Elect Obama or Fall Into Tyranny
As articles by John Pilger, Alexander Cockburn and Uri Avnery make clear, by groveling before the Israel lobby, Obama has dispelled any hope that his presidency would make a difference.
Obama told the lobby that in order to protect Israel he would use all the powers of the presidency to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. As in the case of Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," the conclusion whether or not Iran is making a nuclear weapon will be determined by propaganda and not by fact. Therefore, there is no difference between George W. Bush, John McCain, Obama and the lobby with regard to the Middle East.
As Israel has several hundred nuclear weapons, and a modern air force and missiles supplied by the United States, the idea that Israel needs American protection from Iran is a fantasy. All Israel needs to do in order to be safe and to live in peace is to stop stealing the West Bank and to drop its designs on southern Lebanon. Obama is too smart not to know that U.S. foreign policy has been Shanghaied by the lobby not in order to protect innocent Israel but to enable Israel's territorial expansion.
Obama has dispelled hope on the economic front, as well. Obama has appointed two leading apologists for jobs offshoring as his economic advisors—Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Rubin associate Jason Furman. These two are notorious for their justifications of policies that benefit Wall Street, CEOs and large retailers at the expense of the economic well being and careers of millions of Americans.
As a result of offshoring, good jobs in America are disappearing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics job figures make it totally clear that the U.S. economy has ceased creating net new middle-class jobs in the private economy in the 21st century.
Stressing higher returns to shareholders, Wall Street pressures corporations to move their operations abroad. Wal-Mart tells its American suppliers to "meet the Chinese price" or else—a price that U.S. firms can match only by offshoring their operations to China.
Every job and product that is offshored increases the U.S. trade deficit and lowers U.S. gross domestic product. It is a losing game for America that rewards the overpaid elite of Wall Street and corporate America, while dismantling the ladders of upward mobility.
By enlarging the trade deficit, offshoring erodes the reserve currency role of the dollar, the real basis of U.S. power. Now that U.S. imports exceed U.S. industrial production, it is unlikely that the U.S. trade deficit can be closed except by a sharp reduction in U.S. consumption, which implies a drop in U.S. living standards. If the dollar loses its reserve currency status, the U.S. government will not be able to finance its budget and trade deficits.
Where is the hope when Obama endorses a foreign policy that benefits only Israeli territorial expansion and an economic policy that benefits only multimillionaires and billionaires?
The answer is that Obama's election would signify the electorate's rejection of Bush and the Republicans. Considering the cowardice of the Democratic Congress and its reluctance to hold a criminal regime accountable, electoral defeat is the only accountability that the Bush Republicans are likely to experience.
It is not sufficient accountability, but at least it is some accountability.
If the Republicans win the election and escape accountability, the damage Republicans have done to the U.S. Constitution, civil liberty and a free society will be irreversible. The Bush regime and its totalitarians have openly violated U.S. law against spying on Americans without warrants and U.S. and international laws against torture. The regime and its totalitarians have violated the Constitution that they are sworn to uphold. Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, even asserted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the U.S. Constitution does not provide habeas corpus protection to American citizens.
When federal courts acted to stop the regime's unconstitutional practices and abuse of prisoners, the Republicans passed legislation to overturn the court rulings. The Republican Party has shown beyond all doubt that it holds the U.S. Constitution in total contempt. Today, the Republican Party stands for unaccountable executive power.
To re-elect such a party is to murder liberty in America.
The June 12 Supreme Court decision pulled America back from the abyss of tyranny. For years, hundreds of innocent people have been held by the Bush regime without charges, a handful of which were set to be tried in a kangaroo military tribunal in which they could be convicted on the basis of secret evidence and confession extracted by torture.
The Court ruled 5 to 4 that detainees have the right to appeal to civilian courts for habeas corpus protection. The Bush Republicans, claiming "extraordinary times," had created a Gestapo system in which the government could accuse, without presenting any evidence, a person of being a threat and on that basis alone imprison him indefinitely. Justice Anthony Kennedy reminded the Republican Brownshirts that "the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."
Bush's current attorney general, Michael Mukassey, said he would proceed with his kangaroo trials.
President Bush indicated that he was inclined to again seek to overturn the Court with a law.
Brownshirt Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said he would draft a constitutional amendment to restore the executive branch's tyrannical power.
Republican presidential nominee John McCain said that the Supreme Court decision protecting habeas corpus "is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."
The four Supreme Court justices (Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas) who voted for tyranny in America are all Republicans. They all came out of the Federalist Society, a highly subversive group of right-wing lawyers who are determined to elevate the powers of the executive branch above Congress and the Supreme Court.
The Republican Party has morphed into a Brownshirt Party. The party worships "energy in the executive." If the Brownshirt Republicans are re-elected, they only need one more Supreme Court appointment in order to destroy American liberty.
That is what is at stake in the November election. As bad as Obama is on important issues, his election will signal rejection of the tyranny to which the Republicans are committed.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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It is hard for me to defend the likes of ACLU feminazis like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and left-wing elitist Yankee Republicans like David Souter and John Paul Stevens who seem to treasure their capacity to "evolve" in office like their left-wing Yankee GOP predecessor Harry Blackmun. But PCR's article makes me look at them a little differently, when the subject of executive branch power-grabs comes up. I have always deemed it to be Congress's duty to impeach and remove the aforementioned justices from office for the obvious crimes of willful disregard of the U.S. Constitution. Just consider their opinions that abortion, sodomy, affirmative action for minorities and homosexuals, and flag-burning are protected rights, while refusing service to or employment of homosexuals, praying in public schools, and tossing Darwin out of public schools are not.
But they do, at the present time, seem to recognize the danger in this imperialistic amount of power the White House has taken for itself. And Kennedy, the swing voter, is taking their side as well. The other side, composed of Roberts, Scalia, Alito, and Thomas, has proven its value to the social conservative movement, and for that I am grateful. Yet they are also beholden to the neocons' imperial agenda. The problem is their neo-Hamiltonian view of executive power. He probably would have been OK with an American monarchy, and now his ideological successors have found their way onto the high court. His anti-Federalist opponent Jefferson knew the danger of executive power. We need Supreme Court justices who are Jeffersonian in their view of executive branch power.
With all due respect to Mr. Roberts, I stopped holding my nose and voting for the "lesser of two evils" after the 1996 elections. Going online and discovering libertarianism awakened me politically and disillusioned me forever about the much-vaunted "two-party system". I voted Libertarian in 2000 and 2004, and I expect I'll do it again this year---particularly with someone like Bob Barr running as the LP's presidential candidate.
The Electoral College elects the President not the popular vote.There are many states like mine,Maryland,where there is no viable "lesser evil".I waste my vote if I vote for McCain.(I disgrace myself if I vote for Obama).It's an easy call in Maryland---third party.But for those of you who live in,say,Ohio....hmmm.
Well we can't say we weren't warned. Harvey Mansfield, the Straussian Harvard professor, speaking on behalf of "conservatives," argued for "one-man rule" when he wrote the "The Case for the Strong Executive" for the Wall Street Journal in May 2007. He stated "Now the rule of law has two defects, each of which suggests the need for one-man rule," and then stated his case for dictatorship. The Boumediene v. Bush decision was a defensive action against "unitary executive theory," or in Mansfield's layman's term, one-man rule.
Unfortunately, "conservatives," even those who read Chronicles, are not reliable allies against these attempts at tyranny. I once argued to a group of "conservative" Catholics who celebrate the common sense of a deceased Catholic writer that we should not be trading our "birthright," i.e., habeas corpus, for the pottage of a mere promise that sometime in the future, in the fullness of time, Roe v. Wade "might be reversed, and thereby return the abortion issue to the states. They quickly rejected the argument for the defense of habeas corpus and to a man, enthusiastically indicated they thought giving up habeas corpus for a mere promise was a good trade. Ironically, three days later, South Dakota voted to keep abortion in that state. Curiously, it is not incredible to believe that some of the victims of the loss of habeas corpus would be anti-abortion protestors under some future administration. I guess that's why "conservatives" came to be known as the "stupid party," not just ideological bias.
Unfortunately, this ideology of stupidity in support of tyranny sometimes shows up in the pages of Chronicles, as when space was made available to an anti-abortion writer who criticized the American Bishops for suggesting that Catholic voters might consider additional issues when deciding who to vote for. In that same issue, Mr. Fleming wrote eloquently to the effect that, if I recall correctly, there is more than one issue to judge politicians on. However, the argument for one issue voting was more concise and at the front of the magazine so it probably had more effect.
Paleoconservatives need to decide if they are going to advance tyranny by promoting an unattainable objective, the abolition of abortion; which comes at the eventual cost of taking away their right to be free of detention without cause by the government, or, if they will break the pattern of stupidity that has been adopted by the rank and file. If the latter, Chronicles should not allow itself be used by Republicans chanting anti-abortion slogans on behalf of the party of tyranny. The last seven years have shown where they really stand in defense of liberty.
Roberts hits the nail on the head yet again.....................
I am probably going to vote for Barr, but I admit this is the most dispiriting election of my lifetime.
I hope Obama is lying to the lobby and Wall Street and is a closet populist. I dont know how outsourcing helps the black people I know this man and his wife care about, and I cant figure how another war we cant afford for a small nation that can easily defend itself is going to help them either.
For paleoconservatives, the best thing we can do is to encourage other cultural conservatives to keep having larger families than liberals and moderates, so that we will take America back one day, even if we dont live to see it. The left does not replicate itself, but has to bring in votes via immigration, but the church-going right does replicate itself and then-some. We need to keep up the "then-some" end of it. The establishment gamed the primaries and got J. McCain elected with 30% of the entire primary vote by having the left-most states have "winner-take-all" primaries and having so many candidates in the field that voters could never get behind one of them. Next time we need to get behind someone electable EARLY, before the process starts and agree on him here and other places online and get the grassroots machine rolling before Iowa and New Hampshire even begins.....
"Obama has dispelled any hope that his presidency would make a difference."
Did anyone with any sense actually believe this in the first place?
As Dr. Trifkovic has said, let's pray for a complete, absolute and unstoppable economic meltdown. It's our only hope.
Paul Craig Roberts has become very weak on the immigration issue. He hardly ever mentions it.
If Barack OBama is elected president of the United States, there will be tremondous push to delegitimize the view that America should remain largely a White Nation.
Barack Obama is the mortal enemy of Native Born White Americans. John McCAin is the mortal enemy of Native Born White Americans. Vote for neither of them.
If the Supreme Court gets tipped in the wrong direction, then it will be time for a widepsread and deep revolt against the US goverment.
I Counterpunch and the transvestite legal immigranmt Alexander Cockburn. He should be deported. Counterpunch is a platform for hispanics,hindus-vijay prasad-and muslimns to wage race war aganat Native Born White Americans.
Paul CRaig Robets is on the same team as post-1965 immigration enthusiasts.
Very disapointing article.
The only true rejection of tyrrany would be to abandon two two-party war system of open borders and Wilsonian diplomacy.
Supporting Obama is nothing but cowardly supporting the Death of America.
Chuck Baldwin is the only remaining option.
From Phyllis Chesler at Chester Chronicles:
"My friend and colleague, the scholar Bat Ye’or told me that if Obama is elected, America will become dhimmified even faster than Europe."
I'm not suggesting that a McCain victory will save us but an Obama victory will allow the Democrats to cement control for the next eight to twelve years. If you think having a Republican single party state is bad then wait until we have a Democrat single party state. This time the Democrats will pull the plug on the Right before it can come at them like it did at Clinton in the 1990's. If you haven't already heard they have an action plan to take us straight into an EU-like oppression. We will be dhimmified. I hope you will then be happy.
Paul Craig Roberts seems to be blinded by his loathing of Bush.
Who cares?
Whoever will be our next president was picked some time ago (what -- two, three years ago?). No "voter" and no columnist will at this point have any effect on the outcome.
The irrelevance of "voting" was already obvious even before Diebold and its trail-free e-voting.
I think good minds should stop wasting time with fantasies such as federal elections and focus on things that actually matter.
But fantasies die hard...
The title doesn't really reflect the article. PCH isn't really saying vote for Obama. He is just hoping McCain loses.
I do wish he would endorse Chuck Baldwin.
Arius @11:
My friend, PCR's eyes are as open as they will ever be. You are blinded by the delusion that there is a difference between Democrats and Republicans. They are all part of the Beltway political establishment. Single-party rule by the Dems and the GOP are equally undesirable.
Any true conservative should vote 3rd party or for Obama. Yes, he will be bad, but no worse than McCrazy. And with Obama in office the blame for the disasters will fall on the Democrats not the Repubs.
Voting for McCain means 4 more years of Bush, only worse. He will destroy the Republican party and lead to a Democrat victory in 2012. So that's the choice. 4 years of Barry O, with a Republican congress in 2010, and a CONSERVATIVE nominee in 2012, or 8 years of Democrat congress and a moderate liberal/POTUS - McCain/Clinton.
If you want Amnesty, open borders, a collapsing dollar, skyrocketing trade deficits and war with Iraq, vote McCain.
You make the call.
you sure do get some weird comments! I admit it is the best argment for voting for Obama I have heard--but I think domestic tryanny is on auto pilot. It's too late--sorry.
Dead on, Pablo H! There would be huge advantages to Conservatives if Obama wins, and almost no good in a McCain victory.
Disaster (or at least a meaningful acceleration of the slide which has helped give Bush the lowest approval rating in the history of polling) is almost fated to occur during the next Presidential Term at this point, and we must avoid at any cost a situation where America's false association of McCain with Conservatives leads to them turning on the Republican Party, the only home of meaningfully powerful Conservatives in this Country, for good.
And it would actually be even better if Obama, after being elected, declares war on Iran, as the economic consequences would be so devastating as to greatly strengthen Populist forces.
This would be especially useful from the standpoint of avoiding a repeat in 2012 of the kind of travesty that occurred in 2008 with McCain getting the Republican Nomination.
Also, I think Barack Obama's race and background make it less likely that Americans would let him get away with Traitoring them on Immigration, even in the first 2 years where he’d have a Democrat Majority in both houses of Congress.
We should all bear in mind that a lot of the Democrat Freshmen from 2006 sided with the people and against Bush and McCain on the crucial issue of Amnesty.