Posted on 04/30/2015 6:46:34 AM PDT by B4Ranch
The term "Fifth Column" came into popular use in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and thereafter as socialism and fascism were sweeping into conflict to take over the nations of the West. It means a group of guerrillas, activists, intellectuals, etc. who work to undermine a nation (or some larger organization) from within. Its activities can be out in the open, or they can be secret.
Today in America, the neoconservative political movement represents a "Fifth Column" for the forces of collectivism. Its intellectuals and activists promote themselves as conservatives who oppose the liberals, but their political philosophy has nothing to do with what is known as American conservatism, which has always stood for a limited constitutional government and free enterprise. These values are anathema to today's "neoconservatives" in the nation's political, literary and scholarly circles.
The late Irving Kristol, editor of The Public Interest, and Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, were the founders of the neoconservative movement in the late 1960s. In their youth during the 1930s and 1940s, they were followers of the communist Leon Trotsky. Having bought into the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, they saw socialism as an ideal that needed to be spread to the West. While they and their followers subsequently modified the Marxist roots of their ideology in favor of a more gradualist methodology, they always remained adamant supporters of collectivism for America. Are they outright socialists? No, but their policy proposals have always been in favor of massive government welfarism domestically and an aggressive militaristic foreign policy that seeks what is termed "benevolent global hegemony," in which the U.S. military is to be used preemptively to spread democracy throughout the world.
The paradigm that neoconservatives have given their lives to is built upon a centralized mega-state running American society from Washington and also, as much as possible, the rest of the world.
In Irving Kristol's eyes, the laissez-faire vision of the Founders was a "doctrinaire fantasy." Its ideals "make it inadequate... for a political community," he wrote in 1977. In other words, to adhere today to what Jefferson and Madison advocated is anachronistic foolishness. According to Kristol and his fellow neoconservatives, such a view must be phased out of our collective conscience.1
Kristol died in 2009, but his worldview dominates all of today's younger neoconservatives. He believed that capitalism and individual rights are dangerous institutions. They must be constantly modified by a powerful state that redistributes wealth whenever necessary to mold market enterprises into an appropriately egalitarian social structure. In the neoconservative mind, freedom, while desirable, is not a primary political value. Machiavelli had the better idea; expediency is the best way to rule. People need to be manipulatively led by statist elites – via open dialogue and democracy if possible, but by deception, coercion and expediency when necessary.2
The neoconservatives, thus, represent tyranny's Fifth Column in America. They are deceiving the people into believing that they are genuine conservatives, but like the socialists who were their mentors, they call themselves what they know the people want to hear. These ersatz conservatives have now grown to dominate Washington's think tanks, Wall Street's brokerages and banks, and many major publications and universities. They are highly influential writers, scholars, pundits, publishers, institute heads, bankers and corporate moguls.
The Serpents
What follows are eight of the more influential neoconservatives in America, past and present. These are not friends of freedom, but enemies. They need to be recognized for who they are, traitors to what America was meant to be. They need to be exposed and attacked as we would attack serpents that are slithering into our back yards to threaten our safety and our families.
Irving Kristol
Considered to be the "godfather of neoconservatism." A powerful liberal writer during the 1950s and 1960s, he had grown disenchanted with the Democratic Party by 1970 and switched to the Republican Party, coining the name "neoconservative" for the band of intellectuals he brought with him. Immensely persuasive in the shaping of the movement.
Norman Podhoretz
One of the major founders with Irving Kristol of neoconservatism in the late 1960s, he served as Editor-in-Chief of Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995, pouring out a myriad of articles and books on the need to build America into an all-pervasive "collectivist state," but one that respects traditional values instead of the amoral values of liberalism.
Richard Perle
Called the "Prince of Darkness" because of his extreme hawkish military stands. A member of the Reagan Pentagon, now serves in Washington think tanks such as the Hudson Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. Vehemently promoted the invasion of Iraq, and to this day favors extensive intervention in the Middle East to bring about regime changes.
Paul Wolfowitz
The most hawkish advocate in the Bush administration and the architect of the Bush Doctrine. A visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, he is a former World Bank chief and Pentagon official who was closely involved in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. He has been back and forth between academia and government for the entirety of his career.
William Kristol
Son of Irving Kristol and editor of the prestigious Weekly Standard, he was the cofounder of PNAC (Project for the New American Century) with Robert Kagan. He is a widely recognized pundit and influential Washington political operative. Director at the Foreign Policy Initiative and member of numerous think tanks in Washington as well as a Fox News regular.
Robert Kagan
Cofounder with Bill Kristol of the Project for the New American Century, Kagan is a policy pundit and historian based at the Brookings Institution. He serves also as a contributing editor at The New Republic and, thus, personifies the collectivist liberalism that infuses neoconservatism. They are statist ideological brothers.
Frank Gaffney
The director of the hawkish neoconservative Center for Security Policy, Gaffney has been a longtime advocate of interventionist U.S. foreign policies, ever-increasing military budgets and aggressive attacks upon the Islamic world. A regular on Fox News.
Charles Krauthammer
A writer for The Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer is considered to be the most influential neoconservative political columnist in America. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner, Fox News talking head and was a weekly panelist on the PBS show "Inside Washington" from 1990 to 2013.
There are, of course, many other prominent neoconservatives than just these eight. Hundreds of others like Bill Bennett, Elliott Abrams, Joshua Muravchik, James Woolsey, John Bolton, Max Boot, Karl Rove, David Frum and Condoleezza Rice are assiduously working to advance mega-statism throughout America and the world.
Socialist Roots of Neoconservatism
By 1910, socialism had become the new wave of the future in European universities. The Fabians were growing to power in Britain and numerous socialist intellectuals were emigrating to America to begin subversion of the citadel of capitalism.
One problem, however, confronted the invading intellectuals coming to our shores. The American people were vehemently resistant to socialism. Fabians and Cultural Marxists soon realized that the socialist revolution would never take hold in America as "socialism." They realized they must redefine their revolution and disguise it. Thus, between 1910 and 1920 they began to refer to themselves as "progressives," which solved their alienation problem. Americans were willing to listen to "progressive" ideas, but not to "socialist" ideas.
This is classic Marxist strategy: Become in name and image whatever will more readily convince potential converts. Retain your fundamental collectivist principles, but change the methods of implementation to fit the situation.
In the years between 1920 and 1940 the original neoconservatives like Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, and Sidney Hook were coming of age and developing their worldview. At first openly socialist, they soon adopted the label of "progressive," and eventually began to use the term "liberal" because of it's widespread acceptance in American intellectual circles. Thus socialists became progressives who then became liberals who promoted progressive policies. The intellectual coup d'état was complete. Tyrannical socialism could now be promoted as something liberal, benign and progressive.
All intellectuals of the left were now solidified around promoting socialist ideology under the name of "liberalism." Such a strategy became spectacularly successful up through the late 1960s, moving America insidiously toward the collectivist ideal of an egalitarian society via massive government coercion. The goal was to bring about "equality of results" in life by leveling down productive people as much as possible to the lowest common denominator. The Marxist vision was making great progress by eroding the individualism that had created and built America.
Unfortunately, the mid-1960s came unglued socially because America's youth went bonkers by adopting a New Left radicalism that shook the politics of liberalism to its core. Counterculture rebellion raged among millions of young people who came home from college to kill their donkey parents ideologically. Stability and sanity collapsed into a heap of drugs, nihilism, and contempt for conventional liberalism. It was at this time that Kristol, Podhoretz and numerous of their powerhouse liberal colleagues switched to the Republican Party in face of George McGovern's 1972 takeover of the Democratic Party. They cast off the name "liberal" and adopted the name "neoconservative" so as to break totally from what they perceived as the lunatic fringe of New Left liberalism. Thus the neoconservative revolution was born via yet another name change. Socialists who became progressives who became liberals had now become "neoconservatives."
Of course, the fundamental principles of collectivism and mega-statism were not discarded, only the name of liberalism. Ideologically the neoconservatives were still very much collectivists and statists. But the new name gave them a new life in which they felt they could thrive more successfully. Mega-statism with traditional values had always been their political vision; now it could be openly promoted as neoconservatism. It caught on and attracted droves of big league scholars and pundits to join with it, which grew into today's neoconservative hold over Wall Street, the nation's corporate moguls, the Republican Party and many of Washington's prestigious think tanks.
The serpents had propagated. The Fifth Column had done its job. Thousands in the media became quite comfortable subscribing to "neo" conservatism and discarded the philosophy of "libertarian" conservatism, which had built the country and was the true conservatism, the true opposition to liberalism. The American people (conservative by nature) fell for the hoax and loyally supported the neoconservative movement, assuming it was what would keep the country free when actually it was working to do just the opposite. It was smuggling America into statism.
Thus both liberals and neoconservatives and their respective political parties – the Democrats and Republicans – are relentlessly moving our country into mega-statism today with full support from our professors, our media and our people. "Corrupt the money and the language," said Marx. Freedom and capitalism will then fall. Today's neoconservatives are not conservative; they are rabid collectivists. But you won't hear that from the American people. They have been bamboozled.
The only solution to this ideological deception and corruption is to revive the vision of "libertarian conservatism" subscribed to by the Founders. This means a free market, not a mega-state. It means the protection of equal rights, not the conveyance of special privileges. It means a mind-our-own-business foreign policy, not the pursuit of world hegemony. If the Founders were alive today they would be heaping the same scorn on the "neoconservatives" that they heaped on the Tories and King George. Tyranny is still tyranny whether it calls itself socialism, fascism, liberalism or neoconservatism.
In 1821, Mexico gained its independence from Spain. Alta California became one of the three interior provinces in the First Mexican Empire north of the Rio Grande, along with Texas and New Mexico. The Franciscans Missionaries and soldiers in Alta California had not been paid in about In 1821, Mexico gained its independence from Spain. Alta California became one of the three interior provinces in the First Mexican Empire north of the Rio Grande, along with Texas and New Mexico. The Franciscans Missionaries and soldiers in Alta California had not been paid in about seven years in 1821. The capital of the Mexican government in Alta California was Monterey, California (originally called San Carlos de Monterrey).
Mexico, after independence from Spain, had about 40 changes of government in the 27 years prior to 1848—an average government duration was 7.9 months. In California Mexico inherited a large, sparsely settled, poor, backwater province paying little or no net tax revenue to the Mexican State. In addition, Alta California had a rapidly declining Mission system as the Mission Indian population in Alta California continued to rapidly decrease.
It is estimated that California had a grand total of about 100 people who could read and write in 1845. To breathlessly defend Mexico having a claim to California is a farce.
I know it goes against pop culture and all the hit movies, but Mexico was about the same as Indians. They claimed things beyond their grasp. If they saw it, they claimed it.
They did the same with Texas. Mexico claimed it, but it was wild and unsettled except for a couple of missions until Americans began moving into an empty land and started settling.
You act like it was somehow wrong that we did it. Mexico and Europe was repeatedly needing to be put in their place as the meddled here where we lived. That was not neocon in any way.
Look at the similar claims of France, Mexico, and Spain here in what would become our lower 48.
What happened then was a very different thing than Americans operating in Uganda, Libya, shaping battlefields in Ukraine, and chasing down every sand monkey in Afghanistan.
Neocons are not good, and they are not in touch with this nations history.
Thats a complete fantasy, your idea that the standing Army was expanded after the war of 1812.
We started with one regiment in the 1790s. That was soon expanded to a total of 13. (interesting number,,,isn’t it?)
In the war of 1812 we expanded to 50 regiments.
In 1815 it was reduced to a 8, lower than the prewar total. In 1821 it was reduced even further to 7.
And the importance of a Navy was well understood, and it was commissioned and steadily grew. It was only limited by finances early on. By the civil war the navy was very powerful. That’s simply unsupportable that we had no effective navy before T. Roosevelt.
And in any case, despite the thread hijack, the argument was that America was not built upon the idea of worldwide intervention on a continuous basis like the Romans, or Brits had to. They were in almost constant military action and were intervening in nations far from home, and dictating their governments.
As fun as that is, it destroys freedom at home, bankrupts the treasury, and creates enmity worldwide. It is doing so with us, and the neocons love every minute of it. Some conservatives do too because they confuse supporting our military, with needing to champion its near constant use worldwide.
“Prior to 911, the Chinese militarily took down a US military aircraft into their own territory. That was hugely aggressive.
Utterly retarded. A reconnaissance plane in international space, skirted along the edge of Chinese airspace, as has been done for decades. A Chinese fighter intercepted it and escorted it, as has been done for decades.
The third world barnstormer pilot accidently collided with the patrol plane, displaying 3rd world skill levels,,,as has been done for decades.
The crew landed in China.
Everyone had a tar baby on their hands.
Crew came home 10 days later,,,with all their fingernails.
Chinese apologized for something,,presumably their nutty pilot who had a previous hot dog reputation. And we apologized for something,, presumably taking up ramp space at their base.
Is THAT your reason why we should be interventionist all over earth? That makes no sense at all. As for Iranians seizing a vessel, that has always been justified war. In fact it is exactly what the Barbary pirate was was over.
“Your original claims was that the Mexican American war was because of Mexico’s aggressiveness”
The main cause of the war was the Nueces strip. Texas went to the Rio Grande. Mexico, despite the nation of Texas having won it in the war, claimed up to the Nueces.
70 American cavalry south of the Nueces was attacked by 2000 Mexican invaders and many were killed.
That’s aggressive.
Explain why the US is obligated to honor their claim to California, when they wouldn’t respect the territorial integrity of Texas.
The Mexicans started it. Or to make you happy, innocent Mexico can invade Texas and attack US soldiers and that’s not aggressive but we enter a basically empty California, pay them for it, sign a treaty,, and that’s aggressive?
The neocon mind is a wondrous thing indeed.
And yet gun control is very much a big government initiative, one that is happily embraced by nanny-staters.
You can call me a neocon if that makes you happy. However, we offered to buy California before one bullet was fired. We wanted it and aimed to get it, along with a lot of other territory. Yes, Texas applying for statehood was one reason (as I mentioned in my original thread) and us wanting the whole southwest was another reason.
Bookmarked it. I’ll try to get to it in the next week or so. Thanks
This ludicrous psychocleansing of Chinese militarism is typical of why I don’t want this crowd running foreign policy.
It’s obvious that only neocons have unethical aspirations. Chinese communists are just seeking humane cooperation. Why can’t I just see that and stand down?
In many respects it’s irrelevant. Let’s follow these false predicates until the next catastrophic attack. Then you’re foolishness will be publicly drowned. It’s just a shame that Americans have to die to prove the matter.
We also had the War of 1812 and we invaded Canada briefly and there were those including Lincoln and Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience) who would disagree with your characterization of the Mexican War. I am a bit surprised at your post since I usually think I agree with you but not here.
How about interventions to protect American interests?
Was our fifth POTUS James Monroe a founder? Ever hear of the Monroe Doctrine? Is it possible that earlier presidents did not yet have the military wherewithal to warn the rest of the world to lay off the Western Hemisphere?
The columnists for the Jackson papers were such conservatives as John Chamberlain and Jeffrey Hart and Bill Buckley and such.
The Journal Courier is long gone. The Register has passed from the Jackson family and is now a leftist rag. And, yes, it is reliably a knee jerk pacifist rag nowadays as well and pro-abort and pro-sexual perversion, etc., etc., etc.
Ronaldus Maximus made some errors in California. Just one year after signing the permissive abortion bill, he realized his mistake and personally, as governor, circulated petitions door-to-door attempting to put a repeal initiative on the ballot. During his presidency, he authored a pro-life book and annually addressed the March for Life via a telephone hookup.
Just as Reagan always kept his friends close and his enemies closer (i. e. Lt. Gov. Robert Finch), so with his foreign policy team who wanted nothing more fervently than to kiss soviet patoot and keep him from including "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" in his speech at the Brandenberg gate. People like James Baker (and Howard Baker for that matter) and George Schultz and others wanted to crawl before the US Chamber of Commerce to increase the fat fees of their mega law firms.
Has it ever struck you that Lebanon was not considered worth fighting over and that the Marines might better not have been quartered there? Do you remember Reagan bringing the battleship USS Missouri out of mothballs and sending it to pound the terrorist camps in the Bekaa Valley into the Stone Age. Now that was "realism" but not of the paleoweenie kind.
The humor du jour leading up to Reagan's first inauguration asked: "What's flat, black and glows in the dark? Teheran, if those hostages are not on their way home by the time Reagan is sworn in!" Figures in his administration managed even to enlist Iran in funding the Nicaraguan Contras to attack Comrade Ortega in exchange for minor weapons. Again, that's realism but not as you describe it.
There are paleos and there are conservatives and they do not overlap. By now, the term "neocon" is thoroughly inapplicable to anyone. That term applies only to dead or extremely aged members of the Old Left, mostly from New York City: Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Daniel Bell, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Alexander Bickel, Donald Kagan and others in their circle.
Ron Paul is not particularly dishonest. He is simply nuts. See him now, issuing Letters of Marque and Reprisal to other nuts rowing their rowboats across the oceans with a few blunderbusses to teach the Russian or Iranian navies a lesson.
If Iraq did not want "democracy," neither do many conservatives who are conservative. Neither did American interests allow Sodamn Insane or the Iranian mullahs today to nuke us or our ally Israel. If Sodamn could not muster that kind of force against us, the Iranian mullahs sure are maneuvering credibly to do so and they say so to the world. What part of "Death to America!" don't you guys get. And, NO, it is not because we have offended them. Eisenhower took the trouble to take out the communist Iranian poobah Mussah Dagh in the early 1950s but Jimmuh Peanut could not leave well enough along. He brought Shah Reza Pahlevi (our guy) to the US so that Khomeini and similar lunatics could seize Iran. The Shah's eldest son should have succeeded him and squashed the Islamolunatics like bugs. Jimmuh, for a liberal had a very "paleo" idea of foreign policy just like Obozo.
Welfare statism? I am no fan but this is a secondary issue compared to abortion, marriage, guns, rebuilding the military to Reagan era levels (realistic levels, if you will), federal court and SCOTUS appointments. We will survive welfare statism. We will not survive grave errors on the other five issues.
You are right that Herbert Hoover and FDR are not antipodes. Before FDR was sworn in, Hapless Hoover raised the top tax bracket to about 91% after Harding and Coolidge and Treasury Secretary Paul Mellon had spent eight years slashing Woodrow Wilson's confiscatory tax rates. VTW, such policies were SOOOO popular that Coolidge actually carried New York City in 1924. Other than Reagan, no Republican has come close since. Hoover was about as laissez faire during his presidency and after the crash as Stalin or Hitler or Mussolini or, well, FDR. FDR's regime had Hoover as its precursor. That Hoover became a spokesman for capitalism when it was too late does not exonerate him. Then we had Landon and Willke and Dewey and Dewey again. They also reflected Hoover and the Hoovervilles. Just like Nixon, Ford, Dole, Bush the Elder, McCain and, worst of all, Romney. Just like them, Hoover was no libertarian, and no conservative and a permanent embarrassment to the GOP.
Both Hoover and FDR, as leftists, failed the American people during the prolonged Depression. FDR did manage to effectively soft soap the public enough to give them genuine hope. When he commanded US forces in World War II, FDR was probably the most splendid war president this country had seen. When he died, the American people were heartbroken and bereft except for a few thin-lipped soulless and resentful bankers. When Neville Chamberlain was defeated and when he died, few shed a tear.
Reagan and Goldwater could not have been further apart on social issues. Goldwater's first wife Peggy was a big shot in Arizona Planned Barrenhood. Goldwater was friendly with Margaret Sanger. More available on request.
The terms of the Mexican government for Anglo immigrants to Texas were that they also become Mexican citizens and swear under oath that they had converted to Roman Catholicism if not already Catholic. In exchange, each immigrant family was granted, through Austin, substantial land. Many of the Anglos were "the flag, the Bible, and no damn taxes" Protestants who winked at the religious requirement of conversion and had absolutely no intention of ever converting. Santa Anna did not accept their winks. He fought an honorable war and was only stopped by Sam Houston at San Jacinto after Santa Anna slaughtered the other two Texican garrisons at the Alamo (ironically built as a Catholic Church) and Golead.
Your history leaves much to be desired.
“Some of these are wrong, notably Krauthammer.”
You mean Walter Mondale’s 1984 speechwriter?
If Krauthammer had gotten his way President Mondale would have replaced one-term President Reagan.
“The hit piece forgot to mention though that Gaffney has been going after Grover Norquist for being a closet Muslim Brotherhood supporter.”
I’m with Gaffney on that one.
I suggest you avoid reading President Washington’s Farewell Address. You will surely find it upsetting.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp
I can only imagine the crap you’re taking
They are not all Jewish
But they are all soft on social war
They pretty much sum up Fox today
They are in the way
If you don’t grasp the critical juncture of the culture war then you might as well be Democrat
Gutfeld or Ms Perino
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