“…Particularly as African-Americans, I feel we are in no real position to idealize the American experience and get too choked up about institutions and symbols that were not created with us in mind. Certainly, we cannot cast our lot with those who are actively seeking to destroy those gains we have made.”

I have a number of issues with the above statement, not the least of which is that the principles that inspired the American founding were always viewed as universal principles, which applied to all of mankind. Curiously, it wasn’t until the introduction of Historicist and Darwinian philosophy (which gave birth to Progressivism) that some Americans began to argue otherwise. And of course, I disagree that conservatives are actively seeking to destroy all of the gains black America has made.

It is important to note that the sentiments that my friend expresses are similar to the political attitudes which continue to permeate much of the black community. These same attitudes are also particularly present in the thinking of the black leftists, who have long held the conviction that the existence of slavery at our nation’s founding renders our Constitution a hollow document; the institutions and symbols that sprang from the founding were bereft of moral authority; the founders were hypocrites and liars, and the American dream is little more than a cruel myth.

From this conviction a kind of “cultural revolutionary defiance” has arisen, that is to say: black authenticity began to be increasingly measured by the degree to which black people defined themselves by way of their ethnicity, expressed anger at historical injuries, and were critical of, or rejected American symbols and institutions.

In this respect, my friend is a true new-revolutionary. But the issue he raises is not a new one, neither is it exclusive to American blacks.

In July of 1858, Abraham Lincoln addressed the question of how almost half of the citizens of this country could take pride and ownership in the accomplishments of the nation when they were not “historically related” to the founders, or those living on these shores at the time of the founding. Lincoln answered: “If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together–that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”

The essential element that my friend and the black leftists have missed is that what binds us together as Americans is not shared blood, race, ethnicity, or tribe; it is the unshakable belief in certain universal principles. The American experience is not attached to men who were flawed, but is instead fixed to ideas that remain flawless. The institutions and symbols of America are reflective of the revolutionary idea that all men are the property of God, created with an equal right to life, liberty, private property, and the free pursuit of bettering their station in life. Martin Luther King, Jr., put it more succinctly: “The American dream reminds us…that every man is an heir of the legacy of dignity and worth.”

All of us, whether our ancestors arrived through the gates of Ellis Island or survived travel through the Middle Passage are heirs to that grand idea. It is this idea that animates true conservatism and moreover, it is ONLY that idea—those principles—that made possible the huge gains that black Americans have made in this country and indeed in the world. It is, perhaps, also the reason that more Africans have freely chosen to come to America than were ever imported in slave ships.

In response to my friend, all Americans should ask: If not America, where? If not American symbols, which symbols? If not American institutions, which institutions will do? If not the principles of the American founding, upon which principles do the black left propose to build a new America—an America they can “idolize” and “get choked up about”?

Ask Van Jones.

These forward-thinking paragons, nursed on the mother’s-milk of Marx and Mao, would build their new America on the bedrock of economic redistribution and racial favoritism. I believe we tried that once in this country…

Why would he toss off an incendiary crack about racism in the American military, c. 1940’s?

Whom or what is he so obviously trying to please?

His own, elitist’s vision of American history?

Or someone/something else?

Someone or something like the President of the United States.

Mr. Hanks is now sitting in the same intellectually supremacist’s waiting room that President Obama has placed his entire, in-house entourage.

From SEIU to Tom Hanks and for their mindset, middle-class America, the Tea Partiers, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are to be looked down upon and, apparently, such members of the Once-Silent Majority represent the kind of souls that make up the American military.

Perhaps that is the main reason President Obama wants a civilian military … “a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded!”

As the combined might of the American Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines?

“Unenlightened!” declare the Enlightened Despots, thus labeling the Tea Partiers and Fox News as beneath even understanding.

Meanwhile back in Hollywood, another Silver Screen Czar who is definitely thinking way outside the American box is Sean Penn.

With his proud embrace of the Communist bully, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, he’s actually telling those within the Obama Box, like Tom Hanks, that they are beyond being “behind the curve”.

The Hankses of Hollywood are barely struggling in mid-field, while he, Sean Penn, is already standing in the end zone with those who will eventually be telling even President Obama what to do.

Who in Hollywood is truest to Karl Marx’s original dream, that which was most fervently fulfilled by Mao Tse Tung?

Oh, the entourage adorn the White House Christmas Tree with a Mao Tse Tung Christmas Bulb but Sean is out there in Haiti hauling relief wares for The People.

The Real People!

The Real People are actually those with barely enough education to recognize who might be in charge of things.

The Leaders of the Real People are the savage likes of Sean Penn who can wish cancer on his political enemies publicly. The truth is that Sean Penn looks down on Tom Hanks with as much or more contempt than he would now look down on me.

This inner-pecking-order on the Left is what has begun to tear the Obama Nation apart and will continue to do so until the whole, disorganized nightmare of the Obamatized Democratic Party explodes before our eyes, possibly erupting in some rather violent and self-destructive decisions within the Oval Office.

Oh, we of the Once Silent Majority will pay our own heavy price for not bending to the will of the Obama Nation.

However, the pain we suffer will be nothing compared to that endured by Leftist Visionaries and their Advertising Czars in Hollywood.

No video tape in recent history tells The Communist Tale more dramatically or intensely than this interview with former KGB operative, Yuri Bezmenov. 

What’s tragically ironic, I believe, is that Sean Penn, despite his bravura performance as an American Communist, is exactly what Bezmenov describes as the naïve Americans who have “bananas in their ears.”

Bezmenov’s description of the Viet Cong’s cleansing of a Vietnamese village, the execution of thousands of peasants whose names had already been gathered by Communist operatives?

Does Sean Penn really believe that someone as belligerently blind as Hugo Chavez will eventually be higher in the New World pecking order than Barack Obama?

That because of Chavez’ shameless declaration of Marxist convictions, as brazenly displayed as those of Sean Penn himself, Hugo Chavez will rise triumphantly from the ashes of his relative unimportance within the Progressively Marxist New World Order?

Sean Penn’s naked honesty is what has made him the exceptional actor he is.

As Spencer Tracy described his own secret for acting, “Stand firmly on both feet and tell the truth!”

I have no doubt Mr. Penn tells the truth clearly and unapologetically as he sees it.

What he doesn’t see is that Communism has never been interested in the truth.

All Communism is interested in is power.

Those Vietnamese peasants, executed by the Viet Cong in Hue, were exactly like the peasants of Haiti whom Sean Penn wishes to help.

Hmmm ….

The American Revolution, which Tom Hanks, now an expert on the subject, seems prone, in some jarring ways, to patronize, and the worldwide Communist Revolution, which Sean Penn was raised to worship, are now one and the same side of an easily discernible war between the Tea Partiers and the Obama Nation.

Obama’s approval ratings are falling like the proverbial rock which Sisyphus spent an eternity trying to push to the top of a mountain.

The truly enlightened French author, Albert Camus, may have been describing Man’s fate in general when he analyzed The Myth of Sisyphus; or he may very well have meant the Dream of the Communist Party.

As a glimpse into Camus’ political point of view, here’s part of Wikipedia’s analysis:

“When the Algerian War began in 1954 it presented a moral dilemma for Camus. He identified with pied-noirs, and defended the French government on the grounds that the revolt in Algeria was really an integral part of the ‘new Arab imperialism’ led by Egypt and an ‘anti-Western’ offensive orchestrated by Russia to ‘encircle Europe’ and ‘isolate the United States’.”

“A new Arab imperialism?”

“Orchestrated by Russia?”

The genius of Camus knew that breathtakingly familiar strategy in 1954!

Regardless of Soviet and the undeniably neo-Soviet intentions we live with today, who now stands at The Top of The Communist Mountain is Mao Tse Tung.

His Red China has triumphed while Stalin’s Soviet Dream fell with the Berlin Wall.

It is not Mao’s tyranny that has made China great.

It is the Chinese.

God is patient.

More patient than either Mao Tse Tung or even Job, for that matter.

The Almighty obviously knows that the Obama Nation and its injection of Marxist economics into the American Reality is Karl Marx himself at the very top of his intellectual mountain and its dream of world domination.

As glorious as the 100 year old, Marxist/Progressive Dream of World Domination may have seemed to its early visionaries, it is not only the American Tea Partiers who stand in the way.

The Catholic Church with its unswerving condemnation of abortion carries not just the gravity of St. Peter but the seminal meaning of the entire, 5,000 year old, Judeo-Christian Civilization.

100 years of institutionalized Communism and roughly 1500 years of Islamic nationhood … as versus 5,000 years of Judeo-Christianity?

The Marx and Mammon of the Progressive New World Order, that bipartisan Progressivism we see so greedily displayed in Washington, have a 1 in 50 chance of making it to the top of their Mountain of World Tyranny.

Apparently Hollywood Geniuses and Czars picked Sisyphus as the horse to win.

Hmmm … that is such a long way down the mountain that I doubt if anyone with an ounce of common sense left will again try, after Communism’s final fall, to push the rock of world tyranny up an anthill, let alone that Mt. Everest called Human History.

The Book of Revelation prophesied a thousand year wait, following the coming Armageddon, before the dashed dreams of a Marxist New World Order could rise again.

I’m grateful to be living now.

Now is obviously when and where the greatest drama in all of human history, that between Good and Evil, will reach its most complete climax.

All of us will certainly be tested.

Those of us who don’t surrender to the Progressively Marxist New World Order will be The Ordinary Miracle.

Meanwhile Sisyphus believes that he and Mao’s admirers have already reached their final destination in The White House.

Sitting above Sisyphus and the rest of the Marxist New World Order are The Americans.

We are enthroned in the very Judeo-Christian heaven that God Almighty has always promised us.

There is nothing on earth, and certainly not in Washington, D.C., that can pull us out of God’s arms.

“You disrespected me …” says Don Corleone to a favor-seeker.

That’s one of President Obama’s favorite phrases from Marlon Brando’s Godfather.

The, by now very boring, Judeo-Christian civilization has raised us to “disrespect” criminals, bullies who rule the world by force and force alone and cold-blooded killers such as the Islamic Jihad.

Somehow our President is willing to give a pass to Don Corleone because … well … “The Don” is performed by the same actor who portrayed John McCain’s favorite movie hero, Emiliano Zapata.

Marlon Brando.

Hmmm … no wonder so many conservatives don’t entirely trust John McCain.

The hidden part of Senator McCain is Progressive, a movement that grows increasingly revolutionary.

However, that was all part of a good revolution, the Mexican one, right? It had a whole cast of “good guys” like Pancho Villa, correct?

So if McCain can admire Pancho Villa and Zapata, what’s wrong with the Czars of the Obama administration admiring Che Guevera and Mao Zedong?

Both McCain and Obama obviously admire Marlon Brando. He’s The Star of their favorite movies.

Besides, candidate Obama promised to “fundamentally transform the United States of America”.

That’s revolutionary, isn’t it?

Hollywood pictures and two-party politicians are a revealing combination, aren’t they?

Therefore we have Worldwide Progressive Production Company’s film version of a story entitled Destiny of Mankind, and they’re shooting it out of a movie studio called United Nations.

A bit like United Artists … but … well, United Nations creates only documentary films and the UN scriptwriters have never been busier nor more successful!

With Obama in the White House “stepping on the gas” so to speak, the United Nations domination of the United States, if you’ll forgive the allusion, looks like a “downtown” from Obama’s favorite “corner” of not a basketball court but of his “Todlin’ Town”.

In other words, The Chicago Way!

Now America comes to what amounts to President Obama’s version of a Brando/Pacino-like, Chicago Don and elects him to help America out of trouble.

It is not entirely a coincidence that the German Communist playwright, Bertolt Brecht, set two of his major plays, In The Jungle of Cities and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, in Chicago.

That American city’s legendary reputation as a gangster’s heaven obviously struck Brecht as the best metaphor for his own Europe, struggling between not “two men”, as the subtitle of Jungle describes it, but between the increasingly influential lies and blackmail of both Nazism and Brecht’s beloved Communism.

In The Jungle of Cities is a love story presented in the metaphors of boxing.

The love-hate between dueling ambitions.

In light of that, America’s and Chicago’s First Lady Michelle Obama seemed to be saying, in “love-hate”, that after having endured such “disrespect” from the United States, she and possibly her husband didn’t have to respect America until, of course, her husband was then chosen as America’s own Godfather.

Even then respect isn’t necessary for a Constitution they both have felt is so limited and limiting when put in relation to their bottomless, Brechtian ambitions.

It is payback time!

No, the payback isn’t racist.

It is Marxist!!

A kind of Rainbow Revenge.

As someone might have advised the Obamas, “Vengeance is best served up cold … with a smile”.

Such strategies are taught at the President’s alma mater of Harvard by the Progressive likes of Professor Henry Kissinger – the tireless salesman of a New World Order – seconded by Rhodes Scholars such as William Clinton and, of course, heavily funded by Obama’s own personal Godfather, George Soros.

Paul Volcker has written of George Soros:

“George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become ‘open societies,’ open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but—more important—tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.”

So far, at least from my own “different mode of thinking”, the most belligerent of these “emerging nations” Soros is lecturing to, with the invaluable help of his ideological Godson, President Barack Obama, is America.

The Obama Nation is helping America to emerge as just another corner of the Marxist New World Order.

Ironically Marlon Brando, although surrounded in his life by Marxists and, as a favorite actor of both Obama and McCain, a legendary, bipartisan favorite, was mainly concerned about only helping America’s First Nations become the priority among “emerging nations”.

However, Jihadist Islam, at least for myself at any rate, has obviously become the angriest and most impatient corner of an emerging, would-be nation.

Muslim Jihadists’ dedication to the virtual destruction and permanent end of Israel is where Mr. Brando would have to part company with the Progressives and their non-combative policy toward Ahmadinejad’s Iran

Despite the seemingly anti-Semitic remarks offered by Marlon Brando, the actor had unswervingly supported Israel’s sovereignty.

One thing Obama and McCain must agree upon is the main common denominator of the films Godfather and Viva Zapata, and that is Marlon Brando.

However, without Elia Kazan as his own, artistic Godfather, Marlon Brando would have been without Viva Zapata and On The Waterfront.

The “Mob” that Kazan demonized in On The Waterfront is made up of the very Union Bosses that traipse in and out of Godfather Obama’s White House regularly.

If you want to get a profoundly good look at President Obama’s brand of Union leader, see On The Waterfront again. Concentrate on the brilliant performances by Lee J. Cobb and Rod Steiger.

Johnny Friendly, and that mob boss’ lawyer, Charley Malloy, and the thugs surrounding them are the real stuff of Godfather Obama’s SEIU friends, ACORN, his Czardom and the true architects of his “fundamental transformation of the United States of America”.

They are Johnny and Charley with Ivy League degrees.

That description, indeed, is Al Pacino’s version of a Godfather, Michael Corleone, a graduate of Dartmouth.

As a graduate of Dartmouth myself, I learned that in Soviet Russia the Politburo is actually a modern version of an old-fashioned oligarchy.

Since then, and because of performing repeatedly in the creations of Bertolt Brecht, I’ve discovered that a Politburo is the traditionally Soviet word for a Communist Cosa Nostra.

However, the American Politburo, that ruling elite which is now led by Godfather Obama, instead of admiring Stalin, as you would expect?

They all look up to Mao Zedong.

Mao has ultimately become the greatest inspiration for the American Progressive Movement.

Mao is The Godfather of all Godfathers!

Surely Hollywood and its tortured geniuses would have eventually cast Marlon Brando as Mao, don’t you think?

After performing Emiliano Zapata, Napoleon Bonaparte and Don Corleone, the only challenge remaining for Marlon Brando, the ultimate fulfillment of his symbolic ascendancy as the Left’s Greatest Screen Star would have been to portray the indisputable and now increasingly popular Communist Emperor, Mao Zedong.

Please think about that till I get back to you with Part Two of Marlon’s Mao.

Well thank the Devil for Oliver Stone, for he’s revealed that his upcoming Showtime miniseries “Secret History of America” will help put mass murderers such as Hitler and Stalin “in context.”

“Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy — these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history,” he told reporters during a press tour, managing to slip non-killer Joe McCarthy into the mix, without causing a murmur.

Now, I suppose “thoroughly” was code for “unfairly,” but he’s right about Mao, Hitler and Stalin – it’s just the way things works, I guess, when you kill millions of innocent people. But true to his blind allegiance to relativism, Stone claims that “we can’t judge people as only ‘bad’ or ‘good.’ Hitler was an easy scapegoat.”

He’s right: you had to blame the Holocaust on someone. But finger pointing is so judgmental! Case in point: Stone claims that conservative pundits will really dislike the show – maybe because conservative pundits don’t require psychoanalysis to understand Hitler’s motivations. Me? I don’t care if Adolf’s mommy never loved him, or the maid made fun of his willy. I had similar problems, and I still didn’t kill six million Jews.

But saying only conservative pundits will be upset by this is really a slap in the face of all progressives. For Stone assumes that – unlike right wingers – the left will willingly accept his revisionist look at history’s greatest mass murderers.

He’s right: as embracers of all things relative, they are crackers to his cheese.

And if you disagree with me, then you’re worse than Harry Reid.

Tonight’s guests:

Dr. Marc Lamont Hill!

Ann Coulter!

Michael Baden!

and, a comedian to be named later!

Director Oliver Stone’s upcoming Showtime documentary miniseries “Secret History of America” promises to put mass murderers such as Stalin and Hitler “in context.”

“Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy — these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history,” Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual press tour in Pasadena.

“Stalin has a complete other story,” Stone said. “Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can’t judge people as only ‘bad’ or ‘good.’ Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He’s the product of a series of actions. It’s cause and effect … People in America don’t know the connection between WWI and WWII … I’ve been able to walk in Stalin’s shoes and Hitler’s shoes to understand their point of view. We’re going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions … Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated.”

~~~

“You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate,” Stone said during the show’s trailer, which promised to put historical villains “in context.”

~~~

Stone also warned that the same military industrial complex forces that he’s explored in movies such as “JFK” and in “Secret History,” are now corrupting Barack Obama.

~~~

“My father was a voracious New York Times reader,” he said.  “We consider that in The Middle. Sarah Palin would disagree.”

~~~

Much more here.

“A Warhol Christmas at the White House”
By Christopher Knight, L.A. Times

When it comes to art, the right-wing anti-Obama crowd hasn’t had a very good year. Repeated efforts to gin up outrage in a manufactured culture war have either fallen flat or proved downright embarrassing. (You can see some of them here, here and here.)

The latest fiasco is the Great Christmas Ornament Scandal.

On Tuesday, Andrew Breitbart’sBig Government blog got its knickers in a twist over one of the Obama White House’s myriad Christmas trees. (Big Government is a sibling to Breitbart’s Big Hollywood blog, which cranked up a paranoid fantasy about the National Endowment for the Arts a few months back.) The blaring “EXCLUSIVE” led with a blurry photo of a decoupage Christmas ornament adorned with the face of Chinese Communist dictator, Mao Zedong.

“Of course, Mao has his place in the White House,” Big Government wailed about the GCOS, taking the Obama-as-socialist meme out for a yuletide spin.

Except, it wasn’t exactly Mao. It was Andy Warhol’s “Mao.”

(more…)

The plan has many critics, and rightly so.  For one thing, as Zinn openly admits, his is an activist history meant not only to inform the student, but to inspire them to take up his cause.   This puts the teaching of Zinn in public schools on precarious legal grounds at best.  Others draw attention to Zinn’s radical views themselves.  Zinn says of America, with her representative government and guaranteed freedoms, that,  “The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history,” parceling out just enough wealth and comfort to its citizens to keep them from revolting.  But to truly understand Zinn, and why his work has no place in public education, all a person needs to know is this –  Howard Zinn is not an historian at all; Howard Zinn is a religious zealot.

Now, this is not to say that Zinn or his followers believe in God.   Theirs is a secular religion, but religion none-the-less.  It is a faith in what Rousseau called the natural morality of man, an innate goodness that has only been corrupted by the oppressing evil of power, wealth and property.  It is a belief that when man is truly free, free from ‘wage slavery,’ from bankers and bosses, from states and from God, he will at last be purged of all sin.  Laziness and violence, covetousness and anger, all of these will disappear when the liberation arrives.  The religion is Marxism, Zinn’s denomination, Democratic Socialism (or possibly Anarcho-Syndicalism), but all of it, in the end, is simply Communism.

Of course, Christians actually hold similar beliefs.  Man is fundamentally flawed by something he cannot ultimately control: Sin.  This sin is dealt with by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, through whose Spirit a man’s nature, and ultimately behavior, might be changed.  And when Christ appears again in His glory, the world will be made right and all evil will be dispelled.

Another similarity is that faith is required for both, since neither religion can be proven scientifically.  The Spirit of Jesus cannot be measured out in beakers and applied in dosage, or the results of faith in Him tracked against a control-set, since His presence in the life of a man cannot be truly ascertained. Examples of evil done in his name are not true metrics since many wield His name for gain or tribal loyalty, but do not place their faith in Him.

For Zinn and his followers, the same holds true.  True Communism cannot be judged by failed Communist experiments because true Communism must be global, democratic, and de-centralized, none of which has yet occurred.  Point to the failure of the Bolshevik Revolution, and you will hear that all power corrupts.  The failure of the Soviet Experiment?  Stalin’s misguided belief that single country communism could survive in a world of capitalist forces.

And neither religion can prove that their future Utopia will ever exist, but unlike the Christian who renders unto Caesar what is his and is not called to transform the world into his own image but to trust in God’s will and timing, Zinn ultimately believes that the glorious Communist future will, to borrow from John Hiatt, come through your hands.  This is the fundamental danger of Zinn’s world-view.  It is far beyond evangelistic.  It is a crusade.

“We’re dreamers,” writes Zinn.  “We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don’t want war. We don’t want capitalism. We want a decent society.”

For the dreamer-crusader, the standard is perfection, and all have sinned and fall short.  Zinn points out that radical historians often make the mistake of judging the past by the standards of the present.  Thomas Jefferson was not deliberately excluding women from civic life when he penned that, “all men are created equal,” says Zinn.  Rather, in his time, the civil rights of women were not even a consideration.  However, this does not prevent Zinn from passing judgment.  While the past may not be judged by the present, Zinn seems fully content to hold both past and present to the standard of the coming Communist Utopia.  Jefferson’s failing was not that he was less sympathetic to select minority interests than we are.  His failing and ours is that we both support and uphold a system of power and oppression of the poor.  For Zinn, as for Marx and Engels, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.”

For this reason, man cannot look backwards to determine what forms of government are most desirable, or what evils to avoid.  There is no past wisdom to preserve.  There is only the truth that every effort so far has failed.  We must look to the future, gaining from history only those rare glimpses it affords of what might be accomplished when the oppressed stand united against their oppressors.  Moments of inspiration that evidence what could be.  “Not overwhelming evidence,” Zinn writes on his educational website, “just enough to give HOPE, because for hope we don’t need certainty, only POSSIBILITY.”

Less academic and more religious words were never spoken.

To Zinn, all of America’s wars are evil.  It is not that he supports Hitler, or King George, or slavery, or Mullah Mohammad.  It is that he views war as merely another excuse for the rich to expand their wealth while controlling the people with words like valor and justice.  Rich colonists grow richer in the name of national liberty, rich northerners in the name of ending slavery, rich businessmen in the name of defeating fascism, and on, and on.

If Zinn is occasionally more sympathetic to one oppressor than another (Mao for the as-many-as forty-million people killed in just three years in The Great Leap Forward, over, say, Columbus, who Zinn blames for the ultimate loss of a similar number of Native Americans over three-centuries) he can be excused his mild hypocrisies.  In the end, he would consistently denounce both as proof of his master thesis – That power and wealth corrupt.  Thus Zinn holds no allegiance to any man, party, or nation.  He has written that he may, from time to time, vote for one candidate over another based on the fleeting circumstances of the moment, but his support exists, “only for the minute [he is] in the voting booth.”  Beyond that, the perpetual revolution must continue.  Those in power, even those put there by Zinn’s religion, must then be opposed until all who are oppressed, children by parents, minorities by majorities (except for the minority which is the bourgeois), workers by employers, are liberated and the millennial kingdom of Communism is ushered in.

The question is whether or not this religious revolution belongs in public schools.

American Journalism Goes Dark—Voluntarily

Journalism died in America when Barack Hussein Obama was running for President.

The dinosaur media gleefully surrendered to the cult of personality—standard for leftist politics—and since then normally skeptical journalists have turned into nothing less than a collective Pravda for the Obama White House.

It’s not hard to fathom the reasons for this herd-like behavior. Elite journalists and editors recognize in Obama a kindred spirit, a hard left, big government ideologue who is adept at mouthing—endlessly, tediously and vacuously—all the politically correct rhetoric.

Questions of experience, competence, and Obama’s deeply troubling political, religious and social connections were swept aside as “mere distractions.”

In fact, Obama’s numerous unsavory friends and supporters was and is at the heart of the Obama presidency.

As the American public is now discovering.

Well, only if you watch Fox News or read the Internet.

Dunn Does Mao

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, speaking at the pricey and exclusive St. Andrews Episcopal high school graduation, praised Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Theresa as two of her “favorite political philosophers.”

Was she joking, as she now claims?

Of course not.

–

As you can see, there is not a hint of irony in her delivery—there is a strong hint of psychotropic medication as Dunn reflexively licks her lips during the speech; she’s got a case of dry mouth that can only be induced by drugs—and the titters when she mentions Mother Theresa and mass murderer Mao Tse-Tung in the same breath is the sound of nervous laughter from audience members who are, no doubt thinking: “Did she really say what I thought she said?”

You would think that the White House communications director’s praise of Mao—responsible for the death of about 50 million people—would be big news.

You would be wrong.

Only Glenn Beck and Fox News are carrying this story.

It’s a bit like, well, Mao’s China or the Soviet Union, where the media is a wholly owned subsidiary of the government.

More Mao Maoing

Well, now we have another member of the White House, Manufacturing Czar Ron Bloom, attacking the free market, and praising, yup, Mao Tse-Tung.

Roll the videotape:

–

H/T: Weasel Zippers

Hey, is it any wonder that President Obama refused to meet with that good man, the Dalai Lama?

My Cute Communist Spy

Years ago, researching a film script, the studio sent me the screenwriter, plus director, producer, and co-producer to China.

The Communist government assigned us several translators—meaning spies—to keep an eye on us.

My Spy, a genial, delicate and extremely cute young woman who was crazy about Hollywood movies, and totally knocked out to discover that she was in the company of a real live Jew—“Can you not just bless the pork and make it the kosher you require?”—was kind enough to warn me that my hotel room was bugged, and that her job was to make sure that I only saw the ”best side of The People’s Republic of China.”

My spy, I soon discovered, though she was working for the Communist Party, was deeply unhappy about her life and her role as a government drone.

One afternoon, as she and I strolled along The Great Wall of China—which really is great—away from the other government minders, she told me that her father, a university professor, was denounced as a counter-revolutionary during the so-called Great Leap Forward.

“What happened?” I asked.

“He was shamed and hung himself from the tree in our courtyard.”

And your mother?”

“She was sent for re-education, but I never heard from her again.”

“So you think she died?”

“Murdered. Mao killed millions.”

This was years ago and the extent of Mao’s machinery of death was not yet known in the West.

“And now you’re a member of the Communist Party.”

My Spy shrugged and smiled sadly.

“I survive.”

Praise of Mao Tse-Tung by western elite liberals might be viewed as trendy intellectual slumming—like Che t-shirts—by members of the dinosaur media, not worthy of notice or comment, but for me, Mao Tse-Tung conjures the image of a father dangling by the neck, a mother swallowed by Mao’s vast gulag, and My Spy smiling through her tears.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

When did artists in this country decide it was a good idea to take marching orders from the government? Did I just wake up in some third-world country from a long sleep or am I having a nightmare where I go back in time to Mao’s China, Stalin’s Russian or Hitler’s Germany? No such luck — this is actually happening here and now and some of you artists are too stupid to figure out you’re being had. Wake the $%@# up! Always question the powers that be! The only “change” that has taken place are the faces in high places. Politicians have an agenda-first, last and always — but make no mistake — these guys are worse, much worse!

Today’s liberals are the art community! From galleries, curators, critics, authors, film makers, musicians, actors, bloggers, magazines, publishers, collectors, directors of art institutions, museums and alternative art spaces to the artists themselves-most are already in lock step with the liberal ideology that has been a long standing tradition. That’s why the conference call between the White House, the NEA and the other artists was an easy call to make … literally. They invited Patrick Courrielche to sit in on the call — too bad for them but great for those of us who care.

In Hollywood, actors and others learn to keep their conservative opinions to themselves if they want to work-I get that! It’s the same thing with conservative visual artists like myself, no matter where we live. That’s why I put out my A Call To Artists video. I wanted to let my fellow artists know they are not alone. What I don’t get is how so many of these artists can be so easily swayed? Are artists truly as talented and intellectual as we have been led to believe or are we the recipients of our own praise and largess at the expense of the little guy we pretend to respect and care for so much? Who is pulling the strings? How many hoops do you have to jump through before you begin to understand that you are not an artist if you are not free to express yourself as you see fit. The artist formally known as Prince understood that and made his choice. I like his art/his music-but right now I really admire his stand.

I known first hand about wrongly being labeled and how much more difficult that makes it to earn a living. I also know what it’s like to be shunned by my peers. What I don’t get are the conservative artists who have had great success and are still hiding in the shadows. How much more money, fame, success do you need to feel safe enough to speak up and what does that say about the state of fear we already live in? What are you afraid of and where are your priorities? Here I must thank Mr. Jon Voight for having the courage to speak out. You, sir, are a man!

Have established artists not figured out that if you don’t speak out and stand up for your rights now you can kiss your freedoms goodbye, along with everything you have earned and worked for your entire life? And don’t worry about who gets what when you’ve passed on. At this rate it will belong entirely to the state. Hell, a lot of it already does!

How much more proof do you need to believe that this has been going on for a long time now — this current administration has just shifted to light speed! They’ve been watching, listening, studying and learning, especially from their mistakes. They have been patient and are now fully entrenched. They believe this is their moment and that they cannot let it get away — so anything goes!

 This is not a sparring session, this is the championship bout, the final round — winner take all and “We The People” better come out swinging!!!

Og, Bog, and Grog were out hunting mammoth one day somewhere in the mountains of Prehistoric Europe.  Grog’s job was to select the most succulent, Grade A Prime Mammuthus primigenius available in the Mesolithic grocer’s aisle and herd it towards his spear-bearing buddies who were hidden in the brush.  Grog made his choice and, using his trusty, flaming torch, chased the big woolly one brush-ward.  Unfortunately, in the midst of all the excitement, Grog forgot the cardinal rule of torch-bearing hunters everywhere: always stay at least ten stone lengths away from the back end of a mammoth after it’s eaten a fir tree for lunch.

Over Grog’s ashes, Og ponders the lesson of his friend’s untimely incineration and thinks: “I’m gonna recommend the Chief hold a hunter’s refresher course and change it to twenty stone lengths.”  Meanwhile, Bog, though he has access to the same information, processes it differently.  He ends up dismissing the whole episode as a fluke and decides that, even if the conditions were similar, the same result could never happen to him.  As Og is busy absorbing the cause and effect of Grog’s sudden demise, Bog thinks: “Let’s see, I had half a bison for breakfast, eighteen crow eggs, hand full of pine cones, pig fat smoothie with a scoop of roe deer hoof powder…which means, if I jog back to the cave reallyreally fast I can eat that entire pit of flame-broiled grubs.”

While Og clearly observed and assimilated the dangers of getting on the wrong side of a mammoth, Bog apparently chose to ignore the historic event.  Og burned a groove in his brain and made damned sure his children burned the same groove in theirs, passing his factual knowledge down for posterity.  Bog, on the other hand, kept revising the story and, several oral drafts around the campfire later, actually managed to convince himself that the whole debacle wasn’t Grog’s fault, it wasn’t the mammoth’s fault, it wasn’t even the fir tree’s fault.  Rather, it was all somehow Og’s fault. 

The story of Og and Bog would have no place in hypothetical history were it not for the fact that, apparently, Og went on to father Homo sapiens (“knowing human”) while Bog went on to father an entire subspecies known as Homo sibi destruens (“man destroying himself”).  Though they appear physically identical and share a majority of cognitive abilities, Homo sibi destruens (“HSD”) is decidedly different from Homo sapiens in one critical area: they are unable to absorb the lessons of history.

Standouts of this subspecies can easily be spotted governing countries, running the 111th Congress, starring in films, chairing U.N. committees, controlling the White House and keeping the flames of socialism and communism flickering the world over.  During particularly critical times in history, HSD often emerges en masse to make sure we all end up ignoring the lessons of the past so we can collectively suffer maximum damage in the present and future.

To HSD, communism is not a failed philosophy.  It’s just never been done right.  European socialism –- a floundering system of government Americans have never actually endured –- is somehow superior to the pseudo-capitalist system we are rapidly losing.  The government, though they have mangled our public schools for decades, frittered away our Social Security, worsened our financial crisis and grossly mismanaged everything from Fannie and Freddie to the U.S. Postal Service, is now somehow best qualified to handle our banking, mortgages and healthcare.  Should HSD cross paths with anyone who has actually suffered under communism or experienced the stagnation, lack of choice, and rationing of repressive socialism, they simply dismiss their warnings.

Hope & Change circa 1940's China

I recently asked “Ron,” a Rhodes Scholar friend from Taiwan, what he thought of a college student I knew who kept a poster of Mao Zedong on his wall.  Ron is married to a woman whose highly-educated father, during the so-called “cultural revolution,” was arrested, tortured and ordered to publicly burn his books.  Ron’s wife, a skilled physician, was nearly forced to marry a pig farmer before a patient who was a high-ranking party official interceded.  Ron thought carefully about how to define a young man who admired a mass murderer of millions.  After a moment, Ron pronounced in his heavy Taiwanese accent: “muddy thinker.”

If the current trends in Washington and Hollywood are any indication, HSD’s muddy thinkers are all the rage.

Several years ago, I came across perhaps the best visual fix on muddy thinking I’ve ever encountered.  I was visiting a friend who lived in an isolated, mountain region.  Record rainfall that year had caused a series of mudslides throughout the area.  Driving up the narrow, one lane road to her house, I rounded a hairpin curve and encountered an amazing site.  Pulling over, I got out of my car and stood gaping on the side of the road.  There, before me, were two houses I had passed many times over the years.  One house, however, had apparently slid down the side of the hill and was now lying in ruins at the bottom of a gully.  The other, identical home, located a few yards away from its decimated twin and looking decidedly wobbly, was still inhabited.  And there, in that home, in clear view through a dining room window, were the descendants of Bog.  Gathered around the dinner table, a family of Homo sibi destruens were eating, chatting, and watching MSNBC as if nothing unusual had happened.  I had to fight the urge not to bang on their front door and scream: “Are you crazy?  GET OUT!”

Propaganda Poster circa 2009

Shortly after, the house of Bog’s muddy thinking descendants did, in fact, join its clone in demolished repose at the base of the ravine.  I wonder how long it took the family to finally accept reality and acknowledge their dwelling’s fate.  I wonder how long it will take Bog’s descendants in America to acknowledge what they are doing to this country?

How's this for "Progress?"

Walking out of a Hollywood coffee house just after the so-called “Stimulus” was passed, I followed two prime HSD specimens down the street.  As they entered their fully loaded Prius complete with scary, propagandic, Obama bumper sticker circa Leninist Russia, I overhead one, young rail-thin blonde talking with another.  Instead of pondering how more than doubling our nation’s debt, nationalizing private industry and an unprecedented expansion of government will hobble their bright, shiny futures, I heard:  “Let’s see, I had a non-fat, soy latte for breakfast, Acai Berry smoothie with a scoop of protein powder for lunch, hand full of unsalted almonds, which means, if I work reallyreally hard in Pilates…”