From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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Subject: IP: THE BATTLE FOR AMERICA'S SOUL
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Subject: 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.

     _________________________________________________________________

      (c) Copyright 1996 Balint Vazsonyi





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--- end forwarded text


-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
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'