Stalinists Arise
About two weeks ago, radio talker, Rush Limbaugh was discussing Jesse MacBeth of Washington, who became the rage on the Internet with his stories of US soldiers murdering Iraqi citizens. According to McBeth, he was an Army Ranger who participated in mass hanging of Iraqi citizens from “the rafters of mosques.” MacBeth has been convicted of faking his military record. According to US District Attorney Jeff Sullivan, MacBeth was never in Iraq, he was never a Ranger, he was kicked out of boot camp after 40 days for being unfit. Limbaugh referenced MacBeth and other “phony soldiers” who are telling stories of war crimes to gin up anti-war sentiment.
In an unprecedented attack on freedom of speech and against a private citizen, Democratics in the House and Senate have gone to the floor to condemn Limbaugh, even though Limbaugh was clearly referencing people who had not been soldiers nor been in Iraq, nor witnessed atrocities. The “Shame of the Silver State” Harry Reid sent a letter to the CEO of Clear Channel Radio demanding that Clear Channel force Limbaugh to apologize. One Senator has even called for the Senate to “censure” Limbaugh, claiming that Limbaugh had “maligned” soldiers opposed to the war. Democratic Senator Salazar from Colorado is apparently unaware that the Senate can only censure Senators – but Democratics have never been known to let facts get in the way.
Rush Limbaugh does not need this columnist to defend him and this column is not about defending Limbaugh. This column is about the Left’s use of “phony” soldiers and their drive to silence all opposition. These are the salient points of this “issue” and the ones that should be discussed and remembered.
Many of us who are old enough remember this statement very well, “They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis (pronounced “Jenjus” in that phony Boston accent) Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam . . .” It was with these words that John F. Kerry began his “testimony” before the United States Senate in 1971. Kerry’s antiwar testimony ratcheted up anti-war sentiment and led to the ultimate abandonment of South Vietnam and the murder of over a million Vietnamese by their Communist “liberators”.
Unfortunately for the million Vietnamese who were slaughtered, the testimony that Kerry presented to the Senate was false and had come from men who had not witnessed, nor participated in war crimes. Many of the men who testified in Kerry’s “Winter Soldier” hearings had never been to Vietnam – many had never been in the Army. They were, in Limbaugh’s words, phony soldiers.
Back in 1971, Americans had only the mainstream news media from which to get their information on current events. By the time of the “Winter Soldier” hearings, the mainstream media had become actively anti-war (more accurately anti-Nixon) and was not interested in presenting facts, but only in pursuing their agenda. By the time Americans learned about the phony soldiers and phony testimony, our nation had been humiliated, Nixon had been driven from office and millions of Vietnamese were paying the ultimate price for our betrayal.
It is not surprising that the anti-war left has resorted to using phony soldiers to pursue their goal of securing another American military defeat, after all, it worked so well back in 1971. The difference between 1971 and 2007 is the emergence and power of the “new media”. Between talk radio and the internet, Jesse MacBeth was outed for the fraud and liar that he is long before his story became “irrefutable fact”. Limbaugh and the bloggers have done a great service to our country by outing the new “phony soldiers”.
It was almost surreal to hear Harry Reid condemning Limbaugh for something Limbaugh never said – and acting like no one knew he was perpetrating a lie. Listening to Democratic Senators condemn Limbaugh reminded me of that other great progressive, German national socialist Joseph Goebbels, who said that “if you tell a lie often enough people will begin to believe it.”
The motivation behind the Democratics smear of Limbaugh is their desire to silence all opposition to their agenda. Had it not been for Limbaugh and the Internet, the anti-Bush, anti-American, anti-war left would have had another John Kerry with Jesse MacBeth and now the Left needs to silence opposition.
Earlier this summer, Venezuelan national socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez shut down television stations that were broadcasting news and reports that Chavez didn’t like. Cuban national socialist dictator Fidel Castro silenced free press in Cuba in 1960. The Soviet Union and Communist China allowed only highly censored press to exist. National socialist, progressives and other totalitarian regimes cannot exist with a free and open press and neither can the Democratic Party in the United States. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin created the model of the controlled press in his ruthless, blood thirsty reign of terror. It is a tragedy in the making that American Democratics are modeling themselves after Castro, Chavez and Stalin.
A free society can only exist with a free and open press – and we must constantly be on guard to prevent the Stalinists in the Democratic Party from censoring our free press, seizing control of our government and destroying our Constitutional freedoms.