Hero Worship

Kurt Vonnegut has always been an enigma to me.  I knew enough of his biography to know that he is a leftist, not a Stalinist; but certainly an anti-American, anti-capitalist pacifist.  Slaughterhouse Five, for example was written because of the Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II.

However, this same author wrote the short story, Harrison Bergeron.  For those of you who don't know, this short story sings the praises of liberty and libertarianism as well as anything written by Ayn Rand.  In Harrison Bergeron a society exists where no one is smarter than anyone else.  No one is more talented.  No one is more beautiful.  Steps are taken to make the beautiful ugly, the smart dumb and the physically gifted handicapped.  It is the ultimate equal society.  No achievement but no losers either.  It is the perfect American leftist fantasy.  In college, it was the story that  turned me against modern liberalism and political correctness once and for all.

Vonnegut, though, now, has proven once and for all his anti-American soul.  In a recent interview, Vonnegut stated, regarding Islamic terrorists, "They are dying for their own self-respect. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."

Shocking, isn't it?  It shouldn't be.  This is how leftists think.  Remember when Michael Moore said that Al Zarqawi and the insurgents in Iraq were "minutemen"?  Remember when Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders said that she hoped the Muslims won?

Go to any political message board on the internet.  The leftists will have messages talking about the terrorists in Iraq as defenders of their homeland; as if the Iraqis who support the Americans are somehow disloyal to their nation.  They will ask conservatives, "What would you do if your home was invaded?"  They will then follow it up with some cute comment about right wingers reminding them of the Tories who supported English rule in the American Revolution.

Yes, the leftists, despite their protestations, support the enemies of the United States.  Remember, these are the same people who wanted the Viet Cong to win in the1960s.  Don't say that's not  true.  Even liberals recently have had the guts to admit as much.  Michael Walzer being one of them, and most recently Kurt Andersen who said, "At a certain point during the Vietnam War, a majority of Americans--those of us who were in favor of unilateral U.S. withdrawal--were in a de facto alliance with the North Vietnamese, the Vietcong, and the Soviets. Unpleasant but true. . . ."

That's what today's leftists want in Iraq.  They want the US to withdraw.  By necessity, that means that the enemies of this nation win.  Not only do they not care about that, they really want that.  They want the "brave" "minutemen" to defeat the big bad United States. 

You probably need to ask a psychologist to give you the technical name for a psychosis that wants you to repeatedly see your country defeated.  It has to be a psychosis, though.  Yes, I said it.  Leftism is clearly a mental illness.  There can't be any other explanation.

The Rich and the Oppressed

How many of you have ever had a real discussion with a liberal, leftist, progressive etc. about economics?  The entire discussion eventually centers around one overriding theme.  The "rich" are bad and "workers" are oppressed.  The amazing thing, though, is that once you press the issue, the leftists have funny ideas about who comprises these two groups.

First, you aren't a "worker" unless you are a low skilled, underpaid employee of some exploitative corporation.  For example, the guy down the street who works twelve hours a day as an accountant in his own small firm is NOT a worker.  The person who gathers up the buggies at Walmart IS a worker.  Let's try it again.  The person who has a landscaping service and does most of the labor himself is NOT a  worker.  The guy who works on a GM assembly line in Atlanta IS a worker. 

Before you ask, let me clear a few things up for you.  Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics, even though she built her empire from nothing, is NOT a worker.  Warren Bechtel, of Bechtel Construction cannot be a worker.  Why?  Because if you are an individualist, a success and have enough money to qualify as "rich" then you cannot be a worker in the dream world that is leftism.  Remember, Karl Marx said that when a worker becomes an entrepreneur he sacrifices his humanity.  Today's leftists, while publicly avoiding Marx, still believe this.

That brings us to the next class in the leftist lexicon, the "rich".  Ted Kennedy and John Kerry don't qualify as "rich" regardless of how much money they have.  They aren't currently engaged in any enterprises that "exploit" "workers", so they cannot be the evil "rich".  The Walton family, of course they are "rich".  They are slave owners and despoilers worthy of an abolitionist novel from the 1850s.

You don't have to have millions, though, to be considered the evil rich.  Any entrepreneur who has employees and is working to be rich qualifies.  Any achiever who doesn't see himself or herself as part of the "oppressed masses" qualifies.  Anyone who thinks that they know better how to spend their money than the government does qualifies as "rich".

Any of us who would be considered "well to do peasants", a phrase coined by Mao Zedong, would be considered "rich".  Mao said it like this, "There is a serious tendency towards capitalism among the well-to-do peasants. This tendency will become rampant if we in the slightest way neglect political work among the peasants during the co-operative movement and for a very long period after."

Basically, what Mao was saying is that once we "well to do peasants" stop thinking of ourselves as oppressed workers, we become a problem for the anti-capitalists.  Yes, today's American leftists are just as anti-capitalist as Karl and Mao ever were.

Their entire world view requires there to be an "us" and a "them".  However, to the leftist, these distinctions have nothing to do with national identity and everything to do with perceived economic class.  You notice that I said, "perceived" economic class.  I said that intentionally. Once we view ourselves as individuals with ambition, goals and dreams that WE, as individuals, intend on achieving, we cease to be helpful to the revolution.

Like Mao, the American Left can only win if a majority considers itself oppressed and poor.  The Left has to break our spirit in order for it to advance.  Isn't leftism a lovely ideology?

Democrats, Temper Tantrums Or Honesty

I'm sure you've heard Democrats whine that the Bush administration lied in order to take the nation to war against Iraq.  Don't forget.  Over half the Democrats in the Senate voted for the Iraq war resolution.  Oh, I know, the typical Democrat ignoramus will say that the Democrats believed the Bush administration's lies.

But that would mean that the Democrats simply acted as a rubber stamp for the Bush administration.  The Democrats in the Senate have told all of us since January of 2001 that they are a co-equal branch of government with oversight power.  Didn't they exercise that oversight power?  If they simply took the administration's claims at face value then they didn't.

The senators on the Intelligence committee had access to CIA Director George Tenet in closed door secret meetings and one on one conversations.  Yes, I know, Tenet was part of Bush's conspiracy and lied to the Senate too.  Anyway that's what the Democrat true believers claim.

Of course, a claim like that CONVENIENTLY forgets that Tenet was a Clinton holdover.  Also, Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation has revealed that there was a conflict between Vice President Cheney's neocons and Tenet's CIA.  So to claim that Tenet and other CIA officials would have lied to Jay Rockefeller and others in private closed door meetings to help the neocons make the case for war defies credulity.  Yet, that is what the room temperature IQ crowd of Cindy Sheehan and others want us to believe.

Now, Harry Reid and others want additional investigations into prewar intelligence.  They are going to stomp and hold their breath until they turn blue if they don't get them.  They demand investigations now, but in October of 2002, Harry Reid and his band of two year olds acknowledged that Saddam was a threat and that the best intelligence showed that Iraq had not complied with UN demands to disarm.

Now when it suits their political purposes, they want to claim that they were duped.  If they were as easily duped as they now claim, what gives them the right to lead?

Perhaps those of you backing Harry's diaper brigade should ask yourselves a few questions.  Does it really make sense that the Bush administration, as incompetent as you believe it to be, could have managed aconspiracy so wide ranging as to include Tony Blair and John Howard of Australia?  Does it really make sense that George Tenet's CIA, which was no fan of Dick Cheney and the neocons; would go along with that conspiracy, knowing that no WMDs would be found and he would be blamed too?  Does it make sense that the Democrat "leadership" on the Intelligence Committee would simply take a hated Republican President's word for the reason to go to war without checking things out themselves?  Do you have the guts and the intellectual honesty to really ask yourselves these questions?

Of course not.  If you did, then you wouldn't be Democrats.