In the 1960s, 1) with an anti-war movement scripted, and even controlled more than we knew, straight from Moscow, 2) a civil rights movement that would be ensnared and redirected as soon as Dr Martin Luther King and his closest followers could be despatched (1968), and 3) the rise of a cradle-to-grave incubation system where bright, affluent middle-class kids with only one defining characteristic, that they were coddled and spoiled, irrespective of race, could be indoctrinated in the genteel art of social “alienism” (as writers at National Review called it then—not to be confused with the new mini-series based on the 1994 novel by Caleb Carr, a very good book in its own right, in which psychologists were considered “alienists”), the structural design of the dismantling of the Republic was being fashioned.
In the 60s that indoctrination began in college, today, kids are tapped out as early at 4th Grade. My first memory of “alienists” in the NR sense was in mentioning the “anti-” nature of people such as Hillary Rodham while with the Watergate impeachment hearings committee and Nadar’s Raiders and their signature proclivity for storming government hearings and generally turning over tables in the Peoples’ office buildings. Too green to dislike bureaucracies at the time, that was an activity I had some empathy for, but it was National Review who drew the distinction for me between “anti-bureaucracy” and “anti-social”, which has served me ever since. .
Although he was not popularly known then, the fingerprints of Saul Alinksy were all over the activities of these early radical prototypes, and they were soon to be morphed into armies of lawyers with briefcases, headed by the environmental movement, of which I was a member, “Sue the bastards” our rallying cry.
That period of the 1960s saw the rise of black separatist movements, e.g. Black Panthers, all claiming a kinship with Dr King I doubt he ever intended, and of course race riots broke out in several cities. They were not spontaneous as the public was led to believe. Likewise the evolution of the Black Muslim movement and Nation of Islam occurred in this period, popularized by Muhammad Ali, the great boxer, who always invoked Elijah Muhammad when he proclaim his faith, only to leave the Farrakhan wing in favor of a more peaceful form of Islam as originally set out by Malcomb X, before he was assassinated.
In short, the “civil war” of the 1960s was represented by a “counterculture” that had great selling power in Hollywood, television and music industries, but less in the public at large. From 1964 on, but particularly after the 1968 election, it was made clear that the American voters, and leaderships of both parties, who still “loved America” despite all the positive press the counterculture was getting, and were not about to accede to college students and their faculties’ demands to end the war in Vietnam according to their strictures. Almost a decade of protests took place where universities were taken over, beginning with CAL-Berkeley and ending with some very sad deaths at Kent State in 1970.
Although the FBI knew most of these connections it was not popularly reported that all these events, riots, street protest, college take-overs, even the occasional bombing and bank robbery, had links; that Marxist campus protest leaders were also attending, then leading seminars, in the Deep South trying to radicalize young blacks fighting local Jim Crow laws. For instance, Mario Savo, a ringleader of the original Berkeley campus takeover, ostensibly as part of a “Freedom of Speech” movement, had gotten his spurs radicalizing blacks in Alabama.
People didn’t so easily make those connections then, in part because they believed that most Americans, and certainly in government and the Congress, were on the same page about certain fundamental things about America. We talk those all the time here. Tweren’t so even then, but with the development of the Occupy Movement in 2011, those with memories spotted a repeat of the early 1960s, where a few common threads connected virtually every new campus initiative, threat and gripe; white supremacy, safe-space, anti-free speech, black separatism, even ANTIFA. All bear the unmistakable fingerprints of the original Occupy Agitprop graduates from 2011, and their tutors/handlers.
The 60s was a de facto mini-civil war, to the extent all of these elements were tied together by a low-tech communications system bested probably by only the Algerian terrorists in the 1950s, against the French. They were always one step ahead of the other most-hated FBI director, J Edgar Hoover, who became the national poster boy for “government snooping and invasions of privacy”, which only applied when Republicans were in power. (No sense to repeat how well the Clintons and Obama used those powers in later administrations.) What Hoover was trying to connect was the legitimate dots between Moscow and the various universities and hundreds of private NGO’s who carried interesting names like Albanian Mothers and Children Relief Organization, back in a time when Communist Front organizations were illegal and the Attorney General had to post a list (regularly revised) for which aspiring government employees and persons seeking security clearances, had to affirm they had never been members. I did.
And the FBI did surveillance and data gathering the old fashioned way, with binoculars, stake-outs, wire-taps, almost all of them with warrants, and they kept all their field notes in regular ring-binders and plain paper, called “dossiers”. This was all considered highly immoral and fought vigorously in the streets, the courts and in the media from the mid-1960s on.
And, on paper at least, they won.
For today, students no longer have to storm university offices, since their handlers now run those offices. They are on the horses, dictating what is and is not politically correct, who can speak and who cannot. They no longer have to worship at the feet of free speech now that only their enemies want to use it or protect it.
But still, the people of America remained firm, reconfirming their desire for Richard Nixon to extract us from Vietnam in a way that would not diminish the stature of the United States, instead of the fit-throwers’ preferred path to surrender. Then all hell broke loose with the Watergate break-in in mid-72, followed by a string of political and legal missteps that would bring about Richard Nixon’s resignation in lieu of impeachment, more or less taking the will of the people out of it.
The irreversible die was cast with Nixon’s resignation in ’74, and Carter’s election in 1976 sealed their bargain with the Devil. The “Modern Left”, as they called it then, had become the de facto face of the Democratic Party, absent any love and respect for the Constitution. It would take another few years before they could clean house in the House and rid themselves of any remaining “constitutional Democrats” in their districts, then unceremoniously give God Himself the bum’s rush, with boo’s and hisses in 2012 at their convention, rejecting any affirmative mention of God in their declarations.
Ronald Reagan proved that the Democrat Party’s only impediment to total control were those damnable Americans who still loved America, for they rejected the Democrats again in 1980 and 1984 on essentially the same theme Donald Trump successfully used in 2016, Make America Great Again. My greatest regret was that RR never really saw their end game, or would have allowed himself to believe it. But in his defense, his error was generational, for only my generation (Boomers) could see the Modern Left in all their dark glory, for we had first experienced it when we were young. We could see that their plan going forward had been to kill us off through attrition, and then, with our imminent passing and the more demographically-diluted Baby Gen X’ers waiting in the wings, they were primed for a success in 2016 to finally, after 60 years, to take it all, and all by the rule book we wrote, clean and legal. Without a shot fired.
But their math was off. Way off. So was their “mis-underestimation” of both the transcendence of God and Liberty.
So here we are.
Actually, here they are, facing a civil war they thought they had oh-so-cleverly circumvented. And perhaps, in their design criteria, possibly having created, or imported, some new monsters who have other ideas altogether about what they want to do with this “new America” that was about to be bequeathed to them.
But mostly, what they accidentally and regretfully created was the most sophisticated, best-read aggregation of ordinary, workaday Americans since De Tocqueville visited Cincinnati in 1832. Both God and America are on the up-tick in America today, which is why Huffington Post, Salon.org and National Review are so concerned about our souls and our wayward theological meanderings (more on this later). “Theologically-solid Methodists” just don’t behave this way, which is probably because “theologically-solid Methodists” wouldn’t deign to be counted in our numbers.
All that said, I forecast 2018 to be auspicious, as a test of our Constitutional constancy, for as reported earlier, California’s, and other states’ claim of sovereignty over federal law, including an automatic right for illegal and legal immigrants alike to vote in federal elections, already invoke a list of harsh federal sanctions.
There are several degrees of brinksmanship involved here, and as I wrote, we have a checquered history in how we respond, Ike and JFK quick to send in troops and enforce federal law, nipping everything in the bud quickly, and a series of dreadful congressional acts, and one court decision, Dred Scott (along with Roe, the most awful Supreme Court decision ever rendered) that led to the ultimate act of state sovereignty, secession and civil war..
Our current government will be measured by how well, and rigidly, it tries to bring California back into compliance, giving them the option to invite harsher sanctions. They really have no real option, except bluff. All the power is in our hands to take over their election system and polling precincts and bring them back into compliance. And all the arrests, trials and incarcerations that entails.
This has precedence, inasmuch as Obama’s DOJ took over several police departments as easily as flipping a light switch. And in another time, federal judges took over entire school districts to insure busing plans had been properly designed and enacted. This isn’t new so don’t let the Left or the Media tell you otherwise.
And if guns are drawn against ICE or other federal agents, California will be pre-advised that stronger armaments will follow. It’s their call.
Since it’s my belief that the national Democratic Party might like to see an armed uprising by illegals, not necessarily Dreamers, and a kind of urban guerilla warfare ensue (only they can find profit in such a thing) that might spread to other parts of the country where illegals have been strategically located (yes, I said “strategically” located)—
—1) yes, we will have a “brush-fire” civil war on our hands, and 2) one which will likely get away from the control of their national and state Democrat Party handlers and in some areas, go rogue.
As with race riots, which occur only in blue cities run by blue governments and destroy the property of blue citizens, I don’t see these brush-fires extending to the country at large, where 90% of the privately owned guns are found.
I am certain that our national command structure, POTUS, DOJ, the “good” FBI (99.5% strong), DHS, and if needed, the US military, will use measured and restrained force in putting down these brush-fires.
And I will every day thank God that it is our side up there on those horses, and the Left that is afoot, for had Hillary won, nd the tables reversed, they would ride us down like dogs.
A Final Note: The Existential Threat and History
A reality in all this is that we always have to take our enemies as we find them. We didn’t ask for World War II, it was imposed us. But it also fell on us to end it, for only Americans and the English had a deep sense of the threat totalitarian fascism really meant for civilization—and the History of Civilization. The past 70 years have shown us that the Europeans never did really comprehend the existential depth of that threat, and perhaps now, even England, which is struggling to gather its bearings.
The war on America by the Left is just such an existential threat, not just for now, but all history, for the left has shown its ability, and it’s ability to totally rewrite history should it ever prevail.
I have never thought of Spain as being of another race. Neither have I, in any modern context, thought of the Roman Church to be rapacious, at least in America. But any student of European history knows there once was such a Church, and one does not have to be an anglophile to know that Spain sent a giant armada to England in 1588, in the middle of the Reformation and Counter-reformation, with the express purpose of returning England to the bosom of the Churrch, whether Englishmen wanted it or not. It was an Armada of the Inquisition, and every Englishman knew it was win in battle or either submit or die at the stake.
Although I think no Modern Democrat would claim her, it was a single woman who forged a national resistance that defeated the world’s greatest battle fleet.
Thus endeth the lesson.
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