Nichole Hungerford
From the beginning, McCain-Feingold was a political Trojan Horse. Its stated purpose did not reflect its actual purpose. Its stated purpose was to clean up politics by tightly regulating the amount of money political parties and candidates could accept from donors. Its actual purpose, to use [George] Soros’s words, was to curb the “use of TV advertising” in American politics. “Television ads are doubly corrupting: They substitute misleading, negative sound bites for honest statements, and they are paid for by donor (read: special-interest) money,” wrote Soros in his 2000 book Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism. read more…
Number 205 of Pascal’s scraps contains this famous cry: “When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here?” read more…
Christian Adams, a key attorney working on the Department of Justice’s voter intimidation case against the New Black Panthers, has recently resigned. His primary reason — and what has been emphasized in the resignation coverage — is the controversy Adams and some of his colleagues have been embroiled in after the Department’s dismissal of the case. Was it a miscarriage of justice? No one is really sure at this point (although the video evidence in the case is damning.) But Adams did express that the actions of the DOJ appeared to have left him between a rock and a hard place; in his resignation letter, he seemed nonplussed at what to do.
Whatever the facts may be in this regard, what has been understated in the case is that a significant portion of Adams’ resignation letter expresses serious concern over the violent, criminal proclivities of the New Black Panther Party and the alarming tenor of their response to the case. Adams claims that the New Black Panthers had been becoming “increasingly belligerent,” issuing disconcerting statements. For instance, the Panthers released a scathing response to the “phony” case which they claimed was brought against them by
the modern day racist lynch mob seeking to hang what [they] think are [their] modern slaves. read more…
Any journalist who has studied [George] Soros with sufficient attentiveness has learned to greet his public utterances with skepticism. Soros evinces, at times, what can only be called a professional pride in his skill at deception. His work affords him ample opportunity to hone this skill. Soros’s Open Society foundations have facilitated coups and rebellions in many countries, always ostensibly in the interests of “democratization.” In a 1995 profile in The New Yorker, Soros told journalist Connie Bruck that the “subversive” mission of his Open Society network has required him to wear a variety of masks through the years. In some countries, Soros would adopt a pro-communist pose while in others he would play the anti-communist. Only Soros himself knew where he really stood – and perhaps not even Soros. “I would say one thing in one country, and another thing in another country,” he laughed. read more…
the key to American politics is the romance of the underdog. It is the story of the little guy who goes up against the system and triumphs in the end. It is a story about opportunity and fairness. To win the hearts and minds of the American voter, you have to tap the emotions it evokes.
America’s heroes are all cut to this common mold. Whether it’s George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Davy Crockett, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Amelia Earhart, Jackie Robinson, Ronald Reagan or Colin Powell, the theme is always the same: The common man against the odds. America’s political romance is “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” to make things right. It is “Meet John Doe” who speaks for the voiceless. It is Luke Skywalker who saves the planet by using the good side of the Force to defeat the Empire. It is the odyssey of individuals who challenge power, overcome adversity and rise to the top. Everyone in America thinks of themselves as an underdog and a hero. Just ask Bill Gates. read more…
The main reason the CIA no longer recruits agents from top-ranked schools is because it can’t. “The men and women who teach today’s college students view the CIA with suspicion, if not disdain,” as Beinart put it. The formulation is, in fact, too mild. The left hates the CIA and regards it as an enemy of all that is humane and decent. To make their case, academic leftists drill the nation’s elite youth in a litany of “crimes” alleged to have been carried out by the CIA since the late 1940s—the rigging of the Italian and French elections of 1948 against popular Communist parties (whose aim, unmentioned in this academic literature was to incorporate Western Europe into Stalin’s satellite system), the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in 1951 (whom they fail to identify as a Soviet asset who would have delivered Iranian oil reserves to Stalin), the overthrow of the Arbenz regime in Guatemala (whom the left portrays as a Democrat but who was in fact a Communist fellow-traveler who chose to spend his exile years as a privileged guest in Castro’s police state), the “Bay of Pigs” (which was the CIA’s failed effort to overthrow the most oppressive Communist regime in the hemisphere), and the “Phoenix Program” in Vietnam (which was an attempt to prevent a Communist front set up by the Hanoi dictatorship from overthrowing the Saigon government and establishing a Communist police state in the South.) read more…
In the beginning of October, the United States began air strikes against the Taliban regime. The goal was to destroy ability of the al-Qaeda forces based there to strike again. Such considerations were irrelevant to leftists opposing the strikes like Berkeley Congresswoman Barbara Lee. In voting against the President’s request for an authorization to use force, Lee declared, “As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.” The implication was that if Americans used force to defend themselves, they would be no better than the terrorists who attacked them. Lee was returned to Congress by her Democratic constituents the following year.
Protesters echoed Lee’s sentiments in campus demonstrations across the country, making them even more explicit. At the University of North Carolina, teach-ins featured professors attacking America as a “rogue state” and a greater terrorist threat than al-Qaeda; at the City University of New York, professors condemned “American imperialism;” at Brown University, students and professors went on strike chanting, “One, two, three, four, we don’t want a racist war.” Within weeks of the most heinous attack on America in its history, radicals had turned their own country into the villain. read more…
Multiculturalism, which is not so much about the appreciation of diverse human cultures, as it is about the theology of gender, race and class oppression, is the academic religion that sanctions these campus witch-hunts. Its imperatives are established in the “student orientation” sessions required of every entering freshman. “A central goal of these [orientation] programs,” as an authoritative study of these repressive practices sums them up, “is to uproot ‘internalized oppression,’ a crucial concept in the diversity education planning documents of most universities.” read more…
As the institutional manifestation of George Soros, the Shadow Party operates in two distinct spheres, the financial and the political. The financial nerve center of Soros’s empire is an investment firm called Soros Fund Management LLC, located at 888 Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. Political intrigues are facilitated mainly through the Open Society Institute (OSI), whose main office is housed at 400 West 59th Street. OSI is the flagship of the Soros Foundation Network, whose Open Society Foundations operate in more than 50 countries. read more…
In the business of mothers dying, fate dealt me a better hand than it did Saul Bellow. My mother lived to a ripe age and was vigorous to the end. When she had her first stroke my children were already adults, and had given me two grandchildren besides. I was well into the cycle of the generations. This prepared me in a way that the young Bellow could not have been for the cold hand of mortality that a parent’s death lays on your heart. When the time arrived for my mother to go, it seemed almost natural that her life should draw to a conclusion. Even though her death was sudden and unannounced, I had time enough to prepare for it, to see the vortex coming. read more…
Not Government Approved
Is it prima facie Orwellian to have a bill proposed by the government called the “Healthy Choices Act”? Think about it.
Let’s just assume that it isn’t for now. Let’s instead commit to judge the creepy statism of any particular legislation by the creepy statist measure it proposes to enact. read more…
Following the liberation of Baghdad, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote, “President George W. Bush has made a fatal change in the foreign policy of the United States. He has repudiated the strategy that won the Cold War—the combination of containment and deterrence … The Bush Doctrine reverses all that. The essence of our new strategy is military: to strike a potential enemy, unilaterally if necessary, before he has a chance to strike us.” read more…
