Liars: How Progressives Exploit Our Fears for Power and Control Read online

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  CONTENTS

  PART I. THE ROAD WE’VE TRAVELED

  Introduction: In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle, the Lion Sleeps Tonight

  1. Roots: Hegel, Marx, and the Making of Heaven on Earth

  Profile in Fear: Margaret Sanger And The War On “Undesirables”

  2. First Wave: Wilson, the Philosopher President

  Profile in Fear: The Devil’s Water

  3. Second Wave: FDR, Wartime Progressive

  Profile in Fear: Eleanor’s Dollhouse

  4. Third Wave: LBJ and the Power of Envy

  Profile in Fear: Philip Berrigan And The Antiwar Movement

  5. Fourth Wave: The Hope and Change of Barack Obama

  Profile in Fear: Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s Father Figure

  Quiz: Are You A Progressive?

  PART II. THE LIES

  Introduction: The Great Lie

  Lie 1: Progressives Want to Keep You Safe from Gun Violence

  Lie 2: Progressives Care about the Environment

  Lie 3: Progressives Respect the Constitution

  Lie 4: Progressives Oppose Income Inequality

  Lie 5: The Republican Party Opposes Progressivism

  Lie 6: Progressives Believe in Racial Equality (Eugenics)

  Lie 7: Progressives Oppose Nazism, Fascism, and Communism

  PART III. FEAR THE FUTURE

  Stuart Chase: Progressive Prophet

  The Three Phases of the Progressive Plan

  Fight, Flight, or Surrender

  Epilogue: Defeating the Fear Factory

  About Glenn Beck

  Notes

  FOR RAPHE, CHEYENNE, LORELAI, AND COEN, AND ALL THOSE WHO WILL PLAY A ROLE IN THE REFOUNDING OF OUR NATION. MAY THEY DO IT WITHOUT FEAR FROM LIARS.

  PART I

  THE ROAD WE’VE TRAVELED

  INTRODUCTION

  IN THE JUNGLE, THE MIGHTY JUNGLE, THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT

  In 2001, an archeological team in the Djurab Desert discovered the remains of what they described as mankind’s oldest living ancestor, an apelike mammal with prominent brows. They dubbed this new species Sahelanthropus tchadensis. More chimpanzee than human, these primates lived in groups in a lakeside forest that gave way seven million years ago to the Saharan desert sands of northern Africa.

  During the excavation, the team also encountered the remains of a large saber-toothed cat the size of a lion, which hunted these early humans as prey. The cats’ six-inch front sabers were perfectly suited for carving through flesh and bone, and their low-slung frames were adapted for stealthily stalking their next meals. Nothing could outrun these powerful creatures, certainly not the primates of North Africa that lived in constant fear of them.

  “With our present data, we don’t know what precisely the interactions were between a primate and a big carnivore,” said Patrick Vignaud, director of the University of Poitiers’ Institute of Paleoprimatology and Human Paleontology. “But probably these interactions were not so friendly.”

  We can imagine that interaction seven million years ago: a pair of our ancestors foraging for food near a pool of water, their child playing cheerfully near the mother’s feet. And then, without warning, a shadow in the brush becomes a living, breathing, snarling vision of death. The mother cries out and leaps to protect her baby. The father steps in between the beast and his family. The hairs on the back of both the hunter’s and the hunted’s necks stand up straight. Nostrils flare, eyes squint, jaws clench. Beads of sweat appear. Survival instincts kick in as the adrenaline flows.

  They circle each other slowly. An instant later, the monster leaps forward. Nails and teeth dig into flesh. Dust swirls upward from the ground, lodging in the primate’s throat, lungs, and eyes. The warm-iron taste of lifeblood fills the cat’s mouth as saliva and blood spill out. Droplets of red-brown spatter the dry ground.

  Then, with one swift and well-placed blow to the giant cat’s head, the battle ends. The primate escapes this time—bruised, battered, and bloodied.

  His mate brings over their frightened child, and they all embrace. Heart rates begin to slow, and adrenaline levels recede, but something has irrevocably changed for them. The fear has burrowed deep into their subconscious, and it will never really leave.

  Whether we’re aware of it or not, all of us are attracted to—and strangely beholden to—feelings of fear. Our bodies are simply wired that way. The ultimate fear, of course, is of the end. Of death itself. The fear of an encounter with a saber-toothed cat haunts Sahelanthropus tchadensis and his descendants—us—for eternity. Parents and children look carefully to every shadow for squinted yellow eyes hovering over sharp teeth.

  Can you hear it? The low rumble that turns into a growl and eventually into a panting snarl? The beast is getting closer. The idea of death from the shadows, in all its forms, stalks us all.

  ♠

  What does any of this have to do with Woodrow Wilson or Hillary Clinton? It’s a good question, and it’s what we’re going to explore in this book. Fear, as well as the hopeful (if not pointless) solutions offered to combat it, is ultimately what make progressivism so successful. It’s what makes otherwise intelligent, rational, and good human beings succumb so easily to obviously absurd visions of the future painted by politicians. It’s why our brothers and sisters and our children—and sometimes even you and I—are continually tempted by the progressive siren song.

  Many experts have written about progressivism. I’ve talked about it on the air for more than a decade now, so I’m guessing you are already familiar with its frightening and demonstrable outcomes: the insatiable thirst for control and betterment of others; the determination to build a massive, all-controlling welfare state that holds the rest of us hostage to its preferences and whims; and the flirtation with totalitarianism masked by the guise of political correctness. Progressives regularly espouse ideas and support causes that openly involve the subjugation, murder, or mutilation of their fellow human beings, always in the name of a better world for all.

  When their policies are actually implemented, they unfailingly achieve the opposite of their promised results. And yet, despite this, no amount of empirical data seems to dissuade progressives and their acolytes from embracing their flawed policies the next time around, even when they can easily be shown to be disastrous.

  Given these failures time and time again, it’s only right to wonder how it is that progressive leaders and voters continue to cling to policies and programs that so plainly don’t work. Are progressive leaders such masters of lying and deception that their followers can be easily fooled, even in the face of undeniable evidence? Or is it rather that followers of progressivism are so eager to be lied to that they willfully ignore facts and reason?

  As we’ll find out together in this book, the answer is both.

  We all know what progressives want to do. We all know how easily they lie and how easily adherents allow themselves to be lied to. But what has rarely been asked or discussed is the more fundamental question: Why? Where does the urge originate from, and how does it hold so much power over the human mind? How does this impulse to build institutions and pass laws that dictate the behavior of others, stamping out individual choice in favor of the collective, overtake logic a
nd sound thinking so often?

  Each of us is born a unique, individual being, possessing free will and a mind capable of making rational choices. We’re capable of caring for both our loved ones and ourselves. But devotees of progressivism reject their free will and rational capacity. What makes people adopt a philosophy that is so fundamentally incompatible with their natural birthright as free and independent beings who are able to determine their own future?

  The answer brings us back to the saber-toothed cat and to the fear-hope dynamic buried deep within all of us.

  Human beings are creatures of the natural world, following natural laws that govern all species on earth. Like that of our primate ancestors and all other mammals, our DNA is filled with millions of years of collective experience. The stories of their survival and our evolution are written in organic matter such as proteins and nucleic acids that form vast ribbons of DNA. As much as they are indicative of our past, these strands of DNA also, in many ways, determine our future—whether we’re prone to cancer, whether our children will have light skin or dark skin, whether we’ll have a thick head of hair or be bald.

  Our genetic sequencing also, it turns out, has a large effect on our political future.

  Here’s the short version. Our ancestors, among all creatures that have ever existed, were endowed by their creator with something unique in the animal kingdom, something that sets us apart from every other living organism: an awareness of our unavoidable death. It is the fundamental difference between human beings and every other advanced mammal. No other species except for humans has both the inherent desire to live plus the foreknowledge that we won’t.

  The awareness of death exists both consciously and unconsciously at the same time. Like members of all species, we experience fear as an inherent defense mechanism when faced with the danger of death or harm. That is the natural tool we are given to help us survive. But human beings are aware and afraid not only of immediate potential threats, as other creatures are, but also of future inevitable dangers, outside our control and perception, as other creatures are not. Human beings, therefore, more than any other living organisms, live in a constant state of terror over the danger of death. For some of us, the certainty of our death can create a sense of hopelessness. Each of us, and those we love and care about, will die. Eventually, no matter how many individual fights we might win against beasts from the underbrush, one of them will get us.

  As we’ve evolved, the higher brain functions that enabled self-awareness, imagination, and reason had to create a counterbalance to the constant state of terror that came from foreknowledge of our own death. Psychologists identify this as a sort of coping mechanism that helps us get out of bed each day and march forward with life. This is the other quintessentially human psychological trait: hope. Hope is what empowers us to defy fear, to arm ourselves and fight against the saber-toothed cat. Hope is what enables inherently irrational action against impossible odds, fighting each battle, while knowing that the war will eventually be lost.

  Dr. Jerome Groopman, a Harvard Medical School professor who has spent years studying the science of hope, discovered that the brain releases chemicals that cause a hopeful sensation after a traumatizing experience. “Hope helps us overcome hurdles that we otherwise could not scale,” he wrote, “and it moves us forward to a place where healing can occur.”

  These chemicals create an effect almost identical to that of morphine: a calming, peaceful sensation. The feeling of succumbing to fears and then transcending them with hope becomes addictive. It’s why we love horror movies and Halloween. It’s why amusement parks strive to build the tallest, fastest roller coasters every year. It’s why adrenaline junkies jump out of airplanes and off bridges. It’s why tens of thousands flock to endurance events like triathlons and Ironman races. It’s why Navy SEALs and Army Rangers love the thrill of combat and why they continually subject themselves to grueling tests beforehand.

  Progressivism works at both levels of the unique duality of the human psyche. Progressives first succumb to their own fear, and then they utilize that fear by instilling it in others. They helpfully identify the saber-toothed cats—the things that threaten us and will ultimately lead to our demise—hoping to export their fears to the rest of the herd so that others can be more easily controlled.

  The pattern is always the same. First, they construct elaborate enemies that they say will kill us: overpopulation, global warming, gun violence, pornography, public health epidemics, bullying, SUVs, recreational drug use, or even masculinity itself. These are the saber-toothed cats. Then, having convinced us that we should be afraid of the predator in the brush, thereby filling our brains with adrenaline, anxiety, and stress, they offer us the “solution” that will allegedly kill the beast before it can kill us.

  It’s a never-ending cycle by progressives: introduce fear; exploit it; introduce hope; exploit it.

  ♦

  This book will present a clear, concise, and documented picture of progressives as they really are: eugenicists, racists, misogynists, terrorists, and authoritarian tyrants. We’ll dig through their own words, most of which have been airbrushed out of the official histories by liberal historians who’d rather we not know the truth about their intellectual forebears and the men and women they hold up in our children’s classrooms as heroes of democracy. We’ll unveil the progressives’ methods. We’ll puncture their lies, both the ones they tell us and the ones they tell themselves.

  But more than that, I want you to walk away with the why and the how that animate the sordid history of progressivism and the perils it presents to a free people. Understanding this is vital to understanding the roots of the progressive impulse, seeing it for what it is, and freeing yourself from it.

  Political movements—particularly the most pernicious ones—have always used fear as a selling point. Hitler used fear of the Jews. Hitler and Mussolini whipped up fear of the Communists in Russia, citing Mongolian-tainted blood. The Communists told their followers to fear the Fascists, the church, God, and capitalism. The progressives we’ll study aren’t all that different.

  But wait, you say, there are differences. There was, for example, no racial component to how progressives employed fear to sell their program.

  Think again.

  Progressives used fear of nonwhites as a big part of their own particular “fear factor.”

  Exhibit A: Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. She advocated contraception as a tool to control inferior populations, whether African-Americans (“We do not want the word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro”) or lower-class whites.

  The eugenics movement—a major component of the early-twentieth-century progressive movement—did much the same thing. “The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately,” Sanger warned in 1922. “Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile children, who in turn are just as certain to breed other defectives.”

  Nah, no fear-mongering here!

  But back to the outright racist elements of progressivism—and of its country cousin, populism. Woodrow Wilson was unfortunately only the tip of the iceberg. South Carolina’s Senator “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, Georgia’s Senator Tom Watson, Mississippi’s Senator James K. “The Great White Chief” Vardaman (“The only effect of Negro education is to spoil a good field hand and make an insolent cook”), and Mississippi’s Governor Theodore Bilbo were populist/progressives and also racists, often advocating violence and lynchings.

  Virginia’s Senator Carter Glass, coauthor of the Glass-Steagall Act and Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of the Treasury, boasted, “Discrimination! Why that is exactly what we propose, to remove every negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate.”

  Outside the South, Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 Progressiv
e Party running mate, Hiram Johnson, played on anti-Japanese hysteria. In 1913, Johnson signed the California Alien Land Law, which effectively barred Japanese persons from owning land in the state. During World War II, California’s progressive Republican governor Earl Warren helped implement Franklin Roosevelt’s forced internment of Japanese-Americans.

  Progressives stirred up incredible hysteria before, during, and after World War I. Theodore Roosevelt exploited anxieties over “hyphenated-Americans,” largely Americans of German or Irish birth who didn’t share his enthusiasm for American participation in the conflict. After the United States joined the Allied cause in April 1917, Roosevelt’s progressive rival, Woodrow Wilson, further stoked the fires of fear by banning certain publications from the U.S. Mail and imprisoning numerous antiwar figures, including Socialist Party presidential nominee Eugene V. Debs. Under Wilson’s Espionage and Sedition Acts, even mainstream outlets were suppressed or outright banned.

  Of course, there was a lot more to the progressive and populist fear factor than racism, xenophobia, and wartime crackdowns on free expression. A few decades ago, scholars Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina provided a pretty succinct summary of what the populists were peddling. It bears repeating:

  In terms of ideological characteristics, Populism was not merely a mode of organized political expression, but a mood and an attitude of mind. It covers a broad spectrum of movements, ideas and writings, characterized, to a greater or lesser extent, by common views and preconceptions about American society. Among these was the conviction that history was a conspiracy of rich against poor, of idlers and parasites against productive businessmen, farmers and workers, of bloodsucking finance capital against creative agricultural and agrarian capital, of sinister, subtle, sophisticated English and Jewish manipulators of world power against simple, upright American ordinary folk. The Populists tended to believe that the two great political parties of their country were a sham, essentially identical, both corrupt tools of the interests, engaged in loud but spurious battles as a means of diverting the attention of productive America from the fact that it had been deprived of its political birthright.