{"id":18554,"date":"2013-05-15T22:19:51","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T02:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=18554"},"modified":"2013-05-15T22:20:12","modified_gmt":"2013-05-16T02:20:12","slug":"the-daily-gouge-thursday-may-16th-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=18554","title":{"rendered":"The Daily Gouge, Thursday, May 16th, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Thursday, May 16th, 2013…and here’s The Gouge!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Headlining today’s line-up, courtesy of Dick Mayer and American Spectator<\/em>, an absolute must-read<\/em><\/span> column by <\/strong>Daren Jonescu, who offers a<\/strong> dead-on, balls-accurate assessment why…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Benghazi Reveals the Heart of Progressivism<\/span><\/h1>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"obama-hillary-Marine-guard\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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In the first months after the Benghazi attack, the most urgent question, and one only rarely asked, was \u201cWhat were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton doing during the seven and a half hours between the initial emergency communications from Benghazi and the final American deaths?\u201d\u00a0 A negative answer was provided in February by Leon Panetta: they were<\/span> not<\/em><\/span> engaging with their subordinates; they were<\/span> not<\/em><\/span> contacting anyone to discuss options; they were giving<\/span> no <\/em><\/span><\/span>orders for action; they remained<\/span> entirely uninvolved<\/em><\/span>.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

We are left to speculate about the positive answer to that question.\u00a0 Were they sleeping?\u00a0 Curled up by the fire with a good manifesto?\u00a0 Playing poker with Huma and the gang?\u00a0 Practicing jokes for a fundraising speech?\u00a0 Your guess is as good as mine.<\/p>\n

And none of these guesses really matter in the end, compared to the looming horror that attends any<\/em><\/span> of the possibilities, namely this: the president and secretary of state of the most powerful nation on Earth are impervious to shame.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/span> They can do \u2014 they have done \u2014 what you hope you could never <\/em>do, what you pray your children will never be able to do, what psychologists fill academic journals attempting to explain.\u00a0 They were informed that their countrymen \u2014 their appointees \u2014 were being attacked, were issuing repeated cries for help, and, if nothing were done to intercede, were likely to be killed.<\/span>\u00a0 Knowing this, and knowing, further, that they had at their disposal the most powerful military in the world, no risk of personal harm, and many subordinates prepared to leap into action at their word, they blithely walked away from the desperate men pleading for their help, and carried on with whatever they happened to be doing that night.\u00a0 They let other men suffer unto death without lifting a finger to help, or even indicating a moment\u2019s regret for their inaction after the fact<\/span><\/em>.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

They demonstrated a cold lack of interest in the suffering of others \u2014 not the abstract, theoretical suffering of collective interest groups, such as \u201cthe poor\u201d or \u201cgays\u201d or \u201cwomen,\u201d but the real physical pain and mortal terror-style suffering of individual human beings in mortal crisis.<\/p>\n

\"Frown\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Walking home one evening, you hear men across the street shouting for help, as they are in the process of being overwhelmed by a gang of thugs.\u00a0 You walk away, unconcerned with their cries or the sounds of bats smacking down on their flesh.\u00a0 You do not call the police or volunteer any assistance.\u00a0 You go to bed and sleep well.\u00a0 The next day, and each subsequent day, you carry on with your life of fun, friends, and self-indulgence, never giving a second thought to the men who died because you did not care to help.<\/span>\u00a0 If a neighborhood reporter asks you about the crime, you put on your gravest voice and say, \u201cGosh, that\u2019s so sad; I hope they find the creeps who did it<\/em>.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

That is what Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did on September 11 and 12, 2012, and what they have continued to do in the months since.\u00a0 God save a nation in the hands of men and women with souls of this nature<\/span><\/em>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span> For a man without shame or the capacity for the most primal forms of fellow-feeling is a man who has no internal, self-imposed limits on what he might do to achieve his ends.\u00a0 If the suffering of others is absolutely nothing to him; if literal cries for help do not stir in him painful feelings that can only be alleviated by prompt action or, failing that, by interminable days of shame and self-loathing, then there is nothing \u2014 apart from pragmatic calculations \u2014 to prevent him from doing anything<\/em> that seems to serve his ends.\u00a0 For it is the awareness of the rightful existence and potential suffering of other men that serves as our internal limit.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

And, for that matter, how does a man impervious to the plight, the fear, the anguish, and the simple will to live of other human beings choose<\/em> his own ends?\u00a0 What prevents him from choosing ends which entail or require the suffering and sacrifice of other people, if he is incapable of recognizing \u2014 at the moral and emotional level \u2014 the dignity, the value, the slender thread of breath linking an individual human being to the divine for its achingly short span of life?\u00a0 Such a brute is limited only by external restraint, specifically by the law.<\/span>\u00a0 Once he himself becomes the maker<\/em><\/span> of laws, either actually or in his own mind, he is utterly without limits<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 For now his inability to appreciate the individual existence of others is divorced from the fear of punishment or personal pain that might have stopped him from acting out the lusts and whims of his monstrous inner life.<\/p>\n

\"Clinton<\/a><\/p>\n

Progressivism, socialism, Marxism \u2014 call it what you will \u2014 is an authoritarian strategy masked as a political theory.\u00a0 At its core is the premise that the state has full authority, in the name of \u201cthe people,\u201d to do any number of things which would have been almost universally recognized, throughout human history, as shameful acts.<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 In the name of \u201cequality\u201d and \u201cjustice,\u201d progressives claim the authority to take one man\u2019s rightfully earned possessions by force, and simply give them to other men; to remove children forcibly from their parents, and raise them according to precepts that may be antithetical to everything the parents believe; to retard the intellectual and moral development of every citizen through an aggressive, coercive program of indoctrination through government schools, aimed at producing a submissive underclass of competent but unambitious adults; to determine, by edict, who may or may not be permitted to pursue life-preserving medical treatment, and under what conditions that treatment may be provided; and so on through the litany of moral violations recast as \u201cservices,\u201d and even \u201crights,\u201d by collectivist despots and their bureaucratic minions.<\/p>\n

There must have been a moment near the end for each of the men who lost their lives in Benghazi, and perhaps particularly for Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty who died many hours after the violence began, when they realized their situation was all but hopeless, that no help was coming, that their urgent calls and messages were meeting with silence in Washington.\u00a0 If there is a Hell, and it has the poetic perfection of Dante\u2019s, it is reasonable to suppose that this feeling \u2014 \u201cI am alone, vulnerable, and abandoned\u201d \u2014 will be the eternal fate of two people who knew these men\u2019s predicament and had the power of the world at their fingertips, but who did not care to try to help.\u00a0<\/strong> <\/span>The deaths of four Americans \u2014 their fear, courage, and pain \u2014 will not have been in vain if the most essential lesson of Benghazi is well-learned, and long-remembered.\u00a0 For Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton revealed themselves as today\u2019s \u201cdemocratic\u201d progressives rarely do.\u00a0 They revealed, to be exact, that they are, at heart, what all leading progressive authoritarians have been: conscienceless; without basic human empathy; dismissive of, and unfeeling about, life itself (except their own); constitutionally incapable of considering as significant or meaningful any harm their actions or inaction may cause to other \u201cmere individuals\u201d \u2014 in short, monsters<\/span><\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"drunk\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Homer, composing his epic tales for a society dominated by war and its frequent and sudden losses, coined a term for the essential life force of an individual man, a term designed at once to dignify the individual dying warrior, and to fill all hearers with wonder and a moral shiver at the fleetingness of it all: psuch\u0113<\/em> \u2014 literally, \u201cbreath.\u201d\u00a0 There is the root, linguistically and philosophically, of our word psyche, i.e., soul<\/em>.\u00a0 Human life is breath, and thus death a mere exhalation.\u00a0 A biological fact transformed through poetry into the essential glory and tragedy of our existence.\u00a0 With what horrifying ease may a man be dispatched from this world \u2014 from the company of his comrades, the home of his family, the embrace of his beloved, and the society of his fellow citizens.\u00a0 In the end, a man\u2019s life is just an invisible wisp of air, barely felt and quickly lost.<\/span>\u00a0 We cling to and cherish life because, deep down, we know this of ourselves.<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 We begin our journey to full humanity, however, when we recognize and respect this truth in others<\/em>.\u00a0 To fail in this initial stage of our moral journey is to become something other than human, something lower, something degraded and ugly.<\/p>\n

Creatures of such failed moral development are currently, unthinkably, the most powerful men and women on the planet.<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 We are sometimes given to wondering, in the face of one or another of the progressives\u2019 assaults on individual freedom, natural rights, and human dignity, how they cannot see what inhuman conditions they are imposing on their fellow men.\u00a0 The problem is worse than that.\u00a0 As Benghazi teaches, these monsters, unlike their hypnotized followers, do<\/em><\/span> see what they are doing, but they are simply incapable of giving a damn<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Four thoughts occur to us: first, Mr. Jonescu’s right on every count.\u00a0 Second, these men weren’t killed in combat; they died from willful neglect.\u00a0 Third, is anyone really<\/em><\/span> surprised two such unabashed advocates of partial-birth abortion willingly sacrificed the lives of four adult humans in pursuit of personal political advantage? Lastly, Jonescu and everyone else at American Spectator<\/em> better get ready for their audit!
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"ISStoon0516COLORFINAL_800.jpg.cms\"<\/a>For more on the scandals which may ultimately prove impossible for the MSM to ignore, we turn to another commentary from\u00a0American Spectator<\/em> from Ross Kaminsky, courtesy of Bill Meisen:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Turning on Obama — Could it Be That the Liberal Press has Finally Figured Him Out?<\/span><\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"upsidedownpriorities\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

If ponies rode men and grass ate cows, and cats were chased into holes by the mouse \u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n

If summer were spring and the other way round, then all the world would be upside down.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Once in a long while, an event evokes one of my favorite historical images: the British Army band, at Lord Cornwallis\u2019 surrender at Yorktown which sealed the Americans\u2019 revolutionary victory, playing \u201cThe World Turned Upside Down.\u201d In this case, the event is the dramatic change over the past two weeks in the \u201cmainstream\u201d media\u2019s coverage of President Obama.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

From reporters to opinion writers, from newspapers to television, after a mere four and a half years of economic fecklessness, foreign policy failure, unseemly narcissism, and a Nobel Prize for deeds to be named later, prominent liberal-leaning pundits and organizations may have finally realized that reality, if not journalistic ethics, demands a more clear-eyed look at the president they have been so deeply invested in.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Or maybe they\u2019ve just noticed that their fawning and sycophancy has meant declining circulation and viewership.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"ObamaArrogantWords\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But whatever the reason, the dominant establishment mass media\u2019s turn is as remarkable as it is welcome.<\/p>\n

The first major crack in the dike may have come from New York Times<\/em> opinion columnist Maureen Dowd in an April 20 piece entitled \u201cNo Bully in the Pulpit\u201d in which she bemoans President Obama\u2019s inability to pass restrictions on gun rights. It is not the liberal writer\u2019s anger over the outcome that is surprising; it is that instead of the usual \u201cit\u2019s all the Republicans\u2019 fault\u201d meme, she lays the blame directly at the feet of the previously Teflon-coated president<\/em><\/span>:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s unbelievable that with 90 percent of Americans on his side, he could get only 54 votes in the Senate. It was a glaring example of his weakness in using leverage to get what he wants. No one on Capitol Hill is scared of him. Even House Republicans who had no intention of voting for the gun bill marveled privately that the president could not muster 60 votes in a Senate that his party controls.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Dowd\u2019s criticism of Obama was, by N.Y. Times<\/em> standards, withering:<\/p>\n

\n