Second Stimulus Package Coming!

I wish I could take credit - but Drudge beat me to it. Nonetheless, an instant classic!...T

Liberal Fascism - A Conservative Slur no Longer

Separation of Powers - Federalism - Limited Government - The Rule of Law

These are the "Four Legs" upon which the pedestal of our liberties have stood these nearly 250 years. The rule of law is a concept dating all the way back to the edicts of the Roman Emperors, but enshrined in our modern world by English common law, informed and enlightened by natural law, and codified starting with the Magna Carta in 1215

The Constitution of the United States of America is the ultimate expression and synthesis of these four principles. It has indeed allowed for the sustenance of the greatest, most powerful, and freest nation in the history of this earth.

But what would happen if none cared any longer?

A good friend of mine opined today that Obama's health care proposals, among others, are fascist, and blatantly unconstitutional. Understanding fascism is complicated, but a lack of understanding the Constitution and our system of checks and balances is intellectual laziness, which I postulate is why we find ourselves in the situation of peril that exists today.

Constitution? Who the hell even cares that it exists anymore – certainly NOT when democrats are in power… Hell I wouldn't be surprised to see it “suspended” – after all, Woodrow Wilson did so! FDR did so!

Fascistic is exactly right: Jonah Goldberg (in "Liberal Fascism") explains, and I have added here that -

- Actually, the notion that fascism/Nazism and communism are polar opposites stems from the deeper truth that they are in fact kindred spirits. - Richard Pipes: “ Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of socialism”. Both ideologies are reactionary in the sense that they try to recreate tribal (or feudal!) impulses. Communists champion class, Nazi’s race, Fascists the nation. All these ideologies, totalitarian impulses in the extreme, attract the same types of people! -

AND they are all of the same in another respect – they are all forms of IDENTITY politics. Get the rich, affirmative action, “save the planet” – all pseudonyms for fascistic, socialistic, Nazi, communist, totalitarian, Orwellian control

We are in deep trouble, and can only hope our founders were wiser even than we thought until now...T

The f-bomb of American politics is the word “fascist,” routinely hurled by the left at conservatives. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater were smeared as incipient fascists, and George W. Bush now receives the honor, along with practically anyone to the right of Rosie O’Donnell on a college campus.

The operational meaning of the word “fascism” for most liberals who invoke it is usually “shut up.” It’s meant to bludgeon conservatives into silence. But many on the left also genuinely believe that there is something fascistic in the DNA of contemporary conservatism, as if Republican Party conventions would get their rightful treatment only if they were worshipfully filmed by Leni Riefenstahl.

In his brilliant new book Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg (a colleague of mine) demonstrates how the opposite is the case, that fascism was a movement of the left and that liberal heroes like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were products of what Goldberg calls “the fascist moment” in America early in the 20th century. How we think of the ideological spectrum — socialism to the left, fascism to the right — should be forever changed.

Benito Mussolini was a socialist and earned the title “Il Duce” as the leader of the socialists in Italy. When he founded the fascist party, its program called for implementing a minimum wage, expropriating property from landowners, repealing titles of nobility, creating state-run secular schools and imposing a progressive tax rate. Mussolini took socialism and turned it in a more populist and militaristic direction, but remained a modernizing, secular man of the left.

The Nazis too were socialists, “enemies, deadly enemies, of today’s capitalist economic system,” in the words of the party’s ideologist Gregor Strasser. The party’s platform sounded a lot like that of the Italian fascists. The Nazis wanted to chase conventional Christianity from public life and overturn tradition, replacing them with an all-powerful state. Both Hitler and Mussolini were revolutionaries, bitterly opposed to “reactionary” forces in their societies.

By what standard, then, are they considered conservatives who took things to extremes? The left points to their anti-Semitism and militarism. But anti-Semitism isn’t an inherently right-wing phenomenon — Stalin’s Russia was anti-Semitic. As for militarism, these regimes looked to it as a way to mobilize and organize society, something deeply anathema to the anti-statist tradition of postwar American conservatism.

On the other hand, the progressive movement of the early 20th century looked to Mussolini as an inspiration and shared intellectual roots with European fascism, including an appreciation of the “top-down socialism” of Otto von Bismarck. Goldberg eviscerates Woodrow Wilson as the closest we have ever had to a fascist president. Wilson and his supporters welcomed World War I as an opportunity to expand the state, instituting “war socialism” and a far-reaching crackdown on dissent.

FDR picked up where Wilson left off. The crisis of the Great Depression was the occasion for reviving “war socialism.” The man who ran the National Recovery Administration was an open admirer of Mussolini, and the alphabet soup of New Deal agencies had their roots in World War I and the classic fascist impulse to mobilize society and put it on a war footing.

Goldberg sees the fascist exaltation of youth, glorification of violence, hatred of tradition and romance of “the street” in the New Left of the 1960s, still the subject of the fond memories for the liberal establishment in this country. Goldberg argues that “liberal fascism” — the phrase was coined by H. G. Wells, and he meant it positively — is a distant heir to European fascism. The liberal version is pacifist rather than militaristic and feminine rather than masculine in its orientation, but it also seeks to increase the power of the state and overcome tradition in sweeping crusades pursued with the moral fervor of war.

Goldberg’s keen intellectual history is, at bottom, a profound cautionary tale about the perils of state aggrandizement and of revolutionary movements. If nothing else, it should convince liberals that it’s time to find a new insult.
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A Little Bird Told Me

"It takes a village" - to shame a fascist...(oh, which one? both of them: Obama AND Ayatollah Khamenei )

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Osama 2012 Campaign Slogans Leaked to Press!

Wow, we are going to have a hard time beating this team! Obama looking good for re-election...T

GOP Should Run Against the Power of the Center

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The argument has been frustrating.

We have the Colin Powell types demanding we draw and quarter the Rush Limbaugh's and abandon conservatism. It's just not fashionable, you see! We should just manage big government better than the democrooks.

Then there are the purists. Preferably start a new party, but at the very least, kick all the RINO's and McCain's to the curb! The republicans are worse than the democrats and must all lose, so that we can then win.

I've always thought both of these schools of thought were self defeating, for yes, we need to stand for limited government and constitutional jurisprudence, but there will never be enough of us to form a lasting majority. We must get better at teaching, explaining, and finding thoughtful, principled candidates, as well as finding some answer to the leftist, statist media monopoly that feeds the cancer of socialism that has befallen us. Reagan is the prototype. Idealistic, educated, dedicated to a purpose, not to a career, and yet appealing to centrists and democrats because he could explain conservatism in simple ways that people are instinctively drawn to and can't ignore.

Mr. Barone has hit on a perfect message to which we can only hope the GOP is listening!...T

"So I think Republicans today should be less interested in moving toward the center and more interested in running against the center. Here I mean a different "center" -- not a midpoint on an opinion spectrum, but rather the centralized government institutions being created and strengthened every day. This is a center that is taking over functions fulfilled in a decentralized way by private individuals, firms and markets.

...To govern is to choose, as John F. Kennedy said, and those in charge of these new centralized institutions are making choices that inevitably favor some and hurt others. Unsurprisingly, the politically well connected tend to get the favors. Banks forced to take government money are now blocked from paying it back and in the meantime must direct funds where the government wants them to go...when government gets this intertwined with the private sector, when it makes decisions not based on neutral economic criteria but by what is at best guesswork about the allocation and valuation of vast amounts of capital, bailout favoritism and crony capitalism are inevitable.

...It's arguably good policy as well as good politics to run against this over-powerful center. Bailout favoritism and crony capitalism not only misallocate economic resources, they also sap faith in the fairness of our institutions. After World War II, Democrats wanted to retain wartime high taxes, pro-union labor laws, and wage and price controls -- all manipulatable for political benefit by political insiders. Republicans ran in 1946 on the theme of "Had enough?" and won big enough majorities to lower taxes, revise labor laws and abolish controls.

The 1946 Republicans didn't move to the center. They ran against the power of the center and permanently redefined where the center of the political spectrum was. That's a path today's Republicans might want to consider.
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American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper

"The American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed."

Not my words, and no need to wonder how completely the drive-by MSM is covering comrade Obama's tracks anymore. Pravda is now more conservative than the New York Times. Yes, these are the printed words of Pravda. Pravda!

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists...

Pravda summarizes our dire situation nicely in it's final sentences. Please be sure to access the full article in the post article link...T

...The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

...The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.
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Whither Limited Government?

Obama speaks at Notre Dame. He is"Christ-like", "bipartisan", and non confrontational in the face of protests from "right wing extremists" while simply trying to convey that we should, well "C-C-Can we all get along?"

Horse patoot! This guy is a fanatic. He is destroying, in months, not years, the very remnants of our system of limited government, which the founders bequeathed to us, and which have kept us safe and prosperous for 250 years.

The very concept of limited government is grounded in the principles of
Natural Law, and enshrined in the declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness"

Then there are the words of C. S. Lewis:

" Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of it's victims may be the most oppressive. It would 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"

...T