Occupy Wall Street: Communism's Clueless Foot Soldiers ... Alan Caruba

Occupy Wall Street: Communism's Clueless Foot Soldiers

By Alan Caruba

Norman Thomas, a U.S. Socialist Party candidate for president, once famously said, “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism’, they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Thomas ran for president six consecutive times from 1928. He needn’t have bothered as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and subsequent Democrat Presidents introduced most of the planks of the Communist Manifesto and we live with them to this day.

The Occupy Wall Street youngsters are the latest foot soldiers of Communism, though it is likely most are too ignorant to realize it. They have been so thoroughly indoctrinated in government schools and by Hollywood and the media that they have no idea how they are being used by labor unions and other leftist organizations.

The protesters are likely unaware of the misery and murders Marx’s Communism imposed on Russia courtesy of Lenin, Stalin, and those who followed in their footsteps. Mao's Red China murdered thousands as well in the pursuit of the “equality” that is the alleged goal of Communism and liberalism.

In 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote “The Communist Manifesto.” Marx never held a job in his life, living off of donations from Engels and others. He failed miserably at every enterprise he tried, including publishing newspapers.

The Manifesto had ten planks. The first was the abolition of property in land and the application of all rents to public purposes. Anyone who owns land in America for their homes or any activity such as farming or mining knows that they must pay fees to various levels of government. Even in death, inheritance taxes are a penalty imposed on passing property to one’s children. These taxes were the subject of the Manifesto’s third plank which called for the abolition of all rights of inheritance.

The second plank is one that is very much in the news. It is a heavy progressive or graduated income tax. Everyone pays income taxes and there are demands that “millionaires and billionaires” pay more than others. Corporate income taxes in the U.S. are among the highest in the world. In the Supreme Court decision, McCulloch v Maryland Webster, Chief Justice John Marshall said that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Too much taxation is one of the reasons the nation finds itself in its current financial crisis as it is directly connected to whether people will invest in new businesses or existing ones and destroys job creation.

The Manifesto called for the centralization of all means of communication and transportation in the hands of the state and the U.S. government is replete with commissions that achieve this goal. The fifth plank called for the centralization of credit in the hands of the state and, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Federal Reserve, a system of privately owned banks that have a monopoly on the creation of money backed solely by the credit of the government. Standard & Poors recently downgraded the nation’s credit rating. Is there really any gold in Fort Knox? One hopes.

Most famously the Manifesto called for the state to own all factories and instruments of production. Instead of merely permitting the standard practice of bankruptcy to occur so that they could be restructured, the Obama administration stepped in and “bailed out”, i.e. took ownership of General Motors and Chrysler companies. Creditors were kicked to the curb.

The Manifesto called for government control of all labor and agriculture. The federal government has a matrix of departments that exercise control of these sectors of the economy; a Department of Labor and a Department of Agriculture.

The tenth plank of the Manifesto called for “free education for all children in public schools and the combination of education with industrial production.” The Occupy Wall Street protesters are the result of government schools whose purpose is to create a docile work force that, along with various government “entitlement” programs provides for a cradle-to-grave submissive workforce.

But the Occupy Wall Street protesters, you say, hardly seem submission, nor do the unions that we’ve seen occupy the state house in Wisconsin, call for strikes, and other forms of worker protests. Intimidation in the quest for the Manifesto's objectives is a Communist tactic.

The protesters are calling for free college educations. The unions were protesting against the loss of collective bargaining with governments that determine their pension and health benefits, all paid for with public funding.

Little wonder the protesters are being embraced by the Democratic Party and unions, and that those spoiled brats befouling the walkways, streets, and alleys of New York and other cities are totally oblivious to the way they are being used.

Americans better insist that Capitalism emerges stronger from this latest spate of organized anarchy. If not, Karl Marx and the foolish liberals will succeed in destroying what is left of the nation.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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 Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

The Harm a President Can Do ... Alan Caruba

The Harm a President Can Do

 By Alan Caruba

The announcement that Barack Hussein Obama will run for reelection was greeted with little fanfare and less surprise. In order to raise money, he needed to make it official and he was quick to join Rev. Al Sharpton, a man with a dubious history of histrionics, at a Harlem event.

Even with the data available, two years into his first term, it is difficult to grasp how much harm he has done to the nation as its elected leader.

Despite the fact that, until November 2010, the Congress was controlled by the Democrats, he was so busy during his second year that he could not find time to present Congress with a budget. The government shutdown is pure political theatre and should be avoided. If it comes, it will be the result of a political calculation that the President can benefit from it.

Obamacare, the hallmark of his political legacy, is opposed by 26 U.S. States and has been declared unconstitution in a federal court. The House has voted to repeal it. Hardly a week goes by without finding billions in new costs buried within its pages, all of which expand the size of government beyond imagination.

In two years, the nation has accumulated debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as its entire prior history since the day George Washington took office. In January 2009, when President Obama was sworn into office, the national debt was $10.627 trillion. Today it is $14.052 trillion and rising.

The leadership that the world has long looked to America to provide has dissipated. The nations of the West, in particular the European socialist nations, have also spent themselves into penury. Portugal is the latest to cry out for help. Greece, Ireland, Spain, all once among the great powers, have drained their coffers with cradle-to-grave assurances that the government would always pick up the tab.

After two years in which every regulatory obstacle, including an illegal “moratorium” on deep water drilling for oil was imposed, the price of West Texas crude oil went from $38.74 a barrel to $99.02. Other commodities, soybeans, sugar, and corn have all seen similar increases. The price of corn has more than doubled in just twelve months.

America has enormous reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas. It has long been a giant agricultural economy, but all this potential wealth is being throttled by men and women in the Obama administration who think Americans must be forced to change their driving and eating habits. In a consumer-driven economy, they want Americans to consume less.

When President Obama was sworn in, there were 2,600,000 long-term unemployed. Today there are 9,193,000 Americans in that category. People living in poverty in America have, in just two year’s time, gone from 39,800,000 to 43,600,000. This occurred during a time when massive “bailouts” were undertaken by the government. They are now widely regarded as failures.

The greatest automotive manufacturer in the world, General Motors, is for all intents and purposes owned by the government. Auto union jobs had to be saved even if taxpayers had to have their taxes diverted for that purpose. Having brought the company to ruin with outrageous work, wage, health, and pension demands, they were still to be rewarded by the Obama administration. The heads of public service unions, among the largest in the nations, have enjoyed an open-door policy at the White House.

Having been elected by campaigning against the war in Iraq, President Obama expanded the number of troops in Afghanistan. While U.S. troop presence in Iraq was being reduced, the President suddenly engaged the nation militarily in Libya without any authorization from Congress.

With one glaring exception, no cohesive foreign policy regarding the Middle East exists. Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, an ally of the United States, surrounded on all sides by enemies and threatened daily by Iran, has been abandoned.

Egypt’s Mubarack was publicly abandoned, but Iran’s Ahmadinejad’s stolen election evoked no response when people took to the streets in Tehran to protest it. Col. Gadhafi remains in control of Libya. Syria’s dictator was called “a reformer.”

Domestically, the President calls for windmills to produce energy when they remain one of the least practical means, sustained solely by government subsidies and mandates. The factory in which he made the call belongs to a Spanish company. His call for solar energy is equally fatuous. High speed rail is yet another foolish initiative.

The last two years have been testimony to the harm a President can do to a nation and yet, despite the obvious harm being imposed on millions of Americans, the President continues to enjoy the support of people for whom the growth of the government, the increase in spending, and the nation’s loss of leadership in the world is not understood and will not be until it is too late to reverse the damage.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Why Democrats Hate “Fair And Balanced” News

Why Democrats Hate “Fair And Balanced” News
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Around two thousand years ago, a man said: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” A relatively short while ago, someone added a few words to it and said: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free – but first, it will pi*s you off!” That’s all you need to know about the democrats and the fair and balanced news channel – Fox News.

However, I still have blank paper to write upon and an ink cart not quite dry, so I shall plod on in the seemingly endless task of defining the love of democrats for the politically correct over fact and/or truth.

Facts and truth are two of the most stubborn things in existence. It does not matter whether you believe a fact, or refuse to accept a fact; it remains a fact, nonetheless. The same is true for the truth. It makes not one whit of difference whether you believe the truth, or not. It remains the truth – period.

On the other hand, politically correct facts and/or truth(s) can mean anything you want them to mean. Often they are based on fact or truth but, in reality, that is the only thing valid about politically correct fact and truth. To my way of thinking, a politically correct fact, or truth, is an oxymoron. In the southern vernacular: “There ain’t no such thang!”

The political left is entirely too emotional for me. It has often been said that if American political parties had gender, the democrats would be female and the republicans would be male. All one needs to do to see evidence of that is to observe the pathetic union demonstrations in Wisconsin and other states.

Those demonstrations are a public display of an emotion, called anger, because they lost control of the US government last November. It is the reaction that a child displays when a favorite toy is taken away as punishment.

The electorate sent the democrats to the woodshed, and they don’t like it, no, not even a little bit. They are P.O’ed and, like a child, they are throwing a tantrum.

When I “threw a fit,” as a child, my parents snatched my skinny butt up and applied a 2-inch leather belt to my gluteus maximus until my cerebral cortex sparked and my mind was changed, my attitude was adjusted, and my general demeanor was acceptable in polite southern society. Of course, that meant eating from the mantle board for a few days. (For those uneducated in southern colloquialism, that means: “eating while standing up.”)

Look. When grown people, adults, make fools of themselves, on purpose, normal people just have to wonder: “What ails those folks?”

OK, so it is just me. See, I have a heck of a time dealing with anyone having authority over me. While in the US Army, I was on “KP,” as punishment, 13 times in eight weeks, at Fort Jackson, SC, because I had a problem with authority figures. I simply do not like, and will not tolerate, anyone or anything having absolute control over me. It ain’t gonna happen. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not particularly proud of it – but neither am I shamed by it. It is the way I am wired.

(Stay with me – I am about to make a point – or, at least, TRY!)

Unions, and the Democrat Party, are all about control. I could never be a member of either. I tend to think for myself, indeed, I LIKE thinking for myself. I am self-motivating, and I darn sure don’t like some one trying to motivate me -- covertly or overtly. (Again – it is the way I am wired.) You can imagine – I was a pain in the collective posteriors of my former employers.

The communists used to refer to THEIR minions as “useful idiots.” They manipulated them anyway they wanted and those minions did the will of the Communist Party. Much like Pavlov’s dog, the party would ring the bell -- and the “little commies” would come running.

Now. Compare that to what you see in the union demonstrations. The unions ring the bell(s) and the union members come running. See? Understand? It is “conditioning.” It is “control.”

There would be a heat wave in Hades before I would stand in the snow and shout that a news organization, which actually makes an effort to present BOTH sides of an issue, is a liar – for anyone!
But, then again, they have been so conditioned by the union’s propaganda and the Democratic Party’s propaganda that they seem to actually have great difficulty discerning truth from fiction, fairness from partiality, fact from lie. Its called: “CONTROL.”

It is important that America understands that those “conditioned” union members and Democratic Party members are a prototype for a liberal-socialist Democrat Party/labor union controlled America. Should they ever gain total control of America – they will OWN you – much like the people of the old Soviet Union, only worse.

It would seem their problem with Fox News is – the truth. They can’t stand it. And since the truth remains – unchanged – they must attempt to divert America’s attention elsewhere. They try to besmirch the purveyors of the truth. If it were not so serious, it would be hilariously funny.

Don’t hate them. No. They are to be pitied. They can’t quite grasp the meaning of a representative republic. They seem to believe that socialism is not evil and will not lead directly to communism, and ultimately to slavery. Sadly, they don’t have a clue that they would be the very first targets their socialist masters would seek to round up and annihilate!

J. D. Longstreet

Democrats Harm Their Party In Wisconsin

Democrats Harm Their Party In Wisconsin
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

It gives me no small amount of pleasure to watch the Democratic Party inflict harm upon itself with those “demonstrations” in Wisconsin -- and those just beginning in other states, as well.

“Oh,” but you say, “Those are UNIONS demonstrating in Wisconsin!” To which, I would respond, “That’s what I said – DEMOCRATS!”

Come on, folks! The UNIONS are the democrats and the democrats ARE the UNIONS! This is a political fact I have known since I was a child.

I have told reader’s before that my uncle was a big wig in one of the most powerful unions of its day. I don’t know what position he held, but it was important enough that when he died, the United States Secretary of Labor attended his funeral.

I watched my uncle visually check his automobile for bombs, underneath the car and under the hood and dashboard and seat in the mornings before his drive to the airport. I grew up with those images forever burned into my memory.

Americans have very little sympathy for people WITH JOBS these days not reporting to work -- and taking that time to raise hell in the streets. Many of those people protesting have jobs with salaries from the public trough… meaning they are paid with taxpayer money. Do they not understand how that makes the taxpayer feel?

I must tell you, what is happening in Wisconsin is turning more and more Americans against labor unions and if nothing else good comes from all that sound and fury THAT, alone, in my opinion, would be a good thing for America.

It is also extremely “telling” when the democrats flee the state. It speaks to the veracity of all the claims the GOP and conservatives have made over the years -- that when the going gets tough, the democrats flee. Now, all of America has seen it.

We have often told you that democrats strike us as child-like. They seem to be ruled by emotion. Good solid reasoning seems to be just outside their grasp. This, too, is on display in Wisconsin.

We’d like to express our appreciation to the Democratic Party for making our job so much easier. See – we can claim all this stuff about them, but until Americans see it for themselves it means nothing to them. Now, however, the Democratic Party has been kind enough to put their emotional answer to a question that calls for deep reasoning right out there in public view where the American electorate can see the unvarnished truth. And for that, again I am truly grateful to the democrats.

We conservatives would also like to express our appreciation to the unions for burning all that cash money on the Wisconsin demonstrations. That is a great help to the conservative cause and will most certainly aid us in a achieving our goal of stopping Obama from securing a second term in the White House. The less money the unions have, the less money they can contribute to Obama’s campaign -- and that, too, is good – very good!

We have warned so many times, dear reader, about the Democratic Party’s lack of feeling for the “common man.” Oh, they would argue otherwise having seized the mantle of “the people’s party” for themselves. Only, it is not true. Hopefully, Americans viewing the so-called “demonstrations” in Wisconsin will discern for themselves that just exactly who the Democratic Party actually represents.

Look. We knew way back when, that at some point this was going to happen. We knew the labor unions would suck our state treasuries dry. They have done it.

Public employees should never have been allowed to unionize in America. Those who opposed it predicted then that this time would come. And here we are. Remember what I said above about emotion versus reasoning?

The situation in all our states calls for cold, hard, reasoning and some extremely difficult decisions. Nobody is going to be happy with what must be done for the states to survive. Most people, however, know this and they will act like grown-ups and not take to the streets like spoiled brats on a rampage.

When the choice is between busting a union, and busting a state, I’ll come down on the side of union-busting every time.

J. D. Longstreet

Unions: Dupes, Thugs, and Politicians

Unions: Dupes, Thugs, and Politicians
By Alan Caruba

Growing up in New Jersey and having been a journalist here, my memory of news about unions in the Garden and Empire States is that of headlines concerning the indictment and sentencing of various union chiefs and their underlings.

The alignment between unions and the Mafia is so well known it has been the subject of movies such as “On the Waterfront”, “The Godfather”, “Goodfellas” and “Casino.” To this day the rumor persists that Jimmy Hoffa is buried somewhere between the goalposts of Giants stadium in the Meadowlands.

As events unfold in the very progressive capital of Wisconsin, Madison, the public is being treated to the way unions have very nearly always functioned. Intimidation has been their stock in trade with campaign contributions running a close second. We are watching an epic battle between Wisconsin voters and entrenched, self-serving unions.

In his 2006 book, “Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America’s Promise”, Robert Finch, a former labor organizer and later a faculty member at Cornell and New York University, told the story of how and why unions were and are rotten to the core.

Finch’s book reads like a Hollywood movie script, replete with the names of Mafia families like that of New Jersey’s Vito Genevese and a host of others throughout the nation.

“Corruption,” says Finch “had been built into the labor movement from its very inception.” The politicians who benefited from union support have always done their best to ignore “five generations of racketeering, Mafia rule, bribery and extortion, job selling, benefit fund theft, and simple thievery, going back to the days of the early-twentieth-century labor czars.” This dates back as well to the creation of the National Labor Relations Board created by Congress in 1935. It is another legacy of the FDR years that have left the nation on the brink of bankruptcy.

Suffice to say that the National Labor Relations Board is a useless, allegedly “independent” government entity, often looking with favor on the union’s unceasing demands. Among the issues conservatives want to thwart are card check regulations to enhance union power. Reportedly, Republicans have cut $50 million from the NRLB’s budget as a part of the effort to cut the bloated Obama budget.

Finch notes that “In 1986, the President’s Commission on Organized Crime had identified the four most mobbed-up unions; the Teamsters, the Laborers, the Hotel and Restaurant Workers, and the East Coast Longshoremen. The close relationship between labor unions and the Democratic Party is too often obscured by the mainstream media. “According to the Center for Responsible Politics”, Finch noted, “seven of the top ten campaign contributors in the last decade are not Fortune 500 corporations. They’re AFL-CIO unions.”

Little wonder that public service union members are howling for the head of Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker or that several Wisconsin Democrat politicians have fled to Illinois to avoid debating his proposals. His demand that unions forego collective bargaining rights is, in fact, not that unusual. Twenty-two States have curbed union power with “right to work” legislation.

Perhaps the greatest error regarding the union movement came in 1962 when President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order to grant all federal government employees the right to unionize and collectively bargain with departments and agencies. This accounts for the rise in power of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) with its 1.8 million members and the deceptively named National Education Association (NEA), a union, the largest in the nation. It has 3.2 million members and employs more than 550 staff.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the NEA is responsible for the horrid test scores of U.S. students throughout the nation despite their incessant demands for higher wages, along with healthcare and pension programs well in excess of the private sector. Since the 1960s, they have been at the heart of the deteriorating condition of education in America. A four-part series on this topic is posted on the website of The National Anxiety Center which I founded in 1990.

Leading the SEIU is Andy Stern whose many visits to the White House since Obama was elected have become legendary. His rise in the union began with organizing hundreds of thousands of home care and day care workers. Despite unionizing, their pay has never really improved. “The SEIU,” Finch noted, “is now the largest AFL-CIO union.”

During his campaign and since, President Obama has never made any secret of how beholden he is to the SEIU and the union movement that contributed millions toward his election. It should come as no surprise that he has spoken up regarding the Wisconsin riots on the side of the union members. This ignores the fact that a majority of Wisconsin voters put the Governor in office, along with giving political power to Republicans there. They campaigned on the very issues the unions are protesting against.

Wisconsin, like other States that are essentially broke, must win the struggle to reduce the taxpayer burden that government worker and public sector unions represent.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Democrats Flee Conflict in Wisconsin

Democrats Flee Conflict in Wisconsin
The Ugly Face of the Unions Unmasked in Wisconsin
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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One of the truest of all truisms is -- when the chips are down it is then that you learn the metal of a man/woman.

In Wisconsin it could not be any clearer. When the “defecation hit the rotary oscillator,” all the democrats in that state’s legislature boarded buses -- and headed for parts unknown.

I rest my case!

What we clearly see here is a demonstration of the kind of courage the democrats bring to an issue. When the pitchforks and torches come out, they “get the hell out of Dodge!” (Actually – Wisconsin)

This is the kind of courage that lands our country in trouble time and time again when the Democratic Party is in power.

As of this moment, America is in serious trouble -- nationally and internationally. Our national leader is of the party, which, in Wisconsin, boarded buses and took off.

It would be funny were it not for the fact that this is serious business.

I am STILL not over the fright Obama threw into me -- and a huge number of Americans by his vacillating, “democrat two-step,” during the early stages of the ongoing Middle East fiasco. He clearly did not know what he was doing. He clearly did not know WHAT TO DO. He clearly did not have a plan of action for the US in the event the Mubarak government in Egypt fell, and he clearly has no idea what to do, even now.

Americans should note one important thing as they observe the furor and rage of the Unions in Wisconsin. Those are OBAMA’S PEOPLE! The Unions threw massive amounts of money and manpower into the election of Obama. It is important to know WHO those people in the streets really are.

I have news for the unions. They are not as powerful as they think they are. What is happening in Wisconsin now will have -- no -- has already had an effect on the American people as they have seen the unions with their façade down.

The more the unions riot, the less support they will have among the American people. And the better America will be as a result.

Another thing of note: The more money the unions spend on the sort of activity we are seeing in Wisconsin, the less they will have to insure their puppet is reelected in 2012. Now – THAT is a GOOD thing!

Come on, America! We all know Obama is a hand puppet for the unions in America.

There may have been a time in America’s past when labor unions were of some help to the working class in America, although you will have a difficult time trying to convince me. Even if that time did exist – it is long since past and today the labor unions are a burden on the workingman and workingwoman, and on the nation as a whole.

Incidents such as the ugly, ugly, demonstrations in Wisconsin simply show America why so many Americans object to labor unions -- and states like mine have “right to work laws.”

It also demonstrates, as clearly as one could possibly hope, the ties between the Democratic Party and the labor unions in America. Take a good look, America. Those rioting unions are the “big club” of the Democratic Party and they will use it to keep YOU in line if we do not purge them from our government.

In November of 2012 we will have another chance to finish the job we began last November. That is to cleanse the US Senate and the Oval Office and put some adults in charge of the government of the United States. It will also give us the opportunity to put the labor unions in their place, which, most definitely, is not in the Oval Office, nor any place in the US government.

Observe how the democrats left town while their muscle covered their backsides as they retreated. There is a huge lesson to be learned from all this ugliness in the streets of Wisconsin. What we are seeing is the left at work.

No matter how the problems with the Wisconsin state budget are finally settled, union members are going to lose. Jobs WILL be lost. When the money is gone it is, well, GONE.

There will be other states in the near future, which will face the same sort of problem as Wisconsin. If the union rioting spreads to other states, look for the taxpayers to take another look, a favorable look this time, at the possibility of states filing bankruptcy. Seems to me that is where this is ultimately headed, anyway.

No. The unions aren’t doing themselves any good, at all, by the actions they are taking in Wisconsin. If anything, in the long run, they are doing damage to themselves that will require decades just for minimal recovery.

So – take a long, hard, look at the “demonstrating” unions in Wisconsin and ask yourself if that is what you want in your state. Because, more than likely, it is coming to your state, and like Wisconsin, it won’t be pretty.

J. D. Longstreet

A Whiff of Revolution ... Alan Caruba

A Whiff of Revolution
By Alan Caruba

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After a long series of taxes and arrogant acts that could not fail to anger the citizens of Boston, Massachusetts and nearby colonists affected by them, the American colonists finally picked up their guns and fired on the British coming to seize their store of munitions in Concord and Lexington.

The American Revolution did not occur in a week, a month or a year. It came after a Navigation Act, a Stamp Act, and others called the Intolerable Acts that actually closed Boston Harbor in retaliation for the famous Boston Tea Party.

By then the British had dispatched troops to Massachusetts to put some muscle behind their demands that the colonies help pay for the deep debt the King and Parliament had incurred from England’s many wars on the continent.

America was their nation in spirit long before it was organized as one. Americans were not going to be pushed around. They had tried everything they could to make their case, but finally there was nothing left but to unite and throw off the tyranny. In 1770, the Boston massacre had inflamed public sentiment, but it would not be until 1774 that the citizens of Lexington and Concord would take up arms.

In 1776, the second Continental Congress would convene in Philadelphia and sign a Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wrote, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

It has taken a brief year and a half for President Obama and his Democrat-controlled Congress to enflame the anger of a broad spectrum of Americans, Democrats, Republicans, and independents, who have been rallying in Washington, D.C., and in towns and cities across the nation against a healthcare “reform” they overwhelmingly opposed, but which became law. Since then, twenty States have joined together to nullify it, challenging it in the courts while some passed laws to protect their citizens against it. This is very much in the spirit of the Tenth Amendment that posits powers in the States and in the People that are not specific to the federal government. America is a republic composed of separate and distinct republics.

The initial seizure of General Motors raised questions of its constitutionality that have never been answered. Rather than standard bankruptcy proceedings, stockholders and creditors were shoved aside to grant control to the very unions that had brought the iconic auto company to its knees. This has since been followed by open threats to Wall Street that include proposals that would allow the government to seize firms, toss out their board of directors and officers, and, in effect, nationalize them. This is not unlike the dictatorship of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

It is the antithesis of a nation of laws, a republic; a democracy where power is situated in the people and the constitution limits the powers of the executive and the legislative branches that are, in turn, subject to the judicial process.

If, between now and the midterm elections, the President and Congress pass the Cap-and-Trade Act and an amnesty for illegal aliens, I suspect that some Americans may not be content to sit by while States and the courts work their way within the Constitution. They will sense—and rightfully so—a despotism never before associated with the presidency. There is a whiff of revolution in the air and that is why the White House and Far Left are leveling the bogus charge that the Tea Partiers are all violent neo-Nazi types. It is not beyond this White House to deliberately provoke violence. There have already been isolated incidents of Tea Partiers being attacked by union goons. Since the White House operates on the basis of one questionable “crisis” to another to impose unwanted laws, nothing can be ruled out by these community organizers.

One thing is clear. We have a very unpopular president. We have had others in the past. Lyndon B. Johnson chose not to run again after his first and only full term. Jimmy Carter was a one-term president. Richard Nixon was forced to resign. Even George W. Bush, after two terms, had worn out his welcome. It has not been uncommon to characterize unpopular presidents as despots, but Obama is different. He exudes arrogance. He offends our nation’s allies and is seen as weak by our enemies. He’s declared war on our vital energy sector and now on Wall Street. He imposed a healthcare reform that will drive up costs and cause millions to lose the insurance coverage their employers provide. Add to this the growing legion of unemployed.

There’s a lot of anger in America today.

Alan Caruba

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Alan Caruba blogs daily at "Facts not Fantasy" at: http://www.factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

© Alan Caruba, 2010