Sultan Knish
In the spring of ’48, the collision of wills between the free world and
the red slave empire of the east came to a head in Berlin.
The
Communist strategy had been to push forward, to violate the spirit of
the agreements and then the letter of the agreements while always
claiming to be the aggrieved party.
The Allies had treated the Soviet Union as if it were a credible partner
that wanted to work together with them on rebuilding Europe. The Soviet
Union did indeed want to rebuild Europe. It just wanted to do it under a
red flag.
Communist takeovers in Eastern Europe baffled a West that could not
believe the Reds would show such poor sportsmanship even though
generations of terror and oppression should have already made it
painfully clear that the Communists were ruthless and unconcerned with
any of the niceties of democratic governance or international law.
Stalin had advised Mao to be patient, but patience was a quality that he
himself lacked. Had the USSR waited and feigned cooperation in the
rebuilding efforts, a weary United States would have withdrawn and the
Communists could have taken over.
Instead Stalin decided to humiliate the United States, to demonstrate
its impotence in international affairs and take it off the board with
the Berlin Blockade. The Marshall Plan would fail, the Allies would be
pushed out of Germany and then the emboldened Communists would push
further west.
The Berlin Blockade was a siege in all but name. Beyond the sheer fact
of food and coal being cut off to a city of millions were a thousand
minor humiliations by Soviet officials designed to break the will of
their enemies to resist.
That was their mistake. And it’s a mistake that the left often makes.
The barricades around the Lincoln Memorial and the WW2 Memorial, the
traffic cones blocking the view of Mt. Rushmore and the sawhorses around
Old Faithful are no Berlin Blockade, but they come out of the same
meanness of spirit and the same motives.
The petty harassment extended to a 24-hour blockade of an inn that had
tried to stay open and rangers arriving to block Old Faithful every time
it erupted. There are few moments that sum up the meanness of spirit of
the Obama Blockade as well as a park ranger angrily telling senior
citizens to get back on the bus and stop taking photos because they are
engaging in forbidden “recreating”.
The Obama Blockade has no valid justification. Like the Berlin Blockade, it is about power and control.
No one actually has to go to the Lincoln Memorial or the WW2 Memorial or
any of the other national monuments that were closed off. They are
places that Americans assumed they could always go because they were
part of their national heritage. It never occurred to them that they
would be shut down.
The Pisgah Inn, the Cliff House, the Claude Moore Colonial Farm or any
of the other private non-profits or restaurants on Federal land run
themselves. It takes more resources to shut them down, to blockade them,
than it would to let them keep on operating.
But it’s not about what’s easier. The Communists picked a fight over
Germany’s future currency. The current fight is over ObamaCare. But
ObamaCare, like the Communist Ostmark, is about more than its
substance—it’s also about control.
The siege of America, unlike the siege of Berlin, is virtual; but it
also depends on seizing control over the distribution of vital
necessities. In Berlin, that meant food and coal. In America, that’s
health care.
The question is will you agree to ObamaCare, just as in Berlin the
question was whether you would get a Soviet ration card, fill your
wallet with Ostmarks and submit to a Soviet takeover with their
Communist puppets. The Communists assumed that cutting off food would
force the residents of Berlin to use Soviet ration cards and currency.
They were wrong.
The residents were able to see that short term food from the USSR would
mean decades of little food under Communist rule. Similarly any
temporary benefits from ObamaCare will mean national shortages of health
care in the future.
The National Park Service’s abusive antics, which include kicking senior
citizens out of their cabins and detaining others at a hotel under
armed guard and with warnings not to step outside, are about power. For
these same reasons, Soviet officials subjected trains and water freight
to pointless inspections, made petty demands and resorted to buzzing the
Allied aircraft carrying out the Berlin Airlift. The tactics may have
been petty, but they were making a big statement; this is our territory.
We are in control here.
The petty harassments of officialdom all make the same statement. The
power to make people jump through hoops, to do unnecessary and useless
things, to accept indignities and tolerate harassment are a
demonstration that the power lies on the other side of the desk. It’s
not a tactic unique to the left, but the left really thrives on it.
The Obama Blockade can shut down websites that go on running anyway, it
can refuse to pay death gratuities, take down the Amber Alert and harass
tourists, but it can’t do what it would really like to punish the
Americans who, like the Berliners, insist on voting to the right of the
left, by taking away anything more vital.
And that is what this battle is really about.
The petty harassment of the Obama Blockade is a sign of impotence. It
must satisfy its spite harassing individuals, throwing out senior
citizens from their homes and denying the families of soldiers killed in
its botched war money to help pay for their funeral expenses, because
it can’t inflict a greater misery and torment on the country at large.
And it can’t do that until it completely controls health care.
The Berlin Blockade signaled that even with the numbers on their side,
the Soviet Union did not dare roll the dice and fight the Allies over
the spoils of war. The Obama Blockade is not a sign of strength,
pettiness never is, it’s a sign of weakness.
Like the Soviets, Obama is hoping to rattle Republicans into backing
down and giving in. He’s hoping that the accumulation of inconveniences,
troubles and deprivations will turn Americans against the Yankee
Running Dog Capitalists of the Republican Party, the way that the
Communists hoped that being cold and hungry would turn Berliners against
the United States.
Stalin lost his gamble and Obama is being forced to reconsider his.
Instead of the easy victory he hoped for, his blockade created a
backlash.
The photos of WW2 veterans storming the WW2 memorial have echoes of the
Berlin Airlift; a seemingly small action whose greater resonances attain
heroic proportions by pushing back against tyranny. Family restaurants
that defy the blockaders and fight to stay open send a message that
there still is room for private lives and private concerns even on
government land.
The Soviet Union hoped that Berliners would turn to the Communists.
Instead they turned against them. Obama’s own approval ratings have
fallen sharply. The speeches and putdowns roaring at record pace out of
the White House have not changed the basic fact that Obama’s position,
like that of the USSR, is that he will not negotiate over an economic
power that he considers to be absolutely his in every way.
The
tactics of the Communists shook Americans of their complacency. Even
those who had thought that Stalin was a reasonable man willing to be our
partner understood that there could be no middle ground.
The Soviet Union was not looking for a compromise. It wanted everything
and if it didn’t get it, it would make life as miserable as it could for
everyone.
That has been Obama’s message. Either Congress completely capitulates
and recognizes his power to do whatever he likes or memorials will be
shut down, senior citizens will be thrown out of their homes and the
families of the soldiers killed in the line of duty will have to
struggle to cover funeral expenses.
The Berlin Blockade woke up Americans to what the Soviet Union really
was. The Obama Blockade is waking up Americans affected by it to what
Obama really is.
Behind the big ideas and the big speeches is a meanness and smallness of
spirit that desires power above all else, that lacks any sense of
decency and honor, and that when denied, lashes out viciously against
anyone in the grip of its power. r.
The Berlin Blockade showed millions of people why they never wanted to
find themselves under Communist control. It ended what might have become
a recurrence of isolationism and firmed the conviction of Americans
that the only way to deal with the Soviet Union was to push it back.
The Obama Blockade, the meanness and pettiness in its needless power
plays, is a warning of what life will be like if the left gains even
more control over America.
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