The article that follows uses the term
USEFUL
IDIOTS. I suspect that many will read the phrase as though it
is a commentary on the IQ of the people that are mentioned.
It has nothing to do with their IQ or their artistic talents:
(Excerpt from INFO.com)
"The term is commonly attributed to Vladimir Lenin, sometimes in the form
'useful idiots of the West', to describe those Western reporters and travelers
who would endorse the Soviet Union and its policies in the West."
Howard Zinn (left) with the very serious-looking
actor Viggo
Mortensen
The small-screen version of Marxist
historian Howard Zinn’s leftward-slanted history of America, The
People Speak, aired Sunday night on the History Channel.
The film, based on Zinn’s influential
book, A
People’s History of the United States, is chock full of useful
idiot celebrities including Matt Damon, Marisa Tomei, Morgan Freeman, Viggo
Mortensen, Sean
Penn, Bruce Springsteen, and its executive producer Josh Brolin, all
parroting the radical platitudes written for them.
One
scene in the shlockumentary tells the story of an organizer-agitator
who rallied tenants against landlords during the Great Depression. In the
current recession, “We’ve seen examples of people rebelling,” said Zinn.
“We’ve seen tenants rebelling
against foreclosures. This is the kind of thing that happened in a much
larger scale in the 1930s.”
Added Zinn, “If this spreads — the idea
of fighting foreclosures, the idea of workers going on strike — it’s possible
this can lead into a larger movement for
economic
justice.”
This is what the radical community organizers
of ACORN
do. ACORN
is about causing upheaval that will ignite social change. The group
cares little about abstractions about justice: it is focused on revolution.
Through its support for the financial
affirmative action program known as the Community
Reinvestment Act, ACORN has played a major role in the subprime mortgage
mess that has undermined Americans’ support for free market problem-solving
and set off a worldwide chain of financial troubles. It is also implicated
in vote fraud schemes from coast to coast. ACORN aims to give America change
that socialists can believe in – by any means necessary.
Last week the House Appropriations Committee
rejected on a party line vote an amendment that would have blocked federal
funding of the radical advocacy group. The amendment was needed because
the Obama
administration thumbed its nose at a provision in spending legislation
that banned ACORN funding until Dec. 18.
In a ruling revealed late last month
by the Justice Department the
Obama administration invented a loophole allowing the government to
continue funding the president’s friends at ACORN. Through the magic of
legal interpretation, the language forbidding funding the group was transformed
into a requirement not “to refuse payment on binding contractual
obligations that predate” the original funding ban. U.S.
District Judge Nina Gershon, a Bill
Clinton
appointee, helped ACORN out by offering the Obama administration
political cover by issuing a
temporary injunction prohibiting Congress from cutting off funding
for ACORN.
The bottom line is that the ACORN funding
language –rendered useless by the Justice Department– remains in the massive
fiscal 2010 spending measure now on its way to President Obama for his
signature.
The bailout should be music to the ears
of Rep. Jerrold
Nadler (D-N.Y.), a huge fan of ACORN who has given thousands of dollars
over the years to the ACORN network. Nadler urged ACORN’s lawyer to sue
the government, arguing that a ban on funding constituted a “bill of attainder.”
