Consider this: What if, especially from the 1960s onward to the present, people of various groups had planned to destroy America, and to replace it with a Leftist totalitarian government for the United States that would be built along the lines of the Leftist governments of the world? If, separately in little enclaves and together in groups of various sizes, working mostly independently from each other but with the same goals in mind, they had developed methods and arguments and “solutions” to problems that were deliberately planned to reduce the United States to a dysfunctional, victim-based, class-warfare society. This society would have its own built-in “devils”—the rich, businessmen, the far right, the religious right, the military, conservatives of every kind, people who compete and achieve, and so on—and its own built-in “saviors”—the liberals, the social engineers, the left media, the activist left wing groups, and so on—and its own built-in special interest left wing groups to receive the benefits of the saviors.
This society would have education practices that taught children that morality and truth were relative, that they should be tolerant of everybody and everything—except the “devils,” of course, like conservatives, etc. They would be taught that sex was recreational, that business and competition and excellence were bad, and that good intentions—those motives sanctioned by the “saviors” and their followers, of course—excused anything. They would be taught that poverty caused crime, that anyone would riot and burn and loot if they were “deprived,” that all problems should be solved by the federal government, that everything anyone wants to be or to have or to do is, as long as it is a politically correct behavior or entitlement, to be considered a “right,” and so on.
This society would look remarkably like the one we have now. Consider the possibility that there is something fundamental to the Left wing that brings with it the society just described. Consider the possibility that much of what has happened to create this dysfunctional society has been a deliberate, carefully thought out and a developed set of activities and strategies by some of the leaders in the Left wing.
What if such things as: a high unmarried birth rate; broken families lacking basic Judeo-Christian values; badly educated people; polarized special interest, ethnic and racial groups; explosive cities filled with rebellion; dangerous schools; and so on—instead of being unintended bad results of well-intentioned reforms, were instead the inevitable and desired results of specific policies of the left wing? What if these were planned results, along with the other intentional policies leaning to multiculturalism, political correctness, activist judiciaries, identity politics, and so on. What if these policies and actions were helped along by well-intentioned people who had the best of motives and didn’t understand that the ideas they were following were set up to drive the United States into a dysfunctional society of a form that would allow for a “take-over” by Leftist forces, who would then drive the country into a fully Leftist state?
Many of those who set the policies for the reforms for the last thirty years cannot claim that they didn’t foresee the bad changes that would come from them—because there exists a body of writings that predicted the very results we have had, and why. They cannot claim that these policies sprang up self-generated each year out of that year’s need—because in order to have gotten to the stage they are in today, they had to build from roots sowed long ago, roots discussed in writing throughout the 20th Century by those who said that they meant to socialize the United States. They cannot claim that this was done by others, for the leadership now in the universities, in Leftist public interest groups, in Leftist mayoral governments in most large cities, the vast majority of those who work in the news and the entertainment media, and the Leftists in power in Washington, are those who grew up during the sixties and seventies and followed the philosophy in those writings that set out the methods to achieve a Leftist society.
They have achieved positions of power in those aspects of society that teach, disseminate information, provide the myths and images to follow, legislate, and control the factions in the inner cities, on campuses, and in so-called fringe groups. Many of those who claim to be trying to find solutions are actually developing policy along pre-determined lines and fomenting discord as part of their overall strategy. Their goal is a government that controls every aspect of life, from cradle to grave. This control eventually approaches that of the totalitarian state that determines everything. I am not saying that everyone who is Left wing is deliberately trying to destroy America. With some it is an attempt to achieve honorable goals, but they cannot see that the underlying beliefs they are following are disastrous for America. The problem is, whether deliberately or not, the Left’s fundamental beliefs demand that they proceed this way.
This doesn’t mean that all Liberals act deliberately to destroy America.
I am not talking about a vast conspiracy. In order to see how these activities can be organized and maintained over time, without everyone in it being part of “a conspiracy”, let’s look in on a group of people who are making a traffic plan for a city.
They take measurements and determine the number of cars that go by each spot in the city. They draw a grid, and plot the various things they have to control: streetlights, traffic lights, turning lanes and permission to turn at intersections, passing lanes, one-way streets, parking patterns and parking meters in some places, parking lot space designation, and so on. When they are done, the city runs well, traffic flows, people come into the city to work and to do their shopping, to see theaters and restaurants—to do all the things people do in a city. The planners are happy. Later, as the city grows, the planners, and new planners, modify the plan to accommodate the new patterns, the new businesses. As the city continues to grow, those planners who come later build upon the traffic plan of those who originally set forth the basic pattern that was designed to allow for growth. The city runs efficiently, and is an asset to the area.
This is the way it is supposed to work.
A Fable—Or Something
But let’s make up a fable about these traffic controllers. What if the planners—say, three people at the beginning of the basic traffic plan, in a smallish city, just happen to be the followers of an odd philosophy that one of them likes, “Noredmeatortheaterpetism”, a philosophy that dictates that they (i) refuse to eat meat; (ii) dislike the color red; (iii) hate the theater because it is isn’t “reality”; (iv) believe that animals should always be free and therefore that they should never be pets; and, (v) believe that shoes and the color green are essential to the soul.
They also have ideas that tell them that a city is a place where society can be molded into perfection. This leads them to see the traffic regulation committee is actually a wonderful opportunity to put their ideas into practice. The only problem they foresee is that other people don’t necessarily follow their philosophy, so they don’t talk about what they’re going to do. They just decide to help out the city and mankind, knowing in their hearts that they themselves are wonderful, caring people. They speak with the highest of motivations about everything they do.
They carefully design a traffic plan that incorporates their beliefs. Because they think that one of the most vicious things people can do is to own animals as pets, they carefully design the traffic grid to make it hard for people to turn into a street that has a pet store in it. People have to go around several blocks if they want to park near the pet store. Since this is bothersome, people go to pet stores in the suburbs. The traffic planners put costly parking meters on the streets nearby, and they make the street in front of the pet store into “no parking” street during several periods of the day. This hurts the pet store even more, and the owner moves it out of town.
The planners use the same kind of techniques on every street, helping some businesses and hindering others. Along with the pet stores, red signs, butcher shops and non-vegetarian restaurants, and theaters slowly lose business and move out of town. On the other hand, shoe stores, green signs, and vegetarian restaurants thrive, with large free parking, great traffic patterns, and so forth—making it a joy to shop in their stores, or dine in their restaurants.
As the pet stores, theaters, non-vegetarian restaurants and “red”-lovers move out of their shops, friends of the traffic planners, who belong to the same philosophical society, learn of the possibilities and move into these emptying shops with their own—“proper”—businesses. Traffic patterns are slowly changed for them. But they do not think that this is unfair, because they know that their philosophy is the true one, and they want to help humanity.
Slowly, over a period of years, the city starts to look the way they want it to. They never explicitly state their beliefs, or the fact that they are using the traffic regulation plan to achieve them. They believe that they are acting for the best of society. They have excellent self-defined intentions.
During this time, they also spread their philosophy, gaining converts in other cities. They also send traffic controllers—that they have trained—out into the country to become controllers for other cities. Other cities start looking “perfect” too.
The plan is perpetuated because the originators recognize that they will not always be in control, and they seek out others who believe the same way that they do. They also educate some people who do not feel as they do into thinking that it is good for the city to only have vegetarian restaurants, and no theaters, and so on. The new planners who come up modify the traffic plans—for the city is growing and changing—but they keep to the philosophy of those who originated the plan. For some of the new planners, it is a matter of philosophy, a philosophy of cities that they agree with. For others, who don’t know what philosophy is being followed, the plan, since it exists, is followed as a blueprint for the growth. Both of these groups of planners are following the kind of philosophical ideas that lived in the hearts of the originators of the plan; some of the new planners know they are following a philosophy, and others do not—but in both cases, the traffic plan is modified over time to look like the original guide.
Because after several years there are no more pet stores, non-vegetarian restaurants, red signs, or theaters in most cities, these establishments take on the aura of the richer suburbs, and people in the cities start to insult those who are customers of these “rich people’s shops.” Red becomes a “suburban color,” green a “people’s color.” Sociologists and psychologists write papers on how the color green and shoes bring pride to people, while the color red and pets signify selfishness and mean-spiritedness. Theories about why “real people” don’t like meat, red, theaters, and pets abound. Movements start, with supporters on both sides of the issues. Reform movements start, reactionaries form, and there is a great upheaval in the country.
A few revolutionaries who have examined history and thought about it all try to explain that the problems started when some people got control of the city traffic department. Immediately these revolutionaries are accused of trying to blame societies ills on street lights, when it is obvious that they are just friends of those rotten meat-eating, theater-going, pet-loving red-wearers. How absurd it is to think that traffic lights can somehow control people’s choice to wear green shoes! (Some university students, going after doctorates, write learned papers on how traffic lights themselves are probably evil, putting red higher above green—while others, forming a group that decries the idea that things that are put higher by a society are better, write equally learned papers showing that hierarchies are themselves evil, and anyone can see that anyways red means stop and green means go and therefore green is the active energy in humankind and red is the negative, evil one, thus proving again that the societal ideas about red (bad) and green (good) are correct. They run out and paint every red thing they see a rather startling shade of green. A new group—the yellowists—forms, preaching calm and compromise.)
The scene closes on three sets of placard-holding picketers shouting vicious insults at each other, and Congress forming a committee to look into urban underground theater movements.
Gee, I Wonder What the Fable Means . . .
Okay, I went a little overboard.
But—maybe I didn’t, now that I think about it. People who believe strongly in a philosophy often try to put it into action. They just know that most of them want only the best for the world. They seem to think that caring about people is qualification enough to take whatever action their philosophy requires—believing that even if it hurts individual persons, The People will be helped.
However, if they are wrong about the nature of their beliefs, if what they are actually doing is harmful to society—or harmful to a particular society, like America—then they are harming society despite their "good intentions". Or let me put it this way: if your actions are going to hurt individual persons—as opposed to that wonderful group known as The People—then you had better be sure that your philosophy is based on ideas that will work. This is like the way that doctors can only justify the pain involved with, say, the treatment for rabies or chemotherapy for cancer, because they are based on good, sound theory and they work in reality.
It is precisely this last little snag in the whole thing that causes the problem. Both the theory and the reality must work. A theory so beautiful it can bring tears of joy to the eyes of a statue does not necessarily have any relation to something that is going to actually work with real, individual human beings.
There is not necessarily direct relationships between intentions and actions, between philosophy and reality. A person may intend to delight a child, and decide to give it a chocolate candy bar. But if the child has diabetes, the child may be harmed, despite the wonderful intentions of the adult. Another person might determine that the child has diabetes, and give the child a moment of pain with a hypodermic of insulin. This second adult’s intentions are just as well-intended as the first, but because the second adult correctly assesses the child’s condition, the interaction has helped the child. This makes taking an action a tricky thing, and definitely not measurable by whether the recipient—in this case the child—is happy or unhappy about the action at the moment, or whether the motivation behind the action is noble.
Likewise, a few people who believe that making an animal into a pet is harmful to society may be harming society themselves if they are officials and are wrong in their beliefs, however well intentioned they are. This means that, in our traffic example, if they set up a traffic plan to injure some businesses and organizations and to help others based on their false beliefs, they will be creating a situation that is harmful to society.
Moreover, in trying to maintain the underpinnings of their design, they may perpetuate something that is harmful to society. Of course, they do not view it that way. They view their control as a way to implement their beliefs in society, instead of viewing the job of traffic control to have been a way to maximize the functioning of the city, the way it should be
Please note that although this is a traffic plan, the philosophical ideas were aimed at the city—and finally at the people in the city—not at the traffic. The traffic was used as a tool to socially engineer the city and the people. So if someone looked at the traffic pattern, they might not notice that it was being used as a tool to achieve a social belief. It would be just a traffic pattern.
The only way that things will deviate over time from the original philosophy is if there comes up a new group of people with new ideas and and awareness of what was happening. And with this major realization of how the philosophy of cities works, and the effects of traffic on that philosophy, this group of people deliberately and directly act on that insight to change the traffic patterns, to go out and invite pet shops and meat-serving restaurants, and so on.
Just as when our fabled revolutionaries pointed to the beginning of the trouble as being the time the traffic controllers got into power, it is wrong to say that they are claiming that traffic patterns make people hate pets, or parking lots force people to build theaters only for themselves and their rich neighbors. It is the philosophical ideas of the people who happened to use traffic control as a tool for their social engineering that are under attack. When I say that the social problems that envelop us so desperately today started their greatest driving force in the 1960s with the programs to help the poor and other minority groups, we are not blaming the poor or other minority groups for society’s problems. It is the philosophical ideas of the people in the 1960s, who read Leftist ideological books, to blame—the ideas that led them to use certain programs to help the poor and other minorities as the tools to achieve the kind of society they wanted.
Inside of a designing plan is a Design. That design is planned for a reason. That reason does not have to be the thing designed, which may only be a tool to achieve a higher agenda. By designing an institution or a set of rules and regulations to achieve a given end that may be quite different from the aims and purpose of the institution, people with a belief can engineer their beliefs into actuality. By recruiting people who believe as they do or who can be trained to believe as they do, they can perpetuate the system.
As I will say in many ways throughout my blog posts, I believe that this has happened throughout the United States. I believe that the Left—that is secular collectivists—have acted just like my hypothetical traffic controllers.
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson's Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Random Yak, Adam's Blog, Maggie's Notebook, basil's blog, The Pet Haven Blog, The Amboy Times, Leaning Straight Up, Cao's Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Pursuing Holiness, third world county, stikNstein... has no mercy, stikNstein... has no mercy, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Blue Star Chronicles, Planck's Constant, The Pink Flamingo, CORSARI D'ITALIA, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
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