Lots up again (including toons) on my Obama blog today. And TONGUE-TIED is also a bit Obamafied again today

The unprincipled Left

One of the great truths about the Left is that they have no abiding principles (such as respect for the individual or a skepticism about human wisdom). All the Left have is a lust for power. And because of that they can turn on a dime when it suits them. And history is a good tool for showing that. But with their command of the educational system, the Left have ensured that only selected bits of history get taught in the schools or mentioned elsewhere. So the lessons of history are usually well-hidden from most people. That is why I contstantly remind people of what history shows.

One of the great turnarounds of the Left is in their attitude to minorities. And it is quite a recent and extreme turnaround. There are fortunately still lots of people alive who remember the defence of racial segregation by Democrat governors like George Wallace and Orval Faubus and the way Republican President Eisenhower crushed that defiance. But going further back is impossible for most people. There is much that I could say to take people further back but today I want to focus on just two eras: The late 19th century and the 1930s. The policies of the earlier era are crystal clear from the 1876 poster reproduced below and the second era is covered by a brief excerpt about a man who is to this day praised (quite misleadingly) by the Left as a great hero: FDR



(There is an original copy of the above poster available for sale on eBay at the moment)

Although he saw and addressed the evil that Hitler presented, Roosevelt's failure to comprehend the evils of communism laid the groundwork for the Cold War and the millions of victims of communist dictators must also be reckoned with as part of his legacy. Additionally, he was a bigot who made Archie Bunker look refined.

For one thing, Archie never used the N-word that Mr. Fireside Chat was all too comfortable with. Bruce Bartlett shows this side of the four-term president in his book Wrong On Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past.

To be fair, unlike his mentor Woodrow Wilson, FDR did not act on these inclinations, although the man with the cigarette holder may have done more harm by accident than the author of the 14 points did by design. Nevertheless, if the blacks who wept as his funeral train passed know how much they were set back by his policies, they might have cried for another reason. "To the extent that black workers were able to get public works jobs at all, they were mostly in lower level job categories than they had previously held before the New Deal," Bartlett, an economist, writes.

Nor did they fare much better in the economy as a whole. "In April 1930, the unemployment rate was 6.3 percent for black males and 6.9 percent for white males," Bartlett shows. "Seven years later, in 1937, after implementation of most New Deal programs, the unemployment rate for black males was well above that for white males: 19.1 percent for the former versus 13.9 percent for the latter."

"Negroes have lost jobs as a result of the NRA," Dr. Robert C. Weaver, the Roosevelt Administration's senior black economist said of the New Deal's National Recovery Act. Some wags said that NRA stood for "Negroes Ruined Again." "The minimum wage policy, he [Weaver] said, `resulted in wholesale discharges in certain areas,'" Bartlett relates. "A 1937 study by the NRA itself concluded that the minimum wage provisions of the NIRA [National Industrial Recovery Act] put 50,000 blacks out of work in 1934 alone."

To top it all off, Roosevelt was the first president to put a Klansman on the U. S. Supreme Court-a move that Woodrow Wilson is never known to have contemplated. Although FDR proclaimed ignorance of this colorful aspect of Hugo Black's past when asked about it in the 1930s, the justice himself offered a far different recollection in a 1968 memo. "President Roosevelt, when I went up to lunch with him, told me there was not reason for my worrying about my having been a member of the Ku Klux Klan," Justice Black remembered. "He said that some of his best friends and supporters he had in the state of Georgia were strong members of that organization." "He never, in any way, by word or attitude, indicated any doubt about my having been in the Klan, nor did he indicate any criticism of me for having been a member of that organization," Black wrote. "The rumors and statements to the contrary are wrong."

Source

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The Call of duty

"Charlie Foxtrot" is a good man. I honor him by reproducing his latest blog post below:

Well, the time has come...just a bit quicker than expected. Afghanistan, here I come....

I have known I would be deploying for some time now. However with a sudden change in training requirements, I am leaving home this week on only a few days notice. It is always fun telling your spouse that you are leaving in a few days, and won't be home for 10 months.

As I said, the deployment was expected, but the training requirement that will end up lasting a full 50% of the actual deployment was not.

Like many others in service, particularly in the Army with their prolonged deployments, there will be things that I miss while I am gone. My 40th birthday with my family. My son's 2nd birthday. Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc.... But I cannot complain. It is part of my service to my nation. I have known this since the day I joined. Of course things are always easier when you are a single 20-something, not an almost-40 husband and father. Such is life....

So in a couple of days I will be off on another grand adventure that will start with several weeks of Air Force training, another few weeks of Army Huah training (where they will teach me to shoot bigger guns, drive Humvees, and sleep in barracks), and finish with my third trip to the sandbox.

I am not sure what the future holds on the blogging front. I intend to go on as normal as long as I have access. I will be taking along my intrepid, and recently revived Apple iBook. It has already been to Qatar and Iraq, so lets hope it will survive my summer vacation in the shadow of the Hindu Kush.

While it is always an honor to serve, no matter what your role, it does seem a little more relevant if you do it on the front lines. This war is the defining moment of my generation, and to crib a famous quote, "There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins". So, away I go....

I am pleased to say that I have linked to quite a few of his posts in recent months. Another U.S. military blogger understands what it is all about too.

For more postings from me, see OBAMOLOGY, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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