"If you tell a lie that's big enough, and you tell it often enough, people will believe you are telling the truth, even when what you are saying is total crap.”
Richard Belzer
“Ho, ho here’s the free market in trouble again and here we in Congress are going to have to bail them out of trouble . . . again.”
A comment from (Massachusetts) Representative Barney “The Big Liar” Frank who a) in 2003 and again in 2004, 2005 and 2006 before the financial meltdown affirmed the soundness of federal government-sponsored mortgage enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; b) several times denied that progressive politicians like him were undermining the free market mortgage system; and who now is calling for the end of both Fannie and Freddie . . . and then “starting over from scratch” with whole new government mortgage entities controlling the free markets.
Real Capitalism
(Today’s introductory blog is the first in a series aiming to put the record straight and pinpoint progressives’ lies and other tactics and strategies that have betrayed our country, its economy and our freedom.)
Introduction:
“What, You Don’t Remember Our Lies?
Good, we’ll just recycle them!”
Before we get to capitalism and the lies told about it by progressives – we’ll use this introduction to start out discussing progressives and something called “The Big Lie.” Political adherents of progressivism (a notion that “we must ‘progress’ beyond the ill-conceived and outdated U.S. Constitution so we may make progress toward earthly Utopia”) who have controlled congress for roughly 95 of the last 110 years in this country (since Teddy Roosevelt succeeded assassinated William McKinley), base their attacks on the United States and its patriotic citizens primarily by using a whole series of what propagandists call “big lies” and upon the constant and consistent inattention of a large part of the voting and non-voting public. Where did the idea of “The Big Lie” come from?
Adolf Hitler and his chancellor and propaganda minister Josef Goebbels credited their superior and effective use of propaganda from some studying of the British in World War I, but mostly (according to Goebbels’ diaries) from the powerful techniques they gleaned from the administration of progressive American President Woodrow Wilson and his chief Public Information facilitator, Edward Bernays (called by Time magazine one of the Top-100 Influential Americans of the 20th Century). Hitler was the first to coin the term “The Big Lie” while in Landsberg am Lech prison in 1924 as he dictated Mein Kampf.
Hitler devoted two chapters in Mein Kampf to discussing propaganda. Within those two chapters, “The Big Lie” got most of Der Fuehrer’s attention. The Big Lie according to Hitler was a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
Herr Schicklgruber** of the Charlie Chaplin moustache then gave an excellent example of the big lie by first stating the technique was used by Jews to unfairly blame Germany's loss in World War I on German Army officer Erich Ludendorff. Of course, it was that sweetheart Hitler and his Nazis who created the highly effective Big Lie that the Army had been near victorious in the field in late 1918 and just on the verge of achieving victory when suddenly out of nowhere they had been stabbed in the back by the “November Criminals” (Berlin politicians and civilians back home including Marxists, and especially the Republicans who he said signed the infamous Treaty of Versailles, kicked the monarchy out, and set up the Weimar Republic; and, of course among the November Criminals, were his favorite scapegoats: the Jews. That “Stabbed in the Back by the November Criminals” Big Lie was part of at least 1,800 of his speeches over the first decade and a half of the Nazi rise to power (late 1919 to early 1934). Here is Hitler using the Big Lie to accuse others (the Jews) of using a Big Lie . . . .
“. . . it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.
“All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
Goebbels expanded upon Hitler’s definition some seventeen years later in a magazine article “Churchill’s Lie Factory” again using the Big Lie to accuse others of using the Big Lie.
“The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”
Certainly the Big Lie in conjunction with name-calling is the prime progressive tactic used so overtly and commonly against conservatives as to rank almost as a strategic end. Can’t win an argument, no problem that a bit of name-calling and or ridicule can’t solve. “What? You don’t agree with us, you are a RACIST!” “Don’t buy our philosophy? You must be really stupid!” It all begins with changing history by asserting some BIG LIE as truth. Among the progressive-left’s favorite big lie is to attribute Nazism and Fascism to conservatives. Associated with this big lie is the labeling of conservatives as “the Right,” that is with those traditionally aligned with monarchies. The “Right” is also then expanded to include Nazis and Fascists and then they kick the monarchists out so only conservatives, Nazis and Fascists constitute the so-called “Right.” This particular Big Lie Complex has proven so successful that 90% of people now unquestioningly buy some of it or the entire intertwined lie . . . that is, even a majority of conservatives believe they constitute “the Right.” Check out your truth vs. B.S. detector by labeling the following twelve statements
TRUE or False. Correct answers follow. What’s the truth?
1. The first of those right-wing monsters called “Rednecks” were gun-toting mine-workers’ union members attacking mines that had shutdown in defiance of the unions. They wore red-bandanas to avoid shooting each other accidentally.
2. What we call Fascism began in Italy. The labor unions became so pervasive and strong that pretty soon, they had kicked the business owners out, taken over the companies, and created their own government.
3. The word “Nazi” is a German acronym that means “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.”
4. When Communism was banned in Germany the membership in the Nazi Party almost doubled with perhaps 2/3 of the new recruits coming from among the ex-communists.
5. The bankruptcy of New York City and near bankruptcy of New York State (NYC was bailed out by the federal government in 1975) was part of a strategy plotted by progressive Neo-Marxists Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven and George Wiley that doubled (by adding eight million new recipients) the welfare rolls.
6. Something called C-P Strategy was used by ACORN’s creator Wade Rathke in Arkansas in 1978 to help make Bill Clinton state governor at age 32 and president at age 46.
7. The financial meltdown of 2007-2008 had its roots in a 1966 magazine article written by the creators of “C-P Strategy;” in a 1977 law (CRA ’77) forcing mortgage companies to knowingly make bad loans to unqualified recipients; and in Rathke’s 1977 creation of ACORN.
8. The percentage of suspect home loans (granted at 3% down payment or less) in 1975 was 0.24% but thanks to CRA ’77 and five expansions to CRA ’77, it had risen to 34.1% by 2005.
9. Bill Clinton was the first ACORN president and he paid ACORN back by expanding CRA ’77 four times during his presidency and by passing the Motor Voter Act.
10.Barack Obama was an ACORN lawyer in Chicago shaking down banks and other mortgage lenders to force them to comply with CRA ’77 and make terribly unwise loans.
11. Bill Clinton’s steroid-version expansion of CRA law in 1998 made it easier to use CRA ’77 laws to get into a $400,000 home in 1999 than it had been to put a more qualified buyer into a $100,000 home a decade earlier.
12. ACORN in the early 21st Century was able to routinely get home loans for buyers without jobs; without decent credit ratings; without even rental histories; with only food stamps to show as “income”; and even for illegal aliens . . . courtesy of CRA ’77.
As you’ve probably figured out, all twelve statements are TRUE. Here’s some useful explication:
1. “The Battle of Blair’s Mountain” in 1921 when the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) union sought to expand their hold on West Virginia Mines was the largest armed insurrection in the nation since the Civil War. Over one million rounds were fired and it required U.S. Army intervention to stop it. Union workers . . . that’s progressive action by the rednecks, no conservativism involved.
2. The syndicalist/union movement in Italy began in 1907 as a socialist/Marxist philosophy seeking to help the laborer. It was a splintered socialist movement until 1914 brought World War I. One group was anti-Marxist; the other was very nationalistic and even imperialistic. The groups merged in agreement against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914. After the war the old differences emerged until Benito Mussolini recombined the labor emphasis in 1919 and imposed a state-sponsored socialism upon the nation. Listen to his words as he provides his own interpretation:
"The official Italian Socialist Party has been reactionary and absolutely conservative. If its views had prevailed, our survival in the world of today would be impossible."
Yep, you’re right Mussolini is claiming Socialism is conservative and even reactionary. Similarly, Hitler and the Nazis would proclaim they offered a “third path” saying, “We’re not communists and not capitalists, we offer a better (third) way.” In practice their words mean nothing, deeds mean everything. Controlled economies by the Nazis and the Italian Fascists definitely bear NO resemblance to capitalism or to free-markets anywhere.
3. Since “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” is explicitly socialistic and for workers and those words clue us to socialism and unions rather than to individualism and capitalism, only a monstrous lie by the progressives repeated a million times a year would confuse people the way they are now.
4. According to William Sheridan Allen’s masterpiece The Nazi Seizure of Power (1965), when Communist Party (KPD) scandals (and several abortive and unsuccessful “uprisings”) were exploited in Germany by political opponents (including the Social Democrats, the more popular branch of Marxism in Germany at the time) the membership in the Nazi Party rose dramatically. Later Hitler would ban the KPD and the Social Democrats. Leaders of the SD and all members of the KPD were subject to arrest and being sent to concentration camps from then on.
5. In 1966 Cloward and Piven Strategy (C-P Strategy) was created when the two Columbia University Marxists wrote an article in The Nation magazine entitled The Weight of the Poor: a Strategy to End Poverty which advocated exploitation of social-welfare laws to create chaos and push a radical leftist agenda (in this case, Cloward and Piven wanted a GNI (guaranteed national income). After creating the NWRO in 1967 they doubled the welfare rolls.
6. Cloward, Piven and Wiley never did get their GNI but they bragged about their “success” publicly and also in print. The progressives now had an “overload strategy” to exploit the ever-expanding government that Democratic congresses were giving them. When they shifted to voter registration and housing the whole nation was endangered while Bill Clinton was empowered.
7. Rathke was a lieutenant of George Wiley (Wiley along with Piven and Cloward created the National Welfare Rights Organization) who had been sent to Arkansas in 1970. After boasting of their success following the ’75 bankruptcy of NYC, the threesome told their advocates to move onto voter registration and public housing. When Jimmy Carter passed the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977, Rathke created the “Arkansas” Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) which expanded to the whole country within a decade and became the “Associations of” Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
8. Just by working in Arkansas, Rathke doubled the nation’s suspect loan rate from 0.24% to 0.51%. He and ACORN also pulled a bunch of shenanigans to get Bill Clinton elected Arkansas governor. Cloward and Piven regarded Rathke’s work as so successful they expanded ACORN to the entire nation.
9. Although he lost two years later in 1980 during the first Ronald Reagan wave, Bill Clinton was elected to the governor’s mansion every year from 1982 to 1990 and served till 1992. He paid ACORN back by expanding CRA ’77 four times (once by regulatory edict/thrice by legislation) during his presidency and by passing the Motor Voter Act with Cloward and Piven (husband and wife) standing directly behind him during the signing ceremony.
10.Obama was so effective for ACORN that not only did he get individual loans; but he also got promises of future loan quotas; and even got ACORN donations from the banks.
11. The Republicans canNOT plead “not guilty” in all this. In 1992, George Bush, Sr., who successfully vetoed 45 of 46 bills he opposed, failed to veto a law with one section of it that expanded CRA ’77 to government mortgage companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. They also controlled the house and senate in 1995 and still allowed other compromise bills that expanded CRA ’77 twice that year. Progressive Republicans and other Republicans not paying attention helped the more numerous progressive Democrats to do us in. However, Clinton saw the suspect loan totals go from half a percent in 1985 to 14% in 1995 and was still pushing for laws that put the suspect home loan ratio above 34% with many of the loans after 1998 at 0% down payment.
12. Thanks to ACORN’s street action a la Saul Alinsky (author or Reveille for Radicals (1946) and Rules^^ for Radicals (1971), welfare recipients and illegal aliens got into lots of huge mortgage loans they had no chance of ever paying off. A housing boom ensued, a boom built on blue sky and doomed to fail##.
These are some of the most obvious of the Big Lies progressives use to confuse the issues and to so severely betray the Constitution and America’s citizens today. Dodging issues by using ad hominem attacks; and by impugning racism, stupidity and callous unconcern against all who want to limit government’s size, power and spending is their illogical but popularly constant refrain. In their illogical arguments for and against specific legislation they resort to Keynesian economic models that never have worked but which are always referred to as Gospel among those desiring centralized control of every facet of existence. They would have all of us regard the word “conservative” as a curse word. Is that so bad? Remember this, our Founding Fathers were not “conservatives,” but rather very radical proponents of individual liberty, property rights, economic freedom and limited government . . . Libertarians akin to today’s TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party. Only one system fulfilled their desiderata: the laissez-faire capitalism that had naturally evolved within the thirteen colonies . . . a brand of capitalism which Ayn Rand has called “The Unknown Ideal.”
NEXT TIME: “The Morality of Capitalism”
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
** About ten years before Adolf’s birth his father changed his name from Schicklgruber to Hitler. “Heil Schicklgruber!” has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?
^^ One of Alinsky’s favorite protégés was Hillary Clinton; Barack Obama taught “Rules for Radicals” while simultaneously teaching a Constitutional Law class in Chicago. “Street Theater” as taught by Alinsky was all about in-your-face-confrontation primarily to get newspaper coverage and gain public support.
##For those of you who truly like to understand rather than merely memorize . . . .
Mr. Obama has at least a hundred times referred in his speeches to conservatives or free markets or George W. Bush “driving the economy into a ditch.” In truth Bush spoke over 30 times publicly and 18 times to Congress seeking to repeal CRA legislation, beginning in January, 2005. Not until 30 months later in July, 2007, was a very weakened version of Bush’s bill passed. Predictably, while it helped a lot, when it came to dodging the financial meltdown, the bi-partisan 2007 law proved way too little, way too late. So the truth is that:
George W. Bush saw the progressives and Democrats deliberately pushing the car (the economy) toward a 500-foot cliff; jumped in; grabbed the wheel; and slammed on the brakes to gently guide it into the nearest friendly-looking ditch.
