More on Barry O.’s Barrio Watch…

About a week late and about a trillion dollars short, an American politician has called President –Elect Obama’s “plan” for a National Civilian Security Force” Marxist. No kidding.

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may—may not, I hope not—but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Rep. Broun, having never lived in a Marxist totalitarian dictatorship, cannot quite put his finger on it, but something in his gut tells him that a “national civilian security force” sounds, well, un-American and he’s right.

Over at the conservative web-site Hot Air, Ed Morissey contends that Rep. Broun’s statement hails the onset of ODS, Obama Derangement Syndrome. He also finds the Obama July 3, comments, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded,” rather innocuous:

In the context of Obama’s remarks above, though, he fairly clearly meant to at least include a volunteer force in outreach within and outside the US as some sort of Department of Peace-like indirect boost to national security…

…Nothing in that speech hints at a Gestapo-like organization at all.

Rep Broun’s remarks are likened to “hyperbole:”

If we plan to offer a rational alternative to the coming debacle of the next two years, then we’d better stick to facts and eschew hyperbole. We need to oppose the reality of the radical agenda proposed by Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress, not fantasies spun out of context-free snippets of speeches. The more critics invoke Hitler and Stalin instead of Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson, the better the reality of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi will seem in 2010.

Ok. Facts. I like Facts. I like jokes better: a Department of Peace?!? Very funny. We can call it the Ministry of Peace, the “minipeace” for short,-it has a certain familiar ring to it, no?

I agree with Rep. Broun that Obama’s proposal for a Civilian National Security Force has a Marxist ring to it, though I disagree with him that it will be Gestapo-like. You see, I had the misfortune of experiencing a “civilian national security force” in the flesh in Cuba. For the same reason, I also disagree with Morissey’s dismissal of the proposal as harmless.

The first Marxist red flags (hehehe...get it? red flags?) tactics can be found in the “official” script of the candidate Senator Obama’s speech on July 3. Back in July, I thought I had heard the Senator call for the civilian force in an audio of the speech and it made the hairs in the back of my neck stand at attention because of my Post Castro Stress Syndrome. I went to the Obama campaign website to make sure that I heard what I thought I heard and could not find the passage. Not thinking I was hearing things, I kept searching and thankfully, some intrepid citizens had preserved the given speech on a Youtube video. After the initial relief that I still had most of my marbles, I was shocked that the campaign had not included the potentially controversial passage in the “official” transcript. It seems like the Obama campaign already had a Department of Truth to go along with its proposed Department of Peace. The fact that the campaign tried to hide the words of the then presidential candidate by omitting them from the official transcript reeks of the kind of truth manipulation that occurs in Marxist regimes.

Obama, given his background as a community organizer, probably envisions a community based “security force”

Now, for folks that think like Senator Obama, National Security is a totally different thing than it is for folks with a more conservative mind set. Most lefties I know believe that the reason that America is being attacked by terrorists is because of our misguided and failed foreign policies. They keep telling me that the CIA created Bin Laden and that Saddam’s Iraq was our “client state.” They also argue that Iran had been our client state back in the days of the Shah and before the Islamic Revolution and that our backing of the despotic Shah caused the revolution and the ensuing hatred for America. They also tell me that our allegiance to Israel causes more problems than it is worth and that America’s insistence in holding despots to our standards of liberty and progress is antagonistic and counterproductive because it makes the rest of the world not “like” us. Evil manifests itself in the world not because it is inherently evil but because America causes it. It’s the Flip Wilson doctrine; the devil, America, The Great Satan, makes them do it.

Since these folks on the left are of the belief that America’s actions cause the security threats in the first place, In order for a civilian national security force to protect America, it has to change America so that it doesn’t offend any potential enemies out there and cause them to do evil things and so they “like” us. It also has to protect America from those who see the world in judgmental black and white and not in the enlightened relative shades of gray that the liberals do. It’s these people that believe in the antiquated notions of good and evil, right and wrong, that get us into these “security” messes in the first place.

You can see how the civilian national security force can morph and take on a different more ominous role. In order to protect America from these backward thinking, un-nuanced black and white type of folks, they would help protect the liberal ideals that would usher in a changed and transformed America.

They would “organize” the community in order to “educate” the citizenry into thinking less about themselves and more about the community, less about their individual happiness and more about collective purposes. What’s more secure than having everyone pull together as team towards a common goal?

Meetings at homes would be organized, community projects would be planned, neighborhood night watches would be instituted, T-shirts and hats would be distributed, programs for children would be started, workplace security details would be proposed.

These programs would, of course, all be coordinated through a national network funded by the Federal government with stipends, incentives and perks to the members of the “civilian national security force.” Perhaps even a new web-based group would be started.

The new community organization would then be responsible form promoting a mission and accomplishing a vision through different programs designed to keep people employed and busy-protecting an ideology and a cult of personality.

There would be voter registration and education drives along with massive get out the vote drives.

Those that are not interested in going to the meetings or volunteering or put posters up their homes would be shunned, ostracized, ridiculed and watched as potential “security” risks.

This is all very easy to organize when you have millions of “followers” who see a politician as the solution to all their problems and the answer to all their questions.

The "civilian security force" could be easily merged into existing non-profits and programs. No one would have to carry a gun or break your down in the middle of the night to make you comply with their programs. Their results are achieved much more subtly, by intimidation and peer pressure. You would not need thugs armed with night sticks or rifles to persuade you to tow the party line. But you would get neighborhood snitches with whistles, notepads and cell phones.
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I have seen this “civilian national security force” at work. In Cuba, they call it the CDR, Committees in Defense of the Revolution, and I know the kind of pressure that these kinds of organizations can put on citizens. They don’t have guns like the Gestapo, they just have a bunch of radical and committed individuals who have been organized to serve as the eyes and ears of the government and protect an ideology. I also know the kind of people that are attracted to it.

I know it sounds absurd and paranoid to the uninitiated, but it is not. And I’m not saying that it is going to happen in America, but I am saying that the idea of “civilian national security force” could have dangerous repercussions and detrimental effects on our constitutional rights, or “negative liberties” as our new president thinks of them.

And for those of you who say it cannot ever happen here, take a look at a homeowner's association. If people will agree to give up some of their property rights and freedom of expression as a trade off for some security, it is possible.

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UPDATE:

OK. So it's even a little more authoritarian than I thought. In Cuba, being a regime snitch is encouraged, but not compulsory. The Obama plan, according to Rahm Emmanuel, the incoming chief of staff, calls for a mandatory 3 month "Universal Civil Defense Training".

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UPDATE2:

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It seems I underestimated the Internet component of Obama's organizing plan. This article tells on how the Obama campaign plans to pioneer organizing the Presidents followers by using its vast e-mail phonebook to "convert his army of online activists into a viral lobbying and communications machine."