Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
Americans must decide if, in the name of homeland security, they are willing to allow TSA operatives to storm public places in their communities with no warning, pat them down, and search their bags. And they better decide quickly.
Bus travelers were shocked when jackbooted TSA officers in black SWAT-style uniforms descended unannounced upon the Tampa Greyhound bus station in April with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and federal bureaucrats in tow.
A news report by ABC Action News in Tampa showed passengers being given the signature pat downs Americans are used to watching the Transportation Security Administration screeners perform at our airports. Canine teams sniffed their bags and the buses they rode. Immigration officials hunted for large sums of cash as part of an anti-smuggling initiative.
The TSA clearly intends for these out-of-nowhere swarms by its officers at community transit centers, bus stops and public events to become a routine and accepted part of American life.
The TSA has conducted 8,000 of these security sweeps across the country in the past year alone, TSA chief John Pistole told a Senate committee June 14. They are part of its VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) program, which targets public transit related places.
All of which is enough to make you wonder if we are watching the formation of the “civilian national security force” President Obama called for on the campaign trail “that is just as powerful, just as strong and just as well funded” as the military.
The VIPR swarm on Wednesday, the TSA’s largest so far, was such a shocking display of the agency’s power that it set the blogosphere abuzz.
In a massive flex of muscle most people didn’t know the TSA had, the agency led dozens of federal and state law enforcement agencies in a VIPR exercise that covered three states and 5,000 square miles. According to the Marietta Times, the sweep used reconnaissance aircraft and “multiple airborne assets, including Blackhawk helicopters and fixed wing aircraft as well as waterborne and surface teams.”
When did the TSA get this powerful? Last year, Pistole told USA Today he wanted to “take the TSA to the next level,” building it into a “national-security, counterterrorism organization, fully integrated into U.S. government efforts.”
What few people realize is how far Pistole has already come in his quest. This is apparently what that next level looks like. More than 300 law enforcement and military personnel swept through a 100-mile stretch of the Ohio Valley alone, examining the area’s industrial infrastructure, the Charleston Gazette reported.
Federal air marshals, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard, the FBI, the Office of Homeland Security and two dozen other federal, state and local agencies teamed up to scour the state’s roads, bridges, water supply and transit centers under the TSA’s leadership.
What is remarkable about these security swarms is that they don’t just involve federal, state and local law enforcement officials. The TSA brings in squads of bureaucrats from state and federal agencies as well, everything from transportation departments to departments of natural resources.
The TSA had received no specific threats about the Tampa bus station before the April sweep, reporters were told.
They were there “to sort of invent the wheel in advance in case we have to if there ever is specific intelligence requiring us to be here,” said Gary Milano with the Department of Homeland Security in an ABC News Action television report. “This way us and our partners are ready to move in at a moment’s notice.”
Federal immigration officials from Customs and Border Patrol swept the station with the TSA, looking for “immigration violations, threats to national security” and “bulk cash smuggling.” (How the bulk cash smuggling investigation related to national security was never explained.)
“We’ll be back,” Milano told reporters. “We won’t say when we’ll be back. This way the bad guys are on notice we’ll be back.”
The TSA gave the same vague answers when asked about the three-state sweep this week. That sweep wasn’t in response to any specific security threat, either.
The purpose was to “have a visible presence and let people know we’re out here,” Michael Cleveland, federal security director for TSA operations in West Virginia told the Gazette. “It can be a deterrent.”
It might be — if Americans are willing to live this way.
Tara Servatius is a radio talk show host. Follow her @TaraServatius and on Facebook.
It has ALWAYS been under liberals and progressives that America has degenerated into the depths of a police state. Go back and see all the fascist garbage that Woodrow Wilson beqeathed us with, for example. Consider FDR putting the Japanese into camps and even LYING to the Supreme Court to justify doing so.
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” Obama responded [on December 20, 2007].
– prior to ripping up the Constitution and then urinating on it to get America into Libya and Yemen.
Liberals are hypocrites. Hypocrisy is the liberals’ quintessential essence. If you took the hypocrisy out of the liberal, you could not have liberalism. You certainly couldn’t have Nancy Pelosi. Oh, or John Kerry. Or Charlie Rangel. Or Al Gore. Or Barack Obama. Or Joe Biden. Or Bill and Hillary Clinton. Notice how these are pretty much all their top-level people; the rank-and-file march in goose-step behind them. Democrats are the kind of people who demonize Republicans left and right for taking actions that are necessary in the face of direct threats. And then they do far worse than the Republicans EVER did, and “It’s not fascism when WE do it.”
Liberals are people who say one thing and do another. They are people who are capable of endless self-righteous selective outrage that dries up when THEY’RE running things.
Where are all the liberals demanding Obama be impeached for all his wars? Where are all the liberals demanding Obama be impeached for all of his secrecy and his lies? It was all over the place (and all over the front pages of the mainstream media) throughout the years of Bush derangement syndrome. Remember how they were out in force every single day in front of the televesion cameras? Where are all the Cindy Sheehands and the Code Pinks and the coverage of them NOW???
Try to sort through the Democrats’ basic premise: the party that is trying to grow the size of goverment more and more and put government in charge of more and more of our lives ISN’T fascist; while the party that is trying to reduce the size and scope and power of government ARE the fascists.
Do you remember how liberals went off on Bush as stupid for eight years (not including the primary season leading up to the 2000 election) because of the way he talked?
Bush and the word “nuclear” was a favorite, of course. And there were always a few awkward sentence constructions from a president who – unlike Obama – wasn’t slavishly attached to a teleprompter:
Obama has relied on a teleprompter through even the shortest announcements and when repeating the same lines on his economic stimulus plan that he’s been saying for months — whereas past presidents have mostly worked off of notes on the podium except during major speeches, such as the State of the Union.
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The same left that ridiculed George Bush over his every verbal slip are now rushing in with “intellectual” defenses as to why Obama sounds like a babbling fool every single time he can’t read his lines off a screen.
Apparently, a lot of people consider President Obama to be bumblingly inarticulate. “The guy can’t talk his way out of a paper bag!” a reader wrote to me recently. “Sarah Palin is a brilliant speaker. It’s the president whose sentences are undiagrammable,” said another in response to a column I wrote about Palin. It’s not just my readers, nor is it exclusively conservatives, who hold this view. A Google search of “does Obama have a speech impediment” turns up several pages of discussion among the president’s supporters and critics alike.Admittedly, the president is given to a lot of pauses, “uhs” and sputtering starts to his sentences. As polished as he often is before large crowds (where the adjective “soaring” is often applied to his speeches), his impromptu speaking frequently calls to mind a doctoral candidate delivering a wobbly dissertation defense.
But consider this: It’s not that Obama can’t speak clearly. It’s that he employs the intellectual stammer. Not to be confused with a stutter, which the president decidedly does not have, the intellectual stammer signals a brain that is moving so fast that the mouth can’t keep up. The stammer is commonly found among university professors, characters in Woody Allen movies and public thinkers of the sort that might appear on C-SPAN but not CNN. If you’re a member or a fan of that subset, chances are the president’s stammer doesn’t bother you; in fact, you might even love him for it (he sounds just like your grad school roommate, especially when he drank too much Scotch and attempted to expound on the Hegelian dialectic!).
If you’re not, chances are you find yourself yelling “get to the point already!” at the television screen every time Obama’s search for the right word seems to last longer than the search for Osama bin Laden. And thanks to its echoes of the college lecture hall, you may think it comes across as ever so slightly (or more than slightly) left wing.
That’s kind of ironic, given that the godfather of the intellectual stammer is arguably none other than the paterfamilias of the conservative movement, William F. Buckley Jr. With his slouch, his glazed-eyed stare and a speaking style that suggested the entire Oxford English Dictionary was flipping through his mind while he searched for a word like “dithyramb,” he makes Obama’s extemporaneous speech seem canned — not to mention pedestrian — by comparison. In fact, if the people critiquing Obama’s meandering speech patterns were to see an old “Firing Line” segment, I daresay they would think Buckley was drunk or otherwise impaired.
Granted, Buckley didn’t hold political office (he made an unsuccessful run for mayor of New York in 1965). He was more an observer than a decider, which is pretty much the opposite of what you need to be to lead a nation. Obama, as much as his critics might hate to admit it, is more than a phlegmatic egghead. He’s proved he can act decisively; whatever his faults, he’s leading the nation far more effectively — albeit less colorfully — than Buckley would have led New York. (When asked what he’d do if he won the mayoral election, he famously responded, “Demand a recount.”)
Obama’s problem is not that he’s an intellectual (for the sake of argument let’s define it as someone who is scholarly, broadly informed and distinguished as a thinker). It’s that he sounds like an intellectual. Unlike other presumed political brainiacs — Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich, for example — he isn’t able to bury his ideas behind a folksy regional accent or good-old-boy affectations when he wants to. Nor is he effective at “keeping it real” when he falls into traditionally African American cadences that he clearly never used when he was growing up.
By speaking as though he hails from everywhere, he ends up being from nowhere. The result is that people look at him and see not a Hawaiian or a Chicagoan or even a black man, but a university man.
Of course, the president enables that stigma by stammering his way through town hall meetings and other public dialogues as though they were philosophy lectures. Irritating? Sure. But inarticulate? Sorry, folks, but you’ll have to find another adjective. And take your time. The right word is usually worth waiting for.
Okay. I understand. Obama sounds so stupid because he’s so damned BRILLIANT. And here, look. There’s a conservative out there who did the same thing.
Or not. I don’t recall William F. Buckley Jr. having moments like this one:
But that is a fact. And such things are hindrances to most of the mainstream media’s “narratives.”
I don’t recall Buckley telling us about the 57 states (with one left to go) he’s visited in those sophisticated tones of his:
Nor do I remember Buckley making a visit to Westminster Abbey and getting the date wrong by three years as Obama just got through doing:
I don’t remember Bush – who of course was a moron (just ask any liberal) doing anything this braindead either.
Nope. It’s brilliant, intellectual “university men” who ascend to such marvellous heights of intellect.
Democratic presidential candidates teamed up during a National Public Radio debate here Tuesday to blast the Bush administration over its policy toward Iran, arguing that a new intelligence assessment proves that the administration has needlessly ratcheted up military rhetoric.
While the candidates differed somewhat over the level of threat Iran poses in the Mideast, most of them sought to liken the administration’s approach to Iran with its buildup to the war in Iraq.
“I vehemently disagree with the president that nothing’s changed and therefore nothing in American policy has to change,” said New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. “We do know that pressure on Iran does have an effect. I think that is an important lesson.”
Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the new intelligence report indicated that Iran dropped its program before international pressure came into play.
“It was like watching a rerun of his statements on Iraq five years earlier,” Biden said. “Iran is not a nuclear threat to the United States of America. Iran should be dealt with directly, with the rest of the world at our side. But we’ve made it more difficult now, because who is going to trust us?”
The debate was aired without a studio audience over NPR, live from the Iowa State Historical Museum. It covered Iran, China and immigration, offering the contenders a chance to delve more deeply into subjects that often receive less detailed debate treatment.
Clinton and Biden were joined by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, Connecticut Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Ohio Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel.
But why should it matter that Bush was right, and we are now facing a disastrous crisis that it’s just a damn shame that liberals basically ENTIRELY created with their abject REFUSAL to deal with a crisis, and their DEMONIZATION of anyone who tried? Bush said “nuclear” funny, and that’s really all that matters if you’re properly sophisticated and, you know, professorial. Bush was stupid even though he was entirely correct and the liberals who attacked him (including the three top liberals of the Obama administration with VP Biden and Secretary of State Clinton) were entirely wrong.
It doesn’t matter how many times we’re right and how many times they’re wrong. Because they won’t acknowledge the truth and because the facts don’t really matter worth a damn to them.
There’s a concept in psychology called “accommodation and assimilation” that fits liberals in their steadfast refusal to follow the rules of normal learning. In normal psychology, one assimilates new information into one’s worldview and accommodates one’s worldview as new facts come in that run contrary to the picture one has of the world. Liberals don’t bother with that nonsense. Rather, they rigidly adhere to their doctrines and simply paste-over whatever reality happens to get in the way.
I think of Harold Camping and his followers. It didn’t matter than he falsely predicted the end of the world before in 1994. It didn’t matter that the Bible that he’s doing all his “calculations” from specifically says no man can know the day or the hour of such things. It doesn’t even matter that his prediction for the end of the world on May 21 turned out to be wrong. Such facts don’t work, so so much the worse for the facts. Now we’re assured that the world will end on October 21. Really. Better get ready.
Like Harold Camping and his followers, liberals are immune from any genuine learning. They simply lack the character to deal with reality in an honest way.
Obama is brilliant because he graduated from Harvard, but Bush is stupid even though he graduated from Yale. Previous Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry was brilliant because he graduated from Yale, even though Bush had also graduated from Yale and even though Bush actually had a better accumulated grade average (77 versus 76) than Kerry. Oh, and by the way, even though Bush also actually had a higher IQ than Kerry. But so what? Kerry had that arrogant Massachusett’s tone that just sounded so… so smart. And of course, Bush was stupid because he had a few gaffes; ergo sum Obama is brilliant whenever he’s off his teleprompter because his gaffes are supposedly somehow kind of similar to brilliant people’s.
Or Bush was evil because of Gitmo, and rendition, and the Patriot Act, and domestic eavesdropping, and indefinite detentions, and military tribunals, etc. etc.; ergo sum, when Obama goes back on his demagogic rhetoric and pursues all the same policies that he demonized when Bush did them, it is Obama magnificently adapting his foreign policy. Bush was evil for using enhanced interrogation and Obama was righteous to dismantle the CIA program that relied on such intelligence – even though Obama should get all the credit for killing Osama bin Laden and even though enhanced interrogation and the CIA program that Obama dismantled were absolutenly essential to getting Osama bin laden.
One has to wonder how their heads don’t just explode from containing all the contradictions. But it turns out that when you live in your own little world – and particularly when you get to control the media and shape the “narrative” for society to consume – irritating things like facts and contradictions just don’t really matter.
I rather routinely call Obama the F-word. No, not that F-word (although the ability to resist doing so is dwindling); the other F-word: Fascist. Barack Obama is a fascist.
I have had quite a few liberals fixate on this word, and – while ignoring the rest of my arguments – proceed to give me a lecture about how my extremism undermines my positions and arguments (which they don’t bother to consider).
I’d like to respond to that. At length.
There are many who would argue that if a politician is not as rabid as Adolf Hitler, that one cannot use this label of “fascist” – at least not unless the target is a Republican (see below). Barack Obama is not a “dictator,” these would argue. He hasn’t launched the world into global war and he hasn’t murdered 6 million Jews (at least, he hasn’t yet). So he can’t be a “fascist.” This argument fails on two parts. First of all, by such a metric, Benito Mussolini wouldn’t be a “fascist” either (except for the “dictator” part). One of the reasons it is hard to have an easy definition of “fascist” is because fascism has taken a different character in every country and culture in which it has been embraced. Hitler is not the norm or standard of fascism; he is merely the most extreme example of its virulence and danger. Secondly, even if we were to take a Hitler as our example, let us realize that Adolf Hitler was a very cunning politician who managed to gain power in a Germany that was THE most sophisticated, educated and scientific nation and culture of its day. What I am asserting is that if an Adolf Hitler were to run for the presidency of the United States in 2012, he would run a platform that we could very easily label as “hope and change,” he would demagogue his adversaries as being the cause for the nation’s plight, he would lie both cynically and outrageously to win votes and he would then proceed to push the country as far as he possibly could toward his agenda. And so here, from the outset, I am claiming that the suggestion that either Barack Obama or anyone else does not qualify as a “fascist” simply because he or she can’t be directly compared to Adolf Hitler is nothing but a straw man.
The question thus becomes, what is fascism, and then it is what is Obama steering us toward?
THE WORD “fascism” is used broadly on the left as a term of abuse. Sometimes it is used to refer to any repressive government, whatever its political form. Most commonly on the left in the U.S., it is used to describe any Republican government–in particular, any Republican government or candidate on the eve of a presidential election.
As an experiment, I typed the words “Bush fascist” and then “Obama fascist” sans quotes. I got 3,280,000 Google hits for Bush fascist (and keep in mind an awful lot of hits would have vanished in the last 11 years as domains purged articles or simply ceased to exist) versus only 2,490,000 for Obama. That means liberals were over 45% more likely to call Bush a fascist than conservatives have been to call Obama one.
And when these liberals express their outrage that I would dare call Obama a fascist and thus lower the discourse, I invariably ask them just where the hell they were when their side was teeing off on Bush for eight unrelenting years of Bush derangement syndrome??? It was rare indeed to see a liberal excoriate his fellow liberals for demonizing the president of the United States.
With all due respect, the left started this form of “discourse.” They turned it into an art form. And how dare these hypocrites dare to tell me not to do unto Obama as they did unto Bush???
That might only be a rhetorical argument, as two wrongs clearly don’t make a right. But it remains a powerful one. Liberals have forfeited any moral right to criticize conservatives for using their own tactics against them.
But I don’t simply call Obama a fascist because liberals called Bush one. I call him one because he has exhibited all kinds of fascistic tendencies, which I shall in time describe.
But fascism has a far more precise definition. Historically, fascism is a far-right movementof the middle classes (shopkeepers, professionals, civil servants) who are economically ruined by severe economic crisis and driven to “frenzy.”
In the brilliant words of Leon Trotsky, fascism brings “to their feet those classes that are immediately above the working class and that are ever in dread of being forced down into its ranks; it organizes and militarizes them…and it directs them to the extirpation of proletarian organizations, from the most revolutionary to the most conservative.”
I have no doubt that the irony of these words were entirely lost to the “Socialist Worker” who wrote the article. But allow me to illuminate it for you: think of the most infamous fascists of all time, the Nazis. What did the word “Nazi” stand for? It was the “acronym for the ‘National Socialist German Workers Party’.” Let me try that again, just in case you missed these precious little details: “National SOCIALIST German WORKERS Party.”
But ask the “Socialist Workers” and they’ll assure you that the “Socialist Workers Party” had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Socialist Workers. Because that would certainly be awkward, wouldn’t it???
It is rather fascinating that “Socialist Worker” would cite as his authority on fascism and who should be labeled as a “fascist” the Marxist thinker . Allow me to provide one counter statement which is based not on the “brilliant words” of a Marxist, but on the plain simple facts:
“Part of the problem in recognizing fascism is the assumption that it is conservative. [Zeev] Sternhell has observed how study of the ideology has been obscured by “the official Marxist interpretation of fascism.” Marxism defines fascism as its polar opposite. If Marxism is progressive, fascism is conservative. If Marxism is left wing, fascism is right wing. If Marxism champions the proletariat, fascism champions the bourgeoisie. If Marxism is socialist, fascism is capitalist.
The influence of Marxist scholarship has severely distorted our understanding of fascism. Communism and fascism were rival brands of socialism. Whereas Marxist socialism is predicated on an international class struggle, fascist national socialism promoted a socialism centered in national unity. Both communists and fascists opposed the bourgeoisie. Both attacked the conservatives. Both were mass movements, which had special appeal for the intelligentsia, students, and artists, as well as workers. Both favored strong centralized governments and rejected the free economy and the ideals of individual liberty. Fascists saw themselves as being neither of the right nor the left. They believed that they constituted a third force synthesizing the best of both extremes” [Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview, p. 26].
So depending on Leon Trotsky or any other Marxist-inspired academic who merely parrots “the official Marxist interpretation of fascism” has rather serious intellectual drawbacks. And yet that is largely what we get. Far too many American academics wouldn’t be so obvious as to use the phrase, “In the brilliant words of Leon Trotsky,” but they give his ideas, theories and talking points total credence, nonetheless. The term “useful idiots” was literally coined to describe these Western “intellectuals.” And their being “useful idiots” is every bit as true today as it ever was in the past.
Consider the REAL “polar opposite”: American conservatives are capitalists, not socialists. They demand a limited national/federal government, not a massive centrally planned state as does socialism, communism and fascism. They prefer the federalist idea of powerful states’ rights against a weakened federal government, not some all-powerful Führer. And to try to force conservatives into some Nazi mold invariably means either creating straw men arguments or citing irrelevant facts (such as that conservatives favor a large military just like the Nazis did, as though virtually every single communist state does not similarly favor a large military “just like the Nazis did”). If you want an all-powerful national government that gets to decide who wins and who loses, if you want to see a system where you have to come to your government for assistance and resources with all manner of strings attached rather than being allowed to depend on yourself, your family and your community, you should embrace the political left, not the right.
By the way, another favorite idiotic red herring for liberals asserting that “Nazism was right wing” was that the Nazis hated the admittedly left wing communists. But consider the fact that Coke hates Pepsi and Barbie Doll makers hate Bratz Doll makers. Are we supposed to believe that Coke is the opposite of Pepsi as opposed to water, milk or orange juice? The fact of the matter is that Nazis and Soviet Communists hated each other because both movements had a global agenda of totalitarian dominion, and both movements were competing for the same rabidly left wing converts.
Pardon me for the following insult, but the only people who believe garbage arguments like these are ignorant fools who live in a world of straw men. Even if they have the title “PhD.” after their names.
It is for that reason that I can state categorically that Marxism and fascism are not “polar opposites” at all. They are merely two potentially complementary species of socialism. That is why China has been able to easily weave blatantly fascistic (national socialist/corporatist) elements into its Maoist communism. It is also why Joseph Stalin was able to go from being an international socialist (i.e. a communist) and then appeal to nationalism (i.e., national socialism or “fascism”) when he needed to fight Hitler, only to switch back to “international socialism” after the war, as a few lines from Wikipedia on “Russian nationalism” point out:
The newborn communist republic under Vladimir Lenin proclaimed internationalism as its official ideology[4]. Russian nationalism was discouraged, as were any remnants of Imperial patriotism, such as wearing military awards received before Civil War….
The 1930s saw the evolution of the new concept of Soviet nationalism under Joseph Stalin, based on both Russian nationalism and communist internationalism. Official communist ideology always stated that Russia was the most progressive state, because it adopted socialism as its basis (which, according to the writings of Karl Marx, is the inevitable future of world socio-economic systems). Under Lenin, the USSR believed its duty to help other nations to arrange socialist revolutions (the concept of World Revolution), and made close ties with labor movements around the world[4].
[…]
The Soviet Union’s war against Nazi Germany became known as the Great Patriotic War, hearkening back to the previous use of the term in the Napoleonic Wars. The Soviet state called for Soviet citizens to defend the ‘Motherland’, a matrilineal term used to describe Russia in the past.
[…]
In 1944, the Soviet Union abandoned its communist anthem, The International, and adopted a new national anthem which citizens of the Soviet Union could identify with.
And then, with the victory secured over fascism, the Stalinist “national socialism” (a.k.a. “fascism”) suddenly became international socialism again. The Nazis’ very name was Nationalsozialistische.
One can be a “Marxist-fascist” and combine and blend elements of both totalitarian socialist systems quite easily, as both the Russian and then the Chinese communists proved. Communism and fascism have far more in common with one another than they have in opposition; especially when you examine the fact that both political systems invariably end up becoming the same big-government totalitarian police state.
So for my first two points – namely that 1) the left has routinely demagogically labeled the right “fascist” even when 2) it is clearly the left that owes far and away the most to fascistic elements – I am going to continue to shout from the rooftops who are the real fascists in America.
That said, it is still not enough to merely point out the FACT that American liberalism has much in common with fascism. And there is a lot more yet to say.
Before I begin spouting particular examples, I therefore need to further approach just what it is that would constitute a “fascist.” And then see who and how the label fits. From The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:
The best example of a fascist economy is the regime of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Holding that liberalism (by which he meant freedom and free markets) had “reached the end of its historical function,” Mussolini wrote: “To Fascism the world is not this material world, as it appears on the surface, where Man is an individual separated from all others and left to himself…. Fascism affirms the State as the true reality of the individual.”
This collectivism is captured in the word fascism, which comes from the Latin fasces, meaning a bundle of rods with an axe in it. In economics, fascism was seen as a third way between laissez-faire capitalism and communism. Fascist thought acknowledged the roles of private property and the profit motive as legitimate incentives for productivity—provided that they did not conflict with the interests of the state.
[…]
Mussolini’s fascism took another step at this time with the advent of the Corporative State, a supposedly pragmatic arrangement under which economic decisions were made by councils composed of workers and employers who represented trades and industries. By this device the presumed economic rivalry between employers and employees was to be resolved, preventing the class struggle from undermining the national struggle. In the Corporative State, for example, strikes would be illegal and labor disputes would be mediated by a state agency.
Theoretically, the fascist economy was to be guided by a complex network of employer, worker, and jointly run organizations representing crafts and industries at the local, provincial, and national levels. At the summit of this network was the National Council of Corporations. But although syndicalism and corporativism had a place in fascist ideology and were critical to building a consensus in support of the regime, the council did little to steer the economy. The real decisions were made by state agencies such as the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (Istituto per la Ricosstruzione Industriale, or IRI), mediating among interest groups.
[…]
Mussolini also eliminated the ability of business to make independent decisions: the government controlled all prices and wages, and firms in any industry could be forced into a cartel when the majority voted for it. The well-connected heads of big business had a hand in making policy, but most smaller businessmen were effectively turned into state employees contending with corrupt bureaucracies. They acquiesced, hoping that the restrictions would be temporary. Land being fundamental to the nation, the fascist state regimented agriculture even more fully, dictating crops, breaking up farms, and threatening expropriation to enforce its commands.
Banking also came under extraordinary control. As Italy’s industrial and banking system sank under the weight of depression and regulation, and as unemployment rose, the government set up public works programs and took control over decisions about building and expanding factories. The government created the Istituto Mobiliare in 1931 to control credit, and the IRI later acquired all shares held by banks in industrial, agricultural, and real estate enterprises.
The image of a strong leader taking direct charge of an economy during hard times fascinated observers abroad. Italy was one of the places that Franklin Roosevelt looked to for ideas in 1933…
Fascism is all about the “community,” not the individual. Its message is about the good of the nation, or the people (or the Volk), or the community, rather than the good of a nation’s individual citizens. It is about distributing and then redistributing the wealth and returning it to “its rightful owners” under the guise of an all-powerful state rather than recognizing and rewarding individual achievement. In short, when Hillary Clinton explained that, “It takes a village,” an educated Nazi would have snapped his fingers and excitedly shouted, “Ja! JA! Das ist ES!”
For Obama, the collectivism, community or “village” thing is such a profound part of him that he has literally made it an integral part of his very heretical form of “Christianity,” which very much stresses individual salvation and individual responsibility. Obama has on several occasions put it this way:
For example, in 1995, Obama said, “my individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country…” and again in May of 2008, “our individual salvation depends of collective salvation.”
In the Christian faith, there is no such thing as collective salvation. Salvation is an individual choice. It is personal acceptance of Jesus as savior, Son of the living God.
Obama’s is a wildly perverted view of orthodox Christianity. It so distorts true Christianity at such a fundamental level, in fact, that one literally has to go to Hitler to find a suitable similar parallel from a “Christian” national leader. The great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther – the most famous German prior to Hitler – had written the most monumental text of German culture prior to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. It was called “The Bondage of the Will,” which was considered THE manifesto of the Reformation. According to Luther, the human will was in bondage to sin. The fallen will, if left to itself, will choose what is evil. The human will has been perversely set against the righteous will of God. For sinful human beings, the will is not in a state of liberty but is in bondage to its worst impulses. Luther wrote in this work, “When our liberty is lost we are compelled to serve sin: that is, we will sin and evil, we speak sin and evil, we do sin and evil.” Adolf Hitler infamously turned that key doctrine of Christianity on its head in his “The Triumph of the Will,” in which he exalted depraved human will to an altogether different level of human depravity. Which is to say that Hitler was so profoundly wrong that he proved Luther right.
But getting back to Obama’s profoundly anti-Christian concept of “collective salvation,” the Nazis would have been all over that, enthusiastically shouting their agreement, “Ja! JA! Das ist ES!” Recall the encyclopedia entry on fascism stating that, “Fascism affirms the State as the true reality of the individual,” which was then further defined as “collectivism.” And the Nazis repeatedly called upon loyal Germans to make horrendous sacrifices in the name of that collective.
What the Nazis pursued was a form of anti-capitalist anti-conservative communitarianism encapsulated in the concept of Volksgemeinschaft, or “people’s community.”
From the Nazi Party Platform:
– The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all Consequently we demand:
– Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.
– In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
– We demand the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
– We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
– We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
– We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.
– We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
– We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, Schieber and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
– We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.
– The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbuergerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.
– The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
– We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
– We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. In order to enable the provision of a German press, we demand, that: a. All writers and employees of the newspapers appearing in the German language be members of the race: b. Non-German newspapers be required to have the express permission of the State to be published. They may not be printed in the German language: c. Non-Germans are forbidden by law any financial interest in German publications, or any influence on them, and as punishment for violations the closing of such a publication as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-German concerned. Publications which are counter to the general good are to be forbidden. We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life, and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.
Ah, yes, the Nazis had their “Fairness Doctrine” long before this current generation of liberals had theirs.
You read that Nazi Party Platform carefully, and you tell me if you see small government conservative Republicans or big government liberal Democrats written all over it.
Now, you read the Nazi Party Platform, and given what American liberals want and what American conservatism opposes, it is so obvious which party is “fascist” that it isn’t even silly. Then you ADD to that the fact that fascism and American progressivism (which is liberalism) were so similar that the great fascists of the age couldn’t tell the damn difference.
Since you point out Nazism was fascist, let’s look at some history as to WHO was recognized as fascist in America.
Fascism sought to eliminate class differences and to destroy/replace capitalism and laissez-faire economics.
H.G. Wells, a great admirer of FDR and an extremely close personal friend of his, was also a great progressive of his day. He summed it up this way in a major speech at Oxford to the YOUNG LIBERALS organization under the banner of “Liberal Fascism”: “I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.” He said, “And do not let me leave you in the slightest doubt as to the scope and ambition of what I am putting before you” and then said:
These new organizations are not merely organizations for the spread of defined opinions…the days of that sort of amateurism are over – they are organizations to replace the dilatory indecisiveness of democracy. The world is sick of parliamentary politics…The Fascist Party, to the best of its ability, is Italy now. The Communist Party, to the best of its ability, is Russia. Obviously the Fascists of Liberalism must carry out a parallel ambition on still a vaster scale…They must begin as a disciplined sect, but must end as the sustaining organization of a reconstituted mankind.”
H.G. Wells pronounced FDR “the most effective transmitting instrument possible for the coming of the new world order.” And of course, we easily see that the new world order Wells wanted was a fascist one. In 1941, George Orwell concluded, “Much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany.”
It was from the lips of liberal progressive H.G. Wells that Jonah Goldberg got the title of his book, Liberal Fascism. Goldberg didn’t just invent this connection: H.G. Wells flagrantly admitted it and George Orwell called him on it. All Goldberg did was rediscover history that liberals buried and have used every trick imaginable to keep buried.
And as a tie-in to our modern day, who more than Barack Obama has been more associated with said FDR?
But let me move on to some real red meat. In just what specific, concrete ways can I call Obama a fascist?
Well, to begin with, there is the signature achievement of his entire presidency, his national health care system (ObamaCare). For liberals, it is nothing but the most bizarre coincidence that Nazi culture had a national health care system that was quite rightly considered the wonder of its day by socialists in America. It is the most despicable of insults that Sarah Palin excoriated ObamaCare as “death panels” – even though it is more precisely a bureaucratic maze consisting of more like 160 separate death panels:
And the “czar” thing hits a very fascist nerve, too. Obama has appointed 39 czars who are completely outside our Constitutional process. Obama signed a budget bill into law that required him to remove these czars, but why would a fascist trouble himself with outmoded things like “laws”? One of the enraged Republicans responded, “The president knew that the czar amendment was part of the overall budget deal he agreed to, and if he cannot be trusted to keep his word on this, then how can he be trusted as we negotiate on larger issues like federal spending and the economy.” And of course, he’s right.
But why do I say it’s financial fascism in 20/20 hindsight? Because of what we just learned: in spite of all the bogus lying promises and the massive takeover “for our own good,” Obama didn’t fix anything. Instead he made it WORSE:
The financial system poses an even greater risk to taxpayers than before the crisis, according to analysts at Standard & Poor’s. The next rescue could be about a trillion dollars costlier, the credit rating agency warned.
S&P put policymakers on notice, saying there’s “at least a one-in-three” chance that the U.S. government may lose its coveted AAA credit rating. Various risks could lead the agency to downgrade the Treasury’s credit worthiness, including policymakers’ penchant for rescuing bankers and traders from their failures.
“The potential for further extraordinary official assistance to large players in the U.S. financial sector poses a negative risk to the government’s credit rating,” S&P said in its Monday report.
But, the agency’s analysts warned, “we believe the risks from the U.S. financial sector are higher than we considered them to be before 2008.”
Because of the increased risk, S&P forecasts the potential initial cost to taxpayers of the next crisis cleanup to approach 34 percent of the nation’s annual economic output, or gross domestic product. In 2007, the agency’s analysts estimated it could cost 26 percent of GDP.
Last year, U.S. output neared $14.7 trillion, according to the Commerce Department. By S&P’s estimate, that means taxpayers could be hit with $5 trillion in costs in the event of another financial collapse.
Experts said that while the cost estimate seems unusually high, there’s little dispute that when the next crisis hits, it will not be anticipated — and it will likely hurt the economy more than the last financial crisis.
So much for the massive and unprecedented fascist government takeover.
Think last year’s $700 billion Wall Street rescue package was beaucoup bucks to spend bailing out the nation’s floundering financial system? That’s chump change compared to what the overall price tag could be, a government watchdog says.
The inspector general in charge of overseeing the Treasury Department’s bank-bailout program says the massive endeavor could end up costing taxpayers almost $24 trillion in a worst-case scenario. That’s more than six times President Obama’s proposed $3.55 trillion budget for 2010.
Nobody here but us fascists. And we sure aint talking.
Then there are other issues that the left usually uses to attack conservatives, such as racism. Wasn’t Hitler a racist, just like conservatives? The problem is, the liberals are as usual upside-down here. After running as the man to create racial harmony, Barack Obama has instead done more to racially polarize America than any president since other famous progressives such as Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Frankly, if one were to conduct a major study of racial politics, and the setting up in opposition of one racial group against another, just which party has emphasized race and race-baiting more?
Hitler’s Jew-baiting was all about the idea that one race had taken over the culture, had the money and the power, and was using its influence to oppress the people in the banking system and anywhere else that mattered. And Hitler’s constant screed was that Germany needed to confiscate the Jews’ wealth and then redistribute it. With all respect, all the left has done is replace “Jew” with “Caucasian” and making the exact same claims.
And with all this hard-core racist demagoguing, I’m supposed to say that, “Oh, yes, it’s the conservatives who are guilty of demagoguing race”??? Seriously???
Obama has Samantha Powers (the wife of Cass Sunstein, the man who “nudges us”) close to him and advising him on matters of war. According to the very liberal publication The Nation, “She began to see war as an instrument to achieving her liberal, even radical, values.” What if you had an ultra conservative – oh, say a Sarah Palin – openly acknowledged to pursue war and risk American lives to advance her radical values??? What would the left call this if not “fascist”?
But it’s only fascist if Republicans do it, of course.
Also in yesterday’s news is the fact that Obama is the perpetual demagogue– which is a quintessentially fascist tactic. Obama demonized Bush for trying to raise the debt ceiling until he needed to raise it. Now it would be un-American for Republicans to act the same exact way Obama acted. In the same demagogic spirit, Obama personally invited Paul Ryan to a speech just so he could personally demonize him. The same Obama who lectured Republicans that it would be counter-productive to rely on name-calling and accusations in the health care debate launched into a vicious demagogic attack. Ryan correctly said that “What we got yesterday was the opposite of what he said is necessary to fix this problem.” But that is par for the golf course for a fascist. If that wasn’t enough, Obama held a White House conference for “stake holders” in the immigration debate and refused to invite a single governor from a border state.
A Republican equivalent would have had to come out of a deep involvement with some vile racist militia organization to approximate Obama’s background. And liberals would rightly label such a politician a fascist for his past alone.
Here’s a recent Youtube video of Obama’s key union allies on camera saying, “We’re not going to rely on the law,” and, “Forget about the law” as they seek to impose their unions basically whether workers want them or not:
Today we find out officially that Obama is backpedeling on two lies: one to close Guantanamo Bay, and the other to try the worst terrorists in civilian court. As the LA Times reports via the AP:
Professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators are being referred to the system of military commissions for trial, a federal law enforcement official said Monday.
The decision by the Obama administration is an about-face from earlier plans to have the five go on trial in civilian federal court in New York.
You stupid, arrogant poodle, Obama. You’d be completely ashamed of yourself if you weren’t such an arrogant narcissist.
Again and again, on issue after issue, Obama demagogued and demonized Bush policies on the campaign trail. But when it came time to put up or shut up, and actually DO something, Obama’s “poodle policies” ended up on their back with Bush policy fangs around their throat.
But just when you think Obama has finally accepted reality, the idiot climbs back on his winged unicorn and flies off in another cloud of magic fairy dust.
By finally relenting – after 17 months of wasted time and God only knows how many millions of dollars spent fighting reality – to try the terrorists at Gitmo, Obama is acknowledging that Guantanamo Bay will not be closed as long as his loathsome character pollutes the White House.
Here’s the worst of it. Obama cowardly and despicably went overseas and demonized his predecessor for his atrocities such as Gitmo and trying terrorists in military tribunals. The contemptible rat bastard-in-chief even said he would consider holding Bush criminally responsible. And now Obama will be embracing the very “atrocities” that he himself personally demonized.
The left has been saying that Gitmo and military tribunals would give al Qaeda ammunition for recruiting terrorists. Riddle me this: how much more will they gain ammunition by replaying the very words of Obama and his attorney general Eric Holder as saying Gitmo and military tribunals were immoral?!?!??
Do you remember how the left demonized George W. Bush for eight years? Remember how he was trampling all over the Constitution with his military tribunals? Remember how Guantanamo was a scourge upon the face of humanity, a veritable second Auschwitz? Remember how Obama was going to close Guantanamo within his first year in office? Remember the “fierce moral urgency of change?”
There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world. Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al Qaeda that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law. In fact, part of the rationale for establishing Guantanamo in the first place was the misplaced notion that a prison there would be beyond the law — a proposition that the Supreme Court soundly rejected. Meanwhile, instead of serving as a tool to counter terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.
So the record is clear: Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies. It sets back the willingness of our allies to work with us in fighting an enemy that operates in scores of countries. By any measure, the costs of keeping it open far exceed the complications involved in closing it. That’s why I argued that it should be closed throughout my campaign, and that is why I ordered it closed within one year.
Now, you vile liberals, you explain to me how al Qaeda will not be playing Barack Obama’s and Eric Holder’s speeches and saying, “You see? America is evil even by its very own president’s and attorney general’s standards.”
Dick Cheney has repeatedly said that Obama couldn’t be more naive or more wrong and that he would ultimately be forced to abandon his immoral positions on both Gitmo and the military tribunals.
You owe George Bush and Dick Cheney a personal apology. When Dick Cheney stood up to your lies and denounced your terrible policies, he rightly confronted you on the very issues that you just backed down from today in an implicit acknowledgment that he was right and you were totally wrong. And if you had so much as a single shred of personal honor or decency, you would offer that apology.
The fact that you DON’T have any honor or decency is why we can know that you won’t bother.
The hypocrisy of the liberals is, as always, beyond belief.
Remember how they bitched about every Bush national security program, no matter how obviously necessary each program clearly was? The Patriot Act was a despicable and un-American violation of our freedoms. Domestic Eavesdropping of telephone calls to or from people on terrorist watch lists was a despicable and un-American violation of our freedoms. Even though there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever than a single American citizen had his or her rights deprived. Now they rabidly defend treating every single American who flies like a terrorist, in obvious violation of their 4th Amendment rights.
Well, for the record, no we don’t. We could be like the Israelis – who have the safest record in the world – and profile.
But look at this: the TSA has now exempted the pilots and the flight attendants (union employees, both) from a clearly despicable and un-American violation of their rights and freedoms. The Obama administration is going to exempt union workers from having their 4th Amendment rights violated, but will go ahead and keep violating every other citizen’s 4th Amendment rights.
TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball said, “Flight attendants, like pilots, are a known and trusted group.”
Now, that’s common sense, on one hand. But it’s also clearly “profiling.”
For example, aren’t elderly nuns ALSO a “known and trusted group”??? What evidence can the government provide that elderly nuns should be less trusted than pilots and flight attendants?
Now show me the elderly nun who has crashed a passenger jet aircraft.
Now that we’ve established the “known and trusted” character of elderly nuns in relation to the considerably less “known and trusted” status of pilots and flight attendants, can’t we also easily come up with a long, long, long list of people who are in a “known and trusted group”???
As an example, not only have I never committed a terrorist act, but no one LIKE ME ever has, either. Unlike, say, airline pilots. Which is to say I’M part of a “known and trusted group,” too. Dammit.
But, no. Because liberals are jackasses and fools, I have to be treated just like the groups that clearly are NOT to be trusted. Because for liberals, to treat the group that is responsible for 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999% of all terrorist attacks differently than my group that has never attacked anybody is somehow wrong.
What can I say, but, “I know why the caged bird sings…”
We’re seeing growing sings that all is most certainly not well in the Camelot Part Deux that liberals wanted to recreate in the Obama White House. Obama himself is cracking under the stress, smoking too much and drinking too much. I think we’d all like it if the man who had the responsibility of imposing his will on an Iran determined to develop nuclear ICBMs had at least enough willpower to impose his will on the next pack of cigarettes. Meanwhile, Obama’s Chicago-thug “fearsome foursome” who form his paranoid inner circle are taking all kinds of heat – and showing signs of meltdown from all the gear-clashing.
Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel – Mr. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” himself – has been under fire from liberals who want to blame him for the near-total failure Obama’s first year has been. But Emanuel has some allies in the press as well, who have come out to make a strong defense (mayhap with Rahm’s help?) at the direct expense of Obama. I mean, the mainstream media is blaming the failure of the Obama administration on Emanuel’s lack of discipline and management skills, while other parts of the mainstream media argue that Rahm Emanuel is the only thing preventing Obama from ending up worse than Jimmy Carter. I mean, you know there are a lot of hurt feelings and dead bodies in closets at the White House with this stuff going on.
And now we see the glue is coming off the veneer of David Axelrod, too.
WASHINGTON — David Axelrod was sitting at his desk on a recent afternoon — tie crooked, eyes droopy and looking more burdened than usual. He had just been watching some genius on MSNBC insist that he and President Obama’s other top aides were failing miserably and should be replaced.
“Typical Washington junk we have to deal with,” Mr. Axelrod said in an interview. The president is deft at blocking out such noise, he added, suddenly brightening. “I love the guy,” he said, and in the space of five minutes, repeated the sentiment twice.
Critics, pointing to the administration’s stalled legislative agenda, falling poll numbers and muddled messaging, suggest that kind of devotion is part of the problem at the White House. Recent news reports have cast the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, as the administration’s chief pragmatist, and Mr. Axelrod, by implication, as something of a swooning loyalist. A “Moonie,” dismissed Mr. Axelrod’s close friend, former Commerce Secretary William Daley. Or as the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, joked, “the guy who walks in front of the president with rose petals.”
Still, it is a charge that infuriates Mr. Axelrod, the president’s closest aide, longest-serving adviser and political alter ego. “I guess I have been castigated for believing too deeply in the president,” he said, lapsing into the sarcasm he tends to deploy when playing defense.
No one has taken the perceived failings of the administration more personally or shown the strain as plainly as Mr. Axelrod, who as White House senior adviser oversees every aspect of how Mr. Obama is presented. As such, Mr. Axelrod, the president’s mustachioed message maven, has felt the brunt of criticism over what many view as the administration’s failure to clearly define and disseminate Mr. Obama’s agenda and accomplishments for the country.
“The Obama White House has lost the narrative in the way that the Obama campaign never did,” said James Morone, a political scientist at Brown University. “They essentially took the president’s great strength as a messenger and failed to use it smartly.”
Mr. Axelrod said he accepts some blame for what he called “communication failures,” though he acknowledges bafflement that the administration’s efforts to stimulate the economy in a crisis, overhaul health care and prosecute two wars have been so routinely framed by opponents as the handiwork of a big-government, soft-on-terrorism, politics-of-the-past ideologue.
“For me, the question is, why haven’t we broken through more than we have?” Mr. Axelrod said. “Why haven’t we broken through?”
That question has dogged Mr. Axelrod in recent months and has preoccupied Mr. Obama’s inner circle, fueling speculation that the vaunted “No Drama Obama” team might be fracturing. Not surprisingly, the White House has no patience with the notion.
“You guys want to fit people into boxes and categories that are just not accurate,” Mr. Emanuel said.
Mr. Axelrod would not discuss what counsel he offered to Mr. Obama, though he denies any “fissure with my buddy Rahm” and any charge that he is too infatuated with the president to recognize the political risks of his ambitious agenda.
“Believe me, if we were charting this administration as a political exercise, the first thing we would have done would not have been a massive recovery act, stabilizing the banks and helping to keep the auto companies from collapsing,” he said. “Those would not even be the first hundred things he would want to do.”
But Mr. Axelrod argued that the president, confronted with “breathtaking challenges,” did not have the luxury of moving more slowly or methodically.
In a lengthy interview in his office on Wednesday, Mr. Axelrod was often defiant, saying he did not give a “flying” expletive “about what the peanut gallery thinks” and did not live for the approval “of the political community.” He denounced the “rampant lack of responsibility” of people in Washington who refuse to solve problems, and cited the difficulty of trying to communicate through what he calls “the dirty filter” of a city suffused with the “every day is Election Day sort of mentality.”
When asked how he would assess his performance, Mr. Axelrod shrugged. “I’m not going to judge myself on that score,” he said. But then he shot back: “Have I succeeded in reversing a 30-year trend of skepticism and cynicism about government? I confess that I have not. Maybe next year.”
The criticism of the administration’s communication strategy — leveled by impatient Democrats, gleeful Republicans, bloggers and cable chatterers — clearly stings Mr. Axelrod, as well as the circle of family, friends and fans he has acquired over three decades in politics as a consultant and, before that, a reporter for The Chicago Tribune.
“Every time I hear that the White House is getting the message wrong, it breaks my heart,” said Mr. Axelrod’s sister, Joan, an educational therapist in Boston. “I know he agonizes.”
Ms. Axelrod says that while her brother is devoted to Mr. Obama, he is not a sycophant. She paused when asked whether he admired the president too much. “He is very, very loyal, sometimes to a fault,” she said.
Added Mr. Gibbs: “The list of people who have to deliver bad news to the president is very small, and David is first on that list. I’m probably second.”
Mr. Axelrod’s friends worry about the toll of his job — citing his diet (cold-cut-enriched), his weight (20 pounds heavier than at the start of the presidential campaign), sleep deprivation (five fitful hours a night), separation from family (most back home in Chicago) and the fact that at 55, he is considerably older than many of the wunderkind workaholics of the West Wing. He wakes at 6 in his rented condominium just blocks from the White House and typically returns around 11.
Unlike other presidential alter egos, Mr. Axelrod is not viewed as a surrogate “brain” (like Karl Rove), a suspicious outsider (like Dick Morris in the Clinton White House) or a co-president (James Baker in the first Bush White House). Sometimes portrayed as a bare-knuckled Chicago operative, he is also a bantering walrus of a man in mustard-stained sleeves who describes himself as a “kibbitzer,” not a “policy guy.”
Sitting at his desk next door to the Oval Office last week, he was tearing into a five-inch corned beef sandwich on rye with a Flintstone-size turkey drumstick waiting on deck. “I am the poster child for the president’s obesity program,” he said.
A few minutes later, Mr. Obama walked in unannounced, scattering two aides like startled pigeons. “Hey,” Mr. Axelrod said by way of greeting (no “sir” or “Mr. President.”) Mr. Obama surveyed the spread on Mr. Axelrod’s desk with a slight smirk.
“What is this, King Arthur’s court?” he asked, then pulled Mr. Axelrod aside to talk about a health care speech he was about to deliver.
Mr. Axelrod is often at the president’s side; he sits in on policy and national security meetings and is routinely the last person he talks to before making a decision. He directs every aspect of the administration’s external presentation, overseeing polls, focus groups and speeches and appearing on the Sunday shows. Mr. Emanuel describes Mr. Axelrod as “an integrator of the three P’s” — press, policy and politics — “and how they make a whole.”
White House officials describe Mr. Axelrod’s focus as big themes rather than day-to-day sound bites. There has been no shortage of Democrats willing to second-guess his messaging approach.
“They made a big mistake right out of the box with the Inaugural Address,” said former Senator Bob Kerrey, adding that a president pledging bipartisanship should not have disparaged the previous administration in his speech, as many listeners believed Mr. Obama did.
Of course, they are continuing to make the same mistake of blaming Bush over and over and over again on a daily basis over a year later.
And that does go to the core of the Obama failure: the inability to match his rhetoric with reality, or even his rhetoric with his own rhetoric.
The man who pledged bipartisanship and a transcendent ability to reach across the divide and bring the country together has blamed and demonized the Bush administration and the Republican Party every single time he “reached.”
That’s just health care. You can take almost any other issue and find the same thing with Obama. Foreign policy? Take Renditions. Take Eavesdropping programs. Take the Patriot Act. Take Gitmo. Take the surge strategy. Take the Iraq War. Take the Iranian nuclear threat. And now, take military tribunals. In every single one of these cases Obama personally demonized the Bush position, and then did the same thing himself without ever once having the integrity to say that George Bush had been right and he had been wrong. Energy policy? Obama so completely abandoned his own stated energy policy promises that a senior Democrat was forced to say that Obama “is beginning not to be believable to me.”
I have to say I feel sorry for the messengers who are being hounded for not being able to get the White House message out: it’s full of lies and deceit; how do you make all the Obama lies look good without telling a whole bunch of other lies?
The one word that most accurately frames this piece is, “Wah.” The people who most successfully demagogued mainstream media narratives when it came to George Bush and Republicans are the biggest bunch of thin-skinned whining crybabies I’ve ever seen. Someone else is ALWAYS to blame with these people.
And when they demonize Republicans for their criticisms when the Obama team has done nothing BUT demonize Bush and Republicans, it is beyond disgusting and even beyond despicable.
What couldn’t be more obvious about Obama’s inner circle – political rather than policy experts all – is that all they can do well is campaign. So they constantly campaign in campaign mode, and then cry the moment anybody suggests they’re doing anything because of “politics.” I mean, think about it: the same man who lambasts the press for their “every day is Election Day sort of mentality,” is the guy who is closer than anyone to Obama – and who spends all his time as the “integrator of the three P’s” — press, policy and politics — “and how they make a whole.”
I mean, how DARE you people accurately describe us as what we are, and consider policies from the same uber-political perspective that WE consider them. HOW DARE YOU!
The Obama inner circle lives in a bunker and embraces a “bunker-view mentality” to the world. In contradiction to their statements to the contrary, they are hyper-hyper sensitive to any skepticism at all. And their growing problem is that the nastiest skepticism of all isn’t coming from “the right” or from Fox News, but from their very own left and from media that should be in their pockets.
I don’t know how long it’s going to take before it happens, but this president and this inner White House circle are heading for a meltdown of epic proportions.
9/11 should be a time for every American to ponder the events of that fateful and horrific day in 2001.
We had just suffered more casualties from a foreign enemy in an act of war than had ever been sustained by America on its own soil in its entire history – including the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Most Americans were angry and demanded action. Fully 90% supported George Bush as he laid out his plans to respond to the attack. And that support was still above 70% when President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003. We passed the Patriot Act with wide margins in both branches of Congress in October of 2001. Only ONE Senator – Russ Feingold – voted against it.
And then, slowly at first, and then precipitously, Americans began to turn against the president they had supported, against the wars they had supported, and against the Patriot Act they had supported.
You can see in collections of quotes from Democrats regarding Iraq and the underlying justifications of the war how Democrats were “for that war before they were against it” as declining American support made undermining the war effort itself more and more politically advantageous.
Today, as we pause to reflect over 9/11, we no longer have a “war on terror.” Now we have an “overseas contingency operation.” We no longer want our Central Intelligence Agency to aggressively pursue terrorists and seek out any and all information to help us prevent the next attack. Now we want to criminalize those operatives who tried to keep us safe as a warning to any future CIA personnel who might be so foolish as to violate liberal morays. Better to lose a city or two than to waterboard a terrorist.
As I reflect on the hours of that terrible day of 9/11, I remember Palestinians cheering and dancing in the streets and holding up ‘V for Victory’ gestures. I remember people leaping to their deaths from the top floors of the skyscrapers rather than endure the heat that would have murdered them even more agonizingly. I remember Democrats and Republicans arm-in-arm singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol Building – at least until Democrats determined to undermine virtually everything they had previously supported.
On the anniversary of 9/11, I just wonder what will happen if we are attacked again. How will we respond? What will we want? How will we demand our president act?
I hope that Americans soberly reflect how they would respond to the next massive terrorist attack today. Because virtually every expert agrees that another such attack is surely coming. And rather than swing wildly and frankly psychotically between extremes, perhaps we might come to a considered and committed path based on the real will of the American people.
Ask yourself this: if we are attacked again, would you want a President Bush, or would you want a President Obama? Would you want to handled the next massive attack in which thousands, or tens of thousands (or even more) Americans die to be handled as an act of war, or as a law enforcement investigation? Would you prefer to go to war against any nation that threatens us, or would you prefer to talk and negotiate instead? Would you prefer a president who fights our enemies, or a president who voted against fighting and who in fact voted for undermining the war effort in order to stop it?
Just what is it you want your commander in chief to do in response to a massive terrorist attack? What is it you expect your commander in chief to do in order to prevent such an attack from ever happening in the first place?
Let us realize that the next “Iraq” is rushing toward us in the form of a nuclear-weaponized Iran. Is such a country a threat? Should we allow them to develop their weapons of mass destruction, or should we use all means – including military power – to stop them? The media first reports that Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been dramatically slowed down, then reports that they can literally make a bomb whenever they want within the space of a couple of weeks’ time. One thing seems quite sure: Iran is inexorably working toward nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. What do we want our president to do about it? Everything? Nothing?
To the extent that the American people are even capable of genuine self-reflection and wise contemplation of the future, I hope we take this opportunity to do so today.
I also hope that every single American – regardless of political party – takes a moment to thank God for our troops and pray for their safety and for their victory.
The reality is that everybody who hated us before will still hate us now. The only diffrence after this election is that those enemies know that we elected an appeasing lightweight whom they think they can push around. Essentially, we decided we wanted a poodle instead of a rottweiler.
Regardless of the “If we elect Barack Obama, the world will love us, all the prestige we lost under Bush will be restored, the world will respect us, and the sugar plum fairies will sprinke pixie dust on the whole wide wonderful world” narrative we’ve been fed, the reality just aint going to be like that.
You’ve heard of the massive, well-coordinated attack in seven locations in India’s financial capital, Mumbia? Maybe you also heard stuff like this:
“They were talking about British and Americans specifically. There was an Italian guy, who, you know, they said: ‘Where are you from?” and he said he’s from Italy and they said ‘fine’ and they left him alone. And I thought: ‘Fine, they’re going to shoot me if they ask me anything — and thank God they didn’t,” he said.
Liberals gave George Bush as much hell as they possibly could have during his presidency. They opposed the Patriot Act, opposed Gitmo, opposed interrogating terrorists, opposed domestic wiretapping of international calls from terrorists, opposed that we didn’t give full constitutional protections to terrorists, opposed pretty much everything President Bush tried to do to fight the war on terror or to keep us safe at home. And what would they have done if we HAD suffered another attack during his presidency? They would have screamed that he didn’t keep us safe!
Here we are, waiting for the brand new wonderful world that Dear Leader Barack Obama’s “gonna lead us” into. So far, the media has been unrelentingly unfair in its biased coverage of the political campaign. The same media that wouldn’t let Bush do anything right won’t let Obama do anything wrong.
But some point, we’re going to be forced to wake up, smell the coffee, and deal with reality. And media sugarcoating won’t be enough to make our problems go away.
If we’re attacked by terrorists during Obama’s administration, it will be because he’s a weak, pathetic leader who can’t protect us. If he fights our enemies, it’s because he’s a vicious bloodthirsty warmonger. If he doesn’t fight our enemies, it’s because he’s an appeasing coward who would rather bow down and cringe than stand up and fight. In other words, he’s going to find out that constant demonization swings both ways.
Start Thinking Right 