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IP: THE BATTLE FOR AMERICA'S SOUL
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*****NOTE******
The following article is intended for those who have attention
spans and the abilitiy to focus and reason beyond 30 second
sound-bites. If you are only capable of reading 30 lines of text
of disjointed sloganisms and cliches, I would recommend you simply
hit the delete key now and thanks for your time. For those who choose
to actually fully read and think about the article below, I believe
you'll find the arguments are well developed, forceful, compelling
and exquisitly reasoned. I found the arguments presented in the
article below as relevent and thought provoking as Fredric Bastiat's
The Law, which is available at; http://www.jim.com/jamesd/bastiat.htm
Bastiat's The Law was penned almost one hundred and fifty years before
the article below.- Harley
**************
Source: http://www.founding.org/tbfasshortversion.html
THE BATTLE FOR AMERICAS SOUL
By Balint Vazsonyi
For thirty years now, the Liberal-Conservative debate has been raging
in our country. Some of the participants bring to mind a passage from
Dostoyevskys Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov, while delirious in the
Siberian prison hospital, has a recurring dream. In it, the whole
world had been condemned to a terrible and strange plague. Some new
sorts of microbes began to afflict people. "Men attacked by them," he
writes, "became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered
themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the
truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions,
their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so
infallible..."
One hundred-and-thirty years after those lines were written, it is
disquieting to see just such "sufferers" among us today. Are we
participants in a debate or are we fighting a virus? The following is
an attempt to find some answers to sort out the sides, their origins,
their purpose.
THE QUESTION THAT MATTERS
Scholars on both sides suggest that, during the 1960s, the original
principles on which America was founded came to be interpreted in
entirely new ways. It was this new understanding, so the suggestion
goes, which led to fundamental changes in our thinking, our language,
our institutions. Among other things, this altered reading also
accounts for the radical shift in the meaning of the term, "Liberal."
Is the national debate indeed a dialogue between two competing
interpretations of what we shall call the American Construct? That,
without a doubt, is the question that matters. If it is, then the word
"debate" is entirely appropriate. If it is, then neither side can lay
claim to the 'Truth.' If it is, then the more power to the winners may
they alternate frequently, as behooves a democracy.
Before we can decide, we need to remind ourselves of our spiritual and
philosophical roots. We use the term American Construct here to
represent the compendium of ideas and principles which issued from
Franklins Poor Richard, Jeffersons Declaration of Independence, the
U.S. Constitution, The Federalist Papers of Hamilton and Madison, all
the way to the Bill of Rights. In order to qualify as indigenous,
ideas and practices ought to be traceable to, or at least compatible
with, the American Construct. The following key areas suggest some
early answers.
* The Constitution does not provide for Group Rights. Yet, a
steadily growing number of groups is being granted an increasing
number of rights.
* Defense, for which the Constitution does provide, has been
surrounded by an atmosphere of derision and hostility; the
effectiveness of our armed forces is being diminished through
inappropriate use.
* Of the three branches of government, Congress is entrusted with
the powers to legislate. Neither the Executive nor the Judiciary
should presume such powers, yet both have done so with increasing
frequency.
* The constitutional guarantee for the freedom of speech becomes
moot if the vocabulary is controlled by codes, regulations and
punitive practices.
* The protection of private property is no longer guaranteed if the
Executive Branch can confiscate it under the pretext of arbitrary
regulation.
* Education used to be based on the best available information, the
consensus of generations, and rewards designed to extract the best
effort from all participants. Currently, information is being
replaced by propaganda, consensus by the whim and din of activist
groups, best effort by primitive egalitarianism.
* Americans were supposed to be judged based on what they could do.
Their prospects are now contingent on what (not even who) they
are.
* Morality and decency in human relations which once governed our
society are being displaced by doctrines which do not, even,
recognize the existence of values; the spirit of voluntarism is
being choked by coercion.
Accordingly, the argument that we are conducting a discourse within
the American Construct cannot be sustained. That being the case, the
alternative must be considered. If the debate has not been generated
from within, it must be one between our own preexisting principles and
ideas which are foreign in origin. Foreign ideas may be benign or
hostile. Given the foregoing, as well as the ferocity of the assault
over the past three decades, there is every reason to assume that they
are the latter. If so, the very existence of our country, as we know
it, is at stake. It is therefore of the utmost urgency to seek
detailed answers to the question that matters.
To begin with, new ideas are exceedingly rare. We may safely assume
that most ideas, however differently they might be packaged, have been
around for some time. The doctrines currently waging their battle
inside America are likely to be old acquaintances, not brainstorms of
the 1960s. There is some advantage to be derived: exploring the
history and curriculum of old ideas provides clues about the path they
are likely to follow again and again. As we encounter the alarming
similarities between the so-called Liberal agenda and the practices of
past regimes, there may be emotional barriers to overcome. How could
decent, ordinary Americans take their cue from precedents they reject
and abhor on a conscious level? Yet the facts speak for themselves.
BOLSHEVISM FASCISM
The conventional view, notwithstanding the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939,
is that Communism and Nazism were opposites one on the extreme left,
the other on the extreme right. At the time of the Spanish Civil War
of 1936, Americans fell victim to the propaganda that Communists and
Fascists ("Nazi" and "Fascist" will be discussed below) were enemies.
In addition, the countless distinguished personalities who joined the
North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy created the illusion
that Communists were 'on the side of righteousness.' Unbeknownst to
them, the Communist Party ran the entire organization.
Rather than enemies, Nazism and Communism were the ultimate
competitors. Each wanted to conquer and rule both over the physical
world, and over the minds of people. The methods which were developed
and implemented for the control of behavior took many forms, not all
of them obvious or even unpleasant when dispensed in small doses. Yet
they strike at the heart of human relations; they also severe the link
between cause and effect, so essential in developing an individual's
viability.
First, we need to remind ourselves of key words which, in common
usage, have taken on different connotations: Fascism, Nazism,
Communism. Webster defines Fascism and Nazism in almost identical
terms: "a centralized autocratic severely national regime;"
"regimentation of industry, commerce and finance;" "rigid censorship,
forcible suppression of opposition." The definition of Communism
begins with "common ownership of assets." The subheading Bolshevism,
however, resembles the wording applied to Fascism and Nazism. Webster
comes remarkably close, but no fully-satisfactory definitions exist.
In truth, they are simply so many variants of Socialism, and Marx
himself was already at pains while writing the Communist Manifesto in
1848 to sort out the different kinds of Socialism.
Initially, there appears to be a distinction between "National
Socialism" (the German and Italian varieties) and "International
Socialism" (the Russian Model), based on the difference in agendas as
stated by the parties themselves. Reality, however, gives rhetoric the
lie. Albeit without the Nuremberg Laws or prescribed physical
characteristics, "The Soviet Man" was made the object of enforced
worship just the same as was the Aryan hero - nothing international
about that. Not even in the approach to the fundamental Marxian issue
of ownership can we observe a substantial difference: The Program of
the National Socialist German Workers' Party (the full name of the
Nazi party) demands "the nationalization of all business enterprises
that have been organized into corporations." A realistic examination
of these seemingly opposite systems reveals them as mirror images,
aspiring to a similar objective, applying identical methods, achieving
comparable subjugation of people under their control, and pursuing the
same enemies.
Objective. The agenda underlying all operations calls for unlimited
discretionary powers to be concentrated in the hands of a small,
self-perpetuating group in which membership is by invitation only.
Members of the group typically fall into two categories. One of these
claims to know what is best for all people; the other simply wants
unchecked power. The synergy is perfect: Ideologues need terrorists to
retain physical control; terrorists need ideologues to supply
intermittent explanations for the rule they maintain. It is only
natural that the objectives include an effort to expand the number of
those over whom power is exerted.
Given the ultimate objective of concentrating all power in the hands
of a single group, competing formations calling themselves "Fascist,"
"Nazi," "Communist," "Bolshevik," or "Maoist" must fight it out until
only one of them remains operative, hence the insistence on being
'different.'
Methods. (The reader is asked to compare these to present-day
practices.) As well as control of the military and the police,
successful exercise of power requires control of key institutions to
replace or supplement brute force. The checklist includes news sources
especially of the visual variety education, the judiciary, labor
organizations, arts and entertainment, as well as a parental
relationship between government and the governed. Required, also, is
the attribution of infallibility at the top. A human replaces the
object of religious worship, just as holiday celebrations of a
political nature replace religious ones. Replacement of another kind
is the renaming of streets, towns, institutions. The purpose is to do
away with reminders of the past thus discontinuing history and to
provide constant reminders of the present.
The practice of discontinuing history is indispensable. Successive
generations must be devoid of traditions and prevented from comparing
past and present. It also 'justifies' revision of the entire academic
curriculum, so that no subject would accidentally provide accurate
information about history. While adults need the threat of punishment
in order to 'forget' what they had learned, information can simply be
withheld from young people and/or manipulated before it reaches them.
Youth organizations were created with compulsory membership - except
when exclusion was chosen as an instrument of humiliation. Hitler
Youth, Komsomol, Pioneers put people in uniform at a young age,
ensured their early allegiance to The Leader, and placed them under
the command of a political appointee whose prerogative superseded that
of both the parental home and the school. Finally, learned faculties
were placed under the control of political operatives with little or
no education.
The corruption of education was matched by the corruption of the legal
system. This required judges who would subordinate both their natural
and learned sense of justice to what was declared to be "the higher
interest of the community." For an example we quote marching orders
issued by Hans Frank, President of the Academy of German Law and of
the National Bar Association in the Third Reich:
"The basis for interpreting all legal sources is the National
Socialist Philosophy, especially as expressed in the party program..."
Thus was born the concept of the political activist judge who wore the
robe as no less a uniform than the black shirt or the red shirt.
Controlling the behavior of the adult population required the most
sophisticated approach, if outright terror was to be relaxed to any
extent. Although Lenin and Stalin pointed the way and Mao Tse-Tung
achieved the ultimate by making one billion people wear the same
clothes, it was the Germans ever the theorists who supplied the
terminology for the first tool. They called it "Gleichschaltung,"
which verbatim means "switching to being the same." The program called
for total alignment with the goals of Nazi policies and placed
everyone on the same level, creating the ultimate degree of
conformity.
Gleichschaltung operated at once on structural and cultural levels.
Structurally, the first victim was federalism: Within days of Hitler's
accession, the states had to cede authority to the central government.
Next, the leadership and membership of every kind of organization had
to become politically and racially correct. While a variety of
agencies had the task of implementing the structural changes, as early
as March 1933 a separate Cabinet Department was created for Josef
Goebbels to oversee every aspect of the cultural scene, making certain
that it was politically correct. Specific terms aside, the reality of
all these regimes is the great flattening of society which is in full
progress from day one. It is astonishing and frightening how little
time it took both in Russia and in Germany to accomplish this task.
Indeed, it should be noted that demolishing what centuries had built
does not require even a single generation.
The other tool had to do with groups. While it may appear
contradictory to identify groups in a society having just experienced
Gleichschaltung, contradictions do not represent obstacles in a
totalitarian structure. Placing the emphasis on groups was as
necessary as the leveling had been: It facilitated positive and
negative imaging. This constant dichotomy of egalitarianism and group
hatred provided a manipulative tool as simple as it was ingenious.
Hitler used race and nationality, Lenin and Stalin mostly class the
outcome was the same.
Subjugation. (Please continue the comparison with current tendencies.)
It is commonly known that the Gestapo was a state within the State, as
was the Cheka/GPU/NKVD/KGB establishment. Their responsibility was not
merely control but the maintenance of a permanent state of fear. Yet
internal security organs, however large, could not by themselves see
to that. Therefore, in one sense or another everyone was recruited to
be an agent of fear. In Nazi Germany, as in Soviet Russia, children
were encouraged to inform on their parents, neighbors on each other.
Very soon it became a matter of reporting someone before someone
reported you. It was possible to be reported for virtually anything,
so that people grew fearful of doing or saying everyday, ordinary
things. One could never be safe from somebody 'putting a spin' on the
most innocent act or remark.
Enemies. Whereas democracies associate enemies with physical attack or
the threat thereof, both Nazism and Communism required at all times
the existence of enemies, internal and external. The array of internal
enemies would suggest a certain difference: Jews for the Nazis, "Class
Enemies" for the Bolsheviks. However, the Russians had anti-Jewish
pogroms long before Hitler and, later, significant numbers of Jews
were exiled or killed as "exploiters." The aristocracy was looked upon
just as much an enemy by the Nazis who were, after all, Socialists.
The Church was regarded as an enemy by both, partly because it
advocated morality, and because it, too, required allegiance and
obedience and attitude reserved exclusively for The Party. "National
Socialist and Christian concepts are irreconcilable," so Martin
Bormann begins the Third Reich's definitive statement on the subject.
Yet, it is in the realm of Nazism's and Bolshevism's external enemies
that examination proves the most revealing. Experience confirms that
the primary enemy in the eyes of Nazis and Communists alike was the
English-speaking world, in all its manifestations.
In my native Hungary, where Soviet occupation followed Nazi
occupation, typically the same henchmen jailed the same persons for
the same offense: Listening to an English-language broadcast whether
in 1944 or in 1952. The reasons are obvious. To all those who would
take over the world, Great Britain and the United States have been the
main impediment. Philip II of Spain and Napoleon had known that
already; Hitler and Stalin had to learn it anew. Neither German
technological genius nor Soviet numerical advantage was sufficient to
carry the day against Anglo-American resolve, because it was backed by
principles, attitudes and traditions which had brought forth stable,
productive, peacefully-evolving societies. And since language is the
carrier of ideas, English words were perceived to be as menacing as
Spitfire interceptors or nuclear submarines. The power of seminally
English phrases like "My home is my castle" or "Innocent until proven
guilty" is awesome. The strenuous efforts by Liberals to diminish the
presence of English in contemporary America furnish additional proof.
WHAT'S 'RIGHT' WHAT'S 'POSSIBLE'
The epoch-making contributions of Germans from Luther to Goethe, from
Bach to Wagner, from Gutenberg to Zeiss reveal a great similarity
across the centuries, across the various fields of endeavor. From
Luther's 'nailing his 95 Theses to the door' through Bach's The Art of
the Fugue and Goethe's Faust to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk, the observer
beholds the German tendency and capacity for seeking and creating the
absolute, the all-encompassing, the ultimate. When applied to
philosophy, this same tendency gave birth to Kant who declared his
chief work free from error. He was followed by Hegel, who more or less
declared the end of history. By this juncture, German philosophy had
established its lineage all the way back to Plato, and regarded itself
sole heir to the search for what is right. From that point onward, a
seemingly endless succession of German thinkers, in a mostly
descending sequence of brilliance and/or morality, began to convert
philosophy into Social Dogma. Social Dogma is based on a simple
assumption: That certain people know better what is best for all other
creatures, and that such people possess the right to enforce their
'enlightened' beliefs because they shall lead the rest of us to a
'perfect' world.
Taking his cue, perhaps, from what had begun in 1215 at Runnymede, it
was John Locke who (nearly five hundred years later) identified and
settled for attainable goals. He and Adam Smith seem to have broken
with the two-thousand-year-old search for what is 'right,' and
substituted an inquiry into that which is possible. It would be
consistent with the previous argument to suggest that the sober
modesty of Locke and Smith was as much a reflection on British
temperament as Kant or Hegel was on the German. Be that as it may, the
astonishing influence of their thought is comparable only to the
success of the societies which paid attention to them. Without
diminishing the significance of Locke's lasting pronouncements on the
limited role of government, the separation of powers, the relationship
of the individual to the community, or the full roster of civil
liberties, one is tempted to say that his genius lay in the very
acceptance of certain limitations, which is at the heart of his Essay
Concerning Human Understanding. Free from what Friedrich Hayek calls
the "fatal conceit," Locke presents his chief work fully cognizant of
inconsistencies, perhaps to signal that these are forever inherent in
the human condition.
MONOLOGUES DIALOGUES
It took another hundred years before Nietzsche would declare God
"dead" but, by claiming to be free from error, Kant began what amounts
to a monologue. Hegel and Marx continued the practice of dispensing
monologues. By the time Marx appeared on the scene, German thinkers
had succeeded in seizing center-stage from the French. Social Dogma
was now ready to embark on the effort of replacing Christianity as the
dominant religion, hence its first conquest in Russia where only a new
orthodoxy was capable of upstaging the old one. Russia had produced no
thinkers of its own and was in desperate need of alternatives. Yet,
there may have been deep-seated reasons in Germany itself. After
centuries of struggle for a consolidated German state, after centuries
of religious contention between Catholics and Protestants, between
Lutherans and Calvinists, the perceived need for a set of finite
doctrines was approaching crisis levels. Social Dogma provided all
answers, bypassed or eliminated 'troublesome' individual rights, and
throve on group hostility. Because it does not accommodate contrary
opinion and rules by decree without room for discussion, it must lead
to intrusive government the ultimate embodiment of The Monologue.
Where it ran its full course, it gave the world leaders like Lenin,
and his two stellar disciples: Stalin and Hitler.
By contrast, the founding of the United States of America occurred
amidst a series of dialogues. Most notable among these was the
long-standing disagreement between Jefferson and Hamilton. They and
their contemporaries managed to divine from their studies of other
societies an uncommon understanding of human nature. Postulating moral
foundations as a given, these men created a framework which sought to
limit secular laws, rules and regulations to the necessary minimum.
They recognized that the fewer the rules, the broader the potential
agreement. Broad agreement, in turn, results in less strife. Less
strife leaves people free to create and accomplish. The fewer
obstacles placed in the path of individuals, the less energy wasted in
trying to overcome them. Nevertheless, they left the doors wide open
for the continuation of the dialogue, enshrined in the American
Construct as the system of checks and balances.
PRODUCTION DISTRIBUTION
Adam Smith sets the agenda at the outset of his The Wealth of Nations
by discussing production and productivity. It is a study of constantly
accumulating wealth, providing increased access to a growing number of
participants. On the opposite side, Marx's chief argument concerns
"surplus value" and to whom it ought to belong. (In fact, he presumes
to determine to whom anything may belong.) From the outset, Social
Dogma concentrates on distribution. Socialism is defined as
distribution of the national product based on individual performance,
Communism as distribution of the national product based on individual
need. Social Dogma is unable even to think in terms of production, of
increased availability. Instead, it is obsessed with the distribution
of what it considers a finite quantity of goods.
A review of the past thirty years in the United States will confirm
these findings. American Liberals have concentrated solely on
distribution. Emphasis was shifted from opportunity to entitlement.
Instead of increased productivity, Liberal efforts are always directed
toward increasing demands. These demands are for unearned
participation in, and distributions from, the accomplishments of those
who produce the nation's goods tangible and intangible. Those who
would resist are branded with pejorative labels no self-respecting
American is able to bear.
Agendas of confiscation and of arbitrary distribution result in a
downward spiral. With incentives shrinking, less and less is produced,
consequently there is less and less to distribute. This, in a
nutshell, is why welfare states invariably increase poverty.
MINORITIES MAJORITIES
Were it sensible and desirable in and of itself, 19th century German
Social Dogma would still be irrelevant for the United States. It was
devised under conditions and with societies in mind in which a
minority enjoyed a high standard of living, while the circumstances of
the "overwhelming majority" (in the words of Marx) were in urgent need
of improvement. By the time Social Dogma launched its all-out assault
on the American Construct during the mid-1960s the overwhelming
majority of Americans had come to enjoy a higher standard of living
than members of any previous society. How, then, was it possible for
this patently alien, irrelevant doctrine to pervade our thinking, our
language, our institutions?
Social Dogma persuades its intended victims that it has people's best
interest in mind, that it seeks peace, justice, and equality, that it
is motivated by caring and compassion. Its ability to camouflage true
intent and adapt to a specific scenario is matchless. It never admits
to prohibiting freedom of speech; instead, it masquerades in the Third
Reich as "allegiance to the Fuhrer," in the Soviet realm as "class
struggle," in the United States as "politically correct vocabulary."
It never admits to obstructing the path of the talented; instead, it
decrees purification of the race (Third Reich), leadership of the
proletariat (Soviet Union), affirmative action (United States). It
never admits to confiscating the property of those who had succeeded;
instead, it claims to recover "what the Jews had plundered" (Third
Reich), to establish national ownership (Soviet Union), to protect the
environment (United States).
A convergence of unusual circumstances rendered Americans receptive,
among them the ennui of the affluent, the Vietnam debate, the new
preoccupation with clean water and air, the Civil Rights movement.
Along with its staples of "peace," "social justice," and all-round
'goodness,' Social Dogma promised unlimited and unrestricted sex.
Soon, an entire generation of Americans was convinced that their own
existing ideals and aspirations blended naturally with Social Dogma,
which merely expressed them in 'more precise and more global terms.'
Thus, the interpretation of the Vietnam conflict was switched. No
longer an effort by the Free World to contain Communist expansion, it
became "the just struggle of a small people against the mighty
Imperialists." The rising tide of legitimate concern for America's
Blacks was harnessed to brand every person of white skin with the
indelible stigma of racism, thereby eliminating any prospect of a
resolution. The genuine compassion Americans feel toward the less
fortunate was corrupted into the agenda of redistribution. Academic
freedom in our universities was turned into a weapon to stifle
academic freedom, just as Martin Heidegger Hitler's first appointee as
University President, and still an object of academic worship in
America had demanded in 1933. With utter disregard for the American
experience which had proven the very opposite of Social Dogma at every
turn, the minds of an entire generation were taken over completely,
producing several million unwitting Fellow Travelers. Today, it is
that same generation which performs mind-snatching on successive
generations of children.
They are stealing childhood from our children who are commandeered on
the streets to march against ballot items they cannot possibly
comprehend. Boys and girls are recruited to act as mouthpieces for
activists on behalf of issues patently outside their youthful
interests or grasp. A majority of them now believe they belong to a
minority. Far from being encouraged to think of themselves as
Americans, their sense of identity is imprinted with the stigma of
separateness from their earliest moments of consciousness. The
camouflage applied in this area bears the labels "self esteem," "role
models," "roots."
Most immigrants took their lives in their hands because in the country
of their birth they could not get ahead, or could not get along (or
both). What made the difference? Why have men and women Irish,
Sicilian, Hungarian, Vietnamese and, yes, African made out so
infinitely better over here than over there?
The American Construct knew nothing about hyphens. If everybody was
American, plain and simple, the curse of warring groups will have been
eliminated and a community of individuals was free to evolve. Nearly
two centuries later, the assault of Social Dogma was spearheaded by
the arrival of the hyphen. The hyphen accomplished what the Wolfpack,
the V1, the V2, and all the ICBMs of the Soviet Union could not. It
created the seams at which America was to come apart.
Meanwhile, a growing multitude of minorities is attempting the uneasy
fit of employing Social Dogma developed to suppress the minority in a
given society to gain objectives advocated by self-appointed leaders.
Common sense would inform them that destroying the very structure in
which they seek accommodation has never been a successful recipe. If
the objective is to live inside a certain building, demolishing it and
distributing the bricks is hardly the way to go. Social Dogma has yet
to succeed in building anything at all. History has recorded its
unparalleled record of destruction, which is why the so-called
National Standards for U.S. History and for World History had gone to
such lengths to eliminate the teaching of history in our schools.
DEBATE OR WARFARE?
And so we return to The Question That Matters. Communism and Nazism
have demonstrated what might happen if Social Dogma governs. At the
expense of the individual law, education, and human interaction of
every kind will be subordinated to some "higher purpose," expressed
always in terms of group identity. The agenda is prescribed and
adjusted daily by those who claim to 'know best' what is appropriate
for all creatures.
During the 19th century, the clash between these conflicting views
remained confined to writings. In 1914, the contest moved to the
battlefield. Two World Wars and the so-called Cold War later the same
battle continues to rage, now in the everyday life of America. It is,
without doubt, a fight to the finish. Yet those who have been
persuaded that we are debating merely different approaches to our
shared American traditions remain the great majority. Decades of mind
manipulation by social theorists, social dogmatists, has succeeded in
distorting our vision.
That which divided Kant from Locke, Marx from Adam Smith, separates
Liberals from Conservatives in today's America. Significantly, Locke
neither implied that he was privy to divine insight nor found himself
in need of declaring God "dead" to make his point. English-speaking
thinkers, unlike their German counterparts, did not seek to challenge
religion an important distinction between the protagonists, still
today. Securely anchored in their moral foundations, Conservatives can
afford to pursue the dialogue as a process of discovery, amongst
themselves and with the American people at large. Liberals must
continue to rely upon their unrelenting monologue.
Because in the short term dialogue can appear as uncertainty and
monologue as strength, the time has come to distinguish between
appearance and substance as follows:
* The agenda of so-called Liberals in America rests on 19th century
(German) Social Dogma. No alternative roots of significance are
traceable.
* Social Dogma is diametrically opposed the principles on which this
nation was founded.
* Social Dogma seeks to restrict freedom of speech, freedom of
movement, advancement without discrimination, and the protection
of private property.
* Having lost two World Wars and the Cold War, Social Dogma
continues to cast aspersions on our defense establishment, seeking
eventually to destroy the capability of this country to resist and
combat forces of oppression.
* Social Dogma, unchallenged, has led to Bolshevism and Nazism.
_________________________________________________________________
These are the origins, this is the true nature of the so-called
Liberal agenda. Without comprehending it, we are unlikely to exorcize
it. Some have argued that even the Liberal agenda has 'good' points,
but then people were taken in by Hitler's Autobahns, Mussolini's
success in getting the trains to run on time, or all those Five-Year
Plans which were supposed really, but REALLY, to put food on Soviet
tables.
Remember Raskolnikov's visionary nightmare about the new microbes?
"Men attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had
men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in
possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered
their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions
so infallible..."
We have identified the microbes and the plague they spread. We called
the virus Social Dogma. Cataloguing the damage it has already caused
to America is but a first step. Next, we must learn to differenciate
between those who have been infected, and those who are actively
spreading the virus. While the former may be cured, the latter need to
be engaged head-on.
_________________________________________________________________
� Copyright 1996 Balint Vazsonyi
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--- end forwarded text
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: [email protected]>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'