Socialist Infiltration of America

by

Gadfly

We are hearing a lot more about socialism in the current news.  Older generations understand the irony and danger in this development, because they are closer to the history of its nihilism and brutality.  Younger generations are not so concerned because they have been exposed to a different “education.”

For older generations, they know socialism led to the death of millions in its communist and fascist manifestations.  They are sisters of socialism.  Communism is its leftward manifestation and fascism a rightward (still well left of the political center) manifestation.

 

The left loves to demonize white supremacy or white nationalism as a right-wing phenomenon.  Right-wing based on what?  The political center?  The socialist center?

I contend classical liberalism (individual liberty, private property, limited government, free market/free enterprise grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition) is the political center of a Constitutional Republic, with leftward manifestations being lesser adherence whereas greater adherence is rightward leaning.  Socialism is a left of center ideology.  Economic freedom is right of center.

Racial supremacy is contrary to the notion of classical liberalism because the latter’s fundamental view of humanity is one of equality and individual liberty.  Any notion of privilege or supremacy is contrary to this philosophy.  Is it any wonder then that leftist social justice achieves its full potential by coercively applying privilege as in affirmative action measures, redistribution of wealth, proposals for reparations, and so forth?  Recall that the last surviving commandment in Orwell’s socialistic Animal Farm was, “All animals are created equal, some are more equal than others.”

Am I suggesting that the Republican Party, as a right of center political party practices classical liberalism?  For the most part, yes.  Modern conservatism is mostly aligned with classical liberalism.  Unfortunately, once in office, Republicans tend to capitulate on the levels of spending that violate a limited government principle.  This is the hubris of power in modern politics.  The most to blame for this corruption, however, is the general public—Americans who are living in comfort zones and essentially outsourcing self-governance to a small percentage of elected and unelected officials.

Younger generations have not been taught any of socialism’s history.  Rather, the focus has been a new form of patriotism:  a progressive patriotism that looks toward a perfected future—utopia.  It is pure socialism.  Progressives have been successful in taking prayer out of schools and other public venues, facilitating a trend toward atheistic nihilism.  According to Gallup surveys, those affiliating with Judeo-Christian religions have decreased by well over 30% since 1956 (when 99% of those surveyed affiliated with Judeo-Christian religions).  Other surveys show similar declines in church membership, with Catholics showing the sharpest decrease (likely a result of the public narratives on abuse scandals—even though there are mitigating circumstances such as communist and homosexual infiltration as reported by Bella Dodd in here memoir, School of Darkness and Enrique Rueda’s analysis of the homosexual political movement in The Homosexual Network:  Private Lives and Public Policy). These trends allow the state to increasingly fill in as the moral authority.

 

Marx would be proud of socialism’s success in America.  Education has played a critical role.  In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, education is mentioned 68 times.  The Manifesto states: “All children will be educated in state establishments from the time when they can do without the first maternal care.”  Colorado just approved funding for all-day kindergarten.  Nation-wide, teacher’s unions exercise tremendous power in classroom curricula, manipulating the composition of school boards, and funding political candidates.

Closely related to the role of education by the state is the need to dismantle the family—that is, a traditional family with a mother and father and children.  Marx believed the family was a critical foundation for capitalism.  Current political movements to disrupt the traditional family are critical to achieving socialism.  The fact that many suffer moral injury are of no concern—they are instruments in the overall cause.

In memorializing his experience as a prominent British Communist, Douglas Hyde, in his book I Believed, described communist infiltration efforts when Churchill became an ally to Joseph Stalin:

In that campaign, [sic] experience was gained which not long after came near to bringing about the affiliation of the Communist Party to the Labour Party.  In addition, important new contacts were made in trade union and cultural circles in particular which are still being exploited to this day.

The British Labour Party is similar to America’s Democrat Party.  In addition to exploiting teacher’s unions, the Communist Party clearly exploits all unions, to include those to which a significant percentage of government employees belong at the federal, state, county, and municipal levels.  Examples of these unions include the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO), the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE),  American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the National Education Association (NEA), and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), among others.

Randi Weingarten, President of AFT, demonstrated socialist ideology in a recent column, “A Defining Moment for Democracy.”  The message was very anti-Trump and socialist in its themes.  Communism emphasizes “democracy” as a necessary condition for socialism.  This is why today’s public-school education avoids the founder’s rationale for a republic because they knew the dangers of democracy.

Assuming the reader agrees with the argument that socialists (many use the label progressive or modern liberal) have controlled the education process to facilitate socialism, then how do they control the political process?  They use tried and proven methods as clearly described by Douglas Hyde in his more recent book, Dedication and Leadership.  The following is an excerpt from the book’s back cover:

On March 14, 1948, Douglas Hyde handed in his resignation as the news editor of the London Daily Worker and wrote “the end” to twenty years of his life as a member of the Communist Party. A week later, in a written statement, Hyde announced that he had renounced Communism and, with his wife and children, was joining the Catholic Church. 

The long pilgrimage from Communism to Christ carried Douglas Hyde from complete commitment to Marxism, to a questioning uneasiness about Soviet Russia’s glaring contradictions of ideology and action, to a final rejection of the Party.

In Dedication and Leadership, he advances the theory that although the goals and aims of Communism are antithetical to human dignity and the rights of the individual, there is much to be learned from communist methods, cadres and psychological motivation. Hyde describes the Communist mechanics of instilling dedication, the first prerequisite for leadership. Here is the complete rationale of party technique: how to stimulate the willingness to sacrifice; the advisability of making big demands to insure a big response; the inspirational indoctrination; and the subtle conversion methods.

According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), there are 3,141 counties and county equivalents in the 50 States and the District of Columbia.  The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) employed its 50/3000 model during the 2018 midterm elections.  That is, CPUSA has active cells in 3,000 counties in 50 states.  John Bachtell, national leader of CPUSA, boasted that they were successful in generating 12 million more votes (45 million versus 33 million) for Democrat candidates.  As in their success in aligning with the British Labour Party in the past century, the Communist Party has blatantly aligned with today’s American Democrat Party.

CPUSA gets a lot of support and collaboration.  The media, Silicon Valley (see, for example, this disturbing Congressional testimony), and Hollywood cabal control the public narrative, to include technology and smear tactics to censor opposing views.  Groups like Media Matters for America and the American Independent Institute.

 

The leading think tank for the progressive movement is the Center for American Progress.  It was founded by former President Clinton’s Chief of Staff, John Podesta.  While the infamous Wikileaks publications during the summer of 2016 featured sinister actions by Podesta, the left’s concern was less about actual content and more about the fact that this information was made public.  In their opinion, only “trusted” leftist sources such as The New York Times or The Washington Post are allowed to “leak” sensitive information.

Another organization, Organizing for Action (OFA), has recently changed its www.ofa.us link to a page called All On the Line.  Its predecessor names were Obama for America (OFA), Organizing for America (OFA), and then Organizing for Action (OFA).  Here is a recent progress report by Katie Hogan, Executive Director of Organizing for Action.  She reports:

62,243 people trained on skills needed to make an impact at no cost to them

7,572,171 online action-takers

145 active chapters from coast to coast

30,924 grassroots events in all 50 states and D.C.

OFA is just warming up, and it can count on healthy funding from the Obama Foundation, which is a magnet for progressive donors.  It is not limited to America.  Socialism is not bound by national borders.  The socialist mantra, “workers unite” has a global thrust.

More specifics on progressive tactics were captured in a recent Patriot Post article.  The tactic involves converting red counties into blue counties.  It involves dark money.  The article provides specific details on how they templated the tactics with a county in Tennessee.

  

The purpose of my book, The 2012 Political Contest in America:  Conversations with a Gadfly, was to sound an alarm about the progressive (socialist) movement in America.  At the time, some wanted to compare Obama to Lincoln.  I disagreed and presented a case that Obama was more aligned with Vladimir Lenin.  The following table from p. 64 of the book is included here with permission.

Among the Bolsheviks, Lenin was considered a demigod who tailored Marxism for the Russian people.  That is why we still refer to Marxism-Leninism to describe Communism in Russia, the former Soviet Union, and in China (even today).  Here is a cartoon that reflects anti-Bolshevik sentiment that Lenin (in the red robe) sacrificed Russia to a statue of Marx.  Note:  Lenin advanced the Bolshevik Party, also known as the Russian Social Democrat Labour Party.

Not widely published (let alone recognized) is Obama’s Lenin-style and demigod arrogance.  Despite it’s recent history for slanted coverage, On March 26, 2018, CNN reported on Obama’s wish to clone millions in his and Michelle’s images.  Here is the headline: “Obama hopes to create ‘a million young Barack Obamas or Michelle Obamas’.”  The article starts off saying: "Former President Barack Obama says he aspires to create 'a million young Barack Obamas or Michelle Obamas' who will pick up the baton in what he describes as the 'relay race that is human progress.'"  This is exactly the method Communists employ in achieving "dedication" that Douglas writes about in his memoir, I Believed, and in Dedication and Leadership. The following is the picture that accompanied the article.

        In closing, those of us who firmly believe in a Constitutional Republic--gifted to us by Founders and Framers who pledged their Lives, Fortunes, and sacred Honor--should all be asking to what extent the former Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev was correct when, speaking at the National Press Club in 1957, he declared to America:

. . . I can prophesy that your grandchildren in America will live under socialism.  And please do not be afraid of that.  Your grandchildren will not understand how their grandparents did not understand the progressive nature of a socialist society” (cited in J. Edgar Hoover’s book, Masters of Deceit, 1958, p. 3).

Today’s talk about socialism is not mere rhetoric and wishful thinking.  It is here.  Either give in to it and prepare for its inevitable slide into brutal tyranny, or fight it.  We can do this peacefully at the ballot box and in respectful conversations.

 

Until Democrats distance themselves from the Marxist utopian ideology that is American progressivism, a vote for a Democrat is a vote for socialism.   

A Conflict of Values

by

Gadfly

                Yesterday, I received a report about a member of the U.S. Navy who was discharged for dishonoring our National Anthem.  According to The Florida Times-Union,

On Sept. 19, [2017] Petty Officer 2nd Class Janaye Ervin reportedly refused to salute during “morning colors,” a daily 8 a.m. raising of the flag, a Navy spokesman told The Washington Post. . . .

She gave an interview to International Business Times in which she said she was checking the latest news before starting work for government contractor Leidos at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickham in Hawaii and saw a report on the death of a black man who was shot and killed by a local police officer on a road in Tulsa, Okla.

“That was the last story I saw before the song started playing, and I was really sad and I just didn’t want to stand at that moment,” Ervin said

.

She thought, “I can’t stand for this song knowing that the song isn’t for me, being black. The song doesn’t represent me at all.”

Obviously, Ervin experienced a serious conflict of values.  One can only infer that the values in conflict were patriotism and group identity.  Ervin’s notion of patriotism was to a more perfect union, one that promotes equality and retributive justice based on the ghost of slavery.

 

The institution of slavery is too often demagogued without the historical context.  Slavery was a global institution at the time.  Our nation’s Founders recognized the immorality of this institution, and in the Declaration of Independence declared “all men are created equal.”  There were no qualifiers.  They were optimistic that, in time, the slavery issue would be resolved.

The other value is group identity.  This is very tribal.  It also reflects a distinction Hayek makes in Fatal Conceit:  The Errors of Socialism.  That is, societies reflect a set of behaviors that span a continuum from instinct to reason.  To manage the tension between these ends of the spectrum, customs, norms, and traditions are created.  Thus, to base an analysis of the world from a group identity perspective reflects an “instinct” orientation that is resistant to facts contrary to reason in favor of what one wants to believe.

Ervin’s little episode brought back a memory from 1976.  My wife, two daughters and I were stationed at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas.  I was a first lieutenant serving as a personnel officer in the group that supported the School of Cryptological Sciences (a training unit in support of the United States Security Service, now known as the National Security Agency [NSA]).

The episode involved a conversation during a master’s degree course. About a third of the class were blacks assigned to the Social Actions Office (focused on instilling a nondiscriminatory culture).  Somehow, the discussion evolved to patriotism and the black students became critical of the concept.  I suggested that as members of the armed forces, not being patriotic seemed contrary to what was expected of the profession.  They disagreed.

  

So, I confronted them:  "Do you feel respect for the American flag and the Constitution and way of life it represents?"  They said no.  Then all raised a fist and said “our allegiance is to black power.”

  

I warned them that if I were to report this incident, they might be subject to disciplinary action if not dismissal from the military; but since this was a classroom, I would grant them the anonymity of academic non-attribution.  Further, if they had any pride in not being a hypocrite, they needed to adjust their attitudes or leave the profession of arms.

 

They were respectful and appeared to be listening to what I had to say.  So, I acknowledged that racism remained an issue and this rightfully justified the Social Actions Office they populated.  The key, I believed, was to identify racist comments and acts and then to educate when possible or hold incorrigible violators accountable when necessary.  After all is done and said, tit-for-tat moral reasoning will make us no better than we have ever been.

Ironically, shortly after this episode, I was appointed as an investigating officer for a racial incident at one of the two gates that allowed access to the base.  My preparatory interview with the Wing Commander, Colonel Norma Brown (first female commander of an active duty wing in the United States Air Force and later a major general), was interesting.  After a few moments, she leaned forward and bluntly asked me if I was a chauvinist.  I told her, “Ma’am, I do not know what the word means, so maybe yes or maybe no.”  She then asked if I resented working for a woman.  I said, “No Ma’am, I’m just uncomfortable working for a full bird colonel.”

To make a long story short, the car full of black civilians sought access to the base to meet up with friends at the Noncommissioned Officer’s Club on a Friday night.  None of the civilians in the car had a military identification card that would allow entry.  The gate guard turned them away and then alerted the only other gate guard with a description of the car and occupants.  A few minutes later, the car arrived at the other gate.  Instead of turning the occupants of the car away, a young airman began to intimidate each member in the car, eventually having them exit the vehicle to be frisked.  The frisking was completely unjustified. The supervising noncommissioned officer (NCO) never intervened.

There were issues with this incident that stemmed from a lack of respect for rules (trying to get unauthorized access to a heavily protected facility) and racism, but more so from a violation of other principles, such as discipline, accountability, and so forth.  Upon my recommendations, each black civilian involved received a personal apology from Colonel Brown, three NCOs received letters of reprimand (which kept them from promotion for two years), and the security forces squadron commander received an Article 15 (administrative punishment in lieu of a court martial—which kept this officer from promotion) for allowing an unhealthy and unprofessional culture in the security forces squadron.

There were no winners in the Goodfellow case.  In different ways, all the players involved made decisions based on personal interest that was not congruent with the common good.

As we observe the current jockeying of Democrat presidential candidates, some boldly push for reparations for slavery.  At least one now calls for reparations to members of the LGBT community who were earlier denied equal rights, such as marriage.  Sadly, the motivation for these calls is to generate votes.  “If you vote for me, I’m going to give you something.”  This involves robbing Peter (taxation) to pay Paul (redistribution of wealth).

What values are in play with these candidates?

 

Certainly, no single living black person in America is or has ever been a slave.  Nor has any nonblack living person in America ever owned a slave.  Yet, the notion of reparations implies that nonblacks (we hear a lot about “white privilege”) should pay for the crime of slavery to benefit blacks who have never been a slave.  The value at play here is equality.  Therefore, to achieve equality based on historical behaviors, today’s blacks must be made to be more equal than nonblacks.  Does this sound like tit for tat reasoning?  Absolutely; except today’s Americans—both black and nonblack--get to be used as pawns in order for presidential candidates to achieve political power.

To further argue the absurdity of today’s political left, a new movement is spreading across America, called civic religion.  In a New York Times article, “Preaching Faith in Democracy,” we learn that after the election of Donald Trump, co-founders Eric Liu and Jena Cane, formed a nonprofit organization called Citizen University.  As an example of the training, one of the disciples of the first cohort “asked those in attendance to raise their hands if they thought that liberty was a core American value.  Then she asked them to raise their hands if they thought equality was a core American value.  Then she said: ‘Think of liberty and equality on a continuum.  What’s more important to you?’”

This is the type of dichotomy the left likes to create:  liberty versus equality; socialism versus capitalism.  They make us think we can have either liberty or equality.  One or the other; not both.  In a socialist system, this is true.  This is why individual liberty is taken away to ensure equality for the masses by a ruling elite.

 

This dichotomy also explains why the left pushes socialism as a remedy for the evils of capitalism.  In their narrative, capitalism results in inequality.  Yet, even a socialist system requires capitalism for any production of goods.  The difference is who controls the production.  Greed exists in any system.  In socialist regimes, the ruling elite live like kings and queens.  Politically, capitalism is exploited by those on the entire political spectrum through the phenomenon of crony capitalism.  Socialism cannot solve these problems—but it exacerbates them.  On the other hand, a more comprehensive manifestation of classical liberalism mitigates them, especially within the framework of a Constitutional Republic.

As Hayek explains in The Road to Serfdom, socialists use capitalism as the foil in advancing their cause, when in reality, the enemy of socialism is [classical] liberalism—individual liberty, private property, limited government, and free markets/free enterprise.  I contend that respect for a Judeo-Christian tradition was inherent in the classical liberal political philosophy.  Is it any surprise then that the left tends toward atheism in addition to its criticism of individual liberty, private property, and limited government? The left also believes that our economy is best managed through government control, such as minimum wages and the various forms of price control, and through fiscal and monetary policy.

Many Americans aligned with the left do not know for what the left really stands, except as the liberator of the oppressed.  In Dedication and Leadership, Douglas Hyde (former 20-year British communist and news editor of The Daily Worker) asserts that socialism can not gain any momentum without minorities because they are the easiest to agitate as victims of a nonsocialist system.  This is why the left needs minorities and they amplify this notion through identity groups.  The training, which communists call education, is actual propaganda in so far as it inspires the recruits into adopting a different set of values.  They do this by creating a new language.  This is why words like liberal, gay, and so forth have different meanings in today’s leftist-controlled public narrative.  We are now learning that AOC’s green deal was never about the climate—it was a push for socialism.

The great political division we are now experiencing is a wake-up call and an opportunity to really understand what is at stake for America.  Even Jesus was tempted to find his kingdom in this mortal life (Matthew 4:1-11)—as we are tempted to believe in a socialist utopia.  Those who have faith in God and seek the truth, which is liberating (John 8:32-36), can overcome the illusions and delusions of those who preach faith in secular humanism and the perceived benevolence of ruling elite.

We should be respectful and compassionate to the maximum extent possible while taking a stand for the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness given to us by our Creator.  Much of the anger and contempt for America comes from the left.  While we are expected to respect the innate human dignity in each person, we are also expected to admonish and rebuke behaviors contrary to the notion that all are created equal and each is endowed with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and happiness.  We protect these inalienable rights through truth (currently obfuscated by fake news), the rule of law (ordered liberty; moral duty in the pursuit of happiness, including the ability to forego special interests for a greater good), and justice (adherence to the principle: “to each his due”).

   

In the process, we need to discuss values:  what they mean and how they apply within our communities.  Yet, none of this will be useful if we do not have a fundamental idea of what America is.  This idea is based on the inspiration of the Declaration of Independence and codified in a system of government--a republic--articulated in our Constitution.

 

This knowledge has not been passed along for at least three generations.  Shame on us for letting this happen.  We can change this.  We have work to be done.  Let’s roll!!

  

Restoring Liberty in America

Dear Fellow American,

What is liberty?  Many equate it to freedom.  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke of four freedoms:  freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.  The implication is that government provides these freedoms, which is an example of classical conservatism (more on this later).  This is not liberty.  American liberty is freedom, constrained by the rule of law, to do what one wants without harm to another.  This notion is consistent with language in our Declaration of Independence—all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; governments are instituted among men to secure these rights.  People through their state legislatures delegated specific, enumerated powers to a national government for this purpose.  Unfortunately, over time, our national government has gradually usurped this self-governing authority and as a consequence diminished individual liberty.

Language matters; yet, the concept of liberty means different things to different political factions.  In his book, The Fatal Conceit:  The Errors of Socialism, F.A. Hayek devotes a chapter to this topic with the title, “Our Poisoned Language.”  He argues there has been a deliberate effort to inject ambiguity to blur distinction, such as justice versus social justice.  To drive home his point, he provides a list of over 160 nouns qualified by the adjective “social.”[1] Laws or regulations stemming from the notion of social justice promote egalitarianism over liberty—taking from some (such as progressive taxation) to give to others.  Social justice is not equivalent to charity.  The former is noblesse oblige.  The latter represents liberty in so far as an individual freely exercises his or her natural right to help another in need.

Today, in America, there is a desire to label people for political differentiation:  liberal, conservative, progressive, alt-right, and so forth.  Over time, the meaning of these terms has changed.  Today’s modern conservatives were originally known as classical liberals.  They believe in individual liberty, limited government, private property rights, and a free market.  They also believe in the rule of law and equality of justice for all.  Today’s modern liberals, or progressives, were originally known as classical conservatives.  They believe in collective liberty, a strong central government, noblesse oblige, and a government-controlled economy.  They also believe in conserving privilege based on notions of social justice (a form of nobles oblige).  Today, we see this differentiation and corresponding tension as the tug of war between capitalism and socialism.  The two major political parties generally align with these distinctions.  The Reagan revolution is often credited with the conservative movement in America.  In reality, the revolution was an attempt to “conserve” classical liberalism and its grounding in religious liberty tradition that provided the moral philosophy for civil behavior within the American society.

Progressive (modern liberal) thinking emerged in the late 1800s in response to industrialization and the rapid urbanization of America, with the notion that a central government can more easily solve problems through central planners and advance social and economic reform to improve the quality of life for citizens.  Teddy Roosevelt is generally recognized as our first progressive president as signaled by his Square Deal speech in 1905.[2]  The Protestant Social Gospel movement aligned with political progressives, giving the political movement legitimacy as a divinely inspired effort.  Woodrow Wilson began to institutionalize progressive thinking, especially with the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments, followed by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and a massive expansion of federal agencies.  Then, the cultural revolution of the 1960s, notably spawned by the Port Huron Manifesto of Students for a Democratic Society,[3] moved modern liberals and progressives even further left, emphasizing socialism and secular humanism over capitalism and religious liberty.  Today, the consequences have been manifested in the multiculturalism and relative morality that has diminished the importance of a virtuous, civil society that Tocqueville observed as “habits of the heart.”  Ironically, Tocqueville realized America’s desire for liberty in general was advanced in parallel with a passion for religious liberty.  To the contrary, the promises of a better society stemming from the French Revolution were thwarted because a commitment to religious liberty was shunned (thanks to the Enlightened) in favor of political and economic freedom.

America is terribly divided.  One faction believes in the idea of America as championed by the classical liberal philosophy grounded in religious liberty.  The other faction wants to transform America in a socialistic direction, despite the damning historical evidence of its inevitable tyranny.  The latter faction stems from an educational system that no longer emphasizes the importance and essence of liberty and how self-governance contributes to its vitality in a free society.  Three generations of Americans have not been exposed to the principles and concepts that contribute to healthy “habits of the heart.”

We can recover this loss in a number of ways.  Tactically, by educating the public on the wisdom of Article V of the US Constitution and its means of correcting government corruption, we introduce or refresh in their minds the essence of liberty, checks and balances, and the moral obligation of self-governance.  We do this by arming them with the knowledge and arguments to persuade their State elected officials to return Tenth Amendment authority to the States.  More strategically, we do this through programs that provide classical education from K-12.  Hillsdale College has developed such a program called the Barney Charter School Initiative.[4]   There are now over 20 affiliate schools across the nation.  Finally, we do this one-person-at-a-time by exercising our moral obligation for self-governance through civil discussion and virtuous example, “making goodness fashionable.”[5]

Respectfully yours,

Old Gadfly

oldgadfly@gmail.com

---

[1] F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit:  The Errors of Socialism, Edited by W.W. Bartley, (Chicago, IL:  The University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 115-116.

[2] See Theodore Roosevelt, The Square Deal, speech delivered at a banquet in Dallas, Texas on April 5, 1905.  Retrieved on October 14, 2017 from http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/speeches/trsquaredealspeech.pdf  See also, The Square Deal—The Effects of Progressivism at http://independence.guhsdaz.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_759199/File/Lovell/APUSH/9%20-%20Gilded%20Age/The%20Square%20Deal-The%20Effects%20of%20Progressivism%20chart.pdf

[3] See Michael Kazin, The Port Huron Statement at Fifty, Dissent Magazine, Spring 2012.  Retrieved on October 14, 2017 from https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-port-huron-statement-at-fifty

[4] See The Barney Charter School Initiative at https://www.hillsdale.edu/educational-outreach/barney-charter-school-initiative/. 

[5] See Eric Metaxas, If You Can Keep It:  The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty, (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 2017), pp. 168-176.

Propaganda in Full Bloom

Abstract:  Frankly, the dark side of our nation has achieved great momentum in seizing the initiative, in military terms.  We are in a war—a cultural war.  According to the public narrative, the left is successfully isolating President Trump, attempting to make him completely impotent politically.  No need for impeachment.  The left is essentially diminishing him in a similar fashion that Stalin and his propaganda machine diminished his relatively more liberal nemesis, Trotsky, of the Menshevik socialist faction.  Diminishment was not enough—Trotsky was ultimately assassinated.  And now we see elements of our history being assassinated.  It would be one thing for the media to objectively point out abuses of power or other forms of corruption.  During the previous eight years, Americans were aware of abuses of power and forms of corruption; yet, the leftist press showed little to no interest.  On the other hand, we have yet to see any objective reporting; rather the left deceives the public with propaganda, as this new Gadfly article argues in a conversation between Old Gadfly, an American citizen with and inquiring mind (IM), and a seasoned combat aviator with an inquiring mind (AM).

Old Gadfly:  Gentlemen, it’s been a week since the Charlottesville spectacle.  Your take?

AM:  We’re witnessing emergent propaganda in full bloom.  I say propaganda because the messaging represents the full meaning of propaganda:  “information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.”  I say emergent because there is no single, central organizing agent; yet, the messaging is concerted and consistent because of a central, self-organizing ideology called socialism.

IM:  The propagandists create and perpetuate folklore.  They want the public to believe Charlottesville was a contest between groups that are far right and left of the political center, suggesting the so called “white supremacists” and the KKK are far right-wing extremists.  Before we dig deeper, we should first examine how the stage was set.  The individual who organized the “unite the right” assembly, supposedly on behalf of the groups protesting the city’s plan to take down the General Robert E. Lee memorial, was Jason Kessler.  Kessler is an experienced agitator.  According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Kessler has experience in matters such as this, to include working with Occupy Wall Street, a left of center movement; and he apparently voted for Obama.  The SPLC is a well-left-of-center group.  They classify other groups that have different value systems as “hate groups.”  

AM:  One other question to ask:  why did the Charlottesville police, first responders, and national guardsmen—over 1,000—do nothing to squelch the anarchy?  Would a life have been saved had they intervened?  For the left, letting the clashes unfold was good for the optics—they make news cycles easier and so much more visceral in advancing their propaganda.  Given how these groups are generally characterized by the left and understood by the “nice” public, Charlottesville was a setup to further demonize President Trump.  They insist he is a racist (because they cannot call him the N-word) and that white supremacists represent his base.  Although it is factual that Trump has said things used against him, they generally related to concerns about violations of the law (such as illegal aliens associated with sex and drug trafficking) and conflicts of interest (a judge refusing to recuse himself from a Trump lawsuit despite known ties to La Raza—“The term expresses ethnic or racial pride”).  The left has developed these kinds of tactics for decades.

IM:  Let me describe another example.  The media has even drudged up comments made by President Trump about General Pershing related to suppressing a Muslim insurgency in the Philippines (click here for a good history).  Although Trump’s description used during the Presidential campaign represented some enduring folklore about bullets dipped in pig’s blood, his recent tweets merely referenced General Pershing.  Here is what Trump actually said in his recent tweets within the context of terroristic assaults on our culture:  “study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. . . . There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!”  Notice the difference.  Being caught is not the same thing as being shot.  The historical reference is to the Moro rebellion in the Philippines (an interesting history involving presidential politics demonstrating similar parallels to our most recent experience in the Middle East).  Here is a quote from Pershing’s own autobiography: 

These juramentado were materially reduced in number by a practice the army had already adopted, one that the Mohammedans held in abhorrence.  The bodies were publicly buried in the same grave with a dead pig.  It was not pleasant to take such measures but the prospect of going to hell instead of heaven sometimes deterred the would-be assassins.

AM:  Since there is ample evidence of propaganda, let me offer one more example.  I was alerted to this example from a recent Facebook entry where the author spoke about how our military leaders were even rebuking Commander-in Chief Trump for his insensitive Charlottesville remarks.  Unaware of this, I searched for evidence to confirm this allegation.  Sure enough, major newspapers were advancing this meme (incidentally, recall a conversation we had five years ago on memetics and politics).  Here is a quote from the Los Angeles Times:   

America's top-ranking military officers spoke out forcefully against racial bigotry and extremism, a rare public foray into domestic politics that revealed growing unease at the Pentagon with some of President Trump's policies and views.

The members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- the senior uniformed brass of the Navy, Marine Corps, Army and Air Force -- all posted messages on their official Twitter accounts to denounce the far-right extremists behind Saturday's violence in Charlottesville, Va.

The messages did not mention Trump, who is the commander in chief, by name. But the rebuke seemed clear in several posts given the bipartisan furor over Trump's insistence Tuesday that "both sides" were at fault for the violence. 

“The Army doesn't tolerate racism, extremism, or hatred in our ranks,” Gen. Mark Milley, chief of staff of the Army, tweeted Wednesday. “It's against our Values and everything we've stood for since 1775.”

To the undiscerning eye, the Times author wants you to believe the military leaders are rebuking the President, not the extremism.  The President rebuked racism, extremism, bigotry, and hatred.  The military leaders’ statements are completely congruent with the President’s.  Notice General Milley never used the term “far-right” in his statement.  Nor did any other military leader.

 Old Gadfly:  For so many “nice” Americans, they are at the mercy of a leftist media, relying upon their reporting as settled truth.  We know the KKK spawned as a domestic terrorist group on behalf of the Democrat Party during the post-Civil War reconstruction era.  According to the left, white supremacists are supposed to represent fascists, Nazis, and neo-Nazis because historical revisionists and progressives deny that these groups spawned from socialism, which is a left of center ideology.  The left sets the rules for the creation of truth, and they define or characterize the political right.  They do this by distorting history and creating labels (racist, xenophobe, misogynist, homophobe, etc.) reminiscent of the N-word.  The hateful left wants “nice” people to think the right is hateful.  Unfortunately, the right lacks a deeper understanding of these concepts and how they actually manifested in history; thus, they silently acquiesce to the deception.  This is not new in history.  Hayek observed and documented similar developments in his seminal book, The Road to Serfdom, initially published in 1944 for a Western European audience.  Here is an excerpt from Chapter 11, “The End of Truth”:

The most effective way of making everybody serve the single system of ends toward which the social plan is directed is to make everybody believe in those ends. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends. It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends. Although the beliefs must be chosen for the people and imposed upon them, they must become their beliefs, a generally accepted creed which makes the individuals as far as possible act spontaneously in the way the planner wants (bold italics added for emphasis; p. 171).

Predictably, Hayek’s book was roundly rebuked by the progressive left in academic, media, Hollywood, and political circles.  So, he essentially went into hiding for a few years to collect his bearings.  He resurfaced with some lectures at the University of Cairo to vet his ideas about the concept called liberty.  These lectures provided the inspiration and logic for his next seminal work, The Constitution of Liberty.  Ironically, Hayek revised the Foreword to The Road to Serfdom in 1956 for an American audience.  A year later, speaking at America’s National Press Club, Soviet communist leader Nikita Khruschev taunted Americans with this statement:  “. . . I can prophesy that your grandchildren in America will live under socialism.  And please do not be afraid of that.  Your grandchildren will not understand how their grandparents did not understand the progressive nature of a socialist society.”

This brings me back to the dynamics of Charlottesville.  Good classical liberals mostly represent the Republican Party based on the principles of individual liberty, limited government (via a Constitutional Republic) and the rule of law, private property, a free market, and the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Pathetically, a growing number of so called Republicans betray these principles and their corruption weakens any resolve to combat the forces intent on destroying the idea of America.  See for example Ken Buck’s excellent book, Drain the Swamp:  How Washington Corruption Is Worse than You Think.  Classical liberalism is the form of liberalism that socialists in Europe, especially Germany, and the Soviet Union attacked.  Socialism is a left of center ideology.  This can and should be understood as a political axiom.  Communism is a left-wing manifestation of socialism.  Fascism and Nazism are a right-wing manifestation of socialism.  Both manifestations are left of center on the broader political spectrum.  Both are illiberal.  Yet, the left has been very successful in convincing too many “nice” people, whether American or European, that fascism and Nazism are an extreme right of center phenomenon.  This makes it easy then to appropriately demonize Nazi, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist groups and then to associate them with the Republican Party and conservatives.  Since the left claimed the liberal label, even though their concept did not even come close to representing the classical liberal principles, classic liberals then took on the label of conservative.  People forget or do not even recall what the Reagan conservative movement was all about.  He championed the conservation of classical liberal principles.

Too many “nice” Americans live in their comfort zones while being programmed to “act spontaneously” based on leftist propaganda.  Even some of my closest friends have lamented Trump’s tweets.  But when I asked if they receive them directly, they admitted they did not, which means they only know about the tweets based on how the leftist media portray them.  The left now attacks our history (whether good or bad).  It won’t be long before they attack “nice” people in their comfort zones when the left crosses the threshold of (a) realizing taxation is not enough to meet the demands of a large central government and welfare state and begin confiscating private property (like your retirement accounts that you built based on your own labor); and (b) prosecuting those who question their deceptions and actions as hate speech.

We must warn our family and friends.  There is no straddling the fence here.  One cannot claim political independence and hope others solve our problem.  The idea of America is under full assault.  The left controls the public narrative.  Americans must break out of their “nice” trance.  Become discerning.  Be outraged at “the end of truth” tactics of the left.  Be courageous.  Pick the right side:  either a truly liberal America or a socialist tyranny.  Fight for truth and justice.