If the author had written not another word in this piece she would have rendered a patriotic service to her country. To those of us who have been warning of The Obama Pathology since before the election, this klaxon call to America to defend itself is most welcome. There are few enough in the media with the courage to proclaim what many more see, Barak Obama's epistemology is alien to America and he is a profoundly dangerous man.
I have written many replies and vanities describing the compulsion by egomaniacs such as Barack Obama to play God. By egomaniac, of course, we do not mean that Obama struts and thinks himself superior to everyone else. That may be the case but it is not that kind of narcissism which is so dangerous. It is the ego that drives such men to shape the world at any cost to fit their whim. This is the origin of all tyranny. It is as old as the Old Testament and it is the predictable condition of a man who was utterly rejected the first and second Commandments.
Obama is a would-be tyrant because he would be God.
It is in this context that the author renders another very great service. In the following passage she puts her finger on the spiritual egoism that makes for tyrants:
this Third Way movement for change is as fascist as anything we have ever seen in the USA. As Alinsky described his own "Ideology of Change," the lure is in the claim that the leader has no ideology that would confine his outlook to hard choices between what is moral or immoral, that there are no boundaries set by either religion or politics, that everything can change and the only thing that matters is one's end intention to do something good.
The author has described Obama and it is frightening. There is morally no restraints on his own ambition and any thing he does will be rationalized. The danger of Obama is not that he is an ideologue-although he is certainly that and of the Marxist variety-the danger is that he admits of no other gods before him.
The author performs another service in introducing us to the call of the collective as a motivating force on the left. I have alluded to this in many posts incorporating, for example, Hillary Clinton's commencement speech at Wellesley in which she calls for a more ecstatic experience. The author comments on the power of the call of the collective on the left:
The allure of this mystical unity is so great that its demand to sacrifice reason and thought on the false altar of infantile security is seemingly lost to many. But as Goldberg also reminds us, "unity is, at best, morally neutral and often a source of irrationality and groupthink."
I would add to this observation that many psychologists from William James on have observed: the phenomenon of release and powerful feeling of integration which is obtained when one submits wholly to a force outside of his own ego. The danger, of course, is that one partakes of that which he submits to. So if one surrenders to a cult of Satan, one can expect to take on some very unattractive characteristics. Nevertheless, the act itself, and the repetition of the act, can induce feelings of well-being in the actor. And it is a very strong incentive for people to participate in the Hitler Youth, or a Los Angeles street gang, or a rock 'n roll fan club.
This phenomenon often produces life-changing effects. Perhaps the most famous example in history occurred to the apostle Saul on his way to Damascus. Former President Bush changed his life as a result of a commitment made in the presence of Dr. Graham. Dr. Graham himself testifies such an experience. Hollywood loves to portray these incidences but never in a religious context but always the opposite of what actually occurs. In the Hollywood context the hero resolved to try harder with his own resources because he is confronted with some transcendental reality. The psychological phenomenon works in the opposite context, when the actor submerges his ego into another reality. Hollywood gets it backward.
If that reality is a leftist, collectivist state, we get tyranny.
There is much more in this article which requires thought. I applaud the author for a very great service rendered.
