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If Christmas tree growers can’t manage to agree together on a marketing plan to promote sales, they shouldn’t be asking the Federal government to step in.
Yet, that’s what they did. Somehow, the Obama administration was going to enforce a 15 cent tax on real Christmas trees. Once news got out, however, they relented. Strange — isn’t Congress supposed to vote on levying taxes? Or is this not a tax but a ‘fee’? How do the two differ? It doesn’t take a lot to imagine someone saying, ‘Essentially, it’s a tax. But just call it a “fee”. The American public are too stupid to think that one through.’
ABC News and Weasel Zippers carried the news about the backtrack on the fee. The Heritage Foundation, however, provided information on how this came into being. Excerpts from ‘Obama’s Christmas Tree Tax’ follow (emphases mine):
Heritage Vice President David Addington broke the story Tuesday night on Foundry.org, writing that in the Federal Register of November 8, it was announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace.” Among its goals: “to enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States.” Yes, you read that correctly. The Obama Administration wanted the federal government to handle public relations for Christmas trees …
After the article was posted on Foundry.org, the story was picked up by the Drudge Report, more than a million people read it, and a firestorm erupted–including reaction from left-wing websites coming out in knee-jerk defense of the Obama Administration. One writer argued that the 15-cent fee is “far from a tax” while also trumpeting the positive benefits of the federal government “partnering” with industry for marketing and research.
What they didn’t mention, though, is that it’s a partnership that many in the Christmas tree industry simply don’t want. As reported in the Federal Register, the industry “tried three different times to conduct promotional programs based on voluntary contributions. Each time, after about three years, the revenue declined to a point where the programs were ineffective.” In other words, many Christmas tree sellers decided they no longer wanted to participate in the programs.
So what did the industry do? It sought a mandatory tax, imposed by the federal government, to force compliance among individual sellers who otherwise didn’t want to participate. And the Obama Administration was happy to oblige …
The good news is that this Christmas story has a happy ending, at least for now. Not 24 hours after Heritage posted its report, the Obama Administration decided to delay its Christmas tree tax while the Department of Agriculture reconsiders its order …
Thank you, Heritage Foundation.
What’s so annoying is that, yet again, a group of people thinks that a government solution will solve a problem. And never mind that others in that industry do not wish to participate. No, in a collective society — which the Left believes the US has — everyone must go along and everyone must pay. There will be no free choice.
Many on the Left say, ‘So what? It’s only 15 cents.’ But who will be administering this programme — collecting the fees from the tree sellers, doing the accounting, devising marketing plans, etc.? And how quickly does 15 cents become a dollar?
This ‘fee’ — tax — is a bad idea, compounded by the fact that it was approved unconstitutionally. For this Christmas, Americans buying fresh trees won’t have to pay it. We’ll wait and see what happens next year.
And how many more ‘fees’ are in the pipeline?
Many of us — not only in the United States but overseas — have found Herman Cain an admirable candidate for the 2012 presidential elections.
Strangely, and rather quickly, he has been implicated — probably falsely — in a sex scandal which could put paid to his ambitions to higher office.
Many independents, former Democrats and even small ‘l’ libertarians believe that he has been hard done by.
A regular commenter from 2008 on the No Quarter blog, Wisewoman (11/08/2011 06:14 PM) – herself an African American — tells us the raw truth about another black facing Obama (emphases in the original):
People,
I am a 66 yr old AA with some insight into some issues. Herman Cain is running for president because of the reasons he laid out. He truly cares about the country. He did not have sufficient funds to run a traditional campaign and has done well to get as far as he has.
…
The way the game is sometimes played is that the second place finisher gets on the ticket as vice president. THAT IS THE DEMOCRATS’ REAL NIGHTMARE THAT CAIN BEING ON THE TICKET IN SECOND PLACE WOULD FULLY UNITE THE REPUBLICANS, I.E., THE MODERATE WING (ROMNEY) AND THE TEA PARTY WING (CAIN) AS WELL AS SIPHON OFF SOME BLACK VOTES. That would probably have been an unbeatable combo. The initial charges from unnamed souces were not getting the job done sufficiently. THE DEMOCRATIC MACHINE HAD TO TAKE CAIN OUT COMPLETELY, THUS THE UGLY LATEST CHARGES. PEOPLE, WAKE UP AND SMELL THE ROSES!
…
Now that’s something you won’t read in the New York Times.
It’d be great seeing Cain on the GOP ticket.
‘What have you given us, Mr Franklin?’
‘A republic, madam — if you can keep it’. — Exchange between a Philadelphia resident and Benjamin Franklin
This is a matter which I had forgotten about since 2008. In fact, it is so obscure that many Americans will no doubt be unaware of it.
Have you heard of the National Popular Vote Compact (NPVC)? It is yet another Soros-backed notion gaining ground in the United States. It could well ‘reform’ America’s Electoral College — another of the country’s checks and balances — for the long term.
First, what is the Electoral College? It is a check on the popular vote for President. Technically, American voters do not directly elect a President. Although the President-elect generally appears on television screens worldwide the following day, the Electoral College gathers to vote early in December of the same year to actually elect the President.
This is to prevent what the Founding Fathers referred to as ‘intrigue’ and, as I was taught in history classes, a dictatorship.
Excerpts from Wikipedia follow (emphases in bold mine):
The constitutional theory behind the indirect election of both the President and Vice President of the United States is that while the Congress is popularly elected by the people,[30] the President and Vice President are elected to be executives of a federation of independent states.
In the Federalist No. 39, James Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. The Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the President would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.[31]
Additionally, in the Federalist No. 10, James Madison argued against “an interested and overbearing majority” and the “mischiefs of faction” in an electoral system. He defined a faction as “a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Republican government (i.e., federalism, as opposed to direct democracy), with its varied distribution of voter rights and powers, would countervail against factions. Madison further postulated in the Federalist No. 10 that the greater the population and expanse of the Republic, the more difficulty factions would face in organizing due to such issues as sectionalism.[32]
Presidential electors are selected on a state-by-state basis, as determined by the laws of each state. Generally (with Maine and Nebraska being the exceptions), each state appoints its electors on a winner-take-all basis, based on the statewide popular vote on Election Day. Although ballots list the names of the presidential candidates, voters within the 50 states and Washington, D.C. actually choose electors for their state when they vote for President and Vice President. These presidential electors in turn cast electoral votes for those two offices. Even though the aggregate national popular vote is calculated by state officials and media organizations, the national popular vote is not the basis for electing a President or Vice President. A candidate must receive an absolute majority of electoral votes (currently 270) to win the Presidency. If no candidate receives a majority in the election for President, or Vice President, that election is determined via a contingency procedure in the Twelfth Amendment …
Jacquerie at Gulag Bound explains the Soros-backed NPVC:
While the lamestream media holds public attention on GOP candidate rivalries, a “progressive” strategy is underway to eliminate the role of the states in electing a U.S. President. By transferring electoral votes to a “national popular vote” this “Compact” would usurp the role of the states as safeguarded by our Constitution. In doing so, it could also neutralize Obama’s critics — totally …
This “ultimate vote fraud” is intentionally complicated to keep it obscure until it’s too late to stop it …
There is still time to block the NPVC sufficient states passage – only if we act now! …
The NPVC is a bill now moving state-by-state to make the popular vote winner President by bypassing normal requirements to amend the Constitution. Its outcome would ensure the Presidency would be declared by giving all the required 270 Electoral Votes needed for a “winner” to the candidate who wins the largest number of popular votes nationally – no matter how small the win margin and no difference how many states voted to oppose him. Here’s how it works:
- Once enough states have passed the NPVC bill into law to reach the requisite 270 Electoral Votes (by totaling the EV’s of those states which pass this bill) the NPVC goes into immediate effect in the next – and all subsequent – Presidential elections. It doesn’t matter how strongly other states oppose this. We’d all have to go along, if even a minority of states pass it! • Currently, this bill has passed enough state houses to reach more than 160 EV’s – so they are well over half way to their goal right now.
- According to most up-to-date information this National Popular Vote Pact has already passed 1 of the 2 required chambers in more than 30 other states- without public attention.
- If their magic number of 270 EV totaling states is reached, it won’t matter how the rest of the states vote on this; nor whether other states never take up the bill; not even if other states vehemently object and oppose this action. It would be the Law of the Land!
This sneaky scheme to upend Constitutional rights and protections of all states and their residents in selecting the nation’s leader is underway as an explicit attempt to defeat the careful Constitutional amendment process with no public knowledge, no voter input, no public referendums and no input from states which object to this measure. All NPVC takes is a portion of current state houses to make it law for all of us – always!
Some reading this might say, ‘So, what’s the big deal? If I haven’t heard about it, it can’t be too important. Proponents of NPVC put it in such nice terms — it doesn’t sound as if it will make a big difference to my life. Who cares about an Electoral College, anyway?’
Emphases in bold and italic are Jacquerie’s, the others mine:
Here is what would happen with an NPVC that hands all the needed 270 Electoral Votes to the national popular vote winner: Those states with larger populations – especially those with heavily populated big cities will pick the President. Period. The politically savvy know that big city voters trend “Democratic” – and that controlling big city vote results (by buying votes, duplicating votes, “fixing” vote count machines on a large scale basis) – these are all “Democratic” party specialties!
Take Illinois as a case in point. No matter the notorious corruption in politics there. Year after year, all the suburban and rural vote populations together can’t get their voices heard to change who runs the state. Why not? Because the votes of the city of Chicago always outnumber the total combined votes in the entire rest of the state. Is that what we want to happen to the White House?
The state houses of Illinois, California, New York and New Jersey – with their large combined Electoral Votes – are among those that have already passed the NPVC into law. A list of states which have passed this treacherous law is given below. Do you think the voters in those states (of which you may be one) have an idea this has happened? Of course not – as with all Progressive take-over tactics, this one is being arranged as quietly and quickly as possible, before the actual voters there even find out!
So, if you’ve wondered why Obama isn’t more worried about his “re-election” – despite growing public dissatisfaction – now you know. Just pass the NPVC in a handful more states. Then, put the usual paid workers out in the precincts with lies and pockets full of bribes for votes; send out more union propaganda enflaming and threatening union members into support; continue using state paid staff to bring in the votes of the infirm and institutionalized; doctor up more absentee vote records; alter the vote totals of machines in key areas. And voila – Obama gets even the tiniest combined margin of the “popular” vote (by hook or crook) – and he stays in office!
If this NPVC vote scam gets enough states to go along, the rest of US are doomed to non-elect but appoint Obama again – by the magic 270 with claims that its all very constitutional! Akin to ObamaCare, if this National Popular Vote Compact is passed – no matter how wrong and corrupt – it would take massive funding and endless delays to drag through the courts in hopes of any reversal.
And, quite frankly, there wouldn’t be enough popular money to fight it.
You can read more from Jacquerie here, which details the prime movers in this ‘compact’, along with a list of states you can action.
I remember three years ago when Michelle Obama confidently predicted that her husband would need only ‘one term’ in office. I also recall in 2009 how comfortably and immediately they settled into the White House. Other Presidents and their families have approached it with a sense of awe and responsibility to the United States of America. After all, the White House and the President’s service as leader of the Free World belong to the nation.
Or do they?
In Chapter 12 of Bella Dodd’s School of Darkness, we find out more about Bella’s rise in the national Party structure, fellow travellers from prominent American families and the way Communism changes its colours to fit the times, whether in times of war or peace. With her divorce becoming finalised, Dodd has lost her husband as well as her parents (see Chapter 9).
Interestingly — think Obama with his proposed compulsory citizens service and, prior to that, the Clintons with Americorps — the Communist Youth in the United States wanted universal military training after the Second World War ended. Yet, then as now, the Communists were promoting peace through the United Nations Charter.
The next few chapters are available online, as is the rest of the book. Emphases below are mine.
Chapter Twelve
I HAD NOW BECOME an elder statesman of the Teachers Union. I retained my membership as an honorary member and at the direction of the Party I remained on the top communist committee …
The previous year my husband obtained a divorce down South. Shortly thereafter I heard he had remarried. These events and the death of my mother led me to immerse myself more completely than ever in my work for the Union and the Party. However, I missed a personal family life and I often talked of adopting children. But the comrades dissuaded me. They reminded me I could not overcome the legal handicaps of adoption for a woman living alone, and I knew, too, that irregular hours and my limited income would make it difficult. Instead, I continued to move in a world of men who were determined to create new types of human beings who would conform to the blueprint of the world they confidently expected to control. I lived only as part of an ideological group. I was accepted by them and I dealt with them in the direct but impersonal manner I had long cultivated.
In March 1943 I began to spend part of each day at Party headquarters at 35 East Twelfth Street. This building, which ran from Twelfth Street to Thirteenth Street, was owned by the Party …
Despite a campaign to clean up the building, it remained unbelievably drab. For a long time the Communists had resisted any attempt to beautify the place because that was regarded as bourgeois pretentiousness. The only pictures on the walls were those of Lenin, Marx, and Stalin. The only decorations were Red flags.
Under the impetus of [Earl] Browder’s attempt to make the Communist Party American, a cleanup job was begun.
The walls got new paint. New photographs of the American leadership appeared. I came on the scene just after the painting was completed — a ghastly cream with brown trim. Lenin and Stalin got equal space on the walls and the photographs of the members of the Politburo, each exactly identical in size and type of frames, were placed in identical positions, none lower, none higher than the other. They ranged high along the walls of the ninth floor. Looking at them, I had the feeling I was entering the abode of some strange secret cult, and I was both attracted and repelled …
As I began to prepare for the work I was assigned to do I was amazed at the lack of files of material on social questions such as housing and welfare. When I complained about this, Gil said: “Bella, we are a revolutionary party, not a reform group. We aren’t trying to patch up this bourgeois structure.”
I began to realize why the Party had no long-range program for welfare, hospitals, schools, or child care. They plagiarized programs from the various civil-service unions. Such reforms, if they fitted in, could be adapted to the taste of the moment. But reforms were anathema to communist long-range strategy, which stood instead for revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat.
The Party wanted me to retain my contacts with the noncommunist world, which had been so easy while I represented the Teachers Union, but which I knew would be difficult as an avowed Communist. Gil was delighted when I discussed the possibility of establishing a law office midtown which I could use to meet non-Party friends of the Party who would not go to the Party headquarters for fear of police surveillance. I set up business with two young lawyers who wanted to practice in the labor field. They thought that my growing power in left-wing politics would aid them.
… I found suitable offices at 25 West Forty-third Street. We established the firm and got off to a good start. But I found little time for the practice of law. My office became a place where I met Party and non-Party persons engaged in common enterprises.
Earl Browder was then preparing for the Party convention of 1944. At this convention I was to make the public announcement of my Party affiliation …
That spring of 1943 was memorable for the new friends I met. I had moved to an apartment on Seventh Avenue near Fourteenth Street. The rent was small for it was over a restaurant. Nevertheless it was a pleasant flat which could easily be shared for it had two rooms in front and two in back and a kitchen and bath in between.
Before long I had a roommate … I met Nancy Reed, who had recently been fired, with much publicity, from a New York State Labor Department job because of exposure of her communist activity, by Godfrey P. Schmidt, then Deputy Industrial Commissioner. The press carried, as a result of the investigations of Stephen Birmingham, lurid stories of how she had buried Communist Party records in the sand at her mother’s summer home on Cape Cod. She was out of a job. I offered to share my apartment, and then persuaded the Teachers Union to set up an employment bureau and to make her its director.
Nancy came from a good Boston family. I knew her mother, Ferdinanda Reed, who was one of the three old ladies who technically owned the Daily Worker, the other two being Anita Whitney and my former tenant in the Village, Susan Woodruff. Ferdinanda had come to communism intellectually and remained because, like Susan, she never saw its ruthless side. Her two daughters had followed her into the Party and Nancy’s sister Mary, a writer of some note, had left her American husband and taken their infant son and gone to Russia to live. Nancy had visited her there.
Nancy had many friends among the working people for whom she had helped find jobs when she worked for the State Employment Bureau …
Before I knew it my home became a center for National Maritime Union leaders and seamen of every rank …
One evening John Rogan of the National Maritime Union brought a tall, slender, red-haired seaman in khaki shirt and trousers who had been a friend of Paddy Whalen. “Red,” as his friends called him, proved a fine addition to the party for he talked well and had many stories to tell. He came from Minnesota …
We talked late into the night and I learned that he had left his Church and become an IWW and had worked with the Communist Party at times. I told him proudly of my recent decision to become an open worker in the Party. Dubiously, he asked, “Are you sure that is what you want?” and as I looked surprised, he continued:
“You see, I don’t think they have the answer. I simply can’t make myself believe that we are only clods of earth and that when we die, we die and that’s all. I’ve seen bad conditions in lots of places, on ships, in jails, and in foreign ports in China and India and Africa and South America. I’ve fought against these conditions. There’s no doubt that out of it all revolution may come -the way the Communists want it to — but what will come after that? What will this crowd do when they’ve got their revolution? I hate to think about it. But I’m pretty sure they haven’t got the answer.”
I was startled to hear this sort of talk from a man who had stubbornly worked and fought for labor, often with a reckless disregard for the safety of his life. He was not a “class enemy.” As he talked, I sensed the uneasy feeling that sometimes came over me, even though I tried to ignore it. It was as if this man’s words were the echo of my own unformulated fears.
But they did not alter my decision to be formally inducted into the Party leadership. For years I had functioned with the Party without a Party card or other formal indication of allegiance. Now Gil Green gave me my first Party card, and when he asked to which branch I wanted to be assigned I named the section in East Harlem. To become effective in that area I now moved to a house on upper Lexington Avenue, a neighborhood that had once been Irish and where there still remained a scattering of Irish and Italian families, but where there were an increasing number of Puerto Rican, West Indian, and Negro families. I called our block the street of all nations …
I had moved into this particular neighborhood because, as a Party functionary, I wanted to work in this community and I wished to study its special problems. I was assigned to the Garibaldi Branch of the Party located on 116th Street, a Party club which concentrated on recruiting Italians. The club was ineffective and drab, due in part to the fact that Italians in America were loath to join the Communist Party and in part also to Vito Marcantonio, who represented the American Labor Party and actively worked for the Communist Party. But he did not relish a strong local Communist Party in his district, perhaps because he thought it might get in his way when he made fast deals with the diverse forces.
His own center of political activity was a brownstone clubhouse on 116th Street near Second Avenue. There congregated a strange assortment of smooth, sophisticated communist boys and girls, going and coming in the game of political intrigue, members of local gangs, known racketeers, ambitious lawyers, and political opportunists looking for the crumbs of his political favor.
There were also people of the neighborhood who needed a friend. Marc listened to their stories, assigned lieutenants to their cases, or called on communist-led unions for help. He wrote his people many letters from Washington on his letterhead as Representative …
The Garibaldi branch of the Communist Party was a block from his club. This branch of fifty or sixty members consisted chiefly of Italians, Jews, Negroes, and Finns. Some of the Italians were old-time anarchists. Yet they felt at home with the Communists if only because of their atheism and belief in violence. I found plenty of work to do in East Harlem, but 1 soon learned that the Labor Party and its activees, the Communists, were concerned mainly about getting out the vote. Certainly they were not concerned about the welfare of the people. This was a new type of political machine, attracting not only the voters but the actual precinct workers by vague promises of future social betterment.
By January 1944 I was firmly established at Party headquarters on Twelfth Street. There I organized the legislative program of the Party; but, more important still, I supervised the legislative work of the unions, chiefly the unions of government workers on a state, local, and national level, of the mass organizations of women, and of the youth organizations.
All over the building there was a noticeable feeling of excitement and optimism. Browder’s book, Victory and After, placed communist participation in the mainstream of American life, and there was among us less and less left-wing talk and activity …
The convention that year was held at Riverside Plaza, a hotel on West Seventy-second Street. It was well attended. Besides the delegates, many trade-union leaders and men of national reputation were there. The Communist International had been, at Roosevelt’s insistence, technically dissolved the previous year, but several of its members were in New York and came to our convention …
At this convention Earl Browder’s speech calling for the dissolution of the Communist Party was … the most surprising event. Some old-time functionaries could not understand it. Some pretended to see in it an attempt to cancel out the teachings of Lenin.
But the Party machine worked with planned precision. The American Communist Party dissolved itself and then by another resolution the delegates re-established it under the name of the Communist Political Association, with the same leaders, same organization, same friends.
I was elected as a member of the National Committee of this Communist Political Association, which brought me into its top leadership. I was now supposedly a part of the inner circle.
The new change of name puzzled many both in and out of the Party. I had listened closely during the convention and it was not at all clear to me. I knew, of course, that one immediate reason was to lay the basis for leadership of the Communists for the re-election of Roosevelt, since Earl Browder was the first to call publicly for his re-election to a fourth term. I also knew that the new name had a less ominous sound to American ears. Even so, it had been a drastic thing to do.
By those who thought they knew the reason it was explained to me thus: the current line in world communism was now based on the Roosevelt pledge to the Soviet Union of mutual co-existence and continued postwar Soviet-American unity. If that pledge were kept and if the march to world communist control could be achieved by a diplomatic unity arising out of official Soviet-American relations, then there would be no need of a militant class-struggle party. In that case the Communist Political Association would become a sort of Fabian Society, doing research and engaging in promoting social, economic, and political ideas to direct America’s development into a full-fledged socialist nation.
The convention over, we turned to the most important item — on the Party’s agenda, the re-election of President Roosevelt for a fourth term …
Some of us knew, however, that though Browder was Americanizing the appearance of the organization he was having difficulties, because of numerous professional revolutionaries who could not change their speech, manner, and way of thinking so swiftly.
My duties were various. I continued to exercise control over the communist teachers. Before I had left the Union I had been able to lay the basis for affiliation of the Teachers Union with the NEA. In June 1944 I was assigned to speak at a meeting of more than five hundred communist teachers and their friends at the Jefferson School [a Marxist training school for adults] on the new communist perspectives as applied to education. I held out the prospect of a new approach to education soon to be disclosed by American leaders who controlled the purse strings of the nation. I urged the communist teachers to exercise their influence for unity on all teachers’ and citizens’ groups.
I pointed out that the NAM had established a tie with the NEA and had pledged itself to help build education and to support a nationwide school-building program; that this would grow into a program of continued co-operation on all educational subjects. To those who questioned this perspective I said that the progressive businessmen were playing a revolutionary role. I repeated the explanations given by Gil and other leaders of the new National Board …
In New York the CIO Political Action Committee was staffed with many sophisticated Communists with years of experience in the nation’s capital. The Independent Committee of Artists, Scientists and Professionals, under the chairmanship of Jo Davidson, the sculptor, was under strong Party direction.
These election committees, made up of Communists and non-Communists, were under communist control. If the chairman of the committee was a non-Communist, its executive secretary was inevitably under communist domination ...
In that campaign the Communists were everywhere. We did not trust the district leaders of the Democratic Party to deliver the votes, so we sent bright young left-wingers into the Democratic clubhouses to jog the old fellows into action, and it was amusing to see them in that rough-and tumble atmosphere.
To gather in the votes which the Labor Party could not win and which the Democratic organizations might fail to reach, we set up a National Citizens Political Action Committee. This loose organization held local rallies and collected funds. Its executive committee had many glittering names. The real work was done by the same dedicated little people, the ones who were looking for no personal reward save the right of participation in the building of a new world.
It was fascinating to see how easily the Party personnel acclimated itself to its new role of pulling all forces together. They rubbed elbows with district leaders, with underworld characters, and with old-line political bosses whom they really regarded as caretakers of a disintegrating political apparatus.
While I was in active work I was reasonably happy, but when the campaign was over and Roosevelt re-elected, I found myself depressed. One reason was a peculiar struggle for power which I saw emerging. During the election I had seen effective work done by Communists who were concealed members. Disputes began to develop between open communist functionaries and these concealed Communists who were safely ensconced in well-paid jobs in powerful organizations. These disputes were resolved by Browder himself, if necessary, and always in favor of the concealed members. I felt a growing competition between these groups, and I wanted to run away from it …
I spoke in Cleveland, Toledo, Gary, and Chicago. I came back feeling no happier than when I left. Nor did my next task make me feel any better. I worked for a while with the Communist Youth who were just starting a campaign in favor of universal military training. This campaign troubled me for it did not seem to fit in with the … perspective for a long-term peace, nor with the happy optimism that was promoted when the Nazi armies were broken and peace seemed near.
The campaign for universal military training, the nostrike postwar pledge which the Communists were ballyhooing, and the labor-management charter were all straws in the wind and pointed to one thing: ultimate state control of the people.
When the Yalta conference had ended, the Communists prepared to support the United Nations Charter which was to be adopted at the San Francisco conference to be held in May and June, 1945. For this I organized a corps of speakers and we took to the street corners and held open-air meetings in the millinery and clothing sections of New York where thousands of people congregate at the lunch hour. We spoke of the need for world unity and in support of the Yalta decisions. Yet at the same time the youth division of the Communists was circulating petitions for universal military training.
The two seemed contradictory. But Communists do not cross wires in careless fashion. The truth was that the two campaigns were geared to different purposes: the need to control the people in the postwar period, and the need to build a world-wide machine to preserve peace. Since the communist leaders were evidently not envisioning a peace mechanism without armies, the obvious question then was: for whom and to what end were the Communists urging the building of a permanent army? Did they not trust their own peace propaganda?
Tomorrow: Chapter Thirteen
Over the weekend Telegraph columnist Nile Gardiner had two interesting posts on Barack Obama’s chances for re-election.
‘Why Barack Obama may be heading for electoral disaster in 2012′ and ‘After 29 months … the American superpower is heading for the economic abyss’ made interesting reading over morning coffee. Debate in the comments was lively and no less impassioned than it was three years ago.
We are familiar with the saying that we get the leaders we deserve. A moral people will vote in moral candidates. That said, no one is perfect, but some politicians are better than others.
It says something about the West that many of us have preferred left-of-centre policies and/or candidates. Then we moan about money and morals going down the drain. I theorise this is because we have given too many people a pass for things we should have criticised instead. Even growing up, I remember not only friends but adults saying of certain people guilty of transgressions (regardless of age): ‘He didn’t mean it’. Well, once we get started on the road to moral equivocation and making excuses for other people, that’s it. And it’s been that way as long as I’ve been alive.
We deplore the state of our churches and our clergy, the rise in cheats at university level, the exponential increases in children born out of wedlock, the number of people on benefits or newcomers who — no matter how accommodating we are — always want more awareness programmes or government money.
And now Americans have a chance to put that right next year. But it won’t come without a lot of soul-searching and a return to a moral life. When things are wrong, we must say so and not make excuses for the wrongdoer. We must also ensure, though, that we hold fast to that which is good and exemplify truth and honesty in what we say and do.
How did the West get where it is today? By accepting dubious morals and duplicitous excuses of all kinds. These have occurred in our own homes, our houses of worship, our governments and society in general. I’m not saying we should be inflexible, but we do need to be more discerning in sorting out right from wrong.
Some people are very good at deception and swaying popular opinion. They bank (sometimes literally!) on their ability to deceive us. A closer examination on our part will help to expose such people.
Back to the original topic. Watch for astroturfing on American political fora over the next 15 months. Obama’s political contributors — knowingly or otherwise — heavily financed these efforts in social media in 2008. Some of these kids — generally university students — were better than others. Nonetheless, they completely swamped comments on various sites and drowned out individuals who preferred John McCain. The astroturfers never debated the issues or brought up facts but resorted to name-calling, e.g. ‘stupid’, ‘moronic’, ‘deluded’ — those were just the milder terms used. Getting pounded like that is bound to drive the opposition away, and — as many of us will recall — these underhanded Alinsky tactics succeeded. Once again, only Hillary Clinton’s supporters — because they were from the somewhat-defecting left-wing side of the spectrum — could see through them and try to explain to Republicans what was happening.
Forewarned is forearmed. That said, Republicans also need to get credible candidates for the primaries, none of whom I see on the horizon yet.
For those of us living outside the US, Obamacare has gone a bit quiet. Most MSM followers still believe it is a wonderful plan to bring affordable healthcare to all Americans. The reality is somewhat different. In fact, Obamacare is so ‘good’ that people want to opt out of it. (In case you don’t know – those who signed it into law are already exempt. Obamacare is, like taxes, just for ‘little people’, to borrow a phrase from the late Leona Helmsley.)
The Washington Times featured an article at the weekend by Dr Milton R Wolf, ‘Loudest Obamacare cheerleader wants out’ (emphases mine throughout):
Becoming the most hypocritical politician in America is not an easy goal to achieve, but New York’s Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat, is up to the task.
Earlier this year, the Obama administration began rewarding its union friends and others with an escape from the clutches of Obamacare. Now one of the most outspoken Obamacare supporters – the man who actually said, “I wrote the bill … the bill and I are one” wants his own “get out of jail free” card from this abominable law.
It is only now that the bill has been written into law that legislators are realising what the Tea Party said is — incredibly — true:
Obamacare is already leaving a trail of destruction. Despite promises to the contrary, Mr. Obama’s own Medicare chief actuary estimates that up to 20 million Americans may lose their current health insurance. Despite promises to the contrary, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates Obamacare will destroy 800,000 jobs. Despite promises to the contrary, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently admitted cooking the books by double-counting $500 billion toward both Medicare savings and Obamacare implementation funds and admitted that a major program within Obamacare, the CLASS Act, is – in her words – “totally unsustainable.” As a direct result of this government takeover, many insurance companies already have been forced to raise their premiums or drop out of the Medicare Advantage program, while others no longer offer policies for children, and still others have simply closed their doors.
Never mind. The Economist, the New York Times, the BBC and other media institutions continue to conveniently overlook the problems which really will come to plague the American people as a result of this misguided law.
Yet, some — not just elected legislators — will be able to opt out of Obamacare. The Washington Times tells us:
HHS acknowledges issuing 1,040 “get out of jail free” cards to unions and other friends. Five states have been graced with their very own Obamacare waivers, including Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee and, newest pampered friend, Maine. Why Maine? According to the administration, Obamacare “has a reasonable likelihood of destabilizing the Maine individual health insurance market.”
So, if you are a union member or live in one of those five states, count yourselves fortunate. For the rest of the country? Let them eat cake.
Dr Wolf gives us an insight as to who else bent the rules:
Sweetheart deals for friends is nothing new when it comes to Obamacare. Just ask Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson or Louisiana Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, both Democrats, who struck their respective Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Purchase backroom deals. Or ask AARP. The interest organization for persons age 50 and older endorsed Obamacare – despite $500 billion in Medicare cuts – and was rewarded with a tax exemption on its highly lucrative Medigap policies. Or ask the American Medical Association. The AMA may represent just 17 percent of American doctors, but it endorsed Obamacare despite the fact that the majority of doctors oppose it, and the AMA will keep the government as a customer in its lucrative ICD-9 diagnosis-coding business.
Wow — nice influence if you have it!
And what about Mr Weiner? You’ll love his reasoning for proposing that New York City opts out:
He thinks escaping Obamacare would mean that New York City “can save money and have more control over its own destiny.” Regular Americans need not apply.
Whoa!
Not only does this favouritism increase the already-burning resentment among decent, hard-working taxpayers but it also demonstrates a two-tier American society. If you don’t have the connections, you’re out. But if you’ve got an in somewhere, you can reap the rewards.
But that’s only half the story. Dr Wolf adds:
This sickening display shows that, at best, this administration is admitting that Obamacare is unraveling, in part, because its one-size-fits-all, big-government plan simply cannot accommodate all the unique needs of 310 million patients. At worst, its pay-for-play, politics-as-usual scheme is enriching administration cronies on the backs of everyone else. As Mr. Weiner said, “A lot of people who got waivers were … people who are our friends.”
Wow — that’s an incredible admission to make.
Dr Wolf, a board-certified diagnostic radiologist, concludes:
Every power we have ever granted to the government has always been at the expense of personal liberty, but when we grant government the unholy power to choose arbitrarily who among us will be winners and who will be losers, we grant it the power to make losers of us all.
Americans deserve a level playing field. If one American deserves an exemption from a bad law, all Americans do. Repeal Obamacare.
This will be a story to watch in the months ahead.
My subscription to The Economist expires relatively soon. After the better part of 25 years, I look forward to not renewing it.
Last week’s issue (December 4, 2010) featuring a cover story on the euro, ‘Don’t do it’, operated on the marketer’s favourite, FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).
Their leader (top editorial, p. 13) pretty much said the euro was too big to fail. As Obama’s advisers and fellow Democrats in Congress said about banks, the health care fiasco and more: ‘It’s too big to fail’. The prescription is always to pump more money into it.
And that is precisely what our young Oxbridge globalists in 25 St James Street are telling us:
… Lastly, if the euro is to survive, creditor countries need to give more aid to deficit countries … [Germany's] unwillingness to subsidise the weak and profligate is understandable; but the alternative is worse.
Breaking up the euro is not unthinkable, just very costly …
You’ve go to spend money in order to save it, in other words. So absurd and nonsensical, particularly from some of the nation’s best and brightest minds working on (what used to be) an august publication, around since Victorian times. These are the types of things someone who hasn’t had much practical experience in the world says. Twenty years ago, I would have read that leader and nodded my head in agreement.
They must have graduate degrees from the London School of Economics, the Fabian temple of monetary theory.
Although I wouldn’t have said this even a couple of years ago, it is becoming clear that the euro is akin to the Tower of Babel.
Happily, you get people writing in to criticise (p. 22). Mario Zapata of Wilton, Connecticut, asks:
What difference will raising the retirement age make? With unemployment at 9.6% … do you really believe it is better to keep someone in their 60s in a job? For three more years, and to produce what?
Back to our lofty journos. On page 41, the newspaper (never a ‘magazine’) examines Britain’s ferocious cold snap. The Economist, a big supporter of the Church of Gaia, opines:
It might also add to Britain’s scepticism about climate change …
It shouldn’t … It was warm elsewhere, peculiarly so in Canada and Greenland.
Then, they venture into Christianity. They really shouldn’t. They aren’t believers. I had to laugh when I saw their recently-published little table of Anglican beliefs reproduced around the blogosphere. Anglican men, old enough to know better, seized on making a blog post out of these categorical errors, e.g. Evangelical Anglicans are homophobic, but offering no comment. Therefore, we can only assume that these bloggers must have thought, ‘Hey, this was in The Economist. It must be true!’ Wrong, so wrong.
On page 56, our newspaper wonders who will lead America’s Evangelicals and hope it is not Glenn Beck. For a start, Glenn Beck is a Mormon and most of Christendom knows that. However, it seems a minor point to The Economist. They would probably say, ‘Well, that’s close enough to Evangelical, isn’t it?’ Uh, no.
The newish Lexington (the columnist who opines on America) is a globalist leftist, as evidenced by his inaugural essay a couple of months back. He riducules Americans who love and honour their Constitution, which many of us around the world believe is still the best in the world, more than two centuries on. Here’s what Lexington had to say a few months ago in ‘The perils of Constitution worship’ (emphases mine):
At almost any tea-party meeting you can expect to see some patriot brandishing a copy of the hallowed texts and calling, with trembling voice, for a prodigal America to redeem itself by returning to its “founding principles” …
The constitution, on its own, does not provide the solution. Indeed, there is something infantile in the belief of the constitution-worshippers that the complex political arguments of today can be settled by simple fidelity to a document written in the 18th century. Michael Klarman of the Harvard Law School has a label for this urge to seek revealed truth in the sacred texts. He calls it “constitutional idolatry” …
None of this is to say that the modern state is not bloated or over-mighty. There is assuredly a case to be made for reducing its size and ambitions and giving greater responsibilities to individuals. But this is a case that needs to be made and remade from first principles in every political generation, not just by consulting a text put on paper in a bygone age.
Whoa! That document was intended to establish and maintain a republic. It was written to endure. Also, I sincerely doubt that Lexington truly means ‘giving greater responsibilities to individuals’ — only to certain special interest groups (he cites an example in the article).
Not surprisingly, in the December 4 issue, he has a go at Sarah Palin, a favourite target of The Economist, in contrast to the man who graced their cover several times during 2008 and 2009: Barack Obama. It’s not even worth quoting from this article, which is a rehash of most of what you’ve read about Palin over the past two years.
On the recent elections in the politically troubled Côte d’Ivoire (p. 65):
The pity is that Côte d’Ivoire could recover quickly if only its politics were sorted out.
No, really? Who knew?
Nowadays, The Economist rarely offers new insight. It more or less parrots a postmodern communitarian view of the world, promoting one-world economics, government and social engineering. Whilst it can be useful for news on countries one would not normally read about, it is a one-way street, a cul-de-sac, a dead-end. It’s hardly centrist, nor is it challenging. Just infuriating.
I’ll feature another post on this in future — what The Economist used to be like. And is no more.
Before reading this entry, it might be helpful to read the other posts in the diaprax series first.
Diaprax is all about changing the way we think, not just as a one-off event but as a constant evolution in the way we view the world.
Part of diaprax is a larger public context revolves around subtle, covert ways of changing our thinking. In his online book, The Dialectic and Praxis: Diaprax and the End of the Ages, author and analyst Dean Gotcher says that crises and the media spin play an essential role in this process:
First, there is the disaster—the cause for action, the catalyst on which to develop synthesis, the common social issue on which everyone can focus. Then there are the helpless — the cause for empathy, the catalyst to draw everyone into and through antithesis, the feelings of compassion for those who are unable to help themselves by those who were more fortunate. And finally, there is the divided community in contact with itself—the cause for change, the catalyst from which to experience compromise, the need to be “rational” and put aside, at least temporarily, their differing “divisive” thesis, out of concern for the less fortunate.
Think of terrorism, natural disasters and everything going back at least to the oil crisis of the 1970s. Each of these events produces a change either in business, globalisation or received wisdom in the popular sphere.
The following video examines the language of urgency and crisis that President Obama uses in two speeches, including the one he made in Berlin in 2008:
The media are complicit in helping us effect this change. Gotcher observes (emphases mine):
It is not easy to get citizens to focus collectively on a particular issue without having a disaster or without directly telling them to. Yet, accoridng to praxis, no one citizen in the community can tell the other citizens what social issue or potential disaster they must focus on or attend to. Everyone, including yourself, must attend to and reason through a common social issue or dilemma because of the interest collectively generated from within the community or group. This, according to diaprax, will require the aid of a facilitator (covert influence) and not an order or command given by some higher authority (overt influence). The media [have] taken an active role in doing this today…
The three different ways of thinking when solving differences, according to diaprax, are traditional, transitional, and transformational, or thinking with facts, thinking with feelings, and thinking with reasoning skills.
In the traditional way of thinking, reality is based upon external evidence or facts with knowledge being the accumulation of these facts (quantity) as well as respect for and obedience toward them. In the transitional way of thinking, feelings determine reality. And in the transformational way of thinking, only what can be reasoned is real. Simply put, traditional thinking sees reality out there somewhere as facts, established for all times and places; transitional thinking sees reality in the heart, where facts can be overlooked in the pursuit of pleasure and where problems can be solved by simply going somewhere else that feels better; and transformational thinking sees reality in the mind, where facts and feelings are subject to harmonious change through higher-order thinking skills.
He suggests that we think of it as thesis being fact, antithesis being feelings and synthesis as a global, humanistic approach to a situation, where facts become peripheral. Think about the way the media have handled major world events over the past 10 years. In discussing acts of terrorism, the tsunami and recent earthquakes, fact rarely enters into the discussion. It is all emotive, seat-of-the-pants stuff — especially the vox-pop segments. Watch this play out when disasters are discussed in the workplace. Within 24 hours or so, almost everyone is on the same wavelength and has the same reaction. Those who are not simply make an effort to avoid getting caught up in the conversation and risking public opprobrium.
The reason Christianity is so threatening to diaprax, writes Gotcher, is because:
It is not possible to serve God and diaprax at the same time. The one who tries it ends up serving diaprax, not God. This is why the Ten Commandments, prayer lead by an authority figure, and Bible reading were removed from the local schools across the nation. God was declared “dangerous” by the highest court of our land because He stood in the way of global, New Age tolerance. He had to be removed before “multicultural activities,” “self-esteem,” and “human-reasoning skills” could successfully be used to shape the minds of the next generation so they depend upon socio-psychologists as the high priest of the New Diaprax Age.
Unfortunately, in order to be man-pleasing, many churches are falling into line with diaprax. Mainstream Protestant churches, the church growth movement and the emerging church are all current examples of discarding Scripture and God’s saving grace for this type of warped, man-centred way of thinking.
Gotcher includes a quote from Martin Luther to illustrate his point (emphasis in the original):
Miserable Christians, whose words and faith still depend on the interpretations of men and who expect clarification from them! This is frivolous and ungodly. The Scriptures are common to all, and are clear enough in respect to what is necessary for salvation and are also obscure enough for inquiring minds . . . let us reject the word of man. — Luther’s Works, V.32, p. 217
Yet, the ‘change agents’ — socio-psychologists — have been working over the decades through theory, books, university courses, workshops and the media to define:
“facts as hypothesis.” Because to them all facts are changeable, they can conclude that “hypothesis equals fact.” Reasoning seeks for reconciliation between facts and feelings; trusting and obeying does not.
Gotcher writes that the ‘common cause’ — whatever it may be at the time — becomes a god replacing the one true God. Eventually, society replaces God:
This is called dialectic materialism (traditional Marxism) or historical materialism (transformational Marxism).
He cites three main examples in American life: outcome-based education (OBE), school-to-work (STW) and total quality management (TQM). I would qualify the last to mean in a church environment.
In any event, the result is that:
Socio-psychologists are removing our freedoms, our inalienable rights, so quickly and successfully it is often hard for me to believe we will ever be able to stop them. Few have caught on to the fact that the paradigm shift (a change in the way people think) really means the replacing of our democratic-republic form of government with socialism. And even if some have noticed the changes, it does not appear they care to understand the significance of that change or even care to get involved to stop it …
Today they come to us as our own spouse, our friends, our teachers, and our minister. Even our own children come home questioning the role of the traditional family in a “rapidly changing society.”
… Most of our problems are really due to our lack of knowledge of truths or our rebellion against them. Transformationalists, on the other hand, question all truths (relativity). When crossing a bridge, which method used to build it would make you feel most secure: absolutes, 2 + 2 always equals 4 or relativity, 2 + 2 might equal 4, maybe it equals 5 …
That is why moral decay (fallout) is multiplying all around us.
In a church context, diaprax leads to continuous questioning and reinterpretation of Scripture. We probably grew up with it. ‘Well, St Paul wrote for his time, didn’t he?’ ‘The Bible is so old as to be irrelevant.’ ‘Jesus never judged anyone.’ Yet, anyone who knows his Scripture can tell you that all of those statements are patently false.
And this is the nub of the matter. The transformational folks are hoping that few people today have actually read and studied the whole of the Bible. The teachers in our various denominational schools and many pastors in our churches tell us about it but don’t actually teach Scripture. ‘Don’t worry about reading the Bible — we’ll tell you what it says.’ Yes, their own faulty — if not heretical — interpretation.
In school, this extends to a variety of courses which our forebears took for granted and have since paled into insignificance. Whether it be History, English Lit, or even Woodworking (‘Shop’ in the US) and Domestic Science (‘Home Ec’), we’re left without a leg to stand on.
We don’t know our past. We can’t do for ourselves. We have fewer reference points — religious and historic — on which to base our lives.
And that’s exactly how our elite betters want it.
Tomorrow: the seemingly benign characteristics of diaprax
The Church of Gaia just ramped up tenfold with the controversial 10:10 campaign.
I had intended on ignoring the whole doggone thing until I read ‘The True Colors of Fascism’ by the Lutheran pastor, Father Hollywood (LCMS). (He explains the origin of his moniker on the blog, by the way.)
Reluctantly, I watched the video. Now I’m glad I did. He’s right — it’s not for children or those of a sensitive disposition. Contrary to what Richard (Love, Actually) Curtis says, there is nothing remotely funny about it. I hadn’t realised that the whole production was British. It does put us in a very poor light. Please don’t think that all British people are this way. It’s just the Fabian intelligentsia at work. And, yes, there is a vogue for schoolboys here to tie their ties very short. They think it makes them look ‘cool’. In reality, they only look like dorks.
However, first back to Father Hollywood, who correctly and succinctly points out (emphases mine throughout):
And when you’ve had enough of this godless fascism, a manifestation of what St. Augustine called “the lust for domination,” you might want to consider Christianity and its corollary philosophy that human beings are made in God’s image and are endowed by their Creator with freedom.
Sadly, not even our own governments understand the master-servant relationship. Fascism is alive and well. Is this how you want to live your life?
In the comments, he reflected further:
They obviously can’t compel people and blow them up – even if they wish they could.
But the state can. And that’s where life imitates art.
There is also an underlying message of conformity. Get on board because everyone else is – whether the premise is true or false, whether you agree or disagree, none of that matters. “No pressure” – really means “peer pressure.”
And the state has the power to enforce ideologies such as this. It has the means to confiscate and redistribute, to tax and destroy, to imprison and even to splatter the blood of nonconformists and make examples of those who disagree.
If the 20th century has taught us anything, it has confirmed George Washington’s dictum: “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
What he wrote reminded me of President Obama’s new assassination programme. Never would I have imagined such a thing taking place in the United States of America. Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald had the best summary and analysis. If you are unfamiliar with the story and its implications — in line with Father Hollywood’s observations — please take the time to read it in full. Here are a few excerpts:
At this point, I didn’t believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record. In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki’s father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims …
The same Post article quotes a DOJ spokesman as saying that Awlaki “should surrender to American authorities and return to the United States, where he will be held accountable for his actions.” But he’s not been charged with any crimes, let alone indicted for any. The President has been trying to kill him for the entire year without any of that due process. And now the President refuses even to account to an American court for those efforts to kill this American citizen on the ground that the President’s unilateral imposition of the death penalty is a “state secret.” …
UPDATE: As a reminder: Obama supporters who are dutifully insisting that the President not only has the right to order American citizens killed without due process, but to do so in total secrecy, on the ground that Awlaki is a Terrorist and Traitor, are embracing those accusations without having the slightest idea whether they’re actually true. All they know is that Obama has issued these accusations, which is good enough for them. That’s the authoritarian mind, by definition: if the Leader accuses a fellow citizen of something, then it’s true — no trial or any due process at all is needed and there is no need even for judicial review before the decreed sentence is meted out, even when the sentence is death.
For those reciting the “Awlaki-is-a-traitor” mantra, there’s also the apparently irrelevant matter that Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution (the document which these same Obama supporters pretended to care about during the Bush years) provides that “No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.”
As Americans say, I have no dog in this hunt. It’s the principle of the thing.
Meanwhile, the UK, in line with most EU countries, has transformed itself from the land of the village eccentric into one of conformists. People do watch each other’s behaviour. Admittedly, not everyone, but you do have to fall in line much more: dress relatively normally, look industrious at the weekend (very American) and adopt the socio-political outlook of your manager at work or local cleric. One must ‘fit’ and fit well. Anyone who has gone for a job interview has to be adjudged to ‘fit’ before being hired. This is called ‘cultural cloning’. Samir Shah, chairman of the Runnymede Trust, wrote about the phenomenon for The Spectator in 2009:
The real problem is what I call ‘cultural cloning’ — the human tendency to recruit in one’s own image. Recruitment, instead of being about picking the best people, becomes a process of finding people like the ones already there. The overwhelming need for a kind of cultural comfort blanket takes precedence over every other consideration — and rules out those whose backgrounds don’t quite fit. This is what a 21st-century Equalities Commission should have in its sights. Cultural cloning is, in my opinion, the main source of discrimination in Britain today.
Style, background, accent, dress sense and cultural (as opposed to ethnic) background and — most of all — your manner count just as much as your ethnicity in trying to land that job. This, of course, brings a whole set of problems that we need to overcome …
We’re not talking about an ‘old boys-club’, either. It is a postmodern, post-Second World War social phenomenon. The people in the 10:10 film — teacher, manager and sound technician — exemplify it perfectly. Awfully nice people on the surface: ‘no pressure’, unless you don’t conform. This is why many classically British individuals look askance at David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’. Will there be a gauleiter in every street? Who knows?
I remember a few years ago that the police service in one county in England announced that residents notifying them of suspected crime would receive a sum of money if the person was convicted. I mentioned it in passing at work. To my astonishment, one of the guys piped up, ‘I wish they’d do that in my county. The money I could make!’ I asked if he didn’t see a moral issue with it. ‘What ‘moral issue’? Who cares about morals? I need the money.’ And that sums up a sadly-increasing number of my fellow Britons today.
And should — heaven forbid — a majority of people ever assume an attitude of conformity, are short of cash and become card-carrying members of the Church of Gaia, we have had it as a society. You’ll find out more tomorrow.
Then again, something similar could happen anywhere. Have a look at the second video in Father Hollywood’s post: the State of Pennsylvania’s 30-second advert to catch tax cheats.
Think it couldn’t happen? Think again.
Tomorrow: More Church of Gaia and the British reaction to 10:10
Mid-term elections in the US are still a few months away, but it’s time to reflect back to 2008 as well as keep an eye on the future.
I found an article entitled ‘The Coup: A Position Paper’ by Robert L Kocher. I am unfamiliar with Mr Kocher’s work, but found it whilst reading posts on Karl Denninger’s MarketTicker Forum, specifically this thread, ‘The STORM Handbook’.
Kocher posits that it’s no accident that the United States has the administration it does. He says Marxists have been carefully honing the American psyche for the past 50 years. It’s not very long, and it’s well worth a read.
First, here’s a video from Chester, Pennsylvania, from October 2008. An interviewer asked a crowd of people at an Obama rally why they find him so fascinating. Not one person could articulate why, although it will become clearer once we get into some of Kocher’s insights:
Kocher says that Obama’s election to the presidency was clearly calculated, and not just by David Axelrod and his campaign team:
Two things occurred. 1) The Marxist/socialist coup strategists developed and supported a person with the capability of selling its intentions and position. 2) Previous to the election the strategists spent decades subverting the population into a sickened and weakened state so that there would be no serious opposition when the time to strike came. The coup represents an overthrowing of the constitution, an attack or overthrowing of the educational system, a weakening/overthrowing of our economic system, an overthrowing of our moral system, a subversion of religion, an overthrowing and a wearing down of our evaluative/rational processes.
So, this was no accident! But what about the Republicans? Kocher wrote:
McCain and many others were among those who were so weak and useless as to present no opposition. In displacing defense of the American people they effectively worked to effect the coup. You don’t need much of an army to defeat a people who don’t defend themselves. You don’t need much of army to overturn the government of a nation who’s leaders are disinclined or incapable of defending it.
Obama wasn’t particularly an overwhelming superman or even competent intellectually. He was successful because not one national figure of prominence would stand up and dispute him. Not one.
Don’t forget that McCain and his closest advisers firmly opposed saying anything that could be viewed as even potentially hostile to the future President.
‘Well, so what?’ you might say. Think back to the video above whilst you read the next bit of Kocher’s essay:
Years ago I studied with a Marxist psychologist whose forte was mathematical models of behavior. His position was that the way to impose an authoritarian Marxist state was to apply psychologically operant techniques and attitude change mechanics until you had people voting the way you wanted because in their distorted and manipulated condition of mind that is what they thought they wanted, even to their detriment. It has been my experience that Marxists have dedicated great emphasis on psychological operant techniques, on crowd manipulation, on cognitive dissonance management, on propaganda strategy and they haven’t missed a beat in successfully and diligently applying it in over 50 years. This goes back historically into Adorno et al and the Frankfurt School during the 1930s who established what became law within the psychological profession and up though the expansion by the Saul Alinskys and others during the ’60s. The cute part about it is that the people who are successfully processed then become agents to impose processing. The successful result of this has ultimately been hysterical militant crowds supporting Obama … He plays upon every conditioned nerve and reaction like a concert pianist.
Americans, he says, who helped make this happen:
expect to act in a stupid devil-may-care impulsive destrucive and irrational manner and view the foreseeable consequences of their behavior with indignation and wild anger as if it were an injustice forced upon them instead of their own self-centered degeneracy. From their subjective point of view they believe a self-righteous retaliation is justified, including a reign of terror by the more physically inclined and radical elements, for their victimization by reality.
He describes how it works:
Parenthetically, when designing a system of destructive manipulation to enslave a population the tactic is to promote generalized doubt and weakness in all things — in morality, in acquisition of competence in hard core skills, in diligence, in acuity of judgment. But nobody wants to be perceived weak or stupid, either by themselves or by others. As part of system design the tactic is to promote weakness while at same time inculcating psychological defenses and blocks against self perception of weakness and perception of it by others. It works with preexistent non-programmed conditions or propensities and hence is easily or willingly adopted. Hence soft effete products of affluent environments are pre-susceptible without great expenditure of effort and can become converted into an immediate core of manipulative system products. This is a good place to start and as the advantages of their background ascend them into power and prominence your mission is ascended accordingly.
Note that Kocher mentions ‘generalised doubt and weakness in all things’, morality, skills, education and judgment. They act like children and need a parent at all times. That parent is partly the conditioning and partly the government – including its useful idiots, like educators, so-called experts and community organisers, to name just a few.
People ‘programmed’ in such a way will exhibit certain behaviours which are fit for purpose:
This explains why Obama intends to institute mandatory public service. Youth are to be diverted from real life and programmed, brainwashed, as part of a mission to create engineered mentalities suitable for consolidating the coup and its mission. Many will become permanent fixtures and activists in that so-called public service for want of any other serious direction in their lives and deficiency of competence in other areas. They will have found a soft spot which they will defend and perpetuate forever.
Kocher concludes by mentioning Yuri Bezmenov, himself an expert at conditioning through propaganda in the former Soviet Union. As many of you will know, Bezmenov defected to the United States and subsequently exposed these techniques for what they were. As a result, he has been made a laughing stock — by today’s conditioned Americans!
Be careful before you go into the voting booth this November. Really try to catch up on the stories behind the candidates to see them for what they are. We’ll review the top stories here, but you may wish to check out other American-focused blogs.
In closing, don’t miss my earlier posts on Saul Alinsky, Yuri Bezmenov and the Frankfurt School.
