The Sleeping Giant Awakens (Obama, radicals and racial violence)

American Thinker ^ | August 10, 2011 | Robin of Berkeley

[2ndDivisionVet]

One of my closest friends, "Gail," lives in a pristine suburb in northern New Jersey. It's one of those leafy bedroom communities where residents drive their Lexus SUVs to the railroad station each morning to catch the train to Manhattan.

After 9/11, Gail told me that eerily, several vehicles were left abandoned in the parking lot for weeks. Their drivers never returned home that day to retrieve them.

But, in general, not much goes on in her sleepy, idyllic town. The residents rave about shopping sprees to Loehmanns and sprints to Whole Foods for organic strawberries. There is no crime to speak of; the local paper blares news about a recent traffic accident or the opening of a Trader Joe's. So when Gail told me what happened to her son, I was absolutely dumbfounded.

As for Gail, like my former self, she's a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party.....

[Steel Wolf]

1. Civilization does probably impose a certain amount of unhappiness on man. This is why “the fruit of knowledge” is a curse. Add in technology and “social development”...

This is a party of liberal theology I deeply sympathize with. There's a part of every man that wants to make the world better.

From my own experience, I've seen poverty, true poverty, the kinds that exists in China, Latin America or Central Asia. Up close. You can't help but think, "Man, there's got to be a better way. Isn't there some reset button we can push to start over and redo life without letting some people live like this?" Life is more complicated, of course. We often have no good options, or do more good than we get credit for. Still you can't deny the pull of emotions can make our sane and rational choices as a civilized society sometimes feel heartless and wrong.

2. Most “conservatives” are merely liberals who have some limited quarrel with some aspect of the liberal project. Liberalism is much stronger than most people on FR can fathom.

Humans aren't Vulcans. We're creatures of emotion as well as logic. Within limits, this is a very wonderful thing. Some limits we have in society are very reasonable and survival oriented. Others are cultural and arbitrary.

I could say the words "Prohibition of Alcohol" and "War on Drugs" and start a massive battle that has far less to do with logic than it does with our deep seated core beliefs. Conservatives are still creatures of logic and emotion. The pull to bend morality one way or another, even if it's less than the level liberals desire, still exists.

3. While Liberalism inspires strong faith, it is at its core a nihilist ideology that seeks to preserve some ideals cobbled together from Christianity and other old religions

The universal aspects of religion are often similar, because certain themes resonate with humans on an instinctual level. Part of us wants to be told what to do. We want the stability of knowing that we're good members of our group, that we are respected, and our actions serve a higher purpose. People that don't get that feeling from God invariably get it from somewhere else. People that think they don't need that particular itch in their soul scratched are easy to spot. They're either deeply unhappy individuals, or they deeply passionate about a substitute religion.

As far as that goes, I don't think that liberals care to retain any true part of the past. Things like Christmas, sure. Giving presents, decorating trees and having family over is a fun cultural event that people are used to. Otherwise, liberalism speaks to a pre-civilized spark in humanity. The kind that has no gods, but knows they are missing something in their lives. They want a warlord to kill for, a prophet to die for, or some story teller to come along and explain why they feel empty when they look in the campfire.

People that have drifted away from civilization, be they rich liberals or poor yutes, are, in a very real, sense going feral.

[Steel Wolf]

They are already locking people who express non-liberal opinions up, or fining them, for merely dissenting from liberalism. In western countries. Without a peep of protest from their fellow liberals.

Just because Islamists vote doesn't mean they believe in democratic traditions. Once they get enough power, then it's time for Sharia.

Like those Islamist politicians, once liberals become powerful enough, they stop pretending to care about 'free speech' and worry about 'correct speech'. "Yes, yes, freedom of expression was a wonderful thing," said the liberal/Islamic extremists, settling in their thrones. "It allowed the truth of our beliefs to rise to the top. Now that they have risen, it's time for all of you to get with the program. Your previous ideas are quaint but no longer necessary."

The problem is, somewhere along the way, we lost the will to machine gun people who threatened our freedoms. There's plenty of opposing viewpoints in life than you can negotiate with. Those that want to slip chains on your neck are not among them. We need a resurgence of faith in our own ideals, one strong enough to reassure the potential slave-masters that we mean business. They knew that, once.

Tyrants, big and small, need to meet violent resistance from time to time, or they'll begin to encroach. We need to get the faith back in our hearts that slaying people who would steal our liberty is perfectly justified, and outright mandatory, to keep our system alive. That's a bit of a different topic, though. ;-)

[ladyjane]

Robin's friend is naive and clueless.

And selfish.

Robin knows darn well that there is a race problem and cities are dangerous places. She figured by moving her family to an affluent suburb that she and her family would be safe. The heck with everybody else who isn't smart enough (or rich enough) to move.

As soon as those stitches are healed she'll still vote for the liberal Dem candidate. Surprise surprise.

[ladyjane]

Oops, I guess it’s Gail not Robin.

[SaraJohnson]

I remember when Obama was pushing through Obamacare, he got furious at the headway the Tea Party was making. He told his homies - leftists - to “get in their faces.” In the meantime the Left media was describing the tea parties as “white racists.” Tea Party did get attacked after this Presidential missive.

Then Holder said in front of a committee that laws against voter intimidation don’t apply to “his people” and that is why he dropped charges against Nation of Islam thugs who were intimidating voters in Philadelphia. Obama didn’t say a word. That was sending a message from the Justice Department and Obama about Black political violence. And since his media and activists have targeted his political enemy as “white”... Diversity doctrines also target the inferior and dangerous social and economic enemy as being the white race.

Remember his “churh” of race hate? Obama has a long history of leftist diversity racism.

[Norm Lenhart]

I don’t place it all on him, with all the Al’s and Jessies out there, but he is the centralizing figure and the one pulling Holder’s strings.

[Getsmart64]

surf from work

BTTT

[YankeeReb]

Gail is a brain dead stupid idiot liberal just like many other Americans.

Lenin just called her kind "useful idiots". The thing is once the Bolsheviks are securely in power the useful idiot becomes a useless eater and ends up in a gulag.

[Madame Dufarge]

What a masterpiece you've posted, eloquent and insightful.

I'm truly awed by it.

[little jeremiah]

I feel the exact same way. A very strong and palpable sense of very unpleasant anticipation. Not anticipation in the usual sense of waiting for something good and happy, but waiting for a terrible storm, or forest fire, that you know is heading towards you.

I considered the Norway slaughter a major turning point, of course so many different things are heading off the cliff, but that somehow seemed to be as though a corner was turned.

[nathanbedford]

Noumenon; CitizenUSA;Errant:

You all have raised the element of the spiritual condition of leftists. I too have been preoccupied with trying to understand what I believe to be a connection between the souless condition of leftists and their soul sickness which manifests itself in our political life. I have dredged up another old reply, or rather an amalgam of replies, which grope toward an explanation:

Steel Wolf:

I thank you for any marvelously well-written and really thoughtful reply. You have obviously thought deeply about the psychic condition of leftists and of Obama. Much of what you said, indeed, virtually everything you said strikes a chord with me and even an echo. For example, I have posted several times on the proposition-also made by Dennis Prager-which you raise that whether or not one believes in God, and therefore how man sees his own moral condition, is the most important determiner of one's politics. As another example, I have long been concerned about the epistemology of leftists and how they as a group and individually routinely take flight from logic and reality.

You say, "You're asking the right question, but looking in the wrong place." I would like to submit another old post of mine [it's actually an amalgam of several old posts] which takes on the very quest you are grappling with in your fine reply, why liberals think and behave the way they do? Here is the reply from a couple of years ago:

I have already read it for the citations which describe Obama as a narcissist. I was struck by the fact that they reflected what I had already written and which I will set forth below. I warn you it is quite lengthy. I find it interesting that the psychologist takes basic Biblical truths and recast them in modern language. In my post, which I repeat was written before, I have taken the jargon of the psychologists and tried to to put it in prosaic terms which make it less arcane and which perhaps are enhanced by some insight to Biblical truth.

Here is his previous post to which I have added some concluding paragraphs:

Liberalism is not a psychosis, it is a soul sickness which looks to us like mental illness.

The basic postulate of the Judeo-Christian insight is that man is either in submission to God or in rebellion against God. This is the basic condition of every human on this planet. That is why the first two commandments have to do with getting the basics right. The basics are the God is supreme and man a subordinate. This is a question of alignment. It establishes a vertical alignment.

The Christian experience confirms its Jewish heritage. On the Mount of olives Jesus is quoted in Matthew:

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matthew 22:36-40).

So the Judeo-Christian faith tells us to get the alignment right first. The first alignment to be dealt with is vertical (man's subordination to God) and when that alignment is in order then and only then can and should attention can be given to the horizontal alignment (love thy neighbor).

The liberal is by definition not in submission to God because the whole concept is anathema to him. The inescapable reality is that the liberal is in rebellion against God. There is simply no other existence available to him. This rebellion can be quite unconscious but nonetheless real even though the liberal who is estranged from God is unaware of his true condition.

The condition of estrangement from God is described in the New Testament to be the equivalent of death-spiritual death which is by far more important than physical death. In modern jargon we call this estrangement a psychosis, a neurosis, an eating disorder, alcoholism, drug addiction, aggression, narcissism , or whatever other flavor of the month can be dreamt up by new age psychologists. It is a further postulate of this condition that one who is in rebellion against God is in the throes of a soul sickness of one kind or another.

One of the oddities of this condition is that the victim contrives always to see himself as God. Consider the case of Adolf Hitler. It is easy to imagine him playing God when he was at the height of his powers willing real armies across whole continents and devouring whole countries as well as whole races of people whom he murdered. But move your gaze forward in time to his last days in the bunker when reality and the Soviets were closing around him and he had virtually no armies left. Nevertheless, he ordered phantom armies to do his bidding. It made no difference that Subordinates told him that his armies simply did not exist. He created his own reality. He consumed more mind altering drugs. He threw more tantrums, he issued more orders. He ordered more insubordinates executed. Until, at the very end he played God by shaping reality for one last time: he determined the end by committing suicide- the ultimate expression of playing God.

The capacity of such an individual who is in rebellion against God to engage in self deception can be virtually infinite. Most people do not go to the extremes of Adolf Hitler, they employ a more prosaic means to shape reality, to play God. They drink, they abuse drugs, they close their minds to rational argument, they find refuge in fantasy. They commit their lives to reshaping society (usually not on the scale indulged in by Hitler).

When the individual gets himself into trouble one might think that he would be open to reason. For example, a husband arrested for beating his wife should rationally look at what the consequences would be if he were convicted a second time. But he does it a second time. And a third time if his wife sticks around. Why is he unable rationally to assess his condition and modify his behavior? Why was Hitler?

More prosaically, why can a liberal not see that since the social programs of the New Deal failed, and since the social programs of the Great Society failed, the social programs of Barak Obama must also inevitably fail? The short answer is that he cannot perceive the failure of these horizontal matters because he is out of alignment vertically.

From my previous post:

The real fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives is the absence of or the belief in God. Liberals essentially reject God because they are committed to playing God. All of the rest of the belief structure, all the posturing of concern and commitment to society, all of the convolution of the language, all of the rejection of a rational discrimination, is nothing but a rationalization allowing the liberal to play God. This is the oldest and gravest sin known to the Judeo-Christian tradition. All of the hate, intolerance, and vilification of Christianity (read Sarah Palin) is a visceral reaction to the frustration they encounter from conservatives as they play God. Ann Coulter got it right in the tagline to one of her books: "they would be God." The ultimate example of playing God is the issue of "choice." Fundamental to the Judeo-Christian heritage is respect for human life because it is a creation of God. Abortion, even more than slavery, is the ultimate in playing God, one declares his transcendence over God's creation and in the stroke of a knife becomes God himself.

Let us back up for a moment to deal with the question why he (the liberal in general and Obama in particular) is unaware that he is in a state of rebellion. He is, and usually does not even recognize it. Worse, he has no idea that he is a prisoner in a psychic cage. In fact, he will swear that he is an exemplar of free will, that he is his own man, independent and free of the pitiable state of bondage which obviously afflicts people of faith. He sees those who confess to be in submission to God to be in bondage. He is free of the bondage which comes from such superstition. His whole world is upside down.

Obama lives solely on a horizontal plane. In other words, he cannot orientate himself on a vertical plane. He cannot place himself in relationship to God because he subconsciously thinks he is God. So he must find his self worth by comparing himself against others. His solipsism requires that he the superior to them at any cost-which really means any cost to them. Obama cannot have normal relationships with others because he is trying to live vertically in a horizontal world.

This misalignment means that the prisoner of the psychic cage is inevitably always playing a double game which requires him to lie and to find a fresh cast of characters or puppets to manipulate. So he runs through people as he discards those he no longer needs.

One last pair of observations about this soul sickness which it has become fashionable today to call narcissism. First, it is one of the things that impels liberals to engage in politics. Since they play God, they want, like God, to control the universe. They see this as doing the most good for the most people. They soon see that political power gives them the best chance of controlling the universe so they are inclined to enter politics.

Second, they are inclined to favor big government over small government for the same reason. This does not just mean a bigger federal government, it means County government over city government, state government over County government, federal government over state government, and world government over American government.

I think we will see all of these elements play out as Obama struts the world stage. As Obama plays his role on the world stage one can only pray that the ultimate irony does not play out. Liberals were desperate to replace George Bush whom they feared would pitch the world into war, with Barak Obama whom they had confidence would talk and reason the world out of war. If you have read this far, if you have contemplated the example of Adolf Hitler, you will understand that a God player like Barak Obama is far, far more likely to get us all killed.

[Ronin]

Very cogent, very precise, very readable. I’m stealing the whole thing.

Just joking, I’ll attribute — but it is very well written and needs to be spread around.

[globelamp]

At least the Islamists have an internally coherent rationale for their stance, I.e. Allah´s faithful must always be in the driver´s seat, or Allah will punish you, etc. etc.

With Liberals, they don´t really have any compelling rationale for why any single individual should adhere to the teachings of Liberalism when not watched by Liberals, I.e. why people should behave morally, even if you accept all the empirical claims made by liberals.

“Respect the veil of ignorance, or the wrath of Rawls will strike you down” doesn´t really strike me as a credible enforcement mechanism...

[Ronin]

Yepperdoodle! You got that right! I would have no problems at all voting for West or Cain. Although I am a bit ticked at Cain for apologizing to the Muslims.

[globelamp]

“The capacity of such an individual who is in rebellion against God to engage in self deception can be virtually infinite.”

Indeed. Why should such an individual *not* engage in self-deception, if he finds it pleasurable? Will the hand of Dawkins punish him? Hardly.

Rose got it largely right, I believe:

The Four Stages of the Nihilist Dialectic:
1. Liberalism
2. Realism
3. Vitalism
4. The Nihilism of Destruction

[Covenantor]

Well done. Your post deserves a place in the FR Hall of Fame.

Thank you for that lucid and piercing observation. It captures the primitive emotions unleashed and manipulated by. Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Islamic fundamentalism, crying for ever more blood and destruction with an insatiable hunger. Pure and primordial evil, nothing less.

[globelamp]

Cont...

NIHILISM, by Eugene Rose:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/nihilism.html#4

[globelamp]

“If you have read this far, if you have contemplated the example of Adolf Hitler, you will understand that a God player like Barak Obama is far, far more likely to get us all killed.”

Even provided that we assume the worst about the motives of Obama (I personally believe him to be a rather standard-issue leftish liberal true believer, but not a revolutionary), I doubt that will happen.

In short, I think that Obama is far too weak-willed and undecisive to push hell-bent for his goals in the fashion of Adolf Hitler, and Obama is far more constrained by a stronger opposition and institutional framework.

That´s not a reason to rest easy, though. Obama isn´t really the problem. He is just one of a myriad of manifestations of the problem.

[Covenantor]

In short, I think that Obama is far too weak-willed and undecisive to push hell-bent for his goals in the fashion of Adolf Hitler, and Obama is far more constrained by a stronger opposition and institutional framework.

At a certain tipping point his will is irrelevant after fanning the flames of hatred. The London riots are the current display of leaderless violence. Consider the possibility of a Tutsi-Hutu type of horror unleashed scaled up one or two orders of magnitude, much like the MLK riots flashing across the country. Takes but a spark to start a fire.

[kearnyirish2]

I have no problem at all with the “better safe than sorry” bit; the reputation of urban youth is well deserved, and it is up to them to change it.