Sorry, but this is the best image I could find of this. The text is at least readable.
Posted on 07/30/2013 9:30:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
When it comes to Vietnam, I'm all for moving on, putting the past behind us, looking forward, letting bygones be bygones, but doing so requires honesty about the past, lest history be forgotten and the memory and honor tarnished of the 60,000 Americans who died in that war.
On his visit to Washington last week, President Truong Tan Sang of Vietnam told President Obama the late revolutionary Ho Chi Minh was inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution and by the words of Thomas Jefferson. In an ad in the Washington Post, President Sang even claimed Jefferson's vision of liberty was the same as Ho's. Not exactly.
According to the U.S. State Department's Vietnam 2012 Human Rights Report: "The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is an authoritarian state ruled by a single party, the Communist Party of Vietnam. ... The most recent National Assembly elections, held in May 2011, were neither free nor fair. Security forces reported to civilian authorities. The most significant human rights problems in the country continued to be severe government restrictions on citizens' political rights, particularly their right to change their government; increased measures to limit citizens' civil liberties; and corruption in the judicial system and police."
Does that sound Jeffersonian?
Alignment with the principles and men of America's founding is an old tactic used by many dictators to dupe some Americans into the false belief that they are just like us -- or can be made so.
Ronald Radosh, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, noted recently in the Wall Street Journal that Ho Chi Minh was "a committed Marxist-Leninist, trained in the 1920s at Moscow's famed Lenin School."
During World War II, wrote Radosh, Ho courted President Franklin Roosevelt, appealing both to Roosevelt's anti-French sentiments and to America's Declaration of Independence and American-style liberty as he sought support for driving the French out of Indochina.
All dictators have found apologists in America, whether it is actor Sean Penn cozying up to the late President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela or the elites who supported Fidel Castro and the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.
All dictators have attempted to show they have a rational side. The late Soviet dictator Yuri Andropov was said to enjoy Scotch and American jazz. Hitler's propagandists showed him with little girls who were of the same age as Jewish girls he had ordered killed. The Fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini supposedly made the trains run on time. Stalin's gulags were so good, claimed American journalist Anna Louise Strong, people applied for admission. Strong, who never met a communist she didn't like, also praised China's Mao Zedong.
It's one thing for Vietnamese leaders to promote the fiction that Jefferson was a role model for Ho Chi Minh, but quite another for President Obama to spread this propaganda. I heard the same preposterous assertion from a Vietnamese government official when I visited Hanoi last December.
Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), who spent seven years as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton, isn't buying it. Johnson said in a statement issued by his office: "Sadly, when it comes to individual liberty, the President doesn't have a clue. What an insult to the POWs brutally tortured at the merciless hands -- and rifle butts -- of our captors. This is a slap in the face to those who served -- and especially those who paid the ultimate price for freedom during that dark time in history. Let me tell you, there was nothing 'free' about my seven years in captivity in Hanoi -- more than half of that time in solitary confinement. As a fellow POW etched on a prison cell wall, 'Freedom has a taste to those who fight and almost die that the protected will never know.' "
Who sounds more Jeffersonian?
Obama even “admires” the Declaration and the Constitution. Not enough to abide by it however. “The constitution is a flawed document,” he says. “If the congress doesn’t act, I’ll do it on my own.” ~~Comrade President B. Hussein Obama.
Osama Bin Ladin built hospitals, well at least that's what Patty Murray said.
Never trust a leftist. They will ALWAYS say what they need to say at that moment, to create the effect they want on their listeners...
Is this about Sally Hemings?
I thought this was a Bill and Hillary thread!.............
I thought it was George Jefferson and his b*tch.
I heard this story when I was in college in 1972. The libtards were trying, even then, to make a case for Ho Chi min.
William Flax
True, but that's not where his original indoctrination took place. He was a student at the University of Paris first. He was there during the Versailles Conference and tried to get in to the conference by claiming to be a representative from the "Republic of Vietnam". There was, of course, no such thing at the time. Vietnam was a colony of the French and he was denied entry.
Ho Chi Minh probably admired the American Revolution for its anti-colonial aspects.
He “admires” our founding documents the same way the guy with the hammer admired the Pieta.
The man is the stupidest man of color I have ever seen or heard.
Ho Chi Minh did share some of Jefferson’s sentiments and words.
For example, “Nothing is so precious as liberty and independence” was the motto of his party. The preamble of his party’s Proclamation of Independence: “’All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness’. This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the Earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and to be free. Those are undeniable truths.”
Unfortunately, he did not understand that these principles are inherently incompatible with Marxism. It is perhaps even more unfortunate
Ho was not the Jefferson of Viet Nam, but it is ignorant to argue that he was not impressed and influenced by Jefferson’s thinking. And it is stupid to criticize Obama for this when there are so many other serious scandals.
Is this about Sally Hemings?
Close enough.
Well Jefferson’s first name was Thomas, not Bill. Plus he didn’t have a middle name. So there you go.
Very well said
Liberals hat the constitution. The arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is no different then the rest of the rats
Make that hate the constitution
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