The Grasshopper and the Ant - Old Parable

The Old Version:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed, but the grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!!

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The Modern Version:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks she's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and fed, while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN all show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing "It's not easy being green."

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news networks film the group singing "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down and pray for the grasshopper's sake.

Ted Kennedy & Nancy Pelosi exclaim in an interview with Katie Couric that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."

Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act", retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a sufficient number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive tax, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary Clinton gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of
federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case. As the story ends, we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders, who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY: I leave it to you to decide........!

-Author unknown

An Interesting Dinner Conversation - True Confessions

My wife and I went out to our favorite sushi bar this evening, and there is always an opportunity to get into a discussion with someone sitting next to you. The fellow, in this case, indicated he was in software for transaction verification and was selling it to Japan. I noted the problem with Diebold voting machines and their ability to be tampered with. From his accent, I asked if he was from Canada, and he said Montreal. The stage was set for him to reveal his political leanings. He said Northern California was the only place he could consider living in as the politics were so odd everyplace else. I found this a remarkable statement, primarily since I live here and I find the politics of the area totally repugnant. Then he professed he was a "bleeding heart liberal". I tried to sooth him by saying we need all types of people in this country and that seemed to make him feel better. I told him I don't mind liberals (all the while not revealing my political position, which he sort of homed in on) as long as they are critical thinking and use logic to come to their conclusions. He agreed with that. Then he expounded on how there was no good nor evil in the world, to which I replied the Pope stated the biggest threat to the future of humanity was moral relativism. ...Silence... Then we started talking about the features of our similar mobile phones. Hmmm.

Peace At Any Cost

It is ironic, to me, the lack of realization by anti-war activists, peace advocates, and pacifists that no one wants war unless they happen to be arms dealers or other narrow interests that may gain financially. Moreover, it is often the activities of these groups that encourage those not so inclined to peaceful intention. The unintended consequences are a prolonging and more distructive time of unrest and dying.

Such is the situation in Iraq. Whether or not it was a good or bad decision, the actions of these groups have glorified the enemy (the groups would quickly say it is us) and have given away valuable information that undermines resolution of the conflict.

So the next time you see these misguided individuals getting on their high horse "Hate Bush" campaign with no suggestions or recommendations, remind them that they have a major role in all this death and destruction we are currently witnessing.

Fabian Socialism

Some time ago, I'd written about these various special interest groups when bundled together looked like the Communist Manifesto being implemented via Fabian Socialism. Here is another author supporting a similar line of thought. I would have included International A.N.S.W.E.R. and MoveOn.org in the second paragraph, however.

To any of you ready to pooh-pooh this discussion are either part of the problem or have allowed yourselves to be controlled by these psychopolitical events.

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From: "AlainsNewsletter"

The New Left, Cultural Marxism,
and Psychopolitics Disguised
as Multiculturalism

Linda Kimball

There are two misconceptions held by many Americans. The first is that communism ceased to be a threat when the Soviet Union imploded. The second is that the New Left of the Sixties collapsed and disappeared as well. "The Sixties are dead," wrote columnist George Will (Slamming the Doors, Newsweek, Mar. 25, 1991)

Because the New Left lacked cohesion it fell apart as a political movement. However, its revolutionaries reorganized themselves into a multitude of single issue groups. Thus we now have for example, radical feminists, black extremists, anti-war 'peace' activists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, and 'gay' rights groups. All of these groups pursue their piece of the radical agenda through a complex network of subversive organizations such as the Gay Straight Lesbian Educators Network (GSLEN), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), People for the American Way, United for Peace and Justice, Planned Parenthood, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), and Code Pink for Peace.

Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. Code words by which they can be recognized are: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity. All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism.

Birth of Multiculturalism

In anticipation of the revolutionary storm that would baptize the world in an inferno of red terror, leading to its rebirth as the promised land of social justice and proletarian equality - Frederich Engels wrote, "All the large and small nationalities are destined to perish in the revolutionary world storm. (A general war will) wipe out all nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only reactionary classes but reactionary peoples." (The Magyar Struggle, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Jan. 13, 1849)

By the end of WWI, socialists realized that something was amiss, for the world's proletariat had not heeded Marx's call to rise up in opposition to evil capitalism and to embrace communism instead. They wondered what had gone wrong.

Separately, two Marxist theorists-Antonio Gramsci of Italy and Georg Lukacs of Hungary-concluded that the Christianized West was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist new world order. The West would have to be conquered first.

Gramsci posited that because Christianity had been dominant in the West for over 2000 years, not only was it fused with Western civilization, but it had corrupted the workers class. The West would have to be de-Christianized, said Gramsci, by means of a "long march through the culture." Additionally, a new proletariat must be created. In his "Prison Notebooks," he suggested that the new proletariat be comprised of many criminals, women, and racial minorities.

The new battleground, reasoned Gramsci, must become the culture, starting with the traditional family and completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science, and history. All of these things must be radically transformed and the social and cultural order gradually turned upside-down with the new proletariat placed in power at the top.

In 1919, Georg Lukacs became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Bolshevik Bela Kun regime in Hungary. He immediately set plans in motion to de-Christianize Hungary. Reasoning that if Christian sexual ethics could be undermined among children, then both the hated patriarchal family and the Church would be dealt a crippling blow, Lukacs--towards this end--launched a radical sex education program in the schools. Sex lectures were organized and literature handed out which graphically instructed youth in free love (promiscuity) and sexual intercourse while simultaneously encouraging them to deride and reject Christian moral ethics, monogamy, and parental and church authority. All of this was accompanied by a reign of cultural terror perpetrated against parents, priests, and dissenters.

Hungary's youth, having been fed a steady diet of values-neutral (atheism) and radical sex education while simultaneously encouraged to rebel against all authority, easily turned into delinquents ranging from bullies and petty thieves to sex predators, murderers, and sociopaths.

Lukacs plans were the precursor to what Cultural Marxism in the guise of SIECUS, GSLEN, and the ACLU -- acting as enforcer -- later brought into American schools.
In 1923, the Frankfurt School - a Marxist think-tank - was founded in Weimar Germany. Among its founders were Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno. The school was a multidisciplinary effort which included sociologists, sexologists, and psychologists.

The primary goal of the Frankfurt School was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms. Toward this end, Marcuse - who favored polymorphous perversion - expanded the ranks of Gramsci's new proletariat by including homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals. Into this was spliced Lukacs radical sex education and cultural terrorism tactics. Gramsci's 'long march' was added to the mix, and then all of this was wedded to Freudian psychoanalysis and psychological conditioning techniques. The end product was Cultural Marxism, known in the West as multiculturalism.

In 1950, the Frankfurt School augmented Cultural Marxism with Theodor Adorno's idea of the 'authoritarian personality.' This concept is premised on the notion that Christianity, capitalism, and the traditional family create a character prone to racism and fascism. Thus, anyone who upholds America's traditional moral values and institutions is both racist and fascist. Children raised by traditional values parents, we are told to believe, will almost certainly become racists and fascists. By extension, if fascism and racism are endemic to America's traditional culture, then everyone raised in the traditions of God, family, patriotism, gun ownership, or free markets is in need of psychological help.

The pernicious influence of Adorno's 'authoritarian personality' idea can be clearly seen in the following quote: "In Aug., 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the results of their $1.2 million tax-payer funded study. It stated, essentially, that traditionalists are mentally disturbed. Scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford had determined that social conservatives suffer from 'mental rigidity,' 'dogmatism,' and 'uncertainty avoidance,' together with associated indicators for mental illness." (www.edwatch.org 'Social and Emotional Learning" Jan. 26, 2005) From this Orwellian quote we can see just how successful has been Gramsci's 'long march through the culture.'

The corresponding and diabolically crafted corrective idea is political correctness. The strong suggestion here is that in order for one not to be thought of as racist or fascist, then one must not only be nonjudgmental but must also embrace the 'new' moral absolutes: diversity, choice, sensitivity, sexual orientation, and tolerance. Political correctness is a Machiavellian psychological 'command and control' device. Its purpose is the imposition of uniformity in thought, speech, and behavior.

Critical theory is yet another psychological 'command and control' device. As stated by Daniel J. Flynn, "Critical Theory, as its name implies, criticizes. What deconstruction does to literature, Critical Theory does to societies." (Intellectual Morons, p 15-16) Critical Theory is an ongoing and brutal assault via vicious criticism relentlessly leveled against Christians, Christmas, the Boy Scouts, Ten Commandments, our military, and all other aspects of traditional American culture and society.
Both political correctness and Critical Theory are in essence, psychological bullying. They are the psycho political battering rams by which Frankfurt School disciples such as the ACLU are forcing Americans to submit to and to obey the will and the way of the Left. These devious devices are but psychological versions of Georg Lukacs and Lavrenti Beria's 'cultural terrorism' tactics. In the words of Beria, "Obedience is the result of force. Force is the antithesis of humanizing actions. It is so synonymous in the human mind with savageness, lawlessness, brutality, and barbarism, that it is only necessary to display an inhuman attitude toward people to be granted by those people the possessions of force." (The Russian Manual on Psychopolitics: Obedience, by Lavrenti Beria, head of Soviet Secret Police and Stalin's right-hand man)

Double-thinking 'fence-sitters', otherwise known as moderates, centrists, and RINOs are an obvious result of these psychological 'obedience' techniques. These people-afraid of incurring the wrath of name-calling obedience trainers--- have opted to straddle the fence lest they be found guilty of possessing an opinion, one way or another. At the merest hint of displeasure from the obedience-trainers, up goes the yellow flag of surrender upon which it is boldly written: "I believe in nothing and am tolerant of everything!"

The linchpin of Cultural Marxism is cultural determinism, the parent of identity politics and group solidarity. In its turn, cultural determinism was birthed by the Darwinian idea that man is but a soulless animal and therefore his identity is determined by for example, his skin color or his sexual and/or erotic preferences. This proposition rejects the concepts of the human spirit, individuality, free will, and morally informed conscience (paired with personal accountability and responsibility) because it emphatically denies the existence of the God of the Bible. Consequently, and by extension, it also rejects the first principles of our liberty enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. These are our "unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Cultural Marxism must reject these because these principles of liberty "are endowed by our Creator," who made man in His image.

Cultural determinism, states David Horowitz, is "identity politics-the politics of radical feminism, queer revolution, and Afro-centrism-which is the basis of academic multiculturalism, a form of intellectual fascism and, insofar as it has any politics, of political fascism as well." (Mussolini and Neo-Fascist Tribalism: Up from Multiculturalism, by David Horowitz, Jan. 1998)

It is said that courage is the first of the virtues because without it fear will paralyze man, thus keeping him from acting upon his moral convictions and speaking truth. Thus bringing about a general state of paralyzing fear, apathy, and submission-the chains of tyranny-is the purpose behind psychopolitical cultural terrorism, for the communist Left's revolutionary agenda must, at all costs, be clothed in darkness.

The antidote is courage and the light of truth. If we are to win this cultural war and reclaim and rebuild America so our children and their children's children can live in a 'Shining City on the Hill' where liberty, families, opportunity, free markets, and decency flourish, we must muster the courage to fearlessly expose the communist Left's revolutionary agenda to the Light of Truth. Truth and the courage to speak it will set us free.

Old King George

George Soros managed to Op-Ed his way into the Wall Street Journal with his blather about his Open Society and the world's opinion of the U.S.

For a fellow that escaped Hitler's and Stalin's excesses, he certainly has his own form of megalomania that he is trying to force on us with his money and, what I call subversive, associations. Watch out for this smarmy fellow.

GEA

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August 15, 2006

COMMENTARY

A Self-Defeating War

By GEORGE SOROS
August 15, 2006

The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies. Five years after 9/11, a misleading figure of speech applied literally has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts -- Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia -- a war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians and enraged millions around the world. Yet al Qaeda has not been subdued; a plot that could have claimed more victims than 9/11 has just been foiled by the vigilance of British intelligence.

Unfortunately, the "war on terror" metaphor was uncritically accepted by the American public as the obvious response to 9/11. It is now widely admitted that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder. But the war on terror remains the frame into which American policy has to fit. Most Democratic politicians subscribe to it for fear of being tagged as weak on defense.

What makes the war on terror self-defeating?

• First, war by its very nature creates innocent victims. A war waged against terrorists is even more likely to claim innocent victims because terrorists tend to keep their whereabouts hidden. The deaths, injuries and humiliation of civilians generate rage and resentment among their families and communities that in turn serves to build support for terrorists.

• Second, terrorism is an abstraction. It lumps together all political movements that use terrorist tactics. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi army in Iraq are very different forces, but President Bush's global war on terror prevents us from differentiating between them and dealing with them accordingly. It inhibits much-needed negotiations with Iran and Syria because they are states that support terrorist groups.

• Third, the war on terror emphasizes military action while most territorial conflicts require political solutions. And, as the British have shown, al Qaeda is best dealt with by good intelligence. The war on terror increases the terrorist threat and makes the task of the intelligence agencies more difficult. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large; we need to focus on finding them, and preventing attacks like the one foiled in England.

• Fourth, the war on terror drives a wedge between "us" and "them." We are innocent victims. They are perpetrators. But we fail to notice that we also become perpetrators in the process; the rest of the world, however, does notice. That is how such a wide gap has arisen between America and much of the world.

Taken together, these four factors ensure that the war on terror cannot be won. An endless war waged against an unseen enemy is doing great damage to our power and prestige abroad and to our open society at home. It has led to a dangerous extension of executive powers; it has tarnished our adherence to universal human rights; it has inhibited the critical process that is at the heart of an open society; and it has cost a lot of money. Most importantly, it has diverted attention from other urgent tasks that require American leadership, such as finishing the job we so correctly began in Afghanistan, addressing the looming global energy crisis, and dealing with nuclear proliferation.

With American influence at low ebb, the world is in danger of sliding into a vicious circle of escalating violence. We can escape it only if we Americans repudiate the war on terror as a false metaphor. If we persevere on the wrong course, the situation will continue to deteriorate. It is not our will that is being tested, but our understanding of reality. It is painful to admit that our current predicaments are brought about by our own misconceptions. However, not admitting it is bound to prove even more painful in the long run. The strength of an open society lies in its ability to recognize and correct its mistakes. This is the test that confronts us.

Mr. Soros, a financier, is author of "The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror" (Public Affairs, 2006).

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