MORE OF THE SAME CHANGE

During the 2008 campaign, the charge routinely levelled against the Republican ticket was that a vote for McCain-Palin was a vote for 4-more years of failed Bush policies.

Let’s see if we can identify a few of those dreaded policies which had to be avoided:

1. "Out-of-control" deficit spending
2. That dreaded Patriot Act that infringed on American privacy
3. Too many secret meetings and back-room deals conducted behind closed doors
4. Unilateral decision-making that negatively affected our allies
5. Excessive use of Executive Orders
6. Holding enemy combatants in a Guantanamo prison (instead of a mainland prison)
7. An Oval Office that acted in spite of the will of the populace
8. Escalating war efforts in Afghanistan
9. A chief executive who used the process of reconciliation to get its way
10. A president who spent his time on everything BUT jobs
11. A president who avoided press conferences
12. And others

What was the political reason for avoiding John Sidney McCain, again? Now that President Barak Hussein Obama has been in office, aren’t we glad we avoided more-of-the-same for all that “hope and change?”

NOW WE KNOW: THE PRESIDENT IS ANTI-SEMITIC

Let me make sure I understand this. Since the president's inauguration the hue and cry has been that those who speak out against the policies of Barak Obama are racists. This argument is an attempt to emotionally hamstring and silence opposing views. No one wants to be accused of being a racists.

As a child of the 60’s, I remember all too well the violence that held our country in a chokehold. I witnessed it firsthand. I have also seen those tensions relegated to the history books as Caucasians have, on the whole, moved beyond racist attitudes.

But let us hold onto that thought for a moment; that to oppose President Obama is to proclaim one’s racist ways. There is a political reason to prop up such propaganda, but for those out there who hold fast to this dogma, let us see how it stands up to scrutiny.

This week the international press reported over and over again how Barak Obama deeply humiliated Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The issue? Israel’s construction of homes in a largely Arab section of her capital city, Jerusalem.

Given the premise that to oppose a national leader’s policies constitutes racism, must it therefore follow that President Obama is an anti-Semite? Clearly he opposes Netanyahu’s position on Jewish settlements. Further, by demanding that these settlements cease, Barak Obama insists on racial segregation: keeping peoples apart rather than bringing them together in community—a throwback to failed American policy over the last two centuries.

To add further injury to insult, our commander-in-chief refused to dine with Jews, Benjamin Netanyau and his staff. How else could this rude behavior be interpreted other than as anti-Semitic?

Following the established pattern, that opposition to a national leader is a clear and present indication of racism, then I guess we must also confess that the president of the United States is guilty of anti-Semitism.

The shoe is now firmly on the other foot and it feels quite uncomfortable.

I did not make these racist rules, the Left did. I did not start the folderal that to oppose a leader’s policies is equal to being a racist. I am however, applying the same political reason they have promoted, which of course, demonstrates no reason at all.

So let us be done with this once and for all! Those who speak out against the policies of Barak Obama or the Democrats are not racists lashing out from a place of emotional desperation. To falsely accuse fellow Americans of such behavior only casts a dark cloud on those who profess such shallow nonsense.

WHAT WE HAVE BECOME

I received this note from a friend of mine this week, and share it now with you.—J. H.

“In my youth, there were groups of passionate protestors who believed that their national leaders were taking America down the wrong path. They feared that the federal government had taken their rights away, was becoming too powerful, and was flat out ignoring what the people wanted. They went to rallies, they shouted to the rooftops, and even though they were ridiculed by the leaders and the media, they ultimately brought about political change.

“Today, those protesters are in Congress and the White House. They are making sweetheart deals above our heads, they belittle those who disagree with them, and they ignore those who protest. CNN says 56% of Americans believe the government has become so powerful, it is an immediate threat to our rights and freedoms.

“I guess we become what we fear. And I fear what we have become.”

—A. Bartmess

MALAISE OR INSURRECTION?

Today, at the recommendation of a trusted source, I read The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee (ISBN 987-1-58435-080-4). From what I can gather online, the response to this book is all across the board, from pundits to professors either singing its praise or denouncing it as "evil."

This English translation from the original French is, without a doubt, well-written. The use of language is often compelling. The vocabulary is above average. The play on what many people fear may be going on in their own society is well executed. At times the text address very real issues head on and forthrightly, topics which deserve further exploration.

Written about the French landscape, its subject matter resonates very well for the U.S. As our administration has moved from bank crisis to health crisis, from auto crisis to housing crisis, from debt crisis to who knows what new crisis the boy who cried wolf will profess tomorrow, the words on page 14, "Crisis is a means of governing. In a world that seems to hold together only through the infinite management of its own collapse," sound every bit as relevant for Washington as for Paris.

Similarly, when I read, "For a century and a half, the national school system has been producing a type of state subjectivity that stands out among all others" (p. 37), it can be difficult to remember that the authors are not addressing strictly American issues.

And on the whole, I was pleased to see that the woes of the world were not left to rest at the feet of the Christian church, the standard crutch for blame-laying. Certainly Christianity has had Her struggles with corruption and oppression, but the authors either did not see the church as a factor, or at least not as a relevant factor.

Even so, the final analysis of the book left me not merely skeptical, but gravely disappointed. Whether comparing the Israelites under Pharaoh in the book of Exodus or the plights of New York street gangs,  their conclusions that we live in an imperfect world are hardly new. The complaints, as real and valid as they may be, lead them to a very destructive and self-important decision, that to fight back they must destroy. That anarchy will lead to some utopia. That communes will some how rise above the timeless human tendency toward laws, order, and eventual corruption.

Sadly, as many times as the insurrection they espouse has been tried in the annuls of human history, that utopia never rises from the embers like a hallowed phoenix, but instead, rears its ugly heads as a deceptive doppelgänger, leading to the same eventual imperfect system, with imperfect rules and subjugation as any other manmade institution. Their solution, which can only thrive on the very political and financial systems they so vehemently denounce, can only lead to the same end.

Is it a dangerous book? If someone reads it, becomes excited and says, "Yea, let's rebel," without a thought to what comes after, then yes, it is a very dangerous book. The Coming Insurrection artfully guides readers, potentially sympathetic or impressionable readers, to that motivation. It spells out, in no uncertain terms that the world is a mess and needs help.

But for all its guidance toward militant anarchy, the book offers no thought or sagacity as to what comes after an insurrection: the brutality, the turf wars, the power struggles, and then the inevitable rebuilding of society along the same social evolution as has occurred in every century, in every millennia of mankind's habitation of this blue marble we call home. Their argument, ultimately, lacks political reason.

It is worth reading. It is worth understanding just how far "they," the Invisible Committee and those like them may be willing to go to accomplish their ends. But even so, the very idea of a "committee," invisible and hiding in the shadows, handing down directives to their followers is anathematic to the gospel they preach. Even in The Coming Insurrection's attempt to throw off the confines of society, they give birth to the next, setting the cycle in motion once more.

King Solomon said it best, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

If you are so inclined, and want to save a few dollars or keep a few dollars from reaching the invisible authors, you can read the entire text at http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/texts/the-coming-insurrection/