It could come down to another Teddy Kennedy finish for the 2,000 page bank regulation bill which Obamao took to Toronto, waving it in the air like a nouveau-economic Neville Chamberlain, urging the G-20 members to spend, spend, spend, just like us. Europe and Asia said… “no thanks”. His call for no country to prosper over another fell on amused but deaf ears.
Obama with other G8 nation leaders.
With European socialist countries, including Spain and Greece, coming to the abrupt realization that socialism is economically and morally broke… with echoes of Margaret Thatcher’s classic warning before parliament, “The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money”… Europe has seen the light, albeit slowly and very painfully for their people.
So the Anointed One Trotskys his way around, desperately trying to permanently break the back of America’s economy… before we can get him stopped in November and out in 2012. The rest of the world, perhaps with the exception of ‘our little commie’s’ bosom bud down there in Venezuela, that famous Benito Mussolini wannabe Hugo (I’m not a thug) Chavez, realizes that spending and deficits need to be controlled before the world economy falls into a tailspin from which it may never entirely recover.
The banking bill, or as it should rightly be titled ‘The Large Banking Institution Freedom Bill’, is a 2,000 page polyglot that seeks to regulate our financial economy… every single phase of it… except for Fannie and Freddie. Gee, what a surprise! Where’s Barney?
The whole evil scheme may now be at risk, with the news today that Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) has passed on at the age of 92. Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown (R) has said that he may not support the bill, which he originally favored the second time around. This could put a finish to the bill for this year. Good news for Conservatives and Patriots. Give us responsible, sensible legislation and we might support it.
Totalitarianism is once again on the march. It's coming at us so fast and from so many directions it is difficult to see as a whole, though the pieces are quite familiar.
Let's start with President Obama's most recent encroachment on the private sector, the putative firing of GM's CEO. Nothing in the Constitution tells us that Presidents should maniuplate the leadership of private enterprise, or usurp the responsibilities of shareholders and boards. While I shed no tears for GM or its failed CEO, I wonder about Obama's vision of the Presidency when he behaves more like Hugo Chavez than Teddy Roosevelt, our most activist President when it came to clipping the excesses of big business.
When in modern times has a President taken such invasive action in the private sector, apart from Richard Nixon's imposition of wage and price controls?
"He has the massive will of the American people behind him -- and he has been granted permission by us to do what he sees fit. If you liked this week's all-net 3-pointer, stay tuned."
To do what he sees fit. We're a long, long way now from the American political heritage of Rousseau, Locke, Burke, and Jefferson when we think like this.
Tough economic times are opportune moments for totalitarianism, and sometimes it comes with charismatic leaders who buff it up with charm and soaring rhetoric. Finally, though, all they offer are their own beliefs about what is fair, just and right. And when the timing is right, a lot of people will agree with them.
What is fair, just and right is usually defined against a fearful backdrop of scoundrels, represented by dehumanized stereotypes: The rich, bankers, lawyers, hedge fund managers, and usually Jews (don't worry -- that's coming).
Consider Glenn Beck's questioning of Connecticut's Attorney General, who could not offer any legal grounds for harrassing the bonus babies of AIG. Finally, he fell back on his perception of popular sentiment -- that AIG employees got "money they don't deserve."
Who's to be the judge of that, if not your boss? Apparently, more and more people feel comfortable making Obama the final judge of more and more things: What should taxpayers subsidize, who should be taxed more, what people ought to earn, what constitutes social justice.
To do what he sees fit. It is really no different than what Germans, Argentinian Peronistas, Spanish Francists, Italian fascists, and Nicaraguan Sandinistas granted to their leaders.
Come now, you say -- Obama's no Hitler! He is not. But National Socialism and every other fascist movement took root with government control of private industry and institutions (especially universities, and press). Private ownership, government control. Take away the funny mustaches and silly uniforms, and that's what totalitarianism is. Sometimes it is accompanied by imperialism and mass slaughter, but sometimes it is quieter than that (Tito, Castro, Peron, Chavez). Only the scapegoats change to suit the Leader's needs.
You won't catch President Obama wearing a funny uniform, but his minions in Congress just passed a bill that triples funding for Americorps, and organizes them into "local cadres," with uniforms, military-style discipline, and a committee to consider compulsory service for Americans of all ages. Even the San Francisco Examiner, hardly a conservative oracle, called it "creepy authoritarianism." And those same minions are considering passing his reduction of tax deductions for charitable contributions -- a move no doubt designed make the non-profit private sector more dependent on government, and less on private donors.
All of these policies, and more, show us a President who is a classid statist, with a profound distrust of the individual, and a will to curb individual freedoms in the interest of groups -- favored political classes of people. Most people won't be among those favored groups when it's all said and done.
The rising totalitarian sentiment is not confined to the left. It's worth remembering that our modern left and right, Communist and fascist movements, both originated from the dialectic philosophy of Hegel. Increasingly, we see fascist and Communist flags in public demonstrations in the streets of London and Paris, not to mention long-forgotten fascist flags and insignia increasing displayed at professional football matches in Europe.
Unconnected things, perhaps. I think not. I think we're seeing social phenomena -- Obama is one example -- that reflect people's reactions to widespread economic insecurity and fear for the future, a call for someone to just fix it, to make things right again. To do what he sees fit.
What's with this G20 summit last weekend in Washington? Who are the G20? The MSM as usual abdicated their duty - did what they do best: what they cannot spin or obfuscate, they bury.
Initial research learns that the G20 have emerged from the the Doha Trade Round, set up on the basis of a Brazilian initiative in the run-up to the Cancun Conference. Apart of the states making up the G8, G20 member states include Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the EU and European Central Bank, and the NGOs IMF, the World Bank and their Development Committee.
With the notable exception of South Korea neither of these countries has a principled tradition of free market capitalism. All, until recently suffered, or are still bowing under the rule of theocrats, autocrats, dictators, a collective, or all of the above.
The Third World is slowly crawling on to the world stage, out of its largely self-imposed, poverty ridden, Marxism or theocracy driven lethargy. But swathes of Latin America are already in danger of regressing back into darkness, even before having fully emerged from it; Socialist as well as Islamic beginnings are simply antithetical to individual rights, the moral requirement for a fully functioning free-market democracy.
And then there's good, old chauvinist commie prop. The Heritage Foundation here reports on the PR stunt China pulled just ahead of the summit!
What can be expected of such a global, economic governing body? They cannot even be trusted to handle a trade round, let alone lead, run and reform the world's economic and financial system. How would they do that ... by committee, by revelation, or by decree?!
The situation is hardly better in the state of Europe, which is steadily desolving into a post-democratic, Hegelian Absolute. European states are challenging American leadership of the global economy, calling on President-Elect Obama to embrace Europe as America’s equal partner.
Soeren Kernon The Brussels Journal had this to say last week: "The idea behind this new man-to-man relationship with Washington was hatched by (surprise, surprise) France, which currently holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says the reason for establishing an equal transatlantic partnership is that “the world has changed.” Europe has suddenly realized that the United States “is not the only one concerned by the world’s problems. The European Union has become more resolute…. We don’t want to play a secondary role any more,” says Kouchner," who is an experienced NGO builder (founder Doctors Without Borders).
On the economy the French - as most Europeans - can be fully trusted to commit a coup of state against the private sector. Soeren Kern: "Self-regulation to solve all problems, it’s finished,” Sarkozy says. “Laissez-faire, it’s finished. The all-powerful market that is always right, it’s finished…. It is necessary then for the state to intervene.”
John Gizzi on Human Events goes as far as saying the G20 meeting was in effect Sarkozy's summit, clarifying "that the goal of the French President, was future international economic summits that include many more nations beside the traditional G8 industrial titans. His secondary goal was to assimilate discretionary bondholders (countries that hold U.S. debt) into the summits (...)
gives us the gist of what emerged from the summit: "(...) Sarkozy did get this long-stated desire of a "college of supervisors" for oversight of the books of major financial institutions operating across international borders. Moreover, the world leaders agreed that their systems would submit to periodic review by the International Monetary Fund (whose Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former French finance minister who was tapped for the IMF position by—you guessed it!—Nicolas Sarkozy).
A tougher line by ratings agencies on exhorbitant compensation for executives–either voluntary or regulatory—was called for in the final communiqué of the G20. Again, this was an issue doggedly pursued by Sarkozy.
With much of the actual work of the summit done behind closed doors, the media has had to rely on reports from anonymous sources on who said what to whom. Relying on such sources, the Washington Post pointed to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as one who was particularly opposed to Sarkozy’s calls for greater global regulation over markets in sovereign nations.
We are looking at an entire round of talks stretching well into the next year. Apart from the above, nothing much emerged from present summit while outgoing President Bush acted as a forceful buffer against the anti capitalist onslaught. But as postmodern President-Elect Obama joins the company of Argentina, China and the other card-carrying members of the Grizzly 20 collective, we will soon all be reminded of which cloth that philosophy is a cut.
