Posted by
shipwreck on Friday, August 22, 2008 3:25:48 PM
Obama tells us that his childhood was influenced by Frank in Hawaii. Frank was a fellow traveler and intellectual peer of his socialist mother and his socialist maternal grandparents. So Obama was right at home in Chicago where socialism had a long history from Eugene V. Debs, the 1894 railway union organizer so prominent in the Pullman riots, to Saul Alinisky, who developed the model of in-your-face instigation for social change - boycotts, protests, pickets, and all that. Alinsky's model has been adapted by community organizers as the most effective tool for the redistribution of a community's wealth. Frank, his mother, his professors, his pastor were all products of critical theory whether they thought about it or not.
Critical theory developed out of the philosophies of disaffected German communists who immigrated to the United States from Franfurt in 1937. The more prominent were invited to Columbia University by its president. The history of critical theory is readily available on Wikipedia. Critical theory involves the analysis of societies deficiencies across a broad spectrum followed by social engineering to correct the deficiencies by wholesale displacement of traditional culture and replacing it completely with social inventions thought to free the constipated self-centered, selfish mind of its strictures. Free of its past, the mind will be open to embracing class identification and the practice of work and reward on the need of the class rather than the individual. Bernard Marcuse, a Berkely professor, was the leading proponent of critical theory in the fifties. His advocation of such mind expanding adventures as sexual freedom contributed to divorcing the individual from his puritannical past and has, among other things, led to the acceptance of abortion as an exercise of a woman's constitutional right of privacy rather than an act of infanticide. Sometimes, however, we regress and sentence Scott Petersons to death for killing their unborn. It depends. Mind expanding drugs are helpful in separating the mind from its past and its cultural and moral restraints. Enough of these over a long period of time and the user will not know who he is, who he was, why he's here or what he's doing. He had become the perfect subject for building a new culture and a soldier in a new world order.
Critical theory is handy for engineering society so that we think we feel good. It prides itself on being progressive. One of its features is that it is quite dogmatic. It suffers no argument and any fool who dares to challenge it is an obstacle to progress. And his influence within society must be eliminated. Therefore, those content with the status quo, slow growth, or "staying the course" must be vilified and demonized.
A hallmark of the critical theorists is the demonization of anyone and anything that will interfere with a leveling of society to the lowest common denominator. Take the wealthy for example. They are just plain evil, greedy, selfish, and disrespectful and incapable of comprehending the non-wealthy. Not only is it evil to be wealthy, it is evil to want to be wealthy. Not that you want to be poor, but it is better for society if you are willing to accept less in order to share more. So you better be prepared to accept less from the "change you can belief in." In order for its adherents to succeed, they must completely discredit the status quo and convince the people that they are miserable and in need of a catharsis. In clearing the ground for the acceptanace of a "new order," the critical theorists find it helpful to invent new courses of conduct suitable for class consumption. Hereafter, for example, it will be unacceptable to address a lady as "girl" or to distinguish among men, homosexuals, and women in any societal endeavor, occupation or recreation. Political correctness is another deprivation of individuality, but it must be acceptable because is for the "greater good." Economics must evolve from an endeavor to feed and shelter a family to feeding and sheltering the world. Medicine must evolve from a profession to cure a fortuitous illness or injury to a governmental obligation to cure aids, alcoholism, drug addiction, unwanted pregnancies and all sorts of self inflicted ailments and injuries at the expense of all.
No one must be poor, or sick or unemployed until the "change" has failed to deliver and all are poor, sick and unemployed. We are a global society, afterall, we are all citizens of the world and it just wouldn't be fair otherwise. So this is where Obama is coming from, and when he says real change, he means real change. Where once we could rely upon the checks and balances of a three branch government, we cannot expect a democratic congress to check the power of Obama if elected. Nancy Peolosi is a good example of "real change." She hasn't delivered on any of her 2006 campaign promises, but she has strangled the opposition and practically eliminated the peoples' ability to conduct a fair debate on urgent issues and vote "yea" or "nay." We can't expect any checking our balancing out of her. The Supreme Court will only check Obama's transformation of our society until the next justice is appointed. If you don't think we are tumbling head long down a coal chute read, James Cone's Black Power and Black Liberation Theology. This is the theology of Rev. Wright, Obama's pastor and mentor for twenty years.