Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

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Socialism: National Review Should Talk

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English: President George W. Bush shakes hands...
President George W. Bush shakes hands with William F. Buckley, Jr. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes partisan reactions to political event prove more informational than the events themselves. The first Democratic presidential debate was a yawner. We learned little that we didn’t already know about the five participating candidates. But we learned something important from conservative columnist Jim Geraghty of National Review: “America Now Has an Openly Socialist Party.”

Well, it’s about time ONE of the two parties came out and admitted the nature of its program, don’t you think?

Sure, the forms of socialism offered by the Democrats and Republicans differ in style. Democrats attack “the 1%.” Republicans offer to “save Social Security.” Democrats emphasize the welfare state. Republicans talk up the warfare state. But both parties are state socialist in substance, with very little daylight between them on the real issues.

Old style socialism supposedly operated on the prescription “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

21st century American state socialism tweaks that a bit: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his lobbyist’s talent at wangling sweetheart government contracts to build weapons or hand out condoms.”

But really, I’m surprised that anyone from National Review wants to talk about socialism, given that publication’s role in shaping the modern American Republican Party into the nation’s most successful and enduring socialist institution.

National Review was founded by William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1955. Among its co-founders was James Burnham, Buckley’s mentor and the former head of America’s Trotskyites, who were firebrand advocates of worldwide communism (as opposed to the  “socialism in one country” of their bete noire, Stalin).

As early as 1952, in The Commonweal (an American Catholic magazine, not the better-known British socialist newspaper), Buckley had called upon the Republican Party to support “a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores. …. large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington …” He founded National Review to bring that vision to life.

Sixty-odd years later, behold the mutant form of Trotsky’s “war communism” imposed by Buckley’s disciples on an American politics and economy harnessed to pursuit of “global democratic revolution” (yes, they dumped the s-word to make it more warm and fuzzy).

There’s not enough facepalm in the world to encompass the silliness of National Review whining about “socialism.” The puny proposals of the debating Democrats pale in comparison to the actual accomplishments of Buckley’s commissars.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Politics as Usual: Hillary Clinton “Takes Responsibility”

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Hillary Clinton in Hampton, NH
Hillary Clinton in Hampton, NH (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In politics, words tend to take on double meanings — one for politicians, another for the rest of us. Nowhere is this more true than with respect to the word “responsibility.”

The latest example: Hillary Clinton’s latest statement on her illegal use of a private email server for US State Department business when she headed that department. “I take responsibility for that decision,” Clinton says, betwixt and between claims that she didn’t break the law, that if she did break the law it’s no big deal, and that it really was just a matter of not making “the best choice.”

Here’s how “responsibility” works:

If you or I “take responsibility” for a purchase, we pay the bill or bad things happen. Maybe we get sued. At the very least, our credit ratings take a hit.

If you or I “take responsibility” for a crime, we go to court, plead guilty, and get sentenced by a judge.

When a politician “takes responsibility” for something, he or she is saying something very different: “OK, I ‘took responsibility’ — now let’s move along,  forget all about it, and never, ever, ever suggest that I should face any actual consequences for my actions.”

For example, in 1993 US Attorney General Janet Reno and US President Bill Clinton took turns “taking responsibility” for the FBI’s massacre of 76 men, women and children at a church facility outside of Waco, Texas.

Neither Reno nor Clinton resigned from office in disgrace. In fact, Clinton finished his term and was re-elected, while Reno went on to become the second longest-serving Attorney General in US history.

Neither Reno nor Clinton faced criminal charges or impeachment over the affair. Clinton was later impeached for lying about an affair with an intern. But arson resulting in 76 deaths? Hey, no big deal. They “took responsibility,” right?

So here, 22 years later, comes that other Clinton. She wants to become — in fact, she she considers herself entitled to become — President of the United States. Pursuant to which she has graciously, if belatedly, agreed to mouth the words “I take responsibility,” as part of a script in which your role and mine is to reward that statement by shutting up and getting out of her way.

Well, maybe. Then again, maybe the rest of us bit part actors will flub our lines in USA Network’s presentation of “The Hillary Clinton Story.”

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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It’s Classified: A Tale of Two Scofflaws

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RGBStock.com Prison Photo

For the crime of telling America and the world about the lawlessness of the American political class — including one Hillary Rodham Clinton — Chelsea Manning is now a political prisoner, serving a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth’s US Disciplinary Barracks, after a show trial which violated nearly every basic benchmark of American justice.

For her crimes and misdeeds — including, since Manning’s day in kangaroo court, the discovery that she, too, was compromising classified information by running her official email through an illegal, unsecure “private” email server — the same Hillary Rodham Clinton’s punishment has, so far, been limited to a slow, agonizing fall from political grace.

This week, Manning once again finds herself in the news. She faces solitary confinement as punishment for a variety of “offenses” so minor that it’s nearly impossible to call them “offenses” with a straight face. The highlight: She is accused of possessing a tube of toothpaste that’s past its expiration date (I could be wrong here, but isn’t toothpaste in prison dispensed to inmates BY the prison?).

This week, Clinton once again finds herself in the news. She faces further drubbings in the pre-primary polls as punishment for getting caught lying, yet again, about her illegal handling of classified information. In New Hampshire, she now trails avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, who even a year ago would have been considered an interesting gadfly candidate at best, in the race for the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

I find it painful to compare Chelsea Manning to Hillary Clinton.

Chelsea Manning is an American heroine who knowingly exposed classified information for the purpose of revealing war crimes in Iraq and other government lawlessness, including Clinton’s orders to her State Department underlings to bug the offices of UN diplomats.

Hillary Clinton is a power-monger who carelessly exposed classified information because she believes she’s above the law. Like the late Richard Nixon, on whose impeachment papers she worked as a young congressional staffer, she believes that if  Hillary Clinton does it, it’s not illegal.

I probably owe Ms. Manning an apology for linking her name with that of a disreputable figure like Clinton. But, dissimilar as they are, it seems to me that the solution to both their problems is the same: They should both get out.

Chelsea Manning should get out of prison.

Hillary Clinton should get out of politics.

How’s that for a win-win solution?

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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