ExCop
Veteran Member
Lint to part 1
The Smallest Minority
The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand
Thursday, July 02, 2020
Metastasized Marxism
"An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one which crumbles from within? That's dead... forever." - Col. Zemo from Captain America: Civil War
There is often truth in fiction.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." - Declaration of Independence
Of all the philosophical ideals ever committed to paper, "the pursuit of Happiness" must count among the greatest, but "all men are created equal" ranks a close second. Of course, these ideals were untrue in practice, but the character of Death expressed another truth in fiction in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, "You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?"
We have been a nation often described as a "melting pot," but more accurately as a "salad bowl" - the individual bits not melted together, but working (more or less) in harmony to be more than the sum of their parts.
We have never been perfect. No nation ever has. But we have been good, a beacon to the peoples of other nations, the "shining city on the hill" as Ronald Reagan put it. But not perfect by a long shot.
Advisory: This is my first überpost in quite a while. You've been warned.
The Founders made a compromise necessary to form the new nation. The practice of slavery was codified in our new Constitution. Slavery had been practiced as far back as history goes, but our version of it was slightly unusual - our slaves were black Africans or their descendants, notable not by brands or scars or clothing, but by the hue of their skin. There were free blacks, but those were at best second-class citizens. There were, of course, other oppressed groups - the Scots-Irish, Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Native Americans. Everybody seemed to have some other group to look down on. It's been that way since the Hairy Brow-ridged people lived the next valley over. Well they were obviously inferior. Even some Native American tribes owned slaves, as did some blacks.
So human slavery had been practiced since time immemorial, but in the late 19th Century there was - finally - an ongoing effort to end the practice at least in the West. Its driver was Protestant Christianity, a uniquely Western religion, and its ideal was that "all men are created equal" before God. The conflict finally came to a head in the United States in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the president of the party of Abolition. There were other causes - few wars have only one cause - but the driver was the practice of slavery and its complete incompatibility with the founding ideals of this nation.
It was, per capita, the bloodiest war in American history. Almost 215,000 combat deaths, over 650,000 total deaths, from a population of 27 million, a death toll of more than 2,250/100,000. Almost everyone lost a son, a brother, a husband, a cousin. Hundreds of thousands more came home severely injured, missing limbs, eyes, bearing scars from horrific wounds both physical and mental.
And yet we were not wrecked as a nation.
Seen at Facebook the other day:
About the time of the US Civil war, starting around 1850 and running through about 1880, Karl Marx promoted a new philosophy, and it was very attractive to a lot of people, very self-reinforcing. That philosophy, or rather what it became, made its way here to the U.S. near the end of the 19th century, and significantly affected the 20th. That philosophy was Progressivism, and it was based in Marxist philosophy and its so-called historical inevitability. Science and technology were producing rapid change, and it seemed like every day brought some new wonder into the world. Progressivism was the ultimate self-reinforcing philosophy, promising eventual Utopia on Earth, and it hit the United States as we were recovering from the aftermath of that horrific Civil War.
Progressives made giant strides in the U.S. during the first quarter of the 20th century, restricting child labor, establishing compulsory public education, establishing a (no pun intended) "Progressive" income tax, establishing Social Security, and, of course, Prohibition. The world could only get better. It was scientifically inevitable, as long as The People worked for it.
But Progressives also did other things, among which was the distortion of Darwin's theory of the mechanism of evolution into eugenics, especially towards blacks, but other "lesser peoples" as well. Jim Crow and Plessy v. Ferguson (Separate but Equal) codified segregation. There have always been dividing lines in human cultures, but rarely was it as stark as the separation between blacks and whites in America, possibly excepting India under the Raj or South Africa under Apartheid.
Russia fell under the the onslaught of Marxist philosophy in 1917. As soon as that government became stable, true to its dictates it tried its best to expand as Marxism demanded. "The Main Adversary," that is, the Capitalist West and the United States in particular, was the target of what the Russian government termed "Active Measures." Not simply spying, but implanting ideas into the Western psyche designed to undermine Western civilization - nothing less. Initially, these were just idealistic representations of the "Worker's Paradise" that Marxism/Leninism promised. Former CIA case officer Kent Clizbe published his book Willing Accomplices in 2011 after studying what he calls the "payload" of Soviet psychological warfare and its effect on Western societies. He says:
Clizbe notes in his book that for a relatively short period after the death of Lenin in 1924 and the rise of Stalin that Soviet intelligence operations were somewhat curtailed while Stalin recalled a lot of agents and purged Comintern and the KGB to secure his position. As soon as he felt secure enough, these activities were ramped up higher than before.
Yuri Bezmenov, a former Soviet tool working in India defected to Canada in 1970 and spent much of the 1980's writing and lecturing on Soviet efforts and their intent. One of his main points was the emphasis on "ideological subversion." Watch that video, but note this:
It didn't stop in 1984. At least two more generations have been exposed.
Continued
The Smallest Minority
The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand
Thursday, July 02, 2020
Metastasized Marxism
"An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one which crumbles from within? That's dead... forever." - Col. Zemo from Captain America: Civil War
There is often truth in fiction.
Margaret Thatcher once observed, "Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy."Nation: (n) - a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own - Dictionary.com
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." - Declaration of Independence
Of all the philosophical ideals ever committed to paper, "the pursuit of Happiness" must count among the greatest, but "all men are created equal" ranks a close second. Of course, these ideals were untrue in practice, but the character of Death expressed another truth in fiction in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, "You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?"
We have been a nation often described as a "melting pot," but more accurately as a "salad bowl" - the individual bits not melted together, but working (more or less) in harmony to be more than the sum of their parts.
We have never been perfect. No nation ever has. But we have been good, a beacon to the peoples of other nations, the "shining city on the hill" as Ronald Reagan put it. But not perfect by a long shot.
Advisory: This is my first überpost in quite a while. You've been warned.
The Founders made a compromise necessary to form the new nation. The practice of slavery was codified in our new Constitution. Slavery had been practiced as far back as history goes, but our version of it was slightly unusual - our slaves were black Africans or their descendants, notable not by brands or scars or clothing, but by the hue of their skin. There were free blacks, but those were at best second-class citizens. There were, of course, other oppressed groups - the Scots-Irish, Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Native Americans. Everybody seemed to have some other group to look down on. It's been that way since the Hairy Brow-ridged people lived the next valley over. Well they were obviously inferior. Even some Native American tribes owned slaves, as did some blacks.
So human slavery had been practiced since time immemorial, but in the late 19th Century there was - finally - an ongoing effort to end the practice at least in the West. Its driver was Protestant Christianity, a uniquely Western religion, and its ideal was that "all men are created equal" before God. The conflict finally came to a head in the United States in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the president of the party of Abolition. There were other causes - few wars have only one cause - but the driver was the practice of slavery and its complete incompatibility with the founding ideals of this nation.
It was, per capita, the bloodiest war in American history. Almost 215,000 combat deaths, over 650,000 total deaths, from a population of 27 million, a death toll of more than 2,250/100,000. Almost everyone lost a son, a brother, a husband, a cousin. Hundreds of thousands more came home severely injured, missing limbs, eyes, bearing scars from horrific wounds both physical and mental.
And yet we were not wrecked as a nation.
Seen at Facebook the other day:
A long time ago one of the commenters here, Oren Litwin, left a comment that I have cited several times since. The key portion of it for this essay is:Imagine living in a country that had been torn apart by a terrible war -- one of the most brutal wars the modern world had ever seen up to that point -- but had reunited and knit itself together so strongly that each side honored the other's heroes and respected the other's dead. I was born in a country like that. I'm sad my kids won't get to experience it. - Peter Barrett
This is important to consider.Any political philosophy that is not self-reinforcing is by definition not the best political philosophy.
About the time of the US Civil war, starting around 1850 and running through about 1880, Karl Marx promoted a new philosophy, and it was very attractive to a lot of people, very self-reinforcing. That philosophy, or rather what it became, made its way here to the U.S. near the end of the 19th century, and significantly affected the 20th. That philosophy was Progressivism, and it was based in Marxist philosophy and its so-called historical inevitability. Science and technology were producing rapid change, and it seemed like every day brought some new wonder into the world. Progressivism was the ultimate self-reinforcing philosophy, promising eventual Utopia on Earth, and it hit the United States as we were recovering from the aftermath of that horrific Civil War.
Progressives made giant strides in the U.S. during the first quarter of the 20th century, restricting child labor, establishing compulsory public education, establishing a (no pun intended) "Progressive" income tax, establishing Social Security, and, of course, Prohibition. The world could only get better. It was scientifically inevitable, as long as The People worked for it.
But Progressives also did other things, among which was the distortion of Darwin's theory of the mechanism of evolution into eugenics, especially towards blacks, but other "lesser peoples" as well. Jim Crow and Plessy v. Ferguson (Separate but Equal) codified segregation. There have always been dividing lines in human cultures, but rarely was it as stark as the separation between blacks and whites in America, possibly excepting India under the Raj or South Africa under Apartheid.
Russia fell under the the onslaught of Marxist philosophy in 1917. As soon as that government became stable, true to its dictates it tried its best to expand as Marxism demanded. "The Main Adversary," that is, the Capitalist West and the United States in particular, was the target of what the Russian government termed "Active Measures." Not simply spying, but implanting ideas into the Western psyche designed to undermine Western civilization - nothing less. Initially, these were just idealistic representations of the "Worker's Paradise" that Marxism/Leninism promised. Former CIA case officer Kent Clizbe published his book Willing Accomplices in 2011 after studying what he calls the "payload" of Soviet psychological warfare and its effect on Western societies. He says:
My thesis is that the KGB, beginning soon after the Communist takeover of Russia in 1917, implemented massive covert influence operations. Their goal was to destroy the core moral fabric of American society. Taking advantage of the intellectual and philosophical climate of the early 1900's, the Soviet intelligence apparatus began what would now be called in intelligence circles, "A preparation of the battle space" to move the world towards the inevitable dictatorship of the proletariat. Covert operatives realized that America's greatest strengths were its proud exceptionalism and belief that freedom and liberty were part of man's divine destiny. Our free society also made us vulnerable to covert operations. KGB case officers and their agents had easy access to a wide range of American society.
Babette Gross, wife of Wilhelm "Willi" Münzenberg, German Communist and head of the Young Communist International in 1919-1920 explained the content of that early payload to author Stephen Koch:The goal of the KGB's influence operation was to make Americans feel that their country was inherently bad. The KGB utilized Willing Accomplices to spread the message that America was an evil, racist, imperialist, foreigner-hating warmonger and that Communism was a benign, noble experiment designed to rid the world of corruption, oppression and injustice.
- You claim to be an independent-minded idealist.
- You don't really understand politics, but you think the little guy is getting a lousy break.
- You believe in open-mindedness.
- You are shocked, frightened by what is going on right here in our own country.
- You're frightened by the racism, by the oppression of the workingman.
- You think the Russians are trying a great human experiment, and you hope it works.
- You believe in peace.
- You yearn for international understanding.
- You hate fascism.
- You think the capitalist system is corrupt.
Clizbe notes in his book that for a relatively short period after the death of Lenin in 1924 and the rise of Stalin that Soviet intelligence operations were somewhat curtailed while Stalin recalled a lot of agents and purged Comintern and the KGB to secure his position. As soon as he felt secure enough, these activities were ramped up higher than before.
Yuri Bezmenov, a former Soviet tool working in India defected to Canada in 1970 and spent much of the 1980's writing and lecturing on Soviet efforts and their intent. One of his main points was the emphasis on "ideological subversion." Watch that video, but note this:
(My emphasis.) Demoralization - destruction of "the core moral fabric of American society," This interview was taped in 1984. Three generations puts the initiation of this ideological subversion and demoralization in the early 1920's.The main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion and the opinion of defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either "ideological subversion," or "active measures" - activnye meropriyatiya in the language of the KGB, or psychological warfare. What it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country. It's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow, and is divided in four basic stages, the first one being demoralization. It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years it takes to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of your enemy. In other words, Marxism-Leninism is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism. The result? The result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in (the) 60's, drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media (and) educational system. You're stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them.
It didn't stop in 1984. At least two more generations have been exposed.
Continued