California Conservative

That’s the partial headline of this AP article describing the Democratic Party’s mantra this year. It’s also a bunch of Barbra Streisand.

“It’s a core value that we think organizes the entire political agenda for progressives,” said John Halpin, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “With the rise of materialism, greed and corruption in American society, people want a return to a better sense of community, sort of a shared sacrifice, a return to the ethic of service and duty.”

That’s nice spin but it isn’t likely to work on the people that it’s hoping to appeal to. In fact, most people that hear it would say it sounds like socialism. The truth is that it’s another focus-grouped catchphrase that Democrats hope people will warm to. This becomes apparent here:

Mara Vanderslice, a religious outreach director for Kerry’s presidential campaign, formed a political consulting firm last year called Common Good Strategies to “help Democrats reframe the national religious debate.” The Casey campaign in Pennsylvania is a Vanderslice client.

I googled Ms. Vanderslice and here’s what I found:

“After graduating, Mara spoke at rallies held by ACT-UP, the anti-Catholic group that disrupted Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989 by spitting the Eucharist on the floor. In 2000, she practiced civil disobedience when she took to the streets of Seattle in a protest against the World Trade Organization. In 2002, she tried to shut down Washington, DC in a protest against the IMF and the World Bank.”

What would Pennsylvanians think if they knew that Bob Casey’s campaign consultant was part of ACT-UP? ACT-UP is an anti-Catholic organization preaching civil disobedience whose cause is AIDS? What would they think if they knew that Casey’s campaign consultant was also a socialist, a pacifist and an anti-war activist? I can’t imagine that they’d be thrilled to know that.

Tom Perriello, a co-founder of the Catholic Alliance, said the approach would help end what he sees as a self-defeating practice among liberals, treating religious Americans as a constituency that needs special handling, instead of crafting a message meaningful to all voters.

Mr. Perriello is a piece of work, too. As the article states, he’s the founder of the Catholic Alliance for the Common Good but before that he worked for an organization known as Res Publica, which “ran as a pilot project in Sierra Leone in 2001-2002.” Here’s the 5 core principles listed on Res Publica’s vision webpage:

1. Common Things
2. Global Community
3. Good Government
4. Deliberative Democracy
5. Personal Commitment

Here’s part of their explanation of Common Things:

We believe that the most precious things we have are our “res publica”, the things we have in common, our values, our principles, our community, our freedom, our earth. We are concerned that a rising philosophy that celebrates individual selfishness in the world is undermining our stewardship of these things. We are working for culture change, to revitalize ‘the public thing’, the thing we share, in our communities, our nations, and our world.

Does that sound like socialism to you? If there’s any doubt, check the first 2 sentences of their description for Global Community:

Gandhi said “I am a human being first, and a citizen of India second”. His beliefs would never allow him to ignore the demands of his humanity for any national political affiliation.

After reading that, is there any doubt but that Res Publica is a socialist organization?

I’d further suggest that a vivid picture of socialism emerges when you combine Mara Vanderslice’s socialism with Res Publica’s socialism. Now let’s put the rest of this puzzle together.

Earlier, I mentioned the Center for American Progress. It touts itself as “a nonpartisan research and educational institute” aimed at “developing a long-term vision of a progressive America” and “providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals.” What it is is a Soros-funded ultra-liberal organization

Here’s what a Discover the Network article says about the Center for American Progress:

The Center for American Progress (CAP) describes itself as “a nonpartisan research and educational institute” aimed at “developing a long-term vision of a progressive America” and “providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals.”
Robert Dreyfuss reports in the March 1, 2004 edition of The Nation: “The idea for the Center began with discussions in 2002 between [Morton] Halperin and George Soros, the billionaire investor.…Halperin, who heads the office of Soros’ Open Society Institute, brought [former Clinton chief of staff John] Podesta into the discussion, and beginning in late 2002 Halperin and Podesta circulated a series of papers to funders.”

That’s quite a picture we’ve painted, isn’t it? You start with John Halpin, who sounds like a socialist. Then you move to Mara Vanderslice, who sounds like a socialist AND pacifist. Then you finish with CAP, a group started by George Soros, who’s a believer in a ‘One Government World’. Here’s what his OSI bio tells us about Soros:

While a student at LSE, Soros became familiar with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, who had a profound influence on his thinking and later on his professional and philanthropic activities.

It turns out that Karl Popper had some fascinating, though radical, ideas. Here’s what I’ve learned by reading Popper’s biography:

Popper challenged some of the ruling orthodoxies of philosophy: logical positivism, Marxism, determinism and linguistic philosophy. He argued that there are no subject matters but only problems and our desire to solve them. He said that scientific theories cannot be verified but only tentatively refuted, and that the best philosophy is about profound problems, not word meanings.

In other words, Popper was a believer in relativism. What can we conclude about George Soros through Popper besides his being another relativist? I’d suggest that he’s anti-religious and quite possibly a socialist.

Based on all this information, it’s impossible to conclude that the people supporting ‘the public good’ are much interested in America’s common good. In fact, I’d suggest that they’re anti-American.

Technorati Tags: Election 2006, George Soros, Center for American Progress

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 2:22 am and is filed under Activism, Africa, Author: Gary Gross, Corruption, Liberals, U.N.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.