UPDATE: This post was originally published on May 20, 2010. It is among the top ten most viewed posts on this website, and has attracted more comments than anything I personally have written.
Ben called me today to tell me that he’s currently reading Cleon Skousen’s book The Naked Communist, and was struck by the similarity of message to this post he wrote a year and a half ago. I told Ben I would bump his post back to the top here at The Radio Patriot, and share it with my listeners tonight. Ben is currently working on the campaign to help Ilario Pantano of NC elected to Congress, otherwise he would be with us on the radio program to talk about this.
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Former US Navy SEAL Benjamin Smith penned this essay several months ago. With his permission, it is my privilege to post it here.
Ben was a Navy SEAL for 6 years and served our nation in South America, Africa, and Iraq. He became a SEAL in 2000 and served until late 2005 but returned to Iraq for another year as a private contractor. He is a combat veteran and has served in dangerous missions around the world, and recently joined Gold Star Mom Debbie Lee with Move America Forward in Hood River to oppose anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and support his fellow warriors. Ben was a member of the Tea Party Express III team during its recent three-week national tour.
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You are at war. Your way of life is under siege. Lose this war, and your family will be slaves.
A very nasty dictator once said, “Politics is war without bloodshed, and war is politics with bloodshed.” That was Chairman Mao Tse Tung, mass murderer of millions, Marxist dictator of China, and the unsmiling Asian guy in the stylized posters that is the hero of our present government.
America’s present political leadership ascended to power under the name “Progressive”. Let’s spend some time today finding out what that label really means, and how America is at war without bloodshed.
“Progressive” sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Makes you think of progress. Only progress away from what? Towards what? And who gets to reap the benefit of the so called progress?
Look back at America , and what it used to be. The greatest nation in the history of mankind.
Now, America is “progressing” towards socialism. Government control over every aspect of your lives. Sad but true. Glenn Beck has done a great job of exposing the Obama regime’s takeover of the country. We know what the Cloward and Piven model is. When the progressives set up events to overwhelm the system until a crisis is created, the progressives have achieved their goal of implementing their “solution” which sets them up for huge land grabs into your lives and American business.
Somehow, most of America doesn’t get it. By hiding behind the term “progressive”, socialists bent on seizing power away from the American citizen have gotten so far along with their agenda they’ve taken over the White House, Congress and Senate. Nobody noticed. Banks. Insurance. Industry. Nobody noticed. Healthcare…
How did they do it? Traditional progression of warfare. I know warfare. My adult life has been about proper preparation and waging of war. And idea warfare comes long before bloodshed.
I highly suggest reading “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu. And, put on a pair of rubber gloves and pick up a copy of “Rules for Radicals” by Alinsky. Far from being about weapons and killing, these books teach a mindset and strategy for first waging war on the “Battlefield of Ideas”.
The Progressive is a sly and cunning character with a battle plan. I think what they have done most effectively to us, the silent majority, was to keep silent themselves. You know that old saying: “the best thing the devil ever did was to convince you that he never existed?” It’s a great strategy in any type of conflict. Why go head to head if you have to? Why risk being outdone because you have smaller numbers, or be proven as a lesser, a fake or just flat out wrong if you stand and make your point to everyone? Publicity opens the plan up to scrutiny.
The “Progressive” can stand next to you as your friend, or behind you with your full trust, while you remain unaware of his intentions. He makes sure you’re comfortable and relaxed, working hard to get you thinking the world is a good place, things are improving and there’s nothing to worry about. He knows he can strike at will and you’ll never see it coming. You are on HIS battlefield, facing HIS obstacles and fighting on HIS terms.
You don’t even know you’re facing an adversary, or that perhaps you’ve already lost. This is ‘the art of war’. The ultimate victory is to win with all your forces intact and to never have even lifted a finger.
The goal of the 21st century progressive totalitarian is to win a war that nobody really noticed until it was way too late. Are totalitarians such a bad thing? History teaches us that when the dictator takes power, particularly the benevolent type who really makes his people believe he does what he does for the good of mankind, then the citizenry ends up dead or enslaved. There is no example in history, modern or ancient, in which comprehensive governmental control over the individual lives of its people has led to anything other than poverty, misery and death by the millions.
In this mode of deception (which I call saturation infiltration), the typical costs of war in blood and treasure are avoided, as is all possibility of the ‘rise of patriotic feeling’ which can galvanize people against a common threat and make them impossible to defeat. Saturation infiltration isn’t always overt, like when progressives aid foreigners coming over a fence illegally and offer them citizenship to swell their voting base. No, saturation infiltration is from within, from our very own flesh and blood. It’s indoctrination into belief in socialism and totalitarianism by government education. Progressives infiltrate our families by giving them power to teach your most prized impressionable possession: your children.
They know that their side will never win a majority through open civil discourse. History is against them, as is rationality and common sense. American individualism is self-evident and anchored in the freedom of the individual to succeed as he is able and willing. Nobody wants to enslave themselves, and Americans traditionally mistrust a gigantic and powerful government for very good reasons.
Progressives know that the battle of ideas cannot be won head to head, so clandestine warfare is their logical choice. They are careful to subvert rather than overthrow institutions, leaving ordinary Americans “fat and happy” while the termites nibble the floor out from under them.
And as Lenin and Stalin knew, schools are the key to the future of their ideology, and the left’s education strategy is in high gear. How many children do you know who are sure that Marxism and socialism are bad news, not the right path for America ? These days, American children parrot the alleged VIRTUES of those ideologies. The ancient Roman Empire had the official government youth organization called “Juventus”, where they were taught to worship their emperor and be loyal to Rome unto death. 20th Century equivalents include brown shirt “Hitler Youth”. Our educational system has systematically been taken over by leftists, and the history they leave OUT of our kids’ education could fill a thousand books.
In fact, it DOES fill a thousand books, only our kids don’t read them anymore. Self-sufficiency. Individualism. Freedom. That is how mankind survived through the ages. In previous times of post-war organization, winners groomed children as an afterthought, a way of imprinting the winners’ stamp on the losers’ next generation. They had to either re-educate or kill the young people who remained, just to reduce uprisings and avoid revenge.
But this is new. This is far worse. They are using the children as their main combatants. They can bring them up how they want mostly with the loving touch of the nice teachers you entrust them to day after day while you are busy working. It begins slowly by omitting the history that makes our country great. Take WWII for instance. A very important time in out history when the very WORLD that we live in was almost taken over by evil and the many years after with the cold war. Quiz a youth. You’ll find them lacking in history and civics.
But, they’ll blabber about fairness and justice and equality. Those are noble and good things in themselves. But under the misdirection of the government education indoctrination, these words morphed into complex perversions that will inevitably enslave them, and us.
The young parrot the socialist agenda, righteously demanding redistribution of wealth while agreeing to destroy the things which create that wealth. They don’t even RECOGNIZE that disconnect. They’ve been taught that capitalism is morally equivalent to greed, and that socialism is the moral equivalent of virtue. They believe they are speaking for the idea that poor people will be lifted up, but they do not understand that in the full grip of this twisted ideology ALL PEOPLE will be brought DOWN, and the poor will be made MORE POOR THAN EVER.
This is history, plain and simple. Karl Marx gave it his best shot, but he could not and did not account for the fact that power corrupts, and when all power is vested in government, GOVERNMENT BECOMES CORRUPT, right down to its core. And we know this just from watching Capitol Hill in these past months. If these times weren’t so dangerous and tragic, we’d be laughing ourselves silly over the spectacle of our representatives plugging their ears and refusing to listen to the people they “represent”.
But back to the art of war. This presently non-militaristic, nonviolent social scramble for ‘the high moral ground’ is a new type of warfare, as different as covert ops are from traditional “fire and maneuver tactics.” This is PACIFISTIC PROGRESSIVE WARFARE. It’s multigenerational. It’s relentless. And for decades it was almost invisible to the vast majority of Americans.
For the progressive this is “The Great War”. Not long after Marx’s manifesto was published, socialist progressives took to their trenches– in trade unions and business offices, political positions and educational institutions, newspaper and radio, TV and editorial offices. There is no bloodshed, but to them it is war fought with the same zeal that a battle-hardened marine would bring to hand-to-hand combat. This is their time to push for their victory. The call of history spurs them on to their final battle, and it’s being fought RIGHT NOW.
But, they’ve been exposed, and now they’re deeply concerned that their opportunity might be slipping away. They’re scrambling, rushing, abandoning pretense. Now they’re easy to spot in action. But is it too late to stop them from reaching that hilltop and planting their flag for all to see?
And what about all the economic insanity? Are they really trying to destroy the American economy? What good is wealth redistribution when there’s no wealth left to pass around?
I don’t think they actually want to destroy the American economy. They just want to own it. They still believe that the so-called smart people just haven’t had their shot, haven’t been in charge yet, and once they run things, well, the history of leftist centrally controlled economic failure will be changed forever and we’ll all welcome their ingenious successes. Prosperity for everyone they want to favor. Cap and Trade, global warming, green jobs, ACORN, buybacks of Indian land– everywhere you look, our government is passing out money, at home and abroad. These trillions are the spoils of war, literally, and are the payback due for the leftist ascent to power. It’s expensive, so they looted the treasury and are in our pockets. Healthcare, 2013 and taxes now….. But where are they going with all of this? How far is their ambition?
When Patton was poised to take Germany he said something to the effect of “Let’s keep going, they are right there! We have the momentum!”
The socialist progressives are right there, have momentum and are making the push. But a push at what?
From here we are guessing. These people have an endgame. What is it? They see their support falling away, and the populace becoming ever more vocally resistant and assembling for historic protests. Progressives know that action happens when numbers of people gather. Listen to the vile disparagement of the Tea Party movement by mainstream media and Democrat politicians. It’s a tactic from progressives, an attempt to cut down a powerful counter strategy.
And they’re right. After the public realizes that the left has suckered them out of their heritage and history and freedom, their economic futures and those of their children and grandchildren, the public will be angry. That kind of thing is explosive. Think about it. When was the last time in your life that you have literally had to worry about your next meal? Imagine the power of masses of decent citizens driven to civil unrest on an unprecedented scale? There’s fear and anger against the government of this nation in a volume I’ve never seen in America .
I’m a single man with few needs, and I’ve been trained in survival. Have you? Or have you simply been working hard for decades in an office, bringing home a dependable living for your family year after year, never dreaming that one day you might face the kind of life you’ve seen in documentaries about the third world. Look at Russia ’s corruption after the Soviet Union collapsed, and know that’s what we will look like!
I’m not saying that’s what they want for you. But it will happen, as it has always happened, as a consequence of the “progressive” agenda, and as a natural result of a government in which the government controls and dispenses all resources.
Its part of the war plan that only when all power to choose your own life path is taken from you, then and ONLY then do you discover the true nature and depth of the corruption of the people who govern. They won’t mistreat you unless and until they KNOW you can do nothing about it.
An all-powerful government has the worst traits of a coward and a bully. Sucker punches, conspiring behind your back, ganging up on you… Totalitarian governments must and will do this in order to get, keep and increase power. Totalitarians DO NOT RESIGN. They are killed in revolutions, or they die in office and in power. The ‘peaceful transition of government between opposition powers’, as we’ve enjoyed for centuries here in America is an exception to history. Transitions of power are usually bloody affairs, and the primary reason for it is THE UNWILLINGNESS OF THOSE IN POWER TO RELINQUISH IT.
What we’re seeing in today’s news is nothing less than an all-out effort by progressives to seize permanent power and bring all aspects of our lives directly under control of government. Once they succeed, government will literally decide who has money and who does not, who eats and does not, who LIVES and who DIES. And in this cruel ‘paradise’, he who votes or speaks against government finds his name on the WRONG LIST.
But their backs are against the wall, and you can see it. Their fingers are in their ears at every sensible complaint and every protest from ordinary Americans. They are rushing headlong toward a finish line that is growing more unpopular by leaps and bounds as the public learns just what they’re up to. They are fighting hard, scrambling for that allegedly moral high ground, tossing out every kind of misinformation grenade to keep their enemy at bay…
Example:
Fox News isn’t a real news organization.
Tea partiers are rednecks with guns or Christians shoving bibles at you, and besides, they don’t even know what they’re talking about.
Republicans ruined everything for the last eight years, Bush and Cheney were evil, and besides, the public really wants health care reform, why just look at those nice purple-shirted protesters clamoring for it! Never mind the emails, global warming is going to kill us all and we must ACT NOW DO IT DO IT SAVE THE WORLD NOW TAKE ACTION NOW BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!
Remember crisis creation? Solution implementation?
In the military we’re taught that the quickest way to be seen by the enemy is to get yourself in a hurry. Slow movement is vital if you are to remain concealed. If you don’t have time and you need to get somewhere, you will risk exposure. Now the Democrats are out of position and running out of time. If they get these bills through before the election next year, they believe things will ease up on them. They think the public will forget, as we often have in the past. They see the other side of health reform and cap and trade as a sort of safe haven. It will all just fall like dominos after that.
I hope they are mistaken. It is up to us to make that happen.
And they will do anything they can to get to that safe haven. It’s like being under the water and running out of air. You realize in your mind that you need what’s above the surface. You work like never before to get to that breath of fresh air. You’ll rip your own skin, or even cut off an arm, to get to that life sustaining air. You push like your life depends on it.
Could this be the great push point of this conflict? Do we really have a chance to stall it, stop it dead in its tracks, dissect it in public, give it transparency, and take away the veil once and for all?
Progressives still have the upper hand. But this is a critical set of benchmarks that they must hit. Cap and Trade puts government literally in charge of industry in the fascist style, not by direct ownership but by the implied destructive force of regulatory action for all who do not ‘do the right thing’ as those in power wish it.
Health Care Reform does exactly the same for individuals. If you cannot imagine a future request form for medical attention in which you must tick a box to show ‘political party membership’, then you simply don’t know who you’re dealing with. You don’t know you’re at war.
And while it may look like the safe haven they’re sprinting to the finish line, it’s not. This is just a waypoint for them. Things would look ‘normal’ if we hadn’t begun to pay attention and ‘fight back’. That’s what got them rattled and scrambling. But this is nowhere near the end.
Or, to put it another way, if we don’t raise our game now, it will only be harder later, and every step they take is damage done that we may never be able to undo.
A Pacifist Progressive War is not like the Cold War. In those years, Americans understood our external enemy, the Soviet Union and communism, and the progressives in our country were careful not to reveal themselves to avoid being compared negatively in that light. But the progressives place a high value on American forgetfulness, and so far it has never disappointed them.
So… never forget who they are and what they envision for the future. Ask yourself what your grandchildren will say to you, or about you, when they come to understand that all this could have been stopped if only good and decent Americans had banded together and stood against it. When their backs are bent under the burden of massive tax rates, when their dollars are so weak that they cannot afford food, when their government tells them where they will live and what profession they will practice and even who will live in their home with them, what will that generation say about this one?
Perhaps it will be something on the order of what Samuel Adams said to those who did not want to fight the Revolutionary War. “Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”
The progressives are definitely followers of that ancient book called “The Art of War”, and when you’ve finished that book you will understand as I do. If we see their side as anything less than a state of war, we are signing the obituary for the very system that has inspired the US to be what it is GREAT.
It is past time for us to assume at least the same level of ‘battle state”, to clearly see what we stand to lose, and to make this the highest possible priority in our lives. Whether it is through financial support, attending public meetings, or community organizing, it’s past time to DO SOMETHING.
Take a stand. Or you will lose your liberty without a shot being fired.
She’s adorable. And she’s bright. But she can’t read a prompter to save her soul.
Floridians know how to batten down the hatches, hoard water, food, grills and charcoal briquets. We also know to keep a full tank of gas in our vehicles and a list of valuables to stuff in our “go bag” should we have to make a hasty evacuation.
