Tag Archives: marxism

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Daily Broadside | DEI—A.K.A. “DIE”—Is Going Away, But Not Really

I was in business for 25 years before being terminated in a “restructuring” last year. I was the only one in my division that was released (well, my manager was, too, but that was only because he was managing two of us and without me his role wasn’t necessary), and I found out that there was also one here and one there, many of them long time employees of the company like I was. “Restructuring,” while a legitimate business activity, is also a useful catch-all for corporate downsizing when the motivation is somewhat suspect.

While I miss some things about the business, there’s a lot I don’t miss. The emphasis on “DEI,” for instance, the acronym for “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” a.k.a. Diversity, Equality and Inclusion, a.k.a., Diversity and Inclusion, a.k.a., Diversity. The company had significantly increased its attention on getting more women and minorities in positions of leadership, along with supporting celebrations of sexual deviancy of all kinds, and that was all reflected regularly in communications at all times of the year—not just when it was a particular month to recognize some group in some square in the matrix of so-called disadvantaged people.

I am not at all opposed to women, blacks, hispanics, gays, lesbians and other “under-represented” peoples having gainful employment. I’m not opposed to them being in positions of leadership. Over the course of my career the majority of my managers have been women, with one or two exceptions. Many of them were high performers. Some of them were not. Two of them were LGBTQ+, one being a lesbian in a same-sex “marriage.” And I’ve had many female, black, gay and lesbian co-workers.

So it’s not “diversity” that I’m opposed to. What I am opposed to is the artificial imposition of “diversity” for the sake of diversity.

For example, I’ve seen a more qualified white male get passed over for a role in favor of a less experienced Asian female because “diversity.” DEI is clearly reverse discrimination and, while you could never prove it in court with that example, that’s what it is.

Lately, it seems like others are getting annoyed with it, too, and the current iteration of employment discrimination is having to morph into some other euphemism to avoid the legal risks that come with profiling candidates for jobs.

The demise of DEI has been in the news for a while, but outlets like Jeff Bezos’ The Washington Post (Democracy Dies in Darkness—pfffft!) has recently sat up and taken notice (hard left liberal link alert!).

Last year, Eli Lilly’s annual shareholders letter referenced the acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion 48 times. This year, “DEI” is nowhere to be found.

In March, Starbucks got shareholder approval to replace “representation” goals with “talent” performance for executive bonus incentives. At Molson Coors, “People & Planet” metrics have displaced environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, and the acronym DEI has disappeared altogether.

Amid growing legal, social and political backlash, American businesses, industry groups and employment professionals are quietly scrubbing DEI from public view — though not necessarily abandoning its practice. As they rebrand programs and hot-button acronyms, they’re reassessing decades-old anti-discrimination strategies and rewriting policies that once emphasized race and gender to prioritize inclusion for all.

In other words, the DEI label will be retired in favor of a new term that will cloak the same activities.

“DEI has only been the acronym du jour since 2020,” Emerson said. “Regardless of what we call it, we’ve done a really poor job storytelling what this work is actually about.”

The rebranding is clearly being sparked by the “baggage” now associated with DEI, Emerson said. She pointed to conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who led the campaign to oust Harvard’s first Black president, Claudine Gay, framing her exit as “the beginning of the end for DEI in America’s institutions.”

“Companies with leaders that might be particularly supportive of DEI might also be the ones that are uniquely averse to drawing scrutiny,” Emerson said. “A lot of the companies that were vocal in the past have already been sued.”

“DEI” and all of its antecedents are part of the cultural Marxism that seeks to divide us into separate, warring groups, pitting the bourgeoisie (those who own the means of production) against the proletariat (working class), whose labor produces the goods, in a power struggle. It’s the “victims” of discrimination versus the “oppressors,” those who supposedly have an “unfair” advantage over someone who’s gay, female, black, hispanic, fat, trans, or some other characteristic that somehow puts them at a disadvantage. Men v. women. Gay v. straight. Black v. white. Fat v. fit. You get the idea.

As a man of faith, I can’t in good conscience write copy for “Pride” month celebrations or any other celebration of something that runs counter to God’s established order. DEI always posed a threat to my role, but thankfully I was never put in a position where I had to refuse an assignment (although I got close a couple of times).

It’s still a threat to my prospects, though, since most corporate roles I find list the support of “diversity, equity and inclusion” as part of the job description.

Death to DEI and anything else that favors one group over another.

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Daily Broadside | Gay Sex in Senate Chambers Shows How Far We Have Fallen

I’ve been watching and responding to culture and politics for a long time now, and there’s not a lot that surprises me anymore. I’ve learned that politicians are, generally speaking, not upstanding, principled public servants but self-serving grifters who are mostly interested in staying elected to feed at the public trough.

That’s the baseline level of normal in politics now.

Every now and then, though, there are extreme, “watershed” moments that put me back on my heels as American traditions and norms are destroyed by the cultural Maoists who have infiltrated the ranks of federal, state and local governments.

One of those happened again last Friday.

Leaked amateur pornography shows a congressional staffer having anal sex with an unknown man in the Senate hearing room, video obtained by the Daily Caller shows.

The alleged staffer can also be seen in a photo, naked on all fours, looking back at the camera on the table where Senators often sit to ask questions during a hearing. 

There is so much that is wrong with this incident but before I get to that, note that if this was a heterosexual hook up videoed in a Senate hearing room, I’d have a problem with that too. My response is not driven by the fact that this was gay pornography. That’s a factor, but my response is driven by something more significant than that.

To begin with, we have an act of casual sex between (one assumes) two consenting adults. Again, this could’ve been a consenting man and woman having sex. Sex is one of our primal urges and is both the source of our greatest pleasure in life and the cause of many troubles throughout all of human history.

In the course of time, Amnon son of David fell in love with Tamar, the beautiful sister of Absalom son of David. Amnon became so obsessed with his sister Tamar that he made himself ill. She was a virgin, and it seemed impossible for him to do anything to her.
(2 Samuel 13:1-2, NIV)

Read the rest here.

But not only is it sex, it’s homosexual sex. At this point in our cultural collapse, no one even cares anymore that it’s two men caught in flagrante delicto. It only took 60 years for homosexuality to go from a shameful closeted sin to a omnipresent cultural influence that is celebrated with its own “Pride” month.

But we forget that homosexuality, like casual sex between heterosexuals, is a perversion of God’s sexual design for man and woman.

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
(1 Corinthians 6:9-10, NIV)

The footnote for the bolded phrase reads: “The words men who have sex with men translate two Greek words that refer to the passive and active participants in homosexual acts.”

But not only is it casual sex, and casual sex of the homosexual variety, but these two dudes decided to film themselves engaged in it. Again, that doesn’t surprise anyone anymore because there are so many “sex tapes” involving the rich and famous, the not so rich and famous, and thousands of unknowns because amateur pornography is rampant in our society. Anyone can set up a camera in the bedroom or the boardroom or on the beach and film their raw lust for all to see.

Why someone chooses to do that, with all the risks it entails, I’ll never know.

But to top it all off, this particular homosexual act wasn’t filmed in a private bedroom, or an empty boardroom in some nondescript office building, or on some public beach under the shade of a palm tree. This homosexual act was filmed in what might be considered one of the most sacrosanct buildings in the world. It is home to what once was considered “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” the envy of the modern world, one that commanded deferential respect.

Here served the likes of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, John C. Calhoun, Henry Cabot Lodge, Hubert Humphrey, and John F. Kennedy, among others.

What these two men did was a moral abomination and an indefensible disgrace. While the one who was identified has been fired, the inviolable and solemn decorum historically associated with the Senate has been violated in a shocking and repugnant lack of decency.

I liken it to pissing on someone’s grave, but worse.

Believe it or not, this is all going to plan. What plan, you ask? (H/T Kevin Downey Jr.)

6. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and press.
7. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in the media.
8. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, and healthy.”

Well. Here we are.

Just like we can’t go back to the time before Slick Willy poked Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office, we can’t undo the act of sodomy that desecrated the Senate. We cannot go back to an undefiled state. It’s happened.

And it’s happened because our culture produces the people who performed the act.

But we can reject the growing depravity we’re witnessing before it metastasizes and ruins us all. We can turn from our wickedness and seek God and beg forgiveness and mercy.

That’s my prayer.

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Daily Broadside | Trump Indicted; Will Somebody Make it Stop?

Yesterday we crossed another Rubicon, this time one that can never be undone. For the first time in 247 years, a U.S. president has been arrested and charged with criminal wrongdoing. No, it wasn’t Joe Biden, who has lied about his financial arrangements involving Ukraine, Russia, China and his son Hunter; neither was it Barack Hussein Obama (currently serving his third term behind the scenes) who was involved in the plot to undermine president Donald J. Trump’s term.

No, the president charged with a crime was Donald J. Trump.

When I saw that photo, I had one of those nauseous “watershed moment” feelings in my gut. This has really happened. A George Soros-backed District Attorney campaigned on a promise to indict Trump, rummaged through the gutters looking for something, anything, that he could use, and landed on 34 felony charges of “falsifying business records related to alleged hush-money payments made ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign.”

The indictment‘s charges just repeat the same charge for different checks the Trump Family Revocable Trust wrote to lawyer Michael Cohen from February 2017 to December 2017. They’re saying that the checks were written to Cohen for legal services but were “intended” for something else, i.e. paying off the prostitute.

The indictment will revolve around hush money payments paid at the end of the 2016 election cycle to adult entertainer and Trump fling Stormy Daniels and, possibly, a former Playboy Playmate, Karen McDougal. Bragg revived what was known inside the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as the “zombie investigation” into the hush money payments. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, declined to seek an indictment on this matter. 

The theory of the case goes as follows. Trump made the hush money payments through his fixer, Michael Cohen, and reported the expense as “legal fees.” In fact, Bragg will allege, these were in-kind donations from Trump to his own presidential campaign. This distinction is important because New York state law deems the falsification of business records to be a misdemeanor unless that falsification is meant to conceal another crime. In this case, the documented fraud was perpetrated to conceal a violation of campaign finance law. 

If this is, in fact, Bragg’s case against Trump, then it’s paper-thin. Many campaign finance law experts say it’s unclear whether hush money would be an in-kind contribution to a political campaign, since Trump himself has said he made the payments to spare his family from embarrassment—not to win the 2016 election. 

These trumped up charges are pure political persecution and election interference on the part of Bragg. He’s a tool of the Left.

We would shake our heads and scoff in disbelief when we’d hear about countries where members of the political opposition were arrested under false pretenses. “That would never happen here,” we’d say to ourselves.

With the arrest of Donald Trump, we’ve entered into a new era of country’s history. The kind of corruption we’ve long believed was limited to third-world countries has made it to the Land of the Free. Thanks to Alvin Bragg’s precedent, prosecutors are now emboldened to misuse their power to punish political rivals with fabricated charges. Worse yet, roughly half the country condones it because they care more about punishing Trump than the rule of law or blind justice.

This, even though the statute of limitations has run out; even though the feds knew there was no case to be made (and declined to try); even though it’s dubious that Bragg is authorized to enforce federal laws; even though this is obviously prosecutorial abuse of discretion.

It’s no use wondering how close we are to being a communist third world banana republic. We’re there.

I cite this in order to make this point: In my wildest dreams, I never imagined what I was studying would ever apply to the United States of America, the freest country in world history.

I assumed that communism was, for various reasons, something that happened elsewhere — most obviously, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia and North Korea.

What were those various reasons? One was the absence of freedom in the history of those countries. Another was that all those countries were, with the exception of Cuba, outside of Western civilization.

All these years later, I see that I was wrong. Communism — or if you will, left-wing fascism and totalitarianism — is coming to America and Canada, and (a bit more gradually) to Australia and New Zealand.

Incredibly — or maybe not so incredibly — more than two hundred years of unprecedented and unrivaled liberty and commitment to Judeo-Christian values and reason, and all the unparalleled achievements of Western civilization, have come to mean nothing to about half of the American people and to virtually every one of its major institutions.

Don’t take it from me.

“America is back, baby!” is a farce under Brandon. “America” as founded is dead and will probably never be back.

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Daily Broadside | Here’s One More America-Hating Strategy Being Used Against Us

Daily Verse | Matthew 22:30
“At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”

Monday’s Reading: Matthew 23-25

Happy Monday! I have been having significant issues with my computer and some nuisances with my energy levels. Both conspired to throw me off my game on Thursday and Friday last week. Glad to be back at it again this week (although the computer issues remain, contributing to the energy drain, since these posts take a lot longer to complete).

One of the things I’m trying to accomplish with this blog is to identify for you not only what is going on in the moment (as it were), but also what has led up to these series of moments. When I first started paying attention to politics years ago and to the destruction of the Judeo-Christian norms in our culture, I asked anyone I thought might have an answer, “Why?! Why are they doing this?”

I hardly knew who “they” were … Democrats, liberals, mostly, was the extent of what I could see at the time. It was a long time before I recognized that so-called “liberals” had gone the way of the dodo. These were “progressives” as opposed to conservatives. But still my question remained: “Why?”

In past posts I’ve discussed the roots of cultural Marxism (series listed here) which parades itself as “progressivism,” starting with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx, which led to Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School and their eventual invasion of America in 1935, where they joined Columbia University. I’ve also examined the radical organizer Saul Alinsky (here and here) whose “Rules for Radicals” became the map for how to implement the progressive vision in practice. (Here’s an excellent primer by Sebastian Gorka that I linked to some time ago that will help you understand what’s happening today.)

The other day I came across an article that introduced me to Cloward-Piven, a strategy “first proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University [that place needs to be defunded, leveled and salted] sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven — both longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America.”

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when “the rest of society is afraid of them,” Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system. The authors also asserted that: (a) the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the country; (b) poor people would rise in revolt; and (c) only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inherent inadequacy of the welfare state. In this regard, Cloward-Piven’s early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. “Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1971 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one.

You can see that most of these provocateurs are all students of the same Marxist system of thought but they’re trying to implement it using a variety of techniques.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy was an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse initiatives — mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse in an effort to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. Cloward and Piven calculated that the flood of demands which they were recommending would break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown — providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change. That was the theory.

This was the core of the strategy: to break the system by placing too much weight on it. After they tried to sabotage the welfare system, Cloward-Piven turned their attention to mass voting, which resulted in the 1993 Motor-Voter law signed by president Clinton.

The new law eliminated many controls on voter fraud, making it easy for voters to register but difficult to determine the validity of new registrations. Under the new law, states were required to provide opportunities for voter registration to any person who showed up at a government office to renew a driver’s license or to apply for welfare or unemployment benefits. “Examiners were under orders not to ask anyone for identification or proof of citizenship,” notes Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund in his book, Stealing Elections.

Voter registration and welfare handouts are just two examples of where Cloward-Piven have been tried, but you can’t help but see the effects of their devious scheming being applied on multiple fronts today. Our immigration system is overwhelmed to the point of being virtually non-existent with millions of foreigners crossing our open border without any meaningful resistance. Our economy is being overwhelmed with borrowing as our debt reaches $31 trillion. Our energy sector is being flattened by the ban of extracting the oil under our own feet while we have to pay increasingly more to the oil cartels in the Middle East, who just voted to reduce production. Our military is being undermined by the implementation of “woke” practices, driven by the commanding officers that Barack Hussein Obama appointed during his terms in office.

Wherever you look, you see destruction. None of this is arbitrary. There are people in positions of power, behind the shriveled carcass of Joey Soft Serve, who are intentionally destabilizing and destroying our nation.

Cloward-Piven is just one more strategy being applied to that end. Hopefully knowing about it helps you understand what is behind the lunacy you see.

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Daily Broadside | 6 Things You Can Do to Help Your Candidate Win (And Deny Progressives Another Victory)

Daily Verse | Jeremiah 29:13
“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

Monday’s Reading: Jeremiah 30-33

Happy Monday. I hope you had a great weekend.

One of the questions I’ve gotten a few times from readers goes something like this: “OK, Dave, I get it. I see it. We’re in a crisis that most of the nation doesn’t see or is too scared to talk about. I agree with you. But what can we DO ABOUT IT?”

That’s been a tough one for me, too. A lot of the reading I do is great at analysis, but severely lacking on what we can do. I ask myself the same question and have written about it a few times before:

SIX PRACTICAL THINGS ALL OF US CAN DO TO PREPARE FOR WHAT’S COMING

THE INSIDIOUS STRATEGY OF THE CULTURAL MARXISTS DESERVES A RESPONSE

3 WAYS YOU CAN FIGHT THE SOCIAL MARXISTS WITHOUT LOSING YOUR JOB

These are a good start (and it was good to be reminded of them), but I keep my eyes and ears open to new ideas because the alternatives to doing nothing aren’t attractive to me.

Over the weekend I had a conversation with a conservative, Christian political consultant I know. I asked her the same question: What can the average person do to help turn things around? She gave me a list.

  1. Be a poll watcher. “Poll watchers, also referred to as partisan citizen observers or poll challengers, represent political parties, candidates, or groups such as ballot issue committees at polling locations. Rules for poll watchers vary state to state. The use of poll watchers is primarily aimed at guarding a party or group’s chance at a fair election.”
  2. Be an election judge. An election judge, (or judge of election or election clerk, inspector or commissioner), is the person in charge at the polling place. They are the one who is responsible to open and close the polling place, examine and verify the ballots, “verify that voters are qualified to vote and that they are voting in the right precinct, and they provide instructions for voters to help voting go smoothly. In some states, election judges may help process absentee and mail-in ballots. Each state sets its own requirements for election judges.”
  3. Put a sign in your yard. Candidates will give you a sign for free. Easy-peasy, right? Yes, you will “out” your political leanings. So what? The lefties don’t care if you know about their partisan preferences. Why should you care if they know yours? Have courage! Of course, in our hyper-partisan political environment, opposing voters have been known to steal yard signs or otherwise destroy them. There are ways, however, to counteract that behavior!
  4. Knock on doors. Also known as political canvassing or the “ground game,” knocking on doors to persuade residents to vote for a candidate or to remind the already persuaded to turn out is key for most candidates. Door to door canvassing increases voter turnout by an average of nine percent. “Political canvassing occurs when candidates, staff, or volunteers from a political campaign attempt to directly contact voters by going door to door. This door knocking is part of an extensive outreach plan that helps put a face on a political campaign. The more people a candidate, staff, or volunteer of the campaign reaches, the further the campaign’s message spreads.”
  5. Make phone calls. This, too, is known as political canvassing. “Volunteer-led phone banks have been found to increase turnout by 3.8 percentage points.” Instead of walking neighborhood blocks, knocking on 20 doors an hour, you can volunteer to contact voters by phone.
  6. Write a check. If you’d rather make your contribution low key and out of sight, you can always donate to your preferred candidate’s campaign. Any amount makes a difference—because the difference between winning and losing an election often comes down to funding.

These are things we can all do.

The mid-terms are in November. Start looking into some of these ideas right now, as there is often an application process and training that has to happen for some of the more active roles.

Think about recruiting others who are like-minded to serve with you. Sometimes it’s easier if you have someone to share the effort with.

And don’t forget to appeal to God in prayer to promote good and to destroy evil.

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Daily Broadside | The Democrat Serpent Needs a Heel to the Head this November

Daily Verse | Nehemiah 13:24
Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah. I rebuked them and called curses down on them. I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair.

Thursday’s Reading: Esther 1-2

Happy Thursday, my friends.

I’ve consistently said that the Democrat party should be outlawed (examples here, here, here) and have noted many times that the Democrats need to be kicked to the curb completely this November. What I’d like to see is a tsunami of voting that destroys the Democrats’ hold on power, a defeat so devastating that it will take them years to regain what they lost, if ever they could.

I’m not the only one who feels that way about a political party that is trying to destroy this country by any means necessary; so does Deroy Murdoch.

The vital mission of everyone on the Republican-Right in the upcoming elections should be to demolish the Democrat Party and relegate it to the Smithsonian along with the relics of the Whig and Know Nothing parties.

This is no time for Republicans to squeak by at the polls. By heaping devastating defeats upon the Democrat Party, the GOP justifiably must treat this leftist force as a clear and present danger to the Republic. Everything the Democrat Party touches goes to hell. One would be hard-pressed to find a formerly GOP constituency where a Democrat win has made life better.

The Democrat Party of JFK, LBJ, and even Bill “Welfare Reform” Clinton is long gone. The Democrat Party of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, AOC, and Gavin Newsom has nothing positive to offer and deserves to be voted into oblivion.

Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes.

The problem here is that when we vote, we assume we have conservative candidates running, which is an ignorant assumption these days. Unfortunately, we often end up with establishment “Republicans” like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney who have an R next to their name but are functional Democrats in practice. That’s why voting “harder” doesn’t really get us anywhere.

However, the Democrats’ threat to our country is so great that getting rid of them is like cutting gangrene out of your foot. You just need to slice it out of the flesh now and worry about reconstructive surgery later.

We’re also a mostly evenly-divided country between Ds and Rs with lots of Independents. The only way to crush the Democrats at the polls in November is if enough indies and disaffected Dems vote Republican. Signs are good that parts of the traditional Dem base are disillusioned with the radicalism of the anti-American left, especially among Blacks and Hispanics.

Josh Hammer in this article wonders aloud just what Brandon’s intent is toward the American people.

[T]he better question to ask is not whether President Joe Biden is engaged in a cold war merely against the “deplorables.” We know the answer to that: yes. Instead, the more relevant question is whether the Biden administration is now engaged in a cold war against a broader target: the entire American citizenry. The answer to that question, based on all relevant data and metrics, seems to be the same: yes.

It’s easy to present the evidence, including inflation, open borders, profligate spending, restricted energy development, climate change alarmism, white supremacy gaslighting, radical abortion laws, sexually grooming school children, and creating a Ministry of Truth, to name a few of the radical Marxists’ tactics.

They’re madmen.

Murdock concludes:

Republicans and Libertarians henceforth should make up America’s two-party system. Voters then can choose between 80-proof and 150-proof varieties of limited, constitutionalist government. The Democrats’ deadly Wokistani socialism should be deported to Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela where it belongs. Better yet, the neo-Marxist Left’s parasitic philosophy should plague no nation and, instead, languish on library shelves.

Sure, but the only way to stamp out Marxism is to make teaching or advocating any of the totalitarian political ideologies illegal. We have free speech, but those ideas are the antithesis of free speech. We can’t allow our freedom to be co-opted by domestic enemies to enslave us, like the radical jihadists did in the “free” elections in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But that’s exactly what the Democrats are doing.

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Daily Broadside | What Leftists Want is Not What They’ll Get

Daily Verse | 2 Kings 5:26
But Elisha said to him, “Was not my spirit with you when the man got down from his chariot to meet you? Is this the time to take money, or to accept clothes, olive groves, vineyards, flocks, herds, or menservants or maidservants?”

Thursday’s Reading: 2 Kings 6-8

Thursday and I don’t know if you’re feeling it, but I am. The latest Issues & Insights editorial is called “America Moving From A Permission Society To A Repressive Regime” and it helps illuminate the slow but perceptible movement toward a society that can only operate as the government sees fit.

The Democrats who for now dominate policy making in Washington believe there is nothing so private that they cannot regulate, nothing so personal that it can’t be intruded upon. The only question is the pace of the arrogation of our freedoms. They have to be taken down in increments, so that the country won’t notice the slippery slope toward tyranny. In many cases, often regarding energy and conservation policies, restrictions are even celebrated by the loudest factions to help numb the public to the constant attacks on liberty.

Timothy Sandefur, author of “​​The Permission Society,” and a vice president of the Goldwater Institute, has said one of the fundamental problems with living in a permission society “is that it violates the principle of equality.”

“Who,” he says, “has to ask permission?”

The answer, of course, is “an inferior has to ask permission of a superior.”

That certainly describes the country we live in. But more and more, our “superiors” are closing our options before we can even ask for approval. What requires a government permit or certificate, or some other consent today will tomorrow by verboten.

They go on to suggest that restrictions on gun ownership, building regulations, and of social media acting as an agent of the state, are all examples of what happens in a “permission” society, then conclude:

There is a reason America’s ruling class, made up primarily of Democrats with a few RINOs on the fringes, is aptly labeled. It has no interest in protecting and promoting a free society – its objective is to control the country in a way that increases and consolidates its power. Small steps such as dishwasher guidelines and pool heater rules don’t do much damage on their own.

But combined with decades of directives, mandates, and restrictions that affect personal choices, manufacturing processes, and even expression, and they become a bulwark of fascism. Small offenses add up. We’ve come to live under a tyranny of regulation that grows without rest, a regime of repressive laws, a bureaucracy that inflates itself while making life harder for the supervised masses. The government has become a blob that ate American liberty.

In a different opinion piece, author J.B. Shurk writes of the Ten Steps to Totalitarianism:

  • Destruction of Religion
  • Gun Confiscation
  • Control Over Energy
  • Control Over Communication
  • Control Over Money
  • Doomsday Fearmongering
  • School Indoctrination
  • Elimination of Family
  • Elimination of Cars
  • Digital Identity Tracking

All noted and agreed. The only one I think is missing is Centralized Health Care. But we’re already on our way there with the creation of Obamacare and the refusal of the RINOs under Paul Ryan’s leadership to repeal that law when they had the chance under Trump.

Everyone can name something for each of the categories on that list. Religion? See the infestation of woke thinking and social justice practice under the guise of “church.” Guns? The never-ending assault on our Second Amendment rights with new restrictions imposed every time some lunatic shoots up a subway. Energy? Look at the instant destruction of our self-sustaining energy position as soon as the fool in the White House took office. Doomsday Fearmongering? What do you think the climate change alarmism is about? Indoctrination in schools? That’s the anti-American Howard Zinn agenda in our schools along with the sexualization and moral corruption of our kids.

And we’ve all recently heard about the government’s plans to digitize money. If that happens, which is likely, our self-determination and ability to make choices will be severely curtailed. We’ll be living in a social credit society.

The worst of it is that large segments of our society don’t, can’t and won’t see what’s happening. In 1984 an ex-KGB agent named Yuri Bezmenov talked openly about how the Soviets were undermining the patriotism of Americans. Listen to it and see whether what he said then still holds true today.

“What [psychological warfare] basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American, to such an extent, that despite of the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country. It’s a great brainwashing process that goes very slow and is divided in four basic stages.”

The KGB spent 85 percent of their time on psychological warfare against the U.S. And as he says, there’s no way to undo what has already been done. The most chilling irony is when he says that those who were brainwashed into a Marxist way of thinking and seeing and welcoming that ideology would be some of the first to be eliminated under such a regime. Why?

“Simply because the psychological shock when they will see in future what the beautiful society of equality and social justice means in practice, obviously they will revolt. They will be very unhappy, frustrated people. And the Marxist/Leninist regime does not tolerate this people … In future, this people will be simply fffp.”

They get the bullet, too.

That interview was in 1984—almost 40 years ago. Just think of how many more generations have been brainwashed and now occupy stations of influence in all of our major institutions. It would take another 40 years to replace them all if we started right now, as you read this. And starting right now is not going to happen.

I know you think I’m crazy for saying this, but … pay attention, pray, buy a gun if you haven’t, and make sure you have lots of ammo. You’re going to need it.

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Daily Broadside | This is Not a Drill — Draw Your Line and Defend It

Daily Verse | Matthew 28:19
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Wednesday’s Reading: Mark 1-3

It’s Wednesday, my friends, and thanks for reading. Never use a ferret’s tail to dust the drapes — unless you’ve first detached the tail from the ferret.

We continue to watch as the country formerly known as “the Land of the Free” collapses under the weight of the anti-American junta that is the Biden administration and the tyrannical Deep State that now operates openly as an enemy of freedom. From two weeks to flatten the curve, now in its 84th week, to Americans losing their jobs for refusing to take an ineffective, dangerous and experimental vaccine while being refused proven treatments for a virus unleashed on them, deliberately or not, by the Chinese, to a rigged election that installed a dim-bulb racist misogynist and compulsive liar in the White House, to the feds imprisoning misguided protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6 on false charges of an “armed insurrection” and denying them due process, to the massive failure and humiliation of the Afghanistan retreat, to a Democrat (read: Marxist) controlled Congress trying to push us into permanent bankruptcy by adding $3.5 trillion to our $28 trillion of national debt, to the DOJ labeling parents who protest critical race theory at school board meetings as terrorists — we are teetering on the brink of an overthrow of our republic.

If you’re not concerned, you haven’t been paying attention. This is not a drill — this is the real thing.

Fortunately, some signs of life are starting to appear. Southwest Airlines had to cancel thousands of flights over the weekend as pilots, flight attendants, gate agents, baggage handlers and other staff staged a sick-out in protest of the vaccine mandates declared by Resident Biden, who told us a few weeks ago that he was “losing patience” with us recalcitrant peasants. Southwest (new tagline: “You are not free to move about the country”) announced on October 4 that its workforce must be vaccinated by December 8 or face dismissal.

It’s not just Southwest that is feeling the heat. According to PJ Media’s Megan Fox, an insider at Southwest said that, “there are 22 airlines, along with truckers and other transportation employees represented in their ranks and more disruptions are to come.”

Most of them have joined an organization called FreedomFlyers.org, a web community set up to connect like-minded individuals. You can see this video on their website.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNRU7msPZoo

Perhaps the greatest piece of advice comes from Joshua Yoder, co-founder of the FreedomFlyers website, who was interviewed on Tucker Carlson.

“If there’s a disruption in one part of the system, it has a catastrophic effect among the rest of the system, which is going to affect commerce, it’s going to affect trade, and ultimately it’s going to affect the economy. We have all the control and the control comes from a simple word and that’s ‘no.’ We just don’t need to comply.”

My emphasis. This is what all Americans need to be willing to do. Our ancestors, as perfect or imperfect as they were, fought to secure our rights and protect them from tyrants. We are seeing them slip further and further from us and if we don’t start refusing to comply en masse, we will find ourselves permanently under the heel of the oligarchy that already controls our major institutions, including education, business, politics, law, entertainment and medicine.

In the book of Hebrews, the author writes, “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (12:4). In other words, you haven’t suffered martyrdom for the sake of your faith like others have. It’s not as bad or as hard as it could be, so stop complaining and step it up.

In a similar fashion, Winston Churchill once said about fighting for what is right,

“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

In my layman’s opinion, we are nearer “a precarious chance of survival” than we are “victory is sure.” For certain we “have not resisted to the point of shedding our blood.”

My prediction is that some of us are going to have to do so if there isn’t some kind of intervention sometime soon. Determine whether or not your freedom and freedom for your children is worth fighting for, then define your line in the sand and prepare to defend it.

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Daily Broadside | Our Needs Are More Important Than Your Needs

Daily Verse | Isaiah 20:25
The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

Happy Thursday, Broadsiders! Tapioca is the best kept secret of this generation.

I do a lot of reading across a variety of topics: American history, biography, cultural issues, apologetics, Christian living, marketing, creativity, branding, political thrillers and popular novels. I was flipping through a used book on social influence yesterday and found this inscribed on the endpaper:

“The needs of the one must be sacrificed [for] the the (sic) needs of the many.”

I think this is probably a reference to the scene in The Wrath of Khan, when Commander Spock says to Captain Kirk, “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Kirk answers, “Or the one.” This foreshadows a climatic scene near the end of the movie when Spock enters a highly radioactive chamber in order to fix the ship’s warp drive so the crew can escape a mortal threat. As a result of his heroic actions, Spock dies for the good of the many.

Spock’s logical conclusion is called Utilitarianism, which is based on the premise that “we ought to maximize the good, that is, bring about ‘the greatest amount of good for the greatest number.'” In other words, consideration of what is good for the collective outweighs consideration of what is good for the individual.

Even though it sounds logical, impartial and idyllic—and it is hard to argue with the claim that the morally right action is the one that produces the most good—the utilitarian worldview leaves us with several questions.

  • Who is given the power to determine what is morally “good”?
  • How does that person or group of people determine what is “good”?
  • If people should act for the “good” of the group but don’t, are they free to act immorally (ie. not doing what brings the most good to the greatest number of people)?
  • As people grow and mature, their ideas of what is “good” can change. What happens in a society with different generations who define “good” differently?
  • Who is going to enforce the principle that whatever you do, you do for the greater good?

That last question leads to perhaps the greatest problem with utilitarianism: it leads naturally to a totalitarian political state.

On the utilitarian moral ideal, however, individuals are not seen as responsible for their own lives, health, and happiness; rather, they are regarded as responsible for everyone’s life, health, and happiness. To be moral, according to utilitarianism, people must act so as to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number—and they must sacrifice their personal goals and values to achieve that end. This collectivist moral framework necessitates a collectivist political program. If the collective or the “moral experts” decide it is best for the individual to be forbidden from smoking—or forbidden from doing anything else, or required to do anything else—then the individual morally must obey. (My emphasis.)

Of course, the “collective” is nothing other than Marxism, which divides society into warring tribes. In this case, it’s those who “know” what the good is versus those who don’t. Our current political situation, while not fully Marxist (yet), is certainly showcasing it’s utilitarian chops.

  • You need to wear a mask to protect yourself and others. If you don’t, you’re literally killing people.
  • Joe Biden won the 2020 election fair and square. If you don’t believe that, you’re the greatest threat to our republic.
  • We must increase taxes to provide “free” college to everyone who wants it. You’re selfish for wanting to keep your money so that our young people remain uneducated.

But, in our case, the utilitarian philosophy is also twisted back on itself, so that the premise becomes, increasingly, “we ought to maximize the good, that is, bring about ‘the greatest amount of good’ for the few or the one.” The collective should sacrifice its “greatest good” for the “good” of the few.

  • Give up your power to marginalized brown and black people. Otherwise you’re a racist.
  • My pronouns are ze, zim and zher. The public must use them when addressing me or they are causing me great emotional harm.
  • Biological men who believe they are women must be treated as women. To deny their claim is to deny their personal identity.

You can see how easy it is to require external enforcement for the “greater good” because there are many citizens who don’t agree that these things are “good,” much less “good for all.” But once someone has such power, they don’t want to let go. And that’s the real threat of where utilitarianism and Marxism eventually lead — to absolute power.

“As Roger Scruton observed, our intellectuals were not attracted to Marxism because of the compelling truth that it outlined, but rather our intellectuals were attracted to Marxism because of the power that intellectuals like themselves would have under such a system. What we are dealing with is a raw and swollen case of libido dominandi, a lust for power. The licenses they grant and the laws they decree are simply the bit and bridle that they want you to put on, and they are standing off to the side, booted, spurred, and ready to ride.”

Marxism and Utilitarianism are incompatible with individual rights, such as those granted by the U.S. Constitution, which is why the progressive Left and the cultural Marxists are so dangerous. If you don’t want to live under an oligarchy or dictatorship, which is the destination of the road we’re currently on, you (and I) had better be paying attention and taking action to defend our rights.

They are also incompatible with biblical guidance, which lays out God’s moral code: to love God with your whole being, and to love others as you’d love yourself. Our referent is God’s definition of what is good, not an appointed bureaucrat’s.

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
— Micah 6:8

The book in which I found Spock’s quote was about why certain ideas or products go viral and others don’t. Why did the previous owner of this book choose to write his maxim in the book, which is otherwise free of markings (no highlighting, no underlining, no notes in the margins)?

Because the quote went viral. And as we’re seeing and experiencing, so did Marxism.

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Daily Broadside | Two U.S. Presidents Embraced Marxist Theory—at the Start of the 20th Century

Daily Verse | Psalm 111:1
I will extol the Lord with all my heart
    in the council of the upright and in the assembly.

July 1 and we’re in the middle of a series of short posts on how the craziness of the Left became what we call “cultural Marxism.” In the last two posts (here and here) I laid out, based on chapter six of Andrew Breitbart’s book, Righteous Indignation, how today’s insanity is rooted in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx.

Rousseau believed that humans are intrinsically good but are corrupted by society. That belief doesn’t square with either the Scriptures or with the Founders’ beliefs about human nature. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 51,

“If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

Karl Marx, who lived during the 19th century, believed that society itself formed human nature. Both Rousseau and Marx believed that men were not free or equal and that society was to blame. Both envisioned replacing the current society with a new one—Rousseau with a new “social contract” and Marx by destroying the surrounding society and replacing it with communism. Both believed that “communism” was the natural and best organizational structure for a flourishing society.

What’s amazing is that near the turn of 20th century, we elected two presidents who embraced what we call “Progressivism.” As Breitbart puts it, “Progressivism was a strain in American thought that merged the Hegelian dialectic with Marxism, backed by a rosy Rousseau-ian view of humanity and the general will—basically, it was soft Marxism without the class struggle” (RI, p.109).

The first president with this ideology was Teddy Roosevelt, who served from 1901 to 1909; the second was Woodrow Wilson, who held the office from 1913 to 1921. Both loathed the Constitution’s place as our authoritative document for how America’s government should work. Roosevelt said, “To hell with the Constitution when the people want coal!” and Wilson said, “Justly revered as our great constitution is, it could be stripped off and thrown aside like a garment, and the nation would still stand forth clothed in the living vestment of flesh and sinew, warm with the heart-blood of one people, ready to recreate constitutions and laws” (RI, pp.110-111).

We don’t need no stinkin’ constitution!

Breitbart goes on to write,

“Both Roosevelt and Wilson were far less concerned about the rights of individuals or the value of republicanism; it was the job of Great Leaders to hand down good governance. They thought that great decisions should be made on high by men of high thought, and that the dirty process of democracy just blocked any chance at true change. The philosophy paved the way for FDR, and it echoes all the way down to Obama” (RI, p.111).

Breitbart wrote this in 2011 and died in 2012; therefore, he wouldn’t have known that it now echoes all the way down to the dementia patient currently occupying the White House.

Nevertheless, there were two U.S. presidents in the early 1900s who embraced Marxist ideology, challenging the Founding Fathers’ ideology. I never knew that. Did you?

But that was just the beginning of it. Tomorrow we’ll look at the Frankfurt School, and that’s when this gets really interesting.