Obama’s Slave Ship

When I was young and living in Manhattan, I saw an Off-Off-Broadway play called Slave Ship. It was an experience I’ll never forget.

Unbeknownst to me, the performance was conducted in total darkness. The audience was subjected for one very long hour to the harrowing sounds of slavery. There were blood-curdling screams, whippings, and more.

Given that we were trapped in pitch blackness, the audience was held captive like the slaves, compelled to experience the same terror, helplessness, and despair. This was undoubtedly the intention of the play.

Summary of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules For Radicals”

Union organizers are often highly trained. In many unions this training includes indoctrination in Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.”

Saul Alinsky was a ruthless radical organizer. He would stop at nothing to win. Before he passed away in 1972 he published a book called “Rules for Radicals” in which he outlined his power tactics and questionable ethics.

Anyone interested in staying, or becoming, Union Free, whether in an organizing campaign or in a decertification or deauthorization election, ought to become familiar with these rules.

Commentary Magazine

Commentary is America’s premier monthly magazine of opinion and a pivotal voice in American intellectual life. Since its inception in 1945, and increasingly after it emerged as the flagship of neoconservatism in the 1970’s, the magazine has been consistently engaged with several large, interrelated questions: the fate of democracy and of democratic ideas in a world threatened by totalitarian ideologies; the state of American and Western security; the future of the Jews, Judaism, and Jewish culture in Israel, the United States, and around the world; and the preservation of high culture in an age of political correctness and the collapse of critical standards.

Lifetime cure for Lefties

Scientists have given mankind many blessings, but the discovery of the gene for Left-wing behaviour must be foremost among them. For now there is a diagnosis, there can be a cure. Just think of it – a quick screening of the unborn infant, a mild course of gene therapy, and hey presto! The disease can be eradicated within a generation.

Perhaps we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. But even if science falls short of an outright cure, it should still be possible to ameliorate the symptoms. The gene does not automatically make the carrier a Lefty; rather, it triggers the adolescent brain’s reward mechanism in the presence of novel experiences and viewpoints. The treatment is simple: lock teenage sufferers in a drab room, furnished with the works of Hayek and Friedman. True, their social skills will be somewhat stunted. But the benefits will last a lifetime.

Scientists have given mankind many blessings, but the discovery of the gene for Left-wing behaviour must be foremost among them. For now there is a diagnosis, there can be a cure. Just think of it – a quick screening of the unborn infant, a mild course of gene therapy, and hey presto! The disease can be eradicated within a generation.

Perhaps we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. But even if science falls short of an outright cure, it should still be possible to ameliorate the symptoms. The gene does not automatically make the carrier a Lefty; rather, it triggers the adolescent brain’s reward mechanism in the presence of novel experiences and viewpoints. The treatment is simple: lock teenage sufferers in a drab room, furnished with the works of Hayek and Friedman. True, their social skills will be somewhat stunted. But the benefits will last a lifetime.

Vivian Schiller and the Party Line at NPR

The Juan Williams/NPR flap isn’t going away — and shouldn’t. Basically, Williams was fired for not toeing the party line at NPR. A number of observers, including Williams himself, are protesting the hypocrisy of NPR not dismissing the likes of Nina Totenberg for wishing AIDS upon the family of the late Jesse Helms. Of course, that’s no surprise. Totenberg’s hate speech doesn’t qualify as hate speech in the liberal lexicon. Totenberg toes the party line at NPR. She’s a good apparatchik, safe among the party hierarchy.

The Grudge: Barry Soetoro’s Indonesian Expatriate Hell

Where did Barack Obama acquire the self-evident disdain he has for major corporations, especially oil companies, and for the striving classes who have made America prosperous and strong? Many conservatives have noted Barack Obama’s class envy, expressed both in his and his bride’s resentment over their education debts and desire to live large in the White House, and in his intent, expressed to Joe the Plumber, to “spread the wealth around.”

How Obama Thinks

Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government’s control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama’s approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.

The New Dance on a Pinhead

It’s been a long time since Nietzsche announced that G0d is dead. But debates over the existence of G0d have taken on an urgency in the 21st century, mainly argued by atheists eager to take on those long-dead monks who counted the angels dancing on the head of a pin. Theology is not a popular subject at the dinner parties of urban political sophisticates; a host who says grace before a meal could curdle the gazpacho. But atheism is a fashionable topic in Washington.