Disclaimer: This post is a manifesto of sorts, formally titled “Permanent Revolution: The Return of Trotskyism in the Age of Obama.” Herein I wish to illuminate the imbedded revolutionaries now plaguing this nation. (PRINT)
With even a little study, it becomes evident that revolutionary ideals persist in the hearts of our fellow countrymen. Resistance, in some form or another, is an inherently American virtue. Thomas Jefferson codified this ideal with a preemptive warning in the Declaration of Independence, saying, “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Jefferson even legitimized a continually bloody revolution in his famous 1797 letter:
“What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
On the heels of the American Revolution, oppressed societies around the globe were inspired to take up arms against their Ruling Class. This often manifested into internal conflicts, which America faced with the devastation of our Civil War. In modern times, many now believe we have transcended the threat of another bloody revolution. Have we really? It’s hard to say. Revolutionaries are generally people attempting to overthrow its government; I am unsure what to make of a revolutionary government attempting to overthrow its people.
I. Imbedded Revolutionaries
We generally refer to this relationship, where government unjustly rules over its people, as tyranny. We also believe the struggle between liberty and tyranny was something our Founders faced, or a reality posed upon people in foreign countries. Have we, through the sacrifices of those who came before us, escaped the grasp of tyranny on our own shores?
Since our Founders warned us not to be easily sedated by government, and thusly Americans are cynical of those in power, our government has resorted to remain a hair-trigger “soft tyranny.” Congress continually usurps their Constitutional powers and delegates responsibility to unelected bureaucrats, with the concurrence of an increasingly political Judicial Branch, revolutionized by justices like Earl Warren, who envisioned a ”living Constitution” that adapted to “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” This month’s confirmation of Elena Kagan demonstrates how little regard they have for individual liberties. These imbedded revolutionaries are defined by their unified and profound dislike of America for what it is. Drawing on the recent legislative examples of health care, student loans, and financial reform, these bureaucratic powers are now ready to pounce on individuals who step out of line, with the backing of law, bestowed upon them by an imprudent populace. Yes, our hubristic sense of protection allowed this happen.
Yet Ecclesiastes 1:9 reminds us, “There is nothing new under the sun.” The world has seen its share of usurped powers by illegitimate governments, and its share of revolutionary upheaval. Emboldened by the Americans, France followed suit in 1789 with its own French Revolution, a ten-year period of political and social turmoil. Although initially a supporter of the French Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, who had previously “sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man,” revealed in a 1793 letter his dismay over the excesses of bloodshed in France, expressing “too great a sensibility at the partial evil by which it’s object has been accomplished there.”
And bloody it was. The French Revolution was instigated in part by the Jacobin Maximilien Robespierre, an advocate of the left-wing bourgeoisie during the Reign of Terror. Robespierre was the chief revolutionary against the royal crown and inspired the French to eventually execute their king, Louis XVI, by guillotine.
Robespierre was known for giving incredible speeches, saying, “Terror is nothing else than swift, severe, indomitable justice; it flows, then, from virtue,” and also, “The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.” The French people recognized Robespierre’s ambitions, and he, along with his fellow Jacobins, eventually faced the same guillotine as the bourgeoisie he railed against. France experienced multiple revolutions until Napoleon entered the void and set the nation on its course to become a social market, and as a free - albeit extraneously regulated - people.
Another agent of revolution, Vladimir Lenin, was leader of the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917, and was made First Premier of the Soviet Union that same year. During the Bolshevik Revolution, communists eventually overthrew Tsar Nicholas II, executed him along with his wife and five children, and transformed the Soviet Union into the largest socialist nation the world had ever seen.
Karl Marx’s socialist model became the bulwark movement of Lenin’s Revolution. Lenin, like Robespierre, became an Imbedded Revolutionary in his battle against capitalism, saying, “Our business is to help get everything possible done to make sure the ‘last’ chance for a peaceful development of the revolution.” His initial insurrection was followed by permanent class struggle, against the bourgeoisie, at the behest of the proletariat working class. Accordingly, the Bolsheviks seized and redistributed all private land to the public. Additionally, all Russian banks were nationalized, private bank accounts were confiscated, control of the factories were handed over to the Soviets, and wages were fixed at higher rates, as a shorter, eight-hour working day was introduced.
Yet, what once was a force for the people turned into a force against the people. In 1919, a mere two years after the Revolution, Lenin did an about face: “While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.” Due to its oppression and lack of free market forces, the Russian enterprise quickly sank, relying on corporate espionage for survival, until the movement collapsed in 1989.
Throughout world history, it happens time and again; revolutionaries storm the capital, overthrow the ruling party, only to insert themselves as the new, benevolent rulers. But as the new wears off, so does the benevolence, for as Lord Acton reminds us, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In this, the American Revolution remains an outlier, and as such is exceptional, for it returned natural rights, and the levers of government, to the people.
Now, our basic democratic tenets are being threatened. Humans are learning organisms, and would-be tyrants have the same access to history you and I have. They are able to learn what has and has not worked before, and adapt accordingly. Like a virus, statists find ways to attach themselves to the Body Politic, infesting it and staying there. These imbedded revolutionaries are managing to stay in control by waging a “Permanent Revolution” from within.
II. Permanent Revolutionaries
To understand the subsequent upheavals of history, and what we now potentially face, it is important to understand the ideology behind these related movements. I believe “Permanent Revolution” is now in its third round of global implementation. This theory was conceived by Karl Marx, further developed by Leon Trotsky, and is currently being deployed by Barack Obama. Karl Marx first penned the words “Permanent Revolution” in his 1844 book, The Holy Family, discussing the onset of the French Revolution:
“Napoleon, of course, already discerned the essence of the modern state; he understood that it is based on the unhampered development of bourgeois society, on the free movement of private interest, etc. He decided to recognise and protect this basis. He was no terrorist with his head in the clouds. Yet at the same time he still regarded the state as an end in itself and civil life only as a treasurer and his subordinate which must have no will of its own. He perfected the [Reign of] Terror by substituting permanent war for permanent revolution. He fed the egoism of the French nation to complete satiety but demanded also the sacrifice of bourgeois business, enjoyments, wealth, etc., whenever this was required by the political aim of conquest. If he despotically suppressed the liberalism of bourgeois society — the political idealism of its daily practice — he showed no more consideration for its essential material interests, trade and industry, whenever they conflicted with his political interests.”
In his famous 1850 Address, Marx sought “to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.”
Lenin’s heir apparent, Leon Trotsky, took Marx’s theory and made it his own, commencing his development it as early as 1904. Trotsky planned the rapid implementation of Permanent Revolution, through the means of social upheaval:
“The permanent revolution, in the sense which Marx attached to this concept, means a revolution which makes no compromise with any single form of class rule, which does not stop at the democratic stage, which goes over to socialist measures and to war against reaction from without; that is, a revolution whose every successive stage is rooted in the preceding one and which can end only in complete liquidation.”
As Lenin succumbed to stroke, Joseph Stalin seized leadership of the Soviet Union, suppressing Permanent Revolution in favor of party purity, through the implementation of ”Purges,” and his dominant theory of isolationism he called “Socialism in One Country,” which completely opposed Permanent Revolution. Regarding this shift, a retrospective Trotsky wrote in his essay Permanent Revolution, in 1929:
“The perspective of permanent revolution may be summarized in the following way: the complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is conceivable only in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, leaning on the peasantry. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which would inevitably place on the order of the day not only democratic but socialistic tasks as well, would at the same time give a powerful impetus to the international socialist revolution. Only the victory of the proletariat in the West could protect Russia from bourgeois restoration and assure it the possibility of rounding out the establishment of socialism.”
His status as the castaway leader of “what could have been” solidified, and today, leftists the world over idolize and emulate Trotsky as a hero, forgetting he was a mass murderer himself, responsible for the massacre of hundreds of thousands, and was in fact critical of Stalin for not going “far enough” with his militarization of the state.
Since Trotsky continued arguing from his exile in Mexico that Stalin’s revolution ran counter to the forces that galvanized the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution, an assassin eventually snuffed him out with a pick axe to the head. Trotsky lamented what he viewed as the Soviet abandonment of Permanent Revolution, and continued to champion the implementation of his strategy in “underdeveloped” nations, particularly in Latin America. His movement did not end there, however; through the leftist movements in our country in the past century, Permanent Revolution was perfected for use in America, the most developed country in the world.
III. America Shifts
The American people are beginning to sense the imposition of a “Ruling Class” regulating and controlling more private matters than ever before. How this came to pass in America depends upon, yet transcends, typical populist politics, because our nation has experienced that before, in varying degrees. The enabling issue for our Imbedded Revolutionaries is the use of class warfare, as it was in France, and as it was in Russia, discussed herein. These Revolutionaries, astute as they are, have simply adapted their methods of class warfare to their new environment.
As socialist movements have never had populist support in the United States, and because bold-faced tyrants would have little success in American politics, the statists - that is, those who believe in state control over individual liberties - use the language voters want to hear to imbed themselves in all facets of government. This is nothing new, as in 1856, America’s famous observer, Alexis de Tocqueville, noted, “Despots themselves don’t deny that freedom is a wonderful thing, they only want to limit it to themselves; they argue that everyone else is unworthy of it.”
The Ruling Class has accumulated power, concentrating it in places outside democratic checks and balances, all while dumping massive entitlements to those at the bottom, rewarding failure at both top and bottom of economic status, depending on their allegiance to the regime. Thus the Ruling Class has entrenched itself in a codependent symbiosis with the interests of both the rich and poor. Statist politicians parse us apart into voting blocs with class warfare, so they can implement their agenda without having to defend it for its merit, while wholesale collusion between business and government thrives at our expense. Like the Soviet Union, innovation falters due to intervention in the market.
The topic is timely; Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute explores in his book The Battle the fact that, historically, 70% of Americans prefer a free market to a socialist economy “even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time,” according to Pew Research Center archives. Brooks then asks the question: why are the 30% in charge of the rest of us? Whatever happened to earned success?
Going further, Angelo Codevilla explains in his epic article that the “The Ruling Class” has found its party, and it is Democrat. Long ago, populism put its roots down in the Democratic Party. Before Barack Obama, Robert Kennedy launched the most successful populist movement of our time. In 1968, RFK remade both parties during his presidential campaign; his Democratic Party by Permanent Revolution, and the other, the leftover Republicans, by consequence.
Robert, like his brother John, and like Robespierre, was renowned for his speeches, and relied on the existing undercurrent of Permanent Revolution for political success. At the time, the Civil Rights struggle was boiling over in the Southern Freedom Movement, organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) with the help of college students from Berkeley. RFK was happy to be the political vehicle for their concerns. In 1966, RFK warned from the Senate floor: “A revolution is coming — a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough — But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.”
Riding the inevitability of the conflict afoot, Robert Kennedy was astute enough to recognize the folly of tyranny, stating, “The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use — of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public.” Accordingly, he was not an advocate for an imbedded bureaucratic revolution, but merely a social and cultural one, noting, “Every dictatorship has ultimately strangled in the web of repression it wove for its people, making mistakes that could not be corrected because criticism was prohibited.”
Like those revolutionaries before him, his life also ended tragically. Also like the revolutionaries before him, he had learned to modify his movement for the moment, as would the revolutionaries in his wake. After RFK, Permanent Revolution was methodized again in Saul Alinsky’s 1972 manual Rules for Radicals. Alinsky, a Chicago-based community organizer, thoroughly understood Trotskyism and knew how to adapt it to a changing landscape. This book is important in recognizing the maturation of Permanent Revolution into bureaucratic entrenchment; as described by the author: ”The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.” Alinsky elaborated:
“Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system.”
IV. Postmodern Socialism
No doubt Alinsky had influence on another young community organizer from Chicago, Barack Obama, and his campaign manager, David Axelrod. Populism is nothing new for Axelrod, one of the most successful political scientists of our time, who, at 13, sold buttons for Robert Kennedy. Unlike the bourgeois Kennedy, Obama offered a bolder opportunity for Permanent Revolution. In his Axelrod-reviewed book, Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama wrote, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” As tabla rasa, Obama was elected, portraying himself as a centrist to the centrists, and a leftist to the leftists.
Obama cannot, however, perpetuate this myth for his reelection in 2012. Obama has revealed his intentions, becoming a beacon of Postmodern Socialism; he is friend of the richest, savior of the poorest, and unconcerned with offending those simpletons that “cling to their guns and religion.” He has implemented class warfare legislatively with interest-driven stimulus, health care, student loan, and financial reform, and he proposes more. He understands how to achieve Permanent Revolution, using the Legislative Branch to do most of his bidding for him. Taking another page from Marx’s playbook, he has developed “Proletariat Internationalism” into his own brand of universalism, steadily recognized as nothing more than the progressive Wilsonian agenda, both in foreign and domestic affairs, wrapped in a populist banner. It’s dangerous on both fronts.
As is often the case with populism, however, the political sands have shifted, necessitating a change in Obama’s rhetoric. Consider the differences between these two speeches; first Obama’s “This is our moment” speech given in St. Paul during the campaign, on 3 June 2008:
“If we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.”
Averaging a speech a day since inauguration, the President’s rhetoric quickly turned from soaring to sour. Two years after the St. Paul speech, President Obama, in an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today Show, on 8 June 2010, let loose the following concerning British Petroleum and the Gulf Oil Spill:
“I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the gulf. A month ago, I was meeting with fishermen down there standing in the rain talking about what a potential crisis this would be. I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they, potentially, have the best answers so I know whose ass to kick.”
Insomuch the once charismatic campaign-centric presidency has descended into vulgar threats. Somehow, though, even as BP CEO Tony Hayward leaves his position, some Americans felt sorry for him, sensing he had been “demonized.” That’s because while the Greeks have proven susceptible to class struggle, most Americans understand the free market is not just about economics, but that their freedom depends upon it. Both left and right are questioning Keynesian methods, realizing the folly of attempts to stoke aggregate demand. Moreover, Americans realize maintaining economic freedom is a moral issue.
Not the Administration, though, as Big Business is Barack’s Pariah and certainly not his constituents on the Far Left, who forever want more in the way of class struggle. To satiate them, the Obama Administration resorts to attacking political enemies, not just Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh – totally uncharacteristic of an American president - but bonuses for “Wall Street fat cats,” and, shareholder dividends, charitable donations, and business largesse, all the while, rewarding failure through legislation. That won’t be enough to stay in power, so another method has recently been implemented to continue Permanent Revolution and, they hope, maintain control of the White House.
V. The Next Wave
Sensing that their argument against capitalism is not sticking, the Left has decided to switch tactics, preying on American sensitivity to racism. Americans are petrified of being labeled a racist, because, even when flagrantly false, charges of racism are nearly impossible to repudiate. A Democratic Congress realizes this: Why did the Senate shelf energy legislation – which, although faulted for its deleterious economic effects, had some Republican support – in favor of debate over racially-divisive comprehensive immigration reform, which did not?
Enter a news cycle where everyone is calling everyone else a racist, because defending capitalism was easier than defending charges of racism. This “Left-Wing Conspiracy” is achieved with an affiliate media, a fact verified by the recent “Journolist” scandal. On the listserv network, reporter Spencer Ackerman was quoted as posting the following:
“If the right forces us all to either defend [Reverend Jeremiah] Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists… This makes them ‘sputter’ with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.”
Our Fourth Estate/Fifth Column is therefore fanning the flames of race-baiting arguments to distract us all from the real issues at hand. Ask yourself: Why has race dominated the news cycle for the past three weeks? From coverage of the Tea Party to the New Black Panther Party, and from the Justice Department to the Arizona immigration law, it appears to be working.
The firing of Shirley Sherrod, former Agriculture Department official, further muddied the struggle, who spoke of her supposed redemption from her own racism against whites, saying: ”That’s when it was revealed to me that, y’all, it’s about poor versus those who have, and not so much about white; it is about white and black, but it’s not.” Andrew Breitbart, the online mogul who posted the video, was vehemently castigated while Sherrod was canonized in media. Facing that reality, it’s no wonder nobody questions the relationships that may (or may not) exist between the Justice Department, the NAACP, the New Black Panther Party, and/or Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.
The Left is capitalizing on these racial fears and slandering opponents not just at the Daily Kos or Huffington Post, but at CNN and the Washington Post as well. Just this week, Professor Mary Frances Berry confirmed this tactic is being actively deployed by Democrats, writing on a Politico forum:
“Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.”
Racially-motivated class struggle easily fits the DNA of this Administration. Remember, Barack Obama was surrounded by Black Liberation Theologists like Frank Marshall Davis and Jeremiah Wright for more of his life than not, who reaffirmed the belief that America was a “downright mean” place, in the parlance of his wife, due to the spoils of wealth and the exploitation of cheap labor. His friends and colleagues advocated class struggle on the basis of race to an eager and ambitious Obama. It’s not a large leap for him, or his Administration, to go from one argument to the other. And so it goes.
VI. Counter Revolution
Two class conflicts are being perpetrated on the American people, and neither is new; one is economic and the other is racial. Deception on both fronts incites fear and anger among those who seek the truth. In contrast to revolutionaries abroad, our revolutionaries seek not to do violence, but to instead instigate it. Race-hustling rhetoric is being deployed not in spite of, but because of our successes in turning popular opinion away from progressivism.
The economic problem answers itself, with a look back at history. Reagan’s 1982 recession helps negate the assertion that FDR ended the Great Depression by soaking the rich. Calvin Coolidge’s low taxes – and low misery index - lends merit to laissez-faire. Re-examining how the Swedes successfully combtted a banking crisis, combined with the miscalculations of outgoing Budget Director, Peter Orszag, reveals the fault in Obama’s use of Keynesian controls.
Whereas faulty economic policies eventually undo themselves with data, the faulty race-baiting politics proves harder to combat, as it is so subjective. Today, debates over various subjects are won by crying racism, and then arguing their opponents cannot understand how racism fits into the argument because they’re blinded by privilege or worse yet, their own racism. As Orwell told us, “In a world of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
We can study the past to analyze the present, but our future, at this point, is uncertain. Our political landscape changes so rapidly. What is certain is the Left is trying to keep race as the central issue. Doing so in 2008 helped Axelrod vault Obama into the presidency; for them, this strategy is both successful and familiar.
How do we combat charges of racism?
It is up to us to reminding folks that identity politics, where ever it exists, is bigotry. We must reiterate that conservatives agree with the 13th and 14th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as Brown vs. Board of Education. Even as they rolled back parts of the Constitution, these actions were necessary in keeping with the tenets of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, and should be treated thusly. We also believe in rewarding hard work. We believe in extending ladders of opportunity to those who are willing to work, regardless of prior or inherited socioeconomic or racial status. Therein lies the American Dream.
As we work to reclaim our nation, we cannot be goaded into violence by the Left. The perceived necessity for an actual revolution diminishes if the minority party were to reclaim Congress in 2010. With three months until the midterms, however, this has potential to get worse before it gets better. Ours is a civilized nation, with little appreciation for violent upheaval. The minority party must utilize this logic, as the Left is using it against us. We must get serious.
We must get serious about these assertions for the 2010 midterm and the 2012 general elections. If Republicans take Congress, they must guarantee the American people there will be no more bills “we have to pass” in order to “find out what’s in it.” Even then, however, legislation cannot be repealed, as an Obama veto could not be overridden. The only logical solution for a Republican Congress, then, is to defund agencies like the EPA that continually usurp their legal authority, and set the stage for 2012. Then, they can begin to rollback recent legislation that infringes upon our natural rights conferred in the Declaration of Independence.
It is up to us. I doubt that, years from now, when our indebted children ask, “Why didn’t your generation do something to stop this crisis?” the answer, “I didn’t want to be called a racist,” will suffice. Nor should it. We must remain steadfast to the guidance of Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his 1968 address, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution:” “On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.”
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