The Patriot Post - Alexander's Column 12-12-2013

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The Patriot Post - Alexander's Column 12-12-2013
From The Federalist Patriot
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Art of the BIG Lie
'Distorting the Truth Infamously'

By Mark Alexander

Dec. 12, 2013

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” –Article II, Section 1, Constitution of the United States (1787)

No president since Franklin Roosevelt1 has mastered the art of the “Big Lie” as effectively as Barack Hussein Obama2.

In my last Memo to Demos3, I outlined Obama’s litany of lies to win passage of ObamaCare, or as an increasing number of Democrats now prefer to call it4, the “Affordable Care Act.” Having supported this catastrophic behemoth, they now hope that their refusal to utter the word “ObamaCare” will provide them a measure of political protection. The truth, however, is that they are now irrevocably linked to Obama’s repeated bald-faced lies5.

I concur with the assessment of political analyst Jonah Goldberg6 that Obama’s lies are “the biggest lies about domestic policy ever uttered by a U.S. president.”

As politically vulnerable Demos in the Senate are scurrying away from the ObamaCare train wreck, their intrepid leader, Sen. Harry Reid, yet again repeated Obama’s Big Lie: “What he said was true. If you want to keep the insurance you have you can keep it. The problem is, we did not put the bill into effect that way.”

In other words, you can keep your insurance and doctor, except “we did not put the bill into effect that way.” This must be why he exempted some of his staff from ObamaCare.

I was as stupefied by Reid’s reiteration of this now-infamous lie as was the reporter who asked him about it. Is Reid suffering from acute dementia? Has he been imprisoned in some sensory deprivation tank for the last two months? Or is he, like Obama, thoroughly accomplished in the art of the Big Lie? Recall that this audacious technique is a staple of the biggest deceptions propagated by Leftist cadres1 since the rise of Marxism and its murderous manifestations in successive regimes, most notably the National Socialist German Workers' Party from the 1930s through the end of World War II.

Some reading this will question: Really Alexander? Obama and Hitler? Is this another histrionic example of Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1”?

If you’re among those who’d rather dismiss such associations because they seem too strident – or because you want to help maintain Obama’s deception – then your answer is yes. But the fact is, Obama’s lies fit neatly into the Big Lie framework defined by another pathological narcissist7, Adolf Hitler.

Reid’s repetition of Obama’s lie invokes the need to review the origin of Big Lie theory, as well as the proliferation of Big Lie propaganda today.

Adolf Hitler defined the Big Lie in his 1925 autobiography, Mein Kampf, writing that it must be so “colossal” that the public would be confident that no national leaders “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

“In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”

Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, affirmed that “the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. … It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.”

If you still have trouble making the Big Lie connection, perhaps you can make the Socialist connection.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler also wrote of his Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party, or NAZI), “The party … must not become a servant of the masses, but their master.” With respect to the socialist state and individual Liberty, he wrote, “The unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual.”

Hitler’s regime was founded on his premise, “We are Socialists, we are enemies of the capitalistic economic system … and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”

“To be a socialist,” Goebbels affirmed, “is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.”

For those who still find the Big Lie comparison too strident, I refer you to Jacob Hornberger’s paraphrase of the esteemed classical liberal economist Friedrich von Hayek: “There is no difference in principle, between the economic philosophy of Nazism, socialism, communism, and fascism and that of the American welfare state and regulated economy.”