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Leftist Organizations Are Not What They Seem
The CDC is, in theory, a non-political federal agency with the sole purpose of tracking and studying infectious diseases. Many people, however, have started to wonder if the CDC is not simply what it appears to be. Its response to COVID seemed to have more to do with political concerns than scientific ones, and whispered suggestions that perhaps the CDC is not just a neutral health agency have gone from conspiracy theories to reasonable questions. But still, it’s just a health agency, right? Even thinking that it may have ulterior motives feels a little strange.
The FBI is, in theory, a non-political federal agency with the sole purpose of enforcing federal law. Many people, however, have started to wonder if the FBI is not simply what it appears to be. Its endless investigations of Donald Trump (while it found no problems with the actions of various Clintons and Bidens) seemed to have more to do with political concerns than legal ones, and whispered suggestions that perhaps the FBI is not just a neutral law enforcement agency have gone from conspiracy theories to reasonable questions. But still, it’s just a law enforcement agency, right? Even thinking that it may have ulterior motives feels a little strange.
Our educational system is, in theory, a non-political complex series of organizations with the sole purpose of educating our children. Many people, however, have started to wonder if our educational system is not simply what it appears to be. Its endless efforts to indoctrinate our children (teaching them what to think rather than how to think) seems to have more to do with political concerns than educational ones, and whispered suggestions that perhaps our schools are not just a neutral educational system have gone from conspiracy theories to reasonable questions. But still, it’s just an educational system, right? Even thinking that it may have ulterior motives feels a little strange.
Our news media is, in theory, a non-political private industry with the sole purpose of informing our citizens about current events. Many people, however, have started to wonder if our news media is not simply what it appears to be. Its careful selections of which stories to cover (while presenting everything from a leftist viewpoint) seemed to have more to do with political concerns than informational ones, and whispered suggestions that perhaps our media organizations are not just a neutral news media have gone from conspiracy theories to reasonable questions. But still, it’s just news media, right? Even thinking that it may have ulterior motives feels a little strange.
I’ll stop because I’m getting bored, and you probably are too. Copying and pasting an entire article is boring – I feel like Joe Biden in college. Or Joe Biden in law school. Or Joe Biden in Congress.
Dang! There I go with the repetition thing again! Sorry!
But my point is that leftist organizations such as the CDC, the FBI, our educational system, our news media, the CIA, social media, the entertainment industry, most large & powerful corporations, and so on and so forth – all these organizations have a very interesting feature in common:
They are all not what they seem.
They are all simply leftist organizations, which exist to promote leftism. But none of them acknowledge that basic fact about their very reason for being.
Conservatives have The Hoover Institution. Leftists have the CDC, the FBI, the educational system, the news media, Hollywood, social media, and so on. None of which are ostensibly leftist organizations – they’re just the good guys.
I wonder how that power struggle will turn out?
The CDC pretends to be interested in our health. The FBI pretends to be interested in federal law. Our educational system pretends to be interested in educating children. Our news media pretends to be interested in informing the public.
And they do just enough of those things to provide cover for their true purpose: promoting leftism.
This is a reasonable tactic if you know that you’re on the wrong side of the argument.
If you thought that you might possibly be on the right side of the argument, then you would openly stand up for what you believe in. Only if you know that you’re wrong would you go to such great lengths to hide your true purpose.
If you know that any time someone challenges you to debate the issues, that you will lose decisively, then you plan from the outset to deflect criticisms.
C’mon, man! You can’t criticize the CDC – they’re trying to protect us from disease! You can’t criticize the FBI – they’re trying to protect us from criminals! You can’t criticize the educational establishment – they’re trying to educate our children! You can’t criticize the news media – they’re trying to inform the public!
So any criticism of leftism is automatically and instantly converted into an attack on benevolent organizations. An attack on America itself, really.
And leftists don’t have to do anything. Their cover provides them complete protection. They’ll never have to debate policies. Debates that they know they would lose. They just sit back and allow the opposition to destroy themselves by attacking school children or whatever.
Conservatives view this as underhanded and devious.
Leftists, however, view the same behavior as virtuous. When even the CDC understands that all that really matters is leftism, then they must be just wonderful people.
So there is no pressure from fellow leftists to change this behavior. And it’s working – leftists now control nearly every important American organization – so why would they change?
So it won’t change. Republicans can’t debate policy with Democrats. Republicans can only attack school children. That is their only recourse, to attempt to slow the advance of leftism.
Democrats know that they will lose every debate, because a long history of the results of leftist governments varies from disappointing to horrifying. So they prevent those debates from happening. By deflecting criticisms to ostensibly neutral and benevolent organizations. Which means that even if Republicans wanted to debate policies, they simply can’t. Which means leftists win the only way they can – by forfeit.
Leftism is the most destructive force on the planet over the past couple hundred years, at least. So leftists must hide behind organizations that appear nice. You nasty Republicans wouldn’t stoop so low as to attack nice benevolent organizations, would you? After all, us leftists are all about peace and love! Really!
It may sound devious to you. But it sounds virtuous to a leftist.
And thanks to the success of this system, we have a lot of leftists. And we have a consensus among all those leftists that this behavior is virtuous. Which makes it virtuous.
After all, this is a democracy, right?
Published in General
Depends on how you define conservative. In Europe, that is a lot closer to conservative.
Some conservatives in America hold to that view of conservatism.
Not all do. For instance, constitutional conservatives would not be establishment conservatives if the establishment violated the constitution.
Which is a big part of the divide in the right.
And it’s also what is causing serious shifting in political alignment. Empire is big government and big government is typically viewed as left. Except by anti-establishmentarian hippy lefties.
Ironically, nationalism is or should be the opposite of empire, and that is also considered right wing. And anti-establishmentarian hippy lefties don’t like that, either.
Also, the left is currently the establishment (and so is NYT). So anti-establishmentarian hippy lefties won’t like them.
So maybe the anti-establishmentarian hippy lefties aren’t very good arbiters of determining what is right wing or left wing.
I do know there’s political shifting going on and right/left, conservative/liberal are not the only differentiators right now. I’m not even sure socialism/capitalism is a good designator anymore. There are nationalists and globalists on the right and left. There are establishmentarian sand anti-establishmentarians on the right and left, as well. Using establishment to determine conservative or liberal is going to create confusion with no clarity.
Ricochet uses conservative as a label for policy positions. Using it as an ideology to preserve status quo is not going to be acceptable here even if Rollingstone wants to devise excuses of why the Right is to blame for the state of California.
Did you live though the cold war? – they loved every communist dictator that came along
From downplaying the Holodomar to shilling for Castro – the times have always believe this was the new workers paradise they were hoping for
Two thoughts.
Firstly, American conservatives since Lincoln are trying to preserve the fairly radical liberal ideas the American revolution.
Secondly, are you joking when you say that Rollingstone blamed the right for the sorry state of California.
I don’t know about Rollingstone specifically, but California liberal migrants ARE blaming republicans for the state of CA.
The origins of that are unknown to me, though equating establishment with right-wing seems like the most cogent argument for it.
I agree a part of them are. The other part (previously represented at Ricochet by Dennis and R. Fulmer) were/are more invested in preserving the establishment (stability and status quo). I’d put anyone railing against populism without making an argument for why populism is bad as conservatives for the establishment and status quo. Which is temperamental more than ideological.
Take the New York Times. When Clinton attacked Iraq, the NYT would justify the attacks by writing about Saddam’s WMD. I have screenshots of their charts detailing what Saddam had.. When Bush went to war, they wrote about how Saddam didn’t have WMD so they could attack Bush. When chemical shells were found, they wrote about how these weren’t justification for war because they were old, not manufactured recently, not the WMD we were looking for. Once Obama was President, they wanted to attack the military so they wrote about how the military folks weren’t getting proper health care for problems resulting from the chemical weapons they were destroying.
I for one wished that you would have kept repeating yourself. You left out so many. The IRS. The Federal Reserve. The SEC. The Agriculture Department. The Education Department. The CFPB. OSHA. The EPA. The FEC. The FCC. The FDA. The NIH. The Energy Department. The Interior Department (what is the “Interior”?). The Bureau of Land Management. The IHS. The OIA. The NSA (a really terrifying one). The CIA. The Commerce Department. NPR. PBC. The OIG. Homeland Security. Medicare. Medicaid. Obamacare. Social Security. HHS. HUD. &etc, &etc.&etc…..
Any centralized government entity can be weaponized by those in power. And is.
It should be the mission of Conservatives (and the Republican Party) to both oppose the formation of any new federal agencies or entities, and to promote the abolition of the large majority of current federal agencies or entities. Alas, such will never happen.
Don’t forget the TSA!
Sadly, many of these organizations came into existence under Republican administrations (looking at you, Nixon…). The idea that the Republican party is a small government-minded party has always been a myth.
The Right would be a lot better off with the comprehensive understanding that this is true.
The Democrats like welfare for people.
The Republicans like welfare for corporations.
There has been some blurring of the lines, especially over the last few years, but that is how the average person sees things, and in many ways they are right. If you frame it as a binary option, it’s not hard to see why a lot of people don’t support Republicans. In many ways, I can see their argument. I would much rather help poor people than huge corporations. If conservatives (not necessarily Big R Republicans) want to win this war, they need to understand this.
The GOP is not that interested in a properly disbursed prosperity as this country was founded on. They aren’t that interested in comprehensively understanding the problem, either. The time to get serious about this was between 1991 and the Iraq invasion.
The Republican Party has always included a large number of Progressives: Teddy Roosevelt. William Howard Taft. Herbert Hoover. Richard Nixon. Gerald Ford. Nelson Rockefeller. Christine Todd Whitman. Chris Christy. George H.W. Bush. George Romney. Mitt Romney. William Weld. Many currently serving federal office holders. Many former federal office holders. Many Republican governors, past and present. Many State Republican office holders. One might even say that Reagan, an FDR Democrat, was at one time in his life a Progressive. Same for Trump. And he never attempted to challenge the existence of Medicare and Social Security, quintessential Progressive redoubts. Same for Trump.
I think it’s more like they assume everyone ought to be a leftist . . .
Yes I omitted a MAJOR one. Thanks for filling in.
A good example to support your point is the Ex-Im Bank. I recall listening to Romney do an interview with Hugh Hewitt when Romney was running for President. Hewitt queried him about his view on the Ex Im Bank, and Romney was 100% supportive of it, of which Hewitt approved heartily. Progressives for corporate welfare both. The Ex Im Bank is with us still. Another Federally created entity that should be eliminated but which is probably immortal. Or at least alive and thriving until the fall of the Republic.
Okay, that’s funny.
Empire is one nation dominating and ruling over others for its own benefit. Slippery term, but arguably includes things like the Monroe Doctrine. I don’t agree that Empires are automatically of the Left (eg British, Roman, French, Ottoman….)
Why the opposite of Empire? How is American nationalism inconsistent with the US dominating (for eg) Honduras?
Of course, your view, as an international one not so much clouded by US grammar school boostering, is important to consider. Yet, I thought, as more clearly written here than I can extemporize:
By the early 1820s, many Latin American countries had won their independence from Spain or Portugal, with the U.S. government recognizing the new republics of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico in 1822. Yet both Britain and the United States worried that the powers of continental Europe would make future attempts to restore colonial regimes in the region. Russia had also inspired concerns of imperialism, with Czar Alexander I claiming sovereignty over territory in the Pacific Northwest and banning foreign ships from approaching that coast in 1821
***
This would seem to be the exact opposite of imperialism, but rather a self-interested anti-imperialism. Such as with the US objections to the Soviets putting nuclear missiles in Cuba.
If it had stopped at that, yes.
The Monroe Doctrine essentially defined the US’ “near abroad” and warned the European powers to stay out of it.
After that how did the US’ economic and political relationship with its near abroad evolve? What divergence from its interests did the US tolerate and what did it not tolerate? (Beyond the obvious nukes in Cuba. I’m thinking more along economic or political systems in for eg Chile.)
“Empire” is a word with a lot of history – I think they’ve evolved so that they deliver the same control and benefits (the heart of it) without the more obvious trappings (emperors, for one).
I prefer the term liberal hegemon. It does alot of things like an empire but it’s not quite an empire.
Consider France in Africa today. In terms of extracting raw materials and selling higher value manufactures (and ‘ruling’ through a completely bought elite) it does work like an empire, even though all the countries that use the Central African Franc or West African Franc are ‘independent’. (Irony: France uses the Euro, whatever they call it.)
Two things occur to me:
If you control the currency you control the country. (And controlling the currency of international trade sort of hooks in here, I feel?)
In French West Africa after WWII they could basically vote for full independence, or for some sort of association with France. All those territories, with the exception of Guinea, voted for association. iow, for a new version of the empire – where France had less responsibility, but retained a lot of control. I think that’s the current, and preferred, version of empire.
If the countries can vote for what they want. That ain’t empire.
Empires hold what they can. The one country that voted for full independence, Guinea, wasn’t treated that well. (And the one country that voted to remain a colony – I forget which – was sent back for a re-do.)
Regulatory agencies attract a certain personality type that the rest of us need to understand when dealing with them. When my kids were in school, I spent hundreds of hours attending our local school committee meetings. What did the committee members like about this role? Sitting in judgment of others. End of story. There was no issue or project that they were fired up about and committed to. They never initiated their own projects or investigations. They seldom even read the “packet” that they received each week from our superintendent. They clearly relished the sitting-in-judgment part of the job. These were not creative people or intellectually fired-up people.
I am not a politician and I could not have run for office successfully as they did. But if I had ever been able to get over that hurdle, if I had been on the committee, I’d have been in the schools every single day, talking to people, investigating problems, complimenting the teachers and staff and students for good work. I’d have gone to the games and the concerts and student debates. I’m just wired differently than the politicians are.
I know the CDC is the same way. Last winter I watched a documentary on the 1918 flu, and there were extensive interviews with Dr. Fauci and other high mucky-mucks at the CDC and NIH. It was made in 2018, and what jumped out at me was that they could have been talking about the covid-19 pandemic. Their knowledge and understanding and recommendations for the flu were exactly the same as they have been given us these past two years, and they were the same protocols that were used in 1918. There has been no growth.
It’s a good thing that the private sector was able to produce vaccines for the flu and for this latest coronavirus. If we were dependent on the government for solutions, we’d all be dead. :-)
This is where patriotism and nationalism diverge. While you can have empire building nationalism/patriotism that dominated the latter have of the NAZI regime (prior, it was reclaiming and reuniting the German nation, a different brand of nationalism), the nationalism taking shape in America over the last 5 years that was written about the the Virtues of Nationalism by Hazony and that dominates Israeli politics since Abraham’s sheep started grazing in Canaan is that a people have a right to their own government and control over their place.
Empire is oppositional to that ideal. France for the French, England for the English, Egypt for the Egyptian, Israel for the Jew. Empire seeks to have one nation ruling other nations – like Belgium and Germany ruling the EU countries.
And yes, I agree that the Monroe doctrine was imperial. So was the expansion era post Civil War. It is actually while studying it that I determined I was a nationalist. While my interest in history largely tapered off because of the Monroe Doctrine, I still managed to maintain the belief that the US Constitution is one of the more genius forms of government to have ever existed. And it is very much rooted in nationalistic ideals of people having a say in their government and the government being their own and made up of their own people.
When could you not say that?
Most folks would use nationalism to describe a different view on ownership and makeup of government.
They’d use German nationalism, for example, as a label for the idea that government should be the Germans’ and made up of their own German people.
They’d use a different term, like democratic, to describe an ideological belief that government should be the country’s residents‘ and made up of the resident people.
So, you are using a novel definition of nationalism.
There is nothing wrong with that, if you have some good reason for doing it! Don’t take it as a criticism.
But it does make for a dialog where
You have rightly accused me of being an abstract thinker in the past, and I realize that these four things only seen as problems by a person suffering from that malady.
But I offer this Comment anyway because, until you and the other concretizing thinkers have cured me of thinking abstractly, you should know what I think, if only to help you develop a treatment for my condition.
The thing is is that the word adequately describes what I’m thinking, but with Naziism and the imperial nationalism of the past, there’s a lot of established meaning that I don’t take into mine.
I totally get what you are saying and it is an issue I’ve had with it for a while.
However, my definition is 100% in keeping with the biblical account of Israel as a nation. In fact, my definition was largely influenced by the “nationalism” (my definition) of King Hezekiah.
So what word can be used? It isn’t patriotism that I’m talking about. I am talking about preserving ones own people, where the government acts in the interest of their own people, and where there’s a kind of libertarian NAP attitude between our nation and other nations. Nationalism seems like a totally adequate word.
Yes, I think that nationalism is the best word for that kind of ideology (system of beliefs) and it exactly matches common usage.
I misunderstood which idea you referring to, sorry.
(I thought you were describing the ideology that says that the government of a country should be made of the residents of the country, and represent their interests, without regard to nations. This is commonly referred to as the belief in “democratic” government, or “republican” government. If someone who considers himself to be of German nationality comes to live in a country with other nationalities, a “democrat” (in this sense) believes that the government should represent his interests equally with every other resident.
I also forgot to put a smily face on my teasing. I was relieved to see that you know me well enough to know that everything either of us writes is to be taken with a smile.
Conquering land has been the human lifestyle throughout recorded history. In that, the US has no unique history or unique sin. What makes the US exceptional is the Constitution and the unique relationship between citizen and government that it created. It isn’t our past that we should apologize for but the present. A free and prosperous people frittering away freedom and prosperity is disgraceful.