hand, hates women, and on the other, targets them for unrestrained and permissible abuse in the way of ownership, rape, enslavement, beating, and "honor-killing," Progressivism requires that all men answer to and be accountable to the state. The state establishes criteria of what is good and what is bad when addressing men's actions and values. It is a prescription for ownership and enslavement, as well. The key to the success of Progressivism is to ensure that a habit of dependency on statism is bred in men.

As the narrator of "If I Wanted America to Fail" notes:

.I'd demonize prosperity itself, so that they will not miss what they will never have.

But first, demonize individualism, independence, and living one's own life, so that men will not miss what they once had, because submission to government controls is so much easier.

This has been, briefly, an account of the devolution of "liberalism." Progressive, liberal or socialist rhetoric is tailored for public consumption, usually innocuous and goose-feather pillow soft, so as not to alarm the public. The title of this column is frankly a parody of that successful TV Western, "Alias Smith & Jones," about a couple of outlaws promised amnesty if they "reformed." I could just as well have parodied the films, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" or "Bonnie and Clyde," for all three "entertainments" portray outlaws as basically nice people who mean well and just happen to commit crimes and who otherwise might have been your next-door neighbors, ready for a barbeque and a round of poker.

In a 1971 book called Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits, and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.

So, the radicals cut their hair, donned suits, hunkered down to win those Ph.D's, and infiltrated academia, for one thing. And here's the tip-off about the altruist nature of Progressivism and socialism, and their link to government force:

In his native Chicago, Alinsky courted power wherever he found it. His alliance with prominent Catholic clerics, such as Bishop Bernard Sheil, gave him respectability. His friendship with crime bosses such as Frank Nitti - Al Capone's second-in-command - gave Alinsky clout on the street.

Just as Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky have wielded clout in political thought and in "practical politics." They, too, "meant well" and were otherwise forgettable souls whom one might pass on a street.

It's time for liberals to "man up," drop the demure veil, or take off the smiley mask, or come out of the totalitarian closet. It's time for them to stop the charade and confess their collectivist allegiances, and for their opponents to call them what they are.

Then we'll see some sparks fly, instead of the dissembling back-and-forth rhetoric between the Republicans and Democrats.

Gunfights, anyone?

Thursday, July 28, 2011

How Did America Go From Home of the Brave To Land of the Dependents?



What a terrific article here at Family Security Matters that describes the descent of America in just three short generations from a country of people who weathered their own storms and sucked it up during the worst of times to a country of people who stand in line for every possible government handout?

Last night, in a conversation, I mentioned that the political mess in Washington, D.C. is NOT the problem, it's a symptom of the problem - the real problem has been this shift in America where the people have bought the socialist big government bill of goods - they've bought in hook, line and sinker. The most disturbing part of the whole situation is that we have people in America who have submitted to Government - they've given up. We now have a generation of people who no longer have the fire in the belly to get out of bed and face the world - they have lost that tie to our pioneer forefathers.

Imagine for a moment that you got out of bed this morning and your very existence is not dependent upon your very own hands or heart, but sitting at the window waiting for a mailman to drop your government check in your mailbox. And you think you could look yourself in the mirror?



Adult Children of America


When my parents were born, Americans took care of themselves. They didn’t depend on government to feed them, clothe them, house them, or pay their doctor bills. If they fell on hard times, they got temporary help from family, friends, church, or private charity - none of whom were obligated to help, but who did so out of human compassion. Now, millions of Americans - perhaps even a voting majority - cannot imagine life without government paying for all their basic needs from birth to death. Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said the other day: “We write 80 million checks a month. There are millions and millions of Americans that depend on those checks coming on time.”

When Americans got help from family, friends, church, or private charity, they tended to be grateful. They were motivated to give back after getting past their hard times. Both giver and receiver got something out of the dynamic. Extended families became closer. Bonds were strengthened. Communities were fortified. Americans today, however, feel entitled to whatever assistance they get from government. They don’t even know who contributed the revenue they receive and don’t care either. They may not even know who their next-door neighbors are. All they know is, a check comes in the mail. This kind of big-government “assistance” doesn’t strengthen us as a nation. It weakens us at every level.

What happened? How did we become a nation of dependents in only three generations? It began with FDR’s New Deal, expanded with LBJ’s Great Society, and now is disintegrating under BHO’s (Barack Hussein Obama’s) Devastating Debacle. These were Democrat Administrations constantly expanding the scope of government and its cost. They’ve changed us from a nation of independent citizens into a nation of dependent children afraid of life without the indulgent-parent government taking care of us cradle to grave - adult children of the nanny state.

Between the above administrations, Republicans have either made half-hearted attempts at dismantling big-government entitlements, or actually expanded them as George W. Bush did with his prescription-drug benefit. Federal and state governments are going bankrupt because they cannot afford to pay for the promises they’ve made since the 1930s. The money simply isn’t there, and won’t be there in the future either.

Take Social Security for instance. Passed during FDR’s New Deal in 1935, it was designed as a trust fund people pay into all their working lives and then draw from it when they retire. Americans visualize it as a pile of money built up by millions of citizens. Al Gore counted on that illusion when he promised to put it all in a “lock box” while running for president eleven years ago, but there is no pile of money. Government has already spent it all - every last cent - around $2.6 trillion. Last week, President Obama inadvertently admitted as much when he warned that, unless Congress raised the debt ceiling beyond $14.3 trillion by August 2nd, he couldn’t send out Social Security checks August 3rd - “because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it." The only things Al Gore would have been able to put in his lock box were piles of IOU’s from the federal government.

Most of the federal budget is spent on social programs and interest on the debt, not on defense or infrastructure. The federal government has largely become a vehicle to suck money out the wallets of Americans who work so as to send checks to people who don’t. The former group is dwindling and the latter group is growing. At some level, we understand that this cannot go on forever. Yet, still, we borrow trillions from the rest of the world, and when they balk at lending us more, we simply print it.

“Progressives” in the White House and Congress insist that if the rich would pay more of what they earn, the gravy train could continue for everyone else. This kind of class warfare rhetoric is the progressive stock-in-trade. Yet even if “the rich” were taxed at 100%, there would still be mounting deficits passed on to our children and grandchildren to pay back. Nonetheless, President Obama stokes the fires of class envy by repeating the mantra of “corporate jet owners” at least six times in just one press conference June 30th. Granny and Grampy are starving because rich people fly jets. America’s adult children don’t want to take care of Granny and Grampy themselves anymore. They’d rather put aging parents in nursing homes and let government pay.

Left-wing progressives refuse to acknowledge the borrowing and spending must stop, that government cannot continue supporting a nation of dependent adult children.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), for example, blames Tea Party conservatives in the House for “manufacturing” the debt crisis because they’re calling attention to it - because they’re insisting that there be real cuts to unsustainable, pie-in-the-sky, entitlement programs. According to Lee and the millions of Americans who think as she does, the problem isn’t progressives like her who spend us into insolvency, the problem is with conservatives who make us face up to it. They don’t want anybody pointing out that we’re about to go off the cliff if we don’t reverse course

America was founded on the principle that “We’re endowed by our Creator with . . . rights . . . to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We’re not guaranteed happiness - only the pursuit of it. We’re not children and government isn’t our mommy or daddy. It’s time those among us who don’t understand that to grow up, and soon.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Greece... It's What Happens When Socialism Goes Unchecked

Riot police beat a protester during a demonstration in Athens Tuesday evening June 28, 2011. Greece's beleaguered government is bracing for a 48-hour general strike as lawmakers debate a new round of austerity reforms designed to win the country additional rescue loans needed avoid bankruptcy. (AP Photo/Dimitri Messinis)


Once again the world is witnessing the ultimate failure of Socialism, the vivid proof of the defects of Karl Marx's mental disease and this time that failure is on center stage in the country of Greece. As Greek lawmakers try to scramble and make necessary cuts to ridiculous social programs and government run utilities, protesters are outside of the legislative building trying to burn down those same lawmakers. The world is watching closely as the old adage is played out....what the government can give you, they can also take away. The Greek people are finding out that individual liberties, once stripped from the people, are replaced by a dependency that only leaves despair and destruction.

From the report at Breitbart:

Clashes have broken out between riot police and protesters outside the Greek Parliament where deputies are about to vote on a crucial austerity bill.

Riot police fired volleys of tear gas to push back protesters trying to overturn barriers, while the demonstrators pelted police with bottles and trash.

Greek deputies are set to back more austerity measures Wednesday as thousands of protesters vented their anger against a bill that has to be passed for the country to get crucial bailout funds and avoid a devastating default on its debts.

The proposals by the Greek government have sparked violent protests in Athens as well as a rebellion inside the governing Socialist Party. Prime Minister George Papandreou has struggled to convince his party's deputies to back the bill. He replaced his finance minister earlier this month to assuage the concerns of some lawmakers.

The Socialists hold a five-seat majority in the 300-member legislature.

Alexandros Athanassiadis, many of whose constituents are employed by the Public Power Corporation which is up for privatization, said he maintains his opposition to the bill—but that he will likely be the only dissenter.

"I have not changed my opinion ... as things stand, I persist in my decision," he told The Associated Press. "I don't think (any other socialist) deputies will vote against. I will be the only one."

Athanassiadis said he opposes privatization of electricity and water companies, but supports the selling of several other state enterprises.

This really is phenomenal. Look at the statement by this Marxist tool, Athanassiadis. This is a man who is literally watching his country implode under the inefficiency and defect of Marxist socialism and yet he will not face the reality of what needs to be done. This is a man who is willing to watch the country of Greece end.

Now, when you see that kind of blind adherence to failure, compare his statements with those of Democrats in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate in regards to the budget cut proposal from Rep. Paul Ryan. Think about what someone like Sen. Dick Durbin has said and you will see we are facing the same destructive allegiance to the failure of socialism.

People in America have asked if we could ever become Greece and the answer is simple. Yes we will. There is no doubt. We have bought into a system of government that simply is flawed. It doesn't work. It didn't work in communist China, it didn't work in the Soviet Union, it hasn't worked in Cuba or as we see, in Greece. Yet the American people continue to elect leftist politicians who promise this and promise that....they elect Democrat politicians who wish to fully install this system that has failed since the demented mind of Karl Marx first jotted his ravings down on paper.

So, we have a choice. We can gut the U.S. House and U.S. Senate along with our state legislatures of these socialist kamikazees or we can prepare ourselves for the riots and the collapse of our economy and the end of America. Is that really that tough of a choice?



Clashes break out ahead of Greek austerity vote


ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Clashes have broken out between riot police and protesters outside the Greek Parliament where deputies are about to vote on a crucial austerity bill.

Riot police fired volleys of tear gas to push back protesters trying to overturn barriers, while the demonstrators pelted police with bottles and trash.

Greek deputies are set to back more austerity measures Wednesday as thousands of protesters vented their anger against a bill that has to be passed for the country to get crucial bailout funds and avoid a devastating default on its debts.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

ATHENS, Greece (AP)—Greek deputies are set to back more austerity measures Wednesday as thousands of protesters vented their anger against a bill that has to be passed for the country to get crucial bailout funds and avoid a devastating default on its debts.

Outside parliament, protesters are blaming the politicians for a financial crisis that threatens to ripple far beyond Greece's borders—a Greek debt default could have huge repercussions in Europe's banking sector and stoke renewed turmoil in global markets.

The bill, which involves euro28 billion ($40 billion) worth of spending cuts and tax increases over five years, must be passed by Parliament if international creditors are to release the next euro12 billion ($17 billion) installment of the country's bailout fund. An additional bill that details how the austerity measures will be implemented must also be passed in a vote Thursday.

The proposals by the Greek government have sparked violent protests in Athens as well as a rebellion inside the governing Socialist Party. Prime Minister George Papandreou has struggled to convince his party's deputies to back the bill. He replaced his finance minister earlier this month to assuage the concerns of some lawmakers.

The Socialists hold a five-seat majority in the 300-member legislature.

Hours ahead of the vote, it looks like only one Socialist deputy will fail to heed Papandreou's call to back the measures, suggesting that the bill will get at least the 151 votes needed for it to pass. Hopes that the bill will pass have seen European stock markets start the day off strongly and the euro jump towards $1.44.

Alexandros Athanassiadis, many of whose constituents are employed by the Public Power Corporation which is up for privatization, said he maintains his opposition to the bill—but that he will likely be the only dissenter.

"I have not changed my opinion ... as things stand, I persist in my decision," he told The Associated Press. "I don't think (any other socialist) deputies will vote against. I will be the only one."

Athanassiadis said he opposes privatization of electricity and water companies, but supports the selling of several other state enterprises.

Wednesday's vote comes against a backdrop of violent demonstrations and on the second day of a nationwide general strike which has brought much of Greece to a standstill.

Protesters have vowed to encircle Parliament to prevent deputies from entering and voting for the bill. A massive security operation was under way to avert the blockade, with a large section of central Athens sealed off to traffic.

Scuffles broke out early in the morning as demonstrators attempted to block a major avenue leading to the center of the city, and to Parliament. Riot police responded with pepper spray, and 10 people were treated in a nearby hospital for minor injuries, hospital officials said.

Protesters converged on a car carrying communist lawmaker Liana Kanelli, but let it pass toward parliament because Kanelli said she would vote against the austerity package. However, someone in the agitated crowd threw yoghurt in her face. She wiped it away.

Demonstrators also hoisted ghoulish effigies of men they hold responsible for Greece's misfortune - Papandreou, new Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos and Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos—and shook them in the air on sticks.

"Dogs, you look after your masters," they chanted at police. The furious marchers also emptied bags of garbage from municipal containers and lobbed them at the security forces, who stood their ground impassively.

A day earlier, extensive clashes left at least 46 people injured, most of them police, as rioters pelted police with chunks of marble and ripped up paving stones, and authorities responded with repeated volleys of tear gas and stun grenades.

Greece has said it has funds only until mid-July, after which it will be unable to pay salaries and pensions, or service its debts, without the next bailout installment from the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund. The country is also in talks for additional help in the form of a second bailout, which the prime minister has said will be roughly the size of last year's euro110 billion ($157 billion) package.

"Voting these measures is required to maintain our credibility in the (bailout) process," Venizelos said during the debate Tuesday night. "Voting for these measures, regardless of any reservations, is an important, brave act of political responsibility."

But even prominent Socialists who say they will vote in favor are voicing objections.

"The austerity measures are not only harsh, not only unfair, but they are also ineffective," Socialist critic Vasso Papandreou, who is not related to the prime minister, told parliament late Tuesday. Still, she said she would grudgingly vote for the bill.

"Greece has many problems but the real problem is the eurozone," said Papandreou, a former EU commissioner. "Europe should be a zone of solidarity, but it is a jungle where the banks can do what they like."

Friday, October 1, 2010

Is It Just a Coincidence That the Democrats Started Calling the Conservatives "Extremists?" Not If You Follow Alinsky's Rules #11 and #13


This article at Family Security Matters takes us behind the curtain a bit on how the Left has developed strategies to attack Conservatives and the Tea Parties as they gained total control of Congress and the White House this past year and a half...and those strategies came not from the likes of Harry Truman or Lyndon Baines Johnson...but from Communist author and revolutionary, Saul Alinsky.

Specifically, if you look at Alinsky's Rules 11 and 13, you see how much of the attack squad's unifying message was initiated:

Two rules that are coming into play this midterm election cycle are rules eleven and thirteen, what many would consider the most effective of Alinsky’s rules:

11. Push the negative...every positive has its negative; and
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.

In pushing the negative and personalizing a target – in this case the Tea Party movement – Progressive and Liberal operatives employ the tools of buzzwords and talking points. To be fair, both sides of the aisle use these tools, but a quick look at “the rules,” a book written before Lee Atwater arrived on the scene, provides conclusive evidence – in rules five and eleven – that Progressives not only own their birthright, but refined the tactic of deploying them to a level of potency not seen before in American politics.

Now, one of the things we have to keep in mind is that even though the Left has been and is in power, following the Alinsky model has not been about governing or even controlling - Alinsky is all about revolution. It's all about the end goal, it always has been.

Many of you have heard me describe the Taliban in Afghanistan as not wanting any sort of peace in Afghanistan or limited governmental role...the Taliban simply want that country back in their hands as it was before. Well, the same is true of the extreme Left in America ...they don't want some sort of Democrat control at the top of two of the three branches...hell no, they want to "transform" this country - they want to take the latest stab at Marx's form of Communism and use the "fruited plains" as the test market.

Us "extremists" that the Left has identified are not considered a hurdle or a nuisance to the Left and their agenda - oh no. We are considered the enemy, the one to topple, the one to "remove."



Constructing the Buzzword 'Extreme': Alinsky Rules 11 & 13


f you are paying attention to the politics surrounding the midterm elections – and, for the good of the country, you should be – then you have, no doubt, heard almost everyone from the Left side of the aisle using the word “extreme” where the Tea Party is concerned. To a lesser extent they use it to describe the Conservative movement as a whole but without doubt, it is the descriptor of choice when anyone of the Liberal or Progressive persuasion talks about the Tea Party. This tactic comes straight from the Progressive playbook.

I have been saying since before Barack Obama was elected president that if you want to understand the tactics being used by the Progressive Left you have to read two books: Boss by Mike Royko and Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky.


The first, Boss, examines the genesis of the Chicago Machine – Mayor Richard J. “The King Maker” Daley’s Chicago Democrat Machine – and Chicago style politics. It is important because it not only sheds light on how “The Machine” came to be, but how it operates. Barack Obama, Dick Durbin, Rahm Emanuel, Luis Gutierrez and Jan Schakowsky, to name but a few, are all products of “The Machine.” “The Machine” has been responsible for the election of every Democrat president since John F. Kennedy.

The latter, Rules for Radicals, outlines the guidelines for growing and advancing the agenda of the Progressive Left. It outlines thirteen specific rules that the Progressives commit themselves to from birth, at least that’s the way it seems. They are:

1. Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the expertise of your people.
3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. Develop operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. Push the negative...every positive has its negative.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.

Combined, these two books not only define the “game plan” used by the Obama campaign team to attain the White House – and the game plan they will no doubt employ during the midterm elections and the 2012 General Election, but provide an ideological window through which we can understand how the Progressives have moved everything from healthcare to the Great Society and before that the New Deal.

Two rules that are coming into play this midterm election cycle are rules eleven and thirteen, what many would consider the most effective of Alinsky’s rules:

11. Push the negative...every positive has its negative; and
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.

In pushing the negative and personalizing a target – in this case the Tea Party movement – Progressive and Liberal operatives employ the tools of buzzwords and talking points. To be fair, both sides of the aisle use these tools, but a quick look at “the rules,” a book written before Lee Atwater arrived on the scene, provides conclusive evidence – in rules five and eleven – that Progressives not only own their birthright, but refined the tactic of deploying them to a level of potency not seen before in American politics.

The word Progressives and Liberal Democrats are employing in an attempt to not only shock and frighten independent and undecided voters but to misinform and deceive the total of the American electorate, is, “extreme.” The Republicans running in the 2010 midterm elections – and especially the Tea Party-backed candidates – are, they say, “extreme.” Progressives and Liberals are banking on the probability that many will hear the label enough times that it will be believed without examination. They do so with the added benefit of having a mainstream media that is extremely (no pun intended) reluctant to questioning the claim.

The word “extreme” is defined as:

“...exceeding what is usual or reasonable; immoderate; very strict, rigid, or severe; drastic...”

The word “extreme” defined, let’s take a look at what the Tea Party stands for; what its platform is:

1) Limited government
2) Limited and equitable taxation
3) Fiscal responsibility
4) Adherence to the constitutional process in the crafting of legislation

Where the “Young Guns” of the GOP have done a commendable job of putting together a “Pledge to America,” and whereas many Tea Party groups include addition items, almost each of the planks can be a subheading for these four general tenets.

That said, even a cursory comparison of the definition of “extreme” and the tenets of the Tea Party reveals that something isn’t quite right where calling the Tea Party “extreme” is concerned.

Limited Government
The question begs to be asked, which is more “extreme,” a larger government that employs a greater number of regulations on personal choice and the free market system; which requires an ever increasing amount of taxes for the purpose of administering programs for which they make the rules – rules that can exclude certain demographics based on race, religion or economic status, or a smaller constitutional government that provides limited but potent oversight over the citizenry and the private sector while facilitating a maximum opportunity for each and every citizen?

A larger more intrusive government has the ability to, among a plethora of other things:

▪ Limit what you can do and say

▪ Limit and control what the private sector can produce and sell

▪ Limit what you will receive in return for your taxation, i.e. Medicare, Social Security, national defense and, now, healthcare

▪ Mandate how much you will pay to the government in taxes to support entitlement programs for which you may not even be eligible

▪ Limit your protection under the law based on an ever changing set of criteria, i.e. equal protection under the law in general and equal protection under Civil Rights law to be specific.

Limited government, or government that recognizes the Charters of Freedom – The Declaration of Independence, The US Constitution and The Bill of Rights – as being created to limit the powers of government to those enumerated, avoids the frailty of the human element that allows for the creation of elitist factions, the elevation of despots and the egotism and narcissism of tyrants. It protects the people from government by limiting what government can inflict on the people.

So, which is more “extreme”?

Limited and Equitable Taxation & Fiscal Responsibility
Again, which is more “extreme,” a government that can recklessly impose a financial burden on its citizenry (read: taxation) that, in turn, facilitates the bringing about of a societal catastrophe that until now only existed in the fiction of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, or a government that is committed to operating inside a set of boundaries; the boundaries of a balanced budget derived from honest and equitable taxation of the citizenry?

A government allowed to expand beyond the boundaries of a fiscally responsible balanced budget; that can borrow from foreign nations to the point of no return; and which can expand and extend debt beyond the boundaries of future generations, is a government that possess the ability to tax the citizenry into government dependence; that can create an economic catastrophe that could damage the nation beyond recovery.

A limited government, that derives its fiscal mandate from the enumerated powers of the Constitution; that operates within the constraint of a fiscally responsible budgetary process; and that, essentially, “cuts up the credit cards,” allows for the citizenry to keep more of what they earn, which, in turn, allows the citizenry to spend, to purchase, to engage the private sector market place, thus creating competition and value in the marketplace, while fulfilling the constitutional obligation to “provide for the common defense” and “promote the general Welfare.”

Again, which position is more “extreme”?

The Constitutional Process
My wife Nancy, who literally cherishes the American Constitution and the whole of the Charters of Freedom, has said on any number of occasions that the United States Constitution is the tool, the instrument, by which opportunity for all – every man, woman and child of every race, religion and background – is possible; it is what we all have in common; the noble mechanism that binds us together and at the same time makes us unique, not only as a people, but as a system of government. To that almost perfect statement I add that it is only when we deviate from the Constitution that we affect inequity, favoritism, bias and the dangers of factionalism, corruption and tyranny of the elite.; only when politics usurps constitutional government do we get into trouble.

If we all quest for a maximum amount of freedom, if we all value liberty and the right to remain free in our choices and actions, in our lives, do we not want a government free from inequity, favoritism, bias and the dangers of factionalism, corruption and tyranny of the elite? If we recognize that man is flawed, that human nature does not always find our fellow man and/or our elected officials doing what is right, what is honest, what “promotes the general Welfare,” then our government must have boundaries that they cannot usurp. These boundaries are established in the US Constitution.

If we jettison the Constitution and the limitations it mandates for our Republican form of government we literally invite the deterioration of our government by virtue of the frailties of man and human nature. If we allow elected officials to change the rules without the consent of the governed, to abandon good government for self-absorbed political opportunism, to ignore the constitutional process when it benefits their own motives and the motives of special interest factions, then are we not facilitating a catalyst for establishing legislation that promotes inequity, favoritism and bias while courting the dangers of factionalism, corruption and tyranny of the elite?

I ask, yet again, which is more “extreme,” adhering to our constitutional process or gambling with our children’s future by allowing for even the slightest possibility of tyranny in government?

The Progressives, Liberal Democrats and the operatives that work on their behalf – and even some liberal and establishment Republicans – are doing everything in their power to demonize the Tea Party. They are attempting to smear a group of people who vow to enact limited government, limited and equitable taxation, fiscal responsibility and adherence to the constitutional process, should they be elected to office. And to what end? So that we can experience more of the same tax-and-spend generated debt, more divisive and opportunistic special interest politics and more out-of-control government expansion?

The smearing of the Tea Party as “extreme” isn’t a Democrat v. Republican issue. It isn’t a Conservative v. Liberal issue. This is an issue that pits forces that would “fundamentally transform the United States of America” into a government based on Democratic Socialism, against those of us who believe that the system of government best suited to preserve individual freedoms; that preserves liberty and justice for all –regardless of race, religion or economic demographic, is found in the limited government that only the United States Constitution and the Charters of Freedom can afford.

My argument made, please, ask yourself, honestly and selflessly, which position is actually more “extreme?”

Sunday, September 26, 2010

University of Illinois Professor Says "USA! USA!" Chant at Football Game Hurts the Feelings of Muslims, Is "White" Propaganda


You know, why don't people like professor David Green of the University of Illinois just go in to work tomorrow morning, grab a number of empty cardboard boxes, and simply empty out their desks, clear out their closet and leave? Why don't they then meet the movers at their home and sign off on the load of furniture place in a moving van and then head to the airport with that one way ticket for anywherebutnotAmerica? Just fucking leave, putz. You know, there really isn't any governmental force KEEPING you here, Mr. Green. Just get out - we won't miss your sorry ass one bit.

From the story over at StopTheACLU, we see how professor Green penned an angry letter after he was exposed to a "horrible" site at a football game - the unspeakable military jet flyover and then the horrific chanting of the crowd yelling "USA! USA!". Here's what David Green had to say after the event:


The vast majority of 9/11 observances in this country cannot be seen as politically neutral events. Implicit in their nature are the notions that lives lost at the World Trade Center are more valuable than lives lost in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere; that the motives of the 9/11 attackers had nothing to do with genuine grievances in the Islamic world regarding American imperialism; and that the U.S. has been justified in the subsequent killing of hundreds of thousands in so-called retaliation.

The observance at Saturday’s football game was no different. A moment of silence was followed by a military airplane flyover; in between, Block-I students chanted “USA, USA.” This was neither patriotism nor remembrance in any justifiable sense, but politicization, militarism, propaganda and bellicosity. The University is a public institution that encompasses the political views of all, not just the most (falsely) “patriotic.” Athletic planners should cease such exploitation for political purposes. They might at least consider how most Muslim students, American or otherwise, would respond to this nativist display; or better, Muslims and others that live their lives under the threat of our planes, drones and soldiers.

The overwhelmingly white, privileged, Block-I students should be ashamed of their obnoxious, fake-macho, chicken-hawk chant, while poverty-drafted members of their cohort fight and die in illegal and immoral wars for the control of oil. University administrators need to eliminate from all events such “patriotic” observances, which in this country cannot be separated from implicit justifications for state-sponsored killing.

Good grief. Where do I start? Green proposes that anyone in that stadium is supposed to be focused on the feelings of muslim students there? And what the hell is this about the fact that a chant of "USA" would make muslims feel bad? Aren't they Americans? Shouldn't muslims be on their feet too....rocking with the crowd getting into the chant?

And where does this clown, this college professor, this educator who is standing each day in front of our children, get off with the insertion of the race card into his objections? He goes out of his way to point out that the crowd at the football game was "white" and "privileged." Hmmm. Let me ask you this Mr. Green. At a University of Illinois football game, there are probably close to 80,000 spectators. I'm just curious ... how did you determine that those people were "privileged?" Is it because most were white and thus all white people are privileged? Or is it because anyone that can afford the huge tuition at that University, anyone that can afford to pay the inflated salary of a college professor like you, has to be walking around with a silver spoon in their mouth?

This college professor is a perfect example of just what has to be gutted from our colleges in America. American families need to start making some sound decisions on where they send their kids - and I, for one, would be damned if I'd allow my child to sit through even one class put on by this Marxist traitor. Perhaps when the University of Illinois finds out that their enrollments are dropping like a stone, especially in the field of study put out by Mr. Green, they will come to the conclusion that no one is going to put up with this kind of extremism being imposed on our children.


Illinois Professor Says Chanting ‘USA’ is Bellicose Propaganda


Oh, you ignorant Americans with your venal patriotic chants of “USA, USA” at sporting events. Your bellicosity isn’t patriotism, it’s propaganda and lowly militarism… so says David Green, University Administrator and member of the University of Illinois Institute of Government & Public Affairs.

Green’s poisoned pen letter to American patriots was published by the Daily Illini, an “independent newspaper” at the U of I, and features every manner of attack on America.

Green’s vituperation covers the gamut of anti-Americanism: America is “imperialist,” she is unconcerned over the deaths of Muslims, America is”nativist,” and patriots are prone to “obnoxious, fake-macho, chicken-hawk” chants. In other words all that is wrong with the world is evinced in the United States of America.

The professor’s screed was short, but filled with hate for America:

The vast majority of 9/11 observances in this country cannot be seen as politically neutral events. Implicit in their nature are the notions that lives lost at the World Trade Center are more valuable than lives lost in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere; that the motives of the 9/11 attackers had nothing to do with genuine grievances in the Islamic world regarding American imperialism; and that the U.S. has been justified in the subsequent killing of hundreds of thousands in so-called retaliation.

The observance at Saturday’s football game was no different. A moment of silence was followed by a military airplane flyover; in between, Block-I students chanted “USA, USA.” This was neither patriotism nor remembrance in any justifiable sense, but politicization, militarism, propaganda and bellicosity. The University is a public institution that encompasses the political views of all, not just the most (falsely) “patriotic.” Athletic planners should cease such exploitation for political purposes. They might at least consider how most Muslim students, American or otherwise, would respond to this nativist display; or better, Muslims and others that live their lives under the threat of our planes, drones and soldiers.

The overwhelmingly white, privileged, Block-I students should be ashamed of their obnoxious, fake-macho, chicken-hawk chant, while poverty-drafted members of their cohort fight and die in illegal and immoral wars for the control of oil. University administrators need to eliminate from all events such “patriotic” observances, which in this country cannot be separated from implicit justifications for state-sponsored killing.

Looking at the comments section finds very little support for this anti-American and not everyone at the Daily Illini are in love with this hater as an October 11 entry from 2005 shows.

But this isn’t the first time that Green went down the path of hate for the west. Green has penned many anti-American, anti-Jewish screeds over the last decade. In 2005, for instance, Green wrote a review of one of Holocaust denier Norman Finkelstein’s books that proved that Green is a supporter of Palestine Liberation Organization and is critical of the so-called Holocaust industry.

Like a well-worn hat, Green tries on the old claim that the American’s actions at abu Ghraib and “Israeli torture” are materially the same as the Nazi-generated Holocaust. In his review Green intimates that Israel perpetrates “criminal behavior” that is little different than Hitler’s.

In March Green wrote a screed on the supposed iron-fisted Israel Lobby where he also says that the U.S. is motivated solely by imperialism in its war on terror.

Green is also a member of the Champaign/Urbana chapter of Anti-War, Anti-Racism Effort and is known as a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace which absorbed Not In My Name, the latter formerly based in Chicago.

It is infuriating that this man makes his living feeding off the taxpayers of the state of Illinois. According to the CollegiateTimes.com website, Green’s 2009 salary was $36,388 of Illinois tax dollars. This is the sort of anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-western “academic” that infests the American university system from north to south and east to west. These people are living off the taxpayers and spreading their hate every single day.

If you would like to contact Green and let him know how you feel, his office phone number is (217) 333-3231 and his email is dlgreen@illinois.edu.