Those of you reading this that currently call yourself “Progressive” are presumably taking offense at being referred to as “useful idiots” – but consider that the phrase originated from the leadership your side of the aisle to describe folks like you on your side of the aisle. Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop.
Author’s Note: This is an abridged version of “Useful Idiots” – one of the “communiqués” from the book Communiqués From the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. In the book we make a distinction between the “Progressive Brain Trust” and [Progressive] “Useful Idiots.” In a nutshell, the brain trust members are the people who manipulate the useful idiots to serve purposes they don’t even recognize (in turn, the “brain trust” members this author considers also to be “useful idiots” unwittingly in service of Satan). People like the late Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers, George Soros and Barack Obama would in this author’s opinion qualify as part of the “brain trust,” manipulating “Social Justice Warriors” and “Antifa” and naïve college student “Useful Idiots.” This communiqué is about the “Useful Idiots” in the first part (concluding that most can be “cured”), and an address to them in the second part, attempting to start them on their journey toward the light.
How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
Ronald Reagan
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.
Sir Winston Churchill
Part I: “Useful idiots.” Reputedly this phrase was uttered by Vladimir Lenin to describe the well-meaning but naïve Communist supporters in the West (as well as “fellow travelers” – those who were merely sympathetic but not active, or who unknowingly supported Communist agenda items); those who (to borrow the Anti-Marx’s phrase) “know not what they do.”
While it is not confirmed that Lenin actually uttered this, the phrase accurately encapsulates the cynical and manipulative outlook and practice amongst the “leaders” of Collectivism (including, but not limited to, the Progressive brain trust). It explains (in part) why they so much rely upon propaganda and indoctrination (particularly of youth in schools during their formative years, and the young idealism of college age) – for if the Collectivists can erect a faux reality within those minds, then by definition they can manipulate people of good will to act to advance evil ends, merely because those people of good will channel their good intentions through a distorted prism, and then proceed accordingly.
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
Thomas Jefferson
In George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm we see this “useful idiot” dynamic in operation, with some of the animals accepting it when the pigs declare that: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
We see “useful idiocy” in “Progressives” – people of good intention who are manipulated by publicly sincere – but privately cynical and self-aggrandizing leaders (in this writer’s opinion, this would apply to Al Gore and his becoming fabulously wealthy through his “crusade” to “save the planet” from the phony problem of global warming-climate change).
This dynamic was in full display with the zombie-like adulation (and doggedly unquestioning support) given to Barack Hussein Obama and his vague “HOPE” and “CHANGE” mantras … masking his background and future intentions. It mattered not to the useful idiot classes of 2008 and 2012.
Those of you reading this that currently call yourself “Progressive” are presumably taking offense at being referred to as “useful idiots” – but consider that the phrase originated from the leadership your side of the aisle to describe folks like you on your side of the aisle.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop.
Sir Winston Churchill
The good news is that there is hope for “useful idiots” – and not the fuzzy Barack Hussein Obama kind of “hope” – they can have not “collective salvation,” but they can have salvation from Collectivism. As we’ll see …
To begin, recognize that with such folks (usually) their intentions are good, their hearts pure; it is just that they have been manipulated and are misguided. Once we help them break through that distorted prism of Collectivist-Progressive thought they can live in accordance with their ideals, and do so in an effective manner instead of the current dysfunctional manner. It just takes some political and cultural intervention, a period of rehab – and then most can be cured.
Part II: Consider too that the experience of millennia have demonstrated that the nuclear family and sexual rectitude are not backward or stifling, but an innate and imperative ordering of human relationships. That heterosexual marriage and the nuclear family constitute the cornerstone unit of civilization and so the best (if not only) means available for promoting mental and physical well-being, and overall well-adjusted (rather than socially “dysfunctioned”) subsequent generations.
Human society is analogous to an ecosystem. The healthiest and most vibrant ecosystems are the ones with plentiful nutrients (prosperity via free-market Capitalism); minimal or no pollutants (popular culture pushed by Hollywood, promoting, if not glamorizing, such things divorce, illegitimacy, drug use and wealth accumulation through gaming the system rather than hard work, honesty and diligence); the absence of (or at least a minimal and infrequent occurrence of) catastrophic storms (“peace through strength”); an environment in which living things can reach their full growth potential (“individual liberty” and personal success, achievement and economic independence, instead of inhibiting and stifling dependence upon government); and an environment in which such living things can reproduce and spawn healthy offspring (nuclear family providing nurture and strong role models, the family unit being reinforced by a positive popular culture and strong education system).
Contrast that with Collectivist doctrine, cynically led and peddled by “leaders” who know better, targeting “useful idiots” via appeals to emotionally attractive (but unrealistic) utopianism, seeking to displace what human experience has shown to be the best of imperfect arrangements, in return for “justice” via handing over to an elite – nationally based at first, a global elite eventually – the unilateral power to determine society’s workings, and so by extension many of our major individual life decisions (and imposing identical arrangements upon everyone else). And then hoping that, contrary to human experience, this elite with its concentrated power will acted both wisely and benignly … and that so too will its successors over the following decades and centuries. That we will get Camelot rather than learn the hard way (yet again) Lord Acton’s famous maxim comes to mind: “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Consider “Progressives” of goodwill and noble intention that the spirit of “think globally, act locally” will be best embodied by proceeding with the “tools at hand” – human nature and human experience – and that individual liberty and the structure of government bequeathed us by the Founding Fathers, well-versed as they were in human nature and history – with its diffused power down to the presumption of maximum individual liberty (and its necessary companion individual responsibility for one’s self), and its harnessing of human nature and motivation through the incentives of free-market Capitalism – is the model through which we can best approach your noble intentions. That individual liberty is the best way to “act locally” and that the United States, by serving as an example of coupling individual liberty and free-market Capitalism, has and will serve as that “shining city on a hill” which will promote “globally” the blessing bequeathed us by the Founding Fathers (and, it is submitted to you, by God by divinely inspiring them).
Of our political revolution of ’76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.
Abraham Lincoln
Consider that despite your dismissal of, if not disdain for expressions of “American exceptionalism,” you should recognize that at its heart it is not expressing the idea (or chauvinism if you prefer) that Americans are superior beings. At its heart it is the recognition that as human beings we have been blessed to be residing in a country with a divinely inspired form of government. “American exceptionalism” is “scalable” and can be shared by all human beings. The Constitution of the United States is not copyrighted – other countries could at will duplicate it, or something close to it. More importantly, the principles underlying the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are universal – it is not an accident or mere circumstance that the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles …” It does not speak to “colonists” or “Americans” but to “all” – and not to “government” but “governments.”
It is understandable that you’d be reluctant to repudiate a political values system to which you’ve likely adhered for most (if not all) of your life. Ego and pride, and an understandable reluctance to admit that one was so wrong, about so much, for so long, is a compelling siren call to stay with the status quo, albeit perhaps forever after plagued with nagging doubts. But, after the initial pain, is it not better to be a forgiven sinner? Is not confronting mistake and imperfection, and achieving redemption, the better course for your life?
Think about it.
Communiqués From the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions: https://www.amazon.com/Communiqués-Right-Wing-Conspiracy-Thomas-Wigand/dp/0692635815/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494466204&sr=8-1&keywords=communiques+from+the+vast+right-wing+conspiracy
Mr. Wigand resides in Florida. Comments or questions for him may be sent to: communiques@use.startmail.com — he will make every effort to personally respond to every email (except for spam or trolls).
Communiqués From the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions: GET COMMUNIQUES
Mr. Wigand resides in Florida. Comments or questions for him may be sent to: communiques@use.startmail.com — he will make every effort to personally respond to every email (except for spam or trolls).
