Forgotten Lessons from History

Most Americans just want to live and let live, but the turmoil and destruction on the streets of US cities makes it apparent that no one can ignore the subversive elements at work in society. The deeper one looks into it, the more appalling the reality is.

There are two lessons from history that are essential to understanding the current situation:

1. “…democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”[1]
2. Indoctrination can spread like a cancer and be a serious domestic threat to the nation.

The first lesson reaches all the way back into antiquity, but the bullet is a direct quote from James Madison’s Federalist 10. The founders established a republic to “insure domestic Tranquility.”[2] However imperfect human beings are, a republic values integrity and justice; a democracy does not. These two values require the reasoning that stabilizes a society. Democracies have always been unstable because they only value rule by the majority.

For over one hundred years, the firm conviction that the US is a republic and not a democracy has diminished. The result has been the rise of unleashed passions rather than the calm of deliberative reason.

The second lesson was learned during the Cold War. US troops first experienced the phenomenon when the Chinese took control from the North Koreans and instituted their “lenient policy.” Rather than torture captured soldiers, the Chinese set interrogation “traps” where a captive would admit to an imperfection in his country. By manipulating what Robert Cialdini calls compliance principles, the interrogators would turn a loyal American into someone who would betray his fellow soldiers and denounce his country. Cialdini points to the principle of commitment as the key.[3] Today, the compliance practitioners who have created the monsters we see on our streets have added a heavy dose of social proof and scarcity to the Chinese model in order to spread like a cancer.[4]

Social proof is essentially peer pressure. Something must be true if the majority thinks it is. Unfortunately, not only can a minority seem like a majority, but the conclusion of the majority has nothing to do with the truth of the matter.

The angle on scarcity amplifies the effectiveness of the compliance techniques by using fear for its basis. Covid-19 was just a warmup. Climate Change is the ultimate in fear production. “We’re all going to incinerate in a burning hell if we don’t destroy the western world immediately!” Really? What both of these pretenses have in common is that the only “proof” of either pending disaster comes from computer models.[5] Refer to my article on agoodwar.com to understand the “scandal of prediction” that is propagated by computer models.[6] It is already apparent that the cure for the Covid-19 panic was worse than the disease. Does it seem prudent to repeat that error on a larger, more permanent scale?

The compliance practitioners today control the education system (as well as most corporations and most government agencies). Particularly worrisome is that they are recruiting youngsters for activism that is eerily reminiscent of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

There is one final point to be made about China. In 1999, two Chinese Air Force colonels published a book entitled Unrestricted Warfare. The Naval Academy had it translated into English. The premise is beyond the all-out war of World War II. There are four additional components:

1. Lawfare—using a nation’s legal system against it
2. Economic warfare—everything’s made in China, right?
3. Network warfare—every system in the country is a target: the grid, medical, etc.
4. Terrorism—encouraging domestic terrorism

Is China behind all the riots? Maybe, but probably not. But they will definitely kick us while we’re down.

It is up to “we the people” to pull the US out of the fire. Public sentiment must loudly push back against the rioters, or they will become our rulers…

[1] Federalist #10 (James Madison)

[2] Preamble to the US Constitution (original spelling)

[3] Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: Science and Practice. Pearson Education, 2009. pp. 61-63.

[4] Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: Science and Practice. Pearson Education, 2009. Pg. 3. The six principles are: reciprocation, consistency, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity.

[5] I have done extensive research on climate change and will be publishing a book with the compendium in it this year.

[6] Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Random House, 2010. Pg. 135.