"Republican's Win a Huge Blow for Obama"

From the Associated Depressed:

In an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger to win the U.S. Senate seat held by the late Edward M. Kennedy for nearly half a century, leaving President Barack Obama's health care overhaul in doubt and marring the end of his first year in office. [...]

The loss by the once-favored Democrat Martha Coakley in the Democratic stronghold was a stunning embarrassment for the White House after Obama rushed to Boston on Sunday to try to save the foundering candidate. Her defeat on Tuesday signaled big political problems for the president's party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide.

Brown's victory was the third major loss for Democrats in statewide elections since Obama became president. Republicans won governors' seats in Virginia and New Jersey in November.

[And a conservative third party candidate in New York almost won against a Democrat who had the help of a liberal Republican. Still can't read the writing on the wall, progressives?]

[To Be Continued?]

BROWN VICTORY

Brown has defeated Martha Coakley for Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts! Read 'em and weep socialist scumbags! Massachusetts only has 12% registered Republicans and over half are independents. Your infantile fantasies are going to be crushed in November! Kisses from the extremist right-wing!

Just Hit the Snooze Bar, Democrats

Today in Massachusetts you Democrats are going to get a little wake-up call on your destructive policies. In your honor, I give you the Sugar Hill Gang alarm clock! Just hit the snooze bar, your certain defeat is all just a bad dream.

The RAPE, SHAFT, and SCREW Acts of 2010

Due to the current financial situation caused by the slowdown in the economy, Congress has decided to insert a plan into the economy to put workers of 50 years of age and above on early retirement, thus creating or saving hundreds of jobs and reducing unemployment.

The first scheme will be known as RAPE (Retire Aged People Early).

Persons selected to be RAPEd can also apply to Congress to be considered for the SHAFT program (Special Help After Forced Termination).

Persons who have been RAPEd and SHAFTed will be reviewed under the SCREW program (System Covering Retired-Early Workers).

A person may be RAPEd once, SHAFTed twice and SCREWed as many times as Congress deems fit.

Persons who have been RAPEd may also possibly get AIDS (Additional Income for Dependents & Spouse) or HERPES (Half-Earnings for Retired Personnel Early Severance).

Obviously persons who have had both AIDS and HERPES will no longer be eligible for SHAFT or SCREW but may still be eligible for RAPE.

Persons who are not RAPEd and are staying on will receive as much SHIT (Special High Intensity Training) as possible. Congress has always prided themselves on the amount of SHIT they give our citizens.

Should you feel that you do not receive enough SHIT, please bring this to the attention of your Congressman, who has been trained to give you all the SHIT you can handle.

It is the sincere hope of the government that after Americans have been RAPEd, SHAFTed, and SCREWed, the economy will quickly turn around.

Sincerely,

The Committee for Economic Value of Individual Lives (E.V.I.L.)

P.S. - - Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity,gas and oil, as well as current market conditions, the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off.

Most Americans Want Smaller Government: No News at Eleven

CNS News reports on the Washington Post story:

[Correction: Although the Washington Post’s Sunday story that focused primarily on a new Washington Post-ABC News poll—“Poll Shows Growing Disappointment, Polarization Over Obama’s Performance” by Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta—made no mention of the fact that the poll found that 58 percent of Americans say they favor a smaller government that provides fewer services, another story in Sunday’s Post—“One Year Later Assessing Obama; Testing the Promise of Pragmatism” by Dan Balz--did mention that finding.

The tenth paragraph of Balz’s story said: “The poll also shows how much ground Obama has lost during his first year of trying to convince the public that more government is the answer to the country's problems. By 58 percent to 38 percent, Americans said they prefer smaller government and fewer services to larger government with more services. Since he won the Democratic nomination in June 2008, the margin between those favoring smaller over larger government has moved in Post-ABC polls from five points to 20 points.”]

(CNSNews.com) - A large majority of Americans say they want a smaller government that provides them with fewer services, according to a new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News. But the Washington Post story about the poll makes no mention of this fact.

The poll asked: “Generally speaking, would you say you favor smaller government with fewer services, or larger government with more services?”

Fifty-eight percent said they favor a smaller government with fewer services, and only 38 percent said they favor a larger government with more services.

The Post did not mention the results from this poll question in its news story about the poll.

The poll surveyed a random sample of 1,083 American adults from Jan. 12-15, 2010.

Religious Poison Mixed with Environmentalist Poison

A scenario I have predicted before: 

Because of the work of Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios, who established September 1st as the day for the protection of the environment,[8] and especially the ongoing work of the current Patriarch, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has been given the title, "Green Patriarch". Thus, the person of Bartholomew and by extension the position of the Ecumenical Patriarch is now being viewed as a religious spokesperson on environmental issues and the "green" spiritual leader in the world.

The Tea Party Coalition: The Same Subject Continued

Another way of framing the debate between statist domination and limited government is by way of a debate between Thomas Hobbes and James Madison (Montesquieu being the famous forebear of the theory of checks and balances).

Hobbes' introduction to Leviathan's Part II reads:
THE final cause, end, or design of men (who naturally love liberty, and dominion over others) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in Commonwealths, is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to the natural passions of men when there is no visible power to keep them in awe, and tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants…

Hobbes explicitly argued against limited government and thought it expedient at times that a sovereign could repeal freedom of speech and assembly. (A good introductory essay to Hobbes' thought can be found here.)

The immediacy of the debate between statism and limited government, whose crux is so pivotal for the direction of this nation, and the tea party movement, illustrates that we are engaged in a war of ideas that should be framed as the re-emergence of Pre-Enlightenment regressive statism masked as "progress," and liberty-preserving limited government.

We all benefit by being engaged with the historical and philosophical background to this key political debate. The tea party movement is beset by enemies on both the left and right due to the synthesis of oligarchy and corporatism on the right and a kleptocratic democracy in the form of the welfare state on the left. The Federal Reserve is the engine of economic destruction that fuels this corruption of the republic on both ends of the ideological spectrum, due to the steady inflation of the money supply's ability to mask the effects of malinvestment and inefficient, wasteful government.

Corruption by either the left or the right can be sustained for a period of time, due to the "deal of ruin" in a nation; but the convergence of both destructive forces can truly imperil a people and bring their economic and political system crashing down. The tea party movement needs to mobilize the middle class and the great ideological middle, who are generally for fiscal sanity and economic prosperity. We need to do this by engaging in both intellectual and activist leadership.

Obsession with controversial social issues like gay marriage can sidetrack or even derail the movement. (I will explain how freedom and state's rights are the proper platform for the tea party movement, and social conservatism should be relegated to a state-level matter, in a forthcoming article.) We all have our social preferences, but the likelihood of people from the Bible belt and those on the coasts agreeing on them is very dim. For a national movement to succeed, we need to understand the political theory of the founding, which did not propose a government to homogenize a people in terms of social preferences. The federal government was founded with the assumption of preserving liberty, and this was to be ensured through checks and balances, divided powers, and an active and informed citizenry.

The Tea Party Coalition: A Right-Wing Extremist Movement?

The popular image of the Tea Party movement propagated by the opinion-molders in America is that it is a right-wing extremist movement within the neo-conservative ranks of the Republican party. More properly understood, it is a grand coalition of American conservatives in the traditional framework of political theory.

The epithet "right-wing" is reflexively hurled by progressives and Democrats more broadly at any party, movement, faction, or individual who opposes the left-wing agenda. The smear tactic is intended to conflate those people who support the traditional American tenets of liberty, limited government, and individual rights with fascists and ultra-nationalists of the European kind.

The terms "right-wing" and "left-wing" are derived from the French Revolution; the nationalists who supported the Ancien Regime (monarchy, or "Old Regime"), the church, and the aristocracy sat in the right-wing of the French assembly; while the radical democrats, whose egalitarian ideals implied a "leveling" of institutional, traditional, political, and economic barriers to absolute freedom sat in the "left-wing."

Those who supported the maintenance of the right-wing status quo were known in that period as "conservative"; their preferences for perpetuating the spoils of privilege must be delineated from the philosophy of men like Edmund Burke, who was a proponent of incrementalist reform; and American conservatives, whose adherence to tradition often springs from a deep-seated belief in the truth of the country's founding principles.

Though the term "conservative" is historically associated with monarchist, statist, and etatist political orders, personified by absolutist rulers like Louis XIV and Henry VIII, it is the antithesis of the philosophy that animated the nation's founders. Absolutism, or what has been referred to more broadly as "despotism," was specifically rebelled against by such fundamental thinkers that paved the path to the American Revolution as John Locke, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson.

The influential political theorist Baron de Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws explains despotism and compares its animating principles against those of republicanism and monarchy in a manner that evokes immediate comparisons to the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century:

As virtue is necessary in a republic, and in a monarchy honour, so fear is necessary in a despotic government: with regard to virtue, there is no occasion for it, and honour would be extremely dangerous.

Here the immense power of the prince devolves entirely upon those whom he is pleased to entrust with the administration. Persons capable of setting a value upon themselves would be likely to create disturbances. Fear must therefore depress their spirits, and extinguish even the least sense of ambition.

The signature animating principle of fear drives both the despotic regimes of the past, and has been testified to ad nauseum by those who lived through them, the fascist and communist regimes of recent times. In a direct challenge to the assumptions of historicism (or the idea that all history is unique and no generalizable assumptions can be drawn from it) and Hegelian and Marxist progressivism (or the teleological idea that history is propelled toward a definable end of its own inherent design, or "Idea," respectively) it is justified to question whether or not the more powerful technological means of political administration of modern times grossly alters the nature of a state or regime.

It is my contention that there is no discernible difference in essence, or raison d'etre, between the absolutist and monarchist regimes of the past, whose paradigm was shattered by the American and French revolutions, successively, and the fascist and communist (in practice, as opposed to in fantasy) totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. The means of ruling or administering a political regime do not alter that regime's essence; if the goal of politicians in a coercive government (as all governmental Leviathans are in essence) is social, economic and political control, reductively, that is that government's ordering principle.

If we may dispel the Marxist-generated illusion that the Industrial Revolution fundamentally altered the characteristic make-up of men, and likewise the notion developed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau that men in the state of nature are "noble savages" and civilized society a corrupter that must itself be managed, [1] we are receptive to the genius of the founders of the United States, who set their constitutional republic upon a sound foundation of properly understood human nature.

To follow up on our conjecture, too weighty in its implications to fully flesh out here, but rich enough to seriously ponder and explore at our own leisure, that despotic regimes of the more distant past and totalitarian regimes of the more recent past [2] share the common animating principle of fear and ordering principle of control, then we can appreciate that there is something in human nature, or at least a tendency among some human beings that must be guarded against, to control others.

This appreciation of the often-times darker side of men [3], is a bedrock principle of the founding of the American republic, as can be illuminated by the indispensable Federalist No. 51:

But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

It is imperative that we follow the logic of Madison's propositions:

There are, moreover, two considerations particularly applicable to the federal system of America, which place that system in a very interesting point of view:

First. In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments. In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.

Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority -- that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable. The first method prevails in all governments possessing an hereditary or self-appointed authority. This, at best, is but a precarious security; because a power independent of the society may as well espouse the unjust views of the major, as the rightful interests of the minor party, and may possibly be turned against both parties. The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. [...]

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.

It is this appreciation of naturally arising conflicting interests in a free society that led to the innovations of the Constitution; divided powers and checks and balances were designed to safeguard people against abuses by either an absolutist ruler with centralized authority, or a tyrannical democratic majority seeking to despoil its prey of property, life, or freedom. The requirement of legislation by majority, and the requirement that changing the Constitutional mandates for authority demanded a super-majority, were but two safeguards. One of the most important barriers to tyranny was the Bill of Rights, a firewall of individual rights intended to be used as an ultimate trump card to be played against tyrants of any variety, should all precautions fail. [4]

Ultimately, the Constitution, the embodiment of those founding principles that tea party movement adherers cherish most, is specifically designed to protect American citizens from political threats arising from both the right and the left.

The numerous precautions against the accumulation of power in a central authority in the United States when combined with Constitutional principles for political administration of the republic, provided America with a stability of political rules that gave men the psychological security needed to feel safeguarded from government tyranny and the predatory behavior of adverse interests. This established a framework for a vibrant "civil society," and the prosperous economic order of free market capitalism. These "spontaneous orders" are not conservative in nature, but allow for "progress" (in specifically designated terms, such as technological improvements, or the enhancement of human understanding). They are also not chaotic in nature, as "progressives" tend so often to misapprehend out of their inner craving to control other human beings. Men and women by their very nature are self-interested, though with the potential of flashes of altruistic behavior. Systematic altruism, on the other hand, is unsustainable because it is a misunderstanding of human nature, and therefore not conducive to political order, long-term human happiness, or the prosperity of human beings. In other words, altruism is not a sound animating principle.

The animating principle that brought America forth from fledgling island nation to world power over the course of two centuries is the love of liberty. [5] The ordering principle is Constitutionally limited government.

Those who hold that the tea party movement is "extremist" have the false conception that "noble" men can be placed in government and they can lead a "virtuous" government that will give them and their clients everything their hearts desire. Their accusers fail miserably to account for the historical track record of consolidated governmental authority, which is always justified by appeal to presumably lofty sentiments. The American government must inevitably disappoint and frustrate progressives, because it is designed to spur men to manage themselves and become productive members of society. Progressives who therefore believe that the assumed free market system is naturally chaotic, do not appreciate that it is in reality ordered by the drive of men to better their own lives. This is not the same as anarchy; the wants and desires of men are naturally limited by economic scarcity as reflected in a free pricing system. The wages of labor, just as the prices of goods and services, are also set by the market. Those who develop sought-after skills, prosper; those who do not, are less prosperous. [6] Thus American government is designed for those who value liberty and opportunity over the illusion of security provided by a powerful government. The drive for a paternalistic form of security undermines the political and economic order of safe-guarded liberty, on which only a long-term form of security, from tyranny and from predatory interests, is conceivably possible. [7]

Those in the tea party movement neither desire to rule over their political opposition, whom they perceive as tyrannical democrats (small d) or oligarchic violators of Constitutional authority, or otherwise impose their will on their fellow citizens. Instead, they want to restore the nation to its Constitutional foundations; establish fiscal responsibility in government; re-establish the economic principles that allow the preponderance of the nation to prosper, namely, free market economics; and replenish the virtue among citizens to see each other as individual human beings in and of themselves, and not as means to some political end. These goals are justified by a rationally understood self-interest that holds that the long-term good of any society requires mutual respect among individuals and the freedom that naturally follows.

[1] No empirical evidence to the contrary of Rousseau's "noble savage" theory is more immediate than the behavior of men following natural disasters, such as those of Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

[2] Totalitarianism, by insinuation of our thesis, being an absolutism with more advanced technological means.

[3] A consideration of the darker nature of some men is no doubt as a thorn in the minds of the true believers of secular religions like Marxism, leading far too many men of the academic cloth to support mass brainwashing, a lack of respect for objective reality, and a disregard for the truth. It is also a widespread cause of progressives' antipathy for the U.S. Constitution.

[4] Yet the Bill of Rights should not be understood to be self-enforcing; but rather a thermometer that a vigilant people can use to understand if and how their natural rights are being violated. See: The parable of the boiling frog.

[5] Liberty should not be taken to mean license, or the freedom to do what one wills with the life or property of another human being.

[6] It should be mentioned that Marx's supposition that wages in a free market tend toward subsistence was completely false due to his failure to account adequately for competition in the labor market.

[7] Bearing in mind our earlier discussion of human nature.

Let the Punishment Fit the - Net Worth?

From Zombie via GayandRight:

Last week the Swiss newspaper Blick broke the story [rough translation] of a guy who was caught driving above the speed limit through the town of Mörschwil and given a speeding ticket for $290,000. No, that’s not a typo — two hundred and ninety thousand dollars.

What could possibly justify such a large fine? One simple reason: The guy was rich. And under a new scheme of “progressive pricing” that’s becoming more and more common across Europe, rich people must pay higher fees for things because they can afford it — and because, well, they’re rich, and therefore deserve extra punishment.

Blick even featured a mugshot-like photo of the offender with the shocking caption, “Traffic thug Roland S. has five luxury cars in his garage.”

Horrors! Five fancy cars?!?! What an outrage. On that count alone we should condemn him. [...]

But wait — that’s not all! The British tabloid Express pointed out that the judges deciding on the size of his fine heard testimony that Roland S. was Facebook “friends” with Formula 1 stars Michael Schumacher and Felipe Massa. Unforgivable!

As to how the judges arrived at the reasonable sum of $290,000, the Express notes:

Under Swiss law he was fined for the offence, then had the sum multiplied by 130 to account for his fortune.

The penalty is the highest speeding fine handed out in Switzerland. He was ordered to pay half of it in cash immediately with two years for the rest.

He was stopped last month driving at 85mph through the town of Morschwil, where the speed limit is 50mph.

The few American papers which covered this story safely classified it as “Today’s Weird News” or “Oddly Enough!”, an anecdote presented solely for our amusement, nothing to think about too deeply.

Yet The Fine of Roland is no mere bagatelle. It may be a vision of our future. And you should care very deeply indeed.

More Than Just a Funny Story

On Sunday, AP published an article pointing out the significance of Roland’s fine: Far from being an isolated incident, it’s part of a growing trend in Europe to scale fines and fees to match the payer’s income level:

European countries are increasingly pegging speeding fines to income as a way to punish wealthy scofflaws who would otherwise ignore tickets.

Advocates say a $290,000 (euro203,180.83) speeding ticket slapped on a millionaire Ferrari driver in Switzerland was a fair and well-deserved example of the trend.

Germany, France, Austria and the Nordic countries also issue punishments based on a person’s wealth. In Germany the maximum fine can be as much as $16 million compared to only $1 million in Switzerland. Only Finland regularly hands out similarly hefty fine to speeding drivers, with the current record believed to be a euro170,000 (then about $190,000) ticket in 2004.

The Swiss court appeared to set a world record when it levied the fine in November on a man identified in the Swiss media only as “Roland S.” Judges in the eastern canton of St. Gallen described him as a “traffic thug” in their verdict, which only recently came to light.

“As far as we’re concerned this is very good,” [said] Sabine Jurisch, a road safety campaigner with the Swiss group Road Cross. [More...]

No cash cow is out of bounds for these thieving socialist governments. Why levy fines at all? Why not make a community "service" or jail penalty for speeding universal?

It is just too tempting for cops to bust Lamborghini drivers who happen to break the speed limit and cash in. Heck, you might even earn some extra stripes back at the station that way.

Sorry, socialists, jealousy is not a pretense for distributing your warped version of "justice." As long as a guy doesn't steal his fortune, then it is his to keep and none of anyone's concern.

Scott Brown Unveils Effective New Ad Against Martha Coakley

The Democrats are running scared after former unknown Scott Brown has risen to challenge the Democrat Martha Coakley, presumed successor to the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts. Brown raised $1.3 million in small donations in one night, sending Coakley to Washington to collect grab bags from big businesses, lobbyists, and unions who stand to cash in on the dictatorial and fascistic healthcare bill in Washington (which would mandate that everyone, young and old, pay for healthcare insurance or be fined $750). According to Martha Coakley's own internals (of course, not referring to the ancient practice of divination by entrails), Brown is ahead by two points. If those numbers are accurate, the January 19th election is going to be awful hard for Coakley and Company to steal, even for the likes of their cronies in ACORN and the SEIU.

Global Governance - A Euphemism for World Domination?

From John Bolton's essay in Commentary Obama's Next Three Years, which focuses on likely foreign policy to come from the Obama administration:

Where is Barack Obama’s foreign policy headed? [...]

[T]he high-profile concerns that have monopolized his [Obama's} efforts abroad are seen by the president himself as little more than Bush-era loose ends, not the defining transactions of his own foreign policy. All new presidents encounter irritating constraints on their aspirations, but Obama is more irritated than most at having to endure any sense of continuity with his predecessor. His criticism of Bush continues unabated even as he fares no better in the same stubborn terrain.

Obama is not looking to build his foreign-policy legacy on top of disputes that predate his arrival. He is working to move past these, toward the day when he can implement his own foreign policy and national-security agendas. Accordingly, the best way to predict Obama’s foreign policy in the next three years lies not in examining how he deals with the accumulated baggage of Iraq, Afghanistan, Middle East peace, and the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. Important as those are, they constitute what Obama has had to confront. We should ask instead what he will attempt to establish once he has become less encumbered by the inherited issues. Here, the record shows three critical characteristics.

First, Obama has no particular interest in foreign and national-security policy. That is not what he has spent his professional and political career, such as it is, doing, and it is not where his passions lie. [...]

Second, Obama does not see the rest of the world as dangerous or threatening to America. He has made it clear by his actions as president that he does not want to engage in a “global war against terrorism.” The rising power of other nations, creeds, and ideologies, however unsavory, pose no grievous challenge to which the United States must rise. [...]

Third, Obama’s vision is embedded in a carapace of naive internationalism, a very comfortable fit when national security is neither that interesting nor that important. [...]

“(G)lobal governance” and “international law” will become growth industries under Obama. To the UN Security Council, Obama said, “The world must stand together. And we must demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced.” This dovetails nicely with the sentiments of the incoming president of the European Union, former Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, who made clear in his November 19 acceptance speech that “2009 is also the first year of global governance with the establishment of the G-20 in the middle of the financial crisis. The climate conference in Copenhagen is another step toward the global management of our planet.

Am I wrong to be more than a little disturbed at the wolves in sheep's clothing accumulating at the global power centers? And moreover, their cooperation with, and lack of criticism for, wolves stripped bare of all humane pretenses?

Ron Paul: The Only Man in Government Who Tells It Like It Is

I don't agree with everything Ron Paul thinks about foreign policy (though many of his criticisms are valid), but when it comes to this direction of this nation - no one is more spot on than Ron Paul.

Hillaire Belloc: The Servile State

The following is an extraordinarily perceptive passage from Hillaire Belloc's The Servile State (read the entire article on Mises Institute to better understand Belloc's work in full):

The practical man in social reform is exactly the same animal as the practical man in every other department of human energy, and may be discovered suffering from the same twin disabilities which stamp the practical man wherever found: these twin disabilities are an inability to define his own first principles and an inability to follow the consequences proceeding from his own action. Both these disabilities proceed from one simple and deplorable form of impotence, the inability to think.

Now, if the socialist who has thought out his case, whether as a mere organizer or as a man hungering and thirsting after justice, is led away from socialism and towards the servile state by the force of modern things in England, how much more easily do you not think the practical man will be conducted towards that same servile state, like any donkey to his grazing ground? To those dull and short-sighted eyes the immediate solution which even the beginnings of the servile state propose are what a declivity is to a piece of brainless matter. The piece of brainless matter rolls down the declivity, and the practical man lollops from capitalism to the servile state with the same inevitable ease.

He knows nothing of a society in which free men were once owners, nor of the cooperative and instinctive institutions for the protection of ownership which such a society spontaneously breeds. He "takes the world as he finds it" — and the consequence is that whereas men of greater capacity may admit with different degrees of reluctance the general principles of the servile state, he, the practical man, positively gloats on every new detail in the building up of that form of society. And the destruction of freedom by inches (though he does not see it to be the destruction of freedom) is the one panacea so obvious that he marvels at the doctrinaires who resist or suspect the process.

Intellectual Sabotage: American National Security Actively Subverted by Academia

Several months back, J.R. Nyquist sent a sobering shot across the bow of sleepy-eyed Americans, who are still triumphantly patting themselves on the back for "defeating" the USSR nearly twenty years ago. In "Warning to the West," Russian historians, former KGB, and other academics warned that America is being lulled into a false sense of security.

While President Obama advocated unilateral disarmament during his campaign and again almost literally while North Korean test-missiles flew over the Pacific, the Russians are working with America's worst enemies to destroy us from without, while the president and his progressive cohorts in the media and academia do their damage from within. The arms control talks between Russia and America under Obama illustrate our primrose path to hell very well. While Obama is allowing the Russians open access to our nuclear stockpiles, the START treaty that gave our analysts and inspectors access to nuclear weapons sites in Russia has expired.

Then there is the matter of nuclear weapons development. From the Wall Street Journal:

At issue is whether the U.S. will continue to have access to Russian missile-flight data. The U.S. is no longer developing new long-range missiles, so the Russian negotiators aren't pressing the point. The Russians, on the other hand, are trying to develop new missiles to replace Soviet-era SS-18s and SS-19s.

What is the reason for our unwillingness to match a dangerous foe like Russia in nuclear weapons' capability? An excerpt from the Epilogue of the memoir of KGB defector Sergei Tretyakov Comrade J explains our national delusions about Russia and its intentions:

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and Russia entered into what was supposed to be a new era of cooperation. The Cold War was behind us. We could become friends. Many in the U.S. believe today the old Spy-versus-Spy days are finished. The September 11 terrorist attacks shifted the American public's attention away from Russia toward international terrorism, especially Islamic fanaticism. Russia was suddenly, and is today viewed as, an ally, even a friend of the U.S..

In speaking out, I hope to expose how naive this is. During the Cold War, in the Soviet military doctrine there was the definition of the MAIN ENEMY, which was also used by intelligence as a basic guiding principle. It was the United States, followed by NATO and China. What is the official guiding line for the modern SVR today? The terms have changed. It is now called the MAIN TARGET. But it is exactly the same: the United States, followed by NATO and China. Nothing has changed. Russia is doing everything it can today to embarrass the U.S. Let me repeat this. Russia is doing everything it can today to undermine and embarrass the U.S. The SVR rezidenturas in the U.S. are not less, but in some aspects even more active today than during the Cold War. What should that tell you?

History is non-coincidentally repeating itself, and we are facing a redux of the Cold War when many in academia loathe America so much that they dismiss the hostile intentions of our enemies. We will focus on the track record with the former Soviet Union, its links to pro-communist movements in America, and now our inexplicable national security stance toward Russia.

An excellent book detailing the history of the blind mentality of America's intellectual leadership is In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage by Haynes and Klehr. The book documents and details the stunning inability of communists, socialists, and progressive fellow-travelers to admit that their conceptions about the former USSR were completely bogus. It also provides specific linkages between the former NKVD and KGB First Chief Directorate (now the SVR) drawing on Russian archives (Comintern and CPUSA world HQ) with literally millions of documents.

What comes out of In Denial that seems to me to be the most dangerous is that academics, those who train our best and brightest in their formative intellectual years, are willfully blind to any damning information about America's enemies and even bitterly opposed to everything about America itself! This may seem self-evident, but to read it documented, page after scathing page, is an experience that anyone outside of academia must have. People would be shocked to learn that the presidents of prestigious national historical associations and political science associations have been and often are self-avowed communists! The academic and intellectual climate in the U.S. is akin the former KGB's wet dream, as well as that of the current Russian intelligence services [they were ostensibly split up under Yeltsin into the FSB (internal), SVR (external), and a host of other agencies]. So what happened to our willingness to stand up for and defend ourselves?

Drawing on In Denial and a few outside sources, let's do a basic reconstruction of the recent intellectual history of the pro-communist left.

The entry-point into American politics were the labor unions, with socialists arising in the labor movement in the late nineteenth century. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the socialist Eugene Debs ran for president several times, losing resoundingly each time. During the 1930s, communist recruitment really picked up, as Moscow archives show not only KGB (and relatedly, Comintern) funding for the CPUSA (Communist Party USA), but the Great Depression also soured many on "capitalism." The CPUSA in the 1930s was mainly led by Earl Browder, a Soviet contact who took over for William Z. Foster in 1932. Browder would lead a "Popular Front" of "liberals," (see socialist Norman Thomas' quote), socialists, and "progressives" in common cause against "fascism." "Fascism" was defined by Joseph Stalin and through missives sent out through the Comintern (Communist International) wielded as a weapon against any collectivist regime that deviated from the Soviet line (see Goldberg's Liberal Fascism for more on this).

But the CPUSA, after being largely tolerated by the American public throughout the Great Depression, was ostracized by the news in August 1939 that Stalin and Hitler had concluded a "Non-Aggression" (more accurately, a partition of Poland) pact just prior to Hitler's invasion of Poland. The communists needed a new strategy to become more accepted in the United States. The communists devised verbal tricks (such as changing the references for their Marxist ideology) to mainstream themselves in American life.

From In Denial:

In 1946, Communists and their allies attempted to seize leadership of American liberalism by creating the Progressive Party and backing former vice president [under FDR] Henry Wallace for the presidency. But Wallace's defense of the 1948 Communist coup in Czechoslovakia and his repeated excuse making for Stalin's actions, as well as exposure of the Communist Part's secret role in the Progressive Party, doomed this effort. As the Cold War intensified, and particularly during the Korean War, when American troops were directly engaged with Communist forces, the CPUSA became the pariah of American society (28).

By 1953, Stalin was dead and the American economy was beginning to pick up after a post-war slump. The new freedom for socialists and communists meant the potentiality of developing a new strategy, one that would avoid the obvious resiliency of the American economy and attack from a different front. This new grand strategy, hatched by the Frankfurt School and brought to the Institute for Social Research at Columbia University,was termed "cultural Marxism" and developed the idea of critical theory. Critical theory is the approach where communists form a myriad of movements and fronts critical of the United States and capitalism, but actually espouse very little in terms of formal theory, so that communists can remain "formless" in the culture. See Sun-Tzu, a favorite in the Russian intel services:

“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.”

And:

“Let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” (Ironically, "Barack" in Ancient Aramaic means "falling thunderbolt.")

The neo-marxists of the Frankfurt School drew on the writings of Italian communist Antonio Gramsci to develop a plan to march through the educational, social, cultural, political, and legal institutions of the country to develop socialist "ideological hegemony." This "long march" would mean first placing university professors; training journalists to shape prevailing attitudes; revising history to fit socialist narratives, especially "class struggle"; funding and corrupting the arts; infiltrating acting associations, like the Screen Actor's Guild; corrupting music (see Theodore Adorno); sexualizing youth to cause them to rebel (see Gyorgy Lukacs); demonizing all those opposed to communism as McCarthyites and "red-baiters"; and eventually, even propagating new passive or submissive national security strategies in academia like "containment," and "peaceful co-existence" (detente was a bit different because the strategy was to get Russia and China to turn on one another).

By the end of the 1960s and 1970s, the country was thoroughly radicalized. Feminists, black radicals, peaceniks, environmentalist extremists, and other "critical theory" groups (not always self-consciously so) were combating American culture, preaching retreat in Vietnam (which would demoralize the American military and lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of South Vietnamese) and condemning American "imperialism" (a favorite, but obscene, charge by the left).

One of the primary groups that led the way in these movements was the SDS or Students for a Democratic Society, effectively led originally by Tom Hayden beginning in 1962. In 1969, the SDS effectively infiltrated the American Political Science Association, and had quite an impact on academia, but would splinter into a more "peaceful" wing and a more violent wing - the Weatherman. While the SDS types would go on to be inspired by obvious communist "social activists" like Saul Alinsky (an ideological mentor to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton), the Weatherman (later the Weather Underground) were inspired by terrorists like William Ayers, who later befriended Barack Obama (despite media spin to the contrary).

After a generation of aggressive infiltration of the education system (since 1969), the Berlin Wall would fall twenty years later, in 1989. This event further discredited communism to the majority of Americans, despite academics' best efforts, but shook the faith of very few true believers in communism. The former open communists (who were emboldened over the years through gathering strength in the universities) would again regroup under critical theory guises like "environmentalism" (specifically global warming), "radical feminist theory," African-American studies, and other Marxist front movements, which are now firmly embedded in academia as university departments. The professors of these departments would mold a new generation of thinkers; finally in 2009 (see KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov's chilling estimate of 15-20 years to "brainwash" a generation), their man, Barack Obama, would take the highest office of president of the United States.

It is no coincidence that since taking office Barack Obama has backed down on the ABM defense shield in Europe; quixotically, and dangerously for U.S. national security, has proposed a world without nuclear weapons; has refused to confront the Russians on their assistance of Iran's nuclear weapons (sic) program; and has had nothing critical to say about Vladimir Putin whatsoever. This is how countries are defeated before a potential war even begins - they are psychologically and then materially disarmed. Again Sun Tzu:"Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." If Obama were an agent of subversion, he would be the most highly decorated in Russian intelligence history.

Putin Marks 10 Years of Extraordinary Bullshit

Here's a story written by a complete idiot. I understand when Putin's Russian lackeys write similar bullshit. But why would an Australian write something like this? 

Olbermouth Smears American Healthcare by Way of Haiti?

Keith Olbermann, the uber-cerebral and sassy guy with the glasses and the smug "I'm the smartest man in the world!" smirk on MSNBC, is a master of the non-sequitur and as it turns out - a stalker. The world (OK, the forty people who watch his show) would benefit greatly if Olbermouth would pursue truth and objectivity more doggedly than frightened women's basketball players and washed-up porn stars.

So now that the fire-breathing moonbat is more snugly framed than Olbie's Burberry spectacles (turnabout being fair play), let's see what the man with the head that can barely fit inside my screen has to say about the catastrophe in Haiti. From Newsbusters:

The devastating earthquake in Haiti, which may have killed tens of thousands or more, “reminded” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann of why ObamaCare is needed in the United States as he saw “what health care reform really means” in Haiti’s “awful message of nightmarish reality.” Later, he seriously contended the Haiti disaster makes “a good frame of reference in terms of the health care issue,” as he speculated about a quake destroying Los Angeles:

How would survivors of something like this here fare in terms of getting on their own feet economically afterwards, with the health care system we have in place right now?

After smearing Rush Limbaugh as a “deranged racist,” (and worse, see video above) Olbermann teased Wednesday night’s Countdown: “We are reminded of what health care reform really means by an awful message of nightmarish reality from a place, a place this time not so very far away.” MSNBC’s on-screen heading, as he spoke, sealed the link between Haiti and the domestic policy: “REAL REFORM NECESSARY; LATEST FROM HAITI.” [End quote]

But the real question for you Olbie is, where was Cuba with its marvelous healthcare coming to the rescue? Then again, when have real socialist regimes contributed anything other than a trifle toward humanitarian aide missions? The point is, they are economically and organizationally unable to - making your totalitarian altruistic worldview a sham.

To get to the crux of Olbie's insipid self-absorbed diatribe, Rush Limbaugh's comments on Haiti being a wreck due to dictators and communists (What? Wiki removed the article?) are apropos to say the least. Here is what that "hate-monger" Rush had to say about Haiti:

So the country that he (Obama) runs around the world apologizing for, the country that he has chip on his shoulder about, he now turns to as its president and asks people who have lost their jobs because of his policies to donate to WhiteHouse.gov to the people of Haiti, and we will do it. We are the most charitable and the most generous people on the face of the earth. Each and every time a natural disaster like this happens, we step up. We are there. "Despite the fact we're experiencing tough times here at home, I would encourage those Americans who want to support the urgent humanitarian effort --" You know, I have been to Haiti way back a long time ago when it was a cruise ship stop, Port-au-Prince. And I've seen pictures of Haiti. It is a devastatingly poor place and nothing has ever changed. And right across a mountain ridge in the middle you've got the Dominican Republic, which is like night and day. It's like night and day. And what's the one common factor?

That place, Haiti, has been run by dictators and communists, and how long is it going to be before we hear Obama and the left in this country say that what we really need to do is reinstate the communist Aristide to the leadership position down there to coordinate putting the country back together? The Haitian economy is entirely dependent on foreign aid. They produce nothing. Zilch, zero, nada. And it's been that way for the longest time.

Dictators and communists. Like Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Like Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. And yes, like the communist Jean-Claude Aristide.

Aristide, who is universally described as a "champion of the poor" in the mainstream press, was not much of a champion, since under his leadership the people simply got poorer and poorer. But isn't that the way with progressives? It's the eternal refrain, "it's thought that counts." Awww. Happy thoughts sure do fill up those empty bellies.

So why is Rush accusing Aristide of being a communist? In addition to Aristide's career of inept social welfare programs, well, his return path to power in 1991 was paved by communists, including by the "moderate" (?) head of the communist party Rene Theodore (whose wife, predictably enough, was a Russian ex-pat).

Yet for some strange reason (can't seem to figure it out), Aristide gets glowing marks from the U.S. media and cultural house organs of the progressives. Apparently if one is communist and Catholic, then your incompetency and human rights abuses (and deprivation of freedom and opportunity is a human rights abuse) don't count. Aristide, the "human rights reformer" (tm), was such a compassionate guy, he was thrown out on his rear again in 2004. (Oh, that's right - it was a U.S.-backed coup. You know, because Haiti is so crucial to our foreign policy and stuff.)

To put it in terms even a socialist zombie can understand, the only thing that allows oh-so-noble "progressives" like Olbermann to propose spending taxpayers' resources on humanitarian aid and on the poor without eliciting a collective laugh is that their schemes can be afforded by our "evil" capitalist economic system. Without capitalism, we are Haiti.

Yet it isn't good enough for progressives to steal from taxpayers and give out millions or billions in charity for natural disasters. No, we have to turn the entire world into a giant charity ward, and work for whatever the philosopher-kings will graciously spare us. Well, if every state was as "compassionate" as the socialist and communist countries out there, who would be the United States, the greatest provider of aid in the world? There would be none. Everywhere would be like Haiti.

The track record is clear. Communist countries, and tin-pot dictatorships, cannot "sustain" themselves and this has nothing to do with "dirty" capitalism supernaturally infecting everything. Most tellingly of their intellectual cowardice, communists will not ever hold themselves accountable. It is always capitalist countries' fault for socialist and communist countries' miserable track records, hell, even capitalism's fault for living nightmares like North Korea and the Khmer Rouge. This intellectual cowardice is the source of true believers' inability to take account for their ideology's failure. As long as capitalism exists, capitalism is to blame. Talk about a Manichaenistic cult.

Throughout history, even completely isolated socialist experiments fail time and time again. Utopian socialist projects, even America's own Plymouth Plantation, failed due to a lack of personal accountability for productivity (or lack thereof). Call it "the tragedy of the commons." And the communes of the 1960s and 1970s bit the dust hard when the lazy pot-smoking hippies found out that anytime something was wanted or needed, they had to get it themselves.

The historical record is clear for those willing and able to see it. Those countries that allow freedom and trade, prosper; and then people can do quite fine without the government's thieving hand-outs, thank you very much.

No, progressives like Olbermann think that if indebted states like Massachusetts federalize defunct programs like socialized medicine then magically - the debt will disappear. Progressives like Olbermann also think that if we banned capitalism and had world communism, then impoverished nations will magically become prosperous. (As if the U.S. wanting to trade with other nations means Americans are stepping on poor people's throats.) And progressives like Olbermann think that if we just keep passing the buck, eventually the buck will disappear.

Well, with that way of thinking, the bucks will disappear. And then what will you do for work, Mr. Altruist-at-everyone-else's-expense?

Die Walkure: Barakurenritt

The Germans, with their sublime taste in music and their innate ability to sniff fascism in the air, have composed a musical tribute to Barack Obama. Above is a sneak preview.

The Swiss Model of Homeland Defense

In the wake of the insidious executive order to consolidate the command of the national guard into a "Council of Governors" under the Department of Homeland Defense, I give you a cost-effective alternative that preserves liberty and lowers the crime rate. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Swiss model of homeland defense: Well-armed, well-trained, and responsible soldier-citizens. If every country adopted it, one might call it the plan for privatizing world peace.

Obama the Job-Destroyer

From the New York Post:

So, despite all the money spent on stimulus, the economy continues to lose jobs and unemployment remains at a staggering 10 percent. That grim news appeared to catch the Obama administration by surprise last week -- but it shouldn't have.

The number-crunchers at the Treasury Department have been celebrating what appears to be the end of the Great Recession as told through rising GDP, higher business profits and a buoyant stock market. But owners of small businesses -- the usual engines of economic growth -- are still refusing to hire back workers as they normally do when the economy turns up from a sharp decline.

Talk to them, and they'll gladly tell you why: Having weathered the recession, they now fear the administration will choke off the nascent recovery and increase their costs through higher taxes to pay for the myriad of programs President Obama has in store for us, including the hyperexpensive health-care overhaul.

If the president wasn't so busy looking to score cheap political points when he met with the heads of the big banks last month, he'd have listened to their warnings on this very issue. At one point, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon politely interrupted Obama's monologue on how the banks should be lending more to small businesses to explain that many businesses simply don't want to borrow to expand their operations and hire more workers.

"Jamie basically said the demand for loans is way down because businesses, particularly those that are making money and can qualify for loans, simply don't want to borrow," said one person with direct knowledge of the conversation.

And they're not borrowing because they don't know just how high their tax bills will be when the president gets done implementing all his "hope" and "change."

That's what stock analyst Peter Sidoti is discovering. Sidoti's firm supplies research on so-called small-cap companies, ones the stock market values at $300 million to $2 billion. With typical payrolls of 100 to 2,000 employees, these are the very definition of the "small businesses" that provide many if not most of the nation's new jobs.

Of the 600 companies Sidoti and his team cover, "There hasn't been one bankruptcy," he tells me. How did they survive the recession? By cutting costs and hoarding cash, not expanding their business and hiring more people, even as the economy now is starting to recover.

During other recoveries, Sidoti says, firms like these would be hiring workers in droves as demand picks up for goods and services. This time around, they're not -- because "they don't know what their costs are going to be." And those costs are, of course, higher taxes.

He recalls a conversation with the CEO of one company he covers, Monroe Muffler, who said his average cost per worker is $35,000 a year, but he isn't going to expand his workforce much more if he has to pay another $8,000 a year in higher taxes, thanks to the new health-care plan and other government initiatives.

"This is a huge problem," Sidoti explains. "Unemployment is at 10 percent and all these businesses see are higher costs in the future from health care and other policies -- so they are hoarding cash. They're making money, but why logically would any businessman use this money to expand if he doesn't know what all his costs will be because of the expansion of these government programs?"

The issue is strikingly similar to what the banks face. As we're all aware, the banks are making big money and waiting to pay out bonuses in the coming days. But the cash isn't coming from lending the money out. Instead, the banks are cutting costs, hoarding cash and investing some of it in low-risk bonds.

Businesses are doing the same even if the economy "grows" according to official statistics. Why risk expanding operations and hiring workers amid a wild boom in government that will lead to massive tax hikes when you can make money simply by doing nothing or laying people off?

All of which translates into a jobless recovery -- the economy appearing to grow while unemployment remains unnaturally high -- unless of course, you work in government.

Charles Gasparino, CNBC on-air editor, is author of "The Sellout," about the Wall Street meltdown.

My Letter to Misguided Fool Oliver Stone

As to leftist imbecile Oliver Stone's claim that Stalin was not as bad as he is generally thought to be, I agree with it wholeheartedly. He is much, much worse than that. People like Stone are either infantile fools playing with fire or scumbags who willingly refuse to face reality and eagerly promote insidious lies. I wish millions of Stalin's GULAG slaves were able to stand up from their graves and haunt such people to their deathbed.

Among the Russo-Soviet propaganda myths, the World War II narrative is the most central one. This is the linchpin of all Soviet lies and half-truths. You can debate some issues with socialists and nationalists in a relatively civilized way but the war issue is off-limits. For them, the claim that the USSR's participation in the war was a noble "self-defense" cause aimed at liberating the peoples oppressed by the Nazis is an irrefutable, undeniable, sacred, absolute truth, a mystic revelation that can never be challenged. Everyone who dares to question this hype is branded as a heretic and blasphemer.

Come to think of it, this myth is an easy excuse for every atrocity committed by communist mass murderers. Why were the Soviet industrialization, collectivization and Great Purge (with their enormous death toll and plummeting living standards) necessary? The answer is easy: the USSR needed to transform into an industrialized economy in order to fight the Great Patriotic War (another false name, since the war was neither great nor patriotic). Why were living standards in the Soviet Union far below those in the West after the war? Pretty easy: it was exhausted by the war. All modern tyrannies have used similar justifications for their crimes.

The myth, however, is utterly false. First of all, the concept of a self-defensive war is totally inapplicable to a totalitarian regime. The purpose of national defense is to protect the individual rights of citizens from foreign aggression. If the regime itself regularly violates those rights, instead of protecting them, it can wage a war only for aggression or for remaining in power.

Second, the "sacrifices" allegedly made by the USSR to allegedly "prepare" for the war were worse than those made in many military conflicts. During the industrialization, collectivization and "GULAGization", more Russians died than during the First World War. A communist "peace" turned out to be worse than a capitalist war.

One of the myths is that World War II was started exclusively by Hitler. In reality both the Nazi and Soviet regimes equally share the blame for initiating the conflict. Contrary to the mainstream clichés, Stalin was as much of an aggressor in that war as Hitler. Stalin was smart enough to invade Poland later than Hitler but this temporal difference does not change the facts of the case. Due to Western intellectuals' blindness and leftist bias, Stalin managed to escape the name that he deserved perhaps even more than Hitler - an aggressor. Both Western socialist and Soviet propaganda would have us believe that, while Hitler's occupation of European countries was part of Hitler's WW2 aggressive campaigns, Stalin's occupation of parts of Finland, the Baltic States, eastern Poland and Bessarabia were not aggressive wars in the framework of WW2. But that is absolute nonsense.

But the most important part of WW2 mythology was blasted to pieces by Viktor Suvorov, a former agent of the USSR's Chief Intelligence Department (GRU) (his magnum opus is fully available online for free). Unable to tolerate Soviet lies, Suvorov fled to the U.K. in 1978. He was sentenced to death in absentia. Suvorov provided solid evidence proving that Stalin had planned to invade Germany long before Hitler started contemplating an attack on the Soviet Union. Most Soviet defense installations on the border with Germany were dismantled, and an unprecedented offensive was planned in minute detail. A gigantic army (according to Suvorov, it was the most powerful army in history) was moved to the border and there are many signs that its purpose was clearly aggressive, not defensive. The world's largest paratrooper army, as well as marines and mountain infantry - all indications of the offensive nature of the operation - were secretly transferred westward. Strangely enough, the Soviet navy left Baltic seaports before the German invasion started (sic!). According to Suvorov, Stalin planned the 20th century's biggest military campaign - a Soviet conquest of the entire European continent. He used Hitler as a "useful idiot" to clear the path for communist domination. It was, of course, part and parcel of the long-term communist strategy of the World Revolution. Hitler's invasion foiled Stalin's plans, and the conquest of Europe was postponed for several years, and even then he failed to annex the entire continent and had to be satisfied with the eastern part. Regardless of Hitler's atrocities, he was perhaps doing the world a great service by attacking Stalin, since if the General Secretary had implemented his grandiose geopolitical design, the communist shadow over the world would have been something much worse than the Holocaust.

The first part of the war demonstrated that Stalin was not indeed prepared for defense, since he was gearing up for an offensive, perhaps the largest in history. Moreover, even the defensive potential that existed was squandered. As Mark Solonin showed, Soviet slaves were often a good tool in offensive wars when goaded by their slave-drivers without a chance to escape, but, when a panic caused by the German invasion triggered a partial disintegration of the Soviet regime, they were reluctant to protect their masters and either fled or became POWs en masse.

The real war was, of course, as far from the Soviet mythological idyll as you can get. Barrier troops were used to shoot retreating soldiers, while GULAG slaves were assigned to penal battalions, which meant almost certain death, since the battalions were sent to the most difficult parts of the front.

Due to Stalin's destruction of Soviet defensive capabilities, his execution of generals and the regime's general disregard for individual human lives, the number of casualties was gigantic. Soviet generals, including Zhukov, treated human beings as expendable cannon fodder and made absolutely unnecessary sacrifices to carry out their grand political designs and achieve a faster conquest of Europe. A paradoxical situation emerged - the USSR, the victor, had a death toll of at least between 20 and 28 million people, while Germany, the vanquished enemy, lost a mere 6 million people. So perhaps the Soviet generals' "feats" were a much worse "war crime" than those of the Nazis.

The "liberated" parts of Europe, meanwhile, were handed over to Soviet-affiliated totalitarian regimes that oppressed the locals to a bigger extent than their pro-Nazi predecessors. Huge numbers of local residents and former Soviet POWs in Nazi labor camps were transported to the GULAG. Women were raped by Soviet soldiers en masse. For many, the "liberation" turned out to be indeed worse than the Nazi yoke.

Given these facts, imbecile nonsense sputtered by Russian Stalinists and their acolytes in the West should not even be taken into account.