What Obama is inflicting on America is not just socialism (see our post below, What is socialism?), it is socialist dictatorship.

He does not want America to prosper. He wants power for himself.

He thinks like a dictator, acts like a dictator, and lives like a dictator.

He personally does not want Americans to exploit their own oil resources, and his will prevails.

From the Heritage Foundation:

Next week, for the fifth time since July, the first family will board Air Force One for yet another luxury vacation, this time to an exclusive Martha’s Vineyard estate that rents for up to $50,000 a week. But before they head north, the Obamas will first grace Panama City, Fla., with their presence this weekend for what is being billed as a “solidarity vacation to the Gulf Coast.” While in Florida, the President is expected to meet with local business leaders to discuss the effects of the spill before departing on a cross-country trip around the United States including stops in Los Angeles and Seattle to raise cash for Democrats and a stop in Wisconsin at a renewable energy factory. Not on the agenda: Any meetings with oil workers in other Gulf states who are now unemployed thanks to President Obama’s Gulf oil drilling ban.

If the President really wanted to see the economic damage his policies are causing in the Gulf, he could first stop in Pascagoula, Miss., where idle oil rigs in the Signal International shipyard have formed an eerie floating ghost city that locals have dubbed “Rig Row.” Instead of being deployed at sea where they could be creating wealth for this country and jobs for Gulf residents, these rigs are wasting away idly in port as a direct result of President Obama’s oil drilling moratorium – a moratorium that when first issued on just deep sea rigs, a federal judge ruled was “arbitrary and capricious.” Undaunted, the Obama administration doubled down, issuing a broader oil drilling injunction that is killing even more jobs than the first ban. …

The Obama oil ban isn’t about safety, it is about permanently shrinking our domestic oil production capacity as quickly as possible.

Why? Does his motive have to do with the fact that his moratorium makes America poorer, and the Arab oil states richer?

What is socialism?

Never mind dictionary definitions. Rather ask, what does a socialist state do?

It controls the resources of a nation and allocates them as it chooses.

More fully: In a socialist state, resources are controlled by an all-powerful central agency, the government, and distributed according to the arbitrary decision of the most powerful person or persons in that government.

Widely, “socialism” is thought of as a creed of equality, as is “communism”.  It is to achieve their high ideal of equality that socialists and communists favor the forced collection and allocation of resources.  If they achieve a kind of equality, it is only and always an equality of misery. For this they have many explanations and excuses, but no remedy.

The difference between socialism and communism is often said to be a difference of degree, or manner of enforcement. In common parlance, at least in the West, “socialism” refers to a similar but milder, less oppressive, system of collectivization.  West European states were happy to call themselves “socialist’, and saw the self-described “communist” states, chiefly the Soviet Union, as their enemies.

In the Soviet Union, however, “socialism” and “communism” were commonly used interchangeably, as synonyms. In Marxist theory, “communism” is an ideal that will be realized when the state – ie government – has “withered away”.  But withering away is not on the agenda of any existing socialist government, nor is likely to be.

In fact, most forms of collectivism can  justifiably be called “socialist”.  (An exception is Islam.) The collectivist idea is that the society, not the individual, is important, so the citizenry must be organized. The organization must be enforced, whether harshly or temperately.  Most self-described “socialist” states consider their rule not only temperate but positively beneficent, while they see “communist” states as cruel and oppressive.

But the word “socialism” cannot bear a connotation of beneficence. Nor does it always imply equality.

Remember that the Nazis were self-described socialists: national socialists. Nazi is the short name for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.  And of course the Nazis saw themselves as beneficent – to those they counted as worthy of existence, the “Aryan” Germans. They had a tender care for their citizens. In the Third Reich official collections were taken up for the poor to keep them warm in winter (the annual “Winterhilfe” charity drive).  But nobody thinks of the Third Reich as a kindly state, or one that did humankind any good. And its rulers scorned the notion of equality, either between persons or between nations.

So one clear distinction that does exist among socialist states is that some are ideologically egalitarian – eg Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Castroite Cuba – and some are non-egalitarian – eg Nazi Germany.

The Soviet communists considered themselves international socialists – even when Stalin declared his policy to be for a time  “socialism in one country” (the one country being the USSR). The Marxist ideological vision was and remains a world government controlling the world’s resources – a vision now justified in the name of environmentalism.

The biggest political divide comes between collectivism and freedom. Or rather, since a totally free country does not exist, between those who hold collectivism as an ideal, and those who want every individual to be free.

While it is true that a totally free country is nowhere to be found, such a thing could exist. It would not be an anarchy, because freedom is a product of civil order, and  is only possible under the rule of law. Everyone’s freedom should be limited only by everyone else’s, but the protection of every individual, his person, property, and freedom, requires the rule of law.

The USA was as free as any country has ever been, more so than any other large nation. (Small areas have been freer, such as Hong Kong, which was legally under British rule and could rely on the protection of law, but was free of taxes and all the harm that ensues from taxation – such as regulation of trade, and welfare.)

Now Americans are losing their freedom rapidly, since they voted Democratic socialists into power in Congress, and a Marxist-trained “community organizer” to the presidency. He has packed fellow socialists into his administration. Some declare themselves to be “Maoists” or “communists”.  All of them are collectivists.

It will take a hard fight to recover the liberty that has been lost, but for those who want to be free, it’s a battle that must be won.

Jillian Becker    August 13, 2010

For once we have reason to applaud a trade union.

From the Washington Times:

The National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 7,000 ICE agents and employees, voted 259-0 for a resolution saying there was “growing dissatisfaction and concern” over the leadership of Assistant Secretary John Morton, who heads ICE, and Phyllis Coven, assistant director for the agency’s office of detention policy and planning.

The resolution said ICE leadership had “abandoned the agency’s core mission of enforcing U.S. immigration laws and providing for public safety,” instead directing its attention “to campaigning for programs and policies related to amnesty and the creation of a special detention system for foreign nationals that exceeds the care and services provided to most U.S. citizens similarly incarcerated.

“It is the desire of our union … to publicly separate ourselves from the actions of Director Morton and Assistant Director Coven and publicly state that ICE officers and employees do not support Morton or Coven or their misguided and reckless initiatives, which could ultimately put many in America at risk,” the union said.

In a strongly worded statement, the union and its affiliated local councils said the integrity of the agency “as well as the public safety” would be “better provided for in the absence of Director Morton and Assistant Director Coven.”

The statement also noted that:

• The majority of ICE’s enforcement and removal officers are prohibited from making street arrests or enforcing U.S. immigration laws outside of the jail setting.

• Hundreds of ICE officers nationwide perform no law enforcement duties whatsoever because of resource mismanagement within the agency.

• ICE detention reforms have transformed into a detention system aimed at providing resortlike living conditions to criminal aliens based on recommendations not from ICE officers and field managers, but from “special-interest groups.”

• The lack of technical expertise and field experience has resulted in a priority of providing bingo nights, dance lessons and hanging plants to criminals, instead of addressing safe and responsible detention reforms for noncriminal individuals and families. …

The no-confidence vote, taken in June and made public last week in a letter by the union, said the agency’s senior leadership dedicated “more time to campaigning for immigration reforms aimed at large-scale amnesty legislation than advising the American public and federal lawmakers on the severity of the illegal-immigration problems.”

The would-be builders of the mosque and community-center next to Ground Zero do not own all of the site they want to develop.

Half of it is owned by Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. (“Con Ed”), a company that provides electric, gas, and steam service in New York City.

Apparently neither Community Board 1, which approved the plans for the mosque, nor the Muslim developers themselves knew this.

From the New York Post:

“We never heard anything about Con Ed whatsoever,” said a stunned Julie Menin, the chairwoman of Community Board 1, which passed a May resolution supporting the mosque.

Daisy Khan, one of the mosque’s organizers [and wife of its imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf], told The Post last week that both buildings on Park Place are needed to house the worship and cultural center. But she claimed ignorance about the Con Ed ownership of 49-51 Park Place and referred questions to Soho Properties, which bought the building at 45-47 Park Place in 2009.

Rep. Peter King, who opposes the mosque, said the developers seemed to be “operating under false pretenses.”

“I wonder what else they are hiding,” said King (R-LI). “If we can’t have the full truth on this, what can we believe?”

Any hope that Con Ed will refuse to sell – a refusal that could scuttle the offensive project – would be misplaced. Their site, 49-51 Park Place, “is being appraised for a possible sale to Soho Properties, the developer behind the controversial mosque.”

However, the Public Service Commission would have to approve the sale. It’s a five-member board, controlled by Governor Paterson.

Governor Paterson seems to be more aware than Mayor Bloomberg that a huge mosque built on the edge of Ground Zero will offend millions of Americans. He has offered state help for the Muslim project if the developers will consent to building their mosque and community-center elsewhere:

“It does seem to ignite an immense amount of anxiety among the citizens of New York and people everywhere, and I think not without cause,” Paterson said in a news conference in Manhattan.

But the offer left the developers and Mayor Bloomberg cold:

The developers declined to comment. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who last week made an impassioned defense of the project planned for lower Manhattan, declined to comment through a spokesman.

So it seems that the important thing for the Muslim developers is to build on the site next to Ground Zero.

Why is Mayor Bloomberg so keen that the mosque projects should go ahead?

Kathy Barkulis at Front Page suggests why:

Mayor Bloomberg’s strident support of building a mosque at Ground Zero made me think that he had to make nice with the Saudi’s for monetary purposes. In my mind there could be no other reason for Bloomberg to take such a stand as the Mayor of New York City. …

I don’t know what’s in Mayor Bloomberg’s heart, but I’ll take an educated guess. His vast empire depends on current and future financial dealings with Saudi Arabia. It is in his best interest to make nice with them. … Bloomberg can score big personally by staying in favor with the Saudis.

So the plan to build the mosque, plainly motivated to start with by nothing better than sheer malice, will almost certainly be carried out.

It is widely reported today  – here, for instance –  that the Imam who plans to build that mosque next to Ground Zero is touring several rich Arab states as an official representative of the US, sent by the State Department at tax-payers’ expense.

P.J.Crowley (formerly of the George Soros funded Center for American Progress), speaking for the State Department, said:

“We have a long-term relationship with him. His work on tolerance and religious diversity is well-known and he brings a moderate perspective to foreign audiences on what it’s like to be a practicing Muslim in the United States.”

Two leading Republican members of Congress, Reps. Ilean Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Peter King of New York, called government sponsorship of Rauf’s trip “unacceptable” in a joint statement. They said he had suggested in at least one interview that the United States was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks …

“The State Department’s selection of Feisal Abdul Rauf to represent the American people through this program further calls into question the administration’s policy and funding priorities,” Ros-Lehtinen and King, who are the ranking members of the Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security committees, said in their statement.

Crowley said that during the trip Rauf will not be allowed to raise funds for the proposed Islamic Center and mosque near ground zero … [and that] the Obama administration has no position on Rauf’s plans, which he termed a local zoning matter for New York. But he acknowledged that the State Department had posted a transcript of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Aug. 3 speech defending the project on a website that it runs for foreign audiences.

“We posted it because we thought it was useful for people overseas to understand perspectives on this issue,” Crowley said. “We certainly support what the mayor was underscoring, which is the history of religious diversity and religious tolerance in his city.”

In addition to the original English language version of Bloomberg’s speech, the department has posted Arabic and Farsi translations of the remarks in which the mayor adamantly rejected opposition to the mosque.

Apparently, in their passionate quest for tolerance and religious diversity, the State Department is actually giving tax-payers’ money to Muslims all over the world to build mosques and Islamic community centers.

This is from American Thinker:

Newsweek, the Washington Post’s former progressive stepchild, published an op-ed by Fareed Zakaria, the in-house lapdog for the Administration, extolling the virtues of building the Ground Zero Mosque. A couple of sentences demand a great deal more explanation. …

“Washington has funded mosques, schools, institutes, and community centers that are trying to modernize* Islam around the world. We should be encouraging groups like the one behind this project, not demonizing them. Were this mosque being built in a foreign city, chances are that the U.S. government would be funding it.”

Perhaps we all missed the memo where US taxpayers are gleefully funding Islamic “mosques, schools, institutes, and community centers” around the globe. Of course, US troops have restored hundreds of schools and community centers in Iraq and Afghanistan, but mosques and Islamic institutes? This seems very difficult to believe.

So, as an enraged and curious taxpaying citizen, I have a few questions for Mr. Zakaria, our Congress and this Administration. What are the locations, costs, and dates of construction of these US taxpayer-funded mosques and Islamic institutes? … What particular piece of Congressional legislation authorized US taxpayer dollars to be spent on these mosques and Islamic institutes? …

The Constitution states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” I’m damn sure spending US taxpayer dollars on constructing mosques was not envisioned by the Founding Fathers nor by the overwhelming majority of American citizens.

*Daniel Greenfied, at Canada Free Press, writes on the question Is Islam’s Problem a Lack of Modernity? and demonstrates that it is not: Islam makes use of all the amenities of our time. Muslims cannot invent them, but they can and do exploit them.

What Islam lacks is intellectual enlightenment, which could bring it to tolerance and acceptance of religious diversity – in other words, to so complete a transformation that it would no longer be Islam.

It has been argued that Europe would better be able to protect itself from the onslaught of Islam if it were stronger in its traditional Christian faiths. We don’t agree. We cannot see how an argument can be won by opposing one irrationality with another.

America is still religious, mostly Christian. How is its Christianity helping to protect it from Islam?

The very nature of Christianity with its injunctions to love indiscriminately and forgive regardless of justice; the desire thus bred in Christians to see good where there isn’t any, to trust where no reason  has been given, not to judge where judgment is necessary, not to recognize evil for fear of sullying their own souls, can make them self-blinded, oblivious, and putty in the hands of their enemies.

In an article giving a very good example of how some Christians are all too easily deceived by Islamic guile, William Kilpatrick writes:

I wonder now if Christians, in their naivete and in their desire to be thought tolerant, aren’t inadvertently paving the way for an eventual Islamic theocracy.

It seems that quite a number of Christian churches are now involved in “outreach” programs with local mosques. The typical outreach is for a church to invite an Islamic leader to come in and explain Islam to the congregation. Naturally, the imams present Islam as a religion of peace and love. And naturally in their desire to appear loving and accepting, the Christians lap it up. The imams know how to press all the “tolerance,” “outreach,” and “respect” buttons, and the result is that the Christians end up thinking Islam is just another nice, brotherly religion like their own. As a result, they can probably be counted on not to oppose the building of a local mosque, or for that matter not to oppose any Muslim agenda or initiative. Islamic leaders have done a good job of framing their grievances as civil rights issues, and this, of course, has great appeal to the many Christians who see the pursuit of social justice as their main mission. Mentally, many Christians still live in the days of “We Shall Overcome” and lunch counter sit-ins. They think that in supporting and defending Islam they are like the Christians in the sixties who linked arms with civil rights marchers, and sang hymns together.

Lately, Muslim leaders have been taking advantage of the Christian disposition for outreach by offering outreach programs of their own. 20,000 Dialogues is a nationwide interfaith initiative that helps local level imams set up outreach programs, and provides films and speakers to facilitate the dialogue. The current offering is a film titled “Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Think.” … The film massages polling data to make it appear that Islam is a predominately peaceful religion.

One such outreach was conducted on July 24th at the Lamb of God Church in Fort Myers, Florida. The guest speaker was Imam Shaker Elsayed of the Falls Church, Virginia mosque, “Dar Al Hijrah”—the same mosque where Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki mentored Major Nidal Hasan, the perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre. Elsayed himself is the former Secretary General of the Muslim American Society, an organization which has been described … as a “major component” of the “Wahhabi Lobby.”

Aside from the dubious connections of the speaker and the dubious nature of the film, the most interesting aspect of the presentation was the response of the 400-member audience. With a few exceptions they liked it. And they didn’t like the attempt by some members of ACT for America and the Florida Security Council who were present to ask tough questions during the Q&A session. … . Their sympathies were obviously with the representatives of Islam, and against the critics of Islam. …

Christians …  like Americans in general … have been nurtured on multicultural myths about the essential equality of different cultures and religions. So they are quite happy to nod in agreement when they are informed by the Islamic representative (or by their own pastor) that Islam is no more a threat than the synagogue down the street. For too many Christians, the essence of Christianity boils down to tolerance and non-judgmentalism. Moreover, Christianity in America has become so mixed up with therapy and pop psychology that, nowadays, the surest sign of election is feeling good about oneself. It is, of course, much easier to feel good about yourself if you can congratulate yourself on being tolerant, sensitive, and respectful of differences. It’s likely that many of the Christians who attend outreach presentations like the one at Lamb of God Church aren’t really interested in being educated about Islam. What they are really seeking is confirmation of their existing multicultural assumptions. So their sympathies will lie with those who tell them that it’s reasonable to keep dreaming dreams of interfaith harmony, and they will resist those who want to wake them from the dream.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, having to make a statement about the 10 members of the medical team working for a Christian aid organization who were shot dead by the Taliban, said yesterday in that cold dead voice of hers:

With these killings, [the Taliban] have shown us yet another example of the lengths to which they will go to advance their twisted ideology.

Their twisted ideology? What is their ideology? It has a name – Islam. The ideology in the name of which the Taliban killed those men and women is Islam.

It is not their ideology that is objected to by the administration of which Hillary Clinton is a member. On the contrary, they protect it. Obama positively promotes it.

It is only the method the Taliban use that bothers Barack and Hillary: the method of terrorism. They have to denounce that, regardless of where their sympathies lie. But Muslims who help advance Islamic jihad by other means – infiltration, indoctrination – have the full blessing of Obama’s henchmen and henchwomen. Hillary Clinton herself lifted the ban on Tariq Ramadan getting a visa to enter the US, and he’s a Muslim who devotes his life to promoting the ideology of Islam.

When Attorney General Eric Holder had  to comment on the arrest of 14 American Muslims for supplying money and recuits to al-Shabab, the al-Qaeda  affiliated terrorist organization in Somalia, he did not say – not even once – that they were Muslims. He studiously avoided mentioning the fact. The word only came into his statement when he praised unnamed Muslims for helping to bring about the arrests. Then he went on to lecture us all, hastening to instruct us that Muslims are victims of terrorism. So are others, Mr Holder! In America many more non-Muslims than Muslims are victims of Muslim terrorism, but they don’t deserve a mention?

The administration is in denial that Islam is intrinsically militant, terroristic, cruel, and intent on the conquest of the rest of the world. But that is why the 10 Christians were killed in cold blood in Afghanistan. That is why American Muslims are helping al-Shabab and al-Qaeda.

What’s the point of pretending otherwise? Reality is not changed by pretense.

In the vocabulary of the militant international Left, the word “peace” is a code word for “pro-tyranny” and “anti-freedom”.

This comes from a must-read article, titled The Peace Racket, by Bruce Bawer in City Journal (reprinted in the current issue from Summer 2007):

We need to make two points about this movement at the outset. First, it’s opposed to every value that the West stands for—liberty, free markets, individualism—and it despises America, the supreme symbol and defender of those values. Second, we’re talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations. It is also waging an aggressive, under-the-media-radar campaign for a cabinet-level Peace Department in the United States. Sponsored by Ohio Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich (along with more than 60 cosponsors), House Resolution 808 would authorize a Secretary of Peace to “establish a Peace Academy,” “develop a peace education curriculum” for elementary and secondary schools, and provide “grants for peace studies departments” at campuses around the country. If passed, the measure would catapult the peace studies movement into a position of extraordinary national, even international, influence.

The Peace Racket’s boundaries aren’t easy to define. It embraces scores of “peace institutes” and “peace centers” in the U.S. and Europe, plus several hundred university peace studies programs. …

At the movement’s heart … are programs whose purported emphasis is on international relations. Their founding father is a 77-year-old Norwegian professor, Johan Galtung, who established the International Peace Research Institute in 1959 and the Journal of Peace Research five years later. Invariably portrayed in the media as a charismatic and (these days) grandfatherly champion of decency, Galtung is in fact a lifelong enemy of freedom. In 1973, he thundered that “our time’s grotesque reality” was—no, not the Gulag or the Cultural Revolution, but rather the West’s “structural fascism.” He’s called America a “killer country,” accused it of “neo-fascist state terrorism,” and gleefully prophesied that it will soon follow Britain “into the graveyard of empires.” …

Fittingly, he urged Hungarians not to resist the Soviet Army in 1956, and his views on World War II suggest that he’d have preferred it if the Allies had allowed Hitler to finish off the Jews and invade Britain.

Though Galtung has opined that the annihilation of Washington, D.C., would be a fair punishment for America’s arrogant view of itself as “a model for everyone else,” he’s long held up certain countries as worthy of emulation—among them Stalin’s USSR, whose economy, he predicted in 1953, would soon overtake the West’s. He’s also a fan of Castro’s Cuba, which he praised in 1972 for “break[ing] free of imperialism’s iron grip.” …

His all-time favorite nation? China during the Cultural Revolution. Visiting his Xanadu, Galtung concluded that the Chinese loved life under Mao: after all, they were all “nice and smiling.” While “repressive in a certain liberal sense,” he wrote, Mao’s China was “endlessly liberating when seen from many other perspectives that liberal theory has never understood.” Why, China showed that “the whole theory about what an ‘open society’ is must be rewritten, probably also the theory of ‘democracy’—and it will take a long time before the West will be willing to view China as a master teacher in such subjects.”  [See our post, Mao in the White House, October 15, 2009, for glimpses of what Mao’s China was really like.]  …

Galtung’s use of the word “peace” to legitimize totalitarianism is an old Communist tradition. …

The people running today’s peace studies programs give a good idea of the movement’s illiberal, anti-American inclinations. The director of Purdue’s program is coeditor of Marxism Today, a collection of essays extolling socialism; Brandeis’s peace studies chairman has justified suicide bombings; the program director at the University of Missouri authorized a mass e-mail urging students and faculty to boycott classes to protest the Iraq invasion; and the University of Maine’s program director believes that “humans have been out of balance for centuries” and that “a unique opportunity of this new century is to engage in the creation of balance and harmony between yin and yang, masculine and feminine energies.” (Such New Age babble often mixes with the Marxism in peace studies jargon.)

What these people teach remains faithful to Galtung’s anti-Western inspiration. First and foremost, they emphasize that the world’s great evil is capitalism—because it leads to imperialism, which in turn leads to war. …

Students acquire a zero-sum picture of the world economy: if some countries and people are poor, it’s because others are rich. They’re taught that American wealth derives entirely from exploitation and that Americans, accordingly, are responsible for world poverty.

If the image of tenured professors pushing such anticapitalist nonsense on privileged suburban kids sounds like a classic case of liberals’ throwing stones at their own houses, get a load of this: America’s leading Peace Racket institution is probably the University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies—endowed by and named for the widow of Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, the ultimate symbol of evil corporate America. It was the Kroc Institute, by the way, that in 2004 invited Islamist scholar Tariq Ramadan to join its faculty, only to see him denied a U.S. visa on the grounds that he had defended terrorism. [He has since been granted a visa by Hillary Clinton – JB.] …

What’s alarming is that these [peace studies] students don’t plan to spend their lives on some remote mountainside in Nepal contemplating peace, harmony, and human oneness. They want to remake our world. They plan to become politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, journalists, lawyers, teachers, activists. They’ll bring to these positions all the mangled history and misbegotten ideology that their professors have handed down to them. Their careers will advance; the Peace Racket’s influence will spread. And as it does, it will weaken freedom’s foundations.