Lech Walesa, World Hero Against Marxist Tyranny Visits Conservatives in Chicago

Lech Walesa is a real hero to humanity, folks.   His leadership and courage during the Polish struggle to be free of the Marxist dictatorship three decades ago, was a life or death confrontation.  For once the good guys won, and none were “gooder” than Lech Walesa a leader in Polish labor.

I found the following article by Kyle Stone, “Lech Walesa Warns Against Loss of American Leadership in the World” at Pajamas Media.

“Less than a week before Tuesday’s midterm elections, Illinois conservatives welcomed an unlikely ally.  Legendary Polish Solidarity leader, Lech Walesa, appeared in downtown Chicago last Thursday at a fundraising event organized by citizen watchdog group For the Good of Illinois.  The former Polish president, trade-union organizer, and Nobel Prize laureate came rhetorically armed with a new Solidarity rallying-cry for Illinoisans yearning for new leadership.

Before 300 conservative leaders and activists on Thursday, Walesa dourly remarked that while the U.S. leads the world militarily and economically, in many ways it no longer leads the world “morally and politically.” “Sometimes when we look up to the only superpower in the world,“ Walesa lamented, “we have some doubt whether the United States really wants to continue being the superpower.” He still referred to the stars and stripes, however, as the “last best hope for the world.” Walesa should know.

He endured years of persecution at the hands of Poland’s communist capo, and was a founder of the trade-union movement Solidarity in the early 1980s.  The movement (“Solidarność” in Polish) swelled to become a broad-based anti-Soviet social crusade in Poland, ultimately propelling the Iron Curtain’s collapse and Poland’s first free elections since before World War II  (Walesa subsequently became Poland’s president in the newly re-established office).

Given that history, the old freedom fighter didn’t mince words when it came to criticizing America’s current course. Through a translator, Walesa’s remarks were decidedly grim at times, and at other times surprisingly self-deprecating. In a comprehensive, seemingly stream-of-conscious address, Walesa shared his freedom-fighting experience while also providing warnings of the absence of American leadership on the world stage. He also cautioned against China’s political and economic expansion.  Responding to the notion that the U.S. was no longer interested in retaining its superpower status, he jokingly offered that Poland was ready to take the baton.

(A short, QuickTime video of the speech by Welesa)

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady sat next to Welesa during the lunch-in fundraiser (though buffered by a translator), and addressed the naturally friendly audience. Arguing that the current state government is “ruled” by “secrecy,” and marked by wastefulness and corruption, Brady tied Welesa’s struggle in the 80s to that of conservatives today. Without notes, the state senator from Bloomington (Illinois) appeared confident and optimistic days before the election. Brady is currently four points ahead of his Democratic opponent, Governor Pat Quinn, in a recent Chicago Tribune poll.

Governor Quinn, who had accepted an invitation to speak, notified event coordinators hours before that he was unable to appear. Alas, he had surprised organizers when he accepted their invitation in the first place. It would have been an awkward scene had the governor honored his commitment.  Due to the event organizers’ conservative bona fides (and because the group exclusively supports GOP candidates this cycle), Quinn’s appearance may have validated the notion that Walesa’s struggles in the 80s were comparable to that of conservatives in Illinois. The event’s strong rhetorical connection between the two was not lost on the audience.

During a question and answer session, Walesa was predictably asked to provide his opinion as to Illinois’s reputation for corruption and government expansion by Democrats. Ever the statesman, Walesa refused to take the political bait, and his answer reflected his unwillingness to verbally jump into the fray.

Walesa is not a regular fixture on the American political circuit. In fact, his vocal endorsement for Adam Andrzejewski in the gubernatorial Republican primary was the first for an American office-seeker (Andrzejewski is now founder and CEO of For the Good of Illinois). During a January 2009 trip to Chicago for Andrzejewski, Walesa surprised onlookers in an interview when he decried that the U.S. was moving in the direction of socialism with its bank bailouts and bulging social welfare programs.

Walesa’s visit underscores the weight that Illinois conservatives are placing on these midterm elections. Analogizing Soviet tyranny to the current onslaught of liberal big-governance was no stretch for the conservative crowd. Walesa — whose name is mentioned alongside Thatcher, Reagan, and Pope John Paul II as delivering the knockout punch to Soviet communism — departed by urging the crowd to “elect well,” a thinly veiled offer of good tidings to an audience hoping for change this election season. Never known for outwardly taking partisan sides in the U.S., Walesa’s very presence at the decidedly conservative fundraiser told the story.”

Vote Tomorrow to Put an End to Obama Marxism and A Beginning for Shelby Steele Conservatism!

Mr. Obama did not invent Marxism, did not introduce Marxism to America, does not practice Marxism in his personal life, he learned his Marxism in college.  

He disdains the country which he is attempting to “RULE”, rather than lead.  He has demonstrated this disdain in his public speeches, his private, but overheard, comments, his bowings and scrapings to many unworthy of such respect from his office,  his insults to the members of the Supreme Court, his disregard for the democratic process and willingness to bribe and cheat to pass a monstrously flawed federal capture of the American health industry.   He was raised in a third world, neither here nor there, but a pampered world and a spoiled one. 

He has been given many passes because of his heritage……and suffered the emptiness of fatherlessness.   His father figure has been a foul-mouthed black racist tyrant, Jeremiah Wright of “Goddamn America” infamy. 

Every decade of my life has become a decade in which our nation has become more vulnerable to tyrannies…..its new industry, entertainment and educational industries have become tyrannies in their own right….refraining from performing their professions as high callings in their lives, but political tools for the hate America slogans of the Left, the shallow and the profound…..in the name of   “equality”……unlearned people with a lot of money looking for some purpose while living a shallow, meaningless life of limited talent and knowledge.

Every year there are few and fewer institutions where more and more intellectual inquiry arises.  Universities, however necessary in forming a base for a population of aware, has collapsed from its primary responsibilities which are supposed to center on the search for truth and sharing the knowwledge already discovered as accurately as is humanly possible.  

Instead as if a single entity, the nation’s academics in the social “sciences”  have abandoned the profession of honest teaching and research  to become  salesmen and women  for Marxist absurdities of government regulated equality, selling their souls for a government grant.

Fifty years ago  there were not very many Bigs around…..A few years earlier most Americans were still farming and in careers associated with crop growing.   Most people were churched.  Very few followed the spirits and bizarre, and even fewer were on drugs.

Sixty years ago most black families in America were led by fathers.    Decent behavior was honored.  Americans didn’t argue much about what decent behavior entailed.    Inconvenient  unborns weren’t yet slaughtered.   Schools were places to learn skills and understandings and how to behave as an adult, not places to feel good and cry when a discomfort of body or mind might occur.

And the culture created no adults, only aging teeny-boppers, as they say.

I cannot say where the Tea Party movement might go or how long it might last.  But, there is a lot to restore in America from its traditions the Marxist movements over the past 50 years has either destroyed or confounded.

For almost sixty years the American Left led by the Democrat Party with Republicans tagging along, have tried to buy and sell American problems instead of applying traditional American values to solve the nation’s internal issues.  Nearly every corner of the country has been damaged by Leftwing policies of Welfare and cronyism, pampering and bribing those who struggled on the fringes.

Being a lefty sold well in colleges, churches and government.   It made people feel good even as it damaged the country with its petty crimes and falsehoods.   Massive failures such as forced busing of students and the bribes  of welfare, were swept under the rug.  The country lost its religion, its character, its responsibility to raise its young properly, its core for the present and the future.

But the Marxist grew in power by denigrating and demonizing conservatism.  They have nearly broken the country with their schemes and divisions and people have become concerned…..AT LAST!

I wish to quote one of the heroes I have discovered in my adult life…….Mr. Shelby Steele.   I have never met him and have no clue what he looks like.  I know nothing about his personal life…..  But I know him through his words of  what drew him to  conservativism.    Please read the following explanation several times:

 ”What drew me to conservatism years ago was the fact that it gave discipline a slightly higher status than virtue.  This  meant it could not be subverted by passing notions of the good.  It could be above moral vanity.  And so it made no special promises to me as a minority.  It neglected me in every way except  as a human being who wanted freedom.  Until my encounter with conservatism, I had only known the  racial determinism of segregation on the one hand and of white liberalism on the other;   two varieties of white supremacy in which I could only be dependent and inferior.

The appeal of conservatism is the mutuality it asserts between individual and political freedom, its beautiful idea of a free man in a free society.  And it offers minorities the one thing they can never get from liberalism;  human rather than racial dignity.”

Let Mr. Steele’s words describe modern  American  conservativism .   Let us pray that the people of the Tea Party and others in contemporary politics who love the American experiment  will guide us  again to an  American culture base on  this framing of  conservatism.

Betty McCollom on Al Qaeda and Hot Air: No threat versus Big threat to U. S. Security

Al Qaeda,  Hot Air and hot air are all  in the news when it comes to Democrat Betty McCollom’s campaigning for re-election in the 4th Minnesota Congressional District.

At a League of Women’s debate in St. Paul, recently, Representative McCollom, not known for her climate and military awareness, announced Al Qaeda was no longer a threat to America.   She stopped her worrying in favor of the hot air of global warming.  “Our military is concerned about global warming.  It is a serious threat!”  she informed the folks at the debate.

(Most Lefties have changed the name of “Global Warming” to “Climate Change” for a longer range effect,  apparently unbeknownst to the Representative from the 4th Congressional District).

Perhaps she isn’t quite that up-to-date about reading her Democrat Twin Cities Newspapers yet about the title change.

The people at Hot Air provide additional irritation to Betty McCollom.  They present this following ad  to present Betty to their viewing public:

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/11/01/dem-rep-insists-global-warming-a-major-natl-security-threat/

No one here knows who Betty is except perhaps her family, but she pops up every two years for votes, if not approval.   This year she has met some top notch competition Teresa Collett who is challenging McCollom’s approval.

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/11/01/dem-rep-insists-global-warming-a-major-natl-security-threat/

As You Go Vote Tomorrow, Think of the Disaster Called the Public School

and know that there is a huge learning gap, environment gap, understanding gap, political gap, behavior gap, emotional gap, tolerance gap, freedom gap, teaching gap and all sorts of other gaps between the leftwing programmed boy of today and me when I was a Christian taught boy going to public school over 60 years ago.

In that school’s English class in 1950 I had to learn the following:    Someone who had committed a heinous crime spoke to himself reflecting……

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

Ten lines of the most profound, yet beautiful words expressing  the human condition. 

Yet, you live in an America which disdains classic beauty in art and in our yesterdays.

A few years earlier I had learned, “As for man, his days are as grass….as the lily of the field so he flourisheth…..and the wind passeth over it….and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.”    

I listened and had to learn these classics.

I wonder what American children and youth are learning in today’s  classrooms. 

I suspect I know.   When is the last time you as a citizen, with or without children, have evaluated the local schools’ curricula?  

If we don’t know what our young are learning,  aren’t we   as much to blame as the Marxist politicians and educators who want to change America and are using the schools to do so “in their image.”

When the Real Obama Enters the Campaign, The Real Obama Speaks

CLEVELAND—President Barack Obama closed out his 2010 campaign season here with a mocking rebuke of Republicans, in stark contrast to the lofty, hopeful rhetoric that marked his 2008 campaign.

With Democrats facing potentially big losses on Election Day Tuesday, Mr. Obama has projected a rougher tone than he did two years ago. The bad economy? Blame Republicans, he said. Bipartisanship to solve problems? No, the president said, the GOP has no interest.

With less than 24 hours until voters go to the polls, the rhetoric between GOP leaders and President Obama is heating up. Alan Murray and Jerry Seib discuss. Plus, thousands show up for Jon Stewart’s rally and the revival of political volatility.

Bits of the 2008 spirit were still in evidence in a weekend of campaigning, but Mr. Obama’s calls for change now came with caveats. He still exhorted, “yes we can!” but added that change will take some time.

Democrats say the shift in message is to be expected given the changed circumstances. Mr. Obama is no longer the outsider looking in, but an incumbent president deep in all things Washington. Also, Democrats have worked to make this election a choice between the parties, not a referendum on Mr. Obama, so talking about the GOP’s weaknesses is key to that strategy.

“You have to get down right where the voters are and you’ve got to answer” Republican attacks, said Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), who is close with Mr. Obama. “We’re learning that the hard way. We have not been as forceful as we should have been.”

In Cleveland Sunday, Mr. Obama said Republicans didn’t want voters to remember that he had inherited a bad economy. “Their basic political strategy has been to count on you having amnesia,” he told about 8,000 people at Cleveland State University’s Wolstein Center.

This was the president’s fourth trip to Ohio in support of Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, who faces a tight race with Republican John Kasich. Vice President Joe Biden joined the president, making his sixth visit to Ohio to campaign for Mr. Strickland, as the White House put on a strong effort to keep the state in Democratic hands.

Republicans responded that the visit only reminded Ohioans about Democratic stewardship of the economy. “They are very, very concerned about the fact that the unemployment rate is the highest it’s been in the country, and Ohio has been one of the worst-hit states, frankly, with little chance of improving,” said Sen. George Voinovich (R., Ohio).

In his speeches, Mr. Obama works hard to rekindle the energy that seemed to envelop his 2008 campaign. He says the forecasters have it wrong now, just as some did two years ago. He calls on voters to “finish what we started in 2008.” But almost gone is the man who asked Americans to rise above partisanship to unite the nation. Now he speaks of Republicans as obstructionists who sat on the sidelines during the country’s toughest times.

Off the stump, his language can be just as tough. In an interview with Univision, the Spanish-language network, he urged Latinos to look at the election this way: “We’re going to punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends.”

To be sure, in 2008 Mr. Obama was tough on his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, and on then-President George W. Bush. He said Mr. Bush had failed and that Mr. McCain would represent more of the same. But two years ago, Mr. Obama’s criticism was directed specifically at those two men, not the Republican Party writ large, and was mixed with a high-minded call for unity.

At times he speaks of the need for the parties to work together. That message was part of what drew independent voters to Mr. Obama in 2008, and many of them have abandoned Democrats this year. To win re-election in 2012, strategists say, he’ll need them back.

Comment:  “He’s whistling Dixie” could be an accurate analysis of anything Obama orates when he contrives his “Lofty”  rhetoric mood which is the face he puts up when he is reading teleprompter or among his Marxist buddises.  In the latter crowd he talks about guns, religion, and Americans with  his usual disdainful sneer.

But Rasmussen poll has him up by a full per cent…the first time in five or so months.  I expect the rise is from his most left wing critics who have beem hoping he’d cause blood to flow before tomorrow’s important mid term election.  

Lefties, whether politically active or not,  like vulgarity.  Seriously, they are generally made up of people who do not see themselves as part of the team.  They are the folks who feel they are left out.  In our modern times many have been programmed to feel left out.   They learn so in college, where they are taught to hate the majority culture via  black studies departments, women studies departments, or gay and lesbian studies departments.  

I was taught, in this case by my dad, that most people can keep control of themselves when things are going well.  Ones real character, he assured me, directs his behavior when one is challenged…..when things aren’t going as planned.  At this very moment, I think of Rudyard Kipling’s “If”……”If you can keep your head when all about you are losing their and blaming it on you…..If you can keep your head when all men doubt you, but make allowances for their doubting, too…..”  and then I think of the modern American learning systems where the anti-intellectual, those who hate beautyf and learning profoundly, such as Bill Ayers and his minions,  design curricula and teach teachers the most up-to-date Marxist nonsense to destroy the past in order to develop a new Soviet American.

Please read the entire poem.  What might have been valued when Kipling wrote his message to boys growing up?   What is our American message to our young men?  our young women?

“If” and Voting in 2010……There Is A Generation Gap or Two, My Fellow Americans

Read this Rudyard Kipling poem, required learning in 1948……What did you memorize in school?

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

Comment:  I was in 9th or 10th grade when I had to learn the above poem by Rudyard Kipling.  One of my best friends memorized The Rhime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Coleridge.  We thought then, that language was beautiful.   In ninth grade Miss Mabel Wicker, eighty pounds heavy and one hundred years old required  Portias “The Quality of Mercy is not strained….it droppeth as a gentle rain down from heaven upon the Earth below….it is twiced blessed….It blesseth him that gives and him that receives”, and Caesar’s comment, “Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look.   He thinks too much.  Such men are dangerous”, from Shakespeare…..on pain of expulsion from school if I continued to be sloppy in my work and casual in my values.   I went to a public school!!

She and others like her saved my life.   They loved what they did….Their purpose was clear….Their audience was to listen and learn.   It was clear to the civilized what it took to make children civilized.

I may forget a stanza or two, mix a few things up 60-plus years later, but the messages were not forgotten.   They along with teachings from church, were all the same regarding developing youth, especially males, to become responsible adults, classically morally good and sound thinking with emotion control…..with an ability to recognize beauty and hopefully, someday replenish it.

Fellow Americans, we need more that just a change in the weather……but  beating the lefties tomorrow is a helluva good start!!!

So You Think Soviet Era Revisionism Hasn’t Come To America? Read This!!

There can be no doubt that Soviet style Marxism has never really disppearer from civilized conversation and learning.   On the contrary Marxism is the new religion at most of the universities from whence our 44th American president, Barack Hussein Obama has arisen.   Mr. Obama has appointed innumerable Marxists to his administration and some, such as Van Jones and Anita Dunn were very open about their anti-American devotions.

Obama Lefties have been installed at not only the NEH, but also at the National Endowment for the Arts.  Please read the following article found at Powerline today….written by Scott W. Johnson:

In a series of posts on Obama administration National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Jim Leach, we have followed the descent of the NEH into political partisanship and rank buffoonery. Now we turn to problematic programming funded by the NEH.

In July 2010 the NEH sponsored a workshop for college professors at the East-West Center, University of Hawaii. The title of the conference was “History and Commemoration: The Legacies of the Pacific War.” As one of the 25 American scholars chosen to attend the workshop, Professor Penelope Blake anticipated an opportunity to visit hallowed sites such as Pearl Harbor, the Arizona Memorial and the Punchbowl Cemetery and engage with scholars who share her interest in studying this often neglected part of World War II history.

Instead, Professor Blake was treated to the most disturbing experience of her academic career, a conference which she found to be driven by an overt political bias and a blatant anti-American agenda. Professor Blake has forwarded to us the following letter dated September 12, 2010, to Illinois Rep. Donald Manzullo, her congressman, documenting examples of what transpired at the conference. Copies of the letter were also sent to members of the NEH Council and to Leach. Professor Blake writes (all emphases are in the original):

Dear Congressman Manzullo:

As one of twenty-five American scholars chosen to participate in the recent National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Workshop, “History and Commemoration: Legacies of the Pacific War in WWII,” at the University of Hawaii, East-West Center, I am writing to ask you to vote against approval of 2011 funding for future workshops until the NEH can account for the violation of its stated objective to foster “a mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all persons and groups” (NEH Budget Request, 2011).

In my thirty years as a professor in upper education, I have never witnessed nor participated in a more extremist, agenda-driven, revisionist conference, nearly devoid of rhetorical balance and historical context for the arguments presented.

In both the required preparatory readings for the conference, as well as the scholarly presentations, I found the overriding messages to include the following:

1. The U.S. military and its veterans constitute an imperialistic, oppressive force which has created and perpetuated its own mythology of liberation and heroism, insisting on a “pristine collective memory” of the war. The authors/presenters equate this to Japan’s almost total amnesia and denial about its own war atrocities (Fujitani, White, Yoneyama, 9, 23). One presenter specifically wrote about turning down a job offer when he realized that his office would overlook a fleet of U.S. Naval warships, “the symbol of American power and the symbol of our [Hawaiians'] dispossession…I decided they could not pay me enough” (Osorio 5). Later he claimed that electric and oil companies were at the root of WWII, and that the U.S. developed a naval base at Pearl Harbor to ensure that its own coasts would not be attacked (9, 13).

2. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor should be seen from the perspective of Japan being a victim of western oppression (one speaker likened the attack to 9-11, saying that the U.S. could be seen as “both victim and aggressor” in both attacks); that American “imperial expansion” forced Japan’s hand: “For the Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western Imperialism” (Yoneyama 335-336); and the Pearl Harbor attack could be seen as a “pre-emptive strike.” (No mention of the main reason for the Pearl Harbor attack: the U.S. had cut off Japan’s oil supply in order to stop the wholesale slaughter of Chinese civilians at the hands of the Japanese military.) Another author argued that the Japanese attack was no more “infamous” or “sneaky” than American actions in Korea or Vietnam (Rosenberg 31-32).

3. War memorials, such as the Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery (where many WWII dead are buried, including those executed by the Japanese on Wake Island and the beloved American journalist Ernie Pyle), are symbols of military aggression and brutality “that pacify death, sanitize war and enable future wars to be fought” (Ferguson and Turnbull, 1). One author stated that the memorials represent American propaganda, “the right to alter a story” (Camacho 201).

4. The U.S. military has repeatedly committed rapes and other violent crimes throughout its past through the present day. Cited here was the handful of cases of attacks by Marines in Okinawa (Fujitani, et al, 13ff). (What was not cited were the mass-murders, rapes, mutilations of hundreds of thousands of Chinese at the hands of the Japanese throughout the 1930s and 40s. This issue is a perfect example of the numerous instances of assertions made without balance or historical context.) Another author stated that the segregation in place within our military and our “occupation” of Germany after the war was comparable to Nazism (‘we were as capable of as much evil as the Germans”) even though the author admits, with some incredulity, that he “saw no genuine torture, despite all the [American] arrogance, xenophobia and insensitivity.” He attributes American kindness towards conquered Germans to our “wealth and power” which allowed us to “forego the extreme kinds of barbarism” (Davis 586). Another author/presenter compared the temporary relocation camps erected by Americans during the war to Nazi extermination camps (Camacho 206). (This is perhaps the most outrageous, offensive and blatantly false statement I have ever read in a supposedly scholarly work).

5. Those misguided members of the WWII generation on islands like Guam and Saipan who feel gratitude to the Americans for saving them from the Japanese are blinded by propaganda supporting “the image of a compassionate America” or by their own advanced age. One author/presenter questioned whether the Americans had saved anyone from anything (Camacho 177, 209), arguing that the Americans could be seen as easily and justifiably as “conquerors and invaders” (199).

6. It was “the practice” of the U.S. military in WWII to desecrate and disrespect the bodies of dead Japanese (Camacho 186). (Knowing this to be absolutely false, I challenged the speaker/author, who then admitted that this was not the “practice” of our military. Still, the word remains in his publication. As he obviously knew this to be false, I can only assume that his objective was not scholarship but anti-military propaganda.)

7. Conservatives and veterans in the U.S. have had an undue and corrupt influence on how WWII is remembered, for example, successfully lobbying to remove from the Smithsonian Enola Gay exhibit images of the destruction caused by the atom bomb and the revisionist portrayal of the Japanese as victims in the war (Yoneyama). (What the presenter and author, Ms. Yoneyama, failed to explain was why all representations of Japan’s murderous rampages throughout China and the Philippines were removed from the exhibit as well…surely not at the request of American veterans or conservatives. When I challenged Ms. Yoneyama to explain this issue, a tense exchange ensued, but I finally established that Japanese influences had also played a role in “shaping” the exhibit. This never would have been mentioned had I not demanded the speaker address this distortion in her presentation. Ms. Yoneyama clearly intended to present a one-sided attack on those who wanted the exhibit to emphasize the many reasons why the atom bombs were necessary.) Ms. Yoneyama concluded her essay with a parting shot at the veterans, whom she mockingly labels “martyrs of their sacred war,” and “conservative elites” who objected to the Smithsonian’s revisionist history: “the Smithsonian debate ended in the defeat of those who sought critical rethinking, as well as the defeat of those who questioned the self-evident…, and the victory of those who felt threatened by obfuscation of the contours of conventional knowledge” (emphasis mine, 329,339). The author’s elitist dismissal of those who questioned the Enola Gay exhibit is representative of the perspectives and tone of much of the conference, as illustrated by the following point.

8. Conservatives are reactionary nationalists (no distinction was made between nationalism and patriotism), pro-military “tea baggers” who are incapable of “critical thinking.” Comments were made about “people who watch Fox News” not caring if the news “is accurate or not” (Yoneyama, Lecture). The end result of this deprecation within the conference room was to discourage debate and create an atmosphere of intolerance to opposing views, in direct violation of the stated objectives of the NEH. Several participants told me privately that they considered me “brave” for speaking up, thus begging the question: At a conference supposedly committed to openness and tolerance of all views, why should it take bravery to speak one’s mind?

9. Relating to the above, even members of the NEH review board are not immune to “reactionary” pro-military views. One essay recounts how an earlier attempt to receive funding for a similar conference was denied because some NEH reviewers thought the “program lacked diversity and balance among points of view”….and that the organizers possessed “a very specific, ‘politically correct’ agenda,” noting that “bias is dangerously threatening throughout.” The authors of the essay dismissed and denigrated these NEH reviewers with the same elitist attitude they exhibited towards the “Fox News” viewers: “Clearly this reviewer was unable to comprehend our understanding” of the conference objectives (in other words, he/she is stupid), and “what he or she really desired was the inclusion of defenders of American nationalism and militarism” (Fujitani, et al, 24).

10. Veterans’ memories of their own experiences in the war are suspect and influenced by media and their own self-delusion (Rosenberg, 18, 24). Therefore, it is the role of academics to “correct” their history. As one organizer commented, this will be more easily accomplished once the WWII generation has passed away. Another wrote, “America’s nostalgic war memories are beginning to fray around the edges” (White, 267).

11. War memorials like the Arizona Memorial should be recast as “peace memorials,” sensitive to all viewers from all countries, especially the many visitors from Japan. The conference dedicated significant time to the discussion of whether or not a Japanese memorial in honor of victims of the atom bombs should be erected at the Arizona Memorial site, in order to pacify Japanese visitors who may be offended by the “racism” [anti-Japanese] of the Arizona Memorial. To this end, the conference organizers discussed a revised film (1992) shown to visitors to the Arizona Memorial which removed some of the earlier (1980) film’s “Japan-bashing” and warnings about the need for the American military to remain prepared in the future. The new film, which emphasizes the reasons (justifications?) for the Japanese bombings of Pearl Harbor, includes fewer battle scenes and “transforms the triumphant feelings of victory with a more mournful reflection of losses inflicted by war” (White 285), thus sending a more pacifist, anti-war message and offering a perspective which makes people “less angry” after viewing the film (the author acknowledges that this has worked well, except for “older citizens” who are outraged by the “revisionist” sympathy towards the Japanese) (287). The new, more “inclusive” film features visual images of both American and Japanese dead, Japanese Buddhist monks visiting the memorial, and a culminating text which reads “Mourn the dead” as opposed to “Mourn American dead” or “Mourn our dead” so that “it represented the U.S. and Japanese” (emphasis mine, 288). The memorial’s superintendent, Donald Magee, summed up the tone of the new film: “We don’t take sides….here at Pearl Harbor we don’t condemn the Japanese” (292). Based on the author’s description, I refused to attend a viewing of the film, in protest of its appeasement of treachery and attempts to revise historical fact.

As overwhelming and pervasive as these politically-correct and revisionist messages were, the conference did feature a few presentations and articles which represented truly excellent examples of balanced, well-researched scholarship. One highpoint of the conference was a panel of WWII veterans who shared with us their personal experiences of the war. But, given the overall anti-military bias present at this conference, I could not help but shudder to think how these amazing men would feel if they knew the true focus of the conference. I honestly felt ashamed of my profession and my government for sponsoring this travesty. 

I am aware that my comments may well have been dismissed by the conference organizers in the same manner they dismissed other opposing voices as “nationalistic” or simplistic. So be it. But I am no blind patriot, Congressman Manzullo, nor am I ignorant of the complexities inherent in the telling and re-telling of history. I also acknowledge, research and teach the many mistakes this country has made, and I am as suspect of the extreme right as I am of the extreme left. But I am also a historian who knows that despite all of their mistakes, this nation and its military have defended, protected and freed more people in their comparatively brief existence than all of the nations in Europe and Asia combined. Allied efforts, however imperfect, defended the world against two of the greatest forms of evil the world has ever known, European Fascism and Japanese Imperialism. This perspective was never, not once, offered at this conference except as a concept that will be well-buried with the WWII generation. If nothing else, I have shown that any imminent celebration of the demise of these concepts may be premature.

As a daughter of two WWII veterans and the niece of a man who gave his life to help defend his country in WWII, I simply will not stand by and allow their history to be usurped and corrupted by a revisionist and iconoclastic political agenda within academe.

The NEH is requesting an operating budget of 161 million dollars for 2011, including over 71 million to support conferences like the one I have described. I ask that you do everything in your power to delay approval of this request until the NEH does the following:

1. Reviews all NEH conference and workshop proposals and supporting materials to eliminate any overt political agenda;

2. Illustrates to Congress and the American people an ability to create programs which support sound and objective scholarship and provide forums for debate in which all sides are recognized and encouraged;

3. Eliminates all intolerance and pejorative language towards any group or viewpoint;

4. Commits itself to a fair and balanced view of our nation’s history and humanities, acknowledging its mistakes but also honoring its achievements.

To demonstrate the above, any group or institution requesting a grant from the NEH should be required to submit its entire schedule of presenters and a complete list of the literature which will be discussed at the conference to ensure that varied sides of any issue will be represented and respected.

Until these actions are taken, I sincerely doubt that the majority of Americans would approve of their tax dollars supporting this academic attack on American history and culture. I plan to do everything in my power to inform American voters of this issue, and I trust our elected officials will take heed of their constituents’ reactions.

Citations for the sources I have used are attached to this letter. Should you wish any further documentation on the issues I have raised or have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Penelope A. Blake, Ph.D.

What is to be done? The East-West Center has already been funded by NEH to conduct a similar workshop in the coming summer, plus one for high-school teachers that is likely to be similarly tendentious. These expenditures could be frozen pending a full investigation, or rescinded, or otherwise handled in a way that recognizes the seriousness of the problem.

Professor Blake makes reference in her letter to various parts of a book called Perilous Memories, coedited by Geoffrey White; White was the director of the workshop attended by Professor Blake. This book (or parts of it) was required preliminary reading for the participants in the workshop, and is something like the ur-text that reveals the intentions and worldview behind the workshop itself. It is an appalling if characteristic example of radical postmodernist gibberish complete with all the buzzwords about transnationality, the construction of public memory, and so on.

Professor Blake teaches Humanities at Rock Valley College in Rockford, illinois. Readers desiring a copy of the sources cited in her letter can write me at powerlinefeedback@gmail.com with “Sources” in the Subject line. Thanks to Professor Blake for entrusting this story to us.

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Democrat Racism May Give the Left a Victory Tomorrow!

……….but Republicans are not American idols, either!!

It is my view that Americans need their heads straightened out no matter how they vote.   There is no doubt in my mind that the American Democrat Party as it is today with this Obama administration is the DANGEROUS Party.  It is dangerous precisely because it is toying with Marxism, the dictatorship of government ruling its servants the people.  In such toying it had calculatedly set certain groups of Americans against America.

Such a government was the reason Americans more than 200 years ago  revolted.   The autocracy then, far less invasive into its servants’ lives than Obamacare policies have controlled us, was royalty and the elites that played in the same sandbox……Today, that is the American Democrat Party, the elites building sand castles for themselves and their friends which turn into cement as they solidify their power.

Republicans have been tag-alongs……They go to the same universities where Marxism is admired and indoctrinated, where  the Democrats and theor  bureaucrats are trained  to  build and manage . their castles.  Republicans  want a job too.  Americans for years haven’t been paying attention to the political scenes they live in.  Why should Republicans  rock the boat as long as they get paid too?   

  Dennis Prager, until this year, has called the Republican Party,  the “Stupid” party.

We Americans must reform our American core, our understandings about who he have been, who we are, and who we want to be.  Most Americans still bear children.  Until the Leftwing revolution in the streets of the 1960s and 70s, that used to mean something.

Much in the American community today is rotten or rotting.   Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania this morning bragged about his Democrat Party being motivated going to the polls.   “Blacks are excited.  Latinos are excited.  Gays are excited”…….illustrating much of the damage done by the racist based core of today’s Democrat Party……He is expecting a Democrat Left wing victory tomorrow….and he may be right.

Racism runs deep in the Democrat framed psyche.   Today, it is taught at universities.

Pollster, Scott Rasmussen offers this writing today regarding his view of the mood of the nation:

“In the first week of January 2010, Rasmussen Reports showed Republicans with a nine-point lead on the generic congressional ballot. Scott Brown delivered a stunning upset in the Massachusetts special U.S. Senate election a couple of weeks later.

In the last week of October 2010, Rasmussen Reports again showed Republicans with a nine-point lead on the generic ballot. And tomorrow Republicans will send more Republicans to Congress than at any time in the past 80 years.

This isn’t a wave, it’s a tidal shift—and we’ve seen it coming for a long time. Remarkably, there have been plenty of warning signs over the past two years, but Democratic leaders ignored them. At least the captain of the Titanic tried to miss the iceberg. Congressional Democrats aimed right for it.

While most voters now believe that cutting government spending is good for the economy, congressional Democrats have convinced them that they want to increase government spending. After the president proposed a $50 billion infrastructure plan in September, for example, Rasmussen Reports polling found that 61% of voters believed cutting spending would create more jobs than the president’s plan.

Central to the Democrats’ electoral woes was the debate on health-care reform. From the moment in May 2009 when the Congressional Budget Office announced that the president’s plan would cost a trillion dollars, most voters opposed it. Today 53% want to repeal it. Opposition was always more intense than support, and opposition was especially high among senior citizens, who vote in high numbers in midterm elections.

Rather than acknowledging the public concern by passing a smaller and more popular plan, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama insisted on passing the proposed legislation by any means possible.

As a result, Democrats face massive losses in tomorrow’s midterm election. Based upon our generic ballot polling and an analysis of individual races, we project that Nancy Pelosi’s party will likely lose 55 or more seats in the House, putting the GOP firmly in the majority. Republicans will also win at least 25 of the 37 Senate elections. While the most likely outcome is that Republicans end up with 48 or 49 Senate seats, Democrats will need to win close races in West Virginia, Washington and California to protect their majority.

There will also be a lot more Republican governors in office come January. It looks like six heartland states stretching from Pennsylvania to Iowa will trade a Democratic governor for a Republican one. A common theme in all the races is that white, working-class Democrats who tended to vote for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in 2008 are prepared to vote for Republicans.

But none of this means that Republicans are winning. The reality is that voters in 2010 are doing the same thing they did in 2006 and 2008: They are voting against the party in power.

This is the continuation of a trend that began nearly 20 years ago. In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected president and his party had control of Congress. Before he left office, his party lost control. Then, in 2000, George W. Bush came to power, and his party controlled Congress. But like Mr. Clinton before him, Mr. Bush saw his party lose control.

That’s never happened before in back-to-back administrations. The Obama administration appears poised to make it three in a row. This reflects a fundamental rejection of both political parties.

More precisely, it is a rejection of a bipartisan political elite that’s lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve. Based on our polling, 51% now see Democrats as the party of big government and nearly as many see Republicans as the party of big business. That leaves no party left to represent the American people.

Voters today want hope and change every bit as much as in 2008. But most have come to recognize that if we have to rely on politicians for the change, there is no hope. At the same time, Americans instinctively understand that if we can unleash the collective wisdom and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, there are no limits to what we can accomplish.

In this environment, it would be wise for all Republicans to remember that their team didn’t win, the other team lost. Heading into 2012, voters will remain ready to vote against the party in power unless they are given a reason not to do so.

Elected politicians also should leave their ideological baggage behind because voters don’t want to be governed from the left, the right, or even the center. They want someone in Washington who understands that the American people want to govern themselves.

Comment:  In the last paragraph Mr. Rassmussen is misguided.  What needs to be decided, most of all by Americans ourselves is answering the ideological question underlying everything in politics……do the people prefer the government to run their lives, what they should think, wear and eat…where they should work and what they should earn, where they should live and the size of homes they can live in, because as college graduates with their special political and sociological knowledge they “know” the answers to these and similar questions better…..or will Americans prefer the liberty their forefathers and mothers sculpted and built here in this once blessed land?