Do Not Blame Barack

American Thinker ^ | October 04, 2009 | Selwyn Duke

[neverdem]

Contrary to what my title indicates, I probably judge Barack Obama more harshly than most reading this page.  I don't think he is just a misguided ideologue or merely a creature of expediency.  I believe, practically speaking, he is an evil man.  That is to say, while he is largely ignorant like so many others, he has developed an affinity for evil.  He mistakes it for good.

Yet, to be blunt, Obama doesn't alarm me as much as the average American.  To explain why, I'll present something Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero said 2000 years ago when lamenting Julius Caesar's rise to dictator:

Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions . . . .  Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.' Julius was always an ambitious villain, but he is only one man.

Barack Obama is only one man.  A bad man, yes, but he is a symptom more than a cause.  Without millions of fawning Americans, he would just be a community agitator, vainly preaching Alinsky principles from a soapbox.  Of course, he is a symptom that exacerbates the underlying problem, and symptomatic treatment -- to ease immediate pain and hardship -- is certainly in order.  But it is only the worst of physicians who focuses only on symptoms while ignoring the cancer eating away at the patient's midst.

Some of us lament the presence of self-professed communists such as Van Jones -- and other assorted intellectual mutants, such as Cass Sunstein and John Holdren -- in government, and how we elected a man who broke bread with self-professed communists such as Bill Ayers.  But why complain now?  We've had self-professed communists such as Bill Ayers -- and other assorted intellectual mutants, such as Ward Churchill, Cass Sunstein and John Holdren -- in academia for many decades.  And good Americans still donated money to universities and still sent their most precious possessions, their children, to them.  So, should it be any surprise that millions of these children would, knowing nothing and feeling all the wrongs things, flock to the polls and cast votes for people just like their teachers and professors?  You may say that their parents knew nothing of these universities' true nature.  But it was their place to find out.  And Obama did not create the modern academy.  He is more a creation of it.

We also criticize Obama for saying "We no longer are [just] a Christian nation" and while speaking in Turkey that "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation."  But can we really say he's wrong?  Has Christmas not become completely commercialized?  How many of us say grace with our families before meals?  How many of us pray every day?  How many Americans subscribe to the modern perversion of the "separation of church and state" idea?  How many of us say "God Bless" upon parting?  Have the majority of American "Christians" not descended into moral relativism?  It is here that some will call me a religious nut.  All right, but I simply note that a Christian nation would actually practice Christianity and that if we are satisfied to be only nominally Christian, it lends weight to the argument that we're not actually Christian.  Of course, we certainly can condemn Obama for attending a pseudo-Christian church and being part of the problem, but he didn't create our secular age.  He is more a creation of it.

One thing Obama certainly did help create is the tea-party phenomenon.  It is the largest, most impressive grassroots movement I can remember and I truly hope it grows beyond what even the most zealous reader would prefer.  Yet, when I hear the protesters complain about the violation of the Constitution, I have to wonder we they've been.  Did they miss the activist 1947 "separation of church and state ruling"?  Have they learned about FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society?  Don't they realize that the federal government long ago exceeded its constitutional bounds?  Where is the constitutional mandate for Uncle Scam to involve itself in and/or fund housing, food stamps, farm subsidies, Medicaid, global-warming research, mass transit, and school sports programs?  The fact is that most things the federal government has its claws into are none of its affair.  Thus, to only now complain about constitutional trespasses is like having finally noted the invasion of Poland when the Nazis started bombing Great Britain.

We also have to ask how serious most Americans really are about respecting the Constitution.  Here's a little test for them: Are you willing to give up your Social Security in the name of constitutional adherence?

I thought so.

The average American has his version of acceptable constitutional violation, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg has hers, and Obama has his.  And Obama didn't create the "living document" mentality.  He is more a creation of it.

Then there is our putrid popular culture.  Effete Hollywood types -- such as the Obama sycophants in this bizarre Harpo Productions video -- thuggish rappers, MTV stoner types and the rest of our decadence czars helped galvanize the youth and propel the empty vessel to victory.  Yet, while entertainment is a bastion of the left, it's not entirely a creation of it.  The reality is that we, the people, empowered them.  We watched their movies; laughed at their salacious jokes; were titillated by their prurience; and tolerated their mainstreaming obscenity, homosexuality and gratuitous violence.  We allowed our children to dress in their ghetto styles and imbibe pure and utter filth.  Like with so many other things, we helped create our entertainment -- a major symptom of spiritual malaise -- and then it helped induce many secondary symptoms.  And one of them is Obama.

Of course, nothing is more associated with that symptom than the Shill Media, but I think you know what's coming.  Who bought the mainstream papers for all those decades, watched the nightly news and bought all the lies?  "How could people know?" you ask?  Well, some certainly knew -- and some of those knew better than others. 

Like Cicero, I'm sure I sound quite condemnatory, but I'm not here to lay a curse or consign anyone to Hell.  I don't want to be found guilty of the George Bernard Shaw mistake G.K. Chesterton criticized most colorfully when he wrote:

It is not seeing things as they are to think first of a Briareus with a hundred hands, and then call every man a cripple for only having two. It is not seeing things as they are to start with a vision of Argus with his hundred eyes, and then jeer at every man with two eyes as if he had only one. And it is not seeing things as they are to imagine a demigod of infinite mental clarity, who may or may not appear in the latter days of the earth, and then to see all men as idiots.    

In reality, for us to have avoided that ever-repeated pattern of civilizational decline, the common man would have to be a very uncommon man, something, in the least, like a sublime moral philosopher.  And, certainly, no person will have, metaphorically speaking, a hundred industrious hands, a hundred all-seeing eyes or even come close to enjoying demigod-like mental clarity.  Yet a nation doesn't have to resign itself to being blind and crippled, either.  We can usually manage one more hand and eye.

Truth be known, when we elected Obama, the nation said "Look, ma, no hands!" with its eyes closed.  It required corrupted judgment to be blind to what Obama was.  Note that "corrupted" is different than "corrupt."  When saying a computer file is corrupted, there is no implication that it's evil; rather, it simply means it no longer functions as it should. 

This partially explains why facts often don't matter today.  Just as correct input may not yield correct output if fed into a malfunctioning computer, all the necessary facts may not yield a correct conclusion when processed by a corrupted mind.  And anyone with a properly functioning virtue file would have sensed the lack of same in Obama.  After all, there were so many indications, from his radical associations to his tolerance for infanticide (that's what you call a clue) to the fact that he once allowed his then two-year-old daughter to listen to rap to his empty sloganeering.  Yes, we could've . . . known.

Yet my point here is not about the average person, who isn't reading substantive commentary anyway. It's that even most of us who oppose Obama and are political are just political, content to fight the battle with one hand and one eye.  So many of us -- this includes readers and commentators -- are satisfied with boilerplate; it's Alinsky this and Alinsky that, San Fran Nan, Afghanistan and the Taliban, this bill and that political shill.  This isn't to say there's not a place for such things, as many do need a course in politics 101.  But if we want to have any chance of winning the war, we must move on to graduate work and fight it on the deepest levels, the spiritual and cultural.  We must scrutinize ourselves and evaluate how we have been complicit in empowering the culture that spawns Barack Obamas.  We must remember that those of us who are engaged are a minority weighed against an apathetic majority.  A few stones however, can be substantial enough to tip the scales against a million pebbles.  But this can only happen if we so greatly increase the weight of our virtue that it outweighs the vice that is everywhere.

I once heard a man of the cloth put it perfectly, saying "Everyone is in a different stage of conversion."  Every thought we contemplate, word we utter and action we take move us closer to or further away from perfection.  And it's always time for another hand and another eye.

Contact Selwyn Duke

[EDINVA]

I have a 20-something son whose standard argument whenever I say anything negative about Obama is, ‘well Bush did .... .’ Tonite the discussion was about Valerie Jarrett and Chicago cronyism. Once again he brought up Bush 43 and Texas cronyism.

To his surprise, I said the Bush presidency was destroyed by two major personnel misjudgments of President Bush 43. One was to appoint a Texan, in the person of Scott McClellan, as White House spokesperson; the other was to put Mel Martinez from his brother’s state of FL in as head of the RNC. Neither McClellan nor Martinez was up to the task. McClellan was not only incompetent, he was a total snake.

Especially given Bush’s personal inarticulation he needed superior spokespersons. Yet, after Ari Fleischer, he put in McClellan? The Bush White House never recovered, even with Tony Snow. By then it was too late.

Martinez led the RNC in the Spring of 2006 to adopt a pro-amnesty position that drove off major benefactors and much of the base. That led soon after to the 2006 election debacle. The GOP would not have been nearly so vulnerable to the last minute Foley story had the RNC not driven off its base months before.

And, let us not forget, the GOP came into power on Capitol Hill in 1994 with a ‘defund the left’ goal, then did absolutely nothing. It took 2 20-somethings and Braebart to begin that defunding 15 years later.

[smoothsailing]

Good article!

[plsjr]

We also have to ask how serious most Americans really are about respecting the Constitution. Here's a little test for them: Are you willing to give up your Social Security in the name of constitutional adherence?

I immediately and emphatically said "YES!".

However, I'm afraid he's right. There aren't enough to bear the change and perceived loss of losing ss, medicare, medicaid, unemployment compensation, ... and stand (or fall) of our own accord.

[dagogo redux]

Thanks for posting this great article. Anyone who quotes Cicero immediately has my attention.

[Sherman Logan]

"Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions."

Personally, I'd blame the Roman aristocrats like Cicero and Caesar who used the country like their own personal chewtoy, fighting nearly constant civil wars for almost a century over its control.

That's quite likely to wear any people out, to where they will support any ambitious pol who looks like he will give them peace in which they can live their own lives without being killed in the squabbles of nobles.

The Roman common people and especially the provincials were indisputably better off under the early Empire than the late Republic.

To be fair to Cicero, he was among the less despicable of the aristos. But his solution was just to prop a comprehensively failed system back up for another round of aristocratic games.

[nathanbedford]

Here is a post, lengthy and old, along the same lines as the article:

The contemporary Democratic Party has corrupted itself to such a degree that it is in every sense at odds with the Constitution its elected members have sworn to abide by and protect.

I judge this observation to be very true but there is an underlying explanation which is very revealing of the psychic state of the Democrat party which offers us equally hope for its eventual healing and considerable alarm that it could ultimately be our nation's undoing. First a stipulation, I'm about to charge the Democrat party with a psychic state of mind which a critic might parallel to those open letters printed in mainstream newspapers just before our presidential elections which declare - no, which diagnose -the Republican candidate to be somehow mentally lacking. I confess I have absolutely no credentials to diagnose anyone's mental condition, much less the state of an entire political party. So I concede that what follows is my own prejudice.

Why has the modern Democratic Party so corrupted itself? There loathing of America and their visceral opposition to the constitution has proceeded so far that members of the party act contrary to their sworn oaths. I'm not here to argue the truth of this proposition, I assume it to be so as do virtually all of the posters on these threads because the evidence, especially arising out of the war on terror, has become so pervasive that it can no longer be dismissed. Why do Democrats loathe America so much? Are they aware that they loathe America? Are they aware that they are violating their oaths to the Constitution because of their loathing? [One might might well ask these questions about many of the policies of the Obama administration to bring this post up to date.]

If you are not a poster on these threads and you do not share our virtually universal opinion about Democrats, I invite you to read this thread which alleges that a former Democrat speaker of the House, a former Democrat president of the United States of America, and a sitting Democrat Senator have all, singly or as part of a conspiracy, treacherously undermined the national security of the United States to advance their party's electoral chances! [This is the new story which describes than Sen. Kennedy's overtures through the KGB to the Soviet Union to attempt to undermine Pres. Reagan's foreign policy and pave the way for Teddy to become president.]

Kennedy-KGB collaboration

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1727448/posts

I have no doubt that these three Democrats at the very same time they were undermining their country's national security actually believed they were behaving patriotically. For them, white had become black, up had become down, evil had become good and good, evil. The author describes this process of rationalization and ultimate distortion of reality as it occurred in Russia until every human instinct was perverted into its exact opposite meaning. I can recall writing notes to myself on a flight homeward from Moscow in which the single overwhelming reaction that I drew from what I saw was the utter, debased, cynicism of the Russians.

How ironic that the author cites the perverse cynicism of the Russians as part of his description, although not necessarily an explanation, of the debased state of the Democratic Party. But the Democrat party is more than debased, worse than merely cynical, it is in a psychic state in which it can do no other. The Democrats are entrapped and they can't get out. Rare are the David Horowitzs of the world who can break free of the. One author has described this syndrome as being in a "psychic cage."

That's author's thesis is that this psychic cage did not settle upon the psyches of Democrats by accident but was the deliberate, calculated contrivance of THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL which was established in Germany in 1923 with the funding of a millionaire, a George Soros like figure, to create the conditions to bring the Russian Revolution to Germany. He assembled a group of brilliant Jewish intellectuals and established what became known as The School for Social Research which identified those parts of society which acted to retard the coming of the glorious socialist Revolution. These intellectuals then set out systematically to "deconstruct" those impediments to communism: the family, the church, the school, the nation, capitalism, Western civilization. Coming to power in 1933, Hitler, who if nothing else could always recognize an enemy, suppressed the group as much for their Jewishness is for their philosophy which caused a kind of modern Frankfurt School diaspora into the rest of the Western world, primarily the United States and Britain. Here the refugees found remarkable influence, becoming associated with the OAS, Columbia, Harvard, the State Department and etc. The cancer metastasized.

They took their ambitions to make the world ready for communism with them and by now they had invented some formidable weapons. To deconstruct the first impediment to communist revolution, the family, they attacked patriarchal authority and sought to substitute matriarchal authority. From there it is an easy jump to attack all authority. That was handy for the next cultural institution they wished to undermine, the church. We all know what happened here. Together, our church and our school construct for us our epistemology, what we know and how we know it. If we can destroy that, we have destroyed everything and left man soulless. The author quotes Dostoevsky: Well, my fact is precisely that Russian liberalism is not an attack on the existing order of things, but an attack on the very essence of things, on the things themselves, not merely on their order, on the established order in Russia, but on Russia herself. We are now very nearly at nihilism. So we see today in our universities, for example, abnegation of their whole purpose and the abandonment of the scientific method, logic, or historical actuality for a so-called "critical theory." Reality means nothing, everything is relative, utterly disposable. The author of The Psychic Cage describes how the universities were seduced and converted before they even realized what had happened to them. One might say the same for the National Council of Churches, for example.

This phenomenon has been described with many terms besides the critical theory such as, cultural Marxism, feminism, multiculturalism etc. and they all seem to fall under the rubric of "Political Correctness." I think it is important to understand how insidious is the brainwashing which found its roots in The Frankfurt School and blossomed with the boomer generation. We in the West are beginning to understand, at least intellectually, a phenomenon of Islam, it's fanatical, anti-rational, murderous-suicidal tendencies. We're beginning to see that the phenomenon is not a matter of rational choice. Interestingly, the Germans make the same argument as they outlaw Scientology claiming that it is a cult which disarms the rational powers of its victims. The Germans ought to know about these things for they learned from the masters, Hitler and Goebbels. When you succeed in tearing away every prop that lets man know what he knows and believe what he believes, you have achieved what Dostoevsky has described-a psychic cage. So this is how the modern Democratic Party got itself into its present fix, a soulless zombie? Contemporary political scientists might describe them more prosaically, a party without a core message and possessed only of a methodology and a very destructive methodology at that. I do not know whether this means that it is unlikely to get a message or that it's likely to take on any message. Is it likely in its cynicism and nihilism to turn upon itself and destroy itself or is it likely to become dangerous and aggressive? At least we know what we are dealing with and why. We know that we cannot persuade these people with logic. We must "un--deconstruct" the psychic cage, bolt by bolt and nut by nut so that the cult-mentality becomes open to human discourse.

By way of illustration, those of us who abhor abortion often scratch our heads at the obduracy of its defenders. We have even described it as a sacramental act in some perverse religion in an effort to explain the otherwise inexplicable. We can make no logic in the face of its ghastliness. The left is untroubled by this even to the point of condoning partial-birth abortion or screaming hysterically at the apparition of posters bearing images of aborted fetuses. We are on different planets. We must understand that these people have not just smashed the order of things, they have smashed the things themselves-as Dostoevsky said. If abortion is not the destruction of the thing itself, what is it?

And so we now understand why Senator Kennedy could sell out his country's national security to advance his own march to the presidency.

The scary part of all this is that we are immersed in a war of survival against mindless, fundamentalist Islam while a political party which represents nearly half the electorate is dysfunctional.

[One can endlessly bring this up to date simply by referring to the daily headlines. Why does Hollywood support Roman Polanski? Because they represent the leading edge of a psychic nihilism in which facts and values are deadweights be abandoned on the trail toward today's new thing.

On rereading this it occurs to me that we ought to distinguish between the psychic effects of the deliberate destruction of our eschatology as it applies to the Democrat party and its apparatchiks vs. the lesser degree to which it applies to middle America. Most folks are not so far along the trail of political correctness that they are already in psychic cage. They have not entirely submerged the power of discernment in the swamps of cynicism but I think our powers have been substantially diminished.

I think the ease with which Obama was able to gull middle America into a mindless acceptance of "hope and change" despite his dubious origins and associations is ample evidence of the success the apostles of The Frankfurt School had in putting the whole of America into a psychic cage.]

[WKUHilltopper]

“Did they miss the activist 1947 “separation of church and state ruling”? Have they learned about FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society? Don’t they realize that the federal government long ago exceeded its constitutional bounds? Where is the constitutional mandate for Uncle Scam to involve itself in and/or fund housing, food stamps, farm subsidies, Medicaid, global-warming research, mass transit, and school sports programs?”

I didn’t miss it. I’ve been complaining about this for a few decades...add to your list NASA, Dept of Education...cripes, 95% of the federal government...

[buzzer]

Or ot put it in other words:
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
- Sir Winston Churchill

[csense]

But if we want to have any chance of winning the war, we must move on to graduate work and fight it on the deepest levels, the spiritual and cultural.

And as such, there needs to be a dominant culture, and a dominant belief system, otherwise, the war can not be won, and the country is moving away from that premise, not towards it.

[Vasilli22]

bfl

[Sherman Logan]

On this thread there are links to a couple of excellent videos that fully support your theory that liberals have become nihilists.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2354047/posts

One of the videos is very long, but still excellent.

[Right Wing Assault]

‘defund the left’

One of the author's points is that we must personally defund the left. The best way to do that is a moral rebirth that shuns the smarmy culture the left has pushed on us. Many FReepers already do that. How do we show the other good folks who are unknowingly funding the leftist culture?

[rockinqsranch]

“Many in the left were guilty of treason during the Cold War. Instead the RINO just wanted bygones be bygones.”

IMO RINO’s are the Left just as any Democrat is the Left.

IMO RINO’s are actually incognito Leftists, and traitors providing cover for their bretheren back at Dem Central.

IMO No RINO’s means the return of the two party system.

IMO No RINO’s means the return of legitimate debate.

[Jacquerie]

I don't disagree with the author. It is ultimately our responsibility to protect our rights.

However, I would add that every major unconstitutional program or its ancestor were challenged to Scotus and found to be constitutional.

Imagine how different our culture and society would be if income taxes were not progressive (therefore flat), if religious freedom was not banned from the public square, if direct transfer payments did not exist, if we did not have a fiat currency, if unelected bureaucrats could not write regulations with the force of law, if abortion were left to the states, if the commerce and general welfare clauses were not twisted into shapes unimaginable by our Framers, if racial preferences did not exist, the list goes on.

My point is that our country was radically transformed these past 70 years by an out of control institution largely beyond the influence of we the people and there isn't a d@amn thing we can do about it.

[NTHockey]

I would gladly give up Social Security AND Medicare. Just return the money stolen from my paychecks over the last 40 years. Do that and we’re square.

[plsjr]

I agree with all you say, but the last - It's not that there isn't anything we can do about it, it's whether we have the 'nads do do what is necessary.

Our Founders gave us the example and the means, we've just been unwilling to act (so far). The FR posting Intellectual Ammo: Constitution Made Easy provides resources that can enlighten.

Otherwise, look forward to life in a fascist country.

[plsjr]

Well said!

[plsjr]

Beware of the trap they’ve laid: the U.S.A. is not a democracy, it is a republic - being a democracy would certainly destroy us, as a republic, we may survive.

[plsjr]

"Just return the money stolen from my paychecks over the last 40 years."

I've had almost that much swindled from me as well.

We both know it'll never happen - we all have to be willing to accept that the money's been stolen and spent, convict and punish the thieves we can and go on with life without remuneration.

If we can just get rid of the cancer, we can once again realize and enjoy the true fruits of our labors for what's left of our lives.

[Jacquerie]

Okay, I’ll bite. What is necessary?