Are Four Isms Killing America?

By Robert A. Taft

The answer to the question raised in the title of this book is yes. This well-documented account explores the four culprits: progressivism, communism, Islamism, and globalism. After presenting the American concept and its key vulnerabilities, the book tracks the history of each of these isms, comparing their similarities and describing why Americanism runs totally counter to their principles. From 1900 to the present, this chilling but factual account shows the impact the isms have had on the evolution of America. Starting in 1960, the four have combined forces to attack the family, religion, and education in order to take down this country, its Constitution, and moral firewall. In the end, the fallacy of the four isms, along with their collective operational formula, is exposed and how emerging generations are the unwitting victims of their assault.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984518323

Robert A. Taft

Mr. Taft is the former deputy assistant secretary for international operations at the U.S. Department of Commerce. He has also worked with the United Nations, has been a consultant to the U.S. Defense Department and several African and Mid-East countries, and has consulted with several multinational companies and foreign governments. He also served as President and CEO of the World Trade Centers Association of Florida (consisting of seven World Trade Centers) where he helped organize the nationally-acclaimed Team Florida. He has also taught international business at Georgetown University and the University of Central Florida as well as seminars on globalism and Islamism. He has written three books, was a member of the U.S. Foreign Service Board and has been a keynote speaker on several occasions.

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Copyright © 2018 by Robert A. Taft.

Library of Congress Control Number:               2018903851

ISBN:                  Hardcover                     978-1-9845-1815-6

                            Softcover                       978-1-9845-1816-3

                            eBook                            978-1-9845-1832-3

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Rev. date: 04/11/2018

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.     Introduction

2.     The American Concept

3.     Progressivism

4.     Communism

5.     Islam

6.     Islamism – The Endless War

7.     Comparison Of Three Key Isms

8.     The Radical Shift: 1960 – 1990

9.     The Globalists Arrive For Real: 1990 – 2008

10.   The Obama Years

11.   Family And Religion In America

12.   State Of Education In America

13.   Globalism

14.   Bizarro Globalism

15.   The Fallacy Of The Four Isms

Notes

To My Lovely Wife

Patty

with whom I can chat rationally

about these issues

INTRODUCTION

The answer to the question in the title is yes. This book attempts to show what the fours isms are and how and why they are killing America.

For the past 250 years, the United States has proven to be the greatest country on earth. Sure it has been a rocky road, but the founding tenets of this nation have remained intact to enable it to succeed and prosper. To a person our forebears advised the public to stay well informed. To them it was the only way for the republic to survive and thrive. But with the advent of fake news, polarization and intolerance of different viewpoints and the politicization of just about everything, it is difficult, if not impossible, to stay on top of the truth. And without truth, no one is interested in what may be real or correct, or in searching further for the truth, just in his own her own opinion. Truth in effect has become political, a point of view, either left or right. There is no room for gray; truth for any individual has to lie on one side of the tracks or the other. There is no room for debate, but if a person believes his truth, why bother? What the phenomenon does is replace absolute truth with relative truth.

How have we gotten to this point?

Unfortunately we are terribly divided because four isms – Progressivism, Communism, Islamism and Globalism – are tearing at the traditional values and governance of our representational democracy. These isms breed in every sector of this country: the media, government, oddly much of business, and education. Ideally speaking, these isms all claim to strive for a noble endgame – utopia, and America needs to change or be eliminated because that is not its goal. Some believe this direction is fine, others do not.

But are equality, multiculturalism, diversity and socialism merely screening the real desires of the four isms? Historically speaking, elites have led each of the four ideologies, but as their power has grown, their quest for an egalitarian society has faded.

An elite government to them is essential to lead the masses to the desired social state since the majority of individuals, left to their own devices, cannot be trusted to succeed equitably relative to other individuals. Capitalism and individualism run counter to their principles. The right government, though, will do what is best for the majority, a concept known as collectivism. Likewise they believe economic prosperity must drive social progress. Yet to them social progress requires equal distribution of wealth. This can only occur, they believe, if the government controls the means of production and can then ensure the proper distribution the wealth. This economic concept is called socialism. Thus the division we have all experienced pits capitalism/individualism against socialism/collectivism. Every other issue – social, gun control, politics, whatever – is an extension of this basic divide.

Historically, in every attempt to achieve the idyllic society, the four isms, intentionally or not, have ignored the humanity of an elite government. Even in the best of situations in the past, power has corrupted the fallible officials who have led the masses. Yes, power begets corruption, governments by nature swell into inefficient bureaucracies and, most importantly, do not generate income and retard the industries they control. While they claim to want equal distribution of wealth, if they controlled industry, would there be wealth to distribute and, if so, where would it go? Into the pockets of leaders?

Contradicting what the proponents of the isms contend is the vitality curve. Based on empirical evidence, this statistical curve shows that if you divide all capital equally among 100 people, ultimately 20 percent of the people will produce 80 percent of what can be produced and thus will end up with 80 percent of the wealth. The remaining 80 percent of the people will get the rest of the capital. Several companies use this model to run their businesses because pushing workers to be better improves productivity and encourages competition in the work force. (1) Whether you agree with this concept or not, it has been borne out in historical fact.

Assume for the moment that the curve is statistically accurate. If so and the government in its infinite wisdom mandates that everyone be equal both socially and economically, the government would have to eliminate the top 20 percent. In Australia, they refer to this phenomenon as the tall poppy syndrome. If anyone rises above the rest, lop off his head! If government were to lop off the heads of the 20 percent, what would happen to the likes of Amazon, Facebook, or Apple? Or Boeing, Exxon or IBM? Where would the incentive come from to create those companies and their technologies? If the 20 percent is deprived of their tools of ingenuity, from where would production, much less progress, emerge?

But if the curve were allowed to play out and the government were to distribute the wealth generated, sooner or later the 20 percent would move to other countries to protect their wealth, store it in safe havens, and/or seek out cheaper labor and materials. This is precisely what happened under the Obama administration. With high taxes and excessive regulations, the president drove corporations to other regions of the world, increased American unemployment and forced a record number of people to seek social services, like welfare and food stamps. This corporate exodus broadened the trade gap and escalated unemployment. The U.S. debt soared to finance a bloated government that couldn’t keep pace with the exploding dole requirement as infrastructure began failing and the economy limped along at less than two percent annual growth. Obama’s experiment in socialism and collectivism fell well short of expectations and began to turn the greatest nation on earth into a banana republic.

If government were in control of all businesses, there would be no competitiveness, thus no impetus to innovate or invest in anything new. In this authoritarian system, who would benefit? History shows that the elite leaders would. Consequently, the wealth gaps that catapulted leaders into power only widened, exacerbating instead of helping both the social and economic condition of the countries involved.

Founded on the rights of the individual and capitalism, the United States is considered by many to be the most successful country ever in the history of the world. While home to only four percent of the world’s population, nearly twenty percent of migrants want to come here, four times more than the next largest immigration destination, Germany. (2) Yet for the better part of the past 150 years, the drivers of the four isms have tried to fundamentally change this country. If it has been so successful, why would these groups want to bring it down and restructure it top to bottom? Many have threatened to leave because change hasn’t been to their liking. But have they left? And if they had been successful in changing America into a socialist/collectivist state, would it still be economically attractive to all those migrants who want to come here?

This book doesn’t try to answer these questions necessarily. Instead it explores the origins and nature of the four isms and their progress in changing the United States. While history can be transcribed in various ways with different biases and even cluttered with fake news of its own, viewing things historically can be useful to understand the present and even glimpse the future. From this perspective we can see what these ideologies are and how and why they have worked together in a concerted effort to effect fundamental change in the United States. With this exposure we can better choose the future direction we want for America, for ourselves and for generations to come.

THE AMERICAN CONCEPT

What is the target of the four isms? The American Concept. I call it a concept because the founding fathers drew upon the challenges and failures of history to fashion a new form of government that would favor the individual and not the ruling body. From the Age of Enlightenment (or The Enlightenment) in the 1700’s came both the natural law theory and the Idea of Progress. The United States emerged from the former and the Progressive Era from the latter. Especially after the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution, these two philosophical models would compete for the American mind.

The Foundation of the American Concept

The elements of natural law, and thus the American Concept, are straightforward:

1. God-Given Rights: By claiming that man is free and has certain inalienable rights, such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the founders set the people above those who governed them. In effect, they placed government in a subordinate role: government was not meant to rule, but to serve. This is a critical distinction from past governments, monarchies and dictatorships that controlled the masses.

2. The People Have the Power: Philosopher John Locke said that government should a social contract with society and the founding fathers agreed with him. To ensure that a small government wouldn’t gain too much authority, the people would vote and decide the will of the people. Conventions of the people, not Congress or legislatures, could ratify the Constitution. (1) This document would be committed to writing to ensure its longevity and its understanding. The judicial branch, headed by the Supreme Court, was to oversee and carry out the provisions and spirit of the Constitution. But the courts would exercise their authority under common law. Common law emanates from court rulings that have been given and modified over time. In other words the laws can be written, rewritten or unwritten from one generation to the next. A judge is supposed to look at the precedent ruling on the issue he or she is adjudicating using the same rationale that was given in the original case. However, a judge can alter a law based on new circumstances. Once he changes the law, his ruling will serve as the basis for future court decisions on that issue. (2) This gives judges incredible power and latitude to unilaterally shape American law. Unfortunately, as the bench has become increasingly progressive, many judges have strayed further and further from the spirit of the Constitution.

3. Limited Representative Republic and Limited Government: Reflecting what they had learned from past governments, the forbears didn’t want a full democracy since experiments of this kind had resulted in mob rule. To protect against this, they adopted a form of representative government where officials would be elected under an electoral college and not the popular vote and these officials would serve for a limited period of time – a form of service rather than lifelong career. They also understood the fallibility of man and incorporated a system of checks and balances whereby the three branches of government – the executive, the judicial and the legislative – could amend or veto acts of another branch to limit the power of any of the three branches. They believed the purpose of government was to defend people’s rights at home and the country from foreign enemies abroad.

4. Protection of Private Property: The founders saw a man’s property as part and parcel of his freedom. While property didn’t necessarily define a person, it gave him stature and personal satisfaction, a clear sign of accomplishment. Moreover, it gave him the means to progress, improve himself and his wealth. Once reserved to the nobility in feudal times, the ability to own property was the right of every man and the basis of the new country’s economic system – capitalism.

5. The Rule of Law: Again the founding fathers acknowledged the fallibility of man. While it was their intention to let all men pursue their dreams and aspirations, they also didn’t want anyone interfering with that effort. Law and order was to ensure that a person had space to achieve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but within certain parameters and without hindrance from anyone else. Just as judges can modify and change existing laws, the limits and goals of enforcing those laws can also be changed. As we will see over the course of this book, members of the four isms have attacked law enforcement, courts and legal institutions to soften them up for permanent change.

The Core Principle

The first ten amendments of the Constitution are referred to as the Bill of Rights, a collection of stated principles that further protect the rights of the individual. In this regard it is important to understand the notion of personal space. Foolishly or otherwise, the founders believed that man was rational and would act responsibly, that in order to pursue the three goals in life, he needed space to do so.

When you think about it, that personal space is critical for a man to succeed and government must protect that space to serve and not unduly control the masses. Consequently, the First Amendment, by articulating that dual notion is the bedrock of the American Concept. It states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This amendment ties freedom of religion to freedom of expression. Why is that? What did the founders have in mind by including both rights in one? If man is indeed rational, he learns, thinks about what he has learned and expresses it. For the founders, the First Amendment gets to the essence of what it is to be a human. (3) They believed that religion gave a person his appreciation for authority, community living and personal values. There had to be this type of anchor or else personal freedom could lead to anarchy.

Once again the forefathers had learned from the past. Religious wars based on religious intolerance had stained the history of Europe. Yet they also understood the importance of a fundamental belief system to ensure a strong society.

Unfortunately all men, while created equal, aren’t always rational. Men think differently which the First Amendment appreciates, but some don’t think at all or don’t take the time to learn and process what they’ve learned before speaking or acting. To keep men on track in these areas, the founders hoped that government leaders and officials would guide and if necessary enforce rationality in American society. But over time as times have changed, interpretations of the First Amendment have also changed.

Let’s take a closer look at the wording itself. The first part of the amendment states that Congress cannot make any law regarding the establishment of religion. The establishment clause – not only forbids the government from establishing an official religion, but also prohibits government actions that unduly favor one religion over another. It also prohibits the government from unduly preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion. (4) The second part, called the free exercise clause, allows an individual to practice his or her beliefs and express them freely, and presumably even violate the law in doing so, e.g. when the Sisters of the Poor refused to carry out an Obama mandate to pay for and provide insurance coverage for condoms, sterilization and chemical abortions.

Both of these clauses constitute the popular phase separation of Church and State. This phrase is not part of the Constitution. It emerged over concerns that the Anglican faith, or at the time the faith of England, which existed primarily in nine of the 13 colonies (5), would become the dominant religion of the United States and influence government operations as it had for years in Europe. Clearly the forbears intended to keep government out of religious activities and religion out of government operations, period. But they never meant to exclude religious influence on government; after all, religion to the founders was a man’s anchor, his moral compass from which rational thought emerged. If government officials could not act according to their religious principles, what would guide their actions? As Bill Flax said:

The Constitution (did not) inhibit public displays of faith. At ratification, a majority of the thirteen several and sovereign states maintained official religions. The early Republic welcomed public worship. Church services were held in the U.S. Capitol and Treasury buildings every Sunday. The imagery in many federal buildings remains unmistakably biblical…The day after the First Amendment’s passage, Congress proclaimed a national day of prayer and thanksgiving. The inaugural Congress was largely comprised by those who drafted the Constitution. It reflects incredible arrogance to reconfigure the Bill of Rights into prohibiting religious displays on public grounds. Hanging the Ten Commandments on the wall of a county courthouse no more mandates religion than judges displaying the banner of their favorite sports team somehow equates to Congress establishing that team as preeminent. Our forefathers never sought to evict the church from society. They recognized that the several states did not share uniform values. We lived and worshipped differently. The framers were a diverse bunch with wildly divergent opinions on many issues, but eliminating the very foundations of America’s heritage would have horrified them. Even non-Christian founders thought religion essential. None would have wished to upend the very basis for education, law or culture. (6)

Despite these sentiments and given the importance of the First Amendment to our way of life, the Supreme Court has been rather obtuse in dealing with the Church-State wall. (7) Consequently as this country has become increasingly secular, progressives have used the phrase separation of Church and State as well as free speech as weapons to eliminate religious symbols and even intimidate the practice of religion. This fear tactic has been so blatant that a recent TV ad thanking President Trump for various decisions he has made ends with a little girl thanking him for letting us say Merry Christmas again. Progressives, along with their partners in crime, communists and Islamists, have lobbied hard for the removal of religious artifacts, like the Ten Commandments outside a Southern courthouse or a large white Cross placed in the Mojave Desert by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. John W. Traphagan in arguing that all such symbols, icons and phrases should be eliminated from government display and organized prayer kept out of public schools, claims that the forefathers certainly didn’t intend that the United States be a Christian country. (8) How could he assert such a thing when the 13 colonies were all Christian – Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist and Dutch Reformed?

Weaponizing the First Amendment

The unfortunate fact is that not just secular progressives, but members of all four isms, have exploited the freedoms the founders intended for everyone and actually turned them against us. Free speech was meant to allow expression while maintaining the personal space of an individual, but to do so in a responsible manner. Personal expression with personal responsibility and accountability. Man acting ethically and morally based on the principles of his creed. And for those who didn’t act rationally, there was law and order to deal with. Consequently, even in the heat of the moment, assembly was intended to be peaceful and language respectful. But now demonstrations featuring outright violence are condoned under the First Amendment. If a few people find historical monuments, not just religious symbols, offensive, these monuments too are forcibly removed with little or no consequence. How has this regression of the First Amendment been allowed to take place? It is the product of intimidation by the collective workings of the four isms and the acquiescence of a politically correct and risk-averse government.

Using the First Amendment as a weapon against the American structure erodes the very fabric of this nation, the main goal of the four isms. By weaponizing the first part of the amendment, progressives and their allies try to separate man from his value system. (As we will see later, erosion of the family and religion are key elements of both the communist and Islamist plans for America.) By exploiting the second part of the amendment, they try to destroy the underpinning of the value system – law and order.

Ironically under the First Amendment, based on Christian principles, liberty has thrived. Conversely the French Revolution with its policy of De-Christianization fell into an era of bloodshed and oppression. (9) Did our founding fathers ever anticipate that the precious First Amendment would be exploited to take down the entire Constitution?

PROGRESSIVISM

In the mid-18th century the Age of Enlightenment erupted. It was a rebellion in the way man had been meant to think and view the world. Divinely-inspired kings dominated a feudal system of lords and slaves. Philosophers of the day believed that man could reason just about anything. Rather than accepting Catholic faith and dogma, man could reason his way to heaven. Science was not lost in mystical space, but was a matter of discovery based on experiments, observation and empirical data. And from this new way of thinking emerged a new civil order rooted in natural law.

Two theories arose about natural law. Philosophers Locke and Wolff espoused a hybrid government system that would combine the traditional mode and critical individual civil liberties. Spinoza advocated for a total split from the past and replace it with freedom of speech, individual liberty and the elimination of religious authority. The first was still God-based, the second was not. Both were later countered by a Counter-Enlightenment that sought a return to faith. (1, 2) Consequently liberty, equality, inalienable rights granted by God and nature, representational government and separation of the powers of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of that government became the hallmarks for the new social structure. These are the principles that were adopted after the American Revolution in 1776 and the Declaration of Man, a document by France’s third estate that triggered the French Revolution.

The Difference Is God

The key difference between the progressive view and that of America’s founding fathers is the role of God. Our forebears believed that the individual had rights and freedom bestowed on him by God and nature. They believed that man had the responsibility to live by a certain natural moral order based on human reasoning and well-being. (3) To ensure this happened, they saw a direct link between religion and morality. They stressed a moral code that would preserve the family and encourage virtues, like honesty, patriotism and a good work ethic.

From 1685 to 1815, intellectuals tried to rationalize everything metaphysical and religious. They believed that if man could use reason to understand the universe, he could improve his own condition. (4) Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in particular tried to rationalize metaphysical existence with earthly reality. They believed progress in science, technology and economic development all contributed to the advancement of the human condition. Hegel saw history as a progression of human development aided by innovations in these three areas. Build on the past but look to the future. History was not circular, constantly repeating itself, but linear, always marching toward a better state. Reform the past and present in order to improve the future and mankind. Hegel posed the argument that reality was formed by how a person thought of an actual being to where reality and thought became the same. By doing this he postulated that all reality was rational and logical. By tying the abstract to the empirical, he believed that God in fact could be humanized. He further insisted that as man progressed in this linear historical fashion, he, or at least the best of men, could improve to the point of achieving his own divinity. Further he concluded that the state is the divine idea as it exists on earth. He believed that to achieve the divine state, elite leaders who themselves were divine needed to lead the masses to the Promised Land in this world.

Thus the progressive movement began. To this day real progressives see freedom achieved through divine government and dismiss God as a myth and a hindrance to that freedom. (5) Generations later, John Burgess, a prominent progressive political scientist, added that the state is the "perfection of humanity, the civilization of the world; the perfect development of the human reason and its attainment to universal command over individualism; the apotheosis of man (man becoming God). (6) While the progressive path to self-realization had to progress through science, technology and economic development, it had to do so through an egalitarian process of socialism and collectivism. Yet if everyone had to share to be equal, how could the intellectual elite rise to the top to lead the rest to utopia? This was the problem with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The document was developed by the French third estate or middle class, but the upper classes objected. They wanted a meritocracy, recognizing the inviolability of property. While on the one hand women and slaves were ignored in the Declaration, on the other the elite wanted to replace kings as rulers. Thus historians have labeled the Declaration a statement of bourgeois idealism." (7)

Was replacing monarchs with divine rights with an elite capable of achieving divinity an improvement? As we will see, Karl Marx in the mid-1840s didn’t think so when he called for the workers to revolt against the bourgeoisie. Even when the French Revolution ended in the 1790’s and Napoleon rose to power, he followed the tenets of the French Declaration for a while, but as his power grew, he lapsed into the corruption such power brings and