Mikhail Sergeyevich Obama

[Little-Acorn]

No, we're not calling Obama a Communist. We'll save that for a different thread. But the article points out something very interesting.

Obama recently made a speech in which he urged blacks to take more responsibility for their own lives, raise their kids right, etc. He seemed to imply that blaming whitey, or waiting for government to solve your problems for you, was the wrong way to go. Blacks were well advised to take matters into their own hands, and grasp the freedom (and responsibility) of doing things themselves that they used to wait for others to solve.

I don't doubt that Obama DIDN'T intend to refute the entire backbone of liberal policy in America. He probably meant only that blacks needed to do a LITTLE more in shouldering the load of problem-solving, while government and guilty-feeling whites still did the bulk of it. But, note that he got the heaviest applause when he suggested blacks deal with their problems themselves, watered-down though the suggestion was.

But the author of this article points out what happened the last time a high public figure suggested modifying "a little", people's ideology away from the "pure" line of the powers that be, after that "pure" line had failed its adherents for a few generations. The time was the late 1980s. The country was the USSR, and the public figure was Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gorby was a straight-line communist. But he put forth a platform that allowed "a little" freedom in, letting people do a little unregulated business, watch a little unregulated news media, etc. He didn't intend the change to go very far.

The result? Once the Russian people got a little taste of freedom, and saw how the (relatively) free parts of the world lived, they quickly got to demanding it all. "A little" change wasn't good enough. Within a few short years, they kicked out the entire Soviet government (including Gorbachev) and gained the freedom they hadn't had in generations.

With his speech of last week, Obama seems to be suggesting that blacks do "just a little" change in the way they have been running their lives since at least the 1960s, and "own" more responsibility for the everyday problems in their lives - problems that everyone commonly deals with, whether their skin color is black, white, brown, or purple. The author suggests that this might get Obama a lot more than he bargained for: Might it lead to blacks rejecting such racist programs as Affirmative Action in their entirety?

I prefer to explore the possibilities even further: Might Obama's words, putatively addressed to blacks, serve as the first wakeup call to modern liberals in general? Might they finally begin realizing that the entire liberal platform of government intrusion and dominance, the "Nanny State" the Dems have built up for nearly the last 100 years, is the failed scheme that it is?

An avalanche is frequently started by a small push against one little boulder. Might Obama have delivered the small push against one small part of the liberal Nanny State, that eventually gets people to abandon it completely, as the Russians ultimately abandoned Communism in the 1990s?

Could Obama be the Mikhail Gorbachev of the Civil Rights Movement? Or, ultimately, of the entire modern Liberal movement of the 20th century

I have a dream.......!!

--------------------------------------------------

http://opinionjournal.com

Mikhail Sergeyevich Obama

from "Best of the Web"
by James Taranto
July 15, 2008 -- 3:46 p.m. EDT

"Barack Obama received a prideful welcome from the annual NAACP convention Monday night, but in a stirring speech to the nation's oldest civil rights organization, he nonetheless insisted blacks must show greater responsibility for improving their own lives," the Associated Press reports from Cincinnati:

The man who could become the first black president urged Washington to provide more education and economic assistance. He called on corporate America to exercise greater social responsibility. But he also received his most lusty applause as he urged blacks to demand more of themselves.

"If we're serious about reclaiming that dream, we have to do more in our own lives. There's nothing wrong with saying that," Obama told a crowd estimated at 3,000. "But with providing the guidance our children need, turning off the TV set and putting away the video games; attending those parent-teacher conferences, helping our children with their homework, setting a good example. That's what everybody's got to do."

This is of a piece with the comments that led Jesse Jackson to fantasize about lynching Obama. It got us to thinking that maybe Obama is the Mikhail Gorbachev of the civil rights movement.

Consider the similarities: Gorbachev represented a generational change from Brezhnev and his short-lived successors. Obama represents a generational change from the likes of Jesse Jackson. Gorbachev never intended to bring down communism, only to reform it. Obama says he backs racial preferences but is not wedded to their current form. Gorbachev was a media darling. Obama . . . well, if Time does a "person" of the decade in 2010, can there be any doubt who it'll be?

Of course there are differences; all analogies are imperfect. The civil rights movement, whatever its flaws in its contemporary form, did enormous good for black Americans. The same can hardly be said for Soviet communism and those who lived under it. Gorbachev withdrew from Afghanistan; Obama says he'll invade Pakistan.

Still, here is the central point: Obama, like Gorbachev, may--without meaning to--bring about the collapse of an ideological movement that began idealistically but was corrupted and ultimately exhausted.

[Little-Acorn]

The modern liberalism practiced in the United States has never been able to stand competition. Niether did the communism practiced in the USSR for most of the 20th century. In the latter, there was always the risk that people would start noticing that free countries were prospering far more, had more and better food, more and better goods at all kinds of stores, drove more and better cars on better roads, had better hospitals and schools etc. The only way communism could survive, was to keep people believing it was best when it wasn't. And that was done by isolating the Soviet people from the outside world so they wouldn't know any better.

The same has been true of modern liberals in America. Their only means of survival has been to present a common, unified front of advocates, spokesmen who would constantly tell the people that liberalism was working, and that conservatism was not only unproductive but evil. From liberal politicians to newspapers to TV to schools, the message had to be delivered with 100% consistancy: Liberalism and the Nanny State were the ONLY fair way of running the country, and anyone who disagreed was greedy, heartless, subhuman, and in particular NOT TO BE LISTENED TO AT ALL. The idea of a lauded, trusted, firmly-on-the-plantation liberal figure departing in any way from the party line, was unthinkable. The very rare ones who actually did that, were either cocooned and ignored (Zell Miller) or heartily despised, excoriated, and punished (Joe Lieberman).

But now one such figure - the leading Democrat candidate for the Presidency, who cannot possibly be either ignored or ostracized - has strayed off the reservation. Barack Obama has actually implied the idea that blacks should take responsibility for their own lives, work out their own problems, and rise to prosperity without the help of government or the racial hatred that has characterized so much public discourse involving blacks (See "Affirmative Action", "Black Liberation Theology", etc.). And he was APPLAUDED for it by his heavily-minority audience when he did so!

The media can't ignore their darling, the extreme-liberal, leading Dem candidate for the Presidency in an election less than six months away. And they can hardly condemn him. That leave Option 3: Ignore what he said and pray nobody outside the room noticed it. A disgusting comment whispered by Jesse Jackson into a live mike, helped this process, diverting attention onto Jackson and away from Obama for that one critical speech.

Obama's speech was a crack in the facade of liberalism, that must have given the party bosses nightmares. Hopefully he will make many more such departures from the standard liberal line, though he is a long way from making the kind of pronouncements that then-President JFK did on Dec. 14, 1962, to the Economic Club of New York. It's a place the current extreme-left bosses hopes he'll never go.

[theHawk]

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the black community to change. As long as its cool to be a "pimp" or a thug, the young males are not going to be taking on the responsibility of fatherhood. Its easier to just ditch the bitch, or pay for her Planned Parenthood visit.