Is there a vast right-wing conspiracy?

Here’s a thumbnail history of vast right-wing conspiracies by Janet Levy at American Thinker.  The historian, Gary Allen, thought he was researching history in order to “prove conservative anti-communists wrong.”  He came to the opposite conclusion.  Here’s the opening:

Fifty years ago, journalist Gary Allen set out to write a book to prove conservative anti-communists wrong.  But while researching, he realized he had not seen the "hidden picture."  There indeed was a conspiracy, shielded by a narrative advanced by liberal academia and the mainstream media, both actually in the service of an elite cabal that included Rockefeller, Ford, Morgan, Rothschild, Loeb, Kennedy, and Carnegie.  No longer willing to dismiss "right-wing conspiracy theorists," he titled his book, published in 1971, None Dare Call It Conspiracy.  It was a surprising bestseller: more than four million copies were sold during the 1972 presidential elections.  Many received it as gifts through an informal grassroots distribution system.

What Allen claimed to have discovered was that a plutocracy of 3% of the population covertly controlled the lives of the rest.  They had wrested control of the constitutional republic, with its separation of powers, limited government, and competitive free enterprise, and turned it into a system of centralized control by a few.  How was this achieved?  According to Allen, the conspiratorial clique was hidden and protected by a complicit media establishment they own and control.  Also, they are accomplished liars and farseeing planners.  Their subversive tour de force has been to advance the lies that a) communism is inevitable and b) communism is a movement of the downtrodden.  The first lie aims to destroy the will to fight, the second to gain the support of the poor masses and justify the destruction of a vigorous, innovative middle class.

Allen offers an alternative, realistic definition of communism: an international conspiratorial drive for power on part of men in high places, who are willing to use any means for global conquest.  In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels said a proletarian revolution would necessitate a temporary socialist dictatorship, which would give way to full-on communism if three things were achieved: a) the elimination of private property rights, b) the dissolution of the family, and c) the replacement of religion with Marxist ideology.  These, in fact, are exactly what academia and left-wing groups in America are pushing for, today and when Allen wrote the book.

But all that, as Allen claims, is an elaborate ruse.  Behind it are the super-rich. 

Recommended reading. Full article is here.

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Socialism's seductive appeal

 

Roger Kimball has good history and philosophical lessons for us at American Greatness. He concludes:

For centuries, prudent political philosophers have understood that the lust for equality is the enemy of freedom. That species of benevolence underwrote the tragedy of Communist tyranny. The rise of political correctness has redistributed that lust over a new roster of issues: not the proletariat, but the environment, not the struggling masses, but “reproductive freedom,” gay rights, the welfare state, the Third World, diversity training, and an end to racism and xenophobia. It looks, in Marx’s famous mot, like history repeating itself as farce. It would be a rash man, however, who made no provision for a reprise of tragedy.

Such attitudes are all but ubiquitous in modern democratic societies. Although of relatively recent vintage, they have spread rapidly. The triumph of this aspect of Enlightened thinking, as [philosopher David] Stove notes, marked the moment when “the softening of human life became the great, almost the only, moral desideratum.”

The modern welfare state is one result of the triumph of abstract benevolence. Its chief effects are to institutionalize dependence on the state while also assuring the steady growth of the bureaucracy charged with managing government largess. Both help to explain why the welfare state has proved so difficult to dismantle. The governments that support the welfare state, Stove points out,

are elected by universal adult franchise; but an electorally decisive proportion of the voters—in some countries, approaching a quarter—either is employed by government or is dependent to a significant extent on some welfare programme. In these circumstances it is merely childish to expect the welfare state to be reduced, at least while there is universal suffrage. A government that did away with free education, for example, or socialised medicine, simply could not be re-elected. Indeed it would be lucky to see out its term of office.

Is there an alternative? Stove quotes Thomas Malthus’ observation, from his famous “Essay on Population,” that “we are indebted for all the noblest exertions of human genius, for everything that distinguishes the civilised from the savage state,” to “the laws of property and marriage, and to the apparently narrow principle of self-interest which prompts each individual to exert himself in bettering his condition.”

“The apparently narrow principle of self-interest,” mind you.

Contrast that robust, realistic observation with Robert Owen’s blather about replacing the “individual selfish system” with a “united social” system that, he promised, would bring forth a “new man.”

Stove observes that Malthus’ arguments for the genuinely beneficent effects of “the apparently narrow principle of self-interest” “cannot be too often repeated.” Indeed. Even so, a look around at the childish pretended enthusiasm for socialism makes me think that, for all his emphasis, Stove understated the case. Jim Carrey and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (not to mention a college student near you) would profit by having a closer acquaintance with the clear-eyed thinking of Thomas Malthus.

It’s the same lessons that gave America its first Thanksgiving;  when collective socialism failed, the settlers learned that freedom, incentive, and private property harnessed self-interest to the greater good.

Read Mr. Kimball’s entire essay here.

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Dennis Prager on “leftism” and “meaning”

image credit: drray.com

Starting off 2020 on a philosophical note. . .  Dennis Prager recently published “Greta Thunberg: A Living Explanation of the Left” at Real Clear Politics. His article considers the difference between a “liberal” and a “leftist,” and why conservative and leftists are unable to communicate with each other.  He begins:

It is not easy to understand what the left -- as opposed to liberals -- stands for. If you ask a Christian what to read to learn the basics of Christianity, you will be told the Bible. If you ask a (religious) Jew, you will be told the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. If you ask a Mormon, you will be told the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Ask a Muslim and you will be told the Quran.

But if you ask a leftist what one or two books you should read to understand leftism, every leftist will give you a different answer -- or need some time to think it over. Few, if any, will suggest Marx's "Das Kapital" because almost no leftists have read it and because you will either not finish the book or reject it as incoherent.

So, then, how is one to understand what leftism stands for?

The truth is -- it is almost impossible. What leftist in history would have ever imagined that to be a leftist, one would have to believe that men give birth or men have periods, or that it is fair to women to have to compete in sports with biological males who identify as females?

There are two primary reasons it is so difficult, if not impossible, to define leftism. One is that it ultimately stands for chaos:

-- Open borders.

-- "Non-binary" genders.

-- Nonsensical and scatological "art."

-- "Music" without tonality, melody or harmony.

-- Drag Queen Story Hour for 5-year-olds.

-- Rejection of the concept of better or worse civilizations.

-- Rejection of the concept of better or worse art.

-- Removal of Shakespeare's picture from a university English department because he was a white male.

-- The end of all use of fossil fuels -- even in transportation (as per the recent recommendation by the head of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization).

-- The dismantling of capitalism, the economic engine that has lifted billions of people out of abject poverty.

And much more.

The other major reason it is impossible to define leftism is that it is emotion-based. Leftism consists of causes that give those who otherwise lack meaning something to cling to for meaning.

Two things about Greta Thunberg, Time magazine's 2019 person of the year, embody these explanations.

Mr. Prager goes on to illustrate the emotional need for “meaning” by examining the strange case of St. Greta.  It explains why those who employ facts and logic have little chance of persuading those whose grasp of facts and logic are subordinate to their emotional needs.  But is also helps those who employ logic and facts to understand the rantings of Robert De Niro, Bette Midler, Cher, mainstream media hosts such as Don Lemon and Joy Reid, etc.  Read the rest here.

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