“About the capitalist states, it doesn’t depend on you whether or not we exist… Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!â€Â
-         Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, 1956
I considered titling this column “Where Are We Going and How Did I Get in This Handbasket?†but decided it would have been a bit unwieldy.
The term “Bolshevik†was derived from a Russian word that means “majority;†the party which bore this name went on – after some good old-fashioned 18th-Century style party warfare – to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R) and rule Russia and eastern Europe with a titanium fist for nearly a century.
Two things come to mind: One, that our society has become one which by design promotes the “forgetting of history†(as the saying goes), and two, that Khrushchev’s threat definitely takes on new meaning if one considers it as extending beyond the former U.S.S.R to include all with like philosophy and goals, past, present and future.
While the media (and therefore much of the nation) is fixated on the Svengali-like charismatic power of Democrat presidential contender Barack Obama and the death-struggle between the geriatric liberal senator John McCain and Mike Huckabee on the Republican side, reality continues to unfold in the real world.
“There’s just no doubt in my mind  under any set of rules  waterboarding is torture… One of America’s greatest strengths is the soft power of our value system and how we treat prisoners of war, and we don’t tortureâ€Â
-         Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge Says Waterboarding is Torture, Associated Press, January 18, 2008
A false premise to start with, of course. For better or worse, informed Americans are well aware that questionable things have been done and practices undertaken throughout our history in order to preserve the nation. Is it nationalistic to declare that this is acceptable as long as it does not include violation of individual Americans’ Constitutional rights? Probably.
Do I have a problem with that? No way.
Had I hair, I’d likely want to tear it out at the former Homeland Security Secretary’s comments. Yes, “soft†is what we have become; Ridge’s use of the phrase “soft power†is not only an oxymoron, but it is intellectually dishonest, intellectually insulting and politically dangerous. A more accurate description of America’s practices concerning prisoners of war, spies and the like might better be viewed as “circumspect power.†For a person who once held Ridge’s position to publically reinforce the twisted geopolitical initiatives that the far left has used to reduce so many Americans and American politicians to rationally yielding larva is inexcusable.
Onto the stage set by the War on Terror, a president who has been more savagely maligned by the establishment media that anyone in history save Adolph Hitler (but who has also been vacillating and ideologically weak in key areas), a Republican party in identity crisis and a voting public that is incomprehensibly ill-informed as regards the machinations and objectives of the far left strides Barack Obama.
Obama speaks of change. What kind? We don’t really know; he’s saying what many presidential hopefuls have said over the years, but he’s saying it very well.
There’s a saying: “You don’t know what you don’t know… until you do.†I am reminded of the disenfranchised Russian masses who heard Lenin’s pretty words and fell for the Bolshevik con; they wanted change too, and wound up with a different master than the Czar – but a much crueler and ruthless one.
Barack Obama’s associations include ties to far left billionaire George Soros and others who claim solidarity with the Nation of Islam. Most Obama supporters are likely unaware of this or do not recognize the grave danger of these facts.
Bill Clinton proved how much one President could damage America culturally. Now, unfortunately, we are also in the crosshairs of enemies against whom the Democrats are by their own words not prepared to stand. They’ve minimized the threat and undermined efforts against our enemies, even to the extent of maintaining that this drama was somehow written, produced and directed by George W. Bush.
Now, Americans want “change,†and they are gobbling up empty rhetoric at a time when we can least afford it.
As with the teenager who thinks they have it all figured out, we adults can only fear for their peril – and, in this instance, the peril of us all.
