The Mask Falls in Charlotte

By Christopher Cook

During an alternate-reality battle between the Enterprise and the Klingons . . .

Picard: They’re not even troubling to cloak themselves.Riker: They shouldn’t be so confident after the pasting we gave them on Archer IV.

Please excuse the geeky Star Trek reference. That quote has long stuck with me as an excellent (albeit fictional) way to describe an adversary who is so overconfident, they don’t even try to hide their true intentions. They place themselves in the open, even if doing so means losing tactical advantage. This describes the Democrats in Charlotte quite well.

First, a little background . . .

It is essential to understand that Barack Obama represents a new kind of Democrat. Hillary Clinton is part of the old guard. She is among the last of the order of progressives from the first part of the 20th century—a New Deal, social gospel-type progressive. She is driven with missionary zeal to accomplish the statist project, and thus, issue by issue, she is fairly similar to Barack Obama. But in hearkening back to this era, she is also still fundamentally . . . American. She’s a left-wing nationalist, of a sort.

Enter the 1960s. In the 1960s, a slow process began whereby the Harold Ickes, Rex Tugwell, New Deal-type progressives gradually started to be replaced by a new class of leftist. The new left has the same statist aims as their classic progressive forebears, but they have “molted,” in a way, shaking off much of their earlier characteristics to become a purer leftist phenomenon. Much less likely to be religious, and far less tethered to any sense of “Americanism,” these internationalist statists have slowly moved into positions of power, culminating in the election of Barack Obama.

The new left are focused on statism for statism’s sake. Many are now openly hostile to religion. Their goal is the success of the leftist project as a holistic global phenomenon, and if that includes weakening America, they will do so. They are also far more hostile to our allies and friendly to our enemies, especially if those enemies are themselves leftists.

Obama is the first president cut from this new, internationalist-leftist cloth. He brought with him a cadre of people who are such ideologues that they don’t even feel the need to pretend. Attorney General Eric Holder is openly seeking to allow for vote fraud favorable to Democrats—refusing to prosecute known cases and fighting states’ efforts to crack down on fraud. Van Jones was openly communist, so much so that he was cashiered as too much of a liability. Ambassador Susan Rice is openly anti-Israel, and the administration is clearly hostile to this nation with which we have had a special and close relationship for decades. Barack Obama avoids honoring troops and war dead, eschews long-standing traditions, and thumbs his nose at our oldest and dearest allies.

The cynic may say that previous Democrats went though the motions—respecting American traditions, not insulting large constituencies, showing religious sentiments, etc.—to gain electoral cover, but didn’t mean it in their hearts. What was in their hearts cannot easily be known, but we do know that they at least went through those motions. Barack Obama and this new kind of Democrat are so far left, they barely even try to cloak themselves anymore. This is, as it happens, just what one should expect from a President whose rise to power was launched in the home of terrorists Bill Ayes and Bernadine “First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into the pig Tate’s stomach! Wild!”Dohrn.

This mask has been slipping throughout Obama’s presidency.  However, if their convention in Charlotte can be cited as evidence, it appears that the Democrats may be eager to give up the kabuki act entirely. Three areas thus far present themselves as clear indication:

Israel

The Democrats have long enjoyed a majority of the American Jewish vote. This continues to this day, in spite of the fact that . . .

A) people on the political left show much higher rates of anti-Semitism than people on the political right

B) the left is saturated with anti-Zionism, which is separated by a paper thin line from anti-Semitism

C) the Democrats have been tilting away from Israel since before the Six Day War, and have become borderline hostile in recent years.

On item C, though, they have previously sought to hide it. They’ve played the game and talked the talk. They’ve courted AIPAC and made nice with Israeli leaders. Elected Democrats have done their best to distance themselves from the growing anti-Israel sentiments among their rank and file. But now, it seems that the Democrats want to be a bit more open about their true alignment vis-a-vis the state of Israel.

As Obama told President Mevedev of Russia he will have more flexibility to do what he wishes in a second term. If the Democratic platform is any indication, his “flexibility” is not going to be a good thing for the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel. Comparing the language of the 2008 Democratic Party Platform and the 2012 Democratic Party Platform a key section was removed . . .

The missing parts are crucial. They deal with . . .

• isolating Hamas,
• recognizing Jerusalem as the capital,
• eschewing the notion of a return to the 1949 lines, and
• recognizing the unworkability of allowing “right of return.”

The first two are important. The last two literally deal with the survival of Israel as a nation. A return to 1949 boundaries wouldn’t just be unworkable, it would be an existential disaster for Israel. Similarly, allowing four million “Palestinians” to settle in an Israel from which 600,000 of their parents voluntarily departed would, in short order, end the state of Israel as we know it. The Democrats eliminating these from their platform isn’t an oversight, it is a statement. It isn’t even an attempt at neutrality—it is taking the other side.

A political party’s platform isn’t a haphazard editorial penned by an errant ideologue. It is a statement of where the party stands. Dropping references to God and the defense of Israel is a striking statement.

We belong to government

At its core, leftism is an ideology of the state. It is a combination of collectivist and utopian yearning, coupled with a willingness to use force to make everyone submit to that collective, that they might live harmoniously in their utopia. The vehicle for bringing about that utopia is an all-powerful state: The GodState on Earth, with the power to meet every material want, eliminate all hard choices, and eradicate the messiness of life, even if it means exercising massive control over every aspect of people’s lives.

This has been true of the left for 220 years. Here in America, however—where individualism, natural rights, and limited government are part of our cultural lifeblood—the statists have always been careful to couch their aims in non-threatening language.

Now, it seems that the veil has slipped, and both the establishment and the rank-and-file are openly embracing the notion that we are all subjects of, and owned by, the government.

Asked how they feel about the notion that ”The Government Is The Only Thing We All Belong To,” DNC attendees didn’t hesitate to embrace the notion.

Allahpundit’s brief screed on the subject strikes me as the appropriate reaction:

How psychologically impoverished must you be to find validation in “belonging” to a government? You’re forced to “join,” your “dues” are typically squandered on stupid, wasteful projects, half of the other members are perpetually at your throat, and the whole thing is shot through with corruption at every level. It’s essentially the world’s biggest and worst union (and worst in part because it’s biggest). In fact, didn’t we just spend an entire week listening to the left’s friends in the media tell us how racist Republicans are? Why would any liberal want to belong to a group with people like that in it? This rhetoric is pure communitarian garbage, designed to inculcate some perverse civic pride in the ideas that (a) government will continue to grow and usurp your choices and, more importantly, (b) you need to pay more “dues,” even though government’s already so big that realistically there’s no amount you could pay to make it sustainable. Loathsome.

It’s hard to think of any other way that the Democrats could show the true nature of their ideology more clearly and unabashedly. Government owns us. We can know contentment and belonging if only we relinquish our pesky individuality and join the collective body, under the benevolent state. You’ll excuse another Star Trek reference, but it sounds an awful lot like the will of Landru.

Abortion

Though statism is the core of the left’s ideology, the flag it most often unfurls in public, proudly and loudly, has the word “Abortion” emblazoned on it in ice-blue letters. This has long been the case. Pro-life Democrats are rarely welcomed, and they certainly no longer speak at Democrats’ conventions. The Democrats will go to almost any length, stooping as low as they have to, to prevent pro-life judges and justices from being confirmed to high courts. Barack Obama himself, as a state legislator, fought to make it so that babies who survived botched abortions had to be left to die. Such is the Democrats’ obsession with abortion at any time, for any reason, at any cost.

And yet .  . . you would think that now, here in the midst of the worst recovery since the Great Depression, where the economy has trumped all other concerns in the voters’ minds, Obama and the Democrats would at least pretend to focus on the economy. They don’t have any kind of economic plan—unless you call skipping merrily over for another harvest of the Magic Money Tree at the top of Gumdrop Hill as a plan—but you’d think they’d at least make a show of it.

Instead, their convention is being called Abortion-Palooza. Even wind-sock commentator David Brooks cannot help but notice:

As an overall global phenomenon, the defining characteristic of the left is statism. Here in America, however, the left—and their electoral vehicle of the Democratic Party—are also inextricably bound to the preservation and expansion of abortion on demand. As the convention in Charlotte has thus far demonstrated, this bond is an existential one.

What happens over the rest of the convention remains to be seen, but the first part of it has already revealed their true colors. The mask has slipped. The veil has fallen. They’re not even bothering to cloak themselves anymore.

But perhaps they should not be so confident, after the pasting we gave them in 2010.

See more of Christopher Cook at The Western Free Press... http://www.westernfreepress.com/

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