Tag Archives: Socialist

Obama Destroying our Constitution – But He’s a “Good Guy” ????

Posted by on September 4, 2012 6 comments
dictator-obama22-400x283

Some people insist Barack Obama is a good guy with a good heart. They say his only reason for seeking re-election is the good impulse to serve the best interests of the people and defend the defenseless. Do his words match his actions? Do his policies deliver the good outcomes he promised?

It cannot be denied Barack Obama cut Medicare to fund ObamaCare. It is clear his “reform” system deprives treatment for seniors deemed too old to justify the expense. He has done nothing to save Medicare or Social Security. It is clear his ideology makes second class citizens of seniors. If anybody is pushing Granny off a cliff, it’s Barack Obama.

This is a good guy? This is a good hearted man defending the defenseless?

His tax and spend and steal-from-one-to-give-to-another ideology is destroying the middle class and the hopes of college graduates. Half of them can’t find work. Obamanomics has successfully created crushing and rapidly growing debt that kills any chance of prosperity for our kids and grandkids. Instead of listening to his advisors and his party leaders and changing course to help people, he plays golf, campaigns, takes expensive trips, and sends his wife on even more expensive trips.

This is a good guy? This is a guy that cares?

Worse still, his horrendous economic policies coupled with drastic cuts in defense put us all at risk, especially our military volunteers.

Barack Obama encourages our enemies, insults and humiliates our allies, and then expects us to cheer him when he shows up to reassure us a vote for him is a vote for security.

His policy in Afghanistan—-disarming our soldiers when training Afghan personnel—resulted in at least 100 of our men being murdered by those very trainees. Many more have been wounded. Telegraphing our surrender by naming a pullout date encouraged Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists to escalate, resulting in even more American deaths. Afghanistan, where there was once the promise of freedom, has become little more than a killing ground spiraling downward into chaos.

This is a good commander making wise decisions in theater?

Barack Obama is actively engaged in prosecuting a Navy Seal for writing a book, actively engaged in trying to prevent our military from voting, actively engaged in trying to reduce military health benefits, and actively engaged in leaking classified intelligence to make himself look good during the campaign, even if it means putting our people in serious, unnecessary danger.

Barack Obama takes credit for killing Osama bin Laden every chance he gets, even though he had nothing to do with it, first refusing to give the order, then passing off responsibility to an admiral so that if it went badly, he’d have someone to blame.

Time and again he has said, in word and deed, America should be ashamed of our leadership position in the world, we have dictated to others, and we should therefore take a back seat to the U.N. Time and again he has thrown Israel under the bus, bowed to thugs and dictators, and claimed love of country, all in the same breath. It would appear his crowning achievement is lying through his teeth then convincing people he is Honest Abe.

It’s obvious that Barack Obama is anti-military. He neglects our security because he is against America remaining a super power in the world. This too is part of his ideology.

And this is a good guy? These are good outcomes? This is defending the defenseless?

He talks about religious liberty, then works to destroy it by forcing people to pay for abortion and birth control whether they like it or not.

He talks about protecting and defending the Constitution (the oath he took with his fingers crossed behind his back) then subverts it at every turn. Examples of his complete disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution:

  • Engages war in Libya by circumventing Congress altogether
  • Uses the most corrupt, underhanded and devious means possible, ramming ObamaCare against the will of the majority
  • ”Reforms” welfare law by reducing the work requirements WITHOUT consulting or involving Congress
  • Covert use of drones in other lands, including our own, with no authorization, engaging indiscriminate killing
  • Uses the EPA to install Cap ‘n Trade when Congress would not
  • Directs DOJ to ignore the penalty phase after the conviction of Black Panthers intimidating voters in 2008
  • Refuses to defend standing law, his sworn duty as Chief Executive according to the Constitution
  • Promotes indefinite detention without filing charges
  • Sues states that have every right to secure their borders and manage voter eligibility
  • Uses stimulus money to reward political allies and operatives, engaging in blatant and corrupt cronyism
  • Threatens and intimidates the Supreme Court whenever he senses they might rule against him
  • Demands an oil company put up $20 billion in reparations without a court ruling or legislative action, even before anyone had a chance to determine responsibility for the Gulf Oil spill
  • Funds and conspires with public employee unions to command electoral outcomes against the will of the majority
  • Destroys our ally in Egypt allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to set up shop, destabilizing the entire region

This is a good man with good intentions? This is a man whose words and deeds line up? This is an honest, law-abiding individual who only wants to serve the public interest and defend the defenseless?

It has taken years for people to start looking beyond the bright smile and the glittering words. It has taken years for them to start evaluating the man by watching his actual behavior and seeing the terrible results of his policies.

The majority now understands he cares more about his ideology than he does about them, that he will say and do anything to hold on to power, only to glorify himself.

And this is the essential reason he will lose in November.

Our Pending Decision: Socialism or Americanism

Posted by on August 31, 2012 2 comments

After listening to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan at the Republican National Convention and reviewing the past three and half years of the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administration, the November election boils down to this: socialism or Americanism.

American was built upon the back of thousands of men and women who worked hard and long to build their own businesses. They all started small and the vast majority remained small. The backbone of the American economy is made up of the millions of small businesses across the nation that also supply jobs to millions of people.

Under the Obama administration, small businesses have been closing their doors at a record pace. Not only are the owners losing their livelihood, but so are millions of workers, other businesses and individuals that rely upon them. Like a human backbone, it cannot continue to support the body if it keeps weakening and losing pieces. When enough pieces of the backbone are removed, the body can no longer support itself and it collapses on the floor.

Socialism relies on the collapse of small businesses. The government assumes the role of provider in all areas and aspects of life. This is the path that the Obama administration is actively pursuing. This is socialism, not Americanism.

The Romney/Ryan ticket promises to help small businesses and entrepreneurship to help rebuild the economy, create jobs and strengthen America’s backbone. They’re not going to do it by borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to use on another stimulus package, but by sound and reasonable business practices that have worked for years. This is Americanism, not socialism.

The hallmark of the Obama/Biden administration is Obamacare. Obamacare is nothing more than socialized healthcare. The government assumes the role of health provider and they will make the decisions on what medical care you do and don’t get. The cost of Obamacare is far greater than you know. Not only is it going to cost every American family, rich, middle class and poverty level, thousands of dollars in hidden taxes over the next decade starting this coming January, but it will also cost lives. Americans will die for lack of proper care. Others will die because the care dictated to them by the government will not be the right care as in the case of Jacob Stieler. Obamacare is socialism, not Americanism.

The Romney/Ryan ticket promises to repeal Obamacare and return ownership of your health to you. They do plan to try to work on a new health plan, but one that will not tax American’s into poverty. In the process, they will restore the money that Obama took from Medicare and strengthen the program to help make it last. This is Americanism, not socialism.

Under the Obama/Biden administration, they have reduced the middle class and increased the number of families living at or below the poverty level. A socialistic society does not have a middle class. It has the upper governmental elite and then everyone else. This is socialism, not Americanism.

The Romney/Ryan ticket promises to boost the economy, increase jobs and thus help bring more Americans out of poverty and back into the middle class. The middle class helped make America strong and will help to strengthen it once again. This is Americanism, not socialism.

Under the Obama/Biden administration, government entitlements and dependency has increased at an alarming rate. The administration has made it harder for religious and other non-profit organizations to operate and provide charity. Instead, the government has been assuming the role of charity and provider. This is socialism, not Americanism.

The Romney/Ryan ticket has promised to help get many Americans back on their feet so that they can provide for themselves and their families and get rid of the government handout lists. They will continue to provide care for those that really need it, while at the same time forcing many to take responsibility for their own wellbeing. This is Americanism, not socialism.

The real choice come November is whether you want a socialistic government and country or the free America of our past? If you want America to become like the old Soviet Union and Cuba, then cast your vote for Obama/Biden as this is socialism. If you want to save America and restore it to its former greatness and free enterprise system, then vote for Romney/Ryan for this is Americanism.

Obama… Stupid is as Stupid Writes…

Posted by on March 8, 2012 No comments

On November 16, 1990, Barack Obama, then president of the Harvard Law Review, published a letter in the Harvard Law Record, an independent Harvard Law School newspaper, championing affirmative action.

Although a paragraph from this letter was excerpted in David Remnick’s biography of Obama, The Bridge, I had not seen the letter in its entirety before this week.  Not surprisingly, it confirms everything I know about Barack Obama, the writer and thinker.

Obama was prompted to write by an earlier letter from a Mr. Jim Chen that criticized Harvard Law Review’s affirmative action policies.  Specifically, Chen had argued that affirmative action stigmatized its presumed beneficiaries.

The response is classic Obama: patronizing, dishonest, syntactically muddled, and grammatically challenged.  In the very first sentence Obama leads with his signature failing, one on full display in his earlier published work: his inability to make subject and predicate agree.

“Since the merits of the Law Review’s selection policy has been the subject of commentary for the last three issues,” wrote Obama, “I’d like to take the time to clarify exactly how our selection process works.”

If Obama were as smart as a fifth-grader, he would know, of course, that “merits … have.” Were there such a thing as a literary Darwin Award, Obama could have won it on this on one sentence alone.  He had vindicated Chen in his first ten words.

Although the letter is fewer than a thousand words long, Obama repeats the subject-predicate error at least two more times.  In one sentence, he seemingly cannot make up his mind as to which verb option is correct so he tries both: “Approximately half of this first batch is chosen … the other half are selected … ”

Another distinctive Obama flaw is to allow a string of words to float in space.  Please note the unanchored phrase in italics at the end of this sentence:

“No editors on the Review will ever know whether any given editor was selected on the basis of grades, writing competition, or affirmative action, and no editors who were selected with affirmative action in mind.”

Huh?

The next lengthy sentence highlights a few superficial style flaws and a much deeper flaw in Obama’s political philosophy.

I would therefore agree with the suggestion that in the future, our concern in this area is most appropriately directed at any employer who would even insinuate that someone with Mr. Chen’s extraordinary record of academic success might be somehow unqualified for work in a corporate law firm, or that such success might be somehow undeserved.

Obama would finish his acclaimed memoir, Dreams from My Father, about four years later.  Prior to Dreams, and for the nine years following, everything Obama wrote was, like the above sentence, an uninspired assemblage of words with a nearly random application of commas and tenses.

Unaided, Obama tends to the awkward, passive, and verbose.  The phrase “our concern in this area is most appropriately directed at any employer” would more profitably read, “we should focus on the employer.” “Concern” is simply the wrong word.

Scarier than Obama’s style, however, is his thinking.  A neophyte race-hustler after his three years in Chicago, Obama is keen to browbeat those who would “even insinuate” that affirmative action rewards the undeserving, results in inappropriate job placements, or stigmatizes its presumed beneficiaries.

And then There is Michelle.  The phrase “Stupider and Stupider” seems apt if not ironic as its that very gamarically challenged type of phrase that eventually precipitated the loss of her law degree…. But at least she is now proud of her country.  (For WHAT?  electing an illerate president?)

In the case of Michelle Obama, affirmative action did all three.  The partners at Sidley Austin learned this the hard way.  In 1988, they hired her out of Harvard Law under the impression that the degree meant something.  It did not.  By 1991, Michelle was working in the public sector as an assistant to the mayor.  By 1993, she had given up her law license.

Had the partners investigated Michelle’s background, they would have foreseen the disaster to come. Sympathetic biographer Liza Mundy writes, “Michelle frequently deplores the modern reliance on test scores, describing herself as a person who did not test well.”

She did not write well, either.  Mundy charitably describes her senior thesis at Princeton as “dense and turgid.”  The less charitable Christopher Hitchens observes, “To describe [the thesis] as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be ‘read’ at all, in the strict sense of the verb.  This is because it wasn’t written in any known language.”

Michelle had to have been as anxious at Harvard Law as Bart Simpson was at Genius School.  Almost assuredly, the gap between her writing and that of her highly talented colleagues marked her as an affirmative action admission, and the profs finessed her through.

In a similar vein, Barack Obama was named an editor of the Harvard Law Review.  Although his description of the Law Review’s selection process defies easy comprehension, apparently, after the best candidates are chosen, there remains “a pool of qualified candidates whose grades or writing competition scores do not significantly differ.”  These sound like the kids at Lake Woebegone, all above average.  Out of this pool, Obama continues, “the Selection Committee may take race or physical handicap into account.”

To his credit, Obama concedes that he “may have benefited from the Law Review’s affirmative action policy.”  This did not strike him as unusual as he “undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my academic career.”

On the basis of his being elected president of Law Review — a popularity contest — Obama was awarded a six-figure contract to write a book.  To this point, he had not shown a hint of promise as a writer, but Simon & Schuster, like Sidley Austin, took the Harvard credential seriously.  It should not have.  For three years Obama floundered as badly as Michelle had at Sidley Austin.  Simon & Schuster finally pulled the contract.

Then Obama found his muse — right in the neighborhood, as it turns out!  And promptly, without further ado, the awkward, passive, ungrammatical Obama, a man who had not written one inspired sentence in his whole life, published what Time Magazine called “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.”

To question the nature of that production, I have learned, is to risk the abuse promised to Mr. Chen’s theoretical employer.  After all, who would challenge Obama’s obvious talent — or that of any affirmative action beneficiary — but those blinded by what Obama calls “deep-rooted ignorance and bias”? What else could it be?

Communism… a leftist ideology.

Posted by on October 29, 2011 No comments

Although it seems most unlikely that it will ever happen again, there were many occasions in the 20th century when the most extreme form of Leftism — Communism — did gain great power in certain countries. Does that experience tell us anything about Leftism?

This series started out with an endeavour fairly characteristic of modern Anglo-American analytical philosophy (Hospers, 1967): An endeavour to analyse and make coherent the way terms like “Leftist”, “Liberal”, “Socialist”, “Communist” etc are commonly used. Once an underlying focus for such terms had been “discovered”, the psychology underlying that focus could be considered. And what was “discovered” was that a love of change — particularly mandated change — defined Leftism in its various guises and varieties. The analysis was however principally of what Leftism/liberalism is in the economically advanced countries of the contemporary “Western” world — where Leftists have only ever had partial success in implementing their programmes. So what happens when Leftists get fully into power? Does the same analysis apply?

For a start, it should be obvious that the personality and goals of the Leftist do not change just because he gets into power. He is still the same person. And that this is true is certainly very clear in the case of Lenin — who is surely the example par excellence of a Leftist who very clearly did get into power. In his post-revolutionary philippic against his more idealistic revolutionary comrades, Lenin (1952) makes very clear that “absolute centralization and the strictest discipline of the proletariat” are still in his view essential features of the new regime. He speaks very much like the authoritarian dictator that he was but is nonetheless being perfectly consistent with the universal Leftist wish for strong government power and control over the population — as long as they are in charge. So Leftists in power certainly do not cause the State to “wither away” — as Marx foresaw in “The Communist Manifesto”.

Lenin’s conception of the function of the State shows why:

“Essentially the state is the power exercised over the masses by a group of armed men separated from the people.” From the April Theses

“The state is a special organization of force: it is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class” From The state and revolution.

That makes the Leftist position pretty clear, I think. The State exists to suppress people. How useful that is! So power-mad people such as Leftists like big government and do all they can to foster it.

After 1917 change did continue for a few years in Russia while the Communists consolidated their power (e.g. by “liquidating” the Kulaks), but after that Russia settled into a tyranny where State-directed industrialization was the only form of change allowed. After the completion of the revolution, change in Russian society was in fact repressed ferociously. Certainly, no challenges to Russia’s new power structure were allowed. At its most basic it was power that mattered, not change. Stalin murdered millions without a qualm to ensure his power.

But that very State dominance of Russian life did of course eventually cause advanced social and economic sclerosis and stagnation in Russia and its satellites — leading ultimately to the complete collapse of the Soviet system via Gorbachev’s “perestroika” (reconstruction). “Perestroika” implies change so change was in fact the poison that finally destroyed Lenin’s legacy. So does that mean that the Soviets were not Leftists? If hunger for change is the defining feature of Leftism, then surely the Bolsheviks ceased to be Leftists in 1917! Surely Lenin and his comrades became conservatives at that point!

Ludicrous though that proposition sounds at first sight, it is precisely the common usage today. Defenders of the old Soviet order and those who wish to return to it in post-Gorbachev Russia are usually referred to in the press as “conservatives”. Clearly, the press has adopted the simple (though very unsatisfactory) dichotomy of being for and against change as the definition of Leftism and Conservatism. This does however create the very large problem that precisely the same political policies that are seen in one country (Russia) as being conservative are seen in other countries (e.g. the USA) as wildly Leftist (See also McFarland et al, 1992).

Since change IS in fact obviously somehow involved in the Left/Right dichotomy and since the aims and practice of the Bolsheviks were perfectly concordant with basic Leftist desires everywhere, this is something of a dilemma. Which is basic? Desire for change or desire for power? In earlier papers here and here, I have leant towards the solution of dismissing the role of change altogether and saying that either Leftists or Rightists will oppose or support change depending on whether they are in power or not. I proposed that it is simply the love or suspicion of State power that defines the Leftist or Rightist. And, as a statement about the psychology of Leftists and Rightists, I still adhere to that view. I think it is evident that most Leftists have a strong basic need for power and control and that that flows very simply into the policies that they advocate.

I also think, however, that a DEFINITION of any collectivity should rely primarily on what the collectivity does rather than on a theory about how the group is motivated. One has to define the group before one can study it. And a definition of the “Western” world’s Left (but only the Left) in terms of attitude to change both makes sense of common usage and is readily amenable to psychological explanation. Regrettably, however, it seems clear that one cannot define Leftists as being the change-hungry ones of ALL the world and of all times. It is a definition that is fully applicable only to the present economically successful “Western” democracies because it is only there that advocacy of change enables the Leftist to satisfy his/her ego needs.

If a definition of limited applicability is unattractive, however, we can also grasp the other horn of the dilemma and say that Leftists who attain power cease to be Leftists! This jars a little but does make sense psychologically: Once the Leftist’s hunger for power and control is satisfied, he no longer seeks change and in fact actively opposes it. He then opposes change for the same reason that he opposes neo-liberalism: It threatens his power and control. He becomes a conservative (opponent of change) in a way that a Rightist generally is not. There can be no doubt that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were Rightists but they actively worked to REDUCE the power, influence and control of the governments that they led. The contrast is very clear. Not everyone is as power-mad as the Leftist. And that hunger for power makes the Leftist IN POWER the most ferocious conservative (opponent of change) of all. Case in point: Barack Obama…  the single most arrogant, ppower hungry, tyrant ever to preside over the United States of America.

But there is an exception to every rule and the exception in this case is a most instructive one: Mao Tse Tung. Mao’s “cultural revolution” was a very strange phenomenon unparalleled in other Communist regimes. And it appeared to do nobody any good — including Mao himself. It was a vast but entirely destructive upheaval. But it is just what one would expect of someone in love with change. In the case of Mao, we saw a survival into the post-revolutionary era of the old pre-revolutionary longings. He was so in love with change that he had his revolution all over again. Mao was so thoroughly in charge of China, that he could indulge his natural inclinations without endangering his power and what those inclinations were is precisely what we see in Leftists of the economically successful “Western” democracies to this day: a love of change, preferably revolutionary change. So we can see that power comes first in a Leftist’s scale of values but the longing for change per se comes a close second.

In the “West”

This conclusion drawn from the grand sweep of history has some counterpart on a much more humble scale in findings from survey research in one of the economically successful “Western” democracies. Ray (1984) found from a large random sample survey of Australians conducted in the Cold War era that Leftists were sensation-seekers even when the sensations concerned were the sensations provided by consumerism. Rather contrary to their usual image, Leftists were found to be materialists who enjoyed buying mass-marketed “quality” consumer goods even more than Rightists did. Their love of new sensations was so great that they even sought out those provided by their ostensible “enemy” — consumer capitalism. Clearly, like Mao, their love of novelty was so deep-seated that it overcame other considerations.

Although Leftists in the economically successful “Western” democracies have never gained power on anything like the scale achieved by Mao and Stalin, there have of course been Leftist governments in the economically successful “Western” democracies on many occasions and these have certainly managed to lay the stifling and impoverishing hand of bureaucracy on many endeavours. The twin disciplines of the ballot box and constitutional constraints have however limited what such governments can do. Their power has always been far from absolute.

In summary, bitter experience has shown that Leftists in power are very dangerous and destructive people. Where their power is effectively unchecked, they generally seems to resort sooner or later to mass murder (as in the case of the French revolutionaries, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Jim Jones and many Communist regimes and movements worldwide) and where they are partially thwarted by strong democratic traditions and institutions, they at least bring about large-scale impoverishment (as in post-independence India and pre-Thatcher Britain). By contrast, conservatives just muddle along with piecemeal reforms that don’t require them to murder anybody. So giving any power to Leftists is a most dangerous thing to do and working to prevent that happening is a matter of no small importance.