Edith Stein, August 9 memorial

Today, August 9, we Christians and Jews memorialize the death of Edith Stein, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was killed in Auschwitz on August 9 for both her ethnic Jewish heritage (had converted to Catholicism in 1922 after being an atheist) and her Catholicism. After the Dutch Catholic Bishops had condemned the Nazis for the persecution of the Jews in 1942, Roman Catholics were rounded up and sent to the death camps.

 
The Collect for her memorial in the "Episcopal Book of Common Prayer" reads as follows:

"Pour out your grace upon thy church, O God; that, like your servant Edith Stein, we may always seek what is true, defend what is right, reprove what is evil, and forgive those who sin against us, even as your Son commanded; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be all honor and glory, now and forever."

Yad Vashem, the memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in Jerusalem, commemorates Edith Stein as a Jewish woman murdered by the Nazis: “Edith Stein was born in Breslau, Germany in 1891. Prior to WWII she lived in Koeln, Germany. Edith was murdered in the Shoah.”

 
Pope John Paul II canonized her in 1998.
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Let's remember on this day that Nazi (National Socialists) totalitarianism was against Christians as well as Jews. To revere God as higher than the state is a crime in totalitarian societies. Today we need to watch for that evil as the creeping socialism in our own country becomes an open, in-your-face marathon. We see attacks on Jews in our elite universities and the FBI has been found spying on traditional Catholics. Parents lose their rights for fighting against the agenda of radical trans activists who deny God's plan of Creation of male and female.

(Information from Magnificat, August 2023, pp. 117-118 and Praytellblog,com)

Merrick Garland is dangerous--he hates the Constitution

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has taken a law hastily passed over 20 years ago after 9/11 to stop foreign terrorists (Patriot act) and is using it against parents concerned about the health and education of their children. He is arresting, with Joe Biden's approval and lip smacking grin, people protesting killing the unborn, i.e., American citizens using their constitutional rights under the first amendment. He's using government surveillance illegally to stop journalists who report the truth about use of fetal body parts distributed after abortions. It would seem that Garland does not have the best interests of the USA in mind because he has something against the children of our future.

At the same time, Democrats (and a few Republicans like Cheney) in Congress and in the Media are calling Americans "Nazis" and "Terrorists" for using their First Amendment rights, which is the exact opposite of what they charge. They get hysterical when citizens object to green taxes and coercion. They prove to be thickheaded simpletons who don't know world history of the 1930s and 40s or why American blood was shed in WWII. They demean and insult the millions who died under that regime. National Socialism (aka Nazi) is just one of the many offspring and grandchildren of Marx, Nietzsche, and more recently Foucault that have morphed into BLM and CRT. It's alive and well in our leftist politicians. That doesn't describe our patriots and citizens who want children to live and thrive in freedom.

And although I'm so thankful Garland didn't get his chance at SCOTUS having been blocked by Republicans when Obama nominated him, I do think he's trying to punish half the nation for that 2016 "insult." He was unfit then, and a disaster now.

Fascism—Trump or Biden?

What exactly is fascism? The Democrats for 4 years accused Trump of being a Fascist and Antifa proclaims to be fighting Fascism. Nope and nope. Here's how it works. Silence and jail those who disagree. Make new laws. Work with the scions of industry to insure their support and transfer to them some powers of government (to protect religion, speech, assembly).

"Hillary’s latest op-ed in the Washington Post, a paper owned by the richest man in the world whose company deplatformed Parler, calls for expelling Republican legislators, passing “new criminal laws”, and government oversight of social media platforms. This is fascism." Frontpage, Jan. 20, 2021

Why do Democrats post Hitler memes?

I've got liberal Facebook Friends who keep posting Hitler memes instead of the truth, which just shows they

• don't know much about biology,
• don't know much about history,
• don't know much about geography,
• don't know about the French they took.

They think France and Poland, England and Holland where jumping the border running into German; they seem to think Germany's economy was booming; they don't know that Hitler disarmed and killed his own citizens.  The President loves Israel and is saving babies and the elderly.  That just doesn’t sound like Hitler.

And they seem to be clueless about Stalin and Mao. Poor, pitiful leftists.

Hitler and the disabled—the slippery slope of the left

https://www.lifenews.com/2019/09/13/before-the-nazis-killed-jews-they-euthanized-hundreds-of-thousands-of-disabled-people/

The article he refers to appeared in the NYT in 2017, and there's a pay wall, but this is a decent summary--if there can be anything decent about the Nazis. The Democrats, Antifa, BLM, Occupy movement and pink hat Trump haters and Hollywood celebs have cheapened that word and its memories. I had read about this years ago, but many people don't know that methods were tested on the disabled. Germany actually had some outstanding facilities for children and adults with challenges. Imagine the horror of the parents and siblings who came to visit or look for them! Hitler also learned from the Turks who slaughtered many thousands of Armenians. It's the power of the state--National Socialism (aka Nazi)--and it's the very thing President Trump is resisting. But Trump's enemies are clever--they know that most people don't know history, don't know the meaning of words, even, and that the big lie can be repeated and repeated until their minds are mushy. Hitler's socialist model first killed his own citizens before moving beyond the borders.

Feeling the Bern

"Senator Sanders points to the Scandinavian model as an example of what it means to have health care as a right. Senator Sanders has traveled widely in his life — he found much to praise in the Soviet Union while honeymooning there, and said so — but he is, like many American progressives, almost completely parochial. As is the case with the United Kingdom and much of Europe, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are in the 21st century markedly different from the countries they were in the 1970s, when Senator Sanders’s awareness of the world seems to have congealed into the impenetrable clot of ignorance on such ghastly display in his current political career."

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/bernie-sanders-health-care-rhetoric-rights/?

That's a great turn of phrase, and one I've noticed with some of my friends and acquaintances who seem fascinated, but blind, with socialism of the 70s-- "congealed into the impenetrable clot of ignorance."

I used to translate medical articles from the USSR back in the 1960s when I worked for a professor of sociology--free medical care from feldshers (фельдшер), who'd had 6 weeks of training. Bernie loved the USSR of his youth--maybe that's where he got the idea.

What else do they want to take from us?

In the name of equality, which Dennis Prager says is the ideology that killed 100 million people in the 20th century, what else besides fossil fuels, borders,  religious rights, history and memorials, wealth, the unborn and language do the Democrats want removed or controlled by the government?  Creativity, curiosity and critical thinking.  Those minds are very dangerous to Socialists.

Who’s the racist; is the Wall racist?

The President is accused of being a racist by his enemies because of the travel ban for groups originally targeted by Obama and the Wall, which several years ago Democrats agreed to fund and high profile Democrats like Obama, Pelosi, and Schumer are on video strongly advocating for it.

Neither Muslims or Mexicans are a race--one is a world wide multi-ethnic religion, the other a nation of multi-ethnic people who speak a European language--Spanish--and are 60% white. The U.S. is 70%. There are also many middle-easterners and Asians coming in through our porous southern border, especially where there is no wall/barrier/fence. If they would vote Republican, that original 20 billion the Dems approved would be there tomorrow.

The Democrats continue to demonize people as racist, ignoring the KKK in their closets and roots. They are eying 2020 and have nothing for the nation but old, failed socialist policies like higher taxes and freebies.  Now they've declared a red hat, a slogan, obscure words, teen-age boys, Catholics, and all of Western Civilization racist. They've examined every idiomatic expression for dog whistles and racism, from “rule of thumb” to “union of man and woman” to pronouns,  to the names of sports teams. 

National Socialism, aka Nazi, is extreme statism, when a government takes control of a business or sector of the economy to benefit the state, like health care, education, etc. Hitler didn’t just target Jews, he  also killed the disabled, gypsies, Christians, Poles, etc.--who were absolutely no danger to him. As far as dividing us--that began in Academe, with now massive, bloated departments devoted to "diversity," aka division. Hitler learned the attacks against Jews from the Turks who used it on Christians, and eugenics from Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. But it was the Communists of USSR, China and Cambodia who really grew mass human destruction (although not as many as legal abortion), but because it is a form of socialism which the Leftists admire, they can only mention Hitler in their tirades against Trump.

America’s socialists

I keep reading that 51-57% of Democrats favor socialism--more in the younger range, but enough in the 50+ to cause concern. Strange that they call Trump a Nazi. Our school system has failed them, even people my age and older who should know better, who remember Hitler, Mao and the USSR.

Socialism means the state controls the land and the means of production. The only difference between Hitler and Stalin was the length of their reach--one wanted just Europe and the other the world. Their hearts beat together. American Communists in the 1930s weren't worried about Hitler until he attacked their boy Stalin, then we entered the war.

Socialism is Communism-lite. It is a utopian philosophy that has murdered millions under cover of equality and fairness, because the individual means nothing. Bill de Blasio, Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, university administrations and faculties, certain Christian clergy and various members of the workers party of Hollywood and late night TV/ sit-coms are just fellow travelers on the path to a system that has failed in every country that got sucked in. There are millions of dead Chinese and starving Venezuelans to prove it.

Socialism

 

Socialism, Communism and Fascism are triplets birthed from the same 19th century European womb of Lady Statism. It is where government must forcibly control industry, unions, church,  the press, academe, and personal thought and morality. In the 20th century Communism (USSR and its satellites, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba) and Fascism (Germany, Italy and some parts of Africa like Uganda and Rwanda)  were responsible for probably 100 million humans condemned to  “death by government.” It wasn’t war casualties from WWI and WWII--these millions were citizens killed by their own government. Take all the wars from the beginning of recorded history, whether religious, tribal, monarchy or cultural, and you won’t come close to the losses of the “enlightened” 20th century. The USSR imploded with the help of the famous freedom triplets--a president, a prime minister and a pope.  Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Paul II.

A country’s safety net for the poor, elderly and disabled is not socialism; providing transportation systems, public education and military protection or border security  is not socialism;  forcing everyone, including the middle class, wealthy and self insured in the country to purchase a product on threat of fine or jail such as inadequate and overpriced health insurance IS SOCIALISM; forcing the general public to submit on threat of jail to national bathroom regulations IS SOCIALISM; allowing hateful speech and disruptions of events for a white president as just first amendment rights, but not a black president IS SOCIALISM.

Who are the Nazis in this campaign?

There are just too many people out there on the internet, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  who don't have a clue what the political ideology of National Socialism (Nazis) is. It means state control, i.e. it's statism. The only difference between it and Communism is scope. That's Hillary Clinton's style and ideology. She's always been in public office and capable of passing laws, regulations and accepting money from rich friends in banking and foreign governments for political purposes. That's not Donald Trump who has been a business man and has no political power at all, and almost no political power within the federal government. 

The broadcast media, from which up to 24 million get their news, are supporting Mrs. Clinton 23:1 in coverage of various scandals which they both bring to the election--his are sexual, hers international. This is a precursor of what you will get if you elect her. Once a politician owns the media, the entertainment industry, and academe, it's all over. That's statism, that's Mrs. Clinton, not someone on twitter saying silly things.

Good Golly Miss Molly--don't they learn anything in school these days? (Or my day, since many of you are over 60.)

Bloodlands -- new book on Stalin and Hitler

To the victor go the archives (or history telling), but I don't think I'll read this one. The review is stunning enough. I was surprised to learn that Germany only had a small population of Jews--about 400,000. Most of the Jews the Nazis killed were in territories controlled by the Soviet Union, however, Joseph Stalin had started what Hitler tried to finish.

National Socialism and Russian Communism were flip sides of the same coin of Karl Marx, who is alive and well in American politics of 2010. Hitler wanted to control all of Europe; Stalin all the world. When the war was over and Russia was our ally so we could defeat the Germans, FDR handed the countries Stalin had helped to decimate back to him. When we were in Estonia in 2006, the saddest thing we saw was a small museum about the Soviet occupation of Estonia. Those poor people. They kept waiting for the Americans. They were so sure they would come.

The display of strength on October 2 at the Washington Mall of the U.S. Communists was stunning. Perhaps there aren't enough people alive today who remember Russia in the 1930s and 1940s and what Communism really is.

"Among his other goals in "Bloodlands," Mr. Snyder attempts to put the Holocaust in context—to restore it, in a sense, to the history of the wider European conflict. This is a task that no historian can attempt without risking controversy. Yet far from minimizing Jewish suffering, "Bloodlands" gives a fuller picture of the Nazi killing machine. Auschwitz, which wasn't purely a "death camp," lives on in our memory due in large part to those who lived to tell the tale. Through his access to Eastern European sources, Mr. Snyder also takes the reader to places like Babi Yar, Treblinka and Belzec. These were Nazi mass-murder sites that left virtually no survivors.

Yet Mr. Snyder's book does make it clear that Hitler's "Final Solution," the purge of European Jewry, was not a fully original idea. A decade before, Stalin had set out to annihilate the Ukrainian peasant class, whose "national" sentiments he perceived as a threat to his Soviet utopia. The collectivization of agriculture was the weapon of choice. Implemented savagely, collectivization brought famine. In the spring of 1933 people in Ukraine were dying at a rate of 10,000 per day.

Stalin then turned on other target groups in the Soviet Union, starting with the kulaks—supposedly richer farmers, whom Stalin said needed to be "liquidated as a class"—and various ethnic minorities. In the late 1930s, Mr. Snyder argues, "the most persecuted" national group in Europe wasn't—as many of us would assume—Jews in Nazi Germany, a relatively small community of 400,000 whose numbers declined after the imposition of race laws forced many into emigration at a time when this was still possible. According to Mr. Snyder, the hardest hit at that time were the 600,000 or so Poles living within the Soviet Union."

Book review: Bloodlands - WSJ.com

I find it distressing that loyal party Democrats don't see who is absconding with their party. The crowd wasn't huge on October 2, but it was blantantly anarchist and communist; Democrats, particularly Jewish Democrats, need to give each other a kick in the pants, then kick out the Communists, George Soros, MoveOn dot org from their leadership.

What is a Socialist and why is no one worried?

"While earlier generations of Americans understood the word [socialism] to describe a political system that coincides with the diminution of personal and economic freedom, too many Americans hear the word and simply think of it as an alternative economic system. They think Europe, with its pretty buildings and, until recently, high standard of living.

These same Americans do not think of the USSR and the Gulags, or the Nazis and the concentration camps, or the Norks and their concentration camps, or the Cubans and their political prisons, or the Chinese and their political slave labor. All of those, Americans would say, were communist, which is different, never mind that it’s not.

I can already hear some of you saying right now that Americans are proving, with their hostility to the Obama/Democrat agenda, that they hate socialism. But I’m talking semantics. They’ll say they hate “Big Government,” or taxes, or government inefficiency, or too much government spending, but they will be utterly blase about “socialism.” The word has lost its power. The underlying concepts may bother Americans, but to say Obama is a socialist probably has as much meaning as to say he eats potatoes."

Bookworm Room » What if they gave a socialist party and nobody cared?

F.A. Hayek and The road to Serfdom

What a stunning book! Can hardly believe I never read it before--well, wait, yes I can. I went to school when FDR was idolized and I was a Democrat for 40 years. Figures.

It's not like you have to go deep into a bunch of anecdotes to figure it out. He gives the plot away, and I don't use the term lightly, on page 5. This book is now number one on Amazon because Glenn Beck recommended it, but it was published in 1944 in the midst of World War II.

In 1944 Hayek warned the United States and England, that although they were in the midst of fighting a war against the German Nazis, they were committing all the same mistakes that led up to the National Socialists taking over and the rise of Hitler.

It is necessary now to state the unpalatable truth that it is Germany whose fate we are in some danger of repeating. . . the trend of thought in Germany during and after the last war and the present current of ideas in the democracies. . . There is the same contempt for 19th century liberalism, the same spurious "realism" and even cynicism, the same fatalistic acceptance of "inevitable trends." And at least 9 out of every 10 of the lessons which our most vociferous reformers are so anxious we should learn from this war are precisely the lessons which the Germans did learn from the last war and which have done much to produce the Nazi system. . . it is not so many years since the socialist policy of that country was generally held up by progressives as an example to be imitated.

In short, Hayek points out that the rise of naziism and facism was NOT a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.

READ THIS BOOK. Believe it or not (and I hardly can) there are two copies in the Upper Arlington Public Library with 10 holds. I guess because of it's 1944 publication date, it managed to slip through the banning of conservative titles. I'll return my copy at the end of the week, and it's not a long read.

It's not about health, energy or the environment

All Obama's policies reflect a core liberal mindset that spans policies and endures decades, according to Heritage Blog (and mine too if you've been following it).

And that is, "the willingness to forego jobs and wages for American workers to achieve other goals liberal policymakers deem more worthy. In the case of tax rates, [Laurence] Summers admits growth will be sacrificed at the altar of a soak-the-rich mentality married to the need to fund Obama’s spending surge.

Health care reform has become an excuse to expand the reach of government and levy even higher taxes. The new House health care bill has yet higher rates than Summers was talking about: another blow to jobs and wages.

Cap and trade, a.k.a. pack and move for what it would do to the nation’s manufacturing sector, is an explicit, enormous trade off of lower economic growth for environmental goals. Recognizing the damage this policy would do to the economy, proponents anxiously argue that a few “green jobs” building subsidized windmills can compensate for the millions of real jobs destroyed if this legislation reaches the president." Read the entire piece here.

Using the "N" word

Nazi. Apparently, there is a rule about using the word "Nazi" to insult someone. I thought the Democrats invented it or reintroduced the rule during the Bush era (Pelosi, Reid, etc.), but Godwin's law which has a history, colloraries, and variations, was stated in 1990, according to Wikipedia, a source I don't usually cite, but hey, sounds about right.

"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches." Mike Godwin, 1990

But even that has a history.

"You can tell when a USENET discussion is getting old when one of the participants drags out Hitler and the Nazis."[1989]

I used to be part of a USENET discussion group, and this does indeed sound like USENET. In fact, things got so nasty at the writers group, particularly some twit from Britain who hated me, I started my own blog in 2003, so I could toss the detractors into the trash on a whim or at will. And I never said a thing political.

However, using the Nazi analogy with medical costs control goes way back according to a 1949 article in NEJM:

"For instance, beginning in 1933, the Germans began killing "defectives" of various kinds, in part because they were unproductive ("useless eaters") and therefore were costly to the society. The pragmatic, cost-benefit dimension to the murders was illustrated in the widely used high school mathematics text cited by Dr. Leo Alexander. The text, Mathematics in the Service of National Political Education, included such problems, Alexander noted, as "how many new housing units could be built and how many marriage-allowance loans could be given to newly wedded couples for the amount of money it cost the state to care for the 'crippled, the criminal and insane,'" ("Medical Science Under Dictatorship," New England Journal of Medicine, July 14, 1949)."

"Daniel Callahan readily admits that he wrote Setting Limits because of the acute and inexorably increasing problem of medical care costs, particularly with regard to the elderly. He does not advocate euthanasia for people past a certain age; but by having the state--through Medicare--refuse to pay for certain expensive life-extending procedures such as coronary bypass operations once that age has been reached, the result of his design is..." see his Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society (1987).

I wonder if now that he is turning 80 if he is changing his mind on the costs of eldercare. Is Callahan a Democrat? To judge from his contributions, yes, but he did spread it around to cover his bases. In thought, his heart belongs to Obamacare.

Regardless of who started with the Nazi words (I say the Bush haters did), it's clear that smearing the people who turn up at the town halls and calling them unAmerican when they try to protest legislation they don't like is counter productive for the Obama administration. It just makes him and his purple shirts look like a you-know-what.

What I was taught

Everything I was taught in school about poverty and political disenfranchisement being the root causes of so many of societal ills and revolutions has been proven wrong in just a few months of this presidency/congress. In the 50s, I was taught that the Germans accepted Hitler because the agreements forced on them by the Allies after WWI were so punitive it reduced them to poverty and they were looking for a savior, someone who could tell them how wonderful they were, and who could find a scapegoat for them to hate. They wanted hope; they wanted change. So what's our excuse? Poverty in the USA had to be redefined as "income gap" by the academics, social scientists and politicians, both Republican and Democrat. Yes, some homeless wandered the streets, just as they do in socialist countries, primarily because liberals in the 1970s shuttered all the institutions that took care of them. Drugs could take care of mental illness they said; group homes with no caring staff could handle people with special needs. Ah, the beauty of freedom to sleep on a city grate at night and panhandle during the day. Children too suffered from being born to single mothers, ensnared by the feminists' myths that marriage is just leftover of patriarchy. That was U.S. poverty--a tiny percentage even if you included the illegals and their baby anchors. Our middle class citizens who never knew want unless someone pulled their credit or raised ticket prices on a rock concert are lining up to bow to a narcissist with a big head and small heart. We have a leader who tries to diminish the accomplishments of his people so he can look bigger than life, worthy of worship--really, worthy to take over the whole world once he removes the only country who could have stopped him.

No, I don't claim to understand my friends and relatives who don't yet have buyer's remorse. They aren't even chagrined as they see their retirement accounts shrink, the job losses in their communities and watch as Obama takes over private businesses. Oh, they say, the recession started under Bush's watch. Indeed it did, and Bush inherited one from Clinton (go back and check your accounts--mine were sinking in 1999). Bush's administration had the tech bust plus the tragedy of 9/11 (now forgotten by careless voters), and turned that around quickly by encouraging investment and building our self confidence and sense of security. We all can see that Bush spent money like a drunken Ted Kennedy for 8 years--our deficit certainly isn't Obama's doing. But Obama spent more in 100 days than Bush ever thought about, but for some reason the Potus with the Totus is still racking up those points with the true believers as we slip further and further into national socialism.

Not to worry--it's just Karl Marx!

Well, that's comforting.

. . . the bankruptcy filings of General Motors and Chrysler, and the transfer of stock ownership from the firms' long-suffering shareholders to the government and unions, communists of the world can rejoice. The workers are now, finally, significant owners of the means of production. The United Auto Workers control about 65 percent of Chrysler and 17.5 percent of General Motors."

So Daniel Gross of Slate says it's no big deal. No Mr. Gross, it's not what you think--that maybe unionists will start thinking like owners. We've zipped right over socialism and communism in four months and landed on National Socialism, i.e., Nazi, for short. That's not when the government owns the means of production, but when it through a charismatic leader controls the owners of production and has them--the press, the church, the military, academe and the unions--in a choke hold and scared to death to speak up. The power grab in the past four months has been stunning; we haven't seen anything like it since the 1930s.

I've heard and read some very naive conservatives discussing the elections of 2010--that Obama will then have to face the growing opposition from those liberals with buyer's remorse who've realized "hope and change" was just a catchy slogan and the conservatives who've finally gotten a grip. Sorry. I don't believe it. By 2010 he'll own the state governments, beginning with California, through bail-outs. By then, all opposition communication channels from radio to TV to newspapers to the pulpit to the internet to satellite will be gone, silenced by "regulation," hate speech laws, and fines for carbon footprints.

Who the heck is Peter Heck?

Don't know, but he sure has this one right on the arrogance of our President. Obama sounds like a poor loser instead of a proud winner as he does the global trots defecating on our former Presidents (even Clinton in apologizing for Hutu-Tutsi problems) and besmirching our patriotism and history. Nobody's perfect; no country always gets it right. But he can't take the stance that "this happened when I was 3 years old, so don't blame me," and turn around and throttle the people who elected him for things he doesn't like in our Constitution or history. Read Peter Heck here.

When abusive monarchs repressed the masses, Americans resisted and overthrew them. When misguided policies led to the unjust oppression of fellow citizens, Americans rebelled and overturned them. When millions of impoverished and destitute wretches sought a new beginning, Americans threw open the door and welcomed them. When imperial dictators were on the march, Americans surrendered their lives to stop them. When communist thugs threatened world peace, Americans bled to defeat them. When an entire continent was overwhelmed with famine and hunger, Americans gave of themselves to sustain it. When terrorist madmen killed the innocent and subjugated millions, Americans led the fight to topple them.

This is the legacy that generations of Americans have left. If President Obama seeks stronger relations with the world community, perhaps he should begin by reminding them of these very truths, rather than condemning his own countrymen on foreign shores.

One can only hope that the liberals and progressives among us, who outnumber the hardened marxists and socialists, will wake up and demand that he represent the whole country, not just the Soros and Moore and Ayers types that put him in place and pull his strings. There is still time for him to change before Americans rise up and say,

ENOUGH.

Latin America's Leftist regimes

How left is left?

"First, the multiplicity of projects reveals the loss of a common political referent. The failure of the socialist experience in the Soviet Union and Central Europe, and perhaps more significantly the deficits in economic development and human rights of the Cuban model, made marked impressions on many leftist movements and organizations. Today, only Venezuela, and perhaps Bolivia, Nicaragua, and to a lesser extent Ecuador, seek to emulate the Cuban experiment.

Second, the ‘various lefts’ of Latin America reveal that the region continues in the search for alternatives to deal with the historical legacy of economic dependence and profound inequality. Although broadly speaking there are two distinct strands of the Latin American left—one that it is committed to democracy and free economies and the other that is trying to emulate the experiences of the socialism of the 20th century—the consensus emerging in the majority of countries about how to achieve the goal of development and progress seems to prioritize a commitment to democracy, the understanding of the importance of the market, with its limits, as the driving force of economic growth, and the obligation to a social agenda aiming to address the burden of poverty and inequality in these nations. . . The people of Latin American are choosing leftist governments of several sorts, but they are choosing them through use of democratic procedures." Damarys Canache, University of Illinois

Choosing leftist government . . . well, at least we're in step with our neighbors. Just keep in mind that the "failed socialist experience" (the politically correct term for the 70 years of the former USSR) he refers to killed more people through democide (murder of your own citizens, not through war) than the Nazis in WWII with all out war, invasion and murder of the Jews.

"In a couple of weeks the socialization of the United States will begin. Government ownership of bedrock banks will start. Widespread downturn of the economy will be guaranteed. Some say it was planned by the left. Some will say that it was just a fateful turn of events that led to the republics demise. All hail the new Leader of the United Socialist States of America. No longer will you be pressured to stand at American demagoguery such as Pledge of Allegiance, America the Beautiful, or Old Glory. The country was taken not by a communist country, but by a hidden socialist orator from within, promoted by a historically left leaning media, and by the new Brownshirt brigades formerly known as Acorn. Hail the One, the deliverer from racism, from selfishness, from capitalism." Comment at Houston Chronicle on Chavez' relationship with Obama

Update: I wrote this before I saw the book review in today's WSJ, "The threat closer to home" by Douglas E. Shoen and Michael Rowan, about the demogogue who is depicted as savior to the poor.