by J.R. DunnSource: American Thinker website, story by J.R. Dunn

An image, as any PR pro can tell you, has a life of its own. It can be manipulated and shaped to an extent, but only to an extent. Once past a difficult-to-define but easily recognized point, it is what it is and can be adjusted only on the margins.

This is as true of presidents as anyone else. Consider Franklin D. Roosevelt. Whatever you might think of his policies, the image is clarity itself. Cheerful, insouciant, debonair, a man of great optimism and good will, if confined to his own terms. A man whose personality so overcame his disability as to render it irrelevant. Under the conditions of the Depression, any other son of the upper classes sporting a pince-nez and a cigarette holder would have been run out of town on a rail. Not Roosevelt — they simply added to his charm, a charm as evident today in his photos as it was during his lifetime. That charm never failed him — except in the case of Stalin, who was, of course, immune to anything human.

Despite the efforts — efforts that continue to this day — to depict Ronald Reagan as a dolt, a maniac, or a throwback, his historical image easily equals FDR’s. Reagan was a man of continual good cheer, no matter what the situation. He inspired trust from a battered nation, a trust that the media could never dent, a trust that was never betrayed. He was not as urbane, perhaps, as FDR (you would not have caught Reagan dead with a cigarette holder), but he was in no way a sucker for ideologues, as FDR too often was. It’s no surprise that each in his own way was a revolutionary leader, creating a hinge on which the age itself swung.

We can contrast these two with Richard Nixon, the black sheep of American politics. “Tricky Dick” — shifty, dishonest, and untrustworthy. Comic impressionists of the day always portrayed his eyes as darting to all corners of the room, though Nixon in truth was one of the most self-controlled of any public figure. It has been clearly demonstrated that he was no worse than many others who preceded him — among them none other than FDR himself. Nixon’s weaknesses were those of the neurotic, the man who is self-destructive despite his talents, who can never build so high that he himself can’t tear it down. Nixon was a pathetic figure, his story a democratic tragedy. But he was never able to arouse any sense of sympathy. His image is set in concrete as the great American Machiavelli, a manipulator, a liar, and a cheat. Even history let Dick Nixon down.

George W. Bush was attacked more viciously than Reagan, and with a much broader brush. Even today, a large percentage of the publicly available “photos” of Bush are in fact photoshopped caricatures. But the image of Bush reflected in the actual record is one of equanimity, of an almost preternatural calmness in the face of a deeply hostile universe. The historical Bush is a man who could confront the worst catastrophes with deep serenity and a quiet, unshakable confidence in his own abilities. His enemies depicted this as vacuity or stupidity, but that’s mere projection. It is a rare quality, not often encountered in daily life and almost never seen in a politician. Little wonder that it is only now being recognized. Criticize Bush all you wish; we could have done far worse.

Barack Obama’s image as president is still in a state of flux. No previous president put more effort into image formation. Obama was presented to the country, with his own approval and collaboration, as a religious figure, a prophet for a secular age. A messiah to match the new millennium, a god-emperor possessing abilities beyond those of average men. His rhetoric, behavior, and iconography all reflected this — the halos, the church-like lighting, the worshipful descriptions of his followers.

All that is gone. Obama could act as a textbook example of the limitations of image manipulation. If any effort could have kept an image alive, it would have been this one. More resources, time, and energy went into the Obama myth than any comparable campaign. The nation’s entire media sphere was devoted for several years to preaching the gospel of Obama, along with a large proportion of the international media.

Obama’s permanent image as president appears to be shaking down to two possibilities. The first, embodied in his characteristic posture when addressing the public, might be called “American Duce.” Head thrown back, chin jutting, a frown cutting his features, Obama presents himself as less a man than an archetype of human power. Obama uses this during speeches, debates, and public events.

It’s even evident in the classic Hope and Change posters. It is an imperial expression, designed to overawe and impress, the expression of an Augustus contemplating his empire. Mussolini adapted it as the proper public image of the ruler of Nova Roma. To my knowledge, no other major leader since has utilized anything similar. (Mussolini’s other trick, limited to private audiences, was “the stare,” in which he would gaze penetratingly and unblinkingly while advancing on visitors, pausing to examine them for several seconds before moving on. Claudio Spadaro, who portrayed Mussolini in Franco Zefferelli’s film Tea with Mussolini, had this down to…well, to a “T.” If Obama starts pulling anything like this, we’ll really have something to worry about.

The other is what might be called the “schoolmarm” look. It is an expression of simple petulance and impatience, best characterized by the term “fuming.” A fixed glare, lips twisted in a near-pout, arms often crossed. One almost expects to hear the tapping of a foot. It’s a posture not often seen in presidents, more commonly encountered among stubborn juveniles and novice schoolteachers. We have been seeing this quite often lately since things began to seriously go south for the administration.

At this point, not yet halfway through his presidency, it’s impossible to say which image will settle upon Barack Obama. I myself have no particular preference. The Duce look has appeared in quite a few magazine and newspaper illustrations in recent months. I imagine that one has to be taken as better, if only marginally, than the other.

Our image seldom matches what we want, or what we may believe ourselves to be. Character always comes out. Obama is in the process of learning this. FDR was a flippant, engaging figure. Reagan was a man of endless good cheer (recall his joking with the surgeons after he was shot). Bush remains a man of superb calm and detachment. The real Obama will inevitably emerge. I doubt it will be a surprise to anybody.

Comment by American Grand Jury:

The JOKER: This is the image I will always remember — it will be Obama’s legacy to always be known as the Usurper/Communist that swindled his way into the White House.

By Jeffrey FolksSource: American Thinker website

Lack of real-world experience may actually be the primary criterion for employment in the Obama White House. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, for example, has no work experience outside government. He joined the Department of Treasury in 1988, three years after graduating from college and traveling about Asia, and he has continued in government service ever since. Lawrence Summers, Geithner’s invisible twin on the economic team, has no more experience than Geithner. His entire work experience can be summed up in a few words: professor, World Bank advisor, government employee. Even more limited is the experience of Cass Sunstein, regulatory czar and close friend of the president. His resume can be inscribed on a postage stamp: professor, 1981 to present.

Then there are the hardcore politicos whose relation to the private sector is not just distant, but hostile. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, worked on the Illinois U.S. senate campaign of Paul Simon even before completing his university education. From there he moved to the Daley mayoral campaign in 1989 and the Clinton White House in 1993.

For his part, David Axelrod, Obama’s closest political advisor, has spent his entire career in the world of Democratic politics. Beginning as a political writer for the Chicago Tribune, he soon established himself as an independent consultant, serving on the campaigns of such leftist luminaries as John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer, as well as on the U.S. Senate and presidential campaigns of Barack Obama. No one in Obama’s inner circle has less experience or appreciation of the private sector than Axelrod.

Another key figure is Obama’s long-time adviser, Valerie Jarrett. Ms. Jarrett (who, by the way, was born in Iran and from childhood spoke Persian as a first language) spent most of her career in Chicago politics before following Obama to the White House. She has become wealthy by consulting with government clients and maneuvering the politicized world of Chicago real estate development.

From Geithner to Jarrett, all of Obama’s advisors have one thing in common: they have devoted their lives to the expansion of government. They believe — quite “passionately,” as Axelrod has put it — that government is the solution to America’s problems. Their political DNA is deeply antagonistic to the free market and to the assumption that monetary incentives spur productivity and growth. Professors and politicos, they know nothing of how to manage a business, and they certainly know nothing of how to balance a budget.

Most ordinary human beings know a great deal more than Obama’s circle of advisors. They understand that it is the private sector, not government, that produces goods and services. Instinctively, they know there’s something wrong with the idea that government “creates” jobs. They understand that subsidies for biofuel start-ups and failing banks are wasteful and wrong, and they know that more subsidy is only throwing good money after bad.

They also know that government revenue comes out of somebody’s pocket. Only those who have spent their entire lives in government service or in academe don’t understand this. The trillion dollars in stimulus of which Obama is so proud — he still claims it created or saved millions of jobs even as the Labor Department reports that four million jobs disappeared since the stimulus was signed — was confiscated from the paychecks of working Americans. It was spent to expand welfare payments to those who do not work, to preserve the jobs of inefficient unionized workers, and to fund favored projects of Democratic political contributors.

Americans who have to work for a living understand that Obama’s stimulus spending is political payola on an epic scale. They also understand that it is capitalism that produces wealth and that the profit motive is the key to wealth creation.

Without the opportunity to earn a profit — to be paid for their labor and rewarded for their investment — workers would not work, and investors would not invest. For this reason, a society that disdains capitalism will soon find its standard of living faltering. Fewer goods will be produced, supply will be constrained, and prices will rise. With prices rising, goods will become less affordable, and less will be purchased. The result is a vicious cycle of declining production and rising prices.

What I am describing is the classic state of affairs within all socialist economies. Goods become scarce, and so, as government attempts to equalize supply, they are rationed. Since rationed goods are by definition sold at below-market prices, more and more goods find their way to the black market, where they are sold to the highest bidder. Instead of creating equality, socialism always produces a two-tiered system. On the black market, for those who can afford them, goods are plentiful. For the rest of the population, they are scarce.

It is this two-tiered system toward which we are heading. In only twenty months, Obama has succeeded in shifting one hundred million Americans into greater dependency on government. One hundred million Americans now receive unemployment benefits, expanded welfare payments and child credits, food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid, and (soon enough) ObamaCare. In essence, they are the recipients of rationed goods within a state-run economy. Over time, they will become less well-off as wealth continues to be sapped from the private sector and the production of goods is curtailed. They will be serving life sentences in the prison of socialism.

For the political elite, of course, no such prison exists. Once it becomes apparent that the economy is not coming back, those who have engineered the miracle of Obamanomics — long-term unemployment rates of 17%, stagnant growth, and crushing deficits — will obtain new political appointments, move on to lucrative consulting jobs, or simply return to their tenured university positions. Comfortable and well-fed, they will continue to prosper even as they have learned nothing from the failure of their policies.

As for the rest of us, we will pay for their lack of experience.

Comment by American Grand Jury:

I knew there was something that really bothered me about the relationship between Obama and Jarrett.. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Now it all makes sense! Jarrett was born in Iran.. She is Muslim as is Obama. No wonder she has so much influence over Obama. For those of you that don’t know it has been speculated that Jarrett is responsible for many of the “hardcore” policies coming out of the White House.

The author states the obvious here. We all know that Obama’s Czars have little or no experience to manage the White House or this Country’s affairs. Most are downright hostile to capitalism, our Judaic-Christian beliefs and the Constitution.

I will differ with the author on one point: the political elites that are ruining this country will get what’s coming to them in the end. They may escape punishment in the physical world but not in the spiritual world — Judgment day is not a myth!

Pithy comment: A bunch of inbred, socialistic losers are what is driving the ship right now!

By Lisa FritschSource: American Thinker website

“Whites don’t own Abraham Lincoln and blacks don’t own Martin Luther King,” says Glenn Beck as he defends his right to rally and restore honor at the same place and on the same date as Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech. That Beck has to say this seems ridiculous in itself, for most of us know that Martin Luther King is an American legend, with cherished monuments and a nationally celebrated holiday honoring his birthday each year. But Beck has to say this because he is white. And sadly, he is addressing the same critics: certain black reverends who never miss an opportunity to exploit race and black history.

The Reverend Al Sharpton, the Reverend Walter Fauntroy, and the Reverend Timothy McDonald have been recently quoted in an uproar over Beck’s 828 rally this weekend. They are suggesting that Beck is “hijacking” Dr. King’s dream. Says Reverend McDonald, “To use this weekend when we remember that great march on Washington in 1963 as a pretense to give credence to their cause and their agenda is insulting. We were there.” Had the hijacking of the dream been a sincere concern for the reverends, they would have had a standing reservation to obtain a permit in order to honor the legacy of Dr. King and the “I Have a Dream” speech that made history on August 28, 1963. But they did not.

Furthermore, Beck has been talking about 828 since the beginning of the year. Why are the reverends only now, the week of, coming out, arms blazing, over the rally when they have known for months that it was planned? The reverends are quite simply embarrassed, bitter, and angry that Glenn Beck is showing them as posers. The truth is, before Glenn Beck planned the rally and selected the date that coincidentally coincides with the date of the “I Have a Dream” speech, no one was even thinking about Martin Luther King on August 28. And certainly, many of us would be stuttering to come up with the year. Yet the reverends will tell you that they “were there.” So were hundreds of thousands of others, of every race. But where are they now? And what exactly is the dream that they remember? And oh, how vastly different their dream seems for us today from the visionary and hopeful Dr. King’s.

If we want to skip the nonsense and cut to the chase, it all boils down to this. The reverends had no plans on 828 of 2010 to honor the legacy of the “I Have a Dream” speech with a rally, a parade, or any such celebration of the sort, and now a white man is showing them up with a non-political rally honoring servicemen and paying tribute to Dr. King by talking of peace, love of country, and honor. Glenn Beck is doing what they did not have the foresight, the will, or the heart to do. They have not lived up to the dream, and these reverends have not forged ahead in victory and giving justice to the 828 date.

The reverends, having been there, should be standing with Glenn Beck, but they don’t, and here is why: Their dreams differ greatly from those of Dr. Martin Luther King. They don’t share his vision of peaceful solidarity, equality, and standing hand in hand in unity and love with brothers and sisters of every race. If the reverends shared those dreams, ironically, they would be overjoyed that Beck — who is white — is holding a non-political rally of honor on this date. Dr. King’s niece, Dr. Alveda King, is standing with Glenn Beck, after all.

So exactly is the dream of the reverends? Their dream is simply to keep fear flowing like a river in black communities. When one listens to them, it is difficult to believe they are remembering the same speech of Dr. King. Did they miss the part of the speech that asks that the black community not have a “distrust of all white people”? The only white people they seem to trust are the ones writing them a check from their latest shakedown. In Dr. King’s speech, he lamented that “one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” Sadly, today, our communities are being crippled by the bitterness of these reverends. We are being segregated by their own selfish desires of power and control. We are being shackled by their anger and desire for vengeance over the past. They refuse to move forward in love and hope; instead, their muddled logic and twisted pride stifles us all like heavy sand. Today we are crippled by the weight of victimization bestowed up on us by these so-called reverends, who, instead of love, preach malcontent; who, instead of preaching peace, look and find contention and ill will in every act and deed of those who don’t bow down to their authority; reverends who, instead of preaching honor, look for the quickest place to lay blame.

If these leaders really want to Honor Dr. King’s dream and his legacy, then they will celebrate hand in hand with Glenn Beck and the thousands of Americans projected to turn out to restore honor. They will keep the dream alive by marching ahead and not turning back, as the “I Have a Dream” speech asks of us. This would be a great gift to our children. For our children to see that so many of those dreams have come true is the way towards honor and fulfillment of the whole dream.

For this one moment can these reverends put their bitterness and fear aside and have a moment of solidarity and celebration? Can they honor the victory without continually throwing the struggle in our faces? Can they take a break from race-baiting and divisive politics to enjoy a moment of reverence for the fallen soldier and be grateful for our many freedoms that just 47 years ago went unknown? Can they take the high road just this once and allow us to recognize just how far we have come without nitpicking us to think about how much farther we may have yet to go and who may hold us back? Let us have a moment as a nation to stand together and hear the ringing of freedom, honor, and courage.

Let this moment be for Dr. King, our men and women in service, and for “all God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Comment by American Grand Jury:

Great article — the one’s that tell the truth, plain and simple, are always the best!

By Monty Pelerin

History is a great teacher. It often provides clues that enable us to understand the present and future.

Ancient regimes’ concept of divine right of kings seems pertinent to today. Wikipedia offers as good a summary as any:

The Divine Right of Kings is a political and religious doctrine of royal absolutism. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving his right to rule directly from the will of God. The king is thus not subject to the will of his people, the aristocracy, or any other estate of the realm, including the church.

The phrase “not subject to the will of his people” is an appropriate similarity to contemporary times.

Divine right was based on a metaphysical assertion. Despite “ultimate authority,” kings engaged “intellectuals” to provide supporting propaganda for the claim. Their efforts worked for a long time. As late as 1729, Thomas Paine saw fit to speak about the lingering right of heredity:

…the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet laureate.

We do not believe in the divine right of elected representatives, although some of them seem to.

The interesting parallel to today is the ancient regimes’ use of “intellectuals” as court propagandists. The same model exists today. The propagandists who led our country to its current dismal state, it seems to me, are economists. Today’s metaphysicians are called economic advisors. The Keynesian model is their tool for increased and activist government.

To many, the Keynesian myth is every bit as metaphysical as the divine right of kings. Gary North provides an evaluation that should unnerve Keynesians:

Ever since the third quarter of 2008, the nation’s nominal GDP has increased by a tiny $100 billion, but the Federal debt has increased by 25 times the GDP increase.

It has taken $25 of Federal deficits to produce $1 of GDP growth. This marks a major anomaly for Keynesian economic theory. The justification for government deficits in Keynesian theory is that government spending restores economic growth. Money spent by the private sector does not increase economic growth in a recession; government spending does. This has never made any economic sense, but now the non-response of the economy is exposing this original nonsense for what it always was: nonsense.

The ineffectiveness of Keynesian policies is a surprise only to those who worship at the Keynesian Temple. Many non-Keynesians accurately predicted that recent interventions would make conditions worse.

The Faustian bargain between some of the economics profession and the political class was struck after Keynes’ General Theory was published during the Great Depression. Keynes’ ideas provided cover for politicians to take increasing control of the economy due to its alleged instability. Government management was deemed necessary for consistent growth and wealth creation. For politicians, that was nirvana. For economists, it provided wealth and power in the form of government service. All they had to do was please the king and his court.

The Faustian partnership is now unraveling, despite the protestations of Keynesians. Worshipers like Paul Krugman claim that the economy would be worse if the Keynesian potions had not been applied.

The sacrosanct Keynesian paradigm is never doubted by true believers. All problems are assumed solvable by injection of more poison into the patient. There is no other solution. If results are less than expected, it is always the fault of practitioners who failed to administer enough medicine in a timely manner.

As the world economy implodes, the mountebanks are increasingly seen for what they are — descendents of the court advisors who supported the divine rights of kings. They are alchemists paid to support the divine right of government. It is their role to provide the intellectual support for the growth of government at the expense of the will of the people. These paid political hacks are little different from prostitutes or hired guns. They are the whores of the economics profession.

Let me be clear that I am not calling all Keynesians whores. Some are just plain ignorant. (Neither category is flattering.) Many are technocrats who have mastered mathematical techniques from prestige universities. Like idiot savants, they are brilliant with models, but not intelligent enough to know that aggregate models have nothing to do with individual human behavior. A wag’s characterization of Paul Samuelson seems appropriate to describe these types: “He is the best physicist that the economics profession has ever produced.”

Now their franchise is in danger. Their fingerprints are all over disasters like the Post Office, Amtrak, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and too many others to mention. Despite their best efforts and promises, there is no recovery coming in the economy. Keynesianism is under attack around the world.

It is times like these that paradigm shifts occur. Thomas Kuhn wrote about the difficulties of such shifts in the natural sciences. Vested interests were not easy to overcome, even with contradictory data. That does not bode well for changing the Keynesian paradigm in the social sciences where the vested interests are more numerous and powerful.

There are reasons to be pessimistic:

First, virtually every politician and bureaucrat favors the status quo. It has produced pay, retirement benefits, power and prestige relative to their counterparts in the private sector. There is no risk of unemployment of your employee relocating or going out of business. It is a sheltered overcompensated life that few would willingly change regardless of political affiliation.

Second, big media favors big government and big spending. They understand little about anything, especially economics. The Daily Bell discussed this shortcoming with respect to Time Magazine’s recent article on Economics and concluded:

Here is a woman who writes about economics for millions and whose platform is arguably the most prestigious magazine of its type during the 20th century. Yet both she and her editors allow her to publish an article that betrays such ignorance that the feedbacks beneath the article are of far more value than her own erroneous musings. When that happens, you’ve got a problem.

Third, major corporations are dependent upon various corporate welfare items, contracts and tax loopholes that they are unwilling to give up.

Fourth, 47% of individuals pay no income tax. These individuals have the incentive to vote for larger government because they are “free-riders.”

Fifth, the elderly receive Medicare and Social Security. Presumably they paid into these systems during their earning years. When someone talks about government reform, they see their primary source of income threatened — “they are trying to take away my benefits. How will I live?”

Sixth, the balance of the population is generally unable to determine whether they are winners or losers from government. There are too many programs and regulations to make such a calculation. Many deem a particular program or regulation good because they do not know its costs. Even if proper cost determinations could be made, the calculation is terribly biased because of deficit spending. Deficit spending is close to 50% of total spending. If people compare what they pay in taxes as the costs of these programs, they fool themselves by being biased toward government spending.

Seventh, intellectual arguments cannot overthrow the Keynesian paradigm. Unlike the natural sciences, replicated laboratory tests of a hypothesis are not possible. Proof in the social sciences is never as definitive as in the physical sciences.

Vested interests are much greater than Kuhn described in the natural sciences. No constituent group supports a move toward smaller government. Eventually the truth outs, at least in the natural sciences. Will that happen in the social sciences? Will we overthrow the false paradigm of Keynesian economics? Will big government be able to be rolled back? These are questions that only the passage of time will reveal.

The Keynesian paradigm has gone on too long. It is likely that it cannot continue much longer. Rational evaluation will not kill it. It will die from self-immolation. It will perish in the flames that consume our economy. Consensus that it is dead will probably only come when the economy has reached a similarly terminal condition.

One hopes that this tragedy unfolds fast enough that our freedom still remains. If so, we will rise from the ashes painfully but quickly. If not the world may enter an Economic Dark Ages.

Comment by American Grand Jury:

Monty always writes good articles pertaining to economics.

I have been saying it for years — nothing is going to happen because the “status quo” (the powers that be) don’t want change.. they want power and government to survive — personally, my assessment bothers me — I want real change — I want the progressive-liberal movement in this Country to fall on its ass and die a hard death. Unfortunately, as Monty suggests at the end of this article, it is likely going to take a major Depression for the world to turn around and get back to the business of practicing capitalism and “supply-side” economics — God, I would love to have Reagan back — he would know how to tackle the problem and get our Country turned around.

by James Lewis

Obama Is Colluding with a New Fascist Imperialism

Nothing is more like the fascist Axis of the 1930s than Islamist expansionism today. Like the Hitler-Tojo-Mussolini Axis of the 1930s, Islamic fascists are fundamentally imperialistic, with an explicit order from on High to subjugate civilized people or turn them to ashes. Mohammed himself famously threatened the cultured Persian and Byzantine Emperors of his time, and in the following years, his followers knocked those empires over like devouring army ants.

The peace-loving Buddhist monasteries of India were consumed by invading Muslim armies, with the result that there are no Buddhist monasteries left in India today. Not a single one. Only Hinduism survived the Muslim invasions, because Hindus are not pacifists. You can ask any Sikh about that; they are a huge warrior religion that arose as a buffer between Hindu India and its many Muslim invaders, who now hold Pakistan and Afghanistan. In India, the Buddhist monks just died or fled to Tibet. So much for the glorious results of peaceful resistance against Muslim armies.

Wherever Islamic fascists go, they first like to frighten and intimidate less warlike peoples — as in London today, where any BBC criticism of Islamic fascists is streng verboten. That’s what the Ground Zero Mosque and the Mohammed cartoon uproar have in common: They are purposeful agitprop campaigns to scare and intimidate all the weak-willed liberals in the West, a standard Islamist tactic to conquer by intimidation, just as Muslim conquerors have always done. Why bother to wage war when you can win by terror? Putin understands that, the Chinese understand it, and it’s clear enough around the Middle East. Only American liberals and European socialists are in denial. That’s why they are the biggest round-heels in the world. They will happily collude in their own subjection and degradation.

Islamic practice has always required mosques to have the highest towers in any subjugated city. No Jews or Christians were ever allowed to build higher places of worship, to ride higher (on horses or mules), or even to raise their heads higher while walking the streets than any Muslim. If you were a Jew or a Christian, you would duck your head deep down as you passed a Muslim, who was allowed to spit on you at will. As recently as the Ottoman Empire (crumbled in 1917), all dhimmis were unceremoniously beaten to the ground if they dared to raise their heads higher than a passing Muslim. Modern Westerners deny the obvious, but that is because they are wishful idiots, self-inflicted ignorami, and dead meat to all the predators of this world. It’s Little Red Riding Hood skipping into the dark forest again, but this time nobody told her about the Big Bad Wolf.

Islamic fascism is committing African genocides here and now, as in the Sudan, where a radical Muslim murder regime has been enabled by the “international community” to persecute and kill animist and Christian Africans since the 1990s. Rather than stopping the horrors by simply arming Africans who are killed for Allah, the Sudan has been gloriously elected to the Human Rights Commission of the U.N. General Assembly with the active connivance of the Left. That is just another fact that is understood by anybody who cares to open their eyes. The U.N. has been conquered without a shot by the new fascists, so that U.N. “peacekeeping” forces are rendered impotent in the face of genocide.

Kofi Annan stood by during the Rwandan genocides in the 1990s and then was elected Secretary General of the U.N. partly as a reward; Islamic regimes and the Euro-Left knew he wouldn’t make trouble for them. Annan earned his by using the Food for Oil conspiracy to skim billions off “humanitarian” Iraqi oil sales to help Saddam Hussein, in criminal collusion with French President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. The U.S. press, filled to the brim with useless idiots and suckers, celebrated the bad guys and attacked the good guys. The biggest liberals always fall for the worst tyrants.

You think that evil is safely dead and in the past? You must be a liberal and self-deluded. But I repeat myself, as Mark Twain said in similar circumstances.

Islamofascists constantly threaten genocide against the Jews, as in the daily fulminations of that little Twelver freak Ahmadinejad — but also in the words just reported by our good friend the Saudi King of the Arabian desert: “There are two nations that do not deserve to live: Israel and Iran.”

This is the 7th-century king of the camel-raiders that the President Usurper of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, publicly bowed down to — in a universal gesture of submission that was instantly understood throughout the Muslim world.

Neville Chamberlain gave Adolf Hitler only a half-bow after the Munich appeasement summit of 1938. Liberals are forever thus.

To complete the bleak parallels to the horrible 1930s, we see the Left-Fascist alliance together again. If you think Bill Ayers and Jodie Evans were just accidentally whipping up a PR stunt with the Turkish suiciders off the coast of Gaza a few months ago, then you, too, were taken in by classic agitprop collusion between the radical Left and Islamic fascists. Those were Muslim Bro suiciders (Turkish allies of Hamas) on board the tourist ship Mavi Marmara, under the direct command of the new Islamist fascist regime in Turkey. Like the recent Lebanese border assassination ambush of a senior Israeli military leader, this was a murderous setup. The assassination team in Lebanon Army uniforms had their snipers all set up with 50-caliber long-distance weapons, conveniently provided by U.S. military trainers.

But don’t expect any JournoListers to grok those facts any time soon. They are too busy looking for evil among American conservatives. The Left is half-deluded and half-Machiavellian, and each half constantly lies to the other. The lefty media desperately want to be deluded, of course, like the abused wife of a violent alcoholic. It’s a sort of token of love.

Socialist Europeans are knocking each other out like bowling pins today in their hurry to kowtow to the rising Fascist powers, who have bought all three British Parliamentary parties with their oil billions. Tony Blair is working for Libya’s Muammar Khadafi today, which tells you where the Labour Party’s heart really is. Eurosocialists have for decades imported hundreds of thousands of fundamentalist Muslims from the badlands of Pakistan with promises of lifelong welfare and four wives apiece, a promise that an ambitious young Islamofascist from Peshawar can hardly be expected to resist. As a result, Muslim fundamentalists now virtually control parts of Europe’s major cities, including Rotterdam, Hamburg, and Paris. Socialist Europeans know that their countries are coming to an end as Western states. They are not as idiotic as they constantly pretend to be. But they are drunk on the perks of power — and let tomorrow be damned. After us, the deluge.

Like the demonic 1930s, the Left is again a lot more interested in sabotaging freely elected governments than in fighting rising fascist tyrannies that delight in oppressing millions of women, in persecuting and hanging homosexuals, and in practicing sadistic violence toward a host of other victim groups. Sadistic violence — an intense delight in inflicting pain on innocent people — was a huge and now-forgotten feature of the three big Fascist powers of the 1930s: the Nazis, the Japanese Imperial Army, and even Mussolini’s Italians in North Africa.

Some people define Fascism as a corporatist economic system, like Obama Motors today. It could just as well be defined as the public celebration and practice of massive sadism against enslaved peoples. Mussolini practiced massive sadism in Africa. Hitler practiced systematic sadism against inferior peoples wherever he could — against Russians, Poles, Jews, Gypsies, German social democrats, on and on. Imperial Japan was horrific in its sadistic treatment of non-Japanese — American and European prisoners, Chinese people as a whole, black Americans, Filipinos and other Malay peoples in Asia, on and on. Even the Soviets did not celebrate sadistic torture of its enemies in public, as far as I remember, though they certainly practiced it in private, as the Russians still do today in Chechnya.

Ideologically rationalized sadism and cruelty is not even acknowledged today by such lowlife organs as the New York Times. The Times mostly ignored and thereby colluded in Hitler’s and Stalin’s industrialized sadism in the 1930s. Some things change, but the New York Times always enables the very worst regimes in the world. It is one of those constants that give one faith in the basic stability of things. Tyrannies change names, but the Times always kowtows to the most bloodstained nastocrats it can find. They may even teach it in Journalism 101 at Columbia.

The historic fact is that the Left always enables fascist monsters. I don’t claim to understand that fact, but it’s easy enough to see it over and over again. It seems to be part of their deep moral cowardice and weakness of character. The prophet Jeremiah saw it in the sixth century BCE and roundly attacked those who pretended to heal “the broken daughter of my people, saying Peace, Peace, but there is no Peace.” Listen to our liberal friends, and they are constantly saying it over and over again, a mantra that makes them feel better even if it is a flagrant lie.

Liberalism is just the self-delusion of moral cowards throughout history. It is not a modern ideology, as it always claims to be — now it’s “progressive” again. They can’t even think of new labels. It’s is just a form of denial, a pop fantasy that allows them to avoid thinking scary thoughts. That is why liberalism can be found over and over again in human history, under a thousand different labels.

We can see that delusional thinking right now in Barack Hussein Obama and in Hillary, just as we saw it in the Carter administration — which gave Islamic fascism its first taste of real power in 1979. It’s important to remember that reactionary Islamic fascism was mostly gone after the Ottoman Empire crumbled in 1917. A number of Muslim countries desperately tried to modernize for sixty years — until Jimmy Carter gave the pre-medieval throwback Ayatollah Khomeini his first big chance in 1979. That started a race among all the suppressed Islamofascists in Sunni and Shiite countries. Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jimmy Carter’s dysfunctional politics was not an accident, nor his love affair with Hamas and Khomeini; it is an obsessive-compulsive psychopathology, and it happens over and over again in human history.

That’s why the Norwegian politicians keep handing out that the Nobel Appeasement Prize. It’s why Obama got it just for getting elected. The Left and the Islamic fascists figured out who Obama was long before the people of America were told. After all, he’s one of them.

Comment by American Grand Jury:

Heck of an article.. this gets my vote as one of the best dissertations you will see on on the blogs right now with regard to Islam and Fascism..

Remember my new acronym: RIG — Radical Islam Believer — that’s Obama along with all the other minions that squat with him!