Thoughts

Blogger Ann Althouse observed, "A love of autocracy often lurks beneath the liberal veneer. There's this idea that the right answers are known and the people are just too deluded and distorted to see what they are and to vote for them." New York Times Tom Friedman stated "... [W]hat if we could just be China for a day?... You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions....I want my democracy to work with the same authority, focus and stick-to-itiveness. But right now we have a system that can only produce suboptimal solutions." This is not the first time that Friedman expressed a love for the Chinese totalitarian methods and contempt for his fellow Americans but it does support the Althouse thesis that many on the left are comfortable with an authoritarian approach.

The left believes that Americans simply don’t understand the polices being done in their name which is why there was so much opposition to the Obama health care plan (or still is.) There are times that the Tom Friedmans of the world simply feel the need for control to do what is right. As Woody Allen quipped, “It would be good… if [President Obama] could be dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly." Tom Friedman and Woody Allen discussed openly what many leftist think, Americans really do need a strong leader at the helm to do what is right for them. There is a word for it, Fascism.

Fortune writer Nina Eason found herself a witness to a massive demonstration just down the street from her house. Her neighbor Bank of America executive Greg Baer found his house invaded by 14 bus loads of SEIU “protestors” outside his house. While Baer was at a little league game with one of his sons, his teenage son, Jack, found himself surrounded with bull horns blaring slogans denouncing bank greed and thugs lined up on the front lawn and even on the front patio.

Greg Baer made his way to his home through volley of insults as he attempted to rescue his son. Nina Eason wrote, "Now this event would accurately be called a 'protest' if it were taking place at, say, a bank or the U.S. Capitol. But when hundreds of loud and angry strangers are descending on your family, your children, and your home, a more apt description of this assemblage would be 'mob.' Intimidation was the whole point of this exercise, and it worked-even on the police. A trio of officers who belatedly answered our calls confessed a fear that arrests might 'incite'these trespassers."

This was not about protesting Wall Street greed but inciting fear by a Union with a reputation of thuggish tactics. Eason observed, "Now those strong-arm tactics, stirred by supposedly free-floating (as opposed to organized) populist rage, have come to the neighborhood curb. Last year it was AIG executives -- with protestors met by security guards outside. Now it's any executive -- and they're on the front stoop. After Baer's house, the 14 buses left to descend on the nearby residence of Peter Scher, a government relations executive at JPMorgan Chase… Targeting homes and families seems to put SEIU in the ranks of (now jailed) radical animal-rights activists and the Kansas anti-gay fundamentalists harassing the grieving parents of a dead 20-year-old soldier at his funeral."

Eason asked SEIU Stephen Lerner about these tactics, his response including accusing Eason "Of getting 'emotional' before moving on to his talking points." When Eason pressed him on why move protests from bank offices and shareholder meetings, Lerner stated, "People in powerful corporations seem to think they can insulate themselves from the damage they are doing." Interesting, SEIU was protesting a Bank of America executive and Bank of America is the bank of choice for SEIU. So why go after Bank of America? Eason concluded, "SEIU has said it wants to organize bank tellers and call centers -- and its critics point out that a great way to worsen employee morale, thereby making workers more susceptible to union calls, is to batter a bank's image through protest."

Interesting, the SEIU did not invite media (except for a Huffington Post blogger whose job was to act as a PR person for the union thuggish tactics.) The Post blogger job was to propagandize for the leftist base while leaving the impression they were protesting a former Bush official. Baer was a former Clinton Treasury department official but he was the victim of a personal protest designed to spread fear. And Eason herself has been criticized for writing the truth by others of the main stream media. There are two things to consider. The first, if this was 14 busloads of Tea Party movement folks, the word fascism would have been used. The second is that these are fascists’ tactics.

The third item to consider was the Academy of Pediatrics put forward a proposal allowing physicians to be allowed to perform ceremony pinprick or nick on girls born into communities that practice female genital mutilation. Well consider a young preteen girl having her clitoris “tweaked” with the idea that it will reduce a woman sexual libido. I am reminded a story relayed by Jonah Goldberg about an India tradition in which a wife is thrown on a funeral pyre of her dead husband. When a British General objected, he was told that this was an Indian tradition. He gruffly responded, "In our society we have a tradition. We hang people who throw live women on funeral pyre. So for every funeral pyre, we will have a gallows close by."

Academy of Pediatrics is taking political correctness too far. To paraphrase Goldberg, if any doctor performs a clitoris pinprick, take the doctor license away and send him or her to jail for sexual assault. If a doctor brings a clipper, let a federal marshal be close by with an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs.

Finally, Pew Center did a survey on how people feel about particular groups and ideas. By over a 3 to 1 margin, Republicans had a negative view of socialism and Independents had more than 2 to 1 negative view. For every Democrat who had a negative view of socialism, there was Democrat had a positive view. When conservatives use the S word, many Democrats squeal like a pig and complain. When Democrats are asked the same question in the privacy of their home, they revel in the term. So maybe can we say the Democrats are the socialist party of America?

What do these thoughts have in common? A leftist desire for control. From Tom Friedman's thoughts that he wants to be a dictator for a day to solve all the problems for democracy is so messy. SEIU using intimidation tactics to spread fear against their opponents as a mean to extending their control or the fact that half of the Democrats love Socialism; reinforces the need for control. And finally, a group of doctors is willing to participate in political correctness to allow young girls to be genitally scarred while surrendering to alien ideology that actually harms women and reinforces cultural female inferiority.