Are We at an Inflection Point?
When Michael Barone speaks, I for one listen. This time I think I've been listening to one of the scariest prophecies about this election and the state of our political affairs that I have heard for a long time, made all the more dreadful because of the source. Here is the election in a nutshell:
Barack Obama and other Democrats have used the financial crisis to spin a narrative. The problem, they say, is deregulation and greed. This is not strictly speaking accurate. Obama and the Democrats opposed tighter regulation of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and John McCain supported it. Unregulated firms like hedge funds have done well, while heavily regulated banks have had troubles.
But the narrative will be advanced by the Obama-loving media ... and by the passage of a giant financial bailout -- er, rescue package. The likelihood, as this is written, is that Obama will be elected president and the Democrats will expand their congressional majorities. Possibly even to the 60 votes they need to effectively control the Senate.
So Barone believes as I do that Obama is likely to win the election. What is truly scary follows, " start old the Democrats will expand their congressional majorities possibly even to the 60 votes they need to effectively control the Senate."
This means there is nothing to stop a "Manchurian Marxist" from taking over almost total control of the American economy. If this scenario obtains, Republicans will not even have resort to the filibuster to defend the Republic. Because there will be no check or balance, Obama's socialist policies, as they fail, will be compounded with more socialist policies to rescue the failures.
Worse, Obama has displayed a frightening tendency to enlist the power of the state to squelch free speech. His gang of Democrats in the House and Senate share his views and have already threatened talk radio. Obama has invoked the threat of prosecution against radio stations and in general, evidently, in the state of Missouri even against private citizens. The Kerry campaign intimidated television stations running the Swift boat film. Conservatives have every reason to fear that the country may enter a new dark age under a Putin like administration.
Nor can we sleep well expecting the courts to come to our rescue. There's not the slightest realistic hope that any federal court will declare the bailout unconstitutional as an impermissible usurpation of powers. We have already seen the court waffle on matters such as campaign finance reform so, we are entitled to nourish but little hope that free speech, if not the free market, will be protected.
Across the board of American life there is virtually no institution apart from government which could stand up against the power of an engrossed state. Our educational institution is corrupted from top to bottom with leftists. The higher the learning and the more prestigious the institution the greater the departure from common sense. Our great charitable institutions such as Ford or Rockefeller have been thoroughly infiltrated and are now controlled by leftists. Witness Bill Ayers and Barack Obama's plundering of the Annenberg foundation, originally founded by a conservative. It is now so commonly understood that the media is so given over to leftism that it requires no comment or proof here. Apart from a remnant of the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelicals, the American Christian Church is best exemplified by the United Church of Christ which is practically a leftist front. The executive branch bureaucracy, not excluding the CIA and especially the State Department, are largely given over to undermining conservative principles and policies which are the expressions of our democratically elected leaders.
Take away talk radio, and the void leaves the playing field to the leftists virtually unopposed.
This is the specter that awaits us the day after the election.
These are the nightmares which prompt some of us on these threads to become testy at times when we see posts which are nothing but cheerleading and boosterism. These are the times which call every one of us to dig deep and face courageously the realities that confront us. I am not in the slightest deterred by replies to this post which recite that I am a defeatist. It may be true that I am an alarmist but I believe we have much to be alarmed about. Small wonder that we could become testy when we see a campaign slipping away or an opportunity missed. The stakes are really and truly high this time. It is my hope that Freepers, knowing that the barbarians are really at the gate, will turn their collective genius toward averting a catastrophe
later, in the same thread I added the following thoughts:
At the end of the day we see the thefts of property through thuggery. A good Marxist like Saul Alinsky-or Mao Tse Tung for that matter- are never above easing the travail of their own lives with such perks, but their ideological goal is the distruction of the concept and sanctity of property. There is a reason for that ideological goal.
The basic institutions of Western society which come out of the Judeo- Christian tradition and which were hammered out in our culture over the millennia and refined in the Enlightenment and in the American experience have served as bulwarks against the advance of communism. Foremost among the institutions which stand against the advance communism are the family, the church, the rule of law, the school, private property, and the military with its commitment to patriotism.
Saul Alinsky in his book, Rules for Radicals lays out a guerrilla against these institutions which frustrate socialism. Barak Obama was an acolyte of -indeed he was an instructor for- Saul Alinsky's operation.
To complete the picture, someday a conservative historian (presuming they are allowed to publish) will draw a straight line to Barak Obama which passes through Saul Alinsky, showing feeder lines off to people like Bill Ayers, and originating in The Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School was expressly founded by a George Soros like figure in 1923 in Germany for the express purpose of providing the intellectual methodology to destroy the institutions which protect Western civilization. These intellectuals did provide rationalizations which today motivate the Barak Obama's of the world. The rationalizations are called: feminism; critical theory; conservationism; world order; political correctness; economic democracy, etc. and they all find their origin in The Frankfurt School.
When I say the barbarians are at the gate, I do not mean to diminish the sophistication of the enemy. We must make no mistake, we are dealing with an extremely crafty and dedicated foe whose ultimate aim is and remains despite the fall of the Soviet Union to break through the gates. Indeed, "barbarians at the gate" and "breaking through the gate" are the wrong kinds of imagery. The war is not being fought at this point with violence. It has been fought and mostly won by the other side by infiltration into the institutions which I mentioned in my previous post including the churches, the charitable foundations, the education establishment, the bar, and, as you point out, the unions.
If these people get their hands on the levers of power in America they will not let go.
