Down with banks, student-loan debt, and expensive elections! Up with barter…capitalism…and…Mitt Romney?!?!
On October 4, 2011, Reason.tv visited the Occupy Wall Street protests at Liberty Square in Lower Manhattan, on Day 18 of the ongoing demonstration.
The crowd was relatively small at about 300, and included educated but unemployed workers, college students and recent graduates, homeless drifters, performance artists, 9/11 truthers, and a not-insignificant number of journalists.
The “leaderless” movement is made up of more than a dozen smaller groups, such as the “Information” group with Macbooks hooked up to generators who maintain the “OccupyWallStreet” Twitter feeds and liveblogs, a “People’s Library” consisting mostly of donated leftist literature, and a well-stocked kitchen where organic vegetables are sliced for communal salads.
Student loan debt, campaign finance reform, and general anger with the sluggish economy were the more frequent grievances aired, but the demonstrators are hardly monolithic in their passions or opinions. Among the boilerplate anti-capitalist rhetoric included a lifelong Democrat professing his support for Mitt Romney, an unemployed aviation mechanic declaring his continued support of capitalism and disgust at corporate welfare, and a homeless man expressing skepticism that any of the protestors would remain in the park if just “one bad wind” rolled through the area.
Also in the crowd was Republican New York City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran, who took all questions from the assembled crowd, and even won them over after forcefully denouncing taxpayer bailouts of corporations and eminent-domain abuse.
Though the message of Occupy Wall Street is muddled and the future of the protest remains unclear, similar “Occupy” demonstrations are popping up in cities all over the United States, and the quasi-anarchist community residing in Liberty Square shows no signs of relinquishing its post.
Reason recapped the list of demands of the self-professed “99%,” which include free college education for all and a minimum wage of $20/hr. Read that at http://bit.ly/pcDOLc
And check out this riveting eyewitness account and analysis from NYC at http://bit.ly/nRR3Wf
Every American President Is A Terrorist: Cornel West and Rapper Lupe Fiasco Inspire a Clapping Audience of 13 to 18 Year Olds At Leadership Conference By Telling Them America is Biggest Terrorist in The World & Army Navy & Marines Only Kill People
Earlier this month, Sen. Marco Rubio made an auspicious debut.
Unlike so many first turns in the upper chamber, Rubio’s stirring remarks, which celebrated American exceptionalism, caught fire. The Florida Republican’s words were cited by Senate colleagues and championed by conservatives. To no one’s surprise, the push to put Rubio on the 2012 ticket only increased, even though the charismatic freshman continues to swat away the chatter.
Look for the Rubio buzz to continue. In an interview with National Review Online, he says that he will take to the Senate floor for his second speech this week — and this time he will have President Obama in his crosshairs.
Rubio tells us that he will respond to Obama’s recent press conference, where the president reveled in class-warfare bluster. “Quite frankly, I am both disappointed for our country and shocked at some of the rhetoric,” he says. “It was rhetoric, I thought, that was more appropriate for some left-wing strong man than for the president of the United States.”
“Talking about corporate jets and oil companies,” Rubio says, missed the point. “Everybody here agrees that our tax code is broken,” he says, and he is open to discussing tax reform. “But don’t go around telling people that the reason you are not doing well is because some rich guy is in a corporate jet or some oil company is making too much money.”
Watching Obama brandish such talking points made Rubio wince. “Three years into his presidency, he is a failed president,” he says. “He just has not done a good job. Life in America today, by every measure, is worse than it was when he took over.”…
(Brought to my attention by a reader, Tommy Boy.) I think this first picture (above) is a great contrast between what most would consider two extreme positions. On the right — can you see the irony? — a “revolutionary” socialist/Marxist. On the left a Bible thumper who is holding a cross intimating salvation either before Christ’s Second Coming or before one dies [or you will be forever damned]. The difference is that the Bible thumper wants stability and economic justice (as the Constitution provides). She would believe that her actions can neither speed up or slow Christ’s coming. She would also believe that nothing but a free choice would be involved in the accepting or rejecting the gift of salvation by said sinner. The “revolutionary” believes that those who do not want this change should be forced to make up their mind. Read here Pol-Pot, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and the myriad of revolutionaries in the 20th century. In other words, any person — believer or skeptic — would want that Bible thumper verses what you see below. (All pictures enlargeable upon clicking):
This is some info that I sympathize with people on, and do not mind — and accept with all best intentions w– when someone responded to me, “Bin Laden Anti gay, pro fundamentalist religion! OMG, he must be a Republican!” I can understand where such a statement left on my Facebook comes from. I was amazed myself when I found out that Fred Phelps — of the Westboro Baptist Church/Cult — was a lifelong Democrat and ran for Democratic office many times. What elicited such a post on my Facebook? It was a linked article from Eric Dondero over at Libertarian Republican (A defunct blog, sadly):
Seems that the very worst suspicions about Bin Laden of conservatives and pro-defense libertarians may have just been confirmed.
More intelligence from his compound has just been released. We are learning that the Al Qaeda leader was a fan of AntiWar activists in the West, listened “constantly” to elitist liberal taxpayer-subsidized Western media, was vociferous in his anti-Capitalist views, and rooted for the Democrat Party in US politics.
From the NY Times “Bin Laden’s Secret Life in a Diminished World” May 8:
In 2007, he complained that Democratic control of Congress had not ended the war in Iraq, a fact he attributed to the pernicious influence of “big corporations.” In other messages he commented on the writings of Noam Chomsky, the leftist professor at M.I.T., and praised former President Jimmy Carter’s book supporting Palestinian rights.
This is a tough subject for those who have not read on the topic… and… unfortunately they never may due to many of the authors being from a conservative point of view. This viewpoint (conservative) has nothing to do with the truth of the position of said authors. The reader must see for themselves if the facts used in the books are true or not. For instance, did American Leftists support the fascists in the build up to WWII? (Only later supporting Stalin in his “Stalinism”):
The introduction of a novel term like “liberal fascism” obviously requires an explanation. Many critics will undoubtedly regard it as a crass oxymoron. Actually, however, I am not the first to use the term. That honor falls to H. G. Wells, one of the greatest influences on the progressive mind in the twentieth century (and, it turns out, the inspiration for Huxley’s Brave New World). Nor did Wells coin the phrase as an indictment, but as a badge of honor. Progressives must become “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis,” he told the Young Liberals at Oxford in a speech in July 1932. Wells was a leading voice in what I have called the fascist moment, when many Western elites were eager to replace Church and Crown with slide rules and industrial armies.
Is there a history of the New Left and this wanting of Islamo-Nazi type regimes that denigrate women and lift rape of young men to new levels? We read just a bit from David Horowitz’s intro of his book, Unholy Alliance:
A further irony of these complaints was that the shah had been, in fact, a modernizer who promoted education and the equality of women. His social progressivism was the very cause of the Islamic revolution that overthrew him. President Jimmy Carter’s liberal aversion to the shah’s authoritarian rule helped to undermine his regime and pave the way for the reign of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic revolution. While American radicals welcomed the revolution of the ayatollahs, their regime was far more reactionary and repressive than the government of the shah, and it both created and inspired the Islamic radicals who confront America as enemies today.
Why has the American Left made alliances of convenience with Islamic radicals who have declared war on the democratic West and whose own values are reactionary and oppressive? Why have American radicals actively obstructed the War on Terror, thereby undermining the defense of the democracies of the West? Why have liberals opposed Operation Iraqi Freedom, whose goals are the overthrow of tyranny and the establishment of political democracy and human rights—agendas that coincide with their own? Why have Democrats turned against the policy of regime change, which they had supported during the Clinton administration in both Kosovo and Iraq? Why has the Democratic Party declared political war on the president’s war and thus made foreign policy a point of partisan conflict for the first time since the end of World War II? What does this fracture of the American consensus mean for the future of America’s War on Terror?
These are the questions the current inquiry seeks to address. In doing so, it necessarily must confront others: What is the nature of the American Left? How does it think about the world? How did it come to ally itself with Islamic jihad? How significant is the threat posed by its opposition to the War on Terror? How powerful is its presence in the Democratic Party? What is its role in shaping the American future?
These are great questions. I think the book that answers them more fully in a short and concise manner can be found in the chapter entitled “The Red-Black-Green Islamic Axis,” in the book by Melanie Phillips — The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth, and Power. While my small quote from Melanie does not do her thesis justice, it is a key connecting point in my minds eye:
These curious coalitions are frequently explained as merely opportunistic alliances, where certain groups make common cause with ideological opponents in pursuit of the shared aim of bringing down Western society. This explanation surely is only partly correct. What these various movements have in common goes much deeper: they are all utopian. Each in its own way wants to bring about the perfect society, to create a new man and a new world.
Each therefore thinks of itself as progressive; the supporters of each believe themselves to be warriors in the most noble of causes. The greens believe they will save the planet. The leftists believe they will create the brotherhood of man. The fascists believe they will purge mankind of corruption. And the Islamists believe they will create the Kingdom of God on earth.
What they all have in common, therefore, is a totalitarian mindset in pursuit of the creation of their alternative reality. These are all worldviews that can accommodate no deviation and must therefore be imposed by coercion. Because their end product is a state of perfection, nothing can be allowed to stand in its way. This is itself a projected pathology. As Eric Hoffer suggested in The True Believer, the individual involved in a mass movement is in some way acutely alienated from his own society, an alienation to which he is completely blind. Projecting his own unacknowledged deficiencies onto his surroundings, he thinks instead there is something wrong with society and fantasizes about building a new world where he will finally fit.” This belief that humanity can be shaped into a perfect form has been the cause of the most vicious tyrannies on the planet from the French Revolution onwards.
As Jamie Glazov notes in his book United in Hate, the totalitarian believer publicly denies the violent pathologies within the system that he worships. Privately, however, these are what drew him towards that system in the first place because he is aware that violence is necessary to destroy the old order so that utopia can arise from its ashes. Pretending he is attracted to “peace,” “justice” and “equality,” he actually stands for their opposite. He needs to empathize with the “martyrs” and the downtrodden in order to validate himself vicariously. The Third World, intrinsically noble since it is uncorrupted by the developed world, provides an apparently inexhaustible supply of such validation. That’s why the image of the Palestinian youth armed with only a slingshot touches the radical soul so deeply, and why the radical does not want to hear—why he even denies—the guns that are ranged just behind that youth as he throws his stones.”
Later, after following through with the history of the coining and idea behind the term “Westoxification,” she has a fabulous paragraph that puts in a pretty bow why the Progressive Left so often finds solace in these radical views you would think it would reject:
The Islamists committing mass murder in New York’s Twin Towers or a Jerusalem cafe really do believe they are fighting for justice and to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. The communists and the fascists really did think they were ending, respectively, the oppression and the corruption of man. The environmentalists really do think they are saving the planet from extinction. The radical left really do think they will erase prejudice from the human heart and suffering from the world. And those who want Israel no longer to exist as a Jewish state really do believe that as a result they will turn suicide bomb belts into cucumber frames, and that they are moving in the way that history intended.
Mona Charen wrote a book dealing with this very issue of the Liberal Democrats during the cold war, an excellent book. Take note of the worldview difference that I build up to, and this is key to understanding why the Chomskies and the Zinns of the world as well as the organized revolutionary groups and unions have in common:
“With a President in disgrace, the antiwar Democrats in Congress could have their way. Starting with the 1974 budget, they refused to allocate another penny to Southeast Asia, and forbade US military action “in or over” Indochina. So much for the threat of air strikes to punish North Vietnamese violations of the peace treaty. It wasn’t enough that U.S. soldiers were out of it. The Democrats in Congress wanted the North Vietnamese to win. And they soon got their way.” …. “The victorious Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) rolled into Phnom Penh and began a systematic war on the entire population so savage that it almost defies description. Estimates of the number of dead range between 1.5 and 2 million out of a nation of 7 million. At least one million were executed and another million died of starvation and disease that were the direct consequences of government policy.” …. “Under Mao Tse-Tung, an estimated 65 million Chinese were killed by execution, torture, and starvation. Vietnam is held responsible for one million deaths. North Korea is believed to have murdered 2 million. And so the Cambodian ordeal stands out only in proportional terms. The Khmer Rouge were not qualitatively different from other Communists, but they were more rushed. Communists have often been called “socialists in a hurry.” The Khmer Rouge were Communists in a hurry.” …. “Right-Wing Isolationists of the 1930s had wished to keep America out of foreign entanglements on the grounds that we were too good for the world. Post-Vietnam liberal isolationists saw the world as too good for us.”
So, as these pieces come together you can see why someone like Osama can feel at home with the likes of revolutionary/leftist figures and groups and anti-war movements (which are really Marxist based of Islamo-fascist based – like the Palestinian movements or A.N.S.W.E.R.). Of course I have read the books I mention herein, so I am working from a knowledge base much different than your typical person, especially one who enjoys Chomsky’s and Zinn’s writings. Here is the entire chapter from Melanie Phillips books where she tries to explain the issue in whole: I highly recommend this book. As an agnostic, she has a fair view of this program the Left calls egalitarianism. This egalitarianism trumps their placatory stances on homosexuality, women’s rights, and the like.
Harry Alford, president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, blasted President Obama’s anti-business administration during radio interview with Laura Ingraham.
Mr. Alford, an Obama supporter in 2008, labeled Obama’s Administration Marxist & fanatical. “They might as well put on the brown shirts and swastikas,” he said. When asked by Ingraham why he voted for Obama, his answer was; “because he’s black.”
Majority of the American people agrees with Mr. Alford, Obama is dangerous. “He’s way over his head, and its showing,” he said.
