Marxism

You don’t hear that one very often any more. Seems we exist in a world where relativism reigns supreme. A place where ill-conceived schemes go awry, or go catastrophically awry, and yet the architects are lauded as heroes, and often promoted.

We see this a lot. It happens mostly in the public sector. Private companies cannot afford to keep people aboard who, for one reason or another, are just perennial non-producers, whether that takes the form of too many absences or just an inability to do the job.

Incompetence rules in most government bureaucracies. The best are often suppressed in favor of the less competent but more politically reliable. The unions aren’t out there to protect the leaders and go-getters… they are there to shelter the incompetent, thereby solidifying their hold over their membership.

The unions are a lot like the collective communist societies, in that the leaders live well on the backs of the ‘peasants’, while the ‘leaders’ redistribute funds (political influencing). Well, the result is the same… the ones at the bottom struggling to get by while the politically connected prosper. That’s the upside down world of the socialist. The many, in equal poverty, pay to support the few elites of the ruling class. They call it Marxism.

We’re seeing more of this than ever before and we’re going to be seeing much, much more in hearings that will be held by the new Congress. It’s time to tell our Republican members, both in the House and in the Senate, that we will not tolerate business their way. Never again. I’m beginning to get an uneasy feeling about some of the people we sent back to Congress, and especially the Senate.

It cannot be business as usual. The survival of the country depends on our determination to turn this country and its entire governance back to the conservative principles laid out in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. So I guess that’s the long and short of it, Republicans… Fish or cut bait.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

Islamic radicalism may be creating a “clash of civilizations,” but sexual radicalism is undermining the social foundation of all civilization.

“All politics is on one level sexual politics.” — George Gilder, 1986

Four decades into the boldest social experiment ever undertaken in the Western democracies, the full impact of what was once quaintly known as “women’s liberation” is at last becoming clear. The political class of both the Left and Right have colluded to limit the debate to a series of innocuous controversies: job discrimination, equal pay, affirmative action. Only abortion has any depth, and that debate has been mired in stalemate.

Meanwhile, beneath the political radar screen, the real consequences are finally emerging: a massive restructuring of the social order, demographic trends that threaten the very survival of Western civilization, and perhaps least noticed, an exponential growth in the size and power of the state — the state at its most bureaucratic and tyrannical.

Feminism has now positioned itself as the vanguard of the Left, shifting the political discourse from the economic and racial to the social and increasingly the sexual. What was once a socialistic assault on property and enterprise has become a social and sexual attack on the family, marriage, and masculinity. This marks a truly new kind of politics, the most personal and thus potentially the most total politics ever devised: the politics of private life and sexual relations.

Read the full article here.

I really enjoy reading the work of converts -- people who were formerly on the left but through some epiphany became conservatives. They have the most keen insights into what animates leftist thought, and they also understand the tactics that the left uses to advance their causes. David Horowitz, who edited Ramparts in his youth, is probably the best known.

Janet Daley of the UK Telegraph is another such voice. She has a wonderful column this morning that wraps up the Obama administration's response to the economic crisis, and pairs it with Gordon Brown's leadership.

She notes that while Obama may not meet the textbook definition of a doctrinaire socialist, he meets her own practical definition, one with which Great Britain, particularly in the 15 years before Margaret Thatcher, became all too familiar:

You may quibble at my use of the word "socialist" to describe people who generally present themselves as friends of the free market, and who have repudiated full-scale nationalisation (even of the banks at a moment when that option might have appeared irresistible). So, as someone who spent her formative years on the Left, let me make clear that I am using the word to designate those who accept the primary tenet of Marxist ideology: that the economy can and should be controlled by the state.

Like Krauthammer last week, she calls Obama on the odd, revisionist story he told during his speech to Congress, a statist vision of the causes of economic upheaval:

...he actually seemed to suggest that the present crisis had been caused by America's failure to develop a universal health care system and to attend to the impending environmental disaster of global warming ("we made the wrong choices"), and that by focusing on these matters a way can be found out of the country's economic problems.

Is he quite mad? Does he really believe that the banking crisis and the recession were some kind of divine retribution for the absence of universal health care, and excessive carbon emissions? Or is he suggesting that a practical solution lies in spending money on health care and the development of alternative energy sources?

No, not "quite mad," just clever, in a ham-handed way.

I grew up with the Left and what this looks like to me is a power grab: a seizing of the moment by the forces which always believed in state domination. The Left sees an opening here, first for telling a critical lie about the historical origins of this crisis, which was propelled as much by the Left-liberal determination to spread prosperity through easy credit to the poor, as by the greed of bankers. And then, out of the wreckage, to restructure the economy along the lines that it always wanted, complete with central controls over the pay levels in private financial institutions.

We are being led to believe that public debate should be all about economic mechanics when it should really be about political principle: just how many freedoms do we want to lose while governments pretend that they are the solution?

On the lighter side, another UK voice worth reading is James Delingpole, whose book, Welcome to Obamaland: I Have Seen Your Future and It Doesn't Work!, is a real hoot. Delingpole is no convert, but he understands the Obama attraction well, and has good fun comparing it to the Blair years to let us know what's ahead in the former colonies. It'll make all but most humorless Obama acolytes laugh, too. Among other things, he chronicles the left's campaign to ban fox hunting, "the only sport," he notes,  "FACT - where alcohol actually improves your performance."

(WASHINGTON, DC) -- Just when we thought we had seen our share of fantastic and colorful ideas for 2009, Representatives Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) and Ted Poe (R-TX) are hoping you won't mind just one more to add to the list.

H.R. 739, the SAFE Act ("Security and Financial Empowerment"), intends to promote victimhood and frivolous allegations of domestic abuse by granting lifetime job security to anyone who makes such a claim, creating powerful incentives for highly conflicted spouses and intimate partners to file false abuse charges, which would trivialize real problems associated with domestic violence, while marginalizing efforts to protect actual victims abuse that need and deserve the attention of law enforcement and the courts.

H.R. 739 seeks to prohibit employers from refusing a job to any person who claims to have suffered from domestic violence or "substantial emotional distress or psychological harm" – words that can be interpreted to mean just about anything.

And, as hard as it is to believe, no actual evidence of domestic violence is required to receive these benefits. The "victim" only has to sign a sworn statement or get a restraining order, which are notoriously easy to get because of the low standards of proof and weak definitions of domestic violence that are currently used to destroy intact families.

Furthermore, judges are reluctant to deny applications for fear of being blamed if something bad happened following the denial. An individual or entire family of the alleged "victim" is also entitled to the same benefits.

H.R. 739 also allows any person who "is, has been, or may be the subject of abuse" to qualify for lifetime health insurance coverage.

The "victim" would also be entitled to 30 days of emergency leave as well as unemployment compensation. The bill amounts to a lifetime guarantee of job security and availability of employer-subsidized health insurance for any person who claims to be a victim of domestic violence or psychological abuse, or for any family member. And the person who allegedly inflicted the abuse has no right to refute or appeal the charges.

Some readers might wonder if we're exaggerating when we say all this, but we're not – see RADAR's analysis of the bill here: http://www.mediaradar.org/docs/RADARanalysis-HR739-SAFE-Act.pdf

Suffice it to say, this bill is prime example how the feminist mantra of victimhood has spun out of control, and how even Republican lawmakers are being co-opted by them.

Over 1 million restraining orders are issued each year in which partner violence is not even alleged. This so-called "SAFE" Act is the last thing we need. Take action today!

 Our last two alerts targeted VAWA funding in the stimulus bill. Although we were not fully successful in removing it, we did succeed in eliminating $75 million from the final package – $325 million instead of $400 million. Thank you for helping expose how VAWA has spiraled out of control because of the lack of an honest debate!

Act Now!

Poe's sponsorship of this bill is clearly out of step with his party's stand on economic policy. Please contact his office and ask him to withdraw support for H.R. 739.

As always, please remember to be polite.

Rep. Ted Poe (R) Texas, 2nd Congressional District Phone: 202-225-6565 Fax: 202-225-5547 Webform: http://poe.house.gov/contact/contactform.htm

If you support these efforts, please be sure to forward this message to others within your personal and professional networks.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Michael Burns