Revisiting Allende
I’ve written before that Obama reminds me of Hugo Chavez. But there’s a touch of Allende in Obama, too.
Take a look. Note that a coalition of groups in the Chilean Chamber of Deputies attempted to stop Allende when they became alarmed at the extent of his constitutional overreach. Unfortunately, I don’t think that our Congress has the guts to do something similar these days:
On 22 August 1973, the Christian Democrats and the National Party members of the Chamber of Deputies joined together to vote 81 to 47 in favor of a resolution that asked the authorities to “put an immediate end” to “breach[es of] the Constitution . . . with the goal of redirecting government activity toward the path of law and ensuring the Constitutional order of our Nation, and the essential underpinnings of democratic co-existence among Chileans.”
The resolution declared that Allende’s government sought “to conquer absolute power with the obvious purpose of subjecting all citizens to the strictest political and economic control by the State . . . [with] the goal of establishing . . . a totalitarian system” and claimed that the government had made “violations of the Constitution . . . a permanent system of conduct.” Essentially, most of the accusations were about disregard by the Socialist government of the separation of powers, and arrogating legislative and judicial prerogatives to the executive branch of government.
Specifically, the Socialist government of President Allende was accused of:
Ruling by decree, thwarting the normal legislative system
Refusing to enforce judicial decisions against its partisans; not carrying out sentences and judicial resolutions that contravened its objectives
Ignoring the decrees of the independent General Comptroller’s Office
Sundry media offenses; usurping control of the National Television Network and applying economic pressure against those media organizations that are not unconditional supporters of the government
Allowing its Socialist supporters to assemble with arms, and preventing the same by its right-wing opponents
Supporting more than 1,500 illegal takeovers of farms
Illegal repression of the El Teniente miners’ strike
Illegally limiting emigrationFinally, the resolution condemned the creation and development of government-protected [socialist] armed groups, which . . . are headed towards a confrontation with the armed forces. President Allende’s efforts to re-organize the military and the police forces were characterized as notorious attempts to use the armed and police forces for partisan ends, destroy their institutional hierarchy, and politically infiltrate their ranks.
Allende defied the Chamber of Deputies, and he was only stopped by a military coup. Allende committed suicide rather than step down, but the left has perpetrated the myth that he was assassinated. It makes much better propaganda.
I keep thinking of Obama’s Honduras policy—not the current immigration crisis, but the 2009 shocker where Obama supported the leftist Zelaya’s constitutional overreach, and opposed that country’s lawful attempt to remove and replace him. It was one of the clearest signs that Obama was interested in doing something similar himself. I have very little doubt that, if Obama had been president at the time of Allende’s control of Chile, Obama would have tried to protect him from being deposed, too.
The overthrow of Allende was far better than the alternative.
Yes, the attempt to intervene in the Zelaya affair was a clear sign of our messiah’s totalitarian mindset. However I think it would take a gargantuan ‘crisis going to waste’ before bho would attempt to remain in power.
Lest we forget, the 2009 Honduras shocker was a position also supported by Chillary Clinton.
Augusto Pinochet, a true hero and the savior of Chile, was/is regarded as a great demon by the Euro Ruling Class and our own Demofascists. In his tenure, Chile did away with their version of FDR’s Social Security, privatized it, made each account the property of the individual, and wow, what a success. He also permanently did away with a couple thousand Che-wannabes.
Though Chile remains the political Last Best Place in South America, it is falling back into its Leftist ways. Leftism is like AIDS, a transmissible, incurable disease that eventually proves fatal. We come up with treatments to modify its course, but it remains eventually inexorable.
It was one of the clearest signs that Obama was interested in doing something similar himself.
It was also one of the clearest notifications that American power in the world, is merely a bully and is nothing good whatsoever, when Americans can’t even stop the Left from obtaining the Throne of Power in the US. If the Throne of Power can be sold to anyone, then what meaning is American power and peace for?
Elections and democracy, ultimately give rise to such megalomaniacs, since it sanctions their rule while they are weak, but only force remains to secure the Revolution itself.
Pinochet broke the Back of the power of the Left in Chile, for a time. That’s the only way it can be done, since Allende had several powerful factions still backing him when he died, and they merely would have started a civil war to decide who the successor would be. After all, all that totalitarian power has to go to “someone”.
Neo-
I don’t know if it was you or me that first likened Obama to Chavez, as in my “Obama=Chavez”. You have the data. I believe it was neck-and-neck, if memory serves.
What if anything do your liberal friends and relatives think of Obama’s overreach?
Oh right, they cannot be talked to about it, lest they become estranged.
Not so strange, maybe.
Was talking the other day to a AF Reserves guy who had just gotten back from Afghanistan a couple of months ago. He’s a family man, wife, and 4 young kids, and a dog. And he was mussing on the state of affairs in this country while talking about what he had seen elsewhere. And as we talked, the conversation drifted – at his instigation – to the topic of the discouragingly passive and sheepish nature of so many people we know. He then said the “oddest” thing to me. (The scent of this question must be in the air)
He said: “You know, I was just thinking the other day what if some people came barging into my house. What if some really weird event ever took place where all of the sudden some people in our government decided to take complete control and start running our lives right down to the level of our families. Who would it be that I could look to for support? You know, if people with no real authority but acting like officials came to our houses and started shoving their way in, who could I rely on to back me up? And I realized that when it came down to it almost no one I knew had any b*lls.”
I said – Yeah, it’s remarkable isn’t it. If you think about it really carefully, you begin to realize that most of the people you think you know and treat as friends, and associate with on a daily basis, really aren’t worth anything at all when it comes to shared principles. It seems most men would not even defend their own families … it seems most men really don’t now. We are trained to be passive and obedient from childhood, and hardly believe in our own right to life, much less freedom.’
Now, he wasn’t talking insurrection or anything like it. He was just ruminating on the fact that if all the sudden the facade of personal liberty and constitutional government were stripped from our daily lives, in such a way that it became inescapably obvious that even a man’s home was no longer inviolate, that most of the people he knows would probably accept the transformations as a fait accompli. And he would be on his own.
And, his presumably useless peers aside, why would a dependent of the opposition, a ward of the social welfare state, a client of the Democrat Party, or a feel-good progressive, care even that much?
They wouldn’t. They want a fundamentally different moral life. They seek different satisfactions, and are working from different moral premisses.
We have a problem in this country. The problem is “us”.
There are those who would call The Won himself a rat @ss commie bastard. They might be right.
DNW, most of the upper and lower classes would gladly lead the death squads to your friend’s school or location of residence, for a tip and a fee of immunity. They would be glad to help the Regime crush those that refuse to conform.
You ever notice in High School or other American dens of indoctrination, that a lot of the people in the “clique” groups don’t want to be there and are only following the orders of the group because they fear the group? Oh yea.
And I realized that when it came down to it almost no one I knew had any b*lls.
Remember those Americans that loved to make fun of the Vietnamese for not “defending their country” from the Soviet tank armed North? Remember that? Remember how they said that if the people won’t fight for their country because they are weak or scared, then it’s their problem, not our problem?
Well, guess what…. it’s now our problem.
KLSmith, it was Melanie Phillips, the British journalist, who first openly wrote in 2008 that people are afraid to state that Obama was a fellow traveler. Another commentator noted that the president the lightgiver most resembles is Juan Peron. In fact that “Obama will require you to give up your cynicism” speech sounds like it was taken verbatim from one of Evita’s encomiums.
Come to think, it almost certainly was.
Don Carlos:
I’m not sure who was first, but I began to make some Obama/Chavez comparisons even before the 2008 election. Also see this in July of 2009.
According to most of the congressional Republican brain trust who I have seen, they deny he has violated the constitution enough that any action needs to be taken. They seem to feel that the ‘UN tactic’ is adequate. Send strongly worded letters expressing their disappointment in him, and criticize him on TV, but srop short of calling him a liar or a dishonest man. However they are very vocal and active in destroying anyone in their own party who might irritate the president, or rile up the media.
Brave, courageous men we have on our side.
For those who consider Allende to have been committed to democracy, consider these Allende quotes from the autobiography of journalist Georgie Ann Geyer, Buying the Night Flight.
How many democrats think a one-party state will be good for a country? Just wondering.
Here is a link to the complete Resolution of August 22 1973 the Chilean Chamber of Deputies passed by an 81-47 vote, which enumerated the failings of Allende. The Resolution is sometimes known as the “Declaration of the Breakdown of Chile’s Democracy.”
The Chilean Supreme Court also stated that Allende violated the Consitution.
One of Allende’s “legal” maneuvers was to decree hundreds of nationalizations, which he justified by referring to a DECREE LAW issued by Colonel Marmaduke Grove during the short-lived Socialist Republic of the 1930s. The Socialist Republic came to power by a military coup. Allende justifies his nationalizations by referring to a DECREE LAW issued by a military golpista government. Ironic, isn’t it? BTW, Allende was a a relative by marriage to Colonel Grove.
Chilean President Patricio Aylwin, the first elected President after the Pinochet years, had been head of the Christian Democratic Party during the Allende years. He played a leading part in the crafting of the August 22 Resolution- a Resolution which Allende correctly pointed out promoted a coup.
Aylwin had supported the coup- as did all living former Chilean Presidents- and later helped lead the NO vote in the 1988 referendum that lead to the December 1989 elections that replaced the Pinochet regime. A supporter of a Declaration that was an invitation to a coup, is later a leader in the winning NO vote in the 1988 Referendum that means that elections will be held and Pinochet has to leave office, and subsequently gets elected President in a center-left coalition. History is messy.
Neo-
I was “Tom” back then and for some time after, until a 2nd Tom appeared which made me change my moniker. In the comments in your “before the 2008 election” link above I find my Obama=Chavez. So we were indeed neck-and-neck.
Also therein is a fine post by FredHjr, our late friend, and multiple other read-worthies.
KLSmith
There are those who would call The Won himself a rat @ss commie bastard.
And would point to Dreams From My Father, where Barack Obama says that in college he “sought out..Marxist professors” in order to not be considered “a sellout.” When Obama was in high school, the genocide in Cambodia was well known. Before Obama had started his second semester in college, the USSR invaded Afghanistan. Anyone who, after such evidence of the genocidal and imperialist ambitions of Marxist regimes, would still “seek out..Marxist professors” is to my way of thinking, pretty hard core.
Employing self-professed Commie Van Jones in the Obama White House raised some eyebrows. Jones resigned soon after Glenn Beck and others publicized it.
But ultimately, Obama is for power for himself.
BTW, this blog has had some rather interesting conversations with the [apparent] son of Commie Frank Marshall Davis, who was a mentor of sorts to the teenaged Obama when he was a high school student in Hawaii. Perhaps Neo can pull them up.
On Frank Marshall Davis:
http://neoneocon.com/2009/04/03/obama-and-the-disturbing-influence-of-frank-marshall-davis/
Gringo, I’m still surprised and pleased by how many Leftists go afraid and shivering while they bombastically attack Pinochet. It’s like their older version of Palin and Dark Lord Cheney.
It’s very easy to tweak their noses with this, manipulating their emotions and pulling on the fear one above all others.
Ymarsakar, Pinochet is a target for the left because was that rarity, a milico who was a competent chief executive. The Argie generals- Videla et al- though they had much more blood on their hands than Pinochet [30k vs 2-3k] – are ignored, because they were grossly incompetent as generals [see Falklands war] and presidents. Whereas Chile has followed the Pinochet economic model.
Best way to get a lefty to shut up on Pinochet is to bring up the 81-47 Chamber of Duties vote. They do not like to hear that.
Gringo, yea he did real damage to them. Sort of like a Sarah Palin President, they knew they were suffering damage not even the Left could regenerate easily. So they had to go full Offense.
What I find hilarious is how the Leftists moan and complain about the various “innocent” compatriot commies of theirs that died.
I read a claim that Allende was killed by his Cuban body guards.
I wrote a couple Letters to the Editor to my local newspaper comparing a country in South America and its Socialist president and how bad things became. For some reason they wouldn’t print them although they usually did.