PrintOctober 25, 2009
Nobel Prize: Marxism Goes Mainstream
"Oh, happy day, oh happy day."
That's what gospel musician Edwin Hawkins famously sang about the coming of Jesus. And that's what Nobel Peace Price committee head Thorbjørn Jagland is singing now about another larger-than-life figure, Barack Obama, to whom he will award the prize in a December ceremony. Jagland is good at singing, especially "the praises of folks like Karl Marx" as a leading light of an international organization dedicated to abolishing individual and economic freedom.
Jagland loves Karl Marx. And he loves Barack Obama. In addition to heading the Nobel committee and the European Council, Jagland is a long-time leader of Socialist International, a worldwide organization of radical left groups and the occasional terrorist organization dedicated to establishing a world government that will rule through Marxist, collectivist principles. Its icons include Marx, Chairman Mao (whose Beijing McDonald's has the right to put on its sign "More Than 65 Million Killed"), and Castro.
The major American affiliate of Jagland's organization is Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Active DSA members include actor Ed Asner -- who praises the humanity of Mao and Fidel Castro, while excoriating George Bush for having brought about the "controlled demolition" of the Twin Towers on 9/11 -- and Cornel West, the radical African-American activist and Princeton professor who decries the "bourgeois-ossification of American Jewry" that has caused them to accept American and Israeli "apartheid."
Jagland sees a kindred spirit in an American president who has pledged a socialist blueprint to "transform America," has hired at least one of Jagland's Socialist International members (Carol Browner, White House climate change czar, who has pledged to rid the world of free markets through climate-related taxation), and has brought self-confessed admirers of Marx (whose thoughts have provided the underpinnings for more than 90% of the mass murders of the past century (see The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror and Repression and the Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism) and Mao into the federal bureaucracy.
Oh, happy day for Thorbjørn Jagland, who knows about transformation. He sits in his palatial offices-the European political elite always sit in palatial offices, which are always built at taxpayer expense-contemplating the first American president qualified to officially join "those who are to lead the world" on a foundation of shared "values and attitudes.
Sure, other American presidents have received Nobel prizes. But all except Jimmy Carter -- who doesn't count because he won the prize for displaying something near and dear to the hearts of Europe's political elites, anti-Semitism -- were before the Nobel Committee was itself transformed into, as a journalist familiar with its deliberations describes it, "a radical outfit with a decidedly anti-American agenda."
Talk about kindred spirits and shared values! Finally, an American president who has the sense to understand the utter foolishness of this God-given individual rights stuff. He is positively European in outlook, putting an avowed Marxist who sees his role at the Federal Communications Commission as pushing for the elimination of private media ownership, or having a self-confessed admirer of prominent "philosopher" Chairman Mao, Anita Dunn, as head of White House communications.
From the Council of Europe headquarters in Palais de L'Europe -- more costly than the palaces of the hereditary royalty on which the French used guillotines for reeducation and just one of the score of extravagant buildings devoted to the comfort of those battling on behalf of the poor and oppressed of Europe -- Jagland sees the chance to encourage a similar socialist future in the United States.
And he smiles as he watches the United State of Obama already, like Europe, setting a new record in the hiring of government regulators and bureaucrats while the rest of the US suffers from a 26-year high in unemployment. Jagland loves what he sees; hence, the Nobel award.
None of that life-liberty-pursuit-of-happiness stuff. Jagland sees in Obama Michael Moore without the Big Macs, Cynthia McKinney without the loose screws, and Jimmy Carter without the accomplishments (such as they were). This American president is a European socialist, cut from the same Marxist cloth as Jagland, and that makes all the difference.
Oh happy day -- Obama's Democrats believe in confiscatory taxation, which is as European as bad breath (Google France and garlic), arrogance, and John Kerry. To the Nobel committee, Obama is a younger Thorbjørn Jagland, who helped lead Norway with out-of-control spending that ballooned public debt to more than 80% of the economy.
Norwegians now complain about a political elite that has presided over high prices -- Norwegian fast food lovers now pay the second highest price for Big Macs in the world -- long waits for medical care, deterioration in educational and police services, and shortages of government-run day care and nursing home spaces.
The U.S. Nobel winner is out-Jaglanding Jagland, piling up debt that will exceed 100 percent of the US economy within a few years. And he doesn't even have the North Sea oil wells to keep the U.S. afloat; Obama, like Jagland, believes the future must be green -- the color of the revenues flowing to existing oil producers like Norway with new production in places like the US shut down.
And, of course, Obama is making inroads on another Jagland accomplishment in Norway: unrestrained immigration with gangs of Muslim immigrants running wild in suburban Oslo. A national police study said two-thirds of those charged with rape -- one of the many violent crimes on the rise in socialism's snow-bound paradise- -- in the capital of Norway are "non-western" immigrants. Like a proud father, Jagland looks at a Obama's new America, where illegal aliens are behind "spikes in the reported numbers of murders, rapes, batteries, kidnappings, and vehicular homicides," and smiles.
Transformation! This is exciting to Jagland, who sees an American president who is determined to redistribute income while transforming the US economy. Just the thought makes Jagland's every body part tingle -- not just his leg, like Chris Matthews. Oh, happy day, the thought of the U.S. joining Norway with the highest taxes in the free world, in addition to a purchase tax of 25% on almost every good and service!
Yes, this Nobel Prize has been awarded for sharing Jagland's values, from belief in political elites controlling and redistributing income to antipathy toward "them Jews." Jagland takes his anti-Semitism seriously, for Norway has historically led Europe in persecuting Jews. To this day, his social democratic paradise does not allow Jews to keep Kosher, enacting laws in 1930 that later became the model for Nazi Germany.
Oh happy day, sings Jagland! Hello, Nobel Peace Prize! Goodbye American exceptionalism, Judeo-Christian values, freedom and economic opportunity. Hello, world government, the respect of the International Community, and taxation -- as the Norwegian elite frankly puts it -- as a "means to achieve social objectives, such as redistribution of income."
Barack Obama, Nobel laureate. One small step for Barack, and one giant leap for the self-proclaimed Marxist elites.
Stuart H. Schwartz is on the faculty at Liberty University in Virginia.
