The more that I hear from current liberal/Democrat elected and party officials and the “progressive” intelligentsia, the more the words start to modulate into the low, mournful tones of a funeral dirge. Marked by the cadence and the sounds of the slow, muffled drum beat of a dead march, I can hear the trudging footfalls of a hooded and shackled American citizenry, shuffling down the worn path toward the gallows of Marxism.

It is a weary path, traveled by a gaunt citizenry. Russia and the former Soviet Block countries walked it, as did most of Europe. In the past 150 years, America has also transited this route – only to have an event or a patriot rescue us from our folly. With the foreign debt financial crises of the 1880’s, the Stock Market crash of the late 1920’s/Great Depression of 1930’s, the Vietnam War/cultural liberalization of the 1960’s and the election of a Democratic controlled Congress in 2006 and Obama in 2008, this country has taken many trips to the edge of the Marxist abyss.

There are those who will say that I am wrong, that I am just paranoid; however, to those who are awake in this age of dulled senses, the following will come as no surprise. I quote them in their own words:

First, North Carolina Democratic Governor, Bev Perdue:

“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” Perdue said at a rotary club event in Cary, N.C., according to the Raleigh News & Observer. “I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.”

Video and transcript are here.

Peter Orsag, Obama’s former budget director wrote today:

To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.

Newsbusters’ Clay Waters chronicles the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman’s love of totalitarianism from 2008 and 2009:

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today

 One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

Our one-party democracy is worse. The fact is, on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying “no.” Many of them just want President Obama to fail. Such a waste. Mr. Obama is not a socialist; he’s a centrist. But if he’s forced to depend entirely on his own party to pass legislation, he will be whipsawed by its different factions.

Friedman has praised Communist China’s power to get things done before. In an August 27, 2008 column during the Summer Olympics, hosted by Beijing, he praised the “concentrated state power” of China.

China did not build the magnificent $43 billion infrastructure for these games, or put on the unparalleled opening and closing ceremonies, simply by the dumb luck of discovering oil. No, it was the culmination of seven years of national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work.

Tom Friedman again from Meet the Press in 2010:

You know, that’s really what, what it’s come down to.  So I don’t–I, I–I’m worried about this, it’s why I have fantasized–don’t get me wrong–but that what if we could just be China for a day?  I mean, just, just, just one day.  You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions, and I do think there is a sense of that, on, on everything from the economy to environment.

Direector Woody Allen was quoted in 2010:

In an interview published by Spanish language newspaper La Vanguardia (that we translated), Allen says “I am pleased with Obama. I think he’s brilliant. The Republican Party should get out of his way and stop trying to hurt him.”

The director said “it would be good…if he could be a dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly.”

And our sitting President, Speaking to the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza in Washington said:

The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting, I promise you, not just on immigration reform. But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions.”

Don’t think the “progressives” are contemplating a Marxist/collectivist future for America? Listen for the death march – it is being played in their own words.

It seems that every 45 years or so, the country produces “progressive” leadership that drives us closer to that point. Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and the contemporary triumvirate of collectivists Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and our president, Barack H. Obama are examples. The earlier marches were halted by World Wars I and II and the charisma and policies of a conservative president, Ronald Reagan.

Who or what will stop the march we are on now?

That’s a question that I would like to have asked at the next Republican debates.

 

Stacy McCain has more.