Quote of the day: Message to Obama from Cicero

“Time for a lesson, Barack.”

And I don’t mean Cicero, Illinois, but the great Roman lawyer and orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero (1):

“Whoever governs a country,” Cicero wrote in On Duties,  “must first see that citizens keep what belongs to them and that the state does not take from individuals what is rightfully theirs. . . . Indeed, the chief reason we have a constitution  and government at  all is to protect individual property. Even though nature led people to come together into communities in the first place, they did so with the hope that they could keep what rightfully belonged to them.”

Smart people, those Romans.

via Roger Kimball

Footnote:
(1) And whose prose tormented me in Latin classes. Caesar, Livy, Tacitus, Virgil… no problem! But Cicero? That man broke every rule of grammar you ever learned and made you thank him for it. That’s probably the real reason Marc Antony had him killed.

Presented for your approval: Marco Rubio and Rand Paul school Barack Obama

So, last night was the State of the Union address. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t watch. First off, Obama’s a tedious, hackneyed speaker, and listening to him for an hour would be painful. If you did, you’re made of sterner stuff than I.

Second, we know what he’s going to say. As I posted on Twitter yesterday morning:

#SOTUinLesssThan140 Set up straw man, present false choice, bash critics, pretend moderation, wage class war.

— Phineas Fahrquar (@irishspy) February 12, 2013

And, from what I can see in the transcript, he mostly lived down to my expectations. (1)

But I was interested in the Republican response. For one, prior response speeches have ranged from indifferent to outright flops, but, as this was the first speech of Obama’s second term, there was a chance to begin anew and to lay the first paving stones on the road to 2014 and 2016. Also, the speakers were two men whose careers I’ve followed with interest: Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fl)  and Rand Paul (R-Ky). Both, I think, gave very good responses, concentrating on philosophy over wonky policy details and providing an excellent contrast between our vision of limited government, liberty, and free markets, on the one hand, and Obama’s progressive dream of limitless government, statism, and dependency on the other.

First, Marco Rubio (2):

And then Rand Paul:

While I have points of disagreement with both men, I could comfortably, happily vote for either for president. Along with Governor Jindal of Louisiana, I think we have at least three strong candidates for 2016, and a great improvement over the last group.

Footnotes:
(1) About that proposed $9 per hour minimum wage, indexed to inflation. I suggest anyone who thinks that’s a good idea look up the words “inflationary spiral.” Government should have no role in setting prices or wages, period. It’s just bad policy.
(2) You probably noticed the awkward moment when Rubio reached for a bottle of water. According to actor Adam Baldwin on Twitter last night, that was a sign that the producers screwed up and left the room too warm, which, when combined with the hot lights, left Rubio dying of thirst. He handled it well that night and this morning, though, making jokes about it and disarming the inevitable “OMG!! He drank water!” attacks from the Left.  (Really, guys. Is that the best you’ve got?)

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

California: We’re the best worst state! Yay? Updated.

The new flag of California

Now here’s something to be proud of. Thanks to nearly 50 years of  Democratic control of the legislature and the legislators’ kowtowing to public unions in return for donations and  support, the state of California –the Golden State, the land that inspired untold millions of dreams and created unheard of prosperity for its people– is officially the worst-run state in the nation:

50. California

Debt per capita: $4,008 (18th highest)
Budget deficit: 20.7% (17th largest)
Unemployment: 11.7% (2nd highest)
Median household income: $57,287 (10th highest)
Pct. below poverty line: 16.6% (18th highest)

California is 24/7 Wall St.’s “Worst Run State” for the second year in a row. Due to high levels of debt, the state’s S&P credit rating is the worst of all states, while its Moody’s credit rating is the second-worst. Much of California’s fiscal woes involve the economic downturn. Home prices plunged by 33.6% between 2006 and 2011, worse than all states except for three. The state’s foreclosure rate and unemployment rate were the third- and second-highest in the country, respectively. But efforts to get finances on track are moving forward. State voters passed a ballot initiative to raise sales taxes as well as income taxes for people who make at least $250,000 a year. While median income is the 10th-highest in the country, the state also has one of the highest tax burdens on income. According to the Tax Foundation, the state also has the third-worst business tax climate in the country.

The best run state? North Dakota. In fact, the top five are run by fiscally conservative Republican governments, while the three worst of the bottom five are dominated by liberal Democrats.  I detect a pattern here, and it has much more to do with governing philosophy than with the letter after the politician’s name.

The analysis given after the data is horse feathers, though. Yes, California did suffer heavily from the economic crisis that hit in 2008 and the resulting recession. But that does not explain the slowness of our recovery. That, instead, is explained by the poor policies followed by the government in Sacramento, which has done everything right — if the objective was to choke of economic growth and job creation. Borrowing too much money, then spending it on on padded public pensions and useless projects like high-speed rail; raising already-high taxes on the very people who create the jobs we desperately need, thus leaving no money for reinvestment and driving those people out of the state or out of business; and a regulatory environment that can only be described as miserable. Our “leaders” have taken us straight into the pit and they show no sign of changing course.

Well done, California. Well done!

via Legal Insurrection

RELATED: Other measures of our success: California now leads the nation in poverty, or, as my friend Teach puts it, we’re “Brokefornia.”

UPDATE: Walter Russell Mead explains far better than I did why California’s recovery is so weak:

The problem with California has never been that bad policies put the state in a permanent recession. Rather, bad policies have meant that the state and its residents suffer more than average when recessions come, and that they benefit less than they should when the good times return. Some of the world’s most dynamic people and industries are found in California, but poor governance means that the state as a whole keeps losing ground when compared with the country as a whole. That is California’s real problem, and the Times would serve its readers better by analyzing the forces holding California back from achieving its magnificent potential instead of hailing a modest and cyclical economic recovery as some kind of proof that the state’s model ‘works’.

Left unspoken: We keep electing those responsible for the poor governance.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Secession? No, try federalism

In the wake of the presidential election earlier this month, a lot of people expressed their disappointment with the results by submitting petitions for secession at the White House web site. Petitions were received from all 50 states, and there were several counter-petitions from progressives urging the government to let them go.

To be honest, and even though I signed South Carolina’s to support my friend Gay Patriot, I looked at these as just blowing off steam after a disappointing election loss, just as liberals fantasized about secession in 2004. I didn’t and don’t take them seriously.

My mistake, in at least one respect. As Prof. Glenn Reynolds points out in an op-ed in USA Today, petitions such as these and more serious secession movements in Scotland, Catalonia, and elsewhere arise from anger at a central government from which they feel alienated for various reasons. While the petitions themselves may not be serious, the resentment and irritation caused by being forced to obey one-size-fits-all laws you hate is very real. And, if left to fester, it can lead to more serious problems.

What’s the answer, if secession isn’t it? Reynolds looks back to the handiwork of a very smart group of men who came up with a solution suited to a large, diverse republic, and suggests we give federalism a try:

So what’s a solution? Let the central government do the things that only central governments can do — national defense, regulation of trade to keep the provinces from engaging in economic warfare with one another, protection of basic civil rights — and then let the provinces go their own way in most other issues. Don’t like the way things are run where you are? Move to a province that’s more to your taste. Meanwhile, approaches that work in individual provinces can, after some experimentation, be adopted by the central government, thus lowering the risk of adopting untested policies at the national level. You get the benefits of secession without seceding.

Sound good? It should. It’s called federalism (1), and it’s the approach chosen by the United States when it adopted the Constitution in 1789. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

Surely Reynolds wrote this with a wink and a smile, for federalism is the way were are supposed to operate, and our problems have grown as the federal government has usurped more and more of the states’ proper role, turning gradually from a government of limited powers to Leviathan. Consider it another way: the more the federal government tries to do everything, the less it can do anything well.  The national economy and health care systems are too large and too diverse, and there’s too much information coming in, for them to be directed top-down by a few hundred (or even a few thousand) pols and bureaucrats in D.C. The needs of people differ in various parts of the country, and the resources needed to even try to manage everything nationally wind up being diverted from those things only the federal government can do well, such as national security.

The solution, as Reynolds writes, is to recognize those spheres of competence and respect them, something that’s happened less and less since the progressive era. This isn’t to say that the enumerated powers of Article 1, Section 8 are the end all and be all; the Founders themselves recognized that the Constitution would sometimes need amending (2) –including granting the federal government more power– and put in place procedures for doing just that. It’s through ignoring those limits and procedures that we’ve reached a point whereat so many think, with some justification, that the United States Government is becoming a threat to their liberty and prosperity.

Change won’t be easy, and the genie of the progressive administrative state probably can’t ever be wholly put back in the bottle. But for the health of our body politic we have to keep trying.

Footnotes:
(1) Also “states’ rights,” but that term was forever tainted thanks to defenders of slavery and Jim Crow hiding behind it, back in the day.
(2) And I do think several are needed to deal with the progressive-statist tendency to grab more and more power. Professor Randy Barnett’s Bill of Federalism is a great starting point for discussion. Oddly enough, in the wake of their defeat in 2004, progressives themselves were arguing for federalism. Bipartisanship!

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Pension crisis hits Oregon, collapse of progressive model continues

From the sound of this post by Walter Russell Mead, it looks like whoever manages Oregon’s state pension fund made the same mistakes we made here in California: expecting the extraordinary returns on investments enjoyed during the boom years to continue forever and then making big commitments based on those faulty expectations.

And now, as with their neighbors to the south, Oregon finds itself choosing between pensions or schools:

Oregon’s pension fund for public employees is now in a $16 billion hole caused by the failure of its investments to come anywhere close to the 8 percent rate of return the state was predicting. Now lawmakers are forced to choose between contributing billions of taxpayer dollars to close the pension gap or fully funding the state’s school system.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has the details on exactly how the state got itself into this mess. The main culprit, as usual, is a set of overly generous benefits that actually allowed some state employees to earn more in retirement than they did during their working days…

Details may vary from state to state, but the pattern is the same: public employee unions treating the taxpayers as a never-ending golden goose, and politicians (Democrats and Republicans who act like them) handing out ever more golden eggs of benefits and salaries in return for campaign contributions and election help from those same unions.

In short, it’s a mutual kickback game played with our money, and the losers are We, The People.

But, it’s not just California and Oregon. Wherever you see states and cities that have had long-term liberal dominance in government, you find the same problems with obligations that can no longer be met. New York, Michigan, New Jersey, Detroit, Los Angeles… And all of them being lead by Illinois.

The progressives may have won the presidential race and kept the Senate, but it’s a hollow victory. As Oregon is the latest to show, their model is, in the lingo of the Greens, no longer “sustainable.”

UPDATE: Linked by Instapundit. Welcome, visitors!

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Hillary and Barack: Two Peas in a Class-Warfare Pod

Reblogged from International Liberty:

Every so often, I come across some statement by President Obama that is either jaw-droppingly misguided or unintentionally revealing, and I place it in my is-this-the-worst-thing-he-ever-said file.

His "spread the wealth" comment to Joe the Plumber is the most famous example, but that was before I started this blog. Previous entries on my list include.

• In my video on class warfare…

Read more… 526 more words

Statist, Alinskyite Obama; statist, Alinskyite Hillary. There really isn't much of a difference.

Majoritarianism Is Not Compatible with Individual Rights

Reblogged from International Liberty:

• 

Thomas Sowell, George Will, and Walter Williams have all explained that the Constitution imposes strict limits on the powers of the federal government. This means, for all intents and purposes, that it is a somewhat anti-democratic document.

And by anti-democratic, I mean the Constitution puts restrictions on democracy (not restrictions on the Democratic Party, though in this case...).

Read more… 251 more words

A lot of people forget the Constitution puts limits on majority rule, when it's convenient for them.

Barack Obama: Can we call him a Socialist now?

Oh, my. Take a look at this:

It’s a reminder that the President presented himself as much more progressive during his time in Chicago. In this little-seen advertisement that ran in the Hyde Park Herald in 1996, Obama was listed on a panel sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), University of Chicago Democrats, and University of Chicago DSA. He also supported gay marriage back then.

Click through to see the image of the flyer.

Of course, long-time readers know that I’ve been certain Obama is a Socialist of one form or another for quite a while. Stanley Kurtz did the CSI: Politics work, and I found the argument convincing. Moreover, there’s never been a whit of evidence that Obama has abandoned or renounced his Socialist politics. At most, he’s given up the revolutionary radicalism he favored in his college years and migrated to an incrementalist, gradualist Socialism that seeks to change the system from within.

But, regardless, he’s still a Socialist.

PS: For those wondering if this really matters, it does. Understanding Obama’s political core gives us an idea of where he would like to take the nation in a second term, and forms a handy point of contrast to Mitt Romney. Also, Socialism has never worked wherever it’s been tried, something to keep in mind to tell people who say they don’t care about ideology, they just care about “what works.”

via Jim Hoft

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

(Video) The love of theory is the root of all evil

In one of the best segments of Afterburner in recent memory, Bill Whittle explores the dangers of dogma, that obsessive devotion to a theory that leads one to ignore all evidence to the contrary, and the consequences be damned:

The genius of Bill’s proposition lies in its simplicity. Look at the Hell wrought on the world by some fools’ single-minded devotion to Marxist-Leninist-Maoist economics — how many hundreds of millions have died in Europe, Asia, and Africa?

Look at the trillions of dollars being wasted –the impoverishment of previously wealthy nations, such as Great Britain– because of the obsession with global warming, a problem that does not exist.

Look at our own nation, where secular priests demand we spend more, borrow more, and create more bureaucracy, in spite of all the evidence showing that, far from making things better, it’s only more of the same poison.

This battle is a fight between empiricism and intellectual honesty, on the one hand, and the emotional attachment to a cherished theory, on the other. For the sake of all that we hold dear, we must take that love of false theory, rip it out of the hands of those who cling to it like a soft blanket, shoot it dead before their eyes, and force them to face the empirical truth.

For their (and our) own good.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Has Romney read Bastiat?

Frederic Bastiat

Republican nominee-in-waiting Mitt Romney spoke recently at a meeting of the National Rifle Association in St. Louis, where he gave a powerful speech attacking the Obama administration’s insults to our economic liberty. IBD’s Andrew Malcolm posted excerpts from the speech (and the whole thing), and I recommend reading it.

One part in particular jumped out at me, however, wherein Romney explains the hidden costs of Obama’s tax-and-regulate binge:

“The real cost isn’t just the taxes paid and money spent complying with the rules. It’s the businesses that are never started, the ideas that are never pursued, the dreams that are never realized.”

That could come straight from the thinking of Frederic Bastiat, a 19th century French (1) classical liberal and economist. In his essay “That which is seen, and that which is not seen,” Bastiat attacked the idea that government spending could create wealth, arguing instead that such spending, while it would pump money into the economy, came at the expense of the citizen’s ability to spend that same money on those things that would improve his life. To illustrate his point, he used the parable of the broken window:

Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier’s trade – that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs – I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, “Stop there! your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.”

It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.

Let us take a view of industry in general, as affected by this circumstance. The window being broken, the glazier’s trade is encouraged to the amount of six francs; this is that which is seen. If the window had not been broken, the shoemaker’s trade (or some other) would have been encouraged to the amount of six francs; this is that which is not seen.

And if that which is not seen is taken into consideration, because it is a negative fact, as well as that which is seen, because it is a positive fact, it will be understood that neither industry in general, nor the sum total of national labour, is affected, whether windows are broken or not.

Now let us consider James B. himself. In the former supposition, that of the window being broken, he spends six francs, and has neither more nor less than he had before, the enjoyment of a window.

In the second, where we suppose the window not to have been broken, he would have spent six francs on shoes, and would have had at the same time the enjoyment of a pair of shoes and of a window.

In other words, no wealth was created. The glazier may be a bit richer, but the shopkeeper is poorer. (He may have his window, but he’s out six francs.) Worse, his economic liberty to make his life better was infringed, since the breaking of the window forced him to spend money only to put things back the way they were.

The quote from Romney’s NRA speech indicates he understands (2) what Bastiat was talking about: that government spending only moves wealth from one pocket to another (via taxation); that regulations are a form of taxation (through compliance costs); and that both entail hidden opportunity costs (those things we would like to do but now cannot) by restricting economic liberty.

A president who takes Bastiat to heart is far preferable to one who embraces Alinsky.

Footnotes:
(1) A Frenchman advocating limited government? How times have changed.
(2) Yeah, I know: “Romneycare.” Let’s hope he learned from that.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

How De Tocqueville foresaw Obama and the progressives, part two

Early nineteenth century prose isn’t easy reading (meandering to the point, it seems, was an art form, then), but I’m going to have to knuckle under and read De Tocqueville’s works; the man was obviously  a political Nostradamus. Here he is describing one of progressivism’s defining characteristics to a “T:”

“A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.”

Wilson. Obama. This condescending attitude toward the ordinary man and faith in government experts reeks from the two men who bookend the last century of the transformed presidency.

via Steven Hayward

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

How to undo ObamaCare? A problem of philosophy

There’s an interesting article at The Weekly Standard, by Jeffrey Anderson, looking at the difficulties the Supreme Court faces as it decides what to do about ObamaCare. As Anderson describes it, there are five choices:

1. Upholding the law in its entirety;
2. Minimally overturning it by striking down just the individual mandate;
3. Go a little further by overturning the mandate, plus the closely related “community rating” and “guaranteed issue” clauses;
4. Go through the law page by page deciding which part survives and which is overturned;
5. Voiding the whole law.

Obviously the first is unacceptable to anyone who cares a whit about the Constitution and the principles on which it was founded. It’s also, thankfully, the least likely result if the questions asked by the Justices during the three days of the hearings are any indication.

But options 2-5 pose problems for conservative justice inclined to overturn the mandate: When dealing with a law this huge in both size and scope, which approach best hews to the principles of judicial restraint/judicial modesty, while still adhering to the Constitution? Options 2-4 pose a couple of problems. The first is that, by picking and choosing among the various parts of the bill, the Court may well leave behind a clanking wreck that does even more harm. The other is that, in doing so, especially in the absence of a severability clause (1), the COurt would wind up acting like an unelected super-legislature and usurping the roll of the elected Congress, something that should give any constitutionalist serious pause. As Anderson points out, none of these choices (except the first) are clear-cut and without question.

My own preference to to void the whole bill; it cannot work without the individual mandate, which itself is clearly unconstitutional. And policy decisions about health-care reform, which is what choices 2-4 amount to, are the duty of the elected legislature, not the Court.

But even these arguments raise a deeper issue; the Court would not find itself confronting these issues if not for the progressive penchant for comprehensive legislation, one bill “to bind them all.” Anderson sums it up neatly:

But we shouldn’t miss the larger point here. The predicament in which the Court finds itself is plainly a product of President Obama and his party’s preference for massive, unwieldy, impossibly complicated legislation—the kind that you have to pass first to “find out what is in it.” Such legislation, as the oral arguments revealed, does not fit within our system of limited government. That’s because, as Charles Kesler has observed, Obamacare violates the basic notion of law in a free society. Kesler writes, “Sometimes the most obvious derangements of our politics are staring us in the face but we don’t see them”—like “calling this voluminous monstrosity a bill. Can you have a bill, a single law, that is almost 3,000 pages long? In the old days, that would have constituted a whole code of laws.”

In other words, it’s not just Obamacare that must go, but rather the whole liberal and progressive notion of “comprehensive” legislation for a nation of 300 million people. Obamacare is the epitome of that confidence in central planning by experts. Whether the Court strikes down Obamacare, or President Obama is defeated and Obamacare is repealed, or the Court strikes down part of Obamacare and a new president and Congress repeal the rest, last week’s historic hearings have made one thing clearer than ever: Attempts at “comprehensive” legislation compromise the very notion of limited government, in which the people’s representatives try to accomplish attainable goals in a free society. Comprehensive legislation is what happens when you have unlimited government. It is that effort, and the attitude underlying it, that need to be repudiated—by the Court and, more important, by the voters this November.

(Emphasis added.)

And that points a way forward for conservatives in the coming months: not only concentrating on sending Obama off into retirement , but electing as many limited-government conservatives as possible to Congress who understand a principle related to judicial modesty, but rarely mentioned — legislative modesty. (2) That is, recognizing what the federal government’s proper role is and doing only enough to fulfill that role, not trying to solve every problem (3) that comes down the pike when they’re better left to the states or the people.

Right now, we’re seeing what havoc  legislative arrogance can wreak. It’s time to put a stop to it before the harm is incurable. As Marco Rubio said, “If we don’t win this election in November — and we get four more years of Barack Obama — I don’t know what that means … But I know it ain’t good.”

He was speaking of Obama, of course, but it applies as much to the progressive influence on Congress.

Footnotes:
(1) Severability is a clause Congress usually inserts to allow the courts to strike down provisions of a law without having to kill the whole thing. There was such a clause in an early draft of the bill, but it was removed, indicating the Democrats were betting the Court wouldn’t strike down the whole law because there was no severability. I’m beginning to think they’ll regret that.
(2) Hence Operation Counterwight.
(3) Or any not-problem, something that isn’t their business, but lets them pander to the voters. Such as the BCS.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

One picture is worth a thousand words on Critical Race Theory

This is the fruit of the intellectual handiwork done  by President Obama’s Harvard mentor, Derrick Bell:

And here’s the explanation:

The nation’s premiere voting rights museum—the National Voting Rights Museum—now sits at the foot of the bridge [in Selma, Alabama]. The museum is an inadvertent monument to the civil rights movement’s degeneration. Its outlook is neatly captured in ten words that begin its timeline display of the civil rights movement. There, we find a replica of John Trumball’s iconic depiction of the signing of the Declaration of Independence with the caption, “1776. The Declaration of Independence signed by wealthy white men.”

The original civil rights giants would never have tolerated this historically false assertion. They were patriots, driven by love for their fellow countrymen and a burning desire to make America a better place for all its citizens. They repeatedly and vehemently rejected hatred. But the nasty caption captures the bitter spirit of much of the civil rights movement today and of numerous race-based activist groups around the country.

According to Bell’s Critical Race Theory, which not only the president, but several members of his administration and the Supreme Court and the media admire, the structure and philosophy of the United States is inherently, irrevocably racist. Hence, the caption to Trumball’s famous painting.

It’s hard for me to describe how offensive I find that, let alone dead wrong.

So I’ll let you discuss it.

RELATED: What is the Pacific Educational Group?

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

“Meeting Young Obama”

One of the great mysteries surrounding President Obama is his college career: not so much his grades as what he studied, under whom, and what his major activities were. His transcripts from his undergraduate and law school years are sealed, leaving a major gap in our knowledge of formative times and events of a man who would become President of the United States.

Before the election, the mainstream media failed utterly in their duty to examine the life of a serious candidate for president, choosing instead to beclown themselves with obsessions over Sarah Palin’s tanning bed and generally acting as Obama’s “Information Guards.”

Serious examinations of Obama’s background only finally began to come out years after the election, such as Stanley Kurtz’s meticulously researched “Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism,” and the current expose of Obama’s radical law school mentors underway at Breitbart.com.

There are other pieces to the puzzle coming out now, too. At American Thinker, former radical Marxist John Drew relates the story of the first time he met then-Occidental College undergrad Barack Obama. After first establishing his own credentials as a Marxist, Drew recounts his discussion with the young Obama:

[Obama's friend Chandoo] Boss and Obama, however, had a starkly different view. They believed that the economic stresses of the Carter years meant revolution was still imminent. The election of Reagan was simply a minor set-back in terms of the coming revolution.  As I recall, Obama repeatedly used the phrase “When the revolution comes….”  In my mind, I remember thinking that Obama was blindly sticking to the simple Marxist theory that had characterized my own views while I was an undergraduate at Occidental College.  “There’s going to be a revolution,” Obama said, “we need to be organized and grow the movement.”  In Obama’s view, our role must be to educate others so that we might usher in more quickly this inevitable revolution.

(…)

Drawing on the history of Western Europe, I responded it was unrealistic to think the working class would ever overthrow the capitalist system.  As I recall, Obama reacted negatively to my critique, saying: “That’s crazy!”

(…)

Since I was a Marxist myself at the time, and had studied variations in Marxist theory, I can state that everything I heard Obama argue that evening was consistent with Marxist philosophy, including the ideas that class struggle was leading to an inevitable revolution and that an elite group of revolutionaries was needed to lead the effort.  If he had not been a true Marxist-Leninist, I would have noticed and remembered.  I can still, with some degree of ideological precision, identify which students at Occidental College were radicals and which ones were not.  I can do the same thing for the Occidental College professors at that time.

(Emphasis added)

Drew then recounts his satisfaction at thinking he had begun the process of steering Obama away from revolutionary Marxism toward bringing about Socialism through the electoral process.

I think he’s right. As revealed by Kurtz in his investigations, Obama over the next few years and as he learned while working as a community organizer and with people affiliated with the Midwest Academy, evolved into an “incremental” Socialist, seeking to bring about Socialism through gradual but irreversible change — such as ObamaCare.

But his commitment to that Socialist future has shown no sign of ever wavering.

PS: Some may argue that this is of little importance to the forthcoming election, that what matters is Obama’s miserable record in office. I disagree. While Obama’s record is crucial, without understanding his background, beliefs, and goals as best as we can, we have no context in which to truly understand that record. Thus books such as Kurtz’s and articles such as John Drew’s are still of singular relevance.

via Jayne Cobb Adam Baldwin

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

(Video) The Battle of Big Ideas is the Battle for America

In a new Firewall series, Bill Whittle wants to look at the ideas in play in American politics today. But, before dealing with Right versus Left, Conservative versus Liberal, democracy versus republic, or even Mary Anne versus Ginger, Bill starts with the fundament upon which all else is built: the nature of Man. Taking his lead from economist and philosopher Thomas Sowell, Bill explores two conflicting visions of that nature and the consequences that arise from each: the Constrained and the Unconstrained:

This promises to be a very enlightening series. I’ll be sure to post further episodes as they become available.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

The blazing constitutional ignorance of Markos Moulitsas, aka “Kos”

Last night I was following the Super Tuesday election returns on Twitter, kind of bored, when something amazing happened: Markos Moulitsas, the “Kos” of the progressive Daily Kos web site, decided to lecture conservatives on the Constitution and the derivation of our rights.

As you can imagine, the results were hilarious in their historical illiteracy. The man truly has no concept of the origin of rights under Natural Law, or the differences and relation between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In other words, he was the quintessential progressive.

Do yourself a favor and go read my friend Jimmie’s post deconstructing and lampooning Moulitsas in a way that should have Kos crawling under a rock in embarrassment… if he had any shame at all. He does it far better than I could and, rather than repeat what he wrote, I’ll just point you to it.

Enjoy.

PS: Oh, and Markos? If you want, I can recommend some basic US History and Government texts for you. You seem to be in a bit of need, pal…

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

(Video) Must-viewing: Daniel Hannan at CPAC 2012

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was held this last weekend in D.C. I didn’t attend, sadly  (1), so I’ve been working my way through the speeches I would have attended, looking for some to share.

Boy, have I got a good one for you.

Daniel Hannan, a Conservative member of the European Parliament from SE England, spoke to the assembled conventioneers and gave them a warning from the future: America is on the way to becoming a statist mess like the EU, but there is still time to change direction. (Unlike Europe?)

He also spoke with an outsider’s admiration for our political accomplishments and evincing a knowledge and understanding of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution that I daresay few Americans could match. And also a sadness that his own homeland, the birthplace of our common heritage, is well on the road to chucking it all away.

But, enough. Watch and enjoy:

Two final questions:

Is there any way we can kidnap Hannan, grant him citizenship, and force him to serve in the Senate? And, be honest, how many of you watched this, imagined Hannan debating President Obama and started giggling?

I did.

RELATED: Earlier posts featuring Daniel Hannan. In this video, which made him a star among US conservatives, Hannan shreds then-PM Gordon Brown.

Footnote:
(1) Generous donations for next year gladly accepted!

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

America’s fork in the road: the Tea Party vs. the Occupy Movement

Here’s a good video from Encounter Books and narrated by Bill Whittle on the choice the US faces in 2012 between two populist movements: the largely classical-liberal Tea Party and the progressive-and-further-Left Occupy movement (1). The video provides a clear and succinct summary of the deep philosophical differences between the two groups, and I think you’ll find the five or so minutes it takes to watch is time well-spent:

Every four years it seems people call the approaching election “the most important in our history,” and I admit I’ve become somewhat jaded to those claims. But there’s no doubting that the sequence of elections beginning in 2008 and perhaps climaxing in 2012 is very significant. In a process that began in 1980 with Reagan’s election and that continues to this day, the two parties are developing genuine (2) and serious ideological differences, as illustrated in the video.

It may not be the “most important election in our history,” but the choice is real and the repercussions will last for a long time.

Footnotes:
(1) Although I kind of hesitate to call Occupy “genuinely populist,” given the heavy backing from Big Labor.
(2) And, in the interests of authenticity, may I suggest the Democrat Party stop holding their Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners? You’ve gone so far down the Social-Democratic road that Presidents Jefferson and Jackson would run screaming in horror. (Well, Jackson might draw a sword, instead…)

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Bill Whittle: character and virtue matters

Happy end of the Thanksgiving weekend, folks. I’m sure we’re all excited to go back to work, now. 

Since this is my first post in a few days, I thought “What better way to ease back into the blogging groove than Bill Whittle’s most recent episode of Afterburner?”

Glad you agree.

It’s an interesting discussion of virtue and discipline as components of character and their role in our founding, the assumption that private virtue and self-regulating discipline made our system of self-government possible. And that their decline (which really began after the passing of the Revolutionary generation and the growth of popular democracy in the age of Jackson) lead to the growth of the State and the efforts to impose virtue and regulate behavior from above, via legislation.

And that brings to mind a pertinent quote from Cicero:

“The more laws, the less justice.”

And, perhaps, the less virtue.

I’m not sure I agree 100-percent with Bill’s arguments and examples, but that would be more in the way of a quibble, rather than substantial disagreement.

Regardless, his points are worth thinking about.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Jim Crow lives in Guam, and the DoJ approves

Even though it’s been a US territory since 1898 (1), few of us probably think much about or even know anything of Guam. When we do, it’s perhaps because of the island’s reputation for lots of  snakes, or maybe the danger that it will tip over. But there is a problem there that should demand the attention of anyone concerned with the civil liberties of Americans.

On Guam, if you’re of White, East Asian, or Filipino descent, you aren’t allowed to vote:

“Chamorro” is the racial designation given to the natives who originally inhabited Guam and constitute about 36 percent of the population. Guam is a territory that today has many residents of Western European, American, Asian, and Pacific Islander descent. But all of those other residents are barred by law and the Guam Election Commission from registering and voting on the plebiscite over Guam’s future relationship with the United States.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Arnold Davis, is a former Air Force officer who has been a resident of the island since 1977. When he tried to register for the plebiscite, his application was rejected and marked as “void” by the Guam Election Commission because Davis is white. Bull Connor would have loved the registration form — it required Davis to certify his race under penalty of perjury! Guam is holding a discriminatory election that prohibits certain voters from participating based purely on their race.

Guam’s election restrictions are more extreme than anything that was in place in the South during the height of Jim Crow. Southern states such as Mississippi tried to make it as difficult as possible for blacks to vote through literacy tests, poll taxes, and other obstacles, but some small percentage of blacks were still able to get through this thicket of discrimination to actually register and vote. Guam, on the other hand, bars anyone who is white, Asian, or Filipino from voting in this plebiscite, and even makes it a crime for them to try to register.

It’s bad enough that Guam is resorting to discrimination so bold that it would make the likes of Theodore Bilbo proud. What’s as bad or worse is the reason Arnold Davis, represented by the Center for Individual Rights and Christian Adams, author of Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department, had to file this suit against the Guamanian government: the Justice Department refused to act to protect the voting rights of American citizens.

As Hans von Spakowsky, author of the article, points out, the failure to apply civil rights law against minority violators is, under Obama and Holder, DoJ policy:

DOJ declined to file a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act asserting that the deliberate racial discrimination by the “native people” of Guam violated federal law. As we know from the sworn testimony of former Voting Section chief Christopher Coates before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, deputy assistant attorney general Julie Fernandes informed him that it was the policy of the Obama administration that the Voting Rights Act is not to be enforced against racial minorities, no matter how egregious the violation. As CIR president Terence Pell says, the fact that this racial discrimination “continues to take place under the nose of the U.S. Department of Justice is unconscionable.”

Darned right it’s “unconscionable.” This action by Guam violates the 15th amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was written to enforce the 15th amendment. It’s an open and shut case that should lead to the Guamanian government being smacked down hard by the federal courts — if, under Obama, the laws were enforced in a race-neutral manner.

But that’s not the case.

Under Barack Obama and Eric Holder, the American principle of “equal justice under the law” has been perverted to “justice only for those groups we favor; the rest of you can go to the Devil.” We’ve seen this racial favoritism before in the 2008 New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case in Philadelphia, where the new administration in 2009 refused to protect the rights of White voters, and in others Adams details in “Injustice.”

Even though this case takes place in a tiny, far-away territory, let’s not minimize or dismiss the danger it reveals. One of the pillars on which our republic stands is the Rule of Law: the belief that the law is applied equally to all, one reason we’re willing to grant law-enforcement powers to government. It is a matter of trust crucial to obtaining and retaining the consent of the governed. It may not function perfectly, but it’s the ideal to which we hold and it’s the standard we demand of the government.

Turn the law instead into a vehicle for a racial spoils system and the Rule of Men, not Law, as Obama, Holder, and the rest of the racial grievance industry are doing, and you instead knock down that pillar and weaken that trust.

You attack the very legitimacy of the American government, itself.

I’ve no doubt Mr. Turner will win his suit in court, but the only remedy for the “pursuit of injustice” encouraged by Obama and Holder is the 2012 election and a thorough housecleaning at the Department of Justice.

For the sake of civil rights for all and the integrity of our political system, they have to go.

via the Election Law Center

RELATED: See also Terence J. Pell’s article with more background on the Guam case. Here’s a news report from Guam that includes interviews with the plaintiff, Christian Adams, and a Guam senator who supports the exclusion of non-Chamorros from the vote in the belief that rights vest in groups, not individual citizens. Adams writes about the Guamanian “Jim Crow” law at PJ Media.

Footnote:
(1) ¡Gracias, España!

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)