193 Comments

1. JOHN FRARY:

I remember the Maoist vogue of yesteryear and the willingness to believe that a single mastermind had effected the total transformation of a billion people into a gigantic community of unselfish, cooperative egalitarians. Scotty Reston of the NYT looked upon this miracle and compared it to a mid-western community barn-raising.

Then a massive extraterrestrial abduction/substitution took place overnight.

Surely, those who believed in the first fantasy, should have no difficulty in believing the second.

Oct 17, 2009 - 7:58 am 2. biblio44:

“…Obama and his lieutenants are …. not, perhaps, quite so radical as Chairman Mao….”

Jeez, even the Birchers stopped short of this kind of calumny in their charges against Ike. (I know, Rog, you’re exercising your well-tuned sense of irony. But if you deny Ms. Dunn her use of irony, well, you know….)

“Bottom line: it is one thing to quote a tyrant. It is another to endorse his view of the world.

Oh, so you think Newt disagreed with Mao when he quoted, “War is politics with blood; politics is
war without blood”?

“Probably, Anita Dunn would be as horrified as the next person by Mao’s savage wholesale butchery.”

Love that “probably.” Don’t give an inch, Rog!

“Lee Atwater did not identify Mao as one of his two favorite political philosophers.”

Are you sure, Rog? Atwater apologized for so many things at the end of his life.

“…the conservative blogosphere lit up like a non-denominational sustainably harvested Kwanza tree.”

Now this is priceless! Rahm Emanuel may have been a ballet dancer, but he would be awestruck to see how Rog dances around the edges of racism.

Oct 17, 2009 - 8:56 am 3. Akatsukami:

“It’s not that [Dunn] admires his penchant for industrial strength homicide: rather, she admires his success at fomenting an egalitarian revolution.”

His success? The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were disastrous failures even by Marxist standards. Perhaps Mr. Kimball could point to what he think even Dunn could consider one of Mao’s successes?

Oct 17, 2009 - 11:06 am 4. Fr. Phlegm:

She’s entitled…wah!

Oct 17, 2009 - 11:15 am 5. David W. Lincoln:

How many neo-nazis are there today, even after Berlin and portions of Germany were reduced to rubble? As long as it is easier for folk to identify themselves as, “I am not ______”, rather than, ” I am ____” Henry Ford will be proven right again and again, when he said, “All we learn from history is, we do not learn from history”.

The cultural free-loaders are harming themselves, and ultimately all of us because they are not pulling their weight in the building of the City of Man. For the progress to date of the building of the City of Man is due primarily to those who agree with C.S. Lewis, Mortimer Adler, Jacques Maritain, Martin Buber, Paul Tillich, Nikolai Berdyaev, etc, rather than the deformed souls who identify with Mao, Gramsci, and
the rest who are identified as downtowners in “The Ballad of Stephen “Ringo” Harper” by Charles Adler.

Oct 17, 2009 - 11:28 am 6. Instapundit » Blog Archive » ROGER KIMBALL: The Maoist explains herself: egg, face at the White House. “When will voters begin …:

[...] KIMBALL: The Maoist explains herself: egg, face at the White House. “When will voters begin that long countermarch through the institutions in order to take back [...]

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:01 pm 7. Nick Reynolds:

So now we have another Obama crony praising and quoting Mao to a captive high school audience. Isn’t that just peachy? I wonder what the millions of dead would say? Oops! Guess they won’t be saying TOO much. How many people does she think HER enablers will need to kill, in order to keep The One in power? I wonder.

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:12 pm 8. Blogs For Victory » Blog Archive » Our White House Maoist (Bumped):

[...] Roger Kimball gives a run-down on damage control: Damage control [...]

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:15 pm 9. pst314:

“Probably, Anita Dunn would be as horrified as the next person by Mao’s savage wholesale butchery.”

Based on the many leftists I have known, that “probably” should be changed to “extremely unlikely”.

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:22 pm 10. rkconservative:

I am always surprised at how poorly many people comprehend the words they read.

“…she admires his his success at fomenting an egalitarian revolution”.

Not the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution, the original revolution in which the Nationalist government was overthrown and sent into exile in Formosa. Mao was most assuredly successful in that endeavor.

Unfortunately successful revolutionaries make terrible nation builders.

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:25 pm 11. JM Hanes:

“When will voters begin that long countermarch through the institutions in order to take back the country?”

Alas, the prospect of that long countermarch is the piece of the puzzle that the right has yet to entertain.

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:29 pm 12. david foster:

“They (Obama & his crew) are egalitarians”

I don’t think this is correct, Roger. They intend to be part of a distinct elite class, and indeed, the talk about egalitarianism is just a tactic to displace existing elites (wealthy businesspeople without Ivy League degrees, for example) whose status they deeply resent. The Obama-ites themselves do not intend to be part of the grey mass that they want to convert everyone else into.

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:31 pm 13. Roscoe:

biblio44:

“……..Rog dances around the edges of racism.”

I could say much the same for yourself……..

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:35 pm 14. bill-tb:

Anybody that listens to the speech to the high school graduating class knows what she saying, was doing, and why … If you don’t get it, turn down the lights and listen carefully.

Propaganda is a fine art.

Why would anyone praise a mass murderer like Mao? He murdered the most people ever out of a large crowd of takers. Hitler by comparison was a piker.

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:37 pm 15. Johnny Simpson:

Fact is, Roger, I’m as hardcore a conservative as they get, yet one of my favorite and oft-used quotes is from V.I. Lenin: “In order to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.”

Does that mean I endorse Lenin’s POV? Um, I don’t think so, especially after having helped pull 1000 Vienamese boat people out of the South China Sea in 1982 while aboard the USS Midway.

I suppose in the context of this piece, I can paraphrase: “In order to make an Anita Dunn omelet, you have to break a few eggs on her face.” How did we get to this point in time where we spend 50 years fighting a Cold War against Communism, only to see them take over our own goddamn government?

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:37 pm 16. Blogassault:

The only fortunate thing I see here is the fact that it was a public school and the kids who heard the speech probably didn’t get taught any world history. Most probably couldn’t spell Mao.

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:47 pm 17. Bill Johnson:

bbilio, johnny simpson:

I appreciate your trying to obfuscate the difference in Anita Dunn and the items you quote. Please help me understand why it does not matter to you that she admitted Mao was one of her ‘favorite political philosophers’.

Johnny, do you make the same claim about Lenin? I didn’t think so. Is ther therefore a difference? I do think so.

Biblio, you are a a fool. You keep proving it – why are you here? Does your God require you to go out and proselytize? I’m sure there are some people somewhere who agree with you – why aren’t you there?

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:50 pm 18. RebeccaH:

Anita Dunn, like all her ilk, is indifferent to the millions of dead under Maoism (and those, not just in China). What matters is the political points she can make using Mao’s so-called “philosophy”… which the sanest of us know was simply a tool to gull the masses into submitting. Much like our present-day administration. China was not transformed into an egalitarian society by communism by any stretch of the imagination. The communist elites simply took the place of the old aristocracy and the warlords. It wasn’t until China became capitalist in practice, if not in name, that the mass of Chinese people began to see the benefits, albeit limited as they are in favor of the elites.

The trolls here never fail to disappoint, either. Every criticism has to contain at least one accusation of racism.

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:50 pm 19. mrkwong:

So now we have something called a ‘biblio44′ throwing accusations of racism over a mildly humorous reference to Kwanzaa? Good heavens.

Ms Dunn’s video clip was as remarkable for her, uh, style as for anything she might have said.

Tardive dyskinesia, loose dentures, someone stuck a Ritz to the roof of her mouth with peanut butter, or she’s a space alien.

Given that we’re talking about an Obama appointment, I’m leaning toward the latter.

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:53 pm 20. Gerald P. Hanner:

Barak Obama is a communist at heart. He told everybody exactly that when he was running. I guess a great many people simply wrote off his words as so much campaign rhetoric. Now they’re finding out first hand.

Oct 17, 2009 - 4:59 pm 21. Patterico’s Pontifications » The Long March Back:

[...] followers found it easy to remember the words “Yes, We Can.” Roger Kimball’s words aren’t as easy to remember but they are equally important. After considering White House [...]

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:01 pm 22. MarkJ:

“[Dunn] admires his success at fomenting an egalitarian revolution.”

My problem with this statement is that there was nothing “egalitarian” about Mao’s revolution. In Great Helmsman’s world, there was only the Party… and everyone else.

Then again, during the Cultural Revolution membership in the Communist Party did not mean safety from Mao and the Red Guard. I guess that’s “egalitarian,” huh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:04 pm 23. TMLutas:

We’re not going to countermarch. That would imply a mirror image that simply does not exist. Liberals are not that good at talk radio. Conservatives are not good at marching through institutions. When the left and the right try to imitate instead of being faithful to their own group’s cultural DNA they tend to fail.

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:04 pm 24. Arty:

I wonder who her other favorite political philosopher is? I bet his name begins with an A and ends with a Hitler. I know, I know, Godwin’s Law and all that. But Biblio threw the first punch with his accusation of racism.

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:08 pm 25. Mike K:

Knowing what high school she was speaking to, I doubt they needed her encouragement to seek enlightenment from Mao. They are the children of the Washington elite and already well on their way to revolutionary consciousness. We may be the next boat people.

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:08 pm 26. Barry Dauphin:

She doesn’t simply quote Mao, as has been pointed out. She, in essence, cites his “struggle” in a positive manner. She looks upon him approvingly in that speech. Now one reprehensible thing about the speech is that it was made to high schoolers, who in all likelihood, haven’t the foggiest idea of who Mao was.

A member of the president’s inner circle has no business approving of Mao in front of a high school audience. But she does this because she thinks she can get away with it. I’m sure the members of the inner circle say such things all the time to people who agree with them. Now that they won the election, they operate under the delusion that everyone they talk to agrees with them. They are shocked to learn that there is anything controversial in a speech like this. I wonder what they must say in private, if their public speech is so clueless.

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:12 pm 27. Andrew X:

To those who say there is no difference between Anita Dunn quoting Mao and Newt Gingrich (et al) quoting Mao, I would mention that there is no differenc between kicking a dog and…. kicking a dog.

But the dog knows damn well the difference between being kicked and being tripped over.

Gingrich may quote Mao on a rare occasion…. is there a sane human alive that truly believes he is even slightly sympathetic to Mao? Is there anyone out there who thinks that Anita Dunn is not speaking of Mao here with no small dose of reverence and respect? Same sentence as Mother Teresa f’r criminey sakes!?!?!

I know how Gingrich and Atwater felt about Mao. Do I know how Anita Dunn feels about him?

I didn’t before Glen Beck came along.

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:12 pm 28. bgates:

Biblio, the most important difference between Bircher charges against Eisenhower and our charges against Dunn is that we are charging Dunn with her own words. She wasn’t being ironic, and it would not be a defense if she were. She was holding Mao up as an example for high school students.

Newt was no more endorsing Mao by quoting him than you endorsed Roger by quoting him. Newt agreed with one of Mao’s aphorisms, as you presumably agree with Roger that “Anita Dunn would be as horrified as the next person by Mao’s savage wholesale butchery.” By quoting Roger, have you adopted his philosophy of government in every particular?

Dunn didn’t just offer an anodyne quote of an idea that had occurred to Clausewitz years before Mao’s birth. Your defense is utterly unconvincing.

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:14 pm 29. TK75:

There is 1 important thing that the defenders of Ms. Dunn are forgetting in their posts here. It is not simply that Ms. Dunn is quoting Mao. That would be perfectly fine, even the most innately evil individuals may come up with pearls of wisdom or strategy that are universally applicable.

However, Obama’s girl Dunn called Mao one of her TWO FAVORITE PHILOSOPHERS!!! That is a long ways from culling a single quote or two. That suggests a significant endorsement of Mao’s personal outlook.

How can anyone in their right mind defend that?

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:15 pm 30. Banjo:

TK75, you know the answer to that question in your last sentence. Something sinister is going on in this culture when someone in the White House can be caught saying something no sane person would ever consider thinking and a collection of other like-minded people claim that wasn’t what she really meant. Language won’t mean what it does now when the Obama administration ends, and we can only hope words retain some meaning that can be mutually agreed upon.

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:30 pm 31. Fen:

Obama: “Equality at the expense of Liberty”

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:32 pm 32. ronnor:

“How did we get to this point in time where we spend 50 years fighting a Cold War against Communism, only to see them take over our own goddamn government?” It was a 20 year plan, first they infiltrated the Universities then indoctrinated our children who voted them into power. These are home grown communists, not from Europe. Now they are ruining the institutions that made the country great, they are ruining Capitalism first so that Communism is the only choice. Has Obama done one thing for the United States yet? Has he said one thing good about the United States yet? He has ruined our credit, debased our money, crapped on our old allies and kissed the ass of an Arab Tyrant while pulling defenses out of Poland. What has he done for the United States which he has sworn to protect, nothing, and he won’t. Anita Dunn, Van Jones and all the others that we don’t know about yet, the moles that will take years to dig out.

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:36 pm 33. Shannon Love:

I think some commenters are missing the point. It’s not that Dunn quoted Mao. It’s that she said Mao was one of her “two favorite political philosophers.” If she had simply quoted Mao to make some point there would be no controversy. It was that she held him next to Mother Teresa as someone to be admired, studied and perhaps emulated.

The really frightening thing her is that it is apparent that there is a large subculture that Dunn is part of in which admiring Mao’s political philosophy is considered not only acceptable but unremarkable. It’s inconceivable that any American political figure could survive in public life if they said that Hitler was one their “two favorite political philosophers” but in comparison Hitler was a rank amateur compared to Mao when it came to mass killings. The fact that a lot of people on the left see nothing wrong with admiring Mao should disturb everyone.

We can toss this episode in the box along with their fetishistic adoration of the murderous anti-American communist Che. After some point, we have to stop granting them the assumption they aren’t actively hostile to American ideals.

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:44 pm 34. David:

Anita Dunn’s Maoist praise was delivered to the graduating class of Saint Andrew’s Episcopal School and the commencement was held at the Washington National Cathedral. This is one super exclusive school and not to be confused with your run-of-the-mill high school graduating class. For whatever reason, people are reluctant to name the school.

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:51 pm 35. andy:

http://relay4thetruth.blogspot.com/2007/10/tavistock-institute-of-human-relations.html

Oct 17, 2009 - 5:56 pm 36. Bobby Joe Hitlet:

Mao wasn’t really all that bad a guy. In fact, he was nicer than Ms. Dunn and better looking too!

Oct 17, 2009 - 6:02 pm 37. SukieTawdry:

This is the point: last November, the American people thought they were electing a “post-partisan,” “post-racial” President who would work to restore unity and self-confidence to the country.

Candidate Obama said repeatedly on the stump that he intended to bring foundational, fundamental changes to America. I took that to mean that he intended to change our nation’s very nature and remake it into something the men who propagated our founding principles would not recognize and certainly never intended. What did the Americans who elected him think he meant? Working to restore unity and self-confidence is a far cry from working to make foundational, fundamental change. Ronald Reagan restored unity and self-confidence and he did it by harkening back to our ideological roots, not abandoning them. The “American people” may have been snookered, but it seems to me that too many among us were willingly duped.

Oct 17, 2009 - 6:04 pm 38. marty:

The REAL issue here is Roger’s last point—when are people going to DO something about the fact that the media, academia and a fair amount of the rest of the country is lousy with people who think just like her.

Barry @ 26–

I wish I could believe that she thought there was any risk in saying what she did, that she made a calculation that she could “get away with it,” but I doubt it—she and virtually everybody she deals with thinks that way and to her and them it is totally unexceptional.

I live in Obama’s old Chicago neighborhood, believe me, I know these people

Oct 17, 2009 - 6:07 pm 39. David:

Good essay. Mr Kimball should post this on the Daily Kos or similar site. He’s just preaching to the choir here, and maybe a few of the Kos kids could learn something.

Oct 17, 2009 - 6:12 pm 40. JAY:

You’re not being fair to homicidal maniacs. They’re people too.

Oct 17, 2009 - 6:20 pm 41. Kevin Murphy:

I think it is important to remind folks at every turn that the Obama administration is populated by the folks that were carrying Little Red Books back in the day. Not just a few, but many.

The Democrat Party has been taken over by the Hard Left.

I think the penny will drop — it dropped on GW Bush when people recoiled at the power that fundamentalist Christians had achieved. It will drop here. There ARE commies under every bed.

Oct 17, 2009 - 6:43 pm 42. Al Reasin:

We should be prepared to follow the example set in Tennessee after the governor and legislature proposed to vote in and approve a state income tax in 1999. The MSM seems to have neglected to report much on this, so go to glennreynolds.com/?p=8 and http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/staterights/tenn_taxprotest.htm for some details.

With the reported 26,000 TEA Party organizations in our great country, we could make life difficult for those cloistered in DC.

Oct 17, 2009 - 6:49 pm 43. Cap'n Rusty:

Obama’s appointees are the dots, and we are just too horrified to connect them.

Oct 17, 2009 - 6:53 pm 44. in_awe:

“Her two favorite political philosophers…the ones she turns to most often.”

Oct 17, 2009 - 6:53 pm 45. Stevenham:

“Probably, Anita Dunn would be as horrified as the next person by Mao’s savage wholesale butchery.”

I wouldn’t say probably… a lot of lefties varied from serial apologists for the ‘communists’ (aka, socialists) to being fully on board (ho ho ho chi min, et cetera). 50 million dead? Probably middle class a-holes (they’d say). Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet and all that…

I know some people strive to see parity between the political sides (we’d see large scale political murder as crazy…. so they probably do too) but there is just not an equivalent on our side and a chunk of their side on this… the closest I could come to it is refusing to get too sentimental about people killed in wars (especially when they started them! aka Japan and Germany)…

Oct 17, 2009 - 6:55 pm 46. geokstr:

And lest we forget, Larry Grathwohl, the FBI agent who infiltrated the radical SDS when Bill Ayers was in charge, quotes Ayers as saying that 25 million Americans would have to be killed if they didn’t embrace communism when he took over:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/eyewitness-to-the-ayers-revolution/

Just a guy down the block from the O. Nothing to see here, move along, folks.

Oct 17, 2009 - 7:03 pm 47. Punkindrublic:

Toast ALL their arses and chase them from tbe beltway; then, just perhaps we could get back to the “sorta” sanity of a productive nation. I’m serious; neither RMN, JEC, nor WJC were worth the effort to chase out of town with an axe handle like the current legislative and executive branches.

Oct 17, 2009 - 7:10 pm 48. Das:

What crushes the heart when powerful people reveal their stupidity on a wide scale: 1) you realize yet again that people who should know, don’t know. 2) You realize that powerful people simply do not read books. How did Ms Dunn miss “Wild Swans” by Jung Chang?

You sit here, a citizen, you think you’re doing your duty, you’ve put in the time, you know you will never sit where Anita Dunn sits but you read, think, inform yourself and try to put a picture of the world together. Then you realize that your betters–or the people with more power than you–are simply ignorant power mongers, vacuous unread brutes.

Oct 17, 2009 - 7:20 pm 49. harkin:

“Fact is, Roger, I’m as hardcore a conservative as they get, yet one of my favorite and oft-used quotes is from V.I. Lenin: “In order to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.””

Do you also list Lenin as one of your favorite political philosophers?

Oct 17, 2009 - 7:34 pm 50. Zero:

The media should not side with any administration. Obama’s administration is afraid of challenge. You know the truth.

Oct 17, 2009 - 7:41 pm 51. King:

Seems like just another attempt to make a political mountain out of a harmless, innocuous utterance about a long dead historical figure. An historical figure out of the past of what is now one of the United States’ major trading partners. Anyway, there is a huge difference between the meaning of a “favorite political philosopher” and “a favorite political tactician”. Unless we are mind readers, we will need to at least hear Dunn’s comment on her statement before any conclusion can be drawn.

Oct 17, 2009 - 7:49 pm 52. Hub:

Hey biblio,
I spent 12 years on the radical left. You should get out of your pajamas and spend a little more time with your ideological compatriots IRW. The radical leftists I hung out with wouldn’t have been horrified at all, especially if the victims had names like Rove, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush, and especially if other people did the dirty work. Bullet to the back of the head, just like their hero Che liked to do it. Hate is their drug of choice. BTW: Every rational American should make it his or her duty to mock Kwanzaa every single day. Your sniveling white-guilt liberal racism is palpable.

Oct 17, 2009 - 8:04 pm 53. TB42:

Has anyone pondered the absurdity of considering Mother T. a “political philosopher”? Clearly, Dunn completely misunderstands Mother T.

Oct 17, 2009 - 8:12 pm 54. Inrptrn:

Poorly educated high school students that on the whole are not taught how to use critical thinking in application to history and are tacit products of pop culture – Check!
High ranking politician speaking before them saying “Mao is one of my 2 favorite philosophers” – Check!
High ranking politician passionately espousing Mao’s world views with not a lick of historical context (like saying, oh by the way, most consider Mao worse than Hitler) – Check!
Setting graduates up for success with a fair and balanced world view, a well-rounded education, and an ability to think critically – FAIL.
Graduates internalizing Mao’s rhetoric because they saw a high ranking politician close to Obama do it, and pop culture thinks Obama is cool- Check!

Oct 17, 2009 - 8:29 pm 55. Michael Lonie:

She said her other favorite philosopher was Mother Teresa. This suggests an inability on Dunn’s part to think rationally, since Mother Teresa, humanitarian nun and devoutly religious, is about as far as one can get from the atheistic and mass murdering Mao tse-tung and still be human. Does she actually know anything about these two? My guess would be that she knows perfectly well about Mao, but likes Mother Teresa simply because it is considered proper by the cool guys to do so. There is something about violence and tyranny in the name of an abstract ideal that gives leftists a frisson, that sends a tingle up their leg as it were. Given a choice between the humble benevolence exhibited by Mother Teresa and a brutal, socialist tyrant, leftists almost invariably will choose to extol the latter.

Oct 17, 2009 - 8:35 pm 56. E. O'Neal:

I think the success Dunn admires is not the Communists’ success in establishing an egalitarian utopia — they obviously failed, but in their total and permanent destruction of the old order. That’s the “fundamental transformation” the left seeks in America.

We know who the new ruling class will be. The elites of government, the academy and the learned professions, journalism and entertainment, environmentalism and labor, with their reliable voting base of African-Americans, Hispanics, single women and immature voters, intend to permanently supplant the moribund establishment of capitalists, big and small, the traditionally patriotic, and the conventionally religious. Of course, the new ruling class also includes many capitalists of the rope-selling, rent-seeking variety described by Lenin.

Our new rulers have taken over the banking system and GM, and have their sights set on health care and energy, what Lenin called the “commanding heights”. Today Barry laid down a marker to the health insurance companies for opposing his will — fall in line or he will put them out of business. The administration wants to marginalize conservative voices like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and to intimidate their opponents into backing off. They know they lack majority support but intend to press forward quickly before most Americans understand what’s happening.

It’s the Chicago Way gone national.

Oct 17, 2009 - 10:25 pm 57. Koblog:

What Dunn said was no joke. Her voice was even, calm and assured. She went into great detail about Mao. Never did she give the slightest hint she was joking about this.

She was talking to an audience of high school students doing what she thought was her best inspirational speech.

Dunn took the opportunity to lift up her heroes. Mao is one of Dunn’s heroes.

Specifically, Dunn likes Mao because, in her story, Mao was the underdog and had the whole nationalist Chinese army and air force arrayed against him, yet prevailed.

Liberals love it when communists come from behind to win. So what if a hundred million people have to die in the process?

Oct 17, 2009 - 11:19 pm 58. CJ:

…one of my favorite and oft-used quotes is from V.I. Lenin: “In order to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.”

I believe that George Orwell’s retort to that one went “So, where’s the omelet?”

Oct 17, 2009 - 11:26 pm 59. Marc Malone:

#3 Akatsukami – She admires Mao because he managed to sieze power.

Power.

Nothing else matters.

Oct 17, 2009 - 11:41 pm 60. Pete Nelson:

I recommend a book to those interested in Mao’s “political philosophy.” It is “Mao: The Unknown Story” by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. It is extensivly researched and lays out a lot of the history of the Mao’s takeover of China and his later life. The short version: Mao was despicable in every way – he abandoned at least one of his wives and his children, connived his way into control of the Chinese Communist Party, used torture and terror as a convenient means to *his* ends, and thought little or nothing of killing supporters, let alone enemies, if they got in his way. Even the early founders of the Chinese Communist Party thought he was scum. Mao was all about Mao – he didn’t really care about Communism or the people; they were just a means for him to take total control of China. Just a wild guess, but I think Ms. Dunn has not read this book. Maybe if she actually had learned something about Mao, she might not have made the stupid statements she made. Maybe I’ll send her a copy.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:04 am 61. Dan:

Beck is priceless. If he does nothing more than expose the lack of interest of the MSM in simply informing the public about who runs our government he will have done a great public service.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:32 am 62. JB:

Once the institutions burn.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:42 am 63. Ken Hahn:

I’d like to thank biblio44 for one of the finest examples of the lefty style of political argument that I’ve seen for a while. Ignore the main point. Take a few jabs at side issues and finish with the all purpose charge of racism. The far left in America have no logical or historical basis for their semi religious beliefs but they have passion.

Anita Dunn said that she admired Mao as a political philosopher. If you cannot address that then nothing else you say in response to Roger’s article is simply noise.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:48 am 64. buddy larsen:

Ms Dunn (said elsewhere to be a well-to-do resident of tony Chevy Chase –some Maoist –preach the Long March from the Long Driveway) in her notorious video tells her high-school audience to ‘prepare themselves to do things that’ve never been done before’. This word-matches the NEA trainer guy who told his artist audience that they were going to be ‘learning how to do things that’ve never been done before’.

Then next day when they learn that their words got loose into the people at large, they both sprint away as fast as they can from what they’d clearly said with passion and emphasis just a day or two before, exhorting groups whose loyalty they clearly desire for the doing of some new something that ‘has never been done before’.

Okay, all the above was to set up this question: is there a mismatch between the heaviness of their exhortation and the lightness of the ray of sunshine that made them so quickly and volubly disavow and disclaim?

Sure there is. And what can it be but that they are up to something very aggressive and illicit, and are thus suffused with defensive and sacrificial (”You! Under the Bus! Now!”) furtiveness.

Quick splash, a diversion or two while the ripples degrade, then back to work under smooth reflective surfaces.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:53 am 65. Mike G:

What I find funny about it is that after inflicting a totally unnecessary wound on herself, the thought she praises is so banal and Hallmarky. Honestly, Rumsfeld’s Rules are less cliched than this supposed Mao insight. But, of course, quoting Rumsfeld would be in bad taste, given his crimes.

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:25 am 66. Pajamas Media » The Maoist Explains Herself: Egg, Face, at the White House:

[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:06 am 67. Delia:

It just keeps gettin’ funnier.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:25 am 68. Delia:

I wonder if the ‘HS kids’ got the memo?

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:27 am 69. vivo:

“On June 5, 2009, Dunn delivered a speech to a group of high school students in which she stated “… two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa, not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point…you don’t have to follow other people’s choices and paths” or “let external definition define how good you are internally.”

The Mao quote Dunn cited referred to a disagreement within the Communist Party of China in 1947, as to the conduct of the war against the Nationalists during which Mao declared “You fight your war, and I’ll fight mine”. The Mother Theresa quote, “Go find your own Calcutta.” was in response to a offer to help her at her mission in Calcutta.”

A fuss for this?

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:50 am 70. ehunter:

Anita Dunn is just the kind of entity that enrages Roger Kimball most. She is the standard
product of the Yale-Harvard-Columbia..assembly line. Sheltered, smug, emotionally deranged and deeply confused and supremely privileged. She is the sexless feminist, the half wit pumped full of ideology, the non achiever with the stellar
resume. Every year off the assembly line they come.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:57 am 71. ehunter:

No one is mentioning the Mother Theresa
component of Anita Dunn’s Pantheon. How in Dunns mind did Mao and Mother Theresa become linked?
One suggestion is that both represent the same kind of ideal. Abstract, detached, moving through the death and poverty with a beatific smile sure of the brave new world just around the corner. Theresa may have found it in Christian Salvation, Mao surely never did. But
the point is neither personage is a very useful model for guiding a quite worldly Democracy of 300 million in any practical fashion.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:25 am 72. JohnB:

This absolutely explosive event, (I caught the original on the Glen Beck show), inspired me. I saw in Annita’s words the image of Obama’s civilian guards, (do you remember the one he says we need to be as well equipped and funded as the US military),,,a new sort of Mao’s Red Brigade,,, rounding up evil white folks and marching them off to the killing fields. These black people who claim it’s impossible for them to be racist, hate us that thoroughly.

The very next day I made a pilgrimage to the sporting goods store and bought more ammunition. I think I’m gonna need all I can get before this is finished.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:41 am 73. RedheadedTexan:

Bill Johnson #17: did you ever suspect Biblio is paid by the word by Papa Soros and his bunch to attempt to foment disorder and doubt on conservative sites?

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:55 am 74. hopinghefails:

That comment by Obama before the election was the one that scared me the most and I remember thinking at the time “why isn’t anyone talking about this comment by someone who could be our next president?”. I continue to be amazed that people aren’t talking about it now as we see him pressing in an effort to fulfill his promise to “fundamentally change America”.

I do hope Roger and others keep talking about it. We are in trouble if America doesn’t wake up pretty fast before it is too late.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:23 am 75. pelaut:

“…Obama and his lieutenants …are egalitarians..”

Baloney! They’re the same as Maoists in ‘45-48 and Nazis in ‘28-33.

Wait until even poorly educated American drones catch on that it isn’t working, and the =:obamists pull out the guns and thumbscrews to MAKE us behave.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:37 am 76. pelaut:

Who the dickens did you think they were if not who they SAID they were?

Thomas Jefferson was an eqalitarian, not these malignancies.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:42 am 77. Jerry:

Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Pol Pot etc. all said things that were more or less true. They may have complimented a friend or criticized a policy or veridically recalled a past event. They may even have said something pithy. However, at some point well before one-million deaths the voices from the graves of those killed overwhelm anything of truth or value that might have come from their mouths!

Ms. Dunn should go because her ideological naiveté surpasses her capacity to think logically. This can also be said of many others ensconced in the Obama regime.

In the same vein, I await a recall petition on Mr. Obama given his tyrannical tendencies to transform America. We have suffered foreign policy debacles that warrant his ejection from office. Domestic issues are following in the same downward path.

Anyone for starting a petition?

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:44 am 78. Fearless Leader:

Give a man a loan and you feed him for a day.
Teach a country to borrow and you have to feed them for a lifetime.

Chinese student proverbs.

Barry Obama-

Heaven made him-
Now the world will use him.

Each generation will reap what the former generation has sown.

Chinese Proverb

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:47 am 79. genghis:

Ah, and let us not forget that other great hero of the Left Stalin, who famously observed, ‘one death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic’. An acquired test for these two idols of the brainless left who are too busy to learn a bit of history. Che is not even worth mentioning, having murdered only in the tens of hundreds.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:49 am 80. Delia:

We are on our own, folks.

WE ARE ON OUR OWN.

We can rise up or we can hunker down or a little of both.

But, we are ON OUR OWN.

Keep your powder dry.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:03 am 81. Thomas_L.....:

“What the left-wing excuse factory wants is for the American people to overlook the radicalism of the people populating Obama’s inner circle, of which Anita Dunn is a prominent member.”
Overall, what the left-wing fantasy factory wants you to overlook is what an abysmal failure and human disaster communism has been. If only “real” communism could be enacted, all would be different, though. Right.
Anyway, I’ve met a lot of people in my life and you know who praises Mao? Communists, that’s who. No one else.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:05 am 82. MARC:

Ms. Dunn, is at best a naive utopian and at worst she is a committed cadre of Mao, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro and any other communist murderer who the left swarms and fellates on a regular basis. Ms. Dunn, I believe, is the latter and would have absolutely no compunction with signing a death warrant, ala Che Guevara, for anyone who would espouse an opposing political view. But to put Mother Teresa and the “Great Helmsman” in the same sentence is morally obscene and offensive to general decency everywhere. So if president Urkel and his merry band of utopians intend on “transforming” America, then Mao is the perfect guide, at least in their minds. “YES WE CAN” takes on a whole new meaning when these clowns contemplate “rehabilitation” for the people whom they deem to be politically incorrigible.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:14 am 83. Parabellum:

“Judge me by the people with whom I surround myself.”

Barack Hussein Obama.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:19 am 84. tanstaafl:

It’s not that she admires his penchant for industrial strength homicide: rather, she admires his success at fomenting an egalitarian revolution.

Probably the bottom line of her remarks to the high school class.

Also, in telling the students that Chiang Kai Shek held all the marbles, controlled the country, the military etc., she made the point that Mao accomplished all that with dificult if not impossible odds.

In order to score the “fight your own war” point, Dunn gave a simplistic impression of the strength of the Nationalist gov’t at the time of Mao’s takeover.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:20 am 85. willis:

“Probably, Anita Dunn would be as horrified as the next person by Mao’s savage wholesale butchery.”

She had the forum to say so, but chose not to. I prefer to let her speak for herself, not you.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:33 am 86. Sebastian Shaw:

All the spinning in the world cannot turn Anita Dunn into Wonder Woman; she said Mao is one of her favorite philosophers–a man who was a Communist & killed 70 millions people for the sake of power itself. Utopia’s are always built on the blood of innocent victims & they never deliver any of their promises; Utopias are nightmares in the real world for the power hungry elite. Anita Dunn is one of Wonder Woman’s many villains, Barbara Minerva, the Cheetah who seeks Wonder Woman’s Girdle of Gaea, her magic lasso–for power. The Cheetah kills for bloodsport & revenge. Anita Dunn needs to not show her spots so much.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:38 am 87. MarkD:

I remain unfazed, and armed. Ayers 25 million is probably intended to include me, but I’m not going alone.

I think all sane people would rather it not come to this, but there is a reason arms and ammunition sales have been strong throughout the recession. Obama is a bully, last evidenced by his going after the insurance industry when they had the audacity to oppose his plan which would have led to their demise.

For a former constitutional law professor, he is pretty casual about trampling rights. Judging by Obama’s 43% re-elect number, he’s already gone farther than the majority is prepared to accept. Ms Dunn, being acceptable to him, has become unacceptable to me.

I’ll hold my nose, and vote for the stupid party over the evil party. I suspect I’m not in the minority.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:50 am 88. flyboy:

Watched the video on Beck. What the heck was that tongue / mouth action. Never seen anything like that on a human.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:18 am 89. james:

Gee, a lying Maoist groupie. What a concept, you racists.
Some still think that there is a vetting problem at the WH. There is no vetting problem. All of these people – Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett, John Holdren, Cass Sunstein, Carol Browner, Anita Dunn, David Axelrod, Mark Lloyd – all of them: were picked BECAUSE they were properly vetted. So let’s just say this clearly and get it out of the way.
Barack Obama is a communist radical. He hates America, he hates the Constitution, he hates you. And he intends to destroy all of it. He calls it “transform.” We need to call it what it is.
Don’t be afraid, my friends.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:21 am 90. GLASS:

I find it’s not very hard to determine the real racists among us, they are the ones that scream racist the loudest, same way the gullible and dullest amongst us scream stupid. As my mother used to say, listen very closely to the names your antagonist calls you, it’s usually very close to what his mother raised.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:22 am 91. karlinsync:

The White House inner machine attacking Fox news is going to backfire. With Anita Dunn refusing to answer any of the facts Mr. Beck laid out makes her look like a fool and this American calls for her removal from the inner circles of power! I want the White House to lead for ALL Americans. The PR Obama’s administration is engaged in is a travesty of basic freedoms that we need to stand up for.

Fox News should be whispered thoughout the land as the VOICE of AMERICA.

Fox News- Voice of America

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:43 am 92. lookout:

I think Dunn’s mention of Mother Teresa was just a sop, as Dunn went on to say absolutely nothing about Mother Teresa and how her orthodox, Christian faith and unselfish life might inspire the kids.

Dunn made a big splash about how her pairing of Mao with almost a Christian saint was a very unusual juxtaposition. So, how? Well, she managed to leave out the Christian part, such as: “Love thy neighbour as thyself” and “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me”. In other words, Mother Teresa’s inspiration would be: do NOT put yourself first; serve others. These ideas couldn’t be further from the self-serving tripe Dunn served up to this group of young people (even though their Episcopalian elders seemed happy to put them in harm’s way. And that’s a whole other story!)

From the evidence, I don’t think Dunn gives a toss for Mother Teresa. So, to add to the list of negatives about this arrogant, self-serving elitist, I’ll add that she’s unintelligent, and both a liar and a hypocrite.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:45 am 93. AugustFalcon:

Re: #69 VIVO -
Please stop confusing us with what looks like facts and context. (Sorry, I haven’t actually watched the clip yet since I only have a really slow ATT DSL connection.)

Still, we are the CHOIR, and we need to sing out our displeasure to others in our daily lives in the real world so that these political rascals are ousted at the first opportunity.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:54 am 94. Common Sense:

No one should even respond to biblio44. Once the race card is played you can pretty much count it as the little boy who cried wolf. Just a standard leftie tactic to distract from real content in the discussion.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:05 am 95. Richard:

I am just trying to figure out which ones of my friends who voted for Obama are mere dupes, and which ones are in on the ground floor of this evil nonsense.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:10 am 96. ht:

Ok, I am no fan of President Obama, and I especially dislike way he has larded his administration with hard core leftists. But the bit about criticizing the US Constitution is off base. Read the link. He states, correctly, that the US contitution mainly limits the power of government. I would hardly call that a criticism, it is what we all LOVE about the constitution. And he says that the Warren court interpreted the constitution that way (which I must add is a good thing). He is simply saying that the civil rights movement did not focus on wealth redistribution. Don’t take my word for it, or Roger’s word for it. Read the link.

The President seems to think that it is too bad that the civil rights movement did not devote any energy to wealth redistribution. Here, as in many cases, I disagree with him. But again, this is hardly an attack on the constitution.

If we want to effectively oppose the excesses of the Obama administartion, we have to guard our credibility closely. We have to avoid playing fast and loose with the record. Leave that tactic to the leftists, they need it. We should be fine sticking with the truth.

ht

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:13 am 97. blotto:

ht: “He states, correctly, that the US contitution mainly limits the power of government.” Boy that was brilliant of you. He called the Constitution a “negative rights” constitutiton. He DID criticize it because it limited what the government could do. I don’t know what Obama you are listening to but his whole raison d’etre is to change our Constitution so he can transform America.

Perhaps you should concern yourself with the left playing “fast and loose” with America and not bother about us Neanderthals. We’re just fine, thank you.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:05 am 98. Carl:

How many ROACHES are in the woodwork?

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:14 am 99. suzy:

wholesale butchery of conservative, family values folk is just what dunn/obama have wet dreams about. if they could push a button and kill all oldsters, they would do it in a heart beat. if they could push a button and kill all christians, they would. if they could push a button and kill all two parent (man & wife) families, they would. the current usa administration wants nothing less than the destruction of western civilization.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:16 am 100. JJKRN:

maoists and communists need purged..ALL of them

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:25 am 101. John McLachlan:

I am british, but regard the USA as the guardian of western freedom, in a world full of barbarians. Obama scares me. Could not each of his accolytes be thoroughly investigated so that the American people can judge whether they have elected a socialist government, either deliberately or by deception? I think that it is likely that most of Obama’s associates hold views which are significantly different from the majority of Americans. Dunn is only the latest to be noticed. Is it possible for Obama’s entourage to be investigated and have their probably extreme left views displayed to the general public and compared to historical socialist regimes? What would Obama do different, if he were a manchurian candidate? Obama had a close friendship with Bill Ayres, whose terrorist group happily discussed the logistics of killing 25 million of his countrymen, the ones who refused to embrace socialism, even after re-education. I think that Mrs Dunn is probably not the only one amongst Obama’s entourage, who admires Mao Tse Tung and would regard 25 million deaths as acceptable in pursuit of her cause.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:26 am 102. Mutnodjmet:

Dear Roger: The American people no longer revere the opinions of our political or entertainment elites. To promote our CA Tea Party (and the debut of “Not Evil, Just wrong”) We produced this —

SNL-Tina Fey PARODY at San Diego TEA PARTY EVENT! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZASuAF1pUQU

United we stand against this drivel!

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:33 am 103. DAROGR:

It would be much easier to explain away if it were not all on videotape. What a total dope this woman is.
A total evil dope.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:50 am 104. baal:

Everything that is known about Obama was known before the election, but John McCain and the Republican leadership were too morally,intellectually and philosophically WEAK to just say it; Barack Obama, by dint of his ideology has a worldview incompatible with the country he sought to govern.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:59 am 105. michiganruth:

you know, it wouldn’t bother me if one or two of Obama’s appointees/advisors were radical. but they’re ALL radical! during the campaign I wondered the same thing. does he not know one single centrist? can anyone name one?

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:03 am 106. IMH:

Today while reading “Khrushchev Remembers”, The memoirs of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, I thought of Anita Dunn’s admiration of Mao while reading the part about Khrushchev and Mao sitting poolside and Mao attempting to incite Russia to provoke war with the US so that China could jump in.
Oh Anita! You are such an admirable American
(can you hear my sarcasm?) Even Khrushchev realized that Mao was a nut.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:18 am 107. Moho:

The opposition comes from the right too. Anyone, literally, with a brain is sick of this stupidity. But keep it up, you’re proving to everyone what an absurd choice any of your leaders make to govern any of our institution.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:34 am 108. TomF:

America is an egalitarian society in that the value and dignity of every man is independent of wealth, race, gender, age, education, and religion. The socialistic and communistic idea of egalitarian is the opposite in that it devalues the person and glorifies the system. That is why communism in the 20th century could justify the killing of over 100 million people–for the success of the system.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:38 am 109. Professor Guvinoff:

The grand unified theory of moral relativism:

Mao-Tse-tung plus Mother Theresa equals zero!

Corollary one: If you say the two names in the same breath, nobody will be offended!

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:57 am 110. John Skookum:

Re: “Anita Dunn would be as horrified as the next person by Mao’s savage wholesale butchery”

Perhaps, perhaps not. As others have pointed out, Bill Ayers thought that the death of 30 million people would be a price worth paying to bring about the Revolution. Does anyone doubt that he would now be Secretary of Education if his Weatherman affiliations had remained a secret?

Just two nights ago I was listening to the radio show of extreme leftist Mike Malloy, and heard with my own ears his chilling call for the Left to stay up late one night and “eliminate” everyone on the Right, in a Night of the Long Knives scenario.

Folks, those who say Barack Obama is a hateful communist and would-be mass murderer are exactly right. Judge him by the company he keeps, as he himself asked us to do. Prepare yourselves to deal with his Administration and all its Gramscian fellow travelers as our noble ancestors would have. Steel yourselves for the day when you may have to put a bullet between the eyes of your mayor or your child’s kindergarten teacher in order to save your own life.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:57 am 111. Paul of Alexandria:

SukieTawdry (37):

….
Candidate Obama said repeatedly on the stump that he intended to bring foundational, fundamental changes to America…..

Two thoughts come to mind.
1) (From a communications theory class a while back)Three items are necessary for communication to take place between two parties: a channel of communication, symbols that are sent across that channel, and a shared context by which the two parties interpret the symbols. The symbols and channel may be sound patterns in the air, letters on a page, or as subtle as a particular dress on a woman. Unless we share the context, however, all communication is meaningless. I can say exactly the same words in exactly the same voice, and mean exactly the opposite, simply by having a different context.

2) There are untruths spoken erroneously, and there are lies, which are spoken deliberately in order to deceive someone. The most effective deception, however, uses true words (thus it is difficult to call the speaker on their use) but carefully chooses the portions of the truth spoken and manipulates the context.

The Progressives didn’t lie prior to the election, they stated precisely what they would do. However they manipulated the context, knowing that the vast majority of the people would mis-interpret what they said to suit their own views and not seek to learn what the Progressives meant by them.

Reading some of the more liberal posters here, it seems that it must be instinctive for Progressives to manipulate context, making words mean whatever they want them to, like Humpty Dumpty.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:19 am 112. Paul of Alexandria:

ehunter(71):

No one is mentioning the Mother Theresa
component of Anita Dunn’s Pantheon. How in Dunns mind did Mao and Mother Theresa become linked?

They both made similar quotes which – as is typical – Ms Dunn took out of context. Mother Theresa (”Go find your own Calcutta”) was telling the other person that there are many who need help, go find your own needy. I can’t be sure that this was the case in this instance, but she had little patience with those rich people who just wanted to throw money at a problem but not get personally involved.

Mao, on the other hand, was subtly telling the person that the war that he was ostensibly fighting was not his real war. He was not really fighting the Japanese, he was fighting to take over China.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:31 am 113. johnt:

The list grows longer and longer, dirt bags, commies [ the real thing] retired American terrorist bombers. screaming black racists, ugly women praising history’s greatest mass murderer, gay school safety czars. It goes on and will continue to do so because this is what Obama is. Sit back and observe as it continues.
And if you are of the left don’t forget to rave over Fox, it does not do news, you see.

Observe the few leftist loons puking out their hate on this site as their boy is exposed. It wasn’t supposed to be like this was it kiddies ? The coronation has turned into a disaster, and it’s not over. But I guess you agree with an Jones and Anita Dunn, who really didn’t say what she said.
Or maybe you don’t agree, but don’t know how, or can’t, jump off this ugly and vicious train wreck.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:37 am 114. Richard:

I am of an age where I recall precisely Mao and the the Cultural Revolution, the Gang of Four, the internal strife that emanated for equality, above all else. Much like the French Revolution, Equality became the goal by which any and all manner of horrendous atrocities were committed by the people, on its own people. All persons had to be made Equal in all circumstances, the clothes they wore, the food they ate, the houses they lived in. The nail that stood up got hammered down. Such was the desire for Equality that China completely shut itself off from the entire world, lest they catch a glimpse of how others were living.

Then came Richard Nixon.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:48 am 115. Moho:

Johnt–>Do you want a tissue, you crazed drama queen. Really, if you knew the damage these hysterics were doing to your cause, you’d shut up right quick.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:00 pm 116. Skeptic:

>>>>he would be awestruck to see how Rog dances around the edges of racism [in the Kwanza comment - Sk.]

Kwanza is total nonsense, a fraud, a joke.

It’s a “holiday” created out of thin air in the 1960s by Black activists as a political statement: to have some competition to Christmas, which was considered, I suppose, too “White”.

Before that, and indeed until the 1990s, practically nobody, Black or White, even heard of this completely fake “holiday”.

Apparently, pointing out this obvious truth, or making fun of Kwanza due to it, is now “racism”. Let me accept this claim and accept that I, then, am a racist.

So what?

As Gilbert and Sullivan said, when everybody’s somebody, nobody’s anybody. Since everybody today is a racist for saying anything anybody thinks somebody might be insulted by, nobody cares anymore about being a “racist”, since everybody is a racist anyway.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:15 pm 117. Hyphenated American:

Mr King, let me answer….

King:
“Seems like just another attempt to make a political mountain out of a harmless, innocuous utterance about a long dead historical figure. An historical figure out of the past of what is now one of the United States’ major trading partners. Anyway, there is a huge difference between the meaning of a “favorite political philosopher” and “a favorite political tactician”. Unless we are mind readers, we will need to at least hear Dunn’s comment on her statement before any conclusion can be drawn.”

Imagine if she said that her two most favorite phylosophers are Hitler and Mother Theresa, and then quoted a piece from Mein Kampf. Would you express same feelings as as you did when she expressed admiration towards Mao, a man who had killed more people than Hitler and Stalin put together? BTW, do you think Mao’s phylosophy and political tactics can be completely separated?

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:17 pm 118. Simply George:

In the marketplace of ideas, maoism turned out to be sour grapes.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:30 pm 119. Jerome:

“When will voters begin that long countermarch through the institutions in order to take back the country?”

That’s the question, alright. I am afraid that the answer is, when a nuclear bomb has exploded in New York Harbor. When Michigan is declared a Wilderness Area. When our health care system has sunk to the level of Cuba’s. When tens of thousands of Americans are imprisoned for thought crimes. When our economy has been systematically looted to destruction. When our military power has been so eroded that we can no longer defend our allies or our national interests. When most of Western Civilization has been subjugated to Islam. When the USA has come to resemble the USSR. In short, when it is way too late.

The sad reality is that most of the soft-headed do-gooders who voted for President Hope still think they made the right choice. These useless, prattling clowns are our fellow citizens, and there’s no getting around it. Adam Smith said, “there’s a power of ruin in a nation”, and I’m afraid we’re going to see the proof.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:31 pm 120. Delia:

98. Carl:

“How many ROACHES are in the woodwork?”

It’s a ‘feature’.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:03 pm 121. Jerry:

Anita Dunn has given her inner self away. Her propensities are now public. Mao and Mother Theresa – both obsessed with the expression of power. One took life with impunity and one supported life with ferocity. However, both expressed their power in unmistakable ways. So, we may fairly say that it is power that fascinates Ms. Dunn. Such people should be avoided in the public sphere at all costs because of the damage that they can do to others. Let her plant a garden or fell some trees or dig the foundation to her new house with pail and shovel. Just let her do so outside of the government.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:10 pm 122. Bob Miller:

Dunn’s remarks praising Mao were part of a test for the American public, to find out if our consciousness of history and of right vs. wrong had so eroded as to disconnect most of us from religion, American ideals and the Constitution. This disconnect is essential to the future plans of Obama and his stooges and handlers.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:24 pm 123. Poor Citizen:

Hey, maybe Obama do what Bush wanted to do and mentally “frisk search” each potential government worker and advisor to ensure correct thinking.

Hey the results of Bush’s presidency prove that it was the right thing to do…donut?…

Good Luck to clean thinking !!

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:30 pm 124. Orion:

“Probably, Anita Dunn would be as horrified as the next person by Mao’s savage wholesale butchery.’

Only, I’m afraid, if she were the subject of said butchery. Liberals are very forgiving of tyrants as long as the bullets fly the other way.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:37 pm 125. Susan W:

One can surely admire her, but since when has Mother Teresa been considered principally a “political philosopher?” Couldn’t this school find anyone more intelligent than Anita Dunn to address their children?

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:27 pm 126. misanthropicus:

Besides Anita’s significant choice of a “philosophical” adage to riff upon from Mao, and not from Marcus Aurelius, Tolstoy or Yogi Bera, there is also another facet to this affair – the liberals’ sincere, indignant surprise that she is called for explanations in this matter.
And this shows, time and again, that liberals and lefties live in a completely disconnected world of acceptions. For liberals when they are among themselves it is very normal to praise Stalin, Mao or Guevara – and now they’re shocked to learn that those bitter people on the streets (read NORMAL AMERICANS) don’t see the world the way they do.

Lefties and liberals are in the same position like Hitler, Ceaucescu or others of this type – furious, throwing things around yelling: “This people simply does not deserve me (or us)!”

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:30 pm 127. misanthropicus:

By the way, I think that Sharpton’s threat to sue Rush Limbaugh is just a White House attempt to deflect this scandal with another scandal.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:36 pm 128. Delia:

126. misanthropicus,

There is a LOT of ‘audacity’ stinking up the W/B house.

I’m tempted to believe this is all a well orchestrated effort to unravel our country and make our pesos er ‘dollars’ into kindling.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:08 pm 129. johnt:

moho, at least come up with some new insults.
Sorry, but tonight is not the night to waste my time on trash.
Your boy is going down but at least you’ll get a VAT out of it, and oh those beautiful $1.4 trillion deficits.

I take it you like Van Jones, Anita Dunn, and maybe Mao also, figures.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:19 pm 130. Allan:

As an Australian growing up in the 60’s and 70’s I embraced communism mainly as a means of being “cool”. At university I marched and carried my Little Red Book. I even read the first few pages. I knew about the Cultural Revolution etc but basically through the news media which at least in Australia told me nothing other than photo opportunities served up by the Chinese regime.

As I grew older I got busy and less concerned with politics and certainly grew into a political conservative and economist. It really wasn’t until I read the book “Mao The Untold Story” written by the woman who wrote Wild Swans that I gave any real thought to China’s recent history. For me that extremely well researched and written book opened my eyes to the real history. To say that I was shocked is an understatement. My whole world view was jolted and reshaped.

In a way I can understand an ageing radical quoting Mao because at the time that she formed her opinions the Chinese did completely control the news about themselves and so we didn’t know at the time we formed our philosphical allegiances the true story (like giving your heart to a tragically bad football team). So now even though we know the horror and despise Mao and his regime it still sneaks up on us from time to time. Having said that, she is an important government official of the most powerful nation in the world..does noone help her writing her speeches and check their content?

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:23 pm 131. Lyddea:

“the left-wing excuse factory”

That doesn’t even compare the Right Wing Victim Factory. You know, the shared fantasy of a Machiavellian world opposed to Christians, whites, and “Real Americans”. A who’s who of the world’s oppressed, in the words of one of the factory managers, conservatives are the new oppressed minority.

If we do not learn from history, we are… doomed to be modern-day “conservative” Republicans.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:25 pm 132. Sebastian Shaw:

If Dunn took Mother Theresa;s philosophy to heart, she would not couple it with Communist dictators, in her case, Mao who committed genocide. Dunn’s heart is black. Anita Dunn is a Black Lantern who seeks the hearts of the living for power. And her boss, the wannabe dictator, President Obama is Nekron. In case you’re wondering about the references, look under Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, power rings, Nekron, & Black Lanterns (”Blackest Night”) on Answers.com.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:35 pm 133. Delia:

131. Lyddea,

The welfare check came late this month eh?

Don’t worry, be happy. The check is in the mail!

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:46 pm 134. texexpatriate:

Roger Kimball, you have made a bad slip here in your essay. You give the socialists/fascists too much credit. “Probably, Anita Dunn would be as horrified as the next person by Mao’s wholesale butchery.” Shame on you! Socialists are socialists, like poisonous snakes are poisonous snakes. (For the socialist morons who monitor these remarks, I must also add, Democrats are poisonous snakes, like all socialist snakes.) You are right in your conclusion. Roger, but why give the dolt named Anita Dunn a pass. She’s a monster, too.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:02 pm 135. selwynmills:

Anita Dunn is just Obama’s latest “Trial Balloon”. What she was really saying is, “If Mao can get away with killing 70 million people to create his Chinese Utopia, then we can do whatever we want to, create our American Socialism. “Murder is an option” Let us not waste a perfectly good crisis without advancing our agenda. In 50 years the masses will revere Big Brother and they will be giving commencement speeches at all the re-education centers. Commissars will be starting their talks with, “My two favorite philosophers are Anita Dunn and Shawn Penn.”

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:14 pm 136. gracie:

Dunn did not “merely” quote Mao, she looks to him for guidance. Poor Mother Theresa. Although I hope she would have been philosophical about the grouping.

Yeah, public school. I would sincerely doubt if they know who Mao is and “what” he did…

America’s Public Schools,
…THAT IS where America’s tragedy manifests itself, DAILY, and we allow it.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:42 pm 137. blotto:

lyddea: Well now that just rich. Almost original as compared to your weaklink assistants DS, moho and vivo, but useless as a source of debate. Let me guess: also white, female, atheist, gay, college student who just heard Machiavellian for the first time uttered by her favorite professor. Pretty much sum you up, there lyddea??? Beware though when you go for a job that in the words of Julianne Malveaux up at Syracuse U who said and I will paraphrase: we just use white women to get what we want then we will dump them…

If your ideology blinds you to what is the truth and your “inspired non-organic” hatred of all things good because they do not match what has been inculcated into your cranium then you will have a poor life.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:42 pm 138. vivo:

93. AugustFalcon:

“Re: #69 – Please stop confusing us with what looks like facts and context.”

There is your downfall: refusing to accept facts and context. Ignorance is bliss.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:55 pm 139. venividivici:

Just two nights ago I was listening to the radio show of extreme leftist Mike Malloy, and heard with my own ears his chilling call for the Left to stay up late one night and “eliminate” everyone on the Right, in a Night of the Long Knives scenario.

This seems less “chilling” than “retarded”. I hope they try because then it’ll be open season on them. The very fact that they think it is simply a matter of “staying up late” to accomplish this says more about their childish worldview than any argument I could make.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:17 pm 140. lyddea:

It’s all true blotto. It’s all true Sebastian. The entire higher educational system is merely an assembly line to turn out leftist drones. Barack Obama is secrely a wannabe dictator who only mouths American platitudes in order to fool the sheeple.

Listen to yourselves! Cults are a social phenomenon that have thrived throughout history. They believe crazy things: the comet is coming, the black helicopters are coming, the aliens are coming, Barack Obama is a communist plant raised on foreign soil to topple our democracy. They counter the disconfirmation that occurs when those beliefs were exposed to others by the common thread of all cults, that everyone was against them.

The Right Wing Victim Factory is using those same formulas. You don’t have to be one of their products.

People who disagree with you are not necessarily “female, atheist, gay, college student”(s) (that mythical cohort which is both easily dismissed and controls all the levers of power). They may simply be in touch with reality.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:38 pm 141. Lyddea:

A historical assist (to the conspiracy-minded “conservative” Republicans who populate this board):

Heaven’s Gate
Jim Jones
Aum Shinri Kyo
Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God
Branch Davidian

For your own sake, read about these groups. Long before the ‘black helicopters’ and ‘IRS agents’ come for your ‘guns and freedoms’, your own credulousness and fantasy will destroy you. But that’s just a statement derived from historical observation, I’m sure it doesn’t apply to the new fantasies of today, right?

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:49 pm 142. Inrptrn:

140. lyddea:

“It’s all true blotto. It’s all true Sebastian. The entire higher educational system is merely an assembly line to turn out leftist drones. Barack Obama is secrely a wannabe dictator who only mouths American platitudes in order to fool the sheeple.”

I agree.

“Listen to yourselves!”

I do listen to myself. When I see a Maoist in the WH I say “Self, them’s sum bad apples thar!”

You should try it sometime.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:48 pm 143. Rich Rostrom:

“When will voters begin that long countermarch through the institutions in order to take back the country?”

This is not a problem that voters can fix.

Merely voting a bunch of Democrats out of office in 2010 or 2012 won’t solve the problem. See this post by Charles Murray. Murray looked at political self-identification, as recorded in the General Social Survey from 1972 to 2008, for whites aged 30-39 in six demographic segments: Traditional Upper, Intellectual Upper, Traditional Middle, Technical Middle, Working, Lower. For each year and segment, he subtracted the percentage of “conservative” and “extreme conservative” from the percentage of “liberal” and “extreme liberal”. In 1972 all segments were in the range +3 to -7. By 2008, all segments had moved right by 3 to 8 points, except Intellectual Upper, which moved 22 points left.

IOW, the segment of society which does most of the perceiving and analyzing and communicating (including teaching) has become overwhelmingly leftist. How can culture be reformed or rebuilt when the very basis of thought and action is distorted?

The Left has taken the intellectual “high ground”. It would take a generation of determined effort to re-establish any sort of balance. And the Left will resist fanatically any threat to its dominance.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:48 pm 144. Richard:

Add to your cult list the Maoists. They killed so many millions no one even knows the exact number.

Most cults are collectives, BTW, and most American assassins were leftists or anarchists.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:10 pm 145. Inrptrn:

143. Rich Rostrom:
“How can culture be reformed or rebuilt when the very basis of thought and action is distorted?”

See Dr. Hanson’s article “Confessions of a Cultural Dropout” here on PJM.

There are many cultural aliens out there (myself included) that aren’t taking the piss. We have to do something with all that energy.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:20 pm 146. The News Factor: updated headlines:

[...] The Maoist explains herself: egg, face at the White House [...]

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:24 am 147. Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e90v1:

[...] The Maoist in the White House kerfuffle. [...]

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:10 am 148. Tomp:

Obamunsim marches on..

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:25 am 149. bandit:

I’m with #9 – if Ms. Dunn was being honest she would have said “My friends all agree and say stuff like this all the time. And if you disagree that means you’re a stupid redneck”. I happen to encounter a lot of college professors.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:25 am 150. William:

What is so intellectually profound about, “You fight your fight,and I’ll fight mine”?
Is it deeper than,”You go your way and I’ll go mine”? “I’ll do it my way”? “I’ll be the judge of my own actions, you be the judge yours”? etc.

Actually, like Obama, he never answered the question. He made a broad statement without offering any details of how he would do it. Now we know the bloody details and it isn’t pretty.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:24 am 151. Ken Besig Israel:

What you call “deeply ambivalent” looks more and more like “outright hostility” towards America.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:32 am 152. Banned by Huffpo:

Anita Dunn responds:

“The reality is, one death is a tragedy. Seventy to one hundred million deaths is a statistic.”

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:33 am 153. johnt:

What’s a presidential administration without a Maoist or two?
Meanwhile the US dollar is viewed as weakening and talk is we may see it’s end as the premium reserve currency. Bush’s fault.
The O continues to dither about Afghanistan, the fabled good war, while trying to figure how to slime his way out of there. I’m sure islamic terrorists will leave us alone afterwards. In any case, Bush’s fault.

The only real question left to or about this farcial but dangerous administration is just when Bill Ayers is named as a czar to something, or how many more scummy and American hating loons are uncovered in this nest of vipers.
And in the background the severely ill Obama supporters can still be heard screaming and moaning.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:06 am 154. Paul -Indiana:

–She didn’t mean it.
–She was only quoting a Republican operative.
–Fox News is mean to Democrats.
–Glenn Beck is an extremist.
–The President is trying to clean up a big mess left by George Bush.
–Can’t we just change the subject?
=========================================================You left out; The dog ate my homework.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:09 am 155. Paul -Indiana:

“Judge me by the people with whom I surround myself.” [Obama]
==========
We have any you are found wanting.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:16 am 156. Harris Tweed:

Anita says she was just joking. Observe the video carefully; she’s doing a Buddy Hachett routine.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:32 am 157. misanthropicus:

RE #155/Paul -Indiana: [...] “Judge me by the people with whom I surround myself.” [Obama]

I think this is lifted from Machiavelli who phrased it something like (approx): “You can judge a prince by the people he surrounds with”.

But then, we have as said: …the company he keeps…

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:51 am 158. Now and Then:

149. bandit:
“I happen to encounter a lot of college professors.”

I happen to encounter a lot of rednecks. So, I guess my appraisal of them is valid and you’ll just have to accept it. Sorry. Now, don’t you and Snowman have some Coors to deliver?

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:55 am 159. mttopforge:

There was a woman who my grandparents adored when I was a child. She was a doctor and minister of British decent, she had been in china during Mao’s purges. Her hands had been chopped off at the wrists and her eyes where cut out.
Her minister/doctor husband dissapeared never to be heard from. She was the gentlist person I ever met. She would sit by my grandmother on the sofa and listen to Lewis Armstrong on TV, then watch the Jimmy Durantee show, and in there somewhere the fun started with Liberache or the Lawerence Welk show. They would have a grand time. I was very small and would sit on the floor and look at this lady, she sat so straight and still. She always had a smile on her face. I would sit there and just wonder how could anyone do this terrible thing to another. My Grandfather took me aside on the occasion of this lady’s 1st visit to tell me straight on what the communists in China did to her. He told me it was important I know of these things. I could tell my grandfather was so angry about the communists and what they did he would sit in the kitchen and play solitare to keep his temper. He loved this lady like an angel. He would put his right arm around her shoulders and hold her left wrist and guide her. He would look at the ground and both these wonderful people would say very little. It was dignity of the spirit. My grandfather was a Merchant Marine during the 2nd world war. He had the courage to go across the atlantic 7 times and not be on a ship sunk by the Nazi’s. He was a crack shot and blew up 9 mines shooting them from the deck of the ship he sailed on with an M1 Garand rifle. They paid him $29 for each one. He was buried with full honors in Lawerence Massachussetts in 1974. My grandmother was a registered nurse for 54 years. When she retired over 1200 people attended the party. She sponsered many young woman to be nurses. Both lived through the depression and WWII. They helped many people in and gave more than they had. Including the boy of one of the Brinks Boston armored car depot robbers, his father was shot dead in their front yard. My grandparents raised me.
They had hearts made of gold.
This is the phylosophy I turn to.
This “Government Official” advising the president, who is spouting about the merit of the phylosophy of Mao to children should have her hands cut off and her eyes cut out by that phsycopathic megalomaniac. I would pay good money to hear what she had to say.

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:32 am 160. twoninerkilo:

Another commie in the P-Bo administration??? I’m shocked! Truely shocked! He seemed like such a nice Irish lad…

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:25 am 161. Thomas_L....:

You know who quotes Mao? Anybody who wants to, whether they admire him or not, to make what ever point they’re trying to make.
Do you know who admire Mao, however? Communists and uninformed nincompoops living in free countries.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:49 am 162. Now and Then:

“Hitler was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. Say what you want but that guy knew how do get things done.” – Glenn Beck, 2002

Oct 19, 2009 - 1:31 pm 163. Knotacommie:

Whats next Anita-we all should have health care by DR KEVORKIAN? Or maybe we should be invited to “dinner” with HANNIBAL LECTOR OR JEFFREY DAHMER? Save the bs for Kieth the Uberpuke, Madame Bullsheetvick.

Oct 19, 2009 - 1:32 pm 164. wrg:

Gee, Mao let tens of millions of starve in the early 60s and then “re-educated” about 40-50 million throughout the 60s and 70s.

Don’t forget that the Chinese gov’t is persecuting and murdering Chinese Christians to this day.

Wonderful form of government, socialism! That’s why every murdering, tyrannical, bastard flocks to socialism like moths to a light. It gives them the power they crave.

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:50 pm 165. Lily:

I saw the video. If she meant this as a joke, she kept it to herself. No resonable person, upon hearing that speech the way it was delivered, would conclude that she was joking about viewing Mao as one of her “favorite political philosophers” (I believe the joke was mentioning the two in the same breath).

Mr. Obama has stacked his administration with very concerning people.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:32 pm 166. madderinhell:

The Maoist just might get her revolution. Wall Street is in control. Isn’t it ironic that leftists and bankers are joined together to screw over this nation?

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:46 pm 167. Lily:

Now and Then:

I don’t know if that quote is real – but assuming it is: Is making that kind of a statment equal stating that the guy is one of your favorite philosophers?

No.

All-righty then.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:47 pm 168. Lily:

“…she admires his his success at fomenting an egalitarian revolution”.

Perhaps she’s illiterate, and has never read a history book

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:49 pm 169. Wintoon:

To sum up. First,the woman doesn’t belong in government. Second, since someone brought it up, Kwanza is a crock. Have a good evening.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:55 pm 170. Jim Baker:

#162,
Glenn Beck was right about that. It is you who attempt the moral equivalence of apples and oranges, but then that is a characteristic of leftists. Quoting Mao was not Dunn’s problem, believing in Mao was. Sort it out. Sheesh.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:56 pm 171. Kini:

In front of a graduating High School class, indoctrination begins.
Does anyone want to bet that part of World History was never taught at this school. Leading up to and during Mao Tse Tung’s murderous reign of terror, was there anything about China’s history other than what lines the shelves at WalMart?

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:12 pm 172. proreason:

2. biblio44:

“aroud the edges of racism”

they only know one note

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:22 pm 173. rum:

thank god for dictionary.com

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:22 pm 174. Gerry:

Amen.

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:23 pm 175. blsdcn:

i can only imagine our fallen soldiers turning over in their graves right now if they could see what our country is becoming..

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:44 pm 176. Revnant dream:

Das:
You win hands down. Great comments.
JMO

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:07 pm 177. Donna V.:

Sorry. Now, don’t you and Snowman have some Coors to deliver?

Man, leftists are schizo. One moment they’re demanding that white Americans grovel and apologize for the great sin of being white and American, and the next minute, they’re sneering at blue-collar people. N & T evidently thinks the worst insult you can level at someone is to call him a beer delivery guy. The left pretends to love “the People” but turns up their pampered noses at blue collar workers.

As someone who was raised in a blue collar family, got a scholarship to go to college, and has spent most of her adult life living in urban, liberal areas, I’ll take a trucker over a spoiled, snarky, conceited leftist any day. The leftist is superfically educated, has a head full of trendy cliches, and no common sense whatsover. At least beer truck drivers aren’t generally stupid enough to excuse people who love Communist mass-murderers.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:07 pm 178. Donna V.:

So, N & T: what accounts for your hatred of beer delivery men? Do you have a special hatred for Coors drivers? Did one once beat you up? (Can’t say that I blame him.) Or does your hatred extend to the entire class of blue collar workers? Do you also hate construction workers, carpenters, plumbers (oh, I bet you hate plumbers), auto mechanics, etc?

Could it be because they perform useful tasks, while you know yourself to be utterly useless? (You’re not even very good at trolling, although you are mildly entertaining, I’ll give you that.) Or are you daunted by their masculinity?

I’m really trying to figure out why leftists have become such snobs. My dad always thought the Democrats were on the side of “the working man.” Dad, you were wrong.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:20 pm 179. myunkie:

While your points are well taken on her characterization of Mao and its troubling implications, even if she had quoted a lesser mass murderer, her message was the more damning aspect. She was saying, do not fight someone else’s war, do not go to someone else’s Calcutta. By implication, pay no attention to other people’s advice or heaven forbid morals. It is all about “you”.

We are a people, Americans in particular and humanity as a whole, that stand tall because we are standing on the shoulders of those that came before us. Much of what humanity has learned in the uncounted millennia is embedded in our morals and customs. Without a doubt some have been tossed appropriately away. We delude ourselves into thinking that we are new in doing this. Humanity has been slowly but continuously refining culture over millennia. That is what has gotten us where we are. So her call was for the students to cast off the past in toto. Step down from the shoulders of greatness to sit at her feet. That is the cry of this administration – look up to us, we know better.

As a nation, as a culture, we have learned that the utopian visions of Marx and Mao lead to the most horrific realities. The administration is now in the hands of those die hards that refuse to count the bodies because if they did they would have to admit they themselves are not a special breed, the vanguard, the enlightened. They are sideshow hucksters preying on the ill-educated and easily swayed. One curious line from a 2008 convention speech was, “The presidency is not a journey of self-discovery”. But that is exactly what this administration has become, it is “all about them”; their lives, their feelings, their beliefs. Reality and the lives, feelings and beliefs of others be damned. So Anita is calling the youth to follow in her footsteps. Step down from those shoulders and come discover what you would be without all that baggage… without all that wisdom.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:58 pm 180. misanthropicus:

Re #178/ Donna V.:
1) [...] So, N & T: what accounts for your hatred of beer delivery men? [...] Or does your hatred extend to the entire class of blue collar workers? Do you also hate construction workers, carpenters, plumbers [...] My dad always thought the Democrats were on the side of “the working man.” [...]

Sorry, DonnaV, but your dad was indeed wrong – the Democrats have became a party of an arrogant aristocracy, having only despise for common Americans. (think only of Obama’s pronouncements).

2) [...] Or are you daunted by their masculinity? [...]
DonnaV, I’d come with a correction here – not masculinity, but NORMALCY.
In the current cultural climate, where the media & entertainment eastablishment is full blast inflicting a new type of political correct reality, everything that has a semblance of normalcy is derided and and anything that in a normal society would be considered an aberration is promoted as an edifying model of behavior.
The normal men are things of the past – now effeminate fops have became of standard of normalcy, and, as N&T mightily illustrates this, these creature are not only just some effete fops, but are also a collection of character flaws as well: arrogance, supeficiality, cowardice, you name them.

Oct 20, 2009 - 6:51 am 181. bbbeard:

Set aside the “favorite philosophers” line. Even though Dunn delivered it with apparent sincerity, the idea is so outlandish that she can get away with claiming it was a joke. And set aside the pairing of Mao and Mother Teresa. It was a “rhetorical flourish”.

But listen to what she said. What was the message?

About Mao:

“You don’t have to accept the definition of how to do things, and you don’t have to follow other people’s choices and paths, OK? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war. You lay out your own path. You figure out what’s right for you.”

Translation: it doesn’t matter if other people say you’re a bad person for killing millions of people. There is no absolutely morality. There’s no big man in the sky. You do what you have to do. Oh, and by the way, if you can do it in the name of equality, so much the better.

About Mother Teresa:

” ‘Go find your own Calcutta.’ OK? Go find your own Calcutta. Fight your own path.”

Translation: Don’t join the Peace Corps and become a saint in some Third World hellhole. The Revolution is here. Don’t expect peace. Fight.

Now combine these two pieces of homespun wisdom. What do you get?

Oct 20, 2009 - 6:52 am 182. St James:

No. 20 you are totally correct. Obama repeatedly told us who is and what he believed in during the campaign. Either most of the people refused to listen or just did not care. I believe Obama told us to judge him by the people he surrounded himself with. I think we can do that without any problem. Obama and his crew would have fit in with the anti war and anti government hippie movement. Some may have.

Oct 20, 2009 - 7:44 am 183. What Anita Dunn done | America Watches Obama:

[...] Among Dunn’s explanations of her citation of Chairman Mao as one of her favorite political philosophers is that she was kidding. Watching the video of Dunn’s speech, however, we can see with our own eyes that she takes Mao seriously indeed. We can now also observe that that she lies like a rug. [...]

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:01 am 184. deguello:

Mr. Kimball: Egg on her face might have to do for now;I’d have preferred sulfuric acid.

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:25 am 185. deguello:

Poor Dunn:Egg on her face, syphilis in the Brain.

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:31 am 186. Steynian 391 « Free Canuckistan!:

[...] MAO-PRAISING White House Official Dunn to Glenn Beck: “I Praised Mother Teresa, Too”; The Maoist explains herself: egg, face at the White House …. (gatewaypundit.blog, [...]

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:53 am 187. Number Six:

Please consider that many Progressive Democrats admire Mao precisely because he did reduce China’s population by 50 million or so, by accident or by design. Haven’t you heard the Green Progressives lament that there are too many people in the world. Haven’t you heard leading Progressives engage in fantasies of killing off their opponents or denying them health care (see Chris Mathews and Garrison Keillor). Remember the television specials such as Life After People. This is exactly why the ‘Death Panels’ remark struck home, it reflects exactly what the extreme branch of progressives wants to do.

Oct 20, 2009 - 12:28 pm 188. ak138:

David Foster at 12: “the talk about egalitarianism is just a tactic to displace existing elites … whose status they deeply resent”

Which is exactly where Mao started.

Let’s just hope that after she finishes her stint with WH communications, Anita the Maoist isn’t put in charge of the Dept. of Agriculture. Famines can be such a drag.

Oct 20, 2009 - 2:43 pm 189. Class Clown:

Here are some Mao quotes for you:

“If people don’t die, the earth won’t be able to hold them! People live and people die. Who doesn’t die?”

“Deaths have benefits. They can fertilize the ground.”

“Half of China may well have to die.”

“Don’t make a fuss about a world war. At most, people die… It’s best if half the population is left”.

Yep, really someone to emulate, that Mao. Unless he was “just kidding”.

Oct 20, 2009 - 2:56 pm 190. Class Clown:

And Number Six, you are exactly right. The hard-left has a creepy fascination with human death.

Oct 20, 2009 - 2:58 pm 191. Berlet98:

Anita Dunn, One More Screwball in the News

Culling out the most ridiculous features of recent news items is always a challenge, what with all the absurdities and screwballs in the competition, but here are some of the best:

Swede Charged With Hate Speech: Swedish Democratic Leader Jimmie Akesson published an opinion piece in Aftonbladet asserting “that the spread of Islam represents the country’s ‘greatest external threat since World War II.’ “

Assertion of the obvious is apparently frowned upon by some in Sweden.

Akesson was roundly condemned and ”reported to Sweden’s highest legal official by the Centre Against Racism.”

No refutation of Akesson’s position was offered but the head of the Centre did say, “We are of the view that the article agitates against Muslims when it points at Islam as the greatest threat to Sweden:” http://bit.ly/UOwlP.

What with the continuing worldwide jihad being waged against Western Civilization by Islamic Fundamentalists, Akesson’s contention seems to hold great credibility. His critics failed to present any other viewpoint on what does pose the “greatest external threat” to Sweden if it is not Muslims.

Bra-less Somalis: Masked, unthreatening Muslim men in Somalia are publicly whipping Muslim women who dare to wear bras because they are practicing “deception.”

To further humiliate the Somali fair sex, “After the public whippings, the women are forced to remove their bras and shake their breasts.”

As one Muslim woman complained, “They first banned the former veil and introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women’s chests. They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat.”

The hardline Islamic group Shabaab which amputates the feet and hands of robbers “has also banned movies, musical ringtones, dancing at wedding ceremonies and playing or watching soccer:” http://bit.ly/mG8Fq.

Drunk Man Stabs Son: Seemingly infuriated and inebriated Vermonter, Nazeih Hammouri, allegedly stabbed his 19 year old son in the stomach with a corkscrew following an argument over a clogged toilet. . . .

(Read the rest at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1275)

Oct 20, 2009 - 9:29 pm 192. Another radical in the whitehouse. - Expedite Trucking Forums:

[...] [...]

Oct 22, 2009 - 5:32 am 193. RD:

I honestly believe things will get much worse before (if) they get better. People can get used to anything. Remember Hillary Clinton’s HMO plan when it was first implemented? That raised a lot of ire in a lot of people because, same argument we’re hearing today, bean counters would be making medical decisions rather than medical professionals. Yet HMOs went into effect and are still around. People got used to the system. They’ll get used to the next change in the system because, like it or not, people are sheep.

Historically this is the case. All throughout human history, tyrants have arisen and invoked many unjust, wicked policies intended to exert total control over populations. Often these policies included the wholesale slaughter of political opponents. The populations got used to the tyrants, mainly because they had no other alternative: get in line or die.

In our own country, people constantly gripe about the unfair taxation systems installed by the political elite. New taxes are invoked and people gripe yet pay.

Eventually, people get used to anything and will put up with anything, mainly because of self-preservation instincts. Some may call it moral cowardice. Aside from a few willing to speak out, most will just get in line.

Nov 1, 2009 - 12:20 pm

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