The new Obama regime is taking shape in Washington and provinces eager to take power and secure the "change you can believe in" using humungous propaganda machine of both government radio and television and still privately owned, so-called "mainstream media." These private networks are competing with National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in praising Obama's first choices from his new dog to his new chief of staff.
The thought scene in the US today resembles that of Russia in 1917, Cuba in 1959 or China in 1948. Incessant calls for "unity" and "fairness," attacks on "divisive," "toxic" and "hateful" language are nothing new – they resemble Germany of 1932 and Venezuela of 1996, today's Putin's Russia and Mugabe's Zimbabwe. Listening to the NPR tirades against freedom of speech, famous George Washington's dictum comes to mind: "It will be found unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it." We witness another kind of spirit in the city named after him – of praise and adoration of the new beloved leader.
"America Picks Names for New Obama Dog" is the headline of the "Dog Channel and Cat Channel USA." Online survey, conducted by the Channel, asked respondents to write in their picks for the White House's "first dog" ended up with suggestions like "Yes We Can," "Abrahound Lincoln," "Secretary of State" and "Oprah"[1]. Government radio and television triumphant after their hard and victorious campaign work for Democrats and successful pick of the new "president of change" are busy discussing and suggesting his cabinet choices and socialization plans.
His first appointee – "Emanuel demonstrates one characteristic different from Obama; he’s willing to sublimate his leadership to a higher cause… despite his brash exterior, he does possess something else that a chief of staff needs: a sacrifice of personal ambition. A senior leader who can find someone such as that is a fortunate leader indeed"[2]. This is the praise of the Business Week – an unofficial organ of the majority of our business community united behind Obama in anticipation of new bailouts and handouts.
In the old Marxist tradition, the new great Leader’s calls for "a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the U.S. military. His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, had openly shared this vision of the civilian national security force (CNSF) in his book:
"It's time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service. …
Here’s how it would work. Young people will know that between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, the nation will enlist them for three months of civilian service. They’ll be asked to report for three months of basic civil defense training in their state or community, where they will learn what to do in the event of biochemical, nuclear or conventional attack; how to assist others in an evacuation; how to respond when a levee breaks or we’re hit by a natural disaster. These young people will be available to address their communities’ most pressing needs." [3]
Rahm Emanuel, also known as Rahmbo of the Left, is sure willing to be the first Commissar in charge of these newly indoctrinated wild-eyed CNSF.
Ernst Roehm, another advocate of civilian youth paramilitary force, was equally enthusiastic of his creation – the Sturm Abteilung (Storm Section) of which he became the first Fhrer in 1921. The SA (also known as storm troopers or brown shirts) were instructed to disrupt the meetings of political opponents and to protect Hitler from revenge attacks.
Civilian paramilitary force complemented by the one party monopoly on power in Washington and most state capitals, mass socialization of economy, further destruction of property rights and incessant attacks on the freedom of speech creates fertile breeding ground for fascism and communism alike.
Show Trials in Washington
A phone call from Moscow woke me up in the middle of the night. My friend Vladimir, former Soviet Army general turned reformer under Yeltsin and businessman under Putin, sounded slightly drunk and very agitated. "I am watching televised interrogation of Alan Greenspan and another guy by some Jewish investigator and it looks exactlylike the "Great terror" is back, but not here,for a change. What is going on? Would they shoot all these economic subversives and saboteurs at the end of the day? "
"I am not sure about that, definitely not at the end of the day. Maybe after elections," I mumbled in response and went back to bed. My sleep was ruined however, and in a desperate attempt to get it back I opened Greenspan's "Gold and Economic Freedom" chapter in Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
Yes, Comrade Waxman (D-CA) definitely has a case against former capitalist sympathizer Greenspan. This now repentant agent of the world capitalism wrote back in 1966 about Waxmans of the time:
"An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense – perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire – that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other."
Make no mistake about it – Greenspan was attacked by Waxman and the new socialist establishment because of his libertarian past and free-market rhetoric and not because of his job as chief inflationist and central planner. The show trial over Greenspan's pro-capitalist past was turned by Waxman and his committee comrades into the trial against capitalism itself.
The most critical and revealing question posed by Waxman was: "Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?"
Greenspan, in an act of public repentance, admitted that he had "found a flaw … in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works." Greenspan, who turned 82, last March, headed the US central bank for more than 18 years, and was chief economic advisor to Nixon and Ford. What a belated confession! What a life ruined by the flawed understanding of the world. Greenspan definitely forgot the title of the book in which his defense of the gold standard appeared: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
In his testimony to Waxman's committee [4] Greenspan said that he was in a "state of shocked disbelief" over the current financial turmoil. His guilty plea came as he provided much needed evidence for Waxman and others seeking an absolute regulatory power of government over financial markets. In the best traditions of Lubyanka Greenspan replied: "Yes I found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is, but I’ve been very distressed by that fact."
Greenspan who used to be treated like a victorious Roman consul every time he went to Capitol Hill was humiliated by Waxman like a defendant in Stalin's show trials.
What a change! Just a year ago another prominent regulator, John McCain, promised that as president he would appoint Greenspan to lead a review of the nation’s tax code – "even if the former Federal Reserve chairman was dead"…
It sounds like I am making it up, but I do not. "If he’s alive or dead it doesn’t matter," McCain said[5], "If he’s dead, just prop him up and put some dark glasses on him like, like Weekend at Bernie’s."
A loyal PBS viewer and contributor (he called government propaganda stations a "national treasure"), McCain could make his Vietnamese captors die of envy with this program. Even Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Ho Chi Minh who are all laying embalmed in their mausoleums did not held any postmortem government appointments and eventheir Communist successors, as funny as they were (remember that fat joker Khrushchev?) could not outsmart McCain in his imaginative promises.
Now the usual admiration on behalf of the Washington elites for the man proclaimed to be the chief architect of America’s 80s and 90s boom years is gone. After his defeat McCain moved so much to the Left to please the victorious new Leader that there is no difference between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in today's Washington. McCain would definitely prefer to forget about his praise of the former free market advocate.
RIP former agent of the world capitalism! It doesn't look like another government job is coming his way whether he is dead or alive.
Sir Alan, a Knight Commander of the British Empire, Commander of the French Legion of Honor received honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania, Leuven (Belgium), Notre Dame, Wake Forest and Colgate universities. There were widespread rumors that he was the prime candidate for a Nobel Prize in economic science. His repentance came too late and the Prize was awarded to Paul Krugman who hates capitalism with Leninist fervor and compares Austrian economics with the phlogiston theory of fire. Krugman is another Waxman of the economic profession and he definitely deserves the Nobel not less than Al Gore, Leonid Kantorovich, Tjalling Koopmans, Gunnar Myrdal, Wassily Leontief, Desmond Tutu or Yasser Arafat. On this background, in the eyes of Daniel Schorr, Diane Rehm and Judy Woodruff, Greenspan looks like a right wing extremist, member of some free market militia!
When next time central government radio, federal television or the New York Pravda calls Greenspan a free market advocate it is another lie. He is not. And now he has finally admitted it himself! Who is next?
Notes
[1] America Picks Names for New Obama Dog
[2] Harvard Business Online November 1, 2008.
[3] Cf. Obama’s chief of staff choice favors compulsory universal service Examiner.com November 6, 2008.
[4] US House committee on oversight and government
[5] CBS News, McCain Wants Greenspan, Dead Or Alive, Oct. 4, 2007
November 17, 2008
Yuri N. Maltsev [send him mail] is Professor of Economics at Carthage College in Wisconsin. Before coming to the U.S. in 1989, he was a member of a senior team of Soviet economists that worked on President Gorbachev’s reforms package of perestroika. He is the author of Requiem for Marx.
