FREE ON KINDLE TODAY ONLY: 'The Obama Confession'

I haven't read it yet, but the reviews certainly sound intriguing:

...Psychiatry and technology are strange bed-fellows. However, in this book eminent psychiatrist and forensic profiler, Andrew Hodges MD, not only throws open the curtain revealing the innermost secrets of the mind of a sitting president but introduces a recently discovered scientific methodology, Thoughtprint Analysis. As with DNA and fingerprints it turns out that we have a deeper Super Intelligence that is completely unique and individual, and is always at the ready to subconsciously tell the truth, often in complete defiance of the charade our conscious mind presents.

President Obama's personal press corps and spin doctors are no match for the complete transparency of this all-star witness, always trying to tell his story in the language of naked truth. While he may be surrounded by all manner of personal protectors, he is completely vulnerable and exposed to the unalterable truth-telling of his own subconscious Super Intelligence.

Not only will the reader meet a president he never knew, but will be introduced to the child, Barack Obama, who has suffered untold personal trauma from one of the most pathetic journeys through childhood ever imposed on a future occupant of the oval office. Hodges extends a masterful sensitive and compassionate observation of these years of abuse and the lifelong wounding of this lad who to this day still bears the scars from that abuse. Only now, America--and the world!--become the laboratory where he can flesh out his 'untrammeled fury' and concoct his potions of political, religious, and economic retaliation to inflict on all those he can identify as contributors to his life-long walk of pain....

Click here to order now. Tomorrow the e-book version will be back to the regular price.

Say, remember when Barack Obama listed his birthplace as Kenya to make himself appear more exotic and marketable to publishers?

As Jim Treacher reminds us, Obama himself was the O.B. [Original Birther]:

At some point over the next few days, until the next Election 2012 outrage crops up, a lefty may start shrieking “BIRTHER!!!” at you because Romney made an attempt at humor. If that happens, all you have to do is show the shrieking lefty this [at right]

This was the author bio Obama provided to his literary agent in 1991, and it was uncovered months ago by our friends at Breitbart.com. Obama used this bio for over 15 years, and it was revised a number of times. But he only changed it to indicate his true place of birth, Hawaii, once he decided to run for president.

He has yet to explain why he lied in the first place, but he doesn’t have to. He lied because he’s Barack Obama, and that’s what Barack Obama does.

So just show that to your high-strung lib friend, and watch the cognitive dissonance reduce what’s left of his or her brain to an even less cohesive puddle of mush. Better’n anything on the TV, at least.

You can read the entire curious history of revisions to the Obama biography here:

And, if prompted, remind your liberal friends who the O.B. really is.

Scrubbed: Evidence Stanley Kurtz was right about Barack Obama's plot to destroy suburbia

Most. Transparent. Administration. Evah!

A photo of President Obama was suddenly pulled from the website of the group Building One America, whose goals were documented extensively in Stanley Kurtz’s book Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. The book, which was released ten days ago, reveals what Kurtz refers to as Obama’s plan to undercut the political and economic independence of America's suburbs. Kurtz connects current Obama administration policy with his personal history, and with groups like Building One America in particular.

This website shows a cached viewof how the BuildingOneAmerica.org site looked on July 19th, 2012 -- with a photo of President Obama talking to Building One America’s President Mike Kruglik, which was taken during a 2011 meeting held at the White House. Kruglik’s official biography on the Building One America sitedescribes him thusly:

He has been developing grass-roots citizens’ power organizations since 1973 with the Industrial Areas Foundation, the Gamaliel Foundation and Building One America.

And also says:

From 1984 to 1998, he was co-director of the Calumet Community Religious Conference, the community organization that recruited and hired Barack Obama as a community organizer. Mr. Kruglik’s role as Barack Obama’s mentor has been chronicled in a number of works of history and periodicals.

Who is Kruglik and what is his agenda? Reviewer James R. Holland provides the backdrop:

Kurtz details how Obama has long believed that the residents who fled the cities are racists and need to be dragged back into the cities to help solve the problems festering there. If Obama's plans for this forced redistribution became common knowledge, then it would be cause his re-election campaign to crash and burn...

...For those naïve suburban voters who have only been paying attention to mainstream media, if following the news at all, they don't realize that the so-called trillion-dollar stimulus plan was really just a poverty program that was intentionally mis-named to fool the voters. That's why it had almost no effect and certainly produced no improvements.

For more than two decades, Obama and his fellow radical community activists, agitators have been working toward punishing all those people who voted with their feet and fled the cities and left them filled with only poor and minority residents. "Suburbs are for sellouts...For Obama, the suburbs are a defect in the very structure of American life. That is why the president backs his old friends' movement to abolish them."

"'We are battling apartheid in America.' So said Obama's onetime organizing mentor Mike Kruglik in 2005, explaining the philosophy behind his crusade for regional equity. At the the time, Kruglik was directing the regionalist efforts of the Gamaliel Foundation, a national network of community organizations that Obama himself had helped launch in the mid-1980s. Today Kruglik leads the Gamailied offshoot Building One American, which fights for regionalism in partnerships with the Obama White House, although few Americans have any idea that this is the case."

To the radicals, those suburban racists deserve to have their wealth taken away from them and given to the less fortunate but Obama can't publicly proclaim the details of the regulations to abolish the suburbs because, "Much of Obama's base, to say nothing of independents, would be alienated by the regionalist agenda; this explains the president's reticence. Openness about his antisuburban goals would expose Obama as standing to the left of many of his supporters. Middle-class African Americans and modestly successful suburbanites now disposed to vote for the president might think twice if they knew what Obama had in store for them."

"Kruglik and Obama plan to overcome this liability by splitting the suburbs against themselves, creating an alliance between cities and the relatively less well-off inner-ring suburbs."

They hope to achieve this basic change in America by expanding cities into regions that will all come under the control of the nearest cities. Obama and his allies consider everything about the suburbs to be bad. That's where the money has fled. That's where the SUV's and autos pollute the environment. That's where valuable farmland and forests are absorbed to build more urban sprawl. The suburbanites need to be dragged back into the cities and their love affair with the car crushed.

Mass transit is intended to stop the building of highways in order to help eliminate the use of automobiles. The health care laws are really designed to help bring about the redistribution of wealth from the suburbs to the poor.

This is an important goal of Obama and the leftists and if Obama serves another term, he will be able to punish the middle and upper class residents living outside the problems of American cities.

Lest you think all of this sounds outlandish, I encourage you to tick off the items on the checklist.

eBook Revenue Just Beat Hardcovers for the First Time

So says TechCrunch:

The Association of American Publishers released a report today that shows that ebooks have beaten hardcover revenues for the first time. Ebook revenues topped out at $282.3 million YTD while hardcovers hit $229.6. Almost exactly a year ago the tables were turned with ebooks hitting $220 million and hardcovers brushing past $335 million.

The only growth in hardcovers is in the young adult/children’s category where hardcover revenue rose to $187.7 million and children’s ebooks rose to $64.3 million, up from $3.9 million in 2011.

In short, ebooks are winning.

The convenience of an eBook is hard to beat. That said, there's something about the concept of having to charge a book that still has me ordering hardcovers most of the time.



Which is how I ended up with about 3,000 volumes in the home library.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com/Tech.

Virtual Book Burning: Amazon Submits to Sharia Law in Europe

An alert reader of Germany's Politically Incorrect -- relayed by Gates of Vienna -- observes that Amazon appears to have deleted Geert Wilder's bestseller from its European stores.

The new book by Geert Wilders, Marked for Death, is apparently neither being advertised nor offered in European Amazon. About two months before its publication date, it was possible to reserve the book on your Amazon wish list. In that space now, there is an empty window — without even a dust jacket. Unavailable. Then if you go to amazon.de, you find out it no longer exists.

...If you call up the book on amazon.com and then substitute .de for .com in the address line, so you can order the same book in English, the message appears: “Sorry, the web address you have given does not exist on our website.” If you try this procedure with any other book in English, the “translation” from amazon.com to amazon.de works effortlessly, as always.

Well, OK, not at German Amazon. Maybe British? So instead of dot.com, we put in dot.co.uk. The result is the message: “We’re sorry, the web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site.” Hmm, no active site for the new Wilders book.

If you try the same procedure with another English language book, you get the respective active pages on amazon.co.uk and amazon.co.fr. Just not with Geert Wilders’ book.

Our impression: Amazon does not intend to offer Geert Wilders’ new book in Europe. Since Amazon is having no problems with it in the USA, and the book there is at the stupendous bestseller rank of 459, the suspicion is that someone in Europe has caused some trouble or made some threats. So, is the idea really to keep the book away from Europe?

Why is Amazon worried about listing Wilder's book? Amazon reviewer Bruce -- who gives the book five stars -- describes its content in stark terms.

Geert Wilders new book, "Marked for Death" is an absolute must read and a breath of fresh air. In a methodical way it traces exactly why Islam has been such a curse for all those societies where it is practised. In the words of Mr. Wilders, "Throughout history, Islam has brought poverty, social strife, backwardness, intolerance, and tyranny to societies where it was practiced. This trend continues today, as the curse of Islam hampers the quest for freedom and democracy in the Middle East." The dangers it poses to the West cannot be underestimated and our pandering to Islam and indeed encouraging Muslim immigration to our lands can only undermine our democratic values. Mr. Wilders explains why Islam does not merit the description of it being a "religion." Rather it is really a totalitarian system of beliefs based on hatred and inequality and ultimately control of the human being.

There is a term -- "dhimmitude" -- that perfectly describes Amazon's seeming behavior. I wonder how many other books have been censored for "our own good"?

I liken this kind of conduct to a virtual book burning.

Breaking: New Letterhead Unveiled for the Department of Justice

In light of reports that the Department of Justice now refers reporters to Media Matters -- the George Soros-funded propaganda arm of the hard Left -- I felt it imperative to introduce brand new letterhead for the DOJ.

The Department of Justice is using the liberal “watchdog” group Media Matters for America to deflect questions about the Fast and Furious scandal, including those regarding a gun that might have been used in the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

A new book raises questions as to whether the FBI hid the existence of a weapon recovered at the scene of murdered U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Conservative commentator and author Katie Pavlich lays out evidence she says points to a FBI cover-up to protect a confidential informant in her recently released book, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-up...

Here's the full back-story:

Katie Dixon, a 'confidential assistant' in the Office of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice, reportedly sent an email to Washington Free Beacon writer C.J. Ciaramella saying that she had been directed to send him a link to Media Matters for America, which holds weekly "strategy calls" with the White House, in response to an inquiry  regarding the Operation Fast and Furious scandal...

...In a tweet Friday evening, @CJCiaramella said:

Requested comment from DOJ re: @KatiePavlich's #fastandfurious book. DOJ sent me a link to a Media Matters article...

The message then linked to a story titled Fast And Fallacious: Pavlich's Book On ATF Operation Filled With Falsehoods. At the time of this writing, Dixon has not responded to Breitbart News to confirm that she sent the email shown in the tweet.

Pavlich's book, which is currently a top seller on Amazon.com, is described as telling readers "in chilling detail, just what this operation conducted by the ATF, under the supervision of the Justice Department, entailed" and saying that "equally appalling is the blatant cover-up of wrongdoing by the Obama administration."

In other words, the Holder Department of Justice is openly collaborating with an ultra-left wing propaganda outlet to continue its long-running cover-up of Operation Fast and Furious.

I spoke with author Katie Pavlich on Saturday and she confirmed that additional disclosures related to her bestselling book -- little gems, as I like to call them -- are on the way.

I can't wait.

The Complete Epilogue: Ameritopia

The epilogue of Ameritopia, Mark Levin's latest bestseller -- a brief synopsis of its key themes -- is available in PDF format... and now plain HTML, for easier reading.

My premise, in the first sentence of the first chapter of this book, is this: “Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology.”

Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Marx’s workers’ paradise are utopias that are anti-individual and anti-individualism. For the utopians, modern and olden, the individual is one-dimensional—selfish. On his own, he has little moral value. Contrarily, authoritarianism is defended as altruistic and masterminds as socially conscious. Thus endless interventions in the individual’s life and manipulation of his conditions are justified as not only necessary and desirable but noble governmental pursuits. This false dialectic is at the heart of the problem we face today.

In truth, man is naturally independent and self-reliant, which are attributes that contribute to his own well-being and survival, and the well-being and survival of a civil society. He is also a social being who is charitable and compassionate. History abounds with examples, as do the daily lives of individuals. To condemn individualism as the utopians do is to condemn the very foundation of the civil society and the American founding and endorse, wittingly or unwittingly, oppression. Karl Popper saw it as an attack on Western civilization. “The emancipation of the individual was indeed the great spiritual revolution which had led to the breakdown of tribalism and to the rise of democracy.” Moreover, Judaism and Christianity, among other religions, teach the altruism of the individual.

Of course, this is not to defend anarchy. Quite the opposite. It is to endorse the magnificence of the American founding. The American founding was an exceptional exercise in collective human virtue and wisdom—a culmination of thousands of years of experience, knowledge, reason, and faith. The Declaration of Independence is a remarkable societal proclamation of human rights, brilliant in its insight, clarity, and conciseness. The Constitution of the United States is an extraordinary matrix of governmental limits, checks, balances, and divisions, intended to secure for posterity the individual’s sovereignty as proclaimed in the Declaration.

This is the grand heritage to which every American citizen is born. It has been characterized as “the American Dream,” “the American experiment,” and “American exceptionalism.” The country has been called “the Land of Opportunity,” “the Land of Milk and Honey,” and “a Shining City on a Hill.” It seems unimaginable that a people so endowed by Providence, and the beneficiaries of such unparalleled human excellence, would choose or tolerate a course that ensures their own decline and enslavement, for a government unleashed on the civil society is a government that destroys the nature of man.

On September 17, 1787, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Delegate James Wilson, on behalf of his ailing colleague from Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, read aloud Franklin’s speech to the convention in favor of adopting the Constitution. Among other things, Franklin said that the Constitution “is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become corrupt as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other. . . .”

Have we “become corrupt”? Are we in need of “despotic government”? It appears that some modern-day “leading lights” think so, as they press their fanatical utopianism. For example, Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time magazine, considers the Constitution a utopian expedient. He wrote, “If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so. . . . The framers weren’t afraid of a little messiness. Which is another reason we shouldn’t be so delicate about changing the Constitution or reinterpreting it.” It is beyond dispute that the Framers sought to limit the scope of federal power and that the Constitution does so. Moreover, constitutional change was not left to the masterminds but deliberately made difficult to ensure the broad participation and consent of the body politic.

Richard Cohen, a columnist for the Washington Post, explained that the Constitution is an amazing document, as long as it is mostly ignored, particularly the limits it imposes on the federal government. He wrote, “This fatuous infatuation with the Constitution, particularly the 10th Amendment, is clearly the work of witches, wiccans, and wackos. It has nothing to do with America’s real problems and, if taken too seriously, would cause an economic and political calamity. The Constitution is a wonderful document, quite miraculous actually, but only because it has been wisely adapted to changing times. To adhere to the very word of its every clause hardly is respectful to the Founding Fathers. They were revolutionaries who embraced change. That’s how we got here.” Of course, without the promise of the Tenth Amendment, the Constitution would not have been ratified, since the states insisted on retaining most of their sovereignty. Furthermore, the Framers clearly did not embrace the utopian change demanded by its modern adherents.

Lest we ignore history, the no-less-eminent American revolutionary and founder Thomas Jefferson explained, “On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”

Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times and three-time Pulitzer Prize recipient, is even more forthright in his dismissal of constitutional republicanism and advocacy for utopian tyranny. Complaining of the slowness of American society in adopting sweeping utopian policies, he wrote, “There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”

Of course, China remains a police state, where civil liberties are nonexistent, despite its experiment with government-managed pseudo-capitalism. Friedman’s declaration underscores not only the necessary intolerance utopians have for constitutionalism, but their infatuation with totalitarianism.

It is neither prudential nor virtuous to downplay or dismiss the obvious—that America has already transformed into Ameritopia. The centralization and consolidation of power in a political class that insulates its agenda in entrenched experts and administrators, whose authority is also self-perpetuating, is apparent all around us and growing more formidable. The issue is whether the ongoing transformation can be restrained and then reversed, or whether it will continue with increasing zeal, passing from a soft tyranny to something more oppressive. Hayek observed that “priding itself on having built its world as if it had designed it, and blaming itself for not having designed it better, humankind is now to set out to do just that. The aim . . . is no less than to effect a complete redesigning of our traditional morals, law, and language, and on this basis to stamp out the older order and supposedly inexorable, unjustifiable conditions that prevent the institution of reason, fulfillment, true freedom, and justice.” But the outcome of this adventurism, if not effectively stunted, is not in doubt.

In the end, can mankind stave off the powerful and dark forces of utopian tyranny? While John Locke was surely right about man’s nature and the civil society, he was also right about that which threatens them. Locke, Montesquieu, many of the philosophers of the European Enlightenment, and the Founders, among others, knew that the history of organized government is mostly a history of a relative few and perfidious men co-opting, coercing, and eventually repressing the many through the centralization and consolidation of authority.

Ironically and tragically, it seems that liberty and the constitution established to preserve it are not only essential to the individual’s well-being and happiness, but also an opportunity for the devious to exploit them and connive against them. Man has yet to devise a lasting institutional answer to this puzzle. The best that can be said is that all that really stands between the individual and tyranny is a resolute and sober people. It is the people, after all, around whom the civil society has grown and governmental institutions have been established. At last, the people are responsible for upholding the civil society and republican government, to which their fate is moored.

The essential question is whether, in America, the people’s psychology has been so successfully warped, the individual’s spirit so thoroughly trounced, and the civil society’s institutions so effectively overwhelmed that revival is possible. Have too many among us already surrendered or been conquered? Can the people overcome the constant and relentless influences of ideological indoctrination, economic manipulation, and administrative coerciveness, or have they become hopelessly entangled in and dependent on a ubiquitous federal government? Have the Pavlovian appeals to radical egalitarianism, and the fomenting of jealousy and faction through class warfare and collectivism, conditioned the people to accept or even demand compulsory uniformity as just and righteous? Is it accepted as legitimate and routine that the government has sufficient license to act whenever it claims to do so for the good of the people and against the selfishness of the individual?

No society is guaranteed perpetual existence. But I have to believe that the American people are not ready for servitude, for if this is our destiny, and the destiny of our children, I cannot conceive that any people, now or in the future, will successfully resist it for long. I have to believe that this generation of Americans will not condemn future generations to centuries of misery and darkness.

The Tea Party movement is a hopeful sign. Its members come from all walks of life and every corner of the country. These citizens have the spirit and enthusiasm of the Founding Fathers, proclaim the principles of individual liberty and rights in the Declaration, and insist on the federal government’s compliance with the Constitution’s limits. This explains the utopian fury against them. They are astutely aware of the peril of the moment. But there are also the Pollyannas and blissfully indifferent citizens who must be roused and enlisted lest the civil society continue to unravel and eventually dissolve, and the despotism long feared take firm hold.

Upon taking the oath of office on January 20, 1981, in his first inaugural address President Ronald Reagan told the American people:

If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price. It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.

So, my fellow countrymen, which do we choose—Ameritopia or America?

Buy a copy and pass it on. Drop some knowledge on your family, friends and colleagues. These are perilous times. And November is coming.

Crazy Racist Tea-Bagger Attacks Innocent Black Comedian

Oh, my bad. I screwed up the headline. I meant it to read Crazy Racist Comedian Attacks Innocent Tea-Partier.

The New York Times bestselling author of the explosive new book, Hollywood Hypocrites: The Devastating Truth About Obama’s Biggest Backers, Jason Mattera, had his crew’s camera snatched and hurled by comedian Chris Rock when he asked the star why he has called the Tea Party racist.

Mattera's new book is available here. It sounds like a hoot.

Liberal Genius: Mark Levin's Ameritopia Is a #1 Bestseller Because Koch Brothers Are Buying Up Books In Bulk

Some progressive kook named "Ramona" (if that is her real name) has a novel theory regarding the rise of Mark Levin's Ameritopia to the top of all of the bestseller lists (The New York Times hardest hit). The Koch Brothers are buying up conservative books like Ameritopia to drive incredible sales volume.

Mark R. Levin, a Right Wing radio personality and "the #1 bestselling author of Liberty and Tyranny and regular Fox News contributor" is on January's cover [of the Books-a-Million catalog]. (Last month it was Glenn Beck). Levin has a new book out called, "Ameritopia, The Unmaking of America". Before I saw that cover, I confess I had never heard of Mark R. Levin. (Go ahead and strip me of my Rotten Persons Investigator badge--I know now that his new book, "Ameritopia" is at the top, the very tip-top, of this week's New York Times non-fiction bestseller list! )

So I took a look at the new book by this guy who--my god! NYT Best Seller!--I really should have heard of by now. I turned page after page and, okay, as a new Mark R. Levin reader who is also a liberal, I'm as biased as biased can be. But even I am shocked at how badly this book stinks!

...So here's what I'm thinking: What's to stop [Books-a-Million] from manipulating the market? (They also own a book distribution company.) What's to stop Threshold? What's to stop any of the Right Wing top guns--the Koch Brothers, say-- the people with all the money? What's to stop them from buying up tens or even hundreds of thousands of these books and sitting on them? ... And what's to stop 800+ stooges from churning out magnificent reviews for a book that nobody in their right mind would actually read through to the end?

I truly hope this isn't what passes for informed commentary on the Left.

Eh, Junior: Levin has roughly 10 million listeners for his radio show not because the Koch brothers paid them to listen, but because he explains -- in great detail -- the philosophical, moral, legal and ethical underpinnings of this country.

In other words, conservatism is winning in the marketplace of ideas. And, furthermore, the book's not for dummies. i.e., not for you.

Levin outlines the lessons of Smith, Locke, Montesquieu and others who influenced this nation's founders; the rationale for the form of government they created; and the thousands of years of human experience they leveraged to try to prevent the rise of a corrupt, massive, authoritarian central government. i.e., the Democrat Party.

So tune in to Levin on your local station, schmuck, and try learning something for a change.

Because your philosophy -- the philosophy of Utopianism -- has failed every time it's been tried in human history. Which is, as Levin has also explains, why liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid.

Mark Levin's Ameritopia -- the Complete Epilogue in Plain Text Format

Ameritopia, Mark Levin's latest bestseller, had sold 50,000 copies in two days time as of last night. The book's epilogue -- a brief synopsis of its key themes -- is available in PDF format (hat tip: Dan Riehl). I converted it into text format (actually HTML) because I detest the delays and clunkiness associated with PDFs.

My premise, in the first sentence of the first chapter of this book, is this: “Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology.”

Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Marx’s workers’ paradise are utopias that are anti-individual and anti-individualism. For the utopians, modern and olden, the individual is one-dimensional—selfish. On his own, he has little moral value. Contrarily, authoritarianism is defended as altruistic and masterminds as socially conscious. Thus endless interventions in the individual’s life and manipulation of his conditions are justified as not only necessary and desirable but noble governmental pursuits. This false dialectic is at the heart of the problem we face today.

In truth, man is naturally independent and self-reliant, which are attributes that contribute to his own well-being and survival, and the well-being and survival of a civil society. He is also a social being who is charitable and compassionate. History abounds with examples, as do the daily lives of individuals. To condemn individualism as the utopians do is to condemn the very foundation of the civil society and the American founding and endorse, wittingly or unwittingly, oppression. Karl Popper saw it as an attack on Western civilization. “The emancipation of the individual was indeed the great spiritual revolution which had led to the breakdown of tribalism and to the rise of democracy.” Moreover, Judaism and Christianity, among other religions, teach the altruism of the individual.

Of course, this is not to defend anarchy. Quite the opposite. It is to endorse the magnificence of the American founding. The American founding was an exceptional exercise in collective human virtue and wisdom—a culmination of thousands of years of experience, knowledge, reason, and faith. The Declaration of Independence is a remarkable societal proclamation of human rights, brilliant in its insight, clarity, and conciseness. The Constitution of the United States is an extraordinary matrix of governmental limits, checks, balances, and divisions, intended to secure for posterity the individual’s sovereignty as proclaimed in the Declaration.

This is the grand heritage to which every American citizen is born. It has been characterized as “the American Dream,” “the American experiment,” and “American exceptionalism.” The country has been called “the Land of Opportunity,” “the Land of Milk and Honey,” and “a Shining City on a Hill.” It seems unimaginable that a people so endowed by Providence, and the beneficiaries of such unparalleled human excellence, would choose or tolerate a course that ensures their own decline and enslavement, for a government unleashed on the civil society is a government that destroys the nature of man.

On September 17, 1787, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Delegate James Wilson, on behalf of his ailing colleague from Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, read aloud Franklin’s speech to the convention in favor of adopting the Constitution. Among other things, Franklin said that the Constitution “is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become corrupt as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other. . . .”

Have we “become corrupt”? Are we in need of “despotic government”? It appears that some modern-day “leading lights” think so, as they press their fanatical utopianism. For example, Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time magazine, considers the Constitution a utopian expedient. He wrote, “If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so. . . . The framers weren’t afraid of a little messiness. Which is another reason we shouldn’t be so delicate about changing the Constitution or reinterpreting it.” It is beyond dispute that the Framers sought to limit the scope of federal power and that the Constitution does so. Moreover, constitutional change was not left to the masterminds but deliberately made difficult to ensure the broad participation and consent of the body politic.

Richard Cohen, a columnist for the Washington Post, explained that the Constitution is an amazing document, as long as it is mostly ignored, particularly the limits it imposes on the federal government. He wrote, “This fatuous infatuation with the Constitution, particularly the 10th Amendment, is clearly the work of witches, wiccans, and wackos. It has nothing to do with America’s real problems and, if taken too seriously, would cause an economic and political calamity. The Constitution is a wonderful document, quite miraculous actually, but only because it has been wisely adapted to changing times. To adhere to the very word of its every clause hardly is respectful to the Founding Fathers. They were revolutionaries who embraced change. That’s how we got here.” Of course, without the promise of the Tenth Amendment, the Constitution would not have been ratified, since the states insisted on retaining most of their sovereignty. Furthermore, the Framers clearly did not embrace the utopian change demanded by its modern adherents.

Lest we ignore history, the no-less-eminent American revolutionary and founder Thomas Jefferson explained, “On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”

Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times and three-time Pulitzer Prize recipient, is even more forthright in his dismissal of constitutional republicanism and advocacy for utopian tyranny. Complaining of the slowness of American society in adopting sweeping utopian policies, he wrote, “There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”

Of course, China remains a police state, where civil liberties are nonexistent, despite its experiment with government-managed pseudo-capitalism. Friedman’s declaration underscores not only the necessary intolerance utopians have for constitutionalism, but their infatuation with totalitarianism.

It is neither prudential nor virtuous to downplay or dismiss the obvious—that America has already transformed into Ameritopia. The centralization and consolidation of power in a political class that insulates its agenda in entrenched experts and administrators, whose authority is also self-perpetuating, is apparent all around us and growing more formidable. The issue is whether the ongoing transformation can be restrained and then reversed, or whether it will continue with increasing zeal, passing from a soft tyranny to something more oppressive. Hayek observed that “priding itself on having built its world as if it had designed it, and blaming itself for not having designed it better, humankind is now to set out to do just that. The aim . . . is no less than to effect a complete redesigning of our traditional morals, law, and language, and on this basis to stamp out the older order and supposedly inexorable, unjustifiable conditions that prevent the institution of reason, fulfillment, true freedom, and justice.” But the outcome of this adventurism, if not effectively stunted, is not in doubt.

In the end, can mankind stave off the powerful and dark forces of utopian tyranny? While John Locke was surely right about man’s nature and the civil society, he was also right about that which threatens them. Locke, Montesquieu, many of the philosophers of the European Enlightenment, and the Founders, among others, knew that the history of organized government is mostly a history of a relative few and perfidious men co-opting, coercing, and eventually repressing the many through the centralization and consolidation of authority.

Ironically and tragically, it seems that liberty and the constitution established to preserve it are not only essential to the individual’s well-being and happiness, but also an opportunity for the devious to exploit them and connive against them. Man has yet to devise a lasting institutional answer to this puzzle. The best that can be said is that all that really stands between the individual and tyranny is a resolute and sober people. It is the people, after all, around whom the civil society has grown and governmental institutions have been established. At last, the people are responsible for upholding the civil society and republican government, to which their fate is moored.

The essential question is whether, in America, the people’s psychology has been so successfully warped, the individual’s spirit so thoroughly trounced, and the civil society’s institutions so effectively overwhelmed that revival is possible. Have too many among us already surrendered or been conquered? Can the people overcome the constant and relentless influences of ideological indoctrination, economic manipulation, and administrative coerciveness, or have they become hopelessly entangled in and dependent on a ubiquitous federal government? Have the Pavlovian appeals to radical egalitarianism, and the fomenting of jealousy and faction through class warfare and collectivism, conditioned the people to accept or even demand compulsory uniformity as just and righteous? Is it accepted as legitimate and routine that the government has sufficient license to act whenever it claims to do so for the good of the people and against the selfishness of the individual?

No society is guaranteed perpetual existence. But I have to believe that the American people are not ready for servitude, for if this is our destiny, and the destiny of our children, I cannot conceive that any people, now or in the future, will successfully resist it for long. I have to believe that this generation of Americans will not condemn future generations to centuries of misery and darkness.

The Tea Party movement is a hopeful sign. Its members come from all walks of life and every corner of the country. These citizens have the spirit and enthusiasm of the Founding Fathers, proclaim the principles of individual liberty and rights in the Declaration, and insist on the federal government’s compliance with the Constitution’s limits. This explains the utopian fury against them. They are astutely aware of the peril of the moment. But there are also the Pollyannas and blissfully indifferent citizens who must be roused and enlisted lest the civil society continue to unravel and eventually dissolve, and the despotism long feared take firm hold.

Upon taking the oath of office on January 20, 1981, in his first inaugural address President Ronald Reagan told the American people:

If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price. It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.

So, my fellow countrymen, which do we choose—Ameritopia or America?

Buy a copy and pass it on. Drop some knowledge on your family, friends and colleagues. These are perilous times. And November is coming.

Mark Levin's new book Ameritopia is out tomorrow. To mark the occasion, I reprise his epic rant, "Why liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid"

In honor of the release of Mark Levin's new book Ameritopia (click here to order), the following is Levin's legendary rant entitled "Why Liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid":

The reason I say that liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid is because we can look at what's going around in the country today. If, in your own lives, you were pursuing policies that were destroying your own home ownership, that were destroying your own job, that were creating a massive, impossible debt for your family and your children in particular, you'd stop it. You wouldn't keep doing it!

And yet for the liberal, if it's imposed on you -- and they feel that they can be immune from it -- they're for it.

They wouldn't do to themselves and their own family what they're doing to you, and your family, and the whole nation!

Take Barack Obama. Does Barack Obama conduct himself in his own, personal affairs, in his family's affairs, as recklessly as he conducts the affairs of the nation? No. Would he run up the kind of relative personal debt that he's running up for the nation? No way.

Would he do anything that would endanger his position as president? Of course not -- he thinks his agenda will return him to office. He's taking care of his constituent groups...

So they do to us -- and they do to our society -- what they would never do to their own families. They do not live in their own lives as they seek to have the rest of us live. Or as they seek to have our society conduct itself.

An extensive interview of Levin by CNS News -- regarding the genesis and thought process behind the book -- is quite revealing and well worth reading.

The Islamist's M.O.: Obliterating the Past [Dan from NY]

Dan from NY:

If there is a recurring theme within political Islam it is the permanent jihad to wipe out any trace of non-Muslim civilization. Once you appreciate that you’ll begin to see the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Mosque built over the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the persecution of Christians in Muslim lands and the spread of “no-go” neighborhoods in Europe in an entirely new light.

###

Ynet News, 12/23/2011, by Guy Bechor

Welcome to Cairostan

Op-ed: Egypt’s radicals eliminating country’s connection to West, but does anyone care?

It was barely mentioned in the Israeli and global media, but the following event pertains to the whole of Western civilization: Last Saturday, violent groups of Islamic-Salafi radicals burned the famous scientific institute established by Napoleon in Egypt after its first encounter with the West. Some historians consider it the start of modern times in the Middle East.

The site, L’Institut d’Egypte, held some 200,000 original and rare books, exhibits, maps, archeological findings and studies from Egypt and the entire Middle East, based on the work of generations of western researchers. Most of the artifacts were lost forever, burned or looted.

It’s difficult to understand the modern Middle East without these studies, which were overcome by an immense fire. The large building was situated in the center of Cairo and torching it was a symbolic, intentional act. Those who burned the building and its artifacts meant to burn the era of logic, enlightenment, research and individualism.

This was a grave provocation against the whole of Western civilization, a desire to disconnect from science, research and modernity, while cynically using a Western means – that is, democracy – in order to take power.

One need not go all the way to blowing up the pyramids, as some of Egypt’s Salafis wish to do after they seized some 35% of the new parliament seats (alongside 40% of the Islamic brotherhood,) and there is no reason to go as far as Afghanistan, where the Taliban blew up the huge Buddha statues. The elimination of Egypt’s non-Muslim past is already here.

...This isn’t a new phenomenon, and in Jerusalem as well we see elements associated with political Islam trying to erase any presence of the 3,000-year Jewish existence there, on Temple Mount for example – existence that pre-dated Islam.

... And who is supposed to raise a hue and cry over the burning of Egypt’s Western past? Who is supposed to be greatly disturbed by the fact that Egyptian authorities are having trouble protecting their own museums? UNESCO, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Yet not much is happening there. Well, we can’t blame this organization; after all, it is preoccupied with admitting “Palestine” into its ranks.

Images: Ancient World Bloggers Group - "The Fire at the Institut d'Egypte Cairo"

In 1939, Eric Ambler Described the Obama Regime

Eric Ambler was the father of the modern espionage novel. In his 1939 work Cause for Alarm, Englishman Nick Marlow -- an engineer and salesman of machine tools used to make armaments -- finds himself trapped in prewar fascist Italy. Police, corrupt officials and spies are searching for him; he is on the run along with an associate well-familiar with the world of espionage and clandestine operations. That associate describes the lay of the land to Marlow, who believes himself an innocent wrongly accused of aiding Italy's enemies.

My friend, when you're above the law, when you are the law, the phrase about ends justifying means has a real meaning. Put yourself in their place. If you felt that the state which you worshipped above your God was endangered by the life of one insignificant man, would you hesitate to have him shot? I can tell you that you wouldn't.

That's the danger of Fascism, of state-worship.

It supposes an absolute, an ego-centric unit. The idea of the state is not rooted in the masses, it is not of the people. It is an abstract, a God-idea, a psychic dung-hill raised to shore up an economic system that is no longer safe. When you're on the top of that sort of dung-hill, it doesn't matter whether the ends in reality are good or bad. The fact that they are your ends makes them good--for you.

Isn't that an apt phrase to describe today's radicalized Democrat Party and its sycophants in legacy media?

They are state-worshipers. Government can do no wrong, despite copious amounts of history, facts, logic, reason and common sense that would say otherwise.

Their religion is the state. And, for them, the ends always justify the means.

Photo: a Young Mark Levin

Via The Right Scoop:

As an aside, Levin's new book -- the followup to the bestselling Liberty and Tyranny -- promises to be a doozy.

My guess is that The New York Times will repeat its cowardly performance -- refusing to review the book no matter how many million of copies it sells. Because conservatism's logic, its principles, its philosophical foundations and its historical bases are no more assailable by progressives than Everest can be scaled by a gerbil.

Here's My Guess: the Title and Subject of Mark Levin's Next Book

Best-selling author Mark Levin is a Constitutional renaissance man. Not only is he the author of several New York Times bestsellers, but he's also the fastest-growing radio talk show host in America. Oh, and on the side he runs Landmark Legal Foundation, a law firm that takes up significant Constitutional issues.

His most recent book -- Liberty and Tryanny -- arrived in 2009 to massive acclaim (it has since sold over 1.2 million copies). Jeffrey Lord of The American Spectator called it "The Book That Changed America"; it was a common sight at Tea Party rallies during the fight against President Obama's brand of socialized medicine.

Since that time, Levin's hinted on his show about his work on a new book. Reportedly completed in July, its title and subject are embargoed until the week before its release. That said, I've gathered enough information from his circuitous references to offer an educated guess.

Title: From Democracy to Despotism

Subtitle: The Left's Fatal Assault on Individual Liberty

Description: As our society frays thanks to the machinations of Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress, we would be well-served to review history. The strategies and tactics of the modern Left are not new; we have seen these machinations before and we must recognize them today.

From Russia's bloody 1917 revolution, to Mao's "People's Army"; from the Palestinian elections of Hamas to Mugabe's Zimbabwe; the world has seen populist and democratic movements many times before.

Most importantly, the Statists of the Left use the democratic process itself to destroy government and the civil society. Most recently, Saul Alinsky (the father of modern community organizing) and Columbia Professors Cloward and Piven have articulated strategies that undermine the American republic from within.

The bulwark standing in their way is the United States Constitution. As the Left's termites eat away at our legal foundation, it's incumbent upon patriotic Americans to learn from history's lessons and politically obliterate the infestation of those who mean to unravel our society.

Whether or not my prediction is accurate, I can say with confidence this about Levin's next book. It will be great.

Trinity College Boots Professor for Being a Politically Incorrect 'Barbarian'

Marfdrat alerts us to a professor at Ireland's Trinity College who has been terminated -- it would seem -- for political incorrectness. The professor's bio on the college website, which has since been removed, is epic:

Long Room Hub Associate Professor in Hyborian Studies and Tyrant Slaying.

Dr Conan T. Barbarian was ripped from his mother's womb on the corpse-strewn battlefields of his war-torn homeland, Cimmeria, and has been preparing for academic life ever since. A firm believer in the dictum that "that which does not kill us makes us stronger," he took time out to avenge the death of his parents following a sojourn pursuing his strong interest in Post-Colonial theory at the Sorbonne. In between, he spent several years tethered to the fearsome "Wheel of Pain", time which he now feels helped provide him with the mental discipline and sado-masochistic proclivities necessary to sucessfully tackle contemporary critical theory. He completed his PhD, entitled "To Hear The Lamentation of Their Women: Constructions of Masculinity in Contemporary Zamoran Literature" at UCD and was appointed to the School of English in 2006, after sucessfully decapitating his predecessor during a bloody battle which will long be remembered in legend and song. In 2011/12, he will be teaching on the following courses: "The Relevance of Crom in the Modern World", "Theories of Literature", "Vengeance for Beginners", "Deciphering the Riddle of Steel" and "D.H. Lawrence". He strongly objects to the terms of the Croke Park agreement and the current trend for remaking 1980s films that he believes were perfectly good enough in the first place.

He is happy to hear from potential research students with an interest of any of these topics, but applicants should note that anyone found guilty of academic misconduct or weakness in the face of the enemy will be crucified as an example to the others.

Email: conanb@tcd.ie

The Irish Times reports that Professor Conan's bio was an "inside job", not an external hack.

How Sci-Fi Influences Real World Design

BusinessInsider offers an excellent visual history of the cell phone. I was particularly struck by the following description of the Motorola StarTAC, vintage 1996:

Still shrinking the line of TACs, Motorola unveiled the first clamshell mobile phone with StarTAC. It improved the folding feature by collapsing in half, which is why it's called "clamshell"—because it resembles a clam opening and closing shut... It's said to be inspired by the communicator from the original Star Trek series.

I never knew that, but there's certainly a resemblance.

It truly is amazing how science fiction -- from Arthur C. Clarke's idea of geosynchronous orbit to modern design principles -- has influenced the world in which we live.

Addressing Title IX in urban and minority populations

Two items of note: one current, one forthcoming.
Out now is the book/guide, Hey Shorty!: A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and on the Streets.
It is based on the work done in the non-profit Girls for Gender Equity based on Brooklyn. The group is "committed to the physical,, psychological, social and economic development of girls and women. Through education, organizing and physical fitness, Girls for Gender Equity encourages communities to remove barriers and create opportunities for girls and women to live self-determined lives." Based on Brooklyn, the group caters primarily to urban girls of color. Hey Shorty! (Feminist Press) presents the model developed by GGE on how to teach young people how to address and define sexual harassment as well as some of its effects. According to the blurb, the guide is "geared toward students, parents, teachers, policy makers, and activists, this book is an excellent model for building awareness and creating change in any community."

We haven't seen a copy of the guide yet, but the "look inside" feature at the Amazon.com shows that Title IX is mentioned in the guide.
The title, by the way, is a common call heard by girls as they walk the streets of their communities and the halls of their schools. Shorty is slang for a "sexually attractive girl with both childlike and feminine attributes in terms of body and behavior." In other words, not innocuous and not having anything to do with one's height.

And, not out yet, but we're eagerly awaiting its release, is a documentary film (link to the Chronicle of Higher Education, subscription required to read the whole article), about the effects--or lack thereof--of Title IX in urban schools. The movie, In the Game, is from the production company that gave us Hoops Dreams and is at least a year away from being available to the public. Director Maria Finitzo features three different stories: an inner-city girls' soccer team, a professional women's basketball team, and a group of young girls in the Chicago public schools who are investigating issues of gender equity in their schools.
Even from the little I have heard thus far about the film, it seems like it will start to fill some of the gaps in the literature around the law and its application to urban schools and effects on the girls in those communities. And the stories look like they will be quite compelling.

*Yawn* ... Yet another book on Barack Obama due out soon

The pusillanimous Vanity Fair, which never dares to veer off the Democrat party line, reports that a new book on President Obama is due out in late January. The author of the tome is shrouded in mystery.

But I'm pretty certain I know who wrote it.

It's the same guy who'd written two autobiographies before he'd so much as run a cash register at a 7-11. And, in fact, Cub Reporter Biff Spackle claims he's got an exclusive draft copy, including the cover.

Far be it from me to question Biff's sources and methods.

Amazon Kindle Number Two Goes DOA

Right in the middle of reading the first of two novels I purchased last Sunday, I get this:

Yes -- the screen is almost entirely black with a few horizontal lines scattered throughout.

Less than a year ago, my first Kindle -- that was only a few months old -- suffered a similar fate, though the screen was still somewhat readable.

Notice the discolored band near the top of the 'digital ink'-based screen. That appeared one day as a permanent reminder that a bunch of finicky electrons hold the keys to a dozen of my books.

No need to throw these away yet:

And I hear that when the SHTF, they'll be worth some serious coin.

And at the rate these Democrats are spending, we won't have long to wait.