Thought for Today

"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting."

~~~~~ Charles Bukowski

Thought for Today

"Barack Obama isn't leading. Instead, events are leading the president – and I don't mean stage-managed summits, puppet press conferences or White House dinners, but the international events that matter, the ones paid for in blood. Iran and North Korea are immediate cases where rogue regimes seeking nuclear weapons follow calculated strategies that harm American interests and allies. ... From its inception, the Obama administration has talked and talked a great deal about the way it wants the world to be. Rhetorical theatrics, to include sermons promoting visions, and emotionally charged media spectaculars hold pre-eminent and almost holy positions among administration elites. This is understandable, for these are the tools of domestic politics in a free, secure nation of laws – the terrain where American community organizers operate. Obama believes that if he can chitchat long enough and with sufficient eloquence, the world will align with his words -- his rhetorical 'oughtta be' becomes the way it is. It worked in Chicago. But talk does not stop mass-murdering dictatorships. Events – especially unexpected, game-changing events – demand action."

~~~~~ Austin Bay

Thought for Today

"I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of 'Admin.' The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps.In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

~~~~~~ C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Thought for Today

"Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants."

~~~~~ Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 1, 27 October 1787)

Thought for Today

"And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the will of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion of the state."

~~~~~ Galileo Galilei

North Korea As Seen by Zack Rawsthorne

Here's the Diversity Lane take on the North Koreans and how not to handle the situation:

Thought for Today

"It is seldom that any liberty is lost all at once."

~~~~~ David Hume

Mark Steyn: Live Free or Die

This month's Imprimis from Hillsdale College features an essay adapted from a March, 2009 lecture by the indispensable Mark Steyn. For the title of his lecture, Mark used the famous motto of his adopted home state, "Live Free or Die."

Reading his lecture is a very sobering experience. As a native of Canada who has traveled widely all over the world, Mark has a greater appreciation of United States exceptionalism than most native-born Americans. He has seen first-hand the rapid decline of the once-great civilizations of Great Britain, France, Germany, and even, to a disturbing extent, Canada.

For several years now, Mark has been trying his considerable best to warn us that we, the last bastion of true freedom in the world, are headed down the exact same path as the formerly great powers of Europe. He sees us heading at breakneck speed for a cliff, and is attempting to warn us to change course before it is too late.

In his vitally important book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, Mark discusses the disturbing demographic trends which, if unchecked, will leave us friendless and isolated in a hostile world. In this lecture, he points out that our new administration is trying its best to drive us over the same cliff over which our European and Canadian friends have already fallen.

Here's how he begins:

MY REMARKS are titled tonight after the words of General Stark, New Hampshire's great hero of the Revolutionary War: "Live free or die!" When I first moved to New Hampshire, where this appears on our license plates, I assumed General Stark had said it before some battle or other—a bit of red meat to rally the boys for the charge; a touch of the old Henry V-at-Agincourt routine. But I soon discovered that the general had made his famous statement decades after the war, in a letter regretting that he would be unable to attend a dinner. And in a curious way I found that even more impressive. In extreme circumstances, many people can rouse themselves to rediscover the primal impulses: The brave men on Flight 93 did. They took off on what they thought was a routine business trip, and, when they realized it wasn't, they went into General Stark mode and cried "Let's roll!" But it's harder to maintain the "Live free or die!" spirit when you're facing not an immediate crisis but just a slow, remorseless, incremental, unceasing ratchet effect. "Live free or die!" sounds like a battle cry: We'll win this thing or die trying, die an honorable death. But in fact it's something far less dramatic: It's a bald statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die.

My book America Alone is often assumed to be about radical Islam, firebreathing imams, the excitable young men jumping up and down in the street doing the old "Death to the Great Satan" dance. It's not. It's about us. It's about a possibly terminal manifestation of an old civilizational temptation: Indolence, as Machiavelli understood, is the greatest enemy of a republic. When I ran into trouble with the so-called "human rights" commissions up in Canada, it seemed bizarre to find the progressive left making common cause with radical Islam. One half of the alliance profess to be pro-gay, pro-feminist secularists; the other half are homophobic, misogynist theocrats. Even as the cheap bus 'n' truck road-tour version of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, it made no sense. But in fact what they have in common overrides their superficially more obvious incompatibilities: Both the secular Big Government progressives and political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential.

To read the rest, go here. You can also download the entire issue as a PDF here.

Thought for Today

"George Orwell, in his vision of 1984, got it backward. We do not have to fear Big Brother watching us on TV. In times like these, we have to fear the effects of our watching Big Brother."

~~~~~ Mortimer B. Zuckerman

Thought for Today

"What is this oozing behemoth, this fibrous tumor, this monster of power and expense hatched from the simple human desire for civic order? How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?"

~~~~~ P.J. O'Rourke

Thought for Today

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the rights of the people by the gradual & silent encroachments of those in power than by violent & sudden usurpations."

~~~~~ James Madison

Pruden on the Obama Tape

Karl Marx

In his latest column, A game-changer by Obama, Wesley Pruden comments on the 2001 Obama radio interview in his inimitable style:

If your toilet is stopped up by something really big and smells really bad, you'll probably need a plumber. Joe the Plumber, as it turns out, diagnosed the trouble, and yesterday we learned what it was. It smells really bad.

It's a scorcher. You'll want to read the whole thing.

Empowering Our Enemies

Mona Charen, author of Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us), asks in her latest column Does Obama's Friendship with Khalidi Matter to Jews?

In addition to his close and long-standing friendship with Rashid and Mona Khalidi, Charen mentions two more of the close friends which Obama would rather his Jewish supporters didn't know about, Jeremiah Wright and Mazen Asbahi.

Others have pointed out that Obama's past and present advisors include such notorious pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli individuals as Robert Malley, Samantha Power, former Congressman David Bonior, retired Air Force General Merrill "Tony" McPeak, and Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Can anyone not see a pattern here? Is it not true that a man may be judged by the company he keeps?

Why, then, is it likely that judging by their past voting records, approximately three-fourths of my co-religionists are going to vote for Obama in seven days? Won't they feel the least bit uncomfortable about elevating this unknown, inexperienced individual with his shady, mysterious past and his troubling associations to the most powerful position on earth? Can Jews really be that naïve and stupid?

I'm hoping the answer is No.

From His Own Mouth II

Well, whaddaya know? In 2001, in an interview on Chicago Public Radio, then-State Senator Barack Obama clearly and unambiguously stated his position on the redistribution of wealth. No need to take anybody's word for it. Listen for yourself:



Incidentally, notice how even then, the Obamessiah had to exaggerate his own importance by referring to himself as a "law professor" (at 2:29 into the clip) when, in fact, he was a Senior Lecturer, an untenured position slightly above "Graduate Student." It's roughly the same thing as a 2nd Lieutenant passing himself off as a Colonel. Apparently, the man's narcissism is a long established character trait.

Hat tip: Little Green Footballs

If you haven't watched it yet, here's a link to the first From His Own Mouth.

More on Joe the Plumber

PajamasMedia has two great articles on Joe the Plumber and why his story should matter very much to all of us.

First, there's Ruben Navarrette Jr.'s "The Democratic Party’s Drubbing of Joe the Plumber," which begins like this:

I realize it’s all about winning at this point. But someone has to ask: What has happened to the Democratic Party?

It seems like just yesterday that the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy was talking about income equality and civil rights and worker protections and going to bat for the little guy, the blue collar laborer, the everyday Joe the Plumber.

Now, the well-to-do elites who run the Democratic Party — and their surrogates — greet these people with brickbats. They insult them, talk down to them, and even try to destroy them. Isn’t that the sort of war on the working class that Democrats are always accusing those greedy and heartless Republicans of waging?

Then take a look at this short but incisive piece by Claudia Rosett, "First They Came for Joe the Plumber…." Here's how she starts out:

Joe’s question about taxes threw a wrench into Barack Obama’s campaign pitch. So, oh what a background check Joe got. Within days, reports were all over the news that Joe owes back taxes, he doesn’t have an Ohio plumber’s license, his real name is Samuel, and he is — shock and horror — a registered Republican. Within days, Obama and Biden were holding up Joe to public ridicule, and by implication mocking any American working stiff who might have the audacity to want to earn more than $250,000 per year.

Obama may be full of talk about delivering the American dream, but he apparently has enormous disdain for Americans who actually sweat to earn it for themselves. He wants to take Joe’s money and spread it around in the name of helping others get ahead — but if anyone gets ahead more than Obama deems fitting, watch out.

It seems that Joe’s sins are less than the litany would make them. He may not have a plumber’s license, but he works for someone who does. He owes back taxes, but less than $1,200. And at least to date, it is not a crime in America to use a nickname or be a registered Republican.

Thought for Today

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.

~~~~~ Patrick Henry

Another Question from Hannah

Once again, Hannah, my 17-year-old granddaughter, asked me a very good question:
"Can you tell me what is wrong with Obama and his policies?"

Of course, those of us who follow current affairs know the answer already. Unfortunately, there are millions of people out there, many of whom will be voting on November 4th, who have no idea why we find the prospect of an Obama presidency so disturbing. Like my granddaughter (who won't be quite old enough to vote this time around), they have only the vaguest idea of what the two candidates stand for, and the significant differences between them.

Here's what I told Hannah:

Yes. He's a radical leftist who wants to turn the country away from capitalism and toward a system of European socialism in which an all-wise, all-powerful government directs private companies how to run their businesses, and private citizens how to run their lives.

In addition, he is far too comfortable with practices characteristic of fascism, such as indoctrination of children, the cult of personality (in which the "Great Man" becomes the object of adoration, and even worship), and thuggishness (in which mobs of mind-numbed supporters are used to intimidate opposition). If you study a little history, you'll find that it's just a short step from such practices to a totalitarian dictatorship.

You'll probably scoff in disbelief, and say "But that can never happen here!" Again, I'd suggest that you study a little history. For instance, during the first few decades of the 20th century, Germany's was arguably the most highly developed civilization in the world. From Germany came the world's most advanced developments in chemistry, physics, medicine, music, and many other disciplines. Their government was a democracy, in which a president and members of a parliament (the Reichstag) were chosen in free elections. Yet, in 1933, a former World War I corporal with a funny mustache and a mesmerizing way of speaking managed to gain dictatorial power over the country.

Within 12 years, it was all over, and the former corporal had killed himself in his bunker as the allied armies moved into Berlin. But meanwhile, he had turned his whole country into smoking ruins, thrown the whole world into turmoil, and killed millions of people, including 6 million Jews.

(By the way, you may not be aware that three of those Jews would have been your great-uncles – my mother's three brothers who were unable to get out of Poland in time, Aaron, Burl, and Eli.)

In short – Obama is a very, very scary candidate. He is masquerading as a nice, reasonable, moderate, sensible centrist Democrat. Yet his past history and associations indicate something quite different. Those who influenced him, and those with which he associates, are radical leftists, self-professed Marxists, radical Islamists, corrupt Chicago politicians, and other such unsavory characters.

If he becomes our next president – and as of now, it looks as though that's what's going to happen – we are in very deep doo-doo.

Granted, McCain's far from ideal, and is certainly no Reagan – but his long public record indicates that he loves his country, and has dedicated himself to public service, first in the military, then in the political arena. The fact that he was a U.S. Navy aviator – a qualified carrier pilot – makes him part of a very small elite. It takes a special kind of man to take off and land jet fighter aircraft on carrier decks, and John McCain is one of that rare breed. In contrast, Obama's record includes nothing remotely comparable. Basically, all he has ever done is run his mouth and write two books, both about himself.

I could easily have written several more pages on the subject.

Sieg Heil, Mein ObamaFuhrer! Part 2

It's gone beyond the indoctrination of innocent little children, turning them into obedient little ObamaBots. Watch this video:

I got this from The Jawa Report. They've already gotten some perceptive comments on it, including this link to a Chicago Sun-Times story. Go read it, and you'll learn that such thuggery is not the result of excesses by some overzealous supporters, but an essential part of the Obama campaign.

Sieg Heil, Mein ObamaFuhrer!

By now, you've probably seen this truly repulsive video. (If you haven't yet seen it, by all means take a moment to click on the link and watch it now, then read Kim Priestap's insightful comments on Wizbang.)

UPDATE 1: YouTube has taken down the video. If you haven't seen it yet, it's too late. The remix below is hosted on BlipTV, so maybe it will remain up for a while. It'll give you a pretty accurate idea of the original, too.

UPDATE 2: Confederate Yankee has found another copy of the original on YouTube. For a while, anyway, you can watch it here. He has also done a little research and found out who was behind this monstrosity. There are quite a few interesting comments, too. Better hurry if you want to see the original video, though – it's not likely to be available much longer.

Many blogs and other websites have picked up and commented upon that video. The descriptive term most consistently applied to it has been "creepy." While I agree with it as far as it goes, I don't think "creepy" is nearly strong enough. The kids in this video, along with their glassy-eyed parents, remind me of the old black-and-white newsreel footage of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) from the 1930's. Almost without exception, all of the other monstrous totalitarian dictatorships of recent history followed Hitler's example, and continue to do so. After all, it's much easier to mold people into obedient little Nazis, Communists, Baathists, or jihadis if you can start when they're very young.

The best commentary upon this video which I have yet come across is this masterful video, "Obama Kids: Sing for Change (Pyongyang Remix)" from ReasonTV:


Hat tip: Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online's Liberal Fascism blog

Hey, you undecided voters out there: Is that really the kind of "Change" you seek? Better think before you vote. Before you head down that one-way street and cast your vote for amorphous "Hope" and "Change," you'd better be very sure that you're not making an irrevocable decision you'll come to regret.