Kyle-Anne Shiver, The American Thinker:
In the end, however slow the process, however seemingly benign the growth of the state may seem, liberal fascism has the same result of all tyrannies before it: hell on earth for most and a self-indulgent feast for the Statists in power.
As Barack Obama speaks, thinking Americans ought to hear the echoes of past fascist demagogues and remember. Remember.
When Barack Obama promises “collective redemption” through his profligate spending programs and vast overtures to a new world order built on love for our fellow man, we ought to shudder not swoon.
We ought to remember that healthy global relationships are built upon respect, not all-encompassing love, and that redemption for one’s soul is a commodity the state is not empowered to offer.
As Pope Benedict XVI has so presciently warned:
Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic.
Be not fooled, America. The movement, which appears most benign is instead the most malignant growth ever seen on our soil. It’s a cancer that will kill, and however slowly it grows or however nice it may look on the surface, doesn’t change a thing.
Long-time readers are familiar with my argument that progressivism leads inexorably to totalitarianism — that, given its kernel assumptions, it can only remain coherent by destroying the primacy of the individual and the notion of personal responsibility.
Ms Shiver, taking a different tack, chooses to use an historical overview, much in the way Goldberg did before her, to flesh out her argument that Obama himself represents the essence of the liberal fascist leader — that in him we see stark similarities with some of the world’s greatest political monsters.
Hyperbole? Sober description?
You tell me. Read the whole thing. Discuss.
(h/t N. O’brain)
You only need to look at all the pictures of O! staring bravely into the distance — often with something in the background providing a convenient “halo” — like a classic early 20th century fascist Brave Leader to realize This Shit Ain’t Good.
I find it hard to disagree with that article and Jeff’s comments. I truly think though that this is what the 50+% of mind numbed “American Idol” worshipping public wants. Daddy Government please take care of my every need….
It’s pathetic but as I see it true; and perhaps the only way to turn the tide back is to loose a generation or two to this type of tyranny. Too many (including myself) have had it too good for too long in this country and too many (not including myself) have taken much of it for granted.
Let the pop culture worshippers see what fascism is all about and maybe they will come to respect individual freedom and liberty.
“90% of everything is bullshit.”
This is going further upset Camille I’m afraid.
The problem with that, Bob-O, is that you’re not likely to ever get liberty back.
Bob, why do you have to be hating on American Idol?
Is this what we have to look forward to?
http://www.finallyequal.com/trailer-medium.html
http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html
Hey, my fucking train’s late!
Quote is from the Cardinal’s pre-Pope book, Truth and Tolerance, p. 116, and a chapter which discusses revolution theology and Marxism. Very worthy read.
I understand Jeff, two hat tips in one day would be a bit much. ;-)
Eat my dust N.O’brain!
Carin, I’m sorry, but American Idol makes God cry. Not as much as Rock of Love Bus, but that’s hardly an accolade.
American Fascism, hell, we already have the symbol.
Comment by lee on 5/13 @ 12:51 pm #
I bow before your superior intrawebz skillz.
And thanks, Jeff, I thought this one is important.
I think for reals that some thought should be given to adapting the Cloward-Piven strategy to subvert our dipshit hungarian muppet’s fascist administration. Make the fascist fuckers live up to their own book of rules I think.
Spending a lot of money on infrastructure and social welfare programs is fascist. Murdering hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a war of aggression while shitting on every Western liberal conception of human rights is not. Got it.
No, it isn’t. The schedule hasn’t been made up yet. We’ll get to it after the train arrives.
That’s how it’s done.
Regards,
Ric
Still a mystery where these came from and what they are, isn’t it AJB?
“Murdering hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a war of aggression”
So you are still relying on the demonizing the war in Iraq by citing “studies” that are easily proven lies? You might want to take it up with the current CIC who is now the one “Murdering hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a war of aggression”. You know the murderer you voted for.
I’ll start making the signs:
Young Dictators for Obama!
“Spending a lot of money on infrastructure and social welfare programs is fascist. Murdering hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a war of aggression while shitting on every Western liberal conception of human rights is not.” Whilst the current sitting President is doing both, that is actually not the specific we are complaining about.
Why are you for war and murdering brown people AJB?
AJB–why didn’t you just type “Nuh-uh, YOU are!” It would have been faster and more honest.
Murdering hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a war of aggression
Killing innocent women and children with drones: Obama’s difficult but noble work.
*sniff*
I’ll hate on American Idol – I Dvr everything and that show is responsible for me missing more cliff hanger endings- missed the tail end of fringe last night, in what was, overall, an stellar finale.
I wish Simon Cowell’s kidneys would fail.
Can anyone name any rights that got shat upon during the Bush administration?
(Particularly those that hadn’t been shat upon by the Clinton administration.)
*Murdering hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a war of aggression while shitting on every Western liberal conception of human rights is not.*
When did we bring Hitler into the conversation ? Stay on topic.
Assuming we don’t subscribe to the whole leftist memme that “terrorists have rights too” then no Rob.
Quick, AJB: Which popular Star Trek character has a goatee???
Mr. Spock, you say?
Looks like the transporter is busted again.
Nice dump, AJB! See you next time!
Murdering hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a war of aggression
Ah, so we’re the ones ‘been blowing people up at the markets and in job lines and encouraging them to slaughter each other for sectarian reasons.
while shitting on every Western liberal conception of human rights is not.
Mmmm. Pity no one was around to explain to FDR that sending saboteurs to the electric chair wasn’t cricket.
Do the unicorns shine or merely shimmer in your world?
Great quote by the pope, and it applies to both sides of the political spectrum. Politics don’t save or heal, they don’t redeem. They rule and control. Anyone promising otherwise is not to be trusted and probably wants you to give them power for their own goals.
If being able to say it is going to be any consolation, I’ll be able to tell everyone, “I told you so.”
AJB’s quota is filled now.
The thing is, I don’t think any American actually lost any rights under Bush, at least not due to Bush’s actions in the WOT.
Arguably, there was McCain-Feingold and Bush’s idiocy in signing it. Yet, somehow, I doubt the strident Bush critics would count that against him. There was Kelo, but it’s hard to blame a court decision arising from a local municipality’s action on the president. And, again, I doubt the people cheering for Obama have that big a hard-on for private property rights.
The case of Jose Padilla cuts close, but, well, he did get his day in court, so it’s hard to get that concerned about him.
I don’t recall federal agents torching buildings filled with US citizens in the time between 2001 and 2009, nor people being subjected to IRS audits for criticizing the president.
And in, what, 1/24th the time, Obama’s managed to chuck out the laws of contract, debtor priority during a bankruptcy, run up 4 times the debt, strong-arm critics, and maintain the policies the lefties used to screech about when it was Bush in office in regards terrorists.
Toss in the drive to make all of us dependent on the state for getting medical care, the expressed desire to penalize success via the tax code, the desire to regulate what people may be paid…
That doesn’t even work. Their sainted Algore was the one who expressed zero reservations about grabbing people off the street and sending them to other countries for torture.
I am so glad he stopped by. I am afraid if I do not hear “But Bush blah blah blah murder blah blah blah illegal invasion blah blah blah war for oil” at least once a day I might not be able to soldier on.
I see AJB stopped by with his 40 foot semi packed to the ceiling with moral equivalence platitudes and fallacies.
The tires look like they may need a few more pounds of air though.
Politics don’t save or heal, they don’t redeem. They rule and control.
This is precisely the divide. What is done by politicians is done for political reasons to achieve a political end. Politics is at best a necessary evil. When they are given as little to do as possible, they are moderately acceptable. When they are given everything to do, they become demons. Ideology is irrelevant, the problem lies deeper.
What happened to the Schuster post?
…in him we see stark similarities with some of the world’s greatest political monsters.
That’s not hyperbole, and the day might not be too far off when 3% of the 52 begin to see it. I’ve spent a lot of the last few weeks around “moderate” Obama voters; they’re concerned about his economic policies and power grabs. They’ve noticed his arrogance.
If the economy is in high gear in 2010, they’ll give him a pass and he’s won. Totally. We may as well just tend our gardens and enjoy life. But if the economy worsens — and there are so many ways it might — Boy Wonder faces trouble. And that’s when Jeff, Rush, Cheney’s, etc, pushback will come into play big time.
He didn’t win the election by much.
AJB = Angry Jaundiced Bile
#38 Pat,
We live in the Age Of Obama now. If you think a missing post on a internet board is bad, wait until whole states start disappearing.
Barack Obama, neocon in chief?
All I can say is amazing!
Andrew the noisy says : “Ideology is irrelevant, the problem lies deeper.”
Yes, yes you are on to something here. Whenever a ‘philospher king’ tries to control ‘pain and suffering’ in life, all it seems to do is create more misery. They must control the subjects by destoying DIVERSE INDIVIDUAL THOUGHT, replacing it with the narrative if you will. Ironic that those who bray on about diversity the most seem to have no issue with such mind control. But then , I always knew their ‘diversity’ is only of skin color, sexual taste, or transgenderedness, diversity of thought need not apply.
“#Comment by AJB on 5/13 @ 1:01 pm #
Spending a lot of money on infrastructure and social welfare programs is fascist. Murdering hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a war of aggression while shitting on every Western liberal conception of human rights is not. Got it.”
I’m starting to begin to have an onset of a feeling that AJB is a moron.
Anyone else?
I’m starting to begin to have an onset of a feeling that AJB is a moron.
I’m awash in it. Please send for help.
Barack Obama, neocon in chief?
Sullivan is pathetic, an embarrassment to himself and The Atlantic.
I agree with AJB, Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini were really really GROOVEY COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS.
Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of bureaucrats paid to be useless and obstructive.
But the moment you mention the thought of taking one of them off the payroll, it’s all “YOU WANT TO KILL BIG BIRD YOU HATER!!!”
We don’t have a national budget anymore; it’s been transformed into perpetual ransom negotiations.
Comment by gus on 5/13 @ 2:24 pm #
LOL funny.
Opie 1000% for big and bigger government, because he believes HE IS the Government. Funny thing is, when anything goes SOUTH it’s never him who gets thrown under the bus. He just claims that’s not the XYZ that I knew and moves along with his slobbering minions in line like sheep.
Wow. Outstanding essay. Except that it put me in the mood for a hemlock boilermaker.
If you look at the way AJB crafted his statement from his word choices to the way in which he describes policy choices, you can tell that his comment is intended more to help him reinforce his view of the world than it is an attempt to communicate with others.
We don’t have a national budget anymore; it’s been transformed into perpetual ransom negotiations.
Well said, sir. And YOU WANT TO KILL BIG BIRD should join the rolodex of allcaps zingers favored by this our compact, patriotically correct circle jerk.
And doubled, the content of the narrative that the P-K seeks to impose may be entirely reflective of all that is good, true, upright, moral, and blowjobs for all (yes, the women too). the point is that he won’t and can’t impose it. Note that I do not add to that “without destroying individual lives and freedoms”. I mean that it will not be done no matter how many zeks or corpses you make. Germany is not now a racially pure superstate. Russia is not a paradise for workers where a few hours of pleasant labor pass before practicing philosophy all day. China is not free of foreign influence. You cannot make the human race one jot better by building a pyramid of human skulls. All you can do by killing is possibly kill bad men so that good ones may thrive. And this is far harder work than it would seem.
From the article referenced:
This, that so many were murdered, was the starting point in my leaving the left which I had embraced in college. Reading “The Gulag Archipelago” especially parts III and IV was mind blowing for me. That this had been successfully excluded from my education. Even from my explorations through most of our rather large public library made me acutely aware of the editing out of history that takes place.
It is my belief that the left cannot win if their true history is plainly placed where all can see it. The left must think so too, otherwise why all the incessant effort to deny and cover it up and to distract, divert, destroy all discussion of it.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all union men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former employees and the sons of former business owners will be able to sit down together at the table of government entitlements.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of entrepreneurism, sweltering with the heat of hard work, will be transformed into an oasis of central planning and unionized bliss.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their bank account.
I have a dream that one day, down in Texas, with its vicious capitalists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “independence” and “self-determination” — one day right there in Texas little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as beneficiaries of federal largesse.
I have a dream that one day every government program shall be exalted, and every entrepreneur and capitalist shall be made low, the risky places will be made safe, and the paths to wealth will be torn asunder; “and the glory of the O shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
I have a dream today!
If you don’t feel like reading that giant wall of text I just transcribed, here’s the abridged version:
Khaaaaaaaaaannnnnnn!!!!
Eben, for some reason your use of entrepreneurism put me in mind of this fellow Joe Brewer, who I ran into at that link through Darleen’s “Warning” post yesterday. “He is a social entrepreneur…”
How the language she moves, eh?
Tom Sowell:
I vote the sober one.
The first response to someone trying to put the government in charge of making decisions for you (and with your money they have taken away to use for such) should be “why” and most often followed by “mind your own business and stay out of mine.” I am perfectly capable of making rational decisions about where to invest my money, when and where to go to the doctor or dentist, work, save, play, read, think and the like. I don’t need a GS-9 to tell me that my shoulder doesn’t look bad enough to go to see the doc, or someone on the Executive Schedule to decide that I should not be allowed to invest my 401k where I want.
If people want someone to make all their decisions for them, find a bossy spouse or a nosy sibling or parent to do so. Don’t go and make it a mandatory thing for everyone via the force of law and regulation.
Thomas Sowell is obviously a racist.
Sowell should know better. The media doesn’t want to look like fools for so enthusiastically supporting the man so they have to keep pressing on no matter how ridiculous they look. And since he’s black to do anything else would seem racist, and they don’t want that. And most of all they actually bought into all that hideous, bitter, hate-filled slander, the lies about President Bush and consider anyone, anyone better than Bush and will do anything they have to to prevent that from happening again, no matter what price.
It’s hell when you believe your own publicity. It’s worse if you are the PR guy and still believe it and you made it up, completely.
I just got done, a bit ago, watching American Idol. My wife and kids, after going to Religious Ed. class at our local Catholic Parish, headed over to one of the teachers’ howuses for a kind of after-party–since the teacher is related, in some way, to one of the finalists. I was stuck home waiting for our eldest daughter to come home from going to dinner with a friend. So I got to watch American Idol in peace.
I actually kind of cried watching the “visits to the home towns” of the three finalists. But not for the reasons that I might make easily understood to my daughters.
I was struck and moved by the emotive response to the return of these favorite sons to Milwalkee and conley, Arakansas (I presently live in Arkansas, but am not a native). I didn’t catch the third guy’s return home, so can’t comment–but I imagine “American Idol” championed the same stuff.
Looking at the contestents’ responses to their hometown responses to them, I could honestly understand how and why they might be so moved by such a reception. How great is this? I was just a kid with a nothing story and here I am coming back home and people who never ever knew or cared about me are literally crying on the street if I give them a hug or sign a piece of paper for them. . . It’s incredible.
And yet, in the present context of this conversation, it’s so typical. On the one hand it shows that people seem to need a connection to success–even if it’s not their own. It shows that even winning the lottary is counted today as a kind of success. This is to take nothing away from the nascent talent that these contestents might actually have–but let’s be straight–their talent is for being popular, not for being artists. They’ve written and performed nothing new. They have added nothing to culture. They’ve simply capitalized (or been used by/upon) a marketing strategy.
And then it struck me why someone on this thread actually thought to mention American Idol. I may be behind the curve here folks, but it explains the ascendency of a Barack Obama. He’s exactly what the American Idol contestents are to their tribes–the one that made “good” against all “odds” (which are understood to be whatever is counted success before they strutted the stage–which means they are something different–which they are exactly NOT. The are not different. If Bush was a fascist, then Obama, to a true believer in some kind of principle, must be the same. And yet he’s counted somehow as not the same.
How can this be?
It is because this contest is something like and something more than a popularity contest. The left plays it as such and usually wins (to my mind, sadly). The right plays it about principle and gets played like the pimply can’t-get-a-date-folks they actually are. [By the way–why can’t conservatives dress better and embrace teh sexy?]
My point is that Obama has played both sides and will now use his position, like Hitler did, like every good fascist who really studied and wanted to win, did. He will play everything as a crisis and lull us everyone into believing that he’s doing everything in everyone else’s best interest.
And yet–all he wants to do is commandeer the manufacture and distribution of bread. Dostoyevski asked, in “The Brother’s Karamazov,” (in Ivan’s dream about the devil) of the Christ figure–“Why didn’t you just give them bread?”
It’s the secret to the universe to the fascist. Substitue private property for bread and you begin to get the picture.
Jeff wrote that the “Gulag Archipelago” changed his life–it did mine too. I’m a lit guy, so I don’t have to actually live through that shit to believe it. And I believe Solzhenitsyn. Hell, I believed Hitler in “Mein Kampf,” so why wouldn’t I credit a guy in the Gulag?
Anyway–back to American Idol. It’s an indication that folks in the U.S., and the West, have been softened to think that this is the way they measure their worth–according to someone else’s deciding they are part of some elite.
It sickens.
[…] to Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom) Filed Under: Political Bloggers, Sarah […]
To expound a little on what LTC John said, it’s even worse because their track record isn’t exactly one that inspires confidence.
Would you voluntarily, today, sign up for Social Security knowing its financial situation, how much you paid into it, and what it “promises” to return or just keep the money and invest it in one of those horrible capitalistic funds run by companies with overly compensated executives?
Me too.
We believe in modesty.
[…] ‘BARACK OBAMA, the Quintessential Liberal Fascist†…. […]
i could readily say that Barack Obama will be one of the greatest US Presidents.”