And You Thought McCarthy Was Dead

On Wednesday, a few of our savvy readers tipped me off to a new development that I had somehow missed. The President of the United States, in the best paranoid style of politics, has decided that the outpouring of citizen anger over his socialization of America, particularly health care, is a sinister plot by the Republican National Committee and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. So he is taking immediate steps to stop it. Let's call it "Snitchgate."

So who's that handsome devil in the picture? For those of you not old enough to recognize him instantly, that's the favorite scare-devil of the liberal-left, one Joseph McCarthy, Senator from Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Whenever you query a liberal on any questionable, treasonous or unconstitutional act coming from the left wing of the Democratic Party, the first word out of their crooked mouths is "McCarthyism." It's like an insane Greek chorus, or a bad case of Tourettes syndrome. It's entirely involuntary. Pavlovian, actually.

I'm scarcely old enough to remember McCarthy at all, but I am old enough to remember the proceedings of McCarthy's sister organization in the Congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee. During the height of Red infiltration into the highest levels of American government, the two committees demonstrated historic excesses in pursuing what the left called "the witch hunts." But the difference between a witch hunt and a communist hunt is that there are no witches.

When the leftists attacked George W. Bush as Hitler and America as a tyrannical imperial power, we were told by the Democrats that "dissent is patriotic." When loud and destructive demonstrators turned up at public meetings and on public streets shouting their hatred of all things American and destroying property and physically assaulting those who disagreed with them, we were told that any attempt to restore law and order was fascist oppression. The left shouts "McCarthyism" and "fascist" without having any idea of the actual meaning of either word.

So where are the cries of McCarthyism today when the President and his palace guard set up a White House snitch e-mail address to report those who disagree with the President? In the forty-eight hours since our readers woke me up to this travesty, there has been considerable flak from the blogs and a few news sites. But I'm still waiting for the outraged headlines from the New York Times and the red-faced anger of the TV talking heads. I suspect I'll be waiting for a very long time.

Even FDR at the height of World War II, Johnson at the height of the Vietnam War, and Nixon at the height of his paranoia didn't set up a White House hotlline for citzens to report their fellow citizens for dissenting from the administration's actions. This is something more reminiscent of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Maoist China. It's straight out of the playbook in Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism. One of several ways to control an unruly populace is to get everyone informing on everyone else in hopes that the government thugs will come after them last.

Obama's socialists first ran afoul of the tea party protests, and attempted to paint the spontaneous demonstrators as Republican Party plants who were so unpatriotic as to question the government's power grabs, takeovers, and tax increases. Now that Obama's pet project, socialized medicine, has come under attack from many expected and many more unexpected directions, he has decided that it's time to call out the troops and shut this rebellion down.

People are showing up at public meetings all over the country to let Obama know that they think his health care plan stinks like a fish in the sun. Obama's response is to open a White House e-mail hotline to report anyone who is stirring up dissent. Ironically, he is asking people to report anything "fishy." That's his way of describing anything vocal or written that doesn't say that Obamacare is the greatest thing since sliced bread. He doesn't understand why any right-thinking American wouldn't love a plan so complicated that it has more twists than a western sidewinder rattlesnake, and is equally dangerous. It's so damned complicated that even he doesn't understand it, and his lame attempts to explain it sound like they came out of a word-processor designed by Cuisinart.

With Congressional representatives returning to their home districts during the August recess, the duly-elected thieves are facing angry constituents who have reached and exceeded their saturation point. The liberals cannot comprehend that Americans are not easily intimidated, nor are they prone to be silent as they watch their freedom, their personal health, and their livelihoods slip into the hands of government apparatchiks. So it must be that vast right-wing conspiracy stirring up the people who mindlessly cling to their guns and Bibles. They're out to get the Chosen One.

Here's what the Democratic National Committee has to say: "The Republicans and their allied groups--desperate after losing two consecutive elections and every major policy fight on Capitol Hill--are inciting angry mobs of a small number of rabid right wing extremists funded by K Street Lobbyists to disrupt thoughtful discussions about the future of health care in America taking place in Congressional Districts across the country. However, much like we saw at the McCain-Palin rallies last year where crowds were baited with cries of 'socialist,' 'communist,' and where the birthers movement was born--these mobs of extremists are not interested in having a thoughtful discussion about the issues--but like some Republican leaders have said--they are interested in 'breaking' the President and destroying his Presidency."

Note the words: "Desperate" "mobs" "small number of rabid right-wingers." Ridicule, demonize, minimize. I seem to remember getting that in my radical days from the Saul Alinsky handbook Rules for Radicals.

Take out "right wing extremists" and replace it with "communists" and it is a statement Tail-Gunner Joe McCarthy would be proud of. However, the calculated attempt to suppress dissent never before came from the official organ of a political party or high-ranking officials in the White House. McCarthy never asked ordinary American citizens to call or write to the White House directly and report dissenters to a special hotline designed solely to gather information on those who disagree with the administration. How dare ordinary Americans or grassroots organizations oppose the government without the assistance of Obama, ACORN and other community-organizers?

Linda Douglas, Communications Director for the White House Office of Health Reform ginned-up an indignant video in which she says: "Everyone with a computer and a lot of free time can take a phrase here and there and make it sound like [Obama] is saying something he doesn't really say." She must be referring to several unedited and full-length videos of Obama saying in no uncertain terms that his goal is ultimately to impose single-payer medical care and get the rotten insurance companies completely out of the picture. Of course those videos were filmed at pre-election rallies of union members and proponents of socialized medicine and were not meant to be viewed by the general public.

The latest big lie being told by the Obamacrats is the one coming out of the woman who is third in line for the Presidency--Nancy Pelosi. She was asked by a TV reporter if she thought that the protests were legitimate grassroots events. Her exact words: "I think--they're astroturf--you be the judge. They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that." For the uninitiated, "astroturf" is the expression the lefties coined to describe the "phony" grass roots of the tea party protests. George Bush photoshopped into Hitler and the swastika superimposed on the Jewish Star didn't bother the Democrats one whit. But Pelosi hallucinates "swastikas and symbols like that" and suddenly it's the end of the world. So far, I'm unaware of any photographic proof of those symbols showing up at any rally, but if they did, they would not be that far from accurate.

Some of the blogs are referring to Obama's e-mail snitch address as the place where he can compile his "enemies list." This is far too kind, and somewhat naive. The expression "enemies list" refers to Nixon's list of political opponents whom he considered enemies and against whom he wanted to take action. That's small potatoes compared to a White House hotline that is designed solely to collect information on regular citizens who might pose a threat to the President's plans. And it's not aimed at garnering information from political operatives. He wants to get that information from you. This is not like Nixon. It's more like Himmler. We should have seen this coming when Obama and Biden warned citizens who didn't like what he was proposing even before the election that "those people had better be careful what they say." There is a point at which a change in form becomes a change in substance.

As "town hall meetings" are now being regularly attended by those traitors who think socialism is a bad thing, Congressional representatives are working on developing a different kind of town hall meeting. You come to the town hall, and you get shown a video of your representative mouthing the Democratic talking-points. No direct contact, no questions, no protest. Simple. They're terrified of their own constituents. More from the DNC: "This mob activity is straight from the playbook of high-level Republican political operatives. They have no plan for moving our county forward, so they've called out the mob."

So now we're a "mob." The Democrats assured us that anti-war, anti-Bush demonstrators who shouted down conservative speakers, tossed pies at them, then broke off to go out into the streets to smash store windows, beat up citizens who disagreed with them, carried "Bushitler" signs with the President hanging in effigy, and caused general mayhem were patriotic dissenters. But ordinary citizens who show up at town hall meetings to protest peacefully (if occasionally loudly) are a "mob" bent on attacking the President. The worst thing I've been able to find on the internet was a video of a crowd "mobbing" Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett where one protestor was holding up a sign with a picture of Doggett sporting devil's horns. Wow! Horrible stuff! Hypocrisy, thy name is "Liberal."

Make no mistake. This is a direct assault on free speech and freedom of the press. You are being asked to send an informant's e-mail directly to the White House to let Obama know who is attempting to push the socialist train off the tracks. As a good patriot, you are expected to do your duty and report anything "fishy." So here's my suggestion: Do what they ask. Find an article, or a blog, or a public statement in support of Obama's crazy health care scheme and send it to the White House--exactly as directed by the Obamacrats. Here's the e-mail address: flag@whitehouse.gov. Be sure to tell them you've found something "fishy." I've already sent three, and I intend to keep doing so at least twice a day until this monstrous scheme is utterly defeated, or the White House e-mail address crashes, whichever comes first.

As a side note, I realized in the wee hours of the morning that my associate Andrew Price has done an extensive analysis of Obama's plan on this site, as well as providing what I consider to be an excellent counter-proposal. Andrew, my friend, that looks mighty "fishy." But I am hoping that nobody reports him to the White House. Or maybe not. In any event, in light of Obama's transparent attempt to squelch free speech, I suggest that all of you carefully read Andrew's posts on the subject, if you have not already done so. Then compare it to Obama's blithering defense of his plan. You decide which plan smells fishy. And while you're at it, you might want to start demanding to know why the mainstream media is largely ignoring the "snitch hotline" issue. Let's get out there and expose "Snitchgate" to the light of day.