Progressivism Revealed In Words Of Hollywood Liberals Like Tom Hanks And Sean Penn

If you want to know what an idea looks like, it is a good idea to look for some examples of that thing in action.

Take “progressivism” or “liberalism,” for instance (please! as the old comic’s joke goes).

What do these people think?  What are they about?  What is their vision for the future, and for this country?  What do they want to do?

Well, why not ask Tom Hanks and Sean Penn, both famed Oscar-winning Hollywood liberals in good standing.

Let’s start with Sean Penn.  That way we can get rid of him faster.

Sean Penn, speaking about Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, said:

“Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. And this is mainstream media. There should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.”

Well, what SHOULD we think about Hugo Chavez?  Let’s find out.

From May 2007:

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan troops have seized an anti-government television channel’s broadcast equipment, the station said on Sunday, ahead of a controversial midnight EDT/0400 GMT takeover by President Hugo Chavez that will take the broadcaster off the air.

Chavez sparked international criticism with his decision to not renew RCTV’s license and to replace Venezuela’s most-watched channel with a state-backed network that will promote the values of his self-styled socialist revolution.

From November 2008 in the New York Review of Books:

Hugo Chávez Versus Human Rights

On September 18, we released a report in Caracas that shows how President Hugo Chávez has undermined human rights guarantees in Venezuela. That night, we returned to our hotel and found around twenty Venezuelan security agents, some armed and in military uniform, awaiting us outside our rooms. They were accompanied by a man who announced—with no apparent sense of irony—that he was a government “human rights” official and that we were being expelled from the country.

From July 2009 from the Human Rights Watch (which also includes numerous Venezuelan human rights violations):

Venezuela: Repeal Measures Aimed at Critics

Jul 31, 2009

The Venezuelan government has adopted and proposed measures that reduce the ability of government critics to voice their opinions and will seriously limit freedom of expression in Venezuela.

From August 2009 via the UK Telegraph:

Thirteen channels ordered to be closed by the Venezuelan government went off the air on Saturday and more than 200 are expected to close in coming weeks.

The government broadcasting watchdog, Conatel, said that 34 radio outlets would be closed because they failed to comply with regulations.

However, critics claimed the crackdown infringed on freedom of speech and hundreds of protesters demonstrated in Caracas against the closures.

And, of course, that is simply scratching the surface of Hugo Chavez’s abuses of freedom:

According to the U.S. State Department and other official government sources, the Venezuelan government has been guilty of numerous human rights violations under Chavez’s rule.

“Politicization of the judiciary and official harassment of the political opposition and the media characterized the human rights situation during the year,” said the State Department’s Country Report on Human Rights in Venezuela for 2008 that was released last month.

The report credits the Chavez regime with unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, discrimination based on political grounds, widespread corruption at all levels of government, official intimidation and attacks on the independent media.

“According to HRW [Human Rights Watch], ‘Government officials have removed scores of detractors from the career civil service, purged dissidents employees from the national oil company, denied citizens access to social programs based on their political opinions, and denounced critics as subversives deserving of discriminatory treatment,” says the State Department report.

A recent report by the Congressional Research Service also outlined human rights concerns in Chavez’s Venezuela.

“Under the populist rule of President Hugo Chavez … Venezuela has undergone enormous political changes, with a new constitution and unicameral legislature, and a new name for the country, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” states a Feb. 5, 2009 CRS report.

“U.S. officials and human rights organizations have expressed concerns about the deterioration of democratic institutions,” the report adds, “and threats to freedom of expression under President Chavez, who has survived several attempts to remove him from power.”

How about Hugo Chavez in his very own words:

CHAVEZ: “Yes, we are indoctrinating the children from the first grade through college, every grade, private schools. The ideology of the revolution! The ideology of socialism! Our ideology.”

So Hugo Chavez is a dictator and a thug who is without any doubt suppressing freedom of speech and other human rights in his country.  And if I may now refresh your memory about Sean Penn’s view of the man:

Sean Penn has defended Hugo Chávez as a model democrat and said those who call him a dictator should be jailed.

The Oscar-winning actor and political activist accused the US media of smearing Venezuela’s socialist president and called for journalists to be punished.

“Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. And this is mainstream media. There should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.”

This one’s pretty easy.  Sean Penn demonizes the press for smearing a dictator by calling him a “dictator.”  And proceeds to argue that journalists who report the truth about Chavez be jailed.

Which is, of course, precisely what a dictator would do, isn’t it???

You see, Hugo Chavez is a dictator and thug; but he is a LEFTWING dictator and thug (just as most dictatorial thugs almost always are).

So, to put a thousand words into a picture:

Mind you, Sean Penn is not the only Hollywood liberal who has embraced this dictatorial thug. There’s Danny Glover, Oliver Stone, Benicio del Toro, and others.

And earlier progressives eagerly flocked around the communist revolution under Vladimir Lenin and the fascist revolutions under first Benito Mussolini and then Adolf Hitler, too.  Which is to say that this behavior from progressives – as bizarre and as morally insane as it is – is part of a century-old tradition.

Let’s go back to Woodrow Wilson, the father of the progressive movement.  In his unintentionally chilling essay, “Leaders of Men,” Wilson wrote:

The competent leader of men cares little for the interior niceties of other people’s characters: he cares much – everything – for the external uses to which they may be put. His will seeks the lines of least resistance; but the whole question with him is a question as to the application of force. There are men to be moved: how shall he move them? He supplies the power; others supply only the materials upon which that power operates… It is the power which dictates, dominates; the materials yield. Men are as clay in the hands of the consummate leader.

On Wilson’s elitist view, American citizens truly ARE as clay.  They are incapable of understanding anything remotely complex.  And therefore the half-truths (which very often amount to whole lies) of the skillful demagogue become justified:

only a very gross substance of concrete conception can make any impression on the minds of the masses; they must get their ideas very absolutely put, and are much readier to receive a half-truth which they can understand than a whole truth which has too many sides to be seen all at once.

And how did the father of the progressive movement – who viewed men as uncomprehending clay waiting to be shaped by the half-truths of the skillful demagogue – view the Constitution?  Wilson wrote:

Justly revered as our great Constitution is, it could be stripped off and thrown aside like a garment, and the nation would still stand forth in the living vestment of flesh and sinew, warm with the heart-blood of one people, ready to recreate constitutions and laws

And uncomprehending clay men do not particularly deserve the inalienable rights bestowed upon them by a Constitution which itself is of little actual value.  Thus the father of the progressive movement wrote:

No doubt a lot of nonsense has been talked about the inalienable rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere sentiment and pleasing speculation has been put forward as fundamental principle.

And what should be the limitations of power on the government Leviathan – which could easily be stripped of its limiting Constitution – over uncomprehending and infinitely malleable men of clay?  In The State, Wilson said that:

“Government does now whatever experience permits or the times demand.”

In his “Congressional Government,” Wilson wrote that:

“I cannot imagine power as a thing negative and not positive.”

In other words, Progressivism sees no limitations against the power of raw government power.

But I can certainly imagine such power being a negative thing.  As a student of history, I am vividly aware of the fact that in just one such form of government – communism – more than 100 million people were systematically and brutally murdered by their own government during peacetime.

Conservatives favor limited government with limited and well-defined powers.  Which is the exact OPPOSITE of fascistic totalitarian governments.  When you start demanding bigger and bigger and more activistic and socialist government, you begin meandering over to fascist land.

Thus you should understand why it  shouldn’t be surprising that Sean Penn and Danny Glover should think this way about Hugo Chavez.  Chavez is the Great Leader who shapes stupid clay men with his skillful demagoguery; and thus woe be unto any who seek to get in his way.

And, good news for progressives, the magnificent Hugo Chavez’s socialist revolution is coming to America in the form of Barack Hussein Obama:

(CNSNews.com) – Inspired by his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at the Americas Summit, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared on Sunday that Venezuelan socialism has begun to reach the United States under the Obama administration.

And it’s completely reasonable that Chavez would think this way about Obama.  After all, the American president who did nothing while the Venezuelan dictator nationalized U.S. businesses has done plenty of nationalizing himself.  Which prompted Hugo Chavez to point out:

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday that he and Cuban ally Fidel Castro risk being more conservative than U.S. President Barack Obama as Washington prepares to take control of General Motors Corp.

Does the Obama administration share the totalitarian views of Hugo Chavez, and even admire them?  It certainly does, according to the words of Obama’s Diversity czar, Mark Lloyd:

“It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press.  This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.

[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance.”

[…]

“In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution – a democratic revolution.  To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela.

“The property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela rebelled – worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government – worked to oust him.  But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country.

And we’ve had complaints about this ever since.”

“Complaints,” of course, which bother genuine progressives such as Sean Penn and Obama’s diversity czar Mark Lloyd.  Which is why they think that “complainers” should be thrown in jail.

The left loves – and even worships as a surrogate for God – big government, and seemingly the bigger the better.  And of course, the very biggest governments, the ones that can control the populations and guide their nations to the next socialist Utopia, invariably are or descend into totalitarian regimes.

It’s not that Sean Penn is stupid for his views.  Sean Penn is accurately explaining his progressive philosophy.  He is not a politician who needs your vote, so he can be honest.  And as a multi-millionaire celebrity, he epitomizes the mindset of progressivism: that the peon clay masses are ignorant and need to be ruled over, and that they should surrender their wills and allow the government of their superiors to do whatever they think is best.  And who better than an elitist Hollywood celebrity to explain why the more than 300 million Americans constituting the lower classes are like maggots crawling across the landscape, and that they should be compelled to shut up and do as their betters tell them?

So let us be rid of Sean Penn and introduce ourselves to the “wisdom” of Tom Hanks.  Recently – in acquainting America with the 10 part HBO series on World War II he took part in – had this to say:

“Back in World War II,” he told Brinkley, “we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?” In a separate interview, Hanks referred to the war in the Pacific as one of “racism and terror.”

Damn racist American bastards.  They were called “the greatest generation”; the generation that rose up from the ashes of the Great Depression to defeat the greatest evil the world has ever seen.  But you and Tom Hanks know the truth, don’t you: they were just a bunch of racists.  The vicious cheap-shot sneak attack at Pearl Harbor didn’t have anything to do with our going to war against Japan.  Heck, in the spirit of the modern “truthers” who claim that Bush bombed the World Trade Center, FDR probably sent in American planes painted to look like Japanese Zeroes.

Stupid unAmerican fool.  We didn’t want to annihilate the Japanese “because they were different.”  We were forced to annihilate them because they were utterly fanatic and refused to surrender.  We were forced to annihilate them because they started a war of annihilation and wouldn’t stop.  Tom Hanks is too ignorant and too much an ideologue to consider the Rape of Nanking, or the Bataan Death March, or the Banzai charges, or the first suicide bombers known as the Kamikaze.  I’d like to see Tom Hanks take part in a movie about the monstrous and utterly despicable Unit 731.

If Tom Hanks wasn’t a complete moral idiot, he would simply realize that Japan attacked us without provocation with a vengeance, and the United States of America responded with a vengeance.  Just as they would have done had their attackers had white skin and round eyes.

And when Tom Hanks asks, “Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”  he is not content to label the greatest generation as a bunch of racist warmongers; no, he seeks to do the same thing to our great warriors who are protecting us today.

Why are we fighting against Islamic jihadism?  Because they’re “different,” as Tom Hanks maintains?  How about because they attacked us in vicious act of war that left 3,000 innocent civilians murdered?  Maybe THAT had something to do with it?

Contrary to being “racists,” our soldiers today are operating with a level of restraint against an utterly despicable terrorist enemy – who hide among and prey upon their own civilian people – that is simply amazing to behold.  Our soldiers as a matter of routine are the most enthusiastic back-patting cheerleaders of the courage and toughness they are beginning to see in their Afghani and Iraqi counterparts.

Tom Hanks, like Sean Penn, see only ugliness in America and Americans, and only beauty in the totalitarian regimes of brutal dictators.

And that is, and always has been, the progressive way.

Jeremiah Wright Sermons Transcripts: Context Doesn’t Help

I found a partial transcript of several of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s controversial remarks in fuller context in the Chicago Tribune. I probably don’t need to say that the Chicago Tribune would tend to be as friendly toward Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright as any paper in the country.

By and large, reading the context pretty much reads just like the “out of context” sound bites.

They have his “chickens coming home to roost” bit from 16 September 2001; his July 2003 “God damn America” tirade; and his “Bill did us just like he did Monica Lewinski. He was riding dirty.”

Too bad they didn’t have his sermon that blamed white Americans for creating the AIDS virus as a genocide against black people. I would have really liked to have heard that one in context.

From the interview with PBS’ uber-lib Bill Moyers, I understand that Rev. Wright believes he was taken out of context and that everyone in the media should feel very, very bad.

Let’s try to get past the blatant fact that Bill Moyers is – and always has been – a liberal hack with a taxpayer-funded power-base which he uses to rip at Republicans and conservatives (check out this link and then this one for speeches in his own far-leftist words [but WARNING: they are long, boring, and dripping with sanctimonious self-righteousness!]). Yes, Moyers does his liberal, Obama-loving best to help Wright whitewash his comments without raising the type of objections fair-minded journalists would be inclined to raise. In spite of all that, it was still interesting to hear Wright’s “woe is me for I have been wronged” remarks regarding his racist, anti-American rants.

Jeremiah Wright is a man who believes America is a terrible place, but – to his credit – at least he’s consistent: he believes America has ALWAYS been a terrible place. Reading these transcripts from the Chicago Tribune, and listening to several other remarks that have become public, Wright pretty much rips America upside-down from day one. Our founders were immoral slave-owning hypocrites, we have always been a racist country from day one, that sort of thing.

That’s the context, folks. There is simply no getting away from it. More context simply reveals more anti-Americanism and racism. Does the fact that he finds a quote from some former ambassador named Edward Peck in any way distance himself from the message he is presenting on 16 September 2001? Absolutely not. It is a fool’s argument. Wright simply found a quote to use as a leaping-off point – and believes me, he LEAPS OFF.

Let’s agree that America is not a perfect place (and keep in mind that if it is, you’d better leave, because YOU WOULD RUIN IT!). We’ve done bad things. And black people have been the victims of a number of those bad things that America has done. Just in case some of you didn’t know that, okay?

But this is a man who does not say ANYTHING good about America. Not a (to put it terms that Wright likes to use, “Not a G-D thing”). Listening to Wright – in context – you learn that the United States of AmeriKKKa is vile, it is hateful, it is racist, it is immoral, it is corrupt, and on and on and on.

More context only serves to reveal more of his blatant hostility to America.

It is because of the tutelage of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that Barack Obama’s wife Michelle has never been proud of this country in her adult life, and believes “America in 2008 is a mean place.”

I read more of his sermon from FIVE DAYS AFTER INNOCENT CIVILIANS WERE ATTACKED BY MURDEROUS TERRORIST COWARDS, on 16 September 2001, and I frankly want to puke all the more. He goes back to World War II to prove how we bombed Japan and killed women and children to drive his point home. He omits the fact that the United States was simultaneously fighting the two most despicable regimes in the history of the planet, and had to go to the bloody mat to defeat enemies who were far too full of hate to ever surrender. World War II was our greatest hour: but for Jeremiah Wright and his followers, it is our greatest shame.

Read about the Holocaust, where 6 million Jews perished, the slave labor, the rape of Nanking, the Korean women forced into prostitution, the despicable medical experiments performed on human beings, and so many other ugly, ugly facts about these enemies, and draw your own conclusion. We live in a dark and terrible world, and we have often been called upon to stand up and fight; to fight for freedom, for what is ours, for what is right.

As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese would not surrender.  Period.  American intelligence estimated that an invasion of Japan would consume four million lives – and that fully one million would be ours.  After we destroyed one city, we gave Japan an opportunity to surrender; they refused.  It took a second city to shake them out of their confidence that they could never be defeated.

Allow me now to respond to Jeremiah Wright’s self-serving exegesis of Psalm 137:9 and put IT into context. Remember, this is the Bible. It’s the story of God and His people. You don’t just read one verse and think you understand the whole story. So let’s look at the greater story:

In Genesis 13, God promises the land of Israel to Abraham’s descendants [Interestingly, Israel is the ONLY land that God ever gave to a people as an “everlasting possession” (Gen 17:1-8); and yet it is the land whose possession by that people is most reviled and most doubted. Just a little food for thought]. In Genesis 15:13-16, God tells Abraham that his descendants will one day inherit the land – but not for another four generations, because “the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.” After those four generations had passed (and the iniquity of the Amorite WAS complete), God commanded Moses and Joshua to take the land. He commanded them to conquer it, to drive out the inhabitants and kill them.

Missionaries talk about “power encounters.” In the time of the Old Testament, every people had their own gods. And if one people defeated another, it was because their god/gods were stronger. When the Amorite was as depraved and wicked as they could get, God sent His people into the land, and God played the game of “power encounter” with those people, and the God of the Bible demonstrated that He and He alone was the God of gods. These people were evil beyond persuasion. They could and would only understand violence. And so, in Exodus, Joshua, and in other sections of the Old Testament, God revealed Himself to all the peoples around through violence and war. And these wicked people got Jehovah’s message the only way they could understand it.

So when I read Rev. Wright’s exposition of Psalm 137:9, I see a man who is quite literally characterizing the VERY GOD HE CLAIMS TO WORSHIP AS BEING AS TERRIBLE AS HE SAYS THE UNITED STATES IS. There’s no such thing as a “just war” for Wright. America CAN’T be “just” for Wright. America is just – to again quote Michelle Obama – “a mean place.”

For Jeremiah Wright, there is no good in America. None whatsoever. There is no coming to the defense of his country. Even World War II was an example of an immoral United States of America for him. He is simply too bitter and too full of hate to see the good in this country.

Jeremiah Wright wants us to see how – in context – he’s really not such a bad guy. But he won’t give the United States that same basic privilege. He won’t allow any “context” to color his anger and bitterness against America, or against the white people who live in it.