The audacity of extremism

James Lewis
Audacity is supposed to be a talent in great generals -- at least some of them. That's where the phrase comes from: "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!" It's attributed to the Kaiser Friedrich der Grosse, to Georges Danton, (one of the big head-choppers of the French Revolution), and to Napoleon Bonaparte. Audacity can be effective in warfare, because surprise assaults can break through a Maginot Line. But another word for audacity is "gambling." The price you often have to pay is overreach and defeat. Napoleon's audacity led straight to an historic defeat for Imperial France in Russia. France never recovered -- it's had two straight centuries of military defeats since Napoleon. His invasion of Russia also caused unimaginable suffering, just like Hitler's invasion a century later. Audacity is not necessarily a good thing.

When Obama uses the phrase "The Audacity of Hope," we hope he's talking about peaceful audacity. But we can't be sure -- because Obama and his inner circle are extremists in any reasonable meaning of that word, certainly by the standards of normal American politics. That's why Obama seems so foreign. That is what "radical" means; it's another word for "extremist." These folks love to preen themselves on being radical. Rules for Radicals is their Bible, and it's Obama's manual for "community organizing" -- which looks just like community destruction. Alinsky dedicated Rules for Radicals to Lucifer, because Lucifer is the symbol of destructive extremism. Don't tell me these folks are mainstream Americans. No way.

Obama is running the most extremist administration in American history. It's chockfull of wild-eyed bizarros like Van Jones, Rahm Gawdhelpus, and the whole Chicago Gang. How many presidential chiefs of staff have publicly yelled "Dead! Dead! Dead!" while stabbing a steak knife into a dinner table, just to show what he wanted to do to his political enemies? Rahm Emanuel's the only one. How many have done the Godfather schtick by sending a dead fish to a journalist? Rahmbo wants to scare people, and Obama knew that when he hired him. It can't be an accident that Rahm is Obama's Capo di tutti Capi.

That's extremism. Maybe it's normal in Moscow or Khazakstan. In American politics it's extremist.

Let's pretend it's all theater, and when Obama uses the word "audacity" he means a political Blitzkrieg, a surprise attack with maximum force at the weakest point on the enemy's front. George Patton used that kind of audacity with the Third Army in Europe, but Eisenhower made sure that Patton was kept in check. Eisenhower only let him off the leash after Normandy, and even then Omar Bradley was put in place to ride herd on Patton. Ike knew exactly what he was doing.

I don't think Obama has a General Eisenhower to keep him from doing stupid things. He makes too many flaming mistakes; look at the Fort Hood fiasco. The Brits are now beginning to laugh at Obama's weird, compulsive egomania. Even the New Republic is catching on.

Obama eliminated his Chicago competition by dumping dirt on his election opponents through the media, forcing them to drop out before the election. He beat Hillary by stacking the caucus states and smearing Bill Clinton as a racist. Blitzkrieg is how Obama conquered the banks and the car companies -- and if the Senate GOP crumbles on Mob-O-Care, that's how he will conquer another one-sixth of the American economy.

There's a good chance that Obama is behind the obsessive smear campaign against Sarah Palin, because Palin is the only charismatic candidate the Republicans have. Sarah Palin arouses tremendous enthusiasm just by being herself. She is the anti-Obama. So the Chicago Gang is trying to eliminate her as fast as possible, just like they got rid of Obama's Chicago opposition. Political Blitzkrieg.

The real problem is that all of Obama's enemies are good and decent Americans. He doesn't seem to use his political Blitzkrieg methods against our real enemies, like that madman in Tehran. That's pretty significant.

Obama has the audacity of extremism. This White House is now trying to smear conservatives as "extremists." It's pure projection. What could be more extreme than conquering one-sixth of the US economy with the help of nasties like Pelosi and Reid? We are seeing an extremist alliance in Washington, by far the worst example of political extremists in positions of power in American history. When presidential candidates were picked in smoked-filled rooms, everybody knew who they were. Obama wouldn't have stood a chance. Today the Democrats have affirmative action for delegates, caucus states that can be stacked, and a state-controlled media circus. The result is the most extremist White House in history.

Well, Napoleon met his Waterloo, and Hitler lost his twenty divisions on the Eastern Front. Audacity only works in the short term. In the long run you encounter into smart chess players who just pull their troops back to Moscow and let you get lost in a thousand miles of snow.

Obama is now close to the point of overreaching. That's why this White House is going all out to drive its Panzer divisions through the opposition just as fast as possible. They know they are running out of time. Nancy Pelosi got away with a Blitzkrieg in the House -- that's why she had to lie about the 72 hour public posting of the bill. She had to push Mob-O-Care through before too many voters caught on and raised a ruckus. Well, next year tens of millions of voters will give their yellow-belly Blue Dogs a well-deserved drubbing. There will be a price to pay, and we can only hope and pray that it will be big and long-lasting for the Demagogic Party. Unfortunately, millions of voters are still incredibly ignorant or suckered by the state-controlled media; that's the only hope the Democrats have.

Will the Senate be Obama's Stalingrad? Will the Mob-O-Care bill become his turning point? We can be pretty sure there will be a voter backlash, because Democrats always overreach, and when the voters figure it out they always turn against them: Look at Jimmy Carter and all the other Democrats who lost elections because they looked supremely ridiculous sitting in a tank wearing a helmet. Obama is no better than McGovern, Dukakis, Mondale, Gore or Kerry. Judging by his failure dealing with the Fort Hood massacre he's actually even more out of touch than they were. If Kerry and Dukakis were fools on defense and crime, Obama is a Napoleonic fool. This White House can't pretend to be serious on national security. They're letting General McChrystal wait for months for his needed troops, just as if the Taliban are going to sit still all that time. This is incompetence on a grand scale. If you're not feeling scared you're just not paying attention.

But America is robust. We took the hit of 9/11, and Wall Street didn't buckle, as Osama Bin Laden hoped and expected. Yes, we are hag-ridden by a vicious Left, and by a truly corrupt set of elites, surely the worst ones in our history -- including the Hollywood gang that doesn't understand that child rape is evil, our media who fawn over Obama and lie every single day as a matter of routine, our Politically Correct dumbed-down schools and colleges, and now all three branches of the Federal government.

Yet we have weathered worse storms. The Revolutionary War and the Civil War were worse. The three world wars of the 20th century were worse. So take heart.

As Edmund Burke famously wrote after the French Revolution,

Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.


The Audacity of Obama is a front, and it's starting to crumble. America's endurance is in our people, the tens of millions who remember our history -- not the phony history that the vulgar Marxists are now peddling all over the schools. The conservative media are beginning to seize the national narrative again. All we need to do is to tell the truth over and over, every single chance we get.

Our great American Oak Tree will outlive the grasshoppers of the hour, may they never chirp so loud. Obama is like his styrofoam Greek columns. He's all show, all hungry ego, all chirping grasshopper, all Styrofoam.

America is a lot tougher and a lot more enduring than the radicals who now prance around Washington, DC.