A Very Interesting Next Three Years
Up is Now Down, Down Up
If one were to collate the public statements and actions of many in the Obama administration, one would conclude that the most conciliatory past language masks the most divisive, polarizing administration in recent history — a fact born out by most polls. Surely this is one of the most radical turnabouts in memory: in a mere ten months the mellifluous voice has become a siren that charms and hypnotizes the voters as they are lured onto the partisan shoals.
Progressive powerhouses?
There is a strange fascination with strongmen of history, particularly mass murderers and mass enslavers like Mao and Julius Caesar. That may explain the effort to deify Obama in such Olympian terms — the “speech” at the Prussian triumphalist Victory Column in Berlin, the faux classical temple backdrops at the convention, the Latin motto vero possumus, this is our moment when the seas recede and the planet shall cool, or the appellation by journalists and rock stars (Sting is the latest) that Obama is some sort of “god.”
Good or bad and nothing in between
The Obama world appears divided in Manichean terms, between good and evil, the anointed and the reactionary Neanderthals. The evil doers include doctors who cut out tonsils only for profit, greedy insurance companies that jack up health care costs, the heartless Chamber of Commerce, the Mob/astro-turf/nazi-like town-hallers and tea-partiers, the “stupidly” stereotyping police, the “do what they’re told” and “asshole” Republicans, and the fake news outlets like Fox News and the demonic Rush Limbaugh. Let us put their pictures on the screen and scream out two-minutes of hate at these illiberal enemies of the people for their harming millions without health care.
On the other side is the saintly White House advisor Valerie Jarrett who “speaks truth to power,” the now martyred real truther Van Jones, the framed ACORN, the legions of purple-T-shirted SEIU unionizers (as I said, they even wear these to work in California, as I can attest from a recent visit to the DMV where there was a sea of purple on the other side of the windows), and the sober and judicious like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who suffer so much for the oppressed
There is an Animal Farm taste to this administration: on the barn wall there are plenty of “thou shall not” rules — Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, Predators, Patriot Act — that are crossed through and now rewritten as “thou shall sometimes.”… Taxes are good for us, but bad for the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee or the Secretary of the Treasury. Campaign financing laws, C-Span-aired health-care debates, and no-lobbyist rules are essential for the republic — sorta, kinda, maybe .
FDR did it!
The more the talk of togetherness, hope and change, and healing, the more the daggers come out: it has been ten months and still Bush is blamed daily by the President for all his assorted ills. Imagine had a Harry Truman every day lamented, “Damn that FDR—he left me with WWII, the bomb decision, a traitorous Stalin, a Europe to be rebuilt, a Korean powder keg, a worldwide communist ascendancy, Greece and Turkey about lost, and colossal debts — and I’ve got to hit the reset button on him every day.”
What is there about dissent that drives the Obamians crazy? He goes after Fox. He whines about Rush Limbaugh. The town hallers are the mob. He provides Sean Hannity with his pre-show sound bites. His team ponders handing out NEA grants on the basis of being a toady. School girls sing his praises. What is next? Green “yes, we can” scarves and tiny little Audacity of Hope books to wave at rallies?
We’ve only just begun
Remember, all these are just the preliminaries. The Bush tax cuts have not yet expired, but will soon. Inheritance taxes will soon skyrocket. The promised end to the FICA caps on the “wealthy” is coming — along with surcharges on energy and health care. For some, that could easily mean a combined 20% hike in FICA and income taxes, tacked onto state tax hikes, not to mention more property, sales, and local taxes. Given that Obama got 56% of the vote of those who make over $200,000 it should, well, be interesting. (e.g., “Surely, Buffy, Barack didn’t mean us, did he?) Then there is the 2,000 page health care bill that your family doctor will have to sort out.
Which thug abroad will first draw the sword?
In about 18 months, the tab also comes due on the apologies and “reset” button lectures. That’s when an Ahmadinejad, Assad, Chavez, or Putin decides to see what might happen should anyone seek some readjustments in the regional order. If China sends missiles over Taiwan, if North Korea does the same over South Korea, if India says “enough is enough” and decides to unload on Pakistan (or along the Chinese disputed border), if Putin moves on Georgia or the Ukraine, if Iran boasts it just got the bomb, if some Islamists, trained in Waziristan, take out a few hundred at a U.S. mall, if Chavez carves out a little of Colombia, if Turkey readjusts the Cyprus borders, or does a little more overflying in the Aegean, what would the laureate Obama do? UN resolutions? Lectures? NATO is outdated anyway shrugs? Bush did it? Apologies on spec?
Free the Guantanamo 200 something…
After more releases, we soon expect about 200 left for the widely publicized trials of Guantanamo killers. Imagine: change of venue requests to Madison or Cambridge. Demands that juries have at least one or two Muslims for “diversity.” How many pro-bono ACLU, on the make radical lawyers can we expect each night lecturing to the cameras about all those evil CIA interrogators? Are we going to hear soldiers cross-examined about the conditions under which the poor detainees were originally apprehended: “Do you mean to say, major, that you did not read Mohamed Jabar his Miranda rights in the Hindu Kush?” “Am I to understand, colonel, that there is no video tape of your battlefield interrogation outside Kabul?” “Did I hear you correctly, private, that you shoved Mr. Sadr at Bagram, and made derogatory remarks about Arabs?” So it should be an interesting OJ-trial-like couple of years.
Secretary of What?
I’ve been following Hillary’s disastrous Pakistan trip: she seems nearly incoherent — sermonizing to the Pakistanis to do this or that, bragging that we Americans tax anything that moves and so should Pakistan, always blaming George Bush for all her challenges. (Her “Bush did it” spin is different from Obama’s: he blames Bush for leaving him hard decisions instead of vote-present easy ones; she does too, but adds that “her husband” had once upon a time done it right — nothing about the damage from Monica, the pardons, and the serial appeasement of the embassy bombings, the first World Trade Center attack, the USS Cole, etc. — but Bush then undermined their legacy.)
If Hillary were Sarah
What if you took everything Yale Law School Hillary has said abroad the last week and put it into the mouth of Idaho BA Sarah Palin?
The press would have gone ballistic about her ignorance of the Middle East, her sermonizing, her scapegoating, her factual errors, etc. (What is it about Palin that drives the elite, especially elite women, crazy? Great looks? That Middle-America accent? The 5 kids and he-man husband? The lack of a powerful father or spouse who could jump-start her “feminist” career with money, contacts, and influence? That Idaho BA? The wink? The charisma and, indeed, sensuality so lacking in her angry critics?)
An incredible shrinking Secretary of State
I used to think Obama, in brilliant fashion, had miniaturized Hillary—Bill as spouse of the Secretary of State now can’t get his mega-lecture fees from foreign dictators, Hillary is surrounded by regional czars in all the action places and has little avenue to show executive gravitas or exercise power, Obama’s primary rival is shackled in his administration jail rather than intriguing in the Senate as his polls dip below 50%.
But now? I think Obama instead thinks, “My God, she is more inexperienced than I am, and can’t be turned lose without some disaster ensuing”—ergo get me some czars in Afghanistan, North Korea, Iraq, Pakistan, etc to whom to carve up and outsource her job. What’s next? Tutorials with Ms. Albright? For the safety of the world, let us pray for no cackling during summits.
Triangulators
I think very soon the triangulating Republicans of 2008 will fold up and quietly distance themselves from Obama as his poll numbers stay around 50%. On almost every issue that they contrasted Obama favorably with Bush, Obama has bitten them: Bush deficits? Obama quadrupled them? Bush unemployment? It climbed to nearly 10% after trillions were borrowed and spent. Bush polarization? He never tried to politicize the NEA or give a nut like Van Jones or Anita Dunn free rein. Bush the too easy “decider”? His “let’s roll” snap decisions were no worse than Obama’s Hamlet indecision. Bush’s mangling of words? No worse again than mangling of basic facts. So much for supposedly rightist pundits being gaga over a Niebuhr-reading Obama.
Stay calm
All we can do in these times when up is down, down up, is to stay constant, forget polls, and remember the ancient ways. I keep Horace 1.22 close to me at all times these days, a long poem about the need to ignore the depressing world about; the first line:
Integer vitae scelerisque purus non eget Mauris iaculis neque arcu nec venenatis gravida sagittis…
He who is upright in his way of life and unstained by guilt, needs not Moorish darts nor bow nor quiver loaded with poisoned arrows …
Hi Victor. Good post but I always enjoy em. With your reference to healthcare surcharges, do you see the “mandate” passing this year. This is a direct assault on the indivdual and nothing could be farther from the Constitution, in my view. But I’m no scholar. I just know the basics i was taught in school. I find it unacceptable as, I think, do many others who are just starting to emerge, (see NY23).
What, you mean Like Pelosi’s father did?
Dear Sir,
You are a gem. Thank-you so much for your thoughtful and pithy prose. In these uncertain times, you deliver a refreshing evaluation of the “Insane Asylum-Inmates in Charge” aspect of our Federal Government.
Keep it up and keep on shining the bright light of truth on these people.
God Bless You!!
Very interesting article, Professor Hanson. My own suggestion is to set aside Horace for a while, get those Moorish darts and quiver of poisoned arrows (or the modern equivalent thereof), and hunker down.
I was noticing all those books on military history you have written that are advertised on the side of your site, and thinking to myself that the Battle of Könnegratz in 1866 was a very decisive battle. Not for its strategic importance in displaying Prussian superiority to Austrian arms, nor in clearing the road to Vienna for the Prussian army, nor in its use of whatever weapons the Prussians may have managed to get from the Union Army (like repeater rifles or machine guns), if they had managed to get any, of course.
No.
It was decisive in making Berlin the capital of German nationalism, creating the North German Confederation in 1867 (the skeleton upon which the German Empire was erected in 1871) and in pushing Vienna out of the centre of German nationalism.
This last action almost foreshadowed the creation of Austria-Hungary in 1867, and in this bi-furcated empire, Austrian Germans found themselves a minority, being shoved aside by pushy nationalities in their own Crown Lands – Poles, Czechs, Croatians, Slovenians and last but not least, Jews.
It was in this atmosphere that the ideas predicating Aryan racial superiority flourished and grew; while the Germans in their prosperous empire had no use for them, Austrian Germans, nervous about the surrounding minorities eating away at their power with every single local council election, and disgusted with their beautiful capital Vienna, being turned into a center of Jewish commerce and art, embraced these Aryan superiority theories as very real.
Thus, it is no coincidence that Adolf Hilter, who had joined up with the Bavarian army in WWI, was an Austrian. It was no coincidence that after Germany’s defeat in WWI, they (Germans) began to embrace the ideas of racial superiority also, becoming convinced of them when bankers in New York killed off the capital flowing into Germany by turning into Wall Street into a gambling casino – and losing the American economy in the process. The final straw that broke the back of German “democracy” was the collapse of the Austrian banking system in 1931.
All these events streamed from the day Berlin became the capital of German nationalism in 1866 on a battlefield in Austria.
The ideological desecendants of the barbarians who succeeded to power in Germany in 1933 because of these events are in power today all across the Arab world; and in many ways the folks behind Obama (and Bush) are descended from them as well. A “Fourth Reich” is being created in Europe as I type these words. Is Nick Griffin of the BNP the “coming man” Hitler spoke of in his dying days? One has to wonder.
Have a blessed Sunday.
What bugs them about Palin? How about all of the above?
Hillary? Please, it was made clear during the campaign that Bill had all the talent on that team. She’d never done anything of note… except Whitewater S&L.
There is no way out for Obama, now. He is captive to his politics. The realities of governing conflict with his politics. He cannot do the right thing without betraying his base and his own thinking. Every one of the coming situations will end badly.
Nuclear Iran? Sure bet. More Chavez idiocy? You betcha. Russian aggression? Duh. Unravelling in Iraq? Already happening. (Can’t pin it on Bush. That was on a silver freakin’ platter.) Continuing unemployment? Whaddayathink? Rising interest rates? Yah, sure.
He’ll dither on all of these. The answers fly in the face of his ideology, and his ego won’t handle it. He’ll dig in. He’ll let slip the mask, and it’ll be ugly. There’ll be some truly outrageous powergrab via executive fiat or somesuch. The howl of outrage will echo ’round the world. He may double down again. Violence may well ensue. If so, there will be a good killing. The rage on both extremes will express itself.
The only hope we have is the 2010 elections. They have to represent a huge cultural shift. They must be huge! He’ll have to be neutered by a new Congress.
As we know, this president had his plate full upon taking office. However, now that he is on the way to fixing our past foreign policy nightmares, fixing the economic depression and our failed health care system, he may actually be able to work on some new things. However, I think the first seven or eight problems he inherited should keep him busy for the first term. The second term? who knows.
May I remind you, Dr. Hanson, that this is by no means a new phenomenon in American life:
When things suddenly and “inexplicably” turn dark, men are beset by fear. Fear that cannot be dispelled makes men submissive. More, it makes men want to submit, if we can find someone apparently above our fears who’s willing to take command and drag us in a definite direction.
The classical strongman, among whom we must number Franklin D. Roosevelt, achieves demigod status merely by maintaining the appearance of fearlessness and resolutely following a set course, without hesitation. It almost doesn’t matter if that course leads to further disaster; fearful men are so in need of a bright icon at such times that they’ll rationalize away almost anything. What matters is that the Man on Horseback display no hesitation, no uncertainty, and no fear.
Barack Hussein Obama rose to national prominence at the best time for his aspirations, and the worst for freedom and Americanism. Without the accelerating financial crisis of late 2007 and 2008, he probably could not have pulled off his carefully engineered apotheosis. But the laurel wreath was awarded him unripe; the leaves are dropping off one by one as his missteps accumulate. It’s all but certain he’ll prove to be a second Jimmy Carter, but twice his predecessor’s size and disappointment.
And we’ll have one more data point for the “put not your trust in princes” graph.
It’s fairly obvious that Pakistan is not nearly as critical to our strategy in the Asia Minor/Indian Subcontinent region as Obama claims in public. If it were, he wouldn’t have sent Hillary.
The remark about taxes went on, “The taxes here are much lower than ours. Pretty soon you’re going to have 300 million people here, and what are you going to do then?” Her assumption is, of course, that most of those 300 million will be receiving some sort of government “benefits”, mainly to ensure that they “vote the right way” in every election. That being the Chicago/Little Rock/Hot Springs method.
(Hmm, maybe The One sending The Hill isn’t such a mystery after all.)
As for Chavez’ getting part of Columbia, from all indications, he (through FARC) already has control of the border area and the mountains in the northern part of the country. (No doubt raising romantic memories of Fidel in the Oriente’ amongst his admirers in the White House and over at State.) The real problem is that Chavez’ also stands an excellent chance of gaining control of all of Honduras. The “deal” which lets Zelaya’ return to power presupposes that he will do nothing to impede the upcoming election. It is more likely that he will claim “irregularities”, create a few “incidents”, and then invite Chavez’ to send some “election monitors” and “peacekeepers”- no doubt to be accompanied by Jimmy Carter, Sean Penn, et al., to ensure that there is no resistance to the “liberation”.
Chavez’ dreams of achieving what Castro dreamed of- a South American Democratic People’s Republic, with himself as Comandante’ for Life. It’s an unrealistic goal, but like his enablers in our own government, Chavez’ exists in his own parallel universe, and regards reality as an unwelcome intruder.
In fact, that is pretty much the problem with the entire situation. We are now ruled by people who believe that their self-constructed virtual realities can and will supersede the “real thing”- and if necessary, they will use force to achieve this (theoretically) laudable goal. They live in a dream state in which all they have to do is “want it”- and it happens. Plus crush a few opponents here and there, mainly just because they enjoy doing so. And since there have never been any consequences up to now, they believe there never will be any, other than those they inflict on anyone foolish enough to oppose them.
Many previous “enlightened ones” thought the same thing, from Plato on down. This bunch is no more immune to the consequences of their actions than anyone who went before. Like Plato, sooner or later, they will be forced to deal with the realities of their fantasy Utopias. His awakening came on the island of Rhodes, in 347 B.C.
And as it was with Plato, when their awakening comes, it is going to be painful for all concerned.
clear ether
eon
Great post. I note you’ve given up on calling him “our President”. He is, and will be for three more years (arghhh!), THE President, but he was before. I give you credit that you tried to give him the benefit of the doubt for a while, but there was too much of a record of what he really wanted to do for that to be realistic.
You ask, “What is there about dissent that drives the Obamians crazy?”. Simply the fact that they see themselves as the Anointed by virtue of their educational pedigrees and ideology and, as such, should not have to deal with criticism; the rightness of what they do should be self-evident. This was always the problem with the Bush family – the truth should be self-evident, but the Bushes felt it beneath their station to engage in the hurly-burly of fighting for their reputation and administrations. The Obamatrons are thugs at heart and will act that way sooner rather than later.
“What bugs them about Palin? How about all of the above?”
There are two major reasons. The elites are thoroughly secular. They are enraged that Sarah Palin did not abort her medically challenged baby. She also did not attend an Ivy League university. These folks are terrified of competing. Their soft science degrees are generally fraudulent. It appalls them that superstars like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Mark Steyn, and countless others often did not earn a bachelors degree. Steyn didn’t even finish high school! How many truly bright people even bothered to obtain a liberal arts master’s degree? Please note that I am not talking about hard science credentials—which usually are earned. Anybody obtaining a hard science Ph.D. from Harvard University, for instance, has a right to be proud. The liberal arts credential usually only means that the individual really whored it out. This is especially true in the last forty years since affirmative action grading became the norm. The number one beneficiary of this nonsense, It must be added, is not some black teenager living in the ghetto—but the very wealthy Caroline “ you know, you know” Kennedy.
Obama is proving himself to be a cartoon President; two dimensional, lacking any real depth, prone to hyperbole, and scripted. And amazingly, despite being scripted, he frequently utters nonsense apparently reflecting the limited abilities of his advisors and speech writers, though accepted as truth by his acolytes who know even less. On the other hand, a cartoon President meets perfectly the needs of his leftwing base tutored for the past forty years by an intellectually diminished, self-absorbed and preening consortium of liberal universities. Our first comic book President: Eek, yikes, kaboom.
There are so many ways in which the bloom is off the rose for Barack Obama and his young presidency. His management (through Eric Holder) of the Justice Department; his unrestrained spending; his desire to control virtually every aspect of Americans’ lives; his thuggish attempt to quash dissent — to say nothing of his atrocious handling of foreign policy. All are distrubing.
But, for all his professional shortcomings, Obama’s biggest failings (to my way of thinking) are entirely personal. He promised to be “a new kind of politician”: post-partisan, post-racial, open, and “transparent.” He is none of those things, it seems to me.
Many political hopefuls spread the fertilizer around while they are seeking voters’ support. But candidate Obama went way beyond that. He sold himself as a “transcendent” figure — a being so superior in character and intent that followers weren’t sure that he was even human. It was all stuff and nonsense.
See: Obama, Where Art Thou? http://emmeffemm.com/id179.html
Ruvy,
A “Fourth Reich” is being created in Europe as I type these words. Is Nick Griffin of the BNP the “coming man” Hitler spoke of in his dying days? One has to wonder.
Hmmn, BNP is the parallel party to “National Front”, still under 10% of sympathizers, that can’t hardly overpass this borderline, except for occasional agendas. Nowadays People get more infos than in the thirties, so I don’t extreme parties will have a chance to become a majority
so I don’t expect that extreme… sorry typo
Great article. I tend to agree with Marc. Obama and his posse will carry on with their totalitarian utopia agenda come hell or high water. But every day they alienate more voters. The Tea Party grows. And then there’s Sarah. Interesting times. I’m taking a break from making brilliant predictions.
Great comments history prof. Dr. Hanson!
Now the opposition candidate,
Former Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Abdullah Abdullahin is withdrawing from the presidential race.
Not because of suicide bombers and death threats,
but because a woman,
Hillary Clinton, is seen as having forced the country and the new president into a runoff election.
In America we put our women on a pedestal.
In Afghanistan women are seen as weak and are not worthy to clean the scum from around a pedestal unless they have their heads and arms covered.
Great choice for Sec. of State-
Bambie!
Now we have to send more troops into Afghanistan for the next 20 years,
or withdraw and Obamas ‘war of necessity’ ‘the good war’ will be a humiliating defeat.
And using Bush for the new ‘Blame Czar’ is not working.
The American people have heard that one so much they dream of voting for a Conservative Republican.
Marc Malone,
“There is no way out for Obama, now. He is captive to his politics. The realities of governing conflict with his politics. He cannot do the right thing without betraying his base and his own thinking. Every one of the coming situations will end badly.”
Well put, which underscores the most troubling aspect of the Obama administration: the degree to which this is “all about him.” Like all narcissists, I’m sure he’s stunned that the world isn’t simply swooning submissively into his crackpot ideas. I have no doubt that he’d LOVE the green scarves and book waving. Health care, two wars, recession–you name the problem, and the only consideration for team Obama–and especially Obama himself–is “how will this make Obama look?” I’m disgusted with the number of times I hear, “Failure to pass SOME kind of healthcare bill will be too humiliating and politically devastating for Mr. Obama, therefore, we must ramrod SOME God-awful bill down the American people’s throats.” Ah, yes, Mr. Obama’s colossal ego supersedes all other considerations here. What a self-centered, selfish, jerk.
And another thing: can we PLEASE stop hearing about how “brilliant” Mr. Obama is? I haven’t seen a shred of evidence that he’s “brilliant” in any way except hornswaggling enough of the American people into voting for him. I’m praying that the American people’s fundamental good sense will take care of even that in mid-term elections leaving Mr. Pantywaist President (to quote The Guardian) hamstrung.
Just one of my fifty closest friends likes and supports Obama. I am thinking to move to Australia. My other friendsare thinking to move to New Zealand. Because of people like this Professor, the US is now the worse place on earth to live. This country was build by white and theist conservatives and destroyed by liberal atheists jews!
Well, I for one got a full dose of the promised “change” this year, and the psychological implications are more important than the material consequences. I used to believe that my personal choices had more to do with success or failure than government initiatives. No more. I now make plans in anticipation of more government intrusion in my life. Leviathan is loose upon the land, and I am in full retreat – going Galt.
I’m not one to stand by idly and “hope” that the government will somehow muddle through the next crisis. What happens when (to give just one possible scenario) Israel is forced to move against an existential threat from Iran? Even a threat to close the Strait of Hormuz will be enough to send the price of oil skyrocketing, and I expect the Iranian response will be much more than bluster. What then?
Mr. Obama’s cult of personality won’t save him when Nemesis arrives on the field to claim her due. When his public mask finally slips, what sort of creature will be revealed beneath? We stand now only in the opening stages of a national crisis. I think it prudent to prepare for the worst. And the worst is likely to be very bad indeed.
~Going Galt
No cultural shift in 2010, because the Nelson Rockefeller Country Club GOP is run by Barry Goldwater’s spoiled children gone elitist:
Gingrich, Boehner, MacCain and Graham et al.
Not to mention hordes of brownshirt vote fraud and urn stealers.
Marie Claude: don’t pooh-pooh the idea of Euros returning to Fascism and even going to something worse and beyond.
When America goes down the tubes, the molly-coddled Euros will suddently discover what their ancestors knew, and they won’t like it.
What I don’t get is, there are Americans who are ready to divide the country to get rid of the deformed souls whose paws are on the levers of government inside the Beltway, but where are the Americans who say that a government in exile exercising power is a viable option?
Where is the loyalty given to the average American by the deformed souls
inside the Beltway? There is none.
What is it about Palin that drives the elite, especially elite women, crazy?
She’s beautiful, powerful, smart and successful and she’s not a feminist.
How can that be, they ask? They just can’t grasp the concept, so the try to destroy what can’t possibly belong in their world.
You wrote “What is next? Green “yes, we can” scarves and tiny little Audacity of Hope books to wave at rallies?”
From Amazon
“Pocket Obama (Paperback)
This is the little blue book that right-wing partisans love to hate. Printed in a size that easily fits into pocket or purse, POCKET OBAMA is an anthology of quotations borrowed from Barack Obama’s speeches and writings, intended to keep the momentum going for those inspired by his message of hope and change. The portable book serves as a reminder of the remarkable ability of this man to move people with his words, a primer for readers who want to examine the substance of his thought and reflect on the next great chapter in the American story. His captivating oratory has earned comparisons to John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and this collection presents words that catapulted his remarkable rise to the American Presidency and set a true course for the future. Includes themes of democracy, politics, war, terrorism, race, community, jurisprudence, faith, personal responsibility, national identity, and above all, his hoped-for vision of a new America. POCKET OBAMA is essential reading as we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin the work of remaking America.”
“Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws?
She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.
She is tender where they would be hard and hard where they like to be soft.
She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.
They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”
(Choruses from The Rock, VI, T.S. Eliot)
The next year is going to be bad. No private employer is going to expand in the US. The coming tax increases are going to crush the economy. Our only hope is a vibrant world economy will help our exports, any increase in oil prices will negate this. It’s hard to predict the future when the Senate does not act. If the Senate passed cap and trade then that would show they could pass the public option.
I fear the Senate will pass by resolution ‘Cap and Trade’ and the ‘Public Option’. The privet sector would undergo a new round of shrinking and we would be in a state of undeclared Civil War.
Any Democrat or public employee reading this you must understand one fact. I WILL NOT LIVE AS YOUR SERF! If the right gets power back the counter attack needs to be brutal. I want my government purged of Unions and Marxists pulled out of the Universities. It’s on.
What is there about dissent that drives the Obamians crazy?
VDH, there is this, always this, and only this…when you live in an echo chamber, when you shout…you expect only your own voice reverberating back at you.
When you have rigged the game, you expect to win each hand and all the chips, every time.
When the entrenched mass media is in your pocket, when you own them…and they are essentially bagmen collecting facts and distorting them at your whim, at your direction, …they BETTER stay in line, or you will cut them off at the knees.
The fix is in, Chicago style. The Greylord Faction is “in the House”. Step out of line, no job for you. Pretty soon…like the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld…”no soup for you” either.
Unemployment, soup lines, bread lines…the government caretaker will provide… as long as you stay in line literally and figuratively.
The Greylords are back …with a vengeance. National Auto, National Finance, National Hospital, National Insurance, National Pharma, …if you want any of those things…simply stay in line, ring a few doorbells for your alderman, contribute …actually tithe a substantial sum to the “machine” and you will be given your crust of bread.
The Greylords are back…they have the entire information stream “fixed”, Hollywood in their pocket, and academia wired in the “back room”.
Ain’t patronage grand?
The Greylords are back, and you better get in line.
@7 ruvy.
With regard to your ideas about the origins of facism in Austria. You worries about Facism in the Middle East are right, but your claims about ‘the peolple behind Bush and Obama’ are as outlandish as any conspiracy thinker in the current Middle East or 1930 Germany could dream of.
I think the entire problem with Obama is his lack of historic sense of what Western Civilization has been about. Please be aware that your current president thinks that Austrians have an own language, i.e which apparently would mean something else than German. He is not that cultural savvy as the Europeans had hoped
He send back the bust of Winston Churchill and wil not visit the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. WW II and the Cold War were the defyning battles of the 20 th Century. Liberalism and Capitalist societies won against the totalarian systems of facism and communism.
Obama doesn’t understand that he is standing on the shoulders of giants, whose sacrificises made his remarkable career possible. Therefore is it so disheartening to seem him jump on an airplane to bow for the King of Saudsi Ariabia but he didn’t find time to receive the Dalai Lama, who happened to be in DC. And that is just one of many incidents we have witnessed.
He got the keys to the White House, but he is squandering the legacy of centuries.
I’m an European and no there will not be a fourth Reich. We are however looking at a Muslim population that is predicted to rise to 30 % in 4 decades. Imagine an United States in 2050 with 70 Million Muslims. Large numbers of our Muslim immigrants supported the attacks of 9/11. Please visit nowadays Berlin and other European Cities. Count the number of Mosques and women with headscarves. See the hostilities in their eyes. See there 80/ 90% of part of our crime figures. And it is getting worse and worse.
We are once again in battle for the outcome of Western Civilization and we don’t need a leader of the Free World that doesn’t get it.
Dr. Henson—I disagree with your final prescription of “hunker down” and—world weary—close the gates of our houses, turn inward and withdraw, hoping that “this too shall pass,” for if we do these things, if we have this attitude and adopt this strategy, the game will be lost.
Rather, now is the time to—as numbskull VP Biden advised in another context—“get involved in the fight,” to scout out the enemy, to pay very close attention to, scrutinize, analyze, publicize, and oppose every disastrous, deleterious move by Obama & Co., to create our strategies, set up our obstacles–our tank traps, minefields and choke points–and to deploy our troops, to jump into the battle, to vociferously and energetically protest, to get involved in the political process at every level; for only by doing these things can we have some chance of insuring that there will be elections in 2010 and 2012. Only by doing these things will we be able to lay the groundwork for taking back Governorships and Statehouses, the Congress and the Presidency, set up processes to discover and develop candidates who can attract the necessary support and who, once in office, will reverse what they can of Obama & Co.’s march toward Totalitarianism. Conservatives who will legislate based on truly Conservative principles–strict adherence to the Constitution, the rule of law, limited government, State’s rights, free speech, low taxes, deficits and debt, a strong dollar, strong national defense, maximum personal freedom and personal responsibility.
Sorry. That should be Dr. Hanson.
VDH just wrote “What is next? Green “yes, we can” scarves and tiny little Audacity of Hope books to wave at rallies?”
This from Amazon.com
“Pocket Obama (Paperback)
This is the little blue book that right-wing partisans love to hate. Printed in a size that easily fits into pocket or purse, POCKET OBAMA is an anthology of quotations borrowed from Barack Obama’s speeches and writings, intended to keep the momentum going for those inspired by his message of hope and change. The portable book serves as a reminder of the remarkable ability of this man to move people with his words, a primer for readers who want to examine the substance of his thought and reflect on the next great chapter in the American story. His captivating oratory has earned comparisons to John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and this collection presents words that catapulted his remarkable rise to the American Presidency and set a true course for the future. Includes themes of democracy, politics, war, terrorism, race, community, jurisprudence, faith, personal responsibility, national identity, and above all, his hoped-for vision of a new America. POCKET OBAMA is essential reading as we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin the work of remaking America.”
The irony of this “chope” situation is that “the one” has done more to damageto race relations than 150+ years of the KKK has been able to do, turn even the most tolerant individual into a raving lunatic. He and his minions have set relations back at least 60 years.
There has been a silver lining to the cloud though. We have now learned that people other than White, Anglo, Saxon People (WASP’s) are just as prejudiced. Every group has those who don’t deal well with folks who look, act and think differently. Look at the mayoral race in “Hotlanta” for a good example.
So that genie is out of the bottle for good. Rev’s Al, Jessie and Jeremiah are going to need new gigs. Let’s hope for our sake they simply pass into the trash heap of history along with the rest of the dreck spewers from all races, kindreds and peoples. We need people of integrity, substance, and honor and most of us could care less what the color of their skin or ethnicity is. Race baiters, religious bigots and social re-engineers need not apply.
good piece VDH.
hopefully the underlying strengths of the USA will survive this criminal group how presently hold power in washington.
but I am not overly optimistic given that control of the education system is in the hands of socialist/marxists before obama and they will still be there after obama.
VDH …since you are a history authority. How is it that a society allows their constitution to be disregarded with impunity. I am particularly addressing the “natural born” provision. since it is not where the one was born but that he did not have 2 american citizen parents therefore not a natural born. Where he was born is not the issue although the birth certificate would prove he is not natural born as required by the constitution.
THE BUCK STOPS HERE. WHERE? WHAT’S A BUCK?
I liked all of those potent paragraphs. My favorite, though, was the unwritten or at least inferred by me suggestion that Truman could have given Obama’s mop up speech regarding FDR. Beautiful.
“No cultural shift in 2010, because the Nelson Rockefeller Country Club GOP is run by Barry Goldwater’s spoiled children gone elitist.”
Interesting connection. Another recent Pajamas Media post notes that the Leftists currently in power got there through privilege — they never had to work for a living, never experienced foreclosure, etc. Thus, they don’t really know how things work in the real world where most of us live.
Perhaps the current crop of the GOP suffers from the same malady. That’s why they “don’t get it” with respect to the Tea Parties’ dissatisfaction.
We need a generational housecleaning across the entire spectrum of political elites. My reading of history says that won’t happen without a revolution, or some other national-level “significant emotional event.”
The Greylords are back
And they are here to stay
In a land where nobody and nothing is white or black
Just a paler shade of grey
Where up is down and down is up
In a fun house mirror sort of way
Where you stand in line and hold your cup
For the handout for good behavior is on its way
Where fat is thin and short is tall
And decisions are made along the way
By committees of committees, adherents all
To the script, prewritten, scrubbed and fey
The Greylords now reign supreme
In the dawn of this post-modern American day
Did I awake from an awful dream
Where right and wrong existed…only in shades of grey.
President Obama will make everything worse as his Communism nightmare crumbles into ashes & his fellow Democrats are sent home packing thanks to his marred shadow; even a hint of association of Obama will be poison for the other Democrats. President Obama is already radioactive in Virginia as he desperately tries to save the power hungry corrupt tax fiend, Corzine, from his own corruption. One corrupt man is trying to save another, or, more importantly, Obama is trying to salvage what is left of his credibility. Never mind, most people do not believe a word Obama says right now, despite the sales man pitch.
What does the next 3 years bring? Disaster. President Obama will make sure to try for his unconstitutional power grabs as the Tea Party movement increases in strength & intensity; he will try his best to become Dictator Obama. He will fail. Why? Unemployment will remain high as he tries to grow government into a bigger beast; interest rates will skyrocket as inflation goes through the roof. Stagflation will be born from Obama’s need for power & his lust to spend other people’s money.
Hello Jimmy Carter II.
As lily Tomlinson said – “I try to be a cynic, but it’s hard to keep up”
What it will bring is lies, lies and more lies.When ever any reporter brings up an incosistency(I know this is virtually never) this charlatan never has an answer that is reviewed by the press for accuracy.Why did he bring the press to Dover AFB?Why couldn’t he write “Dreams…” until he meet Bill Ayers?If nobody questions him,he can get away with it.
Dr. Hanson, RE: “Down is up, up: down”… I weep for bad decisions now being made with such fervor by thosing hating Western Enlightenment and its hard lines and precepts.
If we could fill the Excutive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the USA with reanimated Founding Fathers, the world and our nation would still implode… Because the world and our nation will not tolerate the sanity of Western Enlightenment until it does implode. This is what war is for, to change ossified minds, I suppose.
So, in a perverse way, we who love Western Enlightenment must pray for a hasty and decisive implosion, so that a) we are not targets of inquisitions, targets because our souls are incapable of Orwellian, or should I say Obamian, logic; and b) until up is discerned as up, and oh happy day: down is down! Until then, c) we are not in Kansas anymore. And we weep for bad decisions. And beware.
Weep for Bad Decisions
By Robert Winkler Burke
Copyright 9/23/08
Weep for bad decisions,
Made at such a cost,
Weep for bad decisions,
Where so much is lost.
Heaven weeps, hell rejoices,
At bad plans made,
Good is mocked, evil honored,
When honor disobeyed.
Cry for souls in stupor,
So blind and so jolly.
Cry for souls now drunk,
In dissolute folly.
Mourn not for the dead,
Their journey is over,
Wail for sons and daughters,
Buying the lie: Whatever.
Who cares, so what, nothing matters,
They like to say,
Until in quickened truth and deep grief,
They rue the day.
Such wicked and deprived things,
They even ever once said,
For when it’s too late then they’ll say,
Would God we were dead!
They’ll say, Oh God, Have mercy!
We’re in total shock!
We must warn our sons and daughters!
But us now they mock!
If only we could have believed,
Warnings of the wise,
God, we ask forgiveness as our seed,
Does wisdom despise.
Weep for bad decisions,
Made at such a cost,
Weep for bad decisions,
Where so much is lost.
From the original article:
“On the barn wall there are plenty of “thou shall not” rules—Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, Predators, Patriot Act”
So those things were great when Bush was in power, but are bad now that Obama’s in power?
How very Orwellian of you.
Marc Malone has the right answer,lt’s the 2010 election. If the GOP does not take control we are finished.
The most important thing is to remember we have the government we deserve.
OK ok the rats and the know-nothings deserve it a bit more than aware conservatives do but the fact remains: We did not do enough. We were not salt enough. We were not light enough.
Obviously it takes tremendous effort not to let your party be taken over by Bushes and McCains … and we let it happen.
There would be no Obama administration if the pubbie party had offered an alternative. This is the central fact we must face … and it ain’t happening.
We MUST repudiate Bush (both of em) and admit our sins. Obviously in NY 23 they have repented. This must continue across the land.
Vote for NO incumbent.
She has integrity and courage, Dr. Hanson, what she has displayed on many occasions, most recently in HK, speaking out against China on the front door step. If she had been
on that junket through the Stans, she would have named the ISI as the facilitator of the Taliban and AQ, not be so coy about. She knows that laying down one’s swords and pikes, will not lead to other’s doing do, more likely they will cut you down instead
VDH:
Your usual erudite rational exposition. Better than poisoned darts. (Should they become necessary, there will be plenty of others willing to string the bow).
And a VDH bonus: “For the safety of the world, let us pray for no cackling during summits.” Mark Steyn better watch out.
#10:
“Fear that cannot be dispelled makes men submissive.”
Or, uh…angry. Your premise pertains to Europe and much of the rest of the world. Not here in America. Not yet, anyway.
The more the talk of togetherness, hope and change, and healing, the more the daggers come out.
Right, the truth on the ground is exactly equal and opposite to the degree of babbling assurances about it.
An axiom I learned many decades ago around “peace ‘n love” sorts.
It characterizes today’s liberals, for whom incessant talking about “values” is very often the closest they come to actually living those values.
A rather meanspirited, thin-skinned lot, all in all.
You can take it to the bank, or the sewer, or somewhere.
To Goldengoph and the others claiming that Obama’s been lying: if you’ve never called out Bush, Cheney and the rest of that sorry ass bunch of ne’re-do-well’s for their actual, relentless, out and out, no ifs or buts lying, then take a large does of STFU about Obama and his alleged, pretty much completely imagined “lying”. Seriously. Friggin idiots.
It seems like there is an object lesson for (the dynamic of) government at all levels in this opinion piece today in the LA Times.
The Golden State isn’t worth it
#44:
“So those things were great when Bush was in power, but are bad now that Obama’s in power?”
Who said they were bad? Obama did (during the election, ad nauseum).
Bush implemented “those things”, VDH and millions of us agree with them and, now in power, Obama refuses to live up to his rhetoric.
Do you understand the word hypocrisy? That was the point here.
44. Dave K.:
“So those things were great when Bush was in power, but are bad now that Obama’s in power?”
I think you made a slight error there pal. Let me fix that for you.
So those things were bad when Bush was in power, but are great now that Obama’s in power?
How very Orwellian of you.
Do you remember, moonbat, how it’s your candidate that made promises to end Bush era “abuses” that he has since abandoned?
(What is it about Palin that drives the elite, especially elite women, crazy? Great looks? That Middle-America accent? The 5 kids and he-man husband? The lack of a powerful father or spouse who could jump-start her “feminist” career with money, contacts, and influence? That Idaho BA? The wink? The charisma and, indeed, sensuality so lacking in her angry critics?)
Well, yeah :)
Plus the fact that she’s way smarter than most of them, not to mention being highly effective as a mayor and then as a governor.
#44
What a dope Dave is IMO:
““On the barn wall there are plenty of “thou shall not” rules—Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, Predators, Patriot Act”
So those things were great when Bush was in power, but are bad now that Obama’s in power?
How very Orwellian of you.”
Dave K. seems to have a reading comprehension problem and does not seem to have a robust[another Pelosi mis- and over-used word] understanding of George Orwell.
The point, Dave, is that Obama is using some of the policies he has excoriated his predecessor for using. In other words, Obama is a particular type of hypocrite.
“There is a strange fascination with strongmen of history, particularly mass murderers and mass enslavers like Mao and Julius Caesar.”
This strange fascination is very revealing, and it shows up in Obama foreign policy.
For example, Obama treats Hugo Chavez better than the British Prime Minister. And Obama’s FCC diversity czar pretty clearly agrees about Chavez; he spoke admiringly of Chavez’s revolution & takeover of the media.
Many have suggested that Obama and his czars and advisors simply share Chavez’s anti-Americanism, and no doubt they do. Perhaps there is more to it though. Perhaps Obama and the Obamaites actually approve of Chavez precisely because he overthrew a democracy and made himself a dictator.
If so, the Obama administration’s strange efforts on behalf of the Chavez wanna-be in Honduras begin to make more sense.
The only two modern day philosophers with whom I do not recall ever being in disagreement on anything of substance are Tom Sowell and yourself. At this point in time that makes us a depressed and depressing trio. Unfortunately I can find nothing in the political sphere or politically influenced economic/business sphere that is in any way uplifting.
It is amazing that a literate, dynamic society like ours is capable of creating the current mess in such an accelerated (and accelerating) time frame.
“What is there about dissent that drives the Obamians crazy?”
The same thing that drives all totalitarians crazy: they can’t totalitarianize with a lot of people screaming at them. But there is also this, and we must not delude ourselves that totalitarians in America will be somehow “Americanized” and therefore more benign than the others: totalitarians are drawn, by their very nature, to murder. Does anyone really believe that, say, Mark Lloyd, wouldn’t kill Rush Limbaugh if he could get away with it? He would. There has never in recorded history totalitarians who weren’t also mass murderers. Never once. Ours will be – are – no different.
Wish you hadn’t put India in with the “thugs”..
#50 B.C. I may be mistaken,but I thought Barack Obama was president,not Bush. Is it Bush’s fault that Mr. Obama can’t make a decision about Afghanistan,despite his campaign claims about making it the center of the war on terror?Isn’t that a lie? Wasn’t it a lie to claim that doctors do tonsillectomies for monetary reasons? Wasn’t it a lie to claim that surgeons were doing amputations because they get $40,000 for the procedure?Was it a lie to claim his uncle liberated Auschwitz when the U.S. Army stopped at the Elbe in WW II?Was it a lie when he claimed to visit 57 states durng the campaign? Was it a lie when he did not mention his multiple unpaid parking tickets on his Illinois Bar exam when a question specifically mentioned that?Was it a lie when he claimed only a passing familiarity with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn when his first political fundraiser was held at their home?Was it a lie when he said ” I actually wrote two books”?Was it a lie when he claimed ignorance of Rev. Wright’s racist and anti- Semetic philosophy despite being a member of his church for more than ten years and using one of his quotes to title his book? I thought that Mr. Obama was brilliant, highly educated and smarter than us mere mortals.Either he was lying or he is just dumb-no other explanations are possible.
[...] There is a strange fascination with strongmen of history, particularly mass murderers and mass enslavers like Mao and Julius Caesar. That may explain the effort to deify Obama in such Olympian terms—the “speech” at the Prussian triumphalist Victory Column in Berlin, the faux classical temple backdrops at the convention, the Latin motto vero possumus [...]
… and the sycophancy goes on (april, 14th, 2009):
[...] Obama revealed his plans when he met with Archbishop Demetrios, the head of the Greek Church in America, in Washington on Wednesday.
[...] For his part, Demetrios urged Obama to tackle three key issues…
[...] “Following the brilliant example of Alexander the Great, you will be able to cut the Gordian knot of these unresolved issues….[...]
Alexander’s merits and the Afghanistan mess notwithstanding, I still can’t see why one would engage himself in this for of deification – but I can see why this occurrence wasn’t covered with ridicule by the liberal media -
As I read through the comments one thing stands out to me. Even though Mr. Hanson and many others bemoan the tactics and “no dissent permitted” ideology of the Obama crowd (as I do) there are just as many Americans who pine for a nation where no dissent from their thoughts is permitted. The disgusting John Edwards (remember him) talked about 2 Americas. But he had the wrong two. There are the progressives and the conservatives (and those who can’t make up their minds). Neither of the two want to live in the America of the other’s choosing. At some point one side or the other must win. Or, they go their separate ways in some grand Biden-style apportioning of the country. I see no other outcome.
totalitarianize
I like the word.
I get the vibe, listening to Mark Lloyd et al.
A similar vibe with the Black Panther guys standing outside the Philly polling place, “we’re the new enforcers in town”
This entire crowd (cf recent Rahm Emanuel shenanigans, John Holdren, Robert Reich pronouncements etc.) is characterized by totalitarian instincts.
“It has been well said that really up-to-date liberals do not care what people do, as long as it is compulsory.”
~George Will
… and to continue some ancient history analogies, as Obama and Hillary continue their competition in incompetence and blunders ’till they end in a final, catastrophic crash, it may turn out that Clau-Clau-Clau Claudius, I mean Joe “foot-in-the-mouth” Biden will be the savior of America …
No Claudius only pretended to be the fool, Biden well, no one picks on Sheriff Joe. No for classical analogs, one might consider
Catiline, the Roman demagogue, and Alcibiades
the deceitful Athenian that in the end, ended
up on Persia’s side of things
Florida: Don’t let the door hit you in the ass when you leave the USA. However, your destination should be Zimbabwe, a country more in tune with your thought process. Cheers!
OBTW: VDH has hit another home run with this essay.
Iran is going to get the bomb. Lets face it. It seems to be a foregone conclusion at this point. They wil use it to threaten and bully their Sunni/Arab neighbors and become the dominant Muslim player in the region, if not in the world. If they use the bomb against Israel it would mean the near-instantaneous nuclear destruction of all of Iran, with nothing left, but without any guarantee of Israel’s simultaneous destruction, as the latter has some fairly sophisticated intercept technology, probably more and better than anybody realizes. Iran could launch a missile, the destroyed and radioactive pieces of which land all over Iraq and Jordan, and short moments later find that Tehran is gone. Perhaps the mullahs, ‘mad’ as they are, understand this. I’m guessing this is the Israeli calculus. Otherwise they would have attached the nuclear facilities already.
What, are you crazy? Hang on to those Moorish darts, dear Professor. You may need them.
I try to remember that things are never as bad as they seem nor as good as they seem. It’s hard, but I try to remember this with all the terrible decisons being made in our names.
It saddens me when a troll like BC shows up on this thread. The criticism of his idol frustrates him so. All he can offer in response is to spew invective and demand censorship. STFU, indeed. Sorry, little troll, Americans never STFU especially in matters of politics. But you do us a service by demonstrating your totalitarian streak. Spew on if you care to; I don’t mind. The First Amendment applies to all Americans. Even trolls.
Bill, #63, there is no problem with two Americas. The left prospered when the country was run on mutually agreed principles for 170 years. What happened was that a generation of children came of age in the 1960s who had been raised by parents that denied them nothing and who desired that those children have better lives than they had had. That generation of children came to feel they were entitled to run things. Their elders in universities, who had become enervated by post-modern theories, let them believe they could run things. With time, they became teachers and politicians. Few of them went into hard sciences although scientists with PhDs seemed to accept that PhDs in social sciences were indicators of superior intellect. We now stand at the climax of this movement as they control the government and the financial institutions. They think they know how to run things but, in fact, the economy has been grinding along on momentum for 25 years. Fifty years ago, these fools would have been just as foolish but they would have control over a government that had less power over our lives. Now, it is strong enough to ruin us and the fools are finally in control. There is enough time, barely, to save the situation but it will take a near revolution.
If the productive class can wrest control away from the ideologues, the left can go back to the universities where they will do less harm. The country will run well without them. However, it will be a close call.
If former president George Bush is the default ‘blame’ pincushion of this voodoo administration; then we are all bushmen, and bush women now, out here in “the bush”; which suits me just fine. I am proud of the leadership we had for 8 years before we set sail on this crapshoot gambling holiday from responsibility.
So just how many daggers or pins do they have? And just who is supposed to produce them for their paranoid counterattacks? They are severely outnumbered, out manned, and outgunned. Cognitive dissonance won’t fuel up Air Force One for saudi supports for joy rides or continue to put lies into Gibbs drooling mouth.
They never do their homework. And they think an A+ is just waiting to be handed them just for showing up, with a grin or a scowl.
Better gas up those loudspeaker vans, and start trolling, I say, trawling the neighborhoods of that one way street, and you know, start ARGHH!-“O“-nising them, in that daft way you do. *Huff-huff* [chest thumping] Budddha-Budddha-Budddha!
Dr. Hanson, through two election cycles you, together with Thomas Sowell and Mark Steyn have provided me with clear thinking analysis and perception that I find nowhere else. The flavoring your depth of historical scholarship adds a stimulating bonus. It has been interesting to follow your progression this year from apprehensive but watchful to deep concern.
There are a couple of areas in your commentaries that puzzle me. Your write, “There is a strange fascination with the strongmen of history, particularly mass murders and enslavers…”.
With your knowledge of history, do you truly perceive Obama as a strongman? It seems to me that he is almost unique in his obvious weakness and lack of dynamic leadership skills, or even instincts. To compare him with such military leaders as Alexander, or Caesar, or Napoleon is ludicrous. To compare him with Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, or Castro almost as foolish. These were REAL MEN, forceful, driven, attracting followers by virtue of their obvious energy and drive. Goebbels was attracted to Hitler. Axelrod created Obama.
Mao was a born Commander. Obama is a born golf-player.
Can you cite, from history, any individual placed in a position of highest powe, with so little natural capability or qualification for the role?
He told David Cameron, in London after his Berlin “triumph”, that he would (not verbatim) “…have people a lot smarter than I am to do the analysis and thinking. I’ll just make the final decision”. It is quite apparent, to me, that this is exactly how he is functioning – or being handled. The White House is hornet’s nest of doctrinaire communist zealots, with no knowledge of, or skills in, governance, bickering and drunk with the euphoria of sudden power, determined to bring down our evil capitalistic system. And becoming increasingly overt and aggressive.
Even short term, this seems to me to be, a disastrous failing.
The other point is your apparent reluctance to define them more specifically as radical socialists. The insistent use by the conservative punditry and commentators of “liberal” or “left” to describe the political philosophy that drives them. is ridiculous. To treat them as if they were Euro-Socialist-inclined, or clinging to some small tag of our two-party tradition, is beyond absurd: it is providing them with a cover of acceptability for calculatedly destructive legislative fraud. I do not understand your constraint in this area.
The GOP is tone-deaf, sclerotic and self-destructing. Palin will confront both parties head on. I look forward to your tracking of this disastrous Administration’s follies, with confidence that you will be even more forthright in exposing the magnitude of their scam on the electorate.
# 50:
“…Obama and his alleged, pretty much completely imagined “lying”.”
First of all, fool, ALL politicians lie. Only a sucker believes otherwise.
I suspect you were deceived during the election into thinking Obama was some kind of “new” politician. Well, if nine months of 0′s lying and incompetence haven’t caused you to see the “same ol’ okey-dokey” politics at play here, you’re hopeless naive.
65: it may turn out that Clau-Clau-Clau Claudius, I mean Joe “foot-in-the-mouth” Biden will be the savior of America …
The thing is, Claudius was mistakenly believed to be a fool. Biden really is one.
# 50/BC: [...] Seriously. Friggin idiots. [...]
My – here’s some ice for your little head ice bag:
* Virginia race – GOP win;
* New Jersey – GOP win (the arrest of Corzine’s aide for drug peddling still un-addressed by the MSM);
* NY – GOP win (Frank Rich’s fury confirms this);
* Maine – referendum advancing on the California prop 8 track -
* the less known Washington state referendum on de-secretization of inititives proposals signature (addressess & phone numbers y compris), cause so dear to the “liberals” who want to use that data to engage in “meaningful” conversations their opponents – win on the conservative side -
* and to crown this, Rassmunssen came with some horrible numbers that confirm that dba Obama is slipping, slipping, slipping away -
BC, time to emigrate buddy – but again a problem for you, you can’t go to Europe anymore, since Obama is increasingly seen there as regrettable figure, and most European countries have elected conservatives/ tight of center figure -
Hey-ho, hey-ho – to Chavez we go -
Good riddance -
obama seems inept and far from being the educated wise leader he once thought himself to be…..his first defeats and frustrations have traumatized and shaken him. he is however very aware of what he seeks in the way of nation building…his marching orders( from those he fears will strip him of all his sleazy gains) are well understood and entrenched in his marxist obedience. where and when he seems confused it is our confusion about his intent not his confusion that endangers the nation. as distaseful as it seems to deem the first president of color an enemy,I cannot see him in any other light for long…the risks are simply unacceptable.
Thanks for the Horace, Professor.
Yours brings to mind “the other one” (Horace’s) about an innocent conscience — but what’s key about it is that instead of implying that the man of upright life, unstained by guilt, NEEDS no defense, it suggests his clean conscience IS his defense:
Hic murus aeneus esto,
Nil conscrire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa.
Let this be your brazen bulwark,
To be conscious of no guilt nor turn pale [at any charge]. (Epistle I,1,60)
Pope borrowed this, of course, for his lines:
“True conscious honour is to feel no sin,
He’s armed without that’s innocent within;
Be this thy screen, and this thy wall of brass.”
The Bible has a different take, in Ecclesiastes 7:19-20:
“Wisdom makes one wise man more powerful
than ten rulers in a city.
“There is not a righteous man on earth
who does what is right and never sins.”
Maybe the ultimate truth is that we need an “active defense” against evil — not just brazen bulwarks but Moorish darts — and that cultivating the attitudes of righteousness, starting with humility, is wisdom, and IS such a defense: even though we will be imperfect in the execution.
Darn your hide, Professor, you’re always sending me off on these contemplative expeditions.
To ~Paules: sorry, but I’m just so well past being annoyed with people, primarily right wingers, thinking that it’s totally 100% OK to casually lie, smear and/or pass along BS talking points and rumors, whether it’s on a blog site or on a Sunday morning talk show. Granted it’s getting harder and harder everyday to sort out what’s real and what’s rubbish thanks to the long slow decline of journalism and the steep, not so slow rise in disinformation sites, but still, if you are able to post here or elsewhere, that means you have Google, Bing and all sorts of other search engines for you to do a little research. You guys talk the talk about truth, ethics and morality, but when it comes to going beyond just talking about it, out right away comes the full coverage Hypocrite Suit.
It’s almost unbelievable that there is no independent thought in CBS, NBC etc. One would think SOMEBODY would think the Van Jones or Acorn thing significant besides Fox.
When I was a liberal, I thought the military were a bunch of zombie robots like in Star Wars. Now I think the left are like zombie robots.
You can see it on this thread. The few who are contrary here are blind to the fact that Obama has so hidden his past that we CAN’T know him other than his radical anti-American associations.
The left including the contrary posters on this thread are blind like zombie robots.
I have read most of your books and enjoy your reading your blog. Since you mentioned Caesar, its important to note that he had a choice: to lay down his command in Gaul, return to Rome, be prosecuted, then exiled or put to death, or start a civil war. Just as Cato and “The Boni” (good men) wanted to prosecute Caesar for his actions while Consul, so now does the Obama justice dept want to prosecute Bush officials. If that happens, it could be the single worst precedent in the history of the country. Instead of having the peaceful transition of power from one party to another,some future President or Obama himself, would be afraid to leave power for fear of prosecution.
Caesar choose to start the civil war that ended the Roman Republic. This was only one of many civil wars that marked the last 100 years of their republic. So far we’ve had only one civil war, but if Obama proceeds with prosecuting Bush officials, if he continues to turn the Justice Dept into the Ministry of Love, and Press Secretary Gibbs turns into the head of the Ministry of Truth; if the economy continues to crumble as the government takes over more and more of it, how long can it be before another civil war starts here?
“” “… (Recidivist, treasonous, lying, looting, mass-murdering, co-serial-rapist, Missus Billy-Bubba Blythe [Cli'ton]) is (even less “experienced”) than I am and can’t be turned lose without some disaster ensuing.” Ergo: Get me (anyone) in Afghanistan, North Korea, Iraq, Pakistan etcetera, to whom to carve up and outsource her job. … For the safety of the world, let us pray for no cackling during “summits.” “”
Those exposed to this dumb cluck (surely the most stupid pretender to power to have ever, in all of the history of Man, pooped between two shoes) during her telling 1990s’ tilt at “health-care reform,” talk of a clown whose lack of intelligence was not so much measured by her inability to ever provide an answer — but by her being unable, ever, to recognize a single problem and/or to comprehend a single question!
Hate to even imagine it possible but Missus Blythe (“Clii’ton”) makes Missus (not-at) Allbright look less than definitively hapless.
RE #74/BC: [...] Granted it’s getting harder and harder everyday to sort out what’s real and what’s rubbish thanks to the long slow decline of journalism and the steep, not so slow rise in disinformation sites [...]
BC, here’s a chance for you to display your blinding integrity – Jason Shih, Corzine’s aide that was busted for dope peddling Saturday.
Can you explain why he’s mysteriously absent from news? And why the links leading to those who came first with this story don’t work anymore?
Can you explain how the Jason Shih blackout is not related to Obama’s (anyway useless) presence in New Jersey?
Do it buddy, we need more about the decay of media from types like you -
“One of the penalties for (most Americans having refused) to participate in politics is that (we have all ended up) being “governed” by (our inferior enemy).”
– Plato, Apologies to
“He who is upright in his way of life and unstained by guilt, needs not Moorish darts nor bow nor quiver loaded with poisoned arrows …”
He may not need them, but with so many enemies of our nation running our nation, he sure could use them.
35. seanmahair: “…We have now learned that people other than White, Anglo, Saxon People (WASP’s) are just as prejudiced.”
I didn’t need Obama to learn that. I became director of a VA Medical Center lab in a southern state. There were African-American med techs who wouldn’t say hello to me for the first two years I was there. They automatically assumed that a white male was a bigot, and they weren’t going to be polite to a bigot. It took two years of color-blind actions on my part before they changed their minds.
I will agree that this type of prejudice has been more open since Obama’s election.
john m e (#79), Obama has not really know any real, substantive defeats; however, he will find his first defeats as POTUS (Olympics bid, Virginia & New Jersey governor race, & the New York-23 race, possibly health care will blow up, etc al). Obama will not take these defeats kindly or professionally; no, he will act like a spoiled brat & take each defeat personally & grow more bitter or angry. All of these defeats will lead to a scorched Earth campaign. Obama is really a pathetic man-child who is in over his head.
misanthropicus, here’s another little item for your list:
On Wednesday, Boeing announced it would put a second 787 assembly line in Charleston, S.C., rather than Everett, WA.
Dem pols in Washington State are outraged, of course, despite the fact that they’ve worked very hard to create a poor business climate in that state.
Dems think business is like a goose that will continue to lay golden eggs for them no matter how much they abuse it. Well, no, eventually, the goose flies away and takes its eggs with it.
I expect to see that scenario playing out much more frequently over the next few years. I can’t bring myself to feel terribly sorry for the folks in Patty Murray’s deep blue district. Congrats to SC.
I read some references above to the Enlightenment, and those who hate it and love it. Maybe the antidote to all this postmodernist crap is a Re-enlightenment — a conscious re-dedication to our founding principles.
I suggest that’s the animating idea behind the Tea Party movement: reestablishing Enlightenment principles. Putting a name on it helps solidify where we want this to go.
I always finish reading VDH’s posts wanting more.
Remember this line?
” … look for it ony in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered … A Civilization gone with the wind … ”
That’s what happened when the last racist elitists thought they could force their will on the rest of the nation by thumbing their noses at the majority and saying, “there, it’s done what are you going to do about it?” Whether we can even slog along for another three years depends on whether or not change in 2010 is dramatic enough to be historic rather than simply reactionary. Otherwise, this will not end well.
Regards
Obama will not go much below 50% in the polls for one very simple reason. He is emptying the Treasury into the pockets of these voters, who pay no tax and are on the receiving end of his largesse. It’s easy to buy votes with other people’s money.
I disagree with every word you said about Hillary. You seem to have a rather large blind spot there VDH.
92. Frank
Every 5 or so days he posts. I come to this site repeatedly around that time to catch the new one. I’m happily surprised like when you win on a scratch off lottery ticket at the quick stop.
There’s a very informative video series at nationalreview dot com where the professor talks about Iran. It’s only slightly annoying when the moderator interrupts VDH. Scroll all the way down.
VDH used to give Obama advice or even at times the benefit of the doubt. But Obama has shown his cards and we’re all less forgiving. He’s worn out his welcome and demonstrated too much incompetence already…and it’s still early in his term.
Wanted to note the obvious, to add to the severity of the nonsense provided by our current Secretary of State:
1. Sec. Hillary Clinton is being utterly dishonest by saying, “I spent my entire eight years in the Senate opposing him (GW Bush)”. No, in fact she voted for the use of force in Iraq, authorizing the mission, in full support of the Bush Administration, using some of the most aggressive language in the Senate to justify this Military Operation.
2. Sec. Hillary Clinton again provides the overwhelming hypocrisy the Clintons have now become famous for, as the evidence shows the Clinton Administration – President Bill Clinton, refused to take custody of Osama Bin Laden on at least two known separate occasions. How dare Mrs. Clinton be critical of the Pakistani Government in this sophomoric manner, complaining about their failures to capture or kill Al Qaeda terrorists?
3. Sec. Hillary Clinton reveals a bizarre sense of ignorance regarding the current state of the GWOT. It could be another a poor attempt to distort the record of the prior Administration’s efforts in capturing and killing Al Qaeda, implying falsely no one who was behind 9-11 has been brought to justice. It is estimated, the Bush Administration eliminated some 75% of Al Qaeda after 9-11. But maybe this Obama Cabinet Member who is a principal “smart power” player, simply does not know who is currently being held in Guantanamo Bay. Perhaps Hillary Clinton doesn’t even know who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is? The self-described mastermind of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?
Mrs. Clinton has been an utter embarrassment as Sec. of State.
She not only embarrassed all by flubbing a ‘reset’ button while beginning a foolish attempt to appease Russia, showed her bitter contempt while nastily sniping to a young man in Africa who dared reference her husband, proved herself to be utterly ignorant while standing in front of one of the world’s most famous Religious Icons while visiting Mexico, and Mrs. Clinton even foolishly announced to the world the Obama Administration would not make ‘human rights’ a priority.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is simply lackluster, offensive, and has no gift for sound diplomacy.
Besides, the reality of the Clinton Administration record is truly a disaster. It is one of those partisan mythic denials, which keeps enabling the very worst.
The Clinton Administration actually made it their policy to lie about the genocide in Rwanda, provided massive loan guarantees to Enron, peddled pardons to ugly criminals like Marc Rich, foolishly appeased a killer named Arafat – as well as the nutty dictatorship in North Korea, negligently ignored the rise of Radical Muslim Terrorism even after the first attack on the WTC in 1993, and even helped seed the undermining of the Mortgage Industry, etc.
In many ways, the Clinton Administration was an utter disaster. There was a very good reason why the Republicans took control of Congress after 40 straight years of the Democratic Party holding the Majority, during the Midterms in 1994. The Clintons even tried to block needed Wellfare reform, attempted to Nationalize the US Health Care Industry behind closed doors, and gave the USA one of the largest tax increases in Our History, (which helped lead to a recession in 2000).
The Democratic Partisans remain in deep denial, about the Clinton failure. An enormous time of negligence, which made matters far worse for all.
And now we see a return of the Clinton Folly in most arenas in the Obama Administration, not only the addiction towards appeasement, the gross obsession with taxation and growing Government, the vivid deceit, but also a vast number of failed Clintonite Officials are included in the Obama Administration, just like Mrs. Clinton. It is a sincere tragedy.
How many will just go Galt?
Mandated Healthcare? No. I won’t. Fine me? Fine, I won’t pay. Fine me hard, good luck. I have no money. Take away my house? I don’t own it(Dad does). Take away my car(which I think even bankruptcy laws prohibit) good luck with that, and it’s not worth much.
Throw me in jail? Fine, how many others will go Cloward/Piven and overwhelm the system.
Tax me to death. I won’t pay. I don’t make enuff to pay income taxes, I’ve never filed for unemployment(tho been unemployed many times), never taken Medicare, never taken FoodStamps(except when I had a GF with kids, which is understandable..and I hated doing it..but it was for the kids), never expect Social Security to actually pay out.
Tax me for roads and the military, and I’m cool wid dat. Otherwise, good luck takin my money, cause I ain’t got none.
How many does it take to just tell the government ‘screw you, I ain’t payin for other people’ does it take for the system to fall apart?
I work for my money and am a charitable soul. Just the other day I found a pet pigeon and returned it to it’s owner. When I can afford it I donate to various help-the-soldiers Wounded Warriors type charities. I don’t report it on tax returns(no income tax) and also don’t report it for tax-credit(‘free money’) purposes.
I take enuff of my parents’ money, I do my damnedest not to take anyone elses.
So, Government forcing me to take other people’s money? Not gonna happen. And if enuff people say No(Like the Party of No…see how that works? ;) )…the system will fail.
Also, thought I had earlier from somewhere.
There are more nice small ‘backwater’ lille towns in the US than there are ‘nice’ big cities. So, the Elitists should remember that in their ‘we’re giving the people what they want’ thinking.
Disclaimer:I live in one of the few nice(I consider)big cities, so know they are a rare thing.
re: “Stay Calm”
I am enjoying the melt downs and infighting. Kind of like playing chicken with a train, but I will not be morose and snippy on all the drivel spewing from DC and something is needed to maintain sanity.
Totalitarianism is the fear that someone, somewhere, does not love you. It is due to this fear that they must destroy all dissent. They can’t handle the idea of someone not loving them, let alone actually opposing them.
“His captivating oratory has earned comparisons to John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King”
Maybe those comparisons don’t end there?
I’m always amazed, but becoming increasingly less amused, when people ask why Obama and his minions do what they do. “It just doesn’t make sense,” they muse, “for the President, the Secretary of State, (place title/name of other official or czar here), to do or say X, Y and/or Z!” By the way Dr. Hanson, I’m not including you in this class; you have the President’s measure.
Why do the President and his functionaries insult the nation they ostensibly serve and all of its prior leaders? Why has the President already bankrupted the nation and why are they trying to bankrupt the nation for millenia to come? Why does he seem to have no sense of the danger involved in feckless national security policy? Why do liberals insult and attack decent, intelligent, demonstrably successful and capable people like Sarah Palin? Why do liberals insult and denigrate our military, thinking them stupid and incapable of doing anything else, yet instantly sing their praises when a political photo op is required? Why would the president appoint, as Secretary of State, our nation’s top diplomat, a woman with all the personal charm, warmth, and genuine humanity of a rattlesnake? Why doesn’t the President understand that there are any number of enemies who will take advantage of a weak president, to the detriment of the world, and at the cost of millions of lives, many of which will doubtless be Americans? The President is the most brilliant man in the world, according to his followers, a god (Wasn’t Hillary Clinton the smartest woman in the world once upon a time?), yet he is constantly doing incredibly stupid things. How can all of this be? What kind of rational American president would behave this way? Who would possibly hire a Van Jones, or any of the criminal, moral reprobates that liberally populate the executive branch these days?
It’s simple. Obama is not brilliant. He’s not rational. He’s a product of the most radical leftist indoctrination that one can obtain in contemporary America. He really is a socialist/communist true believer. Add to that his true nature, a nature bred and refined in the corrupt embrace of Chicago machine politics and racial grievance mongering, and we’re closer to the truth. Once we called them con men; the politically correct term is “community organizer.” Remember that in his several memoirs Obama admitted that during his community organizing days he could not tell his closest friends what he actually did for a living, not because it was secret, but because he actually didn’t do anything useful for a living. For years. Yet he somehow obtained an Ivy League education and did very well indeed economically.
Consider this: All con men have Obama’s skill set. They’re personable, glib, forceful, slippery and fast on their feet. For a time, they can sell ice to Eskimos. But they have one prime directive, if you will: Don’t hang around too long. Run the con quickly and efficiently (the “stimulus, for example), then take the money and run before the marks realize they’ve been conned. Hang around too long and, as in the Music Man, you’ll end up trying to direct a band that can’t read music or play instruments, but unlike Professor Harold Hill, you’ll find yourself in real trouble. Add in a pathological narcissism that is orders of magnitude beyond even the previously most deranged and out of touch politicians, and we have a president who is unique, unique in his potential to cause extraordinary damage.
Barack Obama is in far, far over his head. Few men who have gained the presidency were fully prepared, but they possessed at least some degree of humility. More importantly, they saw themselves as continuing a uniquely American tradition and understood the need for consistency and strength, consistency and strength that only American has been able to provide since the 1940′s and beyond. They understood the terrible consequence of leaving a power vacuum. Some made mistakes in that area, but most, if not all, of their successors were able to learn from history. Obama will not and cannot. He is above history, beyond it, more important that all that is past. He is history, history that began upon his inauguration and issues therefrom.
But he is nothing more than a con man, a con man who has stayed far too long. The marks, and despots around the world, are beginning to understand, and those inexplicable behaviors suddenly make sense. God help us.
I wonder if the bad actors on the world stage might not wait until a second Obama term to seek any really serious readjustments in the regional order. For now, they seem to enjoy a good many small successes merely by chipping and putting. A president as weak, naive and vainglorious as Obama can be gamed and played for considerable profit. No need to overplay one’s hand.
And in answer to your query about Sarah Palin: All of the above and add to them the facts that she’s pro-life and had the bad taste to knowingly bring a Downs child into the world.
mssrs. hanson and dyer thanks for making my day special …your work is a gift to treasure….
#102, Bingo.
You know, staging date nights, broadway shows, and the gridlock and and anti-septic security expense required, along with veegin gardens, joy rides for saudi supporters on Air Force One, hamburgers and waffles, mop speeches, Devid Axelrodham rebuttal spin, and whatnot…
AND THEN
AND THEN pretending to complain about not having any privacy is nothing more than the follow-up on the original PR stunt to begin with. This is the only transparency we’re ever liable to get from this tediously banal administration.
They think this crapola runs interference for their cupidic schemes for robbing all from their privacy, and raping the chastity of the doctor/patient confidentiality.
In you dreams, manchilde
While agreeing that Obama is disastrous, focusing on him may distract us from equally pressing questions.
For instance, on Hugh Hewitt, Congressman Campbell said that recent bills, including the HC bill, essentially came directly from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and are receiving little to no input from even Dem congress and senators. Under this admin, Congress is reduced to a rubber stamp?
Another indication that we have no choice but fight with everything we’ve got. Scrutinize every bill, every vote.
Dr. Hanson,
Comments 3 and 4 are links to my blog but were not– at least not intentionally– submitted by me. Please delete them.
My apologies.
onthow
Doc, you have served and continue to serve your country well, in word and deed, as farmer, writer, humanist.
But the time must come, will come, Doc, for you to take up a sword of muscle and blood and go out and publicly flay this monster created, adulated, worshipped by the most craven group of idolators that the atheist devil has ever evacuated, the MSM!
In other words, Doc, you will have to run for President in 2012, so that the hydra can be beheaded, one lying tongue at a time, in full view of its acolytes, on all channels, in PrimeTime!
If you doubt my bona fides in placing this bloody task in your trustworthy hands, let me refer you to the only two previous comments I have made on this site, both of which were made months, years before they were recognised and repeated by all and sundry!
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/conventional-nights/ COMMENT #18
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/from-gaza-to-guantanamo/ COMMENT #8
IT HAS TO BE YOU, DOC!
Abdul, I’m assured that he puts on his pants one leg at a time, exactly like MLK, (though unlike JFK, who always kept his pants up and the zipper down!) and wads up the bumpf he’s about to use in a poor imitation of JFK (though not MLK, who always folded his neatly and purposefully!)
Other than that and a few dribbles of “oratory” in his endless, narcissistic speechifying I see no other similarities!
What is it about Palin that drives the elite, especially elite women, crazy?
Simple: She is not one of them. In a democracy, the elitists’ worst fear is that the great unwashed rabble will vote them out of power.
The more I see obama the more I think someone else is in charge (pelosi, soros, michelle…..someone). He is told what to say, where to stand, what to wear and always has. Read his books, listen to him, when he speaks off the cuff, he has the depth of a dime and limited intelligence but, when dressed and scripted, makes a pretty package.
As for Palin, why do “conservative” women hate her? Perhaps the present female population is uncomfortable with a woman who is totally owned….by herself. She has a core that tells her what is right or wrong and, if she is wrong, she corrects, learns from her mistakes and moves on. She is a strong woman and, for some reason, that makes other women uncomfortable, perhaps envious?
Good points by VDH, but I think the Feminists problem with Sarah Palin comes down to her having the life Liberal Feminism was supposed to give them. The “All” they were supposed to have, but never did.
#81
“…out right away comes the full coverage Hypocrite Suit.”
OK, I give up. Please tell me, BC, what appellation may one put to someone who criticizes another for the actions he himself also takes?
No neither comparison fits. Dr, King despite some of his later policy stances, was an extremely courageous individual who deserved
the Nobel for his groundbreaking work. And JFK was much more substantial a figure, so much so, that Taylor Caldwell, no leftist dedicated the biographical novel “Pillar of Iron” in part to him, And I don’t like the implication of that last statement either.
“Triangulators
I think very soon the triangulating Republicans of 2008 will fold up and quietly distance themselves from Obama as his poll numbers stay around 50%.” Can anyone say Peggy Noonan?
To be fair, Caesar only ended the illusion of a Roman Republic. Marius poisoned it. And, unlike Mao, Caesar promoted civilization— the calendar, the written latin language, and amnesty for political opponents. No Cultural Revolution for him.
And Justice Hanson would tell her son that those “pro bono” ACLU defense attorneys won’t be working for free—- They will be well paid by the US Taxpayer.
And as our first Democratic President from the Copperhead Mid-West, keep in mind that Chicago, and other Mid-western cities, are one party jurisdictions. But for the existence of Federal prosecutors and a Federal judiciary, Chicago would resemble Russia or China.
More like, “Four wheels bad, two wheels good, unicycle best!”
And to think that I was starting to wonder if you were getting so charged up with all of Obama’s phony-baloney that you were losing your sense of humor…
I prefer Isaiah 40:31
But those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.
They will rise with wings as eagles.
I just borrowed Gary Wolf’s time machine (AWOL civilization) and took a jaunt to 2012.
Here’s what I found:
An inflation rate of 25%, unemployment rate of 22%, food riots, power shortages, and martial law.
On the up side, all drugs are now legal, and if you make less than the poverty wage of $65,000/year, they’re free, too.
A trifle, but why include India in the “Which thug abroad will first draw the sword?” paragraph? Surely India has its faults, but thuggery isn’t one of them in light of the heinous neighbors with which it is surrounded. China and Pakistan are two vile thug nations which challenge and provoke a very benign India endlessly.
They misappropriate the symbols of our traditions, using them as props to agitate for the remaking of what they represent; they revise our history and assert history is on their side; they chant their shibboleths about utopian fairness but compose inscrutable new bills designed to transfer initiative from competitive markets to their centralized command and control state; they pledge their support to our soldiers, but impugn what those soldiers trained for combat do; they community organize the promotion of every cause but that for individual freedom.
How long can America endure so much confusion? Which will falter first? The bulwark of our constitution and Western traditions or the brutish assault led by our historic first Islamic apostate president?
Are these End Times for our way of life? Will the spectre of communism subdue the spirit of our heritage, free markets, private property, and personal accountability?
Or will the delirium of debt higher than any tax could ever reach, of dictating what we do when, where, and how, soon end by confining these would-be despots to a short term in office, with their leader retreating into his last refuge, pacing from wing to wing in his Hall of Mirrors, commanding nothing more than the self-serving servility of his retinue, and mumbling incessantly “speak truth to power, speak truth to power…”?
The good Professors’ references to Orwell may be understated. This administration is prepared to go to extreme lengths to force its perpetual oligarchic regime (envisioned as a global alliance of media, academia, trade-unions, select mega-corporations and assorted elite political cliques) upon the U.S., the sole remaining bastion of freedom in the world.
They are the masters of the Big Lie. They live empty lives (cannot find joy in life), and so are filled with hate. They seek near-absolute power (ceding only what they deem unimportant) in order to impose that hate on the world itself. Ultimately (and unconsciously) they hope to transcend death by controling life, and so are on a fool’s errand. An unpredictable universe will always remain one step ahead of their childish visions. But they can do a lot of damage in the meantime…
Massive resistance is what is needed. Every day, keep the pressure on in every legal way you can imagine (there are many), yet always retain the moral high ground. It will cause them to veer from their playbook and slow them down. By 2012 the mess they have created will be obvious for all to see. That is when our work really begins.
I just looked at the title again…THREE YEARS?!!!
How about the next few weeks?
Florida @ 21
“This country was built by white and theist conservatives and destroyed by liberal atheist Jews.”
Go poking around in a pile of rubble, you find a Jew beneath it, I guess, like liberal atheist Eric Alterman, for instance, who’d be the first to tell you: “It’s those no-good dual-loyalty Jew neocons who did it, not me!” Jewish destroyers come in all stripes, it seems.
Listen up, everybody! Things are bad enough as it is. Let us Jews off the hook for a change, how about it?
Love you articles! So logically written always with enough substantiation. I think the reason the libs hate SP is that she utterly repudiates the feminist platform. She represents a woman who worked her way from PTA mom to Governor all the while maintaining her marriage, family and faith. The family showed its steadfast adherence to their faith by standing by their daughter and supporting her as she had a baby at such a tender young age. (as a mom of two teens/adults may I never be in that place!) THe liberals would have loved her if she were not conservative, were a single mom and made sure that both she and her daughter had terminated their pregnancies.
Man, Obama was great tonight on “v.” He played the Visitor lead role of Anna perfectly. I did not know a man could look so natural in high heels and “her” Universal Health Care plan was brilliant…errr, what’s that? Really? Fiction, huh? Seriously, that was not a docudrama? Huh, what do you know….
To misanthropicus: Belated thanks for proving my point. I’ve always contended that the average blog site, with comment threads like this one, is on par as a news source with a bunch of random guys in a bar.
Actually I go back and forth about how hard should I be on people being so misguided and misinformed these days. People who get their info primarily from BS outlets like Fox News and the Free Republic deserve a good spanking for their sorry ignorance. But what about things like Drudge? I have some libertarian friends who use that as their main Internet stopping point for news. While I consider it much better as a news source than Fox because it aggregates so many legitimate news sources, it still massages the news towards a conservative/right wing viewpoint in its choice of stories to highlight. So if one tends to just quick scan it, the net effect would be again be more disinformation, but more subtle than what you would get from Fox. So are my libertarian friends being deliberately dense like Fox News watchers, or are they simply going to site that has a lot of good news links and that which feature stories that reflect their viewpoints?