What to expect from an Obama regime; ancient Greece; Will Durant

Numerous commentators have speculated on the effect of a Democrat landslide in this year's elections. They have identified many programs that will be created or expanded with Democrats in the White House and enjoying a filibuster proof majority in Congress. Commentators usually conclude these remarks by stating that this scenario will be bad "from a conservative standpoint."

But these commentators, even conservative commentators, miss the real point. The leftist agenda is not simply bad "for conservatives." We are not watching some sporting event where only Republicans and Democrats have a stake in the outcome. The consequences of a Democrat takeover would affect everyone - and for a very long time.

The Democrats have pledged to restrict free speech and expand existing programs that would accelerate the bankruptcy of the United States, all the while robbing us of the means to defend ourselves, protect our borders and choose our own medical providers. The Democrats have attempted to investigate, prosecute and censor innocent political opponents. The Democrats have shown no reluctance to commit violence and voter fraud in this election and the elections of 2004 - thus foreshadowing the ultimate end to free elections should these thugs ever obtain real power over the executive branch of the federal government. The Democrats have used class warfare as a political weapon - pitting rich versus poor - for decades.

All of the elements exist for the type of near civil war that marked the collapse of the ancient Greek civilization in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C.:

Some governments nationalized certain industries . . . . but the governments paid as low wages as the private employer, and squeezed all possible profit from the labor of their slaves . . . the class war became bitterer than before. Every city, young or old, echoed with the hatred of class for class, with uprisings, massacres, suppressions, banishments, and the destruction of property and life. When one faction won it exiled the other and confiscated its goods; when the exiles returned to power they revenged themselves in kind, and slaughtered their enemies; imagine the stability of an economic system subject to such decerebrations and disturbances. Some ancient Greek cities were so devastated by class strife that industry and men fled from them, grass grew in the streets, cattle came there to graze.

Durant, Life of Greece, p. 564 [1939 edition]

See these quotations for a comparison with 4th century B.C. Greece and 1st century B.C. Rome.

If Obama and the Democrats seize as much power as the rest of us fear, this election may be the last national election that carries even a pretext of legitimacy. Those who would rig and steal the election will not allow free elections once they seize power. Acorn and its allies cannot continue to submit thousands of frauduent registrations every year. Cheating on such a massive scale is difficult to coordinate and organize. They don't plan to cheat forever. They plan to win once in a big way, after which there will be no need to cheat. In the future, two scenarios are possible - (1) local election officials will have learned to be submissive to the Acorn/Obama controlled federal government and remain silent while election totals are rigged or (2) certain elections will simply not take place.

I do not believe all of this will happen immediately upon the inauguration of Obama. Cattle will not be grazing in the streets of Manhattan in Janaury 2009. Obama will allow a certain "healing" period where he speaks of unity and the MSM/DNC presents "feel good" images of children, puppies and general calm. We will be allowed to get comfortable. But soon, our taxes will go up, our doctors will become government bureaucrats, class warfare will resume as it has never existed before and the country will change forever.

Obama received no votes in Harlem.

In the Democrat New York primary, much of Harlem apparently voted unanimously for Hillary:

Unofficial primary results gave Obama no votes in nearly 80 districts, including Harlem's 94th and other historically black areas - but many of those initial tallies proved to be wildly off the mark, the board said.

H/T New York Post

Remember this the next time someone claims that the Republicans suppressed votes in 2000. The Democrats' ability to create a "zero" vote total for Obama in Harlem is not something that we should underestimate. The Democrats have been undermining the electoral process for many years, but this one is as obvious as they have gotten.
In light of Hillary's near total flame-out this primary season, I can only wonder what the true vote total was in 2000 when Hillary "beat" Rick Lazio.

Jonestown massacre; Jim Jones; Peoples Temple; Willie Brown

Update - May 23, 2009 - see the end of this post for the story of Harvey Milk's role in the Jim Jones political machine and the death of at least one of Jones' victims.
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I saw the PBS American Experience documentary on the Jonestown massacre this week. [Debbie Schlussel earlier commented on a History Channel documentary that was probably better.] I found the documentary noteworthy for a few simple reasons. Without going into the entire history of the cult and the murders of 900+ people, I want to point out some similarities that emerge between Jim Jones' cult and the modern left.



As most of you know, Jim Jones founded his own "church," built a following and isolated his congregation from the outside world. Jones built this church in the 1960's and 1970's after moving to the northern California/San Francisco area. According to the PBS documentary, Jones became very influential in San Francisco politics during the 1970's as a result of the large number of loyal volunteers he could command from the ranks of the Peoples Temple.

Jones with Mayor Moscone and Walter Mondale







h/t brasscheck.com.

Jones exercised an iron will over the cult. Members sold their homes and donated the proceeds to the Temple and Jones. Other allegations much more tawdry were discussed on the PBS program. During the late 1970's, some members quit or tried to quit the cult. They tried to raise a public outcry against Jones and his cult in order to free their own family members from the clutches of the cult.

Willie Brown(l) and Jim Jones(r) at 1976 testimonial dinner for Jim Jones








But Jones and his cult were protected by Jones' political influence within the Democratic establishment of the San Francisco area and the local media:

But if, by the late '70s, Jim Jones was insinuating himself in the San Francisco power structure, there were questions beginning to be raised about some of the less savory goings-on inside the Peoples Temple. Throughout 1977, Jones allies in high editorial positions in the local media thwarted attempts to investigate. Nor was it editors and publishers alone who caviled before Jones. Political allies such as Mayor Moscone, Assemblymen and future mayors Art Agnos and Willie Brown, and others worked behind the political scenes to protect Jones and the Peoples Temple.

When he started to feel the heat of scrutiny, Jones was able to move the Peoples Temple to Guyana virtually lock, stock and pulpit. Perhaps worst of all, he was able to escape with hundreds of mostly black children, and the wards of various Bay Area social services agencies initially delighted to turn them over to foster parents within the Peoples Temple. Virtually all shared the fate of their parents and guardians.

Today, Willie Brown refuses to discuss Jones.

The PBS film pointed out that Jones would often frighten his followers with stories that his enemies were coming to kill their children. At other times, he would have his loyalists place children into a dark well, whereupon he would tell the children that there were monsters in the well. [In fact, it was Jones' own loyalists who were grabbing at the children from the bottom of the well in order to add to the terror.]

So we see in Jones and the cult several of the most important characteristics of the American left:
1) Paranoid rantings worthy of the tinfoil hat brigade;
2) Protection by a symbiotically intertwined media;
3) Disaster.

I have mulled over this post for the last two days. For years we have heard the left compare Bush to Hitler, etc. I really had to satisfy myself that, by comparing the left to Jones, I was not simply repeating the leftist tactic of comparing a political opponent to a random evil person. But I am comfortable with my analogy in this post despite the leftist tactic of Bush/Hitler association. I know that Bush and Hitler have nothing in common. I know that the Hitler accusation is simply a convenient tool that the left has used against every Republican for decades.

But Jim Jones actually was a real leftist. He was committed to socialism and the Democrat candidates who took control in San Francisco in the mid-1970's. More importantly, the tactics Jones used on his own flock are very reminiscent of the statements that the extreme left uses today. Jones kept his people in a state of fear about the outside world. Are Jones' statements any more ridiculous than Rosie O'Donnell's rantings about 9-11 being an inside job? Or Al Gore's theory that the Earth is going to get hot and melt icebergs in the North Pole that will one day flood the world?

O'Donnell and Gore and Moveon.org and the Kos Kidz lack one thing that Jones possessed - power. While the left possesses much power in America (and in the West) today, they do not exercise the type of absolute power that Jones exercised over his people. Jones' word was the word of god as far his people were concerned.

Absolute power changes people. With no restraints on one's actions, those actions become not only abusive, but bizarre.

In ancient Rome, the first five years of Nero's reign were relatively normal and benign. The bizarre sexual behavior, the enforced sycophancy and the murderous, random persecutions did not begin until later - after Nero's power over the known world had a chance to condition his mind.

For all we know, Jim Jones might never have dreamed of mass murder when he began his "ministry." In the 1950's, he might have been horrified at the thought that he would one day kill 900+ people (or even that he would take hundreds of people to a different country, isolate them and frighten them into submission). But that scenario became plausible as Jones' power grew.

There is no doubt that the left in this country has become bizarre and power hungry. They advocate more power over our children with federal programs and controls. They advocate a federal government takeover of the entire health care system throughout the nation. They have created bizarre double standards of political correctness, under which millions of Americans cower in fear of saying the wrong words or telling the wrong joke or offending the wrong people. They have created a climate of fear in which public officials, businesses, advertisers and ordinary people hesitate to use words like "Christmas" or otherwise acknowledge the Christian faith that has guided Western Civilization for almost two millenia. These are only a few examples.

When Rosie O'Donnell rants about 9-11, or when Al Gore shouts to screaming audiences, or when the leftist thugs e-mail death threats to conservative bloggers, or when race hustlers force authorities to prosecute innocent people, they may not be winning new converts or making friends among average Americans, but they are energizing their base. They are keeping their faithful in line. Every PC prosecution, every false accusation, every weird theory, every violent act, etc. rallies the uncritical leftists, confuses the adolescent who is new to politics and ratchets up the emotions of their uncritical masses so that they cannot see their way clear to escaping the ideological Jonestown that the left has created.

The one question we should be asking is, "What will happen should the leftists ever achieve complete power?" What will happen when the left controls all branches of government and the government programs have become so large and all encompassing that the normal constitutional limits on power have become meaningless? What will happen when the electoral crisis towards which the left is driving us finally destroys all confidence in the very concept of elections or the regular, peaceful transfers of power on which this country has depended to maintain our freedoms for generations.

If the hardcore left ever achieves total power in the ruins of our Republic, can we count on Al Gore to be a better person than Nero or Jim Jones? Do we honestly want to find ourselves at the mercy of Rosie O'Donnell or Michael Moore with no escape except through a vat of flavor-aid?

If the Democrat politicians of the past could be so enamored of Jim Jones [as Exile has pointed out]. . . :

Who Is This Man?

- Walter Mondale, as a United States Senator, invited him to a meeting on his campaign plane.
Mondale also wrote to this man, "Knowing of your congregation's deep involvement in the major social and constitutional issues of our country is a great inspiration to me."
- Willie Brown, eventual Mayor of San Francisco, introduced him as a combination of Martin Luther King, Angela Davis(!), Albert Einstein and Chairman Mao.
He met personally with Rosalynn Carter, Jimmy Carter's wife. He later wrote to her professing his "deep appreciation for the privilege of dining privately with you prior to the election."
- Senator Mike Gravel (D - Alaska) said that this man was "almost too good to be true."
- Congressman Don Edwards (D - California) wished that "there were more like the people" of this man's "church".
- Vice President Hubert Humphrey said that this man "is testimony to the positive and truly Christian approach to dealing with the myriad problems confronting our society today."
- Joseph Califano, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Jimmy Carter wrote to him saying, "Knowing your commitment and compassion, your interest in protecting individual liberty and freedom have made an outstanding contribution to furthering the cause of human dignity."

. . . then how do we expect today's leftists to exercise greater restraint with their own movement and with their own power?

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update - May 23, 2009

Now that some Californians have proposed creating a holiday for Harvey Milk, it is important to remember his role in the Jonestown murders. Daniel Flynn has written specifically about one of Jones' child victims and Milk's role in aiding Jones against that victim.

Nine days prior to Milk’s death, more than 900 followers of Jim Jones—many of them campaign workers for Milk—perished in the most ghastly set of murder-suicides in modern history. Before the congregants of the Peoples Temple drank Jim Jones’s deadly Kool-Aid, Harvey Milk and much of San Francisco’s ruling class had already figuratively imbibed. Milk occasionally spoke at Jones’s San Francisco–based headquarters, promoted Jones through his newspaper columns, and defended the Peoples Temple from its growing legion of critics. Jones provided conscripted “volunteers” for Milk’s campaigns to distribute leaflets by the tens of thousands. Milk returned the favor by abusing his position of public trust on behalf of Jones’s criminal endeavors.

“Rev. Jones is widely known in the minority communities here and elsewhere as a man of the highest character, who has undertaken constructive remedies for social problems which have been amazing in their scope and effectiveness,” Supervisor Milk wrote President Jimmy Carter seven months before the Jonestown carnage. The purpose of Milk’s letter was to aid and abet his powerful supporter’s abduction of a six-year-old boy. Milk’s missive to the president prophetically continued: “Not only is the life of a child at stake, who currently has loving and protective parents in the Rev. and Mrs. Jones, but our official relations with Guyana could stand to be jeopardized, to the potentially great embarrassment of our State Department.” John Stoen, the boy whose actual parents Milk libeled to the president as purveyors of “bold-faced lies” and blackmail attempts, perished at Jonestown. This, the only remarkable episode in Milk’s brief tenure on the San Francisco board of supervisors, is swept under the rug by his hagiographers.

emphasis added

Read the whole thing.

There will be no day set aside to remember John Stoen. Is it too much to ask that we refrain from desecrating this child's memory by naming a holiday in favor of the man who aided his murderer?

Democrat/Union Acorn vote fraud update; a poll watcher's guide

Blonde Sagacity posts an update on voter fraud.

Here is a reminder/flashback from 2004 on what we have to do at the polls to help prevent fraud. What we need most are not merely voters, but volunteers to go to the polls on election day and help the otherwise overwhelmed election officials prevent carousel voting, ID fraud, illegal alien/felon voting, etc. Contact your local Republican party NOW and volunteer to help on Tuesday. Even an hour or two will make a difference.

Vote fraud in Tennessee; 2004 flashback - Ed Rendell suppresses military vote

After reading Drudge's report of the apparent theft of electronic smart cards in Tennessee, I was reminded of some of the election scandals of 2004 that were never resolved. Particularly, I was reminded of Governor Rendell's attempt to suppress the votes of American soldiers fighting overseas.

We made much of Kerry's insult to the troops earlier this week, but Rendell's actions were far worse.

[Remember also Philadelphia's 104% registration total and the "pre-votes" from 2004.]

Columbia University; Minutemen; Will Durant; ancient Rome, Jim Gilchrist, mob rule

The violence at Columbia University that prevented a Minuteman/Jim Gilchrist speech calls to mind numerous issues, including mob rule, immigration and the nation's pending constitutional crisis. Michelle Malkin summarizes the disgraceful events.

But the issues run deeper than simply one speech or one university. As I noted almost two years ago to the day, the growing mob rule in this country imperils our very future and is analogous to the period in ancient Rome where elected government was replaced by dictatorship. As Will Durant noted when writing about the events of 53 B.C.:

Any man who would vote as paid was admitted to the rolls, whether citizen or not; sometimes only a minority of those who cast ballots were entitled to vote. The privilege of addressing the assembly had on several occasions to be won by storming the rostrum and holding it by main force. Legislation came to be determined by the fluctuating superiority of rival gangs; those who voted the wrong way were, now and then, beaten to within an inch of their lives, after which their houses were set on fire.

emphasis added

The above quote is from Caesar and Christ, 1944. Within 5 years of the events depicted in that passage, Rome was a dictatorship and centuries of republican, elected government had come to an end forever.

The left must silence the Minutemen in order to continue the influx of illegal aliens. The left views the illegal aliens as invading allies in the left's war against America. If the left seizes Congress and the executive branch, it will be through a combination of mob action and electoral fraud, using foreign money and foreign muscle to overwhelm the already beleagured electoral system of this country.

We dodged a bullet in the 2004 elections. But we have failed to take steps to avert the crisis. We have not prosecuted most of the electoral fraud and violence cases from the 2004 election. The left intends to be more violent and more fraudulent in future elections until their rule is unchallenged.

Election day tips; prevent Democrat election fraud

For those of you for whom tomorrow is election day, please check this post for instructions on volunteering and the need to volunteer on election day. Volunteers are needed to prevent the Democrats from stealing elections in various states. This is no less important than it was last year.

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Update - Michelle Malkin posts a summary of some of the crucial elections this year.

There are Supreme Court judicial retention votes on the ballot in Pennsylvania. These judicial rentention votes have been affected by a notorious legislative pay raise and the backlash from that pay raise. It will be interesting to see if the voters decide against retaining two Supreme Court judges as a result of the pay raise. Such a "no" vote would be quite rare. I will try to blog the results tomorrow evening as they come in.

Election anniversary.

In case you have forgotten, today is the one year anniversary of the day we dodged a bullet.

Prosecutors around the country have failed to follow through on prosecutions of those who attempted to rig the election. As a result, we endured a rigged election in Washington State and are in the process of a rigged election in Detroit.

The information relating to the Detroit scandal taints Kerry's Michigan victory in 2004:

So if even half of the 380,000 phony absentee ballots were used in 2004, the Michigan result is invalid. If all of those phony ballots were used, then Bush earned a decent victory in Michigan. In a way, this is good news. A few high profile prosecutions could place Michigan back in the Red column where it belongs.

The real point is, this anniversary is not so much about a celebration, but about the need to follow through on the breather we have been given in the MSM/DNC's endless war to wreck our democratic institutions.

Election fraud and MSM/DNC thuggery

In my previous post, I argued that election fraud and MSM/DNC thuggery go hand-in-hand. As if to prove my point, The Detroit News reveals that 380,000 absentee ballots have been sent to dead people. H/T Debbie Schlussel. Many of the ballots already had the votes filled in. The rest will undoubtedly be filled in by individuals resembling the folks in these mugshots.

If Michigan's Democrat machine has a data base of 380,000 names with which to pad the vote every time there is an election, how did that database impact the Michigan election in 2004? When I have a moment, I will research Kerry's Michigan margin of victory (and Gore's in 2000).

At the same time as the Democratic Party's election strategy kicks into high gear in Michigan, the left trots out their analysis of Judge Alito's nomination:

You've just stepped in it now, ****. This one's personal -- ***** everything else written on this site, and on every other site, about Alito for the time being.

See, here's the thing. I'm Italian American. I'm also an at-this-point-happily-lapsed but still **** respectful Roman Catholic.

And I will be *** *** *** Dead And In a Hole In The *** Ground before I let you claim "Italian American" OR Roman Catholic as a *** code phrase for bat*** conservative reactionaries whose dismissal of womens' ***, civil rights, worker rights, and pretty much everything else that has made America great make it clear they think all those things are akin to something they would normally scrape off their shoes.

There's nothing *** "Italian American" about being an ultra-far-right conservative ***. You will not drag my heritage into this like you shoved Alito's well-groomed hand up Rosa Parks' ***, or I will bury you, you loathsome little egg-*** ***. And unlike most of the victims of your only-like-a-minority-when-they're-dead *** huggings, I'm still very much alive.

edited for content

If the thugs that carry out Democrat strategy could write, their writing would look like the above quote. In fact, it is only for the purpose of inciting the animals that commit election violence that the weasels in the "intellectual" wing of the Party produce such vitriol.
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Thanks to Brain Droppings for the following research on Kerry/Michigan 2004:

Per CNN, Kerry was credited with 600,047 votes in Wayne county. His Michigan vote total was 2,479,183; his margin of victory 165,437.

So if even half of the 380,000 phony absentee ballots were used in 2004, the Michigan result is invalid. If all of those phony ballots were used, then Bush earned a decent victory in Michigan. In a way, this is good news. A few high profile prosecutions could place Michigan back in the Red column where it belongs.

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another update. I have done some research of my own. According to CNN, Gore beat Bush in Michigan in 2000 by a margin of 194,721 votes. There are many unanswered questions. We don't know how many years the Michigan authorities have been using absentee ballots in the name of dead people. We don't know how many of the ballots mailed to dead people were actually counted in the totals.

But all of these questions can be answered with some grand jury proceedings and a few subpoenas. A high profile prosecution would begin to expose this practice. If we can ensure that only the legitimate votes were counted, there would be no reason for Michigan to be blue.

The future of democracy in America

The new face of the Democratic party.











Michelle Malkin unveils her new book today, in which she exposes the violent tactics of Democratic Party operatives and enforcers. Her post today is full of pictures like the one above. Each one tells the story of some thug who attacked Republican volunteers, vandalized Republican headquarters or threw food in order to disrupt conservative speeches. She even includes a mugshot of a leftwing professor who damaged her own car in order to generate false claims of racism.

The pictures are worth studying and I am sure the book is worth reading. I don't agree with the humorous treatment that Ms. Malkin appears to give the people in question. This is a major problem that is not going away. The left is becoming increasingly violent as their goals move further and further from the mainstream of American cultural and political thought.

The Commissar sums it up well:

. . . . the Dems are in love with their own hatred and venom. It feeds, energizes, and stimulates them; they can no more do without it than they could stop breathing. It’s all they have.

citations ommitted

See also the Commissar's Brownshirt Meter.

Of all of the people pictured in Michelle's photographs (and described in her book), there is a solid chance that at least one of them will be a Democratic nominee for Congress, Senate or the Presidency within 30 years. There is an even greater chance that one of them will hold state or local office within the next 15 years. And the chances that some of them will become professors, copy editors in the MSM/DNC, hollywood writers and directors, UN administrators, authors, etc. is near one hundred percent. John Kerry got his start somewhere and so did Ward Churchill. The violent thugs of today become the leftist leaders of tomorrow.

These are not random idiots like the man who stole the football at yesterday's Packer game. These people have a political purpose. They do not seek souvenirs or fame. They have nothing to gain except for power.

They are the future enforcers of the socialist tyranny that the MSM/DNC wants to create in America. They are the equivalent of the Iraqi/Al Qaeda insurgency disrupting free elections with violence.

When you combine this upsurge in violence with the Democrats' propensity for election fraud, you have the makings of a constitutional crisis (h/t Powerline):

Electoral fraud. It is a grave and growing threat to our democracy. Major elections have turned on it, and it is only a matter of time until voter fraud precipitates a constitutional crisis.

Voter fraud, combined with the raw muscle necessary to enforce the fraudulent results and protect the wrongdoers, will continue to erode our system and the remaining freedoms that we enjoy.

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

Meanwhile, rescuers in New Orleans have discovered a lower-than-expected 424 dead bodies or, as they're known to liberals, "registered Democratic voters."

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - H.L. Mencken

No one ever heard of a Democrat who actually believed in Democracy. He always keeps on protesting after the vote has been taken, and he usually tries to upset its verdict. And if he can't do it by fair means, then he is always willing to try foul.

H.L. Mencken (May 2, 1932)

FEMA, Hurricane Frances, Hurricane Charley, funeral payments

In 2004, four hurricanes hit Florida. The official death toll was a little more than 100. Yet the Federal Emergency Management Agency paid for funerals for 319 people. That amounts to 319 Funerals for only 100+ deaths.

Those statistics prove one thing - FEMA must have acquired its funeral beneficiary list from the registration rolls of the Democratic Party.

The "extra" funerals cost FEMA (and ultimately YOU) probably close to one million dollars.