If you're a little concerned about Obama's plan for "Universal Voluntary Public Service," you may want to read about his boot camp for radicals: Public Allies.
In all my life I have never seen such intense emotion surrounding a leader as that evoked by Barack Obama. Even Ronald Reagan, the Gipper himself, didn't enjoy the kind of prostration of the will offered to the president-elect by hordes of followers. Yet, while people the world over are imbued with "hope" and chant Obama's slogan "Yes, we can!" – for instance, the French are using their translation of it, "Oui, nous pouvons!" – some of the intense emotion is of a very different species.
It is fear.
In all my life I have never seen an American politician who could make so many Americans' blood run cold. Some may mention the Left's feelings regarding Reagan or President Bush, but there is no equivalency. For all of leftists' bluster and melodrama, they weren't afraid of those men as much as they, well, just hated them. Sure, leftist ideologues said those two Republicans were scary, but the same people also said that each one was both dumb and Machiavellian. Hatred is an emotion, and emotion isn't logical; it just conjures up whatever feels right at the moment.
In Obama's case, however, I sense a real, palpable, go-white-in-the-face fear akin to what might be evident in someone who has a gun put to his head or believes he has seen a demon. I know for instance, a stout-hearted man of rough-hewn breeding and my political persuasion who has said about the impending changing of the guard, "I'm afraid."
However, he is a right-winger like me, and just as with the leftist ideologues who "feared" Reagan and Bush, we aren't exactly a representative sample of America.
But this is what is truly, well, scary. I have seen this fear not just in rightist politics wonks but also in people who are not in the habit of troubling much over politics at all. For example, I was surprised recently when a woman I know – someone who could easily abide by the injunction, "Never discuss religion or politics" – said in a most sober fashion that she was thinking of leaving the country. Then there is an elderly Jewish gentleman of my acquaintance who lived through WWII; this man could be described as almost apolitical, was probably more apt to vote Democrat than Republican and isn't given to issuing political opinion, let alone hyperbole. Yet when someone else broached the subject of Obama's legions of fawning admirers, he broke his pattern and interjected, "This is like what happened with Hitler. . .."
Then consider this statement printed a couple of months ago:
"Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas. They plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they'll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of 'social change.'"
Is this the rambling of some right-wing site occupying the dark recesses of the Web or a radical on a soapbox? I mean, after all, it's not the kind of thing you read in the New York Times. Actually, it's excerpted from a September 4 piece in Investor's Business Daily (IBD), a mainstream paper of great repute.
Are all these people delusional? Are they simply stuck in time and afraid of change?
Maybe it's that they have some idea what that change will be.
Fear can certainly be and often is irrational. Yet, generally speaking, the most real fear comes from real threats. A ghost story may scare a child, but not nearly as much as if he actually sees a ghost. Imagining what it's like to have a gun to your head may be scary, but not as much so as if you feel cold, blue steel pressed against your temple. And I sense real fear.
What is there to be afraid of? A good place to start is with the content of the IBD story cited earlier.
Most of us have heard Obama state that, "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the military. This alone is enough to send shivers up an informed spine, but it gets even worse when you hear the specifics. Obama intends to use a radical activist group he helped found called "Public Allies" as the model for, as IBD puts it, ". . . his Orwellian program, 'Universal Voluntary Public Service.'"
IBD reports on the inducements used to entice young people into this national service corps and its true aim:
. . . they'll get a monthly stipend of up to $1,800, plus paid health and child care. They also get a post-service education award of $4,725 that can be used to pay off past student loans or fund future education.
But its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about 'social change' through threats, pressure, tension and confrontation – the tactics used by the father of community organizing, Saul "The Red" Alinsky.
As bad as this sounds, I believe the reality will be far worse. I'll explain where I think this will lead, but first we must understand a collective psychological phenomenon that is now apparent.
When Abraham in the Bible was prepared to obey God's command and sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah, it was, and this may shock some, understandable. God is perfect and the author of morality, and while we may not always understand His ways, the Divine Mind always knows what is best. So the story is a lesson of faith and trust in God. God cannot be wrong. You don't question God.
Whether you have faith or not, it's easy enough to grasp that such deference is understandable when talking about a perfect, divine being. But it's downright dangerous when applied to a human being. Any human being.
Unfortunately, while the deific monikers applied to Obama such as "The One" or "The Messiah" have become grist for comedians, humorists and just plain old wise-guys, they're no laughing matter. They reflect a real spirit that has imbued millions, and this is why far scarier than Obama are his followers. They have deified the man, and you don't question your god. I truly believe that just as many Germans followed Hitler over the precipice during WWII, there are many Americans today who would follow Obama unquestioningly, unthinkingly, unknowingly – into the fires of Hell.
If this sounds as laughable as deific labels, know that it isn't radical to claim that a continually-recycling historical pattern will manifest itself again and can do so here; radical is to imply that within American borders the laws of man's nature are somehow suspended. In nature (not culture), Americans are no different from the people who followed Hitler, Mussolini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Pol Pot or Lenin. The tendency to deify leaders is universal.
With this understanding, I'll now give you my prediction as to how Obama's Universal Voluntary Public Service program will evolve.
With his oratorical skills and a complicit media, the president-elect will be able to sell this scheme with talk about security, equality and liberating the downtrodden. "It's the best way to combat crime, hopelessness and a lack of opportunity in the inner city," he will say. "And I know this well from my days as a community organizer on Chicago's mean streets." He will tout how it provides health care, education and skills to the have-nots, and his media-oiled silver tongue's salesmanship will prevail. It will be sold with a low-end price tag, and his fellow-traveler-controlled Houses will echo the message and deliver the votes. Of course, just like Social Security and a trove of other government programs, its cost will make a mockery of predictions. But Uncle Sam's budget projections aren't designed for budgets, but for marketing.
As always happens with such groups, program members will eventually be identified with some colloquial and catchy label. I can't tell you what it will be, only that it won't be Brownshirts or Blackshirts. And the official name of the program itself may even be changed a few years hence.
As with the Public Allies program, members will have to attend seminars and "retreats" where they will be indoctrinated with leftist ideology. Aside from learning how America is a "racist and "sexist" country, they will be taught that she is also ridden with "heterosexism," which, IBD writes, ". . . a Public Allies training seminar in Chicago describes as a negative byproduct of 'capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and male-dominated privilege.'" They will be taught that these evils can never be vanquished until every last vestige of traditional America is utterly destroyed.
The pressure to conform will be immense, as it always is in politically-correct entities. The corps will have a huge core of true believers, who will act as ideological hammers. They will preach diversity but practice conformity.
Just like Public Allies, this program may be birthed primarily in the inner cities. That is where Obama's main support is, and, as stated before, he will claim this is where the corps' help is needed most. It will then be empowered to do "social good," which could mean anything from helping at soup kitchens to recruiting those ripe for indoctrination to forming some kind of neighborhood crime watch. As for the last task, though, given the corps' ideology and the fact that it will be drawing members from high-crime areas initially, I expect it to contain a not insignificant criminal element. It will be corrupt from the get-go and may even assume the character of an organized crime syndicate.
But its "security" mandate will be chilling. In the name of combating garden-variety crime and, more specifically, terrorism, who knows what powers the corps will be granted? Will they one day help enforce an order to seize firearms, if not via direct action then through information gathering? I can't know exactly, but I do know the powers will be misused.
Over time, the program may be expanded to include a corps for even younger adolescents, perhaps starting at age 13 or 14. As before, I can't tell you exactly what it will be called, but it won't be "The Obama Youth" – not officially, anyway. And, certainly by this time, joining it will be the thing the "cool" kids do, sort of like the Boy Scouts' evil twin.
Then, the result may be that we will have, to use John Edwards' terminology, "two Americas": Those who belong to the corps and those who don't. But I think I know which of the two will be more formidable. Remember when the student thugs at Columbia University stormed a stage to stop Minutemen representatives from speaking? Similar things have happened at colleges throughout the country, and they give us a glimpse into the character of the corps. Just picture the same fascist-minded bullies, only more organized, more numerous, even more ideological and far, far bolder. And many authorities in the nation may tolerate their intimidation with a wink and a nod.
We should also take note of the program's name, Universal Voluntary Public Service. One of the definitions of "universal" is, "affecting, concerning, or involving all [emphasis mine]." And I suspect the word most likely to be dropped from the name eventually is not "universal" but "voluntary."
Of course, they don't call me the Amazing Kreskin. I'm no soothsayer and I could be wrong about many of the details I provided. But the fear is real and the historical allusions are valid.
Speaking of which, Georgia Congressman Paul Broun recently addressed the program and exhibited both fear and a grasp of history, saying:
That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist.
Of course, many will nevertheless say that such concerns are but the musings of the tin-foil hat crowd. But such scoffing is par for the course. As Professor Manfred Weidhorn of Yeshiva University wrote:
. . . even if you are prescient enough to observe oncoming evils, you are prevented from acting precisely because other people, being normal, lack your prescience. They therefore see you, rather than the evil person, as the deluded or warmongering malevolent soul. When Churchill warned about Hitler in the 1930s, many people became more upset with Churchill than with Hitler. The anomaly is that the prophet has therefore to wait for the evil to manifest itself and thereby to make everyone else see things the prophet's way. But by then the chance to do anything may be gone.
So there is an answer for those who would say, "You've thoroughly Godwinned yourself, Duke." If you bristle at the comparison and don't want to wear the shoe, then the onus is on you to be vigilant, to make sure it never, ever fits.
I tried explaining my concerns about Mr. Obama to my coworkers, to no avail. They were all so anti-Bush that they could only see how Barak Obama would "save" them from the "travesty that is Bush." They weren't interested in BO's message, except that it meant change. My pleas of "But what sort of change is he planning?" went unheard.
Your scenario is indeed frightening, mostly because it *sounds* so very good…"voluntary," "public service," — these are both good things. I myself joined the US Peace Corps when I was younger because it was a "voluntary public service" and when I first heard BO planning something like it, I thought, "Hey, how bad can that be?" But upon studying the ideology behind it, I can see how it could indeed become some sort of monster, especially if the "voluntary" part is dropped and it becomes compulsory.
I'm willing to let Mr. Obama prove himself, but I for one shall be watching him closely, and if I see even a hint of him causing this country to fall into the mindlessness of those who followed other dictators, I shall do my utmost (however little it may be) to be sure he does not get a chance at winning another four years. And no, that doesn't mean I want him martyred (which as I reread what I'm writing does seem to be my aim), but I don't want to lose the freedoms we do have.
"But upon studying the ideology behind it, I can see how it could indeed become some sort of monster, especially if the "voluntary" part is dropped and it becomes compulsory."
Obama Uber Alles!
While I was thinking about how the radical left is still attacking Bush and Palin, I also had an idea about Obama. Is it proper to still be attacking him, now that he has been elected? Then I thought about Tricky Dick. He got re-elected in November in a landslide and I voted for him both times, but I also recall that it was January when my allegiance turned away from him. All my GOP friends were hanging in with him, and I was the only one saying "Hey, it's obvious that he's a crook and he has to go". So, I guess it’s not too early to go after Obama.
"So, I guess it’s not too early to go after Obama."
Yet.
Curious and curiouser how could anyone think that the Omessiah would emulate the national socialist regime? Yet, we hear echos in his words delivered from on high exhorting the new civilian defence corps. This is not a situation to be viewed through rose colored glasses, it is a national tragedy.
We heard about Change (I remember the Carter campaign…change), yet we see actions that suggest more partisanship, retreads from other unsuccessful democrat administrations moving to new positions in this era of Change we can Trust!
In the developing situation it seems that giving a chance might the the formula to speed up destruction. Maybe obstruction is the only defense, along with building personal security plans.
By the way did I sneak enough cliches into this post?
I apologize for not being better informed, but what is the point of the Universal Voluntary Public Service? Why do we need it? Is it going to replace the military? If it's voluntary, will young people enter it instead of entering the military? And where does the brainwashing come in? I'm just confused. By the way the comparison to Hitler really gave me the chills. I always wondered how someone like Hitler could have attained power, and now I think I have my answer in the illuminati left's worshipped ascent.
I'm one of those liberal elites that everyone talks about.
Hi.
I don't know how you got the idea that this was a security force, but this is an expansion of the peace corps, americorps, and other volunteer services like that. It has nothing to do with security or armed forces.
I live in Milwaukee, one of the most segregated cities in America. I help out sometimes at homeless shelters and social justice programs, and I can honestly say that help and incentives for volunteerism are needed. I'm also a graduate student, so if this program can also help pay for education, so much the better. Lord knows we need more Americans with knowledge and critical though.
Why are you all so afraid? Fascism is all about dividing people and hating those who are different, but I don't see how we liberals area doing that. We want one America, and I'd like to be part of the same communities as my conservative parents.
I do feel sorry that you're so afraid. What can we liberals do to make having a Democratic president less scary?
Nick,
Milwaukee Wisconsin
WiscoHippie
What can you do? If you have not already, just read Orwell's 1984 and Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and then come back a reassure me that your idea of incentives does not lead to these results. And quit talking about fascism as if it is a conservative thing. Hitler and Stalin were the same. I'm wondering which side of the devide you live on in Milwaukee, but I think I know.
I'm an American, Ivan, same as you. I think you've got the wrong idea about liberals and democrats in general.
WiscoHippie
An American maybe, but not like me. I agree we need more knowledgeable critical thinkers, and I acknowledge that some leftists have these features. Your veiled comments linking fascism with American conservatives do not show either knowledge or critical thinking. I can assume from your self-description that you know little about fascism or socialism. Since I was born in a time of fascism and communism and I’m married to a woman who grew up under the flag of the USSR, I can claim some knowledge of the subject. In my view leftists are either malevolent, ignorant, or simply do-gooders who believe in utopia. Which one are you?
I'm a do-gooder, which I attribute to my Christianity.
WiscoHippie
Christian is good, but it's meaningless in a political sense. It all depends on if you think Jesus would favor Karl Marx or Adam Smith. Since Marxists are atheists by definition, the question is simple for me. However, my reference to a belief in utopia is the critical thing. I think you would agree that Jesus preached the idea that we are all sinners and utopia is only available in heaven. Therefore it is incumbent on us to select the system that allows we sinners to attain heaven through free will. Big government is the anthesis of free will so support for leftist policies will only make it more difficult during our time on earth and for the attainment of eternal life. Truly charitable acts can only be performed by individuals and that is why they are called gifts rather than taxes.
WiscoHippie:
You *do* realize that National Socialism, generic Socialism, Communism, and so on, are all movements of the Left, eh? Fascism was a bit transcendental, in that it was a fusion of various beliefs and concepts from both sides and is very hard to define as "to the Right." And during the period of the Spanish Civil War through the end of WWII, Fascism had no problem agreeing with and supporting (and being supported by) movements of the Far Left – again, Communism and National Socialism.
You see, what people (almost exclusively of the Left) fail to note or acknowledge is that those Leftist movements are all *Radical* – a thing one would be quite hard-pressed to call most, if not all, Rightist political systems.
This is all simple history, the revisionist opinions of Academics bedamned.
1. Socialism and Communism are from the left, yes; National Socialism, though, is from the right. And I, too, am leftist. Hi.
2.Spanish Fascism was anti-communist. Where are you getting your facts?
3. Leftist movements are not always radical. In fact, they're the establishment in most of Western Europe, especially in Scandinavia, where folks are pretty happy with the way things are (at least those I've talked to). But radicalism isn't necessarily a bad thing (sometimes it is, but not all the time).
I'm unclear as to what your point is, though, and you need to check your facts as to what leftist and rightist are, and which systems/parties adhere to what.
Thanks for talking
Nick
Wisco,
Perhaps a definition of National Socialism would help you better understand the foundational components of its ideology:
National Socialism typically promotes uniting the working class of a specific ethnic, national, or racial group into a proletarian nation while opposing capitalism, communism, conservatism, international socialism, liberalism. It also opposes nations, ethnicities or other groups that are deemed to be enemies of National Socialism. – taken from http://www.wikipedia.org
Now perhaps my understanding of the terms "left" and "right" in the context of American politics is deficient, but it is not typically the "right", in my understading, who advocates the elevation of the proletariat and opposes capitalism, while also suppressing dissent and rights of those who believe differently. Authoritarianism is a product of the "left". Socialism is a product of the "left". Authoritarian socialism is a combination of two products of the "left". National socialism was not, is not, and has never been, a "rightist" concept.
you need to check your facts as to what leftist and rightist are, and which systems/parties adhere to what.
You'd do well to take your own advice.
I pray to God that your graduate work isn't in political science…
WH: I provided a time-span beginning around the start of the Spanish Civil War (e.g. around the rise of Hitler); I did not discuss the peculiar Fascism of Spain itself.
If my point was unclear, re-read the entire thread. These movements are virtually all from the Left, not the Right.
On reflection, perhaps I should not have used the Spanish Civil War as an loose indicator of a start-date, since it does appear to imply I am including it in my post; my mistake. But that *is* the period when Fascism (in Italy and other European states) and National Socialism were on a steep rise to power.
Wisco
If you insist on looking at the world of politics in a one dimensional right/left way there is little that anyone can write that will convince you, so I withdraw from this conversation.
Nazism is "right-wing" only because Hitler had the audacity to invade Papa Joe's Mother Russia.
Jonkon:
Ain't that the truth.
Isn't it interesting. In a historical sense, the worst wars between nations used to be between relative (nobility closely related). A prime example is WWI, in which Kaiser Wilhelm, Tsar Nicholas, and king George V were all cousins. Between them in better times, they were "Willy," "Nicky," and "Georgie."
Well, it was the same during WWII in a similar sense. The USSR and Nazi Germany were two movements of the Left fighting a cataclysmic battle for world dominance.
First, the article has a great deal of merit.
Second, stop with the fallacious left wing – right wing crap. That's a political definition that's erroneous. Let me explain.
On a left-right political chart you have a horizontal line. The extreme left end is marked Communism and the extreme right end Fascism or Nazism. Ridiculous because both had more in common that not.
An accurate and correct chart would have Anarchism on one end and Totalitarianism at the opposite extreme. That would be accurate.
Anarchism means a total absence of government. Totalitarianism means an all powerful government that controls everything by brute force and answers to no one but itself. Both communism and Nazism share that stage. So does Pharaohism; totalitarianism is the same no matter what label it's called or flag it flies under.
Third, the Left, as it's presently known, is anything but anarchist. It is totalitarian in nature. It claims tolerance but is tolerant only of those who agree with it's agenda. Disagree with it's agenda and you're viciously attacked, sometimes by brute force. When it controls the government it's the government that applies the force; just look at the old USSR, or China or Pol Pot's Cambodia.
The Left wants to mandate all facets of life in accordance with its agenda. It brooks no disagreement or opposition. Thus it has wears the same mantle and uses the same tactics as the Nazis who are allegedly their opposite.
In any event, all forms of totalitarianism are anathema to America as founded. Unfortunately we have drifted away from that and the further we drift towards the left the further we drift towards totalitarianism. My fear is that with promises of Utopia most Americans will march into slavery, singing and dancing as they go!
The whole forced volunteer system proposed by the Obamists is most like the cultural revolution corps of China in the late 60's.They used fear,confrontation,and intimidation as a beginning point,and expanded their techniques to include denunciation,spying,and violence against intellectuals and actual trained professionals who do the real work of society.They had to be firmly trounced on by Mao and friends to end what Mao had thought would be a great way of indoctrinating youth and radicalizing society.It nearly destroyed even a communist dictatorship.It was tried again in Cambodia in the late 70's by Pol Pot.I think we who know history remember how that worked out.These things get out of control quite quickly.Remember,those that don't know the lessons of history….voted for Obama.
"chester arthur"
How ironic you use this username. My distant relative and my last name. :)