Andy Ngo's Unmasked

The following are extracts (for review purposes) from Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, Andy Ngo, 2021-February:

Chapter 3: Portland[, Oregon]

Send [i]n the Feds

"For the...four weeks [after] the Fourth of July[,] antifa's plan of escalating attacks on federal property to provoke a federal response for the cameras produced the exact propaganda they wanted....At its peak there were probably more than one hundred journalists and livestreamers, most of whom were sympathetic to the rioters and protesters. [A]t the urging or demand of others, their cameras were trained solely on law enforcement to capture their every move. Those [journalists] who ran afoul of antifa's rules were forced out or assaulted and robbed....

"Every use of force by officers, whether it be [by] tear gas, smoke, pepper...balls, or arrests, was heavily scrutinized. Out-of-context video snippets were released on social media and published by news outlets, generating mass rage and universally negative press for law enforcement and the Trump administration. The officers were called 'Trump's [G]estapo,' 'storm troopers,' and 'thugs' by Democratic politicians and the media.

"[The journalist] Erin Smith...says antifa use a 'calibrated level of violence' to provoke reactions by law enforcement for propaganda purposes.

" 'Antifa seek to force law enforcement into a dilemma action, where there are simply no good responses from a public relations standpoint,' Smith told me. '[All] choices undermine the legitimacy of the state and its security forces.' " – pp. 63–4

Chapter 4: Rose City Antifa

"Rose City Antifa (RCA) [is] the oldest antifa group in the United States. It takes its name from...'City of Roses,' a nickname for Portland[, Oregon].

"Antifa began accelerating their mass organizing in early 2017 as Donald Trump took office. [I]n June 2020, the public...received a rare glimpse into the workings of the group through a video release[d when] a journalist at Project Veritas who used the moniker 'Lion' was...conditionally approved to join RCA[.]

"Since 2016, we have been told...by biased media and antifa apologists that antifa is not an organization....While there is no single capital[-]A 'Antifa' organization with one leader, there are indeed localized cells and groups with formalized structures and memberships. Though officially leaderless, these are organizations by every definition.

"The RCA curriculum is modeled on a university course. Yet it includes training on how to use guns and do reconnaissance against enemies....

"RCA was founded in 2007 and is the first-known formalized antifa group in the United States using 'antifa' in its name. [T]hrough Lion's time in RCA, he learned that it was started by a Portland woman, Caroline Victorin (née Gauld). She has been in a long-term relationship with a Swedish national. Together, they worked to bring a tried-and-true European antifa model to the United States." – pp. 79–82

Chapter 5: Origin Story

"The militant far-left movement[,] antifa[,] ha[s] existed for over half a century in Europe. It has had decades to develop a coherent ideology and both violent and nonviolent strategies[,] to undermine liberal democracy under the guise of fighting fascism." – p. 98

The Weimar Republic

"[After] World War I[,] Germany was punished with crippling reparation payments[.] Emperor Wilhelm II's...abdication of the throne further threw the new nation-state into confusion. Between 1919 and 1920, [it] faced uprisings from both the left and right. In January 1919, around 50,000 communists...led a failed armed rebellion in Berlin.

"By August that year, a constitution was...adopted in the city of Weimar. But Germany did not have a democratic history or tradition, and the Weimar government was deeply unpopular.

"[T]hroughout the 1920s, political paramilitaries became the norm as groups and parties prepped their members to try to seize power[.]

"The paramilitaries were used as security for political gatherings and to violently shut down the meetings of opposing groups. The [R]epublic was marred with wave after wave of tit-for-tat political violence. The paramilitaries, both left[-] and right[-]wing, are notorious for carrying out assassinations and committing brutal acts of violence. Efforts throughout the 1920s by the government to ban some of the paramilitaries failed. They simply regrouped and reorganized under new names.

"Nearly every political group or party had a paramilitary: the communists, the centrists, and, of course, the fascists. For good reason, the most remembered of German paramilitaries is the [Storm Detachment (Storm Troopers, or SA, German:] Sturmabteilung[)], the original paramilitary of the National Socialist German Worker's Party, also known as the Nazi Party. Called 'Brownshirts,' based on the color of their uniforms, these paramilitary men were Hitler's violent street thugs.

"[T]he history of far-left paramilitaries in the German interwar years has faded [from] memory. Like the Nazis, the Communist Party of Germany (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, or KPD) had its own paramilitaries. The party was Stalinist in orientation and was closely aligned with the Soviet Union. At the national conference of the German Communist Party in 1924, they formed a new paramilitary: the Red Front Fighters' League (German: Roter Frontkämpfer-Bund). The league's paramilitary members had their own uniforms, and the group adopted the clenched fist as its symbol. Leftist groups today from Black Lives Matter to antifa have adopted that communist symbol.

"Throughout the 1920s, the Red Front Fighters' League was extremely violent, engaging in clashes with the paramilitaries of liberal parties. [A]gain[,] the communist paramilitary was mostly preoccupied with fighting liberals and socialists rather than the Nazi paramilitary. [T]he German Communist Party and its various offshoots viewed social democrats and liberals as 'social fascists' no different from Nazis. In fact, Communist International, the...Lenin-founded group that promoted communism around the world, believed that social democracy would inevitably lead to fascism....

"Despite claiming to be Germany's 'only anti-fascist party,' the German Communist Party sometimes worked with the Nazis to undermine the governing Social Democrats." – pp. 99–101

Antifascist Action

"In May 1932, the German Communist Party announced the formation of the Antifaschistische Aktion (Antifascist Action, commonly referred to as 'Antifa'), a new paramilitary communist group. This is the original 'Antifa' and the group that contemporary antifa around the world take inspiration from. The paramilitary was created to bring together a coalition of communists at the community level to oppose and fight political opponents.

"Though calling itself the Antifascist Action, those who served as decision makers on its executive boards consisted of members of the German Communist Party and other allied communist groups. Simply put, the Antifascist Action was a communist organization under a thinly veiled new name. It held rallies and developed its own propaganda. The two-flag logo used by today's antifa groups is based on the original red flags logo of the Antifascist Action. The two red flags symbolized the union of communism and socialism. Like the other communist paramilitaries before it, the Antifascist Action was involved in political street brawls. They also acted as security and self-defense for communists who lived together in select neighborhoods and apartment buildings.

"While the communists were occupied with fighting the social democrats and liberals, the appeal and power of the Nazi Party continued to grow. By July 1932, the Nazis became the largest party in [the] parliament[.] The campaign season was marred by exceptional levels of political violence between fascist, social democratic, and communist members....

"The German Communist and Social Democrat [p]arties were both banned, leaving the Nazis with no political opposition[.]" – pp. 101–2

Antifa State[-]Building

"German communists['] preoccupation with fighting the social democrats and liberals, who they called 'social fascists,' weakened a united opposition to the Nazis and further undermined the legitimacy of liberal democracy in the [R]epublic....

"While the Antifascist Action and all opposing groups were banned after Hitler became head of state, the antifa communist ideology never went away. [I]t was...institutionalized in the official state ideology of what would become...East Germany....For over forty years, the extremely repressive conditions in East Germany exemplified what 'antifa' state-building actually looks like.

"Through the East German Ministry for State Security, better known as the Stasi, citizens were monitored and spied on through a vast apparatus of informants who infiltrated all aspects of life and civil society. The secret police agency was originally modeled to be similar to the Soviet Union's secret police, the KGB. The Stasi's mandate by the state was to weed out political dissenters and to terrorize the masses into compliance, in addition to conducting espionage. Antifa groups today do something similar on a community level.

"Secret police form a pillar of communism....One could never know if their friend, family member, or spouse was an informant. In East Germany, the mass persecution and psychological warfare against its own citizens [being] suspected of political wrongthink were justified by the communist state in the name of fighting fascism. But to them, 'fascism' referred to the West and its governing system of liberal democracy." – pp. 102–4

"Like antifa ide[o]logues today who call for terrorist attacks against the state and its institutions, East Germany supported terrorism. Of note was the Stasi's logistical and financial support to [the] West German far-left terrorist group the Red Army Faction[,] also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, which was formed in 1968. Throughout the 1970s, they killed dozens of people in West Germany[.] The goal was to undermine the West German government, which they viewed as fascistic, as well as to oppose American 'imperialism.' In 1967[,] Baader-Meinhof Gang founder Gudrun En[s]slin declared[:] 'Violence is the only way to answer violence.'

"The rhetoric used by Baader-Meinhof Gang members is nearly indistinguishable from [the] language used by antifa extremists today....

"The misnomer of 'anti-fascism' holds steady today for contemporary antifa groups—they advocate...the overthrow of liberal democracies and the abolishment of capitalism. And the legacy of a pervasive surveillance culture provides one of the pillars for antifa activities." – pp. 104–5

Europe

"Today, the largest, most organized and violent antifa groups remain in Germany[.]

"Despite now having a strong, stable, and prosperous liberal democracy (Germany has the leading GDP in the European Union), the culture of polarized politics remains....Germany's domestic intelligence agency...released data showing [that] left-wing extremists have become more violent in recent years." – p. 105

Italy and Spain

"Argo Secondari, an anarchist, founded a militant anti-fascist organization in Rome in 1921 called the People's Daring Ones (Italian: Arditi del Popolo). The group included communists, socialists, anarchists, and anti-monarchists. They led fights against [Mussolini's] Blackshirts in various towns in the Italian countryside. These historical fights form part of the borrowed mythos used by contemporary antifa groups today. By fighting people on the streets of Portland[;] Berkeley[, California;] and elsewhere, they claim to be engaging in the same anti-fascist tradition....

"Antifa groups today also borrow mythos based on the history of Spanish anarchists and communists who opposed the nationalists...during the Spanish Civil War. Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, a member of the Communist Party of Spain (Spanish: Partido Comunista de España), popularized the slogan 'No pasarán,' or 'They shall not pass,' in a speech in 1936. No pasarán is still used today at antifa rallies and in graffiti messages." – pp. 106–7

Antifa in Europe Today

"Of particular note are parts of the Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain and Neukölln neighborhoods in Berlin[, Germany.] The 'blind-eye' approach [adopted] by local governments allowed...radical far-left squatters [to] occupy abandoned property and land[, leaving] communities to fester for decades, resulting in the development of their own parallel societies where the authority of the state and the rule of law are challenged. Antifa in CHAZ attempted to turn Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood into a variant of this.

"Every year on...May Day, the inhabitants and supporters of these antifa-friendly neighborhoods turn violent. In July 2016, thousands of masked militants attacked police in Friedrichshain to protest redevelopment efforts in the area. They...destroyed shops[.] It took about 1,800 officers to bring the rioting under control." – p. 107

"Both the extreme left and right seek to undermine liberal democracy and the rule of law, whether through the use of violence or other means. They have differing political visions and goals, but both would result in the destruction of the liberties we value.

"[T]he threat of the far right is understood by the American public and actively countered by government, academia, media, and civil society. No comparable resolve or mass organization exists to counter the far left. Why? One explanation is the cultural dominance of the left. The political homogeneity in popular culture, academe, and urban centers of influence (e.g., New York[;] Washington, DC[;] Los Angeles[;] etc.) has produced a populace with severe blind spots." – pp. 108–9

Chapter 6: American Mutation

Critical Theory

"Antifa do not view their premeditated and preemptive acts of violence as 'violence.' It is part of the strategy of remaking words to have completely new meanings. But it also pulls from a left-wing philosophical tradition established by twentieth-century German philosopher and sociologist Herbert Marcuse....

"Born in 1898, Marcuse was a committed leftist all his life. As a young adult, he...voted for the German Communist Party. In 1933, he joined the Institute for Social Research, a think tank at Frankfurt University. [The Institute] is more commonly known as the 'Frankfurt School.'...

"One of the Frankfurt School's lasting legacies is the development of critical theory—the Marxist-inspired theory that undergirds all the various 'studies' disciplines in academe today. In short, critical theorists develop ways to 'criticize' perceived structures and systems of oppression in order to bring about radical change. It offers a heuristic for understanding all human interaction through power dynamics between groups....Colloquially, critical theory is sometimes referred to as 'cultural Marxism'[:] an application of Marxist theory to groups of people based on identity rather than class.

"Many dogmas of critical theory have become so mainstream in American academe and society that people don't even know the origins of those truth claims. Have you heard it argued that there is no such thing as objective reality and truth? Social-justice ideologues use this dogma to 'deconstruct' science[:] biological sex, for example. That's from critical theory. What about 'words are violence'? Antifa militants cite this to justify their violent behavior against opposing views. This is also from critical theory.

"Marcuse became known as the 'father of the New Left'...particularly through establishing the now far-left foundational belief that tolerance means actively suppressing 'intolerant,' usually right-wing, ideas....

"For decades, American academe has been marinating in Marcuse's ideas, spreading it to students who then form the next generation of politicians, leaders, and activists.

"Even stalwart civil[-]liberty organizations like the ACLU, now filled with members educated in this worldview, have been retreating quietly from their principle of defending free speech. In a 2018 document sent to members titled 'ACLU Case Selection Guidelines: Conflicts between Competing Values or Priorities,' the organization responded to the onslaught of resignations and criticisms it received after defending the right of the alt-right to march in Charlottesville.

"In August 2017, the ACLU supported Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler in his lawsuit against the city when it forced him to relocate his permitted rally. However, the [new] 2018 guidelines in response to left-wing criticism stated that 'a decision by the ACLU to represent a white supremacist group may...directly further an agenda that is antithetical to our mission and values[,] and that may inflict harm on listeners.'

"The mainstream left's retreat from [the] liberal values of free speech has worked to the benefit of antifa in every way imaginable....

"In 2020, the recurring theme from the left in response to mass BLM and antifa violence in the streets is '[p]eople over property.' Indeed, an author named Vicky Osterweil...was championed by the mainstream press for her book In Defense of Looting, published in August 2020. NPR interviewed Osterweil, who argued that looting is moral.

" 'The very basis of property in the U.S. is derived through whiteness and through black oppression, through the history of slavery and settler domination of the country,' she said in the interview with reporter Natalie Escobar. 'Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness, and of the police. It gets to the very root of the way those three things are interconnected. And also it provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be.' This is verbatim what antifa say when they are asked to justify why they try to burn down businesses and homes. What the journalists, pundits, and intelligentsia don't understand is that at antifa riots, there is really no line between property destruction and assault. One bleeds into the other as they all serve the same purpose of chaos and violence." – pp. 123–6

"[S]tudents and outside[-]antifa militant groups work...hand in hand to carry out violence, threats, disruption, or harassment against targets at institutions that are supposed to uphold free speech and open inquiry. This close relationship is a unique development of antifa in the North American context. [W]hat is happening in the United States and Canada...recently demonstrates a unique cross-pollination of several radical ideologies: Marxism, anarchism, and critical theory....

"Intersectionality flows through American antifa. The revolution they are fighting for will not be led by workers but rather [by] trans, black, and indigenous 'folx' of color....

"The rise of antifa coincides with the rise of BLM. [T]heir mutual hatred of the United States has brought them together to form a powerful, dangerous union." – p. 127

Chapter 7: Black Lives Matter

"Black Lives Matter (BLM) cofounder Patrisse Cullors was interviewed in the Los Angeles Times [i]n August 2017[. S]he was asked if BLM would be open to a conversation with the president. She responded: 'We wouldn't as a movement take a seat at the table with Trump. [He] is literally the epitome of evil[:] all the evils of this country—be it racism, capitalism, sexism, homophobia.'

"In her own words, one of the cofounders of BLM demonstrates how closely the organization's ideology aligns with antifa. Central to both is the goal of abolishing law enforcement, American jurisprudence, national borders, and free markets in the name of anti-racism and anti-fascism." – p. 129

Foundation of Lies

" 'Hands up, don't shoot' was a myth perpetuated by...Michael...Brown's friend Dorian Johnson....

"It wasn't just Brown who benefited from false narratives[,] but also other deceased or injured figures posthumously adopted as martyr[s] in BLM[:] for example, Trayvon Martin...and Sandra Bland.

"The most devastating consequence of BLM is that it provided the outlet for radical Marxist views to enter [the] mainstream American media, politics, and society under the guise of 'racial justice.' " – p. 131

Marxist Ideology

"BLM is usually presented as an anti-racist uprising and movement focused on countering anti-black police brutality and 'systemic racism.' This effective branding strategy in [its] name has masked BLM's true radical ideology....

"Indeed, on-record statements and writings...by the group's three founders, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, demonstrate their agenda[:] to mainstream hatred of law enforcement, capitalism, free speech, and the United States itself. If this sounds familiar, it is because these are also core ideological components of antifa[.]

"BLM is...a member of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a collective of radical left organizations that share the "BLM" agenda of overturning capitalism and destabilizing the United States.

"On its now-deleted page listing various demands, the M4BL had stated[:]

" 'Until we are able to overturn U.S. imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy, our brothers and sisters around the world will continue to live in chains.'

"[A]ccusations of American 'imperialism' harken explicitly to the Cold War–era propaganda of the Soviet Union, which viewed U.S. imperialism not necessarily as an expansion of territory but [as] the spreading of liberal politics, capitalism, and culture....

"In April 2019, [Patrisse] Cullors, who is an associate professor in the Social Justice and Community Organizing master's degree program at Prescott College in Arizona, penned an article for the Harvard Law Review[:]

" 'Our task is not only to abolish prisons, policing, and militarization, which are wielded in the name of "public safety" and "national security," ' she wrote, '[w]e must also demand reparations[.]' " – pp. 131–6

Convergence

"James Lindsay, coauthor of Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody, pinpoints BLM as the vector that allowed social-justice activism on campuses to metastasize into a violent, virulent movement in the rest of American society.

" 'Black [L]ives [M]atter was enormously visible,' Lindsay says. 'It was everywhere, and presented as a matter of life and death.' Indeed, the urgency surrounding BLM pressured sympathetic liberals to tolerate and even excuse even the most illiberal excesses of the movement. From street protesters carrying signs and chanting slogans urging for police to be killed[,] to even instances of mass murder, BLM's legitimacy was protected by liberals....

"Through BLM, antifa ideologues saw an opportunity to be mainstreamed. Taking advantage of the urgency and panic, antifa were able to say that their militant actions were needed to address white supremacy and fascism.

"As the Republican Party base began to consolidate behind candidate Trump in 2016, BLM took to the streets to protest. It was during this time that an informal alliance developed between BLM and antifa. Trained in fighting and ready for battle, antifa militants acted as volunteer 'security' at BLM-style protests." – pp. 136–8

"[B]oth ideologies now cross-pollinate and influence one another to the point that they are linked[-]entities[,] with the same people showing up to each other's events.

"Their convergence has been immensely mutually beneficial. Antifa get mainstream legitimacy on the back of American racial divisions while BLM gets a volunteer militia at [the] helm." – p. 140

Chapter 8: Violence

Behind the Violence

"In an August 2019 on-camera interview with Rose City Antifa, NBC reporter Dasha Burns directly asked a masked member about the group's violent street actions.

" 'We see fascism as an inherently violent ideology, so when we disrupt its organizing, we see that as self-defense,' the man answered.

"[He] never referred to their militant actions as 'violence.' He was careful to label them 'self-defense'—even when the reporter asked him about antifa assaulting people with weapons and projectiles. This line has been carefully toed by Rose City Antifa since scrutiny was brought to bear on their actions following high-profile riots in 2017....

"Rose City Antifa posted in a statement on its Facebook [page] in 2017[:] 'Anti-fascism is, by nature, a form of self-defense: the goal of fascism is to exterminate the vast majority of human beings.' " – p. 154

Chapter 9: Deadly Violence

Connor Betts

"One man in Ohio who joined the chorus of antifa in calling Willem van Spronsen a 'martyr' was 24-year-old Connor Stephen Betts. He went on to carry out his own deadly shooting in a packed[,] commercial Dayton neighborhood on August 4, 2019. He killed nine people, including his sister, and injured twenty-seven others....

"Bett's shooting came within twenty-four hours of another mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that shocked the nation. Patrick Crusius killed twenty-three people, mostly Latinos, at a Walmart. Another twenty-three suffered injuries. The 21-year-old allegedly left behind a 2,300-word manifesto on [the I]nternet forum [website] 8chan[,] espousing racist and white nationalist beliefs. The entire punditry class picked apart Crusius's manifesto word by word to blame the shooting not merely on him but on President Trump, white people, and every American who supported border security.

"And before details were known about Betts's political beliefs, his mass shooting was also assumed to be related to white supremacy because he was white. For a few hours, we heard about both El Paso and Dayton and the crisis of white racism. But once it became known that Betts actually espoused militant antifa views, the Dayton shooting went down the memory hole....

"A year after the El Paso mass shooting, the hashtag #ElPasoStrong trended on social media. It was created to remember and honor the victims of the far-right shooting. Many media outlets published stories of how Latinos were affected. However, a day later, no #DaytonStrong campaign materialized. This wasn't any surprise to me. Some victims are valued more [highly] in the eyes of the American media than others." – pp. 177–81

Michael Reinoehl

"On August 29, 2020, three months into the daily violent protests in Portland, a 48-year-old volunteer security person for BLM-antifa killed a Trump supporter in [the] downtown [area].

"Michael Forest Reinoehl shot Aaron 'Jay' Danielson, 39, using a pistol at near...point-blank range after lying in wait for him around a street corner....

"The last few months...before...Reinoehl['s] deadly shooting show he was a violent man with no regard for the well-being of others. Over and over, authorities failed to prosecute or jail him, even when they had several opportunities to [do so]. This is the travesty in the killing of Danielson. It could have been prevented....

"Five days...after the killing, Reinoehl...emerged in a VICE News interview with [the] sympathetic left-wing journalist Donovan Farley....Reinoehl admitted to the killing, saying: 'I had no choice. I mean[,] I had a choice. I could have sat there and watched them kill a friend of mine of color. But I wasn't going to do that.'...

"Reinoehl also admitted to being a fugitive, saying he was not turning himself in because he th[ought] police [we]re collaborating with right-wingers. [T]he rejection of police is a central tenant of antifa ideology. They do not allow comrades to cooperate with law enforcement." – pp. 181–8

Chapter 12: Information Warfare and Propaganda

"In my first year [of] covering the antifa beat, one of the things that shocked me[,] as much as [the] street violence[,] was the alternat[iv]e reality [the] local and national press presented on antifa.

"Video recordings...by independent media journalists...provide [an] uncensored look into antifa's extremism. Antifa know this and have made it a priority to keep out journalists[—]even releasing manuals on how to obstruct the work of unapproved press. [And] they've made key allies in the media[,] to counter negative coverage, amplify their propaganda messaging, and discredit their shared opponents.

"The American public has been inundated with nonstop propaganda that obfuscates and lies about antifa[:] simultaneously presenting them as anti-fascists fighting racism and [as] a figment of the right's imagination. How many people who have heard of antifa actually know [that] the movement is made up of organized networks of anarchist-communists who have the goal, training, and determination to overthrow the U.S. government?" – pp. 210–1

Fake News

"[T]he default position is to view antifa as the 'good guys.'...

"I think it is pure ignorance that leads news personalities like MSNBC's Joy Reid or CNN's Chris Cuomo to repeat some variation that 'antifa' is 'just short for "anti-fascist." '

"[S]omething different[,] is the existence of whole networks of writers and so-called journalists who intentionally spread pro-antifa messaging....Most do it as ideological fellow[-]travelers on the far left, but some...are actually members of the militant[-]antifa movement." – pp. 211–2

Unpersoning

"[A]fter my beating by antifa thugs in 2019[, a] number of journalists...began targeting me with such animosity and viciousness[,] that they were indistinguishable from antifa accounts. Journalists I [had] never interacted with[,] pursued me with an obsessiveness [that] I can only describe as a personal vendetta. Their goal has been not only to delegitimize me as a journalist[,] but [also] to make me a toxic figure that others would be afraid of associating with. They pursued that goal through writing lies and half-truths[,] and even inciting violence....

"The network of antifa-supporting journalists is powerful...because their smears are laundered [by] one another and amplified far beyond the original publication. The smears eventually become citations in a Wikipedia entry[,] or the first results in a Google search.

"Any [t]ime someone looks me up online, they will see the false smears first....

"Alex Zielinsky...has played an important role in normalizing antifa in Portland. [H]er coverage since she became the...Portland Mercury['s] news editor protects antifa, amplifies their talking points about 'fascists' in Portland, and joins in demonizing antifa's opponents. Sometimes this manifests in shockingly cruel ways." – pp. 212–5

"[A] cabal of messengers...work in media and have the ability to launder their narratives far and wide. The damage they've done in making the public ignorant and misinformed on antifa has been immense. But as left-wing writers in an industry run mostly by people on the left, their bias does not count against them." – p. 216

Identifying Antifa Press

"I did not like Trump's 2019 comment describing the mainstream media as 'truly the enemy of the people,' but one can see the basis for that sentiment when looking at how transparently [it is, that] extreme...far-left...ideologues are presented as the arbiters of truth....

"As [this book] demonstrates, antifa can terrify, dox, harass, and intimidate[,] without any [overt] use of force. They've been particularly effective[,] because they have infected one of the most important institutions of a free society: the press. Ironically, [the] media is now often used to undermine public support for free speech[,] and [for] the nation's norms, culture, and history." – pp. 218–20

Chapter: Afterword

My Story

"[Formerly,] I [had been] concerned with the material distractions of most youth[:] unaware of the culture, freedoms, and liberties that made society around me prosperous....

"My [M]illennial peers are often ignorant [of] the fact that in much of the developing world, conflicts still end in tit-for-tat clan violence[,] because citizens cannot depend on the state for justice....

"How ironic that decades after Mai and Binh[,] my parents[,] fled revolutionary communism, their son would encounter a virulent strain of th[at] ideology in their adopted home in the United States.

"[V]iolent masked revolutionaries...view...me as a 'reactionary.' Antifa's choice of language in describing me [in] that way echo[es] how my parents were labeled 'counterrevolutionary' by the Vietnamese regime and punished accordingly." – pp. 231–3

A Message to Antifa

"I...see [a]ntifa['s] humanity and [I] don't wish them ill. I...feel sympathy for [people] pulled and brainwashed into antifa's twisted ideology. They are often exploited and used[,] by a movement that explicitly rejects the value of individuals in favor of the cause.

"While some...antifa...are...highly educated and in white-collar professions[,] those [who are] involved in the street violence are disproportiona[te]ly individuals dealing with housing insecurity, financial instability, and mental health issues like gender dysphoria....

"Fear and hatred drive left-wing people to antifa's extremist ideology—but there is more[: t]hey have grievances that need to be acknowledged. [Yet even s]ome of [those grievances are] indoctrinated through education and culture....Grievance ideologies resonate with [M]illennials and Gen Z[.] I can understand why those who lose faith in the American idea—[or] in liberal democracy—[can] turn to extremist ideologies for solutions. The corruption in [the] politicians and state institutions at times rattles my own confidence in the American rule of law and democracy.

"For those who are vulnerable, antifa is more than appealing. It promises community, protection, and purpose. It is organized like a zealous religious movement through the constant feeding of ideology and propaganda. They believe a communist-anarchist world[-]utopia is possible. There would be no borders, police, prisons, racism, or fascism. All [human] material needs would be met through community mutual[-]aid, not through working in an exploitative[,] capitalist system.

"But the world [that] antifa envisions is a literal 'utopia.'...No society can function as antifa envisions. Their small-scale experiments at creating separatist[,] anarcho-communist communes...have ended in disaster and death. Even when their anti-fascist ideology was instituted at the state level (e.g., in the former East Germany), the result was the creation of a sprawling spy apparatus that monitored the public[-] and private thoughts of citizens for wrongthink.

"Antifa will continue to grow after this book's publication[. T]he ideology is mainstreamed and [has been] given legitimacy[,] through Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Party. Still, I urge compassion for those who have been drawn into this violent[,] extremist ideology. The hatred antifa feel toward their society, country, and fellow citizens comes from pain and resentment of their own lives.

"One of the most disempowering mind[-]viruses infecting America and the West[, to] the benefit of antifa[,] is grievance ideology. Through its control in every cultural and educational institution, it primes people to become perpetual victims. It makes them see grievance in every interaction. It turns pain and ignorance into hatred. It turns people into [apparent] oppressors. [The e]ffort...by the Trump administration in September 2020 to address critical race theory via an executive order to ban federal contractors from teaching the poisonous ideology is a good first step. But how do we address it in K–12 education? Higher education? The rest of society? What it will take[,] is the bravery to say, 'Enough!' Grievance ideology only has power[,] insofar as it is seen as legitimate[: i]t is not." – pp. 234–6

"The victory of real justice over antifa's version of 'social justice' requires people to be held accountable for their crimes. The systematic demonizing and weakening of police departments and law enforcement[,] across the United States[, has] emboldened BLM-antifa to destroy and attack with near impunity. Law enforcement need to be given access to the training and tools [needed] for crowd control. Prosecutors must prosecute....

"Antifa's ideology[—]or any extremist belief system for that matter[—]cannot be banned[,] per the First Amendment. Antifa have the constitutional right to espouse their hatred, as do racists and other bigots. I'm skeptical that additional legislation can be helpful[,] when there are already laws that can be applied. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act may be relevant[.] Antifa, regardless of what they call themselves, are an organized criminal network of groups....Organizers exchange money and resources with one another. They provide radicalization[-]training and instructions on how to commit crimes....

"Why are district attorneys, who are elected politicians, determining who gets prosecuted? They have every incentive to bow to the whims of the mob in order to stay in office. There must be better independent oversight[,] to hold rogue prosecutors accountable.

"The BLM-antifa narrative that police are murdering black and brown people in epidemic proportions needs to be thoroughly debunked....This should be the job of the media, but it has been they who fan the flames of racial division[,] through one-sided wall-to-wall coverage. The unending distraction from real issues[,] that c[ould] otherwise be addressed through evidence-based policy making[,] has us chasing shadows." – pp. 236–7

"On November 14, 2020, thousands of people from across the United States traveled to Washington, DC, for the 'Million MAGA March.'...As the participants dispersed...they were met by marauding gangs of Black Lives Matter and antifa black bloc counter-protesters.

"They pushed and punched people to the ground. They hit them with sticks. Diners eating outside at hotel restaurants had projectiles and mortar explosives thrown at them. No one was spared. Those targeted included women, children, and the elderly....

"During the 2016 presidential campaign, people leaving Trump rallies in liberal cities, like San Jose and Chicago, were stalked, robbed, and beaten....

"I am grateful for this country and its Constitution....My family came from a society where there is no tradition of freedom of speech or the rule of law....

"Tragically, what I see is that it's becoming taboo to be patriotic or grateful to one's nation. Americans have been robbed and assaulted in public for merely holding symbols of the United States. As the George Floyd–inspired rioting broke out in Portland at the end of May 2020, I saw a mob of so-called racial justice activists beat a man peacefully carrying an American flag in [the] downtown [area.]

"Antifa, its far-left allies, and [its] useful idiots have convinced the public that patriotism is synonymous with racism and fascism. I reject that and call for all decent people to do the same. As much as this book is about antifa, it's also a letter of gratitude to the nation that welcomed my parents[:] penniless refugees from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, to become equal citizens.

"Antifa seek to destroy the American philosophy and the [actu]al state itself. They are finding some success. For those who are drawn to their siren calls of 'anti-racism'[,] 'anti-fascism'[,] and 'equity'[, just] look to where their ideas have been put into practice. [There, n]o one inherits a utopia[,] or [even] civilization." – pp. 237–9

Copyright (c) 2022 Mark D. Blackwell.

Dinesh D'Souza's United States of Socialism

The following are extracts (for review purposes) from United States of Socialism: Who's Behind It. Why It's Evil. How To Stop It., Dinesh D'Souza, 2020-June:

Preface: The Specter of Socialism

"[A] whole political party...seems...drawn toward the socialist camp. This...is...strange[.]

"[M]any big ideas, and their corresponding ways of organizing society, have ended up on the ash heap of history....

"Feudalism couldn't compete with capitalism, so feudalism was defeated[—]without being discredited[.] Feudal societies...'worked' for many centuries[.]

"[However,] socialism...is an utterly discredited system of ideas[. T]he people who lived under it considered it [as] a form of slavery....

"Friedrich Hayek's critique of socialism is...titled The Road to Serfdom. George Orwell depicted the tyrannical dimension of socialism in...two immortal novels[.]

"Yet [s]erious people advocate...socialism[;] there is a sustained cultural push to apotheosize it; a major political party is pushing aggressively toward it. How is this possible?...

"Socialism has made everyday existence a living hell...everywhere it has been tried, all over the world. [W]ithin...less than half a century since the Bolshevik Revolution, some 60 percent of the world's people were living under governments that embraced some form of socialism....Joshua Muravchik writes, 'it was...arguably the most popular idea of any kind about how life should be lived or society organized.'...

"I count...25 experiments in socialism, all ending in unmitigated disaster.

"The worst forms of socialism proved not only totalitarian but also murderous to an unprecedented degree....Orwell's description of the future from 1984 seems appropriate to apply to socialism here: 'A boot stamping on a human face.'

"[S]ocialism wasn't merely a political failure; it was also an economic failure....

"Orwell...never shows how socialism creates this totalitarianism[.]

"In the real world, the political collapse of socialism was brought about by its economic failure....China...abandoned socialism due to its economic shortcomings." – pp. 1–4

Two Test Cases

"South Korea now is more than 20 times richer than North Korea[.] Every year many thousands of North Koreans risk their lives seeking to escape to South Korea....

"I grew up under...democratic socialism[.]

"A whole generation of young Indians in the 1960s and 1970s saw no future for themselves and fled to work at sea...or to Dubai to do manual labor[.]

"[C]hange...came about through economic liberalization, otherwise known as free market capitalism. [H]ow did India decide to move in that direction? It was not inspired by the Indians reading [the professor of moral philosophy] Adam Smith. Rather, Indians looked across the Chinese border[.]

"Under Mao, the government nationalized factories and expropriated peasants' land.

"[I]n 1966, Mao launched his Cultural Revolution, an attempt to erase all remaining capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society....

"The change came in the late 1970s, when China, under Deng Xiaoping, abandoned the socialism of Mao for its own brand of capitalism. [T]hey married dictatorial political control to free market liberalization....

"Technological capitalism has realized Gandhi's dream by wiping millions of Indian tears....

"American socialists...disavow history[.] They insist that everyone else got it wrong[, and] that...all professed socialist regimes...were not 'real socialism.'...

"What keeps socialism alive for them? [A]nswer[:] the socialist dream! [E]vidently, the socialist dream is one that survives all empirical refutation....

"The socialists...don't care about data, because no amount of data can refute a dream. The socialist mantra is, 'We don't care if it hasn't worked[; w]e will figure out a way to make it work.' [The left-wing activist and journalist] Owen Jones expresses this futuristic hope: 'A socialist society...doesn't exist yet, but one day it must.'

"[T]he socialists...insist that they are the champions of a moral ideal. The only way to refute them is to refute their moral ideal[,] to pop their utopian balloon....So...I will expose the socialist utopia...as a racket.

"[C]ult leaders and TV evangelists...offer [to] their followers the temptation[s] of paradise[:] freedom from the normal drudgery and travails of life[. T]he televangelist promises...wonders in the next life; the socialist promises them in this one. [Y]ou are expected to give up...your ownership of yourself, including your...independence of mind.

"[This] enterprise is driven by lust for money and lust for power[.] In principle, no less than in practice, socialism is the ideology of thieves and tyrants. [T]he people who fall for th[is] temptation...are connivers attracted by the rip-off scheme. But they end up as suckers[.] This book is written...to show the...suckers a better way to get ahead[,] and to demonstrate how the rest of us can finally defeat...the thieves and tyrants[:] the socialists." – pp. 5–9

Introduction: Identity Socialism

"American socialism deserves its own name[:] 'identity socialism.'

"[T]he most helpful definition...come[s] from [the] economist Joseph Schumpeter. In his classic work[,] Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Schumpeter defined socialism as a system in which, 'as a matter of principle, the economic affairs of society belong to the public and not to the private sphere.'...

"If someone were to insist today that the government, [and] not the market, should nationalize computer companies and decide how many digital devices should be made next year, such a person would be considered...a lunatic[.]

"[S]ays Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder of the socialist magazine Jacobin, 'socialism is an ideology of radical democracy.'...

"The constitution of the Democratic Socialists of America...states, 'We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production[, and on] economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships.' [New York] Democratic congresswom[an] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez[, a] member[,] pithily terms it 'putting democracy and society first.'

"Here we have the central moral claim of American socialism: [a]t least in principle, nothing is yours[;] nothing is mine[;] everything is ours. [T]he democratic majority...ha[s] the final say....The majority also has the right to other forms of [social] control: for example, subsidizing some lifestyles over others[,] and restricting citizens from exercising 'hate speech.'

"[T]his...seems to be a direct repudiation of the American founding. It...overturns...the basic design of our constitutional system. If...adopted[,] it would be a second American Revolution....

"But...socialists view their program as continuous with the revolutionary principle of the founding. In other words, the founders established democracy, and socialism extends democracy to the sphere of economics and to society more generally.

"[T]o those who object that socialism...mean[s] you no longer have the right to keep what you earn, or do what you want, or even say what you think[,] the socialist answer is that, in restricting your freedom, socialism advances a different type of freedom: the freedom of a people to govern themselves through democratic self-rule." – pp. 11–5

Truth in Labeling

"Democrat[ic] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi...likens her differences with Ocasio-Cortez to differences among members of the same family. 'Does your family always agree on everything?' she asked at a news conference when the issue of the 'squad'—the socialist wing[—]came up....

"When I listen to the Democratic debates, I am struck by the omnipresence of the collectivist pronoun[,] 'we'[.]

" 'We' in this context does not mean 'us'[.] If it did, then [they] might consider voluntary and private-sector solutions to...education....'We' for them means...the whole society, acting through the coercive instrument of the federal government....

"Are there any prominent Democrats who resist this collectivist terminology? There are not. Some may term themselves progressive and others socialist, but they are all on the same side....The progressives and the socialists are largely unified behind a Democratic Party agenda that can...accurately be termed socialist...in that it involves expanded...government control of various sectors of economic and social life....

"There is only one way to get the...Green New Deal...done: warn that if you don't go along, the world will come to an end.

"[A]dvocates of the Green New Deal unveiled a[n] array of proposals [including] raising unemployment benefits and providing everyone with[:] free daycare, free healthcare and a guaranteed family wage. 'We're almost out of time,' screeches [the energy and resources scientist] Nathan Hultman in a Brookings Institution paper....

"Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti[, in a] meeting [with] the environmental policy advisers of Governor Jay Inslee of...Washington[,] frankly admitted that from the beginning the Green New Deal was conceived with broader ends. 'Do you think of it as a climate thing?' he chuckled. 'Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.' [C]limate change is the ruse to get the public to go for full socialism." – pp. 15–20

Money in the Wrong Hands

"[Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth] Warren [of Massachusetts] seeks an Accountable Capitalism Act[.] The government would require companies to include the interests of workers, customers, communities and society as a whole before making major decisions.

"[In p]art[, this] is the entitlement mentality, [as] evident in Ocasio-Cortez's recent claim that 'You have a right to a job, a right to an education, a right to a dignified home, a right to a dignified retirement, and a right to healthcare.' [M]odern socialism travels behind the banner of such entitlements[. I]t's worth exploring...what obligations the[se] rights...impose on other people[,] who are compelled to deliver on these putative rights.

"[Democratic presidential candidate, New York City Mayor] Bill de Blasio recent[ly] pledged, 'We will seize the buildings[.]'...

"Earlier in 2016, de Blasio spelled [it] out[:] 'I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it [and] what the rent will be. [I]f I had my druthers, the city government would determine[, for] every single plot of land, how development should proceed.'...

"What we see, unmistakably, in these remarks by Ocasio-Cortez and de Blasio is a...pathological hostility to free market capitalism. This is the other side of the socialist coin—blissful talk about rights and entitlements and solemn paeans to the public good are inevitably accompanied by vicious assaults on capitalism....

"Schumpeter predicted that capitalism would sow the seeds of its own destruction[, because it both] undermines traditional institutions[,] and fosters values hostile and antithetical to capitalism....

"Here's how Ocasio-Cortez responded to the prospect of the widespread obsolescence of human jobs[:] 'We're paid by how little we're desperate enough to accept. And the rest is skimmed off and given to a billionaire.'...

"Most people, in [Ocasio-Cortez]'s vision, no longer need to work....Their 'work' is to shop around and buy things....

"Millions of Americans live like this now. Their only 'work' is consumption. They rely on others...to provide for them. [R]emarkabl[y], they are convinced that this is a good and right way for them to live....

"Capitalism might sow the seeds of its [own] undoing...by creating [a] mass abundance that eliminates the need for most people to work. They [could then] rely on socialist measures...to redistribute the nation's wealth and guarantee them a secure and comfortable life. [T]oday's technologists and entrepreneurs will have fostered the end of American capitalism[.]" – pp. 22–5

Strangers in Our Own Land

"[T]he vision of...socialist...activists is not merely economic. They are...more...energized...by cultural issues. [T]hey...care about their moral self-image[;] and they also care about their race...and their sex organs....

"Asked...by...PragerU...to define her brand of socialism, a female student said it would [be] really hard to do because socialism had so many dimensions. For example, 'You're socializing with me right now. Socialism!'...A Gallup survey, release in May 2019, found that 6 percent of respondents defined socialism as 'being social[;] social media[;] talking to people.'

"A writer for New York magazine attended a socialist confab called Red Party, hosted by the left-wing publishing house Verso[.] Mindy Isser, a young activist, whined that 'socialist men don't date socialist women and it really bothers me.' Another activist warned that socialists need better slogans. 'The beauty of ABOLISH ICE,' he said, was its sheer simplicity. It mirrored right-wing slogans[:] 'BUILD THE WALL. LOCK HER UP. They're all perfect for shouting.'

"Jarrett Stepman, a writer for [The Heritage Foundation's news organization] Daily Signal who attended the Socialism 2019 conference, sponsored by Jacobin and [the] Democratic Socialists of America[,] expect[ed] to hear mostly about topics like minimum wage [and] student debt[.] Instead[,] he found...that 'transgenderism, gender nonconformity and abolishing traditional family structures were huge issues.'...

"Corrie Westing, a self-described 'queer socialist feminist activist'[,] insisted that the traditional family is an instrument of capitalist oppression[,] and [that] pregnancy is a tool of oppression to remove women from the workforce[.]

"[A]ll the leading [presidential-candidate] Democrats...support the Equality Act [which] would prohibit discrimination based on 'gender identity'[.]

"[Karl] Marx considered other forms of social division—white versus black, men versus women—to be sneaky techniques on the part of the capitalist class to divide and rule the working class.

"[Similarly, it] is now the avowed strategy of progressives and Democrats...to turn black and brown against white, female against male, [and] gay and lesbian and transgender people against 'heteronormativity.' In 2020, Democrats intend to use these multiple lines of division to create [a] majority coalition[.]

"This broader agenda for identity socialism includes getting rid of ICE and flooding the country with illegals....They support firing and ostracizing Americans for criticizing 'Islamic terrorism'[.] They revel in the digital censorship of views they regard as promoting 'hate.'...

"I believe...the goal here...is nothing less than to make traditional Americans feel like foreigners in their own country. The identity socialists seek [to] convert foreigners into natives...and natives into foreigners....They seek...a way to alienate us from our own society.

"This is why, for many progressives and socialists, an illegal American is now the model American. Part of their plan is to change the national DNA. [T]hey intend to import illegals[,] who bring—in a quite[-]literal sense—new DNA. They seek...to...make the country unrecognizable to those who created it[,] and to many of us who...call it our own....

"Project Veritas secretly recorded [Democratic presidential candidate, Senator] Bernie Sanders['] staffers[.] 'There's a reason Joseph Stalin had gulags, right?' said Kyle Jurek. Even uncooperative liberals should be forced to undergo...reeducation, Jurek said. Such extremes were required, he added, 'because we're going to have to teach you not to be a f[——]ck[——]ing Nazi.'...

"Becoming American is not an easy process for an outsider[.] You are in no-man's land, belonging neither here nor there. But eventually...I assimilated. Since then I have felt at home in America[.]

"But now these people want to destroy my American dream and make me an alien in my adopted country. I...am not going to stand for it." – pp. 25–9

The Socialist Temptation

"My refutation [of] identity socialism [includes] expos[ing its] temptation. [I]f socialism is such a bad idea, why do so many people go for it? [More than] the temptation to live off 'free stuff'[, i]t is the temptation to annihilate one's conscience by feeling justified in living off other people's work.

"[M]ost people would not dream of going into their neighbor's house...and helping themselves to his [things. T]he only way to involve honest people in a theft scheme is to convince them that their neighbors have been stealing from them....

"The second part of the socialist temptation involves...the socialists...themselves. This is a class of people that has no idea how to create wealth. Pretty much the only thing they know how to create is words. This does not mean...that they are untalented. They are actually very talented, just not at making iPhones or warehouse delivery systems or getting oil out of the ground. Resentful of those who can do th[o]se things, the socialists proclaim them 'selfish' and 'greedy' and imply that such vices are responsible for their notable prosperity and success.

"What the socialist class is good at...is creating envy and entitlement. Th[at] is their...talent. [T]hough they won't admit it, they are engaged in a desperate battle for social control. What they seek is a displacement of power in society[,] in which they, not entrepreneurs, direct the great apparatus of American industry[:] indeed[,] direct the lives of the people themselves.

"[T]he very labels that they apply to the entrepreneurs—namely greed and selfishness[—]more accurately apply to them[selves. T]hey insist that society is in need of a neutral, administrative class....

"The people aren't even persuaded. They have to be cajoled, propagandized and bullied....This is what they are doing now. And they do it ruthlessly, relentlessly[:] keeping their eye on the prize[.] They want to be Plato's guardians[:] the 'people of gold'[,] who rule by right over the lower orders[.]

"Their [pretended] virtue [is an] ignoble lie[.] In fact, they are motivated by the same ambition and desire for power and gain as anyone else. [T]hey are the least compassionate, most uncharitable group in society. This, then, is the temptation of the socialists: they are tempted to annihilate their consciences to conceal the ugly truth about themselves.

"One fact they cannot face is that the only difference between them and [the] capitalist entrepreneurs is that they seek unearned power[.] As I will show, entrepreneurs are genuinely accountable to their customers, who exercise direct democracy[;] they vote every day with their purchases for the products that entrepreneurs supply. The socialists wish to answer to nobody. They are driven, as Nietzsche pointed out[,] by a nasty, vengeful 'will to power.'...

"The socialists are...a corrupt gang. They conceal their crookedness behind a mask of virtue, and they appeal to crooked people by giving them reasons to steal from others....Once the socialist morality play is exposed as a theft scheme[,] they are done....

"So what about 'the end of work'?...Even in sowing the winds of 'creative destruction' (Schumpeter's term), which displaces old industries and old institutions, the free market can and will create new opportunities for humans to thrive." – pp. 29–32

Chapter 1: The Invention of Invention

America and the Ideal of the Self-Made Man

" 'Destiny...is a thing to be achieved.'—[Populist] William Jennings Bryan

"[Communist theorist Friedrich] Engels stressed the distinctiveness of America[. H]e admitted 'the peculiar difficulties for a steady development of a workers party' in the United States....

"When I arrived...in 1978 as an exchange student from India, I was simply stunned by the opulence of ordinary American life.

"[M]y host family proposed to take me on a sightseeing trip.

"[But] I wanted to see the local supermarket where I could survey the endless varieties of cheese and ice cream[,] or a local farm where I could watch one guy on a tractor plow and fertilize hundreds of acres[.]

"Most Americans take the basic amenities of modern life for granted. [But] not so long ago[,] America was one of the poor, backward countries. It was still largely rural and agricultural at the time of its founding.

"Then, in relatively short order, America became the most productive and prosperous nation in the world.

"[W]ho made the goose that lays the golden eggs?...

"America became rich...by creating a mechanism for innovation and growth[.] In America, conservatism means conserving the principles of the American Revolution. This means that we are heirs to a revolutionary tradition[;] and rebellion, change and making our own destiny are...in our political DNA....

"The founding...created the framework for a new type of human being[:] 'the self-made man.' " – pp. 33–6

History from Below

"The roots of American prosperity and of American self-invention...are completely ignored in the curriculums and classrooms of American schools and in the media. [Instead,] the history [we] learn...is...from the progressive viewpoint....

"Howard Zinn [in his] classic work, A People's History of the United States...uses the victim's perspective to generate an anti-American narrative, one that is not confined to the academic sphere but has now spread...through[out] the culture.

"[It] is the voice...of identity socialism[,] the dominant narrative taught to young people today....

"Mexican migrants...don't spend their time thinking about me; why should I spend my time thinking about them?

"[N]o ethnic group—not even the groups that Zinn invokes—cares very much about any other ethnic group....We're moderately interested in how American prosperity became more widely distributed[,] but we're much more interested in how it came about in the first instance.

"Here progressive history lapses into silence. This is the great subject it leaves out. Progressive history tends to take America's wealth for granted[.] Typical of this approach is historian Charles Beard, whose famous work is called An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States....

"Beard tries to show that the delegates to the constitutional convention voted as economic interest groups....Beard's theories...held sway for a generation without anyone actually checking his facts.

"Eventually historians like Forrest McDonald and Robert Brown...found that Beard had spun his data. Convention delegates did not, in fact, vote as interest groups. [M]erchants on [both] side[s] of the...tariffs...debate [worked] the same trades[.] Beard's quasi-Marxist theory of the founding as an institutional manifestation of class oppression doesn't hold up.

"[Of] robber barons[,] Jack Schwartz in [T]he Daily Beast [writes]: 'The Gilded Age produced an unbridled capitalism and a culture of excess that led to financial panics impoverishing millions at the hands of corporate profiteers professing the sanctity of property.'

"[A] recent article in [T]he American Interest...says, 'The Gilded Age economy was lopsided and dysfunctional, producing untenable extremes of vulgar opulence and abject poverty.' [Q]uestions abound: Lopsided how? Dysfunctional in what way?...Abject compared to what? Surely not to how those poor people lived before, or else they would not have moved from the rural areas to the cities....

"Encyclopedia Britannica characterizes the Gilded Age as one of 'gross materialism' dominated by 'greedy industrialists.' Not a word about what those greedy industrialists did....

"In 1984, Orwell warns of the socialist project of cleansing history where 'the past is erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.' That has almost happened[.]" – pp. 36–40

The Genius and the Bum

"The founders...were not career politicians or mere 'men of letters.' They were scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs and builders—in other words, practical men of varied talents.

"[T]he founders sought to perpetuate Renaissance men like themselves. This is the grain of truth in Beard's indictment. The founders weren't advancing their economic interest, but they were, in a broad sense, replicating their own human types....Benjamin Franklin['s] Autobiography...captures a distinctive American mold that I'll call 'capitalist man.'...

"Franklin is eloquent on self-fashioning and self-improvement.

"[T]he Sanders type is recognizable all over the world—I had a close relative in India...like [him]—while the Franklin type is uniquely and recognizably American....

"Sanders['] young life seems to have been devoted to agitating for two causes: socialism and sexual freedom. In his college years and in his twenties, he emphasized the latter....

"In 1971 Sanders showed up at a commune in Vermont called Myrtle Farm[. T]he commune expelled [him] for laziness[:] for failing to contribute to sustaining the commune....

"Sanders...seems at ease with...his self-serving sycophancy and his parasitism on the largesse of capitalism to pay his salary through taxpayer outlays." – pp. 40–4

Passions and Interests

"Democratic socialists like Sanders are not fans of the American founding. That's because they recognize the founding as a free market revolution. [I]t was also antidemocratic. [T]he founding rejected democracy in its original meaning[,] adopt[ing instead] a specialized form of democracy[:] a 'constitutional republic' [which] erected numerous barriers to direct popular rule.

"The most influential socialist publication in America is Jacobin. Get it? These guys want to identify with the French Revolution, not the American, and they don't hesitate to identify with the most radical faction of that revolution—the one associated with the guillotine and the Terror. The socialist historian Eric Foner urges...Sanders...to look...to 'the rich tradition of American radicalism.'

"[But] sympathetic...Englishman...Thomas Paine...was a champion of free markets and property rights, and...abolitionist...Frederick Douglass...championed the 'self-made man'[.] Foner makes no identification with the American founders. As far as he's concerned, radicalism in America means moving to...transform and...overturn the principles of the founding.

"We find the same antipathy to the founding in socialist Astra Taylor's recent paean to socialism in The New Republic. [C]lassical liberalism[,] she says[,] is 'not strong enough to survive [against], let alone constrain[,] concentrated economic power.' Liberalism, in her view, has been vanquished by capitalism, specifically by 'unaccountable plutocrats who have rigged the rules of the game.' Some form of socialism that overturns the structure of this constitutional republic is the only remedy.

"In October 2019, Harper's...rais[ed] the question, 'Has America's founding document become the nation's undoing?'...For Rosa Brooks, relying on the Constitution today was akin to...'NASA us[ing] the world's oldest astronomical chart.' Mary Anne Franks averred, 'We have not, as a country, fully confronted the fraudulent nature of the Constitution and the founding itself.'...Louis Michael Seidman said[,] 'We need to forget about constitutionalism entirely.'

"[T]he framers charged...Congress...'to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors [an] exclusive Right[.]

"This...is the only time the word 'right' appears in the original Constitution[.]

"Franklin knew...Adam Smith...personally, having initially met him through their mutual friend, the philosopher David Hume. Smith's The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776[.]

"[Illinois politician and later President] Abraham Lincoln's 1859 ['L]ecture on [D]iscoveries and [I]nventions[' explains that] entrepreneurs...need a regime dedicated to the protection of patents, property rights and contracts. Historically wealth was mainly land, but Lincoln now identifies wealth with new ideas and new human production....

"Wealth in ancient times[, the economist] Albert Hirschman...contends [in his] important [1977] book[,] The Passions and the Interests[: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph], was obtained mainly by seizure. Conquest, theft and looting were the preferred mechanisms for acquisition....

"Hirschman identifies the powerful human impulse to raid and seize and conquer with the passions. For centuries, he says, humans turned to religious and moral exhortation to temper and regulate the passions, but with limited success....

"Passion is sudden, tempestuous, violent; interest is steady, calm, rational.

"[F]or Lincoln, as for Adam Smith, self-interest is not a bad thing. His concern is not to suppress it but to motivate it. More self-interest...means less passion and less seizure by unlawful force....

"These are the principles that shaped...both American revolutions[:] the Revolution of 1776[,] provoked by the Declaration of Independence[;] and the Revolution of 1789[,] the framing and adoption of the Constitution[. T]he first...provides valuable clues about what motivated the second." – pp. 44–8

Hands in Our Pockets

"[T]he right to property was the first principle at issue in the...first American Revolution[.] 'Can there be any liberty,' wrote James Otis in 1763, 'where property is taken without consent?'

"Consider how John Dickinson...responded to the Stamp Act[:] '[T]he Parliament will levy upon us such sums of money as they choose to take, without any other limitation than their pleasure.' Strikingly, American resistance here is not over the amount of taxation, which was quite modest....

"The British...in the Declaratory Act of 1766...rejected the American insistence on 'no taxation without representation.' England retained full power to make law for the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever.'...All these measures were, in [Thomas] Jefferson's words, 'a series of oppressions' that 'plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery.'

"This theme of asserting economic freedom from government confiscation continues to undergird the Constitution[.] 'The first object of government,' [James] Madison writes in the tenth book of The Federalist, is 'the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property.' [I]t is the primary goal....

"Jefferson [wrote,] 'To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.'

"For the founders, this principle was about more than assuring growth and prosperity. It was about the cultivation of human personality itself. [T]he psychologist William James [wrote,] 'A man's self is the sum total of all that he can call his[.] If they wax or prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.'

"The importance of this passage is its emphasis that economic rights are no less fundamental than civil rights and civil liberties. It makes no sense to say that I own my religious and political opinions and have a right to them but I don't own my labor and have [no] right to the fruits of it....

"So the founding is a socialist nightmare[,] because it affirms as the possession[s] of citizens what the socialists would like to take away through the agency of government. [T]he socialists must insist that th[e]se things don't really belong to you. You somehow stole or appropriated them. You seized for yourself what belongs to the commonweal of society. A majority of citizens, agitating through the democratic process, have every right to seize some or all of what belongs to you to cover the wants or demands or 'entitlements' of others.

"For socialists, this is what democracy means: the collective right to appropriate. What gives this right the force of justice, and of law, is that it is supposedly an expression of the 'will of the people.'[—]But the founders did not agree with this. [T]hey rejected the premise that the people have the right to gang up in a majority and seize the property and earnings of their fellow citizens whose only crime is to be in the political minority." – pp. 48–51

Tyranny of the Majority

"For Madison, writing in the tenth book of The Federalist, democracy is mob rule. 'Democracies...have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.'...

"We're...accustomed to hearing progressives and democratic socialists sing the praises of majority rule[.]

"Let's say the majority makes rules that discriminate in its favor and against minorities. Should this be allowed?...

"Lincoln['s 1858 senatorial] Democratic rival[, 1860 presidential candidate, Illinois Senator] Stephen A. Douglas...advocated 'popular sovereignty' [regarding] allowing or forbidding slavery.

"For Lincoln, this was morally unacceptable....No majority, Lincoln insisted, has the right to steal the bread that is made by the sweat of other men....

" 'An elective despotism,' Jefferson wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia, 'was not the government we fought for.'...

"But how, Madison asked, can majority factions be curtailed?...

"The American founders held that unrestricted majority rule is the principle of modern tyranny, just as unrestricted one-man rule is the principle of ancient tyranny....

"Majorities are not inherently wiser than minorities....

"But how to prevent majority rule from being unjust? This was the fundamental problem that the founders, through the constitutional structure, sought to solve....

"First, they adopted a written Constitution[—]a departure from Great Britain[—]that...overrid[es] the will of the majority. The Constitution creates a framework for limited government[:] the authority of the federal government covers enumerated areas[.] Outside [of] that purview, the government has no authority.

"Second, the Bill of Rights....In his famous commentary on the Constitution, Justice Joseph Story noted [that] a bill of rights [in effect] places strict limits on majority rule.

"[T]hird[,] judicial review. The Supreme Court has independent authority to enforce the Constitution and protect the rights of citizens against the will of the majority.

"Fourth, representative government. What this means is that the people do not rule directly; they rule by electing representatives who govern in their stead....

"Fifth, separation of powers. [P]ower is divided [among] an elected legislature[,] an elected executive...and an appointed judiciary[.]

"Sixth, federalism, which divides power between the national government and the states[.]

"Seventh, checks and balances. This [includes] mutual oversight.

"Finally, the Electoral College and the two branches of the legislature[. In both the college and the legislature,] the distribution of power is weighted to give [more] representation to small...states. [T]he House [of Representatives is checked by the] parity among [the] states [with]in...the Senate.

"[A]ll this...means that America was designed to foster a spirit of freedom and enterprise among its people, and to thwart majority rule from tyrannizing over that spirit. In sum, America is a free market society whose founding principles...provide a powerful bulwark against socialism[,] including democratic socialism." – pp. 51–5

Self-Made Man

"[T]he founders...were not unfamiliar with the anomaly of race. [And t]hey understood that their wives and daughters were part of their novus ordo seclorum [(Latin: new series of ages)].

"[E]very group in the world organizes its society without giving primary consideration to the outsiders who might wish to emigrate to that society.

"[T]he operating principle is one of universality, not of difference. This is the aspect of the American founding [which] identity socialists hate....

"At first...Frederick Douglass, the runaway slave...viewed the American founding purely from the point of view of the slave....Douglass couldn't see what Lincoln saw: the founders could not...outlaw slavery at the outset...and still make a union....

"Lincoln[,] Douglass...charged, was the white man's president. Blacks were...the accidental beneficiaries of his actions. After all, Lincoln...campaigned merely to arrest the spread of slavery....

"Lincoln was white; why should he give priority to blacks? Douglass...considered it right and natural for him[self] to give priority to his own race. [After] he met Lincoln, Douglass...saw that Lincoln treated him not as a black man but simply as a man....He didn't need Lincoln to see difference; he only needed Lincoln to recognize their common humanity....

"Douglass...came to see that the founders too articulated universal norms and rights that included him even while not recognizing his blackness.

"[D]ays after the Civil War ended, Douglass raised the question, 'What must be done for the slaves?' His answer: 'Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us...If the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall....If you will only untie his hands and give him a chance, I think he will live.'

"[T]he...speech...Douglass...delivered most often...was titled 'Self-Made Men.' America, Douglass argued, is the land of the self-made man[. I]t offers that prospect to the woman no less than to the man, to the black man no less than to the white man....

"Douglass noted that there are those who scorn the self-made man, crediting his achievement to privilege or luck[,] tak[ing] 'no cognizance of the very different uses to which different men put their circumstances and chances[.]" – pp. 55–8

In Praise of Robber Barons

"[S]ome of the men of enterprise who embody the spirit of the American founding...are the very 'robber barons' vilified in progressive and socialist historiography....

"The progressive narrative focuses on [the] various government subsidies that were extended to [the] pioneers in...America's industrial revolution[. F]or progressives, the...lesson is that without government aid, the railroads and other key modes of transportation would not have been built. [H]istory...in this version...illuminates that the path to government direction of industry—the path toward socialism—is the right one.

"The truth...is precisely the opposite. The great innovations examined here all occurred without government [help, and] were achieved in the face of obstacles erected by the government....

"When Cornelius Vanderbilt began running steamboats on the Hudson River, the traffic was controlled by Robert Fulton's vessels. Fulton's monopoly had been granted to him by New York State.

"[S]teamers got bigger and began to make transatlantic crossings[.] Edward K. Collins...convinced the U.S. government to give him subsidies to compete with...the British line Cunard[. But] Vanderbilt built better ships [and] conserved his costs[.]

"After the...Civil War[,] Vanderbilt moved his investments from steamships into railroads[.]

"Progressives like to tell the story of the multiple railroad companies that built their cross-country lines with the help of government charters and subsidies. The two best known are the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad. Both desperately sought to fill their coffers with government cash as they raced to complete their projects....Henry Villard's Northern Pacific attracted both investors and government subsidies [for] the Pacific Northwest....

"James J. Hill built a transcontinental line through the Northwest with no federal aid. Notwithstanding his government subsidies, Villard failed and went bankrupt[.]

"Villard, a political entrepreneur who came from New York, viewed the Northwest like a postcard; he built along the most scenic routes. It cost more, but so what? Villard was spending the government's money. Hill, a local man with more practical concerns, chose the shortest and most efficient routes. Hill was spending his own money.

"Villard viewed the great Pacific Northwest as good for passing through; Hill encouraged the development of farming communities alongside his railroad....Hill expected that if these farming communities prospered, his railroad would too.

"Unlike Villard and other railroad builders on government support, Hill was obsessed with efficiency....So Hill hired local adventurers to comb through western Montana to find...the Marias Pass that shortened the distance through the Rockies....

"The well-connected political entrepreneur Samuel Langley had pledged to build an airplane. He had the support of the Smithsonian, the most prominent scientific institution in America. He had hundreds of thousands of dollars in government subsidy. He received devotional press coverage as the man who would conquer the sky.

"[Yet] as historian David McCullough tells the story, two owners of a bicycle business, Wilbur and Orville Wright, used $1,000 in profits from their company to purchase building materials. They designed an airplane. They got their materials to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They paid their own way to get there. They built the makeshift airplane. [And t]hey flew it....

"Vanderbilt, Hill, the Wright brothers—these are the American pioneers. They were self-made men who also helped [to] make a new nation....Ignored[,] these entrepreneurs may be—vilified[,] even—in progressive historiography. Yet who can deny that they embody the inventive, enterprising and—I hope—indestructible spirit of America?" – pp. 59–62

Chapter 2: The Dream and the Nightmare

How Socialism Came to America

"We are not the United States of Socialism[:] at least not yet. But the socialists are here, and their agenda is now part of the national discourse....

"The activist group Democratic Socialists of America has grown...to over 50,000 members....More significant[ly], much of the national media is sympathetic, and socialist ideas now dominate the Democratic Party and shape the nation's political agenda....

"In a recent speech delivered at George Washington University[,] Sanders...described his...socialist platform as 'the unfinished business of [President] Franklin Delano Roosevelt [(FDR)'s] New Deal.'

"Sanders' speech provoked some indignant pushback[.] According to...the progressive narrative that is taught in schools and promulgated in the media[,] FDR and the New Deal saved America from socialism. They also saved capitalism by creating a new, more humane form of capitalism that protected its victims[.] Calling FDR socialist, [said the] progressive economist Robert Reich, is to characterize him with a 'scare word.' The progressive historian Sean Wilentz blames such rhetoric on 'right-wing name-calling.'...

"Wilentz stressed that while socialism is defined by public or state ownership of finance, industry and agriculture[,] progressivism refers to what FDR sought[:] a government that provides 'security for all citizens in the essentials of life'[.]

"Al Smith, the Democratic Party's presidential nominee in 1924[,] nominated FDR...in 1928 [but] opposed his reelection. Smith knew that many of FDR's New Deal programs, including Social Security, unemployment insurance and agricultural price supports, had come from the socialists....

"So who's right, Sanders or the progressives? Sanders! Even the progressives know this. Their protest...seems to be against [his] candor....The progressives know that [if] FDR...had prevailed completely[,] America would be much more of a socialist country....

"This chapter will substantiate [Sanders'] contention that progressivism was the conveyor belt that brought socialism into the American mainstream." – pp. 64–7

Sister Ideologies

"As the German[-born] sociologist Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues in a [2006] book tellingly titled Three New Deals[: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933–1939], progressivism, [c]ommunism and [n]ational [s]ocialism (also called fascism) were all sister ideologies, variations on a single theme, motivated by the same impulses, seeking to move society in a similar direction—away from free market capitalism and toward a collectivist society with the state as the instrument of the common good.

"Consistent with this ideological kinship, FDR and American progressives admired socialist regimes: not just the 'international socialism' of the Soviet Union but also [n]ational [s]ocialism[,] in Italy and Germany.

"[W]hat motivates the progressives today who are pushing America in the direction of socialism? Here the standard conservative answer is: the dream!...They want, in the words of [the] philosopher Eric Voegelin, to 'immanentize the eschaton'[.]

"[T]he facts were so obvious, even at the time, that it makes no sense to hold that otherwise[-]intelligent people were simply deceived. If they were deceived, [then] they wanted to be deceived. And why? Again, the standard conservative response is that they have to believe in theoretical socialism because actual socialism never works[:] because it is 'against human nature.' [E]ach generation of socialists has to harken back to the dream[,] and promise a new type of socialism different from all the types that came before....

"Charles C.W. Cooke writes in National Review that 'real socialism can't exist' because 'selfishness is ineradicable' and 'man isn't perfectible.'...But [n]o actual socialist has ever attempted that.

"Anyone who thinks that socialists...are genuinely trying to eradicate selfishness or human imperfection is living on Mars....Nicolás Maduro[,] for instance, promises poor Venezuelans that he will make rich people vacate their land and homes; then he will distribute that wealth among the poor. [W]hat about the [Sanders] voters who want other people to pay for their college tuition and healthcare? Th[is] is hardly an eradication of selfishness[.]

"Soviet socialism...worked for those who were running it, and that's why it lasted for more than 70 years. Venezuelan socialism today 'works' for the Chavistas, who live high on the hog. [S]ocialism is consistent with human nature; it draws on its worst impulses, which cannot be publicly acknowledged.

"[T]he 'will of the people' is not something given; rather, it is made. In Schumpeter's words, 'The will of the people is the product and not the motive of the political process.' Progressives know this, and, as we will see, they devote tremendous resources and energy to forging a climate of public opinion favorable to their projects." – pp. 67–9

The Ones Left Behind

"As [the] historian Bernard Bailyn writes, it is well understood in political theory that 'the ultimate explanation of every political controversy' is the 'disposition of power.'

"[F]or...John Adams[,] the defining feature of...'dominion'[, which] means...control by some human beings of others[,] is...its constant tendency to break loose of legitimate boundaries.

"[P]rogressivism...is akin to socialism in that it developed in opposition to the principle of the American founding....

"Every revolution other than the American has proven to be a failure or a disaster. The French Revolution, for instance, began with the glorious affirmation of 'liberty, equality and fraternity' and ended with Robespierre's Reign of Terror....The Russian Revolution was an unmitigated disaster from the beginning[.]

"Which was the class of people left behind by the American Revolution?...They were the courtiers who served at court, the barristers who advised the throne, the men of letters who received patronage at the hands of [the] monarchs and [the] aristocrats....

"What they produced were mainly words. They prized wordsmithing, but hated doing other types of work, especially manual work....

"These people were once at the helm of power. They were the old regime's ruling class. In Europe, such people watched angrily, resentfully, as the new entrepreneurial class rose in power[.]

"Viewing themselves as smart—the smartest people in society—they feel entitled to be the ones who exercise power, who tell others what to do....

"How...do the 'people of words' rise up and displace the people who make and do things? [T]hey go into full thespian mode. They are good at this; it is the courtier stance, and for centuries it has been their natural métier.

"[T]he people of words insist that they are cut from a finer cloth. They are not like the wicked entrepreneurs. What the people...demand...is a professional class of planners and administrators like the people of words, selflessly devoted to social justice and the common good....Their goal is...to mobilize the resentment of the people against the innovators and wealth creators.

"[T]hey are actually the hungriest, most grasping seekers of power. The people are merely the vehicle for them to get it....What motivates progressiv[e]s and socialists in large part is their desire to exercise tyrannical power over others.

"[Y]et[,] I have to admit that power is not their sole motive. Ideology matters too.

"[T]hey seek both power and an ideological transformation of American society." – pp. 69–72

Honeymoon in Moscow

"When a Soviet choir of 30 young girls performed in Burlington[, Vermont] for about 500 residents, Sanders took the stage and sar[don]ically riffed, 'This is the enemy!' " – p. 74

What de Blasio Saw—And Chose Not to See

"In 1988...de Blasio visited Nicaragua. According to a New York Times profile, he had become...an 'ardent supporter of the Nicaraguan revolutionaries.'

"[He] volunteered...at the Nicaragua Solidarity Network[. He] recently said[,] 'My work was based on trying to create a more fair and inclusive world'[. I]n 1990, he said...about the Sandinistas, 'They gave a new definition to democracy. They built a democracy that was striving to be [both] economic and political[.] It was very affecting for me.'

"[From] his volunteer work at a health clinic in Masaya...de Blasio says[,] 'I took away...how hands-on government has to be[,] how connected to the people[.]

"One would never know from de Blasio that Nicaragua was a socialist dictatorship whose goal, in the words of Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Shirley Christian, was 'to assure themselves the means to control nearly every aspect of Nicaraguan life'[. T]he Sandanistas operated out of the same socialist playbook as the Soviets and the Cubans.

"[T]he aspiring Democratic presidential candidate[, former New York City Mayor] Michael Bloomberg offered a rhapsodic account of the Chinese Communist Party, insisting in an interview...on Firing Line [with Margaret Hoover] that the ruling regime in Beijing was democratically accountable to the Chinese people....

"There is a deep historical pattern here, brilliantly chronicled in [the Hungarian-born political sociologist] Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals In Search of the Good Society....

"The American left is not removed from these horrors—it is...implicated....

"Hollander...misses how FDR and Mussolini formed a mutual admiration society, reviewing each other's books and praising each other as ideological soul mates....

"FDR[, in] his own words[,] viewed fascism from the outset as a 'phenomenon somewhat parallel to the [c]ommunist experiment in Russia.'...Fascism [now] has become toxic and, in the manner depicted by Orwell in 1984, FDR's early connection to it has been erased [in] progressive accounts....

"The eminent leftist scholar W.E.B. Du Bois...championed every socialist regime no matter how murderous[:] 'If...Russia is Bolshevism, I am a Bolshevik.'...

"Du Bois visited Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and praised German [n]ational [s]ocialism as an 'absolutely necessary' scheme that 'showed Germany the way out.'...

"Hollander...thinks the socialist regimes in Russia, China and Cuba bamboozled American progressives and socialists. I...think...they saw what they wanted to see....

"Their project was to protect and defend...system[s] that they understood to be analogous and akin to what they were attempting here. In defending those regimes then, they were defending themselves, just as in denying their previous attachments now, they are also...defending themselves. This is how crime families behave. It's called deniability." – pp. 75–9

The Unnecessary Automobile

"The leading figure of socialism was...Eugene Debs. The leading figure of progressivism was...Woodrow Wilson. The former was, to use Obama's phrase, a 'community organizer.' The latter was the president of Princeton [University and] governor of New Jersey[.]

"The Wilson administration prosecuted Debs under the Sedition Act[.] Debs went into obscurity while Wilson served two terms[.] Yet...Wilson incorporated a good deal of Debs' platform into his progressive agenda. [And] Wilson created a framework for implementing...much of what Debs agitated for.

"The important thing to know about Wilson...is that he opposed cars....He warned[,] 'Nothing has spread socialistic feeling more than the use of the automobile.'...They are a rich man's toy. [Thus t]hey create class resentment. Who really needs a car for personal transportation when we already have the horse and buggy?...

"Wilson...lacked vision. His argument against the car may be termed the 'argument from personal incredulity.' [(]I get this phrase from the [English zo]ologist Richard Dawkins[.) Viz.] 'What is the point of a car? Can I think of any good reason why anyone would want to own a car? Here, sitting in my office and twiddling my thumbs, I cannot. Clearly there is no good reason why anyone should want a car. Therefore, cars should not exist.'

"[T]his is actually a common progressive mode of argument. [For] example[,] 'Who knows what [f]racking...is doing to the environment? It could be causing earthquakes for all we know. Here, sitting in my office and twiddling my thumbs, I cannot personally think of a single good reason for fracking. [So, f]racking should not exist.'...

"Wilson saw the car only as it was, not as it could be....Wilson viewed himself [not as] upper[-]class[, but] more as a man of the people[:] not one of them, certainly, but an objective administrator of the people's genuine interests. He knew what they wanted[—]and, just as important[ly], what they ought to want. He was there to show them how, under his leadership, their lives could be better. This was true democracy[:] democracy under adult supervision. Here [we have] the familiar pose of the enlightened progressive intellectual.

"[C]ontrast Wilson with one of the objects of his contempt[:] Henry Ford....

"Ford's genius was to envision a society in which not only the rich but nearly everybody would own and drive cars. He could see consumer demand, which didn't exist then but would develop later, after people saw what Ford had made for them.

"[Said] Ford[,] 'Machines are to a mechanic what books are to a writer. He gets ideas from them.' Before he started work on the automobile, Ford worked as an apprentice in a machine shop, then in the engine room of a shipbuilding firm, then at a power plant....

"Interchangeable parts enabled Ford to make a standardized product. He didn't care about customization[.] Ford got his idea for a moving assembly line from what he observed in the giant slaughterhouses of the Chicago stockyards. [H]e added a marketing innovation, the car dealership, where cars could not only be purchased but also...serviced.

"While cars were initially selling for around $3,000[,] Ford sold his first cars for under $1,000. He reinvested his profits to make a better, cheaper product....By 1916, Ford's Model T was selling for less than $400....

"The prototypical entrepreneur had a much greater impact than the prototypical progressive statist. [T]he car was perhaps the most democratizing force in history." – pp. 79–82

Wise Minority in the Saddle

"[T]he socialist...agenda was the talk of the nation in the pivotal year of 1912, yet two of the three leading candidates[,] Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, called themselves progressives rather then socialists....

"Debs, who started the Socialist Party...in 1901, is the founder of American socialism....Sanders knows Debs well. He still hangs a portrait of Debs in his office[.]

"Debs...praised the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and declared that, here in America, 'we shall transfer the title deeds of the railroads, the telegraph lines, the mines, mills and great industries to the people in their collective capacity; we shall take possession of all these social utilities in the name of the people.' Notice who takes possession: not the people but Debs and his buddies. They do it 'in the name of the people.' This is the voice of socialist tyranny, masking itself from the outset in the language of democracy.

"[T]he people...rejected the idea of giving...power to Debs in their name....

"In his recent book The Socialist Manifesto[: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality], Bhaskar Sunkara concedes that apart from a brief surge in 1912 and 1931, card-carrying socialists have never been 'a serious force in national politics.' At least until now.

"[I]n 1912...Teddy Roosevelt quit the Republican Party to run as a progressive....

"Wilson was the other progressive running, but he ran on the Democratic ticket. His ideas mirrored those of Teddy Roosevelt.

"[M]odern propaganda emphasizes the 'shiny' achievements of the progressives while covering up their deeper agenda. To understand this deeper agenda, we must listen to what the progressives themselves said at the time. Wilson was the first president to attack the founding. In words every previous president would have considered heretical, Wilson said, 'We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines held by the signers of the Declaration of Independence.'

"[E]ven during the Civil War, when the divisions in American politics were the sharpest, both sides emphasized that they were the true exponents of [the] found[ers'] principles. Wilson...made no effort to camouflage that progressivism represented a sharp break with the founding. Wilson outlined his doctrine in a 1913 speech titled 'What is Progress?' The speech contrasted what Wilson termed the Newtonian principle of the founding with the Darwinian approach of progressive Democrats....

"Wilson concluded, 'Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics. It must develop.'...

"Wilson is making the case for society to be run by enlightened planners, not through some sort of spontaneous operation of natural laws[.] This for Wilson is what 'progressive' means. It means progress away from the founding, progress according to a Darwinian principle of adaptation. Wilson's actual analogy...makes no sense....

"Darwin was very insistent...that evolution operates without...supervisory planning or design. Order is spontaneously generated through adaptive behavior at the local level in varying competitive environments....

"Free markets can be considered a form of...cultural adaptation and evolution. [W]hat survives and works is what gets replicated, with[out] a central planning authority....

"Wilson exhibits the typical profile of the progressives. He despises the founding and the kind of people the founders cherished. He considers himself better than them, more enlightened. He seeks to reorganize society in a way that puts this better kind of person, a person like himself, in the...saddle[.]

"We can hear this same self-aggrandizement in most of the progressive literature of the early part of the twentieth century....Here's [the political economist] Edward Alsworth Ross[,] from his [1901] book aptly titled Social Control[: A Survey of the Foundations of Order]: 'The state is an organization that puts the wise minority in the saddle.' Ross has no illusions about the state being run by the majority. He envisions not the people but a 'wise minority' guiding the people[.]

" 'The state aims more steadily at a rational safeguarding of the collective welfare than any organ society has yet employed.' While in theory the state is supposed to be democratically run by the society, Ross candidly states that 'as a matter of fact the state, when it becomes paternal and develops on the administrative side, is able in a measure to guide the society it professes to obey.' It becomes...'an independent center of social power.'

"During the Wilson years, the progressives made some key changes to establish the power of the centralized state. [T]he graduated or 'progressive' income tax...required a constitutional amendment. [T]he progressives added corporate and inheritance taxes. Now the mechanism to fund the centralized state was in place.

"Progressives...created the Federal Reserve Board to regulate money, banking and credit, and the Federal Trade Commission to oversee industry. [T]hey were the beginning of the administrative state, a kind of 'fourth branch of government.'...

"Wilson...had his own version of identity politics[:] he introduced racial segregation to the federal government[.] He helped to revive the Ku Klux Klan. He supported eugenic measures that would later inspire the Nazis[.] 'During the Wilson years,' [the historian] Ira Katznelson writes, 'the composite of racism and progressive liberalism came to dominate the Democratic Party.'

"We'll see this pattern of using white nationalism to build an effective political coalition continue with the Democrats through the middle of the century. [This] is not a contradiction[—]merely a change of tactics. The party of identity politics in one direction remains the party of identity politics in the opposite direction.

"[T]he Socialist Party platform...in 1912...called for an eight-hour workday at a guaranteed wage. It called for public works programs for the unemployed. It advocated old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, a graduated...income tax, an inheritance tax, getting rid of the Electoral College and a convention to revise the Constitution....

"My point is...simply to show how closely...the agenda of the early socialists...tracks the agenda of the political left and the Democratic Party. [And] that's what progressives did: they steadily took on board the socialist program. They made it their own, they carried out some of it and...they brought all of it into the political mainstream.

"This is Wilson's true and lasting legacy: creeping socialism....It would take a man less cerebral but more cunning to largely enact this program lifted from the socialists[:] a [then-]young navy secretary [who] never swerved from Wilson's priorities. Elected in 1932, he found himself in the midst of a national emergency....He seized on the crisis to do what Wilson never had the savvy or the chance to do. He, not Wilson, is the man who 'remade America' by pushing it in the socialist direction." – pp. 82–7

A Second Bill of Rights

"What is socialism, in the sense now meaningful in American politics? In his George Washington University speech[,] Sanders said it is 'the right to quality healthcare, the right to as much education as one needs to succeed in our society, the right to a good job that pays a living wage, the right to affordable housing, the right to a secure retirement, and the right to live in a clean environment.'...

"In this perspective, the state is the friend of my rights. Government makes available to me things like education, healthcare, home ownership and retirement benefits. It does so by seizing the earnings and resources of a minority of the successful[.]

"[L]ate in his presidency on January 11, 1944[,] Franklin Delano Roosevelt...declared that it was time for America to adopt what he termed a Second Bill of Rights. Every American, he insisted, is entitled to a 'useful and remunerative job'; the opportunity to 'earn enough' to provide adequate food, clothing and recreation; to a 'decent home' for his family; to 'adequate medical care'; to a 'good education'; and finally to 'adequate protection' in old age and retirement....

"When it comes to outlining the socialist agenda...we can say that FDR got there first....No wonder that today's socialists like [Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez] aren't in a socialist party[.] FDR made the Democratic Party a natural fit for them.

"The legal scholar Cass Sunstein, in his [2004] book The Second Bill of Rights[: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever], terms FDR's speech 'the greatest of the twentieth century.'...FDR didn't merely spell out all these new rights, he offered a rationale that basically flips the founders' idea of rights on its head....

"FDR argued that [l]ife requires certain necessities[.] Now[—in] the key move—FDR insisted that 'necessitous men are not free men.' He said that to give citizens true freedom, the government must insure them against deprivation, against the loss of a job, against illness and against impoverished old age.

"What people need, in other words, is what FDR frankly and without irony called 'freedom from fear.'...And who can deliver th[is]? For FDR, there was only one answer to this question: the federal government....As Sunstein recognized, this is...an intellectual revolution.

"It is a revolution away from the entrepreneurial society the founders created and toward the socialist society that FDR envisioned but dared not name." – pp. 87–9

Franklin Delano Ponzi

"FDR's goal [with] Social Security...from the outset was to use current contributions to pay out to currently retiring seniors....

"FDR [said,] 'With those...Social Security [payroll] taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.'...

"He...wanted to fool people into thinking that they had earned their Social Security benefits. They had paid into the system, and now they were just getting their own money back plus interest. Any attempt to get rid of Social Security would provoke the fury of people as if their personal bank accounts were being raided.

"[E]ven in the Depression era, FDR had to be...deceitful about what he was doing. He couldn't sell Social Security as a 'right'[.] And he had to use the whole deceptive vocabulary of 'contributions'[.]

"FDR's second destructive act was confiscatory taxation. FDR raised the top marginal rate of the federal income tax to more than 80 percent[.]

"FDR hired 40,000 artists and painters to produce music and theater, paintings and murals [and] local travel guides[.]

"Alexander Forbes, a Harvard classmate of FDR who went on to be a professor at Harvard Medical School, wrote FDR to say, 'Look at the sorry spectacle presented by long rows of beneficiaries of the boondoggle, leaning on their shovels by the hour, at futile projects, and contrast it with the great universities, museums and research laboratories[—]and then consider which is the major constructive force in building a stable civilization.'

"[W]ho knows better how to use the money, the people who have made it[,] or the government that treats it with the...indifference of...spending someone else's money? FDR's response was to brand Forbes [as] 'one of the worst anarchists in the United States.'...

"Finally, we turn to FDR's unscrupulous willingness to use the 'race card.' We are familiar today with the race card being played against whites, but like Wilson, FDR played it against blacks. He was a practitioner of white identity politics. This is important because when [the] Democrats today say they are fighting the racism of the past, they omit to mention that they are the ones who practiced that racism....

"Katznelson shows in his [2013] book Fear Itself[: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time] how FDR cut deals with racist Democrats to exclude blacks from [the] New Deal programs. The legislation creating Social Security was deliberately crafted to exclude domestic workers and farmworkers, the two occupations in which blacks were most heavily concentrated....FDR blocked anti-lynching legislation to appease this group.

"FDR also named Hugo Black to the Supreme Court, a man with deep and longtime ties to the Ku Klux Klan....

"Later Black wrote in a 1968 memo that he had informed FDR about his background. 'President Roosevelt told me there was no reason for my worrying about having been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He said some of his best friends and supporters were strong members of that organization.'

"[S]everal Senate Democrats recently filed a brief[,] warning the...Supreme Court...justices to 'heal' the Court or face restructuring.

"Stacking and packing the Court...is what FDR cared about. He knew Black was an ardent New Deal man and would vote his way—to suppress economic liberties. That Black was closely linked with a group that lynched blacks...was a matter of relative indifference to American progressivism's most hallowed president. Identity politics is a dirty business[.]" – pp. 90–4

Chapter 3: Alien Nation

Why Socialists Abandoned the Working Class

"Socialism...has turned into a coordinated effort to make...ordinary citizens and workers...feel unwelcome and demonized in their own country. Socialism in America today has turned black against white, female against male, homosexual and transsexual against heterosexual[,] and illegals against legal immigrants and American citizens. The typical socialist today is not a union guy who wants higher wages; it[']s a transsexual ecofeminist who marches in Antifa and Black Lives Matter rallies and throws cement blocks at her political opponents....

"In the left and in the Democratic Party, it's all about identity politics now.

"Recently, the left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore...pointed out...on MSNBC...that Democrats from Bill Clinton to Obama won the presidency without the white vote....Moore's message was simple[: M]obilize against them! 'Let's get out the Democratic base of women, young people and people of color.'

"The implications of this go beyond party politics; they involve how the left views the country itself....

" 'If you are white, male, heterosexual, and religiously or socially conservative,' writes author and editor Rod Dreher[,] 'people like you are going to have to lose their jobs and influence.'

"[F]or identity socialists and for the left more generally, blacks and Latinos are in, whites are out. Women are in, men are out. Gays, bisexuals, pansexuals and transsexuals, together with other, more exotic types, are in; heterosexuals are out. Illegals are in, native-born citizens are out....The point, for the left, is...to estrange their opponents from their native land....

"Because whites were a clear majority, whiteness was the norm. [M]aleness was also seen as normative. [T]he same applied to heterosexuality[.] For the socialist left, it's vital to overturn this hierarchy...by creating an inverse hierarchy. Whiteness, maleness and heterosexuality are now viewed as pathological, as forms of oppression. [T]he left by design seeks to demonize white male heterosexuals and thus make a large body of Americans feel like aliens in their own country.

"[T]his great shift occurred [in] the 1960s[;] the progressive baton passed from FDR to Lyndon B[aines] Johnson. LBJ [also] used a three-letter abbreviation[, a]nd FDR's New Deal found its fuller realization in LBJ's Great Society.

"[B]oth men...manipulat[ed] white supremacy for political ends....LBJ's embrace of civil rights was cynically motivated to preserve the Democratic plantation and guarantee a reliable [black] dependency on the Democratic Party.

"[W]hile FDR's socialist schemes were passed in an era of depression, LBJ's schemes were passed in an era of affluence....

"Earlier, FDR had argued...that [t]he situation was desperate. So it was morally imperative to act!

"[The] economist John Kenneth Galbraith [in his 1958 book] The Affluent Society...argued for an expansion of federal programs on the grounds that America was now a rich country and could afford them. How scandalous to have need[,] in the midst of plenty. So once again it was morally imperative to act!" – pp. 95–100

Marcuse's Marxist Conundrum

"A German philosopher partly of Jewish descent[,] Herbert Marcuse...studied under the philosopher Martin Heidegger[.]

"Marcuse egged on the activists of the 1960s to seize buildings and overthrow the hierarchy of the university, as a kind of first step to fomenting socialist revolution in America....Ronald Reagan...got Marcuse fired....

"In his famous work What Is To Be Done? [the Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir] Lenin insisted that the socialist revolution would not be done by the working class; it would have to be done for them.

"In other words, a professional class of activists and fighters would be required[.]

"[I]n the early 1920s, the Italian [c]ommunist Antonio Gramsci made his own revision of socialist theory by introducing the theme of culture....He insisted that the capitalists...ruled through 'bourgeois values' that permeated the cultural, educational and psychological realm of society....

"For Gramsci[, t]he ordinary worker had no intention of toppling his employers[.] Gramsci's solution was for socialist activists to figure out a way to break this hegemony and to establish a hegemony of their own. To do this they would have to take over the universities, the art world and the culture more generally....

"Lenin and Gramsci provided Marcuse with a starting point. He agreed...that the working class [was] a conservative, counterrevolutionary force. But his greatest early influence was...Heidegger[, including his] magnum opus, Being and Time[.]

" 'Being'...is bracketed by 'time.' Humans are perishable beings that for the time being exist.

"[F]or Heidegger[,] the big question...was...'How is it good to be?' Typically[,] we are barely even aware of...this question[.] We go through life...steered by a tide of...conformity....Authenticity, for Heidegger, means coming to terms with our mortality and living the only life we get[,] on our own terms. We cannot rely on God to show us the way; we are alone in the world, and have to find a way for ourselves....

"So who could...agitate for socialism in America?

"Marcuse looked around to identify which groups had a natural antipathy to capitalism. Marcuse knew he could count on the bohemian artists and intellectuals who had long hated industrial civilization, in part because they considered themselves superior to businessmen and shopkeepers. In Germany, this group distinguished 'culture'—by which they meant art—from 'civilization'—by which they meant industry[.]

"These self-styled 'outcasts' were natural recruits for what Marcuse termed the Great Refusal—the visceral repudiation of free market society. B[ut b]y themselves, the[re] were scarcely enough to hold a demonstration[.]" – pp. 100–4

A New Proletariat

"Marcuse...had to think of a way to take bohemian culture mainstream, to normalize the outcasts and to turn normal people into outcasts. He started with an unlikely group of proles: the young people of the 1960s....How could these slack...products of postwar prosperity[,] loafers completely divorced from real-world problems[,] focused on themselves, their drugs...and mind-numbing music, serve as the shock troops of revolution?

"Marcuse's insight was Heideggerian: by teaching them a new way to be 'authentic.' By 'raising their consciousness.' The students were already somewhat alienated from the larger society. They lived in these socialist communes called universities. They took for granted their amenities. Ungrateful slugs that they were, they despised rather than cherished their parents for the sacrifices made on their behalf. They sought 'something more,' a form of self-fulfillment that went beyond material fulfillment.

"Here, Marcuse recognized, was the very raw material out of which socialism is made in a rich, successful society....Marcuse was confident that an activist group of professors could raise the consciousness of a whole generation of students so that they could feel subjectively oppressed even if there were no objective forces oppressing them.

"[T]o Marcuse's incredible good fortune, the sixties was the decade of the Vietnam War. Students were facing the prospect of being drafted. Thus, they had selfish reasons to oppose the war. Yet this selfishness could be harnessed by teaching the students that they weren't draft-dodging cowards; rather, they were noble resisters who were part of a global struggle for social justice. In this way, bad conscience itself could be recruited on behalf of left-wing activism.

"Marcuse portrayed Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong as a kind of Third World proletariat, fighting to free itself from American hegemony....The new working class were the Vietnamese 'freedom fighters.' The evil capitalists were [the] American soldiers serving on behalf of the American government....

" 'Only the internal weakening of the superpower,' Marcuse wrote in An Essay on Liberation, 'can finally stop the financing and equipping of suppression in the backward countries.'...Together, the revolutionaries at home and abroad would collaborate in the Great Refusal. They would jointly end the war and redeem both Vietnam and America. And what would this redemption look like? In Marcuse's words, 'Collective ownership, collective control and planning of the means of production and distribution.'...

"Who else? Marcuse looked around America for more prospective proles[.] The first was the Black Power movement[. T]his group...would not have to be instructed in the art of grievance; blacks had grievances that dated back centuries.

" '[B]lacks' would become the working class, 'whites' the capitalist class.

"[W]ith effective consciousness raising[,] the feminists...too could be taught to see themselves as an oppressed proletariat. '[W]omen' would now be viewed as the working class and 'men' the capitalist class[.]

" 'The movement'[,] Marcuse wrote, 'aims...not...at equality within the job and value structure of the established society...but rather at...change in the structure itself.' Marcuse's target wasn't just the patriarchy; it was the monogamous family. In Gramscian terms, Marcuse viewed the heterosexual family itself as an expression of bourgeois culture, [thus] in his view the abolition of the family would help hasten the advent of socialism.

"[T]he logic of identity socialism can easily be extended to [g]ays and transgenders[, who] become the newest proletariat[:] heterosexuals—even black and female heterosexuals—become their oppressors....

"The true examplar of identity socialism is a black or brown male with a Third World background transitioning to be a woman, who is trying illegally to get into this country because...her...own country has allegedly been wiped off the map by climate change....

"Marcuse...recognize[d] the emerging environmental movement as an opportunity to restrict and regulate capitalism. The goal...was 'to drive ecology to the point where it is no longer containable within the capitalist framework'[.]

"Marcuse recognized that mobilizing all these groups...would take time and require a great deal of consciousness raising or reeducation. He saw the university as the ideal venue for carrying out this project, which is why he devoted his own life to teaching and training a generation of socialist and left-wing activists. Over time, Marcuse believed, the university could produce a new type of culture, and that culture would then metastasize into the larger society to infect the media, the movies[:] even the lifestyle of the titans of the capitalist class itself.

"Marcuse...foresaw an America in which bourgeois culture would be replaced by avant-garde culture. He foresaw a society in which billionaires would support socialist schemes that take away a part of their wealth in exchange for [the] social recognition conferred by cultural institutions dominated by the socialists....

"Marcuse's project...succeeded as the activist generation of the 1960s gradually took over the elite universities. Today, socialist indoctrination is the norm on the American campus[.]

"Marcuse is also the philosopher of Antifa. He argued, in a famous essay called 'Repressive Tolerance,' that tolerance is not a norm or right that should be extended to all people. [T]olerance is good, but not when it comes to people who [oppress others]. It is perfectly fine to be intolerant against them[—]to the point of disrupting them, shutting down their events and...preventing them from speaking.

"Marcuse...invented the argument that it is legitimate to be hateful against haters—meaning those who might disagree with the socialist agenda. For Marcuse, there were no limits to what could be done to discredit and ruin such people; he wa[rn]ed the left to defeat them 'by any means necessary.' Marcuse even approved of certain forms of domestic terrorism...on the grounds that the perpetrators were attempting to stop the greater violence that U.S. forces inflict on people in...other countries....

"When it comes to identity socialism, we are still living with Marcuse's legacy." – pp. 104–9

How the Planet Caught a Fever

"[As t]he most ambitious proposal to achieve socialist ends[, b]acked by a group called the Sunrise Movement[,] Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Green New Deal in apocalyptic terms. The planet has a fever! Humans have only 12 years to avert climate catastrophe! We must do these things to avert extinction!...

"The Green New Deal is socialism[.]

"[A]dvocates of the Green New Deal respond to...sober calculations with tantrums and hysteria. We cannot, they say, afford not to do it! Our lives depend on it!

"[A] significant part of the Green New Deal...has little or nothing to do with the climate. This seems to be socialism hiding behind an environmentalist banner....

"Marx advanced his theory as 'scientific.'

"Green New Deal advocates insist that their program too is 'scientific'—backed, they say, by 97 percent of all climate scientists. Given this scientific consensus, critics are dismissed as climate 'deniers.'

"[A] recent survey by Susan Crockford, an expert on polar bears, puts the current...population [at] four times as many...as there were in 1960[:] now at a 50-year high." – pp. 109–13

Remember Global Cooling?

"None of this has diminished the certainty of Ocasio-Cortez and other activists. [T]hey are best understood as part of an apocalyptic tradition that includes environmentalists, religious fundamentalists, cult leaders, population-control fanatics and other types of zealots.

"[T]he whole Green New Deal is a scam, a massive exercise in globaloney, a transparent excuse to replace capitalism with socialism. The rhetoric of the activists certainly supports this. 'The climate crisis,' Natasha Fernández-Silber writes in Jacobin, 'is quite simply a crisis of capitalism....We must either replace capitalism with a more sustainable economic system—or face barbarism and extinction.' Extinction or socialism: you get to choose!" – pp. 114–6

The Problem with Walls—They Work!

"[A] second issue that animates identity socialism [is] illegal immigration. [T]his issue is now a critical part of the left's project to assemble a coalition of alienated minority groups to create a prosocialist majority.

"[T]here must be a reason why today's left gives such primacy to this issue.

"[It] cannot be that Democrats are courting the illegal vote. [B]y and large illegals cannot vote....

"Democrats['] determination to prevent [President Donald] Trump's wall...is in direct proportion to their fear that it actually would work....

"There is no record of any student...sneaking into...Stanford University[,] taking courses...and graduating....The wall...is...the admissions office[.]

"Why don't the Democrats campaign to change the immigration laws?...

"They portray enforcement of those laws...as hateful, racist and Nazi-like betrayals of basic human decency. [T]hey work with activists in Central American countries to...overwhelm...the holding facilities[,] apparently seeking the chaos that makes effective administration of the immigration laws more difficult[,] so that more illegals get through." – pp. 116–9

Asian Indian in a Sombrero

"In a recent book, This Land Is Our Land[: An Immigrant's Manifesto], the progressive writer Suketu Mehta attempts to justify the left's approach to illegals....

"Mehta...play[s the] clever game [of] conflating legals and illegals. This has become standard fare among left-wing politicians and also the media left.

"Illegals are not 'immigrants.' [They] are, in a very precise sense, 'aliens.' Even those whose motives are understandable...are still breaking the law. Trump is determined to enforce the law. [B]y erasing the distinction between legals and illegals[,] the left can insist...that 'Trump is against immigrants.'...

"Mehta gives no indication of how...the migrant caravans...actually operate. How do thousands of supposedly starving people move themselves and their families...hundreds if not thousands of miles? [As investigative journalist] Michelle Malkin and others have shown, they do it through an elaborate network of facilities generated by the American and international left. The left assembles the caravans and then sustains them through their trek to the United States border.

"Along the way, the caravans benefit from soup kitchens and first aid centers, [and] overnight shelters with baths and medical care facilities, including therapeutic counseling....Mehta decides it would be impolitic to mention that the caravans aren't spontaneous; they are orchestrated and sustained by political groups for political benefit....

"Mehta['s] central claim seems to be that illegals have a 'right' to migrate to rich countries like England and the United States [b]ecause, in his view, 'Migration today is a form of reparations.'

"[D]id England ruin India through colonial occupation?...Without British influence, would India be the technologically advanced country it is today?...

"Texas used to be a part of Mexico but broke off because of tyrannical laws imposed by a Mexican dictator. [It] opted to join the United States....Mexico lost the...Mexican War[,] and ceded the disputed land in a treaty [in 1848].

"Hispanic Texans f[ou]ght on the American side of that war[. T]he Mexicans who ended up on the American side of the line...found themselves immeasurably better off than their counterparts in Mexico....

"What does Mehta have to say about these questions? The poverty of his argument is that he doesn't even address them. He merely asserts[,] what he has the burden to prove. [H]e's playing to an audience [that] he knows very well[—and] he's a...sly Indian who knows how to assimilate to progressive culture.

"[H]e writes[,] 'America has hurt Latinos much more than it has hurt Indians. America owes them more, and so it should open its doors more to them.' Again, the Latinos who became Americans in 1848 were not hurt; they were helped....

"So what's the left's motive here? The short-term motive is simple: [to] use the illegals to portray Trump and the Republicans as racist or anti-Mexican and also anti-immigrant. The point is to alienate Trump and the GOP...from legal immigrants and Mexican Americans[.] The left also wants to swamp the country with illegals, seeking to make them dependent on the government, so that if they ever get amnesty and can vote, they will vote for the party that sneaked them through[,] and provided them with...sustenance." – pp. 119–23

The Terrorist Next Door

"[Congresswoman] Ilhan Omar's 100,000-strong Somali community in Minneapolis[, Minnesota] is the terrorist recruitment capital of the United States.

" '[P]unitive measures'[,] Omar wrote [to a] trial judge[,] 'inevitably create an environment in which extremism can flourish, aligning with the presupposition of terrorist recruitment. The best deterrent to fanaticism is a system of compassion.'...

"I translate this to mean that punishing terrorists causes terrorism, and the best way to fight terrorism is to seek to include potential terrorists in our communities[.]

"In 2018, Omar was asked about terrorism on Al Jazeera, and she addressed what she called the 'quote-unquote legitimate fears' Americans have[,] respond[ing], 'I would say our country should be more fearful of white men because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country. And so if fear was the driving force to keep...Americans safe within this country...we should be profiling, monitoring and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men.'

"Here is the standard socialist move[:] to turn the tables and insist that whites, not Muslims, pose the greatest terrorist threat; that legals, not illegals, are the problem; that there's nothing wrong with creating Somalia-in-America; that Americans, not Somalis, should make the adjustment to this; and that even terrorism represents nothing more than a cry of protest against America's refusal to include and provide for its foreign newcomers.

"Illegal immigration is not merely a mechanism for changing the political, religious and cultural composition of America, it is literally a mechanism for changing, in ways that...immigration laws have not authorized, the actual DNA of America. In this way the socialists hope to win the day, not by convincing a majority of existing Americans but by creating a majority using new Americans who will overpower and subdue the native population." – pp. 124–5

Race and Gender Hoaxes

"[T]he third face of identity socialism [is] the race and sex agenda. Again, this is...part of an attempt to amass a ruling majority by incorporating a mélange of self-styled victim groups. Strangely, the actual agenda here is pretty thin[, except that t]he left...wants biological males to be able to use women's bathrooms and compete in women's athletic events. Most of the legislative action...has been on th[is] front. Somehow, transgenders are [on] the front lines of identity socialism....

"What's going on...is that race and sex have become more than mechanisms to secure group loyalty for the Democratic left. [T]hey have become tactics of intimidation. The socialist left uses these mechanisms to force people to grovel and submit to its worldview. They want to overturn your moral code and replace it with their moral code. The [English] economist John Maynard Keynes...called this 'immoralism'[.]

"Naturally, [in general,] the left expects resistance. So the whole race and gender thing is aimed at torpedoing that resistance. The basic idea is to portray whites, males and heterosexuals as evil oppressors, and nonwhites, females and gender benders of all kinds as the most normal, wonderful people in the world. And if you say otherwise, or oppose this view, the left will demonize you as racist, sexist, heterosexist and a 'hater.' Then they will try to destroy your career and your life.

"[I]t is now customary, if not obligatory, to tiptoe around blacks and other people of color, to express deference if not subservience to their demands and to put up with behavior that would be utterly intolerable if anyone else did it. We live in a society of black and brown privilege, yet all that we hear about is 'white privilege.'

"[R]acial hoaxes have...become commonplace, especially on the university campus. [Political scientist] Wilfred Reilly in his [recent] book Hate Crime Hoax[: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War] counts more than 400 racial hoaxes.

"[T]he hoaxer is...like a cop who feels sure that the suspect did it, but since he doesn't have the evidence, he...plant[s] it. The outcome, he's convinced, is just, because he 'knows' the suspect is guilty.

"[S]ince...Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh...has been on the Court, all...the various women who accused [him] have disappeared, and the media has lost all interest in following up on any of these cases, since they have ceased to be ideologically useful.

"For some feminists, all of this is aimed at more than just putting men on notice that they can be accused and ruined at any time. It is also about toppling the heterosexual norm itself. As one writer, Marcie Bianco, recently wrote on the NBC website, 'Heterosexuality is just not working.' [W]omen are coming to recognize that 'they don't need heterosexuality,' which is the 'bedrock of their global oppression.'

"The solution: some form of lesbianism!...Miley Cyrus' split with Liam Hemsworth [is] 'a blow to the patriarchy.' Bianco is not kidding[.]

"[T]he notion that women are...oppressed by men goes back to the 1970s, when Shulamith Firestone published The Dialectic of Sex. [T]he basic problem...was nature itself, which assigned to women the reproductive function. Therefore[,] in the same manner that Marx asked the worker proletariat to seize control of the means of production, women must seize control of the means of reproduction.

"This means[:] abortion. The fetus...is an 'uninvited guest.' But it also means breaking...the biological family by figuring out ways to have artificial reproduction...outside the womb. Th[at] way children would still be born, but mothers wouldn't...carry them; somehow both sexes would bear equal responsibility[.] Firestone['s] ideological thrust [was] clear." – pp. 126–30

The Man Who Mistook Himself for a Toad

"[T]he radical gay and transgender movements...pick...up...this same thread....I have the biological equipment to be a boy, but I think I am a girl....The traditional medical approach has always been that nature dictates biology, and when psychology refuses to come to terms with biology, there is an urgent need for therapeutic intervention.

"The transgender movement wants to reverse that approach. Psychology trumps biology....Of course I don't have the biological equipment of a toad. But I feel that I am a toad. Therefore, I spend my days acting like a toad, jumping around in ponds and marshes[.]

"What happens if I then insist that society treat me like a toad? This means allowing me to audition for toad roles in Disney movies....It means that toad jokes are entirely taboo; if I hear someone call me anything other than a toad, I become furious and accuse that person of being a hater and a neo-Nazi....

"If, as leftists routinely say, 'gender is a social construct,' why isn't species membership also a social construct? [I]t takes a human[,] social system of classification to distinguish one species from another....

"Recently[,] TV personality Mario Lopez said in an interview that he was 'kind of blown away' by the whole transgender thing. [P]arents should 'allow their kids to be kids but at the same time, you gotta be the adult in the situation.'

"[H]e was viciously attacked in the usual left-wing quarters[.] Lopez seems to have saved his job only by apologizing....

"The real story here is the reeducation of Mario Lopez. Reeducation is...an old socialist technique, applied here in a new way. To put it in Marcuse's terms, the left had every right to be intolerant of Lopez's intolerance and to beat him into abject submission.

"[T]he left want[s] Mario Lopez...to embrace their race and gender hoaxes and their Moulin Rouge society. This is...limited Stalinism, [with] an official position on [merely] every aspect of identity politics. The left's goal here is to stigmatize resistance as discrimination and to ruthlessly punish dissenters[,] so that everyone is suitably warned. Socialism is a scheme for the trampling of human hearts.

"Today we are living with an identity socialism that seeks not only an economic upheaval but also a cultural upheaval. Its goal is forced cultural conformity: 'Here's our make-believe world that we are going to make you believe is real.' They want to bludgeon us into accepting their imagined community in which good is evil and evil is good, in which...normal behavior and feelings are rendered pathological, in which aliens are the true Americans and native-born citizens feel like aliens[.]" – pp. 131–3

Chapter 4: Venezuela, S[í]; Sweden, No

Socialism and the Scandinavian Illusion

"[I]s there a socialist system today that moves and inspires...American socialism?...

"That model, the progressive economist Paul Krugman insists, is...Scandinavia....

"The point of Krugman's rhetorical performance...is to distance the American left from Venezuela[.] The same point is made by Krugman's allies on the American left.

"[T]he socialist blogger Matt Bruenig...solemnly notes that Norway deposits its oil revenues into a capital fund that it specifically labels 'the people's money[,] divided equally...for generations to come.'...

"Ocasio-Cortez said in a 60 Minutes interview that...what we see in [Scandinavia is] 'on your 10 millionth dollar[,] tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent.' This is...indicative of how American leftists...have no...interest in how things actually work in the Scandinavian countries." – pp. 135–8

Thank God for Scandinavia

"Scandinavia...appears to show that socialism at least works somewhere. This is encouraging for American socialists who must...confront a dreary landscape of failed socialist regimes, past and present....

"I'm not denying the existence of Nordic [(Scandinavian)] socialism. Nor do I deny that this type of socialism works to a point. What I deny is that it can be imported here. Our type of society doesn't...have the conditions for it....Moreover[,] the American left doesn't want it[, and] would consider the result a nightmare. [Thus t]he left's entire invocation of Scandinavian socialism is a fraud....

"The key to understanding Scandinavian socialism is that it is 'unification socialism,' very different from the 'division socialism'...of the American left. Unification socialism is the socialism of the tribe[.] The whole point is to gather the society into a single unit....The burdens of survival, and the fruits of prosperity, must be broadly shared by the whole society.

"In the old Viking days[,] Scandinavian solidarity was the product of the demands of survival in [a] harsh climate....

"Today...Nordic culture has preserved that sense of tribal solidarity that enables those countries to distribute their wealth...widely in the confident belief that they are helping 'our people.' Gert Tinggaard Svendsen, a political scientist at Denmark's Aarhus University, says that 'the Nordic welfare state works due to trust. You have to trust that people work and pay taxes when they are able'[.]

"One can see right away how distant the Nordic psychology is from the American....It...violates the root assumption...of American socialists[:] that America is not a single tribe. Diversity, not unity, is our defining characteristic and strength. The left here separates society into various subgroups: rich and poor, black and white, immigrant and native. The whole structure is based on 'us' against 'them.' Socialism in America means forcing groups defined as 'oppressors' to submit and pay up to groups defined as 'victims.'

"Nothing could be more alien to the spirit of Scandinavian socialism. None of the Nordic countries vilifies their rich. None of them preaches the politics of ethnic division. None of them exalts immigrants over natives, or illegal aliens over citizens. On the contrary, they preach the politics of ethnic unity. They stress the uniformity of Nordic culture. There is no 'us' versus 'them'[;] there is only 'us.' The Nordics insist that immigrants adopt Nordic culture...and...lose their enthusiasm for immigration...when they don't.

"For these reasons, American leftists who have thought about the subject realize they don't want Nordic socialism. They realize it can't work in America, and quite separately from that, it holds no appeal for them." – pp. 138–41

People Like Us

"When I think of what makes Nordic socialism distinctive, I'm reminded of [urban geographer] Joel Kotkin's [1992] book Tribes[: How Race, Religion, and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy. O]ne key [feature of] some of the world's most successful groups[,] Kotkin argues, is their 'strong sense of identity.'...

"When tribal unity is strong, it generates trust....

"In the Middle Ages, the Muslim writer Ibn Khaldun used precisely this concept of tribal solidarity—which he called asabiyah—to advance a novel theory of history. Tribes that develop strong asabiyah, according to Khaldun, become very good fighters, and they also sustain strong communities....

"This kind of tribal identification that Kotkin and Khaldun both praise is reminiscent of the socialism—even communism—that operates within the nuclear family....'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.' Of course[,] healthy [f]amilies strive...to prepare the dependent children to become independent....

"The earliest forms of socialism, going back to the early nineteenth century, can be understood as an extension of this family principle....These were voluntary communities based on a shared vision. They functioned largely through consensus, which means they sought the elimination of faction.

"[T]he early Christians functioned as a kind of socialist commune. 'No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own,' we read in the Book of Acts, 'but they shared everything they had' and 'there were no needy persons among them.' Here we see the roots of Scandinavian socialism; it builds on the unification impulse of the early socialists and manifests as a secular version of the huddled unity that characterized the early Christians.

"Marx is the founder of the division socialism that...continues to define the socialism of the American left. Marx ridiculed the early socialist communities[. T]hey offered no way to transform society as a whole.

"Marx argued that a powerful economic structure like capitalism doesn't give way without a fight. Powerful people like capitalists don't submit unless they are pressured or overthrown. Consequently, socialism can come only via the class struggle. There has to be a Manichean division in society between capitalists and workers, or between the bad guys and the good guys. The good guys [can] win [only] by overthrowing the bad guys....

"FDR...taunted, reviled and sought to humiliate the capitalist class....FDR identified his wealthy Republican opponents as plutocrats, describing them as 'the forces of selfishness and of lust for power....They are unanimous in their hatred of me'[.]

"FDR use[d] the rhetoric of class warfare, of social division, to expand his electoral majority[. H]e sa[id] the plutocratic class...are 'aliens to the spirit of American democracy.'...

"Identity socialism continues...the politics of social division....The identity socialists...mobilize a martial rhetoric to crusade against their great reviled totem: the white male native-born heterosexual.

"The symbol of this evil—the totem himself—is...Trump. [Democratic presidential candidate, former Texas congressman] Beto O'Rourke calls him a white nationalist....Warren says that 'he has given aid and comfort to white supremacists.' Biden insists that Trump 'has fanned the flames of white supremacy.' According to...Ocasio-Cortez, a 'core part' of Trump's coalition was racists together with 'all sorts of other people that could be susceptible to racist views.' Notice how the indictment has moved from Trump to [his] supporters.

"The week of Trump's election, the writer Toni Morrison argued that[,] 'the United States holds whiteness as the unifying force.' And who are the Americans who respond to the call of whiteness? 'They are willing to kill small children attending Sunday school'...and to 'shoot black children in the street.' Is there any basis for unity here, for drawing these people into a...community? Of course not. Morrison wants them stigmatized, routed [and] ruined....

"O'Rourke recently said that 'this country is founded on white supremacy[,] and every single institution and structure that we have in our country still reflects the legacy of...slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression.'...

"For The New York Times, it's not enough to trace America's racial sins to the founders, because that still leaves as innocent the Americans who lived before the founding....

"In his [2002] book Racism[: A Short History], the Marxist historian George Fredrickson writes that 'racism as an ideology of inherent black inferiority emerged...in reaction to the rise of [N]orthern abolitionism in the 1830s.' Moreover, 'Antiblack racism peaked in the period between the end of Reconstruction and the First World War.'

"Fredrickson's dates are important, because they coincide with the rise and humiliating defeat of the Democratic Party. Antiblack racism runs congruent to those developments. Indeed, prior to 1860, the Democratic Party was the party of the slave plantation, and it trafficked in racism as a justification of slavery. After the Civil War, Democrats promoted racism as a doctrine of biological inferiority. Leading Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan in the late nineteenth century and then, after Republicans shut it down, revived it in the early twentieth century....

"Today the left...doesn't want...young people...to know the role of the Democrats in protecting slavery and advancing racism[—h]ence the pivot back to 1619! Th[at] way[,] 'America' gets the blame for what the Democrats did.

"[W]e see here...a systematic effort on the part of the American left to use various categories of oppression...to divide society into good guys and bad guys. Then their good guys band together to create an electoral majority for the left's operating vehicle, the Democratic Party. Through this majority, they seek to overthrow the power of the bad guys. They...consider it right and just...to confiscate the earnings and possessions of the bad guys to support and enrich themselves.

"In a sense, this is the...Viking model[, except that] the looters and the looted...are now in the same society....FDR understood this, which is why he vilified opponents and made no attempt to persuade or appeal to them. Neither does the left today. The left understands that any solidarity that the raided express for the raiders cannot be natural or voluntary; it must be coerced.

"Consequently, division socialism takes on its intolerant aspect. This is the 'intolerance toward intolerance' that Marcuse advocated. In this Marcusian spirit, the left today makes strenuous attempts to intimidate and bludgeon those whose possessions are being taken[, so they will] quietly succumb to the takers. Those who protest are branded as bigots and haters who deserve to be silenced, fired, prosecuted or imprisoned if necessary[—]but in one way or another driven to the margins of society.

"The Scandinavians would be appalled and horrified; imagine a Swede or Norwegian doing this to a fellow Swede or Norwegian! No Scandinavian has ever identified American socialism as resembling Scandinavian socialism, even in embryo. The defining features of American socialism and the American left—identity politics, class and ethnic division, and social intimidation to enforce these categories—are simply absent in the Nordic countries." – pp. 141–6

White on White

"I'm not aware of a single American socialist who wants what the Scandinavians have....The reasons for this are not merely temperamental [but] go back to Madison's discussions in The Federalist about how large extended republics cannot work on the same model as a small homogeneous society.

"[In] ancient Athens or Crete[,] the...goal [was] a one-class society. Madison insisted that factions are inevitable in a large extended republic. They reflect competing values and interests, and they cannot be eliminated. So the founding architecture is designed to accommodate this brute fact[:] in Madison's terms, to steer the course of factional politics toward the common welfare of society.

"Deep down, the American left agrees with this [distinction]. That's why leading figures of the left never go to Scandinavia....Sanders, who has Scandinavian roots and seems to have visited every socialist landmark on the planet, has never been to Scandinavia....

"The white ethnic Norwegians form a dominant majority bloc. They set the tone for the whole country. [The] journalist Robert Kaiser...reported that...tiny...Finland...is 'ethnically and religiously homogeneous.' The Finns, he said, look alike and think alike. 'Groupthink seems to be fine with most Finns; conformity is the norm.' Politics is based on consensus, and the major political parties are...inches apart.

"In Scandinavian countries[, t]here are no 'oppressors' and 'oppressed.' There is no 'white privilege.'

"[T]he black and brown immigrants to Scandinavian countries are largely indigestible. They are visitors of a sort in Nordic society....

"Norwegians have no intention of dissolving their own tribe; consequently, they have been shutting the door on immigration[.]

"Danish prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen...once boasted that his country had no border walls[.] Responding to public opinion[, he] now...stress[es] that his government's goal is not to have refugees stay permanently but to eventually return home[:] 'We should not make refugees immigrants.'

"Carl Melin, policy director at the Swedish research institute Futurion, says that Swedes built the welfare state for themselves, not for outsiders. He remarks that his country has been cutting back on immigration because of the realization that 'people are quite open to showing solidarity for people who are like themselves. They don't show solidarity for people who are different.'...Urban Petersson, a council member in the town of Filipstad...says[,] 'It's interesting to meet someone from another country for maybe half an hour'[.] But '[p]eople don't want to pay taxes...to support refugees who don't work.'

"These problems are not unique to the Nordic countries[;] they afflict all of Europe. In this country, it is possible for a Nigerian, a Korean or an Asian Indian to 'become American.' But it has proved far more difficult for a Turk to become a German, for a Pakistani to become an Englishman, for a Syrian to become a Swede. This is widely understood throughout Europe[.] The modern Swedish term for 'immigrant'...mean[s] a non-Nordic person in Sweden....

"Scandinavian countries...provide greater security but they also provide lesser social mobility, compared with the United States.

"[T]he American model has proven far more hospitable to nonwhite immigrants than the Nordic model, and leftists in this country realize that." – pp. 146–9

Destination Caracas

"If Scandinavian socialism is not the model, then what is? We can answer this question by seeing where American socialists have been going on pilgrimage in the past couple of decades. The short answer is: Venezuela. Venezuela has long been a multiracial society, as America now is. Venezuela has precisely the kind of division socialism that the American left admires and practices....

"In a 2006 speech at the World Education Forum in Caracas, with Hugo Chavez himself in attendance[,] Bill Ayers[, t]he former domestic terrorist and cofounder of the Weather Underground...spoke about how 'education is the motor force of revolution' and how 'Venezuela is a beacon to the world' because it was 'poised to offer the world a new model of education—a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation.'

"[T]he left has long considered Venezuela as its actual dream and inspiration. There is no comparable literature of leftist political pilgrimage to Norway or Sweden....Venezuela, not Scandinavia, is the left's model, and it is Venezuela that supplies the road map for where we seem to be headed if we choose the socialist path." – pp. 150–2

Why Andrew Yang Feels So Generous

"This is how the Scandinavians designed their welfare state: everyone is expected to act responsibly, and everyone, including the poor and the middle class, is taxed heavily.

"The underlying image of the welfare state is not one of a 'safety net' but rather one of the 'nest,' in which all the birds work diligently to sustain a common habitat....

"The reason for the cheering...at a...Democratic...rally...is the audience's excitement over its realization that their bills and benefits will be footed by some other guy.

"This isn't social insurance; it's theft socialism. In this country, the socialists want to stick the bill on Wall Street, or the rich, or the vilified '1 percent.' The strategy is to target an affluent minority that will be shoved up against the wall and forced to pay for the education, healthcare and monthly expenses of Democratic voters. In this way, the Democrats seek to create a majority coalition of dependent voters who can put, and keep, the left in power.

"[F]ormer Democratic presidential candidate, entrepreneur Andrew Yang['s] program involves a government giveaway of $1,000 a month to every adult....As Wired magazine notes, the only way the nation could bankroll this sort of program would be to get rid of many if not most existing social programs. But there's the rub. No Democrat wants to do that. Not even Yang....

"No Scandinavian country has Universal Basic Income." – pp. 153–5

Everyone Must Pay

"While taxes cover the majority of healthcare costs, the Finns, like all Scandinavian countries, do not target the rich or the 1 percent. They target the entire society. The whole society is responsible for providing not just healthcare but also education and paid leave and all the other services that form part of the social insurance package. This means high taxes across the board. In some respects, the Scandinavians impose higher proportionate taxation on the middle and lower classes than they do on the rich....

"In Scandinavia[,] nearly half the society is taxed at the top rate....

"Moreover, the Scandinavian countries...collect around 10 percent of their gross domestic product through VAT [(]value-added tax[)] levies.

"[So] Scandinavians tax all working citizens at a rate of around 50 percent, but when you figure in the VAT, the poor and middle classes pay...higher [effective] rates than the rich....

"We can...say...that...the Scandinavian countries...are capitalist in wealth creation and socialist in wealth distribution....

"Unlike the American left, the Scandinavian countries don't demonize either [the] corporations or the rich....

"Sweden veered sharply in the socialist direction in the 1970s [following a] suggestion of [the] economist Rudolf Meidner [that] private ownership of...companies...gradually be transferred to...labor unions....

"But the Swedes themselves killed the Meidner Plan[, as] socialist policies dragged the Swedish economy into a slowdown[.]

"So the irony is that while the American left [says they] want...to move toward Scandinavian socialism, the Scandinavians have been moving away from it. The Nordics have learned from their experience with socialism; American leftists seem determined to pick up the Nordic model from the 1970s, ignore the lessons of subsequent experience and make all the same mistakes. Many on the left here will find it surprising that Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands now rank higher than the United States on the Heritage Foundation's 'Index of Economic Freedom.'

"[S]ome Nordic socialists are looking wistfully to the possibility of an American model that they can emulate. Writing in Jacobin, two Scandinavian scholars say that when it comes to digesting refugees and immigrants[,] to creating a model for 'a comprehensive welfare state in a multiethnic country,' the Scandinavians hope to learn from America[.]

"To sum up, the Scandinavian model is social insurance for 'people like us,' while the American left subscribes to what may be termed 'theft socialism' for the benefit of various favored constituencies, including illegals." – pp. 159–63

Hugo Chavez's Gangster Socialism

"[T]he left's model for socialism in this country is not Scandinavia but Venezuela[: m]y wife [Debbie]'s native country[—]now in ruins[.]

"Of course they won't admit it. They keep repeating the mantra that their goal in America isn't dictatorial socialism of the traditional stripe; it's democratic socialism. But Venezuela has, or at least had, democratic socialism. Hugo Chavez was democratically elected in 1998. There have been subsequent elections, sustaining first Chavez and then, after his death, his handpicked successor Nicolás Maduro, although virtually every ballot since 2000 has been contaminated with charges of election-rigging and voter fraud[.]

"Why would the American left seek to emulate Third World socialism? [Because] Venezuela was not always a Third World country. In the 1960s, it was the richest country in Latin America and the fourth-richest country in the world[.]

"Socialism made Venezuela into a Third World country.

"[A]t the same time—and this is part of the appeal—it created a wealthy ruling class of Chavistas who run the country like their own private domain. They rewrite the constitution. They have their own private army. They are a governing elite exempt from the misery and desperation of ordinary citizens. They have uninhibited access to what remains of Venezuela's oil wealth. [T]heir lifestyles are the envy of American leftists....

"Let's examine the ingredients of Venezuelan socialism and see if they sound familiar. First[:] identity politics. Venezuela is a multiethnic country. In this respect it resembles America, not Scandinavia....

"There were two main parties, Acción Democrática and Copei. The former was the secular party; the latter nominally the Christian party. The former leaned to the left; the latter to the right....

"Hugo Chavez was elected as a third-party candidate who eventually got the backing of Acción Democrática. He didn't campaign as a socialist—in fact, he denied that he was a socialist. Remarkably, Chavez founded the Socialist Party in Venezuela only in 2007, eight years after he became president. Initially he sounded more like Barack Obama; he portrayed himself as a thoughtful centrist who sought 'hope and change.' Yes, this was his actual slogan.

"But Chavez also introduced an explosive new element into Venezuelan politics: the politics of race and ethnicity. Chavez highlighted the fact that he was a pardo, a term used in the colonial era to designate someone of mixed racial heritage....Chavez noted that his grandmother was a Pume Indian. Chavez's term for whites was mantuanos, which tellingly covers not only whites but also colored people with European pretensions....

"Knowing that nearly 70 percent of Venezuela is mestizo or mixed-race, with 20 percent white and 10 percent black, Chavez sought to mobilize the native Indian, black and mestizo populations against the whites....Chavez used the anticolonial model: whites of European descent are the foreign oppressors, and blacks and browns are the victims....

"Chavez turned Venezuela into a racially polarized society to an extent that it never was[,] before. The socialists introduced a new cultural policy termed Misión Cultura aimed at vilifying whites and elevating previously marginalized groups to hallowed status. Chavez even pressured the referees in Venezuelan beauty pageants not to award prizes to so many light-skinned Venezuelans and to give preference to those who looked more like him....

"Chavez created a new Chavista class heavily populated with blacks and browns, although sprinkled with whites who are happy to serve as 'race traitors' in order to enjoy the benefit of being part of a ruling elite. In Venezuela, as in America, identity politics serves to topple old social and cultural hierarchies and to foster a multicultural left[,] that then controls and dominates the society.

"Then came [the second theme:] the attack on [the] entrepreneurs and the rich. Chavez demonized the productive class—notably the Europeans, Americans and Venezuelans who collaborated in the oil industry—and invoked their alleged greed and selfishness to justify a government takeover not only of the oil industry but [of] nearly all industries. The socialists stacked the banks with directors drawn from Chavez's allies and cronies. The regime set wages and prices for basic goods, restricting the ability of entrepreneurs to make a profit, driving many of them out of the country and...ruining their businesses, so productivity ground to a halt....

"Chavez then proceeded to get rid of the professional class of Venezuelans that ran...the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA)[.] He fired PDVSA's president, the respected Guaicaipuro Lameda, and 18,000 other employees, most of them managers and skilled technicians, replacing them all with political allies loyal to the socialist government. For Chavistas who found themselves with grand titles, occupying corner offices, it must have felt like winning the lottery! These apparatchiks, through that familiar socialist combination of corruption and ineptitude, ran the oil industry into the ground....

"Some of these incompetents...mouthed off about 'climate change' and how Venezuela needed to make a transition from fossil fuel to hydroelectric power....The Chavistas...actually sought to [accomplish this] replace[ment. T]ogether with a mismanaged [electrical] grid[, t]his...is the root of today's regular blackouts.

"[T]he new PDVSA crew was running an oil-drilling operation [that] they had no idea how to run....

"Then began the socialist confiscation of land and property in Venezuela....Chavez himself liked to parade through neighborhoods, seizing property[.] These confiscations were triumphantly featured on Chavez's reality TV show Aló Presidente (Hello President).

"To oppose the socialist government is futile [b]ecause of the third feature of Venezuelan socialism, which is the rigging of the system to make it beholden to the socialist regime. Chavez and his cronies rewrote the Venezuelan constitution, dismantling provisions for [the] separation of powers and essentially stripping the document of its protection of economic and civil liberties. They 'packed' the Venezuelan Supreme Court, increasing its size from 20 to 32, in order to ensure that it was dominated by Chavistas. Today there is no judicial independence, and the Venezuelan high court is a rubber stamp for the socialist regime.

"Sure, there is an elected National Assembly—now largely made up of dissenters who oppose the socialist government—but it is largely powerless, because all legislation must go through another body, the Constituent National Assembly, which is controlled by the Chavistas.

"[I]t's easy to see how the Venezuelan blueprint points the direction in which...the American left...would love to go." – pp. 163–9

Desarma la Violencia

"A fourth feature of Venezuelan socialism is gun confiscation. Here too we see how Venezuela resembles America[.] In Venezuela[,] citizens once possessed guns as a matter of right. The socialists began a systematic propaganda campaign to demonize guns and gun owners. This campaign was termed 'Desarma la Violencia' (Disarm the Violence)....

"The political purpose is to disarm the citizens, so that they are vulnerable to the depredations of the socialist regime. We now turn to the fifth feature of Venezuelan socialism, which is the unleashing of armed militias—the so-called colectivos—against dissidents and protestors. If you blame the government for shortages or blackouts, the government will send a motorcycle gang of armed thugs to beat you and members of your family. In 2005 the colectivos took control of a region of Caracas and unleashed an orgy of terror on tens of thousands of citizens protesting against the socialist regime.

"These thugs are Venezuela's answer to Antifa. They are not part of the government. They are civilian thugs who work in cahoots with the socialist regime. Some of them are criminals who have been armed and released on the condition that they serve the regime and target its opponents. No surprise[,] Ayers[—who is] one of the founders of [Antifa-allied anti-fascist organization Refuse Fascism]—praises the colectivos as a necessary militarized force to defeat the enemies of Venezuelan socialism. 'Venezuela must be defended,' Ayers writes, in part because it 'is today's proving ground for socialist alternatives.'...

"Conformity. That's the sixth theme of Venezuelan socialism. The whole education system has been designed not for debate but for conformity. This isn't an allegation I am making: it's the law. The socialist government has mandated that all education in the country be conducted according to what it terms 'Bolivarian socialism.'...

"The Chavistas have made [the] classical liberal...Simón Bolívar, who liberated much of Latin America from the Spanish[,] into a socialist. If the textbooks say he was a socialist, then, from the students' point of view, he must have been a socialist. There is no one to say any different. And Venezuelan socialism has an anti-American thrust that vilifies everything that America stands for. No wonder Ayers and the Hollywood left are so enthusiastic. That's why they rave about socialist 'literacy programs'—they are 100 percent political propaganda.

"And that...is the direction in which the American left has been moving education in this country. Propaganda on climate change, on identity politics, on gender and race and inequality, now dominates elementary and secondary education, and the debate that once occurred on American campuses is now a rarity; Antifa blockades and the shouting down of speakers has now become the norm.

"[T]he seventh familiar theme of Venezuelan socialism...is getting rich off politics. [I]n Venezuela, as in America, it is quite possible for 'public servants' to become very rich.

"[The merely rich] are the bottom apples in the Chavista barrel; the top ones live at the scale of the richest people in the world, enjoying private airplanes, domestic staff, Hollywood soirees, and Michelin-starred restaurants.

"[T]he late Hugo Chavez's family owns 17 country estates, totaling more than 100,000 acres....

"For Venezuelans[, i]t's one thing to be in pain; it's another to watch the people proclaiming to be your champion stamping their boots in your face to keep you down while they live high on the hog. These people seem like heartless monsters, and of course they are[: j]ust like the heartless monsters in this country who sound like them and, deep down, long to be like them.

"When we consider the major themes of Venezuelan socialism, we can see right away that every one of them parallels the themes of the American left. American leftists are wannabe Maduros pretending to take their cues from [Scandinavia]. If we continue to move in the direction that the left is taking us, we are going to end up not where the Scandinavians are but where the Venezuelans are." – pp. 169–72

Chapter 5: Just Deserts

The Moral Basis of Entrepreneurial Capitalism

"The best thing going for socialism in America is the moral anxiety over capitalism. This by itself is a puzzle. Capitalism has proven enormously successful in relieving suffering [and] raising people out of poverty[.]

"Yet—and to some this will seem incredible—the anxiety over technological capitalism is perhaps stronger in America now than at any time since the Great Depression....I can understand the rage of a sociologist or [a] political scientist who, despite making $100,000 a year, despises a capitalist economy that confers vastly greater rewards on [someone] who sells...term-life insurance. Envy is not a justification, but it often provides a good explanation.

"But today we see whole groups in society that seem to revile capitalism[,] even though they are its greatest beneficiaries. On my campus tours, I frequently encounter students who are living off the proceeds of the small businesses operated by their parents, yet, in evident disregard of this, they unhesitatingly call themselves socialists....

"At one time such strange behavior was confined to Jews....Irving Kristol [of] the American Enterprise Institute...pondered this seeming political 'irrationality' on the part of Jewish Democrats. But now...many rich people earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans....

"Capitalism has won the economic debate, but it has never won the moral debate. The critics of capitalism are currently winning because their moral indictment goes largely unanswered." – pp. 173–5

Three Strikes Against Capitalism

"[A]t the South by Southwest conference in Austin, [Texas,] Ocasio-Cortez...express[ed] the anticapitalist sentiment[:] 'The most important thing is the concentration of capital, and it means that we seek and prioritize profit and the accumulation of money above all else and we seek it at any human and environmental cost....To me, that ideology is not sustainable and cannot be redeemed.'...

"I find three arguments that seek to expose what the progressive economist Joseph Stiglitz calls 'fundamental flaws in the capitalist system.'...

"First, the argument from inequality. This argument...focus[es] on the degree of it....

"Since the 1970s[,] inequalities have grown much starker [than i]n the three decades following World War II[.]

"It is not enough to attribute these huge chasms to 'capitalism,' since America was capitalist between the 1940s and 1970s. Clearly something within capitalism has changed[.]

"A second anxiety about capitalism is focused on an issue that we may term...'just deserts.' 'The twenty-first century economy,' writes [the journalist] Nathan Robinson in Why You Should be a Socialist, seems 'more feudalistic than meritocratic.' In short, people aren't getting their fair share!...

"This issue of fair share and just deserts is encapsulated in Obama's claim, going back to 2012, that 'if you've got a business—you didn't build that...If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. Somebody else made that happen.'...

"This argument is flawed on its face. The 'rest of us' didn't pay for the roads and the schools and the police protection; the entrepreneurs paid also. So why [are] entrepreneurs...obligat[ed] to reimburse society for things to which they have already contributed their fair share? Should entrepreneurs be penalized because they made better use of the[m,] while the rest of us used them for less productive purposes? This makes no sense.

"But the question being raised[—]are the rewards of a capitalist society proportionate to what people actually contribute?—remains valid. In a recent interview[,] Ocasio-Cortez said, 'No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars.' Here's the argument from personal incredulity...again....

"Capitalism, the social theorist Michael Walzer argued[,] is inherently unjust because it does not recognize the 'intrinsic value' of work [n]or the 'individual qualities' of the worker. [Besides, t]here is too much luck involved[;] talk of desert makes little sense.'

"[T]he philosopher John Rawls...in his classic work A Theory of Justice argued that all our good qualities—our intelligence, our creativity, even our proclivity for hard work—are basically assets that have been provided to us as a consequence of luck. If we think about it, we don't really deserve them....

"We are not, Rawls argues, entitled to the benefits of luck....

"Rawls contends that we should seek 'a conception of justice that nullifies the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstances.' Th[is] basic idea is now a core element of progressive doctrine[:] namely that, through state intervention, the fruits of all good fortune must be shared with society, specifically with the least advantaged....

"A third and final argument against capitalism is that it is based on the worst qualities in human nature[:] namely, greed and selfishness. [W]e may expect that a socialist society...would also have greed and selfishness, but the progressive indictment of capitalism holds that these low qualities are incidental to other systems and intrinsic to capitalism....

"Entrepreneurs are successful, according to [the Dutch historian] Rutger Bregman, writing in The Guardian, in proportion to how greedy and selfish they are. It has little to do with what they produce....Bankers, he writes, are a 'giant tapeworm gorging on a sick body.' They specialize in 'sucking others dry.'...

"The rich are 'more likely to be despicable characters,' [religious studies academics] Charles Mathewes and Evan Sandsmark write in The Washington Post, and what's more, their vast sums of money 'poison...those who are merely around them.'...Capitalism is responsible for the moral depredation of American society." – pp. 176–80

A Single Argument

"[I]n moral terms, who's entitled to what? The arguments about [in]equality and greed...are all reducible to the single argument about fair share and just deserts....

" 'Is justice equality?' Aristotle writes[—]and then he gives this enigmatic answer: 'Yes, it is, but not for all people, only for those who are equal.'...He means that justice is...a matter...of giving everyone what they are actually due. If someone deserves more, it is just to give him more; if someone deserves less, it is just to give him less.

"[I]magin[e] a mother who has two children[:] a six-year-old and an infant. She spends most of her parenting time on the infant. The six-year-old is indignant; he protests he's not getting equal time. The mother...recognizes that...her infant child needs more time.

"[T]he greed and selfishness critique doesn't stand on its own; it involves implicit judgments about fair share and just deserts. [T]he left-wing economist Amartya Sen...envisions three individuals...fighting over a flute....To whom, he pompously asks, should we give the flute?

"The giveaway term here is 'we.' This is the precise point at which we catch Sen in the act. Sen has made the hidden assumption that ownership of the flute has silently transferred from the person who made the flute to some societal 'we' that now determines who gets the flute....

"Is [the one who] made the flute...'selfish' for wanting to keep what she made? Is she 'greedy' for seeking to hold on to what belongs to her? Of course not....

"Who owns stuff in the first place? Who has a moral right to it? 'Justice,'...Rawls...writes, 'is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. [L]aws and institutions no matter how efficient...must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.'

"I agree with this, and therefore the central question...is whether capitalism truly distributes its rewards in proportion with what people actually deserve. If it does, it's just." – pp. 181–2

Voting in the Marketplace

"Capitalism has been a controversial institution[,] virtually since its origin[.]

"Adam Smith...famously wrote in The Wealth of Nations[,] 'We address ourselves, not to [merchants'] humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.'

"[In] The Theory of Moral Sentiments [he writes,] 'To feel much for others and little for ourselves, to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.'...He was, by profession, a professor of moral philosophy....

"The Adam Smith 'problem' is that we have two apparently contradictory teachings from the same teacher. In his earlier work, Smith ascribes elevated human action to sympathy and unselfishness; in his later one, he ascribes productive human action to self-interest or, to use his term, 'self-love.' Did Smith change his mind?...

"The...progressive way...to...reconcile th[is] is to hold that Smith conceded the moral inadequacy of capitalism—its rootedness in selfishness and greed—while insisting...that this greed could be channeled, through the invisible hand of competition, to promote the material welfare of the community....

"The Theory of Moral Sentiments seems to hover in stern judgment over The Wealth of Nations. By his own moral compass, as outlined in the first book, Smith seems to concede [that t]he good man looks out for others, while the entrepreneur looks out for himself. And Smith does not even make an effort to show that the allocations of free markets—what Smith terms 'the system of natural liberty'—correspond with merit or just deserts....

"However efficient a capitalist system may be, if it fails to give people their due, it fails the basic test of justice. In Rawls' words, it must be reformed or abolished.

"The alternative...is some form of democratic socialism.

"[T]he moral force of socialism derives from its appeal to democracy.

"[T]he founders clearly recognized popular consent...as the moral basis of the free society. [D]emocratic socialism today rides on the wagon of majority rule and popular consent. Its moral core is that our economic system...must reflect the will of the people. That's what is meant by the term 'social justice.'...

"I embrace...this criterion of justice. [T]he burden of this chapter is...to refute the socialists on their own terms by showing that capitalism, far more than socialism, reflects the will of the people and expresses democratic consent....

"The consumer, like the citizen, is a voter....The consumer votes with his dollar bills, which are his hard-earned money, which represent the time and effort he has put in to get those dollar bills.

"[C]onsumers vote in a system of direct democracy....

"We don't need to extend democracy from the political to the economic sphere; we already have it. And the moral grounding of free markets, just like that of our constitutional system, is in the will of the people[.]

" 'If we are not competent to rule ourselves, then let us misrule ourselves.' Barack Obama Sr., the former president's father, said that in 1959 when he was a student in Hawaii. He was making the case against colonial rule in Kenya....

"Consumers have the right...to elevate the entrepreneurs who produce...the products they want[.]

"Capitalism...is rooted in...popular consent. Thus capitalism, like democracy, is a form of social justice." – pp. 182–7

Who Gets the Surplus?

"The parking lot...work[er at a] fine resort hotel...view[s] himself as...a 'maker.' It's the [owners] who are the 'takers,' depriving their employees of their fair share.

"[He] wants to know, 'Where are my just deserts?' [T]his is a legitimate question. We cannot convince him—and countless others like him—by simply chanting, 'Free markets!' 'Capitalism!'...We have to show...that he is being paid commensurate with what he is producing. If we can, [then] we will have shown that the rewards of the free market system are not only efficient but also fair. If we cannot, some socialist-type redistribution becomes not only plausible but also irresistible....

"Marx's celebrated criticism of capitalism...is taught in schools and universities today....Marx regarded [it] as his most original contribution to economic thought. This is the critique on the basis of 'surplus value.' It is intended to show that the outward cooperation between entrepreneurs and workers is illusory, that at bottom there is a deep conflict between them, and [that] the result of the conflict is thievery and exploitation....

"Marx attacks capitalism in its normal functioning; this gives his critique a universal character....

"Marx says...that...businesses...price their products as high as the market will bear. [W]hen you subtract total cost from total revenue, you get a crucial number[, which] Marx calls 'surplus value.' We call it 'profit.'

"Now Marx asks a profound question: Who gets that? The profit, Marx argues, belongs entirely to the workers. Why? Because they are the ones who have produced the product....Marx insists that the capitalist has produced nothing. The capitalist has—like the name says—contributed the capital. [W]e know what capital counts for: it counts for interest. And paying the going rate of interest on capital is part of the cost of doing business. So a business that does this has already repaid its capitalists. They are not due anything above and beyond that.

"Yet although the workers are the ones who are getting the job done, Marx notes that it is the entrepreneur who swoops in and takes all the profits. The workers produce the 'surplus value' but the capitalists steal it. Here, for Marx, is the true meaning of exploitation and social injustice. Here are the roots of the class division. And here is the moral argument against capitalist exploitation and in favor of socialist redistribution. Here's where Obama and later[,] Warren got their diatribes about 'fair share.' It's not about realizing some vague goal of equality; it is simply giving workers their due, using the agency of government to return, one may say, the 'stolen goods' that have been taken from them....

"Marx insists that the capitalist contributes nothing but the capital, and the workers do all the work to make the business run profitably....But...why don't the workers dispense with the CEOs and start their own companies?

"No one is being forced to work at Walmart, so why don't the workers leave and create their own Walmart? Sure, they may lack the initial capital, but they can borrow that at a going rate of interest. This way, there is no one to exploit them and they can share all the profit among themselves. I find it interesting that workers never do this, and even more interesting that Marxists and socialists never even call on them to do it. Deep down, the Marxists seem to realize that they don't do it because they can't.

"But why not? Here we get to the heart of Marx's fallacy. Marx was a highly theoretical thinker[. H]e had no idea of how businesses actually operate or what entrepreneurs actually do....He was a lifelong leech, a...Sanders type, who had most of his expenses paid for by his partner[,] Engels, who inherited his father's textile companies. Incidently, Engels didn't run his family business either; he had people do that for him. Freed from the need to work, Engels was a man of leisure and a part-time intellectual.

"[O]ne reason American progressives are continually drawn to this duo is that they too have little understanding of what entrepreneurs do. Nor do they really care. They have no aspiration to become entrepreneurs. Rather, they prefer occupations like community activist or professor of romance languages[. T]hey aspire to be, like Marx, lifelong leeches, agitating against capitalism even as they subsist off its largesse....

"Schumpeter wrote a little-known [essay in 1928] called [']The Entrepreneur[', which] shows that the one thing Marx says that capitalists do, they in fact do not do. Schumpeter...show[s] that capitalists do at least four important things that Marx...ignored[,] calling his whole critique into question." – pp. 187–90

The Secret of Trump's Success

"The starting point of...Trump's career, he writes in his best-known[, 1987] book, [Trump:] The Art of the Deal, was his realization that 'I didn't want to be in the business my father was in.'

" 'I was out to build something monumental—something worth a big effort.'...

"One defining feature of an entrepreneur[,] Schumpeter...writes, is 'the dream and the desire to found a private kingdom.' In fact, the secret dream of the entrepreneur is to found a 'dynasty,' to project the dream beyond his own life. It is, Schumpeter admits, 'the nearest approach to medieval lordship possible to modern man.'

"The motivation of the entrepreneur...is 'the will to conquer, the impulse to fight, to prove oneself superior to others, to succeed for the sake...of success itself....The financial result is a secondary consideration[,] mainly valued as an index of success and a symptom of victory.' It is...subordinate to 'the joy of creating, of getting things done, or simply of exercising one's energy and ingenuity.'...

"Early in his career, Trump set his sights on [a h]otel...built in 1919 [opposite] Grand Central Terminal...and named after 'Commodore' Cornelius Vanderbilt. [D]erelicts reclined in the hallways....

"Trump's interpretation[:] 'What I saw was a superb location.' Affluent prospects were passing through it every day....'I was sure it could be a hit. Convenience alone would assure that.'

"[I]t's a big new idea, and that's what counts to get things started. [That]'s the first thing entrepreneurs do: they come up with a big new idea for a venture. [T]hey envision a new product, a new landscape, a new way of doing things or a new way of living....

" 'Most people,' Schumpeter writes, 'do not see the new combinations. They do not exist for them. Most people tend to their usual daily business'[.]

"[T]he second element of entrepreneurship...involves organizing the business....'I...told...my father...I had a chance to make a deal for [a] huge midtown hotel....He refused to believe I was serious.' Trump had to figure out how to buy the Commodore, and how to run it, even though he lacked the funds...and...had no experience in operating an upscale Manhattan hotel....

"Schumpeter calls the entrepreneur...a 'man of action.' What he means is that [he] must take action notwithstanding the risk involved. So here we have a third distinguishing feature of the entrepreneur[:] his employees...receive a guaranteed paycheck...per their contracts, [but] the entrepreneur takes virtually all the risk. [I]f the venture fails, he does not get paid at all.

"[I]f the Commodore failed[,] Trump...would not only make no money, he was basically out of the real estate business in Manhattan....Trump confesses he hates risk. 'People think I'm a gambler. I've never gambled in my life....I believe in the power of negative thinking. I always go into the deal anticipating the worst.'...

"Unknown risks are risks you cannot insure against because you cannot compute the probabilities.

"[T]he economist Frank Knight...pointed out that unknown risks are the hallmark of a capitalist economy.

"Entrepreneurs must go ahead in the face of risks that cannot be known, let alone mitigated. Sometimes they must do so with very limited information, indeed with little more to go on than personal intuition. This, Schumpeter writes, involves the entrepreneur overcoming the greatest resistance his venture will ever encounter[:] not resistance from the outside but resistance from within the mind of the entrepreneur himself.

"[T]he new thing the entrepreneur wants to make does not exist yet; it is only the 'figment of his imagination.' " – pp. 191–4

A Genius for Spectacle

"Trump...unveiled his plan to remake the Commodore...'with...highly reflective glass.'...The critics groused that Trump was violating the architectural norm of the area[.]

"Trump had a different idea[: 'Y]ou [will] see the reflection of Grand Central Terminal, the Chrysler Building, and all the other landmarks'[.]

"[T]he fourth characteristic feature of entrepreneurs [is] the branding and marketing of the business....

"Trump reacted [to] a competing property...lower[ing] its prices[: 'W]ealthy people...want the best[.] By pricing its apartments lower than ours, Museum Tower...just announced that it was not as good as Trump Tower.'

"[A] media panel...once...chuckl[ed] over the fact that Trump claimed to have a $10 billion valuation for his businesses. [His] actual net worth was...in the $4 billion range—but the rest he attributed to the value of the Trump name. The pundits could barely contain their amusement and derision over Trump's apparently inflated self-evaluation.

"[But] business consortiums all over the world...pay the Trump Organization to brand the[ir] hotels as part of the signature 'Trump Hotel Collection.'...Trump created one of the country's most recognizable brands....

"Finally, Trump solved [his] problem[:] He partnered with the Hyatt hotel chain...to operate the Commodore[, and] split...the profits 50–50. [I]n Hyatt, he had found a partner...experienced in running hotels[, and] also willing to...reimburs[e] Trump a significant portion of the funds [originally] expended....

"In 1996 Hyatt...b[ought] out Trump's half-share...for $142 million....

" 'The entrepreneurs,' Schumpeter writes, 'are the workers' best customers.' This is a...clever way to look at it: the worker is a salesman who markets his labor to his employer, who is, in that sense, his customer. 'A continuous improvement of the workers' situation stems from them.'

"Contrary to Marx, the entrepreneur undertakes projects that the worker has no comprehension of and would not undertake himself, but that nevertheless result in paid employment commensurate with the value the worker provides to the employer. [T]he workers...could scarcely get started! That's why they didn't. It took Trump to do it. That's why Trump is the boss and they are the workers.

"I've given only a tiny window into Trump's entrepreneurial world, and we can see from it the inadequacy of the Marxist critique. Marx implies that capitalists only supply the capital, yet typically this is the one thing that capitalists do not supply. Most entrepreneurs get their capital from banks—as Trump did—or venture capital firms. What entrepreneurs do supply—the idea for the business, the organization of it, the marketing, the assumption of risk—are all critical elements completely ignored by Marx. He simply had no conception of what capitalists do. This ignorance renders the Marxist critique of who gets what under capitalism completely useless.

"Although Trump may be a walking refutation of Marxist nostrums[,] in the early 1990s[,] two of Trump's big properties...had just gone bankrupt....Trump remarked [in his 1997] book [Trump:] The Art of the Comeback[, on] seeing a homeless man[,] 'He's...worth $900 million more than me.'

"Reviewing this passage in the book, Dylan Matthews, a writer for the website Vox, reacts with revulsion to Trump's casual, almost whimsical, attitude here. 'You'd think this kind of story would result in some kind of self-reflecting,' Matthews writes. But in Trump's case, 'Nah.' Trump seems 'uninterested in his failures.' In progressive academic and journalistic precincts, self-reflection is what you do when things take a downward turn....

"To such minds, Trump's willingness to assume gargantuan debt and then forge unreflectively ahead seems downright surreal. The man must be demented! Total lack of introspection! Yet Trump weathered the storm and went on to massively successful new ventures, including some...quite remote from...real estate. He won some and he lost some, but he won more than he lost[.]

"I'd like to conclude this section by addressing the parking [worker]. If he wants to know why he isn't being paid more, the answer is that his work is not worth more....

"Someone...had the idea for that resort. He organized it. He marketed it and established a coveted brand. His brand attracted the clientele. He took all the risk. The parking [worker] did none of this. So [the owner], not the parking [worker], deserves the lion's share of the profit. Both of them—the boss and the menial laborer—are getting their just deserts....Perhaps, one day, [the parking worker] will run his own business and, once he has paid all his employees and managers, justly keep the balance for himself as profit." – pp. 195–8

Who Gave the Orders

"Beatrix Potter...and her husband...Sidney Webb...were Fabian socialists who despised Beatrix's father, Richard Potter, a wealthy businessman....

"Potter...described working as her father's secretary[.] 'Everybody had to obey the orders issued by my father[. T]o him nobody gave...orders.'...The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises...shrewdly observes, 'This is a very shortsighted view. Orders were given to her father by the consumers[. S]he could not see these orders...because she was interested only in the orders given within her father's office[.]

"[T]here is another type of entrepreneur who creates products in response to no existing consumer demand....

"Putting himself in the place of his potential customers[,] Steve Jobs...realized that they didn't like the existing keyboard and stylus that dominated the BlackBerry, Motorola and Palm smartphones of the day. Why not have everything work off a touchscreen, using nature's own stylus—the finger—to nagivate the device? [W]ith no instruction manual[,] you can see how to use it!

"The supply-side entrepreneur is an economic revolutionary. He or she thrives...during a technological revolution. During normal periods, entrepreneurs and CEOs respond to consumer demand....Think of...the 1960s, the 'golden age' of relative equality that progressives rhapsodize about today.

"What did those guys actually do? They were...routine administrators; they merely ran their companies[:] some of them...into the ground[. T]hey received mediocre compensation for what they did...because they were mediocre at what they did. They produced modest consumer welfare, and they were modestly rewarded for it.

"Contrast their performance with that of the supply-side entrepreneurs in revolutionary periods, such as...today. These are a select group of entrepreneurs working alongside traditional entrepreneurs, but distinguished from them in that they pursue radical innovations. These innovations produce unprecedented consumer welfare. But they also widen inequality, because they channel huge profits to the supply-side entrepreneur.

"So this is the real reason why inequalities today are wider than they were in the postwar period....Progressives who say we are living through a new Gilded Age miss the point. The Gilded Age...gave us the telephone, the car and the airplane....

"Can anyone who has lived through th[e] great transformation[s in] the past couple of decades not see the massive improvements they have produced? Is there a progressive or socialist alive today who would give them up? Are there young people who can even imagine what life was like before them? It is the enthusiasm of customers in America, and worldwide, that has produced the inequality that progressives bewail today. The moral justification of th[e]se profits is that they represent the wishes—and welfare—of delighted consumers. This is democracy in action, whether the left admits it or not.

"[T]here were supply-side entrepreneurs in the postwar era. One of them was Ray Kroc[.]

"Kroc met with the McDonald brothers and told them that he admired the simplicity, efficiency and affordability of their meals....Kroc even spelled out his supply-side insight. America in the postwar era was becoming more mobile. That meant Americans would be spending a lot of time in their cars. [So] Kroc's idea was that people might come to appreciate 'fast food' that was predictable [and] affordable[.]

"Yet the McDonald brothers were not interested. [T]hey had no intention of working any harder or taking huge risks that might jeopardize the good thing they had going locally....Later, [e]ach of them got a...million-dollar check[.]

"[T]he McDonald brothers resented the mammoth success of McDonald's. Th[e] success, of course, was only obvious in hindsight. It was Kroc, not they, who spotted the opportunity to expand into something big. They had a chance to bet on that success, but opted against taking the gamble. [If t]he duo...were [still] around[,] I wouldn't be surprised to see them...complain...about Kroc's 'selfishness' and 'greed.' " – pp. 198–201

The Guilty Party

"I remember meeting Sony CEO Akio Morita at a Forbes conference in the 1990s....Did consumers ask him to make a little radio that could be attached to their heads?

"Of course not, he said. [Rather, seeing] boom boxes[, h]e began to think in a supply-side mode[:] 'Why do I have to listen[?] Why do they have to carry th[em]?'

"Morita asked his engineers [for] a small radio and cassette player that would sound like a high-quality car stereo[,] yet could be attached to a person's head. [P]eople could listen...without annoying others[,] and...ride bikes...while listening to music....

"The marketing department...was aghast. [E]arphones...were used mainly by deaf people....

"One of...Jeff Bezos'...book buyers [said] he was looking for an obscure gadget[.] Then it hit Bezos that Amazon could sell literally everything, as long as they could figure out how to ship it....

"Bezos proposed Amazon Prime. For an upfront payment of $79, customers would get two-day delivery on their orders....Amazon could now compete with the immediacy of brick-and-mortar storefronts.

"[T]he upfront $79 payment...would give Amazon the capital to create dozens...of regional distribution facilities. [P]roducts...could be stored at fulfillment centers in every part of the country and then be driven to customers at a...practicable...cost[.]

"If you listen to the progressives and the socialists, you'll hear a lot about 'appropriation' and how these guys enjoy a disproportionate share of 'the nation's wealth.' But it's not the 'nation's' wealth; it's their wealth. They got it by producing things that have enriched people's lives so much that they were thrilled to pay for them, and probably would have...pa[id] more. So the entrepreneurs didn't appropriate anything; they earned what they...acquired[,] through their entrepreneurial ventures. Contrary to Obama and Warren, they really did build that!

"And how did they do it? [O]ne...element...runs counter to all the anticapitalist propaganda....That element is...unselfishness, empathy, the ability to identify with the feelings and wants of others. More than any other profession—with the possible exception of the clergy—entrepreneurs, and especially supply-side entrepreneurs, restrain their own selfish impulses and put themselves in the place of their customers. They focus obsessively on the customers' wants and needs, and on how best to fulfill them. In some cases, as we have just seen, through some sort of empathetic leap, they anticipate consumer desires even before consumers themselves have them.

"[T]hese qualities of self-restraint and empathy constitute, in the words of Adam Smith, 'the perfection of human nature.' Thus, we can see a way to resolve the Adam Smith 'problem.' [O]perational empathy...is critical to entrepreneurial success. The entrepreneur's profits are nothing more than a measure of the degree to which they have effectively satisfied the wants and needs of others.

"Inequality, in sum, is here by democratic mandate. Who can still contend that this inequality is unjust? Entrepreneurs are not responsible for it[:] we are. We conferred these gargantuan rewards on them not irrationally or unwittingly but purposefully, through millions of transactions aimed at making our lives faster, easier, more fulfilling. We are fortunate, not cursed, to be living through an entrepreneurial revolution....

"At some point, [perhaps] this revolution will stabilize, and the inequality that came in its wake will flatten out. We don't need policies to make this happen; it will happen by itself. High tech and ecommerce superprofits will shrink back to normal profits. [S]o let's enjoy the benefits and stop whining about a just outcome that we ourselves have, through our actions as consumers, ordained and sustained." – pp. 202–5

Trying Our Luck

"[W]here is the justice or 'merit' in being in the right place at the right time? [The p]hilosopher Robert Nozick...argues that...any socialist attempt to equalize outcomes will require constant state intervention to undo the effects of voluntary human action. [S]ocialism...undermines freedom because it refuses to let people exercise free choice in the way they deploy the fruits of their labor....

"Where is the justice in the rewards [that] Wilt Chamberlain...or...Stephen King...rake in? Their merit...is [in] the value that [they] created for the consumer. [V]alue is in the eye of the beholder. Buyers [and] voters...confer rewards based on their own standards of value[.]

"[I]f we define merit not objectively but subjectively—to refer to what consumers value and are willing to pay for—then capitalism is obviously a meritocratic system par excellence....

"We can envision a group of talented aspiring athletes—or authors, or actors—coming together to create an insurance pool. Taking into account the risks of their profession, they create a 'cooperative' whose members agree in advance to share income receipts roughly equally. [T]he one who makes it big...gets to keep half of his earnings, but must split the balance with the rest of the pool. This would reduce the risk for everyone.

"Yet no one does this. In fact, the very absence of such risk-sharing pools, in sports or publishing or Hollywood, clearly shows that those who venture into these professions are ready to assume the hazards that go with them. I know I am. We would rather assume individually the risk of failure, and in the event that we are successful, the success would be ours; it does not belong to others who 'also ran.' " – pp. 206–8

The Ovarian Lottery

"John Rawls contends that...people['s] talents...are..by themselves 'neither just nor unjust.' Rawls argues that 'these are...natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with those facts.'...

"The investment tycoon Warren Buffett, a disciple of Rawls, is on board with this. It is his acknowledged basis for backing the Democrats and continuing to urge higher taxes on the top income brackets....Buffett says successful people...got lucky in their selection of genes, and parents, and where they were raised.

"[T]he key Rawlsian point [is] that none of these people deserve credit for talents that they were either born with or were conferred by their surrounding environment. Since luck cannot be earned, Rawls and his disciples contend that the benefits of luck should in justice be widely shared....Rawls...favor[ed] the state taking over and reallocating the fruits of [people's] labor in a manner aimed at reducing inequality and 'sharing the wealth.'...

"Is it really true that all [of] the good things...that anyone produces...are the result of luck or natural lottery? Is it really true that we deserve no reward—or even credit—for them?

"If so, it follows that all [of] the bad things that people do, including all the crimes and horrors they commit, are also the result of luck or natural lottery....Why then do such people deserve punishment? Why do they even deserve criticism?

"Rawls' theory applies to the entire system of rewards and sentences, or even of praise and blame, not merely in the market but in every sphere of human action, from performance in school to the criminal justice system. It declares all of it, without exception, to be null and void. Does Rawls seriously propose that we 'go there'? He does not. Nowhere does Rawls even acknowledge, let alone consider, these far-reaching implications of what he is proposing.

"Moreover, Rawls assumes that the outcome of a natural lottery is both unjust and undemocratic[. But] lotteries are inherently just and democratic, for the simple reason that they give everyone an equal chance to succeed....Rawls assumes that [a] lottery winner has some sort of obligation to share. But why? Can anyone reasonably demand this of lottery winners? Can the other players justly gang up on him and seize his winnings? This would be outrageous.

"The economist Milton Friedman [gives] an example [in] his [1962] book Capitalism and Freedom. 'Suppose you [are with] three friends...and you happen to spy and retrieve a $20 bill'[.] Would the other three be justified in joining forces and compelling you to share the $20 equally with them?' This...reflects the tyrannical logic of democratic socialism....

"Entrepreneurs have a name for luck: they call it risk....There is no alternative but to submit to it. This is what it means to take [a] risk; it is to test your luck.

"In life, as in business, our luck may be whimsical, capricious, [or] even random in her dispensations. Even so, we have a right to try our luck, and then to enjoy its rewards or suffer its slings and arrows. Contrary to the Rawlsian mumbo jumbo, no one has the right to our rewards who did not assume the risks we did. This is the human predicament—nature's bargain[.]" – pp. 208–10

Endless Pursuit

"[H]ave...we...reached in America a situation in which robots and other forms of technology can do all the work, leaving nothing left for entrepreneurs and workers to do[?] I think we can see, reflecting on what we have observed of how entrepreneurs operate, that this is not a realistic fear. Entrepreneurs never run out of ideas, for the simple reason that humans never run out of wants....

"Just as farming gave way to manufacturing and [then] services, services will eventually give way to something else.

"[W]e will always need entrepreneurs and workers because human beings never run out of things to dream, and make, and do. [O]ur aspirations keep growing. [T]his [is] the human condition....The pursuit of happiness that Jefferson spoke about is...endless[.] We had better learn to enjoy ourselves along the way.

"[Do] highly successful entrepreneurs need so much money[?] Why...should we leave tycoons with so much surplus when that money can be put to relatively good use by the state to provide food, education and healthcare to others?

"This is an argument based on practicality, not morality. [I]t is a fallacy to suppose that because they have no plausible use for it themselves...they should therefore be willing to relinquish it[,] or [that] the state should have the right to confiscate it.

"What...would we ourselves do if we somehow came into a gargantuan sum of money?...However the money is invested, it will most likely help create jobs, satisfy consumer wants and stimulate the economy....

"Ray Kroc['s] widow Joan Kroc...g[ave] $1.5 billion to the Salvation Army.

"[P]eople who have made their own money are likely to spend it more carefully and discerningly than a group of politicians and bureaucrats. [E]ntrepreneurs are more likely to promote social welfare through their own efforts than by turning over their assets to the federal government." – pp. 210–3

The Business of Politics

"[T]here are...greedy selfish leeches...who don't deserve their money and...have gotten it by contributing little or nothing to society[.] Such people...exist, and they can be found among the ranks of the progressives and socialists themselves[.]

"Whatever one thinks about affirmative action, no one can justify a white woman[,] Warren[,] masquerading as a Native American to capitalize on benefits reserved for historically disadvantaged minorities.

"[T]he Clintons...went from zero to $200 million since Bill...left the White House. [T]he Clintons...are part of a Democratic trend....

"Michelle...Obama...sells 25 different items of merchandise—mugs, shirts and candles—on the speaking circuit....

"For the Bidens[,] it's a family racket that includes his son Hunter and his two brothers, James and Frank. All of them have become millionaires by trading on Biden's political name and connections....

"Somewhat comically, the Democratic[-led] House sought to impeach President Trump for raising the subject of the Biden family's crooked dealings on a phone call with the Ukrainian head of state. The attempt was swiftly and appropriately thwarted by a Republican majority in the Senate.

"The Obamas, the Clintons and the Bidens...are all political entrepreneurs for whom politics is a business....They are in the mode of Hugo Chavez and other Third World kleptocrats who speak the language of social justice even as they rake in gargantuan piles of cash.

"How long are Americans going to be suckered by this sleazy crew? Leave aside the hypocrisy of these pompous frauds talking about 'public service' even as they cash in on their titles, leverage their offices and deliver political favors for personal recompense. What social value have Democrats like Warren, Obama, Clinton or Biden created in exchange for the wealth they have obtained? Virtually none. Essentially, they have used their political name[s] and office[s] to enrich themselves.

"They—not entrepreneurs—are the greedy, selfish bastards. They are the ones playing the system and skirting the law. This is the progressive, socialist[,] parasitic class, feeding off the wealth of society while reviling the free market system that produced that wealth. If anyone deserves to be horsewhipped, it's these progressive and socialist Democrats. As for entrepreneurs, we need more of them. If the socialists are helping to destroy the country, entrepreneurs are helping to make America great again." – pp. 213–7

Chapter 6: The Art of War

Battle Plan to Defeat the Socialists

"[In] 1860[,] Lincoln...was the right man for an incomparably difficult task[:] in his own words[,] one...greater than th[at] faced by [the Commanding General of the Continental Army, George] Washington.

"[New York] Republican [Senator] William H. Seward[,] by giving his 'Irrepressible Conflict' speech [in 1858], had seemed to invite civil war. He was deemed to be...too uncompromising.

"Lincoln seemed...more moderate[.] Yet once the conflict escalated, Lincoln...refused to give in. Some Republicans pressed him to abandon the Republican platform that rejected any extension of slavery and accept the [Kentucky Senator John J.] Crittenden Compromise [of December 1860], which would have extended the [Missouri Compromise l]ine all the way to the Pacific....

" 'I will suffer death...before I will consent...to any concession...which looks like buying th[at] privilege...to which we have a constitutional right.' Thus...Lincoln refused the only compromise that could have prevented the Civil War. And when the war came, he toughened up even more. He did not stop until the bitter end. As [Godfrey Benson,] Lord Charnwood notes in his marvelous [1916] Lincoln biography, 'The Convention rejected a man who would certainly have compromised, and chose one who would give all that moderation demanded[,] and die before he yielded one further inch.'

"It was with this historical example in...mind that I recently stood...in the Oval Office[.] I was eager to see...President Trump...up close[:] to see if he was up to the hard and unfinished task that lay before him....

"He immediately recognized my daughter, Danielle[:] 'I saw your beautiful face[—]and you have such a great way of expressing yourself.'

"[W]e launched into...politics. 'It's craz[ed] out there,' Trump said. 'The other side is relentless. Crazy. Totally dishonest. No regard for the truth.'

" '[Y]our case was bullshit....Now they are trying to do the same thing to me that they did to you.' Trump paused. 'But I fight back. I have the means to fight back. Like you fought back. We have to[: t]hese people are just disgusting.'

"I said [that] the relative civility and decency of...the Reagan years...was...a thing of the past....My wife, Debbie...said, 'Mr. President, I see how you are attacked all over the place, nonstop, without any kind of restraint or respect for the office. Frankly, I don't know how you do it.' At th[at] point, [we] expected Trump to [answer:] 'I couldn't care less what they say.'

"But Trump didn't [do] that. 'Well,' he said, leaning forward, 'to tell you the truth, it gets to me after a while. I'm out there trying to get the job done[. A]nd no matter what I do, these people are after me.'...

"Our talk turned to impeachment....Trump said[,] 'I am really lucky to have the...call...transcript. [A]ll these Never Trumpers and all these dishonest people, they would come forward...and say I said things I never said'[.]

"I looked over at my wife, Debbie, and I noticed that she was close to tears. We thought Trump didn't care one whit about what people said about him. But now we saw a side of him that was hurt, uncomprehending, vulnerable....

"Even so, Trump remained the warrior....At one point he said, 'So many people on our side are weak.' I agreed[:] 'It gives the bad guys a sense of immunity[.] We have to do to them what they are doing to us, otherwise they will never stop.' He said, 'Republicans are just not mean.'...

"I told Trump, 'One of the most common things I hear from Republicans is[,] please...take away his Twitter. I'm thinking[:] And do what—give it to you? What would you do with it?'

"Trump said[,] 'These people don't realize...it's my only way...to reach the American people.'

" 'Without,' I said, 'the filter of the media.'...

"What struck all of us about the meeting was how congenial he was, and how candid....He looked us in the eye. Later, my daughter would say that he was so 'real'[. S]he said[,] 'I love his personality. It inspires me to stand strong in my beliefs, even when I am treated badly because of them.'

"I told Trump[,] 'You should start a news network. Not another Fox News [with] 5 million, [but a] network that reaches 50 million...people.'...

"Then...we stood [on] the White House lawn...watching this intrepid fighter for the restoration of his country's greatness, with a task ahead of him greater than that which faced Reagan[,] helicopter...into the air and disappear gradually into the clouds." – pp. 219–23

Checking Them Out

"On February 11, 1861, [weeks before his March 4 inauguration,] Lincoln gave a brief farewell address to...friends and supporters in [his base of] Springfield, Illinois, and began a train journey to Washington, D.C., to assume the presidency. He didn't take the direct route...but traveled meanderingly through various cities and towns, covering nearly 2,000 miles and making nearly 80 stops along the way to engage with crowds of admiring locals who had come to see the new president-elect....

"Lincoln sought to discover for himself whether Americans—specifically Republicans—had the strength and stamina to endure the coming storm. What were they prepared to do, and to suffer, to save the country?

"Today we are...in a cold civil war. It's a cold war, but not like the one Reagan fought, because it is domestic rather than international. And it's a civil war because now, as in 1860, there is a deep dividing line that runs through the country, not a regional line but rather an ideological one. It separates Americans from each other in a manner unprecedented in my lifetime and cuts deeper than any other schism since Lincoln's time. Therefore Lincoln's question—how prepared are we for the severities of our time?—remains pertinent for us....

"One of the tactics...of the socialist left...we have...discussed [is that] the left routinely practices the politics of division[:] not only rich versus poor but also white versus black, male versus female, heterosexual versus homosexual [and] legal versus illegal. This politics of perpetual turmoil, of pitting Americans against each other, is a tactic aimed at assembling a democratic majority of aggrieved[,] so-called victims. While it takes new forms today, the division formula itself goes back to Marx and is intrinsic to socialism....

"But beyond this division, why do the socialists need tactics? For the simple reason that their ideas are a flop. [E]ven many women, gays and minorities are skeptical of their racket. [I]f the socialists debated their ideas in an open forum with their critics, they would be crushed....

"So, unable to assemble a majority and win over critics and dissenters through honest persuasion, the left seeks to achieve its goals through naked propaganda, shameless deception, various forms of intimidation, outright coercion and the politics of personal destruction. They are in 'wartime' mode[. T]he Democratic left has become gangsterized....

"The Democrats...have created a massively powerful array of forces....They...have three institutions that are closely allied with them: academia, Hollywood and the media. By Hollywood, I mean not just the movie industry but also Broadway, the music industry [and] virtually all the comedians. These three institutions, representing education, information and entertainment, have the largest megaphones in the culture. They work largely as unpaid propagandists for socialism and the Democratic left.

"[T]he left has also recruited a shadowy...group into its orbit. This is the group conventionally described as the 'Deep State.' These are the police agencies of government—the IRS, the Department of Justice, the FBI [and] the CIA—that are supposed to be neutral enforcement agencies but have been working in close concert with the Democratic left to...go after prominent Trump supporters...and...overturn the Trump presidency[.]

"In 1984, Orwell spoke of Big Brother as composed of two elements: the 'outer party,' which in this case would refer to the Democrats and their allies in Hollywood and the media, and an 'inner party,' which would here describe the spook world inhabited by Deep State figures like Robert Mueller, James Comey and James Clapper. The Democrats name their enemies, the Deep State goes after them, the media is quietly alerted to do its public strafing, Hollywood is recruited into the propaganda machine—and this is the real collusion[:] the only collusion that poses a clear and present danger to our republican system of government.

"[T]hese...people...create the lie. And to what end? Their ultimate objective is far more insidious than just taking away our money; it is to turn us into worms, to establish tyrannical control over our ordinary lives. That is the point of the left's relentless determination[:] to trample on our hearts and force us to invert our moral instincts. That's why they want us to succumb to them in whatever they say, even if it's the opposite of what they said yesterday. They want us to concede that they are right in all things, even if they say that up is down and two plus two equals five. In this respect, the socialists are all the same: they represent the boot stamping on our faces!...

"It is essential that we understand...that...this threat...means we are living in a new reality. This is not Reagan's America anymore[;] nor is it the 'kinder, gentler' America to which George H.W. Bush aspired. What this means is that the conservative and Republican strategies derived from that period are now largely obsolete[.]

"We have been utterly incompetent in our Supreme Court nominating strategy, but if by some miracle we gain actual domination of the Court and manage to overturn Roe v. Wade, the left would unleash a massive convulsion that would make Trump Derangement Syndrome look mild by comparison. And my point is that we are not ready for it.

"[T]he waters for...Lincoln...were even more roiled than they are now. And we are in the position that Lincoln was in when he took that train journey[. T]hat old crook Andrew Jackson would have been startled to see the gangsterization of...the Democrats of the 1850s[,] occurr[ing] under the leadership of [the] new breed of thugs[.]

"Think of the craziness that Lincoln confronted then, and it will seem eerily familiar, even across the chasm of time. Determined to break up the country because of their outrage that Lincoln won a free and fair election, Democrats shrieked that Lincoln—not they!—posed a mortal danger to the democratic form of government.

"In prior years, Democratic street gangs, the nineteenth-century precursor to Antifa, sought to disrupt the public appearances of abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and to beat up the speaker....

"Lincoln was a moderate man who found himself in an immoderate environment. And that's where we are also. We are the party of the nice guys, the party of the strai[t]laced people, facing opponents who recognize this about us and ruthlessly exploit it. [S]uddenly we realize that our normal, decent ways of resolving conflict...don't work anymore. Only fools—by which I mean Never Trumpers[—]don't see this.

"Lincoln saw it in 1860, and he became a different man. [H]e adopted policies no less savage than those of the Confederacy. And the Republicans won the war by becoming sterner, harder people than they were previously. We must learn from these examples...and become...the dread and ruin of the opposition. So how do we do this, and how do we remain good people even in a very bad situation? Stiffen your spine[.]" – pp. 223–7

Stormy, Stormy!

"We cannot understand the tactics of the socialist left without penetrating its most powerful institution, the media, and that institution's staple product, fake news. The media is critical because it is the channel through which the American people get virtually all of their political information.

"[H]ow has the Democratic left set the agenda for most of Trump's first term? Why are they on the attack, and why do we feel up against the wall? Why are so many of our leaders—Paul Ryan, Jeff Sessions and the rest—so ineffective?

"[T]hey are intimidated by the power of the media....They recognize that [it] is the power to humiliate. They know that if the media puts them in its sights and opens unceasing fire on them for weeks, their reputation will be in ruins. Even their own side will run away from them! This explains how ordinarily sturdy people on the conservative side become invertebrates....

"How is it possible for such a disparate group of institutions to work in such close concert to generate, as they typically do, a single ideological narrative?

"[T]hey operate like birds in flying formation...by...each...instinctively picking up cues from the others and maintaining a consistency of flight pattern. The question, however, is how that flight pattern is determined. What makes news into news, as far as these people are concerned?...

"The real power of fake news is in deciding...what to cover[,] and [thus] what to overlook. Through this process of news creation, the media...literal[ly] invents political reality. If they don't cover something, it might as well not have happened, because it has no effect on the political process." – pp. 227–9

The Essence of Fake News

"After Obama became a presidential candidate...Chicago [resident] Larry Sinclair...held a press conference on June 18, 2008, at the National Press Club, where he described...cocaine [use] and...oral sex[, both with] Obama....He called on Obama to be...honest, to admit his drug use and come clean with the American people. Immediately following Larry's public statement, he was arrested by the D.C. police[.]

"[W]ho ordered [t]he arrest[?] According to Sinclair, none other than Delaware's attorney general, Beau Biden, the son of Joe Biden.

"[T]he typical conservative complaint [is] that [the] progressive media coverage reflects [a] 'double standard.' [B]ut [t]his...is naïve! Behind every double standard is a single standard waiting to be uncovered. The single standard is to do everything possible to discredit a key political opponent like Trump while doing whatever you can to cover up for a key political ally like Obama. 'Protect our side—the side that seeks to move America in the direction of socialism—and destroy the other side.'...

"Contrast the media hosannas when Obama successfully took out [the Saudi Arabia-born al-Qaeda founder Osama b]in Laden[,] with the begrudging, hostile coverage when Trump took out the Iranian terrorist [Qasem] Soleimani. Incredibly, Soleimani was portrayed as a noble victim[.] Again, this...is the media showing it sympathizes more with Islamic terrorists than it does with the current president of the United States....

"Fake news is all [that] we can expect from the progressive media and[,] for the most part[, it] is all we get....Now the pretense is gone; [t]he socialists in the media are all 'out of the closet.'

"This media[-]pimping for the socialist agenda is a serious problem that requires thought, resources and commitment on our part. [W]e have to create new outlets to reach our people[:] essentially an alternative universe of information, so [that] we are not dependent on what they say. This means[:] our own print media[,] our own networks [and] our own digital platforms. Essentially, we need to 'secede' from the media.

"[W]e have to work to reduce the power of fake news in our minds....What this means is that we don't jump out of our chair when we see the latest outrage on CNN or in The Washington Post. Rather, we're indifferent. Or even better, we chuckle." – pp. 231–6

Deep State Thuggery

"To use Orwell's terms, if the media represents the strongest arm of the socialist left's 'outer party,' then the Deep State represents the strongest arm of its 'inner party.'...The Deep State routinely leaks to the media, and the media protects the Deep State[.]

"The media's pose is objectivity: we are reporting the news fairly, without prejudice, without an ideological agenda. The Deep State's pose is neutrality. We...are enforcing the laws in a neutral manner. We don't play favorites. Lady Justice is blind....

"I admitted [to] the prosecutorial team of the Southern District of New York...that I...exceed[ed] the campaign finance limit—[that] I gave $20,000 over the limit to a college friend of mine running for U.S. Senate in New York[.] I added that I expected to receive the same penalty as anyone else who did the same thing. [But the prosecutors] added...bank fraud [a]nd mail fraud...because[,] they said[,] you took your money out of your bank account[, and] you put your check in the mail....Wow!...

"My attorneys informed me that the U.S. government, at the insistence of the Obama administration, was using...the same laws that were passed to go after ISIS and the mafia....Remarkably[,] these laws were used to target me not because of what I did, but because I was an outspoken critic of the Obama administration....I was red-flagged in my FBI file as a prominent opponent of the president.

"[T]he Deep State operates...under the cover of legalism[. N]one of the cases cited by the prosecution was remotely similar to mine; they typically involved repeat offenses, vastly greater sums of money[,] and always a quid pro quo.

"[A] Clinton appointee[,] Judge Richard Berman...rejected my claims of selective prosecution and selective punishment[.]

"The Deep State deception was picked up...by Anderson Cooper on CNN. Berating m[y claim], Cooper [compared me to] Democratic donor Jeffrey Thompson. [But] Thompson got a penalty comparable to mine for a vastly greater offense.

"Thompson...funneled $3.3 million...to...28...Democratic candidates[,] with a view to gaining...government contracts for his...accounting firm...over many years....

"Thompson's lenient sentence is...typical. New York hotelier Sant Chatwal[—]an Indian American[—]us[ed] straw donors... to give more than $180,000...to...Democratic candidates. [He] wanted Hillary to back a U.S.-India nuclear deal[.]

" 'That's the only way,'...Chatwal...said in a secret recording[,] 'to buy them.' He was also convicted of witness tampering[.] Chatwal told them[,] 'Cash has no proof.'...Chatwal got [n]o prison time. [K]nowing what I do...about the Deep State, my response is, 'That's believable.'

"[I]n late May 2018[,] the president...pardon[ed] me[.] I was elated[.] I was...getting my American dream back; since my conviction, the left would gleefully call me 'felon.' [Now] I was...becoming...an 'ex-felon.'...

"For Anderson Cooper, Trump's pardon was...no...proof...that I was unfairly treated[.] I [replied that] it took a...very powerful man, the former president of the United States...to get me on the hook. Cooper seemed...annoyed at this riposte, and I chuckled at his trademark quizzical expression[.]" – pp. 236–9

Seal in a Sea of Sharks

"[A]ccounts like mine may seem...surreal. That's because we've all been raised on a civics-book understanding of the American justice system. It's only when the full force of the U.S. government is trained against you...that you see how remote the civics-book America is from the gangsterized America of the left....

"My case was heard in 2013. [T]his nonsense has been going on for a while now, directed by the same thuggish Obama crew. But...it reached a zenith[.] Trump's election was, to quote New York Times columnist David Brooks, 'the shock of our lifetime.'...

"Let's sum up what...three cases—mine[; that of] Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of [the] election watchdog group[s] True the Vote [and] Texas-based King Street Patriots[; and that of] Trump staffer...George Papadopoulos[,] a Middle East policy analyst...based in London[—]tell us about the Deep State. In two of the cases, Engelbrecht's and mine, we were the target. The goal was to 'take us out.' Yet...the broader objective was to use us to send a message to others like us[:] 'Don't screw with the left, because we have the power to destroy your life.'...

"In Papadopoulos' case, he...was their setup witness. They sought to use this completely innocent guy to fabricate a case against Trump. We cannot be naïve about the Deep State: this is who they are, and this is how they operate. They are unscrupulous thugs—thugs with badges—which makes them far more dangerous than ordinary criminals. Unless they are held to account, they will keep doing what they can to subvert our justice system and our political system." – pp. 239–44

When Two Plus Two Makes Five

"What is the point of all this aggression?...Never[-]Trumper Jennifer Rubin...puts it with her usual crudeness: 'I think it's absolutely abhorrent that any institution of higher learning, any news organization, or any entertainment organization that has a news outlet would hire these people.'

"She means Trump supporters. She wants [them] not only to exit the government, [but] to be unemployable in the private sector. [S]he says[,] 'We have to collectively...burn down the Republican Party. We have to level them[,] because if there are any survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again.'

"This is the voice of tyranny. It seeks to establish full control of the culture so that, using the instruments of government and the media, it can exercise tyrannical control over our lives. They don't just want to take our money; they want to turn us into sniveling devotees of their wickedness and corruption....

"They...want the NFL [a]nd the NBA[:] a bunch of guys who bounce and run with a ball! Yet they want them[,] too. They...pretty much have...the Boy Scouts[.] They want to intimidate corporations into toeing their ideological line, even in matters that seem innocent or trivial. They want to force the Christian baker, Jack Phillips, to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding....

"For...the activist left[,] it's important to force Phillips to give in and go against the dictates of his conscience. That's what they mean by 'nondiscrimination,' a...term that takes on a darker...meaning in this context. So they file a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission[.]

"Phillips sues[;] the case goes all the way to the Supreme Court. [And] Phillips wins! [O]ne might think...at this point...that...it's over[.] But no! A transgender attorney[,] Autumn Scardina, comes...into Phillips' bakery and demands he bake a cake to celebrate her transition from male to female. [O]nce again[,] on the same grounds[,] Phillips...refuses. So she sues him! Phillips must go through the wringer once again.

"It's a form of terrorization, a historical specialty of the socialists. Sure, they want to ruin Phillips. But their wider objective is to show everyone...across the country...that this is what happens to you when you go against them. There is no point in resisting them because they will never stop....

"Corporations today operate under the strict surveillance of the left's censorship brigade. They live by Orwell's menacing slogan, big brother is watching you. They recognize that Big Brother's enforcement is swift and ruthless, and very few have Jack Phillips' stomach for principled resistance. [As] an example[,] consider the fashion retailer Forever 21 [making] a reference to the [2018] movie Black Panther.

"One critic tweeted, 'Hey @Forever21, in what universe did you think it was OK to feature a white model in Wakanda gear. As a former #21 brand specialist for the company, I'm highly offended.' Notice how the critic tags the company, in order to...draw the attention of other censorious leftists to the ideological deviation. He doesn't use the term 'deviation,' but he declares that he is 'offended,' which is code for, 'Here's a clear ideological violation.'...

"Forever 21 instantly...removed all images of the offending...white male...model from its website. The company tweeted, 'Forever 21 takes feedback on our products...seriously. We...apologize if the photo in question was offensive in any way.' This sort of groveling before the icons of the left has become standard practice in corporate America. Some happily do it, and the rest are made to do it on pain of being branded as bigots.

"[M]any conservatives have turned to digital platforms as an alternative to the narrowness of the mainstream media. Now they find themselves restricted, shadow[-]banned and booted off those platforms. The pretext is 'hate,' even though in most cases the 'hate' amounts to nothing more than vociferously resisting the hateful doctrines of the socialist left.

"We are, again, in Orwell territory....In [his] novels, the state is the primary villain. [He] does, however, depict private individuals as informants. Someone tells, and that's how the state knows to go after you. That's the case here too. A journalist at Buzzfeed [for example] notifies YouTube or Twitter, and that's how you get permanently banned and become a digital unperson....

"Hate week! The Ministry of Truth! The Thought Police! All of this—once the hallmark of faraway socialist regimes—is now familiar. It has become our world. I'm reminded of the great scene in 1984 where the protagonist Winston Smith is being interrogated by the agents of Big Brother.

"[T]hey tell him[:] We are not satisfied. Why? Because we know that in your mind you still believe that two plus two equals four. You are just saying five because you know that is what we want to hear. Our goal is not merely to gain your outward subjection[,] but the conformity of your inner mind. We want to control that too!

"This, then, is the ultimate objective of the socialist left in America: to brainwash us through propaganda and to terrify us into submission, so that we all become Winston, cowering and whimpering at first and ultimately giving in, not only on the outside but also on the inside, our ideals crushed, our dignity gone, finally embracing our abusers and captors by saying, in unison[:] 'I love Big Brother.' At this point, the left is content and our reeducation is complete." – pp. 244–8

Mister Trump Goes to Washington

"It is against the magnitude and sheer evil of the socialist threat that we can, and must, understand Trump....He is...the political wartime general who is leading the charge for capitalism and against the socialists. His tactics are unorthodox—we've never had anyone like him[.]

"It is commonly asserted on the left that Trump is responsible for the viciousness of American politics and the hatred and division that are now a staple feature of that politics. But Trump didn't cause the division. It would be more accurate to say that it caused him....

"The Never Trump phenomenon is, in part, a pining for the good old Reagan days. Reagan presumed the goodwill of the other side....

"But Trump doesn't presume any such goodwill, because...he doesn't receive it. Moreover, Reagan focused on a few key priorities—combating the Soviet empire, cutting taxes—in the belief that you can only change the world in one or two ways, and he let the rest of it go, making jokes along the way....

"Trump, by contrast, fights on every front....Trump has one foot in the political fight and one in the culture war, and he seems to understand that the political fight takes place[,] in just one corner of a larger cultural battleground.

"Trump comes out of popular culture, and he has a very good feel for it....His language is colloquial[;] it is the kind of talk that people can understand and identify with[.]

"Trump recognizes the power of social media. He literally sets the agenda for the national discourse from his Twitter account[.] Trump uses [it] to drive his opponents crazy, to keep them perpetually off balance[.]

"He knows what he is doing. He's...possibly the best mud wrestler in the world today....

"He is obviously the most conservative president since Reagan[.]

"Like Reagan, Trump is an avid patriot. He loves his country. [T]hat's why he didn't run as a Democrat[,] I believe[.] In a eulogy for his political mentor, [Kentucky Senator] Henry Clay[,] Lincoln said, 'He loved his country partly because it was his own country, but mostly because it was a free country.' That's Trump! Lincoln added of Clay, 'He burned with a zeal for its advancement, prosperity[,] and glory of human liberty.' That's Trump again!...

"Trump's trade policy can...be understood as a modest form of economic redistribution....Consumers...have gotten the great windfall from the globalization, immigration and second communications revolution. It has been a revolution of better and cheaper products. But Trump knows that these same developments have severely hurt working-class people in manufacturing sectors, in the process wrecking whole communities! Even if it confounds strict libertarian principles, Trump...is right to insist...on some form of protection for th[em.]

"In my view[,] Trump...should have fired Comey on day one. [T]here would have been no Mueller inquiry, and Trump would have controlled his Justice Department. But [he] didn't[.] As a consequence[,] while that idle figurehead...Sessions...watched in obtuse silence[,] wily Obama holdovers like Rod Rosenstein...figured out how to use Trump's own DOJ against him. [I]n effect[,] Trump...was deprived of one of his most important cabinet agencies[. A]ny effort by Trump to tell the DOJ what to do [was] construed by the Democrats as 'obstructing justice.' This...game...was...successfully played by the left for most of Trump's term....

"Now, through John Durham's investigation, Trump...has the chance to do to the left what it has been doing to him. We'll know he is succeeding when prominent figures on the left—from Clapper to Comey to [Eric] Holder to Obama—wake up to police sirens, hear helicopters ahead and stumble out of bed to see automatic weapons trained on them, and men with handcuffs approaching them through the front door.

"This is not only the best way, it's the only way to curb the excesses of the Deep State. Payback is the road back to a kinder, gentler politics, just as victory in the Civil War was the way to achieve a peaceful, post-slavery America....I for one can't wait. Schadenfreude, I gotta say, is noble when it springs out of the aspiration to restore justice....

"Never Trumpers and others on the left express their contempt for Trump's character[.]

"But put yourself in Trump's place. The man is flayed on just about every media platform at every second of every day. [T]he man's implacable self-assurance acts as his own personal wall. It creates for him a kind of insulation[.] Trump can ignore the shrieks of abuse and push confidently [and] resolutely ahead.

"[I]n a Republican Party that has nominated one Boy Scout after another[,] it's refreshing to have a fighter for a change....

"It's especially invigorating to see how effective Trump is in labeling his opponents. When he calls them names—'Crooked Hillary,' 'Crazy Bernie,' 'Sleepy Joe,' 'Mini Mike'—they stick. Notice that Trump's media opponents, who compose words for a living, have still not successfully pinned a damaging label on him....'Orange Man'...seems[s] to indicate more their own frustration[.]

"Trump simply does not accept the p[eri]meters of acceptable discourse that the left has carved out, p[eri]meters that every previous Republican—even Reagan—dared not trespass. [H]ere's Trump, at a 2018 campaign rally in Ohio[:] 'They're not the elite, you are the elite.' Here's Trump's point[:] Why should we admire angry, rootless people who live screwed-up lives?

"Trump goes on to say that his supporters in the audience...are professionals[;] they run businesses, they own their own homes, they have functional families. [T]hey are 'smarter' than the so-called elite, and they 'make bigger incomes.' Trump goes on to say, 'I'm better than everything they have, including this,' pointing to his head [or hair]. And I became president and they didn't...And it's driving them crazy.' Trump wants to drive them crazy[;] because watching the self-appointed elite in apoplectic mode is both satisfying and entertaining.

"Trump is the only Republican in the country who is...genuinely unafraid...of the media....Reagan was [like] a peacetime general[:] he wasn't trying to neutralize the media, he merely sought a way to get his own message across....While the media couldn't hurt Reagan, they sure hurt his successors, the two Bushes[:] neither of whom had Reagan's way of circumventing the media.

"Trump, by contrast, wants to hurt the progressive media, to expose them as frauds, to permanently reduce their credibility and influence. Even after Trump, CNN will still be fake news, and there's no way for The New York Times or The Washington Post to again become the hallowed institutions they once were. We're on to them now, and we can't unlearn what we know about their sleazy, dishonest operations. Future Republicans will benefit from the media carnage that Trump will leave in his wake.

"If Trump loses in 2020, the left will treat his term as a regrettable blip, a moment in history when Americans lost their minds and then returned to their senses. There will be a comprehensive effort to sweep away everything connected to Trump, to wipe away not only the Trump 'stain' but to discredit all of us who ever said anything positive about Trump. The left will try to ensure that Trumpsters are unemployable, unpublishable, reviled, ostracized—and all in the name of fighting 'intolerance.' If Trump goes, the MAGA concept goes with it.

"But if Trump wins, then MAGA will be a reality by 2024. Reagan had two terms, and America was a different country in 1988 than it was in 1980....Clinton was dragged by the Reagan tide for eight years. [It] ended only in 2008 with Obama's election. [T]wo terms for a man like Trump could change America for a quarter[-]century.

"We do at some point have to see beyond Trump. We won't always have him. We will have to get along without him. My hope is that he will bequeath us a Trumpified Republican Party, with old leaders who have learned from Trump or new leaders formed out of Trump's rib[.] We can't go back to the usual, familial GOP invertebrate style; if we do, the other side will once again reduce us to rubble, and the Trump phenomenon will have been a brief and shining interregnum.

"[W]e need a new generation of leaders who can assimilate the things that Trump does so effectively, fearlessly and gleefully. Trump has made it fun to beat the hell out of leftists and socialists, and even when Trump is gone, we must continue to enjoy the Trumpian experience of being a butt-kicking Republican, Christian, right-wing American capitalist." – pp. 248–55

Onward!

"[To] spell...out what we must do[,] I must begin by complimenting the left. They set out a generation ago to transform America not just through politics but also through culture....They devoted themselves to teaching and organizing and activism.

"[T]hey created two Americas. This is the fact that we conservatives have so much trouble accepting. We continue to chant that this is one America [but] our fallback plan is to create our own space[,] and...pray that [they will] live and let live.

"[B]ut the left has no intention of leaving us alone. They want us to submit to them. They want our children. [W]e don't have the same 'all in' commitment to dominating the country that they do.

"So we must develop it. This is not an option. It is a requirement for our moral and personal survival. We have to change our ways in order to make them change their ways. If we don't fight back, they will turn America into 1984, and we will have no place to run to. What this means is that we have to contest their domination of the media, and academia, and Hollywood. We need to recapture some of that cultural space. We need to build our own megaphones.

"We must go after them like they go after us. This means holding them accountable and not backing down. There is no 'let's move on' after they attempt a lethal strike. [S]urviving [those] is not #SoMuchWinning. We don't move on until we put the perpetrators into handcuffs. [W]e're winning when we take lethal political shots at them.

"They have unleashed their fury against us, just as they did a century and a half ago at Fort Sumter. Let's unleash our fury against them, as Lincoln did in response to Fort Sumter. The Republican Party...came together in full force once it took the full measure of the other side[.] Our situation[—]in a political sense—is quite similar....

"When we...take the field, we will recognize our full strength. [H]alf the time, we aren't even ready to fight. We are in conciliatory, even surrender, mode....Not anymore! We know who they are, and we know what we're willing to do to protect ourselves and save our country. We become 'one America' again by defeating them, just as they seek to become 'one America' by destroying us. Our future...depends almost entirely on us." – pp. 255–6

Copyright (c) 2022 Mark D. Blackwell.