The Whites of Their Lies

The Obama faction's drive to consolidate totalitarian, national, socialist control of key sectors of American life is stirring up some strong negative feelings in many Americans. The self-righteous, 'How-dare-you-question-me' tone in which many Obama faction pols have lashed out at critics has aggravated their resentment. So have the bully-boy tactics intended to discourage people from attending public meetings to voice their concerns.

If the Obama faction’s strategists thought these tactics would make Americans whimper and scurry back to their hidey-holes, they were sadly mistaken. Americans can be ferrets when it comes to truth, but some are more like mountain lions when roused to battle by tyrannical bullies. In the landscape of twentieth century history, pillars of smoke rising from the ruins of their would-be empires mark the burned out pyres of tyrant –isms and self-worshiping individuals who made the same mistake.

This history is so well known though, that I find it hard to believe the Obama strategists failed to take account of it. On the contrary, the deployment of SEIU blue-shirts and tax-funded ACORN rent-a-crowds is intended to provoke a John Wayne reaction. The ensuing brawl becomes their excuse to abuse the color of law in order to move against and criminalize their opposition. In their so-called ‘hate-crimes’ legislation they have already successfully positioned the logic of repression that will allow them to argue that any criticism of their actions or policies is part of a syndrome of violence that makes dissident speech as criminal as the actions they will claim it inspires.

The Obama Faction’s media claque is already preparing the way for this overt repression in their coverage of events. There are legitimate concerns about the implications of armed civilians in the vicinity of events involving the present occupant of the White House. But some reports have used blatant race baiting tactics, doubtless intended to stir up fear and anger among Black Americans. During a segment on MSNBC one anchor wondered “whether this has a racial overtone. I mean here you have a man of color in the Presidency and white people showing up with guns…” Now, as seen in the following video clip, the man who was the focus of the episode being discussed happened to be “a man of color” firmly opposed to the Obama faction’s proposed national socialist takeover of health care:



The MSNBC report has an aspect of ruthlessly contrived and deceitful manipulation, brought home when we notice the careful editing that made sure viewers were not allowed to see that the supposed ‘white racist’ was in fact a calm, self-controlled “man of color” well informed as to his constitutional and legal rights. I imagine the Obama media propagandists would also want us to forget the footage of a black t-shirt vendor as he described being physically assaulted by SEIU blue-shirts outside a town hall gathering in St. Louis. Once provocation has served its purpose, it best serves the strategy of repression that it be forgotten.

What those of us who care for liberty cannot afford to forget is that the Obama Faction’s strategy for repression creates a treacherous context for our efforts to defend it. Not everyone who appears to exercise their constitutional and legal rights will have the obviously sincere intention and demeanor of the civilian in the video above. People whose media henchman fashion deceitful contrivances are obviously of a mind to stage events intended to justify the repression for which they have so studiously set the scene. They are students of Alinsky, Stalin, Lenin, Engels and Mao. Following the advice of ideological strategists like Antonio Gramsci, they have studied the tactics of Hitler and Mussolini. They know what it means to “burn the Reichstag”, and “round up the usual suspects”. Given their fanatic following among the elites in the so-called news and entertainment media, they also have access to the expertise routinely deployed to make fabricated fantasies gleam with the hard edge of reality. Their productions could make Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph” a mere footnote in the history of manipulative propaganda. (Of course, if the tromp l’oeil, “burning of the Reichstag” effect is successful only future historians will know them for what they are.)

In the fight against slavery Frederick Douglas made good use of Byron's famous words "Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." But as a free people striving to defend liberty against insidious overthrow, we will do well to study Abraham Lincoln’s statesmanship. History remembers the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter as the start of the Civil War. Sometimes those intent on defending liberty must carefully let the opposition be seen to strike the first blow. The arms bearing civilian in the video is certainly right when he makes clear that to keep our rights we must exercise them. But there are times when that exercise is best deployed as the punctuation mark at the end of a sentence that prepares free people to defend themselves, but advises them to wait, as America’s Founding patriots are said to have done, “until you see the whites of their eyes.” Though in our case it may be the (bought and paid for, fictional, ‘racist’) whites of the (Obama Faction's propaganda) lies.

Obama's Rise and Fall-What is the key?

Click on the title above to read my latest article at WorldNetDaily.com

Real Change-Rejecting the Politics of Submission

[This is a further installment of the series Real Change. For the previous post in the series visit Real Change-Replacing the Federal Reserve. To read the whole series from the beginning click on "Real Change" under Topics in the sidebar.]

Though for the time being we still maintain the institutional semblance of constitutional self-government, the United States no longer has a political process consistent with its survival. This isn't a matter of structural features (two-party vs. multiparty, proportional vs. winner-take-all representation, regional vs. group representation and so forth.) Rather it has to do with what we understand to be the purpose of politics; the nature of citizenship in light of that purpose; and the means and methods most likely to produce actions consonant with good citizenship.

As things stand today, the only purpose of politics is to get elected. In order to get elected, you must get more votes than your opponents. The most efficient way to achieve this result is to find out what people want to see and hear, then fabricate and project an image that corresponds to their desire. The electoral process has become an information exchange between self-centered hedonists and self-promoting liars: people willing to expose their selfish desires choose from a menu of fictional satisfactions offered by candidates pursuing their own selfish ambitions. On Election Day the electorate selects the candidate whose fabricated image most effectively seduced their self-serving judgment.

Prior to Election Day the focus of the political process is on the candidates. The term politics is therefore used to refer mainly to the activities undertaken by and on behalf of those competing for political office. Besides the candidates themselves, the people involved in politics, are the pollsters and analysts of opinion who figure out what the people want to see and hear; the media consultants whose work is to produce and project an image of the candidate that corresponds to their preferences; and the money people who gather from every possible source the funds needed to pay and equip the rest. But there are obviously two other groups of people who actively participate in the process: those who control access to the media, and those who control access to the money. They have become the only electorate that really matters, the praetorian guard, as it were, whose choice ultimately determines which candidates shall be lifted up for the adulation or opprobrium of the selfish rabble. I say they are the only electorate because the people who determine the choices actually determine the choice. This paradigm of politics therefore effectively abandons the idea of government of by and for the people. Instead we have government over the people, manipulated by the media, who are owned by money powers that therefore control both the process and its results.

For our present purposes two things are especially noteworthy in this political paradigm. The first is the essentially passive, and ultimately superfluous, role of the people as a whole; the second is the concentration of political activity in the hands of a relatively small group of elite participants who in effect become the only real citizens. This paradigm represents the end of the democratic era in human affairs, and a return to the oligarchic rule (using those words to refer to government by the few, but with the usual implication of power in the hands of the wealthy) characteristic of societies before the institution of the American republic. As long as this oligarchic paradigm predominates, the American experiment is suspended. Once the paradigm has been consolidated, it will be over and done.

If this analysis of our present political process is accurate it means that as far as truly representative government is concerned American politics has become an imaginary exercise. Candidates for office have essentially been degraded into mere images. The final choice made by the people is also imaginary, since they select from alternatives predetermined by an exclusively elite process in which they play no active role. The aim of the imaginary process is to determine which representatives of the elite powers project an image more likely to mollify people, and make them less resistant to the will of those who in fact now exercise sovereign control. Though imaginary in its outward form and content, the process therefore aims at a very real advantage. It is less expensive (both in material and emotional terms) to control a people induced to vent its frustrations and ambitions in what amounts to a virtual reality. Such virtual politics adds the finishing touch to the welter of preoccupations and distractions offered by technological toys and sexual hedonism (keeping in mind, of course, that much of that is also virtually enacted, through internet pornography, and such vicarious satisfactions as following the antics of "stars" in the entertainment and information media.)

At the moment, this imaginary political process appears to serve the goal of establishing a system of global governance that will ultimately eliminate the need for the charade of representative institutions (or at least make it entirely optional.) From the oligarchic point of view, the advantage of such a global system lies in the concentration of sufficient power in the hands of a global elite to deter, co-opt or suppress opposition. This requires that a background network of globally minded elites becomes, in effect, the last remaining superpower, with no lesser power capable of standing alone against it. The American union has the wherewithal to be a lasting superpower, but on a national basis incompatible with the globalist principle of the New World Order. Therefore, the continued existence of the United States is an obstacle which must be removed by reducing the power and destroying the unity of the nation.

Whatever his rhetoric, the policies being pursued by Barack Obama are intended to achieve this deflation of the relative power and cohesion of the United States.

His critics have been quick to see the destructive implications of his agenda, especially in the economic realm. But few if any have seen, or at any rate been willing to articulate, the purposeful intention behind it. The two party system effectually dampens any inclination toward such candor, since it represents an imaginary (or virtual) opposition of elements with no more real difference between them than two heads on the same body, or two eyes in the same head. However different they look, they move together and in the same direction. Though Democrats pretend to care deeply about the welfare of the people, Democrat policies increase the power of controlling elites with little net benefit for the people at large. Though Republicans pretend to care deeply about the liberty and opportunity available to individuals, their policies tend to increase the freedom of controlling elites, with little net benefit for individual liberty on the whole. The telltale sign of the agenda common to both parties is their actual indifference or hostility to the effects of programs and policies on the characteristics that are the essential bases of the people's ability to think and act for themselves: self-discipline, self-sufficiency and self-government.

Self-discipline clearly depends on the formation and encouragement of certain moral characteristics. Self-sufficiency requires economic approaches that preserve and enhance opportunities for individual income and wealth creation. Self-government demands political processes that depend on, and respond to individual initiative in the development and mobilization of representative political networks. Clearly these three components of self-government are interdependent. Unless they control material resources that exceed the bare necessities of life, individuals are unlikely to show much political enterprise. Without a sense of their own worth, and the significance of their own abilities and actions, people are unlikely to see or take advantage of economic opportunity. Even when they do, without a sense of responsibility for the management of their impulses and passions, they are unlikely to focus on and sustain effective action long enough to produce results. Finally, without the self-confidence and courage that arises from the sense of personal responsibility, individuals become the passive subjects of the actions and intentions of others, incapable of the initiatives required 0f true citizens.

In their different ways, both the Democrat and Republican parties advance policies that promote mentalities and ways of life that directly attack or persistently erode one or another of these components of republican citizenship. The Democrats consistently champion undisciplined sexual lust. The Republicans routinely cater to the lust for money and material goods. Both alike agree to serve as masks for the unbridled lust for power. In the more general sense of the term, therefore, lust is the whole purpose of the political system they comprise. It represents the implementation of an Hobbesian vision of human nature as an endless effort to satisfy unquenchable desire, a tyranny of domineering passions, in which the appearance of choice simply registers the prevalent passion of the moment. But Thomas Hobbes reasoned logically to the conclusion that absolute despotism is the political system that corresponds to this vision. He would not be at all surprised to see that both major Parties to the politics of lust tacitly agree on a path that leads humanity under the yoke of global tyranny.

The American republic was not founded upon a simply Hobbesian concept of human nature. The American founders acted on an understanding (profoundly influenced by Christian and Biblical precepts) that saw natural right, rather than passion, as the ruler or measuring rod of choice. This different conception of nature leads to a different conception of choice. Rather than arising from the welter of competing passions, it reflects the possibility of deliberation, the process whereby one consciously chooses which passions shall be constrained, and to what degree. But such deliberation assumes a standpoint not subject to passionate forces, an eye in the storm of passion, free in some sense from its prevailing winds because it represents the point of origin from which passion itself derives substance, force and meaning. In the understanding articulated in the American Declaration of Independence, this is the standpoint of the Creator. The concept of right arising from the authority of the Creator assumes that this original position represents more than the sheer force of real existence. It represents an intention, an inwardly formed purpose that foresees, and at every moment constitutes, the destination of existing things. The assertion of right represents the presence of this intention in action, along with just the force needed to carry it out. From this juxtaposition of intention and forcefulness arises a concept of justice that supplies the reason for constraining and ordering the passions, a reason that looks beyond the prevalent disposition of passion itself.

It may accurately be said that the people most responsible for the American founding were obsessed with justice. They saw it as the overriding purpose of political life, to which the freeways of passion would ultimately be forced to submit. But if, by deliberation, people recognize and submit to its requirements, their freedom of choice becomes the basis for government, rather than forced submission. The extent and degree of their self-determination with respect to the requirements of justice establishes the extent of individual freedom in their society. In this respect, the more good individuals are willing to do of their own volition, the less the force of government will be called upon to do for them. Conversely, the less justice they reflect in their individual choices, the more the force of government will be called upon to dictate and impose upon their actions. Freedom depends on individual responsibility.

The politics of lust (using the term in its general sense, as we have in this essay) represents the complete abandonment of this responsibility. Because we have accepted it, our freedom is being overthrown. If we wish to save and restore our freedom, we must become, like America's founders, partisans of justice; people willing to answer in word and deed for the right use of freedom in our own lives and the life of our nation. But we cannot restore the concern for right if we abandon the standpoint from which the concept of right arises: the standpoint of the Creator and of respect for the authority implied by His intention for our lives. This is the true fault line along which shall be determined the fate of American liberty. On one side move the forces that reject the premise of the Creator's will. On the other those firmly committed to its defense. And in between, so many who shift to and fro between the false promises of unbridled passion and the common sense of justice that inclines them toward the path of responsibility and true liberty. Though the partisans of justice cannot pander to the falsehoods, we can do our best to make clear the solid happiness that can only be achieved through liberty. This is the practical challenge that our derelict elites have brushed aside, but which those who are loyal to liberty must be ready to address. To see their work in progress, visit AIPnews.com. Then look for my further description of the real change they are working for in the next installment of this series, Real Change- Restoring the Politics of Justice.

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Why I Hate "Hate-Crimes" Legislation

"De bajo de mi manto, al rey mato." (An old Spanish proverb)

What is the rationale for hate crimes legislation? Sheila Jackson-Lee (D, Tx-18) must have some idea, since she has introduced The David Ray Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009"(HR256) in the U.S. House of Representatives. This bill "Amends the federal criminal code to impose penalties for willfully causing bodily injury to any person…because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or disability of any person, where the offense is in or affects interstate or foreign commerce." It "directs the U.S. Sentencing Commission to study the issue of adult recruitment of juveniles to commit hate crimes and, if appropriate, to amend the federal sentencing guideline to provide sentencing enhancements for such an offense."

In one respect, hate crimes legislation defies the age-old logic of punishment. Webster's defines hate as "intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury." In the past, people generally regarded intense passion as a mitigating factor in the commission of a crime, though usually not sufficient simply to exonerate the person responsible. The influence of intense passion was taken to indicate a diminished capacity for rational choice, like the influence of alcohol or drugs. Of course, such ideas assumed that laws aimed to constrain behavior, not punish heretical states of mind.

Liberals nowadays are disposed to blather condescendingly about the separation of church and state when it comes to defending the natural family or legally established standards of decency for sexual behavior. Ironically, their penchant for hate crimes legislation seems intent on revisiting the mentality of the medieval statutes that enabled the Inquisition- laws that insisted on states of mind that satisfied a standard of purity in the understanding and observance of sacred ideas, people and things. Much like the special penalties imposed by some religions for mistreatment of sacred groups of people or animals, the proponents of "hate crimes" legislation deal in special classes of people against whom criminal acts are somehow more grievous and offensive.

Pity benighted individuals like me, who actually thought it an advance in jurisprudence when people concluded that actions, rather than thoughts and attitudes, are the proper objects of legal regulation and punishment. How absurd were those philosophers of human liberty who saw efforts to impose purity of thought and attitude as thin excuses for sectarian persecution or vengefulness. Of course, today's benevolent liberals aren't looking for excuses to arrest and try those who disagree with their promotion of homosexuality. They aren't seeking a legal excuse to censor the language of preachers who reject their worship of hedonistic sexuality. They are liberals, whose sole aim is to free the world from every semblance of thought that might produce an evil consequence, provided only that everyone is made to think of good and evil exactly as they do.

Sarcasm aside, hate crimes legislation is the statutory framework for the forceful imposition of a political and social religion. The so-called liberals mean to institutionalize intolerance, even as they loudly proclaim Holy Tolerance as their all in all. Because we seek to protect a form of human life that they despise, they defame as bigots or religious fanatics people working to re-establish respect for the law against abortion. Meanwhile they move boldly to use the force of law to punish the thoughts and attitudes of any who move against the sacred untouchables of their new cult of sexual pleasure and self-indulgence. Behind their phony slogans of hope and progress comes the return of Dark Age zealotry, dressed up in the fleshy tones of New Age vanity and glamour.

I say unequivocally that I hate this camouflaged return to the dark ages. I detest the persecution of people for their beliefs, thoughts and attitudes. More than anything that has to do with the body, this effort to delve into and directly impose upon the mind rapes the deepest form of privacy and smacks of the detestable crimes that invade the truly most intimate places of human existence in order to impose the leering tastes and heartless fancies of spiritual tyrants disguised as lawmakers and judges.

If someone has bad judgment enough to hate me, I say let them do so, so long as it never produces an action otherwise against the law. When and if it does, they should be subject to the same punishment that I or anyone else would suffer for the same act, with nothing added or taken away because of their putative beliefs or feelings about me. Adding to the burden of punishment because of their hate exposes me and every other person in society to a danger worse than any crime of hatred. It comes in the form of crimes that simply disregard first conscience and then humanity in order to treat people with the hate-less, cold-blooded ruthlessness of those who feel nothing as they order or tolerate the deaths of millions. Odd isn't it, that what are ostensibly efforts to cure hate may mask the insidious encouragement of the state of mind that, with ruthless efficiency, lends itself to the tasks required in order to impose totalitarian rule. It also leads to a society of people grown accustomed to the presence of the state in the one precinct of our existence that ought to be reserved for us, for us and God alone.

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Obama Faction Moves to Make Medical Workers “Slaves in Conscience”

Starting today, and for the next thirty days, the Department of Health and Human Services will be "accepting comments from the public on a proposal by the Obama administration to completely rescind federal regulations placed into effect by former President Bush that protect the right to conscience for healthcare workers….The regulation mandated federally funded health institutions to certify their compliance with existing federal laws that uphold the rights of doctors and nurses to refuse a medical service on religious or moral grounds."(Obama Publishes Proposal to Rescind 'Conscience' Rule) With this and several other decisions (repeal of the so-called Mexico City Policy; an executive order allowing Federal funds to be used to support research involving the destruction of the embryonic form of human life; the nomination of a rabid pro-abortion extremist as Secretary of HHS) Obama implicates the whole people of the United States in his own pitiless promotion of abortion at any cost. The only thing so far lacking is an effort to repeal or supercede the law that prevents implementation in Federal Hospitals of his depraved support for infanticide in cases where a baby is born alive in consequence of a failed abortion. Catholics and other professing Christians should take note. Except they repent of it, those who voted for Barrack Obama surely face grim judgment from the Supreme judge of the World for their enlistment in the electoral army of this paragon of evil. But even before such judgment in the next life, in this life we will all have to suffer the grim consequences of his abandonment of respect for the unalienable rights to life and liberty.

The reaction to Obama's policies has rightly focused on the relentless implementation of his morbidly pro-abortion views. Though morally repugnant, his consistent support for these views throughout his relatively brief political career prevents sincere surprise from anyone even superficially acquainted with it (unless they are Republicans who expected Obama to imitate the deceitful practices of all too many Republican politicos who are pro-life on the stump and AWOL in the clinches.) Given the hoopla surrounding the false claim that his election represents a breakthrough for black Americans, however, what should be profoundly shocking is his willingness to be the focus and tool of an historic effort to reintroduce the worst aspects of human slavery into the United States, this time extended beyond an oppressed portion of the population to encompass people regardless of race or pigmentation.

In my previous post, I alluded to "the moral degradation that Frederick Douglass and others held to be the greatest misery of my slave ancestors." These words bring to my mind the deep humiliation of married women and mothers, forced to act as concubines to serve the lusts of their so-called masters. It brings to mind husbands and brothers forced to tolerate this degradation of their loved ones, or be subjected to the lash for fighting against it as God and conscience required of them. It brings to mind other enslaved people forced to inflict such punishment upon their fellows; or to give unwilling service to those who did so, even including forced labor to build the scaffolds from which apprehended rebels against slavery and degradation were hung by the neck to edify and terrorize anyone tempted to imitate their courage. Slavery to my mind has never meant only the spectacle of bodies bent to hard labor in the fields, for free men and women also must toil. That is the lot of all humanity. Rather it means the searing contemplation of souls tortured by burning anger and indignation against injustice, which they are helpless to act upon; of consciences racked by the defiling knowledge of their complicity with the very evil that abuses them, and shamed by the fear that deters them from rejecting it, until in all too many ways the habit of submission finally stupefies and deadens the pangs. It is the thought of anguished prayers raised up to the almighty God, that He would deliver them from their humiliating servitude to evil, until it seems the strength of faith gives out, and prayers are tempted to cynicism and despair.

This is the essence of that slavery, which the Obama faction now means to impose upon all our health care workers. Because some people wish to do and benefit from evil, others must become its tools and instruments, against their will. Because some wish to escape responsibility for the nascent life invoked by their cries of sexual ecstasy, others must accept complicity in the murders that carry out their will. At the very least the people who embrace this foul cult of human child sacrifice should have to do the dirty work themselves. But when has evil been content to wallow in its own excrement? The very pride that impels it to defy the boundaries of decent conscience rouses its resentment against those who, by standing apart from its rituals announce their condemnation of its crimes. As it was with slavery, so it is now. Evil does not accept a house divided, but will "press forward" until "It will become all one thing, or all the other."

What the Obama faction proposes to do now, without warrant in law, implements what by law it wishes, but does not yet have the legislative strength to do: secure passage of the deceitfully misnamed Freedom of Choice Act. Because both the proposed regulatory action and the FOCA deal mainly with abortion, people mistakenly think that what is at stake is just the controversy over abortion. But it must be increasingly evident to all but the most stubbornly blind among us that government control of the banks and the health care system is only the first stage in the imposition of complete government control of every aspect of our economic lives. In service to this aim, the Obama faction moves to bankrupt the nation, so that none will have the wherewithal and will to resist their coup d'état. Today they move to make all health care workers slaves in conscience to the state. Soon and very soon, this shall be the fate of us all. Our soldiers and police are being trained and will be required to move against the right to keep and bear arms, born of our unalienable right to preserve and defend the innocent lives of others. Our pastors, rabbis and other religious leaders will be required to surrender the right to live according to their beliefs whenever their free exercise of religion runs counter to the demands of "gay pride", the selfish-esteem of homosexuals; or the anti-religious bigotry of atheists who cannot bear to hear the prayers of others. Parents will be required, without exception to surrender their children for indoctrination by the state. Scientists and technical people will be required to lend their knowledge and expertise to refine and operate the instruments of surveillance that utterly destroy all privacy, and the instruments of mollification (chemical and otherwise) that utterly subvert the will. And so on.

With every extension of state control will come a new sacrifice of conscience, of decency and goodwill. And like my enslaved ancestors, many of us will raise up anguished prayers to almighty God, to deliver us from our humiliating servitude to evil, until perhaps the strength of faith gives out and we are tempted into cynicism and despair. Was it for this so many fought and died? Was it for this, they were planted as seeds of freedom? So that we could harvest the gut wrenching bile of moral subjection, and face the galling prospect that our children or our children's children will not remember enough of freedom to be dissatisfied? Too bad we have so little patience for the best flowers of our thought and language or it might occur to us, at least in spirit and will, to "take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them." But we seem now to lack more than words. We lack spirit, and will and courage. Else in the next thirty days not just pro-lifers, but everyone who cares a whit for conscience and true liberty would direct a tidal wave of comments toward the bureaucrats at HHS, defending the health care workers' rights of conscience in the hope that we will thus safeguard our own. Visit www.regulations.gov, to look for a way to do just that.

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Obama's a Communist: Why is it Name Calling?

Thought for Today

"It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." The Federalist

"With words we govern men." Benjamin Disraeli

In practice, the substance of liberty is deliberate, voluntary choice. Constrained by the threat or use of force; manipulated by lies and misinformation; herded by contrived circumstances; choice is not voluntary, and those who make it are not free. Where free choice prevails, communication is the key to persuasion. Words (including in this term the language of music and graphic images) convey facts, ideas and feelings that sway and determine the will. For those who would be free, words matter.

Understanding this, the enemies of freedom do their best to limit or eliminate words that interfere with their design for despotism. They especially seek to stigmatize and discourage the use of words freighted with the sad and tragic history of tyranny and dictatorship. That's why the use of the word 'communist' to describe Barack Obama has aroused such furious diatribe and aspersion. Call him liberal. Call him socialist. Even call him a Marxist if you will. But communist is a dirty word, a cheap shot, just resentful name calling.

Of course, it wasn't a dirty word when Marx or Engels used it to describe their ideology, or when Lenin wielded it to rally his forces on behalf of the proletariat. Marx's ponderous writings are boring and not even half-true. The bulk of people who claim and act in his name have probably never read much beyond the "Communist Manifesto." But this makes Marxism a false name, not a bad one. It took the millions murdered or dead from famine in the assault on Russia's middle class farmers (the Kulaks); it took the millions slaughter and consigned to hellish gulags during Stalin's other purges; it took the millions mobbed, defenestrated, hacked to death in Mao's cultural revolution; it took the smoking ruins of the tens of thousands slain in Kampuchea's killing fields; and so on and on, to make communism a dirty word. It took the destruction of churches, the persecution of dissidents, the use of crushing military force against unarmed civilians seeking only the dignity of their human rights; to give communists a bad name.

Given this history, it's easy to understand why folks who are looking, waddling and quacking like communists would rather we called them messiahs. Sensible people want to avoid getting caught up in the grist mill of communist tyranny. The use of the term invites them to look at its history, and this means not only the grisly results, but the path to power that let some people inflict such horrors on others. Americans have an especially good reputation for not putting their fingers into light sockets, but it doesn't take that much shrewdness to recognize the telltale signs of an approaching hurricane before it overtakes you. Lincoln showed this disposition when he looked at the actions of the pro-slavery cabal before the last Civil War.

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen -- Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance -- and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few -- not omitting even scaffolding -- or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such a piece in -- in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.

These days, the Obama faction's media claque derides anyone willing to imitate Lincoln's common sense as kooky, crazy, fringe, lunatic and an assortment of less cordial terms meant to scarecrow the weak minded.

• We see the takeover of the banks and financial institutions.
  
• In the steadfast refusal to take simple steps to show compliance with the Constitution's eligibility requirements we see Obama's personal contempt for the Constitution.
  
• We see the Obama celebrity claque hyping a cult of personality, including a pledge of allegiance to him, rather than the U.S. Constitution.
  
• We see steps by his cronies to take over and manipulate the census, control that could be abused to consolidate one party dictatorship over government in the United States.
  
• We see his faction's Congressional delegation assigning unconstitutional voting representation in the U.S. Congress to federally controlled districts not qualified as states under the Constitution.
  
• We see a so called stimulus bill that directs billions of dollars into the coffers of the Obama faction's political machine.
  
• We see his faction's Congressional majority planning a taxpayer funded demographic invasion that will permanently alter the identity of the American people.
  
• We hear his repeated calls for the establishment of a domestic security force as large and well funded as the military: an American KGB.
  
• From him we hear an ominous warning about our "day of reckoning".
  
• His budget seeks control of the life and death health care sector.
  
• His tax policies destructively assault private action in order to fund national bureaucratic domination.
  
• He proposes risky cutbacks in our military preparedness.
  
• His massive spending involves borrowing requirements that will increase Communist China's hold over the United States.
  
• He makes appeasing overtures to Iran as it moves toward nuclear weapons capability.
  
• His faction's State Department welcomes a move that makes our hemisphere's most active radical, anti-American Marxist (Hugo Chavez) a dictator for life.
  

But if we dare to see the obvious pattern in all of this, we're candidates for a soon to be government controlled mental hospital. Or so the Obama faction wants people to believe. Do you think they're right?

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Obama Faction Again Shows Contempt for the Constitution

The U.S. Constitution plainly states that only "the People of the several states" can elect representatives to the Congress of the United States. Despite this undeniable restriction, the U.S. Senate has voted to give the District of Columbia a vote in the House of Representatives. According to a story in the Washington Post "The House is expected to approve the D.C. vote bill next week, and President[sic] Obama has indicated he will sign it into law. " Thus in the near future we will witness the unique spectacle of a Federal bill signing ceremony in which an individual exercising Constitutionally questionable authority as President of the United States will purport to sign into law a bill that unquestionably violates the Constitution. Unlike some other historic "firsts" daily held up for our obeisance in connection with the present occupant of the White House, this one undoubtedly deserves great attention.

As Senator Mitch McConnell (Ky.) has pointed out the President, and any members of Congress who vote for the bill in question, certainly know that the it is unconstitutional. McConnell fails to note however that their willful disregard for that fact places each and every one of them incontestably in violation of their sworn oath to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

By now most reasonably well informed citizens of this country are aware that Barack Obama has refused to release documents needed to establish the fact that he satisfies another clear and explicit Constitutional requirement, to wit, that "No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President". Acting in defense of the Supreme Law of the Land citizens, now including military people conscientiously seeking to be faithful to their oaths, are by legal means pursuing such evidence. So far the judges have arbitrarily denied any and all such plaintiffs a just hearing in the Courts. The media has subjected them to ridicule and vilification. They have been slandered as insane and somehow extremist in their views. Yet their only goal is to assure that the expression of sovereign will which is the basis for the legitimate authority of the U.S. government, our Constitution, is not treated with contempt; that the agreement as to the form of government which has been the acknowledged mainstay of the peace and unity of our polity is not cast aside; that Americans loyal to the Constitution and its principles do not face the awful choice of either abandoning liberty for their children and their grandchildren or coming face to face with the grievous prospect of civil war.

Despite unfair and slanderous attacks, people concerned with the eligibility issue have persistently warned that the willingness simply and openly to disregard the Constitution in one instance is likely to lead to further abuses, until in the end it has been shredded beyond recognition or repair.

It's not hard to recognize the Obama faction's latest contemptuous disregard for Constitutional procedures as convincing new evidence that their warning is fully justified. If the legislative power of Congress over the District of Columbia somehow includes the unconstitutional power to assign it a vote in the Congress, what of the other places over which it has similar authority, such as the sites of "Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful buildings." (Article I, Section 8) or other places (e.g., Guam or Puerto Rico, or the extensive public lands within the boundaries of some of our western States) that qualify as the "Territory or other Property belonging to the United States (Article IV, Section 3). Can Congress, by factional majority vote, grant voting representation to whatever entities it may by law create out of such jurisdictions?

I realize that any such Congressional actions would fly in the face of our whole history as a nation. I know that epochs in some of its greatest controversies were marked by legislation (the Missouri Compromise, the Great Compromise of 1850) whose history and existence prove that no such power was ever imagined to be in the hands of a factional Congressional majority, until now. But if the unconstitutional exercise of this power passes with no more than a casual bleat of protest, what warrants the expectation that it will not be used as a precedent for actions that would permit a majority faction to pack the Congress as President Franklin Roosevelt once sought to pack the Supreme Court, engineering permanent and dictatorial control of the legislative power?

I wish we could live in the certain hope that the Supreme Court will weigh in against this patently unconstitutional act. But even if it does, a majority arrogant enough to disregard both the Constitution and the weight of our whole history may well believe that the fervent personality cult they seem to rely on for their impunity in this case will secure them from opposition in any event. The arrogance of despotic power rarely comes on all at once. By seemingly small usurpations it accustoms people to accept the abuse of power until, encouraged to bolder action, it can eventually be stopped only by major confrontation fraught with the possibility of civil conflict. Have we and all our leaders become such strangers to commons sense and civic duty that we will only move to act when things have reached such a dire extremity? Where is the wisdom, where is the prudence, where is the sane concern for civil peace in such inaction? Statesmanship acts from foresight, in good time, by proper and effective political means. But, the American Founders foresaw that "enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." In that event, people with courage and common sense must make up for the defect of statesmanship. They must organize and communicate their firm opposition to the politicians who are contemptuously engineering the end of Constitutional government in our land. If the privileges of statehood are to be granted to the people of the District of Columbia the U.S. Constitution makes it plain that it is for the states to decide, by Constitutional amendment. The state legislators now promoting the re-invigoration of respect for the 10th Amendment ought to recognize the Obama faction's latest act of usurpation as a step intended to subvert their good efforts just as they begin. I pray they have the vision to see what is at stake and respond accordingly.

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How I know Obama is a Communist

THOUGHTLET

What signals the difference between a "socialist" and a "communist"? It's the gradual repression of political and civil liberty culminating in the open prosecution and suppression of dissident views. But this suppression cannot come about until a monopoly has been established over access to the seats of government executive and decision making power. The key manifestation of this monopoly is of course some form of party dictatorship.

Aside from all the evidence in his known background, associates, policy preferences and political actions one of the main reasons I make bold to call Obama a communist is his grab for unchecked partisan control over the conduct of the next census. Skillful manipulation of the census could make the decisive contribution to establishing an electorally unchallengeable party monopoly, which would then provide the basis for consolidating party dictatorship. If such dictatorship were not part of their agenda, the Obama faction would leave ultimate oversight of the census process where the Constitution places it, in the hands of the legislative branch. As it clearly is part of their agenda, only ignorance or willful stupidity blinds people to Obama's ambition to establish a better tailored version of Soviet-style government in the U.S.

Of course, there may be another name for what keeps some of the so-called Republicans from speaking out about it. Could it be cowardice?

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Insane? Guess I’m not the Only One

In a generally unheralded speech about the so-called "stimulus" package, dated February 10, 2009, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) said:

Let me conclude by saying we are at a seminal moment in our country. We will either start living within the confines of realism and responsibility or we will blow it and we will create the downfall of the greatest nation that ever lived.

This bill is the start of that downfall. To abandon a market-oriented society and transfer it to a Soviet-style, government-centered, bureaucratic-run and mandated program, that is the thing that will put the stake in the heart of freedom in this country.

Coburn says that the policies being pursued by Obama will lead to a "Soviet-Style, government centered, bureaucratic-run and mandated" result. As I recall, the Soviet-style of government was a communist state.

Coburn concludes that the continuation of such Soviet-style policies will "create the downfall of the greatest nation that ever lived."

Until a friend sent me an email about it on Friday, I hadn't read Senator Coburn's speech. But on Thursday evening in Hastings, Nebraska, when asked about Obama's policies, I said that he is a radical communist, and that if Americans who care about liberty (i.e., who don't want to put a stake in its heart?) do nothing to stop him he'll bring about the destruction of the United States.

Though I never watch Keith Olbermann's drivel or anything else on MSNBC (and advise others to practice the same abstinence) I read that in response to my comments he questioned my sanity.

If I'm out of my mind, I guess I'm not the only one.

I also read that Olbermann tried to make something sinister out of my saying that unless Obama is stopped (in his efforts to establish a communist state) the U.S. will be destroyed. Compared to the sort of language used against say, Ronald Reagan and G.W. Bush by Democrat and left wing-critics, this is a polite and reasonable exhortation to political action. However the effort to construe it as something else smacks of the tactics employed at the famous show-trials of Stalin's era, even as Olbermann's suggestion of insanity brings to mind the communist practice of committing dissidents to psychiatric hospitals. Could their use of such tactics be the reason Olbermann and his "We're all socialists now" Newsweek buddies (like his guest for the segment, Jonathan Alter) don't want us using the "C" word? We might remember the tactics of communist repression, and notice some similarities.

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Design for Despotism

Thought for Today

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism… "From the American Declaration of Independence

"Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed..." Lenin

These days arrogant pundits have a tendency to sneer at the very thought of "conspiracy theory". This reminds me of Verbal's pithy pronouncement from the movie "The Usual Suspects" (not for family viewing, by the way) that "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist." But when I'm tempted to let snide punditry influence my thinking I more often call to mind the above quoted words from America's Declaration of Independence. It reminds us that people who want to preserve their liberty must be willing to keep in mind the possibility that the actions of their government leaders may be part of a "design" (that is, a consciously contrived plan of concerted actions) aimed at establishing despotic rule over them. If the American Founders left room for a little conspiracy theory, why shouldn't we? Indeed, in the cyber age we should be more open to it than ever. After all, when it comes to human activities, "conspiracy" is just another word for systematic programming. The key question in that context: What is the goal?

I've been asking myself that question as I consider the Alleged Usurper's recent power grab involving the Census Bureau. And I'm not just referring to the obviously partisan purposes it may serve. What struck me more was the unnecessarily arrogant fashion in which the Obama faction declared control over an activity that the Constitution clearly states shall be determined by law. Existing law places the Census bureau under the supervision of the Secretary of Commerce. A change must be made in the law before the White House can constitutionally alter that arrangement. Admittedly, with a Democrat majority in both Houses, Obama will have things his way. But at the very least, appearing to issue orders not authorized by law (as the Constitution requires) smacks of a hasty if not dictatorial temperament. However, my concern isn't about temperament, either.

Years ago, I wrote my doctoral dissertation at Harvard. I focused on Alexander Hamilton's contribution to the U.S. Constitution. As I researched and ponder this subject, I was struck by the dangerous abuses of executive power that might arise, under certain circumstances, because of the assumptions the Framers made with respect to the characteristics of the American people. The Constitution's famous system of checks and balance works only on the assumption that the different branches of government will jealously guard their own Constitutional prerogatives and the prerogatives of the people they are supposed to represent; and will therefore adamantly resist encroachments upon them. If one branch or another takes unconstitutional initiatives, the judiciary has means to forestall the effects in some cases. In others, the legislature has the power to remove the offending officials. The executive can simply refuse to carry out unconstitutional actions. But, by the same token, only the executive has frequent opportunity to carry on an unconstitutional initiative until it produces a concrete result that can be challenged only after the fact. An individual might, for example, be unconstitutionally arrested, tortured and killed under the auspices of executive authority long before either of the other branches even hear about the action, much less have any chance to intervene. The first safeguard against such abuse is the character of the one vested with executive power. But if that person has the disposition to move beyond the law until met with hard resistance (to probe with bayonets, as Lenin put it), great and perhaps fatal harm could be done before such resistance sufficed to stop him.

There will be a special danger in this regard if the executive in question has enough support in the Congress to make him confident that his abuses will not be challenged, or that challenges will never have sufficient support to achieve the only outcome that will definitely remove him from Constitutional authority, which is to say, impeachment and removal from office. Can we say with any confidence that we are not in this situation of special peril to liberty?

The present occupant of the White House assumed residence while refusing to provide credible evidence that he is in fact constitutionally qualified to serve as President. Neither the judiciary nor the Congress, nor any other government officials, showed any disposition to defend the terms and authority of the Constitution. Unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger and others, Obama took the initiative to run for President despite whatever knowledge still impels him to withhold from public view the document that would rebut the substantial allegation that he is not a natural born U.S. citizen, and therefore unqualified to serve. Following Lenin's dictum, he probed. He met no resistance. He has so far gotten away with it.

Does his dictatorial presumption with respect to the administration of the census reflect the same tactical disposition? If he so casually crosses the line of respect for Constitutional formalities with no shred of cover from the circumstances of his action, what will he do when some emergency actually seems to authorize extraordinary measures? He has already called for a domestic security force as large and well funded as the military. He has already begun to tout the economic crisis as something that can only be solved by centralizing more and more power under his control. His supporters have already begun an effort to replace allegiance to the Constitution with personal allegiance to him. Taken alone, such things might be meaningless. But altogether, like the threads of a tapestry, they begin to suggest a design.

Someone who plays the party dictator when nothing is at stake may just be practicing for the moment when everything hangs in the balance. And if Congress is willing to tolerate such infringements of the Constitution when there's nothing to fear, what must we expect if and when some catastrophe calls for armed forces in the streets, and the prerogatives of disaster arm executive whims with raw power to do things far more threatening than the partisan rearrangement of the bureaucracy?

Let's not pretend that we live in times when such events are at all unlikely to occur. On the contrary, the last terror attack hit upon our soil in a time of relative prosperity. If the next one wrenches us in the midst of an economic depression, will the twin demons of fear and economic misery leave people with much heart for liberty? Or will it seem a pointless distraction from the imperatives of survival. Such times call for a leader whose heart will be the repository of America's love of freedom, keeping the flame alive in spite of all. But human history suggests that they are more likely to spawn leaders that seize the opportunity to do what their ambition, their ideology, or their resentful disposition has inclined them to do all along: seize the day; seize the power; and use that power to snuff out the flame of liberty, and scatter its dying embers.

I know that there are some Americans so far gone that they look without concern upon the prospect of such despotism. For them, the so-called economic stimulus boondoggle is like the distribution of money a new Roman Caesar would make to woo the support and loyalty of the Praetorians and the Roman rabble. Like such Romans, they are doubtless the ones who will gladly serve as servile henchman of despotic ambition, as it works to cow, seduce and subdue the rest of us. But are they so many that the little harbingers of tyranny, carried upon the winds of so-called change, have no audience capable of understanding and responding to their significance? Are there no Americans left willing to see with an eye jealous of our freedom, and stand, with hardy, God struck spirits upon the rights He has designed for us?

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Obama: Civil War Disguised as Politics?

 

When I ran for the U.S. Senate against Barack Obama I did my best to speak the truth. I knew when I accepted the invitation of the Illinois Republicans that I stood little or no chance of victory. With few exceptions, everyone I consulted advised against it. Most thought it political suicide. But the facts convinced me that Obama is a dangerous left-wing extremist. When confronted with the proven depravity of his moral views, my faith and conscience convicted me as well. After years of telling audiences that we had to stand for right and truth no matter what the cost, I felt that the Lord would hold me accountable if I refused to walk the talk. Sometimes we are not called to victory, but to witness for truth, as Jesus did, even unto death.

So when I campaigned in Illinois I let no false ambition; no kind of blandishment or intimidation; and no whispers of political gain or loss distract me from speaking the truth. I talked about Obama's extremist support for abortion (including his unconscionable willingness to tolerate infanticide in Illinois hospitals); I described him as a hard line socialist, pointing out his uncompromising commitment to central government control of health care and education; I pointed to the contradiction between his professed support for traditional marriage and his consistent promotion of the homosexual agenda. I remember talking to people, including Republican leaders, and others who have built little empires and big reputations as leaders of the so-called "Christian right", (what I call more appropriately the moral conservatives). Time and again I heard in response feckless mumblings about how moderate he seemed in his speech at the Democratic convention. Time and again I felt the implication that I was somehow exaggerating, imprudently "demonizing the opposition." They did little or nothing. And when the pro-abortion elements of the Illinois Republican Party openly went on the offensive against my refusal to back down from my stand for moral principle and real conservatism, in silence and inaction these leaders complied with their politically ruthless intention.

Meanwhile I and my family encountered from the Obama forces the ugliest indignities I have ever experienced in politics: Parades in which Obama's marshaled minions shouted curses and epithets almost every step of the way; and forums in which they rudely launched expletives with gestures just short of physical violence. At one such forum the environment they created was so ugly that my wife was visibly shaken, and my daughter in tears. Even on Election Day, when we went to the polling place to vote, a man there created a disturbance. He shouted insults. He acted in a physically threatening way. Nothing was done to stop him, and the pandering Illinois media breathed hardly a word about it in their so-called news coverage.

In all of this there was a hard edged disdain for decent civility that reminded me of the murderous invective Lenin launched against those who opposed the communist agenda. But it all took place behind a media fabricated façade of false hope and moderateness, like the propaganda screen behind which the totalitarians of the twentieth century hid their perpetration of atrocity.

Having felt the cutting edge of this reality, on election night I refused to engage in the nice ritual usually associated with the resolution of our political contests in America. Obama's people treated politics as war. But in war only gutless servility congratulates a ruthless opponent on the victory he has gained without civility. Mine was to be sure, a silent protest but loud enough to have some so-called leaders, supposedly on my side, losing no opportunity to "apologize" for my behavior.

Since 2004 I have walked in the political wilderness. This walk is not without its burdens, but I am heartened when I remember whose footsteps I find there: those of people like Reagan and Winston Churchill who in their dedication to right refused to let ambition triumph over truth. Assaulted, ridiculed, caricatured, ignored, at times reduced to a small and almost covert band of like-minded adherents, they kept their faith. They witnessed the rising power of the evils they warned against. They witnessed the policies of appeasement, retreat and surrender practiced by unprincipled leaders in the face of those evils. They witnessed the day when hard experience finally forced those who had all but forgotten their existence to turn and make a stand against wickedness triumphant over freedom.

I have an ominous feeling about the years ahead. With Obama, we have crossed the line that separates civil politics from civil war disguised as politics. Occupying the White House is a man known for his support and association with people (like leftist Kenyan politician Raila Amollo Odinga) for whom that line appears never to have existed. I predict that American politics as we have known it is gone. And unless we Americans wake up, more than civil politics will end up dead. For there are other footsteps in this wilderness, left by leaders who opposed the Communists when they took over Eastern European countries in the late 1940s, or Asian countries in the fifties, or African countries in the sixties, or South American and South African countries in the eighties, and so on. Mostly we do not know their names, nor can we mark the spot where their lives were overtaken because their compatriots did not wake up in time. But, with the Psalmist, I will fear no evil, for here, as everywhere, I see the footprints of the one who conquered death itself. Wherever they lead, there is life renewed.

An Ominous Pledge

Now comes the report that Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions has produced a video featuring dozens of celebrities shown pledging their service to Barak Obama.

In an article I recently co-authored with John Haskins we pointed out that "When despotic governments prevail… loyalty is the result of personal fealty… In effect this makes the power of government the personal property of the ruler (res privata.) But under the Constitutional form of government, government power is a public possession (res publica) belonging to the people as a whole… Loyalty to the Constitution takes the place of personal fealty as the focal point of the people's respect for law."

With this in mind, the supposedly positive and lighthearted tone of the pledging video belies the deadly serious implications of encouraging people to pledge allegiance to Obama. I believe this is one more bit of evidence that the "change" Obama means to effect is a regime change. However, contrary to the cuddly assumptions of so-called liberal rhetoric, this is not progress toward hope and unity but retrogression, back to the days of monarchic and oligarchic despotism; back to the days when some were raised to glory and others raised to serve them; back to the days when the eras of political life were marked, not by the rise and fall of parties and their numbers in the legislature, but by the rise and fall of dynasties and the family names that titled them.

A change in the focus of allegiance marks the transition from one form of government to another. For example, as the Roman Republic declined the focus of allegiance shifted from the republic, (as established by the conjoint authority of "the Senate and the People of Rome", Senatus Populus Que Romanum, or SPQR) to the name and family of an individual, Caesar. The shift did not take place all at once, but gradually as the result of political competition that escalated into civil unrest and eventually civil war. The different parties to the conflicts organized themselves around leaders- Sulla, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Brutus, Marc Antony, Octavian who became Augustus Caesar), whose forces pledged loyalty to the individuals they followed in battle. The forces that prevailed in battle at any given moment dictated the terms of civic life. Though they continued formally to speak and act in the name of the Senate and the People of Rome, not the authority of the Republic, but the superiority of their armed forces determined the law.

Under the Republic, force alone did not establish Roman rule because no effective force could be brought to bear until and unless the Senate (those well-endowed but few in number) and the People (greater in numbers but otherwise inadequately endowed) worked together. Therefore, the law, in both its content and its administration, had to satisfy both, at least to the extent necessary to keep them in harness. Each of the component elements of effective power had to get its due, or at the very least believe that this was so. In this sense, justice (giving to each what is due) emerges as the prerequisite of co-operation, and therefore the basis for the law which structures and disciplines that co-operation.

But as the Roman rule expanded, success increased the size and complexity of the Roman population. No longer of one condition, the people as a whole ceased to be energetic enough to assert a common view of what was owed to them. The multitude of forces gathered round leaders like Julius Caesar (their armies) replaced the Roman multitude in the balance of justice, so that whoever owned their loyalty could supply the defect of power once supplied by the joint resolve of the Senate and the People. In order to rule, one no longer had to take account of this resolve, so long as he was sure of the resolve of those who owed their loyalty to him.

The American founders took lessons from the fate of the Roman Republic that led them to adopt an understanding of justice more truthful and comprehensive than that of ancient Rome. American justice starts from the premise that God took care of the most important distribution when he created us equal in nature and endowed with unalienable rights that reflect his will for our humanity. As I have argued elsewhere, Obama represents elite forces in America that have abandoned this understanding, turning their back on the principles of the American Declaration of Independence. Indeed, the trend toward this abandonment can be seen as far back as the New Deal, which represented a concept of political life that reflected a purely distributive idea of justice more like that of ancient Rome.

Now the velvet propaganda media of this would be dictator's celebrity claque invites us to take the next step toward the re-establishment of archaic political imperialism, to return to the Dark Ages of personal fealty and political fiefdoms. As if we are clueless enough to forget that these go hand in hand with serfdom, indentured service and slavery. In this context, Obama's stated goal of establishing a domestic security force as large as the military; and his push for compulsory national service take on a properly ominous hue. (In itself, the idea of universal service is not, in my view, objectionable. The idea of such service in the context of personal pledges to Obama raises the specter of the Nazi Party's Hitler-Jugend (Hitler Youth), the Soviet Union's Komsomol (Communist Youth League), and other such factors of totalitarian dictatorship.)

Perhaps because he is not a descendant of the enslaved, Obama doesn't mind the thought of returning to the ideas and approaches that comfortably accommodated serfdom and slavery. Perhaps because of his socialist views and Communist associates, he feels no discomfort at the prospect of American versions of their collectivizing machinery. I cannot but hope that there are many like myself who remember the oaths that bind us to the Constitution, and the pledge we once took in our classrooms every day, of allegiance to the American flag, and the Republic for which it stands. I fear the days are coming when we shall have to do more than chatter in order to prove true to that allegiance. But with God's help, and Christ's courage, we shall endure all things.