>>We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.
Hmmm.. and so those who refuse to join the hive - or are deemed unfit for membership - get a free ride to the camps from...
Boxcar Barry?
Posted on 06/16/2008 3:21:21 PM PDT by vadum
Red diaper baby Barack Obama's collectivist beliefs go way back. We dug up an enlightening old article, "What Makes Obama Run?" (by Hank De Zutter, Chicago Reader, Dec. 8, 1995) that offers more insight into what Obama, the Democrats' presumptive presidential candidate, thinks about America and traditional American values. The short answer: not much.
In it Obama, at that time a candidate for the Illinois Senate, criticizes individualism as what intellectual John Ralston Saul has called the cult of the Hero:
"In America," Obama says, "we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations."American individualism is poppycock, according to Obama. Explaining his theory on how communities can go about "getting [their] fair share," he denigrates the can-do spirit of Americans, calling it, in effect, right-wing propaganda:
"The right wing talks about this but they keep appealing to that old individualistic bootstrap myth: get a job, get rich, and get out. Instead of investing in our neighborhoods, that's what has always happened. Our goal must be to help people get a sense of building something larger."In other words, Americans need the helping hand of government. And Americans on the political right are racist, stupid, and backward-looking, Obama says:
"We must form grass-root structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions. The right wing, the Christian right, has done a good job of building these organizations of accountability, much better than the left or progressive forces have. But it's always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia. And they also have hijacked the higher moral ground with this language of family values and moral responsibility."Elias Crim and I looked at Obama's radical roots in the current Foundation Watch.
Sorry, I got the URL from the site, but it wasn't quite right.
Haven’t lived in CHicago since the mid -80s, but was an avid reader of the READER, a great paper,and had many friends and acquaintances who worked for it and wrote for it...so I’m not surprised someone dug up something on Obama from that long ago. Reading this boilerplate Left rhetoric from people like Obama, and he’s just another one in a long line of rogues and fools, it strikes me that he’s guilty of the very things he ascribes to all the poor folks who need to be woken up and regimented by him—he gets a pass on all this personal vice, of course, because he’s in the vanguard of the forces for good....his way of assuaging his guilt is to pass it on to them. Freud called this “projection”.
During a conversation with my dad a few days ago, he asked me, "If everyone works for government, or for non-profit, like Obama wants, then who will work for profit to pay the taxes to support government?"
The individual's right to life, liberty, and property is the American way. Anything "collective" is the way of the Soviets and the Southern plantations...and we all know how those turned out.
The Republic is already bankrupt, no thanks to generations of the Socialist hydra that was birthed under Wilson and came of age under FDR and LBJ. An Obama win will only hasten such a beast's untimely death.
The unfortunate reality is that a core group of people, primarily concentrated in the Democratic Party, continue to believe the fallacy that the individual is too ignorant or simple-minded to make decisions for himself or herself, and that only the elite, the "expert" can make decisions. This arrogance and hubris on the part of the self-proclaimed masters will only lead us down the same path taken by the Soviets and their satellites, the German Nazis, North Korea, and their ilk...into what Reagan called "a thousand years of darkness," or perhaps into "the dustbin of history."
I agree with everything you said, and I also agree with President Reagan:
"Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty."
The forces of darkness are massing behind Obama, and they will stop at nothing if it means the destruction of the USA.
They are all monsters and fools, and their leader is hatred and evil personified.
It may yet become time for “1776—the Sequel”.
Years ago, both Dems and Republicans at least loved their country.
Now, the Dems are traitors and the GOP is slithering on the ground looking for a spine.
Those who love liberty will need to preserve it for a future generation— for our posterity, as Thomas Jefferson would say.
Exactly right.
On a personal level, Rand was deeply conflicted. I always thought of her as the tall, blond and beautiful Dagney Taggart trapped in the short, dark and unattractive body of Ayn.
But on the workings of Communism and how it takes over a country, she was there - growing up in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution. She saw it, lived, suffered it. And with her brilliant mind, she 'trapped' it all and was able to lay it out for us.
Pray we listen. It's almost too late.
For people who read it today, they should remember that when she wrote it 51 years ago, it was prophetic - now it has happened.
Again...pray we're not to late. It took the Russian people 80 years to regain any semblance of personal freedom.
You pegged him perfectly.
Too much free government cheese seems to constipate Liberal thinking, and; BHMO wants more collective programs for these folks?
There are no more Dems - the last one walked out when Zel did - and Joe L. to a degree.
The democrat party has been systematically and with great deliberateness been infiltrated and taken over by card carrying Socialists.
Why on earth do we still help them with cover by still calling them Democrats?
Well, then liberals should be set...they are the most intolerant, narrow minded creatures prone to false nostalgia supported by their revisionist history of all groups in the US.
That aside, name me one great invention/advance that came about by collective/committee?
The atomic bomb.
You have to be clear on what you mean by collective. It is ia loaded term with a communist history. If I say “teamwork”, how is that different from a collective?
Communists use it in the sense of no individual being left to be deprived, or treated unjustly. Well, we know how well they carried that out. Collective is meant to refer to basic needs like food, clothing and shelter. Obama’s thinking is just as primitive on the subject.
He also intends to describe “leaderless” institutions where the collective wisdom prevails. Again, this fails more often than it works.
So, Obama is left, in his love for collectives, with no good way to handle conflict resolution. He becomes the anti-statesman, the anti-diplomat. His narrow voting record shows that he is incapable of “weaving together incommensurable demands” as Aristotle defined a statesman.
So, really, he is nothing more than an import from Russia - an apparatchik - no imagination, no vision, no ability to initiate meaningful legislation, just like John Kerry.
Any proposal from Obama is going to be a “take or leave it” proposal, since he has no sense of give and take - only take.
During a conversation with my mother in law last week,
she vehemently claimed that Obama wasn’t for socialism (”that’s what they had in the Soviet Union”),
but within 5 minutes, she spouted the meaningless cli-Che - “it takes a village”, as if that was the final word to the discussion.
The situation wasn’t open enough at that point to ask what that exactly meant, if it wasn’t collectivist - but it will.
Of course, I’m violating my tagline when I do that.
>>If I say “teamwork”, how is that different from a collective?<<
Voluntary vs coerced.
Anything the gov’t does is with the inherent threat of the use of deadly force if you don’t comply.
Don’t let this be a blindspot to you - leftists REFUSE to acknowledge this fact.
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