If Robert Heinlein were to write
The Moon today (see Part
1), there's no doubt his notion of the
future oppressive global government on Earth would be very different. With such
forces at play, the free-market revolution in Lunar colonies would likewise be
fought by different means, struggling to overcome the tidal wave of government
indoctrination and demonization, in addition to an army of statist looters
hiding behind the army of statist moochers, who will be hiding behind an army of
statist Blue Helmets of the statist United Nations.
That would be an asymmetrical warfare if ever there was one. The individualist free-market rebels wouldn't be able to respond in kind by playing the collectivist mind games with the statists because it would turn them into their own enemies. Their only hope would be to learn to recognize the game when it is being played, not to fall for any of its seductive illusions, methodically expose the players at every turn, call every little manipulative trick in their arsenal for what it is, and help to immunize the rest against its corruptive influence.
The tidal wave of propaganda notwithstanding, the rebels would still have the most important ally on their side -- human nature. No matter into what society they are born and what mind conditioning they receive, people will never stop being competitive individuals. They will always long for individual freedom, rationality, objectivity, personal achievement, and the pursuit of a better life for themselves and their families.
Without these traits humanity would never have risen from the ignorant tribal collectivism of hunters and gatherers, with its brutal mores, dark superstitions, and average life expectancy of 30 years, when few lived long enough to develop complete self-awareness, formulate a coherent individual thought, and pass it onto others. There would be no division of labor, no markets, and no capitalist wealth to sustain the advances in science, arts, and technology -- let alone to feed the multitudes of Marxist intellectuals and statist plutocrats. There would be nothing to lose and nothing to fight for.
Admittedly, the Marxist notion of human progress is a spiral that would return humanity to that stateless, moneyless, classless, and selfless collectivism -- except on a higher level. For that purpose they must, so to speak, put the genie of individualism back into the bottle, and the only way they can do it is by demonizing human nature itself.
However, the 74 years of the morbid Soviet experiment failed to breed the New Collectivist Man. The communist "engineers of human souls" isolated millions of people from the rest of humanity by sealing off the nation's borders and creating a pressurized Marxist bubble. They rearranged the society, rewrote history, and reorganized the culture. They subjected several generations of children to intense mind programming. They blocked all undesirable news sources, books, films, and music. They rewarded "correct" thoughts and impulses, and punished the "incorrect" ones. They demonized greed, selfishness, individualism, and self-interest. They taught altruism, collectivism, and self-sacrifice. They ran relentless campaigns that dehumanized non-compliant individuals.
Ultimately, not a single trait of human nature had changed. In the months before the collapse, the indisputable failure of collective farming forced the Soviet communists to resurrect the idea of individual farms -- and, in order to survive, Chinese communists reverted to private entrepreneurship, while maintaining the pretense of Marxist orthodoxy.
This alone should be enough to discredit the fundamental Marxist doctrine that the human mind is a "social construct" shaped entirely by manipulation and social conditioning. As an unintended consequence, the Soviet experiment proved the existence of something that Marxist science has always denied: that our individual thoughts, motives, and actions are governed, on the most part, by absolute moral standards, which are objectively derived from the unchangeable nature of human beings and the nature of the world.
Obviously, it is more beneficial to accept human nature in its entirety as an absolute standard and to build the society on that foundation, rather than to erect an artificial construct first and rearrange the foundation later, trying to discard parts that don't fit into the design.
And yet that failed philosophy is now flourishing in America's academia and leftist think tanks, which currently formulate U.S. government policies.
From the economy to crime prevention to education to foreign relations, America's policies today are based on the Marxist premise that crime results from poverty, economic crisis results from greed, injustice results from capitalist exploitation, corruption results from the free markets, and militant Islamism results from Western colonialism. Therefore, peace and harmony can only be achieved through equal redistribution of wealth, appeasement, and a global effort to reshape human nature through politically correct, collectivist indoctrination.
Predictably, a faulty premise leads to a faulty outcome: the economy is stumbling, education is failing, corruption is spreading, crime is rising, and militant Islamism is gaining more ground. Instead of creating the New Man, the suppression and demonization of natural human traits breeds moral and intellectual freaks. Where normalcy is outlawed, abnormalities flourish.
The most damaging outcome of this fallacy, however, is also the least visible -- and thus rarely mentioned: the government effort to demonize our individual thoughts, impulses, and human nature itself can only result in the eventual dehumanization of our society, turning independent American citizens into mindless statistical units, spiritless cogs in the machine, and powerless subjects of the state, ripe for abuse by any sociopathic government official with dictatorial tendencies.
The Game can only exist in symbiosis with big government. They equally need each other for survival, nourishment, and expansion. Downsizing the government would not only deprive the Game of its nourishment, but would remove the very reason for its existence. Of course, the Game's state sponsor can also be a foreign government -- as it was with the network of KGB influence agents -- but that is a matter for another discussion.
A free-market revolution's primary function, therefore, would be to discard any policies or government structures that are based on the collectivist philosophy of demonization and dehumanization of the individual, starting with the Department of Education.
Human nature has taken us this far; there is every reason to believe it will continue to help us in the future.
* * *
In the meantime, a domestic influence operation known as OFA (Obama for America), is reorganizing, renaming itself Organizing for Action, and assuming a tax-exempt legal structure. It would be a mistake to think that since Obama is no longer running for office, his campaign outfit has outlived its purpose. Without its thundering acoustics, Obama would be as helpless as a lip-synching artist whose soundtrack went silent in the middle of an act. The introduction and perpetuation of a collectivist, statist frame of reference among American voters was not only a prerequisite for Obama's victory; it remains a vital ingredient of his governing style as the nation's most powerful community organizer.
As such, even though OFA is not directly bankrolled by the U.S. Treasury, it has become an indispensable part of today's big-government operation -- the American version of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, if you will -- and, as every bureaucracy, it has no intention of downsizing. Having taken the Game to an unprecedented level and reaching its peak performance during the "fiscal cliff's" hate week -- rivaling in effectiveness the erstwhile Propaganda Department of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee -- OFA is planning to solidify its structure and influence with a so-called Obama Campaign Legacy Conference.
Regrettably, the legacy of Obama campaign is not that of achievements in bettering the country, but rather that of perfecting shameless crowd manipulation aimed at grabbing more power and transforming America into something it was never meant to be.
In an email to supporters, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina writes, "Issues like immigration, climate change, and gun violence will be debated over these next four years, and President Obama is ready to take them on -- but he needs us by his side. Our goal is to help him get things done, but also to help change how things get done in Washington in the first place."
Thus, in addition to being a tradition in presidential elections, emotional manipulation is now also being geared to become an official replacement for a traditional legislative process. Marx would have described this as a great qualitative leap forward.
Messina further describes OFA as "an advantage that no previous president has enjoyed and one that has the potential to reshape our politics for years to come."
Judging by past performance, the vague "reshaping of our politics" here translates into a very concrete subjugation of the legislative and judicial branches to the executive dictate and the elimination of the constitutional principle of checks and balances.
If this plan works, Obama and his Czars will be simply telling Congress and the courts what to do, as his Department of Agitation and Propaganda will discredit and demonize all non-compliant legislators and judges with coordinated "hate weeks" in the media and staged street protests, all the while feeding illusions of a major historic battle between good and evil to the misinformed public, who will eagerly play the part of a crowd with pitchforks and torches, especially if motivated with promises of more government handouts.
Any surviving opposition will thus be pressured and intimidated into submission, one by one, until the last resisting judge, congressman, or any other troublemaker is either removed from office or gives up the fight and succumbs to the Orwellian alternative reality, letting Obama fundamentally transform America as advertised. Thereafter, we may as well live in a Lunar colony -- so small will be our chance to uproot the new ruling Party who will be setting the terms, framing the debate, writing the narrative, and otherwise stage-managing the bamboozled, easily manipulated subjects of the new "people's republic."
We may well be witnessing a pivotal moment in creating a system, against which a future free-market revolution will be fought. Let's hope it won't be merely a plot device in a libertarian sci-fi novel, because if this revolution doesn't happen in real life, manuscripts of such nature may soon become inadmissible for publication.
Oleg Atbashian, a writer and graphic artist from the former USSR, is the author of Shakedown Socialism, of which David Horowitz said, "I hope everyone reads this book." In 1994 he moved to the U.S. with the hope of living in a country ruled by reason and common sense, appreciative of its freedoms and prosperity. To his dismay, he discovered a nation deeply infected by the leftist disease of "progressivism" that was arresting true societal progress. American movies, TV, and news media reminded him of his former occupation as a visual propaganda artist for the Communist Party -- a job he reluctantly held, as he knew that no intelligent person would take such art-by-numbers agitprop seriously. Oleg is the creator of a satirical website ThePeoplesCube.com, which Rush Limbaugh described on his show as "a Stalinist version of The Onion." His graphic work frequently appears in the American Thinker.
That would be an asymmetrical warfare if ever there was one. The individualist free-market rebels wouldn't be able to respond in kind by playing the collectivist mind games with the statists because it would turn them into their own enemies. Their only hope would be to learn to recognize the game when it is being played, not to fall for any of its seductive illusions, methodically expose the players at every turn, call every little manipulative trick in their arsenal for what it is, and help to immunize the rest against its corruptive influence.
The tidal wave of propaganda notwithstanding, the rebels would still have the most important ally on their side -- human nature. No matter into what society they are born and what mind conditioning they receive, people will never stop being competitive individuals. They will always long for individual freedom, rationality, objectivity, personal achievement, and the pursuit of a better life for themselves and their families.
Without these traits humanity would never have risen from the ignorant tribal collectivism of hunters and gatherers, with its brutal mores, dark superstitions, and average life expectancy of 30 years, when few lived long enough to develop complete self-awareness, formulate a coherent individual thought, and pass it onto others. There would be no division of labor, no markets, and no capitalist wealth to sustain the advances in science, arts, and technology -- let alone to feed the multitudes of Marxist intellectuals and statist plutocrats. There would be nothing to lose and nothing to fight for.
Admittedly, the Marxist notion of human progress is a spiral that would return humanity to that stateless, moneyless, classless, and selfless collectivism -- except on a higher level. For that purpose they must, so to speak, put the genie of individualism back into the bottle, and the only way they can do it is by demonizing human nature itself.
However, the 74 years of the morbid Soviet experiment failed to breed the New Collectivist Man. The communist "engineers of human souls" isolated millions of people from the rest of humanity by sealing off the nation's borders and creating a pressurized Marxist bubble. They rearranged the society, rewrote history, and reorganized the culture. They subjected several generations of children to intense mind programming. They blocked all undesirable news sources, books, films, and music. They rewarded "correct" thoughts and impulses, and punished the "incorrect" ones. They demonized greed, selfishness, individualism, and self-interest. They taught altruism, collectivism, and self-sacrifice. They ran relentless campaigns that dehumanized non-compliant individuals.
Ultimately, not a single trait of human nature had changed. In the months before the collapse, the indisputable failure of collective farming forced the Soviet communists to resurrect the idea of individual farms -- and, in order to survive, Chinese communists reverted to private entrepreneurship, while maintaining the pretense of Marxist orthodoxy.
This alone should be enough to discredit the fundamental Marxist doctrine that the human mind is a "social construct" shaped entirely by manipulation and social conditioning. As an unintended consequence, the Soviet experiment proved the existence of something that Marxist science has always denied: that our individual thoughts, motives, and actions are governed, on the most part, by absolute moral standards, which are objectively derived from the unchangeable nature of human beings and the nature of the world.
Obviously, it is more beneficial to accept human nature in its entirety as an absolute standard and to build the society on that foundation, rather than to erect an artificial construct first and rearrange the foundation later, trying to discard parts that don't fit into the design.
And yet that failed philosophy is now flourishing in America's academia and leftist think tanks, which currently formulate U.S. government policies.
From the economy to crime prevention to education to foreign relations, America's policies today are based on the Marxist premise that crime results from poverty, economic crisis results from greed, injustice results from capitalist exploitation, corruption results from the free markets, and militant Islamism results from Western colonialism. Therefore, peace and harmony can only be achieved through equal redistribution of wealth, appeasement, and a global effort to reshape human nature through politically correct, collectivist indoctrination.
Predictably, a faulty premise leads to a faulty outcome: the economy is stumbling, education is failing, corruption is spreading, crime is rising, and militant Islamism is gaining more ground. Instead of creating the New Man, the suppression and demonization of natural human traits breeds moral and intellectual freaks. Where normalcy is outlawed, abnormalities flourish.
The most damaging outcome of this fallacy, however, is also the least visible -- and thus rarely mentioned: the government effort to demonize our individual thoughts, impulses, and human nature itself can only result in the eventual dehumanization of our society, turning independent American citizens into mindless statistical units, spiritless cogs in the machine, and powerless subjects of the state, ripe for abuse by any sociopathic government official with dictatorial tendencies.
The Game can only exist in symbiosis with big government. They equally need each other for survival, nourishment, and expansion. Downsizing the government would not only deprive the Game of its nourishment, but would remove the very reason for its existence. Of course, the Game's state sponsor can also be a foreign government -- as it was with the network of KGB influence agents -- but that is a matter for another discussion.
A free-market revolution's primary function, therefore, would be to discard any policies or government structures that are based on the collectivist philosophy of demonization and dehumanization of the individual, starting with the Department of Education.
Human nature has taken us this far; there is every reason to believe it will continue to help us in the future.
* * *
In the meantime, a domestic influence operation known as OFA (Obama for America), is reorganizing, renaming itself Organizing for Action, and assuming a tax-exempt legal structure. It would be a mistake to think that since Obama is no longer running for office, his campaign outfit has outlived its purpose. Without its thundering acoustics, Obama would be as helpless as a lip-synching artist whose soundtrack went silent in the middle of an act. The introduction and perpetuation of a collectivist, statist frame of reference among American voters was not only a prerequisite for Obama's victory; it remains a vital ingredient of his governing style as the nation's most powerful community organizer.
As such, even though OFA is not directly bankrolled by the U.S. Treasury, it has become an indispensable part of today's big-government operation -- the American version of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, if you will -- and, as every bureaucracy, it has no intention of downsizing. Having taken the Game to an unprecedented level and reaching its peak performance during the "fiscal cliff's" hate week -- rivaling in effectiveness the erstwhile Propaganda Department of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee -- OFA is planning to solidify its structure and influence with a so-called Obama Campaign Legacy Conference.
Regrettably, the legacy of Obama campaign is not that of achievements in bettering the country, but rather that of perfecting shameless crowd manipulation aimed at grabbing more power and transforming America into something it was never meant to be.
In an email to supporters, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina writes, "Issues like immigration, climate change, and gun violence will be debated over these next four years, and President Obama is ready to take them on -- but he needs us by his side. Our goal is to help him get things done, but also to help change how things get done in Washington in the first place."
Thus, in addition to being a tradition in presidential elections, emotional manipulation is now also being geared to become an official replacement for a traditional legislative process. Marx would have described this as a great qualitative leap forward.
Messina further describes OFA as "an advantage that no previous president has enjoyed and one that has the potential to reshape our politics for years to come."
Judging by past performance, the vague "reshaping of our politics" here translates into a very concrete subjugation of the legislative and judicial branches to the executive dictate and the elimination of the constitutional principle of checks and balances.
If this plan works, Obama and his Czars will be simply telling Congress and the courts what to do, as his Department of Agitation and Propaganda will discredit and demonize all non-compliant legislators and judges with coordinated "hate weeks" in the media and staged street protests, all the while feeding illusions of a major historic battle between good and evil to the misinformed public, who will eagerly play the part of a crowd with pitchforks and torches, especially if motivated with promises of more government handouts.
Any surviving opposition will thus be pressured and intimidated into submission, one by one, until the last resisting judge, congressman, or any other troublemaker is either removed from office or gives up the fight and succumbs to the Orwellian alternative reality, letting Obama fundamentally transform America as advertised. Thereafter, we may as well live in a Lunar colony -- so small will be our chance to uproot the new ruling Party who will be setting the terms, framing the debate, writing the narrative, and otherwise stage-managing the bamboozled, easily manipulated subjects of the new "people's republic."
We may well be witnessing a pivotal moment in creating a system, against which a future free-market revolution will be fought. Let's hope it won't be merely a plot device in a libertarian sci-fi novel, because if this revolution doesn't happen in real life, manuscripts of such nature may soon become inadmissible for publication.
Oleg Atbashian, a writer and graphic artist from the former USSR, is the author of Shakedown Socialism, of which David Horowitz said, "I hope everyone reads this book." In 1994 he moved to the U.S. with the hope of living in a country ruled by reason and common sense, appreciative of its freedoms and prosperity. To his dismay, he discovered a nation deeply infected by the leftist disease of "progressivism" that was arresting true societal progress. American movies, TV, and news media reminded him of his former occupation as a visual propaganda artist for the Communist Party -- a job he reluctantly held, as he knew that no intelligent person would take such art-by-numbers agitprop seriously. Oleg is the creator of a satirical website ThePeoplesCube.com, which Rush Limbaugh described on his show as "a Stalinist version of The Onion." His graphic work frequently appears in the American Thinker.
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