There are three kinds of organizations that require coercion for their successful function: governments, utopians, and criminals. Because the Founding Fathers understood the coercive power of government, they crafted a Constitution that gave our government limited powers so that Americans could exercise and enjoy a maximum of individual freedom. Thus, for most of our history Americans have considered their government to be a benign force, securing the God-given unalienable rights of the American people.
But our system has been under the assault of socialists for over a century. Socialists, by definition, are utopians. But voluntary utopianism has always failed, because most people cannot live up to the utopian ideals which require self-abnegation to the extreme. The only utopian societies that survive for any length of time are those that use force to get the people to comply with the utopia’s dictates. That is how Lenin and Stalin were able to maintain utopian communism in Russia: through the brute force of terror and dictatorship. But even that failed after 75 years of unadulterated tyranny.
What the socialist thugs in Washington are now trying to do is pass as many laws as possible, in order to impose as quickly as possible, a coercive system of government that will end individual freedom and create the infrastructure of a socialist system. This is being done as speedily as possible, so that the new system will be in place before the American people begin to understand what hit them. That is why the legislators are not even being given the time to read the mammoth thousand-page bills presented to Congress , because if they actually read them, they’d probably vote against them.
Criminals and utopians are attracted to governments because they know that that is where legal coercion lies. Criminals may kidnap one or several people in order to gain ransom money. But utopian socialists must kidnap an entire nation in order to succeed in their quest for total power. Since we know that communists and socialists cannot create a productive economy, they must deceive the electorate into believing that what they will produce is equality in paradise, such as they have in Cuba: free medical care and free education and equality of poverty and enslavement.
While the liberals and socialists are celebrating the supposed demise of free-market capitalism, the world knows that socialist societies produce economic stagnation, unemployment, and food shortages. But a generation of young Americans, educated to believe that socialism is good and capitalism is evil, will be easily convinced that poverty is good and wealth immoral, just as they believe that man is causing global warming even though we are experiencing some of the coolest springs and summers on record.
This is simply mass hypnosis in action, in which people prefer to believe a celebrated authority like Al Gore rather than their own senses. And there is no doubt that the liberal mass media has succumbed to the same mass hypnosis and is on its knees worshipping the new messiah in the White House.
John Dewey, the master strategist of the socialist movement, wrote in 1898: “Change must come gradually. To force it unduly would compromise its final success by favoring a violent reaction.” Taking a page out of the Fabian Socialist handbook, Dewey knew that gradualism was the only way to deceive Americans into giving up their individual freedoms. The Fabians had stressed the need for patience while they undermined the system. Fabian Tract No. 1 described that strategy in these words:
“For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes, you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain and fruitless.”
And that is why the Obama administration is “striking hard,” while Obama has the power to move Congress in the direction he wants it to go. In 2010, he may lose that precious Democratic majority, and then the socialist opportunity will be lost.
And in case you’ve forgotten what socialists really want, in 1887 the Fabian Society openly published its credo to which every member was obliged to subscribe:
“The Fabian Society consists of Socialists….It aims at the reorganization of society by the emancipation of land and Industrial Capital from individual and class ownership, and the vesting of them in the community for the general benefit….The Society accordingly works for the extinction of private property in land. The Society further works for the transfer to the Community of such Industrial Capital as can conveniently be handled socially. For the attainment of these ends the Fabian Society looks to the spread of Socialist opinions, and the social and political consequent thereon.”
American socialists are generally Marxists who prefer violent revolution to the gradualism of the Fabians, but they have realized over the years that such a revolution is impossible in America and thus have followed Dewey’s strategy. The election of 2008 finally gave them the victory they had wanted for over 100 years.
Today, the American people are in a state of mass confusion. Economic turmoil has thrown them off-balance. Gas prices go up and down. There is confusion of apparent inflation and deflation at the same time. Credit card debt is at an all-time high. House foreclosures are taking their toll on thousands of families. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is piling up debt in the trillions of dollars. And a sclerotic socialist system will only make things worse.
We wonder what will be left after the socialists in Washington have done their work. Stay tuned.
Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of nine books on education including NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education, The Whole Language/OBE Fraud, and The Victims of Dick & Jane and Other Essays. Of NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education, former U.S. Senator Steve Symms of Idaho said: “Every so often a book is written that can change the thinking of a nation. This book is one of them.” Mr. Blumenfeld’s columns have appeared in such diverse publications as Reason, The New American, The Chalcedon Report, Insight, Education Digest, Vital Speeches, WorldNetDaily, and others.
