The Political Spectrum

by Fred Elbel

The political spectrum is a representation of differing political positions in relation to each another. A familiar representation is the traditional horizontal axis representing left - moderate - right.

A more complex spectrum developed by Dickenson shows how various political positions relate to each other:1

Dickenson's Political Spectrum

 

The following graphic contrasts Left vs Right values and perspectives:

Left vs Right

 

Definitions for terms describing political positions, such as "progressive," "liberal," and "conservative" are not universally accepted. Political scientist and philosopher W.B. Gallie calls them contested concepts:3

 

the political spectrum you are taught

 

Sources

1. What are ‘Liberals,’ What are ‘Progressives,’ and Why the Difference Matters, Crissie Brown, PoliticsUSA, June 15, 2013.
2. Political spectrum, Rational Wiki.
3. Contested Concepts in Cognitive Social Science, Alan Schwartz, University of California, Berkeley, May 1992.

 

 

Here is more information on the political spectrum in context of today's political environment:

Our Turning Point: Either a Liberal or Progressive America

Article date: 
Monday, February 7, 2022
Medium
Article Body: 

America is at a turning point. The paradigm of progressivism - that is, of socialism / Marxism - is threatening traditional American liberalism. Many Americans intuitively understand that America is undergoing a fundamental transformation, but they don't understand what it is, or why the transformation is taking place.

The following article superbly presents why America is at a crossroads and how we must preserve American liberalism and Western Civilization while we still can. The article is well worth reading in its entirety. Excerpts are included below.

Our 1776 Moment: Either a Liberal or Progressive America
We live at a "1776 Moment" where our governing principles, law, and society are changing into something America has never known.
by Bradley A. Thayer, American Greatness, 22 January 2022.

... The United States is at a "1776 Moment" of ideological transformation. The American Revolution of 1776 marked a change of political ideology from constitutional monarchy to liberalism. Today, the ideological transformation is from liberalism to progressivism....

The American Ideology of Liberalism

Historically, the United States has possessed a single dominant ideology of liberalism... Liberalism is a political ideology that promises liberty for the individual. It employs the concept of inalienable rights and individual freedoms. These ideas and principles are expressed in America’s founding documents...

U.S. political institutions encompass liberal principles, values, norms, and culture. These include the ideas that animate liberalism—freedom, private property, respect for the rule of law, citizenship, and patriotism—and thus the country’s formal political institutions....

For liberalism to work, the power of government must be controlled. It is limited, first, through the separation of powers...

...  it was the political ideology of liberalism that unified all Americans, including later immigrants....

In the American context, while "liberals" and "conservatives" had their policy differences, both camps were classically liberal in their general outlook. Other ideologies, such as socialism, arose out of foreign philosophies and experiences that were alien to the American experience...

Progressivism and the History of Communist Thought

A symptom of our "1776 Moment" is that the Democrats, once stalwart liberals, have become progressives, which means, in fact, they have become socialists. Progressivism’s origins are found in the thought of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels....

In the West, Italian communist Antonio Gramsci and in Germany the Institute of Social Research, known as the Frankfurt School, argued independently of each other that culture would be the instrument of revolution in the West....This revolution could be executed over decades of gradual change....

The educational system, in particular, was of central importance to shape subsequent generations...

Independently from Gramsci, the Frankfurt School—most significantly Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse—advanced a similar message for advancing communism in the West.... This would evolve into critical theory....

The family, as the "germ cell" of bourgeois culture, had to be undermined, destroyed, and reconstituted... 

... these dogmas promote the liberation sought by critical theory—liberation of those who were once oppressed—and the destruction and replacement of liberalism and traditional American identity, values, and principles. Here are the seeds of "hate speech" laws and speech codes to... control thought and expression....

Third, progressivism is totalizing...  which means that there can be no opposition or allowance of alternative political choices or political thought...

Fourth, liberalism’s individualism is replaced with group identification...

Fifth, progressives replace meritocracy with equity so that principle of outcome supplants that of using talent and skill to gain a position....

Sixth, progressivism seeks to replace liberalism and American political culture and history with progressivism’s principles, culture, and history...

CRT [Critical Race theory] serves as the mechanism to accelerate revolutionary change....

The Consequences

The impact of progressivism is revolutionary: the replacement of liberal ideology and culture with its Marxist alternative.... The beneficiaries are America’s enemies, most significantly China, which watches with glee while the United States tears apart the sources of its great strength....

... Americans do not know which should be obeyed, or perhaps even which is legitimate. Moreover, there is a generational divide....

The consequence of the "1776 Moment" is that the United States will either sustain liberalism as its ideology or become a totalitarian country. The plan of progressivism is clear. To prevent it requires a renaissance of liberalism to assert America’s political ideology, culture, and history....

 

About Bradley A. Thayer

Bradley A. Thayer is the co-author of How China Sees the World: Han-Centrism and the Balance of Power in International Politics, and author of Darwin and International Relations and the forthcoming Understanding the China Threat.

Related

The Cloward–Piven strategy - a tool for fundamentally transforming America, by Fred Elbel.

Unprecedented - Western civilization at the crossroads, by Michael Anton, The New Criterion, 5 December 2021.

How Marxists Captured the Universities and Will Soon Capture the Nation, by Doug Casey, International Man / Lou Rockwell, 26 December 2021.

Totalitarianism and the Five Stages of Dehumanization, by Christiaan W.J.M. Alting von Geusau, Burning Platform, 21 November 2021.

Nation Being Overtaken By Small, Powerful Group Of Marxists, by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog, Zero Hedge, 16 September 2021.

The Greatest Existential Threat to America, by David Horowitz, FrontPage Mag, 14 September 2021.

The Hundred-Year Road To CRT - Critical Race theory, by Larry Sand, American Greatness, 29 August 2021.

5 minute video: Totalitarianism: Can It Happen in America?, by Rod Dreher, PragerU, 3 January 2022: What does totalitarianism look like? In the 20th century, it took the form of secret police violently silencing anyone who spoke out against the government. Now, it has a very different face — one we should be wary of just the same. Rod Dreher, author of Live Not By Lies, explains.

An overview of the ten ideologies of America

The following article presents a good overview: The Ten Ideologies of America: As Donald Trump Overthrows the Old Order, a Look at the New, by Virgil, Breitbart, March 20, 2016. The entire article is a good read. Here are some excerpts:

We all know that the old ideological labels, such as “conservative” and “liberal,” are worn out. Okay, so what are the new labels? What are the new ideologies?
 
Let’s get right to it: These, below, are the belief systems of most Americans. We will examine them in alphabetical order. But first, for reference, here’s the full list:
 
  1.     Cosmopolitanism
  2.     Establishmentism
  3.     Green Malthusianism
  4.     Leftism
  5.     Libertarianism
  6.     Libertinism
  7.     Nationalism
  8.     Neoconservatism
  9.     Paleoconservatism
  10.     Populism
 
 
1. Cosmopolitanism 
 
Cosmopolitanism is the view that we are all, everywhere, a part of a single world community, and that such things as nation-states, including the United States, only slow down the fulfillment of our true destiny— coming together in a global harmonic convergence. As John Lennon sang, “Imagine there’s no countries.” Most ordinary citizens probably like the country that they live in, but for many in the globetrotting elite, that’s not good enough; they want to be citizens of the world...
 
Left Cosmopolitanism means support for open borders, of course, and also for multiculturalism. As might be said, “Celebrate diversity—or else!”
 
In addition, Left Cosmos love international organizations, such as the United Nations; to them, that’s the future—one big New World Order.
 
Right Cosmopolitans also support open borders. In addition, being good capitalists, they support free trade and anything else that multinational corporations might wish for. And since they are private-sector-loving corporatists, they avidly embrace pro-business international combines, such as the World Trade Organization...
 
Yes, this is an old story: the Establishment hiring courtiers and henchmen, tasking them with keeping the peasants quiescent.
 
We might dub these henchmen—and, to be fair, henchwomen—as Compradores. That’s a Portuguese word for middleman, which historians have used to lump together all the in-country agents of old colonialism...
 
Here in America today, we can observe a variant on the Compradore system. As we have seen, smug journalists are happy to tell the “yokels” that they should be more grateful for all the good things they have.
 
And yet for some Compradores today, there’s a further cruel edge: They don’t seek to soothe the masses with oily bromides; instead, they attack them with rhetorical viciousness.
 
 
2. Establishmentism
 
Some people just like the status quo. They identify with power; they instinctively take the go-along-get-along position. One might call them “stand-patters,” or “sticks-in-the-mud,” or “kneejerk moderates.”...
 
...we can also observe that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the Tea Partier-turned-Gang-of-Eight-dealmaker, made the mistake of “outing” himself as an Establishmentist a little bit too soon. For his sake, he should have waited till after the GOP presidential primaries were over before  showing off his “Scarlet E.”...
 
...condescension is a key part of Establishmentist thinking, we can also note a more brutal aspect: the process of bludgeoning the lower orders into submission...
 
 
3. Green Malthusianism  
 
...What is it that drives the Greens? Some say they are fulfilling some pagan religious ritual. Others insist that they just like to enjoy a lake- or ocean-front view without any riffraff cluttering things up. Both views, of course, could be true...
 
[CAIRCO note: the article omits the primary driving force of environmentalists / Greens: to protect and preserve our sustaining environment for future generations.]
 
 
4. Leftism
 
Everybody knows the Left, and everybody knows that Leftism has never recovered from the collapse of communism.
 
Yet still, something interesting is happening here in the US: Even though Republicans control most of the important political offices at the federal and state level, the country is moving in a liberal, progressive direction. That’s what untrammeled corporate power will do—it will provoke a backlash...
 
In truth, today’s Democrats aren’t much interested in the well-being of working stiffs. Instead, they are enraptured with new plans to advance identity politics, co-ed bathrooms, and #BlackLivesMatter. All the while, of course, keeping the border open...
 
 
5. Libertarianism
 
...it’s important to emphasize, once again, that Libertarians loom large in the wonk-chattering class. It’s hard to find a Republican economist, for instance, who is not a “classical liberal.”...
 
 
6. Libertinism
 
Libertinism poses a challenge to the American social fabric. In our history, the Founding Fathers strongly believed in personal freedom, but they also strongly believed in personal morality. “Liberty,” John Adams wrote, “can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.”...
 
Yet for most, Libertinism seems to offer no political lessons; it’s just an appetite: Do whatever you want...
 
 
7. Nationalism 
 
For the last 400 years, the nation-state has been the preferred form of political organization—and certainly the most powerful...
 
...today, in 2016, Nationalism has made a “yuge” comeback, thanks to Donald Trump. His signature line, “Make America Great Again,” clearly plucks Nationalist notes in our mystic chords of memory...
 
 
8. Neoconservatism
 
In many ways, Neoconservatism resembles Libertarianism: It is an ivory-tower theory, and thus it connects better to theoreticians than to actual voters.
 
Indeed, if anything, Neoconservatism is even less broadly popular than Libertarianism: Not many Republicans, for example, look forward to a return to the days of the Iraq War—the signature project of the Neocons...
 
Most of today’s Neocons would trace their intellectual lineage back to Woodrow Wilson. It was our 28th president who gave us such seductive abstractions as, “teach [other countries] to elect good men,” fight a “war to end war,” and achieve “peace without victory.”
 
In addition, Wilson also gave us such ivory-tower gems as this, from his “Fourteen Points” speech to Congress in 1918: “Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.”
 
No private understandings? No secret treaties? That’s how the world works? Really?...
 
 
9. Paleoconservatism
 
As noted, Christianity hasn’t been a source of much real-world political science since the 17th century; the theocrats were defeated, first by the autocrats and aristocrats, and then, more recently, by the democrats...
 
 
10. Populism 
 
The Populist worldview can be expressed simply: The big boys are out to get you! So get there first and burn it down, or blow it up—whatever it is!...
 
Moreover, we can add that Karl Marx was right: The state is a tool of the ruling class. Of course, the challenge is to define “ruling class” correctly—to see that it’s not just arch-capitalists and their governmental hirelings, it’s also top dogs in foundations, law firms, media, NGOs, thinktanks, and universities....

 

 
Related article
 
 
Americans should take note: Upcoming elections in two English-speaking countries, the United Kingdom and India, are likely to tell a common story; in both nations, conservative nationalism is likely to defeat liberal multiculturalism. That’s good news for conservatives, and an inspiration for Americans, as they look to their own November 2014 elections. And yet, as we shall see, it’s not obvious that the Republican Party will draw the same positive lessons...

 

Bull Moose Progressives and the liberal paradigm

by Fred Elbel

Bull Moose Progressives

When President McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt at age 42 became the youngest President in history. As the 25th President of the United States, Roosevelt held office from 1901 until 1909. He lead the country into the Progressive Era, and championed a "Square Deal" for Americans. The Progressive party called for major reforms including breaking trusts, women's suffrage, railroad regulation, worker's compensation, farm relief, and pure food and drugs.

Roosevelt highly valued conservation. He established new national monuments, parks, and forests with the intent of preserving America's natural resources. He began construction of the Panama Canal.

When asked whether he was fit to be president in 1912, he responded that he was as fit as a "bull moose." The name stuck.

The Platform of the Progressive Party, August 7, 1912, reads in part:

...This country belongs to the people who inhabit it. Its resources, its business, its institutions and its laws should be utilized, maintained or altered in whatever manner will best promote the general interest...

The Old Parties

Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people.

From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

The deliberate betrayal of its trust by the Republican Party, and the fatal incapacity of the Democratic Party to deal with the new issues of the new time, have compelled the people to forge a new instrument of government through which to give effect to their will in laws and institutions.

Unhampered by tradition, uncorrupted by power, undismayed by the magnitude of the task, the new party offers itself as the instrument of the people to sweep away old abuses, to build a new and nobler commonwealth.

A Covenant with the People

This declaration is our covenant with the people, and we hereby bind the party and its candidates in State and Nation to the pledges made herein.

The Rule of the People

The Progressive Party, committed to the principle of government by a self-controlled democracy expressing its will through representatives of the people, pledges itself to secure such alterations in the fundamental law of the several States and of the United States as shall insure the representative character of the Government.

In particular, the party declares for direct primaries for nomination of State and National officers, for Nation-wide preferential primaries for candidates for the Presidency, for the direct election of United States Senators by the people; and we urge on the States the policy of the short ballot, with responsibility to the people secured by the initiative, referendum and recall.

Reflecting on the platform, it appears that special interests and political corruption were as much of an issue one hundred years ago as they are today.

Liberalism

Liberalism in American can be considered a political ideology which is framed by values that include equal opportunity, freedom of thought, individual freedom, and democratic government. Government intervention is typically embraced as the mechanism by which these values are implemented and enforced.

The Heritage Foundation notes that:

The Progressives were united in their contempt for what they called the "individualism" of the Founding. Instead of a government that protects natural rights through limited, decentralized powers, they envisioned an expansive government, a "living" and evolving Constitution, and the rule of "experts" in nationally centralized administrative agencies...

Whereas the Founders believed the government had a well-defined and limited role to play in the lives of citizens - essentially leaving people alone to lead their lives - the Progressives favored a much more active role for the government in overseeing civil society, regulating the economy, and redistributing wealth.

These two fundamentally different understandings of the role of government grow out of two different understandings of freedom. For the Progressives, freedom is not secured when government protects natural rights and otherwise leaves citizens to rule themselves. True freedom, by this view, demands an active government that provides equal means to self-fulfillment for all. It is not enough to create the conditions that allow people to pursue their own happiness - equal opportunity - since some citizens start with more advantages than others. Government must set out to level the playing field and determine outcomes...

Liberalism can be understood in two very different ways. Liberalism, or what some call "classical liberalism," is a political philosophy based on individual liberty and limited government. Over the last century, however, liberalism has come to take on a different meaning. The contemporary understanding of liberalism is based not on individual liberty, but on the use of government to grant benefits and advantages in order to give everyone the ability to achieve a certain standard of living and reduce inequalities. Therefore, modern liberalism encourages an extensive network of interest groups that receive benefits from government and organize in order to preserve those benefits.

Modern liberalism grows out of the Progressive rejection of American constitutionalism and an embrace of a new conception of freedom, anchored in big government.

The Progressive versus Liberal paradigm

Philosopher and political scientist W.B. Gallie called the terminology of "progressive" and "liberals" contested concepts:

...concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users [that] cannot be settled by appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the canons of logic alone.

There is no singularly accepted definition for these terms. In the article What are 'Liberals,' What are 'Progressives,' and Why the Difference Matters, Crissie Brown notes that:

More recently, cognitive linguists have explored contested concepts in the context of frame semantics... That is, we define words relative to other ideas that come to mind when we hear, read, or think about them. Those other ideas form the "frame" within which we find meaning for a word. Both "liberal" and "progressive" exist in the POLITICS frame and - in the U.S. - both imply opposition to "conservative." Add to that the fact that conservatives have for decades used "liberal" as an epithet, and many people have come to believe that "progressive" is simply a euphemism for "liberal." But those two terms have different histories and hallmarks.

Brown points out that:

Liberalism is a set of ideals grounded in the social contract (rule by consent of the governed for mutual benefit), both negative liberty (freedom from unreasonable interference) and positive liberty (access to basic resources to pursue one's goals), and both equality in law (legal rights and privileges), and equality of opportunity (social mobility). Liberalism is an ideology, and over three hundred years of history have shown that it can be robust and successful. Indeed the past three centuries can reasonably be summarized as the rise and spread of liberal ideals.

Brown notes that not all progressives are liberal:

Progressivism is a problem-solving method. Historians generally date Progressive Era as 1890-1920, but the progressive method did not end with that date. The progressive method is not an ideology but a pragmatic search for solutions that work, grounded in a healthy skepticism.

Thus, for example, Prohibition was a progressive project and was based on the social science of that era , but 'The Great Experiment' of Prohibition failed in practice and progressives also worked for its repeal. The 20th century can reasonably be summarized as the rise and spread of the progressive method.

In support of Progressivism, Brown observes that:

In short, it's not enough to practice the progressive method. That method must be applied toward goals grounded in liberal ideals, and it we must recognize when it's time to 'fish or cut bait' and be willing to advocate the best solutions we can find with confidence, even as we recognize that we will need to adapt to new information and changing conditions.

Liberalism is intolerant of liberty

In the essay The Sinking Ship Of Liberalism, Xiang Yu aptly observes that liberalism can not tolerate liberty, because liberty enables inequality of outcome:

.. But it must be said: the very freedom of the liberal society allows for the destruction of that liberal society, especially via the ballot box. In a liberal democracy, after all, the majority (or rather those who influence the passions of that majority) has absolute power over state and society, and there is no ironclad rule that the majority must vote for liberal ideals forever, making it inevitable that charlatans or fanatics will seek to use the masses to realize their own ideologies...

This growing chasm between liberalism and democracy has been expounded upon, in different forms, by many thinkers far more eminent than myself...

It is through these disparate analyses of conflict that we can make out the form of one liberalism’s most determined and fanatical adversaries, not that of reaction, but rather, leftism. Leftism is not a new phenomenon and has reared its head in countless nations and epochs throughout human history, from ancient Chinese Agriculturalism to the English Diggers to the Jacobins to Lenin, with the common theme of doing away with any inequality by any means whatsoever. The leftist’s claim to legitimacy in all of this is essentially democratic in nature: only he really cares about the people’s well being, only he knows their best interest, even if they themselves have been deceived as to just what that is; he represents the majority. He is the General Will.

For the leftist, liberal buzzwords about civility, merit, moderation, and limited government are just constructs created by an immoral class seeking to preserve its privilege in the face of the leveling that is the only just way to order the world. The liberty the liberal so cherishes cannot be allowed by the leftist to persist in any form because it might be used to perpetuate that most odious of sins, inequality....

Thus liberalism is incompatible with America's form of government - a Constitutional Republic which presupposes equality of opportunity but allows for inequality of outcome. For example, individuals are allowed the freedom to work diligently at a chosen profession, but some may succeed magnificently while others may fail.

Liberalism (which is sometimes called leftism) demands equality of outcome, and therein lies the inconsistency.

Three Dimensions of Ideology: "Conservatives View Things Along A Civilized/Barbaric Axis…", by John Derbyshire, 20 January 2013:

Conservatives view things along a civilized/barbaric axis, liberals along an oppressed/oppressor axis, and libertarians along a freedom/coercion axis. Conservatives will thus favor things that correlate well with (in particular, Western) civilization, while opposing things that correlate with poorly civilized societies or that would directly contradict salient features of civilization. Progressives, on the other hand, don't care about civilization - they care about defending the oppressed and opposing the oppressors. The "civilized" side can be the wrong side if it's taking on the role of an oppressor. And Libertarians don't see civilization or oppressors - they only want to know if someone is being coerced to do something - that's the wrong side.

References

1. Theodore Roosevelt, Wikipedia.

2. Bull Moose Party - The Progressive Party of 1912, American History.

3. Platform of the Progressive Party, 7 August 1912.

4. Progressivism and Liberalism, The Heritage Foundation

5. What are ‘Liberals,’ What are ‘Progressives,’ and Why the Difference Matters, Crissie Brown, PoliticsUSA, 15 June 15 2013.

6. How to tell the difference between a progressive and a liberal.

7. What is Progressive?, Andrew Garb, Alternet, 25 July 25 2005.

8. Yes, the Left Stole Liberalism & Sold Out the West, by Ilana Mercer, Unz Review, 16 August 2018.

9. The Sinking Ship Of Liberalism, by Xiang Yu, Social Matter, 8 November 2018.

10. Video: The Left Ruins Everything, by Dennis Prager, Prager U, 25 March 2019.

11. The Cultural Divide, by F Elbel, 12 October 2022.

Neoliberalism

by Fred Elbel

Neoliberalism (or neo-liberalism) originated as an European economic philosophy in the 1930s. The intent was to bridge the conflicting ideologies of classical liberalism and socialist planning in order to avoid economic failures like those which occurred in the early 1930s. Neoliberalism at first referred to theories at odds with classical liberal laissez-faire doctrine. It promoted a market economy guided by a strong state, which was referred to as the social market economy.

During this 1980s the term gained a negative connotation. The term shifted to mean a more radical laissez-faire economic approach. Scholars began to associate neoliberalism with Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. Neoliberalism currently refers to market-oriented policies such as deregulating capital markets, eliminating price controls, lowering trade barriers, and reducing state influence on the economy - especially through privatization and austerity.

This new meaning of neoliberalism is common among Spanish-speaking scholars, but the term is used less frequently in the United States.

 

References

Neoliberalism, Wikipedia.

What is Neoliberalism? A Brief Definition for Activists, by Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia, Global Exchange, February 26th, 2000.

What is Neoliberalism, Investopedia.

Conservatism, Paleoconservatism, and Neoconservatism

by Fred Elbel

Conservatism

Conservatism is a political approach which promotes retaining social institutions in the context of civilization and culture. Quintin Hogg, chairman of the British Conservative Party in 1959, "Conservatism is not so much a philosophy as an attitude, a constant force, performing a timeless function in the development of a free society, and corresponding to a deep and permanent requirement of human nature itself."1

Conservatism has different meanings and traditions in different countries. Conservative political parties vary from country to country depending on their goals and objectives, and often define themselves by their opposition to liberal agendas.

Conservatism in the United States is rooted in the American Revolution and its commitment to sovereignty of the people, republicanism, and individual rights and liberties. Most European conservatives consider American conservatism to be a variety of liberalism and do not think of it as genuine conservatism.1

Conservatism can take many forms, including the traditional forms of:
  • Liberal conservatism: combines conservative values and policies with classical liberal positions.
  • Conservative liberalism: combines liberal values and policies with conservative positions.
  • Libertarian conservatism: in the United States, combine libertarian economic issues with other aspects of conservatism.
  • Fiscal conservatism: economic philosophy of prudence in government spending and debt.
  • National and traditional conservatism: in Europe, concentrates more on national interests.
  • Cultural and social conservatism: preserving the heritage of a nation or a shared culture.
  • Religious conservatism: seeks to apply the teachings of particular religions to politics.
  • Progressive conservatism: stresses the importance of a social safety net and supports limited redistribution of wealth along with government regulation.1
Environmentalism can also be considered a form of conservatism, since it derives from the objectives of conservation and preserving the natural environment. It differs from traditional conservatism in that it does not encompass social issues.

Paleoconservatism

In the United States, Paleoconservatism stresses tradition, limited government, civil society, along with religious, national, and regional Western identity. Paleoconservatives disagree with neoconservatives, on issues such as illegal immigration, high rates of legal immigration, multiculturalism, affirmative action, foreign aid, and free trade. They also criticize social democracy and social welfare, referring to it as the "welfare-warfare state"2 As such, they may be considered "classical conservatives."

Paleocons typically take the "long view" toward US conservatism. Samuel T. Francis observed that:

What paleoconservatism tries to tell Americans is that the dominant forces in their society are no longer committed to conserving the traditions, institutions, and values that created and formed it, and, therefore, that those who are really conservative in any serious sense and wish to live under those traditions, institutions, and values need to oppose the dominant forces and form new ones...

We believe that the United States derives from and is an integral part of European civilization and the European people and that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character... We believe that illegal immigration must be stopped, if necessary by military force and placing troops on our national borders; that illegal aliens must be returned to their own countries; and that legal immigration must be severely restricted or halted through appropriate changes in our laws and policies.2

Paleoconservatives contend that human nature is finite and limited. Attempts to engineer a man-made utopia are fraught with pitfalls. Paleoconservatives prefer tradition, family, classical learning, and religious institutions to provide guidance. They tend to believe that we have lost touch with our Western heritage and indeed may be in danger of losing our civilization.2

Neoconservatism

The Neoconservatism movement originated in the 1960s with Democrats who were disillusioned with the party's foreign and domestic policies. Since that time, Noconservative ideology has continued to influence American foreign policy. Neoconservatives typically advocate for promotion of democracy and of American interests in international affairs, including by use of military force. Neocons disdain communism and political radicalism. They do, however, endorse some social welfare programs that are rejected by Paleoconservatives.3

In a 2004 article, Michael Lind wrote:

Neoconservatism ... originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Henry ('Scoop') Jackson, many of whom preferred to call themselves 'paleoliberals.' [After the end of the Cold War] ... many 'paleoliberals' drifted back to the Democratic center ... Today's neocons are a shrunken remnant of the original broad neocon coalition. Nevertheless, the origins of their ideology on the left are still apparent. The fact that most of the younger neocons were never on the left is irrelevant; they are the intellectual (and, in the case of William Kristol and John Podhoretz, the literal) heirs of older ex-leftists.3

Former Nebraska Republican U.S. senator and Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, was critical of the Bush administration's adoption of neoconservative ideology. He wrote in his book America: Our Next Chapter:

So why did we invade Iraq? I believe it was the triumph of the so-called neo-conservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence that took America into this war of choice. . . . They obviously made a convincing case to a president with very limited national security and foreign policy experience, who keenly felt the burden of leading the nation in the wake of the deadliest terrorist attack ever on American soil.3

Comparison

Paleoconservatives tend to be traditionalist, isolationist, and America first. Their socially conservative ideology is rooted in fundamentalist Protestantism. They generally oppose social legislation and welfare programs.

Neoconservatives support an engaged and activist foreign policy. They believe in American exceptionalism, and are concerned about the "clash of civilizations" implicit in threats such Communism and Islam. They are less motivated by religion than Paleoconservatives.4

Paleoconservatives and Neoconservatives disagree on issues including immigration, foreign wars, and Middle East policy. Neocons espouse strong support for Israel and believe that America should help ensure the security of the Jewish state.5 Paleo historian Thomas Woods elaborated:

The conservative’s traditional sympathy for the American South and its people and heritage, evident in the works of such great American conservatives as Richard M. Weaver and Russell Kirk, began to disappear... [T]he neocons are heavily influenced by Woodrow Wilson, with perhaps a hint of Theodore Roosevelt. ... They believe in an aggressive U.S. presence practically everywhere, and in the spread of democracy around the world, by force if necessary. ... Neoconservatives tend to want more efficient government agencies; paleoconservatives want fewer government agencies. [Neoconservatives] generally admire President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his heavily interventionist New Deal policies. Neoconservatives have not exactly been known for their budget consciousness, and you won't hear them talking about making any serious inroads into the federal apparatus.5

From the article 3 Basic Differences Between Conservatism and Neoconservatism:

  1. Neoconservatives believe the GOP should be converted to embrace a "modern democracy," aka a welfare state in the mold of FDR and the Great Society. Neoconservatives don't want to disassemble the federal government in order to rebalance divided powers between federal, state, and local governments; they just think they can pilot Leviathan better than the Democrats.
  2. Neoconservatives are largely secular intellectuals who ally with Bible-based people out of cynical pragmatism, not a genuine, shared love for the God of Israel.
  3. Neoconservatives naively think they can democratize the Muslim world with American military power.7

Three Dimensions of Ideology: "Conservatives View Things Along A Civilized/Barbaric Axis…", by John Derbyshire, 20 January 2013:

Conservatives view things along a civilized/barbaric axis, liberals along an oppressed/oppressor axis, and libertarians along a freedom/coercion axis. Conservatives will thus favor things that correlate well with (in particular, Western) civilization, while opposing things that correlate with poorly civilized societies or that would directly contradict salient features of civilization. Progressives, on the other hand, don't care about civilization - they care about defending the oppressed and opposing the oppressors. The "civilized" side can be the wrong side if it's taking on the role of an oppressor. And Libertarians don't see civilization or oppressors - they only want to know if someone is being coerced to do something - that's the wrong side.

References

1. Modern conservatism in different countries, Wikipedia.

2. Paleoconservatism, Wikipedia.

3. Neoconservatism, Wikipedia.

4. What's the difference between Paleo-Conservatives and Neoconservatives?, About.com.

5. Neoconservatism and paleoconservatism, Wikipedia.

6. Paleoconservatism vs. Neoconservatism, Jack Kerwick, About.com.

7. 3 Basic Differences Between Conservatism and Neoconservatism, Dave Swindle, PJ Media, December 27, 2013.

8. Paleoconservatism Vs. Neoconservatism: A Primer, Superblinky.

9. Conservatism's Hidden History, by Daniel Pipes, Philadelphia Inquirer, July 31, 2018.

Color Revolution

From America’s “Color Revolution”, by Marisol Nostromo, Medium.com, December 22, 2019:

For those readers who may be unfamiliar with the term "Color Revolution", it refers to what has now become the standard technique for promoting “regime change” in targeted nations....

Color Revolutions are expensive ($5 billion in the case of Ukraine) and are typically orchestrated by a public-private partnership comprised of government agencies such as the State Department and MI6 and/or CIA, combined with private funding and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

The most famous organization of this sort is the National Endowment For Democracy, a curious entity that is funded by the US Government through USAID (as well as by donations from major neocon private foundations), and has two sub-organizations that disseminate the funds to various Regime Change projects: the International Republican Institute, affiliated with the Republican Party, and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, affiliated with the Democrats. Both organizations carry out the same activity, which underscores the fact that on matters of subverting and bullying the rest of the world, there is a lot more bipartisanship in the US than people are inclined to think.

Another name associated with funding and orchestration is George Soros, whose various tax-exempt organizations such as the Open Society Foundations invariably pump money into the latest Color Revolutions,...

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama embraced the neocon ethos and gave them virtual carte blanche to carry out Color Revolutions around the world. ...

But it was inevitable that these techniques would eventually be used on the US itself. Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of reducing US reliance on Regime Change wars and NATO “out-of-area deployments” as a centerpiece of foreign policy. This was anathema to the neocons. ...

The standard methodology was put into play the moment Trump was inaugurated. ...

No one in their right mind believed that the confused and incoherent Biden could defeat the also incoherent, but clever and confident Trump....

Violent groups from the Antifa milieiu, predominately white and possibly assets of the FBI’s COINTELPRO progam, initiated vandalism and looting. Neocons were salivating at the prospect of Maidan-style chaos....

The good news is that the neocons are not omnipotent. They are adept at conning the public and they have the full cooperation of the corporate media, but the public is volatile and increasingly skeptical of the official “narratives.” ...

Lincoln A. Mitchell explains in the book The Color Revolutions:

From late 2003 through mid-2005, a series of peaceful street protests toppled corrupt and undemocratic regimes in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan and ushered in the election of new presidents in all three nations. These movements—collectively known as the Color Revolutions—were greeted in the West as democratic breakthroughs that might thoroughly reshape the political terrain of the former Soviet Union....

The Color Revolutions explores the causes and consequences of all three Color Revolutions—the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan—identifying both common themes and national variations. Mitchell's analysis also addresses the role of American democracy promotion programs, the responses of nondemocratic regimes to the Color Revolutions, the impact of these events on U.S.-Russian relations, and the failed "revolutions" in Azerbaijan and Belarus in 2005 and 2006....

From Russia and the “Color Revolution” - A Russian Military View of a World Destabilized by the US and the West, by Anthony H. Cordesman, May 28, 2014:

... the “Color Revolution.” Russian analysts have used this term since the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia in 2012, in discussing the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine in 2004, and the "Tulip Revolution" that took place in Kyrgyzstan in 2005.

Russian military officers now tied the term “Color Revolution” to the crisis in Ukraine and to what they saw as a new US and European approach to warfare that focuses on creating destabilizing revolutions in other states as a means of serving their security interests at low cost and with minimal casualties. It was seen as posing a potential threat to Russian in the near abroad, to China and Asia states not aligned with the US, and as a means of destabilizing states in the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia....

Russia and the “Color Revolution” - A Russian Military View of a World Destabilized by the US and the West, KEY BRIEFS, and is available on the Burke Chair web site...

Left-leaning Wikipedia has a catalog and map of Color Revolutions.

From Explaining the Color Revolutions, by Poh Phaik Thien, E-International Relations, July 31 2009:

Scholars witnessed a ‘bulldozer revolution’ in Serbia in 2000, a ‘rose revolution’ in Georgia in 2003, an ‘orange revolution’ in Ukraine in December 2004 and then a ‘tulip’ revolution in Kyrgyzstan in early 2005. Besides these four revolutions, such political upheavals also impacted other post-Soviet countries with related and connected anti-regime’s reactions and movements. Although only the Orange color revolutions actually had a color as it symbolize this term, ‘color revolution’ has become a popular term for referring to the four revolutions that occurred among regional specialist and local politicians....

The United States President George W.Bush has been trying to transplant the model of color revolution in post-Soviet countries to transform Iraq, as he used the term ‘Purple Revolution’ to describe the coming of democracy to Iraq...

... there are four criteria which must be satisfied. Firstly, their incumbent leader of the regimes must be very unpopular and face the so-called ‘lame-duck syndrome’. Secondly, the anti-regimes forces are enforced by mass-media and foreign influences. Thirdly, the revolution must not be ideological; it must be for the sake of better national integration, freedom, democracy and economic development. Most importantly, the demand for such improvement should be massive among the population. Lastly, the anti-regime forces should also be motivated by the grievances on the corrupted government which is supported by a foreign state which the people do not desire.

Why the Color Revolutions Failed - Toppling dictators isn't enough. Successful revolutions also embrace the rule of law. By Melinda Haring, Michael Cecire, Foreign Policy,March 18, 2013:

Why did they fail? Quite simply, the rule of law never took root. Too often, the color revolution governments acted above or with little regard to the democratic legal standard to which they held their predecessors....

An in-depth analysis of The Color Revolution Model: An Exposé of the Core Mechanics, by Andrew Korybko, Center for Syncretic Studies, December 3, 2015:

Conclusion:

A Color Revolution is a complex interplay of many parts operating simultaneously. The Movement has to properly build its six Infrastructures prior to the onset of the public destabilization, and it needs an Event to galvanize its support and justify its actions to the targeted audiences. The Physical Infrastructures assist the Movement in gaining traction and attention, and they make the Color Revolution appear popular and spontaneous...

 

Conservative, Liberal, or both?

In the article Top Five Reasons Not to Vote, Doug Casey notes in a Libertarian missive that "voting encourages politicians". Actually, the opposite is more accurate - that if you don't vote you encourage politicians. In other words, voting is the primary constraint that sovereign Americans can impose on their elected public servants. As in "vote the bums out!"

But who do you vote for as a candidate? Are you a liberal (left) or a conservative (right)? Where do the candidates fall along the liberal - conservative line?

Casey points out that the single liberal conservative dimension is particularly constraining. Not only do these abstract terms change with every politician, they change over time. He notes that:

In the 19th century, a liberal was someone who believed in free speech, social mobility, limited government, and strict property rights. The term has since been appropriated by those who, although sometimes still believing in limited free speech, always support strong government and weak property rights, and who see everyone as a member of a class or group.

Conservatives have always tended to believe in strong government and nationalism... Today's conservatives are sometimes seen as defenders of economic liberty and free markets, although that is mostly true only when those concepts are perceived to coincide with the interests of big business and economic nationalism.

Bracketing political beliefs on an illogical scale, running only from left to right, results in constrained thinking...

Politics is the theory and practice of government. It concerns itself with how force should be applied in controlling people, which is to say, in restricting their freedom. It should be analyzed on that basis...

Casey delineates two fundamental types of freedom: social and economic. He then suggests that the political spectrum can be more accurately portrayed in a two-dimensional chart representing both social and economic freedom. 

Social and Economic Freedom

Thus, for example, a person or a candidate may lean toward personal freedom but not economic freedom - in other words, the government should not interfere with personal lifestyle choices, but it should direct the economy. Or a person or candidate may favor the opposite, or may fall anywhere within the chart.

The Nolan Chart

Casey's chart is a derivative of the Nolan Chart, which is a political view assessment diagram created by David Nolan in 1969. The chart represents political opinion along two axes: economic and personal. It presents political views according to degrees of economic and personal freedom. Nolan stated that when someone views this chart, it causes an irreversible change: viewers subsequently view the political orientations in two dimensions instead of one.

Nolan Chart - liberal versus conservative

Economic freedom relates to what people do as producers and consumers and what they do with their money. For example: where they work, ability to start a business, and ability to buy a home. Personal freedom relates to self-expression, and what people do with their minds and bodies. For example: recreational activities, membership in organizations, and drugs and foods they consume. 

Most government control and involvement falls within these two arenas of economics and personal activity. Wikipedia notes that:

The extremes are no government at all in either area (anarchism) or total or near-total government control of everything (various forms of totalitarianism). Most political philosophies fall somewhere in between. In broad terms:

• Conservatives and those on the right tend to favor more freedom in economic areas (example: a free market), but more government intervention in personal matters (example: drug laws).

• Liberals and those on the left (by the common US meanings of those terms) tend to favor more freedom in personal areas (example: no military draft), but more government activism or control in economics (example: a government-mandated minimum wage).

• Libertarians favor both personal and economic freedom, and oppose most (or all) government intervention in both areas. Like conservatives, libertarians believe that people should be free to make economic choices for themselves. Like liberals, libertarians believe in personal freedom.

• Statists favor a lot of government control in both the personal and economic areas. Different versions of the chart, as well as Nolan's original chart, use terms such as "communitarian" or "populist" to label this corner of the chart.

Here's another version of the Nolan Chart which uses traditional left (red) versus conservative (blue) coloration:

(The above two charts courtesy Wikipedia).

Additional dimensions

Of course, there exist political categories or dimensions other than personal and economic. For example, the environmental dimension extends along an axis from:

nature is there for man's taking (anthropocentrism)

balancing human impact with nature (environmentalism)

protecting future generations - of all species (deep ecology)

Thus, it would be possible to be an environmentalist and a liberal (it seems that many environmentalists fall into this category). But it would also be consistent to be a deep ecologist while being fundamentally conservative (indeed, the late Middle English root of "conservative" is to conserve or preserve).

Similarly, additional dimensions might include international versus domestic priorities, free market system versus social collectivism, empire-building warfare versus peace, etc.

Where do you stand?

A number of self-administered quizzes are available for you to find out where you fit. They aren't perfect, but they are interesting to take. Here are a few:

The World's Smallest Political Quiz

Best Political Quiz - This quiz measures political positions along five axes: Overall Standing, International Affairs, Social, Environment, and Economic.

The Enhanced Precision Political Quiz...in 2D

I Side With: 2016 Presidential Election - How do your beliefs align with the potential candidates?

(When taking any quiz online, don't provide personal information that could be used for tracking purposes.)

Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory is related to Critical Theory, a Marxist approach oriented towards destructive criticism of the main elements of Western culture. The key to understanding Critical Race Theory and Critical Theory is their destructive agenda: criticize, dismantle, and destroy.

Critical Race Theory and Marxism

 

The following article explains the history of Critical Race Theory. Excerpts are included below, and the entire article is well worth reading.

Critical Race Theory: What It Is and How to Fight It, by Christopher F. Rufo, Imprimis, Hillsdale College, March 2021:

... Originally, the Marxist Left built its political program on the theory of class conflict. Marx believed that the primary characteristic of industrial societies was the imbalance of power between capitalists and workers. The solution to that imbalance, according to Marx, was revolution... and usher in a new socialist society.

During the 20th century, a number of regimes underwent Marxist-style revolutions, and each ended in disaster. Socialist governments in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, and elsewhere racked up a body count of nearly 100 million of their own people... In practice, Marx’s ideas unleashed man’s darkest brutalities.

By the mid-1960s, Marxist intellectuals... came to realize that workers’ revolutions would never occur in Western Europe or the United States, where there were large middle classes and rapidly improving standards of living...

Abandoning Marx’s economic dialectic of capitalists and workers, they substituted race for class and sought to create a revolutionary coalition of the dispossessed based on racial and ethnic categories...

Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism...

There are a series of euphemisms deployed by its supporters to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.” Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality..

The editors of The American Mind oppose the spread of this pernicious ideology, stating:

As Americans concerned for the common good of the nation, we reject the following tenets of “Critical Race Theory” as directly opposed to the fundamental principles of American government and political order:

• That any human being simply by virtue of being born in a given racial category (e.g., their “whiteness”) is inherently evil or bears guilt for actions committed by others in the past or present.

• That the principle of the inherent equality and dignity of all human beings insofar as they are human enables racism instead of serving as the firmest bulwark against it.

• That those who oppose replacing the equality of all citizens under the law with a system of “equity” that treats people unequally based on racial categories are complicit in racism or white supremacy.

• That establishing a legal regime of racial hierarchies is equitable or just.

Art Keller writes that sociologist Bradley Campbell, author of The Rise of Victimhood Culture, explains:

In my own work I’ve called it a “moral culture” rather than a religion, and I think that’s probably more accurate. We could call it “social justice culture,” or as Jason Manning and I called it, “victimhood culture,” but in any case, it’s a worldview that places a certain conception of social justice as the highest value...

Drawing from critical theory, those who embrace this moral culture tend to view various social identities as the most important thing about people, and they see those identities as oppressor or victim identities. To be white, male, Christian, or straight, for example is to have a privileged position in a system of oppression, and to be a person of color, female, non-Christian, or LGBT is to be disadvantaged...

... interpreting everything in terms of oppression and in elevating those concerns above all others seems to have led many of the activists to disregard liberal values such as due process and free speech.

Dan Proft signifies the destructive agenda of Critical Race Theory in his April 21, 2021 American Greatness article, It’s Not a Race War. It’s Something Much Bigger - Do not confuse the tactic for the strategy:

The Left wants a race war in America because they cannot otherwise win the ideological war they are waging.

The former is a cover for the latter...

Today’s Marxists’ ideological pursuit of tyrannical control transcends race, which is merely a stealth bomber in their fleet. This is not a race war. It’s something much bigger.

How to counter Critical Race Theory?

This 5 minute PragerU video describes Critical Race Theory and what you can do to stop it: What Is Critical Race Theory?, by James Lindsay.

"Refuse to accept it. Don't be intimidated by the "heads I win and tails you lose" logic of this self-destructive, America-hating, anti-reality idea. Don't be bullied into thinking that you're a racist when you know you're not. Or that you're a victim when you know you're not."

The editors of the American Mind contend that:

• Human beings are fundamentally equal insofar as they are human and citizens and must be treated as such by law.

• Blaming groups of citizens for evils they did not commit based on their race, color, or ethnicity is morally wrong and will result in civic disorder and balkanization.

• A system based on “equity”, in which equity means rejecting equality under the law and distributing goods and services on the basis of race alone is neither equitable nor just.

• Government and public institutions must not discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race, color, or ethnicity.

Those who agree with the above points and disagree with Critical Race Theory (CRT) are labeled with "unconscious bias," "white fragility," or as "white supremacists." In other words, defense of CRT amounts to a hollow tautology that attempts to intimidate and silence those who disagree with it. The invective "You're not a racist, are you?" sounds strikingly like "You don't still beat your wife, do you?"

It takes a bit of courage and stamina to stay the course against this societal delirium.

Christopher F. Rufo states:

No longer simply an academic matter, critical race theory has become a tool of political power...

Critical race theorists must be confronted with and forced to speak to the facts...

There are three parts to a successful strategy to defeat the forces of critical race theory: governmental action, grassroots mobilization, and an appeal to principle.

Similarly, in addition to pointing out the dishonesty of the historical narrative on which critical race theory is predicated, we must promote the true story of America...

References

Critical Race Theory is a Victimization Cult, by Art Keller, June 29, 2020.

Institutionalizing Critical Race Theory - How Marxists in America expect to seize power completely, by Claire Lopez, Frontpage Mag, April 30, 2021. An excellent article on CRT. Part 1 of a 3 part series. Part 2: Critical Race Theory in America’s Classrooms - What parents and other citizen patriots need to understand. .

Book: The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars, by Bradley Campbell, 2018.

Book: Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology, Edited by William Lind, November 2004. Read the entire book (pdf).

The Truth About Critical Race Theory, Christopher F. Rufo, Wall Street Journal October 5, 2020.

Cultural Marxism, Political Correctness, and Critical Theory, CAIRCO research.

It’s Not a Race War. It’s Something Much Bigger - Do not confuse the tactic for the strategy, by Dan Proft, American Greatness, April 21, 2021

Coordination and Decomposition, by Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, April 9, 2021

Standing Against Critical Race Theory, by Christopher Rufo, American Mind, April 21, 2021.

Recommended video: Why Identity Politics Cannot Tolerate Free Speech, Center for the American Way of Life, February 24, 2021: Arthur Milikh, Director of the Center for the American Way of Life, joins Jan Jekielek on American Thought Leaders to discuss the real goal behind the criminalization of hate speech. At 4:07, Milikh discusses Critical race theory, identity politics, and hate speech laws.

 

A White-Out of Whites: Ignoring the Albino, Dhimmi Elephant In the Room, by Ilana Mercer, American Renaissance, May 29, 2021:

Strictly speaking, Critical Race Theory is not even traditionally racist; it’s exclusively anti-white. It is pro all races other than white....

Critical Race Theory’s central project is to make whites accept dhimmitude, not socialism....

NC Lt. Governor Mark Robinson: Critical Race Theory Mirrors Teachings Of The KKK (VIDEO), Gateway Pundit, June 1, 2021:

 

Five tips for debating Critical Race Theory, by Joseph E. McIsaac, American Thinker, June 16, 2021.

Frederick Douglass Versus the 1619 Project - Critical Race Theory's big lie about American history, by Dinesh D'Souza, Frontpage Mag, July 16, 2021:

... Brockell recalls Douglass’s famous July 4 address (pdf), delivered in Rochester, New York, to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. The first part of the speech does indeed support Brockell’s account, because Douglass gives a savage indictment of how American independence looks to a black man...

Already one can see Douglass’s speech as a masterpiece of rhetoric, each phrase building on the previous one, almost like a wave gathering force before crashing down on the audience. Yet as the speech moves on, Douglass makes a sharp and surprising turn. Far from denouncing the Fourth of July, far from scorning the Declaration of Independence as a charter of hypocrisy, far from blaming the Constitution for making an unholy pact with slavery—this is precisely what the critical race theorists do today—Douglass roundly affirms the founding as a “glorious liberty document” that launched “forces in operation” that “must inevitably work the downfall of slavery.”...

Douglass ended his speech on a patriotic note that vividly contrasts with the way he began, and shows why he had no problem, in the end, with celebrating the Fourth of July and what it represented. Of the Constitution, Douglass later said, “Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution needs to be altered.” That’s because the document gives no support, no sanction, to slavery....

The Deceptions of "Systemic Racism," "Antiracism," and "Critical Race Theory" - A compilation of online resources on the ongoing unpleasant dumbing down and racialization of society, Compiled by Stuart H. Hurlbert, Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, May 6, 2021, updated June 28, 2021.

Cynical Minds - a review of the book Cynical Theories, by Fred Elbel, June 21, 2021.

Cultural Marxism, Political Correctness, and Critical Theory

by Fred Elbel
Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.
- George Carlin

Political Correctness is a deadly serious form of Cultural Marxism, which views culture as the basis of class struggle. Cultural Marxism relies on deconstruction to undermine underlying cultural values in order to pave the way to fundamentally transform a society. Critical Theory in essence means criticising society in order to expose weaknesses and facilitate change.

An informative synopsis of Political Correctness / Cultural Marxism, by Discover the Networks1 is included below (adapted from Lind's Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology).2

America today is dominated by a system of beliefs, attitudes and values that we have come to know as "Political Correctness." For many it is an annoyance and a self parodying joke. But Political Correctness is deadly serious in its aims, seeking to impose a uniformity of thought and behavior on all Americans. It is therefore totalitarian in nature. Its roots lie in a version of Marxism which sees culture, rather than the economy, as the site of class struggle.

Under Marxist economic theory, the oppressed workers were supposed to be the beneficiaries of a social revolution that would place them on top of the power structure. When these revolutionary opportunities presented themselves, however, the workers did not respond. The Marxist revolutionaries did not blame their theory for these failures; instead they blamed the "ruling class," which had bought off the workers by giving them "rights," and had blinded them with a "false consciousness" that led them to support national governments and liberal democracy.

One group of Marxist intellectuals resolved this apparent contradiction of Marxist theory by an analysis that focused on society's cultural "superstructure" rather than on the economic "base" as Marx did. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs contributed the most to this new cultural Marxism.

Among Marxists, Gramsci is noted for his theory that cultural hegemony is the means to class dominance. In his view, a new "Communist man" had to be created through a changed culture before any political revolution was possible. This led to a focus on the efforts of intellectuals in the fields of education and media.

Georg Lukacs believed that for a new Marxist culture to emerge, the existing culture must be destroyed. He said, "I saw the revolutionary destruction of society as the one and only solution to the cultural contradictions of the epoch.... Such a worldwide overturning of values cannot take place without the annihilation of the old values and the creation of new ones by the revolutionaries."

In 1923, Lukacs and other Marxist intellectuals associated with the Communist Party of Germany founded the Institute of Social Research at Frankfurt University in Frankfurt, Germany. The Institute, which became known as the Frankfurt School, was modeled after the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow. In 1933, when Nazis came to power in Germany, the members of the Frankfurt School fled. Most came to the United States and many became influential in American universities. The Frankfurt School's studies combined Marxist analysis with Freudian psychoanalysis to form the basis of what became known as "Critical Theory."

Critical Theory was essentially destructive criticism of the main elements of Western culture, including Christianity, capitalism, authority, the family, patriarchy, hierarchy, morality, tradition, sexual restraint, loyalty, patriotism, nationalism, heredity, ethnocentrism, convention and conservatism.

Critical Theorists recognized that traditional beliefs and the existing social structure would have to be destroyed and then replaced with a "new thinking" that would become as much a part of elementary consciousness as the old one had been. Their theories took hold in the tumultuous 1960s, when the Vietnam War opened a Pandora's Box of reevaluaton and revolution. The student radicals of the era were strongly influenced by revolutionary ideas, among them those of Herbert Marcuse, a member of the Frankfurt School who preach the "Great Refusal," a rejection of all basic Western concepts and an embrace of sexual liberation, and the merits of feminist and black revolutions. His primary thesis was that university students, ghetto blacks, the alienated, the asocial, and the Third World could take the place of the proletariat in the coming Communist revolution.

Marcuse may be the most important member of the Frankfurt School in terms of the origins of Political Correctness, because he was the critical link to the counterculture of the 1960s. His objective was clear: "One can rightfully speak of a cultural revolution, since the protest is directed toward the whole cultural establishment, including morality of existing society."

When addressing the general public, contemporary advocates of Political Correctness - or Cultural Marxism, as it might just as easily be called - present their beliefs with appealing simplicity as merely a commitment to being "sensitive" to other people and embracing values such as "tolerance" and "diversity."

The reality is different. Political Correctness is the use of culture as a sharp weapon to enforce new norms and to stigmatize those who dissent from the new dispensation; to stigmatize those who insist on values that will impede the new "PC" regime: free speech and free and objective intellectual inquiry.

Adapted from: "Political Correctness": A Short History of an Ideology," edited by William Lind (November 2004).2

Deconstruction

Author William Lind describes in the article The Origins of Political Correctness how the agenda of Cultural Marxism is implicitly deconstructionist:3

...We have it primarily on college campuses, but it is spreading throughout the whole society. Were does it come from? What is it?

We call it "Political Correctness." The name originated as something of a joke, literally in a comic strip, and we tend still to think of it as only half-serious. In fact, it's deadly serious. It is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious.

If we look at it analytically, if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious.

First of all, both are totalitarian ideologies...

... the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness, like economic Marxism, has a single factor explanation of history. Economic Marxism says that all of history is determined by ownership of means of production. Cultural Marxism, or Political Correctness, says that all history is determined by power, by which groups defined in terms of race, sex, etc., have power over which other groups. Nothing else matters. All literature, indeed, is about that. Everything in the past is about that one thing.

... just as in classical economic Marxism certain groups, i.e. workers and peasants, are a priori good, and other groups, i.e., the bourgeoisie and capital owners, are evil. In the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness certain groups are good - feminist women, (only feminist women, non-feminist women are deemed not to exist) blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals. These groups are determined to be "victims," and therefore automatically good regardless of what any of them do. Similarly, white males are determined automatically to be evil, thereby becoming the equivalent of the bourgeoisie in economic Marxism.

... both economic and cultural Marxism rely on expropriation. When the classical Marxists, the communists, took over a country like Russia, they expropriated the bourgeoisie, they took away their property. Similarly, when the cultural Marxists take over a university campus, they expropriate through things like quotas for admissions...

For the cultural Marxist, it's deconstruction. Deconstruction essentially takes any text, removes all meaning from it and re-inserts any meaning desired... So the parallels are very evident between the classical Marxism that we're familiar with in the old Soviet Union and the cultural Marxism that we see today as Political Correctness...

History

Chuck Rogér summarizes Cultural Marxist history:4

... In the 1920s and 1930s Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who argued that traditional values must be obliterated in order to free "oppressed" social groups, called for eliminating social decorum and glorifying perverse behavior in order to destroy the Western middle class and collapse society from within. Translated into today's terminology, the plan prescribed the commandeering of news and entertainment media, religious and financial institutions, organized labor, health care, and education.

Gramsci's cultural Marxism began to reach throughout society when Frankfurt University's Institute for Marxism -- renamed the Institute for Social Research and informally called the Frankfurt School - fled Nazi Germany, took up temporary residence at Columbia University in 1933, and then, during World War II, began using Gramsci-derived "critical theory" to "deconstruct" American society. German-born philosopher-writer Herbert Marcuse and other Marxists carried cultural Marxism beyond Columbia, and progressives adopted the disease as a weapon of "change" to be deployed within the education system...

So camouflaged has been the use of Gramsci's brainchild that most education school indoctrinees -- K-12 teachers -- have never really weighed the consequences of conditioning students to reject a moral and prosperous America...

Critical Theory

An integral component of Cultural Marxism is Critical Theory. Lind describes it as:2,3

Critical Theory was essentially destructive criticism of the main elements of Western culture, including Christianity, capitalism, authority, the family, patriarchy, hierarchy, morality, tradition, sexual restraint, loyalty, patriotism, nationalism, heredity, ethnocentrism, convention and conservatism.

Critical Theorists recognized that traditional beliefs and the existing social structure would have to be destroyed and then replaced with a "new thinking" that would become as much a part of elementary consciousness as the old one had been...

... the radical feminism, the women's studies departments, the gay studies departments, the black studies departments - all these things are branches of Critical Theory. What the Frankfurt School essentially does is draw on both Marx and Freud in the 1930s to create this theory called Critical Theory. The term is ingenious because you're tempted to ask, "What is the theory?" The theory is to criticize. The theory is that the way to bring down Western culture and the capitalist order is not to lay down an alternative. They explicitly refuse to do that. They say it can't be done, that we can't imagine what a free society would look like (their definition of a free society). As long as we're living under repression - the repression of a capitalistic economic order which creates (in their theory) the Freudian condition, the conditions that Freud describes in individuals of repression - we can't even imagine it.

What Critical Theory is about is simply criticizing. It calls for the most destructive criticism possible, in every possible way, designed to bring the current order down. And, of course, when we hear from the feminists that the whole of society is just out to get women and so on, that kind of criticism is a derivative of Critical Theory. It is all coming from the 1930s, not the 1960s...

Critical Theory is used by leftist deconstructionists to reframe the political debate from discourse about good and bad ideas to good and bad people. The far left believes that their battle is not about political ideas, but about bad people - that is, the Republicans - who should be taken out via every means possible, including violence.

For a succinct discussion of Critical Theory concepts, see Critical Theory by New Discoveries.

Also see: A Beginner's Curriculum on Critical Race Theory, by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, New Discoveries, June 23, 2020.

 

Multiculturalism

Linda Kimball points out that multiculturalism is but another facet of Cultural Marxism:5

Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. They favor code words: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity. All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism.

The blogger Fjordman notes that:6

Not only has Marxism survived, it is thriving and has in some ways grown stronger. Leftist ideas about Multiculturalism and de-facto open borders have achieved a virtual hegemony in public discourse, their critics vilified and demonized. By hiding their intentions under labels such as "anti-racism" and "tolerance," Leftists have achieved a degree of censorship of public discourse they could never have dreamt of had they openly stated that their intention was to radically transform Western civilization and destroy its foundations.

The Left have become ideological orphans after the Cold War, or perhaps we should call them ideological mercenaries. Although the viable economic alternative to capitalism didn't work out, their hatred for this system never subsided, it merely transformed into other forms. Multiculturalism is just a different word for "divide and conquer," pitting various ethnic and cultural groups against each other and destroying the coherence of Western society from within.

At the very least, the people living in the former Communist countries knew and admitted that they were taking part in a gigantic social experiment, and that the media and the authorities were serving them propaganda to shore up support for this project. Yet in the supposedly free West, we are taking part in a gigantic social experiment of Multiculturalism and Muslim immigration every bit as radical, utopian and potentially dangerous as Communism, seeking to transform our entire society from top to bottom, and still we refuse to even acknowledge that this is going on.

Video

The Best 30-Minute Explanation of Marxism and its current manifestation of "equity" and "wokeness".

Here are a few excerpts from the video:

The definition of equity comes from the public administration literature. It was written by a man named George Frederickson and the definition is an administered political economy in which shares are adjusted so that citizens are made equal. Does that sound like anything you've heard of before - like socialism?

They're going to administer an economy to make shares equal. The only difference between equity and socialism is the type of property that they redistribute: the type of shares. They're going to redistribute social and cultural capital in addition to economic and material capital.

And so this is my thesis. When we say "what is woke?" - it's Maoism with American characteristics...

We think that Marx was talking about economics...

If we go below the surface what Marx was talking about was something different.

At the end of history mankind will remember that he is a social being and we will have a socialist society - a perfect communism that transcends private property - is how he put it...

But Marx was never an economist. He was a theologian.

He wanted to produce a religion for mankind that would supersede all of the religions of mankind and bring him back to his true social nature...

We look at this idea a special form of property that segregates society into people who have - the Bourgeois - and the people who do not have - who are in class conflict...

Take out class, put in race. Change out class put in race and watch: we get Critical Race Theory...

Just Like Karl Marx said that in the Communist Manifesto he wrote communism can be summarized in a single sentence - the abolition of private property - well this is why Critical Race Theory calls to abolish Whiteness. Because whiteness is a form of private property. People who have access to this property are Whites or White adjacent or they act White...

If you think of whiteness as a form of cultural capital, white supremacy as they define it is identical to capitalism... It's not believing that white people are superior. It's believing that white people have access to the control of society...

Marx merely believed it was through economic means. Now it's through socio-cultural means. The evolution into this - sometimes called Western Marxism - began in the 1920s.

5 Minute video: Understanding Marxism: From Each According to His Ability, PragerU.

5 Minute video: Understanding Marxism: Change the World, PragerU.


 

References

1. Political Correctness / Cultural Marxism, Discover the Networks.

2. Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology, Edited by William Lind, November 2004. Read the entire book (pdf).

3. The Origins of Political Correctness, by William Lind, Accuracy in Academia, February 5, 2000.

4. Cultural Marxism in Education: The Gathering Revolt, by Chuck Roger, American Thinker, April 18, 2010.

5. Cultural Marxism, by Linda Kimball, American Thinker, February 15, 2007.

6. Political Correctness: The Revenge of Marxism, by Fjordam, Gates of Vienna, June 14, 2006.

7. Who Stole Our Culture?, by William Lind, World Net Daily, May 24, 2007.

8. Why There Is A Culture War: Gramsci and Tocqueville in America

9. What Is the Frankfurt School (And Its Effect on America)?, by Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson, Western Voices World News, August 1, 1999.

10. Multiculturalism and Marxism, by Frank Ellis, Discover the Networks, November, 1999.

11. A Guide for the Perplexed: A Brief History of Political Correctness and Its Origins, by Cartes A. Jouer, Pamela Geller - Atlas Shrugged, September 3, 2012.

12. What is Cultural Marxism?, Destroy Cultural Marxism, January 8, 2013.

13. A Progressive's Guide to Political Correctness, Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will:

 

14. What Is Cultural Marxism?, Katehon:

...In brief, a Cultural Marxist is one who believes that that cultural/civilizational factors are irrelevant in understanding any type of social, political, or international form of relations, and in order to advance their "cultural-blind" end goal ideology, they:

(1) first support the dilution and then abolishment of majority cultures via the 'politically correct' dominance of minority/immigrant cultures, typically using slurring accusations of "racism", "fascism", and "white supremacy" to attack those who oppose this radical platform;

(2) and then afterwards 'smoothing over' all the remaining cultural mass into an amorpheous and unoriginal 'blob' which loses all aspects of its former cultural identity and is thenceforth molded into a new and unprecedented form of being.

Stage one is in process all throughout the EU and parts of the US...

15. The Democrats' Second Secession & America's New Civil War - How to look at the bizarre turn our political life has taken, by David Horowitz, FrontPage Mag, May 26, 2017.

16. A Long History of Leftist Hatred, by Pat Buchanan, American Renaissance, June 16, 2017.

17. How leftist philosophy fuels political violence, by Nate Madden, Conservative Review, June 16, 2017.

18. Leftists versus the People, by Jeffrey Folks, American Thinker, February 24, 2018. Do they really hate ordinary people that much?

19. A Beginner's Curriculum on Critical Race Theory, by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, New Discoveries, June 23, 2020.

20. Critical Race Theory's Destructive Impact on America, by Carol M. Swain, 1776 Unites, July, 2020.

21. Critical Race Theory is a Victimization Cult, by Art Keller, New Discourses, June 29, 2020.

22. The Challenge of Marxism, by Yoram Hazony, Quillette, August 16, 2020. Review: The Marxist threat to liberalism, by Fred Elbel, August 24, 2020.

23. Videos: Towards a Better Understanding of the Left. Are you struggling to understand the cultural revolution being foisted on the American People? While much has been written on Cultural Marxism and Progressivism, the spoken work offers another path to understanding the fundamentals.

Democracy or a Republic?

Recent statements by our ruling elites - that is, the Democrat party - express purported concern for "preserving our democracy." For example:

"...democracy was attacked" - remarks By president Biden To Mark One Year Since The January 6th Deadly Assault On The U.S. Capitol.

"...our democracy came under assault" - remarks by Vice President Harris Marking One Year Since the January 6th Deadly Assault on the U.S. Capitol.

"... be part of saving our democracy?" - press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, January 6, 2022.

What the ruling elites really mean when they say they want to "preserve our democracy" is they want to "preserve their Oligarchy."

There are two problems with that:

1. The United States of America is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.

2. It's not their democracy to preserve. The beauty of a Constitutional Republic is that power lies with the sovereign American people, in a Republican form of representation.

The United States is a Constitutional Republic

These United States are a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy. In a Democracy, power is lodged in the hands of the majority. As has been said, a democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding on what's for dinner.

Judge Napolitano, a Constitutional Attorney, has pointed out that in a Democracy the majority can vote to take your property - and your freedom - if they so desire. This is in essence mob rule, which has always resulted in eventual anarchy and collapse - usually into totalitarianism.

Plato summed it up:

Democracy leads to anarchy, which is mob rule." - Plato (429-347 BC)

The Founding Fathers did not want a Democracy. James Madison stated in the Federalist Papers:

"Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal

He stated in Federalist No. 10:

"A pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction,"

Thus the term "democracy" does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. The term "republic" does. And as everyone knows, we pledge allegiance to the Republic, not to the democracy.

 

Excerpt from "A Republic, Not A Democracy" by Dan Smoot, Apr 18, 1966

"A constitutional republic not a democracy. The ideal of a democracy is universal equality. The ideal of a constitutional republic is individual liberty. A democracy always degenerates into dictatorship, which promises government guaranteed equality and security, but it delivers nothing but poverty and serfdom for the people it robs and rules. America was founded as a constitutional republic to safeguard the liberties of the people against the tyranny of democracy or of one man dictatorship. In this century, great strides have been made toward the goal of subverting our Republic into a democracy. The foremost tactic of the subverters is subversion of language by calling America a democracy, until people thoughtlessly accept and use the term, the totalitarians have obscured the real meaning of our principles of government."

 

Quick references:

 

Countries Considered to be Full Democracies

Here are Countries Considered to be Full Democracies, from World Atlas. Norway is the world’s leading democratic nation, with a score of 10. The score is an implication that all the democratic principles in this country are upheld. Note that the United States is not on this list.

Rank Country Score
1 Norway 10
2 Iceland 9.58
3 Sweden 9.39
4 New Zealand 9.26
5 Denmark 9.22
6 Ireland 9.15
7 Canada 9.15
8 Australia 9.09
9 Finland 9.03
10 Switzerland 9.03
11 Netherlands 8.89
12 Luxembourg 8.81
13 Germany 8.61
14 United Kingdom 8.53
15 Austria 8.42
16 Mauritius 8.22
17 Malta 8.15
18 Uruguay 8.12
19 Spain 8.08

Reseach by ML.

Related

The Political Spectrum

Democracy vs "Our Democracy" by Jeremy Carl, American Mind, 26 August 2022.

‘Our Democracy’ = Their Oligarchy, by Rob Natelson, Epoch Times, 7 January 2022.

Is 'Our Democracy' Failing Our Country? by Patrick J. Buchanan, 9 October 2022.

 

"A republic, if you can keep it." - Benjamin Franklin

A republic, if you can keep it

Fascism - a phenomenon of the left

Today it's commonplace for leftist liberals to call conservatives fascists. But the reality is that fascism derives from traditional liberalism. Fascism is a liberal / progressive concept, and has nothing to do with "right-wing" conservatism.

Modern liberalism derived from twentieth-century progressivism, and shared commonality with European fascism, where it was expressed as militant nationalism with blatant racist overtones.

Before World War II, fascism was viewed as a positive, progressive social movement in both America and Europe. Then the Holocaust completely changed our view of fascism to that of evil nationalism and genocidal racism.

Under FDR's presidency the term "liberalism" came to replace "progressivism" to describe center-left politics. In order to purport that the totalitarian New Deal was the opposite of fascism, liberals then created a straw man out of the conservative movement. The term "right-wing" had already been used to describe a position opposed to Roosevelt, so it was a relatively small incremental step to associate the American right with despised Nazi fascism.

Today's liberalism embodies a soft, yet still totalitarian, form of fascism. Fascism in the United States is expressed in the milder form of progressivism - as a softer form of totalitarianism more in alignment with American culture. We see in the U.S. a form of liberal fascism manifested as an ever-expanding deep state.

Fascism is a Big Government ideology, and is decidedly on the left side of the political spectrum

 

'Fascist' Smear Reveals Harris' Lack of Historical Knowledge, by George J. Marlin, Newsmax, 29 October 2024:

... The architects of Fascist ideology borrowed from Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), the concept that the state was the supreme manifestation of God on earth.

They preached that every citizen must surrender their individualism in favor of the collective. Their slogan was "nothing for the individual, all for the state."...

Fascism’s most prominent thinkers, Giovani Gentile (1875-1944) and Giuseppe Prezzolini (1882-1982), argued that there should be no conflict between man and the state because "the maximum of liberty coincides with the maximum force of the state."...

The word "Fascist" stemmed from "fascio" or "club," which Mussolini founded for supporters of his brand of anti-Communist national socialism...

"Fascism," Mussolini declared, "conceives of the state as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative only to be conceived in their relation to the state."

Fascists called for a "corporate state" whereby the government and corporate giants partnered to control the lives of middle-class and working-class folks.

They opposed laissez-faire capitalism and called for a planned economy.

They trampled individual rights in favor of the collective.

They supported empire building. And they hated religious institutions - particularly the Catholic Church - which opposed their ideology...

 

Notable author Dinesh D'Souza writes in his August 11, 2017 FrontPage Mag article, Big Liar - How Theodor Adorno redefined Fascism:

Fascism and Nazism are both phenomena of the left. This makes ideological sense, because at their core they represent ideologies of the centralized, all-powerful state. Moreover, fascism grew out of Marxism, and fascism's founder Benito Mussolini, was a Marxist and lifelong socialist. Hitler, too, was a socialist who headed the National Socialist Party and in fact changed the name of the German Workers Party to make it the National Socialist German Workers Party.

How, then, did progressives in America re-define fascism and Nazism as phenomena of the right? This sleight-of-hand occurred after World War II, once fascism and Nazism were discredited with the reputation of Holocaust. Then progressives recognized it was important to cover up the leftist roots of fascism and Nazism and to move them from the left-wing column into the right-wing column.

The man most responsible for the progressive redefinition of fascism is Theodor Adorno, a German Marxist intellectual and a member of the influential Institute for Social Research, otherwise known as the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School scholars were leftists and most of them were refugees from Nazi Germany. Some settled in Europe; others like Adorno and Herbert Marcuse came to the United States.

Adorno's influence in defining how fascism came to be understood in America cannot be underestimated...

Adorno decided to repackage fascism as a form of capitalism and moral traditionalism. In effect, they reinvented fascism as a phenomenon of the political right. In this preposterous interpretation, fascism was remade into two things that real fascists despised: free markets and support for a traditional moral order...

Here, after all, was a German Jewish scholar declaring fascism a phenomenon of the right. Clearly he was sticking fascism on conservatives who supported capitalism and affirmed religion and traditional families. This was a lie - real fascists detest those institutions and want to destroy them - but it was a politically convenient lie.

So the progressives delightedly climbed aboard the bandwagon and cheered him on, and the cheering continues...

Adorno's value to such people is that he empowers them to say, "Down with fascism! Now let's get rid of conservatism and expose those evil people on the right." And today Adorno's deception enables the left to call Trump a fascist and Republicans the modern incarnation of the Nazi Party. Only by understanding this big lie can we inoculate ourselves against it and correctly locate fascism and Nazism where they have always belonged - on the political left.

Dinesh D'Souza was politically persecuted under the Obama administration. He has published the book The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left.

 

The article Outing Left Wing Fascists-Nazis, by Jim Oneill, Canada Free Press, August 16, 2017 also explains leftist fascism:

I like most of my fellow Republicans and conservatives was a victim of the progressive paradigm, embedded in all our institutions of culture, from academia to Hollywood to the media. ...the story that we had accepted, like suckers, was the idea that fascism and Nazism are inherently "right wing." - Dinesh D'Souza "The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left"

... For some years now I have been shouting from the rooftops that the Fascists/Nazis were, are, and always will be a Left-wing phenomenon. I have called it the "Big Lie" (e.g. "Right Wing Nazis: The Big Lie"), and I am delighted to see that Dinesh D'Souza sees this outrageous falsehood in the same light - naming his most recent book "The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left." (Unless otherwise stated all of the quotes in this article come from D'Souza's book).

I say I am "delighted" because D'Souza has a much larger megaphone than I do, and in addition has a professional resume to die for. That's why Dinesh earns the big bucks, and I don't. On a more serious note, that is also why D'Souza has been incarcerated as a political prisoner in the United States and I have not...

Let me start by defining some terms. What is a conservative? Politically speaking a conservative is, not surprisingly, someone who wishes to conserve, to save, something. Not to put too fine a point on it, that something that we wish to conserve is freedom, our individual liberty. That means that conservatives try to rein in or restrain government (for as government grows freedom shrinks).

Opposed to the conservative viewpoint is the, well, it goes under a variety of names... I'll simply call it the liberal/progressive/globalist/communist/socialist/statist, or fascist viewpoint - which is in favor of a huge, bloated, bureaucratic government that controls every aspect of our lives, to one degree or another...

Now might be a good time to bring up the question: what is fascism exactly? The Left would have us believe that either (1) fascism is a right-wing ideology, or (2) the answer is so muddled, arcane, obscure, and convoluted that no simple answer is possible. Both of the "answers" that the Left tries to palm off on us are nonsense. They are lies, big lies.

Fascism is a Big Government ideology, and as such belongs firmly on the left side of the political spectrum (on the side opposite from the restrained and reined in government, right-wing side of things)...

Do not buy into that leftist nonsense that patriotism is synonymous with fascism... Mahatma Gandhi was a nationalist, so was Nelson Mandela. Winston Churchill, who led Britain's courageous fight against the fascists and Nazis, was a patriot of the first order.

Conflating love of country with fascism is absolute rubbish. It's a sad specimen of humanity who takes no pride in where they live. Wanting to protect and cherish your home turf is not fascist...

So, who is our enemy? All those who would muzzle us, shackle us, rob us and scorn us. I think you know who I mean...

The Main Stream Media is by and large either clueless or intentionally lying 99% of the time (in case you haven't figured that out yet)...

The riot in Charlottesville was not Left against Right, as the media would have us believe. It was an internecine fight between two leftist factions. In short, it was Left against Left. I doubt that any of the people involved realize that fact, but nonetheless it is true. (I understand that there were also people there simply defending Confederate history, and/or protecting the right to free speech - I leave them out of this discussion).

The Nazi ANTIFA thugs were obviously left-wing, but what about the white supremacists, surely they were right-wing, right? Wrong.

The so-called "Neo-Nazis," or "Alt-Right" white supremacists are basically "Old Guard" leftist thugs, cast adrift by shifting leftist loyalties. Anyone who has done their due diligence researching the history of the Democratic Party (without ideological blinders on) knows that the Ku Klux Klan and the Democratic Party were thick as thieves for a century.

As Dinesh D'Souza recently said in a "Fox News" interview "These white nationalists, who really belong in the Democratic Party, are in a sense politically homeless, because if they show up at multicultural picnic they're Satan." My how the mighty have fallen. The Democratic Party now has a "black racists only" policy - whites need not apply.

 

Is Fascism Right or Left?, by Dinesh D'Souza, Prager U, December 4, 2017:

Related

Liberals' Fascist Inversion - How liberals have permuted the meaning of the term 'fascism', by Fred Elbel, The Social Contract, Winter, 2017: Book review of: Liberal Fascism - The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change, by Jonah Goldberg.

'Right-Wing Nazi': The Greatest Lie of the 20th Century, by Vlad Tepes, RAIR Foundation, 4 September 2024.

"Antifa" - International Brownshirts and Soldiers of the European and American Left, by Collin McMahon, Gateway Pundit, June 6, 2020.

So, Who Are the Real Fascists?, by Ray DiLorenzo, Canada Free Press, November 17, 2018.

Giovanni Gentile - Fascism's Karl Marx is the man the Left doesn't want you to meet, by Dinesh D'Souza, August 20, 2017.

Giovanni Gentile and Italian Fascism, MacroHistory.

Liberalism sure isn't what it used to be, by Fred Elbel, CAIRCO, January 22, 2017.

The Political Persecution of Dinesh D'Souza, by Fred Elbel, CAIRCO, July 16, 2015.

Those Cultural Marxists sure have a way with words, by Fred Elbel, CAIRCO, April 24, 2017.

Ritual Defamation - controlling values, opinions, and beliefs, by Fred Elbel, CAIRCO, August 16, 2017.

The New Far Left Fascism, by Rachel Alexander, Townhall, August 10, 2020.

Naming the Enemy, by Fred Elbel, 10 June 2023.

The Political Spectrum

Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness

 

Left or Liberal?

 

Patriotism is not fascism

 

It's not fascism when we do it

 

Identity Politics: squabbling factions

by Fred Elbel

Theodore Roosevelt observed:

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, or preventing all possibility of its continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

Former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm similarly observed that It is a Blessing for an Individual to be Bilingual; It is a Curse for a Society to be Bilingual.

Yet Identity Politics fragments society more deeply than does national origin, which accedes over time to assimilation.

Identity Politics is defined by Dictionary.com as "political activity or movements based on or catering to the cultural, ethnic, gender, racial, religious, or social interests that characterize a group identity."

Rational Wiki expands on the definition:

Identity Politics as a political style that focuses on the issues relevant to various groups defined by a wide variety of shared characteristics, including, but not limited to, race, social class, religion, sex, gender, ethnicity, ideology, nationality, sexual orientation, gender expression, culture, currency, shared history, medical conditions, profession, and other of the many ways in which people differ from each other, and into which they may be classified or classify themselves.

Appeal to these shared commonalities, or disdain for similarly constituted groups seen as undesirable or aberrant, has likely been a feature of primate politics since before the emergence of Homo sapiens. It is not obvious from the broadest definition, but identity politics as usually understood under the label is a variant of Marxism, and as such it is a political style strongly associated with the hard political left.

Identity politics is distinguishable from political nationalism. A nationalist political movement asserts the unity of an ethnic identity and its entitlement to dominate a territory. Identity politics, by contrast, arises out of the universalist claims of Western democracies that embraced capitalism to at least some extent...

A universal assumption is that certain identity groups that are alleged to be historically oppressed are granted automatic moral worth and sympathy as a result. Who is chosen as the most deserving will of course depend on your perspective.

Wikia observes that: "identity politics means more than the sole recognition of social identity such as religion, ethnicity, or culture. Rather, identity politics seeks to carry this social identity forward, beyond mere self-identification, to a political framework based upon that identity..."

Identity Politics thus attempts to facilitate group empowerment by asserting group difference rather than equality. Identity Politics typically embraces real or imagined group victimhood and oppression by the dominant culture or race. Identity based groups typically strive to accentuate their differences from society rather than strive for equality within society.

Another aspect of identity politics is that it is used to obfuscate an ongoing class war. This was the case when, during the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton lambasted millions of voters as "a basket of deplorables, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic - you name it". Race and gender of identity politics was used to conceal the ongoing and hugely important conflict between globalist elites and patriotic nationalists.

History of Identity Politics

A brief history of Identity Politics published by NPR, July 12, 2011, mentions the rise of La Raza (The Race) in 1970.

From Identity Politics by Vasiliki Neofotistos, Oxford Bibliographies, October 29, 2013:

Additionally, identity politics refers to tensions and struggles over the right to map and define the contours and fixed “essence” of specific groups. The phrase has become increasingly common in political anthropology since the second half of the 20th century with the emergence of a wide diversity of social movements, including the women’s movement, the African American civil rights movement, and the gay and lesbian movement, as well as nationalist and postcolonial movements. Central to the practice of identity politics are the notions of sameness and difference, and thus the anthropological study of identity politics involves the study of the politics of difference.

Rational Wiki sheds more light on the historical evolution of Identity Politics.

The current political version of American multiculturalism is described by Stanley Renshon in the February 8, 2011, Center for Immigration Studies article: Multiculturalism in the U.S.: Cultural Narcissism and the Politics of Recognition:

It is a term that gathered force in the aftermath of the 1960s when cultural narcissism and identity politics became fused into the multicultural movement. The historian Christopher Lasch brilliantly captured the first of these trends in his book The Cultural of Narcissism.

In it, he argued that the traditional American cultural of individualism and self-reliance was eroding in the face of growing self-absorption and a society that increasingly seemed to reward it. This set of developments gained momentum in the context of general demands of groups that had not been "mainstream" to become so and have society validate that new status politically and culturally. The absolute legitimacy of the demand by Americans of African descent for full political and legal rights and their public acceptance was the foundation on which other groups based their own demands for "recognition."

There followed group after group demanding public validation, social acceptance, and government policies to redress the historical wrongs – some very real, others exaggerated – that they used to press their claims.

Not America's history

America hasn't always been a multiculturalist, identity-driven nation. As Stephen Steinlight points out in his April 2004 Center for Immigration Studies article, High Noon to Midnight: Why Current Immigration Policy Dooms American Jewry,

Perhaps the chief distinction between today’s immigration and that of yesteryear is the absence of the tacit and overt pressures that assimilated even the most recalcitrant. These forces have been weakened by multiculturalist ideology that legitimizes and reinforces identity politics; the demise of Americanization programs; the death of civic education; the rise of bilingualism; and the elimination of obligatory national service.

Similarly, Peter Brimelow, author of Alien Nation, observes in his 2002 VDare article Peter Brimelow (“a once-respected conservative voice”) on Goldberg of National Review:

Contrary to the melting pot myth, America has not always been a multicultural, multiracial kaleidoscope held together by some abstract principles. At the time of the Revolution, it was completely white, overwhelmingly Protestant (98%), heavily British (80%), significantly English (60%). (There were of course black slaves, but they were not part of the political nation.) Over time, immigration did gradually alter this, but less than immigration enthusiasts think – demographers estimate that the population of the U.S. would be about half of what it is now if there had been no immigration at all after 1790. When non-traditional groups arrived, there was always intense debate which, if the inflow did not abate spontaneously (the Irish after 1850), resulted in government cut-offs (the Chinese, the Japanese, the “new immigrants” 1880-1921). And blacks were painfully integrated. But the U.S. was 90% white as late as 1960.

Jonah lovingly quotes Ramesh Ponnuru disparaging immigration reform as “identity politics for white people.” (Why can`t whites have identity politics, incidentally, if blacks and Hispanics —or Hindus or Indians— can?) But, historically, “white identity politics” would have been called simply— “American identity politics.”

You can approve of this historical fact or not. But you cannot deny it.

Leftist agenda

Identity Politics is a relatively new phenomenon in American politics which has been embraced by leftists, progressives, and the Democrat Party - particularly under the Obama administration. While initially serving to differentiate the party from conservative agendas, it is beginning to short-circuit the party's efficacy.

In a May 18, 2015 USA Today article, Democrats sic identity politics on their own - The left has handicapped its ability to debate policy, even among themselves, Glenn Harlan Reynolds observes that:

In my experience, people argue identity when they don't want to argue policy. And the reason they don't want to argue policy, usually, is that they're wrong. But in arguing that everyone who disagrees with them is a racist, or a sexist, or a tool of Big Money, or whatever, the Democrats run the risk of self-destruction. This is basically what happened to the the Labour Party in Britain: A reliance on easy tropes that please the base but alienate other voters...

Likewise, too many prominent Democrats and supporters have spent the past six years calling everyone who doesn't agree with Obama a racist...

Joe Klein expresses a similar concern in the September 10, 2012 TIME article, One for All and All for One - It's time for Democrats to move away from identity politics:

The Democrats have a serious problem. It is a problem that stems from the party's greatest strength: its long-term support for inclusion and equal rights for all, its support of racial integration and equal rights for women and homosexuals and its humane stand on immigration reform. Those heroic positions, which I celebrate, cost the Democrats more than a few elections in the past. And they caused an understandable, if misguided, overreaction within the party--a drift toward identity politics, toward special pleading. Inclusion became exclusive...

If the Democrat Party truly wants to be a party of inclusion, it must reach out to those who are currently excluded from its identity politics...

In summary

More than just a nation of squabbling nationalities, America is fast becoming a nation of squabbling identity groups vying for elevated victimhood status. In essence, identity groups are striving to dis-assimilate from mainstream culture, resulting in a fragmented society and loss of cultural cohesion in America.

Perhaps a modernized version of Roosevelt's quote should read:

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, or preventing all possibility of its continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling identity factions.

Additional reading

The Social Justice Endgame - What do social justice warriors want?, by David Azerrad, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2020. An excellent article well worth reading:

... The manifold contradictions of identity politics invite us to look beyond the misleading kumbaya rhetoric and examine its actual goals. There is one question in particular the identitarians are careful to avoid, as it goes to the heart of their project....

The Real Endgame

... The real goal of iden tity politics thus proves to be not proportional representation, but greater diversity, i.e., fewer whites, fewer men, and fewer heterosexuals. For that is all that “diversity” means: fewer members of the bad groups. How few we are never told, but fewer than we currently have is always an imperative. Beyond that, the term “diversity” is essentially meaningless....

The primacy of diversity over parity is further confirmed by the barely restrained jubilation with which the media and the Left greet news of America’s impending demographic transformation into a so-called “majority-minority” country. In 2015, at a lunch in honor of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Vice President Joe Biden celebrated America’s “unrelenting stream of immigration”—specifically Muslims, Africans, Asians, and Hispanics. “It’s not gonna stop, nor should we want it to stop,” Biden enthused. “As a matter of fact, it’s one of the things, I think, we can be most proud of.” In his excitement, Biden moved up the date of the demographic tipping point by almost three decades:

"Folks like me, who are Caucasian of European descent, for the first time, in 2017, will be an absolute minority in the United States of America. Absolute minority. Fewer than 50% of the people in America from then and on will be white, European stock. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a source of our strength."

... This demographic trend line—what has been called “the browning of America”—is presented to America’s white majority as a just dispensation from above to which all must submit.... Nor should you want to do anything about it, since a less white America will be a better America... Only a racist would oppose the rapid demographic transformation of his country...

America, in other words, is defined teleologically by its future demographic composition... It belongs not to all its citizens, but to the future progeny of its nonwhite population....

The emasculation of men, the promotion of sexual perversion, and the flooding of America with non-white immigrants are necessary but not sufficient to achieve identitarian social justice. Even then, a rump of whites will still remain. And though they will have been reduced to a minority who are no longer overrepresented in all realms of accomplishment, they will still be white, with all the psychological and historical baggage this entails. Whiteness itself will therefore have to be deconstructed....

Identity politics in effect invites us to embrace racism, but to do so in the name of anti-racism.... Hence the fundamental contradiction of identity politics: it speaks of love, but fans the flames of hatred....

Adolph Reed: Identity Politics Is Neoliberalism, bennorton.com, June 29, 2015:

Political scientist and race theorist Adolph Reed has long maintained that identity politics is a form of neoliberalism. In a June article, he explains: [Identity] politics is not an alternative to class politics; it is a class politics, the politics of the left-wing of neoliberalism...

Reed condemns identity politics for, despite its putative good intentions, disguising objectively right-wing, neoliberal ideology with superficially “progressive” rhetorical window dressing...

Islamic Jihad: Symptom of a Western Cause, Raymond Ibrahim, PJ Media, December 16, 2015:

Yet it still remains unclear whether objective thinking will eventually overthrow the current narrative of relativism, anti-Westernism, and asinine emotionalism.

Simply put, celebrating multiculturalism and defeating the jihad is impossible.

The Delusions of Left-Wing Identity Politics, Jonal Goldberg, National Review, June 27, 2015:

...identity politics is fueled by generous subsidies from higher education, foundations, and other institutions designed to transfer resources to the Griping Industry. But if you spend enough time teaching people to think that way, guess what? They’ll think that way...

What’s Wrong With Identity Politics (and Intersectionality Theory)? A Response to Mark Fisher’s “Exiting the Vampire Castle” (And Its Critics), The North Star, Michael Rectenwald, December 2, 2013:

The problem with identity politics, then, is that it is one-sided and undialectical. It treats identities as static entities, and its methods only serve to further reify those categories. It aims to liberate identity groups (or members thereof) qua identity groups (or individuals), rather than aiming to liberate them from identity itself. Identity politics fails not because it begins with various subaltern groups and aims at their liberation, but because it ends with them and thus cannot deliver their liberation. It makes identities and their equality with other “privileged” groups the basis of political activity, rather than making the overcoming of the alienated identity, for themselves and all identity groups, the goal. The abolition of the one-sidedness of identity – as worker, woman, man, or what have you – represents real human emancipation. Always failing this, identity politics settles for mere linguistic emancipation...

Identity Politics Play a Role in US Elections, Jeffrey Young, Voice of America, June 20, 2012.

Donald Trump: Last Chance For Conservatism–Or First Sign Of White Identity Politics? Maybe Both, James Kirkpatrick, VDare, August 30, 2015.

Identity Politics: Fool Us Twice, Shame on Us, by Lloyd Marcus, American Thinker, October 3, 2014.

Anarchy Is Swallowing Up the Social Order, by E. Jeffrey Ludwig, March 3, 3018:

... The momentum toward anarchy began with the move toward federal government expansion. During Woodrow Wilson's presidency, we began to see the implementation of what is now called the administrative state. This was helped along by our participation in WWI, which created the need for more governmental controls. This was followed by the massive Keynesian demand-side economics implemented by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the New Deal, and WWII....

However, given the present size, scope, and cost of our government, it never seems to occur to them that governmental policies have been wrongheaded and guided by a wrong philosophy or purpose for the past 100 years. It's not the size and power of the government that has been lacking; rather, the size and power have been put in the service of the wrong purpose.

To use a term from Greek philosophy, the telos (purpose) of government has been misplaced. Instead of designing laws and methods to enhance the dignity and freedom of the individuals living in our society, the government has been designing projects that are (1) guided exclusively or primarily by utilitarian goals of the greatest good for the greatest number or (2) by socialistic goals that government expansion is the greatest good in itself or (3) by identity politics, where the good of identity collectives is more important than the good of individuals.

The above three purposes of government diverge from the founding values of the United States. Those values are based on government's existence to promote the well-being of the individuals living under that government, individuals as individuals, not members of a subgrouping according to sex, race, age, occupation, mental functioning, health, etc. ...

The true conservatives have it right. We need to go back to our Judeo-Christian moral roots based on biblical and natural law, and to checks and balances and federalism as understood by the Founders.

 

Identity Socialism - Herbert Marcuse’s toxic legacy, by Dinesh D'Souza, American Greatness, May 30, 2020:

... Socialism in America today has turned black against white, female against male, homosexual and transsexual against heterosexual, and illegals against legal immigrants and American citizens....

American socialism is concerned less with worker exploitation by the bourgeoisie and more with the race, gender and transgender grievances of identity politics. I call it identity socialism....

If Franklin D. Roosevelt were alive today, he would not recognize the modern Democratic Party he created. Nor would he recognize the progressivism and socialism that formed the ideological pillars of his party. For FDR, as for Marx, socialism was primarily a matter of class. It was the rich versus the poor...

... for identity socialists and for the Lleft more generally, blacks and Latinos are in, whites are out. Women are in, men are out. Gays, bisexuals, pansexuals and transsexuals, together with other, more exotic, types are in; heterosexuals are out. Illegals are in, native-born citizens are out...

To understand identity socialism, we must go back several decades and meet the man who figured out how to bring its various strands together, Herbert Marcuse...

 

How the Left views the world: power, race, and class

 

Intersectionality - stacking levels of perceived discrimination

by Fred Elbel

Black scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term in a 1989 essay which professes that feminist theory, antiracist politics, and antidiscrimination law do not address the overall experiences of black women, as they each focus on only a single factor. Merriam-Webster defines intersectionality as "the complex, cumulative manner in which the effects of different forms of discrimination combine, overlap, or intersect." Intersectional feminism identifies how multiple aspects of discrimination overlap with gender. In other words, multiple levels of discrimination "stack".

A June 15, 2019 New York Post article, Why young, left-wing radicals could help re-elect President Trump, points out that:

"Intersectionalism holds that all types of oppression in American society are linked to one another and that they 'stack': that is, they are exponentially worse for those who experience more categories of discrimination. As Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza tells Soave, 'I’m uniquely discriminated against. I uniquely experience oppression based on standing at the intersection of race and gender.'"

Intersectionality in modern politics

Intersectionality has become more than a feminist term. It now embodies cross-linking of all kinds of discrimination across all of society. This discrimination may be actual, perceived, or theoretical - that is, potential - discrimination.

In the chapter Intersectionality 101 from his 2019 book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump, Robby Soave writes:

A protest is successful only if it highlights the correct issues, includes the right people - people who check all the appropriate boxes - and is organized by a ruling coalition of the most oppressed. This is what intersectionality dictates.

Though the words intersectionality and inclusion sound like synonyms, they are actually in conflict with each other...

Intersectionality is the operating system for the modern left. Understanding what it means and where it comes from is essential for comprehending the current state of activism on college campuses, at protests in major cities, and elsewhere....

Meanwhile, intersectionality has become a ubiquitous force on college campuses, where young people are taught to perceive all social issues through the lens of interrelated oppression and to find more grievances to add to the pile....

Those who grasp the truth of intersectionality are said to be "woke," slang that describes someone who has awakened to the reality of their own privilege and adopted a progressive worldview....

The Post article states, "Because all types of discrimination - from racism to transphobia, from economic inequality to 'ableism' - are linked, an intersectional activist is expected to combat them with equal fervor." Thus, a gay rights activists would be expected to join a feminist activist and a black activist in protesting discrimination against illegal aliens. The Post article continues:

“I’m not necessarily criticizing the idea of intersectionalism. In a sense it’s kind of true,” Soave told The Post. But in practice, “it makes it hard to get people on board to advance a cause when you say, ‘We don’t want you unless you agree to fight all the oppressions.” Someone might agree about the need to fight racism but not be ready for all of the things the activist left demands, like boycotting Israel or accepting their ideas on transgender identity.”...

“It’s a tyranny of the most victimized,” Soave said. “The more categories of oppression you can claim, the more authority you have.”

Intersectionality is not objective

Intersectionality has been criticized as a system that relies on non-objective concepts which can not be empirically verified. Thus, it is an ideological concept rather than a sociological concept.

It also raises the question of degree and pervasiveness: are all women discriminated against? Are all blacks discriminated against? Are all gays and lesbians discriminated against? In other words, if someone is a member of all of these groups, but only encounter discrimination 10% of the time in each category, then their cumulative discrimination would be 30 percent, not 300 percent. 30 percent is indeed a significant number, but then again, what if that individual suffers no discrimination at all in the freest nation on earth? Are they expected to behave as if they are discriminated against 300 percent of the time?

Intersectionality is a technique used by progressive leftists to organize and motivate identify groups to activism. It effectively magnifies the apparent strength of activism on a given issue well beyond the number of those who are truly concerned with the issue.

As Soave writes:

"The spread of intersectionality poses some problems for the left, since the theory divides people as often as it unites them....

A hopelessly divided opposition movement that cannot resist cannibalizing itself over intersectionality-induced disagreements is not going to be very effective."

Leftism - a Hegelian spiral toward Marxism

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Have you ever gotten into a policy discussion at work, and ended up compromising your position, supposedly for the good of the company? Then the next month, became engaged in the same discussion which again ended up compromising down from your first compromised position? Then in another month, the same thing?

That's a form of the Hegelian dialectic - a never-ending spiral of discussion and compromise toward the goal as defined by your opponent.

It works in politics, too. For over a generation, we have witnessed the Left's incessant push via a Hegelian spiral toward their end goal of Marxism, aptly framed as "the fundamental transformation of America."

It's tough for those trying to understand and counter Leftism, especially if they are not aware that they are engaged in a Hegelian spiral. That is, an endless series of compromises that result in never-ending incremental steps toward Leftist goals.

You can't understand the Left without understanding the Left's objective (Marxism) and the fundamental mechanism by which it is achieved (Hegelian dialectic). Over the course of a generation we have seen America fundamentally transformed into a nation that previous generations would not recognize. Yet we have been conditioned in incremental steps to think that it is normal.

Today, not only protest, but violence is considered to be sanctioned and normal in Democrat-controlled cities. Why the wanton violence? It's part of the Leftist agenda to totally destroy America, so that it can be rebuilt as a Marxist / socialist state.

The Left’s Strategy and Tactics To Transform America

The Left's Strategy and Tactics to Transform America by Stephen Coughlin, Richard HigginsThe report: "Re-Remembering the Mis-Remembered Left: The Left’s Strategy and Tactics To Transform America" is tremendously important. It exposes the Left in terms of warfare dynamics and allows us to understand the Left in their own terms. Indeed, the report emphasizes that this is the only way to understand the Left.

"Re-Remembering the Mis-Remembered Left: The Left’s Strategy and Tactics To Transform America" is authored by Stephen Coughlin and Richard Higgins, published February 2019. 353 pages. ISBN-10: 1733473106, ISBN-13: 978-1733473101. Available in print, free PDF, and audio. Print and PDF versions include quotes and pullouts in color.

The authors are immensely qualified: Stephen Coughlin, Esq.: is an attorney, decorated intelligence officer and noted specialist on Islamic law, ideology and related strategic information programs. Coughlin and Rich Higgins run Unconstrained Analytics a 501(c)3 dedicated to analysis of evidence unconstrained by preconceptions and biases.

If you want to understand the relentless driving of the Left towards Marxism, read the report: "Re-Remembering the Mis-Remembered Left: The Left’s Strategy and Tactics To Transform America".

Part 1 of the report succinctly covers Hegel, Marx, the Fabians, Marcuse, and the Frankfurt school. It's not a lengthy, boring, philosophy lesson, but rather an integrated explanation of the Left's framework.

Part 2 of the report covers the Maoist concept of political warfare, provides an example using the Colorado Democracy Alliance, and covers the Left's use of narratives.

The authors writing style is precise, yet informative, interesting, and engaging.

From the Executive Summary

Saying that “the Left moves dialectically, through time, on a trajectory” simply recognizes that the Left is a movement in history defined by its movement through history; that its backward trajectory defines its forward movement; and that failure to recognize this arc leads to error. It is for this reason that this assessment emphasizes historical events, conditions and movements that have defined the Left from the Hegelian dialectic, to Marx, to Wilson’s progressivism, to the early Frankfurt School, to Mao’s Long March, to Marcuse’s thoughts on tolerance, to political correctness.

This is how the Left should be understood. Hence, it would be a mistake to treat the historical elements of this assessment as little more than background material. Assessing the Left as if Hegel and Marx simply provide interesting historical context to today’s events is the failure to recognize that for the Left, Marx was yesterday and Hegel the day before...

Selected excerpts from the report's Key Findings:

• The political rhetoric driving American politics runs along well-trodden paths sustaining a political framework from a by-gone era incapable of coming to terms with the political movements threatening our constitutional system today.

• Constrained by this archaic rhetoric, mainstream and conservative players are outmaneuvered in an information battle-space they hardly perceive; responding to current threats in under-inclusive manners.

• The "otherism" strategy developed by Marxists to destroy America focuses on the systematic destruction of identity leading to the systematic disenfranchisement of Americans from America. It manipulates the issues of the “other”, yet it has nothing to do with the “other”. Rather, it forces a classic dialectical negation along Hegelian lines. This activity presents a clear and present danger that will succeed if not countered. As such, this analysis does not suggest that this is a way to understand the left, it argues that it is the only way to understand it; recognizing that it is 1) Marxist, and 2) dialectically driven.

• The dominant cultural narratives of our time can best be summarized by the saying; “Political correctness is the enforcement mechanism of the multicultural narrative that implements Neo-Marxist objectives.” It is through these narratives that the left drives policy.

Narratives that conservative leaders neither control nor understand drive national policy. When Republican leaders shrink from Constitutional principles for fear of being accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., they are subordinating those principles to neo-Marxist narratives designed for that purpose.

• By submitting to these narratives, establishment Republicans first become pliant, and then obedient to the Left, accommodating it... In this role, establishment Republicans become the defeat mechanism of the Left.

A strategic understanding of the Left recognizes that it is dialectically driven. As such, the Left is a teleologically informed movement that executes through history and thought, along an arc, with a trajectory. It is Hegelian. It defines everything that “is” as fuel for “becoming” in a dialectical process that compels it to negate. — “Change” “Perpetual Revolution” — Analysis of the Left that does not account for the dialectic will fail.

• The critical theory of the Frankfurt School is classical Marxism dedicated to penetration and subversion that relies on Hegelian processes to achieve its objectives... It seeks the destruction of Western culture...

• Frankfurt School leader Herbert Marcuse concurred with the Gramsci Marxist plan to adopt a “long march through the institutions” strategy based on Mao’s “long march” political warfare strategy.

• The Left focuses on cultural and institutional power by communicating its ideological initiatives in terms of “values” while targeting the placement of cadre throughout the mass line so they can enable those “values” by converting them first to norms, then to policy, and finally to law.

Selected excerpts from the report

The Left "powers down" by converting Marxist values first to norms, then to policy, and finally to law.

Critical theory is simply the relentless reduction of Western civilization through a systematic series of negations that applies the Hegelian dialectic in support of Marxist objectives understood in nihilist terms. (Page 63)

It is with this understanding of the mechanics of “Repressive Tolerance’s” dialectical aufheben that one can see that it is necessarily directed against America and the American way of life. Marcuse calls for subversion, undemocratic means, and the suspension of the First Amendment in furtherance of implementing a postmodern campaign of “otherisms” based on racism, discrimination, etc. When reading Frankfurt School materials, the “right” and “fascism” should be understood to mean anything that is either not from the left or is something about which “the Left” disagrees. (Page 69)

Note that aufheben means to cancel or put an end to. Thus, today's cancel culture.

Hence, the statement that “political correctness is the enforcement mechanism of postmodern narratives that implements cultural Marxism”, speaks directly to the negation engine Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance” put in motion that today culminates in hate speech narratives. Political correctness is a Neo-Marxist line of effort. It is also an existential threat. (Page 71)

... the Frankfurt School, from its beginning it has been a Marxist organization purely dedicated to the destruction of Western society through the ruthless application of Hegel’s dialectic to every line of effort at every level of execution. (Page 85)

This analysis affirms that the first understanding of the Left is one that recognizes that it IS a teleologically informed movement that executes through history and thought, along an arc, with a trajectory. (Page 90)

At the 2008 Democratic National Convention held in Denver, that chose Obama as the Democratic candidate, [Democracy Alliance founder Rod] Stein spoke of the need to consolidate counter-state activities in the state through the placement of committed personnel at the senior levels of the government in what has popularly come to be known as the “deep state”. (Page 103)

The Left adopts a strategy that leverages their mass line to harness ever increasing power over institutions, including corporations, the government, religion, and the media. It is through Mao’s concept of political warfare that institutions are co-opted and authoritarian power is wielded. For this reason, there is an immediate need to understand what the media calls the “deep state” as the Maoist counter-state. (Page 126)

The Republican establishment, because it chooses to operate inside the Left’s cultural framework when responding to mass line narratives, has become an asset to the Left’s overall effort. (Page 129)

It is in this context that establishment Republicans become the designated defeat mechanism of the Left because, having been elected to reverse the Left’s efforts with no intention of actually doing so, they become the agents responsible for demoralizing the base that elected them. (Page 141)

Read the report

The report states that "The Left cannot be understood outside the dialectical materialist core that defines it. The dialectic comes from Hegel, the materialism from Marx. The two cannot be disassociated from each other or from the Left."

If you want to see through the smokescreen of the Left, read the report: "Re-Remembering the Mis-Remembered Left: The Left’s Strategy and Tactics To Transform America".

References

The report contains 465 footnotes and references.

Appendix D of the report contains an extensive list of recommended reading material.

Hegel’s Dialectics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, June 3, 2016

Video interview with Stephen Coughlin

Video interview with Stephen Coughlin, author of "Re-Remembering the Mis-Remembered Left: The Left’s Strategy and Tactics To Transform America". Dr. Jerome Corsi interviews Stephen Coughlin, Esq.: attorney, decorated intelligence officer and noted specialist on Islamic law, ideology and related strategic information programs.

"When associated with rising factional discord, the increased hostility from the Left resonates a violence that is becoming a clear and present danger."

The interview is also available as a podcast: Dr Corsi Interview 07-20-20: Stephen Coughlin - Understanding the ANTIFA & BLM Counter Revolutions. See CorsiNation for more books and interviews.

 

The Challenge of Marxism, by Yoram Hazony, Quillette, August 16, 2020. Review: The Marxist threat to liberalism, by Fred Elbel, 24 August 2020.

Liberalism, Progressivism, Leftism, by eugyppius, 20 May 2022.
 

Left or Liberal?

 

Author: Fred Elbel

Multiculturalism vs. America

Sunday, May 5, 2019
by Fred Elbel

Unconstrained mass immigration is a subset of a much larger problem we face - that is, the battle for the future of our country and ultimately of Western Civilization.

In the article Defend America - Defeat Multiculturalism, The American Mind, April 23, 2019, Ryan P. Williams describes the importance of recognizing multiculturalism as an overarchinging regime which presents an existential threat to America. Selected excerpts follow:

Today, multiculturalism and its politics of identity pose an existential threat to the American political order comparable to slavery in the 1850s or communism during the Cold War. Once confined to graduate seminars and the ethnic "studies" departments at our nation's colleges and universities, multiculturalism is now the authoritative ideology reigning over higher education, our media and political establishments, legal system, and corporate boardrooms.

If we do not reverse multiculturalism's advance, it will continue to undermine our country and constitutionalism, destroying the possibility of a common good and a life of civic peace. Indeed, multiculturalism threatens to take down western civilization as whole.

By multiculturalism, we do not mean the mere presence of many cultures, races, or ethnic traditions, which are a fixture of modern American life and can be found across our states, communities, institutions, and private associations....

Multiculturalism, on the other hand, is not this benign tolerance of diverse traditions. Multiculturalism is a comprehensive ideology, demanding obeisance to a rigid system of justice, vices, and virtues. It boasts an intellectual tradition that guides its leadership and adherents in the policing of its boundaries and the maintenance of its categories. It keeps a running list of friends and enemies, a roster of praise, shame, and blame.

In short, multiculturalism is a worldview - a regime, in the classical sense; a political and cultural way of life all wrapped up in one. As an ideology, it stands for nearly the opposite of America's national motto. It seeks to divide and conquer Americans, making many groups out of one citizenry. The modern Left, accustomed to running the campuses according to the new social justice diktats of multiculturalism, now wants to run the world that way.

The threat multiculturalism presents to the American regime and our way of life is now urgent.

We have decided to use the term "multiculturalism" instead of "identity politics" or a similar term, because despite its limitations and current usage "multiculturalism" is more comprehensive. It is a new system of truth and justice that seeks to revolutionize and transform the American way. Identity politics is the coalitional strategy of multiculturalism and political correctness its enforcement arm....

The failure to apprehend fully and take seriously multiculturalism has also led many on the Right to misinterpret and underappreciate President Trump's virtues and his significance as a political phenomenon. Trump understands instinctually that multiculturalism (and its politics of identity and political correctness) is anti-American. He understands that the unity found in patriotism is the antidote to a politics of group identity that if left unchallenged will irreparably divide and balkanize the American citizenry and lead to disunion....

The American Right's failure to evaluate correctly President Trump, his political movement, and the nature of his opposition stems from a much deeper error. They cannot think prudentially....

There are few categorical rules in politics, but in a republic, public opinion is everything. Public rhetoric and political demonstration can shape the public mind decisively.

Much of the American Right, regrettably, does not think of politics in this way. They are enamored with process rather than substance and do not think comprehensively about the rhetoric of justice. They take too narrow a view of politics. Unless conservatives begin to think about politics as Lincoln did - comprehensively - they will lose to multiculturalism....

The modern multiculturalist Left is intent on proliferating divisions without concern for American unity, cohesion, and stability. The modern Right is confused about the threat to the union posed by this political strategy. We must change course, and soon....

 

Another article is worth reading in full: Our House Divided: Multiculturalism vs. America, Thomas D. Klingestein, The American Mind, October 31, 2018. Here are a few excerpts:

Many conservatives did not see that Trump had framed the 2016 election as a choice between two mutually exclusive regimes: multiculturalism and America. What I call “multiculturalism” includes “identity politics” and “political correctness.” If multiculturalism continues to worm its way into the public mind, it will ultimately destroy America....

I realize the term “multiculturalism” is somewhat dated, but I mean to freshen it up by using it in its most comprehensive sense—as a political philosophy. Multiculturalism conceives of society as a collection of cultural identity groups, each with its own worldview, all oppressed by white males, collectively existing within permeable national boundaries. Multiculturalism replaces American citizens with so-called “global citizens.” It carves “tribes” out of a society whose most extraordinary success has been their assimilation into one people. It makes education a political exercise in the liberation of an increasing number of “others,” and makes American history a collection of stories of white oppression, thereby dismantling our unifying, self-affirming narrative—without which no nation can long survive....

During the 2016 campaign, Trump exposed multiculturalism as the revolutionary movement it is. He showed us that multiculturalism, like slavery in the 1850’s, is an existential threat. Trump exposed this threat by standing up to it and its enforcement arm, political correctness. Indeed, he made it his business to kick political correctness in the groin on a regular basis. In countless variations of crassness, he said over and over exactly what political correctness prohibits one from saying: “America does not want cultural diversity; we have our culture, it’s exceptional, and we want to keep it that way.”...

Most conservatives did not see Trump in 2016 as a man defending America. This was in large part because they did not see that America was in need of defending....

... the impulse for electing Trump was patriotic, the defense of one’s own culture ...

... Multiculturalism, not Trumpism, is the revolution. Trump’s campaign, and its defense by his intellectual supporters, was not a call for a revolution but a call to stop a revolution. Trump’s intellectual supporters did not say things could not get worse; they said without a sharp change in course there was a good chance we shall never get back home again....

The core idea of each of these [Trump's] anti-P.C. blasts, when taken in aggregate, represent a commitment to America’s bourgeois culture, which is culturally “Judeo-Christian,” insists on having but one language and one set of laws, and values: among other things, loyalty, practical experience, self-reliance, and hard work....

Trump understands that “diversity is our greatest strength,” which is multiculturalism boiled down to an aphorism, is exactly backwards. America’s greatest strength is having transcended race, and the one major exception was very nearly our undoing. In light of this history, the history of the world (one “tribal” war after another), and the multicultural car wreck that is Europe today, to manufacture cultural diversity is nothing less than self-immolating idiocy. Trump might not put it in these words, but he gets it. The average American gets it too, because it is not very difficult to get: it is common sense....

 

Read the entire article in full: Our House Divided: Multiculturalism vs. America, by Thomas D. Klingenstein, The American Mind, October 31, 2018:

Related

Google Censors the Claremont Institute, publishers of American Mind, Powerline, May 5, 2019. Also see: Algorithms of Suppression, by Ryan P. Williams, American Mind, May 5, 2019. Learn more about Media Bias, Censorship, and Corporate Political Correctness Run Amuck.

 

Here are excerpts from selected articles responding to Klingestein's article:

Trump vs. Libertarian-Multiculturalism, by R. R. Reno, The American Mind, April 8, 2019:

From openness to emptiness: Our bipartisan elite wants to replace America with a vapid utopia where anything goes....

Thomas Klingenstein labels this regime “multiculturalism.” That’s as good a label as any. It expresses a dream of porous borders, heroic affirmations of difference and diversity, limitless openness, and life without an authoritative center. The regime is not “left.” It is bipartisan. Addressing the United Nations after the fall of the Soviet Union, the reliable voice of the American establishment, George H. W. Bush, dismissed the antiquated world of partisan loves and consolidating loyalties. He intoned, “I see a world of open borders, open trade, and, most importantly, open minds.” Multiculturalism stands as an ideologically developed version of this bipartisan establishment consensus in favor of ever-greater openness....

Almost the entire conservative apparatus is now captive to a libertarian-inflected political correctness. It promises to protect free speech and (perhaps) religious freedom, but shrinks from any substantive positions on cultural issues....

Trump vs. the Multiculturalist Insurrection, by Conrad Black, The American Mind, April 8, 2019:

... In practice, in the United States, identity politics is the atomization of the entire vast and intricate demography of 325 million Americans into dozens of overlapping aggrieved sub-sets, each claiming discrimination. This is the fragmentation of society into victim associations: ethnicities, groups of minority sexual orientations, people with physical and mental handicaps, with career reversals—an ever-broadening range of bearers of attitudes and afflictions. All groups except straight adult white males are endlessly hunted and outed to be embraced as yet another wronged collectivity that American virtue requires to be highlighted, elevated, and compensated; all, of course, in exchange for their votes.

In this seething deconstruction of the ostensibly united American people, political correctness is the iron code of discipline. Every step of the march is a debunking of America, a shaming of its hypocrisy, presumption, and moral turpitude....

Multiculturalism is bad policy when large groups of immigrants decline to assimilate to their new country. Virtuous and sincere and successful immigration need not mean cultural deracination. But immigration requires a conscious, determined decision to assimilate to the society where the immigrant arrives....

Yet, as Klingenstein rightly objects, advocacy of this form of immigration has become the official policy of the Democrats, who have been demographically captured and have sold out, bag and baggage, to illegal Latino immigrants....

 

Video: Stephen K. Bannon's Keynote Address at the Western Petroleum Marketers Association in Las Vegas, March 11, 2019. Bannon explains the relevancy of Donald Trump in regaining America's future from the agenda of multiculturalism:

 

Neoconservatism - a Destructive Force

Saturday, May 11, 2024
Article category: Highlights. Tags: 

Most people typically think that Neoconservatives (Neocons) are a benign offshoot of the conservative movement. In actuality, there is a significant overlap of Neocon values and objectives with those of the globalist multicultural Left.

The following article explains the Neoconservative movement and how it threatens Western Civilization. Excerpts are included below:

Neoconservatism: A Secularized Globalist Vision Which Will Destroy Western Civilization, by Boyd D. Cathey, Lew Rockwell, 9 May 2024:

...it is necessary to understand the significant role and the complex history of the movement labeled "neoconservatism" as an intellectual determinant in contemporary America, with its roots in Marxism and in a secularized reimagining of Zionist-inflected universalism...

Trotsky, a secularized Jew, advanced a Marxist-Leninist position that would stress global proletarian revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working class self-emancipation...Trotsky advanced the theory of "permanent global revolution"...

The final breaking point for many of those Marxists who would within a few decades gain a foothold in the American conservative movement probably came with the rise of antisemitism under Stalin immediately before and after World War II in Russia...

Horrified and disillusioned by what they considered to be the perversion of the socialist revolution... These former Marxists soon began to be known as "neoconservatives,"...

More significantly they altered positions which had been associated with the older conservative movement, often termed "paleoconservatism," to mirror their own vision... By the late 1990s the neoconservatives had taken over most of the major conservative organs of opinion, journals, and think-tanks...

They believed that the promise of equality... had to be promoted at home and abroad, and American conservatives, they preached, must lead the efforts to achieve global democracy...

In reality, both the multicultural Left and the neoconservative Right share a basic commitment to certain ideas and expressions. Both use comparable phraseology - about "equality" and "democracy," "human rights" and "freedom," and the desirability of exporting and imposing "our democratic values," whether in Ukraine or elsewhere...

... insofar as they claim to represent conservatism or the Republican Party, their purported opposition to the leftward tsunami engulfing what is left of the American nation is mere window-dressing at best, and outright collaboration at worst, only enabling the deadly virus destroying our civilization.

Socialism, Democratic Socialism, and Social Democracy

by Fred Elbel

Socialism

Norman Thomas, Socialist Party presidential candidate in 1940, 1944 and 1948, proclaimed that:

The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But under the name of Liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without knowing how it happened.”

Socialism is defined by Merriam-Webster as "a system of society or group living in which there is no private property... a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state."  

An additional definition is that Socialism is "a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done." The New Oxford American Dictionary similarly defines socialism as "(in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism." There are many varieties of socialism. The dictionary notes that "The term 'socialism' has been used to describe positions as far apart as anarchism, Soviet state communism, and social democracy; however, it necessarily implies an opposition to the untrammeled workings of the economic market.The socialist parties that have arisen in most European countries from the late 19th century have generally tended toward social democracy."

Dictionary.com notes that "Some socialists tolerate capitalism, as long as the government maintains the dominant influence over the economy; others insist on an abolition of private enterprise. All communists are socialists, but not all socialists are communists."

Difference.com describes how capitalism and socialism are contrasted:

Capitalism and socialism are somewhat opposing schools of thought in economics. The central arguments in the socialism vs. capitalism debate are about economic equality and the role of government. Socialists believe economic inequality is bad for society, and the government is responsible for reducing it via programs that benefit the poor (e.g., free public education, free or subsidized healthcare, social security for the elderly, higher taxes on the rich). On the other hand, capitalists believe that the government does not use economic resources as efficiently as private enterprises do, and therefore society is better off with the free market determining economic winners and losers.

The U.S. is widely considered the bastion of capitalism, and large parts of Scandinavia and Western Europe are considered socialist democracies. However, the truth is every developed country has some programs that are socialist.

An extreme form of socialism is communism.

The article continues with a comparison chart listing key differences between capitalism and socialism.

Socialist political movement

Wikipedia has an excellent series on socialism, which differentiates between economic socialism as defined above and the socialist political movement, which is concerned with addressing social problems resulting from capitalism. Wikipedia observes that:

Social ownership may refer to forms of public, cooperative, or collective ownership; to citizen ownership of equity; or to any combination of these. Although there are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them, social ownership is the common element shared by its various forms.

Socialism can be divided into both non-market and market forms. Non-market socialism involves the substitution of an economic mechanism based on engineering and technical criteria centered around calculation performed in-kind for factor markets, money and the accumulation of capital; therefore functioning according to different economic laws than those of capitalism. Non-market socialism aims to circumvent the inefficiencies and crises traditionally associated with the profit system. By contrast, market socialism retains the use of monetary prices and factor markets for the allocation of capital goods between socially-owned enterprises and, in some cases, the profit motive with respect to their operation...

The socialist political movement includes a diverse array of political philosophies that originated amid the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 1700s out of general concern for the social problems that were associated with capitalism. In addition to the debate over markets and planning, the varieties of socialism differ in their form of social ownership, how management is to be organized within productive institutions, and the role of the state in constructing socialism. Core dichotomies associated with these concerns include reformism versus revolutionary socialism, and state socialism versus libertarian socialism.

Democratic Socialism

Democratic socialism involves democratic control over the socialist means of economic production. In other words, economic socialism is implemented by politically democratic government control. Wikipedia notes that:

Democratic socialism is a political system wherein there is democratic control of a socialist economic system. It thus combines political democracy with social ownership of significant elements of the means of production. Sometimes used synonymously with "socialism", the adjective "democratic" is often added to distinguish itself from the Marxist-Leninist brand of socialism, which is widely viewed as being non-democratic.

Democratic socialism is distinguished from both the Soviet model of centralized socialism and from social democracy, where "social democracy" refers to support for political democracy, regulation of the capitalist economy, and a welfare state...

That is, whereas social democrats only seek to "humanize" capitalism through state intervention, democratic socialists see capitalism as inherently incompatible with the democratic values of liberty, equality and solidarity; and believe that the issues inherent to capitalism can only be solved by superseding private ownership with some form of social ownership.

Social Democracy

Social democracy focuses on socialist state intervention in order to further social justice, particularly in Europe. RationalWiki explains that:

Social democracy is the idea that the state needs to provide security and equality for its people and should actively reorder society in a way that is conducive to such developments, but that such changes should be brought about gradually, legitimated by a democratically-elected majority.

It is native to Europe, where social democrats regularly feature as one of the major parties and have led (or at least participated in) governments in most states at some point in time, most notably in Scandinavia (up to being nicknamed the "Nordic model"). Social democrats typically regard government intervention as a force for good, constraining markets and engaging in redistributive efforts for the benefit of the lower classes in order to establish a more equitable society.

Oxford Bibliographies notes that:

As a political theory, European social democracy has its origins in the development of the workers’ movement, inspired by Marxist and utopian socialist ideas, in the second half of the 19th century. This movement spawned political parties with the label “social democratic,” “socialist,” or “labor” in practically every European country...

Social democratic parties went on to establish themselves as mainstream political forces, participating in government or forming the main opposition, in almost every European country. Where social democrats were electorally successful, they were able to promote institutions such as the welfare state and corporatist bargaining in the workplace, and in some countries they brought parts of the private economy under government control.

Wikipedia describes social democracy:

Social democracy is a political ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a capitalist economy, and a policy regime involving collective bargaining arrangements, a commitment to representative democracy, measures for income redistribution, regulation of the economy in the general interest and welfare state provisions. Social democracy thus aims to create the conditions for capitalism to lead to greater democratic, egalitarian and solidaristic outcomes; and is often associated with the set of socioeconomic policies that became prominent in Northern and Western Europe—particularly the Nordic model in the Nordic countries—during the latter half of the 20th century.

Social democracy originated as a political ideology that advocated an evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism using established political processes in contrast to the revolutionary approach to transition associated with orthodox Marxism...

Modern social democracy is characterized by a commitment to policies aimed at curbing inequality, oppression of underprivileged groups, and poverty; including support for universally accessible public services like care for the elderly, child care, education, health care and workers' compensation. The social democratic movement also has strong connections with the labour movement and trade unions, and is supportive of collective bargaining rights for workers...

Related

Why the Great Reset Is Not 'Socialism', by Michael Anton, Compact, 30 November 2022.

Why Are Communists Determined to Destroy the US?, by Bruce Deitrick Price, American thinker, 18 December 2022.

Why Socialism Never Works: A Video Marathon

Capitalism has lifted millions out of poverty and is the only creator of wealth. Socialism ONLY results in economic ruin. So why do so many young people today support it? Watch this specially-curated video marathon devoted to understanding Socialism and its pitfalls.

 

You are here - liberty or socialism

 

socialism - ideas mandatory

Transnational Progressives vs. Democratic Nationalists - Who Should Govern?

by Fred Elbel

In the article: Ideologies Have Consequences - Transnational Progressives v Democratic Nationalists, Quadrant, February 27, 2016, author John Foote, explains that:

What might be called "transnational progressivism" is the ideology for an age once thought not to need one. President Obama, for example, was hailed as 'not a doctinaire liberal' and 'centrist and pragmatic'. The truth, as eight sorry years have shown, is very different...

Hoover Institution scholar Peter Berkowitz noted that, in fact, Obama does share similarities with the pragmatist philosophers in the sense that he is, as they were, a progressive ideologue promoting a decidedly ideological agenda (think John Dewey), while masquerading as a rational non-partisan “pragmatist” committed to “what works” rather than to a progressive utopian vision of the future...

Foot observes how modern politics has been fragmented into a quagmire of identity politics - groups competing for a share of the political power once considered the domain of mainstream America. He notes that this fragmentation has been dramatically advanced by the Obama Progressive administration:

Whether one examines national health care, immigration, racial and gender politics, LGBT rights, executive orders, aggressive “diversity” initiatives promoting “substantive equality” throughout the federal government in education, housing, energy, defence and elsewhere, judicial appointments, and foreign policy openings to Iran and Cuba—after seven years, it is clear that the current American President is the most ideological since Ronald Reagan. After all, the stated goal of the Obama administration is the “fundamental transformation of the United States of America”, which suggests neither a “centrist” nor “pragmatic” agenda.

Obama’s ideology is progressivism, an American branch of a global ideology that could be described as transnational progressivism or global progressivism. The American wing of progressivism (sometimes confusingly called liberalism) shares a broad worldview with the Western Left generally.

Foote describes how the ideology of transnational progressivism is strongly infused  among Western elites...

At home, global progressives focus on promoting what they call “marginalised” groups, such as women, LGBT people, racial minorities, linguistic minorities, immigrants, particularly Muslims. For example, the Western Left calls for “gender parity” (imposed proportional representation) across the board in all institutions of civic life, by fiat if necessary (violating the tenets of a free society)...

These new (post-1960s) fault lines are based on ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration, language, religion, globalism and other issues that are even more divisive for national cohesion than traditional class struggle...

Abroad, Western Leftists promote (in varying degrees and where politically possible) what they call “global governance”, meaning the building of supranational institutions and policies that diminish the role of the nation-state, including the democratic nation-state. The ultimate goal of this grand ideological project is the creation of an increasingly integrated global order with laws and institutions that are superior to those of the nation-state...

Western progressives appear to approach external and internal politics with sharply different mindsets. International relations are viewed through the prism of “win-win”...

On the other hand, the progressives view domestic politics as strictly a zero-sum game. Their opponents at home, Western conservatives, are often excoriated as racists, xenophobes and reactionary retrogrades...

Foot notes that this ideological struggle highlights one of the most important political questions facing Western civilization: Who should govern?

First and foremost, in the West today, an intense ideological struggle is raging non-stop over the most momentous issues of world politics, including the singular, primary political question: Who should govern? The current migrant crisis and the ongoing issues of mass immigration, multiculturalism and cultural assimilation highlight this ideological conflict throughout Western politics.

Who decides immigration policy: democratic nation-states or hundreds of thousands or millions of migrants on their own? Who accommodates to whom: host nationals or newcomers? What principles determine policy: government by consent of the governed or evolving concepts of global human rights? If the latter, who decides what those universal human rights are?...

...principled democratic nationalists, whether Reaganite-Thatcherite or Gaullist, have more in common with each other than with their leftist opponents who emphasise identity politics...

What is at stake in determining refugee-immigration-assimilation policy (which must be seen as one interdependent issue) is the right of societal preservation and societal reproduction: Does a free people have the right to perpetuate its way of life or not?...

Do the French, British, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Americans and Australians have the right to decide for themselves whether or not to perpetuate their cultures, institutions and ways of life? Or will these questions be decided for them (and against their will) by transnational elites (through ideologically partisan interpretations of global human rights) and/or by millions of migrants from the developing world “voting with their feet” and arriving without the consent of the host nation’s citizens?...

Western civilization is at a turning point. The nation-state is under attack both from within via the Progressive agenda and from without via mass immigration and the trans-national corporatist agenda of globalist elites. The paramount question indeed is: Who should govern?


 

Related book

Sovereignty or Submission: Will Americans Rule Themselves or be Ruled by Others?, by John Fonte
ISBN-10: 1594035296, ISBN-13: 978-1594035296

Woke and Wokeism

Wokeism is the advancement of American Marxism on all fronts.

The following 5-minute video gives an excellent definition and explanation of woke / wokeism / wokeness.

What is woke / wokeism / wokeness?

What is Woke? by Vivek Ramaswamy:

Here is Wokeism, according to Vivek, in a few sentences:

1) To be woke is to believe that there is "an invisible power structure" that has 'cis' White males at the top; your position in that power structure is set by your race, gender and sexual orientation.

2) Political, economic and cultural power must be targeted at correcting those "invisible societal injustices."

3) Begun as a "challenge to the system," Wokeism has now become the "system in America."

4) Wokeism has many deleterious effects:

a) To be woke is to reject "the idea of the individual having agency in their own lives"; instead, your race, gender and sexual orientation "determine who you are and what you can achieve."

b) A woke society is a fearful society: "A culture of fear" has "replaced our culture of free speech in America."

c) A merit standard for admittance, employment and promotion is rapidly being replaced by a victim standard.

d) People are increasingly divided: "We lose our ability to become one people": the "sacred places that can bind us together... the companies where we work, the churches where we worship, the universities where we learn" become a political bastion for advancing "this race and gender and sexual orientation-based view of the world." Thus "We lose those spaces where we otherwise used to come together":

There is a 5th deleterious effect - exclusively on whites. This is not from Vivek, but consistent with his ideas. It is inspired by Helen Andrews of the American Conservative:

e) Whites can look to a future as "permanently powerless scapegoats": America's great historical figures will increasingly be seen as "losers who had labored for a collapsed and discredited cause." Because of slavery Whites will have "no basis for making claims in the public sphere."

Helen Andrews is senior editor at the American Conservative. Extrapolating from the permanent guilt of White South Africans over Apartheid, Andrews sees the same future for American Whites over slavery. This is "what Black Lives Matter" and "The 1619 Project" have in mind for White Americans.

BLM and 1619 advocates embrace the moral certainty with which we condemn Jim Crow and extend it to everything White Americans have ever done until - like White South Africans - we will "feel grateful just to have our continuing presence tolerated."

White Americans can never look forward to a day when they are "no longer blamed for everything that goes wrong in their country." As slavery "recedes into the past, its role as a political explanation grows... every ANC [Democrat] politician blames lingering racial disparities on the legacy of racism."

"So white South Africans will never achieve any political power no matter how hard they try, and they will never cease to be blamed for the country's misfortunes. That is the very definition of a dead end... the most South African thing about our [America's] politics is the current effort to push White Americans into that same position as permanently powerless scapegoats."

Recent books by Vivek:

[The above section courtesy Tom Shuford]

 

Related

Recommended: Video: Best Explanation of Marxism

Cultural Marxism, Political Correctness, and Critical Theory

Identity Politics: squabbling factions

Intersectionality - stacking levels of perceived discrimination

Marxism Key To Understanding Leftists

 

Setting the record straight on slavery

On this day, Republican Party founded to oppose expansion of slavery

A Short History of Slavery video

White and black slavery in North Africa and America

Video: Slavery Is Our ‘Original Sin’?!

The Alternative Right

by Fred Elbel

A very good discussion of the alternative right is presented in the Breitbart article: An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right, by Allum Bokhari & Milo Yiannopoulos, March 30, 2016. The authors describe the alt-right as an amorphous movement, young, and eager to commit secular heresies - the public enemy of beltway conservatives. The alternative right appeared on the scene in 2015 and speaks in youthful, taboo-jarring rhetoric.

Excerpts from the article follow, in which the authors reveal what the members of the alt-right stand for.

The Intellectuals

There are many things that separate the alternative right from old-school racist skinheads... The alternative right are a much smarter group of people - which perhaps suggests why the Left hates them so much. They’re dangerously bright...

The media empire of the modern-day alternative right coalesced around Richard Spencer during his editorship of Taki’s Magazine. In 2012, Spencer founded AlternativeRight.com, which would become a center of alt-right thought.

Alongside other nodes like Steve Sailer’s blog, VDARE and American Renaissance, AlternativeRight.com became a gathering point for an eclectic mix of renegades who objected to the established political consensus in some form or another. All of these websites have been accused of racism...

Steve Sailer, meanwhile, helped sparked the “human biodiversity” movement, a group of bloggers and researchers who strode eagerly into the minefield of scientific race differences — in a much less measured tone than former New York Times science editor Nicholas Wade...

...[LessWrong.com] began a gleeful demolition of the age-old biases of western political discourse. Liberalism, democracy and egalitarianism were all put under the microscope of the neoreactionaries, who found them wanting.

Liberal democracy, they argued, had no better a historical track record than monarchy, while egalitarianism flew in the face of every piece of research on hereditary intelligence...

Of course, it should be noted that accusation of racism is a form of an ad hominem attack - a formal debating tactic of attacking your opponent's character as opposed to answering their argument. It is a de facto admission of the inability to win the debate on the merits of one's argument alone.

Natural Conservatives

Natural conservatives can broadly be described as the group that the intellectuals above were writing for. They are mostly white, mostly male middle-American radicals, who are unapologetically embracing a new identity politics that prioritises the interests of their own demographic.

In their politics, these new conservatives are only following their natural instincts — the same instincts that motivate conservatives across the globe. These motivations have been painstakingly researched by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and an instinct keenly felt by a huge swathe of the political population: the conservative instinct.

Acclaimed social psychologist Jonathan Haidt described the conservative instinct in his 2012 book The Righteous Mind.

The conservative instinct, as described by Haidt, includes a preference for homogeneity over diversity, for stability over change, and for hierarchy and order over radical egalitarianism...

For natural conservatives, culture, not economic efficiency, is the paramount value. More specifically, they value the greatest cultural expressions of their tribe. Their perfect society does not necessarily produce a soaring GDP, but it does produce symphonies, basilicas and Old Masters. The natural conservative tendency within the alt-right points to these apotheoses of western European culture and declares them valuable and worth preserving and protecting...

...they doubt that full “integration” is ever possible. If it is, it won’t be successful in the “kumbaya” sense. Border walls are a much safer option...

It’s arguable that natural conservatives haven’t had real political representation for decades. Since the 1980s, establishment Republicans have obsessed over economics and foreign policy, fiercely defending the Reagan-Thatcher economic consensus at home and neoconservative interventionism abroad. In matters of culture and morality, the issues that natural conservatives really care about, all territory has been ceded to the Left, which now controls the academy, the entertainment industry and the press...

For decades, the concerns of those who cherish western culture have been openly ridiculed and dismissed as racist. The alt-right is the inevitable result. No matter how silly, irrational, tribal or even hateful the Establishment may think the alt-right’s concerns are, they can’t be ignored, because they aren’t going anywhere. As Haidt reminds us, their politics is a reflection of their natural inclinations.

In other words, the Left can’t language-police and name-call them away, which have for the last twenty years been the only progressive responses to dissent, and the Right can’t snobbishly dissociate itself from them and hope they go away either...

Millennials aren’t old enough to remember the Second World War or the horrors of the Holocaust... Racism, for them, is a monster under the bed... Millennials have trouble believing it’s actually real...

For decades – since the 1960s, in fact – the media and political establishment have held a consensus over what’s acceptable and unacceptable to discuss in polite society. The politics of identity, when it comes from women, LGBT people, blacks and other non-white, non-straight, non-male demographics is seen as acceptable — even when it descends into outright hatred.

Any discussion of white identity, or white interests, is seen as a heretical offence...

The pressure to self-censor must be almost overwhelming for straight white men - and, for most of them, it appears to be, which explains why so much of the alt-right operates anonymously...

The article points out that the alternative right is not going away and that we can no longer pretend that differences on free trade and health care represent the full gamut of the political spectrum.


 

Additional reading

Voxplaining the Alt Right, Alexander Hart, American Renaissance, April 21, 2016. A good explanation of the history of the alt right.

A pretty good discussion of conservatism and immigration

I came across a pretty good discussion of conservatism and how immigration is the predominant conservative issue - if we don't constrain mass immigration, all of the other prized conservative values will pretty much fall by the wayside.

I think the article is a good read. It focuses mostly on the conflict of abstract conservative principles versus realistic fundamental interests. Here are some excerpts:

National Review’s Conservatism of Values, Ideas, and Principles, Kevin MacDonald, January 25, 2016:

The National Review assault on Donald Trump brings up the issue of basing one’s political views on values, ideas, and principles. The problem is simply that these abstractions may or may not reflect fundamental interests, and the Trump candidacy is bringing this to the fore. The NR commentary is essentially a brief for the priority of principles, ideas, and values over interests...

Concerns about “limited government” and respect for the Constitution are the main themes running through the comments. Trump just hasn’t been mouthing adherence to either of them, and his critics point to instances, mainly in the past, where he has strayed from these abstractions. (Yes, the Constitution is an abstraction, because as Joe Sobran said (and quoted by Gregory Hood), “the Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.”

In all of this, there is no mention of fundamental interests that might  be compromised by adhering to the principles they espouse. As I noted in a recent article on the response to Trump, “Conservatism Inc. may argue that Trump is not a ‘conservative.’ But the reality is that Trump voters are focusing on his big issues—immigration first and foremost. Unless we win the immigration battle, none of the other battles can possibly be won.”

Immigration, more than any other issue, reflects fundamental interests in the ethnic composition of the United States. As an obvious example, limited government is not going to repatriate millions of illegal immigrants, or keep them out in the future. It is an enduring Utopian ideal that limited, constitutional government and individual freedom can survive importing millions of people from radically different cultures—cultures with no history of limited, constitutional government or individual freedom, and often with hatred toward the peoples and cultures of the West. Only the most reality-detached ideologue could believe that it’s all going to work out and something resembling traditional American institutions will be around in a few decades time if current trends continue.

As Jared Taylor points out, “Do they really believe that Mexicans and Haitians and Guatemalans and Vietnamese and Bangladeshis and Chinese are ever going to be made to care about the Second Amendment or Madisonian democracy or limited government?”...

This mindset among NR conservatives reflects a common defect among liberal Protestants that surfaced originally in the nineteenth century — the idea that the very different people crowding the shores of the U.S. would become “just like us.” These immigrants would eventually become good Protestants. What we are seeing now is how important segments of non-White immigrants, most obviously Muslims, are in fact unassimilable. They are never going to “become like us” and be concerned about the principles and values so near and dear to conservatives. It was the realization that so many of the post-1890 immigrants were infected with radical political beliefs that finally made Americans realize that immigrants don’t automatically turn into patriotic Americans. This realization was an important impetus for the 1924 immigration law...

... intellectual rationales for curtailing speech critical of the multicultural ideal are already common in the legal community in the U.S., while in Europe, police-state controls on thought and  behavior intended to buttress the the multicultural revolution are firmly ensconced. For Germany reeling under the migrant onslaught, the first priority is to manage nativist anger, not restricting migration or repatriating migrants...

We have to understand that this way of thinking is the result of the counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s, the intellectual basis for which is discussed in The Culture of Critique. In CofC I discuss a paper by Roger Smith, who shows that until the triumph of the cultural pluralist model with the countercultural revolution of the 1960s, there were three competing models of American identity: the “liberal” individualist legacy of the Enlightenment based on “natural rights”; the “republican” ideal of a cohesive, socially homogeneous society; and the “ethnocultural” strand emphasizing the importance of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity in the development and preservation of American cultural forms. [1] These three strands are compatible with each other, but only if the US had retained its traditional homogeneous White underpinnings. Recall that the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, with its built-in sense of White identity politics (i.e., biasing immigration to people from Northwest Europe), was essentially upheld over presidential veto not that long ago, in 1952. Yet these principled conservatives act as if their ideals have always been the guiding principles of the Republic. Fundamentally, they have plugged into the leftist zeitgeist in order to make themselves palatable to the powers that be...

The problem is that these self-described conservatives have thrown out all of this except the Enlightenment ideals. By denigrating and religiously avoiding the traditional ethnocultural strand of American identity as well as the republican ideal of a cohesive and socially homogeneous society, these “conservatives” have wholeheartedly gone along with this revolution. It is a revolution that amounts to the suicide of the West. In the end, it is anything but conservative...

If we are in fact seeing the beginning of a politics of more-or-less explicit White identity, the irrelevant cuckservatives at at the dying NR [National Review] must receive a great deal of the credit. And for that we can be thankful.

This article focuses on the importance of practical conservative interests over abstract principles. However, it doesn't focus on another component of so-called "conservatism": the donor class - wealthy and powerful elites who want an unending stream of cheap foreign labor to bolster the bottom line. It's well-known that "immigrants" vote Democratic and essentially Socialistic, which patently illustrates that the elitist agenda of dismantling America with mass immigration in no way represents either conservative interests or principles.


Related blog post and collection of articles

Conservatism, Inc's jihad against American conservatives, Fred Elbel, CAIRCO, January 26, 2016.

Movement Conservatism, Neoconservative orthodoxy, and Trump

A recent article on Unz Review sheds a lot of light on the current discord within the Republican Party. The article focuses on the two leading Republican candidates in a manner that includes a lot of perspective and historical context.

Here are some excerpts:

Why I Support Donald Trump and Not Ted Cruz, Boyd D. Cathey, Unz Review, January 27, 2016.

...I think it is important to begin with a review of some essential history, a brief exploration of the evolution of what is now called “Movement Conservatism” and its symbiotic relationship to the modern Republican Party. Understanding this background is critical to comprehending what has happened and is happening, politically and culturally, to what remains of the American republic in 2016. The transformation of the intellectual brain trust for the Republican Party has fundamentally affected and influenced the successive evolution of the positions the Republican Party has taken over the past fifty years.

Before discussing this history, I think it is necessary that we recall that the GOP Establishment, in fact, never gave up its virtual control of the party structure, despite Ronald Reagan...

It was my mentor and friend, the late Dr. Russell Kirk, whose volume The Conservative Mind actually initiated what became the older, scholarly “conservatism” in the 1950s. “Conservatism,” as Kirk explained it, encompassed an inherent distrust of liberal democracy, staunch opposition to egalitarianism, and an extreme reluctance to commit the United States to global “crusades” to impose American “values” on “unenlightened” countries around the world. Conservatives should celebrate local traditions, customs, and the inherited legacies of other peoples, and not attempt to destroy them. America, Kirk insisted, was not founded on a democratic, hegemonic ideology, but as an expression and continuation of European traditions and strong localist, familial and religious belief...

Beginning in the 1970s into the 1980s there was an influx of former Leftist and ex-Trotskyite intellectuals and writers, who had become anti-Communists and who began to move to the right into the older conservative movement. These were denominated the Neoconservatives, or Neocons. At first the Neocons were welcomed as ex-Marxists “coming in from the cold.” The problem was, and still is, that the Neocons brought with them not only their welcomed and spirited anti-Communism, but also their intellectual template of across-the-board egalitarianism, internationalism, and an a priori liberal and global interventionist foreign policy, which has, as its underlying principle, an almost chiliastic belief in imposed “liberal democracy” as the “final stage” of human (and secular) progress. And it is that Idea of (irreversible) Progress, which means the destruction of older traditions, customs, and those things considered “reactionary” that stand in the way of Progress, that characterizes most of Neocon thinking. Such ideas, needless to say, run counter to traditional conservative principles.

With strong academic connections and financial sources, the Neocons soon took control of most of the older conservative foundations, think tanks, and publications, and they did so with an iron hand, reminiscent of older days, when their Marxism was readily visible. And, more significantly, through this control of most “conservative” institutions, especially those centered in Washington, D. C., they very soon began to provide experts and advisors to the national Republican Party and its candidates. Their dominance manifested itself in organs such as the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and in publications like Commentary, The Public Interest, and National Review (which shed its previous attachments to the older conservatism). The advent of the Rupert Murdoch media empire, with Fox News television, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and the New York Post as its notable voices, cemented this influence, which manifested itself abundantly in post-Reagan GOP policies and prescriptions...

Thus, in a very real sense, what is commonly termed “conservatism” today has not been truly conservative in the traditional sense for probably three or four decades, at least...

Trump, is not a “movement conservative,” that is, he is not a Republican candidate schooled in the narrative of Neoconservatism (while Marco Rubio wallows in it)...

Trump is the candidate who has been bold and farsighted enough to raise the real issues that are affecting every day Americans, not just “movement conservatives.” Most importantly, there is the supremely significant issue of illegal immigration. Consider, for example, what has happened to California, that up to the 1980s was considered a reliably “conservative” state, but after the 1986 Immigration Act, and three-to-four million new immigrants from Latin America, most illegal, will no longer ever vote for a Republican, much less any kind of conservative. The question is: do we want this to continue to happen? Who will be the candidate who will actually stop—and reverse—this?...

Then, there is the issue of Muslims coming to America. Trump’s plan to temporarily bar them coming in until a proper and secure screening system is put into place, is not only logical, it is completely constitutional and legal...

The case of Ted Cruz is mixed. He has on the Senate floor, opposed some of the measures pushed by the GOP Establishment, and he is not a member of the exclusive congressional “club,” but he is still part and parcel of the GOP/ Neocon “movement” fabric...

The essential question for me is this: as much as I might respect Ted Cruz’s senate career, I sincerely don’t think he would be able to withstand or take on the powerful Establishment in the same no-holds-barred and independent manner as the Donald. I don’t think Cruz would dislodge the Neocon intellectual stranglehold over the GOP policy; I think he would end up accepting and confirming it...

What is needed in this nation now is dramatic, even radical change. What is needed is not someone who will simply raise Hell, but someone who will be more like a bull loosed in a terrified china shop. Half measures and regular politicians, “mainstream conservatives” like Ted Cruz, I don’t think can pull it off. Trump, I believe, just maybe can...


 

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The Bill of Rights vs The 10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto

Friday, July 16, 2021
Article category: Highlights. Tags: 

The Bill of Rights is the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution. It specifies that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” It sets rules for due process of law and reserves all powers not delegated to the Federal Government to the people or the States. It spells out Americans’ rights in relation to their government. It guarantees civil rights and liberties to the individual, including freedom of speech, press, and religion.

Here is a summary of the first 10 Amendments to the United States Constitution, contrasted with a summary of the 10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto. Which more accurately portrays America at this point in time? In which direction is America moving?

The Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto, by Karl Heinrich Marx, 1848. From Laissez-Fair Republic.

1. Abolition of Property in Land and Application of all Rents of Land to Public Purpose.

The courts have interpreted the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (1868) to give the government far more "eminent domain" power than was originally intended.

2. A Heavy Progressive or Graduated Income Tax.

The 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, 1913 (which some scholars maintain was never properly ratified), and various State income taxes, established this major Marxist coup in the United States many decades ago.

3. Abolition of All Rights of Inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the Property of All Emigrants and Rebels.

We call it government seizures, tax liens, "forfeiture"

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

The Federal Reserve System, created by the Federal Reserve Act of Congress in 1913, is indeed such a "national bank"...

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the state.

In the U.S., communication and transportation are controlled and regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established by the Communications Act of 1934 and the Department of Transportation and the Interstate Commerce Commission (established by Congress in 1887), and the Federal Aviation Administration as well as Executive orders 11490, 10999...

7. Extension of Factories and Instruments of Production Owned by the State, the Bringing Into Cultivation of Waste Lands, and the Improvement of the Soil Generally in Accordance with a Common Plan.

While the U.S. does not have vast "collective farms" (which failed so miserably in the Soviet Union), we nevertheless do have a significant degree of government involvement in agriculture in the form of price support subsidies and acreage alotments and land-use controls....

8. Equal Liability of All to Labor. Establishment of Industrial Armies, Especially for Agriculture.

We call it the Social Security Administration and The Department of Labor...

9. Combination of Agriculture with Manufacturing Industries; Gradual Abolition of the Distinction Between Town and Country by a More Equable Distribution of the Population over the Country.

10. Free Education for All Children in Public Schools. Abolition of Children's Factory Labor in it's Present Form. Combination of Education with Industrial Production.

People are being taxed to support what we call 'public' schools...

The Bill of Rights: What Does it Say? from National Archives.

The First Amendment provides several rights protections: to express ideas through speech and the press, to assemble or gather with a group to protest or for other reasons, and to ask the government to fix problems. It also protects the right to religious beliefs and practices. It prevents the government from creating or favoring a religion.

The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms.

The Third Amendment prevents government from forcing homeowners to allow soldiers to use their homes. Before the Revolutionary War, laws gave British soldiers the right to take over private homes.

The Fourth Amendment bars the government from unreasonable search and seizure of an individual or their private property.

The Fifth Amendment provides several protections for people accused of crimes. It states that serious criminal charges must be started by a grand jury. A person cannot be tried twice for the same offense (double jeopardy) or have property taken away without just compensation. People have the right against self-incrimination and cannot be imprisoned without due process of law (fair procedures and trials.)

The Sixth Amendment provides additional protections to people accused of crimes, such as the right to a speedy and public trial, trial by an impartial jury in criminal cases, and to be informed of criminal charges. Witnesses must face the accused, and the accused is allowed his or her own witnesses and to be represented by a lawyer.

The Seventh Amendment extends the right to a jury trial in Federal civil cases.

The Eighth Amendment bars excessive bail and fines and cruel and unusual punishment.

The Ninth Amendment states that listing specific rights in the Constitution does not mean that people do not have other rights that have not been spelled out.

The Tenth Amendment says that the Federal Government only has those powers delegated in the Constitution. If it isn’t listed, it belongs to the states or to the people.


Why Socialism Never Works: A Video Marathon

Capitalism has lifted millions out of poverty and is the only creator of wealth. Socialism ONLY results in economic ruin. So why do so many young people today support it? Watch this specially-curated video marathon devoted to understanding Socialism and its pitfalls.

Which Doomer Are You? A New Political Map

Article author: 
Indrajit Samarajiva
Article date: 
Saturday, June 4, 2022
Medium
Article Body: 

Dave Pollard has been clanging to doom bell for a while. He made a 'new political map' in 2015—back when I would have called him crazy—but now I’m crazy too. When the world goes mad, only a madman stays the same.I have modified Pollard’s map above. Nothing wrong with the old design, this is just how I understood it.

The most interesting thing about Pollard’s map is how exploded it is. Everything we consider politics as usual is confined to one corner and called Deniers. It’s as if someone took the X and Y axis that bounds normal political thought and wrenched it apart....

 

Which doomer are you? A new political map

 

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More from Indrajit Samarajiva.

The Traditional Political Spectrum.