Yesterday, Howard Stern informed listeners that he would never again vote for a Democrat, saying they “are communists.” If you’ve lost Howard Stern…
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Over at the L.A. Times today, art critic Christopher Knight went after Big Government for reporting on the White House Christmas tree ornaments and the man, Simon Doonan, tapped to oversee the decorations for the White House. Knight’s objection to Big Government’s coverage of the administration’s decision to inject left-wing politics into the White House Christmas tree begins and ends with the fact that Andy Warhol was the artist behind the particular image of the murderous Communist dictator Mao Zedong featured on one of the ornaments we brought to your attention. Knight’s article is excerpted below followed by Breitbart’s take downs and Knight’s response. Jump in the comments here or head over to the L.A. Times article and join the fray.
“A Warhol Christmas at the White House”
By Christopher Knight, L.A. Times
When it comes to art, the right-wing anti-Obama crowd hasn’t had a very good year. Repeated efforts to gin up outrage in a manufactured culture war have either fallen flat or proved downright embarrassing. (You can see some of them here, here and here.)
The latest fiasco is the Great Christmas Ornament Scandal.
On Tuesday, Andrew Breitbart’sBig Government blog got its knickers in a twist over one of the Obama White House’s myriad Christmas trees. (Big Government is a sibling to Breitbart’s Big Hollywood blog, which cranked up a paranoid fantasy about the National Endowment for the Arts a few months back.) The blaring “EXCLUSIVE” led with a blurry photo of a decoupage Christmas ornament adorned with the face of Chinese Communist dictator, Mao Zedong.
“Of course, Mao has his place in the White House,” Big Government wailed about the GCOS, taking the Obama-as-socialist meme out for a yuletide spin.
Except, it wasn’t exactly Mao. It was Andy Warhol’s “Mao.”
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With Christmas coming up, we wanted to spend some time on books we think are worthy of giving to your friends and even, perhaps, your enemies. My personal choice for that would be The End of Secularism, written by Hunter Baker, JD, PhD, longtime contributor to the American Spectator, The City and what feels like dozens of blogs. Published by Crossway Books, The End of Secularism is an important book, one that I highly recommend — and it’s been the subject of some fascinating podcasts on faith, politics and the public square.
So in today’s special edition of The New Ledger podcast, I ask Dr. Baker questions like: “During a passage on Marxism and science, you give a nod to Whittaker Chambers’ acknowledgment that by shifting from the side of communism to the side of its opponents, he was joining the losing side. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it seems clear history proved Chambers wrong, at least in the form of communism he opposed. Do you think that communism’s force lives on in the less violent but still all-encompassing secularism of today — on issues like climate change and economic socialism? And second, do you think that those who strive against secularism today are on the losing side of history?”
The End of Secularism comes highly recommended by bestselling author Andrew Klavan, who says: “This is a very well written, concise and learned primer on the secularization of the public square. It gives a fair recital of the arguments in favor of it, and a strong but sensible and moderate outline of the arguments against. It has a firm grasp of history and neither falls for the usual ‘This is a Christian country!’ rhetoric that makes its way onto television nor accepts the ’separation of church and state,’ pieties that were rendered obsolete by the state’s aggressive intrustion into what Dr. Baker calls ‘the life-world,’ i.e. our values and private lives. It’s a book you’ll be glad you read the next time you get in an argument about religion’s role in politics.” I hope you’ll consider it as a gift this Christmas.
As always, you can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
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Tis the season to be thankful, and this year one thing stands out as something to be particularly grateful for…the Internet.
Thanks to the Internet, and the Army of Davids it has empowered, the mainstream media no longer possess a strangle hold on information. They no longer get to decide what we know about the people and organizations that effect our daily lives.
In direct terms, this means that when SEIU thugs beat up a black conservative at a health care town hall meeting, the whole world gets to see it via the internet.
And when those thugs are outed as Health Care for America (HCAN) coordinated responders to criticism of Obamacare, the whole world can take it upon themselves to learn about HCAN, using Google and other fabulous tools of the internet.
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Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall was breached and Soviet communism, at long last, entered its death spiral.
After claiming approximately 100 million victims in the 20th century,communism was dismissed to the ash heap of history. But those who suffered under its boot heel have largely been confined to the history books when not forgotten altogether.
Author and historian Lee Edwards set out to correct this oversight with the creation of the Victims of Communism memorial and online museum, dedicated to those who perished because of Communist regimes between 1917 and 1989.
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From the Daily Mail:
The collapse of communism was actually a slow-burning process. Its moral and political bankruptcy became obvious decades before that glorious Berlin day in November 1989
Twenty years ago today, supporters of freedom and human rights cheered and wept for joy as the Berlin Wall was torn down by jubilant young Germans.
To so many, that heady day seemed to herald the emergence of a better world. The spectre of communism had finally been laid to rest. Liberty had triumphed over tyranny.
The end of the Cold War even led some to proclaim that this was ‘the end of history’ - which was to say that liberal democracy was now the dominant and unchallengeable force in the world.
However, the 9/11 attacks on America tragically proved this to be absurdly over-optimistic. The eruption of radical Islamism revealed that, while the West may have been rid of one enemy in the Soviet Union, another deadly foe had risen to take its place. So much is, sadly, all too evident. (more…)
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There is something tragic in man’s nature that an ideology which has been the scourge of the 20th century, inflicting misery and death upon hundreds of millions, still has so many adherents. China recently celebrated the 60th anniversary of its Communist Party. Although communism’s horror show continues to enslave a large portion the world’s population, many in our county are still sympathetic to this cancer. Its track record bears repeating, particularly to students, whose naïveté and inexperience leave them susceptible to dangerous belief systems.
Also in need of a primer on communism’s track record are those in the United States Congress who continue to support and appease communist dictators and tyrants like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. For example, in April of 2009, key representatives of the Congressional Black Caucus met with Castro. “It was almost like listening to an old friend,” said Rep. Rush (D-Ill.). According to Representative Richardson (D-Long Beach), Castro knew her name and district. “He looked right into my eyes and he said, ‘How can we help? How can we help President Obama?’” On second thought, these minds have already been irreversibly poisoned. It’s better their constituents should hear the story of Communist China.
The People’s Republic of China was established on October 1, 1949 and the charismatic Mao Zedong, exposed to Marxism as a student at Peking University, was its leader. Mao’s cult of personality produced slavish devotion and enabled him to be seen as a visionary. Mao sought to fundamentally remake Chinese society. Dutiful to communist dogma, he needed someone to blame for society’s problems, and fomented class hatred. Mao insisted that the peasants were kept poor because landowners and small farmers had taken what was rightfully theirs. Mao demonized those farmers who held more land than he deemed acceptable. He confiscated the land and promised it to the peasants. Part of Mao’s plan for “land reform” was to select at least one landlord, and usually several, in virtually every village for public execution. Political opponents were at first ridiculed, then simply eliminated. So far, Mao’s strategy was akin to his Soviet counterparts but Mao took it a step further. Not only did he confiscate the land; he actually made the people property of the state. Family life and traditions, personal property, privacy, personal initiative and individual freedom, were utterly destroyed for around one-seventh of mankind.
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