Elizabeth Warren and the Future of Neo-Progressivism

by Dr. Gerard Emershaw

Washington pundits and talking heads all seem to agree that former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a shoo in as the Democrat presidential candidate in 2016. Of course, the political junkyard is littered with the careers of politicians that the experts claimed were inevitable Democratic presidential nominees—Gary Hart, Mario Cuomo, Howard Dean, and the 2008 version of Hillary Clinton. Either way, Hillary Clinton is much like her husband. The Clintons are noted for their cynical and Machiavellian use of “triangulation” in order to avoid appearing too extreme. Thus, Hillary Clinton is unlikely to ever truly say what she believes while campaigning. Democratic Massachusetts Senator and possible future presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren is the anti-Clinton in terms of her willingness to clearly state her neo-progressive beliefs. Therefore, even if Hillary Clinton does become the 2016 nominee of the Democrats, it is still more useful to examine what Senator Warren states if one wants to have his or her finger on the pulse of the Democrat Party.

Speaking recently at Netroots Nation, Senator Warren outlined the “11 Commandments of Progressivism.” In many ways, these are far more likely to explain what a Hillary Clinton presidency might be like than anything Hillary Clinton will ever say on the campaign trail.

1. “We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we're willing to fight for it.”

This kind of populist tough talk has always been a trademark of progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. While the 2007–2008 financial meltdown caused extreme damage to the global economy, scapegoating Wall Street is disingenuous. The proximate cause of the meltdown was the bubble caused by the Federal Reserve. However, progressives have been in bed with the rogue private central bank from the beginning, so it is unlikely that Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, or any other Neo-Progressive Democrat will rein in the Federal Reserve. Furthermore, any regulations on Wall Street will likely be lobbied for and perhaps even written by large Wall Street firms. The dirty corporatist secret of progressives—which is so blatant it should hardly be considered a secret—is that they collaborate with large corporations. The cost of regulations can easily be absorbed by large corporations, but they can be detrimental to smaller businesses. Therefore, this regulation will only serve to limit competition on Wall Street. It is also unlikely to prevent further economic meltdowns. Why should one expect a regulator to notice a potential problem when his or her money is not at stake if actual financial professionals with their own money at stake could not? Finally, even if the heads of a few token greedy Wall Street miscreants are chopped off, these scapegoats will likely be middle-management flunkies. The top Wall Street movers and shakers are politically protected by both political parties due to the campaign funds that they can provide. After the any scapegoats get carted off to federal prison after the next meltdown caused by the machinations of the Federal Reserve, the big firms that get wiped out will likely have their losses socialized with another bailout. Even if one subscribes to Keynesian insanity, there is nothing involving stimulus deficit spending that entails bailing out private entities that have gone belly up. Stimulus funds could have been provided to Wall Street firms and corporations that had been fiscally prudent or simply pumped into the economy by the government. It was the Democrats who had no problem with the bailout.

2. “We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth.”

In other words, Al Gore, Goldman Sachs, and other crony capitalists will make billions of dollars in carbon tax money. Despite the claims of neo-progressives, the science on climate change is anything but settled. What is happening with the climate and what—if anything can or should be done about it by the government—is no more settled now than it was in the 1970s when environmentalists warned about “global cooling” and suggested putting soot over the Arctic in order to melt the polar ice. However, most importantly, there is nothing in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution or in Article II of the Constitution which grants Congress or the President any authority to “protect the Earth.” Other than promoting science and useful arts through the protection of patents and copyrights, there is nothing about science in the Constitution. Perhaps politicians should leave science to the scientists and not to the crony capitalists.

3. “We believe that the Internet shouldn't be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real net neutrality.”

Net neutrality. This is yet another populist progressivist charade. Net neutrality means giving the federal government the power to regulate the Internet. Government control is antithetical to freedom. Robert Wenzel expresses the truth about net neutrality:

Government should keep its hands off ISPs and allow them to operate any way they want. The ISPs, using their own equipment, are providing a service and should be allowed to use their equipment and provide their service in any fashion they choose without interference from the government.

If ISPs block content that users want, then the free market is likely to punish those ISPs in the long run. If ISPs do not provide the speed that users desire, then the free market is also likely to punish those ISPs. The best regulator is always free market competition. With the current corporatist system in place in the United States, government regulation of the Internet is simply regulation by the large corporations wealthy enough to buy the government.

4. “We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage.”

The “raise the minimum wage” and “living wage” arguments. Why will the fallacy that raising the minimum wage will benefit the economy and help the poor not go away? Raising the minimum wage will benefit a small group of workers at the expense of a large group of workers. Yes, some will see their purchasing power increase. But many businesses will simply not hire new workers. Others will lay off workers. Young unskilled workers will have no chance of being hired. Poor minorities will be greatly affected. What is the best way to raise the minimum wage? Create jobs. Supply and demand. When the number of jobs increases relative to the number of workers, wages will increase. How can the government create jobs? It cannot. But what it can do is allow the private sector to create jobs by cutting taxes and regulations. The neo-progressive idea of raising the minimum wage will simply lead to more individuals becoming dependent on government assistance. Perhaps that is their true motive.

5. “We believe that fast-food workers deserve a livable wage, and that means that when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them.”

Is it any surprise that unions have long been major supporters of progressive political candidates? While Americans have a First Amendment right to unionize, the federal government has long since stopped being an impartial referee when it comes to unionized labor. The federal government has been an advocate for unions since the New Deal. Ultimately, the federal government should remain neutral regarding unions. There is nothing in the Constitution which grants Congress or the President the power to force business management to accept unionization. Unionization also typically benefits a small group of union members at the expense of all other workers. In the case of the fast food industry, unionization will increase the costs. This will be passed onto the working class families who often depend on inexpensive fast food. In essence, fat cat union bosses and their allies in organized crime will benefit while the majority of workers and fast food consumers will suffer.

6. “We believe that students are entitled to get an education without being crushed by debt.”

Then perhaps the federal government should get out of the student loan business. Guaranteeing student loans simply makes the cost of a college education more expensive. Perhaps Congress should amend bankruptcy laws so that student debt would be dischargeable in bankruptcy. Despite all the government meddling in higher education, the United States has one of the finest post-secondary educational systems in the world. More progressive meddling with universities and colleges is likely to have the same affect on higher education as “Obamacare” is having on health care.

7. “We believe that after a lifetime of work, people are entitled to retire with dignity, and that means protecting Social Security, Medicare, and pensions.”

What does retirement with dignity have to do with protecting government Ponzi schemes? The Social Security System is unsustainable and despite the insane holding in Helvering v. Davis (1937)—which was likely the result of extortion on the part of FDR—it is unconstitutional. Social Security needs to be privatized in a manner similar to the Chilean system. The current system is unfair to the poor because it prevents them from building wealth over generations. It is also racist due to the fact black workers tend to begin working at an earlier age than white workers and tend to die at an earlier age. Social Security and Medicare do nothing but keep Americans dependent on the government. The last thing any neo-progressive wants is any citizen freed from the shackles of the federal government.

8. “We believe—I can't believe I have to say this in 2014—we believe in equal pay for equal work.”

Progressives and neo-progressives have long fomented gender war by making dubious claims about the “gender gap” in pay. Rachel Greszler and James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation succinctly summarize the truth about gender-based wage differences:

This gender gap is not the result of rampant discrimination. Rather, it exists because men and women often work in different jobs, work different hours, and have different qualifications. When work experience, education, occupation, and hours of work are taken into account, the average woman makes 98 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

Is there sexism in the world of business? Certainly. There is always likely to be some. However, the free market will punish those businesses that do not treat female workers fairly and pay them what they are worth. Businesses which seek to hire the best employees will always thrive. What is keeping the wages of all workers—women included—down is corporatism. Government regulation, high taxes, and the Federal Reserve’s “inflation tax” is the greatest enemy in the War on Women (and also on Men).

9. “We believe that equal means equal, and that's true in marriage, it's true in the workplace, it's true in all of America.”

Gay rights. The funny thing about gay rights is that neo-progressives only champion them fully when it is politically expedient to do so. When public opinion was against gays openly serving in the military, the neo-progressives championed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Later, when the American public became more tolerant, neo-progressives finally championed lifting the prohibition against openly gay men and women serving in the military. When public opinion was still against gay marriage, neo-progressives championed “civil unions” for gay couples. As a majority of Americans is now beginning to favor gay marriage, the neo-progressives are finally openly supporting gay marriage. Neo-progressives have always been nothing but cynical pragmatists. They never have and never will care about the natural rights of gays or anyone else.

10. “We believe that immigration has made this country strong and vibrant, and that means reform.”

‘Immigration Reform’ has become a meaningless phrase. Ultimately, neither Democrats nor Republicans want to change the law. And usually neither party wants to enforce immigration law. Each party may complain about it when they are not in power, but when they are in power, they never do anything about immigration. Blah blah blah.

11. “And we believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies. We will overturn Hobby Lobby and we will fight for it. We will fight for it!”

The Hobby Lobby case should have never arisen because “Obamacare” is and always has been unconstitutional despite what Justice Roberts said in his incoherent majority opinion. Whether corporations are persons is an important question. However, the Constitution does not give Congress the power to force Americans to buy a product from a private company. If neo-progressives wish to protect Americans from unscrupulous businesses, then why are they collaborating with insurance companies with “Obamacare?” That is more like fascism than freedom. If neo-progressives want women to be able to afford contraceptives, why not allow them to be available over the counter? Do they believe that women are not intelligent enough to make their own decisions regarding their health without a paternalistic doctor?

The Politics of Project Mayhem: Fight Club on Its Fifteenth Anniversary

by Dr. Gerard Emershaw

October 15, 2014 will mark the 15th anniversary of Fox 2000 Pictures’ release of the motion picture Fight Club. The film, directed by David Fincher, based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, and starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter, debuted at number one at the box office, but fell off quickly, becoming a flop. The film had a $63 million budget but earned only $37 million domestically. However, a funny thing happened on the way to becoming the next Howard the Duck, Heaven’s Gate, or Cutthroat Island. In the decade and a half since its release, Fight Club became a cult classic on home video. Eventually, the cult grew. The film is currently ranked #10 all time by users on the Internet Movie Database’s Top 250 list.

Fight Club is a hilarious dark comedy, an unconventional rom com, a riveting thriller, and a disturbing psychological drama. It features groundbreaking direction by David Fincher, mind-blowing cinematography by Jeff Cronenweth, a pitch perfect pulsating score by the Dust Brothers, a script by Jim Uhls which surpasses the excellence of the source material, and tour de force performances by Norton, Pitt, and Carter. Unlike most films, which peak in popularity early on and gradually settle or decline, Fight Club continues to become more popular and more critically acclaimed over time.

Volumes of interesting material has been written about the countless compelling thematic elements of Fight Club—masculine alienation, the fragmented self and the possibility of self-actualization, father figures and God, the nihilism of modern culture, etc. The following will analyze some of the key economic and political themes present in the film.

The Narrator suffers from intense insomnia. He is so numb that he cannot feel anything and cannot sleep unless he attends support groups for maladies he does not have—lymphoma, tuberculosis, testicular cancer, blood parasites, brain parasites, etc. The reason that the Narrator is so deeply alienated from himself and from humanity is expressed in an anything but subtle manner by the omnipresent Starbucks coffee cups. His alienation is caused by consumerism:

Like everyone else, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct. … If I saw something like clever coffee tables in the shape of a yin and yang, I had to have it. … I would flip through catalogs and wonder, “What kind of dining set defines me as a person?” We used to read pornography. Now it was the Horchow Collection. … I had it all.  Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of wherever.

Marxism is not the cure for this malady of the soul. If the Narrator’s clever coffee table were made by the government, it would not change a thing. If his coffee was brewed by Government Java instead of Starbucks, it would not change a thing. His unfulfilling job of de-prioritizing reports, working on primary action items, and deciding whether the major car company that he works for as a recall coordinator ought to recall defective automobiles would be just as unfulfilling if he were performing it for Government Motors. His annoying cornflower-blue loving boss would likely be even more incompetent and more annoying if he were middle management in some government bureaucratic agency. The alienation that results from empty consumerism is a consequence of corporatism and not capitalism:

When deep space exploration ramps up, it will be corporations that name everything.  The IBM Stellar Sphere. The Philip Morris Galaxy. Planet Starbucks.

The Narrator’s unnamed “major” car company employer, IBM, Philip Morris, Starbucks, IKEA, etc. are all large corporations. Under the corporatist system—a.k.a. “crony capitalism”—that has been in place and growing exponentially since the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, these large corporate entities have the ability to crush smaller rivals by lobbying the government not only for special benefits but also for costly regulations which will greatly harm these smaller businesses. By not truly having to compete on a level playing field in a free market and by forming fascistic partnerships with the government, large corporations are able to collectivize their employees into drones and collectivize the masses into slavish consumerists:

Advertisements have them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs they hate so they can buy shit they don't need.

The only small business entrepreneur in the film is the Narrator’s messianic anarchist alter ego Tyler Durden, who produces soap by rendering human fat “liberated” from the dumpsters of liposuction clinics. Durden strikes a blow against corporatism by performing small-scale acts of sabotage against them—urinating in soup, splicing frames of pornography into family films, etc.

Ultimately, the big target of Project Mayhem—the terrorist cell that Durden forms using the most zealous acolytes from the various fight clubs—is the monetary system. Project Mayhem seeks to blow up the headquarters of the major credit card companies to reset the debt record. In the era of central banks and fiat currency, money is not real. It is not backed with gold or any precious commodity. It is nothing but debt. As a result, the central banks are able to steal the value of money, and its partner the government is able to finance the warfare/welfare state. The people become mere collectivized slaves. In a sense, the credit card debt records are bogus and become a symbol of how morally bankrupt the corporatist system really is.

However, Tyler Durden does not turn out to be a libertarian savior. In many ways, he represents the hidden danger of anarchism. After dissolving the bonds between the members of Project Mayhem and society, he does not set them loose as free individuals. Instead, he collectivizes them into his own private army of “space monkeys.” He becomes the lost father/God figure to the men and instills in them his own unique collectivist worldview:

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We are all part of the same compost heap.

In Project Mayhem, nobody has a name. And nobody asks questions. All is selfless obedience.

Ultimately, Tyler Durden represents the fascistic collectivist danger that will inevitably threaten anarchy. Project Mayhem is nothing but a radical form of collectivism which initially masqueraded as a radical form of individualism. If a charismatic leader like Tyler Durden were successful in destroying the old corporatist order, he would simply replace it with a more primitive fascistic collectivism of his own. Despite Tyler’s insistence to the Narrator that they are not special and are not the leaders, this is disingenuous. Project Mayhem requires leadership. Perhaps some form of leadership is always necessary. Perhaps it is an inherent human trait. It seems as if most human beings ultimately desire or even need leadership. It may be that any form of anarchism would create a power vacuum that some Nietzschean wannabe would attempt to fill. If this is so, then one should strive for a minarchist state as the least of all possible evils.

What makes Tyler Durden into both the greatest and most terrifying of leaders is that he is not a hypocrite. Unlike the typical collectivist despot, he does not subscribe to the view that “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” The rules of Project Mayhem apply to Tyler Durden (in his physical embodiment as the Narrator) just as they do to any other “space monkey.” When Tyler/the Narrator violates the rules of Project Mayhem by trying to interfere with it, he faces castration like any other “space monkey” would.

In destroying Tyler Durden through a violent act of fearless and nearly suicidal self-mutilation, the Narrator overthrows the new collectivist despot who has apparently overthrown the old corporatist order. But to what end? Will the Narrator be able to steer an individualist course between the collectivist Scylla and Charybdis of corporatism and primitive fascism? Even if the Narrator is willing to view the “space monkeys” as individuals—as he did the late Robert Paulson—will this last? Will his successor feel the same way? It was this very worry that led Thomas Jefferson to warn: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Jefferson knew: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” Leaders—whether the American President, Tyler Durden, the Narrator, or anyone else—will naturally seek to increase their power. Even Thomas Jefferson could not always resist that temptation when he was Commander-in-Chief. As a result, we cannot worship power, political parties, or even the most charismatic and beloved leaders. We must be ready, willing, and able to stand up to any collectivist tyranny in the name of freedom and individualism and throw off the chains of any despotic government. Among everything else that it is, Fight Club is also a cautionary tale about revolutions. History has shown that revolutions often overthrow one form of collectivist tyranny to just install another. The paradigm case of this is the French Revolution which tore down the tyrannical monarchy just to replace it with the bloody Robespierre. And eventually tore down the Reign of Terror just to replace it with Napoleon. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

(For a much more detailed discussion of Individualism and Collectivism, read my new book The Real Culture War: Individualism vs. Collectivism & How Bill O’Reilly Got It All Wrong. Available now on Amazon in both print and Kindle.)

Economic Royalism Is Not Libertarianism

by Gerard Emershaw

Many make the erroneous assumption that if someone supports big business and opposes taxes on the wealthy that that makes him or her a libertarian. Nothing could be further from the truth. Such attitudes simply make one an economic royalist. The term ‘economic royalist’ was brought into American discourse in the June 27, 1936 speech of President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Democratic National Convention:

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital-all undreamed of by the fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

While FDR was a progressive tyrant whose policies were an unhealthy mix of fascistic corporatism and Marxism, he did make an interesting point in this speech. Economic royalists are akin to today’s crony capitalists. They are corporatists who use their wealth and influence to give themselves unfair advantages. Typically the economic royalists are rent seekers who use the government to regulate and tax their smaller competitors out of business when they can.

The economic royalist attitude has spread among conservatives, Objectivists, and pseudo-libertarians. In their eyes, big business can do no wrong. Large corporations and wealthy individuals should not be taxed, but it does not matter whether the lower socioeconomic classes are taxed to death. While the minimum wage is a counterproductive concept and increasing the federal minimum wage would be a job killer, economic royalists seem to savor that there are so many Americans earning a low wage. Economic royalists assume—like the embarrassing Herman Cain—that anyone who is not wealthy is simply stupid or lazy. They erroneously believe that the United States has a free market economy when in truth it is a corporatist economy. They erroneously believe that all large corporations and titans of industry did it all on their own. While President Obama was incorrect in his “you didn’t build that” rhetoric, many economic royalists have only succeeded because progressive taxation and business regulations have been used like cudgels against their small business competitors. Economic royalists blame the victim. They attack the neo-progressive policies of President Obama yet also attack the victims who have been harmed and made dependent by the welfare state. One cannot have it both ways. Economic royalists believe that the unemployed and poor are lazy and do not want to work. However, what jobs could they get if they wanted to work? Nearly one in four is unemployed or underemployed. Decades of rule by neo-progressives, neoconservatives, and other enemies of economic freedom have destroyed the economy, and there are no longer enough jobs to go around. Illegal alien workers and foreign workers on visas have driven down wages. “Free trade” which is anything but free and fair and which only benefits other nations at the expense of the United States and “outsourcing” have ensured that the United States economy is a shell of what it once was.

The United States economy has been taxed and regulated nearly to death. It is so far from being a free market that an order of operations is required to cure all its ills. Lower taxes for the rich and more “free” trade simply will not fix things. Unemployment insurance, welfare, and all other progressive social programs simply cannot be ended as a first step. There are not enough jobs thanks to progressive policies. The private sector needs to be reinvigorated through lower taxes and fewer regulations. A jobless recovery will only ensure social turmoil and tyranny down the road.

In short, true libertarians do not play class warfare as communists, progressives, and economic royalists do. Freedom means that everyone gets an equal opportunity. Crony capitalists get no special favors from government.

Highlights and Analysis of President Obama’s Appalling NSA Speech

by Gerard Emershaw

President Obama’s January 17, 2014 speech on NSA surveillance may cause some devoted progressives to claim that the Commander-in-Chief has seen the light on civil liberties. However, anyone who listened to the speech with his or her ears rather than a deaf progressive heart understands how the President said nothing encouraging in terms of willingness to fulfill his duty to defend the Constitution. 

1. Isn’t spying on our enemies different from spying on our citizens?

President Obama pointed out that the United States government has a long history of employing various types of surveillance in an effort to keep the nation and its citizens safe:

At the dawn of our Republic, a small, secret surveillance committee borne out of the “The Sons of Liberty” was established in Boston. And the group’s members included Paul Revere. At night, they would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the British were preparing raids against America’s early Patriots. Throughout American history, intelligence has helped secure our country and our freedoms. In the Civil War, Union balloon reconnaissance tracked the size of Confederate armies by counting the number of campfires. In World War II, code-breakers gave us insights into Japanese war plans, and when Patton marched across Europe, intercepted communications helped save the lives of his troops. After the war, the rise of the Iron Curtain and nuclear weapons only increased the need for sustained intelligence gathering. And so, in the early days of the Cold War, President Truman created the National Security Agency, or NSA, to give us insights into the Soviet bloc, and provide our leaders with information they needed to confront aggression and avert catastrophe.

However, what the President failed to note is that spying on the Confederacy, the Axis Powers, and the Soviets were different than spying on American citizens with the NSA through the bulk collection of metadata. No rational American would criticize spying on dangerous enemy governments. The NSA and other American intelligence agencies can spy on China, Russia, and even allies such as Germany. These agencies can also spy on terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. But why do they need to spy willy nilly on American citizens?

2. Don’t bring up a cautionary tales if they don’t make you proceed with caution.

President Obama discussed the Constitution, the checks and balances built into the American form of government, totalitarianism, and past abuses by American intelligence agencies:

Throughout this evolution, we benefited from both our Constitution and our traditions of limited government. U.S. intelligence agencies were anchored in a system of checks and balances—with oversight from elected leaders, and protections for ordinary citizens. Meanwhile, totalitarian states like East Germany offered a cautionary tale of what could happen when vast, unchecked surveillance turned citizens into informers, and persecuted people for what they said in the privacy of their own homes.

In fact, even the United States proved not to be immune to the abuse of surveillance. And in the 1960s, government spied on civil rights leaders and critics of the Vietnam War. And partly in response to these revelations, additional laws were established in the 1970s to ensure that our intelligence capabilities could not be misused against our citizens. In the long, twilight struggle against Communism, we had been reminded that the very liberties that we sought to preserve could not be sacrificed at the altar of national security.

But what is the point of bringing up cautionary tales if these tales do not make you cautious? One of the most important checks against tyranny from the federal government has been the Fourth Amendment, yet President Obama did not refer specifically to it even once during his speech. He brought up Stasi East Germany, but he failed to recognized that the NSA, FBI, and CIA are beginning to resemble East Germany’s Stasi and that the Department of Homeland Security’s “see something, say something” campaigns have attempted to turn Americans into informers. The fact that the United States government has used its vast spying apparatus against its own people on so many occasions—COINTELPRO, Operation CHAOS, Nixon’s “Plumbers,” Project Shamrock, Project MKUltra, Operation Northwoods, etc.—should lead President Obama to realize how close the nation can come to becoming a totalitarian surveillance state.  It is one thing to say that “the very liberties that we sought to preserve could not be sacrificed at the altar of national security” and another thing entirely to mean it. Meaning it requires being ever-vigilant in preserving natural rights regardless of what threats—even if existential—the nation faces. Being truly aware of “cautionary tales” such as Stasi East Germany and the various violations of rights by American intelligence agencies which the Church Committee revealed in the 1970s means making it a priority to oversee these executive agencies. President Obama has at most given lip service to this responsibility. At worst he has cynically pretended to do it while in fact helping these security agencies violate Constitutional rights.

3. Neoconservative in Progressive’s clothing?

President Obama sounded like Vice President Dick Cheney or some member of a 1990s neocon think tank when he said:

If the fall of the Soviet Union left America without a competing superpower, emerging threats from terrorist groups, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction placed new and in some ways more complicated demands on our intelligence agencies. Globalization and the Internet made these threats more acute, as technology erased borders and empowered individuals to project great violence, as well as great good.  
     

Terrorist threats are overblown. Threats of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are also overblown. Unlike something from Fox’s “24” or a novel by the late Tom Clancy, “suitcase nukes” do not grow on trees. Nuclear weapons are difficult to create and difficult to maintain. Hostile or potentially hostile nuclear nations have every reason to avoid allowing any proliferation. While the United States has shown caution in getting involved with military confrontations with nuclear powers, does anyone doubt that if terrorists obtained and used a nuclear weapon and this weapon could be traced to North Korea, Pakistan, etc, that the United States would not respond with a “shock and awe” military strike against such a nation? Terrorism does not pose an existential threat to the nation as did the Axis during World War II or the nuclear armed Soviet Union during the Cold War. If anything, the United States should be doing less spying and not more. If anything, the American people are finally owed the peace dividend from the ending of the Cold War.

Like the ruthless yet clueless neocons in the administration that preceded his, President Obama shamelessly invoked 9/11:

The horror of September 11th brought all these issues to the fore. Across the political spectrum, Americans recognized that we had to adapt to a world in which a bomb could be built in a basement, and our electric grid could be shut down by operators an ocean away. We were shaken by the signs we had missed leading up to the attacks—how the hijackers had made phone calls to known extremists and traveled to suspicious places.

Adapt? How about not escalating the Afghanistan War? How about not unconstitutionally attacking Libya? How about not trying to gin up a war against Syria? How about watching China and Russia—who actually probably can shut down the electric grid—instead of watching ordinary Americans? How about paying attention to obvious signs like memos stating that Al Qaeda is poised to strike?

President Obama even shamelessly evoked the debunked lie about how 9/11 could have been prevented if the NSA had been bulk collecting metadata at the time:

Why is this [NSA bulk collection of metadata] necessary? The program grew out of a desire to address a gap identified after 9/11. One of the 9/11 hijackers—Khalid al-Mihdhar -- made a phone call from San Diego to a known al Qaeda safe-house in Yemen. NSA saw that call, but it could not see that the call was coming from an individual already in the United States. The telephone metadata program under Section 215 was designed to map the communications of terrorists so we can see who they may be in contact with as quickly as possible.

Without the bulk collection of metadata, the United States knew the identity of Khalid-al-Mihdhar well before 9/11 and knew exactly where to find him. They just failed to do so. The NSA, FBI, CIA, and their sister intelligence agencies in the federal government were all negligent prior to 9/11. Should negligent actors be awarded more power? If too much was slipping through the cracks then, why give these agencies even more hay—in the form of metadata—to obscure the needles for which they are searching?  

4. Pot, meet kettle.

President Obama pulled out one of his favorites from his bag of tricks—blaming President Bush:

And yet, in our rush to respond to a very real and novel set of threats, the risk of government overreach—the possibility that we lose some of our core liberties in pursuit of security—also became more pronounced. We saw, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, our government engaged in enhanced interrogation techniques that contradicted our values. As a Senator, I was critical of several practices, such as warrantless wiretaps. And all too often new authorities were instituted without adequate public debate. 

As usual, the President did not let the facts get in the way of a good story. Enhanced interrogation? What is the difference between doing it and having some ally do it in a secret prison overseas after you have allowed terror suspects and others to be whisked away using extraordinary rendition? How was Bush’s warrantless wiretapping any worse than what the NSA has done on President Obama’s watch?

5. President Obama’s War on Whistleblowers will continue.

President Obama has been notoriously hard on whistleblowers. He assured us that he will continue to fight this war in earnest: 

And given the fact of an open investigation, I’m not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden’s actions or his motivations; I will say that our nation’s defense depends in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation’s secrets. If any individual who objects to government policy can take it into their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will not be able to keep our people safe, or conduct foreign policy. Moreover, the sensational way in which these disclosures have come out has often shed more heat than light, while revealing methods to our adversaries that could impact our operations in ways that we may not fully understand for years to come.

Without whistleblowers, how would the people ever learn of abuses done by clandestine government organizations? One wonders if President Obama believes that Woodward, Bernstein, and Deep Throat should all have been prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act.

6. Friend of false dilemma.

President Obama implied time and time again that one can either accept that the NSA must violate Constitutional rights or one believes that the nation should disarm its intelligence agencies. This is the kind of black and white thinking that made President George W. Bush infamous. It turns out that President Obama is also skilled in such fallacious thinking:

First, everyone who has looked at these problems, including skeptics of existing programs, recognizes that we have real enemies and threats, and that intelligence serves a vital role in confronting them. We cannot prevent terrorist attacks or cyber threats without some capability to penetrate digital communications—whether it’s to unravel a terrorist plot; to intercept malware that targets a stock exchange; to make sure air traffic control systems are not compromised; or to ensure that hackers do not empty your bank accounts. We are expected to protect the American people; that requires us to have capabilities in this field. Moreover, we cannot unilaterally disarm our intelligence agencies.

Who was suggesting that the United States disarm its intelligence agencies? This is like saying that anyone who opposes unnecessary and unconstitutional uses of military force believes that the United States should disarm its military and throw up the white flag to its enemies around the globe. President Obama again and again misses the point. Surveilling foreign governments and terrorists is necessary. Nobody is denying that. But why does that mean that the NSA should be collecting information on citizens domestically without probable cause or even suspicion? Why is the federal government targeting American citizens at all when all the 9/11 plotters were foreign?

7. No such thing as double standards.

President Obama claimed that employees of the NSA and other intelligence agencies can be trusted because they are just like us:

Second, just as ardent civil libertarians recognize the need for robust intelligence capabilities, those with responsibilities for our national security readily acknowledge the potential for abuse as intelligence capabilities advance and more and more private information is digitized. After all, the folks at NSA and other intelligence agencies are our neighbors. They're our friends and family. They’ve got electronic bank and medical records like everybody else. They have kids on Facebook and Instagram, and they know, more than most of us, the vulnerabilities to privacy that exist in a world where transactions are recorded, and emails and text and messages are stored, and even our movements can increasingly be tracked through the GPS on our phones.

Uh, members of the Gestapo, the KGB, and the Stasi were just like ordinary Germans, Soviets, and East Germans. So why did members of those organizations not “readily acknowledge the potential for abuse?” Could it be that members of spy agencies have the ability to exempt themselves and their family members? What is to prevent members of the NSA from formulating a policy of not surveilling employees, friends, and family of the agency? If Obamacare has taught us anything, it is that the President has no trouble with making unjustified exceptions to rules. So why not here as well?

8. Okay, I’m a crook, but look at that bigger crook over there!

President Obama essentially acknowledged that the federal government is violating the privacy of its citizens, but he distracted his audience by pointing to another culprit:

Third, there was a recognition by all who participated in these reviews that the challenges to our privacy do not come from government alone. Corporations of all shapes and sizes track what you buy, store and analyze our data, and use it for commercial purposes; that’s how those targeted ads pop up on your computer and your smartphone periodically. But all of us understand that the standards for government surveillance must be higher. Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us, we won’t abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached. Our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power; it depends on the law to constrain those in power.

It is no secret that President Obama the corporatist does not like business—unless it is a business that gives campaign contributions to his party. He basically said: “Hey, the corporations are violating your privacy, too!” So what? He claims that the government should have a higher standard. But the thing is that the government is becoming unaccountable. One has a choice whether or not to do business with a corporation that violates privacy. If you do not like the policies of Facebook, then you can delete your account. If you think that Google is probing too much, then you can use other websites and online services. If you think that Amazon is spying too much on your internet activity, then you can shop elsewhere. The bottom line is that there is at least a small check against private businesses in that angry customers and others can boycott them. The two major political parties are two sides of the same rotten penny, so “throwing the bums out” will not do a thing.

9. Playing the King card.

President Obama, as he often does, referenced Martin Luther King:

In fact, during the course of our review, I have often reminded myself I would not be where I am today were it not for the courage of dissidents like Dr. King, who were spied upon by their own government.

How are those like Snowden and Manning not dissidents? At this point it seems likely that if Martin Luther King were still alive, President Obama would be spying on him. It is also plausible that Reverend King might be facing a charge under the 1917 Espionage Act or living in forced exile.

10. Fox guarding the hen house.

President Obama promised greater executive oversight:

First, I have approved a new presidential directive for our signals intelligence activities both at home and abroad. This guidance will strengthen executive branch oversight of our intelligence activities. 

President Obama has hardly proven himself to be a friend of the Constitution. The centerpieces of his presidency—Obamacare and the Libyan “kinetic military action”—both involved egregious violations of the Constitution, so how can he be trusted to provide adequate oversight?

11. Most transparent administration.

President Obama also claimed that there will now be more transparency:

Second, we will reform programs and procedures in place to provide greater transparency to our surveillance activities, and fortify the safeguards that protect the privacy of U.S. persons.

The President has claimed time and time again that his is “the most transparent” administration ever. Repeating this claim over and over does not make it any more true—or any less ridiculous. The Obama administration has been anything but transparent with its army of lawyers fighting Freedom of Information Act requests, its War on Whistleblowers, its secretive drone campaign, etc. However, even if he does turn over a new leaf, transparency is not enough. Being transparent about the violation of rights does not make those actions any less unconstitutional.

12. Whatever happened to probable cause?

The Fourth Amendment states that warrants shall not issue without probable cause. President Obama defended the NSA bulk metadata collection program by stating:

This brings me to the program that has generated the most controversy these past few months—the bulk collection of telephone records under Section 215. Let me repeat what I said when this story first broke: This program does not involve the content of phone calls, or the names of people making calls. Instead, it provides a record of phone numbers and the times and lengths of calls—metadata that can be queried if and when we have a reasonable suspicion that a particular number is linked to a terrorist organization.

In sum, the program does not involve the NSA examining the phone records of ordinary Americans. Rather, it consolidates these records into a database that the government can query if it has a specific lead—a consolidation of phone records that the companies already retained for business purposes. The review group turned up no indication that this database has been intentionally abused. And I believe it is important that the capability that this program is designed to meet is preserved.

Reasonable suspicion? Whatever happened to probable cause? It is the reasonable suspicion standard which causes the greatest problem. If the government has all this data in a big database and can dig deep into it with merely a claim of reasonable suspicion, then there is simply no way to protect the rights of American citizens. Unless and until the Fourth Amendment is fully restored and probable cause is again treated as the exceptionless standard it was intended by the Founders to be, then no safeguards will help.

13. Fascism or corporatism? Take your pick.

President Obama suggested two possible reforms to NSA bulk collection of metadata:

The review group recommended that our current approach be replaced by one in which the providers or a third party retain the bulk records, with government accessing information as needed. Both of these options pose difficult problems. Relying solely on the records of multiple providers, for example, could require companies to alter their procedures in ways that raise new privacy concerns. On the other hand, any third party maintaining a single, consolidated database would be carrying out what is essentially a government function but with more expense, more legal ambiguity, potentially less accountability—all of which would have a doubtful impact on increasing public confidence that their privacy is being protected.

Six of one, a half dozen of the other. What difference does it make if the NSA itself has this data or some third party does? Furthermore, such collaboration between government and private entities in such nefarious matters just stinks of fascism or corporatism. When government and corporations collaborate in such a manner, the only question is which one is steering the unconstitutional bus that is about to run over the people. This all begins to feel like a shell game. The NSA will unconstitutionally get this data and will be able to access it on demand. What does it matter where it is stored or who is storing it?

14. Didn’t you hear my lies the first time?

President Obama began to wind up his speech by again repeating a dubious claim:

The bottom line is that people around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security, and that we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures.

The NSA is collecting metadata on essentially everyone. That is the definition of spying. And since everybody is not threatening American national security, the President’s statement is simply not true.

15. Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.

President Obama concludes with some language which in another context would be inspirational:

As the nation that developed the Internet, the world expects us to ensure that the digital revolution works as a tool for individual empowerment, not government control. Having faced down the dangers of totalitarianism and fascism and communism, the world expects us to stand up for the principle that every person has the right to think and write and form relationships freely—because individual freedom is the wellspring of human progress.

However, President Obama and all future presidents must take heed. The United States did in fact help defeat the evils of fascism and communism, but there is the danger that fighting such monsters could turn the nation into such a monster. Perhaps it has already happened.

Obama and Redistribution

by Gerard Emershaw

It has become a meme, and a rather annoying meme at that. President Obama is a socialist. President Obama is a Marxist. President Obama favors redistribution of wealth. The first two of these claims are incorrect. The third is correct, but the redistribution of wealth is not what the Rush Limbaughs, Ann Coulters, and Glenn Becks of the world believe.

If President Obama is a socialist and has been redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor in some sort of Marxist fashion, one would expect empirical data to verify this. However, the data tells just the opposite story. For example, the number of Americans living in poverty has grown to over 50 million under Obama. The number of homeless public school students has risen to over 1 million. Median household income in the United States has fallen for four years in a row. Over 15% of Americans are considered “food insecure.” Such a drop in income obviously affects poorest Americans disproportionately. If President Obama is a Marxist and has been redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor, then why are the poor getting poorer in the United States?

And why are the rich getting richer? The wealthiest 400 Americans have the same combined wealth as the bottom half of the American population. The top 1% owns 40% of the wealth and earns 19% of the income. Of nations in the industrialized world, the United States ranks near the bottom on income equality. Nations which compare with the United States in terms of income equality include Cameroon, Madagascar, Rwanda, Uganda, Ecuador.

President Obama is simply not a socialist. He is more appropriately viewed as a corporatist. The centerpiece of his presidency—“Obamacare”—is not a socialist style government single payer model. It is more like a corporate welfare program that benefits big insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. President Obama’s many wars and “kinetic military actions” are nothing if not welfare programs for the Military-Industrial Complex. The Obama administration has been filled with members with connections to Goldman Sachs yet hardly any left wing radicals. Van Jones is long gone, and the much scapegoated Bill Ayers never worked for the administration. While the middle class and working poor in the United States have been struggling with President Obama in the White House, the big banks have been making huge profits—nearly $35 billion in 2012. In fact, the allegedly Marxist and anti-business Obama has been a godsend for corporate profits. Corporate profits have grown an average of 77% yearly under President Obama.

President Obama is many things. He is an imperial president. He is an anti-constitutionalist. He is a warmonger. He is a fearmonger. He is often a hypocrite. He is a corporatist. But he is not a Marxist or a socialist of any type despite his beginnings as a community organizer, despite his radical friends, and despite his leftist rhetoric prior to becoming commander-in-chief. If President Obama’s opponents are unable to correctly characterize him, they are unlikely to ever be able to defeat him or his likely successor Hillary Clinton.