Posted on 04/21/2008 10:17:57 PM PDT by Aristotelian
Alger Hiss. Barack Obama. Bill Maher.
(snip)
While all of this made Hiss a familiar favorite player with the press and Establishment insiders, what brought him fame -- and ultimately brought him down -- was the charge in 1948 that throughout a considerable portion of his career he was in fact a Soviet spy.
The purpose here is not to recount the particulars of the Hiss case. After a series of stunning events, finally including the revelation of stolen State Department documents that conclusively proved Hiss's guilt, Hiss went to prison. It was what surfaced in the course of the Hiss episode that in retrospect has had such an increasingly decisive impact on American politics since the Hiss case, particularly on the image of Democrats nationally. That "it" is, of course, the charge of "elitism," a charge freshly made against Senator Obama in the wake of his famous "bitter" remark about the residents of small towns in Pennsylvania. A charge that gets subsumed in the controversy over anti-Catholic bigotry as vividly brought to life by HBO's Bill Maher's recent tirade against an entire religion.
But when did this "elitism" business in the party of Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, Al Smith, FDR and Harry Truman first surface?
Listen to the descriptions of the Hiss case as presented by two of Hiss's most famous antagonists, then California Congressman Richard Nixon, and Whittaker Chambers, the man who, at great personal sacrifice, came forward to finger Hiss.
(snip)
the "jagged fissure" of elitist superiority first glimpsed by Chambers and Nixon in 1948 has now become a canyon-sized superhighway running straight from the Hiss episode to the modern American left, of which Obama is but the latest advocate.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
FYI: Jeffrey Lord is the creator, co-founder, and CEO of QubeTV http://www.qubetv.tv/, a conservative online video site. A Reagan White House political director and author, he writes from Pennsylvania, where he lives.
It’s not surprising at all that narcissists like Alger Hiss and BHO are attracted to the ideology of Marxism.
Have to say, I have worked in a top tier company in a major city, and this liberal devotion to “the right people” was always on display. The “right people” were always liberal but it wasn’t just political, it also had to do with the town they lived in, the school they graduated from, there was always some nonsensical basis for who the “right people” were. So this article really hit home with me. And I can tell you the “right people” cannot stand those who succeed without the proper pedigree.
It was not class envy that finally got Hiss, it was the truth in the mouth of a stubborn little fellow named Chambers who could really write. Witness is a stunning read.
I attended Harvard Law School. I believe yours was Whittier (Nixon earned his AB degree at Whittier College in Whittier, Calif., but his law degree was from Duke).
The question should be asked of every Leftist, every candidate:
In many cases, you will simply not believe the hemming and hawing you will get in response to this simple question. Even the direct testimony of his KGB handlers cannot convince them. Peter Jennings ... on television .... would not say the man was a spy.
Ah, the audacity of the would be gods.
Which makes me wonder if Maher's remarks were calculated to have that effect.
One yapping celebrity can take the heat off a politician if they are outrageous enough, and they are likely to NOT lose their job if they pick the 'right' target. Maher's anti-Catholic, anti-religious remark is completely forgiveable by the Left, and provided a moving screen for Obama.
After all, the talking heads commenting on Maher and burning up airtime were complicit in taking the heat off of someone's remarks who matters, especially if he gets elected. Maher doesn't amount to a cup of warm spit either way, he is just another babbler on the boob tube.
Meritocracy vs. aristocracy.
THIS ELITISM EXPLAINS in an instant the visceral hatred for George W. Bush. Bush, after all, was supposed to be one of them. The rich Establishment parents. Yale. Harvard. What makes him so despised by elitists like Obama, Ayres, Maher and the rest is precisely that he doesn't simply disagree with liberal elitists, he, having encountered the breed close up in his youth, despises them for the very thing they prize -- their self-imagined sense of superiority. Were Bush a young man in 1948 sitting in that congressional hearing room, he would have been rooting for Whittaker Chambers, not Alger Hiss. He would know that simply because Chambers was, in Nixon's words, "...short and pudgy...(his) clothes un-pressed...his shirt collar curled up over his jacket..." and Hiss was everything opposite -- smooth, handsome, well-dressed, a man with a golden resume -- that a human being's character is never defined by outward appearance. Not for Bush the front rows behind Hiss with the tittering State Department types and "Washington social community."
Bush, in other words, has deliberately sought out what Chambers called the men and women who grew up on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. Obama, Ayres, Bill Maher of Hollywood and a whole lot more in this election season are the modern "glittering" bands of elitist opposition.
I wonder if this whole bitter remark by Obama is finally waking up the evangelicals to the plight the country is presented with.
great post...Obama looks like a lock for this years Hissie Award. Check out Freep with keyword “hiss”, quite a good collection of historic Commie traitors and their stories!
dem elites I know grew up poor with dem parents
Great article and so true.
This also explains the bias of the MSM and people like Dan Rather who, though often from “out of town,” are desperate to belong to the right crowd once they arrive. They become conspicuous water carriers for the elite (a.k.a. liberal) point of view.
"Elitist" for sure and certain, but there is nothing "elite" about any of them.
i think hillary, unfortunately, is getting a pass on this.
these are the same people who supported her and bill
in the past. she has close ties to terrorist groups and
organizations like the chinese government. hillary will win at any
cost. mccain would have much better luck against obama.
WIFE-O-BUCKHEAD
I think I’m going to have to buy “Witness”. When I read this article, I could clearly see the preening, smirking Clinton after the impeachment failed to convict him and the liberal talking heads kept telling us to “just move on”. The thought that we could soon have another one of these elitists in power makes me shudder.
That's why I like Bush.
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