The Medal of Anti-Freedom

Among Obama’s list of Medal of Freedom winners are some obvious choices:  astronaut John Glenn, Shimon Peres (current president of Israel, although he was the Labor Party leader and influential in Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, a huge mistake for that country), and Nazi resistance fighter Jan Karski.  Down at the bottom of the list was a not-so-obvious choice:  Dolores Huerta, co-founder (along with Cesar Chavez) of the National Farm Workers Association, which ultimately because the United Farm Workers of America.

Huerta is somewhat akin to a Holocaust denier or 9/11 truther, in that she believes California and our southwestern states belong to Mexico (who didn’t want the territory at the time because it couldn’t populate it well enough to mine its vast mineral resources, and ultimately sold it to the United States).

Huerta is also a member of the virulently anti-Capitalist Democratic Socialists of America.  In fact, nearly all of Obama’s choices are inspired by their socialism.  John Paul Stevens is considered by some to be the most Liberal justice on the Supreme Court (he did vote against flag-burning, to be fair).  Sixties rock legend Bob Dylan needs no introduction. Other DSA members include Frances Fox Piven, Noam Chomsky, actor Edward Asner, former NYC mayor David Dinkins, Gloria Steinem, Ruth Messinger (Manhattan Borough President under David Dinkins), and Cornel West (civil rights activist whose heroes include Malcolm X, the original Black Panthers, and black theologist James Cone).

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a democratic socialist and social-democratic  organization in the United States and the U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International, an international federation of social-democratic, democratic socialist and labor political parties and organizations.  The DSA was formed in 1982 by a merger of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the New American Movement (NAM).  Under the leadership of Michael Harrington, DSOC  became America’s largest democratic socialist organization, despite having started, in Harrington's words, as ‘the remnant of a remnant’ with Harrington having been the leader of a minority caucus of the Socialist Party of America in 1972 when it changed its name to Social Democrats, USA.  NAM was a coalition of writers and intellectuals with roots in both the New Left movements of the 1960s and the former members of socialist and communist parties of the Old Left.

Initially the DSA consisted of approximately 5,000 ex-DSOC members and 1,000 ex-NAM members. Upon the DSA's founding, Harrington and socialist-feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich were elected as co-chairs of the organization.  The DSA's leadership believes working within the Democratic Party is necessary because of the nature of the American political system, which rarely gives third parties a chance politically. That said, DSA is very critical of the corporate-funded Democratic Party leadership. 

The organization believes that, “Much of progressive, independent political action will continue to occur in Democratic Party primaries in support of candidates who represent a broad progressive coalition. In such instances, democratic socialists will support coalitional campaigns based on labor, women, people of color and other potentially anti-corporate elements... Electoral tactics are only a means for democratic socialists; the building of a powerful anti-corporate coalition is the end...”

DSA is organized at the local level, and works with labor unions, community organizations, and campus activists on issues of common interest. Nationwide campaigns are coordinated by the organization's national office in New York City.  As of 2006^[update], the DSA website lists 24 chartered locals.

As for Mexican-American Huerta, she’s not only anti-capitalism, but anti-American.  According to Glenn Beck she stated that white people are the “enemies” of Latinos.  Or in her case, Chicanos.  She was instrumental in, among other things, providing welfare for illegal immigrants. 

Huerta started out life as a teacher but soon abandoned her teaching career because she felt she “could do more by organizing farm workers than teaching their hungry children.”  Her philosophy seeded the nursery for a permanent underclass, rather than educating a future workforce that could advance beyond the San Joaquin Valley.  It was the beginning of her “lifelong crusade to correct economic injustice.”

Huerta has received numerous awards for her work including Eugene V. Debs Foundation Outstanding American Award and the United State Presidential Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights.  Don’t be too impressed by the Debs Foundation’s use of “Outstanding American” in its award title.   Eugene Debs, an American union leader, was one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and several times the Socialist Party of America candidate for President of the United States.  Through his presidential candidacies, as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known Socialists living in the United States.

So this is what passes for “freedom” in Obama’s America.  Not individual freedom, individual achievement, success, and honor, not life, liberty, and the pursuit of one’s own happiness, but collective salvation, a centralized government that will micromanage American life, and coerce its units to sacrifice everything for the collective good.  Freedom in Obama’s America means “free stuff”, life without individual responsibility or choices.  Life without initiative.

Life without freedom.