Viet Nam War in Poetry
An American Sonnet
If freedom is Heaven on Earth,
Then communism is Hell
If freedom is hope,
Then communism is despair
If freedom is man’s happiness,
Then communism his sufferings
If freedom is life,
Then communism is death.
The Vietnam Veteran Wall lives on
The Berlin Wall has perished
We, free citizens of the world,
Yearn to see Vietnam’s future cherished.
Let go of Uncle Ho’s oppression
Let God lead our liberty mission.
Linh Duy Vo
(The Boy in the Poem)
13 March 1999 ©
Showing posts with label Communism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communism. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Hmong: After the War, The Killing
Hmong in Laos: After the War, The Killing
Review of "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS,” a Documentary by REBECCA SOMMER
JANUARY 2008:
Question: What do you call it when a war is over but the killing goes on?
Answer: Communism
The advent of Communism has ushered in things the world had never seen before the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917 and instituted the 'Soviet.'
Since then, the bloodletting has not ceased.
Hitler is a piker when compared to Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro...all Communists and purveyors of the greatest violence the world has seen.
Nazism passed away at the end of WWII. Communism, the other side of the socialist coin, persists, its brutality undiminished, its thirst for blood unquenched, its march toward world revolution refueled, replenished, and strengthened by integration with the world’s economies and therefore remains unopposed to devour its new victims.
Socialist Fascism/Nazism took a fraction of the lives that Socialist Communism has consumed and continues to swallow (see: 'Death By Government,' by Rudy Hummel, U. of Hawaii, and, 'The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,' authored by several scholars and edited by Stéphane Courtois.).
This documentary by Rebecca Sommers is witness to the ongoing reality of Communism. It provides details of a largely unknown war against civilians, a genocidal war waged against the Hmong Lao by Communist Laotian and Vietnamese military forces. These forest dwelling Hmong live their entire lives running and hiding from the Communists in the remote mountains of Laos.
Every day since 1975, Communist forces have carried out their aggressions against this largely unarmed, defenseless, simple, and abjectly poor people who remain in the forests because to venture out is to invite rape, murder, and death by execution, torture, and dismemberment, the typical tools of Communist repression. Once employed against the host population, this parasitic form of government can rely on the calculus of fear inspired by such atrocities to do whatever it wants.
Many Hmong fought the communists during the Viet Nam War and retreated back into the inaccessible mountains of Laos after the U.S. pulled out of SE Asia in 1975, the war supposedly over with a Communist victory.
Never ones to practice magnanimity towards vanquished foes, Communists only promise - and deliver- the bloodbath and the 'peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave’ to those whom they defeat. Communism demands human sacrifice.
The Hmong became targets of persecution and retaliation by Communist forces because they fought as soldiers against them. Whether or not they sided with America is almost irrelevant, as the NVA, on its relentless, 30 year march (by 1975) to revolution and the domination of all IndoChina, would have swallowed them up anyway. The NVA, proxy army of Communism, meant to have Laos, and Cambodia, and Viet Nam and deliver the populations of those countries into the Revolutionary furnace.
While most Lao-Hmong were re-integrated into their country after 1975, many other Hmong faced the Vietnamese and Laotion gulag, of persecution, enslavement, and execution after they surrendered. Those who remained in the jungle with well justified fears are forced to starve and bring children into an uncertain world.
Transgressions against the Hmong by the Lao Communist authorities and Vietnamese soldiers have persisted over a span of more than thirty years since 1975. So have the reports of such abuse, only to fall on deaf ears.
A generation after the Viet Nam War supposedly ended the free Hmong hide from those who use every opportunity to attack their little groups of families with military weapons that include aircraft, artillery, chemical weapons, and ground forces.
They are chased like wild animals and killed when caught by Laotian and Vietnamese soldiers. The women, even very young girls, are raped and often mutilated and killed when the soldiers are done with them.
They understand that those who surrender face an uncertain fate. Therefore, with no options and mostly for their children, only the most desperate drizzle out of the jungle. Many simply disappear. Knowing the fate of those who have been lured by false promises, the desperation must be very great for them to leave their jungle hiding places...never to be seen again after surrendering to Communist forces and bureaucrats.
The Hmong are also used as targets by communist forces in SE Asia who train their armies by conducting military exercises against them.
Facing this genocide, many escape to neighboring Thailand as refugees.
This documentary by Rebecca Sommers is a story of human rights violations on a scale and intensity that is hard to imagine for those who live comfortable, secure lives. But it must be told, and "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS” tells it, in the words of the victims themselves.
Even the 'Diary of Anne Frank' was not told with more poignancy, sadness, and fear.
Where are the Jews, who say, "Never again?"
Filmmaker Rebecca Sommers traveled in 2005 and 2006 to the Hmong refugee camp of Ban Huay Nam Khao, Petchabun, in Thailand, where she focused on the Hmong Lao who fled military aggressions against them in their beloved homeland, the beautiful Laotian mountains.
The testimony of these Hmong refugees, with footage filmed by the Hmong themselves who carried digital camcorders back to the danger zones inside of Laos, is woven into the documentary like a tapestry and reveals the human face of contemporary genocide.
These 'human rights violations' occur daily in the remote mountains of Laos, where the gentle Hmong, marked for extinction by the Communists who hate them, are Hunted like Animals. Where is the UN?
Never again?
For more information and to obtain copies of the film, contact:
sommerfilms@gmail.com
Review of "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS,” a Documentary by REBECCA SOMMER
JANUARY 2008:
Question: What do you call it when a war is over but the killing goes on?
Answer: Communism
The advent of Communism has ushered in things the world had never seen before the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917 and instituted the 'Soviet.'
Since then, the bloodletting has not ceased.
Hitler is a piker when compared to Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro...all Communists and purveyors of the greatest violence the world has seen.
Nazism passed away at the end of WWII. Communism, the other side of the socialist coin, persists, its brutality undiminished, its thirst for blood unquenched, its march toward world revolution refueled, replenished, and strengthened by integration with the world’s economies and therefore remains unopposed to devour its new victims.
Socialist Fascism/Nazism took a fraction of the lives that Socialist Communism has consumed and continues to swallow (see: 'Death By Government,' by Rudy Hummel, U. of Hawaii, and, 'The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,' authored by several scholars and edited by Stéphane Courtois.).
This documentary by Rebecca Sommers is witness to the ongoing reality of Communism. It provides details of a largely unknown war against civilians, a genocidal war waged against the Hmong Lao by Communist Laotian and Vietnamese military forces. These forest dwelling Hmong live their entire lives running and hiding from the Communists in the remote mountains of Laos.
Every day since 1975, Communist forces have carried out their aggressions against this largely unarmed, defenseless, simple, and abjectly poor people who remain in the forests because to venture out is to invite rape, murder, and death by execution, torture, and dismemberment, the typical tools of Communist repression. Once employed against the host population, this parasitic form of government can rely on the calculus of fear inspired by such atrocities to do whatever it wants.
Many Hmong fought the communists during the Viet Nam War and retreated back into the inaccessible mountains of Laos after the U.S. pulled out of SE Asia in 1975, the war supposedly over with a Communist victory.
Never ones to practice magnanimity towards vanquished foes, Communists only promise - and deliver- the bloodbath and the 'peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave’ to those whom they defeat. Communism demands human sacrifice.
The Hmong became targets of persecution and retaliation by Communist forces because they fought as soldiers against them. Whether or not they sided with America is almost irrelevant, as the NVA, on its relentless, 30 year march (by 1975) to revolution and the domination of all IndoChina, would have swallowed them up anyway. The NVA, proxy army of Communism, meant to have Laos, and Cambodia, and Viet Nam and deliver the populations of those countries into the Revolutionary furnace.
While most Lao-Hmong were re-integrated into their country after 1975, many other Hmong faced the Vietnamese and Laotion gulag, of persecution, enslavement, and execution after they surrendered. Those who remained in the jungle with well justified fears are forced to starve and bring children into an uncertain world.
Transgressions against the Hmong by the Lao Communist authorities and Vietnamese soldiers have persisted over a span of more than thirty years since 1975. So have the reports of such abuse, only to fall on deaf ears.
A generation after the Viet Nam War supposedly ended the free Hmong hide from those who use every opportunity to attack their little groups of families with military weapons that include aircraft, artillery, chemical weapons, and ground forces.
They are chased like wild animals and killed when caught by Laotian and Vietnamese soldiers. The women, even very young girls, are raped and often mutilated and killed when the soldiers are done with them.
They understand that those who surrender face an uncertain fate. Therefore, with no options and mostly for their children, only the most desperate drizzle out of the jungle. Many simply disappear. Knowing the fate of those who have been lured by false promises, the desperation must be very great for them to leave their jungle hiding places...never to be seen again after surrendering to Communist forces and bureaucrats.
The Hmong are also used as targets by communist forces in SE Asia who train their armies by conducting military exercises against them.
Facing this genocide, many escape to neighboring Thailand as refugees.
This documentary by Rebecca Sommers is a story of human rights violations on a scale and intensity that is hard to imagine for those who live comfortable, secure lives. But it must be told, and "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS” tells it, in the words of the victims themselves.
Even the 'Diary of Anne Frank' was not told with more poignancy, sadness, and fear.
Where are the Jews, who say, "Never again?"
Filmmaker Rebecca Sommers traveled in 2005 and 2006 to the Hmong refugee camp of Ban Huay Nam Khao, Petchabun, in Thailand, where she focused on the Hmong Lao who fled military aggressions against them in their beloved homeland, the beautiful Laotian mountains.
The testimony of these Hmong refugees, with footage filmed by the Hmong themselves who carried digital camcorders back to the danger zones inside of Laos, is woven into the documentary like a tapestry and reveals the human face of contemporary genocide.
These 'human rights violations' occur daily in the remote mountains of Laos, where the gentle Hmong, marked for extinction by the Communists who hate them, are Hunted like Animals. Where is the UN?
Never again?
For more information and to obtain copies of the film, contact:
sommerfilms@gmail.com
Monday, November 24, 2008
Enemy of the People: How can a totalitarian government declare anyone an 'Enemy of the people'
Enemy of the people
See: ‘An Enemy of the People,’ a play by Henrik Ibsen.
The term enemy of the people is a fluid designation referring to political or class opponents of the group using the term, sometimes including former allies. Its usage is derogatory and meant to imply that the "enemies" have conspired against society as a whole.
The term "enemy of the people" has an extensive history. Its earliest use may have been by the Roman Empire, where the senate used the term to apply to the Emperor Nero as a pretext for his arrest (he committed suicide).
Since that time, many groups have used the phrase, including the Jacobins during the radical phase of the French Revolution (the Reign of Terror), and most notably and famously by the Soviet Union and other Communist countries.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union made extensive use of the term (Russian language: враг народа, "vrag naroda"), as it fit in well with the idea that the people were in control.
Indeed, so great a number of people were labeled with the term that most modern connotations of the phrase associate it with communism. It was in official use under the Bolsheviks' rule after the October Revolution.
Other similar terms were in use as well:
enemy of the workers
enemy of the proletariat
class enemy.
The term "enemy of the workers" was formalized in the Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code).
At various times these terms were applied, in particular, to the Romanov’s, all aristocrats, the bourgeoisie, clerics (and in Cambodia, anyone who wore glasses), the intelligentsia, business entrepreneurs, kulaks, monarchists, Mensheviks, Esers, Buddhists, Bundists, Christians, Trotskyists, Bukharinists, the "old Bolsheviks", the army and police, emigrants, immigrants, saboteurs, wreckers (?), "social parasites" "tuneyadtsy"), Kavezhedists (people who administered and serviced the ‘KVZhD’ (China Far East Railway), particularly the Russian population of Harbin, China), those considered bourgeois nationalists (notably Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian nationalists, Zionists, Basmachi), and members of certain ethnic groups (see Population transfer: Soviet Union), and anybody who loved freedom and liberty.
An enemy of the people could be imprisoned, expelled or executed, and his property could be confiscated. Close relatives of enemies of the people were branded "relatives of an enemy of the people," which effected restrictions of their rights.
Any family members of the victim still enjoying their freedom were not allowed to hold positions of importance, and only in exceptional cases would they be tolerated as members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the key to advancement in the Soviet hierarchy. Being a friend of an enemy of the people automatically placed the person under suspicion.
A significant fraction of the enemies of the people were given this label not because of their hostile actions against the workers' and peasants' state, but simply because of their social origin or actions before the revolution: those who used hired labor, high-ranking clergy, former policemen, merchants, etc.
They were commonly known as lishentsy, derived from Russian word ‘deprivation,’ because by the Soviet Constitution they were deprived of their rights of voting. This automatically translated into a deprivation of various social benefits, some of them, e.g., rationing, were at times critical for survival.
Since 1927, Article 20 of the Common Part of the penal code that listed possible "measures of social defence" had the following item 20a: "declaration to be an enemy of the workers with deprivation of the union republic citizenship and hence of the USSR citizenship, with obligatory expulsion from its territory". Nevertheless most "enemies of the people" suffered labor camps, rather than expulsion.
In 1927, the penal code of the Soviet Union was changed drastically. The update of the penal code turned the country into a police state, full of informants, who were derogatorily called stukach (literally "knocker").
According to Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code), everyone was obligated to report all "anti-Soviet activity", including any expression of disagreement with the policy of the Party, even in casual jokes.
This policy resulted in significant growth of Gulag camp populations as those who failed to report their relatives or friends were often themselves reported on. State-sponsored propaganda and mandatory (officially voluntary) participation in the Pioneer Movement helped to indoctrinate Soviet youth to follow the example of Pavlik Morozov, a young boy who reported his own father, a kulak.
July 20, 1953 TIME magazine cover: "Lavrenty Beria: Enemy of the people.” One might wonder why there were so many enemies of workers left, seemingly contrary to the initial claims of Bolsheviks that the opponents of the proletariat were crushed as a class in the Soviet Union. This was handily explained by Stalinist doctrine, which included the "theory of the aggravation of class struggle under socialism".
The theory postulated that class struggle grows more intense during the dictatorship of the proletariat, thus requiring more extreme measures.
After 1937, the ranks of the "enemies of the people" were expanded to include those labeled as Traitor of Motherland Family Members. The extreme treatment of opponents is one of numerous reasons why the Soviet regime is often considered authoritarian or described as even totalitarian.
For further reading, see:
Nicolas Werth, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, hardcover, 856 pages, ISBN 0674076087
See: ‘An Enemy of the People,’ a play by Henrik Ibsen.
The term enemy of the people is a fluid designation referring to political or class opponents of the group using the term, sometimes including former allies. Its usage is derogatory and meant to imply that the "enemies" have conspired against society as a whole.
The term "enemy of the people" has an extensive history. Its earliest use may have been by the Roman Empire, where the senate used the term to apply to the Emperor Nero as a pretext for his arrest (he committed suicide).
Since that time, many groups have used the phrase, including the Jacobins during the radical phase of the French Revolution (the Reign of Terror), and most notably and famously by the Soviet Union and other Communist countries.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union made extensive use of the term (Russian language: враг народа, "vrag naroda"), as it fit in well with the idea that the people were in control.
Indeed, so great a number of people were labeled with the term that most modern connotations of the phrase associate it with communism. It was in official use under the Bolsheviks' rule after the October Revolution.
Other similar terms were in use as well:
enemy of the workers
enemy of the proletariat
class enemy.
The term "enemy of the workers" was formalized in the Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code).
At various times these terms were applied, in particular, to the Romanov’s, all aristocrats, the bourgeoisie, clerics (and in Cambodia, anyone who wore glasses), the intelligentsia, business entrepreneurs, kulaks, monarchists, Mensheviks, Esers, Buddhists, Bundists, Christians, Trotskyists, Bukharinists, the "old Bolsheviks", the army and police, emigrants, immigrants, saboteurs, wreckers (?), "social parasites" "tuneyadtsy"), Kavezhedists (people who administered and serviced the ‘KVZhD’ (China Far East Railway), particularly the Russian population of Harbin, China), those considered bourgeois nationalists (notably Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian nationalists, Zionists, Basmachi), and members of certain ethnic groups (see Population transfer: Soviet Union), and anybody who loved freedom and liberty.
An enemy of the people could be imprisoned, expelled or executed, and his property could be confiscated. Close relatives of enemies of the people were branded "relatives of an enemy of the people," which effected restrictions of their rights.
Any family members of the victim still enjoying their freedom were not allowed to hold positions of importance, and only in exceptional cases would they be tolerated as members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the key to advancement in the Soviet hierarchy. Being a friend of an enemy of the people automatically placed the person under suspicion.
A significant fraction of the enemies of the people were given this label not because of their hostile actions against the workers' and peasants' state, but simply because of their social origin or actions before the revolution: those who used hired labor, high-ranking clergy, former policemen, merchants, etc.
They were commonly known as lishentsy, derived from Russian word ‘deprivation,’ because by the Soviet Constitution they were deprived of their rights of voting. This automatically translated into a deprivation of various social benefits, some of them, e.g., rationing, were at times critical for survival.
Since 1927, Article 20 of the Common Part of the penal code that listed possible "measures of social defence" had the following item 20a: "declaration to be an enemy of the workers with deprivation of the union republic citizenship and hence of the USSR citizenship, with obligatory expulsion from its territory". Nevertheless most "enemies of the people" suffered labor camps, rather than expulsion.
In 1927, the penal code of the Soviet Union was changed drastically. The update of the penal code turned the country into a police state, full of informants, who were derogatorily called stukach (literally "knocker").
According to Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code), everyone was obligated to report all "anti-Soviet activity", including any expression of disagreement with the policy of the Party, even in casual jokes.
This policy resulted in significant growth of Gulag camp populations as those who failed to report their relatives or friends were often themselves reported on. State-sponsored propaganda and mandatory (officially voluntary) participation in the Pioneer Movement helped to indoctrinate Soviet youth to follow the example of Pavlik Morozov, a young boy who reported his own father, a kulak.
July 20, 1953 TIME magazine cover: "Lavrenty Beria: Enemy of the people.” One might wonder why there were so many enemies of workers left, seemingly contrary to the initial claims of Bolsheviks that the opponents of the proletariat were crushed as a class in the Soviet Union. This was handily explained by Stalinist doctrine, which included the "theory of the aggravation of class struggle under socialism".
The theory postulated that class struggle grows more intense during the dictatorship of the proletariat, thus requiring more extreme measures.
After 1937, the ranks of the "enemies of the people" were expanded to include those labeled as Traitor of Motherland Family Members. The extreme treatment of opponents is one of numerous reasons why the Soviet regime is often considered authoritarian or described as even totalitarian.
For further reading, see:
Nicolas Werth, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, hardcover, 856 pages, ISBN 0674076087
Saturday, November 22, 2008
10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto: #5
The 5th Plank:
THE CENTRALIZATION OF CREDIT IN THE HANDS OF THE STATE BY MEANS OF A NATIONAL BANK WITH STATE CAPITAL AND AN EXCLUSIVE MONOPOLY
This brings us straight to the Federal Reserve Banks. The basis of the Federal Reserve Note is debt. It is a promissorry note based on 'The full faith and credit of the United States,' and as such it lacks gold and silver backing. Gold and Silver Certificates, redeemable in coin or bullion, which were not notes nor are such certificates 'fiat' money, were eventually withdrawn from curculation.
The government 'borrows' these notes (they didn't borrow anything of value) merely by printing them to pass on the debt to the people and you will notice how huge the federal debt is. All for the cost of printing these paper notes.
In the Law of Moses and in the first 150 years of the United States of America, people used gold and silver coins which have intrinsic value.
The Federal Reserve Bank has a monopoly on issuing currency today, despite and in violation of Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution for the 50 United States of America:
"No State shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of Debts."
This is fiat paper currency tht is distributed through the local banks.
What Happened to the Gold?
The Gold Confiscation Of April 5, 1933: Forbidding the 'Hoarding' of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates..
"By virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5(b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended by Section 2 of the Act of March 9, 1933, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt…prohibit the hoarding gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States by individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations…the term 'hoarding" means the withdrawal and withholding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates...”
'Hoarding' was defined as anything over $100.00...
“All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933, except:
“Whoever willfully violates any provision of this Executive Order or these regulation or of any rule, regulation or license issued there under may be fined not more than $10,000, or, if a natural person may be imprisoned for not more than ten years or both; and any officer, director, or agent of any corporation who knowingly participates in any such violation may be punished by a like fine, imprisonment, or both.”
One must wonder what Americans thought of this measure, as they had for their entire lives, as had generations before them, held gold privately…
What happened to the Gold?
THE CENTRALIZATION OF CREDIT IN THE HANDS OF THE STATE BY MEANS OF A NATIONAL BANK WITH STATE CAPITAL AND AN EXCLUSIVE MONOPOLY
This brings us straight to the Federal Reserve Banks. The basis of the Federal Reserve Note is debt. It is a promissorry note based on 'The full faith and credit of the United States,' and as such it lacks gold and silver backing. Gold and Silver Certificates, redeemable in coin or bullion, which were not notes nor are such certificates 'fiat' money, were eventually withdrawn from curculation.
The government 'borrows' these notes (they didn't borrow anything of value) merely by printing them to pass on the debt to the people and you will notice how huge the federal debt is. All for the cost of printing these paper notes.
In the Law of Moses and in the first 150 years of the United States of America, people used gold and silver coins which have intrinsic value.
The Federal Reserve Bank has a monopoly on issuing currency today, despite and in violation of Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution for the 50 United States of America:
"No State shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of Debts."
This is fiat paper currency tht is distributed through the local banks.
What Happened to the Gold?
The Gold Confiscation Of April 5, 1933: Forbidding the 'Hoarding' of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates..
"By virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5(b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended by Section 2 of the Act of March 9, 1933, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt…prohibit the hoarding gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States by individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations…the term 'hoarding" means the withdrawal and withholding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates...”
'Hoarding' was defined as anything over $100.00...
“All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933, except:
“Whoever willfully violates any provision of this Executive Order or these regulation or of any rule, regulation or license issued there under may be fined not more than $10,000, or, if a natural person may be imprisoned for not more than ten years or both; and any officer, director, or agent of any corporation who knowingly participates in any such violation may be punished by a like fine, imprisonment, or both.”
One must wonder what Americans thought of this measure, as they had for their entire lives, as had generations before them, held gold privately…
What happened to the Gold?
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
George Orwell Quotes
Quotes by George Orwell
English essayist, novelist, & satirist (1903 - 1950)
Big Brother is watching you - right now.
Communist Party: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
In the end the party would announce that 2 plus 2 made 5, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim, sooner or later, the logic of their position demanded it. George Orwell, in 1984
Communist Party: The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
Liberal: a power worshipper without power.
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.
At age 50, every man has the face he deserves.
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.
Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solid geometry to pure wind.
The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.
On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
If you want to imagine the future [under socialism/communism], imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength
From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned.
Freedom is the right to say two plus two make four. If granted, all else follows.
Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad.
Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter.
They can make you say anything - ANYTHING - but they can't make you believe it.
Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.
Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.
The new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed.
In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.
No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is a thing that human beings must avoid.
Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
He who controls the past controls the future.
If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
Words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.
In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? An unscrupulous writer is the opposite.
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
The future is a boot smashing a human face forever.
When man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys.
By lack of understanding they remained insane.
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage have developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped.
Sanity is not statistical.
..nor did he pause to reflect that hereditary aristocracies have always been short lived where as adoptive organizations such as the Catholic Church sometimes lasted for hundreds or thousands of years.
If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?
An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.
Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
By the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the main currents of political thought were authoritarian. The earthly paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when it became realizable.
Every new political theory, by whatever name it called itself, led back to hierarchy and regimentation. And in the general hardening of outlook that set in round about 1930, practices which had been long abandoned, in some cases for hundreds of years — imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages, and the deportation of whole populations — not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.
In the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further.
With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end.
Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed.
The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.” 1984
In a world in which everyone worked short hours. Had enough to eat. Lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared.
If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction.
It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable.
For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves. And when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. George Orwell 1984
The Revolution and the Party:
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.
We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.
We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing.
All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.
They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.
We are not like that.
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
Power is not a means, it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution.
The object of torture is torture.
The object of power is power.
Now you begin to understand. - George Orwell 1984
English essayist, novelist, & satirist (1903 - 1950)
Big Brother is watching you - right now.
Communist Party: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
In the end the party would announce that 2 plus 2 made 5, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim, sooner or later, the logic of their position demanded it. George Orwell, in 1984
Communist Party: The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
Liberal: a power worshipper without power.
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.
At age 50, every man has the face he deserves.
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.
Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solid geometry to pure wind.
The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.
On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
If you want to imagine the future [under socialism/communism], imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength
From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned.
Freedom is the right to say two plus two make four. If granted, all else follows.
Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad.
Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter.
They can make you say anything - ANYTHING - but they can't make you believe it.
Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.
Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.
The new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed.
In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.
No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is a thing that human beings must avoid.
Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
He who controls the past controls the future.
If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
Words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.
In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? An unscrupulous writer is the opposite.
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
The future is a boot smashing a human face forever.
When man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys.
By lack of understanding they remained insane.
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage have developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped.
Sanity is not statistical.
..nor did he pause to reflect that hereditary aristocracies have always been short lived where as adoptive organizations such as the Catholic Church sometimes lasted for hundreds or thousands of years.
If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?
An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.
Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
By the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the main currents of political thought were authoritarian. The earthly paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when it became realizable.
Every new political theory, by whatever name it called itself, led back to hierarchy and regimentation. And in the general hardening of outlook that set in round about 1930, practices which had been long abandoned, in some cases for hundreds of years — imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages, and the deportation of whole populations — not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.
In the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further.
With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end.
Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed.
The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.” 1984
In a world in which everyone worked short hours. Had enough to eat. Lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared.
If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction.
It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable.
For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves. And when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. George Orwell 1984
The Revolution and the Party:
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.
We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.
We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing.
All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.
They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.
We are not like that.
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
Power is not a means, it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution.
The object of torture is torture.
The object of power is power.
Now you begin to understand. - George Orwell 1984
George Orwell: The Revolution and the Party
The Revolution and the Party:
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.
The party is not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.
The Party is different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.
They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.
The Party is not like that.
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
Power is not a means, it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution.
The object of torture is torture.
The object of power is power.
Now you begin to understand. - George Orwell 1984
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.
The party is not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.
The Party is different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.
They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.
The Party is not like that.
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
Power is not a means, it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution.
The object of torture is torture.
The object of power is power.
Now you begin to understand. - George Orwell 1984
Monday, November 17, 2008
Socialism, Communism, and Genocide
COMMUNISM AS DESTROYER
Communist Revolution and its totalitarian worship of the 'the Party' and demand for obediance or death is the greatest purveor of evil the world has known. In the early years of the Bolshevik revolution and consolodation of power in Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the attempt to establish it in Spain in the 1930's, the true nature of collectivism is shown whether it is called socialism or communism or under whatever misnomer, it is evil that rules 'the party' and inspires a bloddletting without comparison.
Everywhere they make first for the clergy which has claim to the belief patterns of the target nation and the intellectuals who can challenge them with thought and reason, for reason and common sense must be suspended for anyone to desire an arbitratry authority over themselves and their nation.
Of all revolutionary systems, which throughout human history have been devised for the destruction of our civilized values, Communism is without doubt the most perfected, most efficient and most merciless.
In fact it represents the most advanced epoch of the world revolution, in whose postulates it therefore not only acts to destroy a definite political, social, economic or moral institution, but also simultaneously to declare null and void the Church as well as all cultural and Christian manifestations which represent our civilization.
All revolutionary currents have attacked Christianity in its different aspects with particular one-mindedness.
Communism, spawned from this same revolutionary stream of thought, seeks to banish Christianity for the purpose of causing it to vanish from the face of the earth, without even the slightest trace remaining.
The destructive fury of this satanic striving, which brings before the eyes of the world the most terrible pictures of terror and destruction which are possible to imagine, can only be based on the essence of Nihilism as the prelude to revolution, the most evil, hate-filled rejection of everything hitherto existing.
For otherwise, one would not be able to understand the indescribable insanity of its criminal acts and the spirit of destruction, of annihilation, of insult, of contradiction and of resistance by its leading personalities against everything free, and the fundamental features not only of Christianity but of religion in general.
The purpose of Communism, as we have seen in Russia and in the other lands where it has been introduced, is to enslave the people in their economic, political, social, and spiritual sense in order to make possible a minority rule through violence. From an international aspect, the goal cannot be clearer:
“To attain through violence world domination by an insignificant minority, which destroys the rest of humanity by means of materialism, terror and, if necessary, by death, completely indifferent to whether in the process the enormous majority of the population must be murdered.”
The urge to murder, which has characterised the leading Soviet personages and their satellites, is known well throughout the world. There are few, who upon learning of the bloody purges, which have been undertaken by the Marxists in Russia, will not be seized by shudders of horror. One needs only to recall a few details to fill the most stout hearts with fear and alarm.
“In its beginnings the Red Terror strove above all to exterminate the Russian Intelligentsia.” As proof of this assertion S.P. Melgunow affirms the following, in which he refers to the “Special Committees”, which appeared in Russia in the first period of the Social revolution and in similar form in every other revolutionized nation:
“The special committees are not organs of law, but of merciless extermination according to the decisions of the Communist Central Committee. The special committee is neither a commission of investigation nor a court of justice, but itself determines its own powers. It is an instrument of battle, which acts on the internal front of the civil war. It does not pardon whoever stands on the other side of the barricades, but kills them.
“It is not difficult to form ideas of how in reality this extermination proceeds, when in place of the nullified legal code only the revolutionary experience and conscience command. This conscience is subjective and experience allows complete free play to the will, which always, according to the position of the judge, takes on more or less furious forms.”
“Let us not carry on war against individual persons” – wrote Latsis – “but let us exterminate the Bourgeoisie as a class. Do not investigate, through study of documents and proofs, what the accused has done in words and deeds against the Soviet authority. The first question to be placed before him runs as to what class he belongs to, what is his origin, his education, his training and his profession.” This is exactly what befell the Cambodians after the Khmer Rouge came to poewer.
During the bloody dictatorship of Lenin, the Committee of Investigation under Rohrberg (Rohrberg, C.), which after the capture of Kiev entered this city with the White volunteers in August 1919, reported the following:
“The entire concrete floor of the large garage (this was the place where the provincial Cheka of Kiev had carried out executions) was swimming in blood, which did not flow but formed a layer of several inches; it was a grisly mixture of blood with brain and skull fragments, as well as strands of hair and other human remains. The entire walls, holed by thousands of bullets, were spattered with blood, and fragments of brain as well as head skin adhered to them.
“A drain ditch of 25 cm width and 25 cm deep and about 10 m long ran from the middle of the garage to a nearby room, where there was a subterranean outlet pipe. This drain ditch was filled to the top with blood.
“Usually, immediately after the massacre, the corpses were removed in lorries or horse-drawn wagons from the city and buried in a mass grave.
In the corner of a garden we came upon an older mass grave, which contained about 80 corpses, in which we discovered signs of the most varied and unimaginable cruelties and mutilation.
There were corpses from which the entrails had been removed; others had different limbs amputated and others again were cut into pieces. Some had had the eyes poked out, while the head, the face, the neck and the torso were covered with deep wounds. Further on we found a corpse with an axe in the breast, while others had no tongues. In a corner of the mass grave we discovered many legs and arms severed from the trunk.”
The enormous number of corpses, which have already been laid to the account of Communist Socialism and which increase terrifyingly all the while, will perhaps never be exactly known, but it exceeds everything imaginable. It is not possible to learn the exact number of the victims. All estimates lie below the real figure.”
In the Edinburgh newspaper “The Scotsman” of 7th November, 1923, Professor Sarolea gave the following figures in detailed description of how pervasive this evil machine was in carrying out its directive. You must ask yourselves, what kind of human being would carry out these crimes in such large scale?:
“28 Bishops; 1,219 priests; 6,000 Professors and teachers; 9,000 doctors; 54,000 Officers; 260,000 soldiers; 70,000 Policemen; 12,950 estate owners; 355,250 intellectuals and of the free professions; 193,290 tradesman and 215,000 peasants.”
The Information Committee of Denikin on the Bolshevistic intrigue during the years 1918-1919 records in a treatise about the Red Terror in these two years “one million, seven hundred thousand victims.” In the “Roul” of 3rd August 1923, Kommin makes the following observation:
“During the winter of 1920 there existed in the USSR, 52 governments with 52 Special Committees (Chekas), 52 Special Departments and 52 revolutionary courts. Besides countless subsidiary Chekas, transport-networks, courts on the railways as well as troops for internal security, there were mobile courts, which were dispatched to enforce mass executions in the places concerned.”
To this list of courts of torture must be added the special departments, i.e., 16 army and divisional courts. All in all one must there existed 1000's of torture chambers in which individual victims met deviates of the worst order. If it is borne in mind that at that time district committees also existed in addition, then the number rises further. In addition the number of governments of the USSR increased. Siberia, the Crimea and the Far East were conquered. The number of Chekas grew in geometrical ratio.
According to Soviet data (in the year 1920 when the terror had still not ebbed and the reporting of news was not restricted) it is possible to establish an average figure for every court; the curve of executions rises from one to fifty (in the great cities) and up to one hundred in the regions recently conquered by the Red Army.
The crisis of terror was periodic and then ceased; in this manner one can daily estimate the (modest) figure of five victims..., which, multiplied with the thousand courts, gives a result of five thousand, and thus for the year roughly one and a half million.
We recall this indescribable slaughter, not because in its totality it was either the most numerous or the most merciless to arise from the special situation and inflamed passions consequent on the first victories of the Bolshevist revolution, but because today, many years after these mass executions took place, all this might otherwise be obliterated from the present Communist picture, even for the persons who were contemporaries of the events and who today, if still alive, have forgotten those tragedies with the ease with which people forget not only unpleasant events which do not directly concern them, but even those to which they fell victim.
Unhappily, time has shown a truly demonic excess of Communism in its murderous activity. The monstrous statistics are known to all and several of these cruel bloodbaths have taken place recently and even continue in the conquered nations of Laos, Cambodia, and Viet Nam where the hill tribesman, Montagnard, and remnants of free Lao hide in the jungles, hunted like animals. One may hear today the lament of the persecuted, the death-rattle of the dying, and the terrible and haunting complaint of the corpses.
It may suffice to recall the giant bloodbaths in Hungary, Poland, East Germany and Cuba as well as the earlier mass killings by Stalin, the forced starvation of 5 million Ukranians, and the annihilation of millions of Chinese through the Communist regime of Mao-Tse-Tung and the millions more in the so called, 'Cultural Revolution' strewn with corpses.
But also the Communist attempts at revolution, which failed to achieve lasting permanence, such as that of Bela Kun who occupied Hungary in such a brutal way in the middle of 1919; of Spain in 1936, where the Bolsheviks gained control of Madrid and parts of the Spanish provinces and murdered 12 Bishops and more than 16,000 priests, monks and nuns; further the happily unsuccessful attempt in Germany, and in the Red Republic of Bavaria in the year 1919. All these attempts were orgies of torture and death in the manner of 1918 and which had bloodletting and unrestrained bestiality perpetrated on innocent victims.
This Apocalyptic storm, which brings a flood of corpses, blood and tears, and finally the peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave falls upon the world with the sole goal: to destroy not only the Church but the entire Christian civilisation.
Before this shattering picture the world asks itself with heavy heart: who can hate our Christian features in such a form and try to destroy them with such Godless fury? Who has become capable of instigating this bloody mechanics of annihilation? Who can with such insensitivity direct and order this monstrous criminal process? And reality answers us completely without doubt that the [Bolshevik] are those responsible...
They now add to their rank of haters of all things Western and Christian, the Islamic Jihad. Together, with one goal, destruction of America, they need not be allies in the traditional sense.
Communist Revolution and its totalitarian worship of the 'the Party' and demand for obediance or death is the greatest purveor of evil the world has known. In the early years of the Bolshevik revolution and consolodation of power in Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the attempt to establish it in Spain in the 1930's, the true nature of collectivism is shown whether it is called socialism or communism or under whatever misnomer, it is evil that rules 'the party' and inspires a bloddletting without comparison.
Everywhere they make first for the clergy which has claim to the belief patterns of the target nation and the intellectuals who can challenge them with thought and reason, for reason and common sense must be suspended for anyone to desire an arbitratry authority over themselves and their nation.
Of all revolutionary systems, which throughout human history have been devised for the destruction of our civilized values, Communism is without doubt the most perfected, most efficient and most merciless.
In fact it represents the most advanced epoch of the world revolution, in whose postulates it therefore not only acts to destroy a definite political, social, economic or moral institution, but also simultaneously to declare null and void the Church as well as all cultural and Christian manifestations which represent our civilization.
All revolutionary currents have attacked Christianity in its different aspects with particular one-mindedness.
Communism, spawned from this same revolutionary stream of thought, seeks to banish Christianity for the purpose of causing it to vanish from the face of the earth, without even the slightest trace remaining.
The destructive fury of this satanic striving, which brings before the eyes of the world the most terrible pictures of terror and destruction which are possible to imagine, can only be based on the essence of Nihilism as the prelude to revolution, the most evil, hate-filled rejection of everything hitherto existing.
For otherwise, one would not be able to understand the indescribable insanity of its criminal acts and the spirit of destruction, of annihilation, of insult, of contradiction and of resistance by its leading personalities against everything free, and the fundamental features not only of Christianity but of religion in general.
The purpose of Communism, as we have seen in Russia and in the other lands where it has been introduced, is to enslave the people in their economic, political, social, and spiritual sense in order to make possible a minority rule through violence. From an international aspect, the goal cannot be clearer:
“To attain through violence world domination by an insignificant minority, which destroys the rest of humanity by means of materialism, terror and, if necessary, by death, completely indifferent to whether in the process the enormous majority of the population must be murdered.”
The urge to murder, which has characterised the leading Soviet personages and their satellites, is known well throughout the world. There are few, who upon learning of the bloody purges, which have been undertaken by the Marxists in Russia, will not be seized by shudders of horror. One needs only to recall a few details to fill the most stout hearts with fear and alarm.
“In its beginnings the Red Terror strove above all to exterminate the Russian Intelligentsia.” As proof of this assertion S.P. Melgunow affirms the following, in which he refers to the “Special Committees”, which appeared in Russia in the first period of the Social revolution and in similar form in every other revolutionized nation:
“The special committees are not organs of law, but of merciless extermination according to the decisions of the Communist Central Committee. The special committee is neither a commission of investigation nor a court of justice, but itself determines its own powers. It is an instrument of battle, which acts on the internal front of the civil war. It does not pardon whoever stands on the other side of the barricades, but kills them.
“It is not difficult to form ideas of how in reality this extermination proceeds, when in place of the nullified legal code only the revolutionary experience and conscience command. This conscience is subjective and experience allows complete free play to the will, which always, according to the position of the judge, takes on more or less furious forms.”
“Let us not carry on war against individual persons” – wrote Latsis – “but let us exterminate the Bourgeoisie as a class. Do not investigate, through study of documents and proofs, what the accused has done in words and deeds against the Soviet authority. The first question to be placed before him runs as to what class he belongs to, what is his origin, his education, his training and his profession.” This is exactly what befell the Cambodians after the Khmer Rouge came to poewer.
During the bloody dictatorship of Lenin, the Committee of Investigation under Rohrberg (Rohrberg, C.), which after the capture of Kiev entered this city with the White volunteers in August 1919, reported the following:
“The entire concrete floor of the large garage (this was the place where the provincial Cheka of Kiev had carried out executions) was swimming in blood, which did not flow but formed a layer of several inches; it was a grisly mixture of blood with brain and skull fragments, as well as strands of hair and other human remains. The entire walls, holed by thousands of bullets, were spattered with blood, and fragments of brain as well as head skin adhered to them.
“A drain ditch of 25 cm width and 25 cm deep and about 10 m long ran from the middle of the garage to a nearby room, where there was a subterranean outlet pipe. This drain ditch was filled to the top with blood.
“Usually, immediately after the massacre, the corpses were removed in lorries or horse-drawn wagons from the city and buried in a mass grave.
In the corner of a garden we came upon an older mass grave, which contained about 80 corpses, in which we discovered signs of the most varied and unimaginable cruelties and mutilation.
There were corpses from which the entrails had been removed; others had different limbs amputated and others again were cut into pieces. Some had had the eyes poked out, while the head, the face, the neck and the torso were covered with deep wounds. Further on we found a corpse with an axe in the breast, while others had no tongues. In a corner of the mass grave we discovered many legs and arms severed from the trunk.”
The enormous number of corpses, which have already been laid to the account of Communist Socialism and which increase terrifyingly all the while, will perhaps never be exactly known, but it exceeds everything imaginable. It is not possible to learn the exact number of the victims. All estimates lie below the real figure.”
In the Edinburgh newspaper “The Scotsman” of 7th November, 1923, Professor Sarolea gave the following figures in detailed description of how pervasive this evil machine was in carrying out its directive. You must ask yourselves, what kind of human being would carry out these crimes in such large scale?:
“28 Bishops; 1,219 priests; 6,000 Professors and teachers; 9,000 doctors; 54,000 Officers; 260,000 soldiers; 70,000 Policemen; 12,950 estate owners; 355,250 intellectuals and of the free professions; 193,290 tradesman and 215,000 peasants.”
The Information Committee of Denikin on the Bolshevistic intrigue during the years 1918-1919 records in a treatise about the Red Terror in these two years “one million, seven hundred thousand victims.” In the “Roul” of 3rd August 1923, Kommin makes the following observation:
“During the winter of 1920 there existed in the USSR, 52 governments with 52 Special Committees (Chekas), 52 Special Departments and 52 revolutionary courts. Besides countless subsidiary Chekas, transport-networks, courts on the railways as well as troops for internal security, there were mobile courts, which were dispatched to enforce mass executions in the places concerned.”
To this list of courts of torture must be added the special departments, i.e., 16 army and divisional courts. All in all one must there existed 1000's of torture chambers in which individual victims met deviates of the worst order. If it is borne in mind that at that time district committees also existed in addition, then the number rises further. In addition the number of governments of the USSR increased. Siberia, the Crimea and the Far East were conquered. The number of Chekas grew in geometrical ratio.
According to Soviet data (in the year 1920 when the terror had still not ebbed and the reporting of news was not restricted) it is possible to establish an average figure for every court; the curve of executions rises from one to fifty (in the great cities) and up to one hundred in the regions recently conquered by the Red Army.
The crisis of terror was periodic and then ceased; in this manner one can daily estimate the (modest) figure of five victims..., which, multiplied with the thousand courts, gives a result of five thousand, and thus for the year roughly one and a half million.
We recall this indescribable slaughter, not because in its totality it was either the most numerous or the most merciless to arise from the special situation and inflamed passions consequent on the first victories of the Bolshevist revolution, but because today, many years after these mass executions took place, all this might otherwise be obliterated from the present Communist picture, even for the persons who were contemporaries of the events and who today, if still alive, have forgotten those tragedies with the ease with which people forget not only unpleasant events which do not directly concern them, but even those to which they fell victim.
Unhappily, time has shown a truly demonic excess of Communism in its murderous activity. The monstrous statistics are known to all and several of these cruel bloodbaths have taken place recently and even continue in the conquered nations of Laos, Cambodia, and Viet Nam where the hill tribesman, Montagnard, and remnants of free Lao hide in the jungles, hunted like animals. One may hear today the lament of the persecuted, the death-rattle of the dying, and the terrible and haunting complaint of the corpses.
It may suffice to recall the giant bloodbaths in Hungary, Poland, East Germany and Cuba as well as the earlier mass killings by Stalin, the forced starvation of 5 million Ukranians, and the annihilation of millions of Chinese through the Communist regime of Mao-Tse-Tung and the millions more in the so called, 'Cultural Revolution' strewn with corpses.
But also the Communist attempts at revolution, which failed to achieve lasting permanence, such as that of Bela Kun who occupied Hungary in such a brutal way in the middle of 1919; of Spain in 1936, where the Bolsheviks gained control of Madrid and parts of the Spanish provinces and murdered 12 Bishops and more than 16,000 priests, monks and nuns; further the happily unsuccessful attempt in Germany, and in the Red Republic of Bavaria in the year 1919. All these attempts were orgies of torture and death in the manner of 1918 and which had bloodletting and unrestrained bestiality perpetrated on innocent victims.
This Apocalyptic storm, which brings a flood of corpses, blood and tears, and finally the peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave falls upon the world with the sole goal: to destroy not only the Church but the entire Christian civilisation.
Before this shattering picture the world asks itself with heavy heart: who can hate our Christian features in such a form and try to destroy them with such Godless fury? Who has become capable of instigating this bloody mechanics of annihilation? Who can with such insensitivity direct and order this monstrous criminal process? And reality answers us completely without doubt that the [Bolshevik] are those responsible...
They now add to their rank of haters of all things Western and Christian, the Islamic Jihad. Together, with one goal, destruction of America, they need not be allies in the traditional sense.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Obama's Supporters - The Ususal Suspects
Obama's Grand List of Supporters
Obama: “A Marxist radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is now the President of the United States…this is a watershed election which changes the fate of the world…the world now becomes very much less safe for all of us as a result. Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of American presidential elections – at the suspension of reason -- can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date. It’s a faint hope – the enemies of America, freedom and all of Western Civilization will certainly be rejoicing today.” (The Spectator.co.uk; Melanie Phillips, 4 and 5 November 2008. http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips)
From the Urban Dictionary
1. Obammunist: Devout followers of Senator Barack Hussein Obama, 2008 US Presidential candidate, usually characterized by screams, tears of joy and a desire for "change." Usually found at Obama rallies, Starbucks and college campuses.
2. Obammunist: A bizarre cult of the personality arising in the 3rd Millennium in the United States in which millions of people discarded all forms of rational thought and became mesmerized by the liquid delivery style of Senator Barack Obama. These people were led, Pied Piper like, into the swamps of despair upon discovering that Obama's far left philosophy didn't work any better than any of the other socialist experiments of the past century.
List of Supporters of Barack Huseein Obama
ABC
Affleck, Ben
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, President of Iran
Allen, Woody (who married his own daughter)
Anniston, Jennifer
Ayers, Bill
Bernhardt, Sarah (Homosexual comedienne)
Berry, Marion; Cocaine addict and convicted criminal Mayor of Washington, D.C.
Bishop, Dale Leo (Executed in prison for murder), last words were for Obama
Buffet, Warren
Byrd, Robert, former Dem. Senator and KKK Kleagle
Carter, Jimmy
Castro, Fidel
Castro, Raul
CBS
Center for Constitutional Rights
Chavez, Hugo
Clintons
Clooney, George
CNN
Colbert, Stephen
Communist Party, Illinois
Communist Party, USA
Daddy, Puff
Damon, Matt
Danson, Ted
Davidson, Carl, SDS
Degeneris, Ellen
DeNiro, Robert
Dog, Snoop,
Edwards, John
Evans, Jodie, Code Pink Founder
Fonda, Jane (age 71)
Farrakan, Louis
France (poll, 80% for Obama)
Galloway, Joe, British MP and friend of Hussein (Saddam, the late)
Garner, Jennifer
Gore, Al
HAMAS
Hanks, Tom
Hayden, Tom
Hollande, Francoise, France (Socialist Party)
Jackson, Jesse
Jackson, Jesse Jr.
Jackson, Samuel L.
John, Elton
Johnson,Magic
Kennedy, Caroline
Kennedy, Ethel
Kennedy, Patrick
Kennedy, Teddy
Kerry, John
Klonsky, Michael (SDS; Maoist Communist Party candidate)
Lehay, Patrick (SEN. D)
Maher, Bull
Marxists/Socialists/Communists, all for Obama (Under Karl Marx’s writings we are to support the party with the best interests of the mobilization of the proletariat.")
MSM- Main Stream Media (i.e., David Gergen, the senior CNN commentator, who said, "Actually, Rev. Wright may love this country more than many of us ...”)
Russert, Tim: Meet the Press for Obama: David Brody, Maureen Dowd, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gwen Ifill, Ruth Marcus & Jon Meacham. Along with Russert, all these seven are Democratic Party operatives and committed Progressives (the politically correct term for socialists).
McGovern, George
Moore, Michael
MoveOn.org
MSNBC
Muslim Americans for Obama
Muslim American Society (Muslim Brotherhood)
NARAL (abortion lobby: Save the Whales, Kill the Babies)
NEA and all of the little ‘EA’s
Black Panther Party (new)
ACORN
NORMAL (Marijuana legalization lobby)
Obama Youth (Islamic)
New York Feminists for Peace - Far Left FemiNazi Wackos
Weiss, Cora (Collaborator with the NVA; Committee of Liasion)
Sarandon, Susan
Pelosi, Nancy, Speaker of the House
Reed, Harry, Majority Whip, U.S. Senate
Democratic Socialists of America
Progressive Caucus (US House of Reprehensibles)
Ortega, Daniel, Communist President of Nicaragua (Sandinista)
Glover, Danny
Progressives For Obama (PFO)
Project Islamic Hope
Qadhafi, Moamar, Libyan Dictator
Redford, Robert
Rezko, Tony
Wright, Reverend Jeremiah
Richardson, Bill (Governor)
Sanders, Bernie, Socialist (US Senator, D. Vermont)
Rockefeller, Jay
Sharpton, Al
Smith, Will (actor)
Socialist Party USA
Spector, Phil
Teamsters
Time Magazine
Hartford Courant
LA Times
Washington Post
Terrorists – Weathermen
Weathermen Terrorists (2008) - Howard Machtinger, Jeff Jones, Steve Tappis, and Mark Rudd.
Rudd, Mark
West, Cornell, radical Marxist professor, racist introduced Obama as "my comrade."
PBS
Portman, Natalie
Rock, Chris
Soros, George
Spielberg, Steven
Springsteen, Bruce
Steenburgen, Mary, wife if Ted Danson
Streisand, Babs
Warren, Rick - Saddleback Church; Christian Author of 'Purpose Driven Life.'
Winfrey, Oprah
Yee, James, West Point graduate; accused in 2003 of being part of a spy ring at the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, held 76 days in solitary confinement but charges were dropped over "national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence," if the case had proceeded.
Young Communist League
New York Feminists for Peace:
An organization of more than 100 New York feminiNazis: Cora Weiss; Katha Pollitt, columnist for The Nation; Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times writer Margo Jefferson; Alice Kessler Harris and Linda Gordon; Barbara Weinstein, president of the American Historical Association, and Ellen P. Chapnick, Dean for Social Justice Initiatives at Columbia Law School. Susan Sarandon and Francis Fox Piven.
Progressives For Obama (PFO):
Established in March 2008 and co-founded by Tom Hayden, collaborator with North Vietnamese Communists during the Vietnam War and who organized riots at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago in Grant Park, the same place Obama held his victory party 40 years later. PFO's members include Danny Glover, Barbara Ehrenreich, the Honorary Chairwoman of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Bill Fletcher, Jr., a Maoist, current DSA leader and executive editor of ‘Black Commentator.’ Fletcher is co-founder of the Black Radical Congress which has close ties to the Communist Party USA. PFO Internet webmaster is Carl Davidson, a Marxist who is also a national steering committee member of United for Peace and Justice, a prominent member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, an admirer of Fidel Castro, and a former vice president of Students for a Democratic Society.
Senator Bernie Sanders is the only openly socialist member of the U.S. Senate.
Political scientist Andrew Hacker is the author of the 1992 book Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal).
Leslie Cagan is the pro-Castro co-chair of United For Peace and Justice.
Muslim American Society:
Originally, the Muslim Brotherhood. Called themselves the Muslim American Society after 1993. The Muslim Brotherhood is an international Islamist group that largely operates underground. The Brotherhood's goal is to spread the rule of Islamic law throughout the world and have endorsed violence as a means of doing so. MAS' magazine, March 2002 endorses suicide bombings as "martyr operations…not suicide.”
Code Pink Founder, Jodie Evans - Obama met with his terrorist supporting fundraiser, Jodie Evans, at a $5 million Hollywood fundraiser held last week at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion on Tuesday, June 24. Obama met with Evans and was photographed with her at the fundraiser. Evans is co-founder of the leftist anti-American group Code Pink. She and Code Pink have endorsed the terrorists in Iraq and have sent over $600,000 in cash and humanitarian aid to "the other side" in Fallujah. Evans said in an interview last month, on June 3, that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had a "valid argument" for attacking America on Sept. 11, 2001.
"Vote Hope 2008," the Obama supporters' 527 group, federal records show. The group is led by San Francisco lawyer Steve Phillips, son-in-law of wealthy financier and Democratic political donor Herbert Sandler. "The 527s obviously are a challenge to the system, but the Supreme Court has said they're permitted, and there's no way to impose (donation) limits on them," said Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, and an expert on campaign finance law.
Purpose Driven Life Author
Rick Warren, who leads the 20,000-member Saddleback Valley Community Church, called Obama" an amazing man" in an interview with CNN’s Wolfe Blitzer and said he has the potential to be president of the United States because "he has good character." This is a curious endorsement in view of Obama’s pro-abortion stand.
Obama: “A Marxist radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is now the President of the United States…this is a watershed election which changes the fate of the world…the world now becomes very much less safe for all of us as a result. Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of American presidential elections – at the suspension of reason -- can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date. It’s a faint hope – the enemies of America, freedom and all of Western Civilization will certainly be rejoicing today.” (The Spectator.co.uk; Melanie Phillips, 4 and 5 November 2008. http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips)
From the Urban Dictionary
1. Obammunist: Devout followers of Senator Barack Hussein Obama, 2008 US Presidential candidate, usually characterized by screams, tears of joy and a desire for "change." Usually found at Obama rallies, Starbucks and college campuses.
2. Obammunist: A bizarre cult of the personality arising in the 3rd Millennium in the United States in which millions of people discarded all forms of rational thought and became mesmerized by the liquid delivery style of Senator Barack Obama. These people were led, Pied Piper like, into the swamps of despair upon discovering that Obama's far left philosophy didn't work any better than any of the other socialist experiments of the past century.
List of Supporters of Barack Huseein Obama
ABC
Affleck, Ben
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, President of Iran
Allen, Woody (who married his own daughter)
Anniston, Jennifer
Ayers, Bill
Bernhardt, Sarah (Homosexual comedienne)
Berry, Marion; Cocaine addict and convicted criminal Mayor of Washington, D.C.
Bishop, Dale Leo (Executed in prison for murder), last words were for Obama
Buffet, Warren
Byrd, Robert, former Dem. Senator and KKK Kleagle
Carter, Jimmy
Castro, Fidel
Castro, Raul
CBS
Center for Constitutional Rights
Chavez, Hugo
Clintons
Clooney, George
CNN
Colbert, Stephen
Communist Party, Illinois
Communist Party, USA
Daddy, Puff
Damon, Matt
Danson, Ted
Davidson, Carl, SDS
Degeneris, Ellen
DeNiro, Robert
Dog, Snoop,
Edwards, John
Evans, Jodie, Code Pink Founder
Fonda, Jane (age 71)
Farrakan, Louis
France (poll, 80% for Obama)
Galloway, Joe, British MP and friend of Hussein (Saddam, the late)
Garner, Jennifer
Gore, Al
HAMAS
Hanks, Tom
Hayden, Tom
Hollande, Francoise, France (Socialist Party)
Jackson, Jesse
Jackson, Jesse Jr.
Jackson, Samuel L.
John, Elton
Johnson,Magic
Kennedy, Caroline
Kennedy, Ethel
Kennedy, Patrick
Kennedy, Teddy
Kerry, John
Klonsky, Michael (SDS; Maoist Communist Party candidate)
Lehay, Patrick (SEN. D)
Maher, Bull
Marxists/Socialists/Communists, all for Obama (Under Karl Marx’s writings we are to support the party with the best interests of the mobilization of the proletariat.")
MSM- Main Stream Media (i.e., David Gergen, the senior CNN commentator, who said, "Actually, Rev. Wright may love this country more than many of us ...”)
Russert, Tim: Meet the Press for Obama: David Brody, Maureen Dowd, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gwen Ifill, Ruth Marcus & Jon Meacham. Along with Russert, all these seven are Democratic Party operatives and committed Progressives (the politically correct term for socialists).
McGovern, George
Moore, Michael
MoveOn.org
MSNBC
Muslim Americans for Obama
Muslim American Society (Muslim Brotherhood)
NARAL (abortion lobby: Save the Whales, Kill the Babies)
NEA and all of the little ‘EA’s
Black Panther Party (new)
ACORN
NORMAL (Marijuana legalization lobby)
Obama Youth (Islamic)
New York Feminists for Peace - Far Left FemiNazi Wackos
Weiss, Cora (Collaborator with the NVA; Committee of Liasion)
Sarandon, Susan
Pelosi, Nancy, Speaker of the House
Reed, Harry, Majority Whip, U.S. Senate
Democratic Socialists of America
Progressive Caucus (US House of Reprehensibles)
Ortega, Daniel, Communist President of Nicaragua (Sandinista)
Glover, Danny
Progressives For Obama (PFO)
Project Islamic Hope
Qadhafi, Moamar, Libyan Dictator
Redford, Robert
Rezko, Tony
Wright, Reverend Jeremiah
Richardson, Bill (Governor)
Sanders, Bernie, Socialist (US Senator, D. Vermont)
Rockefeller, Jay
Sharpton, Al
Smith, Will (actor)
Socialist Party USA
Spector, Phil
Teamsters
Time Magazine
Hartford Courant
LA Times
Washington Post
Terrorists – Weathermen
Weathermen Terrorists (2008) - Howard Machtinger, Jeff Jones, Steve Tappis, and Mark Rudd.
Rudd, Mark
West, Cornell, radical Marxist professor, racist introduced Obama as "my comrade."
PBS
Portman, Natalie
Rock, Chris
Soros, George
Spielberg, Steven
Springsteen, Bruce
Steenburgen, Mary, wife if Ted Danson
Streisand, Babs
Warren, Rick - Saddleback Church; Christian Author of 'Purpose Driven Life.'
Winfrey, Oprah
Yee, James, West Point graduate; accused in 2003 of being part of a spy ring at the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, held 76 days in solitary confinement but charges were dropped over "national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence," if the case had proceeded.
Young Communist League
New York Feminists for Peace:
An organization of more than 100 New York feminiNazis: Cora Weiss; Katha Pollitt, columnist for The Nation; Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times writer Margo Jefferson; Alice Kessler Harris and Linda Gordon; Barbara Weinstein, president of the American Historical Association, and Ellen P. Chapnick, Dean for Social Justice Initiatives at Columbia Law School. Susan Sarandon and Francis Fox Piven.
Progressives For Obama (PFO):
Established in March 2008 and co-founded by Tom Hayden, collaborator with North Vietnamese Communists during the Vietnam War and who organized riots at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago in Grant Park, the same place Obama held his victory party 40 years later. PFO's members include Danny Glover, Barbara Ehrenreich, the Honorary Chairwoman of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Bill Fletcher, Jr., a Maoist, current DSA leader and executive editor of ‘Black Commentator.’ Fletcher is co-founder of the Black Radical Congress which has close ties to the Communist Party USA. PFO Internet webmaster is Carl Davidson, a Marxist who is also a national steering committee member of United for Peace and Justice, a prominent member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, an admirer of Fidel Castro, and a former vice president of Students for a Democratic Society.
Senator Bernie Sanders is the only openly socialist member of the U.S. Senate.
Political scientist Andrew Hacker is the author of the 1992 book Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal).
Leslie Cagan is the pro-Castro co-chair of United For Peace and Justice.
Muslim American Society:
Originally, the Muslim Brotherhood. Called themselves the Muslim American Society after 1993. The Muslim Brotherhood is an international Islamist group that largely operates underground. The Brotherhood's goal is to spread the rule of Islamic law throughout the world and have endorsed violence as a means of doing so. MAS' magazine, March 2002 endorses suicide bombings as "martyr operations…not suicide.”
Code Pink Founder, Jodie Evans - Obama met with his terrorist supporting fundraiser, Jodie Evans, at a $5 million Hollywood fundraiser held last week at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion on Tuesday, June 24. Obama met with Evans and was photographed with her at the fundraiser. Evans is co-founder of the leftist anti-American group Code Pink. She and Code Pink have endorsed the terrorists in Iraq and have sent over $600,000 in cash and humanitarian aid to "the other side" in Fallujah. Evans said in an interview last month, on June 3, that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had a "valid argument" for attacking America on Sept. 11, 2001.
"Vote Hope 2008," the Obama supporters' 527 group, federal records show. The group is led by San Francisco lawyer Steve Phillips, son-in-law of wealthy financier and Democratic political donor Herbert Sandler. "The 527s obviously are a challenge to the system, but the Supreme Court has said they're permitted, and there's no way to impose (donation) limits on them," said Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, and an expert on campaign finance law.
Purpose Driven Life Author
Rick Warren, who leads the 20,000-member Saddleback Valley Community Church, called Obama" an amazing man" in an interview with CNN’s Wolfe Blitzer and said he has the potential to be president of the United States because "he has good character." This is a curious endorsement in view of Obama’s pro-abortion stand.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Communism, Democracry, Socialism, Communists
COMMUNISM:
Take away a nation's heritage and they are more easily persuaded." Karl Marx
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. V.I. Lenin
Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx
The goal of socialism is communism. V.I. Lenin
"I am a Communist and, according to Marxist-Leninist theories, so long as imperialism persists in the world there will still be wars." (North Vietnamese negotiator, Le Duc Tho on January 23, 1973. (Awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, which he declined)
"All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time."(Lieutenant General Lewis B. USMC)
How to Win at War: The Old Ranger:
“Thorough, Fierce, Courageous and Totally Dedicated; No quit in us; “Can’t” is not a word in our vocabulary. Leadership by example is based on merit, unquestioned devotion to Christian ethics and intolerance of misdeeds. Soldiers, families, and Militia must rely on mutual trust and accountability. Commanders at all levels are expected to have their troops ready for battle at all times. Each officer must demonstrate loyalty to their subordinates as well as to their own commanders, and above all, lead to the mission: There is no substitute for victory.”
Take away a nation's heritage and they are more easily persuaded." Karl Marx
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. V.I. Lenin
Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx
The goal of socialism is communism. V.I. Lenin
"I am a Communist and, according to Marxist-Leninist theories, so long as imperialism persists in the world there will still be wars." (North Vietnamese negotiator, Le Duc Tho on January 23, 1973. (Awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, which he declined)
"All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time."(Lieutenant General Lewis B. USMC)
How to Win at War: The Old Ranger:
“Thorough, Fierce, Courageous and Totally Dedicated; No quit in us; “Can’t” is not a word in our vocabulary. Leadership by example is based on merit, unquestioned devotion to Christian ethics and intolerance of misdeeds. Soldiers, families, and Militia must rely on mutual trust and accountability. Commanders at all levels are expected to have their troops ready for battle at all times. Each officer must demonstrate loyalty to their subordinates as well as to their own commanders, and above all, lead to the mission: There is no substitute for victory.”
Friday, November 7, 2008
Totalitarian Progress: Road To Perdition of the "isms."
Level I.
Rule of the “isms” and their respective symbols.
· Socialism – Handshake
· Nazism – Swastika
· Facism - Fasci
· Communism -Hammer and Sickle
Fear, Greed, and indifference: A recipe for manipulation, makes this 'isms' possible.
When corruption has no name and no face, it is overlooked.
Small groups of ‘energetic,’ motivated people make a difference in the direction of major social forces – it’s the only thing that ever has.
Where the audience is an active participant in it’s own deception and manipulation there are expectations of that a charismatic presence will lead them out of their troubles. What they get is a loss of control over its own destiny.
The most effective rhetoric is simple, passionate, and repetitive. It works equally well through mass appeal or one on one: Mesmer perfected the technique so well a movement was named after him.
Level II.
Police Power, State Terrorism:
A police state produces mass fear and the fear is open, the tactics are open with demonstrations of force and power, as in Waco, Texas and Ruby Ridge, Idaho under the Clington Administration. The employment of such operatiosnagainst civilians produce an undercurrent of emotion that moves from observation to fear to terror in the mind which personalizes the connection, creating an overpowering sense of dread. This is internalized by the masses and the individual.
The Media: The Main Stream Media is produced for the masses but consumed by individuals. It is the main source of instruction to the masses on what to believe, how to act, and what to consume including the consumption of information.
Rule of the “isms” and their respective symbols.
· Socialism – Handshake
· Nazism – Swastika
· Facism - Fasci
· Communism -Hammer and Sickle
Fear, Greed, and indifference: A recipe for manipulation, makes this 'isms' possible.
When corruption has no name and no face, it is overlooked.
Small groups of ‘energetic,’ motivated people make a difference in the direction of major social forces – it’s the only thing that ever has.
Where the audience is an active participant in it’s own deception and manipulation there are expectations of that a charismatic presence will lead them out of their troubles. What they get is a loss of control over its own destiny.
The most effective rhetoric is simple, passionate, and repetitive. It works equally well through mass appeal or one on one: Mesmer perfected the technique so well a movement was named after him.
Level II.
Police Power, State Terrorism:
A police state produces mass fear and the fear is open, the tactics are open with demonstrations of force and power, as in Waco, Texas and Ruby Ridge, Idaho under the Clington Administration. The employment of such operatiosnagainst civilians produce an undercurrent of emotion that moves from observation to fear to terror in the mind which personalizes the connection, creating an overpowering sense of dread. This is internalized by the masses and the individual.
The Media: The Main Stream Media is produced for the masses but consumed by individuals. It is the main source of instruction to the masses on what to believe, how to act, and what to consume including the consumption of information.
Russia Throws Down Hard, Challenge To Obama is Clear, His Ability Is Not
Stratfor Geopolitical Diary: Medvedev's Carefully Timed Address
www.stratfor.com
November 6, 2008
On Wednesday, as the entire world took in the idea of having Barack Obama as the next U.S. president, one of the greatest challengers to American power, Russia, decided to make itself immediately clear on its views of the current U.S. administration, Obama’s election and the global U.S. agenda.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev gave his long-awaited first State of the State address (the equivalent of the U.S. president’s State of the Union address) on Nov. 5. The speech was much more than a nationalist appeal liberally sprinkled with Soviet-era rhetoric; it was a declaration of Russia’s return to the ranks of the world’s great powers. In effect, Medvedev not only tossed the gauntlet for Russia’s rivals in the West, but he also is not waiting around to see how they respond.
It must be understood that Medvedev — while he is certainly coming into his own under the sponsorship of his mentor, former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin –- did not write this speech himself. The author is the Kremlin’s gray cardinal, Vladislav Surkov, who has played the role of backroom dealer, enforcer, planner and puppet master for Putin for most of the past eight years. Surkov does not control Putin — far from it -– but in many ways is the brains behind much of what happens in the Kremlin these days.
It was Surkov who recommended that Medvedev’s speech, originally scheduled for Oct. 23, be postponed. Ostensibly, the delay was meant to allow Russia more time to deal with its deepening financial crisis, but in reality, Surkov wanted to know which presidential candidate the Americans were going to elect. The speech was already written. In fact, according to Stratfor sources, two speeches had been written — one for each possible outcome of the U.S. election. In waiting for a clear picture on whom Moscow would be dealing with in Washington, Russia underscored the central role the United States plays in the international system, and that Moscow views Washington as its main counterweight.
Unlike many previous State of the State addresses, Medvedev’s Nov. 5 speech contained few veiled threats or simple proclamations. Instead, it announced hard actions, including the following statements:
Russia will deploy Iskander short-range ballistic missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave sandwiched between NATO and EU states Lithuania and Poland, in order to directly target the fledgling U.S. ballistic missile defense installations slated for Poland and the Czech Republic. (The Iskanders’ limited range will allow them to put only the Polish site at risk.)
Russia will return to a more Soviet-style system of term limits in order to more firmly entrench the power of the Putin team.
Moscow will not even consider negotiations with the lame-duck administration of President George W. Bush, preferring instead to wait for President-elect Barack Obama’s team, which Moscow thinks will be easier to manipulate (whether or not this proves true).
The United States is to blame not only for Russia’s war with Georgia, but also for the global financial crisis.
Russia will not make any concessions on its international position; the United States can take it or leave it.
All in all, these statements bear a degree of boldness that has long been present in Russian propaganda, though not necessarily backed up by any particular actions. Russia’s goal is simple: Use the three-month U.S. presidential transition period to impose a reality on the regions Moscow considers of core interest, presenting soon-to-be President Obama with a fait accompli. Most of Russia’s efforts will focus on Ukraine, but attention also will be spread throughout the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as the Baltics, Belarus, Poland and the Czech Republic.
These states are already nervous about Obama’s ability to stand up to Russia’s new swagger, especially since he has never outlined a firm stance against Moscow and will be embroiled in other critical affairs, like Iraq and Iran. Now, Medvedev has told these states outright that Russia is about to act while the Americans can’t. He is playing on the states’ fears to push them into making a choice: Continue to depend on the United States (whether its support comes through or not), work with Moscow, or get crushed in the process.
Tell Stratfor What You Think
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com
www.stratfor.com
November 6, 2008
On Wednesday, as the entire world took in the idea of having Barack Obama as the next U.S. president, one of the greatest challengers to American power, Russia, decided to make itself immediately clear on its views of the current U.S. administration, Obama’s election and the global U.S. agenda.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev gave his long-awaited first State of the State address (the equivalent of the U.S. president’s State of the Union address) on Nov. 5. The speech was much more than a nationalist appeal liberally sprinkled with Soviet-era rhetoric; it was a declaration of Russia’s return to the ranks of the world’s great powers. In effect, Medvedev not only tossed the gauntlet for Russia’s rivals in the West, but he also is not waiting around to see how they respond.
It must be understood that Medvedev — while he is certainly coming into his own under the sponsorship of his mentor, former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin –- did not write this speech himself. The author is the Kremlin’s gray cardinal, Vladislav Surkov, who has played the role of backroom dealer, enforcer, planner and puppet master for Putin for most of the past eight years. Surkov does not control Putin — far from it -– but in many ways is the brains behind much of what happens in the Kremlin these days.
It was Surkov who recommended that Medvedev’s speech, originally scheduled for Oct. 23, be postponed. Ostensibly, the delay was meant to allow Russia more time to deal with its deepening financial crisis, but in reality, Surkov wanted to know which presidential candidate the Americans were going to elect. The speech was already written. In fact, according to Stratfor sources, two speeches had been written — one for each possible outcome of the U.S. election. In waiting for a clear picture on whom Moscow would be dealing with in Washington, Russia underscored the central role the United States plays in the international system, and that Moscow views Washington as its main counterweight.
Unlike many previous State of the State addresses, Medvedev’s Nov. 5 speech contained few veiled threats or simple proclamations. Instead, it announced hard actions, including the following statements:
Russia will deploy Iskander short-range ballistic missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave sandwiched between NATO and EU states Lithuania and Poland, in order to directly target the fledgling U.S. ballistic missile defense installations slated for Poland and the Czech Republic. (The Iskanders’ limited range will allow them to put only the Polish site at risk.)
Russia will return to a more Soviet-style system of term limits in order to more firmly entrench the power of the Putin team.
Moscow will not even consider negotiations with the lame-duck administration of President George W. Bush, preferring instead to wait for President-elect Barack Obama’s team, which Moscow thinks will be easier to manipulate (whether or not this proves true).
The United States is to blame not only for Russia’s war with Georgia, but also for the global financial crisis.
Russia will not make any concessions on its international position; the United States can take it or leave it.
All in all, these statements bear a degree of boldness that has long been present in Russian propaganda, though not necessarily backed up by any particular actions. Russia’s goal is simple: Use the three-month U.S. presidential transition period to impose a reality on the regions Moscow considers of core interest, presenting soon-to-be President Obama with a fait accompli. Most of Russia’s efforts will focus on Ukraine, but attention also will be spread throughout the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as the Baltics, Belarus, Poland and the Czech Republic.
These states are already nervous about Obama’s ability to stand up to Russia’s new swagger, especially since he has never outlined a firm stance against Moscow and will be embroiled in other critical affairs, like Iraq and Iran. Now, Medvedev has told these states outright that Russia is about to act while the Americans can’t. He is playing on the states’ fears to push them into making a choice: Continue to depend on the United States (whether its support comes through or not), work with Moscow, or get crushed in the process.
Tell Stratfor What You Think
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Election 2008: They're Inside The Wire
"We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times." --George Washington
Tuesday, 4 November 2008, is a date which will live in infamy. While most presidential elections are followed with calls for unity by both candidates, Barack Obama issued no such call in his speech last night, with the possible exception of his observation, "I may not have won your vote tonight, but ... I will be your president, too."
Of course, none was expected -- liberals have elected a Socialist with deep ties to cultural and ethnocentric radicalism, and his executive and legislative agenda poses a greater threat to American liberty than that of any president in the history of our great republic.
Obama has twice taken an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same."
He has never honored that oath, and, based on his policy proposals and objectives, he has no intention to honor it after again reciting that oath on 20 January 2009. Obama seeks to, in his own words, "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution."
For that reason, this morning, the symbol of our national heritage of liberty, the American flag atop the 35-foot mast at our editorial offices (The Patriot Post), was respectfully lowered, inverted, and raised to full mast as a sign of national distress. It will remain inverted until next Tuesday, when we right it in honor of Veterans Day.
Today, at least 55,805,197 Americans are concerned for the future of our nation's great tradition of liberty. Some 63,007,791 Americans have been lulled, under the aegis of "hope and change," into a state of what is best described as "cult worship" and all its attendant deception.
One of our editors, a Marine now working in the private sector, summed up our circumstances with this situation report. It aptly captured the sentiments around our office:
"It's been tough, fellow Patriots; tough to stomach the idea that more than half of my fellow citizens who vote, have booted a genuine American hero to the curb for a rudderless charlatan.
What a sad indictment on our citizenry that some are so eager to overlook his myriad flaws -- his radical roots, his extreme liberalism, his utter lack of experience or achievement.
Barack Obama is the antithesis of King's dream: He's a man judged by the color of his skin rather than the content of his character.
If it's God's will that Barack Obama is our next president, then so be it. We Patriots will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and wade back to the war front, intent on liberty or death."
This battle is lost, but the war is not. Let's roll.
Mark Alexander, Publisher
UPRIGHT
"Ok. It was a bad night. It wasn't the blow-out the Democrats were hoping for, but it was plenty bad enough." --Rich Galen
"I come to this moment of national decision with deep concerns about the next president. [Barack Obama's] victory is likely to unleash an ideological and vengeful Democratic Congress." --Michael Gerson
"Obama ... talks less and less about bipartisanship, his calling card during his earlier messianic stage. He does not need to. [Obama now has] large Democratic majorities in both houses. And unlike Clinton in 1992, Obama is no centrist." --Charles Krauthammer
"'E Pluribus Unum' is no longer our national motto. These three words are: 'Do For Me.' As in: What will the government do for me?" --Michelle Malkin
"Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good." --Walter Williams
"Most change in America doesn't come from politicians. It comes from people inventing things and creating. The telephone, the telegraph, the computer, all those things didn't come from government. Our world is going to get better and better, as long as we keep the politicians from screwing it up." --David Boaz
"Conservatism always has been and always will be a force to reckon with because it most closely approximates the reality of the human condition, based, as it is, on the cumulative judgment and experience of a people. It is the heir, not the apostate, to the accumulated wisdom, morality and faith of the people. ... Our challenge is not to retreat to the comfort of self-congratulatory exile but to sweat and bleed -- and be victorious -- in the arena of public opinion." --Tony Blankley
WE DEPEND ON YOU!
"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood." --John Adams
Readers, our 2008 Annual Fund support campaign is under way. Our team of writers, editors and support staff depend on your financial support so that we may continue to offer The Patriot Post, free of charge, to countless thousands of our military, collegiate and mission field readers.
"I have been reading The Patriot since its inception as 'The Federalist' back in 1996, and have been an avid supporter all along. It has been an excellent resource and encouragement during my years on active duty. Thank you for your outreach to all uniformed Patriots in our Armed Services, and God bless you and your staff." --Raleigh, North Carolina
As with other mission-based, donor-supported organizations, we raise most of our budget in the last two months of each year. At latest accounting, we still must raise $335,420 before year's end.
If you have not already done so, please take a moment to support The Patriot's 2008 Annual Fund today with a secure online donation -- however large or small. If you prefer to support The Patriot by mail, please use our Donor Support Form.)
Every dollar you contribute provides a free subscription for someone serving our nation, or a young person who will fill a family, community and national leadership role in the next generation!
I thank you for the honor and privilege of serving you as editor and publisher of The Patriot. On behalf of your Patriot staff and National Advisory Committee, thank you and God bless you and your family!
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander
Publisher
EDITORIAL EXEGESIS
"The American electorate has handed [Barack Obama] and his fellow Democrats the kind of sweeping victory they haven't had since at least 1976 and in certain respects since 1964. We'll now find out if the Democratic Party has learned anything since the last two times it held all the levers of power in Washington. ... The economy was by far the dominant issue, and voters held GOP Members who belonged to the party in the White House responsible.
There's some injustice in this, because if anything Democratic policies have prevailed the past two years in Washington. But neither Mr. Bush nor John McCain made that case clearly to voters. The Democratic temptation will be to interpret this victory as a mandate for renewed liberal government. Republicans hope they do.
The last three times the Democrats won this kind of victory -- in 1964, 1976 and 1992 -- they overreached and suffered big losses two years later. ... Republicans can console themselves that soon Democrats won't have George W. Bush to kick around anymore. They'll now have to take responsibility if the economy stays in recession, or if Iraq turns chaotic again after an abrupt U.S. withdrawal. Americans have entrusted Democrats with what will essentially be unrestrained power, and we'll soon see if liberals have learned to govern." --The Wall Street Journal
INSIGHT
"Since our last meeting we have been through a disastrous election. It is easy for us to be discouraged, as pundits hail that election as a repudiation of our philosophy and even as a mandate of some kind or other. ... Bitter as it is to accept the results of the November election, we should have reason for some optimism. ...[I]t is possible we have been persuasive to a greater degree than we had ever realized. Few, if any, Democratic Party candidates in the last election ran as liberals. Listening to them I had the eerie feeling we were hearing reruns of [Barry] Goldwater speeches. I even thought I heard a few of my own." --Ronald Reagan
DEZINFORMATSIA
Adoring media: "It's not an overstatement to say that this is what the world wanted." --NBC's Dawna Friesen
Distractions?: "Look at how our attention was able to get pulled into pigs and lipstick and plumbers. We got a plumber who's the third member of the GOP ticket, in effect, and that's, it's all of our fault, yes, and there will be time to bloody our own backs with chains, but it's also the sorry state of our discourse as if, Tavis, we don't have enough serious issues to concentrate on. I think we may find out it was a movement year, we may find out we all had to step aside and just let it happen, and we may decide we went down too many rat holes of distractions on our way there." --NBC's Brian Williams
Unintelligible argument: "If you are hungry, you're not that interested in freedom of the press. If you are impoverished, you are interested in keeping yourself warm against the cold, and it's harder to think in Jeffersonian rights-of-man terms. Once those first two freedoms are secured, the others tend to follow. It's a very conservative argument that without order, nothing else is possible." --Newsweek editor John Meacham
When redistribution means keeping your own money: "For years, Republicans have argued that the way to help struggling working people is to give more money to the wealthy. Obama is saying that we should cut out the middleman and help working people directly. My hunch is that Obama's argument will prevail, and that conservatives will then work overtime to try to deny the judgment that the people have rendered." --Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne
Fairly unbalanced:
"[Sarah Palin] brought out the crazy people. That's what the Republican base is. The Republican base are people who don't want the queers to get married. They don't want a woman to have a right to privacy. They want to do away with capital gains taxes, which has nothing whatsoever to do with their life. What Sarah Palin did was bring out the knuckle-draggers, the mouth-breathers..." --CNN's Mike Malloy
Too little, way too late: "I don't know what Barack Obama's worldview is. ... And do we know anything about the people who are advising him? ... He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational [sic] speeches. ... What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama? --PBS's Charlie Rose ++ "We don't know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy. ... I don't know what books he's read. ... There's a lot about him we don't know. --NBC's Tom Brokaw
Sub Section: Newspulper Headlines: His Name Is Obama, You Racist Jerk!: "Where's Osama This Election?" --San Francisco Chronicle Web site
Where's Joe the Plumber When You Need Him?: "Obama Addresses Overflow Crowds" --U.S. News & World Report Web site
What Would We Do Without Attorneys?: "Attorney Says Killing, Beheading Not 'Normal'" --Associated Press
We Blame Global Warming: "Winter Comes Early for Spring Awakening" --CBC.ca
Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: "Microsoft Says Next Windows Won't Be as Annoying" --Associated Press
News You Can Use: "Before Killing, Talk of a Shootout" --New Hampshire Union Leader
Bottom Stories of the Day: "Obama Thanks 'Gracious' Press" --Agence France-Presse (Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)
THE DEMO-GOGUES
Mourning in America: "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. ... It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America." --Barack Obama, declaring victory on Election Day
Redistributing wealth: "The reason that we want to do this, change our tax code, is not because I have anything against the rich. I love rich people! I want all of you to be rich. Go for it. That's the America dream, that's the American way, that's terrific. The point is, though, that -- and it's not just charity, it's not just that I want to help the middle class and working people who are trying to get in the middle class -- it's that when we actually make sure that everybody's got a shot -- when young people can all go to college, when everybody's got decent health care, when everybody's got a little more money at the end of the month -- then guess what? Everybody starts spending that money ... and everybody is better off. All boats rise. That's what happened in the 1990s, that's what we need to restore. And that's what I'm gonna do as president of the United States of America. John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic. You know I don't know when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness." --Barack Obama
Bankrupting coal: "What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. ... So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted." --Barack Obama in January in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle -- the Chronicle spiked this part of the interview ++ "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it -- whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers." --Barack Obama in the same interview
We can hardly wait: "I can't think of a time that I have been more excited at the prospect of change. ... It's issue after issue. I think we will have a better policy on Iraq. I think we will have a better policy on energy. I think we will have a better policy on immigration. I think we will have a better policy on education. I think we will have a better policy on health care. It's a huge list." --Sen. Chuck Schumer
VILLAGE IDIOTS
Barack Almighty: "There's this beautiful thing about my husband. He thinks he can really do anything -- he does. With his own power and will, he can fix it." --Michelle Obama on her all-powerful husband
Obama's election is just like a terrorist attack!: "I haven't seen this sense of unity since 9/11, really, really, and 9/11 was this tragic experience that brought us all together and now we're all brought together in the name of hope. Not since 9/11 have I experienced anything even kind of close to this." --Oprah Winfrey
Gun grabbers: "America should take notice thareasonable policies on guns are carrying the day. ... The gun issue has clearly lost its status as a 'wedge' issue in most places and most races." --Brady Campaign chief gun grabber Paul Helmke
Demos raise taxes: "As you know, whenever Democrats get in, taxes do go up. And if they go up and they work the way that Bill Clinton's tax plan worked, I'm okay with that. ... We want everybody to be able to go to the doctor. We want everybody to be able to do all the things they want to do -- then somebody's got to pay for it, and it's people making a lot of dough, and that's the way the American system has always been." --Whoopi Goldberg
Non Compos Mentis: "[T]he people of Iraq are not better off than they were before [the surge]. So before we start passing out too much credit, what we need is a success strategy for Iraq. We don't have one yet." --former presidential candidate Wesley Clark
Race bait: "Being a racist and a sexist was a good calling card for the Reagan administration." --Al Franken
SHORT CUTS
"Perhaps the biggest mystery of all is why anyone would want more money and more power in the hands of the federal government, which is really the basis of Obama's campaign." --Burt Prelutsky
"I want to invite Senator Obama because he needs to do something... He needs to do something about those skinny legs! We're gonna make him do some squats and then we're going to go give him some bicep curls to beef up the scrawny little arms. But if we only could do something about putting some meat on his ideas." --Arnold Schwarzenegger ++ "I disagree with Arnold Schwarzenegger about one thing. He said Obama needs to go out there and do some squats. He's already done squat! Barack Obama has done diddly-squat!" --Rush Limbaugh
"Barack Obama's staff pleaded for get-out-the-vote volunteers in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. The memo said not to come if they're expecting a vacation, they should only come if they want to work. Look, if they wanted to work they wouldn't be Democrats." --Argus Hamilton
"According to recent news reports, Bill Clinton has now become an adviser to Barack Obama. Do you know who is really upset about this? Michelle Obama." --Jay Leno
Veritas vos Liberabit -- Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot's editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world, and for their families -- especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)
http://PatriotPost.US
Tuesday, 4 November 2008, is a date which will live in infamy. While most presidential elections are followed with calls for unity by both candidates, Barack Obama issued no such call in his speech last night, with the possible exception of his observation, "I may not have won your vote tonight, but ... I will be your president, too."
Of course, none was expected -- liberals have elected a Socialist with deep ties to cultural and ethnocentric radicalism, and his executive and legislative agenda poses a greater threat to American liberty than that of any president in the history of our great republic.
Obama has twice taken an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same."
He has never honored that oath, and, based on his policy proposals and objectives, he has no intention to honor it after again reciting that oath on 20 January 2009. Obama seeks to, in his own words, "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution."
For that reason, this morning, the symbol of our national heritage of liberty, the American flag atop the 35-foot mast at our editorial offices (The Patriot Post), was respectfully lowered, inverted, and raised to full mast as a sign of national distress. It will remain inverted until next Tuesday, when we right it in honor of Veterans Day.
Today, at least 55,805,197 Americans are concerned for the future of our nation's great tradition of liberty. Some 63,007,791 Americans have been lulled, under the aegis of "hope and change," into a state of what is best described as "cult worship" and all its attendant deception.
One of our editors, a Marine now working in the private sector, summed up our circumstances with this situation report. It aptly captured the sentiments around our office:
"It's been tough, fellow Patriots; tough to stomach the idea that more than half of my fellow citizens who vote, have booted a genuine American hero to the curb for a rudderless charlatan.
What a sad indictment on our citizenry that some are so eager to overlook his myriad flaws -- his radical roots, his extreme liberalism, his utter lack of experience or achievement.
Barack Obama is the antithesis of King's dream: He's a man judged by the color of his skin rather than the content of his character.
If it's God's will that Barack Obama is our next president, then so be it. We Patriots will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and wade back to the war front, intent on liberty or death."
This battle is lost, but the war is not. Let's roll.
Mark Alexander, Publisher
UPRIGHT
"Ok. It was a bad night. It wasn't the blow-out the Democrats were hoping for, but it was plenty bad enough." --Rich Galen
"I come to this moment of national decision with deep concerns about the next president. [Barack Obama's] victory is likely to unleash an ideological and vengeful Democratic Congress." --Michael Gerson
"Obama ... talks less and less about bipartisanship, his calling card during his earlier messianic stage. He does not need to. [Obama now has] large Democratic majorities in both houses. And unlike Clinton in 1992, Obama is no centrist." --Charles Krauthammer
"'E Pluribus Unum' is no longer our national motto. These three words are: 'Do For Me.' As in: What will the government do for me?" --Michelle Malkin
"Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good." --Walter Williams
"Most change in America doesn't come from politicians. It comes from people inventing things and creating. The telephone, the telegraph, the computer, all those things didn't come from government. Our world is going to get better and better, as long as we keep the politicians from screwing it up." --David Boaz
"Conservatism always has been and always will be a force to reckon with because it most closely approximates the reality of the human condition, based, as it is, on the cumulative judgment and experience of a people. It is the heir, not the apostate, to the accumulated wisdom, morality and faith of the people. ... Our challenge is not to retreat to the comfort of self-congratulatory exile but to sweat and bleed -- and be victorious -- in the arena of public opinion." --Tony Blankley
WE DEPEND ON YOU!
"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood." --John Adams
Readers, our 2008 Annual Fund support campaign is under way. Our team of writers, editors and support staff depend on your financial support so that we may continue to offer The Patriot Post, free of charge, to countless thousands of our military, collegiate and mission field readers.
"I have been reading The Patriot since its inception as 'The Federalist' back in 1996, and have been an avid supporter all along. It has been an excellent resource and encouragement during my years on active duty. Thank you for your outreach to all uniformed Patriots in our Armed Services, and God bless you and your staff." --Raleigh, North Carolina
As with other mission-based, donor-supported organizations, we raise most of our budget in the last two months of each year. At latest accounting, we still must raise $335,420 before year's end.
If you have not already done so, please take a moment to support The Patriot's 2008 Annual Fund today with a secure online donation -- however large or small. If you prefer to support The Patriot by mail, please use our Donor Support Form.)
Every dollar you contribute provides a free subscription for someone serving our nation, or a young person who will fill a family, community and national leadership role in the next generation!
I thank you for the honor and privilege of serving you as editor and publisher of The Patriot. On behalf of your Patriot staff and National Advisory Committee, thank you and God bless you and your family!
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander
Publisher
EDITORIAL EXEGESIS
"The American electorate has handed [Barack Obama] and his fellow Democrats the kind of sweeping victory they haven't had since at least 1976 and in certain respects since 1964. We'll now find out if the Democratic Party has learned anything since the last two times it held all the levers of power in Washington. ... The economy was by far the dominant issue, and voters held GOP Members who belonged to the party in the White House responsible.
There's some injustice in this, because if anything Democratic policies have prevailed the past two years in Washington. But neither Mr. Bush nor John McCain made that case clearly to voters. The Democratic temptation will be to interpret this victory as a mandate for renewed liberal government. Republicans hope they do.
The last three times the Democrats won this kind of victory -- in 1964, 1976 and 1992 -- they overreached and suffered big losses two years later. ... Republicans can console themselves that soon Democrats won't have George W. Bush to kick around anymore. They'll now have to take responsibility if the economy stays in recession, or if Iraq turns chaotic again after an abrupt U.S. withdrawal. Americans have entrusted Democrats with what will essentially be unrestrained power, and we'll soon see if liberals have learned to govern." --The Wall Street Journal
INSIGHT
"Since our last meeting we have been through a disastrous election. It is easy for us to be discouraged, as pundits hail that election as a repudiation of our philosophy and even as a mandate of some kind or other. ... Bitter as it is to accept the results of the November election, we should have reason for some optimism. ...[I]t is possible we have been persuasive to a greater degree than we had ever realized. Few, if any, Democratic Party candidates in the last election ran as liberals. Listening to them I had the eerie feeling we were hearing reruns of [Barry] Goldwater speeches. I even thought I heard a few of my own." --Ronald Reagan
DEZINFORMATSIA
Adoring media: "It's not an overstatement to say that this is what the world wanted." --NBC's Dawna Friesen
Distractions?: "Look at how our attention was able to get pulled into pigs and lipstick and plumbers. We got a plumber who's the third member of the GOP ticket, in effect, and that's, it's all of our fault, yes, and there will be time to bloody our own backs with chains, but it's also the sorry state of our discourse as if, Tavis, we don't have enough serious issues to concentrate on. I think we may find out it was a movement year, we may find out we all had to step aside and just let it happen, and we may decide we went down too many rat holes of distractions on our way there." --NBC's Brian Williams
Unintelligible argument: "If you are hungry, you're not that interested in freedom of the press. If you are impoverished, you are interested in keeping yourself warm against the cold, and it's harder to think in Jeffersonian rights-of-man terms. Once those first two freedoms are secured, the others tend to follow. It's a very conservative argument that without order, nothing else is possible." --Newsweek editor John Meacham
When redistribution means keeping your own money: "For years, Republicans have argued that the way to help struggling working people is to give more money to the wealthy. Obama is saying that we should cut out the middleman and help working people directly. My hunch is that Obama's argument will prevail, and that conservatives will then work overtime to try to deny the judgment that the people have rendered." --Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne
Fairly unbalanced:
"[Sarah Palin] brought out the crazy people. That's what the Republican base is. The Republican base are people who don't want the queers to get married. They don't want a woman to have a right to privacy. They want to do away with capital gains taxes, which has nothing whatsoever to do with their life. What Sarah Palin did was bring out the knuckle-draggers, the mouth-breathers..." --CNN's Mike Malloy
Too little, way too late: "I don't know what Barack Obama's worldview is. ... And do we know anything about the people who are advising him? ... He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational [sic] speeches. ... What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama? --PBS's Charlie Rose ++ "We don't know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy. ... I don't know what books he's read. ... There's a lot about him we don't know. --NBC's Tom Brokaw
Sub Section: Newspulper Headlines: His Name Is Obama, You Racist Jerk!: "Where's Osama This Election?" --San Francisco Chronicle Web site
Where's Joe the Plumber When You Need Him?: "Obama Addresses Overflow Crowds" --U.S. News & World Report Web site
What Would We Do Without Attorneys?: "Attorney Says Killing, Beheading Not 'Normal'" --Associated Press
We Blame Global Warming: "Winter Comes Early for Spring Awakening" --CBC.ca
Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: "Microsoft Says Next Windows Won't Be as Annoying" --Associated Press
News You Can Use: "Before Killing, Talk of a Shootout" --New Hampshire Union Leader
Bottom Stories of the Day: "Obama Thanks 'Gracious' Press" --Agence France-Presse (Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)
THE DEMO-GOGUES
Mourning in America: "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. ... It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America." --Barack Obama, declaring victory on Election Day
Redistributing wealth: "The reason that we want to do this, change our tax code, is not because I have anything against the rich. I love rich people! I want all of you to be rich. Go for it. That's the America dream, that's the American way, that's terrific. The point is, though, that -- and it's not just charity, it's not just that I want to help the middle class and working people who are trying to get in the middle class -- it's that when we actually make sure that everybody's got a shot -- when young people can all go to college, when everybody's got decent health care, when everybody's got a little more money at the end of the month -- then guess what? Everybody starts spending that money ... and everybody is better off. All boats rise. That's what happened in the 1990s, that's what we need to restore. And that's what I'm gonna do as president of the United States of America. John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic. You know I don't know when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness." --Barack Obama
Bankrupting coal: "What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. ... So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted." --Barack Obama in January in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle -- the Chronicle spiked this part of the interview ++ "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it -- whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers." --Barack Obama in the same interview
We can hardly wait: "I can't think of a time that I have been more excited at the prospect of change. ... It's issue after issue. I think we will have a better policy on Iraq. I think we will have a better policy on energy. I think we will have a better policy on immigration. I think we will have a better policy on education. I think we will have a better policy on health care. It's a huge list." --Sen. Chuck Schumer
VILLAGE IDIOTS
Barack Almighty: "There's this beautiful thing about my husband. He thinks he can really do anything -- he does. With his own power and will, he can fix it." --Michelle Obama on her all-powerful husband
Obama's election is just like a terrorist attack!: "I haven't seen this sense of unity since 9/11, really, really, and 9/11 was this tragic experience that brought us all together and now we're all brought together in the name of hope. Not since 9/11 have I experienced anything even kind of close to this." --Oprah Winfrey
Gun grabbers: "America should take notice thareasonable policies on guns are carrying the day. ... The gun issue has clearly lost its status as a 'wedge' issue in most places and most races." --Brady Campaign chief gun grabber Paul Helmke
Demos raise taxes: "As you know, whenever Democrats get in, taxes do go up. And if they go up and they work the way that Bill Clinton's tax plan worked, I'm okay with that. ... We want everybody to be able to go to the doctor. We want everybody to be able to do all the things they want to do -- then somebody's got to pay for it, and it's people making a lot of dough, and that's the way the American system has always been." --Whoopi Goldberg
Non Compos Mentis: "[T]he people of Iraq are not better off than they were before [the surge]. So before we start passing out too much credit, what we need is a success strategy for Iraq. We don't have one yet." --former presidential candidate Wesley Clark
Race bait: "Being a racist and a sexist was a good calling card for the Reagan administration." --Al Franken
SHORT CUTS
"Perhaps the biggest mystery of all is why anyone would want more money and more power in the hands of the federal government, which is really the basis of Obama's campaign." --Burt Prelutsky
"I want to invite Senator Obama because he needs to do something... He needs to do something about those skinny legs! We're gonna make him do some squats and then we're going to go give him some bicep curls to beef up the scrawny little arms. But if we only could do something about putting some meat on his ideas." --Arnold Schwarzenegger ++ "I disagree with Arnold Schwarzenegger about one thing. He said Obama needs to go out there and do some squats. He's already done squat! Barack Obama has done diddly-squat!" --Rush Limbaugh
"Barack Obama's staff pleaded for get-out-the-vote volunteers in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. The memo said not to come if they're expecting a vacation, they should only come if they want to work. Look, if they wanted to work they wouldn't be Democrats." --Argus Hamilton
"According to recent news reports, Bill Clinton has now become an adviser to Barack Obama. Do you know who is really upset about this? Michelle Obama." --Jay Leno
Veritas vos Liberabit -- Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot's editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world, and for their families -- especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)
http://PatriotPost.US
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Viet Nam Generation
H E R O E S of the VIETNAM Generation
Author: James Webb
Posted on 01/26/2001
The rapidly disappearing cohort of Americans that endured the Great Depression and then fought World War II is receiving quite a send-off from the leading lights of the so-called greatest generation.
Tom Brokaw has published two oral histories of "The Greatest Generation" that feature ordinary people doing their duty and suggest that such conduct was historically unique.
Chris Matthews of "Hardball" is fond of writing columns praising the Navy service of his father while castigating his own baby boomer generation for its alleged softness and lack of struggle.
William Bennett gave a startlingly condescending speech at the Naval Academy a few years ago comparing the heroism of the "D-Day Generation" to the drugs-and-sex nihilism of the "Woodstock Generation."
And Steven Spielberg, in promoting his film Saving Private Ryan, was careful to justify his portrayals of soldiers in action based on the supposedly unique nature of World War II.
An irony is at work here.
Lest we forget, the World War II generation now being lionized also brought us the Vietnam War, a conflict which today's most conspicuous voices by and large opposed, and in which few of them served.
The "best and brightest" of the Vietnam age group once made headlines by castigating their parents for bringing about the war in which they would not fight, which has become the war they refuse to remember.
Pundits back then invented a term for this animus: the "generation gap." Long, plaintive articles and even books were written examining its manifestations. Campus leaders, who claimed precocious wisdom through the magical process of reading a few controversial books, urged fellow baby boomers not to trust anyone over 30. Their elders who had survived the Depression and fought the largest war in history were looked down upon as shallow, materialistic, and out of touch.
Those of us who grew up on the other side of the picket line from that eras counter-culture can't help but feel a little leery of this sudden gush of appreciation for our elders from the leading lights of the old counter-culture.
Then and now, the national conversation has proceeded from the dubious assumption that those who came of age during Vietnam are a unified generation in the same sense as their parents were, and thus are capable of being spoken for through these fickle elites.
In truth, the "Vietnam generation" is a misnomer.
Those who came of age during that war are permanently divided by different reactions to a whole range of counter-cultural agendas, and nothing divides them more deeply than the personal ramifications of the war itself.
The sizable portion of the Vietnam age group who declined to support the counter-cultural agenda, and especially the men and women who opted to serve in the military during the Vietnam War, are quite different from their peers who for decades have claimed to speak for them.
In fact, they are much like the World War II generation itself.
For them, Woodstock was a side show, college protestors were spoiled brats who would have benefited from having to work a few jobs in order to pay their tuition, and Vietnam represented not an intellectual exercise in draft avoidance or protest marches but a battlefield that was just as brutal as those their fathers faced in World War II and Korea.
Few who served during Vietnam ever complained of a generation gap. The men who fought World War II were their heroes and role models. They honored their fathers' service by emulating it, and largely agreed with their father’s wisdom in attempting to stop Communism's reach in Southeast Asia.
The most accurate poll of their attitudes (Harris, 1980) showed that 91 percent were glad they'd served their country, 74 percent enjoyed their time in the service, and 89 percent agreed with the statement that "our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win."
And most importantly, the castigation they received upon returning home was not from the World War II generation, but from the very elites in their age group who supposedly spoke for them.
Nine million men served in the military during the Vietnam War, three million of whom went to the Vietnam Theater. Contrary to popular mythology, two-thirds of these were volunteers and 73 percent of those who died were volunteers.
While some attention has been paid recently to the plight of our prisoners of war, most of whom were pilots, there has been little recognition of how brutal the war was for those who fought it on the ground.
Dropped onto the enemy's terrain 12,000 miles away from home, America's citizen-soldiers performed with a tenacity and quality that may never be truly understood. Those who believe the war was fought incompetently on a tactical level should consider Hanoi's recent admission that 1.4 million of its soldiers died on the battlefield, compared to 58,000 total U.S. dead.
Those who believe that it was a "dirty little war" where the bombs did all the work might contemplate that it was the most costly war the U.S. Marine Corps has ever fought, five times as many dead as World War I, three times as many dead as in Korea, and more total killed and wounded than in all of World War II.
Significantly, these sacrifices were being made at a time the United States was deeply divided over our effort in Vietnam.
The baby-boom generation had cracked apart along class lines as America's young men were making difficult, life-or-death choices about serving. The better academic institutions became focal points for vitriolic protest against the war, with few of their graduates going into the military.
Harvard College, which had lost 691 alumni in World War II, lost a total of 12 men in Vietnam from the classes of 1962 through 1972 combined. Those classes at Princeton lost six, at MIT two.
The media turned ever-more hostile.
And frequently the reward for a young man's having gone through the trauma of combat was to be greeted by his peers with studied indifference or outright hostility.
What is a hero?
My heroes are the young men who faced the issues of war and possible death, and then weighed those concerns against obligations to their country. Citizen-soldiers who interrupted their personal and professional lives at their most formative stage, in the timeless phrase of the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetry,
"not for fame or reward, not for place or for rank, but in simple obedience to duty, as they understood it."
Viet Nam War soldiers suffered loneliness, disease, and wounds with an often contagious elan. They who deserve a far better place in history than that now offered them by the so-called spokesmen of our so-called generation.
Mr. Brokaw, Mr. Matthews, Mr. Bennett, Mr. Spielberg, meet my Marines.
1969 was an odd year to be in Vietnam. Second only to 1968 in terms of American casualties, it was the year made famous by Hamburger Hill, as well as the gut-wrenching Life cover story showing the pictures of 242 Americans who had been killed in one average week of fighting.
Back home, it was the year of Woodstock, and of numerous anti-war rallies that culminated in the Moratorium march on Washington.
The My Lai massacre hit the papers and was seized upon by the anti-war movement as the emblematic moment of the war.
Lyndon Johnson left Washington in utter humiliation.
Richard Nixon entered the scene, destined for an even worse fate – but not before he brought Hanoi to its knees – and the bargaining table.
In the An Hoa Basin southwest of Danang, the Fifth Marine Regiment was in its third year of continuous combat operations.
Combat is an unpredictable and inexact environment, but we were well-led. As a rifle platoon and company commander, I served under a succession of three regimental commanders who had cut their teeth in World War II, and four different battalion commanders, three of whom had seen combat in Korea.
The company commanders were typically captains on their second combat tour in Vietnam, or young first lieutenants like myself who were given companies after many months of "bush time" as platoon commanders in the Basin's tough and unforgiving environs.
The Basin was one of the most heavily contested areas in Vietnam, its torn, cratered earth offering every sort of wartime possibility. In the mountains just to the west, not far from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the North Vietnamese Army operated an infantry division from an area called Base Area 112.
In the valleys of the Basin, main-force Viet Cong battalions whose ranks were 80 percent North Vietnamese Army regulars moved against the Americans every day. Local Viet Cong units sniped and harassed. Ridge lines and paddy dikes were laced with sophisticated booby traps of every size, from hand grenades to a 250-pound bombs.
The villages sat in the rice paddies and tree lines like individual fortresses, criss-crossed with trenches and spider holes, their homes sporting bunkers capable of surviving direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells.
The Viet Cong infrastructure was intricate and permeating: Except for the old and the very young, villagers who did not side with the Communists had either been killed or driven out to the government-controlled enclaves near Danang.
In the rifle companies we spent the endless months patrolling ridge lines and villages and mountains, far away from any notion of tents, barbed wire, hot food, or electricity.
Luxuries were limited to what would fit inside one's pack, which after a few "humps" usually boiled down to letter-writing material, towel, soap, toothbrush, poncho liner, and a small transistor radio.
We moved through the boiling heat with 60 pounds of weapons and gear, causing a typical Marine to drop 20 percent of his body weight while in the bush. When we stopped we dug chest-deep fighting holes and slit trenches for toilets.
We slept on the ground under makeshift poncho hootches, and when it rained we usually took our hootches down because wet ponchos shined under illumination flares, making great targets.
Sleep itself was fitful, never more than an hour or two at a stretch for months at a time as we mixed daytime patrolling with night-time ambushes, listening posts, foxhole duty, and radio watches.
Ringworm, hookworm, malaria, and dysentery were common, as was trench foot when the monsoons came.
Respite was rotating back to the mud-filled regimental combat base at An Hoa for four or five days, where rocket and mortar attacks were frequent and our troops manned defensive bunkers at night, which makes it kind of hard to get excited about tales of Woodstock, or camping at the Vineyard during summer break.
We had been told while in training that Marine officers in the rifle companies had an 85 percent probability of being killed or wounded, and the experience of "Dying Delta," as our company was known, bore that out.
Of the officers in the bush when I arrived, our company commander was wounded, the weapons platoon commander was wounded, the first platoon commander was killed, the second platoon commander was wounded twice, and I, commanding the third platoon, was wounded twice.
The enlisted troops in the rifle platoons fared no better. Two of my original three squad leaders were killed, the third shot in the stomach. My platoon sergeant was severely wounded, as was my right guide.
By the time I left my platoon I had gone through six radio operators, five of them casualties. These figures were hardly unique; in fact, they were typical. Many other units, for instance, those who fought the hill battles around Khe Sanh, or were with the famed Walking Dead of the Ninth Marine Regiment, or were in the battle for Hue City or at Dai Do, had it far worse.
When I remember those days and the very young men who spent them with me, I am continually amazed, for these were mostly recent civilians barely out of high school, called up from the cities and the farms to do their year in Hell and then return.
Visions haunt me every day, not of the nightmares of war but of the steady consistency with which my Marines faced their responsibilities, and of how uncomplaining most of them were in the face of constant danger.
The salty, battle-hardened 20-year-olds teaching green 19-year-olds the intricate lessons of that hostile battlefield.
The unerring skill of the young squad leaders as we moved through unfamiliar villages and weed-choked trails in the black of night.
The quick certainty with which they moved when coming under enemy fire.
Their sudden tenderness when a fellow Marine was wounded and needed help.
Their willingness to risk their lives to save other Marines in peril.
To this day it stuns me that their own countrymen have so completely missed the story of their service, lost in the bitter confusion of the war itself. Like every military unit throughout history we had occasional laggards, cowards, and complainers.
But in the aggregate these Marines were the finest people I have ever been around. It has been my privilege to keep up with many of them over the years since we all came home. One finds in them very little bitterness about the war in which they fought.
The most common regret, almost to a man, is that they were not able to do more for each other and for the people they came to help.
It would be redundant to say that I would trust my life to these men, because I have already, and in more ways than I can ever recount. I am alive today because of their quiet, unaffected heroism. Such valor epitomizes the conduct of Americans at war from the first days of our existence. That the boomer elites can canonize this sort of conduct in our fathers' generation while ignoring it in our own is more than simple oversight. It is a conscious, continuing travesty.
Former Secretary of the Navy James Webb was awarded the Navy Cross, Silver Star, and Bronze Star medals for heroism (my bold) as a Marine in Vietnam. His novels include The Emperor's General and Fields of Fire.
Author: James Webb
Posted on 01/26/2001
The rapidly disappearing cohort of Americans that endured the Great Depression and then fought World War II is receiving quite a send-off from the leading lights of the so-called greatest generation.
Tom Brokaw has published two oral histories of "The Greatest Generation" that feature ordinary people doing their duty and suggest that such conduct was historically unique.
Chris Matthews of "Hardball" is fond of writing columns praising the Navy service of his father while castigating his own baby boomer generation for its alleged softness and lack of struggle.
William Bennett gave a startlingly condescending speech at the Naval Academy a few years ago comparing the heroism of the "D-Day Generation" to the drugs-and-sex nihilism of the "Woodstock Generation."
And Steven Spielberg, in promoting his film Saving Private Ryan, was careful to justify his portrayals of soldiers in action based on the supposedly unique nature of World War II.
An irony is at work here.
Lest we forget, the World War II generation now being lionized also brought us the Vietnam War, a conflict which today's most conspicuous voices by and large opposed, and in which few of them served.
The "best and brightest" of the Vietnam age group once made headlines by castigating their parents for bringing about the war in which they would not fight, which has become the war they refuse to remember.
Pundits back then invented a term for this animus: the "generation gap." Long, plaintive articles and even books were written examining its manifestations. Campus leaders, who claimed precocious wisdom through the magical process of reading a few controversial books, urged fellow baby boomers not to trust anyone over 30. Their elders who had survived the Depression and fought the largest war in history were looked down upon as shallow, materialistic, and out of touch.
Those of us who grew up on the other side of the picket line from that eras counter-culture can't help but feel a little leery of this sudden gush of appreciation for our elders from the leading lights of the old counter-culture.
Then and now, the national conversation has proceeded from the dubious assumption that those who came of age during Vietnam are a unified generation in the same sense as their parents were, and thus are capable of being spoken for through these fickle elites.
In truth, the "Vietnam generation" is a misnomer.
Those who came of age during that war are permanently divided by different reactions to a whole range of counter-cultural agendas, and nothing divides them more deeply than the personal ramifications of the war itself.
The sizable portion of the Vietnam age group who declined to support the counter-cultural agenda, and especially the men and women who opted to serve in the military during the Vietnam War, are quite different from their peers who for decades have claimed to speak for them.
In fact, they are much like the World War II generation itself.
For them, Woodstock was a side show, college protestors were spoiled brats who would have benefited from having to work a few jobs in order to pay their tuition, and Vietnam represented not an intellectual exercise in draft avoidance or protest marches but a battlefield that was just as brutal as those their fathers faced in World War II and Korea.
Few who served during Vietnam ever complained of a generation gap. The men who fought World War II were their heroes and role models. They honored their fathers' service by emulating it, and largely agreed with their father’s wisdom in attempting to stop Communism's reach in Southeast Asia.
The most accurate poll of their attitudes (Harris, 1980) showed that 91 percent were glad they'd served their country, 74 percent enjoyed their time in the service, and 89 percent agreed with the statement that "our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win."
And most importantly, the castigation they received upon returning home was not from the World War II generation, but from the very elites in their age group who supposedly spoke for them.
Nine million men served in the military during the Vietnam War, three million of whom went to the Vietnam Theater. Contrary to popular mythology, two-thirds of these were volunteers and 73 percent of those who died were volunteers.
While some attention has been paid recently to the plight of our prisoners of war, most of whom were pilots, there has been little recognition of how brutal the war was for those who fought it on the ground.
Dropped onto the enemy's terrain 12,000 miles away from home, America's citizen-soldiers performed with a tenacity and quality that may never be truly understood. Those who believe the war was fought incompetently on a tactical level should consider Hanoi's recent admission that 1.4 million of its soldiers died on the battlefield, compared to 58,000 total U.S. dead.
Those who believe that it was a "dirty little war" where the bombs did all the work might contemplate that it was the most costly war the U.S. Marine Corps has ever fought, five times as many dead as World War I, three times as many dead as in Korea, and more total killed and wounded than in all of World War II.
Significantly, these sacrifices were being made at a time the United States was deeply divided over our effort in Vietnam.
The baby-boom generation had cracked apart along class lines as America's young men were making difficult, life-or-death choices about serving. The better academic institutions became focal points for vitriolic protest against the war, with few of their graduates going into the military.
Harvard College, which had lost 691 alumni in World War II, lost a total of 12 men in Vietnam from the classes of 1962 through 1972 combined. Those classes at Princeton lost six, at MIT two.
The media turned ever-more hostile.
And frequently the reward for a young man's having gone through the trauma of combat was to be greeted by his peers with studied indifference or outright hostility.
What is a hero?
My heroes are the young men who faced the issues of war and possible death, and then weighed those concerns against obligations to their country. Citizen-soldiers who interrupted their personal and professional lives at their most formative stage, in the timeless phrase of the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetry,
"not for fame or reward, not for place or for rank, but in simple obedience to duty, as they understood it."
Viet Nam War soldiers suffered loneliness, disease, and wounds with an often contagious elan. They who deserve a far better place in history than that now offered them by the so-called spokesmen of our so-called generation.
Mr. Brokaw, Mr. Matthews, Mr. Bennett, Mr. Spielberg, meet my Marines.
1969 was an odd year to be in Vietnam. Second only to 1968 in terms of American casualties, it was the year made famous by Hamburger Hill, as well as the gut-wrenching Life cover story showing the pictures of 242 Americans who had been killed in one average week of fighting.
Back home, it was the year of Woodstock, and of numerous anti-war rallies that culminated in the Moratorium march on Washington.
The My Lai massacre hit the papers and was seized upon by the anti-war movement as the emblematic moment of the war.
Lyndon Johnson left Washington in utter humiliation.
Richard Nixon entered the scene, destined for an even worse fate – but not before he brought Hanoi to its knees – and the bargaining table.
In the An Hoa Basin southwest of Danang, the Fifth Marine Regiment was in its third year of continuous combat operations.
Combat is an unpredictable and inexact environment, but we were well-led. As a rifle platoon and company commander, I served under a succession of three regimental commanders who had cut their teeth in World War II, and four different battalion commanders, three of whom had seen combat in Korea.
The company commanders were typically captains on their second combat tour in Vietnam, or young first lieutenants like myself who were given companies after many months of "bush time" as platoon commanders in the Basin's tough and unforgiving environs.
The Basin was one of the most heavily contested areas in Vietnam, its torn, cratered earth offering every sort of wartime possibility. In the mountains just to the west, not far from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the North Vietnamese Army operated an infantry division from an area called Base Area 112.
In the valleys of the Basin, main-force Viet Cong battalions whose ranks were 80 percent North Vietnamese Army regulars moved against the Americans every day. Local Viet Cong units sniped and harassed. Ridge lines and paddy dikes were laced with sophisticated booby traps of every size, from hand grenades to a 250-pound bombs.
The villages sat in the rice paddies and tree lines like individual fortresses, criss-crossed with trenches and spider holes, their homes sporting bunkers capable of surviving direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells.
The Viet Cong infrastructure was intricate and permeating: Except for the old and the very young, villagers who did not side with the Communists had either been killed or driven out to the government-controlled enclaves near Danang.
In the rifle companies we spent the endless months patrolling ridge lines and villages and mountains, far away from any notion of tents, barbed wire, hot food, or electricity.
Luxuries were limited to what would fit inside one's pack, which after a few "humps" usually boiled down to letter-writing material, towel, soap, toothbrush, poncho liner, and a small transistor radio.
We moved through the boiling heat with 60 pounds of weapons and gear, causing a typical Marine to drop 20 percent of his body weight while in the bush. When we stopped we dug chest-deep fighting holes and slit trenches for toilets.
We slept on the ground under makeshift poncho hootches, and when it rained we usually took our hootches down because wet ponchos shined under illumination flares, making great targets.
Sleep itself was fitful, never more than an hour or two at a stretch for months at a time as we mixed daytime patrolling with night-time ambushes, listening posts, foxhole duty, and radio watches.
Ringworm, hookworm, malaria, and dysentery were common, as was trench foot when the monsoons came.
Respite was rotating back to the mud-filled regimental combat base at An Hoa for four or five days, where rocket and mortar attacks were frequent and our troops manned defensive bunkers at night, which makes it kind of hard to get excited about tales of Woodstock, or camping at the Vineyard during summer break.
We had been told while in training that Marine officers in the rifle companies had an 85 percent probability of being killed or wounded, and the experience of "Dying Delta," as our company was known, bore that out.
Of the officers in the bush when I arrived, our company commander was wounded, the weapons platoon commander was wounded, the first platoon commander was killed, the second platoon commander was wounded twice, and I, commanding the third platoon, was wounded twice.
The enlisted troops in the rifle platoons fared no better. Two of my original three squad leaders were killed, the third shot in the stomach. My platoon sergeant was severely wounded, as was my right guide.
By the time I left my platoon I had gone through six radio operators, five of them casualties. These figures were hardly unique; in fact, they were typical. Many other units, for instance, those who fought the hill battles around Khe Sanh, or were with the famed Walking Dead of the Ninth Marine Regiment, or were in the battle for Hue City or at Dai Do, had it far worse.
When I remember those days and the very young men who spent them with me, I am continually amazed, for these were mostly recent civilians barely out of high school, called up from the cities and the farms to do their year in Hell and then return.
Visions haunt me every day, not of the nightmares of war but of the steady consistency with which my Marines faced their responsibilities, and of how uncomplaining most of them were in the face of constant danger.
The salty, battle-hardened 20-year-olds teaching green 19-year-olds the intricate lessons of that hostile battlefield.
The unerring skill of the young squad leaders as we moved through unfamiliar villages and weed-choked trails in the black of night.
The quick certainty with which they moved when coming under enemy fire.
Their sudden tenderness when a fellow Marine was wounded and needed help.
Their willingness to risk their lives to save other Marines in peril.
To this day it stuns me that their own countrymen have so completely missed the story of their service, lost in the bitter confusion of the war itself. Like every military unit throughout history we had occasional laggards, cowards, and complainers.
But in the aggregate these Marines were the finest people I have ever been around. It has been my privilege to keep up with many of them over the years since we all came home. One finds in them very little bitterness about the war in which they fought.
The most common regret, almost to a man, is that they were not able to do more for each other and for the people they came to help.
It would be redundant to say that I would trust my life to these men, because I have already, and in more ways than I can ever recount. I am alive today because of their quiet, unaffected heroism. Such valor epitomizes the conduct of Americans at war from the first days of our existence. That the boomer elites can canonize this sort of conduct in our fathers' generation while ignoring it in our own is more than simple oversight. It is a conscious, continuing travesty.
Former Secretary of the Navy James Webb was awarded the Navy Cross, Silver Star, and Bronze Star medals for heroism (my bold) as a Marine in Vietnam. His novels include The Emperor's General and Fields of Fire.
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci, Italian Communist:
Gramsci realized that the West, due to its prosperity, its increasingly wide access to education and opportunity, social mobility, and its readiness to repair injustices (due to its Christian morality), would never be amenable to a violent proletarian socialist revolution. So he came up with Plan B, which is often termed "Gramscian tactics," or ‘Fabian Socialism’ achieved by cultural subversion.
“The civilized world has been saturated with Christianity for 2000 years,” Gramsci wrote, “and a regime grounded in Christian beliefs and values could not be overthrown until these roots were cut.”
I. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
Lenin thought always in terms of world revolution and he died in the expectation of a global victory.
In his, ‘Imperialism, the Last Stage of Capitalism’ (1917), he had extended class warfare into an inevitable conflict between European imperialism and the colonial peoples involved.
Lenin was influenced by the English historian J .A. Hobson's, ‘Imperialism, a Study,’ (1902), which alleged that decadent capitalism was bound to turn from glutted markets at home to exploit the toil of "reluctant and unassimilated peoples."
But, as observed by classical, medieval, and modern constitutionalist political philosophers, authoritarian regimes suffer the tensions of all autocracies.
Marx himself might have thought that such planned autocracies had made the worst of his revelation, which was to lead to an unplanned, classless utopia.
Other Marxist approaches. Many Marxist revisionists tend toward anarchism, stressing the Hegelian and utopian elements of his theory. The Hungarian Gyorgy Lukacs, for example, and the German Herbert Marcuse, who fled from the Nazis to the United States, have won some following among those in revolt against both authoritarian "peoples' democracies" and the diffused capitalism and meritocracy of the managerial welfare state.
Lukacs' "History and Class Consciousness" (published in Hungarian, 1922), a neo-Hegelian work, claims that only the intuition of the proletariat can properly apprehend
the totality of history.
But world revolution is contingent, not inevitable, and Marxism is an instrument, not a prediction. Lukacs renounced this heresy after residence in the Soviet Union under Stalin, but he maintained influence through literary and dramatic criticism. After
Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, Lukacs advocated peaceful coexistence and intellectual rather than political subversion.
In his, ‘‘The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (trans. 1963),’ Lukacs again relates Marx to Hegel and even to Aristotle, against the Stalinist claim that Marx made a radically new departure. Lukacs' neo-Marxist literary criticism can be tendentious, but his neo-Hegelian insights, strikingly expressed, have appealed to those anxious to salvage the more humane aspects of Marxism and to promote revolution, even against a modified capitalism and social democracy, by intellectual rather than by political means.
Marcuse also reached back to the more utopian Marx. Now that most of the proletariat has been absorbed into conformist managerial capitalism or has been regimented of
into bureaucratic peoples' democracies, freedom, argues Marcuse, is in retreat.
In Western affluent societies most employers and workers are equally philistine, dominated by the commercialized mass media, or "cogs in a culture machine."
The Soviet Union has reverted to an even more philistine monolithic repression, distorting art and literature.
This enslavement of man by his own industrial productivity has been clinched by the colossal power of governments, which renders the old brief and brisk class warfare a romantic, impracticable idea.
Marcuse attacked all establishments and transferred the redeeming mission of the proletariat to a fringe of alienated minorities: radical students and the exponents of the "hippie" way of life, as well as to Viet Cong guerillas and Black Power militants. Such groups, he declared, could apparently form liberating elites and destroy the managerial society.
Thus re-appeared the old Marxist-Hebraic pattern of redemption through struggle by a chosen people.
The Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci deployed a vivid rhetorical talent in attacking existing society. Like Marcuse, Gramsci was alarmed that the proletariat was being assimilated by the capitalist order and flung himself into the current controversy between social democrats and the radical revolutionaries.
Gramsci took his stand on the already obsolescent Marxist doctrine of irreconcilable
class war between bourgeois and proletariat. He aimed to unmask the bourgeois idea of liberty and to replace parliaments by an "implacable machine" of workers' councils, which would destroy the current social order through a dictatorship of the proletariat.
"Democracy," he wrote, "is our worst enemy. We must be ready to fight it because it blurs the clear separation of classes."
Not only would parliamentary democracy and established law be unmasked, but culture, too, would be transformed. A workers' civilization, with its great industry, large cities, and "tumultuous and intense life," would create a new civilization with new poetry, art, drama, fashions, and language.
Gramsci insisted that the old culture should be destroyed and that education should be
wrenched from the grip of the ruling classes and the church and run under the direction of workers' councils.
But this militant revolutionary was also utopian. Gramsci turned bitterly hostile to Stalin's regime, for he believed, like Engels, that the dictatorship of the workers' state would wither away. "We do not wish," he wrote, "to freeze the dictatorship."
Following world revolution, he wrote, a classless society would emerge, and mankind would be free to master nature instead of being involved in a class war.
Since World War II, Gramsci's notions have enjoyed a minor revival. They appeal to the fringe revolutionaries who admire Marcuse and detest the ‘bourgeoisement’ of an idealized proletariat.
But, in a civilization in which, if total war can be avoided, material prospects are good, the destruction of the old culture out of rage, envy, and naive idealism appears to be a pointless program.
II. Gramsci: Raising the American Taliban
Gramsci realized that the West, due to its prosperity, its increasingly wide access to education and opportunity, social mobility, and its readiness to repair injustices (due to its Christian morality), would never be amenable to a violent proletarian socialist revolution. So he came up with Plan B, which is often termed "Gramscian tactics," or ‘Fabian Socialism’ achieved by cultural subversion.
‘The civilized world has been saturated with Christianity for 2000 years,’ Gramsci wrote; and a regime grounded in Christian beliefs and values could not be overthrown until these roots were cut.
Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained political, economic, and ideological control through a hegemonic culture in which the values of the ‘bourgeoisie’ (‘Bourgeoisie’ is an European term, as is ‘proletariat,’ ‘capitalist,’ and ‘communism.’) became the 'common sense' values of all…a consensus culture in which people in the working-class identified their own good with the good of the ‘bourgeoisie,’ and maintained the status quo rather than revolt from it.
Thus, to Gramsci, consummate subversive that he is, Western "hegemonic culture" is the enemy even more so than ‘the ruling class’ that supports it.
Defeating Western culture, his primary goal, could not be done with guns. It required a "long march through the culture" to slowly discredit and undermine its institutions, values, and foundations.
This was a brilliantly destructive idea.
Eventually, the society would fall apart, opening the way to totalitarian socialism. And the State must lead the way through its courts, schools, and importantly, its system of taxation which must redistribute wealth and purchase the power base that will forge new alliances hostile to the old order. All these factors must play their part to change society.
Gramsci taught that Western bourgeois cultural values were tied to Christianity and therefore much of his polemic against hegemonic culture is aimed at Christian norms and values.
Gramsci was impressed by the power of Roman Catholicism over men's minds and the care the Church had taken to prevent a gap between the religion of the learned and that of the less educated. (??)
Gramsci believed that Marxism should marry the purely intellectual critique of religion found in Renaissance humanism to the elements of the Reformation that had appealed to the masses.
Gramsci inspired:
attacks on Christianity
the family
individual freedom
morality and moral judgments
multiculturalism
cult of victimhood
"tolerance"
political correctness
Green movement
The role of family, religion, individual responsibility and even choice would be replaced with government rules, laws, and regulations. The expansion of the State into the Welfare State and the Nanny State - where we would be cared for ‘from cradle to grave’ – would rule with a velvet glove whose softness belies the iron fist within, for to resist the beautiful hell will invite brutal repression.
Nothing less than a revolution…
The traditions of Western Civilization must be repudiated and discarded.
Capitalism, with its notions of private property and individual competency must end.
Success, as a concept that emanates from individual self interest, must be redefined in terms of group interest.
Nationalism and Patriotism are incompatible with ‘the revolution.’
America and republican Americanism must be obliterated.
To achieve these goals Gramsci favored an incrementalist revolution, what British socialists termed ‘Fabian Socialism’ after the Roman General, ‘Fabius,’ (d. 203 BC), whose cautious delaying tactics of attrition during the early stages of the Second Punic War (218-201) gave Rome time to recover its strength and take the offensive against Hannibal. The Fabians put their faith in evolutionary Socialism rather than in armed revolution.
The Fabians at first attempted to permeate both the Liberal and Conservative parties with socialist ideas, but later organized the ‘Labour Representation Committee,’ which became the Labour Party in 1906. Socialism is the policy of the Labour Party.
Ultimately, suppression of the individual in favor of the collectivist utopia is the object of all socialist policy. It is the abandonment of the soul and spirit of Western Civilization. The 3,000 years of our culture is based on individual freedom, autonomy, initiative, self-interest, and the right to define oneself and determine your own direction. The Revolution can complete the seizure of political power only after having achieved "cultural hegemony," control of society's intellectual life by cultural means and the relocation of power and money.
They even reorder time by insisting use of the anti-Christian French Revolutionary calendar. Some publishers now insist upon secular dating of their publications with "B.C.E." (Before the "Common Era"- whatever that means) rather than "B.C." and "C.E." (the Common Era) rather than "A.D."
Anti-Christian phenomena such as the book and movie, ‘The DaVinci Code,’ turn the vary nature of Christ as Savior on its head. Indeed, one of the last sentences in The DaVinci Code reads, “…It is time to worship at the feet of the fallen one.”
Courts, including the Supreme Court, have declared most displays of the 10 Commandments "unconstitutional" despite the fact that the 10 Commandments are carved into the building that houses the U.S. Supreme Court.
Daily evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, everywhere is repeated the hymn, ‘Islam is the religion of peace’ yet Christianity is portrayed as the religion of hate, colonialism, and bigotry. Fundamental aspects of Christianity such as marriage, sexuality, and abortion are attacked by renegade Christian clergy, causing major schisms within the faith.
(See: Judge Bork, ‘Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline;’ and Pat Buchanan, ‘The Death of the West.’)
February 15, 2007 Cultural Marxism
By Linda Kimball
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/cultural_marxism.html
There are two misconceptions held by many Americans. The first is that communism ceased to be a threat when the Soviet Union imploded. The second is that the New Left of the Sixties collapsed and disappeared as well. "The Sixties are dead," wrote columnist George Will ("Slamming the Doors," Newsweek, Mar. 25, 1991)
However, its revolutionaries reorganized themselves into a multitude of single issue groups. Thus we now have for example, radical feminists, black extremists, anti-war ‘peace' activists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, and ‘gay' rights groups. All of these groups pursue their piece of the radical agenda through a complex network of organizations such as the Gay Straight Lesbian Educators Network (GSLEN), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), People for the American Way, United for Peace and Justice, Planned Parenthood, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), and Code Pink for Peace.
Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. They favor code words: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity. All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism.
Birth of Multiculturalism
In anticipation of the revolutionary storm that would baptize the world in an inferno of red terror, leading to its rebirth as the promised land of social justice and proletarian equality-Frederich Engels wrote,
"All the...large and small nationalities are destined to perish...in the revolutionary world storm... (A general war will) wipe out all...nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only reactionary classes...but...reactionary peoples." ("The Magyar Struggle," Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Jan. 13, 1849)
By the end of WWI, socialists realized that something was amiss, for the world's proletariat had not heeded Marx's call to rise up in opposition to evil capitalism and to embrace communism instead. They wondered what had gone wrong.
Separately, two Marxist theorists-Antonio Gramsci of Italy and Georg Lukacs of Hungary-concluded that the Christianized West was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist new world order. The West would have to be conquered first.
Gramsci posited that because Christianity had been dominant in the West for over 2000 years, not only was it fused with Western civilization, but it had corrupted the worker class. The West would have to be de-Christianized, said Gramsci, by means of a "long march through the culture." Additionally, a new proletariat must be created. In his "Prison Notebooks," he suggested that the new proletariat be comprised of many criminals, women, and racial minorities.
The new battleground, reasoned Gramsci, must become the culture, starting with the traditional family and completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science, and history. All of these things must be radically transformed and the social and cultural order gradually turned upside-down with the new proletariat placed in power at the top.
The Prototype
In 1919, Georg Lukacs became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Bolshevik Bela Kun regime in Hungary. He immediately set plans in motion to de-Christianize Hungary.
Reasoning that if Christian sexual ethics could be undermined among children, then both the hated patriarchal family and the Church would be dealt a crippling blow.
Lukacs launched a radical sex education program in the schools. Sex lectures were organized and literature handed out which graphically instructed youth in free love (promiscuity) and sexual intercourse while simultaneously encouraging them to deride and reject Christian moral ethics, monogamy, and parental and church authority. All of this was accompanied by a reign of cultural terror perpetrated against parents, priests, and dissenters.
Hungary's youth, having been fed a steady diet of values-neutral (atheistic) and radical sex education while simultaneously encouraged to rebel against all authority, easily turned into delinquents ranging from bullies and petty thieves to sex predators, murderers, and sociopaths.
Gramsci's prescription and Lukacs' plans were the precursor to what Cultural Marxism in the guise of SIECUS, GSLEN, and the ACLU--acting as judicially-powered enforcers--later brought into American schools.
Building a base
In 1923, the Frankfurt School-a Marxist think-tank-was founded in Weimar Germany. Among its founders were Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno. The school was a multidisciplinary effort which included sociologists, sexologists, and psychologists.
The primary goal of the Frankfurt School was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms.
It would provide the ideas on which to base a new political theory of revoltuion based on culture, harnessing new [discovered] oppressed groups for the faithless proletariat. Smashing religion, morals, It would also build a constituency among academics, who could build careers studying and writing about the new oppression.
Toward this end, Marcuse-who favored polymorphous perversion-expanded the ranks of Gramsci's new proletariat by including homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals. Into this was spliced Lukacs radical sex education and cultural terrorism tactics.
Gramsci's ‘long march' was added to the mix, and then all of this was wedded to Freudian psychoanalysis and psychological conditioning techniques. The end product was Cultural Marxism, now known in the West as multiculturalism.
Additional intellectual firepower was required: a theory to pathologize what was to be destroyed.
In 1950, the Frankfurt School augmented Cultural Marxism with Theodor Adorno's idea of the ‘authoritarian personality.'
This concept is premised on the notion that Christianity, capitalism, and the traditional family create a character prone to racism and fascism. Thus, anyone who upholds America's traditional moral values and institutions is both racist and fascist. Children raised by traditional values parents, we are told to believe, will almost certainly become racists and fascists. By extension, if fascism and racism are endemic to America's traditional culture, then everyone raised in the traditions of God, family, patriotism, gun ownership, or free markets is in need of psychological help.
The pernicious influence of Adorno's ‘authoritarian personality' idea can be clearly seen in some of the research that gets public money.
"In Aug., 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the results of their $1.2 million tax-payer funded study. It stated, essentially, that traditionalists are mentally disturbed.
Scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford had determined that social conservatives...suffer from ‘mental rigidity,' ‘dogmatism,' and ‘uncertainty avoidance,' together with associated indicators for mental illness." http://www.edwatch.org/ ‘Social and Emotional Learning" Jan. 26, 2005)
The Orwellian cast of the pathologies named shows how far Gramsci's long march has led us.
A corresponding and diabolically crafted idea is ‘Political Correctness.’
The strong suggestion here is that in order for one not to be thought of as racist or fascist, then one must not only be nonjudgmental but must also embrace the ‘new' moral absolutes: diversity, choice, sensitivity, sexual orientation, and tolerance - All major initiatives in the schools. Everything form curricula to playtime is arranged to comply with the new dogma.
Political correctness is a Machiavellian, psychological ‘command and control' device. Its purpose is the imposition of uniformity in thought, speech, and behavior. ORWELL.
‘Critical theory’ is yet another psychological ‘command and control' device. As stated by Daniel J. Flynn,
"Critical Theory, as its name implies, criticizes. What deconstruction does to literature, Critical Theory does to societies." (Intellectual Morons, p 15-16)
Critical Theory is the ongoing and brutal assault upon traditional American culture and society via vicious criticism relentlessly leveled against Christians, Christmas, the Boy Scouts, Ten Commandments, our military, and all other aspects. The new, ‘Dialectic.’
Both political correctness and Critical Theory are in essence, psychological bullying. Cognitive dissonance; indoctrination, mind control, thought transfer, brainwashing, peer pressure.
They are the psycho-political battering rams by which Frankfurt School disciples such as the ACLU are forcing Americans to submit to and to obey the will and the way of the Left.
These devious devices are but psychological versions of Georg Lukacs and Laventi Beria's ‘cultural terrorism' tactics. In the words of Beria, Stalin’s Secret Police enforcer,
"Obedience is the result of force...Force is the antithesis of humanizing action. It is so synonymous in the human mind with savageness, lawlessness, brutality, and barbarism, that it is only necessary to display an inhuman attitude toward people to be granted by those people the possession of force." (The Russian Manual on Psychopolitics: Obedience, by Laventi Beria, head of Soviet Secret Police and Stalin's right-hand man)
Double-thinking ‘fence-sitters', otherwise known as moderates, centrists, and RINO’s (Republican In Name Only) bear the imprint of these psychological ‘obedience' techniques. These people-in some cases literally afraid of incurring the wrath of name-calling obedience trainers--- have opted to straddle the fence lest they be found guilty of possessing an opinion, one way or another. At the merest hint of displeasure from the obedience-trainers, up goes the yellow flag of surrender upon which it is boldly written:
"I believe in nothing and am tolerant of everything!"
Cultural Determinism
The linchpin of Cultural Marxism is cultural determinism, the parent of identity politics and group solidarity.
In its turn, cultural determinism was birthed by the Darwinian idea that man is but a soulless animal and therefore his identity is determined by for example, his skin color or his sexual and/or erotic preferences. This proposition rejects the concepts of the human spirit, individuality, free will, and morally informed conscience paired with personal accountability and responsibility because it emphatically denies the existence of the God of the Bible a priori.
Consequently, and by extension, it also rejects the first principles of our liberty enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. These are our "unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Cultural Marxism must reject these because these principles of liberty "are endowed by our Creator," who made man in His image.
Cultural determinism, states David Horowitz, is
"Identity politics-the politics of radical feminism, the queer revolution, and Afro-centrism-which is the basis of academic multiculturalism...a form of intellectual fascism and, insofar as it has any politics, of political fascism as well." (Mussolini and Neo-Fascist Tribalism: Up from Multiculturalism, by David Horowitz, Jan. 1998)
It is said that courage is the first of the virtues because without it fear will paralyze man, thus keeping him from acting upon his moral convictions and speaking truth. Thus bringing about a general state of paralyzing fear, apathy, and submission - the chains of tyranny - is the purpose behind psychopolitical, cultural terrorism, for the communist Left's revolutionary agenda must, at all costs, be clothed in darkness.
The antidote is courage and the light of truth. If we are to win this cultural war and reclaim and rebuild America so our children and their children's children can live in a ‘Shining City on the Hill' where liberty, families, opportunity, free markets, and decency flourish, we must muster the courage to fearlessly expose the communist Left's revolutionary agenda to the Light of Truth. Truth and the courage to speak it will set us free.
Additional References
Slouching Toward Gomorrah, by Robert H. Bork
Intellectual Morons, by Daniel J. Flynn
Related Articles
Trotsky's ‘Permanent Revolution' in America
Exposing America's Enemies, Part 2: Communist Progressive Democrats
Exposing America's Enemies: the ‘Social Justice Seeking' Communist Left
"The Origins of Political Correctness," (William Linds)
"[PC] is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious."
Lind states that from an historical point, PC has its historical origins in Cultural Marxism, the melding of Freudianism and Marxism; it's premise is that workers are oppressed under capitalism and under Western culture everyone lives in a state of psychological repression.
"Liberation from that repression became the weapon of choice for Cultural Marxism. Linds shows that everyone involved in bringing this ideology to our shores were Jews.
Both authors indicate that these changes began, not in the 60's, but actually in the 1930's, when two Marxist-theorists - Antonio Gramsci of Italy and Georg Lukacs of Hungary - concluded that the Christianized West was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist (Jewish) new world order.
In 1933, the Frankfort School, formerly known as the Institute for Social Research, was established at Columbia University after its founders fled Nazi Germany after Hitler came to power. In addition to Gramsci was music critic Theodor Adorno, psychologist Erich Fromm, sociologist Wilhelm Reich and Professor Herbert Marcuse. Its original strategy to destroy America could only be accomplished by infiltrating and subverting cultural institutions, since it was known that Americans steeped in traditions of freedom and liberty would never succumb to a frontal assault and be used as cannon fodder in a bloody revolution.
Gramsci concluded that Christianity's dominance in the West had corrupted the workers class and it would have to be de-Christianized by a "long march through the culture." His battleground would be the culture itself starting with the traditional family, then completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science and history. His new proletariat would be women, criminals, and racial minorities. He stated that the social and cultural order must be radically transformed and turned completely upside-down with the new proletariat placed in power at the top.
The school would go on to patent ‘Critical Theory,’ which is accurately defined as destructive criticism of all the main elements of Western culture, including Christianity, capitalism, authority, the family, patriarchy, hierarchy, morality, tradition, sexual restraint, loyalty, patriotism, nationalism, heredity (Primogeneture), ethnocentrism, convention, and conservatism."
Herbert Marcuse, who stayed behind in America after WWII, favored "polymorphous perversion," which Freud theorized that humans are born with unfocused sexual libidinal drives, deriving sexual pleasure from any part of the body. The objects and modes of sexual satisfaction are multifarious, directed at every object that might provide pleasure. This theory was radically interjected into the 60's sexual revolution with staggering effects that are still with us today. All forms ox sexual deviancy, tattooing, piercing, branding, etc.
Consequently, additional intellectual firepower was added to cement cultural Marxism's base: 'authoritarian personality.' This concept is premised on the notion that Christianity, capitalism, and the traditional family create a character prone to racism and fascism.
Thus, anyone who upholds America's traditional moral values and institutions is both racist and fascist. Children raised by traditional values parents, we are told to believe, will almost certainly become racists and fascists. By extension, if fascism and racism are endemic to America's traditional culture, then everyone raised in the traditions of God, family, patriotism, gun ownership, or free markets is in need of psychological help.
To poison American society further, the Frankfort School said history was determined by which groups, defined as men, women, races, religions, etc., had power or "dominance" over other groups.
Certain groups, especially white males, are labeled "oppressors," while other groups are defined as "victims." Victims are automatically good, oppressors always bad, just by what group they came from, regardless of individual behavior.
They incorporated into their cultural Marxism what Nietzsche called the "transvaluation of all values:" all the old sins have become virtues, and all the old virtues become sins. Homosexuality is a fine and good thing, but anyone who thinks men and women should have different social roles is an evil "fascist." That is what political correctness now teaches children in public schools all across America. (The Frankfurt School wrote about American public education. It said it did not matter if school children learned any skills or any facts. All that mattered was that they graduate from the schools with the right "attitudes" on certain questions.)
Herbert Marcuse became a "guru," of sorts, during the student rebellion in the 60's, and unfortunately, it provided him with an historic opportunity by injecting the Frankfort School's cultural Marxism into the baby-boom generation.
Of course, we did not understand what it really was. As was true from the Institute's beginning, Marcuse and the few other people "in the know" did not advertise that political correctness and multi-culturalism were a form of Marxism.
The effect was devastating: a whole generation of Americans, especially the university-educated elite, absorbed cultural Marxism, made it their own, and accepted a poisonous ideology that sought to destroy America's traditional culture and Christian faith. That generation, which runs every elite institution in America, now wages a ceaseless war on all traditional beliefs and institutions. They have largely won that war. Most of America's traditional culture lies in ruins.
Cultural Marxism, under the disguise of multiculturalism, is the primary reason why Americans equate truth with racism or hate. It is a ridiculous, poisonous, destructive ideology that we must eradicate, forever, in this country. However, a full frontal assault on the various institutions and organizations that defend it would end in our defeat. They are prepared and heavily fortified, now with the full cooperation of the United States government and para-military police forces behind them.
We, are but a small voice, however, hope reigns supreme. We must divorce ourselves from the poison that has undermined our culture and stolen our freedom, our voices and our liberty; as Gramsci laid it out so long ago, to undertake a "long march through the institutions." Our counter-strategy would be a long march to create new institutions defined by America's traditional value system. Patience is the virture that will eventually liberate us from the tyranny of every Marxist philosophy that now pervades our nation.
In the meantime, the next time you are called a fascist or a racist for speaking truth; label your attacker as a "Marxist" and watch for the reaction. You might be surprised.
References:
The Origins of Political Correctness
Cultural Marxism
The Four Horsemen of the Frankfort School
Who Stole Our Culture?
Also watch William Lind's video "The History of Political Correctness" on Google
Gramsci realized that the West, due to its prosperity, its increasingly wide access to education and opportunity, social mobility, and its readiness to repair injustices (due to its Christian morality), would never be amenable to a violent proletarian socialist revolution. So he came up with Plan B, which is often termed "Gramscian tactics," or ‘Fabian Socialism’ achieved by cultural subversion.
“The civilized world has been saturated with Christianity for 2000 years,” Gramsci wrote, “and a regime grounded in Christian beliefs and values could not be overthrown until these roots were cut.”
I. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
Lenin thought always in terms of world revolution and he died in the expectation of a global victory.
In his, ‘Imperialism, the Last Stage of Capitalism’ (1917), he had extended class warfare into an inevitable conflict between European imperialism and the colonial peoples involved.
Lenin was influenced by the English historian J .A. Hobson's, ‘Imperialism, a Study,’ (1902), which alleged that decadent capitalism was bound to turn from glutted markets at home to exploit the toil of "reluctant and unassimilated peoples."
But, as observed by classical, medieval, and modern constitutionalist political philosophers, authoritarian regimes suffer the tensions of all autocracies.
Marx himself might have thought that such planned autocracies had made the worst of his revelation, which was to lead to an unplanned, classless utopia.
Other Marxist approaches. Many Marxist revisionists tend toward anarchism, stressing the Hegelian and utopian elements of his theory. The Hungarian Gyorgy Lukacs, for example, and the German Herbert Marcuse, who fled from the Nazis to the United States, have won some following among those in revolt against both authoritarian "peoples' democracies" and the diffused capitalism and meritocracy of the managerial welfare state.
Lukacs' "History and Class Consciousness" (published in Hungarian, 1922), a neo-Hegelian work, claims that only the intuition of the proletariat can properly apprehend
the totality of history.
But world revolution is contingent, not inevitable, and Marxism is an instrument, not a prediction. Lukacs renounced this heresy after residence in the Soviet Union under Stalin, but he maintained influence through literary and dramatic criticism. After
Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, Lukacs advocated peaceful coexistence and intellectual rather than political subversion.
In his, ‘‘The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (trans. 1963),’ Lukacs again relates Marx to Hegel and even to Aristotle, against the Stalinist claim that Marx made a radically new departure. Lukacs' neo-Marxist literary criticism can be tendentious, but his neo-Hegelian insights, strikingly expressed, have appealed to those anxious to salvage the more humane aspects of Marxism and to promote revolution, even against a modified capitalism and social democracy, by intellectual rather than by political means.
Marcuse also reached back to the more utopian Marx. Now that most of the proletariat has been absorbed into conformist managerial capitalism or has been regimented of
into bureaucratic peoples' democracies, freedom, argues Marcuse, is in retreat.
In Western affluent societies most employers and workers are equally philistine, dominated by the commercialized mass media, or "cogs in a culture machine."
The Soviet Union has reverted to an even more philistine monolithic repression, distorting art and literature.
This enslavement of man by his own industrial productivity has been clinched by the colossal power of governments, which renders the old brief and brisk class warfare a romantic, impracticable idea.
Marcuse attacked all establishments and transferred the redeeming mission of the proletariat to a fringe of alienated minorities: radical students and the exponents of the "hippie" way of life, as well as to Viet Cong guerillas and Black Power militants. Such groups, he declared, could apparently form liberating elites and destroy the managerial society.
Thus re-appeared the old Marxist-Hebraic pattern of redemption through struggle by a chosen people.
The Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci deployed a vivid rhetorical talent in attacking existing society. Like Marcuse, Gramsci was alarmed that the proletariat was being assimilated by the capitalist order and flung himself into the current controversy between social democrats and the radical revolutionaries.
Gramsci took his stand on the already obsolescent Marxist doctrine of irreconcilable
class war between bourgeois and proletariat. He aimed to unmask the bourgeois idea of liberty and to replace parliaments by an "implacable machine" of workers' councils, which would destroy the current social order through a dictatorship of the proletariat.
"Democracy," he wrote, "is our worst enemy. We must be ready to fight it because it blurs the clear separation of classes."
Not only would parliamentary democracy and established law be unmasked, but culture, too, would be transformed. A workers' civilization, with its great industry, large cities, and "tumultuous and intense life," would create a new civilization with new poetry, art, drama, fashions, and language.
Gramsci insisted that the old culture should be destroyed and that education should be
wrenched from the grip of the ruling classes and the church and run under the direction of workers' councils.
But this militant revolutionary was also utopian. Gramsci turned bitterly hostile to Stalin's regime, for he believed, like Engels, that the dictatorship of the workers' state would wither away. "We do not wish," he wrote, "to freeze the dictatorship."
Following world revolution, he wrote, a classless society would emerge, and mankind would be free to master nature instead of being involved in a class war.
Since World War II, Gramsci's notions have enjoyed a minor revival. They appeal to the fringe revolutionaries who admire Marcuse and detest the ‘bourgeoisement’ of an idealized proletariat.
But, in a civilization in which, if total war can be avoided, material prospects are good, the destruction of the old culture out of rage, envy, and naive idealism appears to be a pointless program.
II. Gramsci: Raising the American Taliban
Gramsci realized that the West, due to its prosperity, its increasingly wide access to education and opportunity, social mobility, and its readiness to repair injustices (due to its Christian morality), would never be amenable to a violent proletarian socialist revolution. So he came up with Plan B, which is often termed "Gramscian tactics," or ‘Fabian Socialism’ achieved by cultural subversion.
‘The civilized world has been saturated with Christianity for 2000 years,’ Gramsci wrote; and a regime grounded in Christian beliefs and values could not be overthrown until these roots were cut.
Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained political, economic, and ideological control through a hegemonic culture in which the values of the ‘bourgeoisie’ (‘Bourgeoisie’ is an European term, as is ‘proletariat,’ ‘capitalist,’ and ‘communism.’) became the 'common sense' values of all…a consensus culture in which people in the working-class identified their own good with the good of the ‘bourgeoisie,’ and maintained the status quo rather than revolt from it.
Thus, to Gramsci, consummate subversive that he is, Western "hegemonic culture" is the enemy even more so than ‘the ruling class’ that supports it.
Defeating Western culture, his primary goal, could not be done with guns. It required a "long march through the culture" to slowly discredit and undermine its institutions, values, and foundations.
This was a brilliantly destructive idea.
Eventually, the society would fall apart, opening the way to totalitarian socialism. And the State must lead the way through its courts, schools, and importantly, its system of taxation which must redistribute wealth and purchase the power base that will forge new alliances hostile to the old order. All these factors must play their part to change society.
Gramsci taught that Western bourgeois cultural values were tied to Christianity and therefore much of his polemic against hegemonic culture is aimed at Christian norms and values.
Gramsci was impressed by the power of Roman Catholicism over men's minds and the care the Church had taken to prevent a gap between the religion of the learned and that of the less educated. (??)
Gramsci believed that Marxism should marry the purely intellectual critique of religion found in Renaissance humanism to the elements of the Reformation that had appealed to the masses.
Gramsci inspired:
attacks on Christianity
the family
individual freedom
morality and moral judgments
multiculturalism
cult of victimhood
"tolerance"
political correctness
Green movement
The role of family, religion, individual responsibility and even choice would be replaced with government rules, laws, and regulations. The expansion of the State into the Welfare State and the Nanny State - where we would be cared for ‘from cradle to grave’ – would rule with a velvet glove whose softness belies the iron fist within, for to resist the beautiful hell will invite brutal repression.
Nothing less than a revolution…
The traditions of Western Civilization must be repudiated and discarded.
Capitalism, with its notions of private property and individual competency must end.
Success, as a concept that emanates from individual self interest, must be redefined in terms of group interest.
Nationalism and Patriotism are incompatible with ‘the revolution.’
America and republican Americanism must be obliterated.
To achieve these goals Gramsci favored an incrementalist revolution, what British socialists termed ‘Fabian Socialism’ after the Roman General, ‘Fabius,’ (d. 203 BC), whose cautious delaying tactics of attrition during the early stages of the Second Punic War (218-201) gave Rome time to recover its strength and take the offensive against Hannibal. The Fabians put their faith in evolutionary Socialism rather than in armed revolution.
The Fabians at first attempted to permeate both the Liberal and Conservative parties with socialist ideas, but later organized the ‘Labour Representation Committee,’ which became the Labour Party in 1906. Socialism is the policy of the Labour Party.
Ultimately, suppression of the individual in favor of the collectivist utopia is the object of all socialist policy. It is the abandonment of the soul and spirit of Western Civilization. The 3,000 years of our culture is based on individual freedom, autonomy, initiative, self-interest, and the right to define oneself and determine your own direction. The Revolution can complete the seizure of political power only after having achieved "cultural hegemony," control of society's intellectual life by cultural means and the relocation of power and money.
They even reorder time by insisting use of the anti-Christian French Revolutionary calendar. Some publishers now insist upon secular dating of their publications with "B.C.E." (Before the "Common Era"- whatever that means) rather than "B.C." and "C.E." (the Common Era) rather than "A.D."
Anti-Christian phenomena such as the book and movie, ‘The DaVinci Code,’ turn the vary nature of Christ as Savior on its head. Indeed, one of the last sentences in The DaVinci Code reads, “…It is time to worship at the feet of the fallen one.”
Courts, including the Supreme Court, have declared most displays of the 10 Commandments "unconstitutional" despite the fact that the 10 Commandments are carved into the building that houses the U.S. Supreme Court.
Daily evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, everywhere is repeated the hymn, ‘Islam is the religion of peace’ yet Christianity is portrayed as the religion of hate, colonialism, and bigotry. Fundamental aspects of Christianity such as marriage, sexuality, and abortion are attacked by renegade Christian clergy, causing major schisms within the faith.
(See: Judge Bork, ‘Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline;’ and Pat Buchanan, ‘The Death of the West.’)
February 15, 2007 Cultural Marxism
By Linda Kimball
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/cultural_marxism.html
There are two misconceptions held by many Americans. The first is that communism ceased to be a threat when the Soviet Union imploded. The second is that the New Left of the Sixties collapsed and disappeared as well. "The Sixties are dead," wrote columnist George Will ("Slamming the Doors," Newsweek, Mar. 25, 1991)
However, its revolutionaries reorganized themselves into a multitude of single issue groups. Thus we now have for example, radical feminists, black extremists, anti-war ‘peace' activists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, and ‘gay' rights groups. All of these groups pursue their piece of the radical agenda through a complex network of organizations such as the Gay Straight Lesbian Educators Network (GSLEN), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), People for the American Way, United for Peace and Justice, Planned Parenthood, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), and Code Pink for Peace.
Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. They favor code words: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity. All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism.
Birth of Multiculturalism
In anticipation of the revolutionary storm that would baptize the world in an inferno of red terror, leading to its rebirth as the promised land of social justice and proletarian equality-Frederich Engels wrote,
"All the...large and small nationalities are destined to perish...in the revolutionary world storm... (A general war will) wipe out all...nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only reactionary classes...but...reactionary peoples." ("The Magyar Struggle," Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Jan. 13, 1849)
By the end of WWI, socialists realized that something was amiss, for the world's proletariat had not heeded Marx's call to rise up in opposition to evil capitalism and to embrace communism instead. They wondered what had gone wrong.
Separately, two Marxist theorists-Antonio Gramsci of Italy and Georg Lukacs of Hungary-concluded that the Christianized West was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist new world order. The West would have to be conquered first.
Gramsci posited that because Christianity had been dominant in the West for over 2000 years, not only was it fused with Western civilization, but it had corrupted the worker class. The West would have to be de-Christianized, said Gramsci, by means of a "long march through the culture." Additionally, a new proletariat must be created. In his "Prison Notebooks," he suggested that the new proletariat be comprised of many criminals, women, and racial minorities.
The new battleground, reasoned Gramsci, must become the culture, starting with the traditional family and completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science, and history. All of these things must be radically transformed and the social and cultural order gradually turned upside-down with the new proletariat placed in power at the top.
The Prototype
In 1919, Georg Lukacs became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Bolshevik Bela Kun regime in Hungary. He immediately set plans in motion to de-Christianize Hungary.
Reasoning that if Christian sexual ethics could be undermined among children, then both the hated patriarchal family and the Church would be dealt a crippling blow.
Lukacs launched a radical sex education program in the schools. Sex lectures were organized and literature handed out which graphically instructed youth in free love (promiscuity) and sexual intercourse while simultaneously encouraging them to deride and reject Christian moral ethics, monogamy, and parental and church authority. All of this was accompanied by a reign of cultural terror perpetrated against parents, priests, and dissenters.
Hungary's youth, having been fed a steady diet of values-neutral (atheistic) and radical sex education while simultaneously encouraged to rebel against all authority, easily turned into delinquents ranging from bullies and petty thieves to sex predators, murderers, and sociopaths.
Gramsci's prescription and Lukacs' plans were the precursor to what Cultural Marxism in the guise of SIECUS, GSLEN, and the ACLU--acting as judicially-powered enforcers--later brought into American schools.
Building a base
In 1923, the Frankfurt School-a Marxist think-tank-was founded in Weimar Germany. Among its founders were Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno. The school was a multidisciplinary effort which included sociologists, sexologists, and psychologists.
The primary goal of the Frankfurt School was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms.
It would provide the ideas on which to base a new political theory of revoltuion based on culture, harnessing new [discovered] oppressed groups for the faithless proletariat. Smashing religion, morals, It would also build a constituency among academics, who could build careers studying and writing about the new oppression.
Toward this end, Marcuse-who favored polymorphous perversion-expanded the ranks of Gramsci's new proletariat by including homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals. Into this was spliced Lukacs radical sex education and cultural terrorism tactics.
Gramsci's ‘long march' was added to the mix, and then all of this was wedded to Freudian psychoanalysis and psychological conditioning techniques. The end product was Cultural Marxism, now known in the West as multiculturalism.
Additional intellectual firepower was required: a theory to pathologize what was to be destroyed.
In 1950, the Frankfurt School augmented Cultural Marxism with Theodor Adorno's idea of the ‘authoritarian personality.'
This concept is premised on the notion that Christianity, capitalism, and the traditional family create a character prone to racism and fascism. Thus, anyone who upholds America's traditional moral values and institutions is both racist and fascist. Children raised by traditional values parents, we are told to believe, will almost certainly become racists and fascists. By extension, if fascism and racism are endemic to America's traditional culture, then everyone raised in the traditions of God, family, patriotism, gun ownership, or free markets is in need of psychological help.
The pernicious influence of Adorno's ‘authoritarian personality' idea can be clearly seen in some of the research that gets public money.
"In Aug., 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the results of their $1.2 million tax-payer funded study. It stated, essentially, that traditionalists are mentally disturbed.
Scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford had determined that social conservatives...suffer from ‘mental rigidity,' ‘dogmatism,' and ‘uncertainty avoidance,' together with associated indicators for mental illness." http://www.edwatch.org/ ‘Social and Emotional Learning" Jan. 26, 2005)
The Orwellian cast of the pathologies named shows how far Gramsci's long march has led us.
A corresponding and diabolically crafted idea is ‘Political Correctness.’
The strong suggestion here is that in order for one not to be thought of as racist or fascist, then one must not only be nonjudgmental but must also embrace the ‘new' moral absolutes: diversity, choice, sensitivity, sexual orientation, and tolerance - All major initiatives in the schools. Everything form curricula to playtime is arranged to comply with the new dogma.
Political correctness is a Machiavellian, psychological ‘command and control' device. Its purpose is the imposition of uniformity in thought, speech, and behavior. ORWELL.
‘Critical theory’ is yet another psychological ‘command and control' device. As stated by Daniel J. Flynn,
"Critical Theory, as its name implies, criticizes. What deconstruction does to literature, Critical Theory does to societies." (Intellectual Morons, p 15-16)
Critical Theory is the ongoing and brutal assault upon traditional American culture and society via vicious criticism relentlessly leveled against Christians, Christmas, the Boy Scouts, Ten Commandments, our military, and all other aspects. The new, ‘Dialectic.’
Both political correctness and Critical Theory are in essence, psychological bullying. Cognitive dissonance; indoctrination, mind control, thought transfer, brainwashing, peer pressure.
They are the psycho-political battering rams by which Frankfurt School disciples such as the ACLU are forcing Americans to submit to and to obey the will and the way of the Left.
These devious devices are but psychological versions of Georg Lukacs and Laventi Beria's ‘cultural terrorism' tactics. In the words of Beria, Stalin’s Secret Police enforcer,
"Obedience is the result of force...Force is the antithesis of humanizing action. It is so synonymous in the human mind with savageness, lawlessness, brutality, and barbarism, that it is only necessary to display an inhuman attitude toward people to be granted by those people the possession of force." (The Russian Manual on Psychopolitics: Obedience, by Laventi Beria, head of Soviet Secret Police and Stalin's right-hand man)
Double-thinking ‘fence-sitters', otherwise known as moderates, centrists, and RINO’s (Republican In Name Only) bear the imprint of these psychological ‘obedience' techniques. These people-in some cases literally afraid of incurring the wrath of name-calling obedience trainers--- have opted to straddle the fence lest they be found guilty of possessing an opinion, one way or another. At the merest hint of displeasure from the obedience-trainers, up goes the yellow flag of surrender upon which it is boldly written:
"I believe in nothing and am tolerant of everything!"
Cultural Determinism
The linchpin of Cultural Marxism is cultural determinism, the parent of identity politics and group solidarity.
In its turn, cultural determinism was birthed by the Darwinian idea that man is but a soulless animal and therefore his identity is determined by for example, his skin color or his sexual and/or erotic preferences. This proposition rejects the concepts of the human spirit, individuality, free will, and morally informed conscience paired with personal accountability and responsibility because it emphatically denies the existence of the God of the Bible a priori.
Consequently, and by extension, it also rejects the first principles of our liberty enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. These are our "unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Cultural Marxism must reject these because these principles of liberty "are endowed by our Creator," who made man in His image.
Cultural determinism, states David Horowitz, is
"Identity politics-the politics of radical feminism, the queer revolution, and Afro-centrism-which is the basis of academic multiculturalism...a form of intellectual fascism and, insofar as it has any politics, of political fascism as well." (Mussolini and Neo-Fascist Tribalism: Up from Multiculturalism, by David Horowitz, Jan. 1998)
It is said that courage is the first of the virtues because without it fear will paralyze man, thus keeping him from acting upon his moral convictions and speaking truth. Thus bringing about a general state of paralyzing fear, apathy, and submission - the chains of tyranny - is the purpose behind psychopolitical, cultural terrorism, for the communist Left's revolutionary agenda must, at all costs, be clothed in darkness.
The antidote is courage and the light of truth. If we are to win this cultural war and reclaim and rebuild America so our children and their children's children can live in a ‘Shining City on the Hill' where liberty, families, opportunity, free markets, and decency flourish, we must muster the courage to fearlessly expose the communist Left's revolutionary agenda to the Light of Truth. Truth and the courage to speak it will set us free.
Additional References
Slouching Toward Gomorrah, by Robert H. Bork
Intellectual Morons, by Daniel J. Flynn
Related Articles
Trotsky's ‘Permanent Revolution' in America
Exposing America's Enemies, Part 2: Communist Progressive Democrats
Exposing America's Enemies: the ‘Social Justice Seeking' Communist Left
"The Origins of Political Correctness," (William Linds)
"[PC] is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious."
Lind states that from an historical point, PC has its historical origins in Cultural Marxism, the melding of Freudianism and Marxism; it's premise is that workers are oppressed under capitalism and under Western culture everyone lives in a state of psychological repression.
"Liberation from that repression became the weapon of choice for Cultural Marxism. Linds shows that everyone involved in bringing this ideology to our shores were Jews.
Both authors indicate that these changes began, not in the 60's, but actually in the 1930's, when two Marxist-theorists - Antonio Gramsci of Italy and Georg Lukacs of Hungary - concluded that the Christianized West was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist (Jewish) new world order.
In 1933, the Frankfort School, formerly known as the Institute for Social Research, was established at Columbia University after its founders fled Nazi Germany after Hitler came to power. In addition to Gramsci was music critic Theodor Adorno, psychologist Erich Fromm, sociologist Wilhelm Reich and Professor Herbert Marcuse. Its original strategy to destroy America could only be accomplished by infiltrating and subverting cultural institutions, since it was known that Americans steeped in traditions of freedom and liberty would never succumb to a frontal assault and be used as cannon fodder in a bloody revolution.
Gramsci concluded that Christianity's dominance in the West had corrupted the workers class and it would have to be de-Christianized by a "long march through the culture." His battleground would be the culture itself starting with the traditional family, then completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science and history. His new proletariat would be women, criminals, and racial minorities. He stated that the social and cultural order must be radically transformed and turned completely upside-down with the new proletariat placed in power at the top.
The school would go on to patent ‘Critical Theory,’ which is accurately defined as destructive criticism of all the main elements of Western culture, including Christianity, capitalism, authority, the family, patriarchy, hierarchy, morality, tradition, sexual restraint, loyalty, patriotism, nationalism, heredity (Primogeneture), ethnocentrism, convention, and conservatism."
Herbert Marcuse, who stayed behind in America after WWII, favored "polymorphous perversion," which Freud theorized that humans are born with unfocused sexual libidinal drives, deriving sexual pleasure from any part of the body. The objects and modes of sexual satisfaction are multifarious, directed at every object that might provide pleasure. This theory was radically interjected into the 60's sexual revolution with staggering effects that are still with us today. All forms ox sexual deviancy, tattooing, piercing, branding, etc.
Consequently, additional intellectual firepower was added to cement cultural Marxism's base: 'authoritarian personality.' This concept is premised on the notion that Christianity, capitalism, and the traditional family create a character prone to racism and fascism.
Thus, anyone who upholds America's traditional moral values and institutions is both racist and fascist. Children raised by traditional values parents, we are told to believe, will almost certainly become racists and fascists. By extension, if fascism and racism are endemic to America's traditional culture, then everyone raised in the traditions of God, family, patriotism, gun ownership, or free markets is in need of psychological help.
To poison American society further, the Frankfort School said history was determined by which groups, defined as men, women, races, religions, etc., had power or "dominance" over other groups.
Certain groups, especially white males, are labeled "oppressors," while other groups are defined as "victims." Victims are automatically good, oppressors always bad, just by what group they came from, regardless of individual behavior.
They incorporated into their cultural Marxism what Nietzsche called the "transvaluation of all values:" all the old sins have become virtues, and all the old virtues become sins. Homosexuality is a fine and good thing, but anyone who thinks men and women should have different social roles is an evil "fascist." That is what political correctness now teaches children in public schools all across America. (The Frankfurt School wrote about American public education. It said it did not matter if school children learned any skills or any facts. All that mattered was that they graduate from the schools with the right "attitudes" on certain questions.)
Herbert Marcuse became a "guru," of sorts, during the student rebellion in the 60's, and unfortunately, it provided him with an historic opportunity by injecting the Frankfort School's cultural Marxism into the baby-boom generation.
Of course, we did not understand what it really was. As was true from the Institute's beginning, Marcuse and the few other people "in the know" did not advertise that political correctness and multi-culturalism were a form of Marxism.
The effect was devastating: a whole generation of Americans, especially the university-educated elite, absorbed cultural Marxism, made it their own, and accepted a poisonous ideology that sought to destroy America's traditional culture and Christian faith. That generation, which runs every elite institution in America, now wages a ceaseless war on all traditional beliefs and institutions. They have largely won that war. Most of America's traditional culture lies in ruins.
Cultural Marxism, under the disguise of multiculturalism, is the primary reason why Americans equate truth with racism or hate. It is a ridiculous, poisonous, destructive ideology that we must eradicate, forever, in this country. However, a full frontal assault on the various institutions and organizations that defend it would end in our defeat. They are prepared and heavily fortified, now with the full cooperation of the United States government and para-military police forces behind them.
We, are but a small voice, however, hope reigns supreme. We must divorce ourselves from the poison that has undermined our culture and stolen our freedom, our voices and our liberty; as Gramsci laid it out so long ago, to undertake a "long march through the institutions." Our counter-strategy would be a long march to create new institutions defined by America's traditional value system. Patience is the virture that will eventually liberate us from the tyranny of every Marxist philosophy that now pervades our nation.
In the meantime, the next time you are called a fascist or a racist for speaking truth; label your attacker as a "Marxist" and watch for the reaction. You might be surprised.
References:
The Origins of Political Correctness
Cultural Marxism
The Four Horsemen of the Frankfort School
Who Stole Our Culture?
Also watch William Lind's video "The History of Political Correctness" on Google
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