I've seen people suggest in several places that we ought to visit upon the Statist the same sort of incremental resistance to their tyranny as they employed to steal our freedoms. The reason we can't act like them is not because such dishonesty and duplicity is wrong, it is because our adversaries will not permit it. They know where they are headed, but will always deny their real ends. A number of us will surmise their ends and attempt to convince the more gullible, but you and I do not own the big megaphones that they own.
But it is far worse than that. There are, to use a precise term, modern casuists in the ranks of our adversaries. These are what you would better recognize by the label "true believers." What happens when the veil falls from their eyes and they see the truth?
The leaders of the avante-garde:
With the radical Left, anyone who tells the mob "hey wait a minute. You're doing it wrong." or "you're going in the wrong direction," or "this is not what we were seeking," is subject to sudden and violent termination for the sin of being a counterrevolutionary. Whatever their actual sins, Robespierre and Trotsky are probably good examples. What was there in power did not need them any longer -- they had outlived their usefulness.
The strategic leaders:
The "Progressives" (as the Jacobins before them) had the appearance of being the rational planners. The radical Left criticized the established order, raised the objections to whatever injustice in the news they could capitalize upon, and with their often violent demonstrations, pushed the envelope of what became tolerable public discussion. All the while the nice sounding and popular "Progressives" like Theodore Roosevelt would stage pleas for leniency to protect the Marxists or anarchists from answering fully to the law for their lawlessness. Those who quite often wanted nothing more than have the miscreants answer for their lawlessness were labeled as reactionaries, no doubt aided by the image painted of the men who reacted in self defense but painted by the media as acting outside the law. Seeing the lies with which today's media has painted both the TEA party and Occupy groups, and knowing of the yellow journalism of the time, I think I'm on firm ground with this speculation.
The pattern to power repeated:
But what of it? Well, it was because the "Progressives" could hide their long range plans and simply repeatedly call for cooler heads to reign, that the Leftward march into and throughout our institutions could be facilitated. They gained one niggling foothold after the other until, voilâ, there we have all sorts of radicals in the Dem party and
Progressives Incrementalists in the GOP, and the American equivalent of the Roman Leftist known as Marius sitting in the Oval Office for at least 12 years and maybe more. (We may be at the point of bloody counter-revolution as Ancient Rome under Sulla. But I cannot see how that is any real answer. What will prevent a strong man dictator to come out the other side as happened to the hapless patriotic republicans of Ancient Rome?)
We simply cannot duplicate the actions of the Incrementalists:
But this is why we cannot mimic the actions of the Incrementalists in how they undermined our government. People in our government and in society at large, responded to pressure to allow that the Incrementals were well meaning, so we ought to tolerate their simple requests. Don't punish the radicals too harshly, and allow for little compromises with the radicals. Give in a little and let's see what happens; if their ideas fail, we end the experiment and go back to the way things were -- what's the harm in that? Tolerance, that's the ticket. Do unto others as you would have done unto you.
Like I said at the top: Can you see that being tolerated within in a Statist system? Argue against the top down diktat and find yourself in reeducation camp, sedated under heavy drugs as a mental case, or sent off to the gulags as a counter-revolutionary.
I've seen people suggest in several places that we ought to visit upon the Statist the same sort of incremental resistance to their tyranny as they employed to steal our freedoms. It cannot work that way. And this was why.
Cross-posted at Crusader Rabbit.
Late in the 2nd trimester of my freshman year at Michigan, the first teach-ins against the Nam war were organized. I only caught a glimpse of what was going on. But shortly thereafter came the student votes to condemn UM participation in war industry through research grants. Naturally the Engineering School led the voting bloc that constantly voted down the resolutions.
Well, after the SDS lost another vote, some bitch grabbed a bull-horn at an unusual rally site behind the UGLi* and declared
Most of us went off to work after college to do something productive. She and her ilk, no doubt, went to work as an educrat and thus infiltrated our education institutions. We let them sow their wind, and now nobody should be surprised that we are reaping the whirlwind -- the familiar mindless sloganeering of a herd of indoctrinated sheeple as we witnessed last fall in the Occupy movement.
The reason it now starts in the primary school classroom is that those 60's radicals first began to fully infest the teaching colleges then. According to CS Lewis in "Men Without Chests," the first seeds of that invasion began in British teaching colleges during the 20s and 30s.
Like I wrote up at the top, the "Progressives" were well planned from the start to incrementally bring about their complete control of the West (which is to say the world), while the rest of us were complacent at best. They thrived because they could use Alinksy rule #4 to force us to be tolerant of them by hiding behind the 1st Amendment. Good luck getting the same tolerance now that they are in charge. PC disguises Leftist bigotry and allows them to make rules -- which they enforce ruthlessly -- to silence us.
The question that is pressing us into service is, :
Probably. But only with reference to and appeals to God. I cannot think of any more in-your-face conflict with the Left (sinister) forces than bringing Him into it.
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*A relatively small rally on the grass between the undergraduate library and West Engineering, probably to catch the attention of us engg students. IIRC, most rallies were staged out in the center of the Diag, on and North of the steps to the graduate library. Her words still ring in my ears. I fully suspect that was the whole reason they were there -- so that if they succeeded eventually, her words would be a form of gloating before the fact.
It's not over sister. If you're still alive, useful idiots are the first to wind up in the gulag because they are viewed as too dangerous by the inner circle.