Fund Your Utopia Without Me.™

09 June 2012

Underestimating the New Nazis in Greece: The Golden Dawn Party



M2RB:








And when we come back we'll be dressed in black
And you'll scream our names aloud
And we won't eat and we won't sleep
We'll drag bodies from their graves




 Who are they and what do they believe?




By Jeanette Pryor


The hidden responsibility for World War II rests not upon Adolph Hitler, but rather with Johann Dietrich Eckart. Had Eckart not introduced Hitler to larger crowds and inner circles, had the echoes of his maiden speech not bounced across the basement walls, the madman would have slithered to the corner and nursed his tea in the company of demons and visions forever unrealized. Instead, the first opportunist calculated his gain and a basement full of bystanders fell silent.

Hitler’s path from oblivion to deity was paved by a thousand Judases and a million Pilates; mercenaries and cowards each, who, in moments of destiny, used or excused the monster and hastened him on his way.

The simplest action might have arrested Hitler’s ascent. Here a judge who shortened a sentence, there a socialite whose glittering luncheons legitimized the odd man and his dream for a new Germany. Almost everyone dismissed Hitler’s ominous threats; taking the man at his word cost too much.

Such moments of destiny now test us in our turn. Two short weeks ago, across Everests of whipped cream and dense cappuccino fog, our iPads blipped something or other about the Greek Neo-Nazi party winning seven percent in elections held amid Weimar-like disintegration of that country’s economy. A hundred million eyes rolled, five million deigned to snort, and all buried their minds, ostrich-like, in caffeinated indifference.

The once-obscure Greek Golden Dawn is worthy of more than snorting disdain. Its growth and the conditions in Greece are reminiscent of pre-War Germany. The organization owes its advent in part to a band of new Eckarts, men who use religion to mask their antisemitic ideology and socialist economic theory in Europe and the United States. The organization’s growing popularity demonstrates how quickly small numbers and risible doctrines can achieve power given favorable social factors.

Led by Nikolaos Michaloliakos, Golden Dawn is a member of the European National Front (ENF), an umbrella organization consisting of eight European nationalist branches headed by Roberto Fiore, founder of the Italian Forza Nuova. The branches promote their own country’s ethnic traditions, but share the broader mission outlined by Fiore:
The real Europe, to rise again, will need a single political center that embodies a compelling Idea. This will only happen with a state entity, by its nature “superior” to individual people and offering them a great historic mission: that of “order” making the world a mirror of the Order of heaven. The Idea is the rediscovery of the imperial (not imperialist!) (It is the Idea) of a power “consecrated” from on High and rooted in many people- related, similar and united — but still distinct and vital.  It will be one hundred flags of the European Empire.
The web pages of ENF members contain Nazi-like iconography and documentation of joint rallies looking, for all the world, like miniature reenactments of Triumph of the Will. Cartoons advocate not balanced immigration policies, but supremacist malevolence towards foreigners.

The ENF embraces an economic policy that opposes the “effects of Zionism.” It advocates distributism, a social philosophy erroneously claiming to be based on that of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, who outlined solutions for the ill effects of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of Communism.

Distributism has much in common with communism, particularly its Utopian promise that the world will be in harmony when human beings share equally the means and fruits of meaningful work. Radical distributists wax eloquent concerning the role of “Zionist international banking empires” in the present state of Europe, but are shy when asked for details concerning the distribution of presently-held “Zionist” wealth. The implementation of distributism requires stringent state involvement.







Fiore identified what he believes is the obstacle to a restored European economy when speaking of Golden Dawn’s victory:
Greece could escape the clutches of international finance in a few days.
Who, exactly is, for the European National Front, “international finance”?

In 2011, Fiore told a gathering of supporters in Budapest:
The men who brought about the world financial crisis of 2008 were the very same who put Christ on the Cross.
Distributism was promoted in the European National Front by its Irish co-founder Derek Holland. Holland joined forces with Fiore when the Italian fled to England as a person of interest in the 1980 Bologna train bombing. Together, they started the International Third Position, a group that used Catholic devotional practices to legitimize and market their radical economic and political philosophy.  Holland outlined his program for a new kind of religious-political activist in his book The Political Soldier, which drew inspiration from the fascist Julius Evola.

When Fiore returned to Italy, he launched Forza Nuova and recruited the other members of the National Front including Greek Golden Dawn. Holland turned to America where his friend, Bishop Richard Williamson, ran the seminary of the Society of St. Pius X. Like Fiore, Holland frequented the chapels run by the organization now known for Williamson’s infamous Holocaust denial and 9-11 truther sermons.

Holland and a young American, also a devotee of Williamson, established IHS Press to spread distributism in the United States.  They benefited from the sympathies of the Society leadership in the U.S and their literature flowed into SSPX bookstores.

Holland’s American business partner spread not only the anti-capitalist economic theory espoused by the ENF, but its antisemitism as well. On September 12, 2001, with the nation transfixed in horror at the sight of the Islamic terrorist attacks, Holland’s protégé wrote the following for his website The Legion of St. Louis:
Readers will notice that we didn’t begin today’s special issue on yesterday’s remarkable events with “America is attacked.” America wasn’t attacked. America isn’t the World Trade Center, nor is it the Pentagon.  At least those things don’t represent our America, nor should they for our readers. … If we lived in a sane world, and bound ourselves by our own rules of logic, we would consider very seriously the question of whether those who caused these accidents are “sane” or “insane,” whether these hypothetical “crazy Muslims” are really “crazy Muslims” and not “justifiably angry Arabs. The intended victims were the financial and military power of a nation that, should introspection ever become the order of the day, cannot claim ignorance nor innocence of having earned the hatred and resentment of the non-Western European world.  Turn off the TV and go outside. Unless you live in Manhattan, the sky is clear, the birds are chirping, there is a nice breeze, and God is still Good and life is still sane.




 


(Neo-Conned was published by Sharpe’s publishing house in 2005.)



Having posted his rant, the author, Lieutenant Commander John Sharpe, headed to his day job at the U.S. Atlantic Fleet Public Affairs Office. Sharpe later wrote the following:
In a way it is a pleasure to be back with you on this silly “anniversary” of 9-11. For those of you who suffered through the televised ground zero memorial ceremony… what is the relevance of that to a so-called terrorist attack on the financial capital of the world?  The waving flags, the tears, the constant voice-overs about what the first moment was that we realized we were “at war,” the metal circle placed in the middle of the dirt at ground zero with groups of people marching up to it to pay their respects…it’s all such nonsense…if the collapse of the WTC was not caused, at least from the highest levels or in its root causes, by bin Laden and his henchmen, but rather by the Powers that Be in order to lead us into a further intervention in world events, to ensure that the liberal-democratic order triumphs based on force of arms, then the grief and suffering of the 9-11 ceremonies should be accompanied not by smugness that “American greatness will triumph in the end,” but rather by sheer outrage that 3000 citizens were allowed to perish in order to further the aims of the Zionist New-World-Order gang, run and/or coordinated from and/or coordinated by America in the first place!
The contents of this U.S. officer’s webpage were brought to the attention of the Navy, which conducted an internal investigation.  Sharpe was not disciplined by the Navy for his antisemitism. He has always declared his publishing house to be distinct from the organized neo-fascism of his friend, though his writings were declared to be antisemitic as a rule of law during a civil trial.

Reports concerning the writings and associations of Sharpe, Holland, and Fiore were sent to religious superiors, to the U.S. Navy, to journalists, and to a dozen others in positions of authority with power to at least limit the influence of the European National Front and its associates.

But these rolled their eyes, snorted, and reached for their coffee.

In 2005, Director Marc Rothemund’s cinematic masterpiece Sophie Scholl: The Final Days received a nomination for an Oscar for its superb depiction of the White Rose German resistance movement.  Explaining why he felt it was important to tell the story of Sophie Scholl, a 23 year-old student decapitated by the Nazis, Rothemund explained:
I travel all over the world and I learned that you have Nazis everywhere.  As long as there are Nazis in Germany, you have to tell the stories from the past.  When I travel through Germany, I ask the young people, “Did you see the movie of the White Rose from 1981?”  And it was only half of the teachers who raised their hands.  But the young people, nobody saw it.  We have five million unemployed people and people have a lot to do to look for jobs and they are worrying about their future. Especially in the time if you have economical problems, then the young people are easy to influence, to seduce. If one politician tells to the people, “The Turkish guys, or the foreign guys, or the Jewish guys are responsible, then you believe it and you vote for the Nazis.”
Golden Dawn will send 19 members to the next session of the Greek Parliament. IHS Press will host its first Restoring Christendom Congress in Washington, D.C., in August of 2012.

Jeanette Pryor is a native Californian residing in Topeka, Kansas, with her husband and five children. A freelance writer and blogger, her published articles focus on the growth of antisemitism and misogyny in conservative organizations. Her PJ Media piece "Toxic Activism: Is Politics Your Drug of Choice?" chronicles Jeanette’s twenty-year experience in the heart of the French religious far-right. A 2012 graduate of Kansas State University (Interdisciplinary Social Sciences), Jeanette is the recipient of the 2011 Washburn University Nall Scholarship for her speech, The Freedom Writers and the Transformative Power of Holocaust Education.



Related Reading:

Hitler's Ghost Haunts Europe

Norway: A Tolerant, Inclusive, Diverse, Multicultural Society For Everyone...Except Jews...Part I 

Occupy Wall Street & Anti-Semitism

 Did Obama Throw A Beer Summit?

 The Answer Is Obvious

A Circus Parade of Freaks, Anti-Semites, Bare-Breasted Ladies, Radicals, Pinkos, and Hardly An "Average, Hard-Working, Middle-Class American" In Sight

Nazism Was Not Based In Christianity

Why Anti-Semitism Is Moving Toward The Mainstream

Memo to Jews: After They Come for the Catholic Church, They Will Come For Us

The Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Origins Of Occupy Wall Street Are Ignored By The Media

A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism

Judge Richard Goldstone’s Mea Culpa, in the Pages of the New York Times!

Ron Paul: All Aboard! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Haaaa! Mental Wounds Still Screaming! Driving Me Insane I'm Going Off The Rails On My Crazy Train! (And I Want To Take You Along For The Ride)

Obama - The Anti-Israel President

Update on Norway: The Poison of Multiculturalism

The Last Jews Of Baghdad: Just SEVEN Remain (And They Fear For Their Lives After Being Named By WikiLeaks)

Islamic Naziism




Spectrum - Florence + The Machine

When we first came here
We were cold and we were clear
With no colors on our skin
We were light and paper-thin

And when we first came here
We were cold and we were clear
With no colors on our skin
'Till you let the spectrum in

[Repeat: x3]
Say my name
And every color illuminates
We are shining
And we will never be afraid again

And when we come for you
We dressed up all in blue
With the ocean in our arms
Kissing eyes and kissing palms

When it's time to pray
We dressed up all in gray
With metal on our tongues
And silver in our lungs

[Repeat: x3]
Say my name
And every color illuminates
We are shining
And we'll never be afraid again

And when we come back we'll be dressed in black
And you'll scream our names aloud
And we won't eat and we won't sleep
We'll drag bodies from their graves

So say my name
And every color illuminates
And we are shining
And we'll never be afraid again
Say my name
As every color illuminates

[Repeat: x2]
Say my name
And every color illuminates
We are shining
And we'll never be afraid again

Say my name
We are shining
Say my name
Say my name
And we will never be afraid again

Detroit: Here's Where The Story Ends





M2RB:






Here's where the story ends
Ooh here's where the story ends





The Moral of the Story



By Kevin D. Williamson



The Left’s answer to the deficit: raise taxes to protect spending. The Left’s answer to the weak economy: raise taxes to enable new spending. The Left’s answer to the looming sovereign-debt crisis: raise taxes to pay off old spending. For the Left, every deficit is a revenue-side problem, not a spending-side problem, and the solution to every economic problem is more spending, necessitating more taxes. The problem with that way of looking at things is called Detroit, which looks to be running out of money in about one week. Detroit is what liberalism’s end-game looks like.

And Detroit does in fact have a revenue problem, as I argued in the May 14 National Review (“Let Detroit Fail”): “Revenues declined by more than $100 million between 2007 and 2011. Income-tax revenue dropped by 18 percent, utility-tax revenue by 17 percent, property-tax revenue by 2.3 percent. Seeking a quick fix to its revenue problems, Detroit chartered several casino-gambling operations, only to see taxes from them begin to decline (by 1.5 percent last year) after a period of early growth. Detroit, once the wealthiest city in the United States by per capita income, is today the second-poorest major U.S. city.”

Detroit is evidence for the fact that the economic limitations on tax increases sometimes kick in before the political limitations do. The relationship between tax rates, tax revenue, economic incentives, growth, and investment is complex, to say the least, and deeply dependent on the historical and economic facts of particular places at particular times. We have theories of growth, but no blueprint. But Detroit was not reduced to its present wretched circumstances by historical inevitabilities or the impersonal tides of economics. It did not have to end this way, but it did, and understanding why it did is essential if we are to avoid repeating Detroit’s municipal tragedy on a national scale.

One lesson to learn from Detroit is that investing unions with coercive powers does not ensure future private-sector employment or the preservation of private-sector wages, despite liberal fairy tales to the contrary, nor do protectionist measures strengthen the long-term prospects of domestic firms competing in highly integrated global markets. We cannot legislate away comparative advantage or other facts of life. But the problem of unions’ coercing distortions in the private sector is at this point a relatively small one, given the decline of unionization outside of government. Organized labor being a fundamentally predatory enterprise, its attention has turned to the public sector, where there are fatter and more stable rents to be collected.

The second important lesson to be learned from Detroit is that there are hard limits on real tax increases, a fact that will be of more immediate significance in the national debate as our deficit and debt problems reach crisis stage. Even those of us who are relatively open to tax increases as a component of a long-term debt-reduction strategy must keep in mind that our current spending trend is putting us on an unsustainable course in which our outlays will far outpace our ability to collect taxes to pay for them, no matter where we set our theoretical tax rates.


The IMF calculates that to maintain present spending trend the United States will have to nearly double (88 percent increase) all federal taxes to maintain theoretical solvency. 


Those tax increases are sure to have real-world effects on everything from investing to immigration. At some point, the statutory tax increases will not increase actual revenue.

Even the best tax regimes are cannibalistic: Every tax is an incentive for the taxpayer to relocate to a more friendly jurisdiction. But tax rates are not the only incentive: Google is not going to set up shop in Somalia. Healthy governments create conditions that make it worth paying the taxes — which is to say, governments are a lot like participants in any other competitive market (with some obvious and important exceptions). The benefits of being in Detroit used to be worth the costs, but in recent decades millions of people and thousands of enterprises large and small have decided that is no longer the case. It is not as though one cannot profitably manufacture automobiles in the United States — Toyota does — you just can’t do it very well in Detroit. No one with eyes in his head could honestly think that the services provided by the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan are worth the costs.

The third lesson is moral. Detroit’s institutions have long been marked by corruption, venality, and self-serving. Healthy societies have high levels of trust. Who trusts Detroit? This is not angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin stuff. People do not invest in firms, industries, cities, or countries they do not trust. Corruption makes people poor.

What is true of Detroit is true of the country. Our national public sector not only is bloated and parasitic, it is less effective, less responsible, and less honest than that of many other developed countries, including New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Germany. I am not an unreserved admirer of Transparency International’s global corruption-perceptions index, but I believe that it is in broad outline accurate. Liberals are inclined to learn the wrong lessons from the relative success of countries such as Canada or New Zealand, concluding that what we need is a bigger welfare state, government-run health care, etc. (Conservatives, for our part, tend to overemphasize the role of comparatively low taxes and light regulation in the success of countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong. Those are important, but there are other equally important factors.) In reality, there is a great diversity of health-care arrangements and social-spending levels among the countries that have more effective institutions than ours, while many countries with the sorts of institutions liberals admire (take Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal for starters) are in crisis, in significant part because of plain corruption. What the more successful countries tend to have in common is a public sector that is less intent on looting the fisc.

Sure, Hong Kong and Singapore have lower levels of government spending (as a share of GDP) than does the United States. So do Switzerland and Australia. At 38.9 percent of GDP, our public-sector spending is indistinguishable from that of Canada (39.7 percent). It is not obvious that we have much to show for it.

The city fathers of Detroit inherited one of the richest and most productive cities in the world, and they ruined it in a generation. The gentlemen in Washington have been entrusted with the richest and most productive nation in the history of the world, and the trendline does not look good. Those of us seeking to radically reduce the footprint of government must remind ourselves from time to time that our case is as much ethical as economic, that the ethical and the economic are indeed closely intertwined.



Here's Where The Story Ends - The Sundays

People I know places I go
Make me feel tongue tied
I can see how people look down
They're on the inside

Here's where the story ends

People I see, weary of me
Showing my good side
I can see how people look down
I'm on the outside

Here's where the story ends
Ooh here's where the story ends

It's that little souvenir of a terrible year
Which makes my eyes feel sore
Oh I never should have said the books that you read
Were all I loved you for
It's that little souvenir of a terrible year
Which makes me wonder why
& it's the memories of the shed that make me turn red
Surprise surprise surprise

Crazy I know, places I go
Make me feel so tired
I can see how people look down
I'm on the outside

Oh here's where the story ends
Ooh here's where the story ends

It's that little souvenir of a terrible year
Which makes my eyes feel sore
& who ever would've thought the books that you brought
Were all I loved you for
Oh the devil in me said go down to the shed
I know where I belong
But the only thing I ever really wanted to say
Was wrong, was wrong, was wrong

It's that little souvenir of a colorful year
Which makes me smile inside
So I cynically, cynically say the world is that way
Surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise

Here's where the story ends
Ooh here's where the story ends


Marx’s Ghost: The Evil That Men Do



M2RB:








The evil that men do lives on and on.








By Ion Mihai Pacepa

I grew up with the picture of the U.S. president hanging on the wall of our house in Bucharest. My father, who spent most of his life working for the General Motors dealership in Romania, loved America, but he never set foot in this country. For him, America was just the place of his dreams, thousands of miles away. For him, the American president was its tangible symbol. At the end of WWII, we had President Truman on the wall. For us and for many millions around the world, he had saved civilization from the barbarism of Nazism, and he had restored our freedom — for a while. From the Voice of America and the BBC we learned that America loved Truman, and we loved America. It was as simple as that.

A few days after the 2004 Democratic National Convention ended, Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of the Democratic contender for the White House, stated that four more years of the Bush administration meant four more years of hell for America.[i] Like Teresa, I am also an American immigrant, and I have spent my 34 American years under six presidents — some better than others — but I have always felt that I was living in paradise.

I still keep the picture of the American president on the wall in my home, and I will continue to keep it there until the end of my days. To me, the meaning of his office transcends the views of its occupant. The president of the United States symbolizes this greatest country on Earth, and he embodies the essence of our unique democracy: a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. He is also the leader of the free world, and the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military and intelligence force on Earth.

Next November, we will face a crucial election. For the first time in the history of this country, the voters will decide whether to preserve America’s traditional capitalism, which made the U.S. the undisputed leader of the world, or to transform the U.S. into a permanently debt-ridden socialist realm marching to the tune of Marx’s utopian “to each according to his need.” Unfortunately, our conservative movement has focused this critical electoral campaign almost exclusively on an anti-Obama strategy. This may not be a winning line of attack.

President Obama has indeed bought into the siren call of Marxism, as I myself once did, along with millions of others like me around the world — even including former President Reagan — when we were young and innocent. But President Obama did not come to power following a coup d’état. He was brought to the White House by 65,182,692 Americans who were proud that the U.S. had become mature enough to elect a black president. They were also overcome by Obama’s unparalleled self-confidence on stage and by his outstanding oratory, a combination that succeeded in neutralizing even such incredible disasters as the one caused by the Marxist Rev. Jeremiah Wright — the “adviser for change” of Obama’s 2008 electoral campaign who was caught on videotape screaming “God damn America.” Moreover, the electorate was entranced to such a degree by Obama’s disarming smile that no one has yet dared to ask him why the picture of Marxist idol Che Guevara was hanging on the wall of his campaign office in Houston — as was accidentally televised worldwide in February 2008. Then there was also President Obama’s flamboyance and his flair for grandiose staging. During the 2008 election campaign he easily filled entire stadiums with fascinated admirers. Some of those electoral gatherings looked like Stalinist revival meetings — over eighty thousand people were assembled in front of the now famous faux-Greek temple resembling the White House that had been erected in Denver.

Most of those people are likely to vote for President Obama again, unless our conservative movement will change its current electoral strategy of portraying him personally as the enemy. If history is any guide, this strategy will backfire. The 2004 Democratic National Convention was entirely focused on denigrating President George W. Bush. Remember? One after the other, the participants portrayed him as a “renegade,” a “liar,” a “deceiver,” a “fraud” who had concocted a war for personal gain. One delegate, now governor of Maryland, even stated that he was more worried about Bush than about al-Qaeda. A retired four-star general and former commander of NATO called President Bush a “deserter,” and looked the other way while one of his supporters compared America’s president to Hitler. The result? Bush was easily re-elected. He also won an outright majority of the popular vote.

Unity in a time of war is what made America the leader of the world. During World War II, 405,399 Americans gave up their lives in order to defeat Nazism and the Holocaust, but their country remained sturdily united around its commander-in-chief. “Attacking Obama will be counterproductive for Republicans,” warned Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard’s executive editor.[ii] I second his statement.

Robert Kennedy — not one of my favorite people — once said: “I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have strong feelings about what must be done.” Robert Kennedy understood what the presidency was all about, whatever we may think of what he planned to do if given the mandate, and he seems to be even more right today than in his time.

Our country is on a very perilous course.

An April 2009 Rasmussen poll showed that only 53% of Americans preferred capitalism to socialism; 27% were unsure, and 20% strongly opted for socialism. Even Russia’s Pravda chaffed:


“It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed, against the backdrop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.”


 One of the most popular nightclubs in New York City’s East Village is the “KGB Bar.” The place is jammed by Marxist writers and journalists, who read from their own scribblings and preach the need to redistribute America’s wealth.

Why would so many citizens of the United States, a country that for most of the last century sheltered capitalist economics and law-abiding freedoms from the evil plague of socialism, now suddenly be succumbing to Marx’s noxious charms?

French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who claimed he had broken with Marxism but confessed to still being choked with emotion whenever he heard the “Internationale,” reminded us just before he died that the first noun in Marx’s Manifesto is specter: “A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.” According to Derrida, Marx began The Communist Manifesto with specter because a specter never dies.

Derrida was certainly onto something. “Of only one fact do I feel certain, and it is that no thinking man can imagine that the ultimate result of the Great War can be anything but disastrous to humanity at large,” stated Alfred Mosley, one of Europe’s most celebrated economists, in 1915.[iii] Mosley was prophetic. Each of the World Wars caused a brief economic letdown and induced people in some countries, those more heavily affected, to seek Marxist solutions to their economic problems.

World War I brought Marx’s specter to life in the shape of the Soviet Union. Marx’s specter continued to thrive after the long wars in other corners of the world. The Soviet Empire, which dispossessed all inhabitants of Eastern Europe of their property and transformed that part of the word into a gulag empire, was created at the end of World War II.

My native country is a case in point. Four years of war on Germany’s side had squeezed Romania like a sponge, and what little remained had been stolen by the vindictive “liberating” Soviet Army, which had laid waste to the land worse than a plague of locusts. Many young Romanian intellectuals who had grown up under the influence of the postwar patriotic fervor were willing to try anything, Marxism included, to rebuild their homeland. I was one of them.

After World War II ended, the young British voters turned to Marx’s specter for help as well. Tired of five years of war and ignorant of history, they kicked the legendary Winston Churchill out of office — although his leadership had been critical to winning WWII — and brought in Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party. Attlee, who was a Marxist disguised as a socialist, started his reign with a popular socialist move: he nationalized the health care system, which had been heavily damaged by the war. Most people clapped, and Attlee suddenly became more popular than Churchill. Since, as the saying goes, l’appétit vient en mangeant, Attlee went on to nationalize the financial system, the automobile, gas and coal industries, communication facilities, civil aviation, electricity production, and the steel industry. He also introduced taxpayer-funded milk in schools.

The British economy collapsed, and the powerful British Empire passed into history. Nationalized famous British brand names, such as Jaguar cars, became disgraced or even international jokes. “Apart from some Russian factories in Gorky, Jaguar’s were the worst,” stated Ford executive Bill Hayden, when Ford bought that once prominent automobile manufacturer from the British government in 1988.[iv]

In 1950 the British voters repented and brought Churchill back to Downing Street, but it took Great Britain 18 years of conservative governments to repair the catastrophe generated by Attlee’s government in a mere six years. In the process of recovery, the Labour Party was fortunate enough to acquire non-Marxist leaders who normalized the party again.

Red China was created after eight years of Sino-Japanese war and four more years of civil war. The Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945) forced an uneasy alliance between Chinese Nationalists and Communists, which in 1947 generated a Chinese Civil War. On October 1, 1949, this civil war ended with the Communist Party of China taking control of the mainland China, and the Kuomintang retreating to Taiwan. Some hundred million people in Red China cheered. Marxism had won! Soon, however, an estimated 45 million people died of starvation and the effects of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and a billion ended being deprived of their properties.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany have recently discovered a genetic factor, the A1 mutation, which affects the ability to learn from past mistakes. It seems that quite a few people in South America are carrying the A1 mutation. They brought various Atlee-style populist labor parties to power in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Argentina, which shepherded those countries into the first stage of Marxism, the socialist fold. Russian military ships and bombers are now back in Cuba — and newly in Venezuela — for the first time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Brazil, the world’s tenth largest economy, even installed a former Marxist guerrilla fighter, Dilma Rousseff, as the country’s president.

Socialism, which is simply a smiling mask hiding the ugly face of Marxism, has dramatically changed the geopolitical map of the world.

After 45 years of Cold War and eleven more years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, quite a few Americans also began imagining that capitalism was their real enemy, and they felt that the system of government should be transformed into socialism by redistributing the capitalists’ wealth. The leaders of the Democratic Party obliged.


According to a March 12, 2008, amendment introduced in the U.S. Senate, funding just 111 of the 188 social projects proposed for financing by redistributing America’s wealth would steal 1.4 trillion U.S. dollars from businesses and other taxpayers over the next five years. This huge redistribution of America’s wealth would cause the tax bill of people earning $104,000 to rise 74% ($12,000) and that of people earning more than $365,000 to rise by 132% ($93,500),[v] but it would also heavily affect the average taxpayer earning $62,000, whose tax bill would rise 61% ($5,300).[vi] In addition, the Democratic Party stated that it would let the Bush tax cuts expire. That would mean an additional federal tax increase of between $2,400 and $3,000 per taxpayer. 


On March 27, 2008, the Democratic Party announced a new $30 billion stimulus package to help individuals and areas “hard hit by the housing crisis.”

Millions of young Americans cheered. They were, of course, galvanized by the prospect that a Democratic administration would force rich Americans to pay a part of their own health care, mortgages, loans and school tuition, and they rushed to support the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party won the White House and both chambers of the U.S. Congress, and undercover Marxism became a national policy.

Once in power, the Democratic Party began an undercover effort to transfer the country’s private economy into the government’s hands. The process started with the automobile industry, which had been almost bankrupted by the United Auto Workers, a labor union representing workers in the United States and Puerto Rico. In the summer of 2009, the federal government gave General Motors $49.5 billion in “aid.” In exchange, the government took roughly 61% ownership of GM. Chrysler was bailed out in 2009 as well, receiving $30 billion from the U.S. government with the condition that the UAW receive a 55% share of the company.

On Christmas Eve 2009, the Democratic-led U.S. Congress empowered the government — secretly, at midnight — to take over most of the U.S. health care system.

A Democratic Party victory in the 2012 elections would dramatically intensify the transfer of America’s private economy into the government’s hands. In other words, stealing would become a governmental policy in the U.S., just as once happened in the Soviet Union, in South America and in every other part of the world where the Marxists have been able to take the helm of the government into their own hands.

On February 15, 2003, an estimated one million young people took to the streets all over Europe, not to celebrate the freedom they enjoy because the United States protected them from becoming Soviet slaves, but to condemn the evil American capitalism portrayed by a disgusting book called Empire.[vii] Its co-author, Marxist professor Antonio Negri, was a KGB asset back when I was at the top of the KGB intelligence community. He served time in jail for his involvement in kidnapping and killing former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro. The New York Times called Negri’s modern-day Communist Manifesto “the hot, smart book of the moment.”[viii]

As I watched the television spectacle showing those young people demonstrating against capitalist America, I could picture myself among them. They belonged to a new generation, but they were condemning the same kind of fabricated American capitalist monsters as I had done back in the 1950s, and they were just as many thousands of miles away from the real America as I had been.

Looking back on that time in my life, I realize how much easier it is to change one’s view of America at 25 than at 50, especially when America is some vague place thousands of miles away. Alas, now even young Americans born in this country seem to be as far from the real America as I was fifty years ago, and as caught by the siren song of Marxism as I was at 25.

A few days ago, PJMedia published an extremely important editorial: “Changing Minds in Crunch Time.” Its bottom line is disarmingly sincere: “I was a liberal once,” wrote PJMedia’s CEO, Roger Simon. “So were many others I could name and still more I have never met or heard of.” But we changed. “The question is not wheter to change people or whether they can be changed. The operative question is how they can be changed. We at PJMedia think about this every day. One of the things we consciously attempt to do is provide you with some ammunition.”

Remember the Reagan Democrats who played a vital role in defeating Jimmy Carter’s undercover Marxism? They switched to Reagan because he had also purged himself of his own youthful infatuation with Marxism. There are still a lot of the old, non-Marxist Democratic Party members around who remember President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” Let’s help them become “Romney Democrats.”


[i] ” They want four more years of hell,” Teresa Heintz Kerry, responding to a Bush supporter yelling ‘four more years’ at a Democratic rally in Missouri,” TIME, Special Report, August 16, 2004, p.19.

[ii] Fred Barnes, “The Republican’s Best Weapon,” The Weekly Standard, February 2, 2009, p. 8.

[iii] Edward Marshall, “The War an Economic Disaster,” The New York Times, Magazine Section, June 6, 1915, p. SM15.

[iv] Angus Mackenzie, “Jaguar XK/XKR, A healty helping of cat-scratch fever,” Motor Trend, December 2008, p. 168.

[v] Ross Kaminsky, “What Will Obama’s Plans Cost the Nation?” Human Events, March 17, 2008, p. 1.

[vi] Ross Kaminsky, “What Will Obama’s Plans Cost the Nation?” Human Events, March 17, 2008, p. 1.

[vii] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (London: Harvard University Press, 2000).

[viii] David Pryce-Jones, “Evil Empire, The Communist ‘hot, smart book of the moment,’” National Review Online, September 17, 2001



The Evil That Men Do

Love is a razor and I walked the line on that silver blade
Slept in the dust with his daughter, her eyes red with the slaughter of innocence
But I will pray for her, I will call her name out loud
I would bleed for her, if I could only see her now
Living on a razor's edge, balancing on a ledge
Living on a razor's edge, balancing on a ledge
Balancing on a ledge, living on a razor's edge
Balancing on a ledge, you know, you know

The evil that men do lives on and on
The evil that men do lives on and on
The evil that men do lives on and on
The evil that men do lives on and on

Circle of fire my baptism of joy at an end it seems
The seventh lamb slain, the book of life opens before me
And I will pray for you, someday I may return
Don't you cry for me, beyond is where I learn

Living on a razor's edge, balancing on a ledge
Living on a razor's edge, you know, you know

The evil that men do lives on and on
The evil that men do lives on and on
The evil that men do lives on and on
The evil that men do lives on and on

Living on a razor's edge, balancing on a ledge
Living on a razor's edge, you know, you know

The evil that men do lives on and on
The evil that men do lives on and on
The evil that men do lives on and on
The evil that men do lives on and on
The evil, the evil, the evil that men do
The evil, the evil, the evil that men do
---

Clueless: The President on Growth




M2RB:






(Liberties taken w/lyrics)


Never knowing.
Shocking, but I'm nothing.
I'm just moments.
I'm clever, but I'm clueless.
I'm just human
Amusing, but confusing.
But, the truth is
All I've got is questions
I'll never know.
Never know.
Never know.



 1index




An instructive Friday press conference.




That sure was a revealing White House press conference with President Obama Friday morning, and not for the reason that Republicans are saying. Mr. Obama said at one point that "the private economy is doing fine," and Mitt Romney and others quickly ripped him for being "out of touch." A few hours later, Mr. Obama corrected himself by saying at another event that "It is absolutely clear that the economy is not doing fine. That's why I had a press conference."

Assistant editorial page editor James Freeman on President Obama's prescriptions for growth. Photo: Getty Images

This is all good campaign fun, but Mr. Obama's presser was far more revealing for what it said about how he thinks an economy grows. His line about "the private economy doing fine" was followed immediately by a complaint that America's real growth problem today is shrinking government. Here's the complete context:


"The truth of the matter is that, as I said, we've created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government—oftentimes, cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don't have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.

"And so, if Republicans want to be helpful, if they really want to move forward and put people back to work, what they should be thinking about is, how do we help state and local governments and how do we help the construction industry."


Mull that one over. GDP growth in the first quarter was a measly 1.9%, revised down from an initial 2.2%. The President's response is to say as his first policy priority that the federal government should borrow or tax more so it can then finance more hiring by state and local governments. Spur the economy by growing the size of government.

It's true that government spending is part of GDP, and spending more can boost reported GDP for a time. But the lesson of the stimulus—which spent hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to the states—is that this boost is temporary and fades when the spending ends.

Mr. Obama also misdiagnoses state and local government layoffs. They aren't the result of falling state and local revenues, which have increased by 6% over the last two years, according to the Census Bureau. The problem is that the cost of worker benefits is growing faster than revenues. Governments are having to lay off workers to pay for their rising pension and health bills.

That's especially true in states that haven't followed the example of Wisconsin's Scott Walker and altered their benefits or reformed collective bargaining. Think California and Illinois. Mr. Obama is asking Congress to tax Americans from every state more, and borrow more from China, to send money to states that have been the most spendthrift.

If the President really wants to help state and local governments, he'd campaign with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for pension reform. Or he'd join Mayor Chuck Reed in San Jose to praise that city's voters for passing a reform referendum this week. Both mayors are Democrats.

The fair if depressing takeaway from Mr. Obama's press conference is that he continues to believe, despite three and a half years of failure, that more government spending is the key to faster growth and that government really doesn't need to reform. This is how you get a jobless rate above 8% for 40 months and the weakest economic recovery in 60 years. 


A version of this article appeared June 9, 2012, on page A12 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The President on Growth.



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The Left's Epic Crash & Burn

After Wisconsin: Denial Ain't Just A River In Egypt 

Progs' Mouths Write A Cheque Their Asses Can't Cash

Wisconsin’s Peter Pan Progressivism

Union Thugs: Your Wisconsin Cheddar* Or Your Life!!!

Pic of the Day: At Least She's (?) Honest..

Crybabies

Welcome To 'My Progressive Little Ponyland'!  It's Forward!  It's The Future And I Swear It Works!

 

Never Know - Jack Johnson

I heard this old story before
Where the people keep killing for the metaphors
Don't leave much up to the imagination,
So I, wanna give this imagery back
But I know it just ain't so easy like that
So, I turn the page and read the story again
And again and again
It sure seems the same, with a diff. name
We're breaking and rebuilding
And we're growing
Always guessing

Never knowing
Shocking but we're nothing
We're just moments
We're clever but we're clueless
We're just human
Amusing but confusing
Were trying but where is this all leading
Never Know

It all happened so much faster
Than you could say disaster
Wanna take a time lapse
And look at it backwards
From the last one
And maybe that's just the answer
That we're after
But after all
We're just a bubble in a boiling pot
Just one breath in a chain of thought
The moments just combusting
Feel certain but we'll never never know
Just seems the same
Give it a different name
We're beggin' and we're needing
And we're trying and we're breathing

Never knowing
Shocking but we're nothing
We're just moments
We're clever but we're clueless
We're just human
Amusing but confusing
Helping, we're building
And we're growing
Never know

Knock knock on the door to door
Tell ya that the metaphor is better than yours
And you can either sink or swim
Things are looking pretty grim
If you don't believe in what this one feeding
Its got no feeling
So I read it again
And again and again
Just seems the same
Too many different names
Our hearts are strong our heads are weak
We'll always be competing

Never knowing
Shocking, but we're nothing
We're just moments
We're clever, but we're clueless
We're just human
Amusing, but confusing
But, the truth is
All we got is questions
We'll never know
Never know
Never know