Tilting Left, Tilting at Windmills

It wasn’t long ago that most conspiracy theories came from conservatives. The right, after all gave our country the John Birch Society. But these days, liberals have a virtual monopoly on loony ideas -- and they seem to be getting crazier all the time.

For example, in case you haven’t noticed, the United States is sliding into fascism. Well, not sliding, actually. We’re being driven into fascism. By you-know-who.

“Beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society,” Naomi Wolf wrote this year in Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “There is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship,” she insists, and the Bush administration purportedly is following all the steps. Items on Wolf’s checklist include: “Create a gulag,” “Develop a thug caste” and “Control the press.”

Now, you’d think people might notice if things like that were going on. But Wolf explains why we haven’t. “Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government -- the task of being aware of the Constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors -- we scarcely recognize the checks and balances that the Founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled,” she insists.

Actually, Wolf isn’t wrong about one thing: We have allowed judges and lawyers to control too much power. But who’s to blame for that development? Liberals. Conservatives have been fighting for years to limit the powers exercised by courts. We want to see a society where lawmakers legislate, the executive enforces and judges interpret. It’s liberals who try to use the courts to enact policies (such as gay marriage) that they could never convince voters to go for. As for whether or not Americans learn about the Founders, well, conservatives would love to see schoolchildren taught more about the remarkable men who started this country. Unfortunately, our liberal-dominated education system has replaced “History” with “Social Studies.”

It apparently takes years to teach children that Columbus was a racist who came here simply to kill Indians, that George Washington was a slave owner only looking out for his own interests and that everyone from Ben Franklin to Abe Lincoln was gay. By the time kids have “learned” all that, there’s no time left to actually, you know, read the Constitution.

Wolf’s a fairly mainstream liberal. She was the key advisor to Al Gore during his 2000 presidential bid, who, among other things, advised him to wear earth tones. So when she espouses crazed theories about creeping totalitarianism, it’s fair to assume many other liberals share her dementia.

Just before his latest diatribe, “Sicko,” was released, Moore told reporters he was afraid the Bush administration would attempt to confiscate it. “We took measures a few weeks ago to place a master copy of this film in Canada so if they did take our negative we would have a duplicate negative of this film in Canada,” Moore told reporters.

The corpulent conman claimed that the feds might seize his movie because 15 minutes were filmed in Cuba. These scenes include a visit to Naomi Wolf’s supposed “gulag” at Guantanamo Bay. A gulag where, according to Moore, prisoners get better health care than Americans. Try to square that circle.

In the event, of course, Moore’s film hit screens without government interference. The only thing blocking the screen, in fact, seems to have been people leaving the theater early. Even presidential candidate John Edwards admitted, “I didn’t quite get to see the end.”

Maybe that’s because the former senator had to rush out on his recent poverty tour. “One in eight of us … do not have enough money for the food, shelter, and clothing they need,” claims Edwards who, while serving as a spokesman for the poor, is building himself one of the largest homes in North Carolina.

In reality, though, we’re not tripping over emaciated poor people at every turn. For the most part, the U.S. has defeated real poverty.

Nine out of 10 families defined as “poor” by the government report they have enough to eat. In fact, “poor” children get almost exactly the same nutrition as middle-class children. A poor child today is expected to grow up to be an inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the average American soldier in World War II.

Why don’t we hear much about this good news? Maybe because (in Wolf’s model) the Bush administration controls the press and doesn’t want good economic news reported. Maybe it’s all part of a Bushco plot to seize more power.

Sounds like a crazy theory. But, sadly, it’s as sane as anything we’ve heard from the left lately.

“the United States is sliding into fascism”

The author is using sarcasm here but nonetheless is correct.

The U.S. has been sliding into fascism at least since FDR. (don’t confuse fascism with Nazi’s, not the same thing)

The most outrageous example is the wheat farmer whose crop was confiscated by the Feds during FDR’s administration.

Think meat packing house inspections, milk price supports and selling rules, farm subsidies, FDA drug inspections and controls, coercion for drinking age and speed limits and school curriculum, Securities and Exchange Commission.

These are all fascist ideas. AND THE PEOPLE LOVE THEM!

I have a theory that fascism is the natural human condition. That freedom is a freakish system of government that is rare in the history of the world and can never last long.

It is very sad, but most people don’t want to be free. They want to be taken care of. Hence the popularity of fascism.

The John Birch Society, it seems, begins to sound more rational all the time.

The convergence of the relative freedom of the Western countries, and the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and Red China, had a surprising result. The Soviet Union crumbled like mud bricks in the rain, and the Red Chinese decided its objectives could be served best if they made contracts to be the heavy industry source for the world.

And in doing so, the Red Chinese inherited the mantle of “bankers to the world”, as trade deficits piled up and they were the holders in due course of enormous quantities of dollars and Euros. In fact, China was at a loss as how to invest this embarrassment of riches, and willingly or otherwise, the former adherence to the principles of Marxism-Leninism became a thing of the past. Now, the Chinese are in a direct struggle with the shadowy international bankers of the same conspiracy that financed the colonial domination of the Third World during the 18th and early 19th Centuries, and the overthrow and revolution of Russia that created the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was protected and nurtured for years until it was overwhelmingly demonstrated to be based on an unsustainable Ponzi scheme, because there were just not enough contributors to support the utopian visions dreamed up by the planners. Not once were these planned goals met, except in those rare instances when every one of the resources available was thrown into a given effort, like the defense of Stalingrad in 1942, or a launch of a man into space. But the Soviet Union proved to be a one-trick pony, and finally went bankrupt, because its economic system could not support the dreams of the near-tyrannical leadership. It was a case of not looking around and making sure there was still a parade following behind.

In fact, the parade had gone somewhere else, in this case to Red China, which had vastly revamped its economic system and allowed some individual initiative to be rewarded, in real and substantial terms. A sort of bank-driven capitalism had returned forcefully to Red China, and with it, a growing and ever more insatiable thirst for energy. China has vast coal reserves, and turned first to using this coal to tear the country out of the rural peasantry and small local trading regions, into a vast industrialization that blackened the skies and choked the teeming cities. A huge power dam, the largest in the world, was constructed at the Three Gorges across the Yangtze River, far more ambitious than even the TVA and Hoover Dam in the US. Now China is turning to the Middle East, a huge storehouse of petroleum, and bidding up the prices of the energy exported from there.

This infusion of cash has awakened dreams of the various Islamic jihadists, who, with this new capital in their possession, have launched a counter-Crusade against the people with whom they have the greatest grudge, the Westerners of Europe and North America. Their prize (or so they believe) is the ransom of the Jewish people of Israel, compelling the West to come to the defense of the Israelis.

The first threat the Islamic jihadists make, is to literally wipe Israel off the map, and to drive all the Jews into the sea. This is foaming at the mouth, totally irrational, excessive sun exposure type of crazy, and they explain everything away by referring to the words of a schizophrenic madman who lived fourteen centuries ago. The second step in their threat (since they have tried again and again to carry out the first part of the threat and been rebuffed each time) is to carry the conflict to the centers and capitals of the West, London, Paris, New York. There have been a few spectacular hits, but nothing that came anywhere near crippling the capacity of the West to continue to function. There are messianic and charismatic leaders of this Islamic jihad who have become the successors of the quest for domination that had to be abandoned by the one-time Soviet Union, and in an odd alliance, the former True Believers of the Marxist-Leninist view of the world, have come to support the Islamic jihasists, in their hunger to defeat the West once and for all.

It is an ill-starred combination, if for no other reason than the totally xenophobic nature of the Islamic jihadists. If you are not Muslim, and more importantly, the right kind of bearded, fervent with the burning eyes, glory-bound Muslim, then you are less than a common beast, fit only for a demand of your total obedience and submission, on pain of death by decapitation, or punishment by the removal of body parts.

In the near future, this fundamentalist extremeism is about to collide head-on with the expanding demands of (still) Red China, as they come to claim more and more of the world’s resources, and have the means to carry on massive warfare to obtain it. China can muster a million-man army overnight, and send it on a land march into the arid lands of the Middle East, securing and taking over the vast oil reserves there. It would be a scourge that would make Genghis Khan look like an itinerant burglar passing through the neighborhood. And if the Chinese choose to exercise this option, there is not just an awful lot anybody can do about the outcome. It would be one-sided, and the Islamic apostasy will most likely be totally wiped out.

I have just written the history of the next century. Both the Chinese and the Islamic jihadists think in those terms, while the West, and particularly Americans, will not.

There is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship,” she insists, and the Bush administration purportedly is following all the steps. Items on Wolf’s checklist include: “Create a gulag,” “Develop a thug caste” and “Control the press.”

Then it sounds like Harry Truman was attempting to be a dictator.

Background: Truman slashed the defense budget and withdrew our troops from a free Korea in 1949.

Only after North Korea (well-armed by the Soviets) invaded S. Korea in 1950, did Truman decide to send troops back to S. Korea to re-win its freedom.

The Americans were underprepared, undersupplied and undermanned.

Six months into the war (and after over 12,000 American deaths in Korea), the Truman administration imposed the severest wartime censorship rules in memory.

Here are just a few of the regulations.

1. Correspondents were placed under the complete jurisdiction of the army
2. Any criticism of the Allied conduct of the war was forbidden.
3. Casualties could not be revealed until official publication
4. No mention could be made of reinforcements, equipment, arms, plans and forecasts of future operations, or positions or descriptions of camps
5. Officers could not be quoted in any way, except with authorization.
6. All dispatches for publication were to be screened for military information which might injure the morale of UN troops or their government.
7. Information on the strength, efficiency, morale, or organization of Allied forces was unauthorized.
8. Newsmen who deliberately reported any troop movements without authorization were threatened with court martial.

Leftists need to be weaned off their "unreality" pills.

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