Five Serious Questions
Asked and Answered
Thanks to Z and Mustang over at GeeeeeZ for formulating these questions the other day. We thought they were so important they deserved to be featured here. The answers we have given are intended only as a springboard for further discussion.
1. As a citizen, do you think the United States is moving toward a Marxist state? If not, please try to explain the transformation of the Democratic Party from American liberalism to that of neo-Marxism.
I agree with the body of the post, and have been saying things like it for more years than I care to remember. However, while I use "Marxism" and especially CULTURAL MARXISM all the time, I think it might be more useful to change the terminology since it's so charged with emotion based on deep prejudice on all sides.
Call it what it is: TYRANNISM. Yes a neologism, but one with roots in rationality. What we are lapsing into with frightening velocity is TYRANNY –– DICTATORSHIP –– DESPOTISM –– TOTALITARIANISM –– the rule of ABSOLUTE POWER.
A hideous thing, but INEVITABLE where the vast majority are so ill-informed as to believe someone in AUTHORITY should determine and chart the course of their lives.
2. Why are so many loathe to call Marxist behavior what it is, and insist on calling it corporatism?
The term MARXISM, as I just said, is so tinged with prejudiced emotionalism that, while accurate, it may no longer be useful.
HOWEVER, these days "Corporatism" or "Crony Capitalism" is very probably the evil phenomenon to beat rather than Marxism per se.
GLOBALISM is the real culprit in the struggle for dominance. It stands to reason that the leaders of enormous multi-national corporations, the owners and suppliers of raw materials, and the international bankers who control the money supply would gravitate towards one another and form a POWER BLOC the likes of which the world had never seen before.
The language and professed ideals of MARXISM have been extremely USEFUL to these shadowy moguls in pursuing their secret agenda to achieve ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT under THEIR Corporate-Bankster-quasi-Tyrannist aegis.
3. Why do so many Americans actively support or enable this shift to communist ideology?
As I just tried to indicate, it isn't truly a Communist ideology, but rather an OLIGARCHICAL ELITIST AGENDA to achieve DOMINANCE that we fight.
Nevertheless, USING Marxist terminology such as "Social Justice," "Fairness," and "Equality," has been extraordinarily useful to the Mogul-Oligarchs, who are our true rulers, because it appeals, as Winston Churchill so eloquently said, to the vast IGNORANCE of most people, the tragic human propensity to feel ENVY, and the equally destructive human desire to wreak VENGEANCE –– to GET EVEN –– with their "oppressors" real and imaginary.
Cultivating HATRED, ENVY, SPITE and MALICE in the rank and file lends tremendous power to those who surreptitiously CHOREOGRAPH and ORCHESTRATE the show for their own, selfish motives.
4. Given the oath taken by all military personnel, politicians, mid-high level bureaucrats, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, why do so many of these people appear nonchalant about the transformation taking place within our beloved America?
Because in taking advantage of the deliberately cultivated IGNORANCE of the populace by a corrupt, suborned EDUCATION INDUSTRY –– it is no longer a "profession" noble or otherwise, it is simply an Arm of an AUTHORITARIAN REGIME –– those in power are capable of taking unfair advantage of their position to AGGRANDIZE and OVERCOMPENSATE THEMSELVES at the PUBLIC'S EXPENSE.
In the world of REALPOLITIK decency, morality, nobility, altruism, high ideals, and respect for one's fellow creatures is entirely absent.
What we have fallen into in actual fact is a highly sophisticated form of NEO-BARBARISM.
5. Is there anything we can do, as citizens, to prevent the adoption of communism within our culturally unique form of government?
That horse left the barn and galloped off into the sunset more than a hundred years ago. We began our long slide into DESPOTISM when Abraham Lincoln was allowed to get away with his establishment of or First Dictatorship.
That set a precedent and set in motion a deletrious belief that "under certain circumstances" Might Makes Right –– a horrifying perversion of our Founder's True Intent from which we've never truly recovered.
The next BIG STEP toward TYRANNISM, believe it or not was Teddy Roosevelt's usurpation of the right of private property owners in his seizure of vast tracts of land for the purpose of establishing our system of NATIONAL PARKS.
Because we look back at this, and see it as "BENEVOLENT" and "ENLIGHTENED," we have chosen to OVERLOOK and IGNORE the despotic nature of TR's Great Achievement.
All of this really belongs under the heading "BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR. YOU MIGHT JUST GET IT"
What could we possibly DO to reverse this hundred-year-old trend?
It would be a good idea to start learning who and what our enemies truly are. For that we need to look deeply into OURSELVES and start examining our OWN motives. It seems fairly obvious to me that we have been SEDUCED into trusting the WRONG people, and possibly we have defamed those who might have done us a power of good given the chance.
If that seems cryptic, so be it. Life is highly COMPLEX. Its challenges do not lend themselves to SIMPLISTIC approaches.
~ FreeThinke
1) The Port Huron Statement in 1962 describes the plan for the New Left takeover the of Democrat Party PERFECTLY.
ReplyDelete2) Corporatism IS both Socialism AND the Left's preferred form of Socialism... the only CHANGE that they (DEMS) want to make is to where the profits go... they (DEMS) want them to get turned over to the government for spending on the public... the Republicans want to keep the profits for themselves and the "elites" who run the corporations.
3) Most Americans support the shift because they are no longer independent small business owners, but have become corporate wage slaves (the new proletariate). It's what they "know".
4) They are nonchalant because they are the prime benificiaries of our completely SOCIALIST system, they are the first ones paid and last ones laid off.
5) The only thing we can do is to restrict and try and further reduce the scope of corporatism and fight for policies that set aside large swaths of the economy for private small business development. The petit bourgeoisie have taken it on the chin over the last 150 years, it's time we moved back to a SMALL PRIVATE BUSINESS MODEL BASED ECONOMY.
from Wikipedia - Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests. Corporatism is theoretically based upon the interpretation of a community as an organic body. The term corporatism is based on the Latin root word "corpus" meaning "body".
ReplyDeleteIn other words, it's an SOCIALIST organization principle.
I agree that words such as marxism and fascism are so hot button that they are no longer useful in a conversation, since they send the hooting loonies on the left into a howling rage and no further productive conversation can be had.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I like corporatism and statism, because that is what it is.
Marxists who seize Government no longer seek to take over the means of production, they merely want to control it, to shake down the factory owners as they leave the plant each day and sluice their money off to state-favored cartels, syndicates and victim groups.
and sluice their money off to state-favored cartels, syndicates and victim groups.
ReplyDeleteThey're doing a pretty good job.
Thank you FJ and SF for astute observations (meaning you appear to be in general agreement with me ;-).
ReplyDeleteI tried to coin a new word -- TYRANNISM -- to describe the political and economic evils that befall us.
Whatever you want to call it, it always comes down to people being duped or "conditioned" into wanting others to DIRECT and CONTROL their LIVES -- presumably for THEIR good.
It doesn't matter what you call that regrettable tendency, the result of giving up one's individuality in favor of functioning as a mere CELL in some ENORMOUS collective BODY that neither knows nor respects your individual identity is always the same:
An OPPRESSIVE, SOUL-DEADENING, society.
Too bad we've lost the questing, pioneer, spirit, but several generations of "progressivism" which has really been the wedding of corporate power to government using the language of Marxian Idealism to make the New Oppression palatable to the masses has virtually killed the concepts of Self-Reliance, Individual Initiative, and Rugged Individualism as virtuous and desirable.
Frankly, I think The Industrial Revolution has had the long term effect of reinventing The Feudal System. These days, instead of aristocrats with vast tracts of inherited land calling the shots, it's corporate moguls and the international bankers.
We may like to think we have God-given rights, but its mostly an illusion. Whatever we have is what "they" PERMIT us to RETAIN -- and because of THEIR manipulation of currency always to THEIR advantage -- our share is getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
Huxley was not really kidding when he referred to The Year of Our Ford in A Brave New World, which I read as a savage satire of where the blind pursuit of where CORPORATE-as-opposed-to-INDIVIDUAL interests were destined to take us.
So in reality Corporatism is just another form of Collectivism.
HOODATHUNKIT?
Same old wolf dressed in a new outfit. Only the outward and visible signs of despotism change. That's how he TYRANNISTS keep us forever off balance and punching at shadows -- and EACH OTHER.
~ FreeThinke
Mr, Observer,
ReplyDeleteYour remarks make sense, but they appear to have been prepared in advance for a general audience, and not to be a direct response to any of the questions posed in today's article.
Since you haven't been rude or abusive and appear to be supportive of a generally conservative outlook, I will let your comment stand, but in the future please try to make responses specifically relevant to whatever article may be posted.
Thanks.
~ FreeThinke
It's the "Division of Labour" that necessitates the surrender of control. That's why it's imperative to return to the small business model, as there is less and less "division of labour" within it that doesn't require a "head" for business, and not merely more "hands".
ReplyDeleteAdam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations" (1776)
ReplyDeleteIn the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.
(cont)
ReplyDeleteIt is otherwise in the barbarous societies, as they are commonly called, of hunters, of shepherds, and even of husbandmen in that rude state of husbandry which precedes the improvement of manufactures and the extension of foreign commerce. In such societies the varied occupations of every man oblige every man to exert his capacity and to invent expedients for removing difficulties which are continually occurring. Invention is kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that drowsy stupidity which, in a civilised society, seems to benumb the understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people. In those barbarous societies, as they are called, every man, it has already been observed, is a warrior. Every man, too, is in some measure a statesman, and can form a tolerable judgment concerning the interest of the society and the conduct of those who govern it. How far their chiefs are good judges in peace, or good leaders in war, is obvious to the observation of almost every single man among them. In such a society, indeed, no man can well acquire that improved and refined understanding which a few men sometimes possess in a more civilised state. Though in a rude society there is a good deal of variety in the occupations of every individual, there is not a great deal in those of the whole society. Every man does, or is capable of doing, almost every thing which any other man does, or is capable of doing. Every man has a considerable degree of knowledge, ingenuity, and invention: but scarce any man has a great degree. The degree, however, which is commonly possessed, is generally sufficient for conducting the whole simple business of the society. In a civilised state, on the contrary, though there is little variety in the occupations of the greater part of individuals, there is an almost infinite variety in those of the whole society. These varied occupations present an almost infinite variety of objects to the contemplation of those few, who, being attached to no particular occupation themselves, have leisure and inclination to examine the occupations of other people. The contemplation of so great a variety of objects necessarily exercises their minds in endless comparisons and combinations, and renders their understandings, in an extraordinary degree, both acute and comprehensive. Unless those few, however, happen to be placed in some very particular situations, their great abilities, though honourable to themselves, may contribute very little to the good government or happiness of their society. Notwithstanding the great abilities of those few, all the nobler parts of the human character may be, in a great measure, obliterated and extinguished in the great body of the people.
It really baffles me that so many avowed Christians mock the term "social justice."
ReplyDeleteIt's a concept based on Christian theology. Sure it has economic implications, and I would argue that they are NOT Marxist, but it's theological in nature.
Aleviate the suffering of others. In a country like ours, with such massive wealth, no one should ever go hungry, or have to be homeless. Sure, there are some people in those situations through their own fault, but as I understood it, Jesus showed compassion to EVERYONE, including sinners and deadbeats.
Does social justice call for redistribution of wealth, for the government to seize control of all production, and for everyone to have the same socio-economic status? Nope.
All it calls for is the notion that everyone have some modicum of survival, and it argues that those who have much should--in all sense of morality and Christian generosity--use their wealth, power, and influence to ensure that basic modicum of survival.
This is about human decency, not about some fantasy communist revolution you all are conjuring up.
The only communists that actually want communism are the ones in power. The People never want it. Few people here in America want it. All they want is a fair shake and to know that if life takes a turn for the worse, they won't have to suffer for too long.
That everyone have the means to obtain some level of comfort and happiness is not really asking too much IMO.
Social justice is not "justice". It's a "class action suit". It's a shotgun in the preferred single-shot rifle class of "justice". It's a crime Socrates REFUSED to commit (the trial of the Admirals).
ReplyDeleteThanks again, Thersites, for the words of Adam Smith.
ReplyDeleteShakespeare made a similar observation, albeit more succinctly, in Macbeth:
"Security is mortals' chiefest enemy."
Also, your quip comparing the late Christopher Stevens with T. E, Lawrence at yesterday's post was not lost on me. Perhaps we should praise Mr. Stevens after all, despite his leftist, possibly self-loathing orientation for his questing spirit and his refusal to participate as just another comfortably placed cog in The American Corporate Machine?
Lawrence too at age 46 died tragically early, though from a freak accident, and was, according to several accounts, a notably self-loathing -- even masochistic -- individual who lived a notably spartan existence, and whose sexuality was questionable -- certainly abnormal, whether homosexual, as some have alleged, or asexual as many prefer to insist.
Mr. Steven's even bears an almost uncanny physical resemblance to T. E. Lawrence.
Lawrence, of course, lived at a time when it was still possible for Notable Eccentricity and Great Personal Character to thrive.
The Century of the Common Man -- an image certainly sponsored and promoted by Corporate-Collectivist interests -- has given individualism a black eye, if not an actual death blow.
I suspect, despite such remarkably strong, capable historical figures as Queen Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth I, Bess of Hardwicke, and more latterly Gertrude Bell, who in atypical response for a woman to unrequited love, single-handedly waded into the thick of "Araby" and was able to win the confidence, respect and admiration of the Arab-Mesopotamian potentates of her day, many of the more degrading aspects of modern life came as a result of the weakening resistance women's participation in politics. };-)>
~ FT
Jack,
ReplyDeleteThersites is right about "Social Justice."
It's not at all what it purports to be. The term was conscripted by the Cultural Marxists into their hyper-aggressive AND lethally insidious movement against Individualism, Capitalism, Ownership and Enjoyment of Private property, Christianity and the accumulation of personal wealth.
No one, except The Oligarchs -- and I hope you understand what I mean by that term by now? -- does not hope for fair, decent, humane treatment of all human beings -- and animals as well.
Where so many disagree is in finding the proper METHOD to achieve those desirable ends.
~ FT
Also, re: Jack's comments. I'd like to know how many people die of exposure and starvation every year in this country.
ReplyDeleteIf we're going to have the conversation, we need a starting point that defines the magnitude of the problem.
Social Justice originated as a thing that originated in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and it was seized upon by some socialists.
ReplyDeleteIt's roots are theological and moral in nature. As you mentioned, the methodology is where we have a problem. Most people that I know who preach the gospel of social justice are not even a little bit socialist.
And Silver: no, people aren't dying of starvation here in America, at least not that I know of, but magnitude doesn't matter.
Perhaps this is a cultural thing that we're talking about, not an economic thing. I will be the first person to say that no one should ever be forced to give to charity, and that no one should have to pay a ridiculously high tax rate just to support the welfare state.
But people are using the whole low-tax and "socialism" thing to justify some really awful budget cuts. Here in Ohio, they actually considered making cuts to programs that service people with disabilities. If there was any citizen in this country that was vulnerable and needed government money, it would be someone with a significant disability. BUt we're trying to tell them to piss off and fend for themselves?
I have only ever known one person actually talk about a classless society like such a thing could exist, and that guy was a nut job. I have not once heard any credible voice in America say aything about making a communist state.
No one in America, especially not the ruling class, wants a Communist America, not even the Socialists (there IS a difference between socialism and communism). Beating the drum against Marxism is just a ploy to get people good and scared so you can get your way.
Social Justice? Oh yeah, it's totally Marxist to believe that those who have should aleviate the suffering of those who have nothing. I just thought that was being a good person? Perhaps I'm incorrect.
I admire independent souls like Ambassador Stevens. Unfortunately, I believe that he was taking his assignment in the wrong direction. Had I been he, I would have sought to make myself a local warlord running my own militia. I certainly wouldn't have placed myself in a position so as to have to rely upon outside others to provide for my own security. I would have had a personal bodyguard of at least a dozen or so heavily armed "brothers-in-law" around me at ALL times, as well as a drone or two overhead at ALL times.
ReplyDeleteJack,
ReplyDeleteChristians have ALWAYS drawn a distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, and our government has always done everything in its' power to obscure that distinction.
Yes, Christ would share his loaves and fishes with all, regardless of their ability to obtain their own, with the typical result their being some "left over", but I certainly believe that those who partook in those feasts would have very much resented the portions eaten by the rich misers present at the "common" table. In fact, after dinner, they probably gave more than one of them a "blanket party".
The difference is today that our loaves and fishes don't go nearly as far. The first "shameless" guest who sits down at the government table tends to eat them ALL.
You should heed Thersite's post today upon the subject of "dishonesty". You will find more "cheaters" in Sodom today than Lott or any Diogenes could ever find "back in the day"
Unlike myself, FT, Amb. Stevens wasn't the killing type. ;)
ReplyDeleteFJ's message to Ambassador Stevens... ;)
ReplyDelete...never mind, our grocery stores have all been replaced by Super WalMart's.
ReplyDelete@ Jack: "And Silver: no, people aren't dying of starvation here in America, at least not that I know of, but magnitude doesn't matter."
ReplyDeletePrecisely my point, and I'm glad we're back on solid ground, you were getting out there where the buses don't run.
Americans give generously to charity, so we are not a stingy people, but it sticks in everyone's craw that so many people get over and abuse the system.
Our federal government is too big and too dumb to be handing out money.
What a bunch of land lubbin' swabs we be today, fer naught talkin' like pirates....
ReplyDeleteYargh!
Also, re: Jack's comments. I'd like to know how many people die of exposure and starvation every year in this country.
ReplyDeleteIf we're going to have the conversation, we need a starting point that defines the magnitude of the problem.
------------
A lot fewer than would if we left it to you and the rest of the janitors in Galt's Gulch.
Has anybody read Thomas Paine beyond Common Sense? Would he be considered a Marxist today? I mean considering his views on the social contract and social justice.
ReplyDeleteHe was a Girondist, NOT a Jacobin
ReplyDeleteThersites, your erudtion is sometimes daunting, but it is usually stimulating and often proves instructive.
ReplyDeleteThan God for Google, or many of us might never be able to discover your meaning.
An excerpt to provide 'on the spot' elucidation"
"The Girondists (in French: Girondins, and sometimes Brissotins) were a political faction in France within the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention during the French Revolution.
They campaigned for the end of the monarchy but then resisted the spiraling momentum of the Revolution.
They came into conflict with the Montagnards -- a more radical faction within the Jacobin Club. This conflict eventually led to the fall of the Girondists and their mass execution, the beginning of the Reign of Terror.
The Girondists were a group of loosely-affiliated individuals rather than an organised political party ...
The famous painting Death of Marat depicts the revenge killing of radical journalist (and denouncer of the Girondists) Jean-Paul Marat by Girondist sympathizer, Charlotte Corday.
Some prominent Girondists were Jacques Pierre Brissot, Jean Marie Roland and his wife Madame Roland.
They had an ally in American Founding Father Thomas Paine. Brissot and Madame Roland were executed with the guillotine and Jean Roland (who was in hiding) committed suicide when he learned what had transpired. Paine was arrested and imprisoned but narrowly escaped execution."
~ FT
Why thank you, FT. One of the great challenges of the American Revolution was to quell to revolutionary Spirit once its' goals were accomplished. And as the story of Tammany goes...
ReplyDeleteWhen our country was young and our numbers were few
To our fathers his friendship was shown,
(For he e'er would oppose whom he took for his foes,)
And he made our misfortunes his own, my brave boys,
And he made our misfortunes his own.
At length, growing old and quite worn out with years,
As history doth truly proclaim,
His wigwam was fired, he nobly expired,
And flew to the skies in a flame, my brave boys,
And flew to the skies in a flame.
...of course, the Whiskey Rebellion and "Alien and Sedition Acts" would shortly follow... but these lessons on extinguishing revolution were not heeded in Revolution's European offshoot. Perhaps it was one of Dr. Franklin's less appealing offerings to the French, and partially explains the subsequent trial for treason of Aaron Burr.
Les,
ReplyDeleteA quoted essay is in the works in an attempt to answer your provocative question about Thomas Paine.
Paine may have been instrumental in inspiring and fomenting the early stages of the American Revolution, but later he was disowned, and disavowed by none other than George Washington.
Great question! thanks for asking it.
~ FT
Question, FT, Why Waldo Pierce?
ReplyDeleteGreat coloring, Thersites!
ReplyDeletePossibly a distant relative too.
I am -- or was -- practically his double.
You know him through Bellows?
~ FT
No, Google. Sorry to disappoint. ;(
ReplyDeleteI agree that words such as marxism and fascism are so hot button that they are no longer useful in a conversation, since they send the hooting loonies on the left into a howling rage and no further productive conversation can be had. Personally, I like corporatism and statism, because that is what it is. Marxists who seize Government no longer seek to take over the means of production, they merely want to control it, to shake down the factory owners as they leave the plant each day and sluice their money off to state-favored cartels, syndicates and victim groups.
ReplyDelete