Ecclesiastical "Negative Liberties?"

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Obama's Newspeak UPDATED

Remember in High School when that weird English teacher made you read George Orwell’s “1984?”

That book was such a drag. We spent what seemed like an eternity going over “newspeak.”

How stupid was that- having to learn a new vocabulary just to read a dumb book?

Back when I read the book, 1984 was still a few years in the future, yet strangely, for me 1984 was in my past.

It was difficult to read a fictionalized account of what had been my life a few years before. I had come from a tropical Oceania complete with a Big Brother, the thought police and the ministry of truth.

I supposed if I were to read 1984 now, I might get a little misty eyed at Winston Smith’s life reminding me of my hellish childhood. But as a teenager I was tremendously annoyed.

But, back to 1984 and “newspeak.”

Yesterday, as I heard the 2001 tapes of presidential candidate Barack Obama commenting on the civil rights movement, the courts, the constitution and the founding fathers, all I could think of was “newspeak.”

Orwell was brilliant in coming up with “newspeak” to explain how Big Brother and the thought police partially controlled Oceania through speech. In practice, Marxist regimes aim at controlling discourse and thought processes through linguistic euphemisms.

Communists, socialists and fellow travelers all talk in “code.” Now, when I try to explain this “code” to the uninitiated, well, you know…they tell me I’m a paranoid exile that sees a communist bogeyman hiding behind every rock. Fair enough, I may be paranoid, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t communists lurking around. And believe me, they are they’re not going to come out and confess. They’re going to try to deceive and confuse you by talking in code. It’s what they do.

Seemingly innocuous words and phrases like “social justice” or “income redistribution” or “activities on the ground” or “coalition of powers” or "equality" or "brotherhood" all take on a Marxist aura when they are deciphered through a socialist code decoder.

Basically, what the Illinois State Senator was talking about way back in 2001, was his dismay that the founding fathers had not codified “egalitarianism” into the US constitution and that the Warren court hadn’t taken the admittedly radical step when it had the chance. That’s what he means when he says that he could now sit down at a lunch counter and order, if he “could pay for it.” If he could not pay for it and the white guy sitting next to him could, then he’s not equal. This is why wealth has to be redistributed-in order to achieve “economic justice” - code for egalitarianism.

Now, mankind is either genetically wired or created, (depending on one’s belief system), to act in the interests of self preservation. Under normal circumstances, man would not share his wealth with other men. It’s not in his best interests to do so. That’s where the state comes in. The state must, therefore, redistribute the wealth so that all men have more or less the same. Since the state has to force one man to give up what’s his for the benefit of another, it must do so by coercion or force, thus also equally distributing misery.

Marxists don’t see the world in terms of rights that come from their creator. The “creator” for the Marxist is an opiate-another form of crowd control. Man isn’t measured by being equal in the eyes of the state. Man is equal if he has the same relative to every other man. As long as all men are given the same rights by the state, then its fair – “social justice”-again, socialist code words for “egalitarianism.”

So when Senator Obama talks about “negative liberties” he’s really talking about the protection of individual rights which are negative, in his view, because they limit the state from instituting “social and economic justice”, egalitarianism, by coercion-his goal.

In Obama’s view, the problem with the Constitution is that it doesn’t say “what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf.” In other words, Obama, believes that the Constitution is flawed because it doesn’t give the state the right to coerce another citizen to give you some of his wealth and achieve “social and economic justice” which code for egalitarianism.

So when you put Obama’s “spread the wealth” philosophy with his belief that the constitution is flawed because it stops short of giving the state the power to act “on your behalf,” you can see how the argument can be made that Obama’s “hope” and “change” are really just newspeak euphemisms for the socialist reorganization of society based on the Marxist principles of egalitarianism through activist judicial reinterpretation of a flawed constitution.

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You can. Really, if you know the code. And it isn't even a thought crime ... yet.

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UPDATE:

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A different and brilliant take on Obama's Newspeak from Bruce Walker at Free Thinker:

Notions like "positive liberty" are part of the web of thought control by language manipulation which Orwell described in 1984. If Obama cannot think of "positive liberty" as a contradiction in terms, then he simply cannot think. The conscious surrender of language to the needs of the party creates a self-made prison from which escape is, quite literally, inconceivable. These unguarded remarks by Obama display a mind trapped in a reality in which words are phantoms.

I think Walker lets Obama off the hook for his newspeak though by excusing Oboma for being a product of the left's newspeak "indoctrination.":

Iron and dull control of education, destruction of the nuclear family, disappearance of religion in public life, degradation of art and entertainment into tasteless mush, and, most of all, the politicization of everything in life -- these forces have created a new sort of human being, a person who lacks from life any tools of discernment or devices to describe life outside of the realm of collectivist political rhetoric.

There is something about Obama, many of us sense, which is different from any other politician. Socialism is inadequate to explain Obama. He is both more and less than that. The Left with all its odd menagerie of causes and claims is not enough either. Obama is part of that but part of something more disturbing. He is someone who can say "negative liberties" unaware that he is saying nothing at all.

I would argue that Obama is not the victim of newspeak who mindelessly repeats the Orwellian newspeak and socialist code but a practitioner in the art of socialist euphinistic linguitics- a true believer.

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Obama is certainly intelligent enough to have seen through the linguistic indoctranination that someone in our age group would have been subjected to in American academia.

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Young people in Cuba, where thay are subjected to the entirety of George Orwell's Ocenia ,are able to see through the propaganda even after generations of Big Brother, the thought police and the ministry of truth.

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Favorite line in the Article:

But implying that more state power somehow increases liberty is beyond mere Leftism. It is entry into that dead realm of Newspeak in which language is pureed into nonsense, and then nonsense is presented as argument.

Ha! That's great stuff. No pure there, just tasty chunks to chew on!

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What, Me Worry?

I’m usually the one pointing out the red flags around Obama.

But yesterday I was put in the unusual position of having to calm someone who is despondent about the prospect of an Obama presidency down. This Cuban American was going down the list of similarities between Obama and the Castro.

Obama, you see, was abandoned by his father and had another name until he was a teenager just like Castro….yaddah…yaddah…blah…blah…blah. They had a pretty extensive list.

Over some cold ones, we came to the conclusion that even if Obama is a Marxist, he won’t have enough time to transform our fledging socialist goverment unto a full fledge totalitarian state in eight years. There’s just not enough time. I mean, even Chavez hasn’t been able to do it to Venezuela in 10 years.

That could never happen here…

So we kept watching the football game. We came to the conclusion that even after Obama’s impending victory, we would still be able to watch football on TV or go to the game and keep making our mortgage payments to the government and our car lease payment to the government owned bank. Nothing’s changed, really. Just a temporary swing of the pendulum to the left.

So I get up this morning and find out that the Socialist wing of the Democratic party is busy at work planning the birth of the People’s Republic of America.

Barney Frank wants to cut military spending by 25%. John, reporting for duty, Kerry wants a “The New Deal II”. The, there’s a plan out there to socialize my 401K .

All this on top of what looks like the criminalization of dissent as evidenced by the attacks on Joe the Plumber and the upcoming push to re-institute the “fairness doctrine.”

Meanwhile, “Russia's Central Elections Committee has also assigned its Centre for the Study of Election Technology to review the U. S. election campaign.” A preliminary report obtained by the Russian press formerly know as Pravda, the official organ of the Communist Party of USSR, and organization that knows a thing or two about propaganda says that the American MSM, the official organ of the Democratic Party of the United States has given Barack Obama a “hidden advantage.”

Still, all this only takes to a European style Social Democracy. With time, their inefficient nature causes a swing to the right as has happened in France and Germany, for example. Equilibrium.

And even in the European socialist governments there hasn’t been any serious erosion of civil rights…

…Unless there’s some international crisis happens that could cause martial law to be declared.

What are the chances of that?

It’s not like anyone’s guaranteeing a crisis or anything. Is it?

Ok. So I called my friend this morning and told him that if a white pigeon lands on Obama during his inauguration speech, I’m outta here.

Counting Your Chickens Before They Come Home To Roost

I guess it’s all over but the crying.

The collective American Pravda has declared that Obama has won. The election is a mere formality like in Cuba.

The candidate is already preparing for a transition. The celebration is on and the senator is trash talking:

"If you'll stand with me, then I know that we can win Virginia and we can win this election and we can finally bring the change we need to Washington," Obama told the estimated crowd of 35,000. "I feel like we got a righteous wind at our backs here."

A righteous wind at his back? Hmm. Maybe he was walking in front of Biden and mistook a “self –righteous” wind from his blowhard running mate for a plain old righteous wind.

Anyway, as his friend Ayres knows, you don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blowing and Obama feels the wind is blowing his way.

So does the Cuban regime who is salivating at the thought of a fellow traveler blowing into the White House.

The Cuban spy diplomat, Jorge Bolanos, who heads the Cuban Interest Section in D.C. is starting an awareness campaign to generate world pressure to “kill” a half-century old U.S. trade embargo genocide on Cuba by the root of all humanity’s evils, the USA.

The Cuban regime’s goal of talks without pre conditions is about to become a reality on January 20. The regime’s pre condition of being treated as “an equal partner in negotiations." at any kind of a meeting with the Americans seems close at hand since Senator Obama has stated his desire to meet with the Castros without pre conditions (on his side). Communists do not negotiate and never will. Their idea of negotiations is for the US to end the embargo which is what the regime means when it says that it wants to be treated as an equal:

In an IPS interview with Esteban Morales, a Cuban academic and researcher Esteban Morales, a Cuban academic and researcher, Morales lays out the regime’s preference for Senator Obama:

"I’d like to see him win. I think that with Obama in office, the possibilities for change would be richer,"

It seems, though that Raúl is giving the President Select, Obama, an out by agreeing to talks without having to deal with the embargo:

He pointed out that Cuban President Raúl Castro has said on more than one occasion that Cuba is willing to negotiate to find a solution to the long-standing bilateral conflict, provided that its "independence" is respected and that discussions be "guided by the principles of equality, reciprocity, non-interference and mutual respect."

With regard to defining a possible agenda for such talks, Morales said that "the key factor is that the parties cannot come to the negotiating table with preconditions." "If that is achieved, the rest is just drawing up a smart list of issues mutually agreed on, ranging from the most simple matters to the most complex," he said.

In Morales’s view, the embargo imposed in the early 1960s, which Obama says he will not lift, is a "political problem" that could be left out of the debate if both countries decide not to discuss it.In that case, the two nations could begin to regularize economic relations on the basis of the already existing trade flow, which is limited to food imports by Cuba paid up front in cash.

A quick gusano translation: The regime will meet with Obama to shore up his diplomacy cred if they get “credit.” Cred pro quo.

On the other side of the globe, the Iranians are also salivating at the prospect of an Obama Presidency.

"We are leaning more in favor of Barack Obama because he is more flexible and rational, even though we know American policy will not change that much,"

Meanwhile, Al Qaida is trying reverse jihadist psychology by backing McCain so that people will vote for Obama.

Joe the Dissident?

Is this a sign of things to come?

Senator Obama is running around the country asking for people to vote for him. He’s shaking hands, kissing babies, eating pie and answering questions.

His path crossed with one Joe the plumber, just some guy in an Ohio neighborhood. Joe asked him a question. Obama’s answer wasn’t exactly politically correct in most of flyover small town America and the opposition jumped all over it. That’s politics.

But in the America of Obama’s supporters it was a crime against humanity that had to be avenged.

And Obama’s minions set out to destroy Joe the plumber for having the audacity of hoping to change his lot in life from employee to small business owner-to live the American dream without being penalized by the government for achieving his dream.

The plumbers union, the sindicato, set out to discredit the pipe fitter. Had he been a member of the union, he would have probably been expelled for having ideologically deviant pipe dreams. His career would have gone down the drain. They do that in Cuba. They took my dad’s syndicate card away so he couldn’t get a job with the only employer in town, Fidel, because he had the audacity to want to leave the island.

Then, the public relations arm of Campaign Obama, the press, decided to dig into Joe’s past. They threw the kitchen sink at the plumber, airing all the dirty laundry from his washing machine. Was the Joe that was practicing plumbing without a license really a McCain mole- a plant? They do that to those who dare ask questions in Cuba also-discredit them. They call them mercenaries in Cuba- CIA moles and spies.

It seems that Obama can only be asked questions within certain parameters or boundaries. Any challenges to his officially created persona are considered attacks. Any questions that are too tough to answer with a platitude or slogan are an assault. If anyone steps over the line, their transgressions are dealt with swift and strong personal retaliations by overzealous followers. Fidel once said “within the revolution, everything, outside the revolution, nothing.” It would appear Joe the Plumber crossed the line and stepped outside Obama’s audatious boundaries.

With the fairness doctrine, rearing its ugly head just over the November horizon, what was once an inquisitive citizen exercising his or her right to demand answers form politicians asking them for their votes in America, could now become a dissident with all the honors, rights, and privileges pertaining thereto.

I know...I'm a hysterical paranoid Cuban exile..BUT it has already happened to Joe the Plumber...and Obama has even been elected yet.

Welcome To The Jungle

The media has been quoting Cuba’s blogger in chief, el compañero Fidel, giving his opinions about the American presidential race.

Reading Fidel’s ramblings is painful, but somebody has to do it since reading what the AP, Reuters and others decide to quote can be um…misleading.

Fidel, in his reflections, gives incredible insights into his warped world view. He peppers his observation with communist phraseology to continue the 50 year old façade that he’s a true believing Marxist.

In the name of his reflection Castro says it all: “The law of the jungle.” To Castro, the predator, you’re either the predator or the pray. Nations are also governed by the same rules and the countries have to compete for a limited pool of wealth that is arbitrarily distributed by the luck of the geographical draw.

Among countries: those with a better climates and more arable land, more water and more natural resources in the area where they are located, when there are no more territories to conquer; those that master technology, have greater development and handle unlimited media resources, and those that, in contrast, do not enjoy any of these prerogatives. These are the sometimes enormous differences between countries described as rich or poor.

It is the law of the jungle.

Interestingly, Castro is still clinging to the idea that all the world’s wealth is finite and mankind is condemned to constantly struggle over it. He refuses to acknowledge that wealth can be created, that the pie can made bigger. That’s why when he took over Cuba, he distributed the existing pie to the powerful and strong, himself, and never created any more wealth in an island blessed by nature with fertile land, ideal climate and breath taking natural beauty.

Castro marvels at the fact that the European whites, who are the power elite in the United States, have not solved the Obama problem by following the law of the jungle by praying on the weak minority as he certainly would have. And again, he tacitly endorses the senator, whom he once called the “most progressive” candidate.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Senator Obama when asked why he would raise taxes to small businessmen who make over $250,000 a year, he responded that he wanted to “spread the wealth.” That’s an interesting answer. Rather than wanting to create more wealth so that more people can make over $250,000 a year, Obama, like his fan in Havana, prefers to redistribute the existing finite wealth. This approach has been tried ad-nauseum with no success all over the world. In Cuba, it only succeeded in making everyone equally miserable living in a place ruled by the law of the jungle where only the strong survive.

Of course, to the left, whatever suffering the citizens have to endure to grow the power and influence of the government is of no consequence. The expansion of the all knowing state that ultimately decides how the pie is split and the power that goes along with it, is what's important.

Reaching

I have been anticipating this for a few days now.

Ever since to the growing chorus asking questions about Senator Obama’s relationship “with some guy in his neighborhood” started to get louder and his campaign continued to give flippant answers and blow the questioners off, I knew it was coming.

I knew that, eventually, when the talking points about Ayers just being a guy in the neighborhood, and Obama being wet behind the ears when the bombs where going off, and the whinny “guilty by association” rationale weren’t enough, and their backs where against the wall, that they would try to bring John McCain down to Barack Obama’s level.

And who better to scapegoat than the Miami Cubans, the “go to” ethnics, with whom McCain has some common bonds and warm ties.

Today two articles surfaced that argue that since McCain is friendly with communist hating Miami Cubans who are pressuring President Bush to pardon the founder of Alpha 66, Eduardo Arocena ,that he like, Obama, is guilty of , in the words of Sarah Palin, “palling around with terrorists.”

One of the articles comes from the Huffington Post and it tells the sad sorry tale of Max Lesnik of all people, (talk about guilty by association), whose body shivers at the hypocrisy of Sarah Palin in accusing Obama of “palling around with terrorists” when the Republicans embrace all the Little Havana terrorists.

Roberto Lovato, the author, takes all his shots at the McCain campaign through the words of Max Lesnik. To Lesnik, of course, anyone who yearns for a democratic Cuba free from his friends, the terrorist Castro twins, are terrorists because they don’t lick the tyrant’s jack boots while they’re getting kicked, like Lesnik delights in doing.

The other more innocuous article comes to us from the Miami New Times blog, Riptide, and it tries to draw a parallel between Ayers and Arocena in a piece called the ‘Tale of two “terrorists”’ in order to excuse Obama’s refusal to come clean about his relationship with Ayers.

Comparing the Ayers affair to McCain’s association with a coveted constituency in south Florida is not only a reach but an exercise in intellectual dishonesty and moral relativity.

Bill Ayers’ terror spree with his communist Weather Underground was meant to bring about a revolution that would destroy American society and value system and plunge it into the totalitarian world that the Soviet Union and Cuba where suffering under at the time, and that unfortunately, Cuba still endures.

Arocena’s Alpha 66 was fighting the same terrorist movement that was fueling and financing Ayers and his merry band of mad bombers. The radical groups of the late 60’s and early 70’s were mostly comprised of Marxist “revolutionaries” who where being financed and supported by the Soviets and by Fidel Castro, the leader and role model of the Hemisphere’s would-be revolutionaries, guerrillas and terrorists.

By fighting the international communist movement that was trying to bring down American society, Arocena was merely trying to preserve the American value system. These Cuban men like Arocena who, in the sixties and seventies, decided to fight communist aggression with some aggression of their own where freedom loving men who saw themselves as warriors in an international struggle for freedom and liberal democratic values.

When John McCain was rotting in a Viet-Cong jail being tortured by his communist captors, some Cubans among them, William Ayres and his friends were trying to turn America into another North Viet Nam. Arocena was trying to stop Fidel Castro from fulfilling Che Guevara’s promise of creating a “hundred Vietnams” including one within America’s borders.

While one set of terrorists where trying to destroy the American way of life and enslave our children under a totalitarian communist system, other “terrorists” where fighting back to prevent that from happening.

Senator Obama and his campaign keeps reminding us that he was only 8 years old when Ayers was setting off bombs. Now, he’s 47. These days, terrorists like Castro, don’t take over countries by terror and revolution. That’s the old Marxist playbook. Nowadays, countries are taken over and enslaved by fast talking politicians that promise change and more equality between the rich and the poor like Chavez, Morales, Correa and Ortega. They later enshrine themselves into power by fixing elections and amending their charters to create constitutional dictatorships. The terrorists of old like Ayers and Castro have never changed their Marxist stripes, just their methods.

That is why it is so important to some American voters that senator Obama explain his relationship with Ayers and ally the well founded fears that some of us have that he’s not another of these 21st Century Socialists that has been backed, groomed by and represents the old Marxist revolutionaries and terrorists of the 60’s.

Food Shortages

If you were to drop in from outer space and read an article on Cuba, you would never know that hunger, deprivation and rationing existed in Cuba well before the island was ravaged by hurricanes, as this erroneously report in this SFGate article claims:

… the government of Cuban President Raúl Castro this week announced a nationwide food-rationing policy.

Now, consumers will only be permitted to purchase limited amounts of rice, beans, root vegetables, plantains and other basic foods…

Cubans have been suffering the indignity of “la libreta” for 46 years now.
The regime, of course, blames the 46 year shortage of food on the “embargo” and the miscreants and useful idiots in the US blame the “embargo” of the Cuban Exiles in Miami.

Now that the regime has basically shut down the farmer’s markets, Havana has 40, by decreeing a freeze on prices, the shelves are bare:

In markets around Havana, customers found stretches of mostly vacant vendor stalls and limited supplies of food. A market in the Vedado district offered only papayas, a small stack of melons and a few bulbs of garlic.

The regime is forcing all goods into its own stores where the rationing cards must be used including “humanitarian aid” which it is diverting to its hard currency stores.

As a matter of fact, Guillermo Fariñas of Cubacan press reports that there was a spontaneous protest in the city of Santa Clara when some 500 citizens witnessed boxes clearly marked “humanitarian aid” in Portuguese being unloaded from a truck and delivered into the “Siboney” hard currency store. The police, state security and rapid response brigades were called in to repress the citizens who where verbally abusing the truck drivers for diverting the humanitarian aid into a for profit state – run store.

The Wink

Obama has become a phenomenon.

He has “followers,” not supporters. Children sing him songs. Celebrities swoon.

He’s a rock star. The cult of personality personified.

I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if conservatives, for example, started a personality cult of their own …

Ronald Reagan used to talk about America being a shiny city on a hill. But, my whole life all I ever found was a dilapidated trailer park adorned with Walmart whicker citronella torches on top of a landfill. But I keep looking.

Whenever I went to Mexico or the Bahamas for spring break, (they don’t have politically correct liberal regimes in these countries and they serve you liquor without an ID), I would always pretend to be Canadian because I was ashamed to be from the same country as Bill Clinton who had single handedly, (he held the cigar in the other hand), made America synonymous with lip service and oral sex.

There were other reasons I pretended to be Canadian. It was embarrassing to be from the country with the only military that could turn any place into a parking lot with conventional arms-and that’s just one branch of service, the Marines- and be bitch slapped across the globe by a bunch of rag-tag suicidal religious fanatics while half of my country was more worried about their constitutional rights than what caliber slug would go between their crazed beady eyes.

I was also confused to live in a country where all the movie stars, ( I get ALL my historical perspective from Hollywood movies-and don’t laugh, the college professors who write all the history books are even more biased than Hollywood directors who at least have to answer to movie critics), who made believe for a living would come out of character, (or assume another character), and act like they cared about , global warming, for example, but then act like they we’re acting by turning around and acting totally contrary to the way they urged me to act. (See? It’s confusing.)

Anyway, I tough I would never reach the shiny city. I had lost hope for me and humanity. All seemed lost.

Then I hear her name. Sarah. A biblical name. That was good.

Then I saw her face. And now, I’m a believer. (Hey, if Barry O & co. can steal his campaign slogan from David Bowie, I can steal from The Monkeys.)

No, she didn’t make the oceans stop their rise or heal the planet, but she aroused me and healed my libido-and it is all about me, me, me. Not a shiny city on a hill but a shiny happy face atop two luscious mountains.

And then I heard her speech. A heavenly voice. And she talked about dogs and moms I love dogs and moms. I love dogs so much, I don’t even eat hot dogs, unless you call them frankfurters, in which case, I’ll eat them because I don’t love Frank, although I love frank people.

She was mesmerizing. She told stories of America’s last frontier, about moose and snow machines.

But when she spoke, I couldn’t really listen to her words because for I was so captivated by her personality and personal aura that all I heard was a choir of angels. Is she an angel? Was that a glow? Or was it the stage lights? It didn’t matter what she said. She could talk in circles for all I cared. It was all about her. Sa-Rah! Sa-Rah! Even her name was like a cheer! A mantra, a prayer.

She spoke of hockey and six packs and she was fertile. Five kids worth of fertile and still looked just like she did when she was a beauty queen years ago! Imagine… a beauty queen vice-president. Better looking than that Merkel woman and hotter than what his name in France’s model wife. Finally, something to be proud of! No longer would I have to hold my head in shame and pretend to be Canadian in front of all the people who hailed from countries America had liberated twice in one century!

And last night…sigh. Well, let me tall ya, I just love the way she says that, she can call me Joe or whatever she wants anytime she wants…she, Sarah, winked at me. Right in the middle of the most important day in her life, she looked right at the camera and winked at ME.

Imagine that, a candidate that winks at ME.

The sound of the ensuing ridicule would be deafening and well deserved and yet when you read people talk about Obama in such ridiculous terms, you hear crickets.

(Wink)