At the heart of the hold that Democrats have on the politically apathetic is emotion. They have the ability to tug at the heart strings of otherwise rational thinking individuals and make them forget to use their own minds and believe whatever they wish you to believe. This is the kind of hold that evil people possess. Doubt me? Look at the last century for the examples that best make my point - Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Jim Jones, Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, David Koresh, and Charles Manson just to name a few. What did they have? They had the ability to prey upon the emotions of people to put them into positions of power.
Dr. Thomas Sowell a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute wrote an article on this very point Tuesday - Dangerous Demagoguery. In it he writes:
Most people have too much of a sense of decency and too much common sense to have gone along with those horrors unless someone found a way to turn off their thinking and turn on their emotions.
That is how Jim Jones led hundreds of people to their deaths at Jonestown. On a much larger scale, that is how Lenin created a regime of mass murder in Russia, how Hitler did the same thing in Germany and Mao in China.
Yet we seem to be no more aware of a need to be on guard against demagoguery today, in the 21st century, than those people who looked up with open-mouthed adulation at Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and at numerous other demagogues, large and small, around the world throughout the turbulent 20th century.
A Demagogue senses a populous weakness to exploit for the benefit of personal power and grabs it. They tend to be charismatic figures who say and do all the right things to attract those who feel that they have suffered at the hands of others.
In modern US politics, that would be those who employ the deadly sin of envy to gain their power through the use of class warfare. Pitting the “have-nots” against those who are perceived as the “haves”. For example the Bush Tax Cuts of 2001 and 2003. The major Democrat candidates are all parroting the same mantra, “the Bush tax cuts only benefited the ‘rich.’” When the truth of the matter is that the Bush Tax Cuts benefited everyone by sustaining economic growth in this country in spite of higher energy costs and being a nation at war. The Bush Tax Cuts created the 10% tax bracket giving a 50% cut in taxes to the poorest of taxpayers but you won’t hear John Edwards, Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton talk about that. Nor will you hear them talk about it when they allow the Bush Tax Cuts to expire at the end of 2010 and the poorest Americans get a 50% tax increase.
Dr. Sowell also tackles a buzzword designed to grab the emotions of those who feel that they have been given a raw deal by the present Administration - Change.
Many people find it thrilling that the mantra of “change” is ringing out across the land during this election year. But let’s do what the politicians hope that we will never do — stop and think.
It is doubtful whether there is a single human being in this entire country who is 100 percent satisfied with everything that is going on. In other words, everybody is for change.
The real difference between liberals and conservatives is in which specific things they want to change, and in what way.
Milton Friedman was the leading conservative thinker of his time but he wanted to radically change the Federal Reserve, the school system, and the tax system, among other things.
Everybody is for change. They differ on the specifics. Uniting people behind the thoughtless mantra of “change” means asking for a blank check in exchange for rhetoric. That deal has been made many times in many places — and millions of people have lived to regret it.
In 2006, the people of the United States fell for the mantra of change and put Democrats in charge of our national legislative bodies and what did that yield us? The “Do-Nothing Congress.”
Congress has worse approval ratings than the President. And that is saying a lot when President Bush isn’t very popular with Republicans let along Democrats. Their only agenda success in their first term? The raising of the federal minimum wage which itself couldn’t pass on its own merits it had to be approved through the “back door” as an amendment to the Emergency War Supplemental.
Voting for change for the sake of change also led to the election of the worst President in US history. I’d love to say Bill Clinton but he comes in a close 3rd behind Jimmy Carter and Lyndon B. Johnson respectively.
Jimmy brought us double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment, 23% interest rates, an energy crisis, and a situation with Iran which led to the capture of US citizens and their being held as hostages for 444 days.
LBJ led us deeper into the Vietnam War, hamstrung our generals in theater by micromanaging the war from the Oval Office. He also was the architect of The Great Society which as we know now was about as successful at solving poverty in this country as Jimmy Carter’s rescue mission of the Iran hostages. In 2008 we are still dealing with the idiotic mess created by LBJ’s Great Society.
The fact is that Democrats have a track record of failures at governing but you won’t hear anyone on the campaign trail speak of their failures unless they try to claim they succeeded.
Democrats use emotion to create a sense of panic among those on whom they prey. On the poor and working class they use class warfare utilizing jealousy as a tool to gain power. This is something that Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Castro did.
And the king of all modern demagogues - High Priest Al Gore of the Church of Global Warming of Modern Day Idiots (MDI). High Priest Al Gore and his junk scientists have through the use of mass media hoodwinked America and the rest of the world that man is responsible for a phenomenon that has occurred several other times in history as well as on another planet in our solar system.
At one time, before the industrial revolution mind you, Greenland was farmed. But that little fact escaped High Priest Al Gore’s glorified Power Point presentation masquerading as a documentary. Why would he leave this fact out? Because he gains no power without causing mass hysteria.
It is his contention that man is solely responsible for global warming. Then why can’t he explain why Mars, another planet orbiting our sun that is uninhabited, is at this moment having a planetary warming cycle? Could it be that it has something to do with sun spot activity and not as Mr. Gore would have you believe anything to do with man’s activities on this planet? No hysteria no power.
People who are unwilling to think for themselves are more willing to buy into the propaganda and rhetoric of the left. And as long as there are lemmings in our society willing to listen to these modern day demagogues, our nation will be doomed to their influences.
Read also Dr. Sowell’s Wednesday column - Dangerous Demagoguery: Part II
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