[BRIGADE] PJB: Alienated & Radicalized
Published: Tue, 10/20/09
I think Pat wrote this one for me -- and all of us Brigaders who
are getting closer to joining the Revolution against this
government. [This government, the one before it, and before that
one as well -- and probably the next one unless we get rid of
computer voting -- but that's another story.]
I put an article from Oath Keepers on the site yesterday. Read
Pat's column below, then check it out at:
http://tinyurl.com/yzst5u9
As always - For the Cause, Linda
PS -- The site is loaded with great columns, videos, and all are
open for your comments. I hope you will stop by for a visit.
http://www.buchanan.org/blog/
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couldn't send it out because I didn't pay the bill. If you would
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Thanks!
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Alienated & Radicalized
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Tuesday - October 20, 2009
In the brief age of Obama, we have had "truthers,"
"birthers," Tea Party activists and town-hall dissenters.
Comes now, the "Oath Keepers." And who might they be?
Writes Alan Maimon in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Oath Keepers,
depending on where one stands, are "either strident defenders of
liberty or dangerous peddlers of paranoia."
Formed in March, they are ex-military and police who repledge
themselves to defend the Constitution, even if it means disobeying
orders. If the U.S. government ordered law enforcement agencies to
violate Second Amendment rights by disarming the people, Oath
Keepers will not obey.
"The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from
ever happening here," says founding father Stewart Rhodes, an
ex-Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer. "My focus is on the
guys with the guns, because they can't do it without them.
"We say if the American people decide it's time for a revolution,
we'll fight with you."
Prediction: Brother Rhodes is headed for cable stardom.
And if the Pelosi-Reid progressives went postal over town-hall
protesters, calling them "un-American," "Nazis" and "evil-mongers,"
one can imagine what they will do with the Oath Keepers.
As with Jimmy Carter's long range psychoanalysis of Joe Wilson, the
reflexive reaction of the mainstream media will likely be that
these are militia types, driven to irrationality because America
has a black president.
Yet, the establishment's reaction seems more problematic for the
republic than anything the Oath Keepers are up to. For our
political and media elite seem to have lost touch with the nation
and to be wedded to a vision of America divorced from reality.
Progressives are the folks who, in the 1960s, could easily
understand that urban riots that took scores of lives and destroyed
billions in property were an inevitable reaction to racism, poverty
and despair. They could empathize with the rage of campus radicals
who burned down the ROTC building and bombed the Pentagon.
The "dirty, immoral war in Vietnam" explains why the "finest
generation we have ever produced" is behaving like this, they said.
We must deal with the "root causes" of social disorder.
Yet, they cannot comprehend what would motivate Middle America to
distrust its government, for it surely does, as Ron Brownstein
reports in the National Journal:
"Whites are not only more anxious, but also more alienated. Big
majorities of whites say the past year's turmoil has diminished
their confidence in government, corporations and the financial
industry ... Asked which institution they trust most to make
economic decisions in their interest, a plurality of whites older
than 30 pick 'none'--a grim statement."
Is all this due to Obama's race?
Even Obama laughs at that. As he told David Letterman, I was
already black by the time I was elected. And he not only got a
higher share of the white vote than Kerry or Gore, a third of white
voters, who said in August 2008 that race was an important
consideration in voting, said they were going to vote for Obama.
With black voters going 24 to 1 for Obama, he almost surely won
more votes than he lost because of his race.
Moreover, the alienation and radicalization of white America began
long before Obama arrived. He acknowledged as much when he
explained Middle Pennsylvanians to puzzled progressives in that
closed-door meeting in San Francisco.
Referring to the white working-class voters in the industrial towns
decimated by job losses, Obama said: "They get bitter, they cling
to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or
anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to
explain their frustrations."
Yet, we had seen these folks before. They were Perotistas in 1992,
opposed NAFTA in 1993, and blocked the Bush-Kennedy McCain amnesty
in 2007.
In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged
from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV.
They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their
jobs outsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen
trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have
seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use
and dropout rates.
They watch on cable TV as illegal aliens walk into their country,
are rewarded with free educations and health care, and take jobs at
lower pay than American families can live on--then carry Mexican
flags in American cities and demand U.S. citizenship.
They see Wall Street banks bailed out as they sweat their next
paycheck, then read that bank profits are soaring, and the big
bonuses for the brilliant bankers are back. Neither they nor their
kids ever benefited from affirmative action, unlike Barack and
Michelle Obama.
They see a government in Washington that cannot balance its books,
win our wars or protect our borders. The government shovels out
trillions to Fortune 500 corporations and banks to rescue the
country from a crisis created by the government and Fortune 500
corporations and banks.
America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And
they are right.
Want to comments on Pat's column? See our site at:
http://buchanan.org/blog/alienated-radicalized-2641