Robert Ringer's Voice of Insanity

Robert Ringer made his name in the 1970s as the author of Me Decade motivational classics like "Winning Through Intimidation" and "Looking Out for Number One." Ringer has brought that kind of selfish intimidation approach to his WorldNetDaily column, begun in October 2006 and, after a year-and-a-half layoff, resumed in November 2008.

Ringer's column may be titled "A Voice of Sanity," but it's really the opposite -- what Ringer apparently views as intimidation comes off as an insane brew of paranoia and hysteria directed at President Obama.

Representative of this approach is Ringer's Dec. 11, 2009, column, which he begins by explaining why he will never acknowledge Obama is the president:

Most readers have probably not noticed it, but in all the articles I've written about BHO, I have never referred to him as "President Obama" except when quoting someone else. As you might have assumed, this has not been by accident.

I'll never forget the time I was standing in line at a bookstore, chatting with someone about BHO. A stranger standing a couple of people away from me overheard my comments and abruptly admonished me, "Whether you like it or not, he's our president."

To which I responded, "He may be your president, but he's not mine." That was the end of any thought I may have had about conceding and accepting the fact that BHO had been elected to the highest office in the land. The reason I have never seen BHO as the president of the United States is because he swore to uphold the Constitution, but from the day he took an oath to that effect, he immediately began violating it.

Ringer continued by lying about Obama:

And, clearly, Obama had a dysfunctional life growing up -- a white Marxist mother, a black African Muslim father who was a drunk and a philanderer, then, of all things, an Indonesian Muslim stepfather. And, of course, there were the years he spent in a Wahabbi Muslim school in Indonesia (Wahabbi schools being most famous for teaching students hatred of Western countries).

The idea that Obama attended a radical madrassa in Indonesia, of course, was disproven almost as soon as it was first made nearly three years before Ringer regurgitated it.

Ringer went on to claim that Obama isn't evil but merely "a man without a soul. And, as soulless individual, his actions are not hampered by trivial moral considerations."

Ringer used his April 2 column to bizarrely theorize that Obama is deliberately provoking civil unrest to establish a dictatorship:

But if BHO truly has his mind set on establishing a dictatorship -- and it is my personal belief that he does -- it's too risky for him to wait for a runaway inflation as an excuse to call a state of emergency. He knows that as long as there is a semblance of a free market in place, producers will continue to push back against the economy-killing effects of his policies.

Thus, he needs another excuse to declare a state of emergency. In previous articles, I've mentioned a nuke exchange between Iran and Israel as one possibility. Another is civil unrest due to unemployment rates that could reach 25 percent or more in the not-too-distant future.

These and others still remain possibilities, but last week Glenn Beck came up with one that may be even more likely. Beck believes that Obama will continue to keep the accelerator pressed to the floor - amnesty for illegal immigrants, a cap-and-trade bill that will eliminate the U.S. as a global business competitor, and more -- thus enraging an already angry public to the point of revolution.

In other words, purposely foment "civil unrest" rather than wait for something like unemployment or runaway inflation to make it happen. As Beck puts it, just continue to poke people in the eye, then use their predictable and justifiable backlash as an excuse to establish dictatorial powers.

[...]

Yep, I believe Glenn Beck might be on to something. But if the American public refuses to take the bait and doesn't resort to violence, BHO will have to go to Plan B to have an excuse to declare a state of emergency.

Having said all this, don't despair. No one, including myself, can predict the future with certainty. In a rapidly changing world, nothing is certain - which is why I don't make predictions; I just lay odds. And here are my odds based on what I know and see today:

• The chances of a declared state of emergency and ensuing dictatorship prior to the 2010 elections: 25 percent

• The chances of a declared state of emergency and ensuing dictatorship prior to the 2012 elections: 50 percent

• The chances of the Republicans cutting back on major entitlements if they regain power in the 2010 elections: zero

• The chances of the Republicans cutting back on major entitlements if they win the presidency and an overwhelming majority in Congress in 2012: 5 percent

Of course, I could be wrong about all this ... but what if I'm right?

Ringer pushed the dictatorship idea again in his July 2 column:

We should not allow ourselves to become emotionally engrossed in oil spills, riots in Greece and foiled terrorist plots. Instead, it is imperative that we relentlessly focus on our loss of liberty. Any of these and a thousand-and-one other ''crises'' could be used as an excuse for BHO to invoke an Obomination Sedition Act, which, in turn, could be used as an excuse to ''postpone'' elections in 2010 or 2012 for ''security reasons.''

Warning: Be on the alert for one crisis after another between now and November – and take the time to study the facts about each of them carefully. Some will be trumped up; some will be real but overblown by both the government and the media. But none will be an honest justification for BHO's taking yet more freedoms away from Americans.

Don't allow yourself to become distracted by IMF and G-20 riots, Joe Biden's custard outings or Al Gore's massages. Ignore most of the rubbish you see on television and stay focused on the real issue: our loss of freedom!

These are far from the only examples of Ringer's Obama derangement. His column is replete with them:

Gov. Palin, if you want angry Americans – those who are now in the majority! – to take you seriously, here are some cheat notes for you to use in future interviews and speeches:

Barack Obama is a socialist (or, more properly, a Marxist). Say it!

Barack Obama, it obviously follows, is a radical. Say it!

Barack Obama has surrounded himself with Marxists and other radicals who want to fundamentally change America. Say it!

Barack Obama is a liar. Say it!

Barack Obama is the least transparent president in U.S. history. Say it!

Barack Obama wants to get a government-controlled health-care plan and a cap-and-trade bill passed for one reason and one reason only: to gain total control over people's lives. Say it!

-- Nov. 20, 2009

I was at the D.C. rally, and I can tell you that the voices were not shrill, though some of them were at times loud – as well they should have been. But take a cue from Che Prez, because he comes from the ranks of the enemy – the enemy who invented loud and shrill.

You may not be old enough to remember the antics of the hippies in the '60s, but they mastered the art of loud and shrill to move the country irreversibly to the left. Loud and shrill ended the Vietnam War. Loud and shrill kicked the deadly "green movement" into high gear. Loud and shrill reduced God's role to that of a bench player. And loud and shrill brought Barack Hussein Obama out of the manger and into your wallet.

-- Sept. 18, 2009

The Duplicitous Despot and his criminal minions – most notably David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Anita Dunn, and Mark Lloyd – are out to shut down Fox News. No subtlety about it. They take seriously Mao's belief that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. After all, Anita Bandita looks to Chairman Mao when it comes to her philosophical inspiration.

[...]

When the reincarnation of Al Capone, David Axelrod, says of Fox that "It's really not news – it's pushing a point of view," it would be laughable if the stakes weren't so high. But as Tucker Carlson said, it's outrageous for a liar like Axelrod to say that Fox News commentators aren't being truthful.

It's like the schoolyard bully claiming that it was really his victim who bullied him. The bullies at the Kremlin House in Washington, of course, are all too aware that Fox is really the only station that is actually reporting the news, while the fringe media (ABC, CBS and NBC), along with CNBC and MSNBC, are going to great lengths to keep their viewers in the dark about what is really happening – particularly in Washington.

[...]

If I ever believe that we're getting close to that point, you'll read about it here first. In the meantime, let's be thankful that our illustrious president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, because I have heard from a reliable, high-level source that he barely beat out three other equally worthy opponents for this great honor: Bernie Madoff, Charles Manson and Michael Vick.

-- Oct. 30, 2009

Though millions of us knew from the start that BHO was a fraud, few imagined that, once in office, he would arrogantly thumb his nose at the American electorate. BHO has great difficulty hiding his disdain for the tea-party people, Fox News and anyone else who opposes his policies.

I don't know how many Democrats will have the courage to stand up to BHO, but you can be sure that he will threaten and punish those who do not fall into line. In his eyes, he was not elected president of the U.S.; he was anointed monarch. He has absolutely no interest in what the electorate thinks.

-- Feb. 5

If you hadn't already caught him in hundreds of lies, you'd swear that BHO is totally sincere and truthful when he speaks. And, as I have previously pointed out, what makes him so convincing is that he is soulless. From Stalin to Mao, from Castro to Ho Chi Minh, from Chavez to Obama, I believe that the reason left-wing fascists are able to do whatever it takes to achieve their objectives – from lying to genocide – is that they are devoid of souls. That's because soullessness is a prerequisite to being a ruthless dictator.

After all, a soul can be a nuisance. It gets in the way of revolutions. It gets in the way of eliminating your perceived enemies. It gets in the way of remaking the world in one's own egotistical image. It gets in the way of establishing one's moral superiority in deciding who should get how much of the fruits of someone else's labor.

-- April 9

The BHO oligarchy has managed to change the Big Question from "Is Obama a socialist?" to "Is the tea-party movement dangerously immersed in racism, hate speech and violence-prone affiliations with paramilitary groups?" Never sell the Saul Alinsky crowd short when it comes to turning every negative around and pointing it in the direction of its accusers.

I honestly believe that Der Fuhrbama believes his verbal skills are so powerful that he can embarrass the tea-party people into submission. He may be a lightweight in most respects, but he's a lightweight with an abundance of (over)confidence. The tea-party people had better take a page from "Rules from Radicals" and press down twice as hard on the accelerator, lest they lose their momentum long before Nov. 2.

-- April 23

Maybe I've been living on a different planet, but it seems to me that Der Fuhrbama's approval ratings have been gently moving back and forth between the low and high 40s for as long as I can remember. Nothing he does, no matter how anti-constitutional, how criminal or how arrogant, seems to faze 40-plus percent of the population.

I understand the roughly 30 percent who want the United States to become a hard-core socialist nation. They have a sincere desire to redistribute wealth and live under an all-powerful central government. I get it. They're a visible enemy, and you're conscious of the fact that you have to push back against them day in and day out.

But the other 10-15 percent – those who don't want to live under a socialist regime, yet still approve of the job BHO is doing – are the ones who have head-scratchers like myself so puzzled. Do they ever watch anything but sports and "Ice Road Truckers" on television? Do they ever read nonfiction adult books or watch Fox News? Are their legs hopelessly trapped in an irreversible tingling mode caused by the realization that an African-American is living in the White House? Are they simply not able to get over it?

-- June 25

When he's not spewing Obama-hate, Ringer has used his column to peddle related issues in a similarly belligerent, factually challenged way. In his Feb. 19 column, he wrote that "If compassionate politicians are really serious about lowering unemployment, the first two things they should do is eliminate unemployment benefits and abolish minimum-wage laws." Why? "The fact is that when people say they can't find a job, what they often mean is they can't find the job they want, at the wage they want, under the working conditions they want – which means that high unemployment is, to a great extent, a result of workers simply refusing to accept low-paying jobs, preferring instead to live off of government largesse."

Related articles on ConWebWatch: Ellis Washington: Flamboyantly Wrong The Other (And More Hateful) Rush The Unrepentant Janet Porter Molotov Mitchell's Gay-Bashing Follies

In his July 9 column, Ringer advocated, in addition to term limits for Supreme Court appointees, stripping voting rights from federal employees, so they would not be "able to vote to assure that their neighbors will be forced to continue paying for their cushy lives."

Ringer had even more trouble with facts in his July 18 column. After asserting that "Obama has been following FDR's dictatorial playbook to the T," he wrote: "In his 1937 inaugural address, at a time when unemployment was still rising (15 percent on Inauguration Day), FDR bodaciously said, 'Our progress out of the Depression is obvious.'" In fact, unemployment was not "still rising" in 1937; it was falling -- from 24.9 percent in 1933 to 14.3 percent in 1937.

Ringer, however, essentially gave away his game in his Jan. 1 column, in which he described Saul Alinsky this way: "Like all crusade leaders, he clearly had a huge ego – an ego that made him comfortable in the role of arbiter of right and wrong." This is clearly not a criticism of the man, because Ringer has repeatedly exercised his own ego in declaring himself moral arbiter over Alinsky and Obama.

Just two paragraphs after making that statement, Ringer engaged his ego again, pronouncing his judgment in "psychoanalyzing Saul Alinsky" by declaring him to be "a man in search of a cause ... in search of a following to carry on an ill-defined campaign against the power elite." Again, that sounds like Ringer is describing himself.

That's followed up by his once again declaring Obama to be "soulless," adding: "In Obama, I see no laughter, no beauty, no love, and no creativity." What is his evidence for this claim? What empirical basis did he use to declare this? Who knows? He felt no need to share what, if any, standards he's using with his readers.

It seems that Ringer is on nothing more than an ego trip, trying to win through intimidation by using his column at an extremist website and his alleged status as, according to his end-of-column bio, "author of three No. 1 best-sellers, including two books listed by the New York Times among the 15 best-selling motivational books of all time" as a shield around his vicious hatred of Obama.

All of which makes the name of his column, "A Voice of Sanity," increasingly delusional. After all, isn't it the crazy ones who keep insisting that they're sane?