EDWARD CLINE: OBAMA’S TRIBAL WAR AGENDA
In my recent post, “The Transparency of Obama’s Malignity” (November 24th), I wrote that the man is evil incarnate. He is a nihilist. He revels in the destruction he contemplates and initiates. He disguises his nihilism, not very effectively, behind one or another kind of verbal and behavioral public mask: a jihadist/terrorist wrap-around mask revealing only his eyes, a Venetian carnival mask to express his practiced insouciance, and a bandit’s bandanna over his muzzle the better to render his words unintelligible. But, like Mickey Mouse attempting the same deception, his true intentions and ends have always been obvious to the keen observer. I’m not talking about Mickey’s or Obama’s ears.
Dr. Leonard Peikoff has published a new book, The Cause of Hitler’s Germany, which is a distillation of his 1983 opus, The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America. The Cause focuses on the philosophical roots of Nazism, going all the way back to Plato, up through Augustine, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, and sundry philosophers and intellectuals in the present time. In a copacetic relationship, Nazism benefited mightily from Marxist ideology, and vice versa, vis-à-vis the principles and practice of totalitarian rule. I left this comment on the Amazon listing of The Cause.
If you want to understand the phenomena of Barack Obama and his continual grabs for power, his indifference to Congress, and his hostility to America and to Americans, Dr. Peikoff’s book would be an essential, necessary place to start. Obama, however, is merely the end product of over a century and a half of political and moral thought in the United States. He is merely the practicing heir of Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel from the 18th and 19th centuries. His predecessors in office, Republican and Democratic, subscribed to some of his agenda; the Republicans, to preserve the status quo, whatever it happened to be at the moment; the Democrats, to advance the Progressive, collectivist agenda of transforming the nation to a thoroughly regulated one from top to bottom.
Dr. Peikoff explains in clear terms how America is “progressing” to an end similar to that of Nazi Germany’s. The visible accoutrements may differ between Germany’s Nazism and our own – jackboots and kepis vs. tennis shoes and baseball caps – but the ideology and consequences are the same. It was logical that Hitler hated America and regarded it as a mortal enemy; and it is only logical that Obama express his undisguised hatred for America, as well, and seek to advance its destruction more blatantly.
Someday, hopefully, when reason is reestablished in this country, and the nihilists now in charge of its dissolution have been disenfranchised, a documentary will be produced showing the highlights of Obama’s own “Triumph of the Will,” not as a a propaganda film, but as an instructional exposé.
In The Cause of Hitler’s Germany, Dr. Peikoff makes little reference to how the progress to Nazism or to our own brand of totalitarianism is paralleled in America. That daunting task he performs in The Ominous Parallels. The text of the latter is updated in The Cause to include the turmoil in the Middle East. When The Ominous Parallels was published in 1982/1983, the fundamental essence of Islam, a totalitarian ideology garbed in religious vestments, had not yet been comprehended by very many observers who based their assessments on any ideology’s essential characteristics.
On November 24th, President Barack Obama gave a speech to a Chicago audience on the subject of his executive amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants, the majority of them from Mexico and Central America. It is the same folksy, patronizing rhetorical equivocation that has characterized all his political speeches, one that sought to capitalize on a subject he has, on one hand, been ambiguous about, but on the other quite clear: He is going to do it in spite of the probable illegality of his action, in spite of his failed programs, in spite of his growing unpopularity even among his now luke-warm supporters.
Neil Munro of The Daily Caller, in his November 25th column, “Obama: Americans Have No Right to Favor Americans,” remarked:
The only Americans who can legitimately object to immigration are native Indian-Americans, President Barack Obama told his Chicago audience Nov. 24, as he made an impassioned ideological plea for endless immigration, cultural diversity and a big government to manage the resulting multicultural society.
“There have been periods where the folks who were already here suddenly say, ‘Well, I don’t want those folks,’ even though the only people who have the right to say that are some Native Americans,” Obama said, rhetorically dismissing the right of 300 million actual Americans to decide who can live in their homeland. Americans should not favor other Americans over foreigners, Obama demanded. “Sometimes we get attached to our particular tribe, our particular race, our particular religion, and then we start treating other folks differently… that, sometimes, has been a bottleneck to how we think about immigration,” he said in the face of many polls showing rising opposition to his immigration agenda.
Obama promises that he will step-by-step grant no-strings-attached amnesty to 12 million illegal immigrants who he says will boost an economy he has already wreaked with Obamacare and all his other wealth and income sapping policies. It is burdened with an unemployment rate of nearly 13% among Americans and legalized immigrants already here. Neil Munro highlights Obama’s “compassion” for people he wants to swamp the country with:
Deportations of illegals who have children in the United States “breaks up families… it is heartbreaking, it is not right,” he said. “We’re not a nation that kicks out strivers… we find ways to welcome people, fellow human beings, children of God, into the fold, and harness their talents.”
The Statue of Liberty doesn’t have its back to the world, he said, trying to portray the monument as a colossal invitation to migrants. In fact, the statue was designed as a “Light to the World” that would show foreigners how Americans use their constitution and liberty to govern themselves without kings or emperors. The many immigrants who arrive have to be treated equally under the law, Obama said, segueing into his progressive agenda.
To “show foreigners how Americans use their constitution and liberty to govern themselves without kings or emperors”? Or an authoritarian – “Do as I say, not as I do” – usurper of the constitution that stands in his way?
James Taranto in his Wall Street Journal article of November 25th, “Policy? What Policy?” pondered the apparent contradictions in Obama’s Chicago speech:
Simply put, the president offers no explanation for why he is ordering these changes only for 5 million of the nearly 12 million illegals in the United States. Everything he said in his speech about the value of immigrants, and the need to show kindness to the stranger, ought in theory to apply to any illegal [alien] but a criminal. But Obama has limited its reach to people who have been here for several years and have children who are American citizens. This means either his arguments are disingenuous, or he doesn’t have the courage of his convictions, or he’s calibrating his responses to satisfy a political constituency without causing a wholesale eruption inside the country. Or all three.
It’s Obama’s version of the Three-Card-Monte scam. Taranto ends his column with:
The administration is playing a double game. Plainly Obama believes his political objectives are best served by striking a bold and confrontational pose (which further suggests that arriving at a legislative compromise is not among those objectives). But in formulating a legal argument, it is in the administration’s interest to present the action as modestly as possible-a minor change in policy that doesn’t amount to a “general policy” at all.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen such an approach from the administration. During the political debate over ObamaCare, the president insisted that the bill’s proposed penalty for not having insurance was not a tax. When it came time to defend the law in court, the solicitor general argued in the alternative that it is a tax. In that case, at least, the double game was successful. We’ll see if they can pull it off again.
If Taranto bothered to peel the onion of Obama’s immigration policy layer after layer down to its bud, he’d be crying a river of tears. He might better understand the nature of the monster he is assessing. Consistency is not a hallmark of a dictator or even a wannabe dictator such as Obama. Dr. Peikoff stresses that Obama, emulating Hitler, plays the ultimate pragmatist, claiming that an action was absolutely imperative one day, but change his mind the next day and propose or enforce another kind of action. Since nothing was real in Hitler’s universe, he could pose as a paragon of consistency while at the same time waffle between contradictory policies and persuade Germans that he was “staying the course.”
From Obama’s November 25th remarks in Chicago which “don’t” mention the Ferguson riots or the Grand Jury decision:
As many of you know, a verdict came down – or a grand jury made a decision yesterday that upset a lot of people. And as I said last night, the frustrations that we’ve seen are not just about a particular incident. They have deep roots in many communities of color who have a sense that our laws are not always being enforced uniformly or fairly….
“Communities of color”? “White” isn’t a color? Are Asians lumped together with “whites” in Obama’s universe, but Latinos or Hispanics comprise another “community of color”? Obama is fixated on race. As are his supporters, and the MSM.
But what we also saw – although it didn’t get as much attention in the media – was people gathering in overwhelmingly peaceful protest – here in Chicago, in New York, in Los Angeles, other cities. We’ve seen young people who were organizing, and people beginning to have real conversations about how do we change the situation so that there’s more trust between law enforcement and some of these communities. And those are necessary conversations to have….
“Peaceful protests”? Such as mostly white protesters staging Ferguson “die-ins” in shopping malls, or or trying to stop Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, or disrupting public Christmas events, such as Christmas tree lightings? And I can’t help but recall actor Morgan Freeman’s 2005 retort to Mike Wallace who asked him to comment on America’s alleged “race problem.” Freeman said: “Stop talking about it!” Implying that skin color is important only if it’s an issue to you.
So my message to those people who are constructively moving forward, trying to organize, mobilize, and ask hard, important questions about how we improve the situation – I want all those folks to know that their President is going to work with them. (Applause.) Separate and apart from the particular circumstances in Ferguson, which I am careful not to speak to because it’s not my job as President to comment on ongoing investigations and specific cases, but the frustrations people have generally – those are rooted in some hard truths that have to be addressed.
And so those who are prepared to work constructively, your President will work with you. And a lot of folks, I believe, in law enforcement and a lot of folks in city halls and governor’s offices across the country want to work with you as well.
So as part of that, I’ve instructed Attorney General Eric Holder not just to investigate what happened in Ferguson, but also identify specific steps we can take together to set up a series of regional meetings focused on building trust in our communities.
He isn’t going to comment on Ferguson, but does anyway. The boy can’t help himself.
But Peikoff’s chief point is that the Germans were conditioned by two centuries of imbibing Kant and Hegel and could no longer tell what was real and what wasn’t. This is Obama’s policy, as well. “I’m against racism and violence and property destruction,” he’ll say with faux sincerity on one hand. But his policies and actions say something else. On December 1st he convened a “civil rights” conference of the leading racists in the country that included Al Sharpton, the president of La Raza, and other preeminent race-baiters and race exploiters to discuss how to fix America’s “race problem,” which Obama has done more to exacerbate than did the KKK.
Imagine Hitler calling a meeting of the top Nazis to deliberate on how to combat anti-Semitism. Further, the participants at the White House meeting have “suffered” from racism like Paris Hilton and Miley Cyrus have suffered from “sexism.” Obama’s race conference seems more like a rap session between non-rival gangs. Think the Bloods and the Crypts trading jive-talk and planning their own jihad against the American public (as in Ferguson “protesters” invading malls, ruining public Christmas events), supervised by a government appointed maven for community-organizing outreach.
My own point here is that Obama wants a “race war,” or tribal warfare. He’ll do everything in his “executive power to encourage it. There’s money in it, there’s political capital in it, there’s Progressive “social justice” in it.
If you think this column is “too intellectual,” then there’s nothing I can do for you. You must be a tribalist.
Edward Cline is the author of the Sparrowhawk novels set in England and Virginia in the pre-Revolutionary period, of several detective and suspense novels, and three collections of his commentaries and columns, all available on Amazon Books. His essays, book reviews, and other articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Journal of Information Ethics and other publications. He is a frequent contributor to Rule of Reason, Family Security Matters, Capitalism Magazine and other Web publications.
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