Former U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Chairman Mary Frances Berry, a long-time prominent liberal activist, has admitted in an interview with Politico that the left is trying to smear the tea party movement as “racist” for strategic reasons, not out of genuine concern that the movement is itself racist.

Berry called the tactic an “effective strategy” and chose not to denounce it.

“As an active participant in the tea party movement, I know the movement’s motivation is about Obama’s policies and not his race,” said Deneen Borelli, a Project 21 full-time fellow who has spoken at many tea party rallies and is scheduled to speak at the “Uni-Tea” rally in Philadelphia on July 31. “Race card politics is the last-ditch effort to shift the debate away from President Obama’s harmful policies such as the government’s takeover of health care and his failure to create jobs — both of which are having an impact on his popularity. This diversion may also help Obama to try to jam through cap-and-trade legislation through Congress. It’s a grand distraction from policies and may unfortunately increase racial tensions.”

Berry, now the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and History at the University of Pennsylvania, was asked, “will branding the tea party ‘racist’ work?”

Berry replied:

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

“This is exactly the kind of thing that has irked me all of my adult life, to put it mildly,” said Project 21 member R. Dozier Gray. “This willful and purposeful use of the race card for nothing more than political gain is toxic to race relations, and Mary Frances Berry must know that. But she evidently does not care. Based on her comment, political posturing takes primacy over whatever real issues regarding race that she might pretend are her calling cards. I have seen this all before. I find it shameful.”

Project 21 member Bob Parks added: “What’s most disturbing about this very public quote? Not only is Mary Frances Berry making this comment without fear of admonishment, and that progressives have apparently embraced and are employing these very shameful, race-baiting tactics — but Berry is likely teaching this ‘social thought’ hate to children.”

Left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky, whose tactics have been studied and followed by Barack Obama and his followers, taught his activists to “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” The Tea Party movement has unnerved the left and energized supporters of smaller government, causing the left to target it, as per Alinsky’s method, with bogus racism charges.

The Politico interview with Berry is available at http://www.politico.com/arena/bio/mary_frances_berry.html.

Much debate has transpired for many years over illegal immigration and much more attention has been given Arizona with the state’s recent passage of illegal immigration laws that mirror our federal laws that are not being enforced. This debate has sharply divided political ideals, where on the one side the progressive liberals believe in open borders and a destruction of our sovereignty as a nation, an abolition of a distinct identity. On the other side, Americans want law and order, a means where immigrants seeking to share in the American Dream can legally come to this country and assimilate, as our present laws provide. Truly we find the polar opposites of idealism at work and as such we are witness to forces behind the propagation of political agendas.

Many Americans are of the mind that environmentalism is all about saving and protecting the planet. This has been drummed into our heads for a very long time and is now an integral part of our education/indoctrination system in this country. Truly, how can one question that environmentalists don’t have the best interest of protecting our landscape, our waters and our atmosphere at heart?

Here’s a look at reality! I have written about it before, as have many others. At the Desert Rat Blog, a colleague who lives and works in Arizona, asks where are the environmentalists when it comes to the incredible destruction of the landscape caused by illegal immigrants being marketed into this country by thugs and criminals?

Desert Rat provides some photographs that clearly depict the piles and piles of trash and relates of things called, “rape trees”, where the “coyotes”, who market the illegals, rape the women and hang their underwear in trees as trophies.

Where are the environmentalists? This man-caused annihilation of our environment is something everyone should be alarmed about and yet the same environmentalists who would eagerly sue the pants off any oil company, remain silent. Why is that?

It’s a simple answer really and Desert Rat spells it out precisely.

Where are the environmental groups? I guess when their political agenda is stronger than their supposed environmental motives, they suddenly lose their voice.

And therein lies the rub! This is the opportunity that few Americans ever get to see as most of their information comes from a biased media who celebrate the same political agendas, while also suffering from a loss of voice, or should I say a selective loss of voice.

The lesson we all need to learn from this is that the sickness of environmentalism, disguised as people who care about our planet, are driven by political agendas far stronger than any environmental husbandry.

I’m sure it began long before our obsession with self-esteem. So consumed we became with making sure our kids’ feelings were never hurt, we lost all reason and understanding and began teaching that exceptionalism wasn’t “fair”. (Oh, there’s the four-letter word that should be banned.)

Was it diversity? We were being indoctrinated that diversity was admirable, that some was good and more was better. Lost in all this was the importance of retaining identity, for without identity how can a child’s self-esteem have a foundation?

I’m afraid it all began a long time ago. Little by little we lost the focus of what made America great.

Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison and Edward Rutledge, are only a few of the exceptional people who signed our Declaration of Independence. One trait that made them exceptional was their desire for and understanding of freedom. They didn’t want to be like England or any other. They wanted to be like America.

John Adams at a very young age wrote of his dreams that someday America would be the greatest nation on earth, not to look down on others but to draw them up unto this country’s greatness. Adams’ dream came true. America did become the greatest nation on earth, doing more to help other people than any other nation. It came from liberty, the freedom to excel, the desire to be the best of the best. It was called exceptionalism. It is what made America a magnet that draws others to come here. Why do we want to extinguish the magnetism?

As I sat yesterday and watched the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderone, stand at the stage of the greatest legislative conclave on earth, the symbol of liberty and everything great, and ridicule America while members of that Congress stood in applause for such treasonous, anti-American sentiments, I wondered if the above mentioned exceptional men had been sitting in that audience, what their reaction would have been.

As President Barack Obama stood outside the White House with Calderone, in what certainly appeared to be an affirmation from our President of his hatred toward America, I pictured George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson gathered amongst the bushes of the Rose Garden, standing in utter disbelief.

Tom Remington

I received an email this morning from someone on the “left” attempting to support his ideas of predator/prey relationships with his science. All was going well until the “left” in him just couldn’t resist adding that last paragraph showing his true colors. It’s quite funny and I share that with you here.

Levin also reminded listeners all of the name calling and “vitriol”, as the Liar-in-Chief called it, we on the right have been called since the beginning of the campaign. Here’s a partial list: bitter, angry, white American, gun clinger, Nazi, racist, terrorist, un-American, etc.

Our freedoms are being destroyed and our country, at least the one I learned about in history and grew up appreciating and respecting, is being dismantled by a radical thug who has surrounded himself with other radical thugs, all determined to change America into something I have no interest in being a part of. For that reason I will fight. I don’t care that Joe Wilson yelled out and called Obama a liar. He is a liar. Perhaps the time and place weren’t the best but the left is now using this as a distraction. It’s what they do best. They now have ammunition they can use to draw your attention away from what is really taking place.

Today Thomas Sowell described Obama’s speech before the joint Houses, “a masterpiece of rhetoric and a shameless fraud.” In other words, he’s a liar.

I believe it was also Sowell who said that it is not in the nature of conservatives to be “protesters” and “demonstrators”. Evidently more and more of us conservatives have had enough and it’s time to fight back.

Many have said, even some on the left, that Obama was angry during his speech. Some have mislabeled that as his passion for what he’s trying to do. Don’t buy it. He’s angry like a brat. He’s not getting his way and there are people daring enough to stand up to him. He’s a liar. Fight back. We aren’t talking small potatoes. We are talking the destruction of our country.

Emotions will run high!

Page 114 begins a chapter called, “On Enviro-Statism”. This is how it begins:

“Science, broadly defined, is a door to knowledge. Although the Statist is found of accusing the Conservative of slamming the door shut, it is actually the Statist who abandons science – just as he abandons the laws of nature, reason, experience, economics, and modernity – when he promotes what can best be characterized as enviro-statism. His pursuit, after all, is power, not truth. With the assistance of a pliant or sympathetic media, the Statist uses junk science, misrepresentations, and fearmongoring to promote public health and environmental scares, because he realizes that in a true, widespread health emergency, the public expects the government to act aggressively to address the crisis, despite traditional limitations on governmental authority. The more dire the threat, the more liberty people are usually willing to surrender. This scenario is tailor-made for the Statist. The government’s authority becomes part of the societal frame of reference, only to be built upon during the next “crisis”".

Levin refers throughout the entire book to the Statist, the culprit that promotes tyranny and threatens our liberty. A Statist is what Levin uses to define the Modern Liberal. The Liberal term has been twisted and redefined over history. Today’s liberal is far from the true meaning of liberty and as such Levin chooses Statist instead.

Environmentalism or enviro-statism, threatens our liberty. When a country compiles something in the order of 75,000 pages of laws within the Federal Register, common sense tells us our liberty is threatened. Levin refers to what Alexis de Tocqueville described as a “soft tyranny”. This can also be similar to incrementalism or a slow destruction of our freedoms and if not brought into check can eventually lead to a “hard tyranny”. As we continue to pile on law after law, we slowly erode the liberty that some of us are quite fond of.

Levin claims the onset of today’s environmental movement began with the banning of DDT, an insecticide used to save millions of lives around the globe. You’ll have to get the book to follow how this all played out. It’s truly amazing!

Environmentalists don’t buy into the notion that life on earth surrounds man or that nature is hear for the sake of the people. Instead they believe the Earth has priority. With that view, often times these Statists see man as expendable. Levin explains it this way:

“If nature has “intrinsic value” then nature exists for its own sake. Consequently, man is not to be preferred over any aspect of his natural surroundings. He is no better than any other organism and much worse than most because of his destructive existence. And so it is that the Enviro-Statist abandons reason for a faith that preaches human regression and self-loathing. And he does so by claiming the moral high ground – saving man from himself and nature from man. Most individuals who are sympathetic to environmental causes are unwitting marks, responsive to the Enviro-Statist’s manipulation of science, imagery, and language. Over time, they self-surrender liberty for authority, abundance for scarcity, and optimism for pessimism. “Save the planet!” is the rallying cry that justifies nearly any intrusion by government into the life of the individual. The individual, after all, is expendable.”

If you do not fit the profile of Levin’s Statist, then probably much of what he says here makes sense and if so can certainly help to understand and deal with these individuals. Of course if you fit this profile, you would deny any validity to Levin’s view.

It is said that the best way to defeat an enemy is to first understand your enemy. Perhaps Levin has given us a bit more knowledge or at least a way to verbalize it.

Tom Remington

Evidently we are getting a taste of what Obama meant. Back when he made the statement, I asked whose science was he planning to restore? Maybe he is planning to restore the science, if that’s what you want to call it, of his newly appointed “Science Czar”, John Holdren.

For those who might not know anything about Holdren, he is a former professor of environmental study at Harvard. He also suggests that forced sterilization through adding things to our drinking water or food supply would be a good thing, or that requiring all babies born illegitimately be forced into adoption. Put him together with Obama’s pick to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a man who believes animals should have a right to sue, and we’ve got the makings of a dynamic duo.

Holdren’s science, I guess, must be science that Obama agrees with. And if that’s not enough, then let’s require all women to take a sterilizing implant and only be allowed to have babies when the government approves.

Pretty far fetched isn’t it. And some of you probably think that believing this is as weird and far out as Glenn Beck. What’s troubling though is that when people talk of Obama being a radical, it is all too often denied. But what is to be said about a man who surrounds himself with these kinds of people? Do not birds of a feather flock together or is just certain species of birds?

It’s equally troubling that a president is picking all these so-called czars. They are unelected, appointed by the president and answer only to the president, yet he gives them all kinds of power. They are exempt from the control of Congress or we the people.

It would be my guess that Obama’s idea of “restoring science to its rightful place” is on the same par with “hope and change”. It all sounds really swell boys and girls but in truth, none of us have any idea what he’s talking about until we begin to do a bit of digging to find out more about a man and who he selects to surround himself with and get advice from.

I don’t know about you, but I find that quite scary.

That might be what the poll says and that might be what those polled actually said but I’m not buying that it is true. I think those polled have the perception they are conservative (and I honestly don’t think they know what that means) and/or they don’t want to be directly associated with some of the real whacked out leaders on the left – and I certainly can’t blame them for that.

I was speaking with a 30-something professional one day not that long ago. I mentioned that I thought that this country was moving further to the left everyday. Their response came in a question, “Are there really any liberals left in this country?”

I honestly believe this person is representative of the voting class that elected Obama to lead them. From my perspective, history shows me that it has been a march to the left for many, many decades and through many, many presidents.

My question actually becomes, are there really any conservatives left?

Michelle Malkin points out that for those who believe that Maine’s two Senators, Snowe and Collins, are representatives of conservatism, they have voted 92% of the time with Obama and less than 50% of the time with the republican party.

So again, either someone’s perception of conservatism is skewed or in this case, it may be a matter of thinking Obama is a moderate.

I still say it is merely perceptions fed by a media that regularly refers to RINOs (republicans in name only) as conservatives.

Tom Remington