08/23/16

Alt-Right Bashes Constitutional Conservatives, Patriots Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro – Dances with Leninism

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

I believe that each of us has a right to support our chosen candidate and that includes Donald Trump. I do not hold that against someone once they have made that decision, for any of a myriad of reasons. However, I do hold it against those that go out of their way to attack and savage patriotic conservatives because they will not kneel at the altar of Trump. Such is the poison written by Edmund Kozak on Laura Ingraham’s website entitled: “Alt-Right vs. Conservative Inc.”

I have been a Ted Cruz supporter from the beginning. Even though he is no longer in this race, I still support him as the Constitutional Conservative we have waited for. I most likely will write him in when I vote. That is not a vote for Hillary Clinton. It is me voting my conscience, standing by my principles and refusing to vote for one evil to stop another. Two evils that I view as two sides of the same coin and equally repugnant.

I was told when I didn’t fall in line with Trump that my vote didn’t matter and wasn’t wanted. Now I’m told that if I don’t vote for Trump, it will be my fault that he loses and Hillary wins. That doesn’t sway me in the least. In my world, right is right and wrong is wrong. I won’t vote for a Fascist to stop a Marxist, especially when the two are interchangeable.

Kozak has written a piece that paints Constitutional Conservatives as the Establishment GOP Elite. Nothing could be further from the truth and he knows it:

In truth, it is the Establishment GOP elite — who profit in both power and dollars by pushing a globalist economic agenda — who have strayed farthest from the tenants of traditional conservatism. These elites have actually created a for-profit structure. This “Conservative Inc.” dupes the base of the party into handing more power and campaign cash to an Establishment network that operates primarily against their interests.

Constitutional Conservatives and patriots such as Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro in no way support a globalist economic agenda. They are for free trade… perhaps that is something that seems foreign to the likes of Kozak. We are not protectionist as Trump is and there’s the rub. True conservatives believe the market should decide the economic outcome. Those that are true globalists are on the left and this is his attempt to smear conservatives and lump them in with not only the GOP Elite, but leftists as well, essentially branding them the enemy. You see, he has to do this as true conservatism and constitutionalism is a danger to the likes of Trump. We believe in our God-given rights and freedoms and we want the Constitution to be followed, just as we want the rule of law implemented. Nice try on branding, but fail.

The next part I am quoting is simply insane:

The Constitution worship of those like Shapiro and Sen. Ted Cruz reveals that the mainstream conservative movement has largely forgotten the principle of imperfectability.

The Constitution alone cannot guarantee some sort of political utopia. Man is fallen — a city on a shining hill cannot be guaranteed by a mere piece of paper. The fact that within a decade of the documents’ adoption the government was already trying to subvert it should be a clear indication of that reality.

None of us has ever claimed the Constitution was perfect. No document or man is. But the Founding Fathers made sure that could be rectified with Amendments. Whereas it does not create a political utopia, when the Constitution was adhered to, our country thrived and prospered. There have been those trying to subvert the Constitution from the beginning and who still are. Again, I was told that when I would not follow Trump, that Constitutional Conservatism was dead and the document was outdated. I was told that I would regret not following the man and it would destroy me. It hasn’t yet, but if it did, then so be it. My principles and freedom mean more to me than any strongman or his followers who threaten me. Kozak’s argument here is specious and utterly flawed. It is the justifications of someone laying the groundwork for a dictatorship.

It is not Constitutional Conservatives and the likes of Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro who have lost their way. They aren’t lost period. It is the Alt-Right who has veered off to follow a leader who does not believe in the Constitution or freedom. A man who will rule with an iron grip, an enemies list and who will slam the lid down on this nation so hard it will shatter.

I believe that Donald Trump is a very dangerous man. And some of those around him may be just as dangerous or more so. Steve Bannon comes to mind. Bannon has claimed that he is a Leninist.

This is the definition of Leninism:

Leninism is the political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party and the achievement of a dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism. Developed by and named for the Russian revolutionary Lenin, Leninism comprises socialist political and economic theories, developed from Marxism, and Lenin’s interpretations of Marxist theories, for practical application to the socio-political conditions of the agrarian Russian Empire of the early 20th century.

Ronald Radosh, a former communist turned conservative, had this to say about Steve Bannon:

Why has the Trump campaign taken as its new head a self-described Leninist?

I met Steve Bannon—the executive director of Breitbart.com who’s now become the chief executive of the Trump campaign, replacing the newly resigned Paul Manafort—at a book party held in his Capitol Hill townhouse in early 2014. We were standing next to a picture of his daughter, a West Point graduate, who at the time was a lieutenant in the 101 Airborne Division serving in Iraq. The picture was notable because she was sitting on what was once Saddam Hussein’s gold throne with a machine gun on her lap. “I’m very proud of her,” Bannon said.

Then we had a long talk about his approach to politics. He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today. “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.

Shocked, I asked him what he meant.

“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press.

This is the man who now basically has Trump’s ear and this is what he proclaims and supports. That’s chaos and it is just moonbat crazy. Add that to Russian influence, shady dealings, vile attacks and unconstitutional leanings and you have the makings of a South-American style strongman.

Nationalist populism is not the answer… it is a death knell for this country, just as liberal Marxism is. The only thing that will save the Republic and our country is to return to what made us great in the first place: faith in God, the Constitution, founding principles, limited government and our God-given rights. No one man can save us or solve this and to turn to one is suicide.

The Founding Fathers were brilliant men who sacrificed everything for this country and to ensure our freedoms. The Constitution is a foundational document that has served us well for 240 years. These people keep trying to fix something that is not broken to serve their own political agenda. We don’t worship the Constitution… we revere it and believe that it is the answer to righting this country. The answer certainly isn’t a strongman, nor is it a federal leviathan government.

I’m proud to be a Constitutional Conservative and if one day that has me labeled as a traitor and tried for being a patriot, I will make sure they have enough to convict me.

06/6/16

The Red Guards Are Green

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

The media have given the misleading impression that the policies of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a self-declared socialist, are radically different than those of President Obama or Hillary Clinton. In reality, they all propose to use government power to control the economy by either confiscating the assets of private firms or running them out of business.

Technically, this may be fascism, rather than socialism. But the totalitarian nature of what is taking place is unprecedented in American history. America is becoming a socialist state that not only determines the fate of private industry, but attempts to control what people think and read about important public policy issues.

In Venezuela, which is admittedly ruled by a socialist regime, an iconic firm called Empresas Polar, which provides everything from pasta to beer, is suffering under government price controls and regulations, and has been declared an enemy of the state. The Wall Street Journal has been covering the fate of this firm in detail in a dramatic series of articles.

Here, the problem is actually worse. Rather than targeting just one firm, the Obama administration has been seeking to destroy the entire coal industry, along with the jobs of tens of thousands of workers that the old-style Marxists used to claim to represent. In their latest move, “the Obama Administration is giving the industry its last rites by halting new coal leases on federal lands where mining is still profitable,” the Journal noted.

This is not just Obama’s policy. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that if she became president, “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

The official Democratic Party policy of destroying the coal industry is being done in the name of saving the environment from alleged global warming. Toward that end, Obama signed the Paris Climate Agreement for the purpose of reducing global CO2 emissions. But he refused to submit the agreement for Congressional approval. The Global Warming Policy Foundation has published an academic paper which says the agreement is essentially a fraud, adding that it exempts countries such as China and India from undertaking any reductions.

In order to stifle debate over the job-destroying policies of the Obama regime, a group of Democratic state attorneys general are using legal tactics in an effort to criminalize and prosecute those challenging the global warming theory.

In an interview conducted by Ginni Thomas and carried by The Daily Caller, Dr. Kim Holmes, author of The Closing of the Liberal Mind, says the criminalization of dissent on climate change is “truly Orwellian” and “borderline totalitarian.” It is another sign of the decline of American democracy, documented in another important book, Democracy: And Why It Will Fail in America.

At the same time, the Portland (Oregon) Public School Board has voted to ban textbooks and other materials that do not support the theory of climate change. Patrick Wood, Editor of Technocracy News & Trends, asks, “Will they ban materials from the homes of students? What will be the punishment for being caught with such materials on Portland Public School campuses?”

The left-wing group Rethinking Schools calls this Portland, Oregon, board decision “the country’s most far-reaching policy on teaching climate justice in the schools.” It says the policy commits Portland schools to “abandon the use of any adopted text material that is found to express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis or its roots in human activity,” and requires the school district to develop a comprehensive plan to “address climate change and climate justice in all Portland Public Schools.”

This is, of course, occurring on a local level. But one could easily anticipate the Obama administration adopting this policy on a national basis, in the form of a directive to local districts, similar to the federal dictate on bathroom policy.

This agenda can be called fascism or socialism. But another “ism” also rears its ugly head.

Bill Bigelow, a former teacher and current curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, has referred to Howard Zinn as “the great historian and activist.” Zinn, whose books are force-fed to young people on many college campuses, was not only a member of the Moscow-controlled and Soviet-funded Communist Party USA (CPUSA) but lied about it. Zinn taught in the political science department of Boston University for 24 years, from 1964 to 1988.

Bigelow is the co-editor of a textbook on environmental education, A People’s Curriculum for the Earth. It looks like his campaign is at least partly designed to get his own textbook into the schools. Indeed, the group reports that Portland’s resolution “began in a workshop” led by the book’s co-editors, Bill Bigelow and Tim Swinehart. Swinehart, who teaches at Lincoln High School in Portland, is an alumnus of the Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling.

Commenting on the campaign to criminalize dissent on climate change, Dr. Kim Holmes said, “Once you break that barrier and tell scientists they will be punished, this is like the Inquisition in the 16th century or the Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution in China.”

Ironically, the Roman Catholic Church is involved in this modern-day inquisition, since Pope Francis has already issued a papal encyclical on climate change in an “unholy alliance” that includes anti-capitalist and pro-population control advocates.

The Red Guards were groups of students, formed under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party, which eliminated remnants of the old order.

How different is that from what is happening in the U.S. today? The group Rethinking Schools says that what happened in Portland could inspire similar efforts around the country, leading to “millions of public school students” who would then become part of a nationwide army of activists recognizing “a climate emergency” that requires “shutting down coal-fired power plants, banning new pipelines and off-shore drilling.”

Swinehart declares, “Now the real work begins: transforming the principles of this resolution into the education of climate literate students across the district who feel empowered to work toward a more just and sustainable future.”

These new Red Guards are coming to a school district near you. Can we rescue America from mysticism and tyranny?

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected].View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

06/1/16

Is Trump a Fascist? No, Merely a Dangerously Narcissistic Bully

By: Sam Vaknin | Gulag Bound

“What we are looking for here is the sort of person that slashes pictures,
takes a hammer to Michelangelo’s statues and a flamethrower to books;
someone who hates art and ideas so much that he wants to destroy them:
a fascist.”

Inspector Morse in “The Twilight of the Gods” (1993)

Profile pic of twitter account @ilduce2016, whose Mussolini quote Trump retweeted

In the 18^th May edition of the Washington Post, Robert Kagan joined a growing chorus of public intellectuals who castigate Trump as a fascist.

All of them are confusing authoritarianism and totalitarianism with fascism. Trump is not a fascist. He is not sophisticated enough to have any political ideology. He is a narcissistic bully, a shrewd marketer, and an amateur politician with authoritarian instincts. These do not a fascist make.

So, what is fascism?

Nazism and, by extension, fascism (though the two are by no means identical) amounted to permanent revolutionary civil wars. In his magnum opus The Death of Politics (1994) John Laughland coined the apt term “subversive right,” or in his own words, a “mixture of Left and Right… (that has) embraced nationalist and socialist ideas….”

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03/12/16

A Time for Choosing: Socialism or Fascism

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

Donald J. Trump has a strange and unhealthy fascination with the “strength” of those who pummel, terrorize, and kill people. At the Miami Republican debate, he stood by comments in support of the Communist Chinese dictatorship for killing protesters during a “riot,” and he praised the leading killer in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, for being “strong.” Despite these shocking assertions, Trump was seen by some in the media as turning in a respectable or even “presidential” performance. At least he didn’t talk about his body parts or use obscenities.

Once again, according to Trump’s leading media cheerleader, the Drudge Report, the New York businessman won the debate. Drudge said he got 63 percent in an online survey, versus 24 percent for Senator Ted Cruz.

It seemed bizarre to me. But in a matter-of-fact manner, moderator Jake Tapper noted that Trump has been criticized for “praising authoritarian dictators.” Hequoted Trump as saying about China’s massacre of pro-democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square, “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it, then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”

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03/12/16

The Little Fascist That Could

By: Frank Salvato

Tonight, as I watch protesters in the streets of Chicago squash the free speech rights of those they do not agree with I exist ashamed of my hometown. I have understood for years that Chicago had arrived at being the epicenter of Progressive intolerance, even more so than the grounds of UC Berkeley or Columbia University. But listening to one of the “protesters” being interviewed after the announcement that they had succeeded in effecting the cancellation of a political rally featuring Donald Trump (of whom I am not necessarily a huge supporter), I have come to the conclusion that the brown shirt-jackboots of fascist regimes past have been resurrected; inhabiting the liberal bastions and college classrooms of the Windy City.

One giggling female protester said, “We are protesting inequality, we’re protesting everything.” And a self-anointed community activist (where does one go to get certified as a community activist anyway?), Quo Vadis, said the goal of the protesters – numbering in the high-hundreds, if not thousands – was for, “Donald to take the stage and to completely interrupt him. The plan is to shut Donald Trump all the way down.” In other words, the protesters who consider themselves champions of “equality for all” executed a plan to affect the total censorship of a political figure. By any consideration, these “protesters” annihilated Donald Trump’s First Amendment right to free speech. Correct me if I am wrong, but censorship is antithetical to equality for all. But maybe these protester’s civics instructors haven’t covered the Bill of Rights yet.

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08/4/15

Paul Weston: How to Destroy a Country

07/20/15

Wesley Clark Calls for Internment Camps for “Radicalized” Americans

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

This is a horrific idea. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for hunting down and dispatching terrorists and bad guys on our turf. But internment camps? Let’s just stop for a minute and wonder why Wesley Clark has done an about face so suddenly. Anything they can use in the name of national defense like internment camps can also be used against everyday Americans at their discretion. The internment camps in WWII were shameful and wrong. The same would be true here. If you have to deport people or prosecute them, that is one thing. But to round up everyone you deem ‘radicalized’ is quite another. What does that even mean to Clark? Color me highly suspicious of this and shocked that it is being floated out there.

From The Intercept:

Retired general and former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark on Friday called for World War II-style internment camps to be revived for “disloyal Americans.” In an interview with MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts in the wake of the mass shooting in Chatanooga, Tennessee, Clark said that during World War II, “if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn’t say that was freedom of speech, we put him in a camp, they were prisoners of war.”

He called for a revival of internment camps to help combat Muslim extremism, saying, “If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine. It’s their right and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”

The comments were shockingly out of character for Clark, who after serving as supreme allied commander of NATO made a name for himself in progressive political circles. In 2004, his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination was highly critical of the Bush administration’s excessive response to the 9/11 terror attacks. Since then, he has been a critic of policies that violate the Geneva Convention, saying in 2006 that policies such as torture violate “the very values that [we] espouse.”

In a memoir written the following year, he also famously alleged that the White House under Bush had developed a massively imperialistic plan for the Middle East, which would see the administration attempt to “take out seven countries in five years,” beginning with the invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Earlier this year I spoke with Clark at the annual Lewis and Clark University Symposium on International Affairs in Portland, Oregon. The subject of our discussion was how to deal with the potential threat of foreign fighters returning from armed conflicts abroad. At the time, Clark spoke out strongly against “the politics of fear” and eroding democratic institutions and norms, while reiterating his criticism of the excesses committed by Bush-era neoconservatives under the banner of fighting terrorism.

But on Friday, he was advocating the revival of a policy widely considered to be among the most shameful chapters in American history: World War II domestic internment camps. Aside from the inherent problems in criminalizing people for their beliefs, Clark’s proposal (which his MSNBC interlocutor did not challenge him on) also appears to be based on the concept of targeting people for government scrutiny who are not even “radicalized,” but who the government decides may be subject to radicalization in the future. That radicalization itself is a highly amorphous and politically malleable concept only makes this proposal more troubling.

“We have got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized. We’ve got to cut this off at the beginning,” Clark said. “I do think on a national policy level we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of terrorists.” And he added that “not only the United States but our allied nations like Britain, Germany and France are going to have to look at their domestic law procedures.”

Despite an outcry about his comments on social media, Clark has not responded publicly. As of Monday morning, his latest tweet was from Friday, encouraging his followers to watch his interview.

Wesley Clark is a political hack. His suggestion here should chill every American right to the bone. He’s not just suggesting it for America either… he’s suggesting it be done globally. Listen to the video closely. He’s suggesting people who are likely to be radicalized should be imprisoned. This is unconstitutional and barbaric. He’s suggesting here that we suspend the Constitution (even more than they already have) and build and populate gulags. I can’t believe what I’m hearing and seeing. Things are hurtling out of control in America. Americans better stand up and stop this or we are going to see a fascist tyranny take hold here and fast. Internment camps? What scares me the most is that people on both sides of the political sphere are cheering this on. Unfreaking believable.

07/3/15

The Flags of Fascism

03/13/15

The Founders Didn’t Fail—We Are Failing The Founders

By: Benjamin Weingarten
The Federalist

Conservatives are understandably depressed in the wake of Speaker Boehner and the Republican-controlled Congress’ predictable caving on executive amnesty.

Let me stop right there by emphasizing that I only said conservatives. Were our republic healthy, every single American would be depressed that President Obama’s amnesty—which on dozens of occasions he said he did not have the authority to enforce—will continue apace to the benefit of lawbreakers at the expense of American citizens.

Americans would be further demoralized at the notion that our president politicized the sovereignty of our nation represented by failing to protect its borders, all in a transparent attempt to win a permanent Democratic majority—which the shortsighted Republican establishment seem perfectly fine with, since they want immigration and the idea of “those racist Republicans” to become non-issues.

Some are lamenting the cowardice of our representatives, and to that I quote a former NFL Coach: “They are who we thought they were!”

I have even seen one article arguing that the Constitution itself has failed. But the Constitution and our Founders did not fail. Human nature has not changed between 1787 and 2015. There were undoubtedly plenty of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century booze-swilling, cigar-smoking iterations of John Boehner lumbering around Capitol Hill.

What has changed is the size and scope of government, the number and composition of people who are voting, and the public’s general indifference to and acceptance of the greed, graft, lying, and all matter of corruption that have become commonplace in public life. There is also a heck of a lot more bread and circuses to keep us fat, happy, and distracted from what our supposed leaders are doing.

Government Is Too Big to Control

Entitlement reform is not going to capture the imagination of the American people like a llama chase or the color of a dress. And it bears noting that many of the Founders themselves were involved in sordid activities, and even willing to accept a king.

But that king’s powers would have looked downright puny compared to those President Obama wields today; and what corrupt politicians did way back when feels less offensive than the systemic abuse and political malpractice on display now, in part because the nation our founders—exceptional citizen legislators—entrusted us with was substantially smaller and less intrusive.

Today, when you have hundreds of agencies and millions of pages of laws, when the federal government is among the largest employers in the world, hyper-regulating almost every aspect of our society, creating arcane and byzantine rules designed to reward one set of constituents or another over and above the American people, not to mention the rule makers, rule interpreters and compliance officers themselves—this naturally creates not only an unwieldy and unaccountable federal government, but one that will invite and reward people willing to pull the kinds of shenanigans we see today.

To the percentage of the public that is actually informed as to what is going on in government, there are simply too many egregious things occurring on a daily basis, not to mention again the Siren song of bread and circuses, for anyone to keep track of it all or know where to focus one’s energies and pitchforks.

The Failure Is Our Fault

What defines an informed voter itself is of course open to interpretation, given what the majority of people are taught in our hallowed Democrat-controlled community organizing institutions, also known as schools; and given that one can read The New York Times, Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and Vox, and watch “The Daily Show” each day to qualify as informed by today’s standards, without knowing anything about what the other half of the country thinks and believes.

On amnesty specifically, as a lame-duck president without control of either house of Congress, Barack Obama is completely unchained, simply running roughshod over our laws. That a supposed constitutional scholar is rendering the system of checks and balances and separation of powers meaningless; that the executive branch is usurping the legislative branch, while congressmen say one thing and stand by idly doing another, is not a reflection that the Constitution or founders failed.

Rather, these travesties reflect that the American people are failing the founders.

We elected Barack Obama twice, in spite of his words, actions, and associations, which have unsurprisingly led to these disastrous six-plus years. The presidents who preceded him were not much better, though no one would have posed the question of them as Mark Steyn recently dared: “If he were working for the other side, what exactly would he be doing differently?”

We elected the congressmen who with rare exceptions (see Lee, Sen. Mike) continue to stand by while Rome burns, and who are derelict in their duty to defend and protect the Constitution, including against its brazen violator who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Welfare Versus Defense: Who Wins?

We have failed to persuasively enough make the case that we cannot thrive as a nation just by slowing government’s rate of growth and hiring smarter technocrats, but must literally be slashing the federal budget by 50 percent, abolishing agencies en masse, allowing Americans to opt out of the welfare state (including programs which can only pay my generation back in devalued dollars like Social Security), ensuring that we have not small deficits but massive surpluses to pay down our debt so the interest alone does not consume all the money we pay to the feds each year, and demanding a massive devolution of power back to the states and the people where it rightfully belongs.

And if our fellow Americans choose to live in socialist basket-case states, they are free to do so without reaching into your and my pockets at the point of a gun.

At root and underlying all of these issues, we have allowed the Left to control the media, academia, and the rest of America’s key cultural institutions, such that the vast majority of our fellow citizens are reflexively progressive and cannot even conceive of the types of changes I just mentioned. This is how the radical, morally and economically bankrupting leftist policies can be considered mainstream, while freedom can be considered fascistic.

This inherent progressivism narrowly underlies Republican acquiescence to the growing leviathan, and dictates the type of leaders that America broadly finds palatable, which has led us to this perilous place in our history in which all of our worst enemies are ascendant, while we are fast on the road to bankruptcy and serfdom, with our only choice between welfare and defense.

When entitlements and our armed forces are sitting side by side on the chopping block, which do you think a war-weary, economically pummeled American public is going to choose?

We Need a New Generation of Savvy Statesmen

No, the Constitution hasn’t failed, and our founders haven’t failed. We the people have failed during the hundred-year progressive march. So now we are burdened with the doubly difficult task of trying to win the long game of culture and the short game of politics.

I have much more faith in the latter over the former—that over time the chances are greater that we develop the strategy and tactics to beat an establishment incumbent class than win America’s cherished cultural institutions, which form our national soul.

Our national soul determines whether the Constitution is a piece of parchment or enshrines principles like equal rights for all and special privileges for none, that law resides above man, that men are not angels and that we must compel government’s non-angels to control themselves, and that the most important thing in America is protecting the rights of the minority, the most important of which is the individual.

And the inspiration for our national soul should reside not in our Constitution but in the Declaration of Independence that breathes life into it, a majestic document that we have ignored for far too long.

Don’t Blame Boehner—Blame Us

In any event, we the people have all the leverage in the world. The Boehners and Mitch McConnells will listen to us when the political cost of siding with the Chamber of Commerce is so great that their political lives depend on it.

Using the power of the purse as a lever to control the president, or threatening let alone bringing forth articles of impeachment are political remedies, and they are not being used not only because the Republican establishment that makes up the majority of the majority in Congress are risk-averse and often spineless, but because the majority of the American people are not demanding it.

That impeachment brings howls of racism alone shows a failure of our culture to separate the original sin of slavery from the demerits of the job done by this president, to separate identity politics from the individual.

Until and unless we devote all of our efforts to winning the long and short games with a constant, strategic, relentless full-court press, we are going to see amnesties ad nauseum, Obamacare not only not abolished but metastasizing, the federal budget and debt continue skyrocketing, comparatively small things like the Export-Import Bank chugging along and, yes, the welfare state expanding and our defenses shrinking while Islamic supremacists, Russia, China, and their proxies grow ever-bolder and more confidently bellicose.

We the people have much work to do if we want to keep any semblance of our republic, as Benjamin Franklin challenged us to do. And we hold the power in our hands.

But do we have the will and capability to exert it?

Ben Weingarten (@bhweingarten) is publishing manager and editor of TheBlaze Books. Ben is a graduate of Columbia University, where he majored in economics-political science and contributed to outlets including the Breitbart sites and the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

03/10/15

Russia, the Caliphate and the Shadow of World War III

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

We are already in the beginnings of World War III and the clouds of war are getting darker each day. Who is behind most, if not all, of this? In a word… Russia.

The White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism had a very interesting guest – Alexander Bortnikov, the director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB, formerly the KGB). Now, exactly why do you think he was there? Considering we are supposedly standing against Russian-backed Marxist-Leninist Ukrainian separatists, while barely backing Ukrainian forces, this makes for some very strange bedfellows. By the way, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he ordered officials to start work on taking control of Crimea weeks before a referendum which, the Kremlin has asserted until now, prompted the region’s annexation from Ukraine. Putin finally lets slip the truth, which makes Bortnkiov’s attendance even more suspicious. Since it is widely known that the Soviet KGB was hip deep in creating, funding, training and directing a vast terror network that spread over the globe from the 1960s through the 1980s, one has to wonder what Obama could possibly have been thinking when inviting Russia to his counter-extremism event. Russia is the author and master of a great deal of extremism across the planet. Perhaps Obama wanted pointers.

To hit home that Russia is just like the US and the rest of the world, Bortnikov stated that there are 1700 Russian citizens fighting with ISIS and they want to control violent extremism just like we do. I’m sure he’s referring to the Chechens. Well, that may be true, as we have no intention of controlling it either. Sly words from an old Russian bear. Under the guise of security, Russia is proposing that our intelligence services and the FSB partner up. Not only that, Russia wants us to ally with Iran as well. That is one of the most frightening propositions I have ever heard in my life. It should make every American head for the bathroom.

Consider this… Russia is behind ISIS and other terrorist groups. They fund both sides of the fence – whatever benefits them in the end the most is what they endeavor to do.

From The New American:

In his book Disinformation (2013), former high-ranking Soviet-bloc defector Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, who served as chief of the Securitate, the Department of State Security for Communist Romania, revealed the Soviet Union’s role in exploiting and radicalizing Muslims against the West:

By 1972, [Yuri] Andropov’s disinformation machinery was working around the clock to persuade the Islamic world that Israel and the United States intended to transform the rest of the world into a Zionist fiefdom. According to Andropov, the Islamic world was a petri dish in which the KGB community could nurture a virulent strain of American-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxism-Leninism thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep. The message was simple: The Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology.

A predecessor to Bortnikov, Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was the longest serving chairman of the KGB (1967 to 1982) and briefly general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1982 until his unexpected death in 1984. Pacepa refers to Andropov as the “father of today’s anti-Semitism and international terrorism.”

If you dig deep enough behind the radical Islamist groups and behind those moving Europe, you will find Russia. In the end, Russia wants the destruction of Israel and the US. They are in the way and a nuisance to their global agenda. Vladimir Putin has called Andropov an “outstanding political figure.” Along with his admiration of Andropov, Putin is reviving the cult of personality for Communist dictator Joseph Stalin, the restoration of the Soviet Union’s national anthem as the anthem for the Russian Federation, military invasions of Georgia and Ukraine and the erecting of statues to former Soviet Communist leaders such as Yuri Andropov. He is orchestrating intense nationalism within Russia, using the Russian Orthodox Church as an instrument to do so and to justify his aggression in Europe. Radical Islam is another tool being used to clear the way for Russia across the planet. One that is deadly and effective.

In 1990 Astrakhan, an oblast in the lower Volga region of Russia bordering Kazakhstan, hosted the inaugural congress of the Islamic Revival Party. Russia also authorized the establishment of the Islamic Revival Parties in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. With the Soviet creation of the Islamic Revival Parties in the Muslim-populated areas of Russia, they were able to provide more radicalized Muslims with a political home and voice to further spread their message throughout the Muslim world both inside and outside of Russia.

Russia has used terrorists in many ways… to create chaos so they can move in and snap up natural resources and to pave the way for geopolitical conquest. They even use them within their own country to set up false flag events to further their political agenda. You see, the alliance between Russia and the Islamists has each of them thinking they will win in the end after they have worked together to bring down their biggest enemies: the US and Israel. Take for instance, Ayman al-Zawahiri. On July 16, 2005, the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita published an article in which Litvinenko identified that al-Qaeda second-in-command “Ayman al-Zawahiri trained at a Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB) base in Dagestan in 1998.” According to Litvinenko, al-Zawahiri “was transferred to Afghanistan, where he had never been before and where, following the recommendation of his Lubyanka chiefs, he at once … penetrated the milieu of Osama bin Laden and soon became his assistant in Al Qaeda.” In 2006, the FSB poisoned Litvinenko with radioactive polonium-210 and he died horribly in a hospital on November 23, 2006. With the assassination of Osama bin Laden by US Special Forces on May 2, 2011, Ayman al-Zawahiri, whom Litvinenko had previously referred to as “an old agent of the FSB,” became the leader of al Qaeda. That was not a coincidence. The Russians have used a carefully orchestrated plan to spread disinformation and terror across the planet. They have been using terrorists to assist in their plans for over 40 years. Successfully, I might add.

And as terrorism engulfs the planet, there are other stirrings. Russia’s anti-American fervor is now at a fever pitch.

From the Washington Post:

After a year in which furious rhetoric has been pumped across Russian airwaves, anger toward the United States is at its worst since opinion polls began tracking it. From ordinary street vendors all the way up to the Kremlin, a wave of anti-U.S. bile has swept the country, surpassing any time since the Stalin era, observers say. […]

There are drives to exchange Western-branded clothing for Russia’s red, blue and white. Efforts to replace Coke with Russian-made soft drinks. Fury over U.S. sanctions. And a passionate, conspiracy-laden fascination with the methods that Washington is supposedly using to foment unrest in Ukraine and Russia.

Today’s anti-American fervor in Russia exceeds that of the Soviet era and the Cold War. Putin is stoking American hatred every chance he gets – we are his scapegoat and as I said before, America must be brought to her knees and destroyed, so that Russia can fully ascend.

Russia is also ratcheting up their military provocations. Their fighter jets have been using NATO ships in the Black Sea as target practice to run “attack scenarios,” a situation that NATO military officials say they are aware of and are prepared to defend against if necessary. This is just one in an ever lengthening list of Russian military probes to see where NATO, European and American military weaknesses exist. The US is claiming they are providing heavy military equipment to NATO-allied Baltic states to protect themselves, but what they are sending is far too little and they know it. The Russians would not even blink at these minor attempts of deflecting their forces. We’re also sending 3,000 troops for training exercises. None of this is serious and is simply propaganda dressing to make it seem as if Obama gives a crap.

Meanwhile, Jean-Claude Juncker of the EU is calling for them to form an army to show Russia they can defend themselves. They can’t agree on the most minor of issues, much less an army. I’m sure Putin is having a really good laugh over that one. Besides, I think Juncker is calling for this as a way to reunify the EU (not gonna happen) and relieve some of their impending debt doom (also, not gonna happen).

Trevor Loudon believes a European Spring is coming. I agree. An American one could happen as well with all the contrived emergencies and violence being pushed here by Leftists. It’s only a matter of time. Glenn Beck said yesterday that a call to arms, a global depression and a disenchanted youth are in the future and it is critical that Americans be aware of the ramifications before they hit. He’s absolutely right on this one. Russia, the Caliphate and the Shadow of World War III are in play now. If you are looking for the grand architect – look to Russia.