Author: Jim Guirard
Source: TrueSpeak.org
At a time when President Barack Obama and his self-defined "Progressives" are subtly denying that they are "Socialists," and when Republicans are debating whether or not to condemn them openly and proactively as the latter, it is essential that we clearly define both of these major socio-political labels as essentially one and the same.
In layman's terms, Socialism is simply the economic, sociological, bureaucratic and political system in which the Government either (a) owns the means of production and distribution or (b) controls these major elements (and virtually all others) to a degree which is equivalent to ownership.
Either way, the Government tends -- sometimes gradually and peacefully, but sometimes by violent and never-ending "Revolution" -- to own and to manage the people, rather than the people owning and managing both themselves and the Government. At the most elemental level, the option for most people is either to own or to be owned.
Extreme versions of the Big Government over-reach are the fully "communized" systems of Leninism, Maoism and Castroism. And then there are the heavily controlled and functionally "nationalized," but not quite fully owned, economies of Benito Mussolini's Fascism (Italian National Socialism) and Adolf Hitler's NAZIism (German National Socialism) -- all of which are clearly Socialist and therefore clearly Leftist.
Somewhat more "centrist" but still left-of-center at heart and in practice, there is a variety of over-taxed and overly-managed "social-democratic" systems (e.g., most of today's West European governments) which are still struggling in various free-market and private-sector ways to resist the utopian promises and deadly pitfalls of "creeping socialism."
On occasion, some are still able to elect centrist and even relatively "conservative" Governments -- as France, Italy and Germany have done in recent years and as Great Britain may soon do, as well.
But despite such momentary successes, the trend is typically "Leftward" and toward the further empowerment of the State and further enshrinement of so-called "social justice" and "peoples rights" -- rather than toward the Center or the Right where there is more emphasis on individual "rights of opportunity" and "free enterprise" and on the personal and private aspects of what America's Founders called "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
A Great Deceit -- Calling the Left "Centrist"
At the partisan political level in recent years, and particularly in their mad scramble last year for the increasingly "Liberal" Democrats' nomination for the US Presidency, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama spent enormous time and effort avoiding the dreaded "L-word" label -- almost as though it stands for Lucifer rather than for Liberal.
In so masking their deep-seated Leftism, they routinely and correctly called themselves "Progressives" -- and most emphatically still do.
Recall, please, that these are people who, even at a time of war, have had far more vicious and hateful things to say about Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld than they have ever uttered about the fascist-left likes of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez -- the latter two of whom even enjoy the exalted status of "fellow Progressives."
At one point during the 2008 Presidential campaign, this lovely new label threatened to get a bit sticky for Mr. Obama. This was when Cuba's Fidel Castro of "Gulag Guevara" infamy decided to endorse the US Senate's most extreme-Left member, praising him effusively as "the most Progressive candidate for the US Presidency." But in the end virtually no one seemed to notice this birds-of-a-feather embrace.
The question now is whether "normal" American people will be duped into forgetting what the Always-Weak-On-Liberty, Blame America First, UN-worshipping "Progressives" are all about.
To avoid such a dangerous and potentially ruinous result, we need to be reminded that among the most infamous of earlier American "activists" and “Progressives" (as well as one little-known Italian Marxist who is the ideological "godfather" of them all) have been such far-Left reactionaries as
o former Vice-president and Soviet sympathizer Henry Wallace and his senior State Department colleague and collaborator Alger Hiss;
o Socialist firebrands Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas;
o Communist Party USA "activist" Angela Davis;
o such other communoid labor and community "organizers" as Harry Bridges, Frank Davis, Saul Alinsky and William Ayers;
o the Italian Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, whose "March Through the Institutions" strategies for achieving World Socialism are the model for most Euro-socialist, Progressive and Socialist Internationale thinking worldwide -- the community organizing tactics for which are set forth in Alinsky's infamous "Rules for Radicals" handbook;
o California radicals Jane Fonda and (former husband) Tom Hayden;
o former US Attorney General (and the late Saddam Hussein's defense attorney) Ramsey Clark;
o such "Liberation Theology" gurus as James Cone, Rev. Jim Jones and Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- whose pseudo-religious scam has been declared by the last three Popes to be a Marxist-inspired Heresy against the Catholic Faith and against Christianity in general;
o Harvard linguist and rabid anti-capitalist (and hero of Cubazuela's Hugo Chavez) Noam Chomsky;
o Harvard-cum-Princeton redical "Black Studies" professor Cornell West and his Colorado ideological soul-mate Ward Churchill;
o numerous far-Left members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus -- which for many years had an institutional relationship with the Socialist Internationale;
o numerous US Senators who are ideological clones of the House's Progressive and Black Caucuses -- the latter of which is chaired by Rep. Barbara Lee of California, who has been honored as a "Progressive Champion" by Campaign for America's Future -- which Accuracy in Media says "is perhaps the largest Progressive group in the country."
Still other modern-day claimants of the "Progressive" labels, policies and practices which dominate so much of Academia, the Establishment Media, the Hollywood Left and the Obama Administration itself -- including Gramsci and Alinsky acolyte Hillary Rodham Clinton -- are so collectivist, so anti-Capitalist and so Blame-America-First as to embrace virtually any left-wing tyrant on Earth as a purveyor of "social justice" and a "fellow Progressive."
And the Marxist March Goes On
Finally, it should be noted that as a matter of the man's self-definitions as a Socialist, Barack Obama
(a) became a member of the Democratic Socialists of America's "Chicago New Party" in the mid-1990s;
(b) remains an uncritical follower of the Marxist-inspired Black Liberation Theology religion -- despite his having distanced himself from a particular pastor and mentor (Jeremiah Wright) but having appointed the equally radical Rev. Cecil Moss of that same Chicago congregation to the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Initiatives;
(c) has appointed Ms Carol Browner, Board Member of the Socialist Internationale's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, as his White House "Environment (and de facto Energy) Czar;"
(d) through various spokespersons who have begun attacking what is derisively referred to as "Republican Capitalism;" and are continually demanding "an end to the profit motive" (i.e., the free enterprise system) in healthcare.
(e) has recently nominated -- and a staunchly "Progressive" US Senate has confirmed -- a Liberation Theology (and, therefore, according to the last three Popes, a Marxist-inspired and heretical) theologian Miguel Diaz of St. John's University to become his Ambassador to the Vatican.
(f) has appointed over three dozen unvetted, un-Confirmed and largely unaccoutable far-Left "Czars" who are, indeed, "marching through the institutions" of the US Government and of the US Economy, as well -- in ways that would amaze even the late Comrade Antonio Gramsci.
The compelling evidence and even the proofs positive are virtually endless. Just look at the Ever Bigger Government initiatives of the trillion-dollar Economic Stimulus fiasco, the trillion-dollar "Cap and Trade" Energy and Environment bill now bogged down in the Senate, and the multi-trillion-dollar "Healthcare Reform" bills now churning through both the House and Senate.
Only the invincibly ignorant,
the cynically deceitful and the mindlessly "politically correct"
can possibly remain in a state of denial -- or of conscious cover-up
-- about how deeply Gramscian-Socialist, how Alinsky-trained and how
Ayers-associated this President and his Big Brother “ProgSocs" really
are.
JIM GUIRARD -- TrueSpeak.org 703-768-0957 Justcauses@
A DC-area attorney, writer, lecturer and national security strategist, Jim Guirard was longtime Chief of Staff to former US Senators Allen Ellender and Russell Long of Louisiana. His TrueSpeak.org web site is devoted to truth-in-language and truth-in-history in public discourse.