Posted on 05/03/2009 11:56:27 AM PDT by Starman417
I have been rereading the classic tome Witness by Whittaker Chambers recently, using the new 50th anniversary edition with wonderful forewords by the recently deceased Buckley & Novak. (It has had a foundational influence on American conservatives and traditionalists like Buckley and Novak and justifiably so.)
Although I have read it several times before, this is the first time Ive read it since the election and the difference for me is astounding and eye-opening. Things have been leaping out of the pages at me this time. There is a lot I could talk about but for the purposes of this essay, there is one basic thing I want to mention. The point I want to make here is just how Communist what Obama has said and done in regard to Change in the light of Chambers definition. [Is Obama specifically a Marxist or a Communist? That is another question which I cannot and do not presume to know as a fact. The points of similarity, however, I think, are obvious.]
First, for purposes of information, let me tell you a little bit about the book and the man. Many today have little idea who Whittaker Chambers is and why his book is so important, so some comment is owed to the reader.
Witness is Chambers attempt to explain his bearing witness against Alger Hiss as a Communist spy in the famous trials and Congressional contests involving him in the late 40s. He presents himself as a witness but what kind of witness is he? His answer has nothing to do with grudges, politics per se or even ideology. He even fails to fit into the classic conservative mold. Basically, his answer is an existential one. He must witness against Communism not Hiss, against the experiential ideas not the Party. He MUST do it to be true to himself: External freedom is only an aspect of interior freedom. Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible. Religion and freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies. Without the soul there is no justification for freedom. Hence every sincere break with Communism is a religious experience.
Whittaker (the name he adopted from his mother in the 1920s) distinguished himself as a translator early on, notably for his rendition of Bambi from the German. To say his upbringing was problematic would be an understatement. As time went on, his troubled family life and experiences led Chambers to embrace Marxism and he did so with great ferocity. He was a bisexual aesthete who vehemently rejected religion and associated God with ill-ventilated vestries and ill-ventilated minds.
Chambers radical bent was all-consuming; he became not only a Communist Party member but also went underground to be a Soviet operative, a total self-dedication. He ended up operating among the government circles of Washington, DC in a secret Communist cell based there (later known as the Ware group). He was alternately known as Carl or Bob or other aliases. He and his wife became close friends with a State Department official and his family that they met in that group; the friends name was Alger Hiss.
After ten years or so, he underwent a mystical conversion, his description of which might be said to resemble the Confession of St. Augustine. A key break came when the Party first tried to stop his marriage and then demanded they abort their newly conceived child. Abortion, which now fills me with physical horror, I then regarded, like all Communists, as a mere physical manipulation. All that had apparently changed within himself. He began to realize he was no longer what he had been and could not go through with what he had come to see as a horror. From that point on, he slowly began to plan, not only his break from the Party, but to begin his life-and-death war with Communism itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at Flopping Aces ...
I’m rereading “Witness” right now, too. Remarkable book. It really gives one a lot of insight into the bizarre functioning of the Communist mind. Of course, Chambers defines Communism correctly, as a religion making religious claims; but it is one totally devoid of any ethic except that of permitting anything that benefits or advances the Party.
A fascinating study of politics and subversion. This is recommended reading for everyone.
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The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine
Monday , May 5, 2008
FoxNews/Hannity's America
[special Friday night edition--original airdate May 2, 2008]
(some key excerpts)
["(Jose) Diaz-Balart is the son of Rafael Diaz-Balart y Guitierrez (a former Cuban politician). He has three bothers, Rafael Diaz-Balart (a banker), Mario Diaz-Balart (a US Congressman) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (also a US Congressman). His aunt, Mirta Diaz-Balart, was Fidel Castro's first wife."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Diaz-Balart]
JOSE DIAZ-BALART, TELEMUNDO NETWORK: "Liberation theology in Nicaragua in the mid-1980's was a pro-Sandinista, pro-Marxist, anti-U.S., anti-Catholic Church movement. That's it. No ifs, ands, or buts. His church apparently supported, in the mid-'80s in Nicaragua, groups that supported the Sandinista dictatorships and that were opposed to the Contras whose reason for being was calling for elections. That's all I know. I was there.
I saw the churches in Nicaragua that he spoke of, and the churches were churches that talked about the need for violent revolution and I remember clearly one of the major churches in Managua where the Jesus Christ on the altar was not Jesus Christ, he was a Sandinista soldier, and the priests talked about the corruption of the West, talked about the need for revolution everywhere, and talked about 'the evil empire' which was the United States of America."
REV. BOB SCHENCK, NATIONAL CLERGY COUNCIL: "it's based in Marxism. At the core of his [Wright's] theology is really an anti-Christian understanding of God, and as part of a long history of individuals who actually advocate using violence in overthrowing those they perceive to be oppressing them, even acts of murder have been defended by followers of liberation theology. That's very, very dangerous."
SCHENCK: "I was actually the only person escorted to Dr. Wright. He asked to see me, and I simply welcomed him to Washington, and then I said Dr. Wright, I want to bring you a warning: your embrace of Marxist liberation theology. It is contrary to the Gospel, and you need, sir, to abandon it. And at that he dropped the handshake and made it clear that he was not in the mood to dialogue on that point."
Source: The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
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"Their founding document [the Weather Underground's] called for the establishment of a "white fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other "anti-colonial" movements[1] to achieve "the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism."..."-Berger, Dan (2006). Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. AK Press, 95.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_Underground#cite_ref-Berger_0-0
Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (Paperback) by Dan Berger
http://www.amazon.com/Outlaws-America-Underground-Politics-Solidarity/dp/1904859410
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From the New York Times, August 24, 2003
"they [the Weather Underground] employed revolutionary jargon, advocated armed struggle and black liberation and began bombing buildings, taking responsibility for at least 20 attacks. Estimates of their number ranged at times from several dozen to several hundred."
Article: Quieter Lives for 60's Militants, but Intensity of Beliefs Hasn't Faded
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E4DE1539F937A1575BC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2
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Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
Kathy Shaidle, FrontPageMag.com
Monday, April 07, 2008
In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obamas pastor in a heated interview about his Churchs teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to "Black Liberation Theology"...
Like the pro-communist Liberation Theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30CD9E14-B0C9-4F8C-A0A6-A896F0F44F02
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Catholics for Marx [Liberation Theology]
By Fr. Robert Sirico
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 03, 2004
In the days when the Superpowers were locked in a Cold War, Latin America seethed with revolution, and millions lived behind an iron curtain, a group of theologians concocted a novel idea within the history of Christianity. They proposed to combine the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx as a way of justifying violent revolution to overthrow the economics of capitalism.
The Gospels were re-rendered not as doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical dialectic of class struggle. These "liberation theologians" saw every biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to expropriate the expropriating owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=460782B7-35CC-4C9E-A2C5-93832067C7CD
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From "45 Communist Goals":
#27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion.
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
"The Communist Party USA views the 2008 elections as a tremendous opportunity to defeat the policies of the right-wing Republicans and to move our country in a new progressive direction.
The record turnout in the Democratic Presidential primary races shows that millions of voters, including millions of new voters, are using this election to bring about real change. We wholeheartedly agree with them."
http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/907/1/4/
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A Landslide Mandate For Change
Congratulations on an extraordinary history making election!
We can think back with pride to decades of hard work toward our strategic goal of a big enough, broad enough and united enough labor and all-peoples movement that could overcome the ultra-right blockage to all progress. That all peoples movement has come to life, it is dynamic and it has the potential to keep growing.
The election of Barack Obama and a strengthened Congress creates new conditions in our country. There is now the possibility to shift gears and move forward. This new day requires us to further develop our tactics in order to continue to deepen and broaden labor and peoples unity.
There are thousands of experiences that we all have had in these momentous days, some large, some small, all of which express the enormity of change in thinking and readiness for involvement that is underway and that steels us for the battles ahead.
The tears of joy we all shared as crowds gathered to watch the election results here and throughout the world dramatize the new moment we are in.
http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/991/1/154/
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Saul Alinsky on "Change"...
From Rules for Radicals, Alinsky outlines his strategy in organizing, writing:
"There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution."
Saul Alinsky, The Latter Rain (Latter-Rain.com is a "Liberation Theology" commie-left website -etl)
http://latter-rain.com/ltrain/alinski.htm
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"Barack Obama told supporters that
'change has come to America' as he
claimed victory in a historic presidential election."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/election.president/index.html
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From Accuracy In Media | AIM.ORG
Obamas Red Mentor Praised Red Army
AIM Report | By Cliff Kincaid | April 30, 2008
Frank Marshall Davis
Barack Obamas childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA (CPUSA), wrote a poem dedicated to the Soviet Red Army. Smash on, victory-eating Red Army, he declared. He also wrote poems attacking traditional Christianity and the work of Christian missionaries.
The Red Army poem goes beyond hoping for the communists to beat the Nazis in World War II and hails the Soviet revolution. It says:
Show the marveling multitudes
Americans, British, all your allied brothers
How strong you are
How great you are
How your young tree of new unity
Planted twenty-five years ago
Bears today the golden fruit of victory!
http://www.aim.org/aim-report/obamas-red-mentor-praised-red-army/
Excellent read, the review that is. I will need to read the book now.
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