by Dr Jimmy T (Gunny) LaBaume
“They who say all men are equal speak an undoubted truth, if they mean that all have an equal right to liberty; to their property, and to their protection of the laws. But they are mistaken if they think men are equal in their station and employments, since they are not so by their talents” (Voltaire).
I was just now browsing through some old files and came across this. It struck me as to how much worse things have became than they were back in the 90s when this was written. There is just not much left. — jtl, 419
A Conspiracy of Ideas
I have never accepted the so-called “conspiracy theories” at face value. It is just too hard to envision a bunch of old fat men, dressed in old baggy gray suits, sitting around a big mahogany table, overtly plotting to enslave the rest of us. On the other hand, with a close look at what is happening around us, the play is being acted out just as many of these theories predict.
Yes, there has been a conspiracy, but not an overt conspiracy of men. Instead, it was a conspiracy of ideas that lost our once great Constitutional Republic– little by little–slowly but progressively–more a “death by a thousand cuts” than by traumatic amputation. As William Lind (1997) put it, “The fall of Rome was graceful by comparison.”
How did all this come about? Where did all these ideas that are alien to our culture come from? Was it simply a market response to a spontaneous, radical cultural change that was brought about by a random set of events played out by a random set of independent players? Not hardly.
Critical Theory and Cultural Marxism
A concept, known at the time of its inception as “Critical Theory,” was developed by a group of German intellectuals who founded the Institute of Social Research at Frankfurt University in 1923. Modeled after the Marx-Engles Institute in Moscow, the organization became known as the Frankfort School (Raehn 1997).
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, these intellectual Marxists fled to the United States. They migrated to major universities like Columbia, Princeton and UC Berkeley where their ideas flourished. The most notable of these were Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm and Herbett Marcuse (who, during the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations coined the phrase, “make love, not war.”)
These men came to the realization that sociology alone could not effect their “quiet revolution.” They argued that sociology must be supplemented with mass psychology and thereby married Freud and Marx. They hypothesized that “the patriarchal family structure characteristic of bourgeois society produces an authoritarian personality type; an extra-punitive type of person who is predisposed to ethnocentrism and the projection of imperfectly repressed hostility upon out-groups” (Nelson 1994).
Of course, they found fertile ground for the propagation and dissemination of their despicable creed on the college campuses in the late 60s and early 70s. The disease spread rapidly during those years. The primary vehicle was the idealistic boomer elite (AKA the New Totalitarians) who are now in power and control every public institution in our nation (Kelly 1977).
Notably, their progeny includes Betty Friedan who authored The Feminine Mystique, the seminal screed that initiated the destructive feminist movement (Friedan 1963). Another of their more detestable offspring is John Dewey, the first “educator” to advocate the use of public schools as instruments for social change (and who, incidentally, was an open admirer of Mussolini).
Critical Theory was the precursor of “Cultural Marxism,” which is a term used to describe the application to culture of the principles of Carl Marx in a blend with the modern psychological tools of Freud. “Political correctness” is, in fact, Cultural Marxism. The reconstruction of the history of Western Civilization (so prevalent in our universities today) is, in fact, Cultural Marxism.
Of course Cultural Marxism has not been exclusively applied to education–nor did it happen in any sort of straight progression. Collectivists always work through a myriad of political, economic, legal, academic and cultural fronts at the same time. Not always in concert, not always in harmony, but always with the same goal; planned social change–always toward collectivism (Barry, 1999).
Indeed, this marriage of Marx and Freud has produced a “quiet revolution” in the United States that has been systematically unfolding for over 50 years. How? Through the instillation of guilt, pity, shame, fear, anger and hatred into the American psyche. The ultimate outcome is fear–fear of being labeled or associated with such words as “prejudice,” discrimination,” bigotry,” racism,” sexism,” and “anti-Semitism” and, as a result, being subjected to uncontrollable rage, intimidation and even terror.
How about their method, their technique? One, among many, of these techniques is group “sensitivity” training. The “change agent” (AKA the “facilitator”) at these sessions will generally work something like this.
Said “facilitator” (a better word would be “manipulator”) will start out by asking people to voice their concerns about (fill in the blank). S/he listens intently, breaks the larger group into small discussion groups and has them make lists, all the while listening and learning something about each member of the target group. S/he will then begin to show his/her real colors by pointing out possible objections to an “undesirable” position but, at this point anyway, s/he is still everybody’s buddy. However, it usually will not be long before s/he becomes the devil’s advocate and pits one sub-group against the other. S/he will question the position of the opposition leader(s), play on the fears of those with weaker convictions and finally drive a wedge between the “pro” and the “con” groups. S/he will make certain participants angry, which is exactly what is intended so as to escalate the tensions. Goals will become muddled and, in the end, the individuals against (fill in the blank) will be shut out and the desired outcome will be achieved.
These “sensitivity training” techniques are strikingly similar to the methods used by the Chinese Communists to indoctrinate Prisoners of War in Korea. These methods were based on Pavlov’s experiments with dogs and the best available data indicate that they worked very well: only 5% resisted, 15% were consistent, dedicated, hard-core collaborators with the enemy and the other 80% were rendered “passive” and stood for nothing but their own survival.
Yes, there is a direct thread that runs from Pavlov through Marx through the Frankfort School through the US university system and into “sensitivity training.”
Sadly, higher education was one of the first institutions to succumb and has been a primary perpetrator. For example, a current blatantly stated goal of academia is “decentering: forming interdisciplinary courses, encouraging the historical, political, and literary voices of previously marginalized people.”
If you doubt it, visit any major university in America and peruse the curriculum. You will find a vast array of non-content subjects and even whole departments—everything from women’s “studies” to race based “cultural studies” to sexual orientation “studies” etc. ad nauseum of non-substantive drivel. Phrases like diversity, pluralistic community, moral imperative, enrichment of our community, multiculturalism, tolerance and pluralism are perennially on the lips of university administrators. These are the principles and slogans of the “victim’s” revolution.
Such foolishness is not confined to “higher” education. Ask any primary or secondary school child what s/he is studying in school. You will find that teaching methods are designed to “explore the child’s feelings” and build “self-esteem”—even in math, science and English classes. Teachers are no longer teachers. They are now “facilitators” —amateur group therapists applying “sensitivity” training techniques, which more closely resemble psychotherapy than education. This shift to a “value neutral” mode of teaching has created a generation of moral illiterates who can “get in touch with their own feelings” but know nothing about their own culture.
Very often parents are unaware of such methods because of a deliberate policy of bootlegging the “values” stuff under other titles. For example, if parents object to the “new values clarification” program, school officials simply change the name to “life skills” and do it anyway.
The private sector has suffered a direct assault on property rights. EEO and related legislation has effectively made the federal government the owner of all organizations, even those that are nominally considered “private”, for-profit businesses. Traditionally, only the owner of a business had the right to determine what sort of workplace h/she preferred. Now the State has usurped that right and effectively replaced the owner by dictating the workplace environment.
For example, business and industry have known for years that the most effective way of choosing employees is by a simple, 10 minute, intelligence test. Overwhelmingly, the more intelligent folks do well on the job. However, using that method for selecting employees is now against the law. Seems that intelligence (which is 80% or more heritable) has been declared “discriminatory.”
What these egalitarian collectivists fail to see or choose to ignore is that, in a single day of operation of their programs of affirmative action, minority-owned business “set-asides,” etc, they do more to promote race and gender-consciousness…than the combined efforts throughout the years of all the so-called “hate groups” (Nelson 1994).
And Now Into the Lone Star State
The 75th Texas Legislature mandated that the Texas Commission for Human Rights (TCHR) develop EEO training programs required for employees of all state agencies. The legislation provides that state funds will be withheld from agencies that do not complete the required mandatory training for employees using the TCHR materials. Thus, training programs and materials were developed in compliance with Chapter 21, Sec. 21.010 of the Texas Labor Code.
Selected state employees were informed that the legislation provides an employer “the authority to require any training that the employer feels is in the best interest of the establishment” and given one month to complete the course.
In other words, this “training” is under duress and therefore non-contractual. However, few wish to issue challenge as “the system” threatens the use force or violence as a means of dealing with dissenters. (Yes, threatening or taking ones livelihood because of his/her political beliefs is a severe form of violence.)
Since this statute outlaws any “hostile environment regarding one’s gender, sexual preference, race, religion, age, or political beliefs,” it is self-contradictory. If the statute itself violates a person’s political beliefs, then it thereby creates a “hostile environment” for that person. In other words, it undermines individual rights in the name of “individual rights.”
There seems to be a lot of that sort of thing going on in our world nowadays.
References and Recommended Reading
Atkinson, Gerald L. 1998. Who Placed American Men in a Psychic “Iron Cage?” The Thread of Cultural Marxism. The Resister. Vol. IV. No 4.
Atkinson, Gerald L. 1999. Leadership and Ethics Training at the U.S. Naval Academy. The Resister. Vol. V, No 3.
Barry, Steven F. 1999. Commissars: The Army’s Political Officers, Part I. The Resister. Vol. IV. No 4.
D’Souza, Dinesh. 1991. Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus. The Free Press, a Division of Macmillan, Inc. New York. 319 p.
Friedan, Betty. 1963. The Feminine Mystique. Dell Publishing. NY.
Herrnstein, Richard J. and Charles Murray. 1994. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The Free Press. New York. 845 p.
Kelly, Michael. 1977. Arguing for Infanticide. The Washington Post. 6 November.
Lind, William. 1997. What is Political Correctness? Free Congress Foundation. Essays on Our Times: Number 43.
Nelson, Brent A. 1994. America Balkanized: Immigration’s Challenge to Government. The American Immigration Control Foundation. Monterey, CA. 148 p.
Pearson, Roger. 1991. Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe. Scott-Townsend Publishers. Washington, D.C. 304 p.
Raehn, Raymond V. 1997. The Historical Roots of “Political Correctness. Free Congress Foundation. No. 44.
Taylor, Jared. 1993. Paved With Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America. Carroll & Graf. New York. 416 p.
Anatomy of the State Murray Rothbard
The Essence of Liberty Volume I: Liberty and History chronicles the rise and fall of the noble experiment with constitutionally limited government. It features the ideas and opinions of some of the world’s foremost contemporary constitutional scholars. This is history that you were not taught at the mandatory government propaganda camps otherwise known as “public schools.” You will gain a clear understanding of how America’s decline and decay is really nothing new and how it began almost immediately with the constitution. Available in both paperback and Kindle versions.
The Betrayed: On Warriors, Cowboys and Other Misfits.
The Essence of Liberty Volume III: Liberty: A Universal Political Ethic
Labor unions have a long history of discrimination against blacks. Frederick Douglass wrote about this in his 1874 essay titled “The Folly, Tyranny, and Wickedness of Labor Unions,” and Booker T. Washington did so in his 1913 essay titled “The Negro and the Labor Unions.” To the detriment of their constituents, most of today’s black politicians give unquestioning support to labor laws pushed by unions and white liberal organizations.
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