On Sunday May 9, President Barack Obama presented the commencement address for the graduates of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. The speech was chilling, but not in the way that one would expect on such an occasion. Instead, the “chills” were a product of the Marxist comments that President Obama poured over the unsuspecting spectators.
In the middle of his commencement address, Obama said:
You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations … information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; its putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.
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In other words, there are too many contradictory “truths” available through technology, too much information accessible to the individual. It may lead to confusion, and dare I say it, pursuits to decipher truth from fiction. Obama considers this a threat to democracy.
So what is wrong with that?
Simply, the very idea that information available to the general public should be limited is the antithesis of representative democracy and our Republic. In fact, it is the reason that the freedom of press is the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
It is that which separates the United States from the rest of the world. According to Reporters Without Borders, an organization that ranks countries in terms of freedom of the press, one-third of the world’s people reside in nations where is no freedom of press. These nations rely on state-run news organizations to propagandize and to suppress opposition. Reporters Without Borders notes that in 2003, 42 journalists lost their lives for attempting to print items that were in opposition to the government regimes, while 130 were imprisoned for such. In 2005, the number of journalists’ deaths increased to 63.
When Barack Obama addresses information that poses a distraction, do you suppose he is referring to the information touted by his good friends at MSNBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, or the Huffington Post? It certainly is doubtful. By now its been firmly established that the mainstream media has become a puppet for the Left. While ACORN was stealing elections, and Obama is secretly fraternizing with Goldman Sachs behind closed doors, the Huffington Post continued to print articles like “Bringing the Vatican to Justice,” “Voter Fraud in California: Is ACORN at It Again? Or Is It Actually Republicans?”, and “Glenn Beck Is Against Mother’s Day Now?”
The “enemies” are organizations like Fox News, The John Birch Society, The New American, and people like the Tea Partiers, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc.
What’s worse is that Barack Obama has somebody working for him who is prepared to metaphorically "eliminate" these enemies. His name is Cass Sunstein, confidante to Obama and, more importantly, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. In a 2008 Harvard Law paper written by Sunstein, he regards any information spoken against the regime in power as a “conspiracy theory.” Sunstein asserts that the government needs to employ covert agents to “congnitively infiltrate online groups and websites as well as other activist groups which advocate views that are “false” about the government.” Even if these groups are correct, according to Sunstein, they need to be discredited in order to “increase the citizens’ faith in government officials.”
For Sunstein, there are five ways to combat those conspiracy theories: ban them, tax them “financially or otherwise,” have the government engage in counterspeech, hire people to engage in such, and infiltrate the groups.
On yesterday’s episode of Glenn Beck, he noted that he has begun to see several of these rules employed. On his own Twitter page, Beck’s fans have suddenly begun using racial slurs. Beck remarks, “Sounds like Cass Sunstein. Doesn’t it? Infiltrate, online, pose, and discredit.” Likewise, the group called “Crash the Tea Party” was created solely for the purposes of placing agents in Tea Party crowds that would behave crazily and make racist, homophobic, and sexist remarks in order to discredit the Tea Party movement.
Much of what Obama and his administration have learned about transforming America and are now employing comes from neo-Marxist Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. There is no question of Obama’s connection to this man. In a letter written by Saul Alinsky’s son, David Alinsky, to the editor of the Boston Globe, he asserts, “Obama learned his lesson well. I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.” In fact, according to the World Net Daily, President Obama helped fund the Midwest Academy, also known as “Alinsky Academy,” when he served as a paid director for Chicago nonprofit Woods Fund. Midwest Academy describes itself as “one of the nation’s oldest and best-known schools for community organizations, citizen organizations and individuals committed to progressive social change.”
In Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky writes, “Lest we forget, at least an over the shoulder acknowledgement to the very first radical, from all of our legends mythology and history, the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom. That radical was Lucifer.” Alinsky is the man that Obama holds in high esteem, and Lucifer is the role model for Alinsky. In other words, when the transformation is complete, we will all end up in hell.
In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky writes that a true community organizer “does not have a fixed truth — truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist.” Is this where Sunstein’s philosophy on “conspiracy theories” is grounded? Sounds like a page write out of Orwell’s 1984. The availability of fixed truths are a danger and must be eliminated.
Alinsky also writes, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon”, a philosophy the mainstream media has used in its portrayals of the Tea Party as “racist” and “violent.” Alinsky adds, “Utilize all events of the period for your purpose,” reminiscent of Obama’s Chief of Staff’s remark, “You never want a serious crisis go to waste.”
Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is the handbook of the Left, the Bible for the Obama administration. We see that these rules are being utilized regularly by this administration, and now they have turned their attention to the freedom of the press.
According to The John Birch Society (JBS), Obama notes that the “flow of information puts pressure on government.” But, as noted by JBS, “that is exactly what it should do” since the government in a Republic is meant to be “answerable to the people.”
One would think that the way to combat falsities is by touting the truth, not by silencing the speakers. Of course, if the so-called “falsities” are in fact truths, then that may pose a problem to the regime struggling to maintain power. So the solution, according to Obama and Sunstein is silence.
