Sowell compared Obama to Hitler, Mao, other dictators, and Jim Jones
Thomas Sowell's syndicated column compared Sen. Barack Obama to Bolshevik revolutionaries, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Jim Jones, and "[o]ther despotic regimes in China, Cuba, and Iran," all leaders who Sowell claimed resemble Obama in that they rose to power on a message of "change" or due to "inspiring rhetoric and a confident style" more than "specifics." Sowell also falsely claimed that Obama "was against a law forbidding physicians to kill a baby that was born alive despite an attempt to abort it."
In an October 22 syndicated column, Thomas Sowell compared Sen. Barack Obama to Bolshevik revolutionaries, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Jim Jones, and "[o]ther despotic regimes in China, Cuba, and Iran," all leaders who Sowell claimed resemble Obama in that they rose to power on a message of "change" or due to "inspiring rhetoric and a confident style" more than "specifics." Sowell also falsely claimed in the column that Obama "was against a law forbidding physicians to kill a baby that was born alive despite an attempt to abort it."
After claiming that "[s]ome of Senator Obama's most fervent supporters could not tell you what he has actually done," Sowell wrote: "The magic word 'change' makes specifics unnecessary. If things are going bad, some think that what is needed is blank-check 'change.' But history shows any number of countries in crises worse than ours, where 'change' turned problems into catastrophes." Citing the example of what happened in "czarist Russia," Sowell stated: "[T]hey went for 'change.' That 'change' brought on a totalitarian regime that made the czars' despotism look like child's play. The Communists killed more people in one year than the czars killed in more than 90 years, not counting the millions who died in a government-created famine in the 1930s." He added: "Other despotic regimes in China, Cuba, and Iran were similarly replaced by people who promised 'change' that turned out to be even worse than what went before."
Sowell then compared Obama to Jones, Hitler, and Mao, stating:
Yet many today seem to assume that if things are bad, "change" will make them better. Specifics don't interest them nearly as much as inspiring rhetoric and a confident style. But many 20th-century leaders with inspiring rhetoric and great self-confidence led their followers or their countries into utter disasters.
These ranged from Jim Jones who led hundreds to their deaths in Jonestown to Hitler and Mao who led millions to their deaths.
Later, purporting to provide one of the few "specifics ... we know about Barack Obama's track record," Sowell asserted: "We know that he was against a law forbidding physicians to kill a baby that was born alive despite an attempt to abort it." But in making this claim, Sowell misrepresented the legislation Obama voted against, a bill amending the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975 that Obama and other opponents said posed a threat to abortion rights and was, they said, unnecessary because Illinois law already prohibited the conduct being addressed by the bill.
Indeed, as Media Matters for America noted, when tasked by the Illinois attorney general's office with investigating allegations that fetuses born alive at an Illinois hospital were abandoned without treatment, the Illinois Department of Public Health reportedly said it was unable to substantiate the allegations but said that if the allegations had proved true, the conduct alleged would have been a violation of then-existing Illinois law.
From Sowell's October 22 column:
Of the four people running for president and vice president on the Republican and Democratic tickets, the one we know the least about is the one leading in the polls -- Barack Obama.
Some of Senator Obama's most fervent supporters could not tell you what he has actually done on such issues as crime, education, or financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- much less what he plans to do to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear nation supplying nuclear weapons to the international terrorist networks that it has supplied with other weapons.
The magic word "change" makes specifics unnecessary. If things are going bad, some think that what is needed is blank-check "change."
But history shows any number of countries in crises worse than ours, where "change" turned problems into catastrophes.
In czarist Russia, for example, the economy was worse than ours is today and the First World War was going far worse for the Russians than anything we have faced in Iraq. Moreover, Russians had nothing like the rights of Americans today. So they went for "change."
That "change" brought on a totalitarian regime that made the czars' despotism look like child's play. The Communists killed more people in one year than the czars killed in more than 90 years, not counting the millions who died in a government-created famine in the 1930s.
Other despotic regimes in China, Cuba, and Iran were similarly replaced by people who promised "change" that turned out to be even worse than what went before.
Yet many today seem to assume that if things are bad, "change" will make them better. Specifics don't interest them nearly as much as inspiring rhetoric and a confident style. But many 20th-century leaders with inspiring rhetoric and great self-confidence led their followers or their countries into utter disasters.
These ranged from Jim Jones who led hundreds to their deaths in Jonestown to Hitler and Mao who led millions to their deaths.
What specifics do we know about Barack Obama's track record that might give us some clue as to what kinds of "changes" to expect if he is elected?
We know that he opposed the practice of putting violent young felons on trial as adults. We know that he was against a law forbidding physicians to kill a baby that was born alive despite an attempt to abort it.
Thomas Sowell is a thoroughly useless, sorry excuse for a human being.
Years back I read a great article somewhere, written by a philosophy professor, where he said that he relied upon Sowell columns as a great source for logical fallacies.
Each one was a gold mine for his class-- the whole gamut.
I guess no one is completely useless - they can always serve as a bad example.
:-)
See, the people who don't bother to read up on Obama, and what he plans to do about the issues that this guy listed, obviously, well, don't know how to read. Or haven't been listening to what Obama has been saying. We know the least about Obama? Is he serious? I mean, the man has been running for President for literally almost 2 years. He has been scrutinized up and down and all around. His pesonal life probed into, the people he's know, where he grew up, where he went to grade school, and so on and so forth. It makes me laugh, when we get a clown writer like this guy, who says we don't know anything about Obama. Which is an outright lie. The information is out there. It's available for all to see. It's people like Sowell who don't take the time to read about Obama, and what policies and positions he has, that say he hasn't said anything. It's just false. Look at the debates, all of them. He has laid out, and remained fairly consistent in his views and policy positions. And of course, Sowell throws out falsehoods and misinformation as if it were something new and interesting about Obama. Comparing anyone running for President in America to Hitler, Mao, Jim Jones, and other crazy people throughout history is just so ridiculous it's not even funny. People like this should have their head examined. Seriously. Because, first of all, Obama is a lefty. All of those other guys he mentioned, hard core right wingers. Hitler. Mao. Jim Jones (hello, religious cult anyone??). Not even the most mainstream hard core right wing politician in this country, would I compare them with that nasty list of people, let alone Obama.
Sowell and others like him are basically ignorant, trying to use fear (again) to move the election. Thing is, people don't believe them anymore. Even now, and even today, we keep hearing that if democrats are elected to the White House, and take over Congress, the terrorists are going to win and come and get us, because there's no way that a democrat can protect the US for some reason, even though, if you look at who in the Senate and Congress, has served their country in uniform, most of the time, you see a lot of democrats who have done so, and chickenhawks on the other side of the aisle.
You know it. I just spent the last half hour showing my bartender what the truth about Obama was. She told me she was undecided but gave all the ignorant reasons she heard these idiots spew. I was able to debunk them, and then she asked about policy issues and I had my nifty handful of graphs on tax policies, health care and insurance which is what she was really concerned about. I'm quite pleased that she told me that I helped her out and she will vote Obama!
A small step for Snoopy's bartender, a giant leap for mankind!
Funny, I had a similar conversation with a co-worker of mine last week. He was talking about politics over the wall, and I heard him say something about he voted for Hillary during the primary but that there was NO WAY he'd vote for Obama for President. Interested, I asked why. He told me he wasn't going to vote for him because of his associations. I asked, specifically, what associations. He of course mentioned Ayers, and then that racist preacher of his, Wright.
I asked him if he went to church locally, and which one. Being that I live in NC, he is a Baptist, Southern Baptist. I asked him if he thought it was OK that Baptists discriminate against an entire section of people in the US, just because of who they feel they are attracted to (homosexuals). He said, that was OK, because the Bible was against it. Off to the races we went. I went back to the old Dr. Laura e-mail about eating shellfish, planting crops, selling daughters into slavery, and things like that, because, that's ALL in the Bible as well.
Then we moved onto Ayers. I told him that he wasn't friends with Ayers, they worked together on a project to better education in Chicago, that was run by a republican who was good friends with Reagan.
Anyway, I didn't sway him, because he thinks and won't relent that Obama is a "dirty Muslim" (his words, not mine). Of course, I didn't have the energy to follow up with him on why Rev Wright would be a problem then, him being a christian reverand and all.
Did you ask him if it's ok for christians to speak in tongues? See what he says and then remind him that palin's church does that. I'd be interested in hearing how he could defend a practice that almost all christian leaders condemn.
I have a hard time believing thta this guy actually voted for Hillary -- the anti-gay issue, and (likely) the abortion would have prevented him from doing so with any kind of real conviction.
And therein lies the (porbable) truth: If he voted for Hillary, he was most likely a stealth Republican, hoping to prevent the stronger Deomocrat from running against the Republican nominee.
Or he's just flat racist and is grasping at any excuse to seem to not be.
Not only the anti-gay and anti-abortion issues, but it's also the fact that the anti-black Negro conservative racist Sowell is also pro-racial segregation, AND Sowell favors repealing the 1964 Civil Rights Act more than McCain and Palin do.
Sowell is an anti-black Negro conservative racist Republican, or to paraphrase the words of black talk radio host Ambrose I. Lane Senior http://www.weourselves.org, Sowell is the colored conservative who opposes Obama.
I have a co-worker like that, too. When faced with facts that she doesn't like, she just ignores them and spouts talking points. When shown -- repeatedly -- that her talking points are not accurate, she retreats to name-calling. She actually insists that one of the reasons she likes McCain is that he "sticks to his guns" and Obama is a flip-flopper. She seems absolutely unaware that claiming Obama is a Muslim while condeming his Christian pastor of twenty years is a contradiction. She also claims to have been a Hillary supporter. It's reached the point that I cannot talk to her any more.
I respect those with opinions that do not match mine. I have no respect for those who, when faced with facts they do not like, disregard those facts. Intellectual dishonesty like that is so widespread on the Right that I cannot understand how they live with themselves.
-- I just spent the last half hour showing my bartender -- snoopy
Nice job, snoop. It should make Teddy Kennedy rest easier knowing he has a competent protege to carry on his life's work...
Nice job, Wetyourpants! It should make O'Reilly, Hannity, Rush, Weiner, etc. rest easier knowing they have an imbecile like you to carry on with...
Carry on his life's work when he dies of brain cancer? Classy. That's hilarious.
Wesley likely also made jokes and/or celebrated the death of Coretta Scott King, and also celebrated the death of Molly Ivins, too.
Who'll be the whipping boy when he's gone?
Sowell is a perfect example of the Republican's long held belief that affirmative action is dangerous. Like anything else, it can be in the wrong hands-- Stanford's idea of racial progress, as an example.
No doubt that Sowell, much the same as fellow colored anti-black Negro conservative racist Ward "Con Man" Connerly, likely also seeks out the support of the KKK, the Council of Conservative Citizens, and other right wing racist white supremacist groups, as he, like other anti-black colored Negro conservative racists, seek to justify racism and white supremacy so they can collect their mercenary payoffs from the corporatist conservative Republican think tanks.
Obama wants to implement social changes that are similar to those instituted by Mao Zedong. As a result of Zedong's policies millions starved to death. I guess I should stock up on canned goods and bags of rice before Obama takes office.
Of course, you can't prove a single claim you make, but either way get used to it. The American people want what Obama is offering and nothing you can do will stop it. You could have, possibly, but you and your republican buds decided to run an old dying fascist with a dingbat racist runningmate who wanted to bring fascism and McCarthyism to our shores. Enjoy another 40 years in obscurity!
You may be able to go to the South Park website, Freeperville, or RedStatebetwetters.com and get away with that kind of charge, but if you want to be taken seriously around here, come back when you have specifices which show Obama and Mao's similarites.
Explain how any president under our constitution would be able to impliment the kind of changes necessary to make America similar to The Peoples Republic of China.
So far, you've shown nothing but an ability to accept whatever those real people, Gramps and his prom date, have fed you. Maybe someday you'll own marry a beer heiress, own 8 houses or have someone spend $150,000 on new clothes for you to wear.
But I guess they didn't want the Governor to look bad next to the trolop who wore a $300,000 outfit for her appearance at the convention.
Blah blah blah...
Maybe if you this... and maybe if you that... and maybe if you something else. Blah blah blah... some randomn dollar amount.
Blah blah blah... Snoopy dreams of going back in time and singing on Soul Train.
Blah blah blah... blah!
you betcha.
Do you even make sense to yourself?
But I guess they didn't want the Governor to look bad next to the trolop who wore a $300,000 outfit for her appearance at the convention.
Now to be fair, over half of that $300K was due to one piece of jewelry. Otherwise the two trollops were nearly equally outfitted.
Well at least you picked an amusing monicker.
Liar McCain and Liar Palin want to re-implement negative social changes along the lines of George Wallace, Bull Connor, and Joseph McCarthy, and the continuation and/or acceleration of regressive economic policies that are worse than Herbert Hoover.
Think this is another one of those things that liberals are not allowed to do. Add it to the list along with being angry, inquisitive, loving one's country, and being authentically religious.
Eweston, can you clarify what 'this' refers to, in "Think this is another one of those things..."?
This being, being able to give a positive none threatening "message of change". To properly use "inspiring rhetoric", and carry on in a "confident style". Apparently only Republicans, when they get bored with gutting liberals, can do these things correctly and to the overal benifit of the american population.
It was a big this.
What specifics do we know about Barack Obama's track record that might give us some clue as to what kinds of "changes" to expect if he is elected?---Sowell
We don't need any. He's not running under the banner of a new revolutionary party. Further he's running for an office which has its' power checked by the Congress, the courts, and the states' rights.
Or it used to, before Bush/Cheney got ahold of it.
Show a little respect PigBoy. We Commies now own 520 billion dollars worth of your treasury bills and soon we will have to take something more concrete for our money. Wall Street Investment Banks look like a good target and shares may be available at a good price. Just be sure you adhere to our strict dress codes when you are working for us. By the way the tax rate for income over 100001 dollars is 45%. I'm sure you will appreciate that we will put the money to good use.
While I seriously doubt that Obama would bother trying to be a dictator or despot..... the rightwing nutjobs that voted Bush in would have only themselves to blame....
It was their guys Bush/Cheney that have destroyed the Constitution (USAPATRIOT Act), eviserated the Rule of Law (Gitmo), the the concept of government working for the people (placing wholly unqualified cronyies that had no right being placed in government positions and Katrina: Gulf Coast/Ivan: Galveston), the Military Commisions act..... and so many other un-American laws I can't remember them all.....
If Obama decides to run the government using all the tools given to him by the bastards in there now.... hmmmph... the door has been opened.... and Obama could go there if he wanted.... and thanks to these clowns.... it would all be legal.
I don't think that Obama will however.... and I don't think that Mr Sowell or any other rightwinger with access to a major newspaper or TV or radio show believes he will either..... but the perception that he 'might' is all they need.....
In the hopes that enough American's fall for the made up bullcrap of the corporate rightwing ideology that they help elect the side that most likely will be not much different than Mao or Hitler or Stalin........ Palin/McCain.
Mind you... the Dems will very likely have a veto proof majority in both Houses... but I really can see Palin using the newly conceived powers of a 4th branch of the government Office of the VP (thanks Cheney!) as a way to take powers away from the Congress... recall her answer to that 3rd graders question about what a VP does....
Seriously though...... I truely do believe that the rightwing is using these scare tactics not because they believe ehst they are saying about Obama... but because they believe that there are still enough gullible Americans to get Palin/McCain elected!
If We the People want to at least keep some semblance of our country intact.... we need to go all out and get everone we can to go VOTE! Since short of an all out revolution..... this is all we have at this time!
May whatever spiritual deity that may be watching over this planet..... a helping hand if you would?
What interests me is that Mr. Sowell published a column earlier in October in which he discussed in detail his version of Obama's plans regarding merit pay for teachers, right down to who would allegedly be included and excluded from influencing merit pay (for the record, Sowell ignored what Obama had said and published and instead nursed his paranoid suspiscions). If Sowell has dug all the way down to a policy cellar like merit pay, he certainly is completely informed about Obama's very specific plans and positions on a host of issues. I would love the opportunity to ask Sowell what exactly he intends, then, by all this huffing and puffing about the dangers of empty charisma, but unfortunately there is no posting mechanism or email address at this column's website.
I won’t post what my wife calls him... no doubt that he is a great speaker and can really energize a crowd. I think that linking Obama to some of these past individuals is a little bit out of line.
Some have made that argument that the terrorist organizations around the world also mimic some resemblance of Nazi Germany as well.
Whether or not Obama’s relationships with the reverend whacko Wright or this bill ayers fool are true or to the extent that Obama actually says they are is still up in the air as far as I am concerned. I have heard different things here and there.
It’s funny to me how history repeats itself. I remember a few years back there was a governor of AR who ran for president and during his run, his past was sprinkled with all kinds of alleged controversial dealings and alleged affairs. They haunted him all through his presidency and ended up being impeached by the House of Representatives. I wonder if people remember that.
Yeah, I remember. Republicans spent eight long years trying to pin anything they could to Clinton. And in the end, they could only get him for a consensual affair with a consenting adult. I also remember that he was found innocent and remained in office, because the Senate realized the entire ordeal was a partisan witch hunt.
John McCain has connections to a man, G. Gordon Liddy, who instructs his radio listeners to shoot law enforcement officers in the head. Liddy is a convicted felon, having attempted to subvert our democracy by stealing a presidential election. Liddy has raised funds for McCain, and McCain has appeared on Liddy's radio show during this campaign, and says he is proud to call Liddy his friend.
liddy said that in 94... ayers said in 2001 that he wished he had bombed more. I believe that the entire quote from McCain is "I know Gordon Liddy. He paid his debt. He went to prison and paid his debt, as people do. I'm not in any way embarrassed to know Gordon Liddy."
Wrong on the bomb on misquote. The object was to stop the Vienam war. They acknowledged that this tactic was a failure on that. The bombs were not meant to spread death and destruction. They were a statement of seriouness.
Liddy was talking in the present, Ayers was talking about the past. How can you even make a comparison?
Because he doesn't want to grant legitimacy to an opposing point of view.
I fail to see how a bomb could NOT be for the purpose other than death and or destruction. People need to find better ways of getting their points across.
The comparison is that both individuals have said and done some criminal things. It just seems to me that Obama has a little more of a cloud of suspicion to deal with.
and to geek001 thanks but I can speak for myself
I fail to see how a bomb could NOT be for the purpose other than death and or destruction.
What about the ones that burst in the air to give proof through the night that our flag is still there?
Good one... really.
He wasn't using those types of bombs. The bombs they did use, did explode, and things, property, etc. were destroyed.
and to geek001 thanks but I can speak for myself
Too bad you can't comprehend for yourself, too.
As I noted, they in the end considered the tactic of little use. Did you live through that era? I did, and never considered WU, Black Panthers, etc, any risk to anyones life and limb.
IYO Obama's cloud of suspicion is larger. Why, howcum, an ideological position, or you got any meat to go with it.
Psst--I was mocking your inability to see the world without your kool-aid induced glasses.
Ayers has repeatedly insisted that by his statement he meant that he wished they had done more to stop war. As far as I know, Liddy has not issued any such clarifications about his statements inciting listeners to shoot ATF agents in the head.
Sowell is a tool of the right wing propaganda machine. He exists only to serve the conservative cause, and will lie freely in pursuit of that end. Any column he writes can be picked apart line by line. When you remove the verifiable factual errors and toss out the logical fallacies that he uses to make his points, nothing is left but his byline. If Sowell says it, assume it's untrue until proven otherwise.
Oh, and his employer, the Hoover Institution, is located on the Stanford University campus because they rent office space there. It is not connected with the university in any way.
"inspiring rhetoric and a confident style" - Sounds more liek Ronald Reagan
'more than "specifics."' - Putting aside the whole "You've got to be kidding me!" because I've never heard ANY candidate EVERY be as specific as Obama has been on the campaign trail, this again sounds a lot like Reagan.
And how does 'Jim Jones' even come into the discussion?
Sowell's gone over the deep end. He used to make me think, now he just gives me a headache.
All you need to know about Thomas Sowell is summed up in the following sentence:
Thomsa Sowell and Clarence AThomas are good friends.
BOTH Sowell and Thomas are racist against their own people, they are both more anti-Black than McCain, Palin, McConnell, Lott, Sessions, Baucmann, Delay, and Pat Buchanan, and right wing racist etc., put together.
Note that "The Black Eagle" Joe Madison http://www.joemadison.com, the excellent Black Talk Radio Host on Radio One's http://www.radio-one.com satellite radio network THE POWER on XM 169, invited Sowell to come on his radio show.
Sowell refused to appear unless Madison and Radio One sent him a list of prepared questions in advance. Madison gave an absoulte "NO", saying he doesn't give prepared questions in advance to ANY of his guests.
Being the typical right wing liar that Sowell is, Sowell will deny that either Madison or Radio One ever extended him an invitiation to appear on Madison's show.
"Sowell also falsely claimed that Obama "was against a law forbidding physicians to kill a baby that was born alive despite an attempt to abort it.""
Oh, Media Matters, you are so right. Obama voted "present" on the bill to forbid physicians to kill a baby born alive". Heck, that's not AGAINST the bill. Guess this quote from a Washington Post blog is all lies too, huh?
on behalf of the entire democratic party i would like to thank the right for there ignorance and shallowness. you have helped to move people that arent very political to the light. keep on watching faux news and tune in rush slimeball everyday. we are aware that you cant process a logical thought so you turn on a guy who says to listen to him because you dont have to think on his show he does it for you. it speaks volumes about the entire party.
so again i thank you and i remind you its not to late to leave the dark side.