Hope n Change Redux

In the continuing saga of Spring cleaning, I ran across another hippy book written by an avowed Socialist, Michael Harrington's The Accidental Century, published in 1965. I believe that I acquired these hippy books in the first place from a library grab bag clearance sale, so it's only fit & proper that they're recycled whence they came.





Just like Tom Brokaw & Charlie Rose, I have no idea what books President Obama read:

ROSE: He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational (sic) speeches.

BROKAW: Two of them! I don't know what books he's read.

ROSE: What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?

BROKAW: There's a lot about him we don't know."

Nor do I know what authors influenced his life. Obama has appointed advisors, such as Anita Dunn, who've openly admired Mao (Chinese dictator who murdered more people than Hitler), and has appointed EPA officials who gloat about crucifying citizens. By contrast, George W. Bush said Jesus (a poor Jewish rabbi who didn't kill anybody & who ended up being crucified by sadists like the EPA official) was his favorite philosopher. Bush was immediately excoriated & denounced as being simplisme & Manichean. It's so much more progressive to model oneself after a mass-murdering Marxist dictator.

So, either advertently or not, Harrington's book seems to encapsulate & delineate philosophies & schemes enacted by the Obama administraion:

In the process of change, it must become clear that America is having the wrong debate, that the shiboleths about collectivism, balanced budgets, and bureaucracy are without real meaning. For the present premise of most American politics is that the choice is between a resolute march to the rear in the name of anticollectivism and a cautious confrontation with the future in the name of a mixed economy [aka Socialism + Capitalism]. In reality, the past which is the dream of the American Right is beyond recll; and the present which is recognized by American liberalism is much more radical than imagined. At some point, then, a new political movement must begin to talk of a new political program--the democratic and conscious control of a technology that is already collective and bureaucratic.

Notice the subtle semantic slight of hand in the above piece. Just as "pro-life" has morphed into "anti-choice", "pro-individual liberty" is denounced as regressive "anti-collectivism".