The War on Reason

By Sandy Stringfellow  Saturday, August 14, 2010

(originally published on CanadaFreePress.com)

Perhaps it was my having been drawn to the arts from an early age, and that Liberalism is irrevocably concomitant to the art world.  I’ve known many Liberals over the years, some of considerable talent, including liberal family and friends whom I dearly love.

Unfortunately, Liberals have initiated a considerable amount of harm to our nation from their blind application of circular logic when trying to make sense of the world. 

To justify their policy positions and beliefs, Liberals must jettison the prescriptions of reason, historical fact, and acceptance of human nature.



Many older Liberals can still recall media references to Nikita Khrushchev’s various disruptions of the United Nations General Assembly with fist pounding, shoe banging, and shouts of belligerence (“we will bury you”).
In retrospect, Khrushchev may have known more about what was in store for us than he was given credit for; he later said the U.S.S.R. wouldn’t need to bury us, as we will bury ourselves.

These “Cold War” Liberals generally recognize the need for a strong national defense, but as with all other Liberals are egregiously misinformed and naively malleable on issues such as government expansionism, punishing taxation, environmental fallacies, social programs and the welfare state, fiscal accountability, and the relentless bureaucratic assault on individual liberty and property ownership rights by our “ruling class.”

Since King Barry’s coronation, Liberals have split into two primary camps; those determined to remain irrational and loyal to King Barry rather than question the veracity of his words or motivation for his deeds, and those that have accepted reality and garnered the courage to admit they’ve made a very dangerous mistake by electing our forty-fourth President.

The fact that so few “journalists” fall into this latter category is proof positive that, due to lack of interest in King Barry’s unprecedented and wholly un-Constitutional power grab, traditional journalism has officially expired and should be pronounced dead as a doornail; they certainly aren’t asking the tough questions or demanding honest answers.

Mantle of “political correctness”
Even in today’s upside-down world, where words are re-defined to represent the mantle of “political correctness”; a world in which propaganda is labeled as “news”, truth as fiction and fiction as fact, and the capacity to reason has been obliterated through methodical assault, it’s nice to know that numbers still have the same value as they have for the past millennia.

As numbers go, calculating dollars and cents is about as simple as it gets.  Even though the numbers being discussed today with easy and cool detachment are unquestionably breath-taking when considered in their monetary context, the question remains: if most Liberals can calculate a household budget and understand its importance, why would they not question what our bloated Federal bureaucracy is doing with the ever-increasing percentage of personal income required to feed an insatiable government redistributive beast?

The statistics (ratio of debt to GDP, total unfunded liabilities, etc.) are readily available and most alarming.  If King Barry’s Liberal loyalists check into it, they’ll find that our Federal government is bankrupt.

In the simplest of terms, the Treasury Department, printing money out of thin air, is selling our ever-increasing debt in the form of Treasury Securities to the Federal Reserve; not unlike a consumer paying one credit card with another credit card.

Meanwhile, King Barry continues his spending bill spree, like a kid in the proverbial candy store.

If one applies reason, this fact should be of concern to everyone, especially the 48% of Americans that paid no Federal Income Tax in 2009, as they will be least able to find work in a shrinking job market, or afford the rising inflationary costs of living and higher taxes coming in 2011.

Liberals from all income brackets are unknowing victims of the long-running war on reason
Generally speaking, Liberals from all income brackets are unknowing victims of the long-running war on reason.  Ideologically driven by white liberal guilt and unilaterally misinformed, they mean well (excluding the Kook Fringe element) but have grievously erred regarding conclusions drawn about civil society and the exceptionalness of America.

They work hard (something Americans are still known for), are often talented, raise families, go to church, pay taxes, pursue their interests, and have a shared desire to keep more of what they earn.
Yet so many of them not only voted for King Barry, they continue to believe he’s on the right track and doing the best he can.  Further, many of these same Liberals are still suffering from the mainstream media-induced malady of “Bush Derangement Syndrome.”

They’ve been conditioned to the point of accepting the premise that Bush 43 created all of the problems we have today, and that King Barry is simply trying to right our ship of state.

Unlike King Barry, George W. Bush is a gentleman, loves his country, and has a genuine sense of gratitude for our men and women who serve in the various branches of the United States Military.  He has quietly, without fanfare, visited more wounded soldiers than any President in my lifetime.

But there’s no doubt that Bush 43 shares responsibility for our current degree of national peril.  He did some good things as President, but he also did some things that were very troubling, inexcusable, and that no Conservative would ever have allowed to happen on their watch.  But then again, Bush 43, like Bush 41, is an Establishment Republican, not a Conservative.

Angelo M. Codevilla, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, writing in “The American Spectator” an essay titled “America’s Ruling Class—And the Perils of Revolution”, points out that George W. Bush’s 2005 inaugural statement about America not being free until the world is free sounds hauntingly familiar to the Progressive doctrines of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson and Columbia’s Nicholas Murray Butler.

Professor Codevilla further exposes Republican history:

“But the Republican Party does not live to represent the country class.  For it to do so, it would have to become principles-based, as it has not been since the mid-1860s.  The few who tried to make it so the party treated as rebels: Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.  The party helped defeat Goldwater.  When it failed to stop Reagan, it saddled his and subsequent Republican administrations with establishmentarians who, under the Bush family, repudiated Reagan’s principles as much as they could.  Barrack Obama exaggerated in charging that Republicans had driven the country “into the ditch” all alone.  But they had a hand in it.”  

Ronald Wilson Reagan was able to persuade ordinary Liberals to embrace his Conservative vision for America

To this day, I’m amazed by the effectiveness with which the great Ronald Wilson Reagan was able to persuade ordinary Liberals to embrace his Conservative vision for America, primarily by virtue of his unique ability to articulate Conservatism.

Reagan said what he meant, and meant what he said; a forth-rightness that resonated powerfully with Americans because his positions were built on the foundation of reason, principal, and moral integrity.

Reagan’s Conservative message was further enhanced by his genuineness and down-to-earth bonhomie.
Voters instinctively understood and accepted Reagan’s unapologetic and deeply ingrained love for America, as well as his faith in the American people.

It’s not insignificant that both of Reagan’s electoral landslide victories included a component of voters from the Democrat Party.

As did William F. Buckley, Jr., the acknowledged Father of Modern Conservatism whose fundamental goals were to promote liberty and defeat Communism, Reagan understood that politics is a matter of addition, not subtraction.

Although under attack from a multi-generational liberal bias’ projected non-stop by the mainstream media, the element of reason had not yet been mangled beyond recognition for those Liberal voters casting their ballots thirty years ago for Reagan. Liberal Democrats of the day evaluated the evidence, applied reason, and voted in a manner consistent with their own self-interest.

As bad as things were after four years of Jimmy Carter, there is little comparison to the magnitude of impending disaster we now must face, if our intention is to survive as a Constitutional Republic.

Thomas Sowell recently wrote a column published in Jewish World Review titled “Degeneration of Democracy”, in which he identifies one of the great concerns of our Founding Fathers:

“A democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, ultimately even survive.  In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and very few people seem to be concerned about it…

The president’s poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.”

It’s easy to incorrectly deduce, if one evades the objectivity, honesty, and self-discipline necessary to employ reason, Dr. Sowell is pointing to liberals exclusively when he observes “very few people seem concerned” about the systematic destruction of America.

Many who claim Republican Party affiliation are equally guilty of ignoring the process of reason by refusing to involve themselves politically in our time of national crisis, even though they, as well as future generations, will pay a terrible price for inaction if King Barry and his cohorts aren’t slowed down this November by electing a Conservative majority to the House of Representatives.

As modern Americans, we’ve become soft over time, pampered and spoiled, expecting instant gratification and expressing our displeasure when we don’t receive it on demand.  We often distract ourselves with things that entertain us, or imbibe in self-medication to dull our senses, while in the process we neglect our most basic obligation to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”  Bad habits die hard.

With the exception of those who’ve served in our military, most of us haven’t been tested nearly to the extent of civilians who went through World War I, World War II, or the Great Depression.  But that could all change soon.

To quote Edmund Burke, often considered the Founder of Conservatism:

“Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principal.”   

The plans of King Barry, to inflict terminal damage upon America are well underway
The plans of King Barry, his benefactors, and his Marxist minions to inflict terminal damage upon America are well underway, with impressive destructive yields at every level.

This reality is difficult to comprehend for a society that has grown accustomed to taking freedom for granted, and that has not been required, through necessity, to contemplate and confront the potential destruction of their country from within since the days of Joseph McCarthy, almost sixty years ago.

In chapters four, five, and six of her book “Treason,”Ann Coulter presents an irrefutable case that McCarthy was right; he did what he was supposed to do, and what other Republicans had neglected to do:

“For decades, people who should not have been allowed anywhere near a government job were strolling into sensitive positions with the U.S. government.  As Soviet agents wormed their way in, loyalty boards were sipping sherry and shuffling papers.  McCarthy forced liberals to make an accounting of themselves in full view of the American people…

It was the exact same point Eisenhower was making when he directed Attorney General Brownell to inform the public that President Truman had wittingly placed a Soviet spy in a key post at the IMF.”

When Joseph McCarthy began his investigation, he wasn’t looking for Communists per se, but evaluating security risks; he was doing his job.  But they were there, loyal to Mother Russia, and he discovered them.

It wasn’t until declassification of the ultra top secret Venona Project in 1995 that the vastness of a Soviet spy network in the U.S. during the forties and fifties became widely known.

Joseph McCarthy did something that used to be commonplace in America, back in the day when we were a nation of rugged individuals, when a sense of duty and personal responsibility were praiseworthy: he applied “reason”, based on evidence, and reached his conclusion that we had a spy problem.

Is it too passé by today’s standards, too rudimentary, to ask the question: what is “reason?”

When is the last time you contemplated the fundamental nature, the pure majesty, the contemporary relevance, and the elegant beauty of reason?

To apply reason is to calculate, to think; to offer in statement the justification for one’s intellectual position, or a rational motive and logical defense for a course of action.  Reason is what makes fact intelligible.

To reason is to engage in the applied effort of comprehending, inferring, and thinking in orderly, rational ways; to identify cause and effect.  Reason is the power of the intellect by which man attains to truth or knowledge; the process of thinking rightly and justifiably.

On the unenviable list of items representing the antithesis of reason, one would be “political deduction.”

And yet, we observe today the re-defining of reason in purely political terms; viewed through the lens of political correctness, filtered and distilled to meet the subjective expectations and ulterior motives of our ruling class.

Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”
Sun Tzu wrote his treatise on military strategy, “The Art of War” more than 2,000 years ago in China.

Mao Zedong, an icon of the Progressive Marxists in King Barry’s court, and responsible for 70 million deaths during his reign of terror, was such an ardent student of Sun Tzu that he considered himself a disciple, and credits “The Art of War” with having a profound influence on determining the outcome of a civil war pitting the Chinese Communist Party against Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists.

Sun Tzu was the first known proponent of psychological warfare, and one of his insights has a significant political relevance today: 

“War is always based on deception.”

The morphing of definitive historical reason into a sanctioned and codified interpretation of reason, over the course of time, is not an accidental happenstance.

It is part and parcel of the organized destruction of Western culture and our Judeo-Christian roots, formulated by Marxist intellectuals after World War I.

Led initially by Antonio Gramsci in Italy, and Georg Lukacs in Hungary, it would later include well-known recruits to a new Marxist think tank at Frankfurt University in Frankfurt, Germany.

Originally called the “Institute for Marxism”, the name was changed to the “Institute for Social Research”, in order to conceal development of a systematic methodology for the destruction of Western society evolving at the hands of these new “Progressive” Marxists.

Antonio Gramsci, Institute for Marxism, “Political Correctness”, “Critical Theory”, “Studies in Prejudice”, “Identity Politics”
The institute eventually became known simply as the “Frankfurt School”, where cultural Marxists developed the strategies of “Political Correctness”, “Critical Theory”, “Studies in Prejudice”, “Identity Politics”, etc.

Cultural Marxists at the Frankfurt School formulated the concept of blending Marx with Freud, thus creating the ground work for the wide spread psychological conditioning taking place in our schools today.

It was Lukacs who, in 1918, promoted the tactic of “cultural terrorism”, utilizing as one of its main components the introduction of sex education into Hungarian schools.  He understood the absolute importance of breaking down the mores of society, specifically sexual morality, to create the societal decay necessary for cultural implosion.

Today we have taxpayer funded teachers in government schools making a concerted effort to instruct second graders on choosing their sexual orientation and gender identity, fifth graders on sexual positions, and eighth graders on how to apply a condom.

Rappers celebrate behavior not unlike that of the Islamic-Fascists, whose Theocratic authoritarians view and promote their customary acceptance of women as disposable sexual objects to be ridiculed and subjugated, and where violence, even death, can be excused as a justifiable means to an end.

The original propaganda methodologies developed at the Frankfurt School have played a protracted role in today’s “soft tyranny” by insidiously reshaping thought processes of individuals, nudging the mores of society over time in the desired direction, and thus conditioning societal behavior at large.

William S. Lind, director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism of the Free Congress Foundation in Washington, D.C., wrote in chapter ten of the book, “The Culture-wise Family: Upholding Christian Values in a Mass Media World:”

“Gramsci famously laid out a strategy for destroying Christianity and Western culture, one that has proven all too successful.  Instead of calling for a Communist revolution up front, as in Russia, he said Marxists in the West should take political power last, after a ‘long march through the institutions’ – the schools, the media, even the churches, every institution that could influence the culture.

That ‘long march through the institutions’ is what America has experienced, especially since the 1960s.”

One significant political coup for the Progressive Marxists occurred in 1962, when John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10,988 granting bargaining rights to Federal employees and recognizing the right of Federal Employee Unions to engage in the collective bargaining process.

Kennedy’s decision was another big blow to Constitutional Governance, as the American taxpayers who fund both Federal Employees and their Unions have no direct voice in the bargaining process.
 
Service Employees International Union
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) celebrates this event as a major turning point in their history, and it fueled the National Education Association’s (NEA) rise to power, eventually becoming the largest and most influential union in America with over 3.2 million members today.

The quid pro quo relationship between Unions and the Democrat party is well known.  It’s a matter of record that Union executives take a percentage of all membership dues and promptly contribute them to the Democrat Party, which in turn flexes political muscle to confer on the specific Union whatever perks were conditional to the donations.

The majority of children in America used to receive a quality primary school education.  But since the signing of Executive Order 10,988 and the corresponding push to federalize education, it’s been a steady down hill slide for our government schools, to the point that students are graduating now unable read or make change at the cash register of a local burger joint.

The behavioral depravity, intellectual conditioning, fictionalization of history, and spiritual abandonment that have been continuously foisted upon an unsuspecting and increasingly under-educated public are now culminating in the usurpation of our liberty, our property rights, and for the first time in our history, the destruction of our Constitutional Republic.

It’s certainly no secret that King Barry emulated those with whom he held an affinity, and modeled his moral and ideological belief system after the effete, metro-sexual, ivory-tower, pseudo-intellectual professors holding court at Ivy League universities and other institutions of “higher learning.”

His intimate relationship with identity politics, the cult of victimization, and entitlement mentality go back to the earliest stages of his formative social years.

King Barry believes that his cataclysmic devastation of America can be justified as a noble foray into the realm of building a New World Order with a One World Government, and he is proud of the damage he’s done in his own ideological, detached-from-reality, narcissistic, and possibly socio-pathological kind of way.

In his minds eye, King Barry views himself as a metaphorical David, bravely engaged in combat against a Capitalistic Goliath; a hideous and all-consuming creature of monstrous proportions, wielding maniacally Imperialistic plans to subjugate the world and squander its resources.

The abject and contemptible hypocrisy of his kaleidoscopic self-image, resplendent with stunning illusions of grandeur, up to and including his god-complex, is indicative of the behavioral depths to which King Barry has been affected through years of Progressive Marxist indoctrination, as well as the apparent culmination of his rise to power; an all-too-predictable pattern of megalomaniacal delusion.

It doesn’t bother King Barry in the least that his own half-brother still lives inside an eight by ten hut with a dirt floor.  He doesn’t waste moral energy on his personal lack of charity and benevolence, issues begging for introspection; rather, he focuses on dismantling the economic engine of Capitalism that has allowed him to amass his own personal fortune.

Is it hyperbole to suggest that, unless King Barry’s fast track to destroy America is derailed with a Conservative majority in the House of Representatives this November, many Americans will soon experience the joy of living under similar circumstances?  Consider the Great Depression, and carefully evaluate our current economic circumstances.

George Washington once encapsulated, in a remarkably brief and brilliantly insightful way, the problem with all government:

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence.  It is force.  And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

Marxism requires indoctrination and extrinsic reinforcement from a governmental authoritarian entity
Marxism is not a naturally sought state of existence for mankind.  Unlike Capitalism, which is based on Natural Law, Marxism requires indoctrination and extrinsic reinforcement from a governmental authoritarian entity.

People inherently understand the advantages of Capitalism, and they vote with their feet.

It’s not the Communist regimes of third world tin-pot dictators that the bulk of mankind makes their destination; it is America.

Propaganda works, behavioral conditioning works, brain washing works, indoctrination works; one only need look at Pavlov’s experiments, or at the effect of “political correctness” in America to understand how well it works.

There are many intelligent, well educated, yet none-the-less indoctrinated people in the world.  Their beliefs are often the product of proven, carefully crafted, and time tested programs designed around suppression of free will and the power of choice, and consequently replaced with implementation of pre-conditioned mental and emotional responses to predictable stimuli.

Under the bright and impartial light of reason, and using our Founding documents as a template, there is very little having been done by our government to the citizenry that is Constitutionally defensible over the past century (a notable exception being Ronald Reagan’s presidency).

It’s difficult to overstate how prevalent and imbedded the philosophy of non-Constitutional ideas has become, woven into the fabric of our American society through a multitude of bureaucratic organizations and “special interest” lobbies, all promoting their well financed agendas through political correctness and social engineering; the cancer that is Progressivism.

The short list would have to include: education, entertainment, pop culture, government bureaucracies, politicians, special interests, the mainstream media complex, lobbies, trial lawyers, activist judges, unions, churches, multi-national corporations, and any person or group that would place their quest for money and power above the rule of law as defined by our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights.

It’s not without irony that the brief list of indoctrinating forces behind our plethora of social, political, and economic ills is somewhat difficult to thoroughly comprehend, at least without an investment of time, effort, and research; yet the documents of our Founding are elegantly simple.

Our Founding documents are so fundamental, concise, and comprehensive, one must marvel at the strategic inventiveness and raw determination of the Progressive Marxists to blow our capacity for reason so far off course.

There is simply nothing ambiguous, confusing, contradictory, or self-serving about our Founding documents, yet we’ve allowed them to become the subject of ridicule and scorn among intellectual elitists and self-anointed bureaucratic potentates.

The uniqueness of our Founding documents, and the obvious successes that resulted from the circumscribing of our society in liberty (before the advent of our current Progressive Armageddon), is why our Founding Fathers have long been considered by legitimate historical scholars as the greatest cooperative example of moral integrity and intellectual genius to exist in the history of mankind.

It took less than 250 years for America to become the wealthiest, most innovative, most powerful, most benevolent, and most envied nation in world history.

Even today, Americans in the bottom quartile of income earners have a higher standard of living than 80% of the global population.

Utilizing tactics from Karl Marx, the Frankfurt School, Saul Alinsky, Cloward and Piven
With King Barry’s fiat governance via executive order, his ever-expanding nationalization of our economy, and the federalization of states’ rights, the conversion of America into a Totalitarian regime has been kicked into overdrive.  We are no longer in a position to speak hypothetically of a “soft tyranny”; we are living it now, every day.

King Barry has learned his lessons well.  Utilizing tactics from Karl Marx, the Frankfurt School, Saul Alinsky, Cloward and Piven, et al, he has brazenly initiated the diabolical undermining of everything for which America stands with unprecedented efficiency.

Republicans, as usual, have been playing right into the strategy; thrashed so soundly by the mainstream media and every other institutional practitioner of political correctness, they cower in the corner like a whipped puppy, peeing on the floor, clueless about the defense of Conservative ideals, values, and principals.

It’s important to understand that there isn’t a Democrat party anymore, at least not in the old school sense of American two party politics.

The Democrat party has been infiltrated and co-opted by radical Leftists of every stripe, in all of their many manifestations: Progressives, Marxists, Socialists, Communists, Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, Anarchists, and every amalgamation thereof.

King Barry’s steam-rolling of our Constitution could possibly have been slowed if Republican leadership had been more vocal in exposing the travesty of justice and abrogation of the rule of law being propagated by the consortium of Progressive Marxists currently at work.

It’s now become critically important that true Conservatives be given the opportunity to draw that line in the sand, and defend it with the conviction of those who fully comprehend what we have to lose, and how soon that may occur.

As John Adams wrote in a letter to his wife Abigail dated July 7, 1775:

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored.  Liberty once lost is lost forever.”

The painfully obvious truth is that, in our relentless march toward the Utopian Progressive Marxist dream of “social justice”, we are now ensconced between that awkward phase of “soft tyranny” and the final destination of some new governmental Totalitarianism; an autocracy more reminiscent of a monarchy, oligarchy, or dictatorship.

Rush Limbaugh often refers to liberals as being “incapable of competing in the arena of ideas”, and to liberalism as being “the most gutless choice you can make.”  Like him or not, it’s hard to argue with these positions.

Liberalism is the triumph of emotion over reason
Whereas Liberalism is the triumph of emotion over reason (as defined historically), Conservatism is an applied intellectual process; based on observation, deduction, and the study of provable historical fact.

Conservatism celebrates our Founders with a heart-felt appreciation and sense of humility at the magnificence of what they achieved, and further seeks to protect and sustain the integrity of our Founding documents.

Ladies and Gentlemen, only Conservatism can save America, and time is running out.  We are being tested, and it is our sacred duty to rise to the challenge.  Identify the Conservatives on your ballot, and vote them into office this November.

It’s been said that God helps those who help themselves; that we are to pray, then place one foot in front of the other.

So please, pray for strength to do the right thing in these perilous times, pray for your loved ones, and pray for your fellow patriots.  God Bless America.

Reprinted with permission, Canada Free Press

Sandy Stringfellow is a writer and musician with an interest in history, economics, and politics.