Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Collating in my mind this article by David Kahane and this article by Angelo M. Codevilla, a long-standing question of mine was answered.
How did SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and related or parallel groups go “radical,” meaning violent and anti-American, by the late 1960s, when I studied at a prominent Seminary and had, as it were, a ring-side seat?
I knew, but not clearly how, CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) was involved in that happening. I suspected KBG (Committee for State Security) was. Even before graduating at Seminary I gradually withdrew from the circles that, over time, would have afforded me a clear view of what happened — at the cost, of course, of being drawn deeper into those circles, which I inchoately felt were dirty. I suspected things and elected to pull back before throwing in, as it were, and as well I could have. No regrets.
The question — What happened there, then, in that situation, how did it turn from patriotic, liberal social democracy, with which I then identified, to anti-American, nasty power-and rent-seeking? — drove upon me through these years. It might be stated this way: How did Saul Alinsky become promoted as a triumphant hero when so many powerful structures of national life were in place to prevent exactly that from happening?
Pithily put, KGB beat CIA and, into the bargain, unveiled George F. Kennan’s doctrine of containment as both unknowledgeable (docta = safe, secure knowledge) and futile.
By VJ Day in 1945, what we may call the Old Left — the liberals, the social democrats, the Wilsonians and Rooseveltians — were in firm control of the mechanisms of the US government, many state and local governments and most large voluntary organizations (= moneyed foundations) that help structure and operate the US as a nation state. Some individuals in those structures were Democrats, some Republicans. There was among them a shared patriotism, internationalism, socialism and “social conscience” typified by a characteristic founding of the day (1947), Americans for Democratic Action.
The Kennedy Clan, Dwight Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Reinhold Niebuhr represented the Old Left. Ronald Reagan emerged from it, as did many, including this writer. The 1940s and 1950s in the US were the apogee of the Old Left’s influence in the US and around the world.
Who grew up under their aegis then recall it as terrifying (bomb shelters, desk drills, fear mongering) and fun (Disney, thick chocolate malts, freedom to be and experiment), apparently settled, expansive, exciting, muscular, capable.
The Old Left was patriotic. They considered themselves Americans. They loved their country and instinctively not only supported the intent of the Monroe Doctrine but also the propagation of American methods and values overseas and the pushing of assistance to foreigners who wanted to learn and adopt those methods and values. They were evangelical regarding the value of their country and the potential universality or at least helpfulness of her ways.
Faced by the threat of Soviet hegemonism over US and allied sovereignties — a long-standing, powerful, perspicacious, probing, relentless threat — the Old Left summoned a characteristically humanist posture: educate, help develop economies and guarantee friendly governments on the flanks of the US strategic defensive perimeter. This, it was thought, would contain the rampant Soviet bear. Ring it with an indefatigable fence. (Codevilla compares the fence, felicitously I think, to setting backfires to deny a conflagration fuel.)
Meanwhile, the Soviet state security mechanism, KGB, operated an array of anti-American activities along US strategic defensive perimeters as well as inside US sovereign territory, to include military, scientific and industrial espionage and radicalization — by inculcating envy — of voluntary organizations and academic faculties and their curricula.
Concurrently, Red Chinese and other nations mounted parallel and coextensive operations inside US sovereign territory and along her strategic defensive perimeter, to include the Asian littoral and in particular its left flank in the Southwest Pacific: Vietnam.
Surveying intense and energetic foreign activity focused inside and peripherally against US welfare and sovereignty, the Old Left extended their doctrine of containment from foreign policy, its original application, to domestic policy. They (e.g., CIA) created voluntary organizations, such as SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), to hold their kids in the liberal left fold and prevent them from becoming communist and anti-American. Similar to organizing church or synagogue youth groups to keep youngsters out of trouble, e.g., in those days, becoming a Beatnik.
It did not work. Those voluntary organizations, set up as fences or backfires against KGB and parallel activities inside the US, were overtaken by KGB-inspired and-trained radicals, in many cases Old Leftists’ own offspring, e.g., William Ayers. KGB radicalized Old Leftists’ kids by creating and exploiting opportunities presented by birth control, pop culture, latent queering, free association of the sexes, drugs, step parents and academe (things the Soviet deemed “decadence”). Those kids took to dismantling US values, law and operating structures.
Call them New Leftists. Really, call them criminals. They became not their parents’ sons and daughters. They were alienated from the US, not patriots but anti-patriots. They identified as anti-Americans and condemned their mother country. Criminals. They claimed to despise the US. Criminals. They supported not only her ridicule and demise but also the destruction of American methods and values overseas and the denial of assistance to foreigners who wanted to learn and adopt those methods and values. They were evangelical regarding the valuelessness of their country and the purblind parochialism — nay, the “racism,” “colonialism,” “sexism” and “imperialism” — of her nature and ways.
They held their mother country up to derision, as despicable. Criminals. They demanded world government, through the United Nations, the teaching of young people from birth up to reject American heritage in favor of what they came to call “multiculturalism” and “starting from zero,” they argued for moral equivalence of bad and good actors, they called the US Constitution obsolete and inadequate, made by racists, misogynists and slavers and therefore dismissible. They became in every way they could think of being, nasty little shits.
They remain so to this day. They radicalized — i.e. criminalized — the Democratic Party starting in 1968 and control it since 1972. Almost every Democrat in the US Congress, indeed the US, today is a New Leftist. A criminal. All the party’s senior leaders are.
The “great protest” of the 1960s was by KGB-inspired New Left kids against their patriotic Old Left parents. Both, really, criminals. It was and remains a family affair, as affairs always are. A patriotic but unwise generation were compelled by time, their own stupidity and circumstance to hand off stewardship of American destiny to their anti-American, bumptiously criminal offspring.
That is a remarkable change of conditions and one which cannot be accomplished without external influence. Families do not upend themselves unless a foreign agent has gotten inside.
The Old Left was powerless to prevent. Indeed, they created the conditions used to burn them. Humanist posture — “Educate the bastards and break every bone in their body to do it, if necessary.” — failed them. They strove mightily, with every one of their resources of time, money, energy, networks and learning, to realize their ambitions. But those ambitions subverted reality and were, in consequence, criminal.
Yet, populations they thought to educate and prosper and governments they thought to control — and what is more important, offspring they thought to protect from communist blandishments — jettisoned their advice and went straight up communist in theory and fascist in fact. KGB poured fuels of doubt and envy on the Old Left’s backfires, driving youthful forces they created under, over, around and through the Old Left’s containment fences, demonstrating that an enemy cannot be held at bay.
Containment did not work – even though Kennan meant it as an offensive, not a defensive strategy and tactic. It cannot work. It does not work.
While it is widely known and mostly settled that an enemy cannot be appeased, it is not widely known and is hardly settled that an enemy cannot be corralled. Containment is corrallment. Its outcome is painful.
Life, especially human life, is far more capable than a fire or brute force. Life is perpetual kinesis and human life is perpetual surging by, for and towards expansion. Will is involved, and purpose. Expansion is the goal and the driver. Trying to contain these surging powers of being is akin to leaving heat and lid on a pressure cooker. Not only will your mission fail, you will be injured when the corral blows into you.
The only way to face a belligerent enemy is to defeat them through attack to victory and then rearrange their country to preclude their ever again — or at least as long as can be engineered — raising a hostile will. Failing ability to do that, one makes peace with an enemy under the best terms possible then tries to look as happy as one can.
KGB overwhelmed CIA by turning CIA backfires against KGB into KGB fire-storms against CIA. Very competent.
This could be done because the Old Left essayed to stop an enemy by containing his activity. They failed in WWII (Iron Curtain, rise of Red China) (and here). They failed in Korea (38th Parallel). They failed in Vietnam (DMZ). They failed at home (Weather Underground, Black Panthers, Berrigan Brothers, Daniel Ellsberg, Barbara Marx Hubbard, nearly the entire professoriate). They failed in the Middle East (Saddam Hussein, Iran, Sauds, Assads, Hizbollah, Egypt) until one of their own, George W. Bush, heretically (to Old and New Leftists alike, but for different reasons) resolved to ignore containment and instead to defeat straight on at least Saddam Hussein and subsequent exploiters in Iraq. (Regrettably, he did not resolve to defeat the Ayatollahs in Persia and the Sauds in Arabia Deserta, so, those tasks remain ahead for the US.) Those enemies went over, under, around or through the barriers the Old Left erected to contain them.
Why? Humanism (educate the bastards so they can have a good life and economy) is naive. Neither opportunity nor ability is equal, nor can be made so, across any population whatsoever. Not only can education not reach everyone, neither can it pacify an aggressive personality or motivate a prosperous economy. Education cannot prevent war. Assuming it can is the central “vision,” as humanists call it, of humanism. It is a criminal’s vision. Even indoctrination will not do it. Drugs can, but by creating zombies, and doing that illustrates the point that humanism fails from naiveté. If you have to drug them, your education is worthless.
An enemy is successfully attacked or submitted to. CIA/USA submitted to KGB. And that’s where we stand today, the USA’s sitrep. KGB continues today under other names, but, same friendly service, and with strong systemic domestic US support. New Leftists have hands on the mechanisms of US government, education and voluntary organizations. Criminals ruling, as they like to say, USA.
The Old Left — the liberal socialists, Incumbent’s parents, step-father and grandparents, i.e., criminals — was led by the CIA, supporting the US against the USSR by lighting leftist backfires (education, financial aid, cultural training, humanistic ideology and organizations) against KGB’s march through nations on the US’s strategic defensive perimeter and on US sovereign territory.
The New Left, the radicals, to include Incumbent and friends, was driven into existence by KGB, against the US. I suspect Incumbent’s maternal grandfather was KGB, having been bent from a role in CIA.
KGB won the Cold War. Today they control core and some periphery of the former USSR, primarily as criminal organizations united with government ones.
Incumbent’s vita illustrates this happening. His career signals the transition from patriotic Old Left to anti-American New Left having hands on the mechanisms of governments, schools and voluntary organizations/foundations (for-and non-profit corporations) of the US. KGB did this by exploiting the humanist naiveté of the Old Left. Very competent.
Best would have been to screw up courage and defeat the Soviet in 1945. Now, before detritus of the Soviet still subverting US sovereignty and probing her strategic defensive perimeters can be defeated, KGB’s progeny calling themselves Americans while hating America — e.g., Incumbent and friends — have to be pried off the mechanisms of US governments. Defeating their enabling foundations and academic faculties as well would not speed amiss.
As I see it, the Middle East, in any of its lineaments, does not float a lethal threat to US sovereignty. Threats yes, but not lethal ones, not even from the myriad madrassahs Saud establishes on US sovereign territory, especially at US universities and colleges, for long-term subversion and lawfare. Iran is ever Xerxes I whipping the Hellespont in gorgeous oriental exaggeration, a quaint Uranian tutti-frutti known as power.
US strategic partners in the Middle East are able to defeat Iran with some assistance from the US. In any case, it’s their fevered brains — clerical and scholastic — causing their problems, so let them sort themselves out. And as well, Europeans should protect their own interests in the Middle East. They are able or can [should!] make themselves so.
Afghanistan, however, is a near-lethal threat by way of its drug production, smuggling and trans-shipment accommodations. Karzai is corrupt. There are relatively simple ways to eliminate that threat and several willing partners for the effort, to include Russia if the goal is not outposts on a Russian flank.
Russia, too, is not a lethal threat to US sovereignty, as I see it. Soviet detritus threatens, especially KGB progeny claiming US citizenship. But these threats are not lethal and can be defeated through normal US electoral and judicial processes. Fundamentally, US and Russia are brothers on the world stage along with India. By Russia I do not mean communism, I mean Russia the ancient, prolific, profound nation state.
Central and South America are not lethal threats to US sovereignty. Threats, yes, not lethal. The “drug trade” is an internal US problem that can be solved internally and with perhaps military expedition coincident with Mexican participation.
Red China (and here) is a lethal threat to US sovereignty. Culturally, Chinese live in another world, the only world, to them, and anything else, if there could be anything else, is worthless and enslaveable. China alone, China only. Some Chinese learn that there are others of worth, but Red Chinese leadership hold the traditional view of Chinese racial, moral, economic, cultural, national … what? … superiority? … well, more than that, really: exclusivity, sole proprietorship of Heaven, i.e, earth.
In this respect Red China (and here) is similar to Caliphism(1). However, China is deeper and wider than Caliphism, not so fevered, and not pieced out so extensively. Long lines of communication to natural resources, especially fossil fuels, and inability to control sea and air lanes are China’s strategic problems. They are hoping to control both from space. China (and here) can be successfully attacked through her southwestern flank, across Tibet, who deserves liberation, with a holding force at her eastern flank ready to punch in as her western defense rolls back eastward.
Africa is a lethal threat to US sovereignty for its natural resources, currently being overrun by China, and geographical position as well as by its cultural evangelicalism, which translates geopolitically into New Left, Caliphist and cultural imperialism.
The true name of Terrorism, as it is deemed, mistakenly, is: Caliphism.
Footnotes
1 I use the term in distinction to Islam this way: Caliphism is idolatrous (i.e., demonic) Islam, specifically idolatry of a man and a book; Islam is a unitarian religion nearly lost since the rise of Shia and the ascendency of Asharite moral and intellectual savagery.
Update I: Socialists’ attraction to anti-American strongmen.
Update II: 0 Speaks, The Heart Sinks
Update III: Scott Johnson at Power Line and Elliott Abrams at The Weekly Standard
Update IV: Here they go again.
Update V: Tom Rogan at Washington Free Beacon
Update VI: Matthew Continetti: Power Precedes Politics
Update VII: And Al Saud intends to keep it up. See also here.
Update VIII: Ed Driscoll on Americans who are not anti-war, just on the other side, the Communist side, anti-America.
Update IX: Regarding developments in North Korea.
Update X: Bruce Thornton: The Truth About Colonialism.
Update 11: Something to consider: Could Russia Breakup After Putin?
Update 12: Patrick Buchanan: Is Trumpism The New Nationalism?
Update 13: Traitor To His Class [:-)] Page 2
Nothing is more terrifying to the elite than Trump’s embrace of a tangible American nationalism.
Update 14: Richard Fernandez: The End Of Containment
One sits at table with a long-run hostile and rockets a short-run hostile as a message to the long-run hostile that they had better climb down. That is a Mafia communication technique that did not escape China’s attention.
Update 15: Todd Wood: America really did have a Manchurian Candidate in the White House
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
