Obama Prepares to Community-Organize America

My article from the Jan. 22, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Obama Prepares to Community-Organize America

By Matthew Vadum

In his latest unprecedented move in American history, President Obama announced he is converting his campaign apparatus into a permanent in-your-face campaign aimed at furthering Obama’s divisive, radical politics.

The new tax-exempt advocacy group, Organizing for Action, will “play an active role” in “mobilizing around and speaking out in support of important legislation” during Obama’s second term, the president said last week.

In the same vein, in his second inaugural address yesterday, Obama bullied the opposition. Reinforcing his long-running “spread the wealth” theme, the president hectored successful people, declaring that “our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.”

Obama also seemed to signal in his mercifully brief oration that he’s going to go all-out to make government bigger.

Americans, he said, “reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.”

Now, like a Third World caudillo, Obama will be able to pursue his policies from inside government and from outside through his OfA thug army.

OfA is a less violent version of Mussolini’s black shirts and Hitler’s brown shirts, or of the government-supported goon squads that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Castro brothers use to harass and intimidate their domestic opponents. OfA units brought muscle to the recent fight in Wisconsin over that state’s out-of-control government labor unions. OfA has bludgeoned Democrats that Obama deemed insufficiently left-wing, especially red-state congressional Democrats who had been wavering on the issue of Obamacare.

Algeria in Jihadi Flames

My article from the Jan. 18, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Algeria in Jihadi Flames

By Matthew Vadum

Emboldened by America’s projection of weakness abroad, Islamists apparently linked to al-Qaeda reportedly continue to hold about 40 foreign hostages including seven Americans seized Wednesday at a natural gas field in Algeria.

At press time, conflicting media reports had been emerging from the region. Some claimed that the hostages have been freed; others, that several hostages have been killed.

The mass kidnapping at a BP (formerly British Petroleum) gas site near the Libyan border, which may very well have been accomplished with U.S.-supplied weapons left over from the ouster of the late Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, seems to be a spillover from a failed French drive to remove Islamist militants from nearby Mali.

According to the Wall Street Journal, France’s target in Mali was Algeria-based Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, which has “claimed responsibility for the Algeria kidnappings, calling it retaliation.”

The northern portion of Mali is important to the Islamofascists because it is one of their recently acquired strongholds that serves as a showcase for the reimposition of Shariah law in the region. It is a beachhead for Islamist world revolution.

Oliver Stone’s Distortion of the Eisenhower Era

From the Jan. 14, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Oliver Stone’s Distortion of the Eisenhower Era

By Matthew Vadum

Editor’s note: The following is the fifth installment of a series of articles Frontpage is running in response to Oliver Stone’s neo-Communist documentary series, “The Untold History of the United States.” Frontpage will be reviewing each episode of the Stone series, exposing the leftist hateful lies about America and setting the record straight. Below is a review of Part 5 of the series.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower is responsible for transforming America into the imperialist global bully it supposedly is today, according to radical Hollywood fabulist Oliver Stone.

In the fifth episode of his multi-part revisionist assault on modern American history, Untold History of the United States, Stone argues that Eisenhower was a willing tool of greedy U.S. corporations and a warmonger who refused to make deals with a Soviet Union that was suing for peace.

Stone blames Eisenhower, the popular former five-star general who led the U.S. and its allies to victory in World War Two, for creating “a permanent war economy.” Essentially, Ike turned America into a high-tech modern-day Sparta, Stone claims, by permanently ramping up military expenditures. Of course to the extent that Eisenhower promoted high levels of defense spending he was only carrying on the policies of President Franklin Roosevelt. The Communist-loving director, known for palling around with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, could never forgive Eisenhower for deploying nuclear weapons that were aimed at Stone’s beloved USSR.

“Nuclear bombs were now the foundation of America’s empire and provided the new emperor, its president, with a mystical power that required more and more suffocating secrecy even if those powers went far beyond the original limits of executive power defined in the Constitution,” Stone says.

Of course the United States has never been an empire, but Stone’s Marxist worldview clouds his perception. Apart perhaps from its pursuit of “manifest destiny” and a few military adventures in the 1800s, when the U.S. has projected its power beyond its home territory it has eventually pulled back.

The U.S., unlike so many world powers, does not conquer other countries: it liberates them and then goes home. This has, understandably, given the U.S. a special moral standing in the community of nations and it certainly does not make the American president an emperor.

Gun Confiscation By Presidential Decree?

From the Jan. 10, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Gun Confiscation By Presidential Decree?

By Matthew Vadum

President Obama may soon act unilaterally to curtail Americans’ right to keep and bear arms and impose a new national firearms policy without congressional approval.

Spurred on by the Newtown, Connecticut schoolhouse massacre last month that took 26 lives, Obama could restrict, perhaps even abolish, private gun ownership with the stroke of his auto-pen.

Second Amendment backers are justifiably angry after Vice President Joe Biden spoke yesterday about ways to curb violent gun-related crime. He suggested that the president may take swift, decisive action without congressional approval.

“The president is going to act,” said Biden who is heading up a task force that is supposed to make policy recommendations to Obama later this month. The vice president reportedly “guaranteed” Boston Mayor Thomas Menino that President Obama would push through sweeping firearms restrictions before February.

Off With a Bang: Assault on Second Amendment Begins

From the Jan. 8, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Off With a Bang: Assault on Second Amendment Begins

By Matthew Vadum

President Obama is planning an aggressive, in-your-face, blitzkrieg-style campaign against Americans’ fundamental Second Amendment right to self-defense.

After a madman murdered 26 people including 20 young schoolchildren last month at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Obama initially urged a reinstatement of the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban. The demonstrably useless law lapsed in 2004 and had no detectable impact on crime. It was designed to cater to big-city liberals and their irrational fear of firearms.

But the Obama administration’s plans to assault the Bill of Rights grew more ambitious over the Christmas holidays. The administration has now had an opportunity to brainstorm more extensively with the left-wing gun-grabbing lobby, which is heavily financed by radical financier George Soros.

The president is hoping to use the bloody Newtown massacre to impose sweeping new restrictions on firearms and to create a massive new database to track and spy on law-abiding gun owners. 

Americans are wise to be wary of such proposals. Governments the world over have used such databases time and time again to crack down on internal dissent, lay the groundwork for gun confiscation, and clear the way for genocidal slaughter.

Fiscal Cliff Showdown Postponed to March

From the Jan. 2, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Fiscal Cliff Showdown Postponed to March

By Matthew Vadum

With a cocky President Obama no doubt grinning from ear-to-ear, federal lawmakers yesterday gave their blessing to legislation that boosts income tax rates and government spending while kicking many of the “fiscal cliff” issues down the road for several weeks.

The $1.2 trillion in scheduled spending cuts –falling largely on the Pentagon– have now been officially postponed for two months. The next manufactured crisis comes March 1, the day the cuts will take effect unless Congress intervenes again to stop them.

Putting off dire problems for another day is now becoming routine in Washington, D.C., commentator Jim Antle opined on Twitter. “We have reached the point where temporarily averting self-inflicted disasters at the last second is a political success.”

The Obama-approved fiscal-disaster procrastination bill received final congressional approval in the House last night with relatively little Republican support after a prolonged fight during a long lame duck session of the outgoing Congress. Obama and Democrats got almost everything they wanted, as many Republicans dropped their long-standing opposition to income tax rate increases. Now Obama comes across to many low-information voters as a kind of champion of the middle class, and Republicans, whom the media would have painted as villains no matter what the fiscal cliff outcome, look like stubborn obstructionists who had to be forced to do the supposedly right thing.

Grab Your Parachute

From the Dec. 31, 2012 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Grab Your Parachute

By Matthew Vadum

Thanks largely to President Obama’s intransigence, America is poised to fall over the potentially treacherous “fiscal cliff” tomorrow. Top policymakers in Washington appear no closer to reaching a deal than before they left town for the Christmas break.

The outgoing 112th Congress is meeting in a high-stakes lame duck session to decide whether Bush-era tax rates should be extended and if $1.2 trillion in scheduled spending cuts –falling largely on the Pentagon– will be avoided. If current tax rates are not renewed, the already fragile economy will suffer.

President Obama’s critics say he wants America to go over the cliff so he can blame the consequences on Republicans — and he’s given those critics plenty of ammunition.

Instead of trying to deal with the problem, President Obama has been busy framing Republicans as the villains, arguing that they are being unreasonable because they want to cut spending and maintain current tax rates.

With bags under his eyes an exhausted-looking Obama disingenuously claimed on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his offers to Republicans “have been so fair that a lot of Democrats get mad at me.”

Going Over the Cliff

From the Dec. 26, 2012 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Going Over the Cliff

By Matthew Vadum

Unless a political miracle happens, America is going over the so-called fiscal cliff next week, possibly plunging the nation into a fresh economic recession.

With the abrupt withdrawal from consideration last week of House Speaker John Boehner’s “Plan B” alternative fiscal plan, there is no reason to believe a political deal preserving current income tax rates and averting significant spending cuts will be reached before January 1.

There simply isn’t enough time left before current tax rates expire and the political will to act appears to be absent among the major players.

Oliver Stone’s Untrue History: Stalin the Great Hero of WWII

From the Dec. 20, 2012 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Oliver Stone’s Untrue History: Stalin the Great Hero of WWII

By Matthew Vadum

Editor’s note: The following is the first installment of a series of articles Frontpage will be running in the days ahead in response to Oliver Stone’s neo-Communist documentary series, “The Untold History of the United States,” currently airing Mondays on Showtime. Frontpage will be reviewing each episode of the Stone series, exposing the leftist hateful lies about America and setting the record straight. Below is a review of Part I of Stone’s series. 

America is a soulless, unexceptional country that has done more harm than good over the last 70 years, leftist Oliver Stone argues in “World War II,” the first installment of his latest documentary project.

In Stone’s multi-part revisionist assault on modern American history, Untold History of the United States, the Communist-loving movie director argues that the U.S. lost the Second World War to the Soviet Union, our allies at the time. The Soviet Communists may have been harsh and violent, but they saved the world, not America. America was too busy getting rich building weapons of mass destruction to make the world safe for capitalism, or something along those lines, according to Stone.

The 66-year old Oscar winner opens the first episode with a soliloquy summing up his journey from patriot to Howard Zinn wannabe.

When Stone was a young boy learning about U.S. history, America was “the center of the world,” he says in the narration.

“There was a manifest destiny. We were the good guys. Well, I’ve traveled the world now. I continued my education as an infantryman in Vietnam. I’ve made a lot of movies, some of them about history, and I’ve learned a lot more than I once knew. And when I heard from my children what they were learning in school I was perturbed to hear that they were not really getting a more honest view of the world than I did.”

As Americans, “we live much of our lives in a fog –all of us– but I would like my children to have access to something that looks beyond what I call the tyranny of now,” said Stone, pretending to have invented the concept of presentism.

All good propagandists know that the use of scapegoating and simplistic story lines make falsehoods easy for some people to digest, and Stone is one of the best.

Anti-Gun Lunatics Take Over the Asylum

I got a little behind in re-posting published articles. Alas.

From the Dec. 19, 2012, issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Anti-Gun Lunatics Take Over the Asylum

By Matthew Vadum

Instead of undoing reckless policies that have allowed dangerous mentally ill people to roam free, President Obama is using the bloody Newtown massacre to target Americans’ fundamental right to self-defense.

Determined not to let the senseless murder of at least 20 young schoolchildren and six adults by a madman last Friday in Connecticut go to waste, the nation’s Demagogue-in-Chief is taking aim at the Second Amendment by urging a reinstatement of the useless federal Assault Weapons Ban.

The Assault Weapons Ban, enacted during the Clinton era, prohibited civilian use of specific semi-automatic firearms that politicians arbitrarily deemed “assault weapons” for superficial reasons largely unrelated to how they operate. As Daniel Greenfield wisely put it, an assault rifle “is some sort of mysterious weapon forged in the fires of hell solely for the purpose of murdering people.” The ban, which had no measurable impact on crime, expired in 2004 and attempts to revive the nebulous law have failed so far.