Summary: Not all social revolutions are violent or fast. Revolutionaries on the Left are building a new America on the ruins of the America-that-once-was. Our passivity is their most powerful advantage.
I have written hundreds of posts about ways to reform America. Meanwhile, the Left has begun a revolution – and it gathers force and momentum every day. Becoming more radical year by year, despite having little public support. We are stampeded like a flock of sheep. Perhaps because we have become sheep.
Think of America ten years ago. Transgendered rights – and the massive panoply of changes to society they demand – were unknown to the vast majority of the public. Throwing the borders open (with welfare for migrants) was considered imprudent or bizarre. Now both are major programs at all levels of government. But until recently neither has been a major subject in political campaigns. Until recently, neither was the subject of much legislative action. Both have been pushed by the Left using their influence on the courts and government agencies – using their massively powerful non-profit organizations, plus support by journalists and academics.
This has been the way of America for several generations. Long ago the public lost control of our evolution.
About revolutions
Revolutions often become more radical as they evolve. The French and Russian revolutions were at first simple reform movements. They became attempts to uproot their cultures and replace them with dreams (that became nightmares). That too has been America’s history since the 1960s. We are just in the transitional stage.
The Civil Rights Movement became Black Power.
The Civil Rights movement in America was in many ways conservative, run by reformers and Christian ministers (e.g., Roy Wilkins and MLK Jr.). A new generation of African-Americans replaced them in the late 1960s – with more revolutionary goals. Bobby Seale and Huey Newton were co-founders of the Black Panther Party. In his 1970 book, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton
“Huey wanted brothers off the block – brothers who had been out there robbing banks, brothers who had been pimping, brothers who had been peddling dope, …brothers who had been fighting the pigs.”
That has been a recurring pattern since then, as seen in the evolution of the Black Lives Matter movement from its focus on police brutality on innocent Black men to the defense of criminals whose mothers might be glad they are gone.
The transition from Civil Rights to Black Power was announced with a name change. This was a marketing error not to be repeated by the Left.
The four waves of feminism.
The first three waves of feminism were the quest for equal rights. The Fourth Wave seeks supremacy but marches under the same flag. This causes confusion in those not paying close attention, who do not realize that the name is the same but the goals have changed.
Radical feminists seek to make women’s testimony beyond challenge (as Sander’s has learned, despite his impeccable Leftist credentials), make marriage a one-sided deal imprudent for men to enter, and make discrimination against men in education and employment national policy. Opposing these is condemned as “oppression of women” and sexism.
Fourth-wave feminists are open about their goals, with campaigns that would be considered gross sexism if the genders were reversed (which was a test for sexism in the second- and third-wave feminism). Such as “the future is female” campaigns. Obama’s proud claim that “women are better then men.” A host of articles and books proclaim the superiority of women and inferiority (or evil) of men. Op-eds in major newspapers urge men to let women rule (e.g., here and here). Even polite conversation among equals becomes “harassment” to fourth-wave feminists (only abject deference by men suffices), as seen in these radical feminists’ reactions to the proposal scenes in Pride And Prejudice.
New revolutions.
Now the Left is making even more profound changes in American society. Open borders combined with multiculturalism (and less assimilation) will over time drastically reshape our culture. The multitude of changes brought by the LGBTQ movement will have equally or even larger effects.
The 2020 election has begun to bring these issues into public discussion. But despite their importance, the candidates and journalists will keep them on the margins, in the shadows. Will the results, either way, slow the progress of these revolutions? Their institutional support lies beyond the reach of elections, and elected officials have no interest in these issues.
Where are the conservatives?
Conservatives are locked up in the Republican Party. Their leaders are servants of the 1% and the plutocracy. Their priorities are tax cuts for the rich, big defense spending, facilitating growth of cartels and monopolies, breaking unions, and deregulation of corporations – all the things Team Trump put at the top of their To Do list. The Left’s social revolutions are of no interest to them, except as fodder for speeches.
But sometimes good things come to an end. Trump broke ranks with his fellow US elites and acted to slow immigration. The other cultural changes being done by the Left are of little interest to him.
Summary
For a decade, the Left has been changing America using the power of the courts, news media, and government agencies. Without public consent through elections, even without broad public support. All they needed were networks of true believers, lavish funding, intelligent planning (an open-source movement), time – and a deeply passive American public.
Are any of those things likely to change in the foreseeable future? If not, the revolution will continue.
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: “Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.”
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- The Left goes full open borders, changing America forever.
- Visions of America if the Left wins.
- The key insight: the Left hates America and will destroy it.
- The Left can win in 2020 and dominate US politics.
- The middle in American politics has died. Now extremists rule.
- The Left crushes the Right. The counter-revolution will be ugly – There will be a second act.
- The Left crushes the alt-Right, but Darwin might bring them to power.
- Trump promised to rebuild America but did nothing – To the GOP, the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.
- Campaign 2020 shows who will mold America’s future.
- Two levers to bring the Democrats victory in 2020.
- A candidate can win in 2020 with popular proposals.
- Glimpses of the political revolution just starting.
Useful books explaining what happened
I have not found a good book explaining what happened to the Left, causing its hatred of America. These are the best I have found, looking at our politics.
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted
Potters work with the clay in front of them. I think you are confusing the different pots with a change in the nature of the potter instead of the clay available.
The non-white people who were actually making their families and culture competitive if not superior to their majority neighbors don’t show up on the Civil Rights radar because they had families and businesses and churches to attend to. The women who made their value to their families and communities weren’t showing up smoking cigarettes demanding a vote because they had families and businesses and churches to attend to.
The same potters are spinning the wheel today as they were back when you think these movements had merit. The difference is the clay they are working with is much much worse so they can’t conceal their toothpicks and armatures holding it up anymore.
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room.
SF,
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”
The older generation has been saying that about the younger generation for thousands of years. They were saying that in Rome.
Even worse, “they contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
It’s a great quote even though it’s not a direct one: by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907 – per the Quote Investigator.
This is interesting with regard to how the 1% operate globally, and show the patent may be mightier than the sword, in world domination.
Also the broadcaster is a leftie, and wants to blame Trump, but is informed Obama was the problem and right after getting the peace prize, listen carefully to the number on young on drugs in the farming areas of India, no praise for Bill Gates or Amazon, with regard to what they are doing in India.
People, mostly European, Christian families, have been reacting to the left wing assault on their person and families for some time. Private schools, suburbs, voting Republican even if they don’t want to, and the lefty continues their assault.
They assault under the banner of inclusion and equality but they seek power and domination. Most people, majority of people, want to be left alone and to know their descendants and posterity will enjoy the fruits of labor and capital acquired and hold onto their beliefs. However, lefty thinks people are a collective resource and more importantly life is a zero sum game. They’ve isolated the target, a formerly patriarchal family and the European male because they assume a sexual brown utopia wi’ll occur without oppression. The assault will continue for a long time I’m afraid.
Christopher Caldwell’s new book The Age of Entitlement attempts to address the sources of this revolution, conceptualizing it as a culmination of the forces set in motion by civil rights movement. The reviews look interesting. Going on my reading stack.
Scipio,
Thanks for the recommendation! Please share your thoughts on it after you read it!
Larry, do you feel confident that the comparison of the events in the US after 1969 to today can be properly compared with the French and Russian revolutions?
Yes, it is true that as both of these progressed they became dominated by increasingly radical and deranged individuals and groups. But in both cases the period of revolution was comparatively short – around 10 years – after which governing structures were restored and the revolution proper was basically over.
In our case we have seen the governing structures staying in place, and a series of eruptions take place which haven’t materially changed them. When Biden says, as you quote him, that transgender rights are the new civil rights, you have to wonder what on earth he is thinking. It affects such a tiny proportion of the population and can easily be accomodated without any fundamental changes to the rest of society.
The civil rights movement and its consequences affected large numbers of people and changed the geographical and social balance of power in America. And even that was hardly a revolution in the same way the French and Russian revolutions were – it too was accommodated within the existing structures.
Isn’t a more useful comparison the one which you have yourself frequently made, to the slow changes that occurred in the Roman Empire?
henrik,
“do you feel confident that the comparison of the events in the US after 1969 to today can be properly compared with the French and Russian revolutions?”
Of course. Social change in the West has evolved for millennia. Each phase is different, but not sui generis (unique, appearing without priors). The French and Russian revolutions were different from the revolutions before them, as today’s are from those.
“And even that was hardly a revolution in the same way the French and Russian revolutions were”
You’re not paying attention. I doubt you’re even reading the post except as a superficial skim.
I read it several times, and found it very thought-provoking. I may not however have expressed my thought clearly or perhaps it wasn’t clear in the first place. Putting it in a different way :-
Social change has been common in history. Some of those changes are generally called revolutions. Typically these revolutions proper have a defined period, about a decade at most, during which their main changes are made, and typically they greatly modify the governing institutions of a society. The French and the Russian are paradigm cases. Typically they are driven by fairly small groups of people, with, as you point out, an increasingly deranged and radical agenda as they progress.
We also observe changes which occur over longer periods and which are phenomena of a quite different sort. Either because they occur piecemeal or because they leave the governing institutions basically unchanged, these are quite different kinds of events from the revolutions proper.
We speak of the industrial revolution, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the sexual revolution. These kinds of events may unfold over a period of multiple decades or even centuries. The changes in voting entitlements due to the Civil Rights movement in the US, or the slow changes to electoral reform in the UK during the 19c might be examples.
We also have what might be called the normal process of social evolution and adaptation in response to events. The gradual introduction of the welfare state in the West in response to rising 20c wealth might be an example. In culture an example might be the movement of the center of literary gravity from verse in the 18c to the novel in the 19c. The decline in the importance of classical studies and Greek and Latin.
The thing I am doubting is whether the social changes under way since 1968 really count as revolutionary, whether calling them that doesn’t obscure more than it illuminates. I’m struck by how much more they resemble the last category above than the first, that is, how much more like normal social change than a revolution proper.
I’m not doubting there have been profound changes in American attitudes and society since 1968. I’m reflecting that the nature of these changes may be more obscured than clarified by calling it a revolution. What is striking from a different perspective is how little, except talk, has actually changed.
And I think at least culturally. Conservatives have been consistently buying into the revolution of the left with at least a 30 year delay.
The term “Open Source Movements” brings Katlyn Johnstone to mind. I also think of you and BAR.
I’m working on a logo. It consists of 5 “Power Fists”. One white, one black, one brown, one red and one yellow representing “races”, tribes. They are each circled with slash and arranged in the 5 point star around a 5 sided “Yin-yang” in center using the same colors or stars and stripes. Underneath in bold, the word UNITY.
As mentioned before, I had a sign lettered on back window of my pickup truck that said, “fabuismaximus.com” below it said “Reigniting the Spirit of a Nation Grown Cold.”
Truck got totalled when a van made left in my path. Gotta make a new and better sign for my new truck. Also making business cards.
I want to make some high quality tee or polo shirts with FM logo and ask for your permission. I have access to a retail outlet willing to market these shirts. FM big on back and their logo small on front right. Profits split 3 ways, you, us, agreed upon causes or charity.
Yesterday I changed my voter registration from NPA to D so I can vote in most active primary in my Closed Primary state. We got enough signatures to get Open Primaries on our ballot in November. I’m not campaigning for any candidate.
I’m only campaigning for fabiusmaximus.com community.
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