let's have equal opportunity bashing for sen. daschle!

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by Gerard Jackson TNA News with Commentary Saturday 9 June 2001

Like it or not, Tom Daschle has lot in common with the late Salvador Allende, the former Marxist president of Chile who tried to turn his country into another Cuban dungeon. Daschle also holds his country’s constitution in contempt; he detests his country’s institutions and traditions; he too despises those who disagree with him and he too believes that the mere existence of opposition proves evil intent. What this boils down to is that Daschle, like the would-be dictator Allende, does not believe that the opposition, meaning the GOP, has a legitimate right to exist.

I see the Democratic party consisting of three layers. At the centre we have the hardcore leftists of which Daschle is a leading member. The outer layer consists of the mass of Democrats, most of whom tend to vote for the party because pa and grandpa did, and so on. These are traditional members in the sense that they believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Not surprisingly many of these folks voted for Reagan. The middle layer is something of mixed bag, with many moving one way and then the other. Ultimately, those committed to their liberal, meaning leftwing, principles will gravitate towards the core while the more conservative-minded like Senator Zell Miller will be pulled towards the party’s traditional base.

Those who would abandon the traditional base to support a group of leftwing politicians who do not believe Americans should be defended from nuclear attack, that the military should be virtually wound up, that the country is an oppressive racist, sexist tyranny run by big business or whatever, raise an interesting question: Why? Why should inherently decent people support those who make little attempt to hide their hatred, spite and mean-spiritedness?

From my own experiences I have concluded that what separates the radical from liberal is not ends but means. And where liberals come to see the ends as being the supreme moral goal it is a tiny step to accepting the doctrine that the “ends justifies the means,” especially if carried out in another country. And this is why we have, for example, the nauseating spectacle of Charley Rangel publicly licking Castro’s boots while pouring scorn on America.

I think the late Lionel Trilling came to the same conclusion in his novel The Middle of the Journey Maxim, the typical leftwing extremist, confronts Laskell with the logic of his own ideology:

“Certain things were clear between Laskell and Maxim. It was established that Laskell accepted Maxim’s extreme commitment to the future. It was understood between them that Laskell did not accept all of Maxim’s ideas. At the same time, Laskell did not oppose Maxim’s ideas. One could not oppose them without being illiberal, even reactionary. One would have to have something better to offer and Laskell had nothing better. He could not even imagine what the better ideas would be.”

What is striking about this passage is that it unmasks the liberal Laskell as being as fixated on the ‘idea’ as much as Maxim is. In short, it’s the ‘idea’ that counts, not people, not liberty — and certainly not patriotism. Dictators are to be judged according to their professed liberal beliefs and not by what they do. Hence the mass murderer Castro is praised by the same people who condemn General Pinochet. It’s this mentality that drove liberals to ardently defend Clinton while ferociously attacking those who exposed him. This is why Daschle confidently stated that the Bush agenda is dead. Not because of a one-man coup carried out by grasping, greedy little man, but because in the eyes of the Democratic core every Republican administration is illegitimate, regardless of how many votes it gets.

As the ‘idea’ is morally superior to any alternative, particularly the present, it follows that those who oppose it are either fools or just plain evil. Trying to paint Reagan as pure evil was patently absurd, even to most of his enemies, therefore he must have been an “amiable dunce”, so pronounced the smug Clark Clifford, or “virtually brain dead” as the leftwing Robert Wright of The New Republic obligingly put it. Events in eastern Europe and Russia demonstrated who were the real dunces.

Trying not to make the same mistake twice, Democrats, led by Daschle, have decided on evil mode for Bush, the man who wants to restore slavery and put arsenic in your water. Utter nonsense, but to Daschle and his fellow Democratic thugs perfectly justified because they do consider Bush as evil. To do otherwise they would have to treat him as an “amiable dunce”, which he clearly isn’t.

But what is Daschle’s ‘idea’? It’s a world run by the likes of Daschle for the ‘benefit’ of the masses, particularly those who are stupid enough to vote for Republicans. It’s a world where dreadful energy shortages are a virtue, except for the nomenklatura. This is why he attacked the Republicans as the party of gas, oil and plutonium. In other words, the Energy Party. That’s right, Daschle is openly attacking the GOP for wanting to expand the country’s energy supplies instead of cutting them. For wanting to make energy abundant instead of making it increasingly scarce. For wanting to expand the lifeblood of the American economy.

Daschle has now declared war on prosperity. Without abundant energy supplies the American economy will collapse. Does Daschle realise this? Not really. He thinks that he can reduce energy supplies in a way that will cause the American people to call for the government to control energy producing industries, a policy that would eventually lead to central planning by which lower living standards could be accommodated without severe political or economic disruptions. This policy could only be fully implemented in a one-party state. But like I said, it won’t work anyway because no American government could survive an imploding economy, particularly one in which energy became largely the preserve of the Democrats’ rich supporters.

Is Daschle that ruthless and single-minded? The answer, regretfully, is yes. Right now Daschle, along with other Democratic kommissars masquerading as Senators, is threatening to have Bob Tyrrell, editor of the conservative American Spectator, jailed if he refuses to turn over his magazine’s records to them. Being a real man, Tyrrell is resisting the efforts of these thugs to violate his First Amendment rights. So much for Daschle’s respect for the Constitution. It should be of concern to readers, but not a surprise, to learn that most of the mainstream media has so far supported Daschle’s assault on the First Amendment. (They’re too dumb to ask who’ll he come for next).

But the attack on Tyrrell’s rights is nothing compared with the assault on Senator Strom Thurmond. When Joe Biden became concerned about Thurmond’s physical condition he offered to “pair” with the 98-year-old Senator so that the old man could get some much needed rest. To do this Biden had to get permission from Daschle and the corrupt Hillary Clinton. They refused and then sat down, coldly watching Thurmond, waiting for him to collapse. To put it bluntly, in order to control the Senate they adopted a tactic they knew could have killed a fellow Senator. The phrase for this is attempted murder. This ain’t the Democratic Party your father knew. But then any measure is justified in the war against evil. Just ask Tom and Hillary.

By now many of you will have realised that I’ve used Daschle eponymously because he now represents the Democratic Party, a party that in other countries in more recent times would have been called the People’s Democratic Party. It’s now the party of the new left, peddling the kinds of ideas that bring only misery and slavery in their wake. But to these ideologues it’s the ‘idea’ that matters and not people — and especially not their rights. Never forget that.

Fair use for educational/researchpurposes only!



-- (socialists.on.p@rad.e), June 26, 2001


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