March 20, 2015
Recognition of the inevitability of comprehensive bureaucratization does not solve the problems that arise out of it.—Joseph Schumpter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
Many of us—including me—worry about the downward arc of liberty, ethics and economic freedom. If you are taking the time to read this short article, in all likelihood, I needn’t detail the myriad challenges we face, even at a high level. Rather, the question is: is there any hope? Or are we fated to descend into a new Dark Age, aided and abetted, in the famous words of Winston Churchill regarding National Socialism, by “perverted science?”
Notwithstanding those who look forward to the return of Jesus Christ—of which I count myself one—or a spiritual revival, are there any other reasons to hold out hope in the interim? I think there is reason for optimism. It is not a certain hope, but is a hope that—accompanied by courage, elbow grease, intelligence and audacity—should give conservatives, libertarians, Constitutionalists and other allies a reason for positivity. And please note by “audacity,” I do not allude to the book by Barack Obama, who is one of the leading unlights pushing us towards a new Dark Age; rather, I make reference to the words of a true American hero, George Patton, whose motto was “Audacity, audacity, always audacity.” Patton, of course, led the charge in destroying a similar national socialism we see here today.
What is this hope for a better morning based on? Simply this: the leftist experiment has always and everywhere—by virtue of its complete misapprehension of human nature - eventually reverted to its natural ouroborotic state. It is, as Jacques Mallet du Pan (1749—10 May 1800), wrote about the first leftist reign of terror, in his 1793 essay
that ”...the Revolution always eats its own children” (“A l’exemple de Saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants”)
Examples of du Pan’s thesis? The prototypical example is Robespierre falling to his own guillotine, of course. But let’s look at more history. Do you recall the Red Chinese attack on fellow communist Vietnam immediately on the heels of the US withdrawal and collapse of South Vietnam? If not, perhaps you recall the Sino-Soviet war on the Ussuri River border area in 1969, amid reports Soviet leadership had inquired of US leadership if there would be any problems if the Russians nuked Mao’s China. Or you may recall Leon Trotsky, one of those who brought into being the Soviet nightmare along with Lenin, becoming persona non grata in the Soviet People’s Workers Paradise, being forced to flee to Mexico and finally being murdered there with an ice pick. The story of former NKVD (predecessor to the KGB) head and Stalin buddy Lavrentiy Beria falling out of favour, is particularly chilling. He was dragged before a special session (“Spetsialnoye Sudebnoye Prisutstvie”) the a day before Christmas 1953 with no defense counsel and no right of appeal, then summarily dragged off to be shot—after they stuffed a rag in his mouth to shut up his whining before they pulled the trigger. A little more recently, perhaps you recall Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo in the old Rhodesia? Of course. Operation Barbarossa, where the National Socialists of Germany invaded the socialists of the Soviet Union is a classic example. (Please… if you do not understand that the war between Hitler and Stalin was an internecine one, one version of socialism vs. another, simply go read the planks adopted at the very first Nazi convention, Munich, Feb. 1920, and tell me how they differ in any substantive way. Or consider Hitler’s own words, “There is more that binds us to Boshevism than separates us from it… I have always made allowances for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once,” or again, “I am not merely the vanquisher of Marxism, I am its implementer… The whole of National Socialism is contained in Marxism… the industrial cells, the mass demonstrations, the propaganda material.”) Most recently, we see similar dynamics where “Obama’s brain” Valerie Jarrett has made vigorous attempts to derail the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign by purportedly being the agent behind Hillary’s State Department email imbroglio.
But of course, the Fabian socialists in power today deign to use a velvet glove rather than the hammer and sickle to crush the skulls of their opposition—at least much of the time. That is, the new socialists desire to not smash your skull, but rather to get in and reside within it (another mindless “Yes we can!” chanting session, anyone?). The goal today is generally not the guillotine (though all those banker “suicides,” or the abnormal deaths of Andrew Brietbart, Tom Clancy or Michael Hasting do not leave one with warm and fuzzies), but rather, as Charleton Heston wrote, the usurpation of culture: “Modern media fills the cultural airwaves with a mist of anesthesia, so that principles and values are slowly desensitized to the coming onslaught. The new culture arrives on the heels of this propaganda. It simply moves in and takes over, like slipping a fine new glove over a numbed hand. The outcome of the war is just as devastating, but without bombs bursting, twisted bodies to bury, or rubble to rebuild. A new class, a different culture, simply takes over.” Andrew Brietbart, before his peculiar death, put it more succinctly: “Politics is downstream from culture.” In fact, the quotes from Heston and Brietbart are merely a shortened version of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
Where the velvet hammer fails, there is cultural marginalization, or failing at that, always the hammer of punitive legal measures, such as fining an Oregon baker a quarter million dollars for exercising her freedom of conscience re. homosexual marriages; sending another baker in Colorado to a re-education camp for the same “sin,” or Elaine Huegenin- the photographer who graciously refused to photograph a gay “wedding” - who was informed by the New Mexico Supreme Court that her very right of citizenship was predicated on her submitting to the radical Brownshirt homosexual agenda.
Homosexuality uber alles… including the 1st Amendment—is just part of the game. Al Gore and his merry band of anti-science global warmers also illustrate the naked leftist hammer, where Gore recently stated that those who question global warming should “be punished.” And of course, there are always the ubiquitous campus speech and thought police, who are no more than Red Guards without the Mao suits . For them, it is as famed leftist Herbert Marcuse—who popularized the “repressive tolerance” theory of modern progressives ‚Äìsaid:“Liberating tolerance would mean intolerance against movements from the right and toleration of movements from the left. Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed.”
Famed leftist Mario Savio and his free speech crusade on the steps of the student union at UC Berkeley in the 1960s is now proven to be just part of the “realpolitik” in taking over the levers of control. Free speech be damned when there is control to be had!
But here is the optimistic twist about the leftists/fascists: As there is no God, power is the highest value in their universe. Indeed, it is ultimately all that exists for them. You know this from watching Hillary and Obama. And from this assumption flows their whole hellish world, where it is as Dostoyevski wrote,“if there is no God… everything is permitted.” (Без бога всё позволено, всё дозволено (the second clause is a variant of the phrase “everything is permitted.”). And because power is their “god”—as opposed to the God the Founding Fathers invoke —the left is open to all kinds of distortions, corruptions and self-destructiveness. These self-proclaimed leftist savants have rejected the wisdom of those informed by absolutes (again… think here of America’s Founding Fathers, who were generally informed by Judeo-Christian presuppositions, which - critically - led to the division of powers) and instead have left themselves open to raw, fallen human nature… without having the intellectual grid to even be aware of the full ramifications of this. Or as one two thousand year old book—not much read today—once stated, “Proclaiming themselves wise, they became fools.” Or as another writer from that era, Roman satirist Juvenal, asked, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guards?) There is no answer to this, because none is possible in the amoral world of the left.
And herein lies the hope: Simply, that the left will, as it always has, destroy itself. The only question is, of course, how many must suffer or die before that implosion? Will it be the 100 million that the Black Book of Communism (Oxford Univ. Press) says were murdered last century by the left? Or will people rise before that to derail the train to darkness?
It has often been observed that the Soviet leftist beast died of its own internal contradictions and misapprehension of human nature (that is the reason why Ludwig von Mises’ best known book was called “Human Action”—downloadable here.) The point is, the leftist gyroscope is, by definition, not “in spec,” and thus can never lead anywhere that is recognizably human. And of course a million human decisions made locally every second will always and everywhere trump the decisions by some self-appointed “best and brightest (the same “best and brightest” that gave us Vietnam) constructing today’s version of a Soviet 5 year plan while isolated in Moscow or Washington DC.
There is hope in that the left is utterly intellectually dishonest. Think the global warming scam. Science is decided by “consensus” rather than experimentation and hypothesis testing?
Notwithstanding the fact that there has been ZERO global warming since 1998, has anyone told Galileo, Copernicus about this? Has anyone told Ignaz Semmelweis—who insisted his doctors wash their hands between operation and was drummed out of the medical business in the mid-1800s because germs were not in the consensus—about this? Perhaps Mr. Gore could ask Albert Einstein - about whom Hitler had published a book entitled “100 Scientists Against Einstein” (to which Einstein replied “Why one hundred? If their facts are right, only one would be needed)—about that “consensus” scam.
The left thinks it can create a new man, a new reality based on their utterly flawed premises about human nature. But they are wrong—and permanently and forever wrong. No matter how much propaganda the left musters, it is as Horace (65—8 BC) said, “You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, but she will nevertheless come back.” Similarly, Solzhenitsyn predicted the downfall of the Soviet Union many decades ago, by noting simply that Communism could not, by their central presuppositions, see man as he was, and was thus inexorably doomed to fail.
There is more. Once the inevitable economic and ethical implosions occur, exactly how long will they be able to find the foot soldiers required to do leftist bidding? Not only will there be little money with which to hire mercenaries, the intellectual bankruptcy of the matter will be visible to all. In short, the Wicked Witch of the West will have no more flying monkeys at her command. People will not sacrifice their lives for something they know is bankrupt. And once this state is arrived at, the end is only a matter of time.
How do I know? I have lived in the capital of socialist Canada for many, many years, and worked with thousands of government employees. Exactly how many do you think really gave a flying rat’s derriere about anything other than their pensions and getting out the door precisely at 4 PM? Need I go through the litany of stories the US side of the border (my favourite being that distasteful issue where the EPA was having problems with employees defecating in the hallways). Let me ask you this: this article is being written for free—my only interest is truth and justice. How many on the Big Government side would take even five minutes of their time to do the same? The truth is, that as the leftist Orwellian dystopia continues its descent, more and more will see the intellectual bankruptcy of the naked emperor, or—more narrowly—at least become disenchanted as they see a chronically unemployed brother, an elderly parent living in poverty, or their children with no future. Slowly but surely, with no bell rung at the bottom, people will one by one check out of Hotel Kalifornia.
It is true that there will always be the committed Bolsheviks; and it is true, as Margaret Mead said, that change generally comes through small committed groups (think the vile Saul Alinsky here). But recall, too, that there is no honour among thieves—let along ethics—and the world of the left will—long or short - devolve into a Lord of the Flies scenario. Worse, as the left knows it is creating an ever shrinking pie, there will be mad scrambles for the diminishing number of crumbs. There can only so many Michelle Obama-style vacations available, and that number will become smaller each year. In fact, the old apocryphal story of Leonid Brezhnev is a perfect example: In the 1970s, Leonid Brezhnev’s elderly grandmother, who had lived in pre-communist Russia, came to visit him at his communist headquarters. Leonid is beaming with pride as he introduces her to all his aides and servants, shows her his gold plated desk, his 15 Zil limousines waiting, all with engines running, pictures of all his well-appointed dachas in exclusive, VIP areas across the USSR, etc. Finally, at the end of the day, all the assistants, aides and servants leave. The old granny very nervously and very carefully looks around to make sure absolutely no one is anywhere near, then leans over and very, VERY quietly whispers in Leonid’s ear:
“This is all very well, Leonid…. BUT WHAT IF THE COMMUNISTS COME!?!?”
The truth is, formerly an army travelled on its stomach. However, today, with MREs, McDonalds and GMOs, food is not as great of an issue. There will be food (as non-nutritious as it may be!). Rather, today’s army travels on its worldview—but just like every other socialist experiment, ranging from Zimbabwe to the USSR, this worldview is neither intellectually tenable, economically sustainable nor morally bearable. Therein lies our hope.
Finally, for the left, their very fallen, imperfect human nature—which is addressed through the division of powers in traditional America, but dominated by czars, elites and autocrats in the totalitarian leftist world (remember: power is the only “god” they worship, and people become increasingly like that which they worship)—will be the final cause of their downfall.
In sum, there is hope. It is, as Dale Dauten wrote in his Greatest Quotations of All-Time “Willpower subverts passion. Bureaucracy subverts willpower. Idiocy subverts bureaucracy. If you need an example of this, just look at Obama’s cabinet.
Canada Free Press
