Wednesday, March 4, 2009 Alan Keyes
Thought for Today
"It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." The Federalist
"With words we govern men." Benjamin Disraeli
In practice, the substance of liberty is deliberate, voluntary choice. Constrained by the threat or use of force; manipulated by lies and misinformation; herded by contrived circumstances; choice is not voluntary, and those who make it are not free. Where free choice prevails, communication is the key to persuasion. Words (including in this term the language of music and graphic images) convey facts, ideas and feelings that sway and determine the will. For those who would be free, words matter.
Understanding this, the enemies of freedom do their best to limit or eliminate words that interfere with their design for despotism. They especially seek to stigmatize and discourage the use of words freighted with the sad and tragic history of tyranny and dictatorship. That's why the use of the word 'communist' to describe Barack Obama has aroused such furious diatribe and aspersion. Call him liberal. Call him socialist. Even call him a Marxist if you will. But communist is a dirty word, a cheap shot, just resentful name calling.
Of course, it wasn't a dirty word when Marx or Engels used it to describe their ideology, or when Lenin wielded it to rally his forces on behalf of the proletariat. Marx's ponderous writings are boring and not even half-true. The bulk of people who claim and act in his name have probably never read much beyond the "Communist Manifesto." But this makes Marxism a false name, not a bad one. It took the millions murdered or dead from famine in the assault on Russia's middle class farmers (the Kulaks); it took the millions slaughter and consigned to hellish gulags during Stalin's other purges; it took the millions mobbed, defenestrated, hacked to death in Mao's cultural revolution; it took the smoking ruins of the tens of thousands slain in Kampuchea's killing fields; and so on and on, to make communism a dirty word. It took the destruction of churches, the persecution of dissidents, the use of crushing military force against unarmed civilians seeking only the dignity of their human rights; to give communists a bad name.
Given this history, it's easy to understand why folks who are looking, waddling and quacking like communists would rather we called them messiahs. Sensible people want to avoid getting caught up in the grist mill of communist tyranny. The use of the term invites them to look at its history, and this means not only the grisly results, but the path to power that let some people inflict such horrors on others. Americans have an especially good reputation for not putting their fingers into light sockets, but it doesn't take that much shrewdness to recognize the telltale signs of an approaching hurricane before it overtakes you. Lincoln showed this disposition when he looked at the actions of the pro-slavery cabal before the last Civil War.
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen -- Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance -- and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few -- not omitting even scaffolding -- or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such a piece in -- in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.
These days, the Obama faction's media claque derides anyone willing to imitate Lincoln's common sense as kooky, crazy, fringe, lunatic and an assortment of less cordial terms meant to scarecrow the weak minded.
- We see the takeover of the banks and financial institutions.
- In the steadfast refusal to take simple steps to show compliance with the Constitution's eligibility requirements we see Obama's personal contempt for the Constitution.
- We see the Obama celebrity claque hyping a cult of personality, including a pledge of allegiance to him, rather than the U.S. Constitution.
- We see steps by his cronies to take over and manipulate the census, control that could be abused to consolidate one party dictatorship over government in the United States.
- We see his faction's Congressional delegation assigning unconstitutional voting representation in the U.S. Congress to federally controlled districts not qualified as states under the Constitution.
- We see a so called stimulus bill that directs billions of dollars into the coffers of the Obama faction's political machine.
- We see his faction's Congressional majority planning a taxpayer funded demographic invasion that will permanently alter the identity of the American people.
- We hear his repeated calls for the establishment of a domestic security force as large and well funded as the military: an American KGB.
- From him we hear an ominous warning about our "day of reckoning".
- His budget seeks control of the life and death health care sector.
- His tax policies destructively assault private action in order to fund national bureaucratic domination.
- He proposes risky cutbacks in our military preparedness.
- His massive spending involves borrowing requirements that will increase Communist China's hold over the United States.
- He makes appeasing overtures to Iran as it moves toward nuclear weapons capability.
- His faction's State Department welcomes a move that makes our hemisphere's most active radical, anti-American Marxist (Hugo Chavez) a dictator for life.
But if we dare to see the obvious pattern in all of this, we're candidates for a soon to be government controlled mental hospital. Or so the Obama faction wants people to believe. Do you think they're right? For more current writing by Alan Keyes, please visit LoyaltoLiberty.com! Do you like it? Then Digg it!
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