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REQUIEM

Below are the two final essays to be posted on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. The first one is written by a friend -- screen name 'Euro-American Scum' -- who, over the past four years, has been the most faithful essayist here. He has written about everything from his pilgrimage to Normandy in 2004 to take part in the 60th–year commemoration of the invasion, to his memories of his tour in Vietnam. His dedication to America’s founding principles ... and those who have sacrificed to preserve them over the past 200+ years ... is unequaled. Thank you, E-A-S. It has been a privilege to include your writing here, and it is a privilege to call you my friend.

The second essay is my own farewell. And with it I thank all of the many regular visitors, and those who may have only dropped in occasionally, for coming here. I hope you learned something. I hope a seed or two was planted. But, even if not, I thank you for stopping by ... 25 March, 2010

4/13/2008

A Small-Town Pennsylvanian's View of Arrogance

Arrogance1.bmp

I am a ‘small town Pennsylvanian’. There is no amount of explanation, or any claim of ‘mis-statement’ that can erase for me Barack Obama’s recent diagnosis of what ails small-town Americans.

I resent the fact that Barack Obama sees my faith, my belief in my right to keep and bear arms, and my negative opinion of those who have illegally invaded my country, as abnormal behavior, in need of remedy, and evidence of personal weakness and shortcomings on my part.

I suggest to Senator Obama that offering such unsolicited advice and diagnosis is evidence of deep arrogance and elitism the likes of which used to be unheard of in America’s ‘public servants’. Since when do those who ‘serve the public’ take upon themselves the duty to mold that public into their own image ... and to define as abnormal those beliefs and characteristics that do not conform to that image?

Senator Obama, you possess some of the characteristics of one who envisions himself a god in human form. Such men must not attain positions of leadership in a free society. In serving as a United States senator, you have ascended far higher than your elitist mindset should allow. And I will do everything within my power to see to it that you ascend no further.

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the midwest, the jobs have been gone now for twenty-five years and nothing’s replaced them ... And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.


I am not bitter. I am not frustrated. And for you to tell me that I am … and to offer a diagnosis for my non-existent symptoms … simply because I choose to place value on different things than you do, reveals volumes more about you than it does about me and my fellow small-town Americans.

A rough translation of your condescending statement above:

_____________________

Americans who live in (Pennsylvania, and other) rural communities are turning to Christianity because they are experiencing difficult economic times. Their Christianity is a crutch and the scripture teaching, for where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst, has little to do with their reason for attending church with fellow believers.

Gathering on Sunday morning in the Lord’s house with others of like mind and purpose in order to worship the God who gave us breath … and to fellowship with others whose faith is focused on Him … is simply not a sufficient reason to ‘cling to religion’.

Instead, the fact that our all-powerful, omniscient government has somehow ‘let us down’ has transformed us into wretched creatures who have no alternative but to surround ourselves with other fellow wretches and ‘cling to religion’ as a foundation of last resort, since the God of Government has somehow failed to provide us jobs and economic security.

We treasure our right to keep and bear arms for the same reason. Our wretchedness causes us to cling to antiquated symbols of ‘worth’ and ‘power’. Our desire to own a gun has nothing whatsoever to do with a right bequeathed to us by our Founders, or to an increased awareness that our government is systematically stealing from us every freedom granted by God and secured by our Constitution. And our ‘fascination’ with guns has nothing to do with our educated awareness that the declaring of gun ownership as ‘criminal’ has preceded the imposition of total tyranny over countless numbers of oppressed people throughout the history of modern civilization.

No, we are simply weak, paranoid, redneck wretches who haven’t the wherewithal to obtain a sense of personal security or self-worth without having a weapon within arm’s reach.

The fact that we ‘small-town Americans’ resent the millions of criminal malcontents who have taken up illegal residence in our country is not due to the facts that:

  • these criminals are enjoying many of the benefits of residency here without contributing to those benefits as American citizens are, and they are sometimes even receiving preferential treatment from a government that answers more to special interests than it does to its electorate

  • many politicians in Washington are pandering to these criminals, to the detriment of the American citizen and those whose charge it is to protect our borders

  • these criminals are committing crimes (many of them deadly) against the citizenry of this country at a significantly higher rate than the rest of the population

  • a contingent of these criminals is here with the specific intent of ‘reclaiming’ large portions of the southwestern United States as their own

  • many of these criminals are making no attempt to assimilate into American society, but instead are fomenting division, hatred and balkanization in the locations in which they take up residence. They are demanding that legal Americans alter their lives and laws in order to accommodate them and their native language and heritage.
The above considerations are, however, irrelevant. ‘Small-town Americans’ harbor a negative opinion of these criminals simply because they aren’t like us. They are of a different national origin, and we are closed-minded bigots. We are ‘taking out our frustrations’ on them simply because we are a small-minded people.

_____________________

What Barack Obama would have us believe is that America is in dire need of a president who is capable of having us recognize the ‘faults’ listed above, and then declare as a national priority the eradication of those ‘faults’. Re-education camps might be in order. Or more gun control. Or more hate crime legislation. Perhaps we can even re-define ‘anti-illegal immigrant’ speech as a hate crime. Yeah. That’s the ticket.

Senator Obama, your brand of arrogance is a threat to every American, and every freedom-loving person on this planet.

I worship only one God, and I am suspect of any man who deems himself one. And any man who defines my devotion to my religion as the result of ‘bitterness’ and ‘frustration’ has stepped over the line of civility and humility.

That you are a front-runner for the office of the presidency, and that you could conceivably become the leader of the free world, is every freedom-loving American’s worst nightmare.

~ joanie

45 comments:

Anonymous said...

You should run for national office. You are exactly who this country needs in Washington.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant, Joanie. Absolutely brilliant. I wish Rush or Hannity could get ahold of this.

Anonymous said...

I agree. Rush needs to read this.

Anonymous said...

BRAVO!!!!!!

This needs wider circulation.

Anonymous said...

That you are a front-runner for the office of the presidency, and that you could conceivably become the leader of the free world, is every freedom-loving American’s worst nightmare.

I can't see any scenario where Obama will ever be elected, but you have it right, Joanie: Just the fact that an empty suit like Obama is a candidate at all speaks volumes about the mindlessness of many Americans. The faces of his adoring young supporters at his rallies reminds one of a Nazi party rally in the thirties.

I also think Geraldine Ferraro had it right: The only reason he's a candidate is because he's black. It's that liberal guilt thing again; Liberals want to assuage their overwhelming guilt by outwardly "supporting" a black man for president. When they're alone in the voting booth come November, though, they're going to pull the lever for the white person.

Obama has beclowned himself, and the people who support him as well.

Anonymous said...

God bless you for your intelligence, honesty and candor!

Anonymous said...

“Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition. It is the opium of the people.”

--Karl Marx

Anonymous said...

Cooper, just another item to add to the list "4,829 Reasons to Believe Obama is a Marxist."

Anonymous said...

Gee, it looks like the Keystone State didn't take kindly to being called a bunch of bible-thumping, gun-toting, hicks.

One week ago, Obama and Hillary were tied at 45% apiece. Today Hillary is ahead 57% to 37%. Nice work, Barry.

Source: April 14, 2008 - Pennsylvania Democratic Primary Preference

Anonymous said...

http://images.cafepress.com/product/253872679v4_240x240_Front.jpg

Anonymous said...

You're the best, Joanie! I wish this could be read by everybody entering the voting booth in November.

joanie said...

proudpodunknative:

This needs wider circulation.

A little bit more:

RenewAmerica

I was also asked to present this at a press conference to be held in Hazleton, PA tomorrow night at which Alan Keyes will be announcing his intentions to leave the GOP. Unfortunately I will be unable to attend, but I was deeply honored by the invitation.

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

Awesome Joanie. I wish you could have gone to Hazelton and knocked em dead.

Anonymous said...

Read this eloquent and profound letter and pay close attention to the last paragraph of the letter...

The Gun is Civilization
by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat—it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.

People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

By Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.

Anonymous said...

What a great essay by Maj. Caudill.

I honestly believe that 99% of all the members of the American military, and retired military, have more allegiance to our country than Obama and Hillary combined. And probably a large majority have more than McCain.

Thanks for posting this.

Anonymous said...

Obama thinks Partial Birth Abortion is a positive thing.
He thinks a baby is a punishment for a teenage girl and should be murdered.
He thinks his Pastor of 20 years is being singled out, not exposed, for his racist rhetoric.
His wife thinks this country sucks unless you're one of those “typical white people” her husband has been dealing with all his life, inside his family and out.

The fact that this guy, and the lying wife of a former President have any support from the American people is unbelievable.

Anonymous said...

Somewhere in rural Pennsylvania....

“So how’d it go at the unemployment office today, Roscoe?”

“I’m so dang frustrated! The government isn’t listening to me! Where’s my dang gun, Shirley?”

“Where it always is, next to the potatoes in the pantry. Can you explain your frustrations, Roscoe?”

“Yeah! I’ll explain ‘em! How’s this!”

Blam! Blam! Blam!

“Would you watch out with that thing? There’s another hole in the accordion, and you almost hit the damn parakeet!”

“Well too bad I didn’t hit one ‘a them durn immigrants! They’re all differunt from me!”

“Well Roscoe, you know there’s a tent revival tonight, at least that’s something we can cling to.”

“I don’t know Shirley. If only there was some way we could bring about a… a… change in America.”

“Well now that you mention it Roscoe, I was watchin the tee-vee over at the hairdressers today, and there was this nice young man on with some kind of funny A-rab soundin’ name. I didn’t understand what he was sayin’, but whatever it was made me feel good inside, like there was hope again.”

“Ohhhh yeah. That negro fellow at the bowlin alley. First time I’ve ever seen a negro at the bowlin’ alley, huh.”

“Well that’s just it. Such an articulate young man. Even though I didn’t understand nothin’, it was like, I got this ringin’ in my ears, then I felt like I was floatin’ up on a big fluffy cloud, with all the immigrants, and everybody else, even that blockhead brother of yours. And we were all holdin’ hands, an there was this, like, unity.”

“Wow Shirley – I think I’m feelin’ it too….! If only there was someone like that in the central govmint as the President! Someone that would listen to my concerns for a change!”

“Well maybe there can be now, Roscoe. Why don’t you put that gun down, and lets eat these beans, before they get cold.”

Anonymous said...

anonymous: That was hilarious, but I have a tiny criticism for the author: All country folks know that you don't keep potatoes in the pantry, you keep them in the basement where it's cool and dark.

Anonymous said...

A standing ovation from this small Texas town!

Anonymous said...

Bitter Bumpkins Take Note!

So let's get this straight: If you are a gun-supporting, God-worshiping, secure-the-border type who feels unfair trade regulations are killing American manufacturing, Barack Obama doesn't just respectfully disagree with you.

After all, you can't respectfully disagree with someone you have utter contempt for.

No, he thinks you're nothing but a sour-grapes, behind-the-times, racist, gun-and-Bible-toting nutcase.

Anonymous said...

Outstanding Joanie!! Absolutely outstanding and your best yet. What a brilliantly cogent argument/statement.

Anonymous said...

That you are a front-runner for the office of the presidency, and that you could conceivably become the leader of the free world, is every freedom-loving American’s worst nightmare.

You can say that again. How a freshman senator with no real governing experience, who hates America and coddles our enemies could be this close to the presidency is mind-boggling.

Anonymous said...

A Living Lie by Thomas Sowell

" Senator Obama is all talk -- glib talk, exciting talk, confident talk, but still just talk.

... Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction -- and where opinions different from those of the left are ascribed to emotions ("bitter" in this case), rather than to arguments that need to be answered.

Like so many others on the left, Obama rejects "stereotypes" when they are stereotypes he doesn't like but blithely throws around his own stereotypes about "a typical white person" or "bitter" gun-toting, religious and racist working class people.

... It is understandable that young people are so strongly attracted to Obama. Youth is another name for inexperience -- and experience is what is most needed when dealing with skillful and charismatic demagogues.

Those of us old enough to have seen the type again and again over the years can no longer find them exciting. Instead, they are as tedious as they are dangerous."

Anonymous said...

Obama is no Christian, though he masquerades as such.

Obama is no American, though he masquerades as such.

He is a trojan horse, a vector of hate, ethnic supremacism, reparations vendettas and fascist-marxist-islamism.

joanie said...

Thanks for the kind words, Barry. :)

joanie said...

Thomas Sowell is a national treasure! Thanks for the excerpts from 'A Living Lie', John. He is brilliant, as always.

joanie said...

Lou Barakos, Kathy Mlynczak, Texas Redneck:

Thanks for the kind words and your additional excellent insights.

Luis said...

Excellent article Joanie.

His words are arrogance of an almost unimaginable level. They also suggest a complete lack of judgement.

That he is effectively the front-runner to be your next president is astonishing and disturbing.

joanie said...

Thanks for the kind words, Luis.

That he is effectively the front-runner to be your next president is astonishing and disturbing.

And it appears that your vision is 20-20, even when viewing from across an ocean. :)

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

Obama as New Age Patrician: Why He Just Doesn't Get It

Good work Joanie!

Anonymous said...

This is by far the best commentary I've read on this topic. Your clarity and common sense are amazing.

Anonymous said...

It is understandable that young people are so strongly attracted to Obama. Youth is another name for inexperience -- and experience is what is most needed when dealing with skillful and charismatic demagogues.

Those of us old enough to have seen the type again and again over the years can no longer find them exciting. Instead, they are as tedious as they are dangerous.


Describing Obama, Thomas Sowell at his very best.

Anonymous said...

You really hit the nail on the head, Joanie. Thank you.

Here is another accurate nail hitter:

Is Barack Hussein Obama America’s Savior?

Barack Hussein Obama is telling America his belief that small town folks across this nation are "bitter" and turning to "faith and guns" over the state of the economy. Perhaps, Sen. Obama, we are bitter, but we are not turning to "faith and guns." A majority of us have always had our faith and owned our guns in good times and bad. Our faith and sometimes our guns have been passed down from generation to generation of proud Americans. Rather, it is the behavior of politicians in Washington, of which you are one, that is frustrating and disgusting small town America.

I am not "bitter," but I am angry and bewildered that many Americans are so blinded – for whatever reason - that they would believe for one moment that this "savior" will suddenly "change" their lives. He’ll change their lives, all right, but not in the direction that the average American has ever wished for this great nation.

So, if elected, just how will Obama "change" America? Will we continue to be the free, capitalist society that has made this country strong or will we spiral into a nanny state nation with no sovereignty, a rewritten history, and fewer and fewer Constitutional rights? .....

http://familysecuritymatters.org/challenges.php?id=1387258

Anonymous said...

Is Barack Hussein Obama America’s Savior?

Like Ted Bundy was a girl's best friend.

Anonymous said...

Bruce Springsteen announced today that he endorses Obama for President.

He said:

"He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years."

Remind me to burn all my Springsteen music when I get home from work today.

Anonymous said...

I really really wanted Barry to win the PA Democrat primary and then crash when he started speaking his mind and everybody else discovers what he's really all about. But it looks like he's pre-empting my hopes and crashing earlier than I would have liked.

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Anonymous said...

In America, we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing.

But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.


.....Barack Obama, Chicago Reader, 12/8/95

Anonymous said...

If Obama were running on a Socialist or Communist ticket, people would stay away in droves. But hide Marxist ideology under the Democrat banner and the lemmings gather.

Anonymous said...

Man of the people:

Obama reports income of $4.2 million in 2007 tax returns

"Among the charitable donations in 2007 was $26,270 to Trinity United Church of Christ, where the incendiary sermons of Obama's former pastor have created problems for the candidate. The Obamas' largest charitable donation was $50,000 to the United Negro College Fund. They also gave $35,000 to CARE."

I'm so bitter. I think I'll grab my gun and go to church.

Anonymous said...

I'm so bitter. I think I'll grab my gun and go to church.

LOL! You have the right attitude!

Anonymous said...

Another excellent response to Sir Obama (as is yours, cw-patriot):

Candidate on a High Horse

By George F. Will
Tuesday, April 15, 2008; A15

Barack Obama may be exactly what his supporters suppose him to be. Not, however, for reasons most Americans will celebrate.

Obama may be the fulfillment of modern liberalism. Explaining why many working-class voters are "bitter," he said they "cling" to guns, religion and "antipathy to people who aren't like them" because of "frustrations." His implication was that their primitivism, superstition and bigotry are balm for resentments they feel because of America's grinding injustice.

By so speaking, Obama does fulfill liberalism's transformation since Franklin Roosevelt. What had been under FDR a celebration of America and the values of its working people has become a doctrine of condescension toward those people and the supposedly coarse and vulgar country that pleases them.

When a supporter told Adlai Stevenson, the losing Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, that thinking people supported him, Stevenson said, "Yes, but I need to win a majority." When another supporter told Stevenson, "You educated the people through your campaign," Stevenson replied, "But a lot of people flunked the course." Michael Barone, in "Our Country: The Shaping of America From Roosevelt to Reagan," wrote: "It is unthinkable that Roosevelt would ever have said those things or that such thoughts ever would have crossed his mind." Barone added: "Stevenson was the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle-class American culture -- the prototype of the liberal Democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting."

Stevenson, like Obama, energized young, educated professionals for whom, Barone wrote, "what was attractive was not his platform but his attitude." They sought from Stevenson "not so much changes in public policy as validation of their own cultural stance." They especially rejected "American exceptionalism, the notion that the United States was specially good and decent," rather than -- in Michelle Obama's words -- "just downright mean."

The emblematic book of the new liberalism was "The Affluent Society" by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. He argued that the power of advertising to manipulate the bovine public is so powerful that the law of supply and demand has been vitiated. Manufacturers can manufacture in the American herd whatever demand the manufacturers want to supply. Because the manipulable masses are easily given a "false consciousness" (another category, like religion as the "opiate" of the suffering masses, that liberalism appropriated from Marxism), four things follow:

First, the consent of the governed, when their behavior is governed by their false consciousnesses, is unimportant. Second, the public requires the supervision of a progressive elite which, somehow emancipated from false consciousness, can engineer true consciousness. Third, because consciousness is a reflection of social conditions, true consciousness is engineered by progressive social reforms. Fourth, because people in the grip of false consciousness cannot be expected to demand or even consent to such reforms, those reforms usually must be imposed, for example, by judicial fiats.

The iconic public intellectual of liberal condescension was Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, who died in 1970 but whose spirit still permeated that school when Obama matriculated there in 1981. Hofstadter pioneered the rhetorical tactic that Obama has revived with his diagnosis of working-class Democrats as victims -- the indispensable category in liberal theory. The tactic is to dismiss rather than refute those with whom you disagree.

Obama's dismissal is: Americans, especially working-class conservatives, are unable, because of their false consciousness, to deconstruct their social context and embrace the liberal program. Today that program is to elect Obama, thereby making his wife at long last proud of America.

Hofstadter dismissed conservatives as victims of character flaws and psychological disorders -- a "paranoid style" of politics rooted in "status anxiety," etc. Conservatism rose on a tide of votes cast by people irritated by the liberalism of condescension.

Obama voiced such liberalism with his "bitterness" remarks to an audience of affluent San Franciscans. Perfect.

When Democrats convened in San Francisco in 1984, en route to losing 49 states, Jeane Kirkpatrick -- a former FDR Democrat then serving in the Cabinet of another such, Ronald Reagan -- said "San Francisco Democrats" are people who "blame America first." Today they blame Americans for America being "downright mean."

Obama's apology for his embittering sociology of "bitterness" -- "I didn't say it as well as I should have" -- occurred in Muncie, Ind. Perfect.

In 1929 and 1937, Robert and Helen Lynd published two seminal books of American sociology. They were sympathetic studies of a medium-size manufacturing city they called "Middletown," coping -- reasonably successfully, optimistically and harmoniously -- with life's vicissitudes. "Middletown" was in fact Muncie, Ind

Anonymous said...

Joanie, if you don't mind saying, are you voting in next Tuesday's primary?

Anonymous said...

I think I'm in love.

Anonymous said...

No womens for president too.

Anonymous said...

A really beautiful response to a white-hating, anti-American, communist, elitist power monger. Thank you for writing this.