Monday, July 18, 2016

The progressive thread weaving evil together


There's a common thread weaving together all the terrorist incidents in Europe, all the murders of police officers in the USA, and all the political protest from the sometimes fringe, often violent left-wing and progressive groups in this country.  It's a fundamental determination to tear down and demolish the status quo in society by whatever means are necessary.  It's a declaration of war against the standards that have hitherto defined civilization.

Think I'm exaggerating?  Let's look at a few facts.

The mass exodus of refugees from the Middle East to Europe has been applauded and funded by left-wing individuals and sympathizers.  Witness George Soros' support for and active involvement in the crisis.  He's far from the only player.  I believe that at least some of the blood spilled by fundamentalist Islamic terrorists in Europe is on his hands, because he's done and is still doing everything in his power to bring more of them there.

Witness the deliberate equating of police with street gangs.  For example, here's Ta-Nehisi Coates on the subject:

In the black community, it’s the force they deploy, and not any higher American ideal, that gives police their power ... if the law represents nothing but the greatest force, then it really is indistinguishable from any other street gang. And if the law is nothing but a gang, then it is certain that someone will resort to the kind of justice typically meted out to all other powers in the street.

However, the law - not the police, the law - most certainly does represent something more than "the greatest force".  It's the basis of our social contract.  Defiance of the law means that social contract is breaking down.  To target police is to target those who uphold that social contract.  Thugs kill other thugs as a matter of routine.  To treat police in the same way is to treat them as thugs.  Some of them - the bad apples - may, indeed, be thugs;  and the criminal justice system should and must treat them as such.  However, the vast majority of them are not thugs.  They're decent men and women trying as hard as they can to preserve the social contract.  As George Orwell put it:

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

That's as true today as it's ever been.  Only when those 'rough men' are constrained by and act within the social contract can we have any security.  When those doing violence are not constrained by anything . . . it's thug rule.

The attack on the police in the USA is being orchestrated by movements such as Black Lives Matter, whose name is demonstrably a lie.  BLM will protest against police brutality from dawn to dusk and all night long, but will they say - much less do - anything about the black lives lost to violent criminals, usually themselves black?  I've never heard them do so.  Theirs is a peculiarly one-sided, selective focus.  The criminal murders of blacks vastly outnumber those committed by police, by a factor of at least a hundred to one and probably far higher than that:  but you never hear BLM mention that reality.  They're trying to undermine the social order, the social contract.  Their agitation against the police is merely a means to that end.

BLM is just one example of a flock of social activist organizations geared to challenge the social contract on every level.  They're all funded and organized by shadowy, behind-the-scenes figures, and all work towards the same end from different directions.  For example, the Washington Times recently reported:

Billionaire George Soros has funded liberal organizations intent on bringing confusion, disarray and trouble to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next week.

And they’ve already had some victories.

Civil rights group Color of Change — which Mr. Soros gave $500,000 to in his Foundation’s latest tax return — collected more than 100,000 signatures on a petition to demand Coca-Cola and other companies withdraw their support from the convention. The petition that featured a Coke bottle with the label, “Share a Coke with the KKK.”

Color of Change was joined by UltraViolet, another Soros-backed women’s rights organization, in the petition, an effort to amplify their collective voice against the GOP.

And it worked.

. . .

To demonstrate how extreme Color of Change’s political ideology is, it’s latest campaign is to defund America’s police forces that “don’t defend black lives.” Its social media feeds give no reference to the five men in uniform who lost their lives in Dallas.

. . .

Brave New Films, which received $250,000 from Mr. Soros‘ foundation, tried to make waves for Republicans by creating misinformation about their convention through social media.

Brave New Films is a social media “quick-strike capability” company that uses media, films, volunteers and internet video campaigns to “challenge mainstream media with the truth, and motivates people to take action on social issues nationwide,” according to its website.

In a Facebook posting, Brave New Films bragged about driving a fake internet campaign — a petition to allow for open carry at the convention — into the mainstream media. The petition was reported on as if Republicans wanted it, however, it was simply created by a liberal, Soros troll.

. . .

MoveOn.org is also planning activity. They proudly took responsibility for shutting down Mr. Trump’s rally in Chicago in March, and fundraised off their success.

MoveOn is organizing a “National Doorstep Convention” that runs parallel to the GOP’s convention where members plan on going door-to-door in Ohio and other states to urge voters to “reject the politics of hate sown by Donald Trump and the GOP.”

The group’s been quiet about their plans for actual protests at the convention, but we can bet they’ll be involved. On Wednesday MoveOn urged its members in an email to sign the “Movement for Black Lives Pledge,” being circulated by Black Lives Matter activists, calling Mr. Trump a “hatemonger.”

. . .

Last weekend, the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), a progressive organization that was given $900,000 by Mr. Soros’s Foundation, held a People’s Convention in Pittsburgh, to organize social justice movements ahead of the political conventions both in Cleveland and Philadelphia.

The conference included Black Lives Matter organizers, those campaigning for immigration reform, the Fight for $15, LGBTQ rights, and environmental justice activists. It’s purpose was to give them the tools to communicate and engage with one-another’s campaigns to amplify their collective voice.

“We are beginning to launch a real national organizing framework — that’s something that really hadn’t been seen since ACORN went under,” Jonathan Westin, executive director of New York Communities for Change told the American Prospect of the conference.

That’s right, Mr. Soros is actively working to build another ACORN.

There's more at the link.  Funny how Mr. Soros' name keeps cropping up, isn't it?  However, he's not the only one behind these organizations.  For example, look at who's funding Black Lives Matter.

Jonathan Haidt recently pointed out a root cause of this agitation.

We’re beginning a second transition of moral cultures. The first major transition happened in the 18th and 19th centuries when most Western societies moved away from cultures of honor (where people must earn honor and must therefore avenge insults on their own) to cultures of dignity in which people are assumed to have dignity and don’t need to earn it. They forswear violence, turn to courts or administrative bodies to respond to major transgressions, and for minor transgressions they either ignore them or attempt to resolve them by social means. There’s no more dueling.

... this culture of dignity is now giving way to a new culture of victimhood in which people are encouraged to respond to even the slightest unintentional offense, as in an honor culture. But they must not obtain redress on their own; they must appeal for help to powerful others or administrative bodies, to whom they must make the case that they have been victimized.

. . .

The key idea is that the new moral culture of victimhood fosters “moral dependence” and an atrophying of the ability to handle small interpersonal matters on one’s own. At the same time that it weakens individuals, it creates a society of constant and intense moral conflict as people compete for status as victims or as defenders of victims.

Again, more at the link.

Mr. Haidt's research is in the area of so-called microaggressions;  but I believe it's directly relevant to this discussion.  You see, each of the organizations we've discussed above is trying to exploit the concept and culture of victimhood.  They claim to identify (and identify with) various classes of victims, and seek to mobilize them (and their sympathizers) to agitate against the system that has allegedly made them victims.  If there were no culture of victimhood - if, instead, the focus was on individual responsibility - these organizations would collapse.  Only by denying individual responsibility, focusing instead on groups and the social contract that has until now governed their interaction, can they establish their own reason for being.

This is startlingly reminiscent of the criminal mindset.  I wrote about this in my memoir of prison chaplaincy.  In it, I pointed out a number of characteristics of the criminal's outlook on life, including the following:

3.  Refusal to accept responsibility. The criminal avoids or evades any acceptance or admission of guilt or responsibility. Even when he displays contrition about his actions, it’s usually an outward show. In reality his only genuine regret is that he was discovered. He’ll blame anything and everything, anyone and everyone except himself for the negative consequences of his crimes. Of course, this means that he’ll eagerly agree with those blaming factors in his background for his crimes — it allows him to slide out of accepting any personal responsibility for his actions. It’s always someone else’s fault.

. . .

6.  A need for excitement. The criminal ‘gets a kick’ out of what he does. Even getting caught has its own thrill. Dealing with the arresting officers (perhaps including an exciting car chase that gets him on TV), establishing his place in the hierarchy in the jail, dealing with the courts, trying to ‘beat the rap’: all have their own emotional intensity. The same applies to life in prison. A really hardened convict may spend more time in the Hole than in general population, aggravate and infuriate staff, annoy other inmates… but he doesn’t care. He’s getting a kick out of his ‘power’ to make others react to him.

. . .

10.  A refusal to accept reality. Reality is defined by the criminal on his terms, not by the victim of his crime or by society. A criminal convicted of check fraud will adamantly deny that he’s a thief — he ‘never took anything’. One who stole from a bank didn’t steal from an individual, only an institution, and that’s not theft by his lights. A rapist didn’t do any harm to his victim — ‘she enjoyed it’. A child abuser wasn’t abusing the child at all: he was ‘showing his love’ for his victim. An armed robber who killed his victim when he resisted wasn’t guilty of murder. If his victim had complied with his demands he wouldn’t have died. He ‘asked for it’ by resisting, therefore his death wasn’t the robber’s fault. Most criminals will argue that they weren’t convicted because of what they did, but rather because ‘the system’ or ‘the judge’ or ‘the prosecutor’ was against them. It was personal bias that put them behind bars, not the weight of evidence. I could go on forever in this vein, but I’m sure you get the picture.

More at the link.

Do you see any common ground between these characteristics, and the attitude and conduct of so many progressive pressure groups such as Black Lives Matter, Moveon.org, Common Dreams, Color of Change, and so many others?  I certainly do.  Almost uniformly these groups deny (or don't even mention) the need for individuals to accept personal responsibility for their lives and actions.  They'll blame anything and anyone else.  It's "the system".  It's "the police".  It's "racism".  It's never the individual's fault, never the fault of the group complaining about oppression.  It's always someone else.

They also appear to demonstrate a real need for excitement, to make "the Man" respond to what they're doing.  They're social gadflies.  They never achieve anything themselves - at least, I've never seen anything they've managed to build.  They merely cause trouble for those they oppose.  They tear down what others have built, but offer nothing concrete with which to replace it.

Finally, they certainly appear to refuse to accept reality.  Black Lives Matter is a particularly evil offender in this regard.  They have not one word to say about the hundreds - sometimes thousands - of black lives shattered by criminal violence every single weekend in this country.  Go add up the accounts of shootings, stabbings, etc. in every major city in the USA for any weekend this year.  See how many of the victims were black.  See how many of the perpetrators were black.  Do you hear one single word out of BLM about them?  Like hell you do!  Instead, BLM chunters on and pontificates about the violence of the police . . . when the latter accounts for far, far less than 1% of the violence offered to blacks (usually by blacks) on a routine, everyday basis.  Clearly, to BLM,  black lives don't matter.  That's the only possible explanation of this reality.

All these progressive organizations have this common thread running through their activities.  Individuals don't matter.  The social contract doesn't matter.  All that matters is pursuing their own progressive, liberal agenda . . . and damn the cost to everyone else.

That's just plain evil.  There's no other way to describe it.

Of course, when you try to point that out, the mainstream media and the lickspittle servants of political correctness are going to do their best to silence you.  Witness what a CNN presenter did yesterday to Sheriff David Clarke of Wisconsin when he laid the truth on the line.





For the record, Sheriff Clarke is right.  This is a hate group ideology.  It's nothing less and nothing more - and we need to treat it as such.

Peter

17 comments:

Kell said...

That's an awful lot of typing for what basically boils down to, "They're barbarians." And most of them are, despite the fact that they have many of the trappings of civilization.

SiGraybeard said...

To throw some numbers in here, Harry Reid spent time every day for 134 days attacking the Libertarian donors (the Koch brothers) from the senate floor, but those guys have donated nothing compared to George Soros, Tom Steyer and a handful of other liberal donors.

The Koch brothers donated $1.5 Million - in the entire decade of 2001-2010. Soros gave $35 Million to Black Lives Matter alone. When you include all his societies and institutes, Soros gave $7 Billion. The SEIU alone has given $220 million to democrats, which they get by collecting dues from members who work for governments - basically our tax money.

The left is organized and funded to a mind-boggling level. Combined with their virtually total lock on the mass media and mass messaging, I don't see how truth gets out.

mark leigh said...

Re: Open carry at the convention. When arms are prohibited it is well to be armed. That petition may have been a hoax but it should have been a principled movement. The explicit surrender of the right of self defense is an implicit surrender of personal autonomy that renders the whole process suspect. A convention of unarmed delegates is much easier to control than one of armed individuals. From the perspective of the controlling cabal this is a good thing. The prospect for liberty in such a situation is not salubrious.
We don't need violence at the convention but a convention of armed individuals with zero incidents would send a powerful message.

Kell said...

@SiGreybeard

I completely understand the dismay you feel. In my experience, however, the truth tends to find its way through the cracks eventually. If you don't believe me you can ask the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to comment on the matter.

Old NFO said...

We are at a tipping point with the ongoing violence. I pray it doesn't descend into open warfare, but if it does, we will win.

Peter said...

@Kell: You're right . . . but the people of the late and unlamented Soviet Union had to go through a living hell lasting several generations before it succumbed to its own instability - and most of their present nations still haven't shaken off the after-effects of so many decades of evil. I'd rather we didn't have to go through that if it can be avoided.

dave said...

“We are sending a letter to Gov. Kasich requesting assistance from him. He could very easily do some kind of executive order or something — I don’t care if it’s constitutional or not at this point.”
--Cleveland Police Union president Stephen Loomis
http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ammoland.com%2F2016%2F07%2Fcleveland-police-want-emergency-suspension-constitutional-rights%2F%23ixzz4EiaHbVa0&h=uAQFntC0U

"A Chicago investigator [ed: who was a 26-year veteran and former commander of the Chicago PD] who determined that several civilian shootings by police officers were unjustified was fired after resisting orders to reverse those findings, according to internal records of his agency obtained by WBEZ.

...

Davis’s termination came less than two weeks after top IPRA officials, evaluating Davis’s job performance, accused him of 'a clear bias against the police' and called him 'the only supervisor at IPRA who resists making requested changes as directed by management in order to reflect the correct finding with respect to OIS,' as officer-involved shootings are known in the agency."

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wbez.org%2Fshows%2Fwbez-news%2Fcity-fires-investigator-who-found-cops-at-fault-in-shootings%2F6a52d0e7-5100-475f-ad5b-fec99cbdc459&h=-AQHljFjd

Note well that this was an official personnel action coming from the top--that is, it's not one bad apple (though, as the saying goes, "one bad apple spoils the whole bunch"), but rather institutional, and coming from the top.

Or, to put it in one word, "Rampart." Or any number of other institutional scandals.

I'm sorry, I interrupted; you were saying something about how police are the guardians of the law. Please do go on.

Anonymous said...

Peter,

Read Dad29 post on this same subject and the comments

http://dad29.blogspot.com/2016/07/fords-financing-of-communists.html

Anonymous said...

@ Old NFO:

We are at a tipping point with the ongoing violence. I pray it doesn't descend into open warfare, but if it does, we will win.

There are a LOT of us hoping for a change in direction; I fear that hope is wasted effort.

There's no question that "we will win" for some values of "win" but several things should be understood:

1) Should it start, despite our dire wishes for it not to, there will be no reason for it not to be prosecuted to a full, complete and irreversible conclusion.

2) Look up the definition of "pogrom" and spend some time imagining how much worse it could get.

3) Some groups are dependent upon on "government' for solace and sanctuary; that will not work under the circumstances of full societal convulsions. "Government" will be doing its best to keep its own head attached to its shoulders; your problems won't even be on their list.

4) You will think that, at some point, it will end and things will go back to "normal"; you will be wrong. Sow, reap, etc.

I would strongly recommend that you examine - in a completely honest and forthright manner - what it is that you think you deserve, and what it is that you realize you have earned.

Bart Noir said...

That Orwell quote is not an actual Orwell quote, it is something written about him. See the whole story here:

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/07/rough-men/

But it surely sums up what he was saying, and many others also.

Cannoneer No. 4 said...

Remember Putin's Little Green Men in the Crimea? Hybrid War is being waged in America as we speak. Black Lives Matter/Black Liberation Movement are Soros' Little Black Men

LastRedoubt said...

With the caveat that there are a number of systemic issues in the police that need to be addressed - and my own varied encounters between various jurisdictions near where I live make it clear that some are good, and some are bad, it's not monolithic - between the police and BLM/SJW's/Political correctness/islam and other issues you bring up here, the cops are the lesser evil that we can put off until the greater issues are addressed.

BLM refuses to aknowledge any responsibility in behavior, culture, actions, and their enablers, and the enablers of islam, flat out ignore anything that detracts from the narrative that it's never, ever their fault, it's us.

Regarding your prison experience, what you say echoes what Marlin Newburn, who often shows up on Colin Flaherty's show, has to say.

Wayne said...

Sheriff David Clarke is from Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.

Peter said...

@Wayne: Fixed. Thanks.

JK Brown said...

I just came across a quote that is appropriate for this

“The smoke may be coming out right here, but the fire is obviously somewhere else. No good throwing water on the smoke.”

William Gairdner The Trouble with Democracy


Although, I would caution that it is the fumes (smoke) that burn and if things get hot enough even smoke far from the fire can flash over.

Anonymous said...

Kasich may be Governor, but I'm not sure he wouldn't enjoy trouble being brought to The Donald.

Antibubba

deb harvey said...

pastor peter,
are criminals congenitally deniers of responsibility?
are the blm people the same or are they learning to deny responsibility?
curious about your take on it.