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Comment by carol ann parisi on June 12, 2012 at 6:54am

 

THE NEW LEVIATHAN: HOW THE LEFT-WING MONEY MACHINE SHAPES AMERICAN POLITICS AND THREATENS AMERICA’S FUTURE By David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin Crown Forum, $27, 309 pages

David Horowitz has a reputation for the unsparing way he reveals the thinking and tactics of the liberal-progressive side of American politics. He marshals facts into patterns and patterns into indictments. His latest book, “The New Leviathan,” co-written with Jacob Laksin, lives up to that reputation. It shows, by the numbers, how the left wing is funded.

Mr. Horowitz knows what he’s writing about. He was born into left-wing politics, the son of two American Stalinists who, as he later wrote, “thought of themselves as secret agents.” He was an editor at the radical journal Ramparts. He was a friend of Black Panther Huey Newton. Mr. Horowitz later underwent an awakening, which he detailed in a popular biography, and came to see Newton as a terrorist, his own activism as wrong and the philosophy of his youth as a lie.

So when Mr. Horowitz writes about the left wing, his understanding is firsthand and specific. His recent writing on how college professors instill ideology was a name-by-name list of wrongdoers. Another effort, the Internet-based Discover the Networks, is a watchdog project designed to show which foundation is funding which activist group.

Comment by christine smutney on March 30, 2011 at 3:35pm

Thanks Maureen and Carol Ann....So much to read and learn and so many prayers that need uttering!!

Comment by maureen dirienzo on March 30, 2011 at 8:15am

Christine, Yes I loved Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism".  It was a real eye-opener for me.  Now I'm delving into more early 20th century history to learn the roots of socialism and communism and how they got a foothold in the US.  Recommend "Dupes" and "A Conservative's History of the American Left". "Dupes" reveals the unwitting (or not so unwitting) complicity of many Americans in the early 20th century in advancing communism in the US.  Reminds me of the dupes we now see for Islam in America. "A Conservative's History" reveals some really interesting early, and failed, experiments in communalism in the US, as well as the progressive/socialist movement of the early 20th century.  And how it faded out in the '50s, only to be resurrected by social scientists and a new batch of academics in the '60s.  

I'm now plowing through "Lenin, Stalin and Hitler" which recounts the philosophies behind Marxism, Communism and Hitler's version of Socialism, all in the context of the devastation left in Europe and Russia after WW I.  It is stunning to see how a couple of crazed but charismatic fanatics could impose such terror and genocide over millions of people.  They saw their moments in history and seized on them, when people were confused, desperate and gullible.  Makes me squirm when I think about where we're headed.  

One last recommendation---Goldberg mentions a novel, "It Can't Happen Here", by Sinclair Lewis.  Read it.  It's a novel about America, probably around the '30s.  People are watching what is happening in Europe and are dismissive that it couldn't happen in America.  But then a charismatic figure runs for President and wins against the odds.  See what happens next.  I read this in 2008.  It was surreal.  

Comment by carol ann parisi on March 30, 2011 at 6:12am

wow  Thanks for the RICH content....  These folks forgot the basic rule ....ENDOWED BY OUR CREATOR. with certain unalienable rights..  by design I am sure cuz when there is a HIGHER Authority  Government takes lower authority... let keep AWAKENING AMERICA TO TRUTH!!!

Comment by christine smutney on March 29, 2011 at 10:45pm

Maureen, thanks! I love Thomas Sowell!  Reading Liberal Fascism at the moment and am amazed at Goldberg's commentary about the chief benefits of terror being its tendency to maintain a permanent sense of crisis...crisis being a tool of fascism because debate and normal democratic deliberation are bypassed. Goldberg has a website for the book www.liberal-fascism.com . I shudder at his definition of fascism, unity of the body politic, longing for a leader atuned to the will of the people; everything is political; means justify the ends which are the widely heard, undefined "common good". It assumes responsibility for everything and by force or regulation seeks to unify the populace. All opposed are branded enemies!  Any doubt about being there?

Comment by maureen dirienzo on March 29, 2011 at 9:42pm

Thanks, Christine.  Excellent summary.  I found Hayek's book fascinating.  

Thomas Sowell, in his book, "Intellectuals and Society" describes the personality of the experts of Hayek's planned society who ordain themselves the anointed ones, qualified to run our lives because we are just too stupid to make decisions for ourselves.  He takes them apart so deliciously, you'd enjoy reading this book too.  

Comment by christine smutney on March 29, 2011 at 9:25pm

F.A. Hajek (1899-1992), winner of the Nobel Prize (Economics, 1974) and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1991), was a 20^th century economist and proponent of libertarianism. His treatise, The Road to Serfdom (1944) is a complex journey developing his thesis that people who relinquish principles of freedom through neglect or misunderstanding find themselves accepting, even wanting dictatorships. The individualist tradition in the U.S., he says, which created Western civilization and attendant growth of science and economic activity, has been abandoned in favor of “collectivism” and consequent “central planning.” Hajek explores the mindset which allowed, even favored these changes, including a belief that advances made under the “liberal” (i.e. liberty) system were permanent. Due to a lack of understanding of the forces operating in social and economic systems, the public, persuaded by skilled propagandists that a “freedom of necessity” could be enjoyed, was unaware of the ramifications of such a change. He explains how engineered planning eliminated competition and damaged the free market. We have fallen for the deception, he says, that economic control is merely a sector of human life, whereas in reality, it is the control of the means for all our ends. Economic freedom is a prerequisite to any other freedom.

            Arbitrary government, one which does not operate within the rule of law by which all government actions are confined within fixed and announced rules, now prevails. Acceptance of the vision and goals of planners is accomplished through manipulation of language, the crafting of “truth,” the creation of theories and myths, and the suppression and ridicule of reason. Coexistent with planners’ utopian ideal, holding such ambiguous ends as “betterment of society,” is an intellectual climate of cynicism, “the disappearance of the spirit of independent inquiry, and of the belief in the power of rational conviction.”

In his chapter, Totalitarianism in our Midst, Hajek elucidates the extent of the planners’ web. In Material Conditions and Ideal Ends, he extends the hope that we may “avoid the fate which threatens” and resume rapid economic growth. This venture includes sacrifices that seem daunting given the current political and social climate in America.

The road to serfdom is mapped, as is the road to prosperity. We cannot follow both. We are past the fork and must reroute if prosperity is our end.

Christine Smutney

Comment by christine smutney on February 21, 2011 at 1:12pm

Thanks Maureen! Horowitz surely has a feel for both sides and chose the right one.

Comment by carol ann parisi on February 18, 2011 at 9:38pm

THANKS MAUREEN!!!  Looks like David had a GREAT AWAKENING to the TRUTH  :)

Comment by maureen dirienzo on February 18, 2011 at 9:35pm

"Radical Son"  by David Horowitz

Many of us know Horowitz as a staunch and vocal conservative.  But he started life as a red diaper baby in the '40s and soaked us radical Marxism from his parents.  He was educated at Columbia (of course) and then Berkeley in the '60s where he contributed to the radical magazine, "Ramparts".  Later he promoted the cause of The Black Panthers, befriending the rapist/murderer Huey Newton.  When a woman he recommended to work for the Panthers organization is brutally murdered by members of the party, Horowitz realized how wrong his ideology was.  Gradually he examined and rejected everything he had been taught by his parents and his radical environment.  Horowitz takes you through the tumultuous '60s-- the Vietnam war protests, the Weather Underground, the sexual revolution, drugs, and feminism--confessing to his reader how he had been a willing dupe to the anti-American, nihilistic rhetoric of that time.  He clung to his belief in the Marxist ideal, trusting that its failure in the USSR would not be repeated if only its current proponents could remain true to the utopian notion of a classless society that eschews private property.  Yet he is crushed by the inevitable realization that man is imperfect and cannot achieve heaven on earth, that all he believed in is morally bankrupt, and that he had wasted his life pursuing an ideology he now finds repugnant.  Horowitz wallows in his misery for a while, but gradually discovers a new voice in conservatism.  Like a smoker who survives a cancer scare and becomes an anti-smoking zealot, Horowitz puts himself on a personal mission of redemption, committing himself to rebuking the radical fraud of his past. There is nothing more satisfying than reading about the confession and conversion of one of the left's most committed radicals to Reaganism and American exceptionalism. 

Comment by carol ann parisi on February 3, 2011 at 8:49pm

Lets talke this information and create our messaging to move AMERICA to the RIGHT

Comment by christine smutney on February 1, 2011 at 8:49pm

Propaganda by Edward Bernays  first copyright 1928

Direct quotes from the pages of this book provide practically a Clift’s Notes version of it but the read itself is full of examples. An intro by Mark Crispin Miller traces contemporary history of public relations and relates Bernays conceptual similarities to Lippmanns. Miller tackles the important ethical consideration of “truth” as it applies to both propaganda and the propagandist.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society”.

“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country.” “Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.” “Modern propaganda is a consistent enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group.” “…so tenacious are they when regimented that a group at times offers an irresistible pressure before which legislators, editors and teachers are helpless.” “It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.” “When the example of the leader is not at hand and the herd must think for itself, it does so by means of clichés, pat words or images which stand for the whole group of ideas or experiences.”

In advertising, using the new propaganda “please buy this piano” becomes “please sell me a piano”. “There is  a good deal of irony in the fact that business has learned everything that politics has to teach but that politics has failed to learn very much from business methods of mass distribution of ideas and products.”  “People today are largely uninterested in politics and their interest in the issues of the campaign must be secured by coordinating it with their personal interests. The public is made up of interlocking groups- economic, social, religious, educational, cultural, racial, collegiate, local, sports and hundreds of others.” “The important thing for the statesman of our age is to know how to sway the public….by meeting the conditions of the public mind, by creating circumstances which set up trains of thought…by establishing contact with the group leaders who control the opinions of the public.” Logic, reason and debate are old fashioned. One who engages in these is “assaulting inertia.” “Civilization is limited by inertia.” “ Propaganda bridges the gap between the intellectual classes and the practical classes.” “Ours must be a leadership democracy administered by the intelligent minority who know how to regiment and guide the masses. Is this government by propaganda? It must be enlightened expert propaganda through the creation of circumstances, through the high spotting of significant events and the dramatization of important events.”

Comment by carol ann parisi on January 27, 2011 at 3:37pm

GOOD JOB CHRISTINE SEE YOU LATER TONIIGHT

Comment by christine smutney on January 27, 2011 at 2:37pm

Though not a book, Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College has quick summaries of current topics. November 2010 has a 4 point Outline for Constitutional Government .

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2010&... 

Comment by christine smutney on January 27, 2011 at 2:24pm

Instead of a review of Rules for Radicals by Alinsky, here is an article in the Phyllis Schlafly Report Vol 42 no 7 that does an excellent job of it. By the way, the title is "How a Community Organizer Became President". She does a chapter by chapter summary which is excellent in establishing Alinsky's goals, philosophy as well as M.O.

http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2009/feb09/psrfeb09.html

Comment by christine smutney on January 27, 2011 at 2:10pm

The Shadow Party by Horowitz and Poe

  Published 2006, several years after the beginning of the Iraq war, this book specifically outlines George Soros’ operational schemes for engineering coups and names his affiliates behind the undermining of American unity. Using the “bidirectional strategy” (Cloward&Piven) exerting societal pressure simultaneously from both high government officials and street provocateurs manipulating local politics, operatives stealthily infiltrate and organize using patriotically named apparently socially conscious groups “whose authority is obscured in a complex hierarchy of organizations within organizations within organizations.” Soros has stated that “It is necessary to puncture the bubble of American supremacy”. His revolutionary affiliations and investments suggest that he is attempting to do so.

  Lengthy chapters on “how Soros works” and “inside Soros” reveal him as a “predatory financier despite his carefully cultivated image as a humanitarian/philanthropist”. His connections with individuals whose belief systems focus on either violent revolutions (armed coups and bloody invasions to rid the world of voracious capitalism) or nonviolent but nevertheless subversive “velvet revolutions” ( bribery, black-mail, phony polls, voter fraud and paid street demonstrators) are revealed as is the “shadow party” (not subject to the will of the people or accountable to them). The McCain Feingold Act, which Soros backed and which prevented both Dems and Reps from amassing soft money campaign funds is described as his vehicle for obtaining control of Democratic party funding.  The financial backing and operational expertise of “shadow party” members allowed Soros to manipulate campaigns with the availability of government and marketing demographic data.

  The Velvet Revolutions for which Soros has become notable were inspired by a Harvard political scientist who taught that the key to “defeating a hostile government is to undermine its ability to fight its opponents.” Slowly, the police, military and intelligence arms are infiltrated and disabled. Soros followed this strategy thus enabling the coups of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan as well as the regime changes in Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia and Yugoslavia. His chosen vehicle, humanitarian aid missions allowed his Trojan horse to enter distressed countries while clever marketing and entertaining the police kept protective forces at bay.

  The extent to which shadow party operatives have infiltrated the American government is not up to date in this book. The association of financial giants, labor leaders, politicians and grass-roots orgs, NGO’s and others is not fully explained here but enough of the roots and strategy is covered to give readers a pattern to follow in explaining current events as they hope to protect US sovereignty.  

Respectfully submitted

C Smutney 27 Jan 2011

Comment by christine smutney on January 27, 2011 at 2:02pm

The Coming Insurrection  by the invisible committee

This book is considered a manual for terrorism by the French Interior Minister and is evidence in a case involving 9 individuals. In the intro the writer suggests that a brute conflict between those desiring order and those who don’t is soon to break forth as the welfare state collapses. The spokesman for this committee states that they have been repeatedly lied to, stifled, repressed, deprived and are now dispossessed and deaf to all formal organizations.

In 12 chapters, the group spokesman lays out their thesis with seasoned Orwellian rhetoric which is at times poetic and beautifully stated though melancholy pervades its entirety. Experiencing the failures of French society as a personal affront, he generalizes a collapse of civilization, which contention he supports with specific references to world events both current and historical. He describes his situation as destitute and dispossessed, exiled and uprooted, isolated and enslaved in a contrived France teeming with propaganda which constantly evidences the “power of the state”. Culture, neighborhoods, literature, familiarity, masculinity, femininity, intimacy have all been subverted in France during its “colonization and tidying” by the “petty bourgeoisie”, he claims. “Entertainment, consumption and leisure only underscore the lack from which they are supposed to distract us,” he laments.

Drained of his “supply of delusions”, the spokesman reviews others’ solutions to loss of identity and culture: unwind the web, knock out electrical stations, strikes, blockades, interrupting the flow of commodities. Most effective cover for these dispossessed

individuals is communal living where one can be faceless, anonymous yet organized, allowing the group(s) to become a “moving multiplicity that can strike a number of places at once”. Loss of invisibility the writer sees as inevitable. He hopes to be effective in revolution before they are destroyed.

One cannot help but empathize with a dispossessed individual or group. How does living in this type of culture impact clarity of thought? Where are the grief/loss therapy providers in France? These and other questions provoke a consideration of ones’ own response to tyranny, lawlessness, unconstitutional government and those who are affected by it.

Respectfully submitted by

C Smutney 27Jan2011

Comment by maureen dirienzo on December 13, 2010 at 9:07pm

"Witness" by Whittaker Chambers
Have you ever wondered how a person could embrace communism? Whittaker Chambers was an American who did just that in the 1920's. He joined the Communist party of the USA and spied for the soviet union for several years. Along the way he befriended Alger Hiss, another American who was a high up official in the government of FDR and Truman, who was also a spy for the commies. After several years, Chambers had a spiritual epiphany; he embraced Christianity and defected from communism. At great risk to his personal safety he ratted out Hiss, who eventually was convicted and went to prison. Chambers reveals how communism requires the abandonment of God and your soul. He exposes the moral bankruptcy of communism and how he returned to faith. His description of the admiration of Stalin and communism by American "intellectuals" of the '30's and '40's is eerily reminiscent of today's lefties who admire China, Cuba and Venezuela. Chambers was a brilliant writer who bared his soul in this book in the hope that others would understand the pure evil of communism and reject it vehemently.

Comment by maureen dirienzo on December 2, 2010 at 6:26pm

Radical in Chief by Stanley Kurtz

This book exposes Obama's socialist associations, starting from his days at Columbia, and going through his community organizing in Chicago and attending Rev Wright's "church". Starting from Obama's own half-truth's, as presented in his mythology, "Dreams from my Father", Kurtz digs into archives to discover evidence that establishes Obama connections to socialist front groups, such as the Midwest Academy and ACORN. It establishes his long-standing relationship with the terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, showing how he funded their efforts to pollute children's minds in Chicago schools. If you are unclear about what community organizing is, read this book. You will learn that "community organizing" is the covert method to insinuate socialism into our schools, businesses and politics. When the radicals of the '60's realized they could not impose socialism on America via force, they made a conscious decision to go underground and achieve their ends via schools, churches and "community organizing". Creating class and racial grievances is the modus operandi. Numerous organizations were created to achieve these ends, and people like Jan Shakowsky were in on the ground floor. Obama joined those efforts whole-heartedly and nurtured his political career among socialists. Kurtz concludes, "Obama is a socialist".

Comment by carol ann parisi on December 2, 2010 at 4:43pm

Add as comment to add books...Thank you for sharing so that others can gleen great ideas and information.