Tom Friedman reporting from Davos says the “elite” gathered at this august forum are worried about “political instability” in the United States.
“Political instability” was a phrase normally reserved for countries like Russia or Iran or Honduras. But now, an American businessman here remarked to me, “people ask me about ‘political instability’ in the U.S. We’ve become unpredictable to the world.”
The source of this worry appears to be the reluctance of the American voter to follow the leader. Friedman writes “You can understand why foreigners are uneasy. They look at America and see a president elected by a solid majority, coming into office riding a wave of optimism, controlling both the House and the Senate. Yet, a year later, he can’t win passage of his top legislative priority: health care.” What they would prefer to see, in Friedman’s words is a ‘Confucian-Communist-Capitalist’ consensus.
under the umbrella of a one-party state, with a lot of government guidance, strictly controlled capital markets and an authoritarian decision-making process that is capable of making tough choices and long-term investments, without having to heed daily public polls.
Not that Friedman is necessarily buying it. But he does get the sense that less than a dozen Republican senators stand between the nation and a negotiated consensus that will allow America to go forward. And he’s not alone in wanting to see Obama lead Washington out of the wilderness to the new promised land of Hope and Change. Frank Rich at the NYT says John McCain is unpatriotic for refusing to hold out his hand to the President. Rich writes: “How satisfying it was to watch him [Obama] provoke Alito into a “You lie!” snit.”
One year into Obama’s term we still don’t know whether he has what it takes to get American governance functioning again. … John McCain epitomizes the unpatriotic opposition … Perhaps McCain was sneering at Obama because of the Beltway’s newest unquestioned cliché: one year after a new president takes office he is required to stop blaming his predecessor for the calamities left behind. Who dreamed up that canard — Alito? F.D.R. never followed it.
Tell ‘em Frank, tell ‘em. And while you’re at it, bring ‘em back alive! Anna Quindlen of Newsweek exhorts her leaders to “Follow the Leader”.
The Democrats are in danger of learning the wrong lessons from their Massachusetts defeat. After all, they seem to have learned the wrong lessons from their electoral triumph just a little more than a year ago. They are the majority, and they should act like it—boldly, decisively. Let the Republicans filibuster, and be confident that the sight would irritate, then enrage, most of the American people. …
A very smart man once said, “Telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won’t do.” That man was Barack Obama, and that attitude is one reason he got elected. He should stick to that position, and the American people should embrace it.
Too bad they all haven’t embraced it. And that’s called ‘political instability’ in Davos.
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Anna Quindlen of Newsweek:
A very smart man once said, “Telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won’t do.” That man was Barack Obama, and that attitude is one reason he got elected. He should stick to that position, and the American people should embrace it.
Here is something that our POTUS needs to hear. When you tell your constituents that if they read the two thousand page health care bill they will like it, when neither you nor the legislators have read it, it leaves a sour taste in our mouths, especially when we have already discovered things about it we do not like.
But wretchard, you know that we Americans are just plain dumb.
A really fine humorous piece from January 29:
Ed Hinkle: Talking Down to the Public Will Surely Work
http://preview.tinyurl.com/ydt4nya
A sample:
It mighty big of man with nice voice [Obama, of course] to take blame like that. Him not need to. Head honchos not often take blame. Most times after big screw-up, head honchos say they have “full confidence” in someone who work for them — right before pushing someone off edge of cliff, or letting someone twist “slowly, slowly” in wind, like tricky Nixon guy did with man who ran FBI.
Man with nice voice not like those other head honchos. Him bring change to Washington already, see?
But him right. Him not explain health care good. Use too many big words. Say too many compound-complex sentences. Confuse American people. American people not want that. American people want simple explanation. Simpler the better.
Jamie Irons
Wait until the natives find out that Scott Brown is pro-choice and supports Roe v. Wade.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2010/01/a-scott-brown-republican-is-pro-choice-anti-tax/1?csp=hf
“Sen.-elect Scott Brown, R-Mass., told Barbara Walters he supports Roe v. Wade and believes that states should decide the issue of gay marriage, not the federal government, during an interview that aired today on ABC’s This Week.”
I wonder if Glenn Beck’s early hit on Scott Brown was just the opening salvo for a campaign of Tea Party betrayal. Republican elites have steadily sold out the pro-Life factions since . . . well since Reagan approved an exceedingly liberal abortion bill as governor of California.
Tom is teetering on the edge of demanding that Obama institute Chinese style (i.e. dictatorial) government in the US. To quote Michael Ledeen:
“Even a doufus like Tom Friedman.”
Tom is a living demonstration of the truth of Jonah Goldberg’s thesis — scratch a “liberal”* and reveal the fascist underneath.
*modern American, not a lover of liberty.
We all forgot the first line in the Constituition has been rewritten;
instead of “We the people”, it now reads “We the Elite”.
Someone needs to tell Tom and Anna that Buraq, Nancy and Harry have been dictating to the nation in their preferred manner, without stooping to hear what we bitter clingers want. With every important initiative from the Stimulus to ObamaCare, Buraq and company, have hid the details until after key votes.
This is about as much an authoritarian decision making process that even the craven democrat media will allow.
Once again I commend to all Belmont Club readers the Arthur Koestler book, “The Call Girls.” They are the intellectual prostitutes who sell their wares at international conferences like Davos.
It has been said at my University that the Medical School would prefer to have all their graduates go into research. Then they make the fatal mistake of introducing them to patients, and those pesky medical students find that they actually enjoy interacting with real people.
Well I guess that’s the same problem the Davos crowd has. “Those annoying individual people keep getting in the way. How long are “they” going to be permitted to interfere with “our” enlightened plans?”
Secularist elites to the left of us, fanatic Islamists to the right of us; into the valley of the 21st century rode our civilization.
Mr. Friedman and Ms. Quindlan should remind themselves that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism”.
For the record, this should make it crystal clear just how convinced of their own superior wisdom these pompous, wanna-be-tyrants really are.
Over two thirds of the poplace want nothing to do with this administrations semi-socialized medicine scam. That would give most truly wise men second thoughts.
Instead it prompts the likes of Quindlan and Friedman to essentially say: “Ram it down their throats no matter what they think they want”. Indeed, in Friedman’s case it leads him to pine publicly for a government more like China’s.
The term Liberal Facism has never rung truer.
Credit to you, Wretchard, for being able to read Friedman. I can’t do it. But as I understand it, this is not the first time he has lamented that we are not more like the Chinese.
As for Quindlen, well, you get an extra week of combat pay for that. I would rather choke down a gallon of bull urine than read anything by her.
What I cautioned on the night of Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts was that, while we were celebrating, these people in power were busy moving their armor.
Expect more unreconstructed efforts to jam all sorts of things down the throats of Americans to prove Obama’s prowess as a leader.
It’s easy to like the charming, puissant strongman, especially in a foreign setting like Davos. There you are, a moderately successful journalist, pulling down a couple hundred K a year and then you’re in the company of people who seem to be able to do things at the snap of a finger. Guys who’ve been to same schools you attended but who seem to have gone so much further because they went back to their home countries where any road can be made smooth and where they lead through scene after scene of unparalleled gorgeousness all peopled with fascinating characters who speak barely accented English, wear the latest fashions from Paris or London and who seem to think nothing of hurtling through the street in convoys of armored limos.
So you say, “why can’t we be like that?” But the world can look very different for a guy coming off a ship to scrounge liberty at places like “Joe Ago-go”, or if you’re a contract worker who has to wait for an aiport shuttle to some godforsaken construction destination. If you live among the peons the “Confucian-Communist-Capitalist” consensus looks a whole lot less civilized. But it’s very beguiling and it often takes an effort to understand that those strongmen-led countries aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
(slightly off topic, but not really)
As President Obama sends a nearly 4 Trillion Dollar budget to Congress I thought I’d give you a brief look back at some of the major spending packages that our federal leaders have passed recently, just for fun!
Ready, Here goes:
January 31, 2010. Obama Budget. 1.6 Trillion Dollars.
Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget heading to Congress (AP)
AP – President Barack Obama’s proposed budget predicts the national deficit will crest at a record-breaking $1.6 trillion in the current fiscal year, then start to recede in 2011 to $1.3 trillion, a congressional official said Sunday.
March 02, 2009. Omnibus Appropriations Bill. 410 Billion Dollars
President Obama to Sign Pork-Laden Omnibus Spending Bill
The $410 billion omnibus spending bill the House is poised to pass Wednesday to keep the government running through Oct. 1.
February 18, 2009. Economic Stimulus. 787 Billion Dollars.
DENVER — President Barack Obama signed his $787 billion economic stimulus package into law Tuesday, with an upbeat speech emphasizing the road to recovery.
October 3, 2009. TARP or Troubled Asset Relief Program. 700 Billion Dollars.
The program started as a $700 billion federal effort to buy bad loans and debt from banks. A year later, it has evolved into a dozen different programs which all add up to a price tag of about $3 trillion.
I am sorry, but Friedman has jumped the shark – he’s flipped. Gone insane….
I don’t believe any Euro in Davos would say that and mean it.
The real political instability is that the US would elect Barck Hussein Obama, and the whole world knows it.
who seem to think nothing of hurtling through the street in convoys of armored limos.
Not to mention our own aristocrats and their abuse of air travel, Pelosi being the premier example:
According to the documents, obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Speaker’s military travel cost the United States Air Force $2,100,744.59 over a two-year period — $101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/2010/jan/judicial-watch-uncovers-new-documents-detailing-pelosis-use-air-force-aircraft
According to Doug Ross, “What hasn’t been revealed so far is that [these] military aircraft are being used to shuttle Pelosi’s kids and grandkids between DC and San Francisco without any Congressional representatives even onboard! Put simply, the United States Air Force is serving as a multi-billion dollar chauffeur- and baby-sitting service for Nancy Pelosi’s kids and grandkids — presumably because commercial travel is beneath the families of the autocrats.”
Political instability? To quote Michael Ledeen, “Faster, please.”
Oh, such a pity, that Americans remain unruly, individualistic and unpredictable and won’t fall in line like good obedient little subjects of a benevolent state that runs everything for the best of all and knows better than the people themselves what is best. Excuuuuuse me but the country was founded on liberty and not on subordination to authority.
Wretchard, this is merely the ongoing Western Civil War.
The elites want to replace the Western White Middle Class with a foreign people, mostly non-White, who will be more compliant and better serfs than the natives.
The people are wanting to throw out the elites, and create their own institutions. Against this is the threat of jihad and Muslim demands for Sharia, globally. It will only take ONE incident like John Brown’s raid on Harper’s ferry to bring off a Hot instead of a Cold Civil War.
Suppose, for example, KSM is found not guilty and released? Or that where ever his trial is, hostages are taken and demands made (i.e. release KSM for the hostages) and Obama does it, with the predictable results (dead hostages, a free 9/11 Mastermind).
The result of course will not be status-quo ante. It will not be John McCain, or even Scott Brown. It will be … something along the lines of the BNP (shudder). Such a result will be directly the responsibility of elites like Friedman pushing too far, in their transnational dreams of dominance.
Obama’s prowess as a leader
Can anyone explain why this wonderful leader bows to the mayor of Tampa, Florida? To show that she’s the equal of the Emperor of Japan?
The expression on the face of the pilot to the right of Dear Leader is priceless.
http://www.weaselzippers.net/blog/2010/01/why-the-hell-would-obama-bow-to-tampa-mayor.html
Slightly off topic:
Pelosi appears to have a drinking problem:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=123472
I don’t believe any Euro in Davos would say that and mean it.
Are you kidding me?
The EU is designed so that an elite bureaucracy can run it without the consent of the people (“oh, you voted wrong, now vote again; hemmm you don’t like ‘constitution’ well vote on this ‘treaty’”).
Of course they wish that the US would fall in line behind (or along side) them.
2tru,Wretchard,the natives are restless, and revolting(sorry, a pun)”We, the party mandarin..”, why can’t they be more like us and why don’t the ignorant dolts and clingers know their place? The international socialist “owners” need, and really want, another Dred Scott decision to validate their right to control the slaves and properly criminalize the new Underground Railroads of the net that promote all this anti-party thinking.
Hey, that’s America – ungovernable since 1776!
I see Dick Armey was counseling Republican politicos at their annual issues conference to “walk among” Tea Partiers and listen to them and talk with them. Excuse me if I’m not swooning. When Tea Partiers went to town halls across the country by the thousands last year, politicians were diving for cover. So NOW they want to talk & meet, post Massachusetts?
They don’t get it. Everything Armey has to say to them is couched in the unspoken context of, “here’s how you can hold onto your job [read: power].” That is priority #1 for them. We know it. We smell it on them. Meet, talk, talk, meet, blah blah blah. If that’s all they think the Tea Partiers want, they are woefully mistaken. Obama spoke about fundamentally transforming this country and by gum, he meant it. Guess what? So do the Tea Partiers. They just don’t have the same kind of transformation in mind that TOTUS does. But the “business as usual, except with a few more town halls” way of politics in Washington is OVER. Those who don’t recognize that paradigm shift are dinosaurs and will get left behind with all the other dinosaurs like the lamestream media talking heads.
Gnostic @3:
Scott Brown’s position on abortion is not a well-guarded secret. Plenty of people who disagree with him on that issue voted for him anyway because he was the best available choice to beat the Kennedy-Dem machine in this race, and there were other important issues on which Brown’s views aligned with their own. Those who were not aware of Brown’s stance on abortion & who contributed money, volunteer work or a vote and are the type to get hacked off that he’s pro-choice have only themselves to blame for not informing themselves better beforehand.
BTW, it is possible to be both pro-choice and anti-Roe v Wade.
I’m both pro-life and anti-same-sex-marriage (sorry, Teresita) but I would rather have these issues duked out at the state level. The tendency to run to Washington for “solutions” (aka the big legislative stick, when one cannot get one’s way locally) creates more problems in the end than it solves. The bigger the government, the more harm and outright evil it can (and will) do. On all powers not enumerated in the Constitution, empowering Washington and the federal courts to decide those things anyway, even for what one deems “good reasons,” is not a wise move. Ultimately both the issues listed above will be decided culturally and not just politically anyway.
Whiskey- my wife and I were just talking about how people would lose their minds here if KSM was found not guilty. Not too much of a stretch because I’m sure that he wasn’t read his Miranda rights in time, and the case against him could be stopped on procedural grounds.
What scares me is thinking about the consequences after the general public loses their minds. Kinda like how the black community lost its mind during the LA riots after the cops in the Rodney King beating were acquitted.
1. The financial wipe out was planned in Davos. Somebody knew ahead of time–remember all those billions stolen by a broker in France months beore? There were other instances of billions missing.
2. Mr. Friedman is a paid agent of the Chinese.
3. We are at war with China
4.Google is evil. Their protestations of leaving China because of hacking problems were a distancing manuver. They’ve actually assisted China, who will soon badly damage our internet communications.
5.The White House will sound very outraged that our communications system is inert, but really, they, Davos and China will have the outcome they’ve been working towards together.
“I am sorry, but Friedman has jumped the shark – he’s flipped. Gone insane….”
Nope. He is just showing his true colors — fascist black.
The world should not worry about the American people, Obama is quietly enlisting our children in his efforts to accomplish his agenda. Soon after washing and ironing out all resistance in the brains of this generation of young people he will target the elementry schools.
..OH…I forgot he already has!
Obama Organizing in High School
I recommend that you pay attention in your locals schools for this or other Obama intrusions upon our children.
Papa Ray
Buy More Ammo.
All Calibers.
Exercise your 2A rights while you can.
Bogie wheel: I’m both pro-life and anti-same-sex-marriage (sorry, Teresita) but I would rather have these issues duked out at the state level.
That’s more or less what Scott Brown said today, he won’t try to roll back Roe v. Wade because it’s a “settled issue” and not only will he will oppose any Constitutional Amendment to ban marriage equality, he will vote to roll back DOMA and leave the issue to the individual states to decide. The bigger issues are stopping the government takeover of the health care system and keeping the country safe.
Whiskey: Suppose, for example, KSM is found not guilty and released?
Guaranteed Republican majority in both houses, and a bill of impeachment submitted for consideration. Obama would be the first President impeached and convicted. President Biden would suddenly be a defense hawk for his two year term. What astonishes me is that Obama would gamble his entire Presidency on the vote of twelve jurors. Where’s the up side?
Mel/22; this, from Sept 26, 2008, is the great Judi McCloud of Canada Free Press, writing from the eye of the financial hurricane of summer/fall 2008, about Davos –the World Economic Forum, founded by Maurice Strong during his tenure as high undersecretary or ambassador at large, or whatever, of the UN. McCloud’s language and insight at that early time in this ‘event’ is remarkable.
Pardon my French, but puissant looks like pissant to this old redneck.
*blinks several times*
Waitaminute, waitaminute! You mean that here we are already into the 21st Century and the rest of the world outside of America still hasn’t gotten the word that there are viable governments besides absolute monarchy? O_O
And the Davros crowd is worried and sullen at the news that America is a Republic? o_O
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! What a collection of chumps! ^o^
can’t find edit widget, but i misspelt Judi McLeod in #27
From a commentor at the “Obama Organizing” link.
Here is a link to a blog with a redstate link and other info.
HR 3221 Education Lending Bill
Any Questions?
Papa Ray
Whiskey: Suppose, for example, KSM is found not guilty and released?
Yea, but did not teh Won said that no way KSM would be found not guilty. Thus -> a show trial.
Is teh Won trying to set a precedent for show trials?
Comment the First — Someone needs to tell Mr. Friedman that most Americans REALLY don’t care what Europeans or the rest of the world think of us.
Comment the Second — I thought the demand from “the rest of the world” for decades now was “Yankee Go Home” — that “the world” wanted us to butt out and mind our own business and allow them to go to hell in a handbasket in peace. Now that we are actively butting out and pulling out of Iraq and thinking about pulling out of Afghanistan, and in general turning our attention inwards and leaving them to heir own devices … now, THAT is a bad thing, too, and “the world” is concerned about our “instability”?!
Silly World.
Yep, my edit widget disappeared also, wanted to add this link to my #31 comment.
Swiss Family Congress: H.R. 3221 wants to radically change student lending and school building
Another take on another aspect of the bill. Patrick McBride is a freshman at Vanderbilt University. There are fine young Americans going to these liberal bastons of brainwashing. I hope he and the rest of them can resist.
Papa Ray
@twobyfour of 32,
I’ve considered that angle as well. It’s quite possible. Perhaps even probable. But I wouldn’t overlook the possibility that he’s just lying through his teeth to placate those who are outraged by this. Chicago Dummycrats do tend to believe that if you make soothing noises at angry voters they’ll just go away eventually and forget everything when Election Day rolls around. Chicago voters have done little to prove them wrong thus far. A 3rd possibility is that Mr. Obama is just engaged in assuming that what he wants is a certainy and will honestly be blindsided by the intrusion of reality into his little fluffybunny universe.
Note that possibility #3 does not preclude either possibility #1 or #2 also being true.
Papa Ray’s #24 ‘obma organizing’ link to Atlas –from the curriculum, “week 3, data collection, nightly entering of data…
oh, man. please read that link. high school kids, your kids –roaming neighborhoods on foot, knocking on your door, asking you questions, and entering the data. This is what MC’s link [nearby thread] –Yuri Bezmenov –said to look out for —
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x32cxf_yuri-bezmenov
Whiskey:
What’s the endgame? Even if your description of the situation were correct, so what?
One open secret I know about state colleges and universities is that they vastly prefer “international students” over students from their own state. Why? Foreign students pay a higher tab, which helps the university budget in the short term. This, of course, leads to reduced funding for state colleges and universities, which make college administrators even more desperate for short-term cash. Meanwhile, foreign students finagle ways to stay here, bring their families over, and set up ethnic enclaves with no intention to assimilate.
It state colleges and universities simply changed their funding formulas, this problem would go away. (Presently, states give appropriations to public universities and then set lower tuition for state residents. Instead, states could give tuition credits to state residents so that equalized tuition rates don’t bias college recruitment away from the local constituency.) The biggest enemy to such a reform is bureaucratic inertia. When a crisis is evident to everybody else, affluent people will fail to see a problem because it doesn’t directly affect their lives. The problem isn’t malice from the leisure class, but rather sheer obliviousness.
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had thrown away the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Bertolt Brecht, a German Communist playwright, wrote this poem in the aftermath of the failed East German uprising of 1953.
Are there are affluent capitalists and leftists who seek population replacement as a means to advance their short-term interests? Yes! It has been that way for a very long time. Besides, using an exotic servant as a house ornament is a highly effective form of conspicuous consumption. What they don’t realize is that supposedly “compliant” replacements never stay compliant. Celtic mercenaries didn’t stay loyal to Carthage, German mercenaries didn’t stay loyal to Rome, and Turkish Mameluks didn’t stay loyal to the Arab Ayyubid Dynasty in Egypt. The “leisure class” is typically so oblivious to the world around them that they usually don’t know how bad things can get until it is too late.
I think the “leisure class” rarely acts with any intent to undermine their own societies. Instead, their selfishness, laziness, and utter obliviousness shield them from the consequences of their own actions. Poor people often assume that the rich are malicious, seeking to torment the poor with their latest nutty experiments, when rich people are merely exhibiting ignorance of the consequences of their own actions.
Obama is fine I think and would prefer (as a man born and raised a Muslim) that KSM be found not guilty. It would cement him in Muslim and Leftist circles, and as a lawyer guaranteeing his guilt and conviction and execution he knows he makes a free and fair trial impossible, thus he wants his release.
Obama WANTS this to, I think, rub the noses into what he considers wrong, of the people. So he can flounce around as the big shot Big Man. It is his modus operandi. But I think he underestimates the reaction. This is a man for all purposes who is not culturally American.
Yeah ” tough choices and long-term investments, without having to heed daily public polls.” The folks in Davos would like to see that. So would I only in the EU. Greece’s PM Papandreou just swore on a stack of filo dough that Greece would get its act together and stop printing Euros like they were confetti and anyone in the room who said he believed that has either taken one too many hits on the old opium pipe or is lying through his teeth.
Yeah folks are right to worry about political instability in the USA but it is coming to the EU too. Democracy is in trouble as soon as 51% of the people realize they can expropriate the wealth of the other 49%. When that happens you get political instability and a sure sign that you are there is when a 32 year old woman sues her 60 year old father for an allowance and a judge gives it to her. This just happened in Italy. Throughout the EU these days it is common to find 30 years old men and women who have never been in the workforce living on the dole and or in Mom and Dad’s house. It is insane but no more so than the California legislature voting for universal health care this week when the state is broker than a Haitian earthquake survivor.
There seem to be no adults left anywhere, either in charge or in the voting booths.
In Buddy’s link @36 – Yuri Bezmenov said America is stuck with demoralization. Even if you started right now, he said, educating a new generation of Americans, it would take 15-20 years to turn the tide of ideological perception back to where you have a normal patriotically-minded common-sense people.
I gather this video was made some time in the 1970s? Or was it the ’80s? Whenever it was, the intervening years have only seen cultural marxism and political correctness become more firmly established and solidly entrenched, so much so that millions of people in this country could vote for Obama on only that basis alone. (Miseducated, largely ignorant of history, it’s cool to elect the first black president.)
Whatever happened to Bezmenov? I don’t suppose he’s still alive. Wonder what he would say about us now? What would his assessment of our situation be now?
Maybe he would say, the elite at Davos need not worry. Just be patient a little longer.
Read them both, and the only truth I saw was in Quindlans article, I quote “We are in a transformative moment in history, when the acceptance of the status quo counts as cataclysmic failure.”
That’s absolutely true, but I don’t think she’ll be happy with the changes that will likely be made.
If we’ve learned anything over the last year or so it’s that the Statists and Elitists don’t have a clue. That recognition is what they really fear; Friedman and the rest are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
When Wretchard mentioned talk of political instability in the U.S. at Davos, I thought he meant Prof. Igor Panarin (USA 2010 = USSR 1990) was one of the speakers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Panarin#Prediction_of_the_USA.27s_collapse_in_2010
There is no chance KSM will be released. There is virtually no chance a jury would find him not guilty. There is however a danger that a civil trial judge could be forced to dismiss the charges against KSM with prejudice due to procedural errors. That will then make a mockery of the US civil justice system, as there is no way we will let him walk away despite his legal right to do so. Military Commissions provide a historic precedent (American Civil War, WW2) for how to avoid the word “gulag” in the US – enemy combatants given legal review through military courts. Obama would make the word inescapable for KSM if the civil trial goes sideways.
The political instability in the US is top down. It comes from a president who announces new policies with a microphone aimed at the wider world and then quietly does something different. The Europeans simply can’t count on us to do all the dirty work any more. They don’t know what Obama is up to, but he is sure not providing them with the stability of Bush. There was nothing like a good old Bush Bash to direct attention from things like Euro/UN complicity in oil for food or European sales of dual use items to Iran or selling out Eastern Europe to get a Gazprom job.
bogie wheel,
While I agree with you about Scott Brown and Federalism, I disagree with you about Dick Armey and the Tea Parties and “revolution.” Armey is urging politicians to listen to and work with the people. That is a good thing. Most of us are seeking a restoration of constitutional government and the social and economic system that made America prosperous and safe. We are not seeking to tear it all down like the French did in the early 1790s. If we pry the Democrats from power then we can focus on legislative tools, and some constitutional reforms, that will prevent a seditious parasite class from placing us in jeopardy again. That will obviously start with tort reform and control over civil service unions. It does not necessitate violence or the suppression of civil liberties. The separate problems of illegal immigration and jihadist infiltration may not be solved peacefully.
Personally I am tired of hearing about Obama’s “overwhelming” majority in 2008. If the lid gets peeled up enough to reveal a 3% fraud factor, especially in places like Ohio, and there is verification produced regarding the suspected $300,000,000 in illegal overseas money funneled to the Democratic campaign then the last shreds of legitimacy will fall from this administration. That will be as good as finding his college financial aid applications. Then things will get interesting.
vb,
Well said.
Salt Lick,
Looking down, that real estate fortune is worth a lot less now. Those poor dears.
It’s fun when Progressives attack Thomas Friedman.
As the July edition of the Washingtonian Magazine notes, Friedman lives in “a palatial 11,400-square-foot house, now valued at $9.3 million, on a 7½-acre parcel just blocks from I-495 and Bethesda Country Club.” He “married into one of the 100 richest families in the country” – the Bucksbaums, whose real-estate Empire is valued at $2.7 billion.
one wonders at the progressive’s fuhrerprinzip, how a principle can be a romance, and vice-versa, depending. how a word like ‘principle’ can expand to mean so many different things while a word like ‘consistency’ gets narrowed down to how you measure jello.
What a bunch of little statist commissars are at work in our press. Rich, Quindlan and Friedman. They think the Democrats should just “push through” aggressively (they would have screamed had the GOP majority done so). They think the GOP filibuster would make the country angry. That didn’t bother the dems when they filibustered throughout Bush’s terms. They think the president should just do what he “knows best” about and the hell with the American people who don’t know what’s good for them. Again, imagine if Bush played it that way.
What phonies. What irredeemable phonies. And they have the academies, the media and the government. We’re so screwed.
jbl/48 We’re so screwed –yes but we were even MORE screwed before we understood how screwed we are.
If what Friedman says he’s picking up is real, then I think he’s misdiagnosing it. Political gridlock isn’t new in America — it’s an American trademark. No one used to a parliamentary system with party discipline can get over the inefficiency and chaos of the American system. (This is its strength of course.)
The new features of the American system are all on the economic side: Argentinian budgeting, Putinist crony capitalism, the sliding dollar, a retreat from trade leadership, massive bailouts of state-run enterprises. If I were the “businessman” Friedman quotes, these are the sorts of things I’d worry about, not health care reform.
“Obama Won. Now Follow the Leader” (Anna Quindlen, Newsweek)
Just reading the headline of this article is enough to get the blood boiling. Where in the world is “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”?
Ooopse, already mentioned above. Sorry.
LOTM #45 — Salt Lick,
Looking down, that real estate fortune is worth a lot less now. Those poor dears.
Yes. We’ve got friends in their 60′s who took a second mortgage to expand their business, remodel their kitchen, and finance a vacation to Italy. Yipee!
Now, the business and home — and all the “equity” in both that was to serve as their “retirement” — are “underwater.” I’m both sorry for, and annoyed at them for acting like spendthrift little kids. Looks like their children will need to prepare for live-in grandparents.
And I worry, remembering that Archie Manning’s father committed suicide when faced with economic meltdown and poor health.
Another point, Friedman et al. have absolutely no idea about Confucism.
The ‘Confucian-Communist-Capitalist’ consensus is total garbage, if he thinks the present day China is any where close to the CCC philosphophy in play.
I love this inversion of “patriotism” from people who practically wanted us to lose in Iraq, were publishing classified documents, and encouraged the prosecution of military and intelligence personnel who needed to do the “rough things” to protect us, as did the “rough men” Orwell praised in his famous quote. These mendacious weasels act like anatgosists in an Orwell novel, and pay no heed to Orwell’s wisdom.
Oh, and by the way, I’m “so sorry” we natives are “restless.”
RE: Yuri Bezmenov
I read somewhere he died in Canada years ago. I don’t remember where I saw it, but I do know I did a Google search on him after watching one of his videos. The answer is probably on the first page of hits.
American Marxism is the source of our “political instability;” the term should be re-labeled “Marxist Class Struggle.”
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.” Karl Marx
“The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property… In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.” Karl Marx
“The proletariat (non-disabled poor) will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie (middle class), to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property… You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.” Karl Marx
“In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time…. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions…We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working (non-working – Marx was a liar) class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy (use class struggle and the principle of democracy to defeat a Constitutional Republic.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Batman /6 “Secularist elites to the left of us, fanatic Islamists to the right of us; into the valley of the 21st century rode our civilization.”
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me…”
http://www.rwf2000.com/2000/23pslm.htm
“(…Marx was a liar)”
methinks marx was a bit more toxic
than your average street corner 3 card monte player.
i also think efforts to uncover his sources of subsidy are useful.
I was relieved and grateful recently when other commenters posted descriptions of first, the generations-long efforts of COMINTERN to infiltrate and subvert Western countries, and next, Stalin’s decades-long campaign of murder and terror against the Kulaks (middle-class land-owning farmer-merchants) in Ukraine during the 20′s and 30′s.
Part of the reason people are so incapable of believing – and therefor incapable of PERCEIVING – the evil of the incumbent revolutionaries-parading-as-conventional-Americans is that they have been so effectively and persistently propagandized to regard Communism and Socialism as intrinsically benign.
About 1970 a book published about that time was getting a lot of discussion: “Why Johnny Can’t Read.” It examined the decline in reading skills that seemed directly proportional to the trendy experimental methods of teaching reading that had been flashing through the public school systems like a flame front through a flour mill. The experiments abandoning traditional phonetics that had worked for a century were being pushed by the vanguard of the leftist iconoclasts emerging locust-like from the teaching mills in the inflamed 1960′s.
Up the Administration.
Up the Establishment.
The Streets are for the PEOPLE.
Make Love Not War.
Tune in, Turn On, Drop OUT.
What a bunch of hedonistic stupes they turned out to be. And now the aging hippies turn up in division strength in their Birkenstocks and tie-died Tees at PBS fund-raising events, where they pay as much for valet parking for their Escalades and Navigators, as they do for their yearly contribution to the World Wildlife Fund or PETA.
In the late 60′s I finished high school without ever seeing a marijuana cigaret.
Ten years later, kids in elementary school were drinking, asphyxiating themselves in glue-filled plastic bags, smoking dope, eating LSD, mescaline and psilocybin, stealing ‘ludes and Percocet from their grandmothers, and giving each other blow jobs in trade when they couldn’t score their own drugs.
Progress?
In the 40 years since the radicals began screwing things up in education, we’ve now graduated at least three full generations of high school diplomates who can’t logic their way out of an open toilet stall. They can’t write a sentence with subject-verb agreement, much less a coherent paragraph or essay.
I’ve seen managers at fast-food restaurants at their wit’s end when a teenager at the register can’t deal with a customer who gives them a fiver and 63 cents for a $1.63 purchase, expecting to get four ones back.
No wonder these dunces think Obama is a great fellow.
Ripe for the CON.
“methinks marx was a bit more toxic than your average street corner 3 card monte player.”
“I long to take vengeance on the One Who rules from above.” Karl Marx
“And still, you personified mankind (the ordinary middle class individual), I may take you by the power of my mighty hands (the Marxist State) and crush with fierce force. In the meantime, as the abyss gapes before me and you in the darkness, You will fall in it and I’ll follow you, Laughing and whispering into your ear: “Come down with me, friend!” Karl Marx
http://www.forerunner.com/predvestnik/X0013_Karl_Marx.html
#38 Whiskey – What do you mean “…not culturally American?”
That sounds weird to me. Large parts of Obama’s profile fit large sections of biographies of a dozen friends of mine. Including myself, the white father of a black son and a whole bunch of black teenage foster boys to boot.
About 2000 miles back I got the point that you don’t like Obama, that you think he is a liar, a communist, a closet Muslim, an African Big-man wannabe. Does it make any difference at all that Obama came out as a professing Christian? It’s on video – Youtube somewhere, you can see for yourself. As some kind of Christian myself, I don’t want to come out raging, calling him a liar; I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt. Who am I to pounce upon his confession of faith?
I think you go too far afield in your search for Obama defects and inauthenticities.The hints of conspiracy that you detect in every facet of his personality are just everyday traits of most big-shot politicians. Conspiracy? How about the whole John Edwards-as-decent-family-man-media/political package fobbed off on the electorate from 2003 until what — December 2008? The whole democrat machine knew what a lous the guy was, the media knew, his campaign handlers knew and yet they fluffed him to the public as some kind of capable dude. Think of the hollowness nof John Kerry holding hands with Edwards across stage after stage in America knowing that the guy hs the psychology of a Norway rat? Conspiracy? No, we’ve got real-live institutional melt-down going on before our eyes.
I think Obama offers up his weakness from his very mouth; his off-the-cuff, grab moments, perhaps unguarded reveal his orientation more than wide ranging conspiracy speculation.
I believe it would be more accurate to state that Obama does not adhere to the values of America as expressed in our Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution; in this regard he is un-American. I believe Obama adheres to the totalitarian values of Marx and/or Mohammad – no difference from the point of view of a serf.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/09/spreading_the_smear_that_obama.html
Das, it must be excruciating for you to see ”race” rising back up out of the swamp. I hear you –i know we were on the high road not long ago –and can get back on it. i don’t mean belmont –i mean the culture. it just could not be any worse that we have our first marxist revolutionary president and our first AA president in the same person. I blame the billionare club for fiendish manipulation.
#64 Hey Buddy, mostly re: race Not sure, race is usually swampy in America; mostly I see incongruities: church is quite important to working class/middle blacks but democrats and the left never tease them about it. I go on field trips with my son (10) and his mostly black school class; I see no difference between him and white kids the same age except his and his classmates skin is darker. The segregation seems odd and somewhat white-induced, especially here in super liberal Seattle where liberal citizens cannot praise and compliment themselves enough on their multicultural superiority. I do chuckle when white conservatives go on about how much better things were in the past – you NEVER hear any black folks talking about how great 1965 and the generalized past was…
das, race is a problem where it’s made into one, and where it’s not, it ain’t. seems so simple, don’t it.
Buddy, have you read Shelby Steele on O? Can’t recommend highly enough…
Teresita @ 26:
I actually vigorously and vehemently disagree with Scott Brown re: abortion being “a settled issue.” If anything Roe v Wade inflamed the issue exponentially by cramming it down the throats of the American public by a non-legislative, non-publicly-deliberated process via a decision made be a handful of unelected public officials. If Brown believes that same-sex marriage ought to be decided by the states (ideally, by either legislatures, public referendum or state constitutional amendments depending on each state’s allowances for process, and NOT by the courts), then I think he’s inconsistent in giving Roe v Wade a thumbs-up for the way in which it was decided, regardless of what he thinks of the decision itself.
I happen to think both the process and the decision itself are appalling, and that we are reaping the social, economic & spiritual whirlwinds of that SCOTUS power grab in ways that most people do not even begin to reckon. (For starters, think about how much having 45+ million Americans under age 45 already in and about to enter the workforce, and paying taxes, would have on the terribly inbalanced payee-to-recipient ratio of Social Security, Medicare, etc. The Boomers really screwed themselves [and the rest of us] there, if you ask me. But I won’t continue belabor the issue any more than I already have.)
LOTM @ 45:
I probably didn’t make myself very clear, which wouldn’t be the first time that has happened.
What I object to re: Armey’s advice to GOP Congressman is that NOTHING he said appears to indicate that he or his audience of GOP pols truly grasps the extent to which the Tea Partiers have been and are continuing to become radicalized. When I say radicalized I mean the “to-the-root” nature of ordinary citizen-voters’ views on how the current system needs to be overhauled and returned to Constitutional boundaries and practices. When a million people, a significant proportion of whom have never engaged in political protest before, march on DC … do they understand that this means something, and that this “something” is not business as usual?
When I stated before that the political status quo in Washington is over, I didn’t mean it is that way because the Tea Partiers are making it so, I meant it’s because reality is making it so. For all the reasons commenters on BC have been enumerating lo these many months — out of design margin, etc.
The DC system has been specifically engineered to protect and further entrench the power of those inside the system. It has become not only sclerotic and unresponsive to the needs of ordinary taxpaying citizens, it has become actively destructive of the jobs, property and political voice of these citizens.
The ways in which the political system has been engineered by the insiders for the insiders are many, but I will choose a few representative examples:
1) Gerrymandering, done specifically to create “safe seats” for the incumbent and his/her party
2) Election laws, which have been constructed to create an impenetrable jungle of impossible hurdles hindering newcomers, while BASIC things like the integrity of the ballot go ignored
3) The triangle trade of Lobbyist Cash to Campaign Contribution to Congressional Earmark (where a $100,000 contribution can become a $50million contract — nice ROI that!), essentially legalized bribery and influence peddling
The percentage of Republicans who engage in the above is overwhelming. You could count on the fingers of one hand the number of GOP Congress people who do not practice earmarking.
Dick Armey was telling the Republican pols to tell Republican voters, “We’re not the ones who broke your hearts” with the breaking of the promises contained in 1994’s Contract for America … but who does he think he’s kidding? Percentage-wise, how many of today’s Republican senators are the same people who were there ten years ago?
Armey’s advice to “meet” and “talk” and “listen” appears, to this voter and taxpayer, to be following the paradigm of addressing voter anger by tinkering around the edges of the existing system without any fundamental change of the system. That is not what the Tea Partiers are interested in. Talk is cheap. To cop a phrase from Dr. Phil, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. What have the vast majority of the current crop of GOP politicians in Washington shown us by their behavior? That they are in it for themselves and their cronies, at the expense of the rest of us.
If there is a lesson about Scott Brown’s election (and let’s hope that there is), it is not that Scott Brown is Mr. Wonderful … it is that We the People spoke. We the People, not the system insiders, are the ones who sent you to Washington and we can damn well recall you if you start smelling like you have become part of the cesspool. Remember who you work for.
Does Scott Brown get this? Do the rest of them?
We’ll see.
“A very smart man once said, “Telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won’t do.” That man was Barack Obama, and that attitude is one reason he got elected. He should stick to that position, and the American people should embrace it.”
Wow. I couldn’t agree with Quindlin more, perhaps for the first time ever: Obama was elected because he told people what they wanted to hear-a lot of nonsense and lies. He should resign in shame.
Now let me see… the ‘world,’ a lot of tyrants (e.g. China) and wanna-be tyrants (EUrabia) think the US is unstable. Gales of riotous laughter. Let’s not review the last 100 years of the world’s political judgment. There are too many corpses to count. Stability, stasis, is not a virtue in any political or moral framework I’d agree to.
Das,
Under Marxism the “aggrieved” class, with the aid of an all-powerful Marxist government, turns the table on the “privileged” class – the classes change places. In Marx’s day the aggrieved class was called the proletariat and the privileged class was called bourgeois. Now the aggrieved class are the Blacks, Gays, Muslims, etc. (any minority group will do), and the so-called privileged class are the remaining ordinary Americans. In Marx’s day the proletariat really did have a beef with the bourgeois because the system was Fascist in structure – where government power favored the Monarchy-associated in crowd; but we don’t have a Fascist system here which places the White race superior before law to the Blacks. No, what we have is Marxism where the tables have been turned and the Blacks (new proletariat) are superior before law to Whites; i.e.: affirmative action, un-Declarational taxation of the middle class, un-Constitutional redistributive social programs, etc. – Black political and cultural supremacy – via Marxism. The end result is a self-serving Marxist ruling class which robs the American middle class while enriching themselves and tossing out leftovers (property redistribution) to the new proletariat – and they call it “social justice.”
The Marxist system is the road to both serfdom and tyranny; serfdom because the work ethic is destroyed in the middle class as they become exhausted through excessive taxation of their labor while the proletariat class remains in serfdom because there is no need for them to labor – they can live off the labor of others; tyranny because the whole Marxist system is based on inequality before law and selective destruction of God-given rights to liberty and property. Marx wanted the abolition of the individual and his/her private property – and the establishment of class distinction.
I want the abolition of classes and the re-establishment equality before the law for all people – as individuals.
Americans don’t realize that American Marxism is alive – they are using a variation of Marxist class struggle tailored to our day and time, and to our country as opposed to Russia. So far the American Marxists are winning – they have gained power through un-Declarational excessive taxation of the middle class (infringing on their God-given right to property earned through labor – their creative pursuit of happiness) and un-Constitutional redistribution to the American proletariat classes (Property redistribution via Social programs is not an innumerated Federal power in our Constitution).
“The proletariat (Blacks, Gays, Muslims…) will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie (White middle class), to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state (Federal Government)… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property… You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the (White) middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.” Karl Marx
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
“Now, in the United States bourgeois society is still far too immature for the class struggle to be made perceptible and comprehensible…” Karl Marx
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05.htm
Karl Marx wrote his thoughts about the United States in 1852, but it is now 2010, and the American Marxists have decided that the United States is now ready for Marxist class struggle – you are in it. Do not underestimate the power of Marxism. Marxism can only be defeated by limiting Federal taxation to 10% so that Federal government does not get more than God – so that government does not become a Marxist god. We must amend our Constitution to that effect, along with a balanced budget – starve the American Marxists by keeping your own property – the property for which you labored.
The “social justice” and “equality” rhetoric of the American Marxist is a temporary phenomenon. Once the American middle class is taxed into serfdom there will be only two classes remaining: The oligarchic Marxist ruling class (which never “withers away”) and the great mass of proletarians. At that point there will be no more need for Marxist internal “class struggle” and the rhetoric of “social justice” and “equality;” the Priests of Power will have us by the balls – both economically and legally (but not morally). The American Marxist ruling class will then require external wars of aggression to justify their oligarchic hold on power. Our current proletariat class thinks that money and property grows on trees, an idea planted into their heads by our emerging Marxist ruling class; in truth (as anyone with intelligence knows, but neutralizes with an act of Orwellian Doublethink) the property they both crave comes from the laboring and creative American middle class with its vanguard of entrepreneurs. Our current proletariat class is living on borrowed time, and so is the American middle class which should be re-named the American proto-proletariat class. The downward slope has been gentle; soft under foot, with no visible road signs ahead – the Manifesto is held close to their vests.
SR/71; the Manifesto is held close to their vests
This is so tiny it trivializes that enormous truth, but –well, it’s a ‘tell’ that sticks in my mind: take a look at the two staffers between 1:10 and 1:30
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Das/67; Nosir –i’m a fan of Steele but haven’t read his O take –will do, tho, now you say.
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Storm-Rider, 70 & 71, compliments –that’s good stuff –tight and to the point –
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BW/68; not to mark self as nutter, but so what –i sometimes wonder how on earth America could possibly see the way forward, through the shadows of those forty-million empty spaces wandering the psychic landscape wondering what might have been.
***
tying together the marxist overlords and ‘race’, whatever else Planned Parenthood may be doing, one thing it does (see where it does its predominant ‘work’) is to bias the marxist-overlord’s base camps –the urban ghettos –toward population-stable numbers. i guess for the command & control.
buddy, 72
The “social justice” and “equality” rhetoric of Socialism (Marxism) is a lie. Marxists are a force for totalitarian evil in this world – they are in it for themselves – they are greedy for our property (and the political power derived from other people’s property) while always accusing the ordinary middle class individual of being greedy – “greedy” for their own property for which they labored. Under Marxism there is no social justice – only the injustice of liberty and property destroying totalitarian government power – unjust government power derived without the consent of the governed (the middle class). Marxists constantly harp on about “equality” (of property) – the “gap between the rich and the poor.” Marxists never tell you that they close the gap by robbing the middle class – placing them inferior before the law and the proletariat class superior before the law – inequality before the law. Sorry, real injustice (inequality before the law) cannot end well – it will only lead to equality in serfdom for the proletariat and the middle class combined into homogenous serfdom – loomed over by a Marxist ruling class of not-to-be-equalized equalizers. Marxist “equality” is a massive lie – the Marxist ruling class will be an Oligarchy – far unequal (superior) to the masses of serfs.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guides/Z-Social%20Justice-Code%20for%20Communism.htm
“It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called “abolition of private property” (Communist Manifesto)… meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before… In the years following the Revolution it (The Socialist Party of Oceania) was able to step into this commanding position almost un-opposed because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization… It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated (through Marxist class struggle) Socialism must follow; and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them; and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc (Socialist Principles of Oceania), which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result; foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.” George Orwell – 1984
What do you suppose follows the Marxist class struggle phase? George Orwell provides the answer – he was familiar with nations where Marxist class struggle came to an end – you know – the triumph of “social justice.”
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others…We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we’re doing… Power is not a means, it is an end… The object of power is power… Always there will be the intoxication of power… We are the priests of power… Power is power over human beings, over the body; but above all over the mind… The real power; the power we have to fight for night and day is not power over things but over men. How does one man assert his power over another… by making him suffer… Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing… We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back…Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling; everything will be dead inside you… You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.” George Orwell – 1984
big questions; why are all the busted states the deep blue states, and why are most of the deep blue states busted? Why after 2.5 generations of Great Society programs the urban ghettos –which were part of the American growth story in the early 1960s –now ‘failed enclaves’ with 70% of newborns to unwed teen mothers and over half of every high scool class dropping out (and from luridly dumbed-down government high schools), gang-owned streets and dope as the only healthy industry? What does this have in common with the Palestinians, now three generations on UN relief, in 60 year-old refugee camps –and blaming it on ‘standoffish’ neighbors? Why wouldn’t ANY neighbor anywhere on earth ‘stand off’ from such a social Dr. Mengele experiment ?
Now the big question, HOW have the marxist overlords, from Teddy Kennedy to the UN palestine-relief industry, gotten away with it ?
Gotten away with leveraging the ‘toward better lives for all’ tithe of citizens into armies of victims politically bound to never name the monster at the bottom of the abyss?
(hint –one answer begins with fabulous do-gooders Woodrow Wilson, Roscoe Pound, and Walter Lippman)
Storm-rider, I get a strong whiff of racial fire-stoking in your New Marx-for-Dummies post – sorry, it ain’t for me, I’ll pass…
SR/73; yes, ‘greed’ is always the feature of the person who wants to own his own life, and never a trait of those actively trying to wrest it away from him.
the desire for low taxation –it must be ‘greed’ (we slaver to buy more baubles) because it couldn’t be the philosophical desire to stop feeding the monster before it grows too strong and strangles the nation.
74 Buddy
I couldn’t phrase an answer (even if I knew) to match your succinct questions: I think Steele really nails it with his propositions about White Guilt that has driven the intellectual/political/media/academic classes since the Great Society – don’t have time just now to summarize but he puts forward very workable models that show a way out for both white and black…
Das/77; “…very workable models that show a way out for both white and black….” would be welcome indeed. i’m Alabama-born, Louisiana-bred, and Texan all my adult life, and at least in the deep south, good things were happening–the man who came to dinner was happening –then something rose up and slapped it all down –suddenly it was ‘come to dinner, my ass’ on all sides. it all turned into glass. Qui Bono? –one must ask –
OTOH, PoMo wrecks everything else on the psychological front, so why not ‘race’ too?
Das,75
I don’t give a damn about skin color; I’m stoking a fire for the evil of Marxism. Karl Marx said all men are not created equal before the law – some based on class (or skin color) are more equal than others. Equality before the law (regardless of class or skin color) is the only natural equality – and justice. Marxist “equality” of property can only occur with unnatural and unjust inequality before the law between the middle class and proletariat class – and an even greater inequality before law (and property) between the newly homogenized serfs and themselves – the Marxist ruling class.
“OTOH, PoMo wrecks everything else on the psychological front, so why not ‘race’ too?”
I agree.
Buddy – we’re getting a bit far afield from the thread and into one of THE big interesting and problematic areas of American life; I do have some thoughts from the statistically small view of interracial observation, etc – if you’d like to persue further why don’t you (or any other BCer interested in this)drop me an email over at clawsmoke–AT–yahoo.com (no dashes of course) and I can redirect you from there — thanks — D.
Das,75
Your idea for a new book called “Marxism for Dummies” is a great one; I believe it would be a hot item – and a needed one.
79 – Storm,
OK – let;s agree to set the racial stuff aside. But I still don’t see why standing Marxist terminology on its head describes contemporary America. We just spent 40 years pounding a real evil marxist experiment into the dirt – so it really irks me when you say that WE are such a marxist society. We are, in fact, NOT a Marxist experiment; yes, affirmative action exists but voters in some states have voted it out of the university system; yes, transfer payments do exist but are they really such a big part of our economy? (I’m not saying I am for or against them, I’m just asking) – I don’t think the marxist model works atany level that you describe. We’ve got an 11 trillion dollar economy (and lots of debt) but we are free men and women in a free country – yes government is irritating but I don’t see anything holding anyone in America back from anything….
Storm-Rider:
Race Marxists come in two basic varieties. One champions an aggrieved class of the “blacks, gays, Muslims, et cetera” against a privileged class of the “white middle class” and the other champions an aggrieved class of the “white middle class” against a privileged class of the “blacks, gays, Muslims, et cetera”.
We need to celebrate freedom. The present racial classification system is just plain wrong. Racial classification must be “fill in the blank”, not “multiple choice”. People ought to have the freedom to claim one or more races for one’s self or not claiming any race at all. We should reclaim the freedom of association.
I believe in individual rights, yet these must be balanced by the social necessity of freedom. One of the reasons we have this onerous machinery of apartheid called “affirmative action” is because of America’s long history as a “tyranny of the majority” by “White Protestants”. Racial preferences are wrong. The problem with removing them is that it becomes politically impossible to stop racial preferences when any attempt to end them becomes a means to tell those who aren’t “white middle class” that they aren’t welcome.
Barack Obama has historically called for reparations for slavery. I utterly oppose any and all ex post facto laws, and calls for slavery reparations are morally repugnant. However, there is actually a strong case for reparations for historically disparate appropriations to historically black colleges and universities between 1865 and 1965. In exchange for a state-federal compact with these institutions to compensate them for state and federal negligence in living up to the doctrine of “separate but equal”, all references to race in our federal laws (especially hated preferences on the basis of race) must come to an end.
Public businesses and colleges ought to be seen as “common carriers”. Although people naturally segregate themselves according to their common interests, such segregation must be never be coercive. When segregation becomes state-sanctioned or a substantial abridgement of the personal freedoms or economic opportunities of others (such as commercial, residential, and educational segregation in previous eras), then segregation becomes inherently coercive.
The constitutionally guaranteed freedom of association must not become a license to tyrannize others.
Das, 82
No, I can’t agree with you; The United States has become an experiment in Marxism – just not in the same way as occurred in the Soviet Union – not yet anyway – the Kulaks (middle class) haven’t been sent to gulags – not yet anyway. The individual’s right to property is a natural God-given right because property is the fruit of labor, and labor is an expression of God-given human creativity. The individual’s natural right to property is the individual’s natural right to own himself – self ownership. Marxism is government ownership of the individual’s creative labor and the property thereby derived – government ownership of the individual. When individuals resist Federal Government theft of their property (taxation >10%) there is hell to pay – IRS audits – criminal prosecution – prison. We are well down the path to Marxism, but you can call it by another name if you wish – maybe Statist – no difference from the point of view of the ordinary individual. God gets 10% (education and social programs for the disabled poor); our Federal Government should not get more than God – with its current levels of taxation (and money creation) Federal Government is becoming a false god.
You say we are free men and women in a free country and that nothing is holding anyone in America back from anything. This is not true because slaves are not free – the middle class is being held back – middle class individuals are slaves when government excessively taxes away their labored-for property, and prosecutes for resisting – government ownership of the individual. This is why the middle class natives are restless – they want to own themselves – they want to be free.
Total Federal Spending is approximately 3 Trillion dollars:
Social Security – 21%
Medicare – 13%
Medicaid – 7%
Welfare – 12%
HHS – 2%
Dept. of Education – 2%
HUD – 1%
Interest on the National Debt (due to the above redistribution of property) – 8.5%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fy2009spendingbycategory2.png
Un-Constitutional social programs (and the debt there from) comprise 2/3 of our budget – 2 Trillion dollars per year. All of these government programs, according to our Bill of Rights (tenth amendment) fall to the States – or to the people. Each State can decide whether or not to run social programs, and if so how to manage them – and how to give individuals an opt-out through tax breaks.
America’s gross national product is 14 Trillion dollars; so our Federal Government taxes at an overall rate of 21.4%, but this revenue comes from the top 60% (the taxpayers) which renders their tax rate 36%. Add in State taxes, sales taxes and property taxes; and the taxpayer is up to 50% – half a slave to Marxist government. No American should pay more than 10% in Federal taxes, no more than 10% in State and local taxes (including property tax). Throw in 10% for God, and the total comes to 30% – the individual should keep 70% of his property – 70% of his labor – 70% of himself – so he won’t become a slave to self-serving (Marxist) government – or to self-serving Monarchy (King George III).
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=american+gdp
http://ohnoanotherconservativeblog.com/2009/02/03/tax-freedom-day.aspx
Another way to look at it. This is a year or so out of date, but that doesn’t harm the trendlines, and the charts are unique and visual. well i guess visual is the whole point of chart but don’t mind the old fool blabbering on the doorstep, just walk on in and have a look –
Storm, You’re going to have to do better than that to convince me that I am a Marx-whipped slave in America, year of Our Lord, 2010. Examples of slavery abound, examples of Marxist tyranny abound; in every case they outstrip anything happening in contemporary America by way of analogy.
Near as I can tell I am a free man living in the freest country on earth…sorry but it is up to you to show me otherwise. I would ask you to save yourself the trouble.
Das,86
You are not the issue; the 250 million Americans in the middle class are the issue. For all I know you are a member of the emerging Marxist ruling class – they remain free because they make the law (Marxist “Living Constitution”) and are thereby above the law. Man it’s great to be free – above the maddening crowd of little people.
http://www.oftheeising1776.com/thenewrulingclass
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/nyt_david_brooks_intellectuals.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/the_new_ruling_class.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/10/the_rise_of_the_new_aristocrac.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/10/academic_elitists_want_more_of.html
Alexis, 83
Race Marxism is tyranny of the minority in collusion with government, whereas race Fascism is tyranny of the majority in collusion with government. Class struggle is present in both Marxism and Fascism – each erecting a self-serving ruling class, and the ordinary individual is suppressed by both.
“Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand… You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
“The day of individual happiness has passed.” Adolph Hitler
“It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole … that above all the unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual… By this we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices for the community…” Adolph Hitler
“For Liberalism the individual is the end and society the means… For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends.” Alfredo Rocco
http://www.peikoff.com/lr/chapter1.htm
Das,82: “it really irks me when you say that WE are such a marxist society. We are, in fact, NOT a Marxist experiment”
Well, we are now headed toward European style Socialism, i.e.: Marxism; that is what irks me. Some courageous, in-the-know Europeans have noticed their descent into Marxism – and they are more than irked – they see European Totalitarianism – again – raising its head.
“The former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy, who has warned that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union, thinks that while the West won the Cold War in a military sense, we lost it in the context of ideas: “Communism might have been dead, but the communists remained in power in most of the former Warsaw bloc countries, while their Western collaborators came to power all over the world (in Europe in particular). This is nothing short of a miracle: the defeat of the Nazis in 1945 quite logically brought a shift to the Left in world politics, while a defeat of communism in 1991 brought again a shift to the Left, this time quite illogically. Bukovksy is right: We never had a thorough de-Marxification process after the Cold War, similar to the de-Nazification after WW2, and we are now paying the price for this. Many Marxist ideas have been allowed to endure and mutate, such as the notion that culture is unimportant or that it is OK to stage massive social experiments on hundreds of millions of people… Marxist ideals of forced equality can only be enforced by a government with totalitarian powers, and will thus inevitably lead to a totalitarian society. There is no “enlightened Marxism,” and the idea that there is has ruined more lives than probably and other ideology in modern history. Marxism is an organized crime against humanity.” Fjordman
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2125/print
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/865
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2008/0201.html
“The Cold War Never ended”
(more)
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/main.html
The Cold War Never Ended – Marxism is Alive. Marxism is in the United States because “Cultural Exchange” Works Both Ways – The European Cancer of Marxism has metastasized to America:
“In a bizarre 1984 book (New Lies for Old), ex-KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn predicted the liberalization of the Soviet Bloc and claimed that it would be a strategic deception… There is other evidence that corroborates Golitsyn’s thesis. In his 1982 book We Will Bury You, Czech defector Jan Sejna also claimed the Berlin Wall would be torn down and the Warsaw Pact dissolved for reasons of deception [15]. Additionally, there are the 1992 and 2005 Mitrokhin Archives. More recently, weird 25-year-old videos of another KGB defector detailing a decades-long process of purposeful U.S. demoralization by Soviet intelligence services have appeared on You Tube.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/did_communism_fake_its_own_dea.html
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2307456730142665916#
“A second reason for the Communists’ alignment with the Democratic Party is that the Communist Party still lacks a “mass-political organization” in the United States able to achieve their radical ends and the Democratic Party provides a springboard from which to instigate these policies. Democrats may take offense at this assertion, but to do so they will have to counter the remarks of James Steele, Communist Party USA Legislative Director in the eighties. He said, “In the absence of a mass-based third party, it is possible and necessary for the people’s movement to make use of the Democratic Party in the struggle for reforms….” He then went on to suggest that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party was growing in importance and would eventually drive the party, signaling hope for his plan. Even a cursory glance at the recent policies of the present Democratic leadership make Steele’s declaration prophetic. Forget the term “progressive”; the Democratic Party has become the party of Lenin.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/the_perestroika_deception.html
Marxism metastasized to the United States soon after the Russian Communist Revolution in 1917. By the 30′s there were Communists in American Government – the Democrat Party has become the Party of Marx – and most ordinary Democrat voters are completely oblivious.
“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom. So it was that a revolution took place within the form. Like the hagfish, the New Deal entered the old form and devoured its meaning from within. The revolutionaries were inside; the defenders were outside. A government that had been supported by the people and so controlled by the people became one that supported the people and so controlled them… For a significant illustration of what has happened to words, of the double meaning that inhabits them, put in contrast what the New Deal means when it speaks of preserving the American system of free private enterprise and what American business means when it speaks of defending it. To the New Deal these words, the American system of free private enterprise, stand for a conquered province. To the businessman the same words stand for a world that is in danger and may have to be defended….You do not defend a world that is already lost. When was it lost? That you cannot say precisely. It is a point for the revolutionary historian to ponder. We know only that it was surrendered peacefully, without a struggle, almost unawares. There was no day, no hour, no celebration of the event; and yet definitely, the ultimate power of initiative did pass from the hands of private enterprise to government. There it is and there it will remain until, if ever, it shall be reconquered. Certainly government will never surrender without a struggle.” Garet Garrett
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/garrett1.html
We are in the early stage of a new American Civil War – it will be Marx and his followers (foreign and domestic) vs. Jefferson and his followers. I pledge my life to defending the American Revolution – remember Jefferson’s words: “I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Just to make things clear, I’m praying that American Marxism can be defeated peacefully – through education and a Constitutional amendment:
1. Term limits for Congress and Supreme Court
2. Revision of the 16th amendment – limiting Federal taxation to 10%
3. Balanced budget requirement
4. Congressional 2/3 override over the Supreme Court – just as Congress has 2/3 override for Presidential vetoes
5. Repeal the 17th amendment
In the meantime States should enforce the 10th amendment by incremental takeover of all un-Constitutional Federal social programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Education – all of these government powers fall to the States under the 10th amendment. Federal social and education programs are not only un-Constitutional, they are the tools of Marxist class struggle which in the end brings Marxist Oligarchy.
Should the Marxists win the legal struggle with their “Living Constitution,” the Declaration of Independence will become the fall back position – the final defensive redoubt of the American Revolution. Never forget: The American Declaration of Independence is an eternal declaration of War “against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
(thousands of itty bitty straws in the wind)
“Did you notice that [S Carolina Gov's wife] Jenny Sanford’s former boss at Lazard Freres was Steven Rattner. As in Steven Rattner, Obama’s former Car Czar. What an interesting coincidence.” It’s a small world among the political elite.
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/93051/ (my emph)
(big huge things too big to notice)
As a thought experiment, now that we are ruefully catching on to big, shamelessly, unbelievably bold conspiracies such as AGW and Cap n Trade, ObamaCare, and so forth, let’s throw out ALL big events as possibly contrived, manipulated, or staged, and instead simply follow the money, energy, and movement (thematically akin to ‘case law’ infiltration of ‘originalism’, the distinction is between ‘proximate’ and ‘underlying’ –which for the example means that when power wants an effect, it can create or control a proximate cause where it cannot easily alter an underlying condition).
So, okay, that was way too much qualification for such a short (albeit subversive) thought, but note that FDR entered WWII only after Hitler revoked his alliance with Stalin.
If the Dems go through with their Marxist rape fantasy it will end the same way it did in Italy… with the lot of them hanging from lamp posts.
The American people understand that they are being bribed with their own money to give up their birthright and they are appalled. They understand that the only way the government can reallocate assets is by force and they are smart enough to know when they are being threatened. States are already passing laws to inoculate themselves from the proposed health care mandates and the people have peacefully assembled to let the government know that it risks losing the consent of the governed.
The Republic and the Constitution will be restored — or at least maintained in their current crippled condition. The only thing the Dems are deciding now is whether it will be done peacefully.
BTW, I think it is telling that comments aren’t allowed in response to Friedman’s articles. The only way the media can remain as purblind as they are is by carefully insulating themselves from the truth. They go to extreme lengths to maintain their fantasy of being the great and the good.