The shocking radicalization of the center Right

The New Neo Posted on by

Those unruly un-American mobs of enraged independents and conservatives (and perhaps even a sprinkling of moderate Democrats) keep annoying our elected representatives with their inconvenient anger at the fact that the Obama administration and Congress seem to be intent on pulling a fast one on them by attempting to pass legislation that will change their lives for the worse in the intimate and touchy area of medical care—and to be doing so without bothering to explain to the people (or in some cases even knowing) the details of what the government is actually planning to do and why.

The resultant dismay the Left feels at this development would be almost comical if it weren’t so sad. After all, it’s the Left that’s supposed to champion “power to the people” and “speaking truth to power.”

Community organizing is the coin of the Leftist realm. But it turns out that it depends on which community is organized. If it’s downtrodden minorities, the unemployed, illegal aliens, unions, or any other group composed of and/or appealing to the natural constituency of the Left—then it’s not a mob, it’s a populist group of concerned citizens speaking their mind in classic American fashion. But if it’s anything that even remotely smacks of the Right or the middle class or even the non-union working class, it’s a bunch of pitchfork-wielding astroturfing swastika-carrying thugs.

One of the things that’s so interesting about the current development—a true populist movement that involves centrists and the Right—is the shock of the Left that such a thing is even happening. It started with the Tea Party movement, which prompted the Left (along with its handmaiden, the MSM) to immediately attempt to marginalize and invalidate that movement, by banding it as a bunch of fringe crazies. Now this strategy continues towards the even more alarming (to the Left) and more visible phenomenon of the Town Hall meeting protesters/questioners who are filled with righteous indignation that their concerns are being marginalized and condescended to.

It takes a lot to radicalize the center and the center Right. Historically, demonstrations have tended to come from the more extreme ends of either party, and ordinarily have been larger on the Left than the Right.

During the Vietnam era, we saw some of the biggest and most frequent demonstrations we’ve seen in modern times in this country, and the force of them came from the fact that although they were orchestrated, managed, and used by the far Left, many of the demonstrators came from the center Left and even the center rather than the fringes. What motivated those demonstrators—other than the pictures of carnage on the nightly news, or Walter Cronkite’s declaration of our defeat in Vietnam—was a simple fact of life: self-protection. The demonstrators were overwhelmingly young people whose lives were deeply affected by the draft, either actually or potentially.

People tend to be more driven to protest things that affect them personally rather than abstractions or faraway problems in distant lands. And it’s hard to imagine a government program that promises (or threatens) to affect people more personally than the health care reform bill, or one that has been more suspect in its claims and more murky in its lack of transparency. Therefore it should not be the least bit surprising that there’s a lot of energy in the fight against it.

What is surprising—to the Left—is that now they’re the objects rather than the perpetrators of the outrage. Their charge that opponents are astroturfers is partly a cynical ploy. But I suspect it’s also partly sincere, because they are experiencing shock and resultant denial that a populist movement has arisen against the Left itself.

After all, they wrote the book on community organizing. And now they’ve got a community organizer President—what could be better? How astounding to have the tables turned at this moment of what should be their greatest triumph.

Now, here’s a mob:

And about those death panels…

The New Neo Posted on by

This seems to make sense to me. It’s rational to imagine that this sort of rationing will absolutely be a part of Obamacare, either now or in the future. If it’s the hyperbole of the phrase “death panels” (as well as the fact that the hated Sarah Palin used it) that gets the goat of the Left, then let’s just call them “rationing of life-saving or life-extending care.”

Paglia half gets it, too

The New Neo Posted on by

I wrote of Peggy Noonan the other day that, although she’s beginning to “get” Obama and what he’s about, she’s only halfway there. Noonan still thinks he’s just receiving bad advice or making missteps, and that he’s not the master of his fate and the captain of his own policies.

I beg to differ. I think he’s revealing his true nature and ideology more and more. But I also know that:

…Noonan (and certain others) who fell for Obama hard during the campaign now find themselves suffering the pangs that disappointed lovers often feel, and a similar reluctance to face the truth that they were hoodwinked and used by a con artist.

Happens all the time…But as I said, hope dies hard. Very hard indeed.

Now comes Camille Paglia, a very different sort from Noonan but suffering from a version of the same problem. Paglia liked (and still likes) and supports Obama. But her innate honesty and common sense in some areas (not foreign policy, unfortunately) forces her into noticing just how terrible he’s been as President.

Read Paglia’s recent piece in Salon, and you’ll witness a person struggling with the clash of prior beliefs vs. present observations. If Obama is so smart, and good, and well-meaning, then why is he doing all these bad (or stupid, or destructive) things?

As so many others have done, Paglia blames Obama’s failings on bad advice. Just get rid of the bad company he keeps, and all will be well. She ignores the fact that Obama picked many of these people (not Pelosi, of course, but the non-elected ones), and that furthermore he’s been surrounded by bad company all his life.

What’s more, as he so often and repetitively reminds us, he’s the President. He sets the agenda. He can fight or criticize Pelosi or the DNC or the health care reform bill or the specifics in it if he wants to. Clearly, for the most part he does not want to, except on very rare occasions, obliquely and weakly and through third persons.

But Paglia can’t recognize that Obama is the major architect of his own policies—not yet, at least. She blames everyone else (and also seems to hold a completely bizarre perception of the cold and ruthless Axelrod as charming):

I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, and hope it’s a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.

Paglia sees the problem with the health care reform bill clearly enough, and expresses her frustration with vigor (I’m editing out the obligatory swipes at Bush and Iraq that pepper her prose):

There is plenty of blame to go around. Obama’s aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land. The president is promoting [a] colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation…

You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you’re happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.

Paglia confesses her confusion, though, as to Obama’s motives. This is where she (like so many others) shows her reluctance to follow her own line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and to blame Obama himself fully and squarely. In an analogy I’ve used before (and will probably use again), Paglia is like a wife who’s found the lipstick on the collar and all the little love notes to another woman, and is still so in love with her husband and so desirous of saving her marriage that she’s struggling against accepting the truth that she’s been betrayed by a stinker.

But Paglia’s still thinking, at least, and asking the right questions:

I just don’t get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.

Girlfriend, let me help out and connect the dots for you. The insane rush, the failure to give the American people the details, are purposeful and not accidental. They are cheating on us, and “they” includes Obama.

They are lying, and they know it. Have you not seen this video?

Those “soothing lullaby tones” you hear are the sound of con artists trying to sweet talk us, to rush us into accepting an agenda that is quite different from the one they are pretending to offer: one that will grow government, increase their power, and end up crowding out private health insurance, rationing health care in a more draconian fashion, lining the pockets of their friends and supporters, demonizing capitalism, and socializing medicine as a step in their continuing quest to socialize this country.

What would it take to get Paglia and so many others to see this? A lot, because it involves a very basic change of perception, a loss of faith in their own previous judgment about Obama and the Democrats as a whole. Apparently not even the following is enough to cause Paglia to feel buyer’s remorse about her vote:

The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration’s outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable “casual conversations” to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.

If that’s not enough to constitute a smoking gun for Paglia, what would be?

The Left tells the truth about itself: the end justifies the means

The New Neo Posted on by

The title of this op-ed by LA Times columnist Dan Neil caught my eye: “It’s Time to Fight Dirty.”

The piece is an admonition to the Left to take the gloves off (and here I thought it already had!) and win what Neil defines as the “war on words” on health care. Neil is angry and frustrated that:

…liberal progressives cannot seem to get on top of any public policy debate, cannot seem to win any war of words — which is just weird because you have to assume there are many more English majors among liberals.

While opinions on health-care reform break sharply along partisan lines, with most Democrats in favor and most Republicans opposed, independent voters strongly oppose the health-care reform measures pending in Congress by a whopping 70 percent to 27 percent, according to a recent Pew Research poll. How could the left possibly be losing the debate on health-care reform when its opponent is the roundly loathed health insurance industry — an ongoing criminal syndicate, in my view, that demands protection money from sick people?

Earth to Neil: maybe it’s phrases like that one at the end of your quote, comparing the health insurance industry to a criminal syndicate without even attempting to back up such an assertion. Maybe it’s that the health insurance industry isn’t quite so “roundly loathed” as you assume (if you could get out of your liberal echo chamber and pay attention to what the public actually believes rather than what you think it should believe), as polls indicate.

And maybe, just maybe, the whole thing isn’t just about spin or winning a war on words. Maybe facts are important, as well. I know that may be a novel thought, but maybe most Americans are angry at the actual provisions of the health care reform bill and upset about the ways in which it will impact their lives, as well as the obfuscation of the current Congress and adminstration about what those facts might even be, and their generalizations and condescending rhetoric (“just trust us and all will be well”) on the subject.

Maybe the poor track record of the stimulus bill also has a bit to do with the distrust of many Independents and other middle-of-the-roaders, who are not astroturfers after all.

In other words, maybe you need to think less about rhetoric and more about substance.

But the most interesting part of Neil’s piece by far was its ending, which doesn’t try to hide Neil’s conviction that anything is justified in this all-important rhetorical fight. If it’s all about demagoguery, the trick is to be a more effective and more ruthless demagogue than the other guy [emphasis mine]:

There’s some hope on the horizon, though, in the ad from Americans United for Change…The ad, titled GOP Rx, debuted last week. To a kicky bass riff and the occasional cash register ring, the female narrator asks, “Why do the insurance companies and the Republicans want to kill President Obama’s health-insurance reform?”

Note the yoking of insurance companies to Republicans. Note also that it’s Obama’s health insurance reform. Evil insurance.

The ad then lights into Cigna Corp. CEO Ed Hanway, who is retiring with a $73 million golden parachute. The GOP’s prescription for the health-care crisis? “Be as rich as Ed and you’ll be happy, too.”

Of course it’s disingenuous. Executive compensation at insurance companies is at best peripheral to escalating health-care costs. For all we know, Mr. Hanway may be one of the good guys.

The important thing is that the ad hominem ad is pointed, shrewd and manipulative. And yes, it’s class warfare. But then again, this is war.

Thanks for the warning.

The natural turner and the fouette

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back, in a post on the subject of turns in dance, I wrote:

Certain people are…that rare phenomenon known as “natural turners.” Some strange trick of brain and inner ear, some unusual sense of centered balance, allows them to turn easily almost from the moment the step is first introduced to them.

The following is an example of what I was talking about. It’s almost unbelievable how straight a plumb line this dancer’s body makes, how impervious to skew she is, how almost inhumanly rock-steady as she balances on the tiniest of pivots. She even changes her “spot” in the middle of the whole thing, making a complete revolution with that as well (a “spot” is the place a dancer focuses the eyes and head in order to keep from getting too dizzy):

The turn this dancer is demonstrating is known as the fouette—a word that means “whip.” I think you can see why it’s been applied to that particular movement. The trajectory of the leg as it quickly unfolds leads the body into the turn with a whipping force that isn’t easy to control, to say the least.

But you know what? I don’t care much for any of it. And this isn’t only because I was never all that good at fouettes, especially when on pointe.

Like most steps in ballet, the technique required of dancers performing the fouette has become more extreme. It used to be enough just to do them; the step itself elicited oohs and ahs. Now, multiple turns embedded within the fouettes (as you see in this video at the beginning and end) have become required in order to satisfy the jaded palates of the dance consumers, used to gymnastics rather than finesse, athleticism rather than art, tricks rather than sublimity.

I have searched You Tube for an example of fouettes that would partake of artistry. I couldn’t find any, even in older clips featuring dancers I admire greatly. It seems it doesn’t matter who does them, or how well or how poorly; they’re a trick that doesn’t interest me at all, although I admire the strength and balance required because I know how exceptionally difficult it is.

Why Honduras matters (cont.)

The New Neo Posted on by

I know I keep harping on Obama’s reaction to Zelaya and Honduras, even though for most people it’s small potatoes compared to some of the other issues facing us, such as health care “reform.”

But Honduras matters deeply to me—perhaps because liberty matters deeply to me. And I found that it was a turning point for me with Obama.

Why? I think commenter “Synova” has expressed the reason why at least as well as I could, and perhaps better (except that I would change the word “frightened” in the first sentence to “angered”):

More than anything else that Obama has done, his support for Zelaya frightened me.

It indicated that Obama had no concept of the basis of freedom and no understanding that what makes us great is that *he* can be elected and become the President without bloodshed.

It demonstrated ignorance of the supremacy of the Constitution (rule of law) over Democracy and why that even matters to both Peace and Freedom. It proved that he has no personal concept of the reality of the tyranny of the majority.

Who is Zelaya? For that matter, who is Chavez?

Who are these men that their countries can not function without them? Are there no competent people in Zelaya’s party to step in, interchangable, into the top slot while Zelaya makes himself useful in service in other ways?

That Obama seemed only to see Zelaya’s planned election and circumvention of the Honduran constitution as a matter of majority democratic rule showed him to be shockingly unaware that such a thing as the need for checks and balances even exists.

What does that say about how he views HIS service?

Obama’s Emily Litella moment on Honduras: “never mind”

The New Neo Posted on by

Good news is always welcome, and it’s very good news indeed that Obama seems to have backed off at least somewhat on his support of would-be-dictator Zelaya.

The reason is unclear. Perhaps he saw how revelatory his previous position was about his own possible agenda. Perhaps he got too much flak even from his supporters, who were having trouble defending his indefensible policy. Perhaps the eloquence of the other side got to him—for example, when Micheletti’s excellent op-ed defending the actions of the anti-Zelaya forces in Honduras was published in the WSJ, and even the usual Obama-friendly LA Times allowed Miguel Estrada to have a definitive say on the matter, eviscerating whatever was left of Obama’s lame legal “argument.”

Whatever, right?:

As it turns out, the U.S. Senate can’t find any legal reason why the Honduran Supreme Court’s refusal to let Zelaya stay in office beyond the time allowed by Honduran law constitutes a “military coup.”

This marks a shift. The U.S. at first supported Zelaya, a man who had been elected democratically but didn’t govern that way. Now they’re reaching out to average Hondurans, the real democrats.

Sure, the U.S. continues to condemn Zelaya’s ouster and still seeks mediation of the dispute through Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. But no U.S. sanctions means Hondurans have won.

Let’s hope so, despite the best efforts of President Obama to thwart them. And don’t sit on a hot stove till the MSM reports this properly. Wouldn’t do to let Obama look so wrong, and so stupid.

But things are looking up for the brave people of Honduras, and perhaps even other Latin American nations as well:

This isn’t to say U.S. policymakers are happy or that the dispute is over. Honduras is still suspended from the Organization of American States, its trade has been disrupted, Venezuela’s oil is still cut off, and its officials still can’t get U.S. visas. But the worst is over. Whatever changes that come will be by Honduran consent alone…This, by the way, also opens the door to a return of democracy in troubled nations like Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela. People in those nations can take courage from Honduras.

People in those nations? How about people here, as well? After all, it may be that we’re fighting against a similar menace. Who would have thought that Honduras would be an inspiring beacon of defiance against a US administration intent on stifling liberty?

[Hat tip: commenter “Baklava.”]

[ADDENDUM: Commenter “MrsWhatsit” points out that Obama may be pulling a double Emily Litella. Never mind the never mind?

Here’s the relevant quote, from today’s NY Times:

“Let me be very clear in our belief that President Zelaya was removed from office illegally, that it was a coup and that he should return,” Mr. Obama said. He dismissed as “hypocrisy” the criticism from some in Latin America who say the United States has done too little to pressure Honduras’s de facto government to return Mr. Zelaya to power ”” among them Mr. Zelaya himself.

“The critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras,” he said, “are the same people who say that we’re always intervening, and that the Yankees need to get out of Latin America.”

They are? I suppose a few of them are the same people, but most of them are not. That’s been a cry of the Left for many years, not the Right—although of course some on the Right, especially its more isolationist wing, echo it. But it’s neither the Left, nor the isolationist wing of the Right, who are Obama’s main critics for his support of Zelaya.

Not to mention the fact that there is still absolutely no legal support for Obama’s assertion that Zelaya was removed illegally, or that it was done through a coup (plus, Obama’s critics are not even asking him to intervene in support of Zelaya’s opponents—just that he be neutral, stay out of it, and let the Hondurans handle it). Au contraire; the law is squarely behind Zelaya’s removal. But we can’t very well expect Obama to understand anything about law, especially of the constitutional variety, can we?]

A new low for Pelosi: calls opponents “un-American”

The New Neo Posted on by

Okay, maybe it’s not a new low for Pelosi; there’ve been so many.

But this is pretty far down on the list [emphasis mine]:

Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at [health care reform] for decades.

Health care is complex. It touches every American life. It drives our economy. People must be allowed to learn the facts.

Isn’t projection wonderful?

I’d counsel Pelosi and Hoyer to practice what they preach—but I know my advice would fall on deaf ears. In their opinion, populist dissent is just fine—as long as it emanates from the Left.

[HOTE: Here’s Boehner’s rejoinder.]

Education, Ayers, Obama, and “the great march”

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Wandriann” asked recently [emphasis mine]:

How in earth is it possible that ”˜Middle America’ combined with the solid US institutions does not make this weird kind of thing [the current Democrat agenda and methods] impossible?…Is this still the bill of the sixties, the luciferic, youthful rebellion against age-old common sense and wisdom? Has the ”˜great march through the institutions’ finally succeeded?

The short answer is: yes, especially in our press and our public education system.

It’s my impression that more people are aware of the press’s Leftward drift than of the extent of the change in the schools, although I could be wrong about that. There are also alternatives readily available to the liberal/Left press, such as Fox News and periodicals such as the Weekly Standard, National Review, the Washington Examiner, and sometimes the Wall Street Journal, as well as blogs such as this and larger ones.

The takeover of the educational system has been more insidious. Yes, there are private schools that offer a more conservative option, but that requires a commitment of money and an amount of effort that most people are neither willing nor able to expend. Also, what happens in a school system not only happens to our youngest and therefore most easily molded citizens, it also occurs (at least for the most part) outside of the awareness of their parents, unless the parents happen to be monitoring what’s going on very closely by reading textbooks and assignments and quizzing their children. Even then a great deal of it can be missed.

Paradoxically, the school systems that are considered the best and most modern, with the smartest student bodies—for example, in districts near universities—are often the worst in this regard. But the problem has infected the public education system as a whole. How else could a man such as Bill Ayers become a highly regarded educator, and his curriculum one of the most popular and influential in the field?

Sol Stern, who has written extensively about Ayers and education, was on Ayers’s case on this subject even before Obama was a candidate for president and the Ayers connection became an issue for that reason. Here Stern is in 2006 on how terrorist Ayers came to see the educational system as another way to steer this country Leftwards, and an effective and legal one at that (I will quote at some length because I think it’s important, but reading the whole thing is even more informative):

Ayers’s spectacular second act began when he enrolled at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1984. Then 40, he planned to stay just to get a teaching credential. (He had taught in a “Freedom School” during his pre-underground student radical days.) But he experienced an epiphany in a course taught by Maxine Greene, a leading light of the “critical pedagogy” movement. As Ayers wrote later, he took fire from Greene’s lectures on how the “oppressive hegemony” of the capitalist social order “reproduces” itself through the traditional practice of public schooling””critical pedagogy’s fancy way of saying that the evil corporations exercise thought control through the schools…

It hadn’t occurred to Ayers that an ed-school professor could speak or write as an authentic American radical…Greene told future teachers that they could help change this bleak landscape by developing a “transformative” vision of social justice and democracy in their classrooms. Her vision, though, was a far cry from the democratic optimism of the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr., which most parents would endorse. Instead, critical pedagogy theorists nurse a rancorous view of an America in which it is always two minutes to midnight and a knock on the door by the thought police is imminent. The education professors feel themselves anointed to use the nation’s K”“12 classrooms to resist this oppressive system. Thus Maxine Greene urged teachers not to mince words with children about the evils of the existing social order. They should portray “homelessness as a consequence of the private dealings of landlords, an arms buildup as a consequence of corporate decisions, racial exclusion as a consequence of a private property-holder’s choice.”…

All music to Bill Ayers’s ears. The ex-Weatherman glimpsed a new radical vocation. He dreamed of bringing the revolution from the streets to the schools. And that’s exactly what he has managed to do.

It’s also instructive to take a look at what passed (and passes?) for a doctoral dissertation in the field of education at the prestigious Columbia Teachers College back then (and probably now as well). Stern certainly has:

In record time Ayers acquired an Ed.D. with a dissertation titled “The Discerning ”˜I’: Accounts of Teacher Self-Construction Through the Use of Co-Biography, Metaphor, and Image.” There wasn’t much biography, metaphor, or image in the 180-page text. Ayers’s research consisted solely of a few days spent interviewing and observing the classroom practices of three nursery school teachers he knew personally.

On the basis of research such as this as well as his family connections, Ayers was on his way to becoming influential not only in the field of education in the city of Chicago, but in the country as a whole [emphasis mine]:

With his Teachers College credential in hand, Ayers landed an ed-school appointment back in Chicago, where his father was CEO of Commonwealth Edison and nicely plugged in to the city’s political establishment. These days, Ayers carries the joint titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. One of his several books on the moral imperative of teaching for social justice is a bestseller in ed-school courses. Like many other tenured and well-heeled radicals, Ayers keeps hoping for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism.

That was written in 2006; now Ayers must feel he’s finally got it, in the person of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, et. al., although you might say it’s been more of an evolution (devolution?) than a revolution. But that was exactly the aim of the Long March of Ayers and others—and he is hardly alone—through our educational system.

And if I sound like a paranoid McCarthy-esque alarmist, so be it. The evidence is in; just take a look at the reading lists of so many public schools today as well as the curricula, and you will see it. And we also see the fruits of the labors of Ayers and company in our young people’s relative ignorance of history and civics; the dwindling of the teaching of the Western canon as it has been “reframed” as the works of oppressive white men; the dominance of the tragic view of this country as a force for evil, one for which constant apologies and sacrifices are necessary; and the decline of critical thinking and the rise of moral relativism and post-modernism.

All of these trends are now amply demonstrated in our educator-in-chief, President Obama, as well as his wife Michelle, who’s only been really proud of America in her adult life since it began to take her husband’s ambitions seriously.

Whatever Obama’s direct connection to Ayers (and I continue to think it’s greater than we know), his philosophical connection is clear. The patience of the 60s radicals has been rewarded at last, and this accounts at least in part for the fact that they—and Obama—are so unwilling to compromise their radical agenda at the moment, even in the face of mounting opposition. They know best, after all; they’re our teachers, and we the students.

[NOTE: And speaking of Ayers and education, he and his cronies had big plans for our re-education back then. And if that failed, there was always murder:

And speaking of murder, yesterday was the fortieth anniversary of the Manson gang murders, a very sad chapter in American life. Let’s revisit the commentary of Ayers’s wife-to-be—and current Northwestern University law professor—on the subject.]

Obama’s hypocrisy: even worse than you think

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember that recent speech in which Obama told the opposition to shut up? In my post on the subject I wrote:

But what I see in this video that is new is the naked, unashamed need to silence the opposition, especially ironic in a man who posed in his campaign as the great listener, the great uniter, the great champion of dialogue. And I use that word “posed” advisedly: it was a pose, and now there’s no need for him to pretend any more.

It turns out that I was wrong—about the need to pretend, that is. In fact, Obama still feels the need to pretend, and did so in that very same speech!

The word “two-faced” doesn’t even begin to express it. Dr. Obama and Mr. Soetoro, anyone?

Advising Obama: “if only Stalin knew”

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a growing strain of op-ed pieces that involve giving helpful advice to Obama on how to rescue his administration by tacking back towards the center.

Yesterday I mentioned Peggy Noonan’s, which contained the following apologia and guidance for the President:

[The Democrats and the DNC] are mocking and menacing concerned citizens. This only makes a hot situation hotter. Is this what the president wants? It couldn’t be. But then in an odd way he sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office…You cannot allow your allies to call people protesting a health-care plan “extremists” and “right wing,” or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They’re citizens. They’re concerned. They deserve respect…

The president should call in his troops and his Congress and announce a rethinking. There are too many different bills, they’re all a thousand pages long, no one has time to read them, no one knows what’s going to be in the final one, the public is agitated, the nation’s in crisis, the timing is wrong, we’ll turn to it again””but not now. We’ll take a little longer, ponder every aspect, and make clear every complication.

You know what would happen if he did this? His numbers would go up.

Maybe earlier they would, but I’m not so sure anymore. Many people at this point would see any tacking to the center as a temporary and strategic move on Obama’s part and distrust it, although it would certainly be more welcome than the policies he’s pushing right now.

But the more basic error Noonan makes is that she assumes that the recent program of character assassination of the health care protestors isn’t what President Obama wants. There’s no evidence whatsoever to back that up, and plenty of evidence from his own mouth that he is fully on board with the program.

But Noonan (and certain others) who fell for Obama hard during the campaign now find themselves suffering the pangs that disappointed lovers often feel, and a similar reluctance to face the truth that they were hoodwinked and used by a con artist.

Happens all the time, I’m afraid. It happened during the Stalin years, as several commenters on the Noonan thread have pointed out (see this, for example). The phenomenon then was called “if only Stalin knew,” and was predicated on the belief that the bad stuff was happening outside of Stalin’s awareness and orchestrated by his underlings, and that if only Good Old Joe knew about it he’d stop it.

It seems laughable now. But as I said, hope dies hard. Very hard indeed. And this is especially true of many of those who voted for and supported Obama in the hope that he’d be the uniting and reasonable centrist he promised.

What was going on with them then, and what is going on now? If I wanted to be crude, I’d say that their bullshit detectors were and are seriously out of whack. Or, if I wanted to be more kind, I’d call it the need to believe in the goodness of this particular smooth-talking politician. Oh, and the fact that’s black, and that voting for him was a chance to strike a blow against racism in this country once and for all, didn’t hurt either in creating a false belief system based on wishful thinking about Obama.

Just today we have another piece cut from the same “if only Stalin knew” cloth as the others. It’s by Doug Schoen, who was an adviser to President Clinton who counseled Bill on his successful mid-course correction. As Schoen describes it:

When I first met with Mr. Clinton following the devastating 1994 mid-term election, he put it to me this way:

“I’m way out of position. I was elected as a centrist, and now I’m perceived as a liberal Democrat. I’ve got to change that, and I’ve got to put some space between myself and Congress.”

And change that we did — with a bold new agenda that included a balanced budget that protected Medicare and Medicaid, protection of the environment, frank acknowledgement of the limits of government, bi-partisan welfare reform and tough anti-crime legislation.

Mr. Obama still has time to avoid repeating the mistakes of the first Clinton term, but it will take a fundamental and near-term shift in ideology, approach and commitment to regain the momentum he earned after a campaign in which he promised policy objectives similar to those offered during the 1992 election.

Anything wrong with this picture? Plenty, in my opinion. It relies on what you might call the “old template,” the idea of Obama as a Clintonesque politician who is somewhat to the Left but more fundamentally a pragmatist who is flexible in his ideology and responsive to the wishes of the American people.

That was one of my hopes during the campaign, although I always considered it to be a long shot. But I abandoned that dream long ago; the evidence is too great that Obama is an ideologue who is deeply committed to a far Left agenda. Nearly every step he has taken as President reveals this fact, and those who don’t see it or at least strongly suspect it at this point are deeply into denial. That would include the advice-giving Mr. Schoen, who is a good Party apparatchik who doesn’t quite get what he’s dealing with:

Let’s be clear, the Republicans do not have any policies and they do not have any ideas. Their agenda is based totally on opposition to the Democrats and so far this is proving to be successful. But with a bipartisan, centrist agenda that emphasizes growth, low taxes, fiscal prudence and common sense policies, Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats can isolate Republicans — whose approval rating has fallen to a record low — while preventing the loss of 40-50 vulnerable Democratic House seats won during the last two Congressional elections, and as many as seven in the Senate.

Schoen offers good advice, advice that Clinton took and it propelled him to a second term. But Obama’s not listening. He already knows these simple and actually rather obvious facts, and is ignoring them. Obama has a very different agenda, although he doesn’t mind having people such as Schoen perpetuate the “if only Stalin knew” narrative to serve as cover.