In a comment on the post immediately below, The state is imposing a religion, Jack wrote in part (see the comment in full):

I think Environmentalism is a sub-ideology of egalitarianism. I think it is egalitarianism which is the Left’s secular civic religion. Egalitarianism is expressed in all the Left’s major ideologies: feminism, multiculturalism, socialism (welfare-statism in the watered down form), environmentalism, and pacifism. All of them revolve around the destruction of absolute standards and thus the denial that there are better and worse or good and evil. Egalitarianism mandates relativism. How this egalitarianism rose to conquer the West is an interesting historical and philosophical question. I think it occurred in the process of secularizing Christianity.

I agree with all of that. And to take up the point of Socialism being secularized Christianity: the colossal shipwreck of Socialism in Russia in the last century, and the painful flop of the European welfare-states now, demonstrate wonderfully why not only Socialism but its sentimental parent  Christianity are both recipes for misery. Both ignore the truths of human nature. Both demand self-sacrifice. Both require of humankind what is humanly impossible, and by no means desirable to the whole human race. We do not, cannot, and should not love our fellow human beings indiscriminately. Not to make moral judgments is immoral.

People are not equal in the gifts of nature. Nor can they be equal in wealth, however much force is brought to bear to make them so. (And always those who bring the force to bear exempt themselves from its consequences.)

My novel L: A Novel History illustrates what happens when  force is brought to bear in an attempt to create an egalitarian utopia. 

L – a Marxist philosopher and theater director – articulates the absurd, romantic, egalitarian dream, thrilling millions of citizens who consequently vote for their own doom:

As socialists we shall continue … to take all land into public ownership. To employ every man and woman. Our aim must be to house them all, clothe them all, feed them all, teach them, heal them, organize their leisure. None shall be underprivileged, all shall be made equal. The underprivileged must be freed from all oppression, the oppression of being less lucky, less successful, less energetic or healthy than others. Positive discrimination will liberate women, youth, blacks. Especially the immigrants from those parts of the world which we exploited, raped, robbed and pillaged, who have come to share with us our greater good fortune must be liberated from their oppression. The first duty of the state is redistribution. There is no question of one man earning a reward greater than another. All must be balanced. If one man has a clean job, he must get less money than one who has a dirty job. The state must equalize with due regard not merely to externals but to inner feelings. There must be no prizes for one man to win who was better endowed by the accident of nature with stronger limbs or some fortuitous talent. No one can take credit for anything he does, and no one is to blame for anything he does. As Professor L teaches us, neither achievement nor guilt are individual. Society achieves, society is guilty. …. No man can decide his needs for himself. What he feels are wants and to indulge them is selfish, anti-social. But what others diagnose as his needs, those are his needs. And as his needs are shared with others, the problem of supply is a community problem. …. The state alone must be the source of the satisfaction of all needs. …

No one will ever again have to suffer envy for another man’s greater wealth, industriousness, enterprise, energy, cleverness, reward, or even luck. We shall be there to smooth out the random rewards of luck, like the random rewards of hard work, inspiration, inventiveness, or any gifts of nature. How comfortable it must make the majority, the “overwhelming majority” as [the socialists of] the Labour Party like to say, “at the end of the day” as they say so often. Their policies have been designed to give not just survival and material welfare to those who cannot look after themselves, but comfort to their feelings too. They must be given what they cannot get for themselves, “because they need it”. But must they not also be spared the feeling that others can get whatever it is for themselves, while they cannot? Of course they must. …

“The pursuit of equality requires the handicapping of the many in the interests of the disadvantaged few,” he said; “no man can be allowed to feel inferior to his neighbours.” …

The dream is turned into reality, and regret sets in.

The affluent children who squatted in the communes and protested against freedom calling it “repressive tolerance”, and those they elected, were caught in the trap of their own lies, and brought an end to liberty in the name of liberation; an end to plenty in the name of humanitarianism; and an end to the impersonality of the law before which all were equal, and the impersonality of the market in which all were equal, and created legal discrimination and class elitism, in the name of equality.

How L brings the nation to misery in an amazingly short time, how he choreographs anguish and doom, is the surprising part of the story which I won’t give away.

But I will give away part of the ending. England recovers from its historical episode as a Red Republic.

Americans have recently voted to set themselves on the path down which L led the English to ruin. America has yet to discover what it leads to. And eventual recovery cannot be predicted.

Jillian Becker   December 2, 2012

Here is an extract from Jillian Becker’s book L: A Novel History. (Find out more about it through the link in the margin. Click on the image of the book cover.)

CHAPTER 6

REVOLUTION

On the 3rd June, 1979, at about 6 o’clock in the evening, members of the Theatre of Life, arriving for an audition, pushed open the doors of the dark auditorium and saw a hooded figure standing in a spotlight on the otherwise bare stage. He stood as still as a dummy. They thought at first it must be L, “because he was dressed in the sort of overalls that L usually wore in the theatre, a kind of tailored boilersuit made of blue suede.” The hood was of black cloth, like a hangman’s, with a pair of eyeholes. The would-be performers, some thirty of them, took their seats silently, and when they were all settled, the man spoke. It was not L’s voice.

In a loud, harsh, unvaried tone, he repeated what L had often said about life and art being indistinguishable. He said that violence was “the goal, the climax, of all action”, and that it was “right at this time for the compelling violence of the most significant action to spill over from the stage into the world.”

The light then spread over the whole stage. Another man was standing near the back, dressed in a policeman’s uniform. All round them, on the boards, armaments were laid out, in neat order: rifles, pistols, machine-guns, grenades, “looking very like the real things”. There was also a heap of wooden staves, iron bars, rocks, broken railings, pickaxes and spades. The hooded man took up an iron bar, lifted it with both hands above his head, whirled about and rushed towards the other man, swinging the bar down and forwards with the utmost speed and strength into his face. The watchers gasped, some screamed, some rose from their seats, as the man fell. But he fell straight backwards, with a soft plop, like a bundle of laundry being dropped. He was a dummy.

The hooded man took up a large cardboard box, came down from the stage and handed out knitted balaclava helmets. The lights came up over the auditorium and there was L, sitting on an aisle seat towards the back, “dressed in a dark suit, looking very Savile Row elegant, and watching without saying a word”.

“Put them on!” the hooded man commanded.

The knitted helmets were old, grubby and stained, and smelt of unwashed human bodies, underarms, feet and worse.

“Breathe in deeply,” they were ordered when they were all hooded, sitting in their rows (“like so many gagging turtles,” as one of them said).

“Again! Again!”

They breathed in the stink of the dirty wool.

“That,” the hooded man said, loudly and harshly, “is the smell of the armed proletarian struggle. It is the smell of the future. It is the smell of your dedication to that future. You will learn to love it.”

Which of them, they were asked, had any experience of or training in wrestling, self-defence, armed combat, or marksmanship, and those who claimed to have either or both were asked to remain. The rest were told that classes were to be organized in “fighting techniques”, and they were advised to attend, as there was to be a season of plays in which they would need such arts. They would also learn “to understand the liberating emotions which accompany the response of violence against the oppression of air-conditioned boredom”. Upon which, “a sigh went through the group, like the sigh of release from tension when something promised and yet almost given up has at last been delivered,” as one of the would-be actresses there that day has recalled. “I felt as if I suddenly knew what I had been waiting for and expecting, why I had been coming here.”

This useful explanation of what the Cloward-Piven strategy is, comes from Family Security Matters, by Frank Salvato:

In 1966, two Columbia University sociologists, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, collaborated on a theory  … referred to as the “Cloward-Piven Strategy.” People who are familiar with the likes of Saul Alinsky and William Ayers are familiar with the strategy, as are the full complement of the Progressive Movement.

In a nutshell, the underlying principle of the Cloward-Piven Strategy is to so overload the entitlement system – to add so many to the entitlement rolls, that the country’s economic system collapses, unleashing chaos and violence in the streets, thus effecting radical Leftist political change in government. Up until recently this theory has been just that, a theory, and a theory that anarchists and Progressives have salivated over for their want of execution. But today, we are seeing the fruits of the Cloward-Piven Strategy played out to success in Greece and several other financial destitute countries in Europe. …

To summarize briefly the Cloward-Piven Strategy, I turn to Richard Poe who wrote an article of the same name, which is featured at DiscoverTheNetworks.org.

Mr. Poe observes that Mr. Cloward and Ms. Piven sought (and “seeks,” in the case of Ms. Piven) to facilitate the fall of Capitalism by “overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.”  …

In a 1970 New York Times interview, Cloward is quoted as saying that poor people can only advance when “the rest of society is afraid of them.” He then theorized that activists should refrain from demanding that government provide more for the poverty stricken and, instead, should strive to pack as many people on the welfare (read: entitlement) rolls as possible, creating a demand that could not be met, facilitating the destruction of the welfare system and massive financial crisis. As a byproduct, rebellion would be ignited amongst the people; chaos would rule the streets and governments would be damaged beyond repair, many falling to history making it possible for new radicals to assume the roles of oligarchs, ushering in new systems of government and the dismantling of the Capitalist system in particular.

Both Cloward and Piven understood that it would take pushing the American citizenry to the point of anarchy, to the point of the populace effecting violent chaos in the streets, for there to emerge an opportunity to damage our Republican form of government and our Capitalist system to the point where people would accept radical political as well as economic change. Cloward and Piven, using the philosophy of Saul Alinsky (who, by-the-by, was their inspiration in fomenting their “strategy”), knew that they would have to achieve chaos, so as to introduce the Progressive political ideology – the ideology of Democratic Socialism – to the masses as a saving grace. 

“Democratic Socialism” – remember – is a cover name for Communism.

As Frank Salvato says, the calamitous outcome of “overloading the welfare/entitlement system” is being “played out to success in Greece and several other financial destitute countries in Europe”. And it is starting to play out in the USA, under Saul Alinsky’s follower, the “community organizer” President Barack Obama.

We quote from an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily:

In the “now they tell us” file, add a vast array of reports that have come out since the election showing just how weak the economy really is. …

Here’s just a sampling of what we’ve learned since voters decided to give Obama four more years to “experiment” with the economy.

Earnings falling: The Labor Dept. reported on Thursday that real average hourly earnings dropped again in October for the third month in a row …

Poverty rising: A new Census Bureau report, also released after the election, finds that the number of poor people in America climbed 712,000 in 2011. …

Food-stamp enrollment skyrocketing: Another government report conveniently timed after the election found that food stamp enrollment exploded by more than 420,000 in August. The number of people getting food stamps has climbed more than 15 million — or 47% — under Obama. … Today, almost 15% of the population is collecting food stamps, up from 7% just a decade ago.

Jobless claims jumping: The number of new jobless claims shot up to 439,000 last week, up 78,000 from the week before … The two states with the biggest increases in jobless claims the week before that were Pennsylvania and Ohio, thanks to layoffs in the construction, manufacturing and auto industries.

Inflation creeping up: We also learned that the annual inflation rate climbed to 2.2% in October … the third consecutive monthly increase.

Coal plants closing: A report by the liberal Union of Concerned Scientists, released (naturally) a week after the election, finds that as many as 353 coal-fired plants will close as a result of Obama’s environmental rules.

Small banks disappearing: Fortune reported three days after the election that the “overwhelming conclusion” of industry analysts and consultants was that Dodd-Frank would cause thousands of small banks to disappear. …

Obama keeps saying that his top priority for his second term is jobs and growth, but the only thing he’s pushed since his re-election is a massive tax hike on the so-called rich.

That’s despite the fact that Obama knows these tax hikes will hurt economic growth. … We know that Obama’s tax hikes will kill 710,000 jobs.

One by one, businesses will be forced to close, like this one, putting thousands out of work:

Hostess, the maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, is going out of business, closing plants, laying off its 18,500 workers …

The Irving, Texas, company said a nationwide worker strike crippled its ability to make and deliver its products. …

Hostess had warned employees that it would file a motion in U.S. Bankruptcy Court to unwind its business and sell assets if plant operations didn’t return to normal levels by Thursday evening. …

“Many people have worked incredibly long and hard to keep this from happening, but now Hostess Brands has no other alternative than to begin the process of winding down and preparing for the sale of our iconic brands,” CEO Gregory F. Rayburn said in a letter to employees posted on the company website. He added that all employees will eventually lose their jobs, “some sooner than others.”

Thousands of members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union went on strike last week after rejecting in September a contract offer that cut wages and benefits. … Hostess has said that production at about a dozen of the company’s 33 plants has been seriously affected by the strike. Three plants were closed earlier this week.

Now they are all closing.

The economy is being systematically wrecked. How long can it be before America reaches the stage of the general strikes, riots, blood on the streets, anarchy?  Then the administration may take “emergency powers”. Congress is already being bypassed as Obama rules by executive order.

Obama has the temperament of a dictator. Will he soon be a dictator?

Is the terrible triumph of Saul Alinsky, Richard Andrew Cloward, Frances Fox Piven and Barack Obama near at hand?

Americans must start getting used to the fundamentally transformed country they now inhabit.

Here is a scene from the world’s newest freshest Socialist Republic. It has not yet changed its name from the United States of America, USA,  to the Union of Trade-Unions Socialist Republics, UTUSR, but that is what it is becoming. (There is a dispute, hotting up as we write, over whether to call it the UTUSR or the UTUISR – the Union of Trade-Unions Islamic Socialist Republics.)

Anne Sorock of Legal Insurrection reports:

Teachers filled the ranks at the 2012 Midwest Marxism Conference, which was held Saturday at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey, who spoke at one of the breakout sessions, was just one of the hundreds of attendees, many of them teachers, there to strategize about the next phases of the partnership between Chicago Socialists and the Chicago Teachers Union.

Of course, all recording was strictly verboten unless you had been preapproved by the Chicago Socialists.

The event kicked off with Becca Barnes’s keynote speech. Barnes, a Chicago teacher, spoke about the new era of Marxism in America stemming from the Chicago Socialists’ recent successes in running the show during the Chicago Teachers Strike. Said Barnes, who referred to everyday American capitalists as “capitalist vampires”, “the struggle here in the United States has entered a new phase. Nowhere have we pointed the way forward more clearly than here in Chicago with the teachers union strike.” From her talk and other succeeding events throughout the day, it was clear that the Teachers Union and Marxists were one and the same.

I attended three break-out sessions in addition to the opening plenary. Each began with the speaker congratulating Barack Obama on his win. Rather than allowing discussion, the Chicago Socialists had a policy that disallowed actual person-to-person interaction; rather, the moderator required that you “raise your hand in a fist” in order to be placed in line to discuss. If you didn’t raise your hand in a fist, you were placed after those who did conform and raise their hand in a fist. As a queue formed, the result was that no comment addressed the previous issue raised.

Thankfully, after hours of enduring non-discussion and hate speech against Americans (and being amongst those celebrating a philosophy of mass murderers), I was “outed” as not a communist, told I was “not in solidarity” and surrounded by members of the Chicago Socialists who told me to leave the Northwestern School of Journalism premises. Also “spotted” as not in solidarity was Rebel Pundit, who had a more interesting exit than I:

Just what did the Chicago Socialists feel they had to hide, that attendees such as myself, observing, might expose? …

Perhaps that parents might feel uncomfortable that these ideas were being presented to their children on-campus …

It is not an overstatement to say, based on the words of the teachers who filled the rooms at the Marxism Conference, that the Teachers agenda and the Marxist agenda is one and the same.

Welcome to the New Education of your children.

Millions of voters who have resided in America their whole lives have immigrated without moving an inch. They don’t live in the country of their birth even if they’ve never travelled outside its borders. This is not your father’s America. It’s not even your older brother’s. 

So writes Daniel Flynn, in an article at Front Page.

The electorate that voted Ronald Reagan into the presidency in 1980 was 88 percent white, ten percent black, and two percent Hispanic. The body politic that reelected Barack Obama in 2012 was 72 percent white, thirteen percent black, ten percent Hispanic, three percent Asian, and two percent “other” …

But –

The changing complexion of America may be the most superficial of the major demographic shifts. Getting married and bringing children into the world are less popular now than at any point in U.S. history. In 1980, just 18 percent of births occurred to women not married to their child’s father. Now, that figure exceeds 40 percent. Without a daddy in their house, many single mothers look for a daddy in the White House. …

So many Americans now depend on government for food, shelter, retirement, education, health care, and even jobs that the party of government almost guarantees itself a majority long before the campaign has started. Consider that in 1980 slightly more than twenty million Americans received food stamps. In 2012, the number approaches fifty million. From bailed-out Toledo autoworkers to the comfortably unemployed approaching 99 weeks of benefits in Detroit to Georgetown co-eds desiring free birth control, the Democrat constituency is the coalition of the bought. …

Republicans Tuesday suddenly came to grips with the changes that have been slowly transforming the United States of America. …

There has been a revolution within the form.

The nation’s name remains the same. Its habits, and inhabitants, have changed beyond recognition. 

A majority of Americans chose socialism. They may not call it that, but that is what they’re getting with their choice of Obama.

As Daniel Flynn says, the transformation of America did not come suddenly. The November 2012 election was only the consummating event. Preparation for it started decades ago. To choose an arbitrary date, one might say 1968. But the realization that it has happened has come suddenly to the Republican Party.

The change came to the West in general.

Since the advent of the “New Left”, generations of children have been educated to believe that socialism is good, capitalism is bad. In American public schools, the teaching of every branch of the humanities is an indoctrination of socialism. American history is taught as a shameful tale. The books of modern fiction prescribed for student reading more often than not carry the messages of the left: anti-capitalism, egalitarianism, environmentalism, multiculturalism. The nation state and military strength are bad. Pacifism and world socialist government are good. Business is a bad thing. (“Making a profit is a disease in our society”, declares that icon of the left, Noam Chomsky.) The person who succeeds in making money in business is ipso facto a bad person.

All this they were taught. It was a long concerted campaign. “The  long march through the institutions” (the slogan that became a program, first uttered by Antonio Gramsci, founder of the Italian Communist Party) was patiently undertaken by the footsoldiers of the left, and steadily achieved. One by one the institutions were conquered: the schools and universities, many of the churches (easily turned from irrationalism to irrationalism, from one faith to another), the media, the entertainment industry; in Europe, and parts of America, even the police and the courts of law; eventually the government, and so the military and the intelligence services.

And conservatives did not notice the march. Or if they noticed it, they didn’t think it worth the effort to stop it. And now it cannot be reversed. It is a one-directional movement, a political ratchet.

So America goes socialist. The spectacle of other societies failing under socialism/communism/collectivism/statism should, in reason, make Americans shudder, not emulate them. But it hasn’t. Americans have caught the disease that is destroying the West.

What is its name?

As a failure to notice that socialist experiments have failed, it’s mental blindness.

As a failure to understand why they’ve failed, it’s mental feebleness.

As an open-eyed, fully conscious commitment to self-destruction, it is, in the medical term, suicidal ideation.

Democracy kills itself.

November 6, 2012, the day on which Barack Obama was re-elected to the presidency of the United States, was a moment when the history of America was decisively changed. Some – and we are among them – think that the old America, the America founded in 1776, died on that day.

We have selected passages from several post mortems (see the whole articles).

Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh, who has lived under a communist regime, writes a lament:

Our Constitutional Republic died a peaceful death on November 6, 2012. Having reached the point of no return in a comatose state after years of progressive and illegal immigration assaults, the fabric of conservative society is now completely unraveled and Uncle Sam’s America is no more.The United States of America is now relegated to the dust bin of history as a “has been” empire. The Shining City on the Hill, the hope of so many millions since July 4, 1776, no longer exists. What rises from the ashes is a country that few of us will recognize, like, or learn to accept submissively. After 236 years of existence, a new country emerges today … The Supreme Court will be forever altered after its last conservative members will be replaced by the liberal academics who call themselves “progressives.” The rule of law will be implemented by Executive Orders, making Congress irrelevant. The communist motto “Forward” that resonated with so many ignorant Americans will plunge us into many years of darkness from which we will never be able to recover. We have proven our Founding Fathers right, they did give us a Constitutional Republic and we were unable to maintain it. … The welfare dependent Americans, unions, and illegal aliens have chosen for the rest of us the dark path of serfdom to big government and to socialist utopia. … Rallies in support of conservatism overwhelmed venues for Mitt Romney while rallies for our bumbling President became scarcer and scarcer. Yet, miraculously, at the ballot box, our President won all over the countrt. … Americans chose high unemployment, reduction of our military, communist indoctrination of their children, and loss of personal freedoms … I am saddened by the loss of millions and millions of American soldiers who have died to preserve freedom yet we lost it on November 6, 2012.

Ron Radosh gives some advice. He writes:

The president will argue that the nation has given him a mandate and endorsed the policies he sought to pursue, and that he will do all he can to move the United States to the “fundamental transformation” he said was his goal in the 2008 election campaign. That means the opposite of any attempt for serious compromise, and a hunkering down to try to move ahead with ObamaCare and other politically leftist programs. …  So what should conservatives do? … Those opposed to the direction Obama favors should provide serious and meaningful alternatives of their own, and present them to the nation. They should do everything possible to reveal to the nation that it is the White House, and not the defeated Republicans, that is failing to deal with the coming crisis of a growing entitlement state.  In foreign policy, which is the most dangerous of the coming crises that will face the Obama administration, conservatives should relentlessly forge ahead on issues like the failure of the White House in the murders of our diplomats at Benghazi, which candidate Romney foolishly failed to deal with in the last days of the campaign … It also means a continuing effort to raise the issue of the danger to the world of the growing radical Islamic movements abroad, to attack their ideology, and to make it clear that although Bin Laden is dead, his death did not put an end to a regrouped al-Qaeda.

J. Christian Adams sounds a note of optimism, looking to the individual states to preserve liberty. He  writes:

The Founders gave us a Constitutional architecture which was designed to delay the arrival of demagogues. And make no mistake about it, Obama is a demagogue. He has totalitarian tendencies which manifest over and over and over again. Whether attacking religious liberty, or secured Chrysler bondholders, this man comes from a worldview distinctly un-American. Thankfully the Constitution still is operative. Some of the liberties the Founders secured are still ours to treasure. The press remains free. We can still assemble. And I suspect after tonight, gun ownership will substantially increase. But another part of our Constitutional architecture provides solace tonight – the 10th Amendment. Sure, we’ve heard the 10th thrown about for years. But tonight it ripened. Whatever powers aren’t given to the federal government, it doesn’t have. And the states are empowered to push back against federal power. It’s funny how those wise architects 200 years ago anticipated things we couldn’t anticipate just a decade ago. It is providential that the document contains seeds that sprout over time. The 10th Amendment does not lend itself to the sort of corrupt interpretation that the Commerce Clause does. States retain power, period. …

Bryan Preston writes in a spirit of mea culpa but let’s-now-do-it-right encouragement:

We can blame the candidate, sure. Romney didn’t fully capitalize on his first-debate win, and apparently the Chris Christie/Barack Obama lovefest turned a lot of votes back to the president, too. But overall, Romney ran almost as competent a challenger’s campaign as I’ve seen. We can blame the press, sure. Benghazi alone would have sunk most presidents — most Republican presidents — in weeks if not days. The coverup by the Complicit Media was shameful in the extreme. But we’ve faced down the MSM before, and won. So, no, I don’t think we can just blame Romney and I don’t think we can just blame the press. Even combined, those two aren’t enough to explain what happened today. There is something deeply wrong with our country. We’ve been living on borrowed time — and trillions of borrowed dollars — for a decade already. We seem to think that we can keep on doing so. That more than anything else is “the new normal.” Thomas Jefferson famously said of the slavery issue, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” I tremble for my country when I think that the God of Compound Interestis a far more jealous God than Jahweh, Allah, and Zuul all wrapped up into a single, bloody package. Maybe that truth — the truth — doesn’t sell in a country that’s been suffering for four years now, and with no real end in sight. This election should have been something like a walkover for the challenger. But no. Our economic destiny is already written in stone, with four trillion in new debt run up by Bush and the GOP, and another six trillion by Obama and the Democrats. Our only hope is rapid and wrenching reform. The alternative is hyperinflation, Cloward-Piven [forcing the break-down of the system and then establishing communism], and all the rest of the Zimbabwe-like horror. And that means Mitt Romney didn’t fail us. That means people like me — people like you — failed our country. We had years to make the case, and we didn’t. We worked our bottoms off, but it wasn’t enough. So we must redouble our efforts. … Do not tire, do not flag, do not quit. … We will need to fight [Obama] at every turn. I’m not quitting. Don’t you quit now, either.

We won’t be quitting.

The worst is yet to be, and for as long as we have the freedom to say what we think, we – and all our readers, we trust and hope – will continue to do so.

… And, on further thought, do so even after that freedom is denied us, because then it will be even more necessary. That’s our pledge.

Yesterday, by a majority of 1,057,148* (a figure we have just derived from the Drudge Report), Americans chose to give up liberty by re-electing the socialist Islam-lover Barack Obama to the presidency.

And so “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is perishing, contrary to President Lincoln’s hope.

It is no wild exaggeration but a sober truth that Obama prefers to govern in the manner of a tyrant, against liberty in principle, and destructive of it in practice.

Thomas Sowell gives a few of many possible examples of Obama’s contempt for American Constitutional democracy:

The checks and balances of the Constitution have been evaded time and time again by the Obama administration, undermining the fundamental right of the people to determine the laws that govern them, through their elected representatives.

You do not have a self-governing people when huge laws are passed too fast for the public to even know what is in them.

You do not have a self-governing people when “czars” are created by Executive Orders, so that individuals wielding vast powers equal to, or greater than, the powers of Cabinet members do not have to be vetted and confirmed by the people’s elected representatives in the Senate, as Cabinet members must be.

You do not have a self-governing people when decisions to take military action are referred to the United Nations and the Arab League, but not to the Congress of the United States, elected by the American people, whose blood and treasure are squandered.You do not have a self-governing people when a so-called “consumer protection” agency is created to be financed by the unelected officials of the Federal Reserve System, which can create its own money out of thin air, instead of being financed by appropriations voted by elected members of Congress who have to justify their priorities and trade-offs to the taxpaying public.

You do not have a self-governing people when laws passed by the Congress, signed by previous Presidents, and approved by the federal courts, can have the current President waive whatever sections he does not like, and refuse to enforce those sections, despite his oath to see that the laws are faithfully executed.

Barack Obama … has refused to carry out sections of the immigration laws that he does not like, unilaterally creating de facto amnesty for those illegal immigrants he has chosen to be exempt from the law. The issue is not — repeat, NOT — the wisdom or justice of this President’s immigration policy, but the seizing of arbitrary powers not granted to any President by the Constitution of the United States.

You do not have a self-governing people if President Obama succeeds in having international treaties under United Nations auspices govern the way Americans live their lives, whether with gun control laws or other laws. …

The desire to circumvent the will of the American people was revealed even more ominously when Barack Obama said to Russian President Medvedev – when he thought the microphone was off – that, after he is reelected and need never face the voters again, he can be more “flexible” with the Russians about missile defense.

There are other signs of Obama’s contempt for American Constitutional democracy, but these should be more than enough. Dare we risk how far he will go when he never has to face the voters again, and can appoint Supreme Court justices who can rubber stamp his power grabs?

A majority of 1,057,148 chose to force the nation to risk it.

America is no longer the political embodiment of the idea of liberty.

Thomas Sowell ends by asking rhetorically –

Will this still be America in 2016?

No.

* Later numbers of popular and electoral college votes may be found here.

Before he crashes down next week (as we ardently hope he will), here’s an outline of his amazing rise while Americans were not paying attention.

The video was made when Barack Obama was standing for election to the presidency in 2008. It didn’t get the attention it deserves.

It bears re-showing now.

ET Williams comments on Obama’s lack of credentials to be president of the USA.  Repetitive yes, but apt.

Just as the bankrupt EU (with any luck) is about to self-destruct, some thick Norwegians decide to give it a Nobel Prize.

There’s nothing unusual about the Prize being awarded to the Least Deserving. They gave it to the Grandfather of Contemporary Political Terrorism, Yasser Arafat. They gave it (instead of a more suitable Chicken Little prize not yet instituted) to the climate-threat hoaxster, Al Gore. They gave it to Barack Obama for doing nothing at all.

This is from an editorial in the IBD:

This year’s Peace Prize goes to the EU for its “successful struggle for peace and reconciliation and for democracy and human rights.” This isn’t the committee’s worst choice. But it’s one of them.

Barack Obama, Al Gore, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Yasser Arafat and Mikhail Gorbachev were all worse choices.

So picking the EU, which is having a hard time holding itself together, isn’t the most asinine decision the committee has made. But it could have done better.

If transforming most of Europe “from a continent of wars to a continent of peace” is the standard, the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize should have gone to the United States. This country has been more effective at keeping peace in Europe than any other entity.

America has had a strong military presence in Europe since World War II. The U.S. has subsidized European security with troops on the ground, jets in the air and trillions spent.

With money that would have otherwise been used for defense freed up for other purposes, Western European nations set about building their now-bankrupt welfare states. While America bought guns for Europe, Europe bought butter for itself. …

The five-member Nobel Peace Prize Committee, based in Oslo, has itself become a joke. Maybe it’s time to give the Nobel Peace Prize responsibilities to a less frivolous group.

… from bitter experience, warns against the Democrats’ socialist policies: