Limbaugh, Obama, Stalin and Leadership

Over at Townhall, Frank Turek weighs in with an excellent piece. Read the whole thing, it's well worth the time. Some highlights:

Who is the current leader of the Republican Party? No one. But there certainly is someone who wields the most influence over people who agree with the Republican Party platform, and that is Rush Limbaugh .

How so? Because Limbaugh manages to do the three things any leader must do to be successful with a large group of people: he communicates direction, he earns trust, and he evokes desire in people to go in the direction he communicates. Those are the three fundamentals of leadership.

[snip]

Unfortunately, too many Republicans ignore these facts and the lessons of Reagan. They somehow think that Democrat-lite is their ticket to electoral popularity. It’s not—articulate conservativism is. As the 2008 election showed us, when Republicans offer neither, voters will settle for articulate.

Which leads us to where we are today. We have an articulate president whose direction is clearly wrong for the country. That’s not just an opinion. Obama’s direction is demonstrably wrong because it ignores the repeated lessons of history and adopts a false view of human nature. Socialism has never worked and will never work because it destroys human incentive and creates dependency.

Limbaugh says that Obama knows this and wants to create a culture of dependency that will keep Democrats perpetually in power. If this is true, Obama is taking a leadership page from Joseph Stalin.

While speaking to a group of henchmen one day, Stalin began denuding a chicken that struggled to get away. After Stalin finished the painful process, he placed the now-vulnerable bird at his feet and walked away while dropping breadcrumbs behind him. To everyone’s surprise, the bird he had just tortured followed the dictator around the room. The moral? Stalin gave it: “This is the way to rule the people,” he said. “Did you see how that chicken followed me for food, even though I had caused it such torture? People are like that chicken. If you inflict inordinate pain on them they will follow you for food the rest of their lives."

[snip]

[I]f Obama succeeds:

• We enter a depression because Obama raises taxes on those who provide the jobs—“the rich” (note to the President: the poor don’t hire anyone!);

• Thousands of more babies (and several mothers) will die from abortion and taxpayers will be paying the bill (the “Freedom of Choice Act”);

• Hundreds of religious hospitals will close (there are 664 Catholic hospitals in the U.S. alone), and thousands of doctors will resign, rather than be forced to provide abortions (so much for “choice”);

• Workers will have their right to a private union vote revoked (the deceptively-named “Employee Free Choice Act”);

• A few unelected justices in one state will impose their view of marriage on the nation’s three hundred million other citizens (Obama wants to gut the “Defense of Marriage Act”);

• Through the “Employment Non-Discrimination Act,” churches and private citizens will be forced to hire people who behave in ways that violate their religious and moral principles (so much for “tolerance”);

• Unprecedented debt and dependency will crush lives and incentive for generations to come.

For the sake of the country and our future, let’s hope Obama fails in these areas. I pray for the President, but I also pray that articulate conservatives in politics will begin to lead like conservatives in talk radio.

Change for spite's sake!

I am amused at the Obama Administration working so hard to avoid using any terminology that may link them to the Bush Administration. They refuse to say "War On Terror" or "Enemy Combatant". The One, himself, refuses to acknowledge that the surge worked in Iraq. It goes on and on.

It is okay to say "War On Poverty" or "War On Drugs"; since "War On ..." has come to mean a serious concerted National opposition to something. But, the term "War On Terror" first arose with the Bush Administration, so it cannot now be repeated.

Can anyone explain to me why this is important in the governance of the world's only superpower?

God, I love this woman!

Before I was even born, Mike Wallace did an interview with the most amazing person who ever lived, Ayn Rand. Through the magic of the internet, this interview is available to us today, fifty years later.

Of particular note is her unflinching, unapologetic rejection of Wallace's contentions that man is meant to be his brother's keeper. How refreshing to see someone so certain, and deservedly so, of her own knowledge, convictions and ideas. This woman could save the world, if the world would only listen.

Wallace so obviously just doesn't "get it." Admittedly, given the indoctrination we receive throughout our lives, it's difficult to wrap one's mind around true freedom and the unlimited potential of the free man.







h/t to nanosecondinvestments at the Power Line Forum.

Perhaps my favorite story from our country's history

In early 1783, the infant United States faced a crisis. The Revolutionary War was practically over, but the army had not been paid. Soldiers who had fought for years were in desperate need of money. Congress had no funds, and rumors spread that it would send the men home without pay.

By mid-March, the threat of violence filled the air. Officers encamped at Newburgh, New York, talked of mutiny against the government. George Washington, realizing the country verged on disaster, sat at his desk on March 14 and wrote an address urging his men to have patience.

The next day, when the general strode into the hall where his officers had gathered, a hush fell over the room. These men had come to love their commander in chief during the war, but now they looked at him with resentful eyes.

Washington began to speak. He urged his men to have patience. He promised to do everything he could to secure their pay. He asked them to consider the safety of their new country, and begged them not to "open the flood gates of civil discord."

He paused. His men stared uneasily.

Washington produced a letter from a congressman explaining difficulties the government faced. He started to read, stumbled over the words, stopped. Then he pulled from his pocket something the men had never seen him use before - spectacles.

"Gentlemen, you must pardon me," he said softly. "I have grown gray in the service of my country, and now find myself growing blind."

The hardened soldiers fought back tears as they suddenly recalled Washington's own sacrifices. Later, when the general left the room, they voted to give Congress more time. As Thomas Jefferson later observed, "The moderation and virtue of a single character probably prevented this Revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish."

Courtesy of Bill Bennett, another great American.

A disaster of convenience

When it was necessary for the American people to be in a state of total panic in order to get the $787 billion porkulus package passed, Obama was there, right on cue. Remember? Just a couple of weeks ago, we were being told in ever more dire terms that this "crisis" would turn into a "catastrophe" of such magnitude that we might "never" recover. His tone was so negative that even the Democrats took notice, and began suggesting that he might want to lighten up a bit.

That was then. Now, the situation has changed dramatically. Now there's a four trillion dollar budget that is chock-full of socialist programs that do nothing to help the current economy, and a great deal to destroy the economy of the future. Again, a few of the more astute Democrats in D.C. are expressing doubts - this time about the wisdom of passing such a budget when our country is in the throes of such disaster.

So, ever flexible (hope! change!), Barack the Great Pretender has done a 180. Aw, shucks...you guys didn't really take all that gloom and doom seriously, did you?

Obama, speaking to top executives of the Business Roundtable, expressed an optimistic vision and called for patience.

Richard Parsons, chairman of beleaguered Citigroup Inc., asked if Obama could offer some help in a national battle "between confidence and fear."

"A smidgen of good news and suddenly everything is doing great. A little bit of bad news and ooohh , we're down on the dumps," Obama said. "And I am obviously an object of this constantly varying assessment. I am the object in chief of this varying assessment."

"I don't think things are ever as good as they say, or ever as bad as they say," Obama added. "Things two years ago were not as good as we thought because there were a lot of underlying weaknesses in the economy. They're not as bad as we think they are now."

"And my long-term projections are highly optimistic, if we take care of some of these long-term structural problems."

Don't worry. Next week, when the Dems are firmly back in his pocket, it will all be a disaster again. Oh, and did I mention? It's all Bush's fault!

About that "deadbeat donor" remark

I had been thinking about Ban Ki-moon's spectacularly undiplomatic statement for a while, trying to put my disgust into words. Then I stumbled across an editorial on the matter from Investor's Business Daily that says it perfectly. In a show of poor taste of my own, I'm quoting the entire piece.

U.S. Deadbeats?

United Nations: It takes some gall to grumble about getting billions in U.S. taxpayer handouts. Does U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expect spend-happy Uncle Sam to give the corrupt U.N. its own stimulus?

It wasn't the way to win friends and influence people in the U.S. Congress — even this spendthrift band of power-drunk lawmakers.

In a private meeting with members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the secretary-general called America a "deadbeat" nation because U.S. taxpayers have been slow in chucking out another billion dollars in dues.

The U.S. ponies up some 22% of the nearly $5 billion U.N. budget. We also host that body's gaggle of diplomats in the cosmopolitan capital of the world, New York City, where they can dine, philander and double-park (via VIP license plates) in high style.

Yet after giving them all that, and after hearing their never-ending attacks against the U.S., our economic freedoms and our near-unilateral military efforts to fight terrorism in the world, we also get subjected to insults and name-calling for being late with the money.

As described by the Associated Press, when Ban was asked if he had actually used the word "deadbeat," the U.N. chief answered, " 'Yes, I did — I did,' then laughed mischievously."
With liberal Democrats in power in both the White House and Congress, Ban can afford to laugh; he and the U.N.'s Third World majority are confident that in the coming years no John Bolton or Jeane Kirkpatrick will be holding them to much account.

No one will invite the U.N. to relocate, as Kirkpatrick deputy Charles Lichtenstein famously did a quarter-century ago, with the assurance that the U.S. mission "will be down at the dockside waving you a fond farewell as you sail off into the sunset."

The more one examines the U.N.'s record of corruption and criminality, the more attractive Sen. John McCain's idea of a "League of Democracies" looks.

How can an international body be taken seriously when the committee it convenes to organize a "racism summit," next month's Durban Review Conference in Geneva, is chaired by one of the worst human rights violators and supporters of terrorism in the world, Moammar Gadhafi's Libya? Among that same committee's other members are Iran, Cuba and Russia.

What can be said of an organization that fancies itself the hope of the oppressed in the world — yet is condemned by the Save the Children charity because its "peacekeeping troops" and other officials were found "trading food for sex," along with committing "rape, child prostitution, pornography, indecent sexual assault and trafficking of children for sex"?

Victims of such U.N. criminality were found to be as young as 6 in places like Haiti, the Ivory Coast and Southern Sudan.

What hope is there for an organization that undermines its own sanctions against a terrorist regime like that of the late Saddam Hussein in Iraq with an oil-for-food program that illegally hands over $13 billion to Saddam — with a slew of U.N. officials profiting along the way, including the son of former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan?

The outrage is not that the U.S. taxpayers' check to the U.N. is late; it's that year after year we continue to finance this global cesspool without demanding reform.

The Truman Doctrine

On March 12, 1947, President Harry Truman went before Congress to request $400 million to help Greece and Turkey resist Communist-led rebels bent on overthrowing their governments. The president laid out a policy that became known as the Truman Doctrine - a pledge that the United States would help nations struggling to resist anti-democratic forces. Truman's words still resonate, and are still important:

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures....

The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.

The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms.

If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world - and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.

From William J. Bennett's The American Patriot's Almanac. I hope enough of us still believe these words to be true and relevent today.

History Revealed

A little piece of long hidden American history was finally revealed on Tuesday, when a watchmaker carefully removed the back from Abe Lincoln's pocketwatch.

For nearly 150 years, a story has circulated about a hidden Civil War message engraved inside Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch. On Tuesday, museum curators confirmed it was true. A watchmaker used tiny tools to carefully pry open the antique watch at the National Museum of American History, and a descendant of the engraver read aloud the message from a metal plate underneath the watch face.

"Jonathan Dillon April 13 - 1861," part of the inscription reads, "Fort Sumpter (sic) was attacked by the rebels on the above date." Another part reads, "Thank God we have a government."

The words were etched in tiny cursive handwriting and filled the the space between tiny screws and gears that jutted through the metal plate. A magnifying glass was required to read them.

Jonathan Dillon, then a watchmaker on Pennsylvania Avenue, had Lincoln's watch in his hands when he heard the first shots of the Civil War had been fired in South Carolina. The Irish immigrant later recalled being the only Union sympathizer working at the shop in a divided Washington.

Read the whole thing here.

"Mr. Watson, come here! I want you!"

On March 10, 1876, a young immigrant from Scotland, not yet a U.S. citizen, spoke those words into the world's first telephone. Something tells me that Alexander Graham Bell would very much appreciate the iPhone!

Now they've crossed the line!

I can stand being taxed into the poorhouse. I can deal with a country, indeed a planet, suffering a deep depression. I can tolerate a lot of things. But now they're messing with Sheriff Joe, and that's just plain wrong!

Federal authorities have told a high-profile Arizona sheriff that they will investigate his department over allegations of discriminatory practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures.

The U.S. Justice Department said in a letter delivered Tuesday to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio that the investigation will focus on alleged patterns of discrimination based on a person's national origin.

Arpaio told The Associated Press that he will cooperate with the Justice Department.

Arpaio, who describes himself as "America's Toughest Sheriff" and is best known for feeding jail inmates green bologna sandwiches, clothing them in pink underwear, and making them work on chain gangs, received praise for his anti-immigration efforts from many who believe the federal government isn't doing enough to remove people in the U.S. illegally.

But his raids and sweeps of illegal immigrants in Phoenix and nearby Guadalupe have drawn protests from community leaders and civil liberties advocates. Arpaio, a Republican, has also been criticized for letting thousands of felony warrants go unserved while he chased illegal immigrants.

According to the Arizona Department of Public Safety, there are about 59,000 outstanding, unserved felony warrants in the state. The majority are in Maricopa County, the state's most populated county.

Joe Arpaio gets it. In this upside-down, politically correct world, Sheriff Joe is one of the last few pioneers. He's made of the stuff that made America the greatest nation on earth. Mess with Joe, and you're messing with the very spirit of this country. By God...this will not stand!