By Douglas V. Gibbs
Communism never fell. Yes, the Soviet Union crumbled, Cuba's communist government is falling apart, and the eastern bloc countries have all shed their communist veil. China and North Korea remains, however, as does American Liberalism.
How is it that the people of the world ever fell for communism in the first place? How is it that people were willing to hang up their freedom, and grant their lives to the totalitarian statism of communism? Communism spread through Europe after World War II faster than Nazism had. The Russians just picked up where the Germans left off. Amazingly, as with Neville Chamberlain regarding Nazism, people defended communism, or at least felt that a little appeasement may contain the ideology.
Like any other evil, communism spread despite any attempts to stop it short of military action.
General Patton said that after we defeated Germany in World War II, we needed to continue on into Russia and destroy the communist threat before it became too large to contain. During the Korean War General MacArthur recommended a stronger move into North Korea, and for the atomic bomb to be used on various targets in North Korea and China. Both were dismissed for their recommendations. Had we followed the advise of our military generals, the world would be a much different place, and more than likely, a much better place.
Communism would have been stopped before it gave us the fits we have been enduring.
Communism is a form of Utopianism, a political concept that the Founding Fathers of the United States warned us continually about. Communism, socialism, liberalism, and all other forms of statism may not have been named such back then, but the concept of collectivism, utopianism, and big government did exist.
Different name - same evil.
Regardless of the name of the utopian philosophy of government, in the end it seeks to spread worldwide. Communism held that philosophy of worldwide dominance. Nazism also sought to spread across the globe. Liberalism has oozed its way throughout the international community, and through the United Nations is currently seeking a global system of governance.
Even at the simplest levels of government the political elitism of liberalism exists.
Locally, when I ran for City Council in 2010, a set of measures I supported passed overwhelmingly. Measures C, D, and E in Murrieta, California were designed to limit the terms of city officials, as well as limit their compensation. The City Council has refused to implement the initiatives even though the voters passed them, and they are altering the ordinances with the help of the city attorney without the consent of the people.
In a quick interview by one of the young students of my Constitution Class, one of the city council members told him, "We are changing the measures because we understand what the people thought they wanted, and are adjusting the measures accordingly."
That reminds me of the General Will.
Liberals promise to act in an angelic manner "for the public good" if they are given enough power. Once attaining that power, as we are seeing now in the American system, liberals work to create within America the very philosophy we fought to defeat during the Cold War. Part of that philosophy is the General Will, which is a concept that was once promoted by a man named Jean Jacque Rousseau at about the same time as the founding of this nation.
Eighteenth century French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau was one of the minds behind the madness of the French Jacobins (secular socialists) that eventually led France into the destructive upheaval of the French Revolution. Part of their drive for a new system was the belief in the supposed existence of a "general will" that does not necessarily appear as something obviously expressed by the general public, but is presumed to be known by the ruling elite. A kind of "we know what you want and what is best for you" attitude that supposedly exists simply because of their elite positions and higher-institution intellectualism.
Most of the Founding Fathers denied the existence of a general will, nor did they believe the federal government should follow policies for the general idea of the public good. They believed in "the public good," but felt society as a whole was best served when personal responsibility and self-reliance took root, and when government stepped out of the way of liberty, freedom, opportunity, a free market, and the like.
In other words, it was not thought to be the role of government to force their views of what is best for the public good, but for the society to determine it for themselves, and create a public good through the individual efforts of the free market.
The concept of a General Will collided head on with the philosophy of American federalism, as provided by the U.S. Constitution. The majority of the founders believed in individualism, and a collectivist concept such as Rousseau's theory of a "General Will" sought to govern by dissolving the people into a homogeneous mass, abolishing decentralization (principles of limited government set forth by the Constitution), and remove representative institutions such as our Congress. The Founding Fathers saw such a view of government as a radically dangerous system that could not be in sharper contrast to the American traditions of constitutionalism, federalism, localism, and representation.
The Founding Fathers held on to the idea of a limited federal government that retained most of the powers to the States, and the people, therefore they hated and feared the Jacobin theory of a "general will." Collectivism and statism were concepts that would ultimately subject all voluntary associations to government control in the name of "the people," and their "will," as interpreted by a ruling elite, which would ultimately lead to serfdom, and the end of individual liberty.
The threat of a progressively ever-expanding government was a danger to the concept of American Federalism. Such a big government philosophy pushed for the consolidated taxing and borrowing powers in the federal government, which the Founding Fathers that adhered to limiting principles believed would lead to a suppression of the republican state assemblies, by depriving them of political importance, resulting from the imposition of dispensation of taxes.
The fears of governance through centralized government chipping away at the principles of federalism came to reality when the big government politicians of the Federalist Party came to power in 1790. From 1790 to 1800 Congress's spending skyrocketed, as did taxation and governmental borrowing. With statist Alexander Hamilton at the reigns of the Treasury Department, more government debt was accumulated for government expenditure programs, and the economy was in shambles as a result. The objective was to concentrate economic and political power in the federal government, and effectively abolish federalism and states' rights.
Today we call such assaults on the American Form of Government by a different name. In today's society it is called "liberalism."
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." --James Madison
When these liberal ideas emerge, they seek to act in a preferential manner to particular groups. We see the rise of governmental preference to certain corporations in the form of bail outs and governmental influence, as well as laws passed to benefit particular groups over the rest of the population (like affirmative action). We even see this system of preference to one group, while acting punitively to another, in the progressive tax rates of our income tax system.
"The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy." --Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations, 1774
Be it Communism, the philosophies of the Jacobins, socialism, progressivism, or liberalism, in the end they are all just names for the same thing: Utopianism. The Utopian Society is the final goal of those concepts, and today's progressives. Regardless of the name, the hope by these leftists is the same, and the path to enact such a system of collectivism always follows the same destructive route. They desire a communal society that theoretically eliminates poverty, the need for monetary wealth, and assaults the very concept of winning and losing.
Human Nature stands in the way of the plans of these social engineers. The natural tendencies of humanity will never support the destructive pipe dream of liberalism. We have seen such failures in the past. Today's Liberals are yesterday's Bolsheviks, and they don't even realize it.
I can't count how many liberals, and Democrat Party Sheep that vote the statists into office, I hear crying out "down with capitalism," or criticizing the free market.
I've heard that kind of Rhetoric before... from the now defunct Soviet Union.
Whenever the leftists attempt to equalize, or be socially just, through a system of wealth redistribution, claiming that it is their goal to make all things fair for people through government intervention, individual human nature will always reject the liberty-killing philosophy. These statist systems of governance only take hold temporarily. Countless times throughout history attempts at utopianism have failed, and leave in their wake a violent and bloody trail of millions. The "enlightened" minds behind the progressive movement are unwilling to accept the fact that as it has countless times before, their philosophy is doomed to failure. Each time rejection of their progressive system of government happens, the elitists behind the movement towards a Utopian society determine that they must push harder. After all, they think they know what is best for society more than the individual does, and that somehow, despite all historical evidence to the contrary, in the end collectivism will win out over individuality. Every single time liberal collectivism makes such a push, the populace is not as receptive to socialistic collectivism as they had hoped. As a result, they decide to enact a new strategy, one that must be implemented without the people realizing what is going on, so that they can force liberal socialism upon the people whether the people like it, or not.
This means that in order to get their policies in place, there must be a strategy of deception employed. Obama, for example, has been implementing his liberal madness while wearing a mask of moderation that even has the hardline liberal base angry with him.
Obama is no fool. He knows that full blown liberalism would never be fully accepted by the people. That is why his presidency is in such a shambles at this moment. When he hides his true intentions his leftist base gets angry. When the veil is lifted, despite all of the Democrat's efforts to hide what they are doing, their plans are exposed, and rejected.
Liberalism has progressed using a system I call "creeping incrementalism," where the liberals get a little here, and a little there, and before the people know it, the public has accepted the philosophies of communism under the guise of liberalism little by little without even realizing it.
It is sort of like the often used story of the boiling frog. At first, in the cooking pot, the frog luxuriates in the warm water. The slowly rising heat is so gradual that the frog never notices the increases, and never jumps out of the pot to escape the incremental rises in temperature. Eventually, the water is so hot that the frog winds up cooked, and the poor animal never knew what was happening until it was too late to take action. What was thought to be a nice warm bath for his own good turned out to be the end of him.
Creeping incrementalism promises the people one thing while delivering another through slowly measured doses. The liberal socialists could never allow the populace to realize the true nature of their movement by injecting too much too quickly, or being up front about their aims. So, they hide their socialism, calling it by other names, even though their platforms are obviously socialist in nature. They inject the socialism slowly, careful not to deliver so much socialism that the populace discovers the exact nature of the strategy, and removes the liberals from office.
Socialism cannot win in the arena of ideas because ultimately the citizens of a free society would never accept the tenets of the statist philosophy should they discover what it is. Therefore, along with the stealth tactics of implementing socialism gradually, the leftist liberals also work to destroy the trust and faith the people have in their current system. Capitalism must be demonized, and the citizenry is convinced that the free market is the cause of their economic woes. Republicanism is demonized. History is revised. Never mind that in the case of the United States, it was that same free market they are criticizing that made the United States the most prosperous nation on the face of the Earth.
The attack against any dissent then becomes vicious and unrelenting. Most people don't want socialism, and they do not desire to live under a socialist system, so the Socialists resort to deception through a series of lies, coupled with the unrelenting demonization of any system that dares to oppose their liberal philosophies, including capitalism and faith-based religions.
One way to attack the opposition is for members of the liberal left to ask questions that corners the opposition, forcing them into a defensive posture. The leftists then use the answers by their opposition as a tool of propaganda, twisting the meaning of the conservative's words any way they can. They ask questions of non-socialists not because they are searching for answers. They ask questions not in the hopes of learning something, or getting responses they can use out of context for the purposes of propaganda.
A great example of this is the pro-Obama video by the Democratic National Committee that emerged after the GOP debate in New Hampshire that took the entire debate, and the responses of the GOP presidential candidates, way out of context.
Remember, the answers by the Republicans were responses to questions asked by a liberal media:
The liberal left doesn't ask questions with the determination of figuring out where "right-wingers" stand based on the answers given. Liberals already have their preconceived notions on where their opposition stands on the issues, and what their opposition thinks. The entire goal of asking pointed questions is to receive answers that can be used as fodder for the destruction of any faith voters may have in any dissent of liberal policies. Every action by the liberal communists are to specifically demonize the positions of those that oppose them, rather than simply debate the issues.
As the opposition of liberalism is demonized, programs are put into place by the leftists that masquerade as beneficial to the society. The purpose of these programs, however, are not to benefit the populace, but to soften the populace up, get them used to receiving gifts from the national treasury, and to allow the government to be able to exert more control over the populace through creating dependency by the people upon the government. One of the tools used to achieve such control is the redistribution of wealth through entitlement programs. The promise is that the wealth is to be redistributed from the wealthy to those poor individuals at the bottom of the economic ladder through a system of entitlements that eventually the populace comes to rely upon. In reality, the government is taking from one to give it to another, but the benefits are not to the receivers of these entitlements, but is actually ultimately those who control the system.
The concept of a General Will collided head on with the philosophy of American federalism, as provided by the U.S. Constitution. The majority of the founders believed in individualism, and a collectivist concept such as Rousseau's theory of a "General Will" sought to govern by dissolving the people into a homogeneous mass, abolishing decentralization (principles of limited government set forth by the Constitution), and remove representative institutions such as our Congress. The Founding Fathers saw such a view of government as a radically dangerous system that could not be in sharper contrast to the American traditions of constitutionalism, federalism, localism, and representation.
The Founding Fathers held on to the idea of a limited federal government that retained most of the powers to the States, and the people, therefore they hated and feared the Jacobin theory of a "general will." Collectivism and statism were concepts that would ultimately subject all voluntary associations to government control in the name of "the people," and their "will," as interpreted by a ruling elite, which would ultimately lead to serfdom, and the end of individual liberty.
The threat of a progressively ever-expanding government was a danger to the concept of American Federalism. Such a big government philosophy pushed for the consolidated taxing and borrowing powers in the federal government, which the Founding Fathers that adhered to limiting principles believed would lead to a suppression of the republican state assemblies, by depriving them of political importance, resulting from the imposition of dispensation of taxes.
The fears of governance through centralized government chipping away at the principles of federalism came to reality when the big government politicians of the Federalist Party came to power in 1790. From 1790 to 1800 Congress's spending skyrocketed, as did taxation and governmental borrowing. With statist Alexander Hamilton at the reigns of the Treasury Department, more government debt was accumulated for government expenditure programs, and the economy was in shambles as a result. The objective was to concentrate economic and political power in the federal government, and effectively abolish federalism and states' rights.
Today we call such assaults on the American Form of Government by a different name. In today's society it is called "liberalism."
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." --James Madison
When these liberal ideas emerge, they seek to act in a preferential manner to particular groups. We see the rise of governmental preference to certain corporations in the form of bail outs and governmental influence, as well as laws passed to benefit particular groups over the rest of the population (like affirmative action). We even see this system of preference to one group, while acting punitively to another, in the progressive tax rates of our income tax system.
"The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy." --Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations, 1774
Be it Communism, the philosophies of the Jacobins, socialism, progressivism, or liberalism, in the end they are all just names for the same thing: Utopianism. The Utopian Society is the final goal of those concepts, and today's progressives. Regardless of the name, the hope by these leftists is the same, and the path to enact such a system of collectivism always follows the same destructive route. They desire a communal society that theoretically eliminates poverty, the need for monetary wealth, and assaults the very concept of winning and losing.
Human Nature stands in the way of the plans of these social engineers. The natural tendencies of humanity will never support the destructive pipe dream of liberalism. We have seen such failures in the past. Today's Liberals are yesterday's Bolsheviks, and they don't even realize it.
I can't count how many liberals, and Democrat Party Sheep that vote the statists into office, I hear crying out "down with capitalism," or criticizing the free market.
I've heard that kind of Rhetoric before... from the now defunct Soviet Union.
Whenever the leftists attempt to equalize, or be socially just, through a system of wealth redistribution, claiming that it is their goal to make all things fair for people through government intervention, individual human nature will always reject the liberty-killing philosophy. These statist systems of governance only take hold temporarily. Countless times throughout history attempts at utopianism have failed, and leave in their wake a violent and bloody trail of millions. The "enlightened" minds behind the progressive movement are unwilling to accept the fact that as it has countless times before, their philosophy is doomed to failure. Each time rejection of their progressive system of government happens, the elitists behind the movement towards a Utopian society determine that they must push harder. After all, they think they know what is best for society more than the individual does, and that somehow, despite all historical evidence to the contrary, in the end collectivism will win out over individuality. Every single time liberal collectivism makes such a push, the populace is not as receptive to socialistic collectivism as they had hoped. As a result, they decide to enact a new strategy, one that must be implemented without the people realizing what is going on, so that they can force liberal socialism upon the people whether the people like it, or not.
This means that in order to get their policies in place, there must be a strategy of deception employed. Obama, for example, has been implementing his liberal madness while wearing a mask of moderation that even has the hardline liberal base angry with him.
Obama is no fool. He knows that full blown liberalism would never be fully accepted by the people. That is why his presidency is in such a shambles at this moment. When he hides his true intentions his leftist base gets angry. When the veil is lifted, despite all of the Democrat's efforts to hide what they are doing, their plans are exposed, and rejected.
Liberalism has progressed using a system I call "creeping incrementalism," where the liberals get a little here, and a little there, and before the people know it, the public has accepted the philosophies of communism under the guise of liberalism little by little without even realizing it.
It is sort of like the often used story of the boiling frog. At first, in the cooking pot, the frog luxuriates in the warm water. The slowly rising heat is so gradual that the frog never notices the increases, and never jumps out of the pot to escape the incremental rises in temperature. Eventually, the water is so hot that the frog winds up cooked, and the poor animal never knew what was happening until it was too late to take action. What was thought to be a nice warm bath for his own good turned out to be the end of him.
Creeping incrementalism promises the people one thing while delivering another through slowly measured doses. The liberal socialists could never allow the populace to realize the true nature of their movement by injecting too much too quickly, or being up front about their aims. So, they hide their socialism, calling it by other names, even though their platforms are obviously socialist in nature. They inject the socialism slowly, careful not to deliver so much socialism that the populace discovers the exact nature of the strategy, and removes the liberals from office.
Socialism cannot win in the arena of ideas because ultimately the citizens of a free society would never accept the tenets of the statist philosophy should they discover what it is. Therefore, along with the stealth tactics of implementing socialism gradually, the leftist liberals also work to destroy the trust and faith the people have in their current system. Capitalism must be demonized, and the citizenry is convinced that the free market is the cause of their economic woes. Republicanism is demonized. History is revised. Never mind that in the case of the United States, it was that same free market they are criticizing that made the United States the most prosperous nation on the face of the Earth.
The attack against any dissent then becomes vicious and unrelenting. Most people don't want socialism, and they do not desire to live under a socialist system, so the Socialists resort to deception through a series of lies, coupled with the unrelenting demonization of any system that dares to oppose their liberal philosophies, including capitalism and faith-based religions.
One way to attack the opposition is for members of the liberal left to ask questions that corners the opposition, forcing them into a defensive posture. The leftists then use the answers by their opposition as a tool of propaganda, twisting the meaning of the conservative's words any way they can. They ask questions of non-socialists not because they are searching for answers. They ask questions not in the hopes of learning something, or getting responses they can use out of context for the purposes of propaganda.
A great example of this is the pro-Obama video by the Democratic National Committee that emerged after the GOP debate in New Hampshire that took the entire debate, and the responses of the GOP presidential candidates, way out of context.
Remember, the answers by the Republicans were responses to questions asked by a liberal media:
The liberal left doesn't ask questions with the determination of figuring out where "right-wingers" stand based on the answers given. Liberals already have their preconceived notions on where their opposition stands on the issues, and what their opposition thinks. The entire goal of asking pointed questions is to receive answers that can be used as fodder for the destruction of any faith voters may have in any dissent of liberal policies. Every action by the liberal communists are to specifically demonize the positions of those that oppose them, rather than simply debate the issues.
As the opposition of liberalism is demonized, programs are put into place by the leftists that masquerade as beneficial to the society. The purpose of these programs, however, are not to benefit the populace, but to soften the populace up, get them used to receiving gifts from the national treasury, and to allow the government to be able to exert more control over the populace through creating dependency by the people upon the government. One of the tools used to achieve such control is the redistribution of wealth through entitlement programs. The promise is that the wealth is to be redistributed from the wealthy to those poor individuals at the bottom of the economic ladder through a system of entitlements that eventually the populace comes to rely upon. In reality, the government is taking from one to give it to another, but the benefits are not to the receivers of these entitlements, but is actually ultimately those who control the system.
It is a perfect strategy, because who can argue against compassion? Who can say that giving to the poor and disadvantaged is a bad thing? Never mind that it is not the role of government, and that the same can be accomplished through private charities, and other methods outside of governmental influence.
Once Socialism has the people dependent upon it for entitlements, and gains total control over the market place through regulatory means, the government becomes the final employer of all workers, and the right to provide for one's family becomes a privilege. The liberals seek to eliminate the private sector, just as Karl Marx instructed.
If the American People were to realize that the final goals of liberalism is the same as that of communism, Obama would never have been elected. This is why the deception used by the liberals is employed in the first place. The true nature of leftism would never win an election.
Liberalism contains two kinds of people. The deceivers, and the deceived.
Collectivism is a wicked spell put on the people, that finds its roots in a variety of evils that have traipsed across the world stage throughout history. Today's leftism, however, is not just utopianism or Marxism, but a bastard child that encompasses all of the worst philosophies, and much, much more. The only hope to turn our demise around and away from the destructive forces of liberalism is to battle against this dangerous ideology with conservatism, and the limiting principles set forth by the U.S. Constitution. Once those that have been deceived realize the dangerous nature of the socialist philosophy of liberalism, the nation will then get back on the right track, following a course set out by the founding fathers of this nation - a course that includes a small, limited federal government.
The very fact that people can be naively optimistic about a utopian style belief system when it has failed so many times in the past is amazing. The fall of the Soviet Union is a blazing example of the failure of Marxist utopianism. Every time the push for a worldwide socialist liberal utopia has been launched, the fall of the effort each time creates a worldwide reminder of the danger of such political endeavors. Progressivism in any form is very dangerous.
Liberalism eliminates choice, which in turn kills freedom, but nonetheless, the deception finds a way to convince the people that such slavery is what they need. Jean Jacques Rousseau was quoted as saying that the people need to be "forced to be free."
Socialists never admit the failures of the past, and will only keep trying to force socialism on the people until they succeed - a success that will always elude them for eternity because a socialistic form of government cannot exist for long.
"The utopian schemes of leveling (re-distribution of the wealth) and a community of goods (socialism scheme of central ownership of production and distribution), are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional. Now what property can the colonists be conceived to have, if their money may be granted away by others, without their consent?" -- Samuel Adams, Boston Gazette, April 4, 1768.
"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." -- Norman Thomas, six-time U.S. Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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