What today’s Democrats really believe, once all their unprincipled exceptions have been removed

(Note: it appears that the photograph is a fake. See discussion below.)

In a neat contrast to President Kennedy’s 1962 tax cut statement, Stogie also posts this:

T-Shirt Describes Obama Supporters’ True Goal

Here’s a picture of an Obama supporter at a campaign rally, wearing a scandalous T-shirt that tells the true goals of Obama and his supporters.

Of course, a single T-shirt worn by a single individual means very little in itself. It is, however, symbolic. I post the photo because I think that it does express what Democrats really believe—the logical end point of all their beliefs.

- end of initial entry -

Dan R. writes:

For an exercise in frustration, try explaining to a Democrat what most of us take for granted: that Obama is a socialist. I find myself making the comparison of the Democrats to the British Labor Party, whose differences are minimal. In fact, in England, where the Conservatives (called Republicans here in the U.S.) are known as “the Tories,” Labor is commonly described as “the Socialists,” but no matter—the Democrats will argue to their last breath that this is not true. To make this argument is, apparently to them, a vestige of McCarthyism. I call it the ultimate in spin and denial.

LA replies:

But calling the Democrats “socialists,” without qualifications, will result in the speaker’s being dismissed as a right-wing ignoramus. Obviously the Democrats are not literally socialists in the sense of seeking government ownership of the means of production. They are, however, essentially socialists in that they seek effective government control of more and more of the economy and of the entire society, starting with the health care industry and spreading out from there, with no principled limit on the areas they seek to control in order to achieve the equality (largely of race and sex) they seek. It seems to me that such caveats must be made when one calls Democrats socialists.

By contrast, Britain’s Labour Party was—at least until Tony Blair remade it as “New Labour” in the 1990s—a socialist party in the literal sense of the word. When they first gained decisive power over the country in 1945, they immediately proceeded to nationalize Britain’s major industries, and they always stood for maintaining and expanding such nationalization.

A reader writes:

The picture shown is photoshopped; this is most obvious because the Obama campaign logo is simply stamped on, but the letters are also not warped in a natural fashion at all. In fact, a Google image shirt suggests the man was actually wearing an un–PC Romney t–shirt and was asked to leave (unless the Romney image is a much, much better alteration):

The story just showed up today, however, and I have not found a reputable news source regarding it (the Huffington Post is the closest, and it’s … the Huffington Post).

LA replies:

But there is a waviness in the letters, suggesting the unevenness of letters on an actual shirt that is being worn.

The reader replies:

Waviness alone is very easy to achieve, the problem is that it does not go with the natural fall of the shirt. I’ve looked around more and the Romney came from Getty. The real tip–off regarding the Obama image is that the campaign symbol is of very high contrast compared to the rest of the photo, and sharp enough to suggest it was sized down from a larger image; I noticed this even at the smaller size used on your blog compared to the linked post. Whether or not it is symbolic is one thing (and I would agree that it is), but it should be noted as fake.

James N. writes:

Here is the original image—your image is a fake.

The reader continues:

I should have also mentioned the heavy pixelation at the top of the shirt, mostly to the right of the logo, where the person doing the alteration tried to smooth out the texture a bit to help the logo look like it was blending. If you compare this to the original image (which is available in higher resolution) it is very obvious.

Ken Hechtman writes:

There’s also no way in the world anybody wearing such a T-shirt could get inside an Obama rally. I had a couple of friends who worked on the campaign four years ago and they told me how heavy-handed the censorship was at those rallies. All home-made signs, without exception, were confiscated at the door and replaced with fake home-made signs. Women in hijabs were made to change seats so they couldn’t be photographed in frame with Obama from any angle — that one made the news when two of them complained.

Because of all that, as soon as I saw the picture I started looking for evidence it was fake, but your other readers found it first.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 14, 2012 07:24 PM | Send