PrintNovember 10, 2009
The President of Resentment
Some people have a government, and some governments have a people, said Ronald Reagan. We are being turned into a nation where the government owns the people. It is the demagogic heirs to the dreadful history of slavery who are now trying to turn the tables; Obama is a slave-master in the making. He looks the part, he acts the part, and behind the scenes, his commissars are making it happen.
Obama has never displayed his bitter, long-harbored resentment toward America quite as obviously as he did after the Fort Hood massacre. The president couldn't figure out how to respond with the dignity befitting his office.
I happened to be going through the Washington, D.C. airport a couple of months ago when I heard a lot of people clapping and whooping in a little demonstration. When I looked, I noticed a single elderly French horn player sitting on a folding chair and playing patriotic tunes to enliven a parade -- if you can call it that -- of elderly wheelchair-bound vets from World War Two coming off their plane: the Greatest Generation, as even Tom Brokaw called them. They looked shrunken, most of those lifelong handicapped vets, wearing baseball and VFW caps, but some of them left their wheel chairs and walked through the reception as the old horn player did his tunes. My eyes started to tear up and I walked over to join the applause as these real saviors of the West went on by. They were greeted by a little reception committee and then went on to what was almost surely their last celebration with their buddies from the war. And that octogenarian horn player kept on playing his patriotic tunes.
Some of the bystanders joined in the applause, but there were some who made a display of their indifference and contempt as well. It was an interesting lesson in our split society. One young man jauntily walked away from the little homecoming demonstration, prancing in the opposite direction -- a little counter-demonstration all by himself. Those old vets in wheelchairs had no meaning for him. They were just mean old white guys, or something equally bizarre. The most democratic army in history, the one that brought together Italians, Jews, Germans, Poles, and yes, blacks and Japanese Americans and everyone else, all of them scared of dying but convinced that their country was imperiled by some pretty evil characters in Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union. So they fought and died, sometimes in great numbers. Bob Dole got his lifelong wounds in the murderous Italian campaign, just like John McCain got his shoulder-bones broken in the Hanoi Hilton. Some of those World War II guys were wounded for life, and some of them were now being rolled in wheelchairs before our eyes. They meant nothing to the contemptuous young man who pranced away from them.
That's a small metaphor for this administration. The young counter-demonstrator had no idea about the sacrifices of the Greatest Generation, the lethal dangers the country confronted after Pearl Harbor, and the heroism of our soldiers, sailors and marines. He'd no doubt been told from childhood onward how evil White America really is. Yes, those WWII soldiers represented an imperfect democracy, but it just happened to be the best one on earth. And those young soldiers knew that because of their own family histories, because American history was still taught in all the schools, and because they were good and decent people who were shocked by the vile regimes conquering Europe and Asia, ruthlessly killing millions of innocent civilians as they went. It was a huge resurgence of barbarism, and their very souls cried out against the injustice of it all. They were Americans. It wasn't necessary to explain things to them. They got it.
And so the high school girls stayed home to watch their sweethearts go off to war. Some of their men came back, often shell-shocked, but they didn't talk about the war. They went back to their lives and tried to pursue happiness. A lot of them never came back.
And then some guy named Joe Stalin exploded the first Soviet nuclear bombs, an A-bomb and an H-bomb. After all of their pain and homesickness and sacrifice, another totalitarian enemy had infiltrated the U.S. government, up to and including the White House staff. Those infiltrations were real, as we now know. They were not just the wild imaginings of Tailgunner Joe McCarthy. So Americans became angry and frightened by this new danger, especially because the State and Federal bureaucracies, the teachers, the media, and the universities were penetrated by the Stalinist Left and their front organizations. For the first time in human history, a single Soviet bomber could fly from Europe to New York City and obliterate all of Manhattan with the push of a button. Americans were outraged and frightened by this new threat, and they supported a vigorous anti-Communist movement led by people like Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Joe McCarthy, Dwight Eisenhower, and a host of others. For some decades the American people defended themselves vigorously and effectively against the Stalin-directed fifth column that threatened their lives and freedom.
Today we are seeing a Second Cold War, but the enemy is within, just as it was after World War II. We are seeing outright front organizations again. "J Street" is a classic example; it should be called "J Front." It's a fraud, claiming to represent people who never voted for them. George Soros, who sets up many of these phony organizations, is a man who accommodated the Nazis, among other distinctions. He has never displayed a smidgen of guilt for his role in the the disposition of Jewish possessions after their owners were arrested and sent to death camps -- men, women, and children. Normal Holocaust survivors feel tremendous guilt; Soros sounds jaunty and devil-may-care about the murderous cannibalism of those years. He made out well and started his long road to fortune. Today he is financing Obama's "Coup from Above" with the same insouciance with which he betrayed his Jewish relatives in Hungary.
There's a story to be told there. But don't expect the media to tell it.
The American people are hearing a call to arms -- not literal arms, for our system can self-correct. But we have to out-organize and out-pressure the Left. They have called us "the enemy" ever since Alinsky's little book radicalized the revolutionaries of the Boomer Left (and this only after the violent revolutionary groups were suppressed). When somebody really considers you an enemy, you have no choice: either you return the compliment, or you get overwhelmed by the new Chicago Mob in D.C.
The Left has shown how to win from a minority standpoint. According to a recent poll, American conservatives have a two-to-one majority. They are constantly undermined by the political Left: ridiculed in the media, demeaned in the schools and universities, and outmaneuvered at the state and national level by Leftists who are far nastier and far more ruthless than ordinary, decent Americans. This is a struggle for the country. We need to toughen up.
The first lesson is to start telling the truth without fear. Shout it out. Demonstrate. Tell your truth to your relatives that you've been trying to be nice to all these years. Make it pleasant and polite, but firm. Don't yell. Just talk and talk and talk. Yes, you can stand out from the crowd. Half of your listeners will privately agree with you if you state your case well, and over time they will find the courage to speak up, too.
The second lesson is to build up a cadre of leaders -- in the media, in politics, in the educational system, everywhere. We have at least one charismatic leader now in Sarah Palin. That's why she is under constant, vicious attack from the Left. That's why they burned down her church in Wasilla. They fear her. I love her for the enemies she has made. There are many other good people, but a charismatic political talent comes just once in every generation. She needs and deserves support. So do others.
When conservatives betray American conservatism, let them know you will vote against them, and support their conservative opponents in all the ways that work. Don't get nasty and hysterical. Just be calm and firm.
The third lesson is to organize, organize, and organize. That's how the Left did it. Tea Parties are good; the Heritage Foundation is good. There are many good organizations, and we need to support them with our dollars and our voices. We need to mobilize conservatives into active pressure groups around their greatest concerns. Web freedom is a crucial one right now. So is free radio and TV. When the Left attacks Fox News or Rush, we have to raise a gigantic fuss on their behalf. The media cannot be allowed to ignore our demonstrations. We have shrugged our shoulders and allowed far too many good people to be attacked.
The elections of 2010 will be a major survival test. If Americans fail that test, we will become Britain in its catastrophic decline under fifty years of socialism. A new Ruling Class will arise, just as it has in socialist Europe, and they will not care one bit about the people. They will import hostile voters from third-world countries. They will forge alliances with Islamists, as they are already. America will be helpless, and all the hostile forces around the world will know it. They will all try to push us under. If we are governed by a domestic fifth column, then North Korea, Russia, China, Iran, Hugo Chavez, the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood...all of them will beat us down. Real democracy is just not their thing.
At the U.N. we see kleptocracies in charge. Behold our future if we do not act. Chicago and Detroit stand as warnings.
Conservatives are individualists, so we have to do something unusual: organize, organize, organize. Local and national. Even international. We have friends in the British media looking for us to stand up and defend civilization, just as they stood up against Hitler when we were still dithering. Some of our friends are in Australia, in Canada, and yes, in France. Around the world there are millions who get it. We can be American patriots with allies all around the world. They need leaders and vocal support just as much as we do.
And we must militantly defend the freedom of the web. The Stalinoids will attack it viciously, just as they will attack talk radio and Fox News. We are fighting the same enemy Ronald Reagan fought. We have to do it just as intelligently and vigorously as he did.
The word "activist" used to be a media word for the Left. It's high time to make it work for American conservatives.
Become an activist or lose your country.
