Tag: Brave New World

Quote(s) of the Day

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On the near-simultaneous reference by Michael Bane and Glenn Reynolds, I ordered a copy of Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life, by Neil Strauss. I’m about halfway through it at the moment, and I have to say that so far it’s been fascinating, especially since Mr. Strauss is about my polar opposite from a political perspective. His interpretation of the world is, naturally, colored by his worldview, but a lot of what he says is pretty interesting. Here are just a few quotes from the book so far:

Our society, which seems so sturdily built out of concrete and custom, is just a temporary resting place, a hotel our civilization checked into a couple hundred years ago and must one day check out of. It’s an inevitability tourists can’t help but realize when visiting Mayan ruins, Egyptian ruins, Roman ruins. How long will it be before someone is visiting American ruins?

—

One of the most unsettling things about Adolf Hitler is that he wasn’t an imperialist, like Napoleon or William McKinley. He wasn’t just trying to subjugate other countries. His goal was to cleanse them, to wipe out the so-called weak races and speed the evolution of the human species through the propagation of the Aryan race. And for seven years, he got away with it. Few of the most brutal periods in medieval history – from the sack of Rome to the early Inquisition – were as coldly barbaric as what happened in our supposedly enlightened modern Western civilization.

And though I left the (Holocaust) museum with the reassuring message that the world stood up and said “never again” to genocide, it only took a minute of reflection to realize that it happened again – immediately. In the USSR, Stalin continued to deport, starve, and send to work camps millions of minorities. As the bloody years rolled on, genocides occurred in Bangladesh in 1971, Cambodia in 1975, Rwanda in 1994, and in Bosnia in the mid 1990s.

All these genocides occurred in ordinary worlds where ordinary people went about ordinary business. The Jews were integrated into every aspect of the German social and professional strata before the Holocaust. The entire educated class in Cambodia – teachers, doctors, lawyers, anyone who simply wore glasses – was sent to death camps. And as Philip Gourevitch wrote in his book on the Rwandan massacre, “Neighbors hacked neighbors to death in their workplaces. Doctors killed their patients, and schoolteachers killed their pupils.”

—

So what I ultimately learned at the Holocaust Museum was not “never again,” but “again and again and again.”

—

The lesson of Katrina wasn’t that the United States can’t protect its own. It was that no country can protect its own.

No place is safe, and no government can guarantee the well being of its citizens.

—

The fears of Americans change over time. In late 1999, we feared the collapse of our computer system. Then it was terrorist attacks. Then it was our own government. Then it was global warming. Today it’s economic collapse. Fear, it seems, is like fashion. It changes every season. And even though threats like terrorism persist to this day, we eventually grow bored of worrying about them and turn to something new. Ultimately, though, every fear has the same root: anxiety about the things we take for granted going away.

Let me add to the list:

Nuclear holocaust / nuclear winter

Population bomb / world famine

Peak Oil / energy crisis

Etc., etc., etc.

Although a gun can’t do much harm in a locked box in a plane’s cargo hold, I had no idea it was this easy to fly with a firearm. It was the first time since I began this journey that I discovered a freedom I didn’t know I had, rather than a new restriction.

—

Nearby, a group of (Gunsite) students and instructors were making fun of Democrats, gun control laws, and anyone from California. “There’s no constitutional amendment that’s been more crippled and regulated than the Second Amendment,” a competitive shooter was saying about the right to keep and bear arms.

After eavesdropping a while, I began to realize that all my life I’d been a hypocrite. As a journalist I’d always supported the right to free speech, but been opposed to guns. However, by playing favorites with the amendments, it wasn’t the founding father’s vision of America I was fighting for – it was just my personal opinion.

So far it’s been an interesting read. Given the path that Strauss has detailed through the first half, I’m a little concerned as to where he’s eventually headed, but I’ll soldier on to the end and report what I find.

Oh, and given that first excerpt, you might find this interesting: Future Present

Paul Campos, Economic Illiterate

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I’m sort of tempted to ask Professor Reynolds if this seems plausible to him. Does it seem plausible to him — a law professor who is probably paid around 200K a year by the great state of Tennessee to do whatever it is he does while performing what is technically his actual job — that he is “working” five times “harder” (using Wingnuttia’s definition of “hard work”) than a guy roofing houses in San Antonio in July who makes 40K a year? – Lawyers, Guns and Money, Working Hard or Hardly Working?

Now, Paul himself is a professor of law at the University of Colorado, and by all appearances about as socialist as they come, rather than economically illiterate, but really Professor, can’t you do any better than that?

Of course, he precedes this by building a virtual army of strawmen which he then hacks at with great zeal, but here’s the deal:

People get paid based on one thing, primarily: how valuable their skills are to others. Of course, their individual competence weighs heavily in there, too, but there are a lot of people who can do roofing. There’s a somewhat lesser pool of those with the skills required to be law professors.

I, for example, am an electrical engineer. I’m well paid for the area in which I live, but compared to similar electrical engineers in other markets I’m probably average or a bit below-average in base pay. (Tucson doesn’t pay all that well, but I refuse to move to Phoenix, for example.) However, the only reason the office I work at exists at all is because of one guy – an engineer who specializes in a pretty small field, and sits pretty high up in the rankings of that field.

Our home office is in California. When this engineer became available, they hired him in a heartbeat.

But he wouldn’t move to California.

That was OK with the home office. They opened a branch here in Tucson.

For one guy.

We currently have 14 people in the Tucson office. I am thankful every day for the existence of this individual.

But does he work “five times harder than a guy roofing houses in San Antonio in July who makes 40K a year?” That’s not the question. Can the guy roofing houses in San Antonio do the job of this engineer?

That’s the only question that counts. Because if he could, he’d be making the kind of money this engineer does.

And somehow, in Paul Campos’s world, having an ability that perhaps less than 1% of the working population possesses entitles the other 99% to a much bigger chunk of his income.

Campos says that the “wingnuts” paint the argument in terms of “hard work” versus “lazyness” – that rich people are rich because they “work hard” and poor people are poor because they’re “lazy.” This is, apparently, what we believe. (Sound like anyone you know?)

No, Paul. Rich people can be rich for any number of reasons, but quite a few of them got that way by having skills that other people don’t have, and using them. Poor people, the truly poor, generally are that way because of bad decision-making skills. Granted, some get there through illness or bad luck, but tell me why someone making $250k a year who is making their mortgage payment on time should have to fork over a bigger percentage of their paycheck than that $40k/yr roofer in San Antonio? Is he “poor”?

We believe that people should be rewarded according to their worth in the free market, not “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Because who put you in charge of determining either?

THIS is Why . . .

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. . . an armed insurrection in America will not lead to a restoration of the Constitution and a return to Republican (as in “Republic” not the party misusing the name) ideals:

The Survivors Of US Airways Flight 1549 Make Me Hate People
Just to review, although I’m sure you all know what happened: Ninety seconds after takeoff from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport, some Canada geese were sucked into the plane’s jets, resulting in the immediate loss of thrust in both engines. Unable to reach any airfield from that altitude in unpowered flight, the pilot and crew masterfully set the plane down intact three and a half minutes later in the Hudson River between midtown Manhattan and NJ. All 150 passengers and 5 aircrew on board survived.

First of all, let’s just reflect on how astounding that is. The plane was low over NYC, the pilot maneuvered it less than 900 feet over the George Washington Bridge, and set it down gently in the river. Everyone lived. See, that’s the problem—everyone lived. If a a couple dozen of the passengers died, maybe the survivors would be grateful and I wouldn’t have to hear them whining about how much free shit they’re not getting from the airline.

The opening of a short but EXCELLENT rant by ThrowingstarDNA – read it all. (h/t: SayUncle)

Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re not worthy. Not enough of us, anyway. One hundred years of indoctrination has made us this way. Tytler’s Progression seems more and more inevitable every day:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.
I put the country at late-stage apathy, early stage dependence. The depression recession and the “bailout” will put us into full-scale dependence.

We should’ve ignored Claire Wolfe and started shooting a long time ago when it would have done some good. It’s too damned late, now.

Quote of the Election

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Thomas Sowell on Locke v. Rousseau with respect to this election, via Peter Robinson in Forbes.com:

Then there is Thomas Sowell, the economist and political philosopher. He prefers an older way of looking at American politics–a much older way. In his classic 1987 work, A Conflict of Visions, Sowell identifies two competing worldviews, or visions, that have underlain the Western political tradition for centuries.

Sowell calls one worldview the “constrained vision.” It sees human nature as flawed or fallen, seeking to make the best of the possibilities that exist within that constraint. The competing worldview, which Sowell terms the “unconstrained vision,” instead sees human nature as capable of continual improvement.

You can trace the constrained vision back to Aristotle; the unconstrained vision to Plato. But the neatest illustration of the two visions occurred during the great upheavals of the 18th century, the American and French revolutions.

The American Revolution embodied the constrained vision. “In the United States,” Sowell says, “it was assumed from the outset that what you needed to do above all was minimize [the damage that could be done by] the flaws in human nature.” The founders did so by composing a constitution of checks and balances. More than two centuries later, their work remains in place.

The French Revolution, by contrast, embodied the unconstrained vision. “In France,” Sowell says, “the idea was that if you put the right people in charge–if you had a political Messiah–then problems would just go away.” The result? The Terror, Napoleon and so many decades of instability that France finally sorted itself out only when Charles de Gaulle declared the Fifth Republic.

That’s not the QotD. That’s lead-in for it:

Take it all together, Sowell believes, and this election will prove decisive.

“There is such a thing as a point of no return,” he says. If Obama wins the White House and Democrats expand their majorities in the House and Senate, they will intervene in the economy and redistribute wealth. Yet their economic policies “will pale by comparison to what they will do in permitting countries to acquire nuclear weapons and turn them over to terrorists. Once that happens, we’re at the point of no return. The next generation will live under that threat as far out as the eye can see.”

“The unconstrained vision is really an elitist vision,” Sowell explains. “This man [Obama] really does believe that he can change the world. And people like that are infinitely more dangerous than mere crooked politicians.”

Read the whole piece. Print it out and pass it around.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

The Weathermen’s plans included putting parts of United States under the administration of Cuba, North Vietnam, China and Russia and re-educating the uncooperative in camps in located in the Southwest. Since there would be holdouts, plans were made for liquidating the estimated 25 million unreconstructable die-hards.

The most interesting moment of the video comes when (Undercover agent Larry) Grathwohl asks the viewer to imagine what it’s like to be in a room with 25 people, all of whom have master’s degrees or higher from elite institutions of higher learning like Columbia, listening to them discuss the logistics of killing 25 million Americans.

Actually, it’s easy. What’s hard to imagine is sitting in a room full of plumbers discussing the same thing. – “Concerned American”, Western Rifle Shooters Association, The Plan

Markadelphia Comments

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Kevin, you are completely wrong. Barack Obama is not a socialist nor is he a communist. The central problem here is that when you are as far right as you are..everyone…even us good capitalists are communists.

One need only spend a few minutes on Barack Obama’s web site, looking at his economic plans and ideas to see that your views are way off the mark and I really can’t figure out why. It doesn’t make any sense because you are bright, engaged, and clearly a competent person. I suspect that it has something to do with the “Dogma” line “You can change an idea but you can’t change a belief.” Your belief system, fed by some who post here, has careened off into a bizarre reality that has no bearing on the facts.

Given the fact that Senator Obama has the strong support of people like Warren Buffet and a slew of corporate donors, I find it hard to believe that they would chuck all that to be subservient to a communist or socialist state. It’s not going to happen.

From a comment to an earlier post.

In that post I said,

One of the choices we have for President has been surrounded since childhood by avowed Marxists/Socialists. I realize that Antonio Gramsci has won, and that our educational system has been suborned into cranking out large quantities of people who think socialism is a marvelous idea, but now we appear to be at a point where we are about to elect to the highest office in the land a man who would not otherwise pass an FBI background check for a job at the CIA or the Pentagon due to his known associates.

Let’s review, shall we?

Obama’s father who left him was a supporter of Marxism, according to this IBD editorial:

(Obama’s) father’s critique of Kenya’s economic policy was published in the East Africa Journal under the title “Problems Facing Our Socialism.” One discovers — after reading just a few pages into his eight-page tract, where he waxes quixotic about “communal ownership of major means of production” — that he wasn’t criticizing the government for being too socialistic, but not socialistic enough.

Obama Sr. described his own economic plan, his counterproposal, as it were, as “scientific socialism — inter alia — communism.” Yes, Obama’s father was a communist who wanted to put socialist theory into action — by “force.”

He trusted the collective over the individual, a theme he successfully instilled in his son, also Harvard-educated, with whom he visited once for a full month in Hawaii, even speaking to his prep school class. He kept up correspondence with his son through his college years.

—

Listen to what “the Old Man,” as Obama and his siblings called him, wrote in proposing government-run farms: “If left to the individual, consolidation will take a long time to come. We have to look at priorities in terms of what is good for society, and on this basis we may find it necessary to force people to do things they would not do otherwise.”

He explained that “the government should restrict the size of farms that can be owned by one individual throughout the country.”

More evil than individuals, Obama’s father believed, are heads of corporations. More evil still are the bankers and investors, who conspire to control the world through their evil capitalist system.

“One who has read Marx cannot fail to see that corporations are not only what Marx referred to as the advanced stage of capitalism,” he wrote. “But Marx even called it finance capitalism by which a few would control the finances of so many, and through this, have not only economic power but political power as well.”

It’s clear from Sen. Obama’s own writings and speeches that he too is no fan of business or our system of “chaotic and unforgiving capitalism,” as he wrote in “Audacity.” He’s fond of bashing Wall Street “greed” and the post-Reagan rise of individual investing over government investing. He wants to roll back the “Ownership Society.” He resents the profit motive and individuals “on the make.”

—

Obama wrote in “Dreams From My Father” that he was trying to impress his father by taking a low-paying job organizing and agitating in the Chicago ghetto right out of college. “I did feel that there was something to prove to my father,” he said.

Yet, suspiciously, he does not once mention his father’s communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory. No doubt he wanted to keep that hidden.

Gee, ya THINK?

Accuracy in Media reports:

In his biography of Barack Obama, David Mendell writes about Obama’s life as a “secret smoker” and how he “went to great lengths to conceal the habit.” But what about Obama’s secret political life? It turns out that Obama’s childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist.

In his books, Obama admits attending “socialist conferences” and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a “hard-core academic Marxist,” which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.

However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his “poetry” and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just “Frank.”

The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What’s more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.

But he’s just “Frank.”

Obama spent twenty years in Trinity United Church of Christ where Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached every Sunday. Wright married Barack and Michelle and baptized their daughters. Obama has called Wright “his mentor.” Evidence suggests that Obama attended Trinity United because of Wright’s political activism, but what exactly is Wright’s political position?

It’s Black Liberation Theology as espoused by James H. Cone. Newsvine reports:

When Jeremiah Wright got into a spitting contest with right wing TV host Sean Hannity last year, he at one point refused to answer Hannity’s badgering questions and kept asking Hannity “Have you read James Cone, what do you know about black theology? Have you read Cone? Have you read Cone?Have you read Cone?”

James Cone is one of he founders, some say the founder, of Black Liberation Theology. Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s ministry, his beliefs about America, and about life itself are formed by his attraction to and acceptance of the writings of James Cone.

Let’s look at some quotes from James Cone.

____________________

“The time has come for white America to be silent and listen to black people.”

“All white men are responsible for white oppression. “

“Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man ‘the devil.'”

“Any advice from whites to blacks on how to deal with white oppression is automatically under suspicion as a clever device to further enslavement.”

“Black suffering is getting worse, not better. . . . White supremacy is so clever and evasive that we can hardly name it.” (2004)

“Jesus Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.”

“Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him.”

“The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.”

“What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal.”

But wait! There’s more!

American Thinker has an interesting post concerning Cone, Wright, and the Obamas you might want to read. A FrontPage Magazine piece states:

Until ABC News picked up the story months later, Black Liberation Theology remained a rather obscure discipline, confined to the syllabi of liberal seminaries. But after Wright’s sermons were broadcast again and again on the news and the Internet, Black Liberation Theology once again commanded popular attention. After all, Barack Obama had joined Trinity twenty years earlier, had been married in the Church, and had his daughters baptized there. Obama and his wife had donated $22,500 to Trinity in 2006. The presidential hopeful even took the name of his memoir, The Audacity of Hope, from the title of one of Wright’s sermons. The beliefs held by a presidential candidate’s longtime pastor and spiritual advisor are therefore of great national interest.

And what are those beliefs? Like the pro-communist liberation theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of “salvation” in the afterlife is superseded by “liberation” on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.

—

It is troubling that Barack Obama’s closest friends and allies subscribe to an explicitly racist doctrine. Even more worrying is that the main exponent of Black Liberation Theology sees Obama as a kindred spirit. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Obama’s pastor and Church, Cone said: “I’ve read both of Barack Obama’s books, and I heard the speech [on race]. I don’t see anything in the books or in the speech that contradicts black liberation theology.”

Troubling? Pish-tosh! No one in the major media seems concerned! Why should we worry our little heads?

While that same media seems to consider William Ayers the equivalent to Charles Keating, politically, they gloss over a few pertinent facts. Obama called Ayers, according to the New York Times:

“a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” but “not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.”

He also described Ayers as “a Professor of English in Chicago.” He is not. He is a Professor of EDUCATION – a man who teaches future teachers. What Obama also neglected to mention was that when he began his run for State office he did so from William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn’s living room. This suggests a somewhat closer relationship that just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” Both Ayers and Dohrn were members of the Weather Underground, an avowedly Marxist organization dedicated to overthrowing the U.S. government.

Let’s see. . .

Obama senior, Frank Marshall Davis, Rev. Wright, William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn; who else do we have? According to this American Thinker piece:

Obama’s Official campaign blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, a former writer for the leftist Nation magazine and a contributor to the Socialist Viewpoint, is certainly a believer in class warfare.

The capitalist ruling class of the United States exercises a virtual dictatorship not only over American society, but also over the entire world. This capitalist class rule is the basic cause of the poverty, wars and the degradation of the natural environment.

After being expelled from Socialist Action in 1999, we formed Socialist Workers Organization in an attempt to carry on the project of building a nucleus of a revolutionary party true to the historic teachings and program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

Socialist Viewpoint

Sam Graham-Felsen, hired to run Obama’s blog, writes about Noam Chomsky in a Marxist publications that openly calls for revolution against the American government. This is a Presidential candidate’s choice to run the on-line portion of his campaign. That speaks volumes of his character and worldview. Contradicting what he says in public, Obama is surrounding himself with poeple who never seem to learn that their absurd ideologies end in misery and ruin.

—

The adults in the Obama campaign expect us to believe that a campaign staff filled with Marxists and radicals does not reflect the candidate.

That would be people who hang Cuban flags and Ché posters in their campaign headquarters. But no reflection on Obama!

Then there’s the news (completely ignored by the major media) that Obama was a member of The New Party. Erick Erickson explains:

Most of the New Party’s history has been lost in the digital age. It was established in 1992 and started to die out in 1998, well before Google and the modern web were established. But through lengthy searches of the Nexis archive and microfilm at the local university library, I’ve been able to piece this together.

The New Party was established in 1992 “by union activist Sandy Pope and University of Wisconsin professor Joel Rogers,” USA Today reported on November 16, 1992. The paper wrote that the new party was “self-described [as] ‘socialist democratic.’”

The seeds, however, had been sown all the way back in 1988. Quoting John Nichols in the March 22, 1998 issue of In These Times, “The roots of the New Party go back to the aftermath of Jesse Jackson’s run for president in 1988. At that time, Dan Cantor, who had served as labor coordinator for the Jackson campaign, and University of Wisconsin sociology professor Joel Rogers began talking about how to formulate an alternative between the increasingly indistinguishable Democratic-Republican monolith.”

Joel Rogers sought to use the idea of “fusion” as a way to get the New Party into power.

Fusion is a pretty simple concept. A candidate could run as both a Democrat and a New Party member to signal the candidate was, in fact, a left-leaning candidate, or at least not a center-left DLC type candidate. If the candidate — let’s call him Barack Obama — received only 500 votes in the Democratic Party against another candidate who received 1000 votes, Obama would clearly not be the nominee. But, if Obama also received 600 votes from the New Party, Obama’s New Party votes and Democratic votes would be fused. He would be the Democratic nominee with 1100 votes.

The fusion idea set off a number of third parties, but the New Party was probably the most successful.

—

Fusion, fortunately for the country, died in 1997. William Rehnquist, writing for a 6-3 Supreme Court, found the concept was not a protected constitutional right. It was two years too late to stop Obama.

On December 1, 1994, after the Gingrich revolution swept the Democrats from congress and forced Bill Clinton to triangulate, the Chicago Tribune ran an article by Steve Mills entitled “Looking for the Left: The Old Progressives and Marxists Still Breathe Idealist Fire, but They’re Too Splintered to Generate Any Heat.”

“‘The Left is in crisis, and it has been for some time,’ said Carl Davidson, the former national secretary for the radical Students for a Democratic Society. ‘I don’t know if it’s even bottomed out yet,'” he reported to Mr. Mills. Mills continued, “The Socialist Workers Party is in this corner; the International Socialist Organization is in this one. The [communist group Committee of Correspondence] is in another. The radicals, or even the liberals with some radical leanings — so-called ‘soft radicals’ — seem to find it hard to abandon individual issues for a broader movement.”

But, Mills reported, “It is amid this political confusion that The New Party would like to step in. ‘If there’s anything that defines the American Left, it’s fragmentation,’ said Dan Cantor, the party’s national organizer.… The New Party aims to change that. By uniting the progressives behind a cohesive ideology, one that, in theory at least, will have room for all the factions that now litter the landscape of the Left, The New Party is confident progressives can again be strong.”

In 1995, the New Ground, the newsletter of the Chicago Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, noted, “In Chicago, the New Party’s biggest asset and biggest liability is ACORN.

“Like most organizations, ACORN is a mixed bag. On one hand, in Chicago, ACORN is a group that attempts to organize some of the most depressed communities in the city. Chicago organizers for ACORN and organizers for SEIU Local 880 have been given modest monthly recruitment quotas for new New Party members. On the other hand, like most groups that depend on canvassing for fundraising, it’s easy enough to find burned out and disgruntled former employees. And ACORN has not had the reputation for being interested in coalition politics — until recently and, happily, not just within the New Party.”

Naturally, Barack Obama was an active part of ACORN at the time, helping it legally in court and helping it organize voters. By 1996, ACORN and the New Party were essentially the same body. Along with the Democratic Socialists of America, the New Party endorsed Barack Obama in his State Senate bid.

Obama began seeking the New Party endorsement in 1995. He had been running in a four way primary against his former boss, Senator Alice Palmer, herself a far left radical, and two other individuals. But an election law quirk gave Obama the upper hand. In order to get on the ballot, candidates had to collect signatures of voters. Printed names were not allowed. Obama challenged the petitions of his rivals and was able to get every one of them thrown off the ballot. By the time the ballot was drawn up for the 1996 election, Obama’s was the only name in the race.

Nonetheless, Obama still coveted the New Party endorsement. The New Party required candidates who received the endorsement sign a pledge of support for the party. Obama did not need to support a party that was, in effect, a front group for communists; yet he still chose to. The July issue of the New Ground noted that 15% of the New Party consisted of Democratic Socialists of America members and a good number of Committee of Correspondence members.

Barack Obama, not needing to, chose to affiliate himself with this band of quasi-communists. As the nation moves closer to the election, it is clear that Obama chose to affiliate with assorted anti-American radicals. Machiavelli once noted that we can know a leader by the people he surrounds himself with. What does that say about Barack Obama, who chose to surround himself with people committed to overthrowing the United States and capitalism?

Think Progress reported on April 14:

In his New York Times column today, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol claimed that Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) now-infamous “bitter” remarks sound like Karl Marx’s “famous statement about religion.” On the Brian and the Judge radio show today, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano asked Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) if Obama is “a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case?”

“I must say that’s a good question,” replied Lieberman, before stepping back to say that he would “hesitate to say he’s a Marxist”

Hesitate how long?

Then there’s this piece from US News by James Pethokoukis today that includes this pithy bit:

A while back I chatted with a University of Chicago professor who was a frequent lunch companion of Obama’s. This professor said that Obama was as close to a full-out Marxist as anyone who has ever run for president of the United States.

That would fit the available evidence.

Then also today Investor’s Business Daily reports:

America’s Communist Party is giddy over current political events, saying its movement has reached a “turning point.” There’s no mystery why. Their candidate is the White House front-runner.

Part of the Communist Party USA’s glee can be attributed to the current economic turmoil. The radicals who make up its membership have long rooted for capitalism to fail.

But it can’t be denied that the popularity of Barack Obama, the most far-left candidate to run for president as the nominee of a major party, is a big part of the Communist Party resurgence.

In an article chronicling that revival, Agence France-Presse makes sure that it mentions that “the Communist Party does not endorse Democrat Barack Obama.” The fact is, the party does not officially endorse candidates.

Members of its staff, however, are upfront with their support. The AFP story notes that “many” of the workers at the party headquarters in Manhattan wear Obama’s image on lapel buttons.

Not enough of a link? How about the party’s Aug. 15 Web site editorial that talks of Obama’s “transformative candidacy” as one “that would advance progressive politics for the long term.”

—

The Communist Party’s dedication to Obama is not new. During the primary season in March, the party noted in a news release that the Obama “campaign has the clearest message of unity and progressive change.”

While America’s communists are beaming over the prospect of an Obama presidency, the Illinois senator’s biggest fans in Europe — judging by the rock star treatment he got when he spoke in Berlin in July — are moving back to Karl Marx. The media report that sales of “Das Kapital” are on the upswing in Germany.

Again, economic concerns are driving people to desperation. But considering Berlin’s warm welcome for Obama, it’s easy to make a clear argument that the momentum of his campaign, with all its leftist language and Marxist principles — most recently, Obama’s admission that he wants to “spread the wealth” — has inspired Germans to return to Marx.

Voters need to remember on Nov. 4 that when Marx’s books are selling well and communists are happy, we are headed for trouble.

We’re already in trouble. The question now is whether an Obama presidency with democrat majorities in both houses of Congress will light the afterburner on our express elevator ride to Hell.

UPDATE: I finally found it. From my post The Mystery of Government from October of last year, came this comment from Markadelphia:

There is a pervasive, Randian view on Communism on this blog, though, that seems to me to be very single minded…based on her unquestionable personal bias.

No, based on my and my reader’s understanding of history. You said that, Mark, as though Rand was wrong about Communism.

I have to admit, though, Markadelphia has contributed to the creation of some really good posts here!

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

For years we have tolerated incompetence, corruption, dishonesty — and yes, greed — in government while looking the other way. On those rare occasions when politicians have made principled stands, we have rewarded them with a firestorm of political assault, full-throated media ridicule and criticism, and enormous financial pressure from lobbyists pouring money into the pockets of those who purport to represent the people. We have elected a government of the people, in the most literal and disgraceful sense: we have elected, and kept in office, those who share our desire for self-gratification and materialistic acquisition at the expense of character, moral integrity, honesty, and prudence. The cesspool which is our current Congress is what we have reaped by our own actions — or perhaps more accurately, by our inaction. We have elected those politicians who are like us in every way — and we hate them for it. They are, after all, created in our own image. – The Doctor is In, Surveying the Abyss

This was not the best quote from the piece, but it was one of the few capable of standing alone. Read the short essay in its entirety. Several times.

Tough History Coming, indeed.

H/t to Van der Leun.

How You Know When There’s a Problem

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There’s a fairly famous story from the era of the Great Depression wherein Joseph P. Kennedy pulled his money from the stock market just prior to the Crash. He said that when his shoe-shine boy gave him stock tips, that was the signal that the market was wildly overinflated and it was time to get out.

Personally, I’ve known there was a problem in the mortgage industry ever since every fifth radio commercial was an advertisement for a 0% down, interest-only adjustable rate mortgage at a low, low, low APR! Anybody could qualify!

That was about four years ago, here in Tucson. Had I lived in California (perish the thought!) it would have been a lot sooner.

I ran across a transcript from radio host Mark Levin’s Sept. 19 show that is good enough to archive:

September 2008 will be remembered as the time when Socialism really, really took hold in this country.

Unfortunately these politicians are running for the hills because they do not want to take responsibility for what is going on, and I mean BIG TIME.

So I want to tell you a little story about your government; I want to tell you a little story about how it works and doesn’t work. I want to tell you a little story about how things go on in the shadows in this country and the massive bureaucracies of this country that you don’t know about, and yet they affect your lives every single day.

We have a massive Administrative State….and we have this massive bureaucracy, that’s utterly unelected, and unaffected by what you want or what you believe. It’s part of the Washington elite management system that controls so much of what goes on in this country.

…And I want to tell you a little bit about how the liberals in government whether they be elected or appointed, whether they be bureaucrats or politicians, how they work together and bring us to this point. And then tell YOU the problem is free markets, the problem is Capitalism, the problem is greed.

They lie.

The Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA – is a federal law that requires banks and thrifts to offer credit throughout their entire market area. And it prohibits them from NOT giving loans to poorer areas within the reach of their communities. They call this redlining. They call violations of this redlining.

The purpose of this Act is to provide credit, including home ownership opportunities to what they call “under-served populations” and commercial loans to small businesses.

The law was passed by Congress in 1977 under Carter as a result of national grassroots pressure from groups like ACORN (an ultra-Left wing criminal enterprise in my humble opinion) which brought pressure for affordable housing for the poor. It was opposed significantly and aggressively by the banking community. But they had no choice. It became law 31 years ago.

The law mandates that “each banking institution be evaluated to determine if it has met the credit needs of its entire community” – that is, if it has given loans to enough poor people, or people who can’t really afford them.

And then that record is taken into account by the federal government when it considers an institution’s application for mergers and acquisitions.

And so the law is enforced by the federal government and in 1995, as a result of interest from Bill Clinton’s Administration – particularly Janet Reno and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the implementing regulations for the law were strengthened by focusing the financial regulator’s attention on institution’s performance in helping to meet community credit needs.

So they really, really pushed them. They used the FORCE OF LAW to compel these private institutions to make bad loans.

These changes were very controversial.

…The Clinton Administration’s regulatory revisions with an effective starting date of January 31 1995, were credited with substantially increasing the number and aggregate amount of loans to small businesses and to low and moderate income borrowers for home loans. Clinton used to brag about this.

Part of the increase in home loans was due to increased efficiency in the genesis of lenders like Countrywide that DID NOT mitigate loan risk with savings deposits, which traditional banks do. They were using the new SUBPRIME AUTHORIZATION, of 1995. Are you listening to me? This is known as the secondary market for mortgage loans. The revisions in the law allowed the securitization of CRA loans containing subprime mortgages. In other words, they had to figure out how to give loans to people who do not qualify for the loans under traditional procedures. So they changed the procedures.

The loans were not capitalized. So you have No Down Payment loans, No Interest loans, Low Interest loans that turn into higher interest loans over time (ARMs), and on and on. They were trying to be creative in what they could do, and they HAD TO BE under the threat of losing business practices and activities as compelled by the Federal Government.

The Federal Government compelled this activity and compelled this behavior.

The first securitization of CRA loans, started in 1997 with Bear Stearns (remember them?)

Now in 2003, The Bush Administration recommended what the New York Slimes (Times) called “The most significant regulatory overhaul in the Housing Financial Industry since the Savings and Loan crisis a decade ago”. This change was to move governmental supervision of two of the primary agents guaranteeing subprime loans; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, under a wholly new agency created within the Department of Justice, which would give it more oversight power and more auditing power. It would require these two so-called “companies” to better capitalize their debt.

Even so, what remained was the implied guarantee that the American taxpayer, should anything go wrong, would back-up these loans.

But that legislation to strengthen these programs, to move the oversight to an independent separate agency WAS BLOCKED in 2003 by Congress. And it was blocked by the Democrats, because the Democrats were in bed with ACORN and these other “community activists grassroots groups”, of whom Barrack The Hussein Obama is quite familiar.

These are the constituents of the Democrat party – that is these Left wing groups like ACORN.

(Barney) Frank (D-MA) was in bed with them; Chris Dodd (D-CT) was in bed with them; the Clinton Administration was in bed with them; and so they blocked the reforms the Bush Administration proposed in 2003.

Barney Frank said at the time “These two entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are NOT FACING ANY KIND OF FINANCIAL CRISIS. The more people exaggerate these problems…the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing”.

So basically, the Socialists FORCED the private sector to behave in ways the private sector didn’t want to behave but was forced to behave under threat of law. That is to give loans to people who were bad risks.

The two government run companies; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, when the Bush Administration said in ’03 “Look we got a problem here. They don’t have enough capital, they’re running wild over there. We don’t have enough oversight and auditing activity. We want to break out that activity – make it independent so they can oversee it. Force them to capitalize against their loans better”. They were BLOCKED.

Now I don’t know about people who say we can’t talk about party (blame) – We HAVE TO TALK ABOUT PARTY HERE because the only way you have accountability, and the only way you fix this situation, is to know WHO and WHAT is responsible, and what policies got us here!

Now these policies encouraged the development of the sub-prime debacle, through this CRA legislation, which forced banks to lend to uncreditworthy customers. Which they are now being criticized for having done. Before this debacle, while they are now attacking these huge financial institutions – they would praise them for all the uncreditworthy risky loans they were giving to ‘certain’ citizens (and non-citizens) in this country!

In 2003, the NY Slimes said of the Bush Administration’s plan “The plan is an acknowledgment by the Administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together have issued more than 1.5 trillion in outstanding debt, is broken”.

2003.

Former Treasury Secretary John Snowe from the Bush Administration, 2003 – “There is a general recognition, that the supervisory system for housing-related government-sponsored enterprise neither has the tools nor the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and importance of these enterprises.”

Michael Oxley, Republican from Ohio, former House Finance Services Committee Chairman, he said: “The current regulator does not have the tools or the mandate to adequately regulate these enterprises. In recent months, we have seen the mismanagement and questionable accounting practices went largely unnoticed”.

The Senate Republican Policy Committee, the Conservatives warned in 2003, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac threatened the U.S. economy and taxpayer “Although both firms seem to be performing well at the moment, it is far better for Congress to take pre-emptive action, instead of facing an enormously expensive corrective action after a destabilizing crisis strikes. Given how large these government companies have grown, and how much interest rate risk they retain, the risks posed by their current operations, should move Congress to increase their disclosure requirements, improve safety and soundness regulations, and examine how best to extricate the Federal Government from their operations. And through such steps, Congress could give regulators and investors a better sense of the risks that Fannie and Freddie’s operations pose and reduce the likelihood of a bailout.”

That was the Conservative Republican Policy Committee, Conservative Republican Senators.

What did the Democrats say? What did they say in 2003?

When the Bush Administration in 2003 was in fact, ringing the alarm bells, and did in-fact draft proposed legislation to address this, Republicans supported it and Democrats blocked it.

“These two entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are NOT FACING ANY KIND OF FINANCIAL CRISIS. The more people exaggerate these problems…the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing”. – Barney Frank, 2003 (D-MA)

He told the AP a few weeks later: “I don’t think we face a crisis. I don’t think we have an impending disaster.”

In 2004 Frank said “I think Wall Street will get over it”, referring to the possible collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In 2005, the Republicans in Congress offered legislation to basically do what the Bush Administration had proposed two years earlier, and here’s what the Democrat Minority Leader in the Senate Harry Reid had to say: “The legislation from the Senate Banking Committee passed today on a party-line vote by the Republican majority, includes measures that could cripple the ability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to carry out their mission of expanding home ownership. While I favor approving oversight by our federal housing regulators, to ensure safety and soundness, we cannot pass legislation that could limit Americans from owning homes and potentially harm our economy in the process”. That was UPI quoting Harry Reid in July ’05.

This by the way is the same reason they won’t address the other looming disasters like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They just won’t do it. Until we’re on the brink.

Over, Mark. Over the brink.

As recently as August 16, 2007 – a little over a year ago – Schumer and Dodd, the Chairman of the Banking Committee, called on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulators TO LIFT THE PORTFOLIO CAPS SO THEY COULD GIVE OUT MORE LOANS, to MORE people. They argued that allowing the two firms to buy more mortgages, and we’re talking about these sub-prime mortgages, “at least temporarily” they said, “would inject much liquidity into the market and calm the financial markets.”

That’s what we’re talking about.

In November 2006, Schumer in an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: “With the benefit of hindsight, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which imposed a new regulatory framework on all public companies doing business in the U.S., also needs to be re-examined. Since its passage, auditing expenses for companies doing business in the U.S. have grown far beyond anything Congress had anticipated. Of course, we must not in any way diminish our ability to detect corporate fraud and protect investors. But there appears to be a worrisome trend of corporate leaders focusing inordinate time on compliance minutiae rather than innovative strategies for growth, for fear of facing personal financial penalties from overzealous regulators.”

They were arguing for REDUCING the regulations that had been passed after Enron!!!!

…We will be paying for all of this now and down the road because of Socialism. That’s what I am trying to explain. That’s why I am taking the time to slog though this. Because it all sounds so foreign – because it has all been going on, behind the curtain. So we really haven’t been aware of it. It’s like Illegal Immigration, been going on for 45 years, they have been passing these laws, and we really haven’t been aware of it. We’re aware of it now, because we are on the hook for it.

What Chuck Schumer wrote in the WSJ Op-Ed in November 2006, is not what Chuck Schumer says today. Here’s what he said on the senate floor

“8 years of de-regulatory zeal by the Bush Administration, an attitude of “The market can do no wrong” have led us down the short path to economic recession. From the unregulated mortgage brokers, to the opaque credit default swaps market, to aggressive Short Sellers who were driving down the price of even healthy financial institutions based on innuendo, this Administration has failed to take the steps necessary to protect both Main Street and Wall Street”.

There may not be a silver bullet to fix what is currently dragging down the economy, but we can take steps to mitigate the costs and make sure that the impact of this crisis will be short-term. ” – Schumer, (D-NY)

See, our nation would be far better off without charlatans like Chuck Schumer. We have you dead to rights here Chuck. We have you in writing where you demanded LESS regulation and less oversight. So the fact you go to the senate floor and spew your talking points doesn’t work here.

We have you Barney – we have you dead to rights too. You’re a liar. You fought the reforms the Administration tried to put in place in 2005.

Yet Frank had this to say today:

“The fundamental issue is we have got to put an end to this situation in which there is no sensible regulation, and irresponsible individuals in the private market, or unwise individuals in the private market can incur the kind of risks that put us in a threatening situation,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairman, Barney Frank.

He’s a liar.

Now Barrack Obama, Obama is allied with radical groups like ACORN. These radical Left wing front groups like ACORN which pushed hard for the legislation that Carter put in place – the CRA forcing private financial institutions to make the riskiest of loans.

We have the Clinton Administration dead to rights – including Janet Reno, who insisted that these banks and financial institutions would not be able to survive and expand unless they took a certain amount of their assets and applied them to the riskiest of loans. That’s what they created in 1995 with this sub-prime market – of zero down loans. They were trying to come up with packages so they could meet their federal requirements. And they did.

Then step in the two government-run entities, Fannie and Freddie – and they are buying up these loans from the private sector as far as they can. Now that doesn’t promote home ownership, yet that is what they were in existence to do. So why were they buying up these risky loans?? Because they appeared as assets on their books, even though they weren’t. And the more assets they had, the bigger the bonuses for Franklin Raines, and Jamie Gorelick, and Jim Johnson – these three who are Obama’s ECONOMIC ADVISORS – that’s why they bought them up. It was in their OWN self-interest!!

I’ve seen no evidence that these three are, in fact, Obama’s “economic advisors,” but in July the Washington Post reported that, since his resignation from Fannie Mae, Raines had “taken calls from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.” Gorelick was mentioned some time back as a possible choice for Obama’s Attorney General. In June, the Minnesota Post reported that Jim Johnson was an Obama advisor, but did not specify what Johnson was advising him on. The story did state this, however:

No matter how they were introduced, the selection of Johnson to be a part of the inner circle seems to run contrary to Obama’s campaign theme of “change.”

Johnson represents Washington power as it’s always been. He’s the consummate insider. He’s very rich, very connected and very much behind the scenes.

Johnson’s wealth and politics appear to be related.

Interesting.

Continuing with Levin’s monologue:

This corrosive cronyism, has spread throughout the financial institutions in this country. That’s why they are hustling to fix it! Their fingerprints are all over this dammit! Don’t you see???!!! This wasn’t the private sector that did this, this wasn’t any individual company that did this, this is institutionalized corruption – we call it Socialism!!! Every effort to address it by the Bush Administration in ’03, by the Republicans in ’05, was rejected. Rejected by Chris Dodd, rejected by Chuck Schumer, rejected Barney Frank, rejected by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. This is why I rail against this! This is why I rail against the Left and the Socialists.

This isn’t a joke! This is real life!

And now, over the weekend, the Treasury Secretary – who is a Liberal Democrat, and a Friend of Schumer’s – has a plan that sticks us with a bill of over 1 TRILLION dollars!

We’re nationalizing businesses, we’re subsidizing businesses, now we’re going to create a one trillion dollar trust?

I tell you what; Socialism Sucks.

The Paulson plan could cost $1 trillion!

Look what your government has done! They have dragged us to the precipice!

You and I weren’t overseeing Freddie and Fannie – you and I had nothing to do with this CRA law – with all these Left Wing grassroots groups – or forcing banks and thrifts to cough up money for risky loans – we had nothing to do with this!

This is what goes on behind the scenes.

“Oh it’s Capitalism and Free Markets that are the cause” – no it’s not – THAT’S the problem!

What kind of a businessman gives a loan to someone who cannot pay it back unless they have a gun to their head???

…So all this crap that is out there – all these bad loans that are out there – they are going to pass them off into this fund, so every business out there that is loaded with these is going to dump them on you and me – the American taxpayer. To save those businesses. And by the way, those businesses – in many cases were forced to make these crap loans by the very people who are going to save us!!!

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” said lawmakers were told last night “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications, here at home and globally.” 


Why is Chris Dodd still chairman of the banking Committee?? Why isn’t he spooning out slop at some federal prison? Why isn’t he in charge of the soap at some Federal prison?

“What you heard last evening is one of those rare moments — certainly rare in my experience here — was that Democrats and Republicans decided we needed to work together, quickly,” Dodd said.

Funny how they want to work quickly to fix it now – but refused to do so in 2003 and 2005 BEFORE this collapse was triggered.

“Congressional leaders tell Politico that to expedite the rescue, Treasury plans to seek additional authority rather than creating a new entity. The plan involves buying up hundreds of billions of dollars in bad mortgages to take them off the books of financial institutions that otherwise might fail”.

…Yeah let’s hurry up (and fix this) let’s set this thing up before the American people figure out what’s going on. Let’s set it up – because as all the experts keep telling us, “this is just too big to fail!” That’s too big and this is too big – we have to nationalize everything! That’ll fix it! That’s because we know that whatever the government does is okay and whatever the private sector does is horrific.

I’m sick of these Socialists.

What happened here wasn’t due to a “lack of federal regulatory oversight,” it happened because of federal regulatory oversight – oversight that set up conditions that a free market would not have. The government required banks to make risky loans, then provided entities to remove much of the risk for the lending institutions. Making loans means lenders make money. There’s an incentive to make loans. If there wasn’t, no one would make them. But there’s also risk, which is why the old cliché goes “You can only get a loan if you can prove you don’t really need one.” If the risk is minimized, then the money flows freely.

And it did. Zero Down! Interest only! Jumbo ARMs! And low prime interest rates only fueled the fire. Greed certainly had a part in it – lenders undoubtedly convinced borrowers that they could afford a bigger loan than they had any business asking for. On the radio the other day I heard a sixty-plus year old woman complaining that a lender convinced her and her sixty-plus year old husband that they could afford a loan with a $5,000 a month payment, since interest rates were low. Zero down! No, no, no, you don’t need a no prepayment penalty clause! Certainly your son and daughter-in-law can be included since they’ll be living on the property with you!

Except the son and daughter-in-law divorced. And the property value has plummeted. And even if they could refinance, the prepayment penalty is prohibitive.

I’m not letting the lenders off the hook.

But I’ll be damned if I put all the blame on them, either.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, the free market works, if we let it. But when we fuck with it, we do so at our own peril. There’s this thing called the “Bell Curve.” Some people are stupid. Some people are greedy. And we forget this at our own risk.

In that piece on Locke v. Rousseau I linked to yesterday, “doqz” said:

Locke thought that men were born morally/intellectually neutral, the blank slate (that idea was developed by Locke in the course of his career TAing survey history courses to freshman in a major state University). And in the course of their life, people become themselves though accumulation of experience.

—

Jean-Jacques (Rousseau) thought that men are born good. I am not going to discuss what he thought about women – this is a family program. But men were born excellent. Unfortunately in course of their life they are corrupted by the state, which learns them all sorts of bad ideas and words. Like stuff. And the desire for more stuff.

P.J. O’Rourke said something similar in his book Republican Party Reptile:

Neither conservatives nor humorists believe man is good. But left-wingers do.

For some reason they neglect to remember the last part of Rousseau’s Philosophy of Man – Man gets corrupted.

No, to the Left there must be some uncorrupted Enlightened Beings – “Lightworkers,” if you will – to whom we can entrust our care and feeding so that we don’t have to concern ourselves with it any more.

(UPDATE: LabRat has a P.J. O’Rourke quote of her own in the comments that is very apropos:

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

Indeed. End update.)

The Socialism Levin rails against isn’t the boot-on-a-face-forever Orwellian image, or even the dystopia of Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. It’s the ham-handed destructiveness of those for whom beautiful ideas – in this case “fairness” in lending to people who probably shouldn’t get mortgage or small business loans – turn into disasters – in this case a financial debacle of almost unimaginable proportions – because too few are willing to deal with reality.

And that’s the biggest problem I have with the Left. To be sure, the Right isn’t immune to it, but the Left seems to wallow in it.

It didn’t work, but the philosophy cannot be wrong! Do it again, only HARDER!

The Bush Doctrine

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The Bush Doctrine

I wanted to write about this ever since I saw the clip where Charlie Gibson asked the question and (*GASP!*) Sarah Palin didn’t know what “The Bush Doctrine” was.

Funny, because I didn’t either. Oh, I had my own understanding of “The Bush Doctrine,” but it didn’t equal the one Charlie Gibson enuciated:

The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country we think is going to attack us.

Charlie stated that this doctrine was laid down by President Bush in “September 2002.” Wikipedia (yes, I know) states:

The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of United States president George W. Bush, created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The phrase initially described the policy that the United States had the right to treat countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups as terrorists themselves, which was used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan. Later it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate (used to justify the invasion of Iraq), a policy of supporting democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating the spread of terrorism, and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way. Some of these policies were codified in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States published on September 20, 2002.

That would be, I believe, this document. Here’s the key excerpt:

In the 1990s we witnessed the emergence of a small number of rogue states that, while different in important ways, share a number of attributes. These states:

* brutalize their own people and squander their national resources for the personal gain of the rulers;
* display no regard for international law, threaten their neighbors, and callously violate international treaties to which they are party;
* are determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction, along with other advanced military technology, to be used as threats or offensively to achieve the aggressive designs of these regimes;
* sponsor terrorism around the globe; and
* reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands.

At the time of the Gulf War, we acquired irrefutable proof that Iraq’s designs were not limited to the chemical weapons it had used against Iran and its own people, but also extended to the acquisition of nuclear weapons and biological agents. In the past decade North Korea has become the world’s principal purveyor of ballistic missiles, and has tested increasingly capable missiles while developing its own WMD arsenal. Other rogue regimes seek nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons as well. These states’ pursuit of, and global trade in, such weapons has become a looming threat to all nations.

We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends. Our response must take full advantage of strengthened alliances, the establishment of new partnerships with former adversaries, innovation in the use of military forces, modern technologies, including the development of an effective missile defense system, and increased emphasis on intelligence collection and analysis.

First Charlie Gibson asked Gov. Palin if she agreed with “the Bush Doctrine.”

Then he asked her this, not once, not twice, but three times:

What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?

—

So if we wouldn’t second guess it and they decided they needed to do it, because Iran was a threat, we would be cooperative or agree with that?

—

So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be all right?

Charlie apparently forgot that Israel took out Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981. (Read that piece!) Apparently he forgot the even more recent destruction of a Syrian nuclear facility (built with the apparent assistance of Kim Jong Il’s government) in September of 2007. Governor Palin simply stated,

I don’t think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves

three times.

Governor Palin’s response to the original “Bush Doctrine” question was this:

I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made, and with new leadership, and that’s the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

Once Gibson clarified his question, her response was this:

Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country.

And so does Israel. But what I wanted to point out is that Charlie Gibson’s definition of the “Bush Doctrine” doesn’t agree with the document that he supposedly cites. Charlie states that the Bush Doctrine is

…that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country we think is going to attack us.

However, the National Security Strategy spells out plainly the nations against which this doctrine is directed. States which:

* brutalize their own people and squander their national resources for the personal gain of the rulers;
* display no regard for international law, threaten their neighbors, and callously violate international treaties to which they are party;
* are determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction, along with other advanced military technology, to be used as threats or offensively to achieve the aggressive designs of these regimes;
* sponsor terrorism around the globe; and
* reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands.

I’m not sure what Gibson was looking for. Was it just Palin’s acknowledgment that preemptive strikes were not out of the question? Was it to make her look ignorant or stupid? Personally (for a politician), I didn’t think her answers were all that bad.

More troubling still, I asked my Obama supporting colleague today whether he believed the US had the right to strike preemptively against such regimes.

He said no. I asked him again, specifically, if he was willing for the country to lose a city before we took action, and he said “Yes. We don’t shoot first.”

Is this something the Left as a group actually believes?

The hell we don’t.