Idols of Crowds (Thomas Sowell)

"A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence."

Jean-François Revel was not referring to the United States when he wrote those words, nor to his own France, but to human beings in general. He was certainly not referring to Barack Obama, whom he probably never heard of, since Revel died last year.

To find anything comparable to crowds' euphoric reactions to Obama, you would have to go back to old newsreels of German crowds in the 1930s, with their adulation of their fuehrer, Adolf Hitler. With hindsight, we can look back on those people with pity, knowing now how many of them would be led to their deaths by the man they idolized.

The exultation of the moment can exact a brutal price after that moment has passed. Nowhere is that truer than when it comes to picking the leader of a nation, which means entrusting that leader with the fate of millions today and of generations yet unborn.

A leader does not have to be evil to lead a country into a catastrophe. Inexperience and incompetence can create very similar results, perhaps even faster in a nuclear age, when even "a small country"-- as Senator Obama called Iran-- can wreak havoc anywhere in the world, when they are led by suicidal fanatics and supply nuclear weapons to terrorists who are likewise suicidal fanatics.

Barack Obama is truly a phenomenon of our time-- a presidential candidate who cannot cite a single serious accomplishment in his entire career, besides advancing his own career with rhetoric.

He has a rhetorical answer for everything. Those of us who talk about the threat of Iran are just engaging in "the politics of fear" according to Obama, something to distract us from "the real issues," such as raising taxes and handing out largesse with the proceeds.

Those who have studied the years leading up to World War II have been astonished by how many people and how many countries failed to see what Adolf Hitler was getting ready to do.

Even though Hitler telegraphed his punches, few people seemed to get the message. Books about that period have had such titles as "The Gathering Storm" and "Why England Slept."

Will future generations wonder why we slept? Why we could not see the gathering storm in Iran, where one of the world's leading oil producers is building nuclear facilities-- ostensibly to generate electricity, but whose obvious purpose is to produce nuclear bombs.

This is a country whose president has already threatened to wipe a neighboring country off the map. Does anyone need to draw pictures?

When terrorists get nuclear weapons, there will be no way to deter suicide bombers. We and our children will be permanently at the mercy of the merciless.

Yet what are we talking about? Taxing and spending policies, socking it to the oil companies and rescuing people who gambled on risky mortgages and lost.

Barack Obama of course has his usual answer: talk. Rhetoric seems to be his answer to everything. Obama calls for "aggressive" diplomacy and "tough" negotiations with Iran.

These colorful adjectives may impress gullible voters but they are unlikely to impress fanatics who are willing to destroy themselves if they can destroy us in the process.

Just what is Senator Obama going to say to Iran that has not been said already? That we don't want them to develop nuclear weapons? That has already been said, every way that it can possibly be said. If talk was going to do the job, it would already have done it by now.

Go to the United Nations? What will they do, except issue warnings-- and when these are ignored, issue more warnings?

I know there were many Conservatives and I’s that flat wouldn’t vote for McCain no matter what Dr. Sowell said.

And therein lies our greatest danger IMHO. Another case of the perfect goal that can't be attained being the enemy of the imperfect but adequate goal that can be attained

I realize that many conservatives hate McCain's guts and would rather see the US imperiled by Obama's incompetence and radical agenda than to vote for him. I admit that I was embittered by the outcome after the primary season ended, and I made those same kind of irrational threats to sit this election out. They, as I did initially, try to justify their position by saying the GOP base will wake up and realize that a RINO can't win and will then nominate a real conservative next time.

I now seriously doubt that theory would turn out to be realistic. But even if it were to be, with the devil's own forked tongue giving Obama mesmerizing utterance, and him in charge of foreign policy and the military's CinC, along with a revived Russia backing fanatical Islam as it threatens nuclear war on our allies, IMHO we are very close to entering a new and more dangerous world scenario than ever before in our history, and I have to wonder if there will be a next time if Obama is elected.

Barack Obama is truly a phenomenon of our time-- a presidential candidate who cannot cite a single serious accomplishment in his entire career, besides advancing his own career with rhetoric.

In his famous 1911 speech at the Sorbone, Theodore Roosevelt basically delineated what's wrong with socialism:
There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds . . .
Socialism is nothing but criticism and second guessing of those who actually do things. Journalists don't catch criminals and they don't fight wars and they don't provide us with food, clothing, or shelter- all they do is report on any failure of the police, the military, or the businessman to provide security, food, clothing, and shelter which meets the journalist's arbitrary standards. So journalism is inherently simpatico with socialists. Indeed, similar comments apply to teachers, intellectuals and trial lawyers. And, it scarcely need be said, unionists.
And that is why journalists and teachers assign positive labels to socialists.The word "socialism" itself seems to me to be, on etymological grounds, somewhat tendentious in that socialism relies on government coercion to, at least theoretically, accomplish its utopia. What is "social" about socialism? In America, "socialism" did not sell as a brand. But since journalists were simpatico with socialism, it was a matter of no difficulty for socialists to rebrand "socialism" as "liberalism." Of course "liberalism" was a preexisting word which meant pretty much the opposite of socialism, but "liberalism" was popular as a political philosophy in America, so in a relatively brief period in the 1920s link the meaning of the word was inverted. In the post-Reagan era, of course, "liberal" has become the dreaded "L-word" which socialists do not want to have applied to them any more than they wish to be called the socialists that they are. But, no matter - socialists can always coin - or coopt - another euphemism. Such as "progressive."

Yes, as time has passed and BO's actions and words have become more bizarre Dr. Sowell has steadily increased his criticism of him.

Dr. Sowell is a fair man and righteously and wonderfully intelligent. Obama is a denigration of all that Dr. Sowell is, and believes in. Dr. Sowell knows that way too many black boys are being left behind amid in the culture wars and in re education. Dr. Sowell is no racial partisan, nor racialist. But he's got to know that Obama as President will worsen the matter for black males, not improve it.

I see far too many young black males who are only able to read at 1st to 3rd grade levels with math only a year or two higher. These young men are not dumb; but they have been scammed by an ideology.

Obama represents that ideology - in fact - Obama represents the embodiment of numerous failed left-wing ideologies. And Dr. Sowell is banging the drum. Solidly, and increasingly louder and louder. Awaken! his drum beats. Beware! He words say.

Save Yourselves from more foolishness! his heart exudes through the lines of his columns.

Obama resides in the Kingdom of Self, otherwise known as: Obama-World. Far too many blacks have been kidnapped into that same way of viewing the world -- in terms of themselves, solely. During my dreams at night, my brain works on newer ways I can cut through the unholy caul surrounding and entombing those trapped by a failed ideology.

The culture of self.

It's a form of ideologic autism which is entrapping and failing American youths. Not autism, for real, but an ideologic autism which posits -- that's mine, because I want it. Not because I earned or worked for it, not because I'm qualified for it; but because I want it.

Ideologically induced "autism".

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