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Freedom and the View From Obamaland
American Spectator ^ | 7-1-2008 | Jeffrey Lord

Posted on 07/02/2008 10:33:47 AM PDT by Ouderkirk

Pull back for a moment from the day-to-day and see the pattern.

Talk radio. Oil. Guns. Global warming. Smoking.

On the surface this is a seemingly unconnected laundry list of issues, their connection one to another tangential at best. Or is it?

In the increasingly disturbing view we are all getting of the messianic world that is Obamaland, these subjects in fact have a chilling commonality.

* Talk Radio: Think back for a moment to that threatening letter sent earlier this year to Rush Limbaugh's business partners at Clear Channel Communications by Senator Harry Reid, the Democrats' Senate leader. It was signed by all Senate Democrats, prominently including Barack Obama. While Limbaugh famously turned the attempt to intimidate him into a hilarious charity bidding war that raised four million dollars for the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, make no mistake. The idea behind the letter was an attempt by government officials to intimidate a private citizen into silence. To shut down Limbaugh's freedom to run his radio show the way he sees fit. Silencing freedom is also the point with the push by Obama supporters to revive the so-called Fairness Doctrine, a move that would effectively shut down the free-market world of talk radio as Americans by the millions have so enthusiastically come to know it.

(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...


TOPICS: Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: fairnessdoctrine; firstamendment; freespeech; talkradio
Well worth the read
1 posted on 07/02/2008 10:34:01 AM PDT by Ouderkirk
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To: Ouderkirk

* SUVs: Remember this gem a while back from Barack Obama?

“We can’t drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in the desert or we’re living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world’s energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. That’s not leadership.”

The point is not subtle. Obama is laying the ground work here for the potential banning of SUVs as well as pushing regulations that will tell all of us at exactly what temperatures we must heat or cool our homes. Over at the website BanSUVs.com, an outpost of the type of thinking that prevails in Obamaland, the goal, as the name of their site proclaims is just that: banning SUVs because they are “endangering peoples lives” and are “high polluting.” The Obama point that we should no longer enjoy the freedom to “keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in the desert or we’re living in the tundra” has already emerged as a proposal in California. In this Obamaland vision the state would mandate that every heating and cooling system in a private dwelling include a “non-removable” FM receiver that would allow the government to decide the temperature inside your home.

* Global Warming: The answer in Obamaland is simple. Not only should there be no further debate (”Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers...” wrote Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman a while back), the demand is on for a Nuremberg-style trial for oil executives. Applauding the sentiments of climate “scientist” James Hansen, who suggested as much in a recent appearance before Congress, one enthusiastic denizen in the Daily Kos precincts of Obamaland put things more succinctly: “Put the bastards on trial on national television.”

Are you seeing the thread here?

If not, there’s more of this kind of thing. Also on Obama’s list of things he either wants to ban or has considered banning are ammunition magazines, semi-automatic weapons, smoking (to be resolved with a federal ban on smoking in public places) and — at one now infamous campaign rally — Muslim women wearing the hijab. The Obama campaign apologized for the latter incident, but the apology only underscores the point. While his staffers may be sensitive to the image of Muslims in the Obama campaign, they either know or intuit that the idea of restricting the freedom of others is, as a rule, perfectly acceptable in Obamaland.

FOLLOW ALONG NOW to a just-released Obama commercial featuring Obama himself. Doubtless un-intentionally it speaks exactly to what lies at the heart of the philosophical heart of Obamaland. Praising himself for spurning a post-Harvard Law School opportunity to work on Wall Street in the heart of free-market capitalism, the candidate boasts of his decision instead to “go to Chicago...helping neighborhoods devastated when steel plants closed.” Helping them? Did he go out and raise capital to start a new business that would bring jobs to the neighborhood? Well, no. Job creation through the free market system was not at all what Obama had in mind. What did he have in mind as to how one creates jobs? As Obama himself expressed it in a 1995 interview with the Chicago Reader, Obama wondered if he could “figure out ways to use the political process to create jobs for our communities?”

In other words, when faced with a disagreeable problem (in this case the lack of jobs) the answer for Obama always seems to get back to the manipulation of the political process to achieve the desired result.

Are Obamalanders uncomfortable with the free-market driven success of talk radio? Then they will “figure out ways to use the political process” to shut it down. In the case of talk radio, how else to explain the threatening Reid-Obama letter to Rush Limbaugh’s business partner? How else does one explain the attempt to retrieve the “Fairness Doctrine” from the dustbin of history? These are nothing more or less than the “use of the political process” to subvert someone else’s freedom. Period.

Are Obamaland followers hostile to oil? Do they hate SUVs? Do they think you have no right to heat or cool your own home beyond what they consider politically correct? Do they think you should pay $5 — or $6 or $7 or $8 or more — for gas at the pump to ensure you conform to the Obamaland world-view? Yes, they do think all of this and their Obamaland answer is inevitable. They will “use the political process” to stop drilling off shore in its tracks. So too with stopping the use of oil shale or ANWR or anything else that even hints at allowing average Americans their basic freedom to drive whatever vehicle wherever they damn well please whenever they damn well please. In Obamaland it is not only perfectly acceptable, it is gospel from the secular bible that they must use the political process to stop refineries from being built, to keep nuclear power plants from being built, to keep coal from being burned. Use the political process to forcibly mandate the temperature inside every single American home. As a matter of fact, why not just go all the way and nationalize the oil companies — this actually being suggested by Obamaland’s New York Congressman Maurice Hinchey.

Tired of debating global warming? Use the political process to set up show-trials for oil company executives. Who will be around to object if you have successfully used the process to silence the world of talk radio?

As we learned in one of his last debates with Mrs. Clinton, presented with the economic fact-of-life that cutting the capital gains tax resulted in increased revenue for the government, not, as he was portraying it, a loss, the ringmaster of Obamaland simply shrugged, saying he would raise it anyway because to do anything else was “unfair.” The idea of your having the freedom to do with your money as you please — even when doing so increases the revenues for Washington politicians to spend — was simply irrelevant to Obama. No, your freedom must pass his “fairness test” — and if it doesn’t, well, too bad. Your income is going to suffer right along with your freedom to listen to talk radio, drive an SUV, debate global warming, eat what you please, heat your house the way you please or — the latest Supreme Court decision notwithstanding — own a gun if you please.

Is there a problem in Obamaland with your constitutional right to own a gun? It’s an easy-to-solve problem, as state senate candidate Obama proposed way back in 1996 when he filled out a questionnaire endorsing the idea of, you guessed it, just banning your freedom to own handguns. Interestingly, when this questionnaire came to light the Obama camp denied their candidate had done this, which prompted the Politico to come up with an amended copy of the questionnaire plainly showing the candidate’s own handwriting. The Obamaland acolytes say their leader favors the use of guns for hunting and target shooting, but on the issue of handguns — well — his stiff response to the 5-4 decision of the Court that insists gun ownership is, in fact, a constitutional right suggests that handguns in Obamaland would go the way of talk radio and oil. The first Supreme Court vacancy announcement would have barely made it onto the cable news networks in an Obama Administration before an Obamalander would be named to fill the vacancy on the understanding that at the first opportunity he or she can grandly reverse that 5-4 decision and effectively ban the entire Second Amendment.

SO LET’S SUM UP what America would look like in an age of Obama.

To start there would be no more driving SUVs. No more Rush. For God’s sake absolutely no driving your SUV while listening to Rush. No more eating whatever you want. Definitely no keeping your home as warm or as cool as you prefer. No capital gains cuts because they are unfair. Your guns will be banned. And if you have a different opinion on global warming? All those lofty supporters of rights for terrorists are going to strip every oil executive in America of theirs in a heartbeat, live and in living color.

Is anyone paying attention here? Today the targets are talk radio, oil, SUVs, or guns or debates on global warming and so on. But what about tomorrow and the day after that and the day and years after that? What freedoms will next be targeted with that deadliest trademark of an Obamalander — moral superiority? What do we have when the sole purpose of the government as run by the chilling principles of Obamaland is to “use the political process” to remove freedoms large and small one by one by one?

Someone needs to speak it plainly.

The word is fascism.


2 posted on 07/02/2008 10:50:37 AM PDT by Ouderkirk (I will not vote for Barack Obama not because he is black, but because he is RED)
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To: Ouderkirk

These are scary times. This is fascism plain and simple. The government is seeking to empower itself by taking away our Constitutional rights. And if a left wing judge gets put on the court, then our Constitutional rights will go right out the window in the name of “progress”, “evolving interpretation”, “new moral order”, or some other leftist crap.

I laugh whenever I hear “living Constitution” because it’s such a stupid concept. Murder laws don’t “evolve”. Speeding doesn’t “change with the times”. You can’t “interpret” stealing. And the Constitution is the Supreme law of the land. So why in God’s name can IT be molded and contorted to some fascistic world view? The very thing I might add it was designed to prevent.


3 posted on 07/02/2008 10:57:51 AM PDT by djsherin
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To: Ouderkirk

I just don’t think we’ll be as docile as the Germans, Hungarians, or Croats when the government swings completely fascist. On the other hand, I don’t see the party of government throwing up their hands and saying, “OK, we give up.”

What it feels like in my gut is chaos approaching. I can see President Obama passing along president decrees which some follow and some do not; a military standing against the orders of the president, while many federal bureaucrats line up in back of the president; some states merely ignoring the federal government, some states acting as syncophants for the feds; and the population treating the new fascists the same way they dealt with the abolition of alcohol. I don’t feel a conflict like the Civil War emerging; I feel a large majority simply throwing up their arms with a collective WTF and individually deciding to form the American version of the European general strike. What would the feds do if two-thirds of the population decided not to send in their tax forms? What would happen if the chiefs of staff looked at President Obama and said softly, “No, sir.” What is Alaska and Montana and Wyoming decide to simply not implement whatever intrusion comes down the pike? In response to a new Fairness Doctrine, how about Rush and Savage simply giving away podcasts in bulk emails... or maybe just ignoring the feds and challenging them to come and shut them down.

Chaos isn’t pleasant, either, and there would probably be conflict, disorder, and deaths, too. To paraphrase the Beatles: “So you say you want a revolution, well, you know, we all want to change the world.”


4 posted on 07/02/2008 11:00:24 AM PDT by redpoll
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To: Ouderkirk
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

-- C.S. Lewis

5 posted on 07/02/2008 11:50:22 AM PDT by AnAmericanMother (Ministrix of Ye Chase, TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary (recess appointment))
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To: redpoll
I don’t feel a conflict like the Civil War emerging;

The Civil War is the wrong model. It won't be states seceding, with neat lines between the sides. What's going on in Baghdad will be more like it: everyone mixed up together. I don't like the idea, but we better be prepared for it.

6 posted on 07/02/2008 11:51:14 AM PDT by JoeFromSidney (My book is out. Read excerpts at http://www.thejusticecooperative.com)
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To: redpoll
No doubt there is something brewing.

I have postulated that the democRATS and liberals continue to spend and tax the country into oblivion. They do so not for the good of those who the pretend to help, but for the good of their agenda. They want to bankrupt the country. They desire, the end of the United States of America as we understand it. They wish to create on the ashes of what was, the Socialist States of America. The long promised utopia. Free of guns, and want, with free love amongst all.

I remain convinced that this is their goal. The democRATS and Liberals will deny this as adamantly as is possible, but it is the goal just the same. Destroy America from within by the weight of the debt they have created.

7 posted on 07/02/2008 1:10:10 PM PDT by Ouderkirk (I will not vote for Barack Obama not because he is black, but because he is RED)
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