The Smallest Minority

Boy she says the word "democracy" a lot. She almost gets it - but not quite.

My comment (from March) is here.

How is it that I keep missing this juicy stuff at your blog, Joe?

Don't forget the Wilson administration in that list. He only failed because the people took the country back as soon as the war ended.

1. Germany and her allies/the sinking of the Lusitania
2. Didn't need secret prisons, the Alien and Sedition Acts and other laws enacted that gutted the 1st amendment let him use the public prisons
3. The 4 minute men and his "secret" agents that spied on family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc
4. See #3
5. See #2
6. See #3
7. The congressman and the screenwriter/producer that were imprisoned for speaking out against the administration and making a movie critical of the president, respectively
8. Control of the mails that allowed for delivery of only those periodicals deemed "worthy", editors intimidated
9. See #2
10. Between the end of the war and the influenza epidemic of 1918/1919, he didn't really need to impose martial law and he and his administration had already subverted the Rule of Law

Goldberg's summary of the Wilson years is okay, but John Barry in his book the The Great Influenza lays it out in detail.

I know a lot of people don't care to hear this, but David Olofson works as an example of #7 for me (he's a key individual in the sense of, "Poke the hive and see what happens").

Olofson has now been ordered to prison, instead of remaining free on appeal.

Hey how about that Canadian "Human Rights Tribunal" that's trying Mary Steyn for words spoken by nutty Muslims that he simply repeated in his book? Our neighbors to the north are ahead of the game.

Kevin, I had a completely different take on it from you. I didn't make it nearly as interesting as you did.

That was a failure on my part.

I haven't finished watching it yet (I'm only half way through) but one thing has really struck me about her talk so far. She's taking things which are historically accurate and relevant, then applying them only to Republicans, sometimes working so hard to do so that she bypasses even more relevant examples perpetrated by lefties. For example, terrorism is a real threat, yet if you compare the statements of terrorist leaders and sympathizers with what the Bush administration says, the only conclusion you could come to is that if anything, the Bush administration is understating their desire to destroy us. Yet she blows right past Glueball Worming, a questionable "science" in every single aspect, yet hyped extensively as the Greatest Threat To The Planet, Ever.

Even when she correctly identifies times when the Bush administration engages in one of these activities, she completely ignores Democrat agreement and pushes for such actions and grassroot conservative opposition to those activies. (See Rule of Law and border enforcement.)

She also fails to accurately identify lines between valid and even commendable ways of handling things and abuses. For example, she identifies camps/prisons as problems in and of themselves. To hear her talk, these camps always lead to abuses, but they don't. There are numerous examples in our history of POW camps being closed and prisoners sent home once hostilities cease. By her reckoning, all POW camps are illegitimate. She ignores the fact that we have to do something with enemy combatants, and I don't think shooting them on the spot or turning them into slaves are better options.

Yes, she's getting 80-90% right. But it's that last 10-20% she gets wrong which is actually aiding the fascists!

Kevin: ""A leader attuned to the will of the people." Naomi Wolf cites Russia, Germany, and Italy as her examples of states that descend from what she calls "openness" into totalitarianism. But what she fails to note is that each had a strong, charismatic, and popular leader - Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini. She tries to portray G.W. Bush as such a leader, but the very idea is laughable. The same can be said for John McCain.

But The Obamessiah?

Wow. That Obamessiah article is scary! It reminds me of this:

“And then if anyone says to you, ‘Behold, here is the Christ’; or, ‘Behold, He is there’; do not believe him; for false Christs and false prophets will arise, and will show signs and wonders, in order to lead astray, if possible, the elect.”
(Mark 13:21-22 NAS95S)

I used to wonder how so many people could be fooled into believing in someone like this passage describes. Unfortunately, I don't wonder anymore. There are none so blind as one who refuses to see.

I just read Joe's article (after waiting for blogspot to reboot his server). He's right. I also noticed that when it came to abusing the 2nd Amendment, she notably did not give an example. I suspect that was for good reason; she couldn't find an example which supported her conservatives = evil fascists/lefties are not meme.

One more thought struck me as I was preparing lunch. Ms. Wolf is another example of someone getting exposed to the facts, but unable to change her mind.

I just finished the video. Two more thoughts:

Re: undermining the Rule of Law. Oh what irony! Her example was the 2000 votes. She complained that there were Republicans observing the vote counters while ignoring the fact that Democrats sitting right next to them, complaining that it was somehow "intimidation." Meanwhile she somehow misses the elephant in the room that the lefties' solution to the questions about the votes was to throw away the election laws! Just… wow…

Finally, after demonizing one side in such a completely partisan fashion, she called for a type of popular revolution to overthrow the ruling party. Is it just me, or isn't a "people's revolution" the exact mechanism the various fascists and communists used to assume total power? Just… wow… with a cherry on top!

Junk science (in this case, history) lives!

Junk History is the very essence of our times, and the inevitable product of a Junk View of current events.

Senator Rockefeller tells us that "In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent,"

but...

The actual content payload of his report? Case after case of (The president's statements)"...were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/08/AR2008060801687.html


We live in Schroedinger's Republic based on Schroedinger's Constitution, and it will all be recorded in Schroedinger's History.

Or was it Orwells?

Yup. She reminds me of the joke about the guy who has a flat tire right in front of an insane asylum. When he gets out to change the tire, he notices someone in pajamas standing up against the fence, staring at him.

Unnerved, he goes about changing the tire, periodically glancing over his shoulder at the observer, still staring.

Once he gets the flat tire off, he places the lug nuts in the hubcap, but distracted he accidentally steps on the hubcap, and the lug nuts all go rolling into the nearby storm drain.

"Oh HELL," he says. "What am I going to do NOW?"

At this instant, his observer speaks up:

"Take one lug nut off of each of the other three wheels. Three lug nuts will hold on the wheel long enough for you to drive into town and replace the ones you lost, and the other wheels won't fall off if they're missing only one lug nut."

Shocked, the man responds, "That's brilliant! If you don't mind my asking, why are you in an asylum?"

Unperturbed, the inmate replies, "Because I'm crazy, not stupid."

Naomi Wolf is not stupid. She sees the mechanisms of oppression just as we do.

Her sanity is open to question, however.

Kevin: Naomi Wolf is not stupid. She sees the mechanisms of oppression just as we do.

Talk about one thought leading to another!

"No one should doubt the intellectual sophistication of the National Socialists. Elie Wiesel discovered that, contrary to the myth that the Nazis were uneducated brutes, most of the killers of the death squads had college degrees, including some with Ph.D.s in philosophy, literature, and even theology. Jaroslav Krejci likewise found that while fascist movements in general tend to draw heavily from the lower middle-class, in those countries where fascism has been most successful—namely, Italy and Germany—students and the university-educated were strongly represented. One study of a local Nazi party organization shows that 43.3 percent were university students.

"Georg Lukacs has observed that tracing the path to Hitler involves the name of nearly every major German philosopher since Hegel: Schopenhauer, Neitzche, Dilthy, Simmel, Scheler, Heidegger, Jaspers, Weber. That the Nazis emerged out of such a distinguished intellectual tradition should by no means discredit completely the achievements of these important thinkers. But ideas have consequences, and the ideas that led to Auschiwitz deserve special scrutiny. This is especially true when those ideas, often adopted uncritically, are still in vogue."

from "Modern Fascism" by Gene Edward Veith, Jr.

Whoa.

Good cite. Thanks.

I had to tune out a few of those things mainly because she seemed to want the facist to be Bush. She missed that dictators are cheered into power with thunderous public support. Bush would make a horrible dictator because he lacks the popular support to build his power to the point where it can't be stopped.

Obama worries me.

I like:

"We live in Schroedinger's Republic based on Schroedinger's Constitution, and it will all be recorded in Schroedinger's History.

Or was it Orwells?"

The first part *exactly* describes the viewpoint of the MSM...the cat is both black, white, dead, alive and non-existant, all at the same time,depending on the channel and the viewpoint...