Eric Hoffer and the True Believer

I've recently become aware of Eric Hoffer's work. It's a shame; it was quite well known in generations before me. His first book was published in 1951, and he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 1983. And yet, today his work is largely deliberately forgotten, or at least I've never heard of it, even though it should be exactly the kind of work that's right up my alley, and would explain a great deal of the problems that we see in the world politically and socially. I expect that the reason for this is that his work is largely a condemnation of leftism as its become, and since Leftism holds the reins at every academic institution, they've focused more on works that attempt to validate them rather than condemn them.

This doesn't mean that I think Hoffer's work is perfect, of course. Hoffer had an interesting life, and probably wasn't best person in the world. He describes life in his 20s and 30s during the Great Depression as one where he almost committed suicide, but then dividing his time "between the books and the brothels" where he became a writer and philosopher and extremely well-read individual who also had a blue-collar, working man's approach. He called himself an atheist who had sympathetic views towards religion, but he seems to have been poor at picking out genuine conversion from fanaticism, in the cause of Paul the Apostle, for example, which he uses as an example of a fanatic. Incorrectly, of course, because he doesn't believe in the possibility that Saul's Road to Damascus conversion into Paul was anything other than another example of fanaticism, the main subject of his writing. He also buys into the false narrative that fascism and communism were polar opposites of sorts, so his conclusion that the object of fanatic's fanaticism is interchangeable. That may or may not be true, to some degree, but his example doesn't do a good job of demonstrating it, since communism and fascism partly appealed to the exact people because they were only subtle variations on the same ideology anyway.) A point Heber J. Grant and David O. McKay, among others, certainly did not miss. Actually, prior to the US going to war against Germany and deciding that the Soviets were our allies, pretty much everyone in America knew that fascism, Nazism, socialism, communism, peronism, francoism, or any other variant you can think of, were all basically the same movement with only minor variations on them.) And his assertion that Saul transferred his fanaticism for Judaism to a fanaticism for Christianity upon his conversion into Paul is silly. Hoffer also assumed that Lincoln, Churchill and FDR (among a few others) were different somehow, although they used the same processes and methods. Grant and McKay were not so fooled, and wrote directly to Roosevelt's administration in condemnation.

Of course, now that I've picked apart (or at least highlighted) areas of disagreement with his work, at an extremely high level, I should probably get to the meat of his work, which I think absolutely does describe the current wave of socio-political movement, as well as a warning for the future. First, let me quote a little bit (once again) of the Z-man.

The Opposite Rule of Liberalism states that whatever the Left is saying about its political opponents, assume the opposite and you will get close to the truth. [...] The classic example of this is ten years ago when the Tea Party was a thing. This purely grassroots movement in reaction to the radicalism of the Obama administration was called “AstroTurf” by the Left. The Left claimed their activism was organic while the Right was manufacturing activism. The Tea Party was a creation of the Republican Party and their corporate masters. The reality was the opposite. Left-wing activism was controlled by the party and financed by corporate America.

The opposite rule can also work as a warning. In fact, this is the best application of the rule as it helps prepare for left-wing shenanigans. The way this works is that once you hear warnings from left-wing people about some threat, you can assume they are planning it or they are actively engaged in it. The last bit is the way to bet when the Left is overly excited about the claim. In other words, they have a habit of accusing their opponents of crimes the are committing. [...]

This behavior of the Left, where they accuse their enemies of what they are plotting or doing, is used by conservatives as proof of the Left’s cynicism. For conservatives, hypocrisy is the most powerful abracadabra word. Despite all the evidence, they are sure that uttering this word will destroy their enemies. When the Left accuses their enemies of something they are doing, the conservatives scream about hypocrisy, believing is does something magical for them.

This never has the desired effect because being accused of hypocrisy only works if you care about factual accuracy. For conservatives, being factual correct is important, so they would rather lose than be accused of contradiction. This is mostly why they lose every fight. They like losing while being right. For the Left, advancing their goals is what matters, so they can live with contradiction. For them, facts are just another tool that can be used as a weapon against the opposition. [ed. There's a popular expression among conservatives: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" known as Hanlon's Razor, because Robert Hanlon is to whom it is usually attributed. Goethe seems to have expressed it as early as 1774, however. However, this is a red herring for most conservatives, who should practice a bit of the opposite: stop attributing to stupidity (or ignorance) that which is better explained by malice.]

It also helps that left-wing politics attracts a specific type. Eric Hoffer observed that people often join mass movements out of self-loathing. They wish to swap their hated sense of self with the identity of the group, which they view positively. This is almost always true with left-wing politics. The people in it are looking for a form of salvation, where they are saved from thinking about their hated sense of self. Instead, they get to focus on an enemy they can enthusiastically hate.

Of course, hating an enemy that has the qualities you hate about yourself is pretty much the ideal enemy for this sort of person. Their self-loathing is transformed into a virtue while they express their hatred for qualities they fear they possess. Collectively, this transforms the Left into a mob driven by what looks like moral indignation and a desire to purge the world of corruption. This is what makes a relatively small number of people into a powerful force in American society.

This shameless ability to project onto others the sins of the Left has been the primary reason the Left has denominated American politics. They claim the moral high ground, accuse anyone that resists of doing something bad and then they do that bad thing to the people they are accusing. After all, they have created the justification for the bad thing they are doing. Conservatives spent the last half century trying to prove they are not the villains while the Left marched from triumph to triumph.

The opposite rule has been so effective, in fact, that there is no longer an effective opposition to the Left in America. Conservatism has collapsed and the political divide in America is the Cloud People, who populate and control the managerial class, and the Dirt People, who suffer under the rule of the managerial class. The Cloud People now accuse the Dirt People are various things, like the insurrection business, which is used to justify heavy handed tactics against the Dirt People. [...]

This is where that opposite rule becomes so effective. The need to accuse an outsider of the worst crimes the Left can imagine becomes a justification for committing those crimes against the alleged enemy. It is how America so quickly moved from defending the liberal order and individual rights to celebrating corporate censorship and the persecution of political prisoners. The bad guys get worse, so the means to defeat them must get worse as well. This is the terror escalator.

This is a parasitic and corrosive ruling ethos. The sharp decline in the quality of life for most Americans over the last generation is one result. The collapse in social trust is another consequence. Like the desperate person eating the seed corn, what we call liberal democracy is consuming the social capital of society in order to fuel the hate-machine that props up the managerial class. At some point, maybe soon, they run out of things to burn and the system becomes unstable.

Next, some quotes from Infogalactic about Hoffer's work:

Hoffer came to public attention with the 1951 publication of his first book, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. Concerned about the rise of totalitarian governments, especially those of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, he tried to find the roots of these "madhouses" in human psychology.

Hoffer argued that fanatical and extremist cultural movements, whether religious or political, arose under predictable circumstances: when large numbers of people come to believe that their individual lives are worthless and ruined, that the modern world is irreparably corrupt, and that hope lies only in joining a larger group that demands radical changes. Hoffer believed that self-esteem and a sense of satisfaction with one's life was of central importance to psychological well-being. He thus focused on what he viewed as the consequences of a lack of self-esteem. For example, Hoffer noted that leaders of mass movements were often frustrated intellectuals, from Adolf Hitler in 20th Century Europe to Hong Xiuquan's failure to advance in the Chinese bureaucracy of the 19th Century.

A core principle in the book is Hoffer's assertion that mass movements are interchangeable: in the Germany of the 1920s and '30s the Communists and Nazis were ostensibly enemies but routinely swapped members as they competed for the same kind of marginalized, angry people and fanatical Communists became Nazis and vice versa. [...] For the "true believer," Hoffer argued that substance of any particular group is less important than being part of an energized movement. [ed. This does, at least, partly explain the nonsense which conservatives have bemusedly noted for decades, but never been able to utilize effectively against Leftists; that they will often take literally the exact opposite position that they just had a few weeks ago, and will pursue both with equal fanaticism.]

Hoffer also claimed that a passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others was an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life. [...]

The "New Poor" are the most likely source of converts for mass movements, for they recall their former wealth with resentment and blame others for their current misfortune. Examples include the mass evictions of relatively prosperous tenants during the English Civil War of the 1600s; or the middle- and working-classes in Germany who passionately supported Hitler in the 1930s after suffering years of economic hardship. In contrast, the "abjectly poor" on the verge of starvation make unlikely true believers as their daily struggle for existence takes preeminence over any other concern. [...] [ed. This may have been true for the Bolshevik, Fascist and Soviet movements, but it is not true for the current crop of cultural Marxist movements at all, where the relatively affluent and well-educated are the most prominent members. There, the lack of self-esteem and presence of self-loathing seems to be the driving factor, and therefore the driving factor for the present. However, it's a notable warning for the future. Because the current crop of social and political policies are rapidly creating a vast class of disenfranchized "New Poor" in America, there's likely to be a very, very bad backlash to the current regime once it reaches critical mass. Which, sadly, looks to be on track to happen much more quickly and soon than I had ever anticipated in the past.]

Racial and religious minorities, particularly those only partly assimilated into mainstream culture, are also found in mass movements. Those who live traditionalist lifestyles tend to be content, but the partially assimilated feel alienated from both their forbearers and the mainstream culture. (E.g., "The orthodox Jew is less frustrated than the emancipated Jew".)

A variety of what Hoffer terms "misfits" are also found in mass movements. Examples include "chronically bored"; the physically disabled or perpetually ill; the talentless; and criminals or "sinners". In all cases, Hoffer argues, these people feel as if their individual lives are meaningless and worthless.

Hoffer argues that the relatively low number of mass movements in America is attributable to a culture that blurred traditionally rigid boundaries between nationalist, racial and religious groups, and which allowed greater opportunities for individual accomplishment. [...]

Mass movements demand a "total surrender of a distinct self". One identifies first and foremost as “a member of a certain tribe or family", be it religious, political, revolutionary, or nationalist. Every important part of the true believer’s persona and life must ultimately come from her identification with the larger community; even when alone she must never feel isolated and unwatched. [...]

While mass movements [may] idealize the past and glorify the future, the present-day world is denigrated. "The radical and the reactionary loath the present". Thus, by regarding the modern world as vile and worthless, mass movements inspire a perpetual battle against the present. Mass movements aggressively promote the use of Doctrines that elevate faith over reason and serve as "fact-proof screens between the faithful and the realities of the world". The Doctrine of the mass movement must not be questioned under any circumstances. [...] Successful mass movements need not believe in a god, but they must believe in a devil. Hatred unifies the true believers, and "the ideal devil is a foreigner" attributed with nearly supernatural powers of evil. [...][ed. Look at the rampant and incessant hatred of whiteness, including white culture, white legal tradition, white intellectual tradition and Christianity today. Americans have become the focus of hatred in America, which is a little odd. In Nazi Germany, Hitler turned the majority against a minority; in America, the cultural Marxists have turned the minority against the majority. The only reason that they've been able to be as successful as they have is because our majority is naïve, nice, and bends over backwards to give everyone else the benefit  the doubt. Not sure how well that will work in the future when we've finally had enough, because I can't think of an example where that's been successfully done before. Certainly, there are loads of clues all around us that the momentum of the hate machine is running out; people are sick and tired of CRT, and child groomers, and propaganda disguised as entertainment, etc.] The hatred of a true believer is actually a disguised self-loathing, as with the condemnation of capitalism by socialists while Russia under the Bolsheviks saw more intensive monopolization of the economy than any other nation in history. Without a devil to hate, mass movements often falter (e.g., Chiang Kai-shek effectively led millions of Chinese during the Japanese occupation of the 1930s and '40s, but quickly fell out of favor once the Japanese were defeated).

Fanaticism is encouraged in mass movements. Hoffer argues that "the fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure" and thus uses uncompromising action and personal sacrifice to give meaning to his life. [...]

Mass movements begin with "men of words" or "fault-finding intellectuals" such as clergy, journalists, academics, and students who condemn the established social order (e.g., Gandhi, Trotsky, Mohammed, Lenin). These men of words feel unjustly excluded from, or mocked and oppressed by, the existing powers in society, and relentlessly criticize or denigrate present-day institutions. While invariably speaking out in the name of disadvantaged commoners, the man of words is actually motivated by a deep personal grievance. The man of words relentlessly attempts to "discredit the prevailing creeds" and creates a "hunger for faith" which is then fed by "doctrines and slogans of the new faith".[19] A cadre of devotees gradually develops around the man of words, leading to the next stage in a mass movement.

Eventually, the fanatic takes over leadership of the mass movement from the man of words. While the "creative man of words" finds satisfaction is his literature, philosophy or art, the "noncreative man of words" feels unrecognized or stifled and thus veers into an extremism against the social order. Though the man of words and the fanatic share a discontent with the world, the fanatic is distinguished by his viciousness and urge to destroy. The fanatic feels fulfilled only in a perpetual struggle for power and change. Examples include Jean-Paul Marat, Maximilien de Robespierre, Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler.

In any case, while this was written long before cultural Marxism and wokeness was a thing, one can hopefully see the obvious way in which they fit the structure that he outlined by looking more at communism and fascism. Leftism is fundamentally the same now as it was in the Bolshevik and Nazi age, and it is fundamentally led and propogated by people who are emotionally stunted. Here's some more; his discussion of Asia in the 1950s sounds very much like America in the 2000s:

For centuries, Hoffer notes that Asia had “submitted to one conqueror after another." Throughout these centuries, Asia had “been misruled, looted, and bled by both foreign and native oppressors without” so much as “a peep” from the general population. Though not without negative effect, corrupt governments and the legacy of European imperialism represented nothing new under the sun. Indeed, the European colonial authorities had been “fairly beneficent” in Asia.

To be sure, communism exerted an appeal of sorts. For the Asian “pseudo-intellectual” it promised elite status and the phony complexities of “doctrinaire double talk." For the ordinary Asian, it promised partnership with the seemingly emergent Soviet Union in a “tremendous, unprecedented undertaking” to build a better tomorrow.

According to Hoffer, however, communism in Asia was dwarfed by the desire for pride. To satisfy such desire, Asians would willingly and irrationally not only sacrifice their economic well-being, but their lives as well.

Unintentionally, the West had created this appetite, causing “revolutionary unrest” in Asia. The West had done so by eroding traditional communal bonds, bonds that once had woven the individual to the patriarchal family, clan, tribe, “cohesive rural or urban unit,” and “religious or political body." Without the security and spiritual meaning produced by such bonds, Asians had been liberated from tradition only to find themselves now atomized, isolated, exposed, and abandoned, “left orphaned and empty in a cold world."

Certainly, Europe had undergone a similar destruction of tradition, but it had occurred centuries earlier at the end of the Medieval period and produced better results thanks to different circumstances.

For the Asians of the 1950s, the circumstances differed markedly. Most were illiterate and impoverished, living in a world that included no expansive physical or intellectual vistas. Dangerously, the “articulate minority” amongst the Asian population inevitably disconnected themselves from the ordinary people, thereby failing to acquire “a sense of usefulness and of worth” that came by “taking part in the world’s work." As a result, they were “condemned to the life of chattering posturing pseudo-intellectuals,” who coveted “the illusion of weight and importance."

Most significantly, Hoffer asserts that the disruptive awakening of Asia came about as a result of an unbearable sense of weakness. Indeed, Hoffer discusses the problem of weakness, asserting that while “power corrupts the few.. . weakness corrupts the many.”

Hoffer notes that “the resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done [to] them but from the sense of their [own] inadequacy and impotence.” In short, the weak “hate not wickedness” but hate themselves for being weak. Consequently, self-loathing produces explosive effects that cannot be mitigated through social engineering schemes, such as programs of wealth redistribution. In fact, American “generosity” is counterproductive, perceived in Asia simply as an example of Western “oppression." [...]

Hoffer believed that rapid change is not necessarily a positive thing for a society, and too rapid change can cause a regression in maturity for those who were brought up in a different society. He noted that in America in the 1960s, many young adults were still living in extended adolescence. Seeking to explain the attraction of the New Left protest movements, he characterized them as the result of widespread affluence, which, in his words, "is robbing a modern society of whatever it has left of puberty rites to routinize the attainment of manhood." He saw these puberty rites as essential for self-esteem, and noted that mass movements and juvenile mindsets tend to go together, to the point that anyone, no matter what age, who joins a mass movement immediately begins to exhibit juvenile behavior.

Hoffer further noted that the reason why working-class Americans did not, by and large, join protest movements and subcultures was that they had entry into meaningful labor as an effective rite of passage out of adolescence, while both the very poor who lived on welfare and the affluent were, in his words, "prevented from having a share in the world's work, and of proving their manhood by doing a man's work and getting a man's pay," and thus remained in a state of extended adolescence, lacking in necessary self-esteem, and prone to joining mass movements as a form of compensation. Hoffer suggested that this need for meaningful work as a rite of passage into adulthood could be fulfilled with a two-year civilian national service program (not unlike programs during the Great Depression such as the Civilian Conservation Corps). He wrote: "The routinization of the passage from boyhood to manhood would contribute to the solution of many of our pressing problems. I cannot think of any other undertaking that would dovetail so many of our present difficulties into opportunities for growth." 

Which is an observation that is obviously no longer true today.

Anyway, this is largely a rambly post of quotes and selections from other works. But I found it remarkably insightful in both understanding the personality of Satan himself, and those who follow him, and why these fanatical movement that that which currently motivates the Left (and which has motivated the Left ever since its definition during the French Revolution).

Sadly, it suggests that without major structural changes to fix society, there's no good solution. What will most likely happen is a violent collapse in which the Cloud People elites are set upon en masse by the Dirt People, and the vast hordes of foreigners will either purge Americans from America or be purged from America because the main reason that they are here is the malice of the elites against the American people.

And let me be clear, again. I'm not suggesting that I endorse that result. Merely that I predict that it is inevitable regardless of what you, I, or anyone else thinks about it.  

All's Well in Zion; Zion Prospereth

The Z-man:

Most of what we consider public life in modern societies is public reactions to things done by the powerful. The New York Times makes up a new hoax and the week is spent on the hoax. The usual suspects swear by the obvious lies and normal people spend days picking apart the lies. Occasionally, we get the reverse where some uncomfortable truth gets loose and the usual suspect go bananas trying to “debunk” it while normal people cling to it as blessed relief.

This is the news cycle in a nutshell. There is very little news. It has been at least a generation since the major news outlets in America have done reporting. Most of it is just stenography. The “journalist” copies what a government spokesbot has sent to them and dresses it up with some commentary. Then there are the narratives that are designed to give the public a way to repeat the official truth that sounds convincing to them and their acquaintances.

The source of this is the “new journalism” that emerged in the 1960’s. The late British reporter Chris Munnion chronicled this in his book Banana Sunday. He spent most of his life covering Africa for the Telegraph. In the 1960’s he noticed Americans showing up with pre-written narratives. They would seek out quotes and pictures to fill out the story they had prepared for the trip. Even if the facts contradicted the narrative, they stuck with the narrative because that was the new journalism.

[...] In the Washington Post we have another version of the Alamo narrative [about the Azov guys in the Ukraine]. This one is authored by a someone named David Stern. The Post identifies him as a journalist based Ukraine. In reality he is most likely an operative of the American foreign policy establishment charged with peddling their narratives in Western media. Note that his copy does not mention that the holdouts are Azov fighters. The Post does not want anyone noticing those guys in the story.

If you scan the Washington Post, what you quickly see is that most of their Ukraine “reporting” relies on operatives from NGO’s and the intel community. They know that the information they are being fed is from partisan sources. That would be fine if they made that clear, but they go out of their way to conceal this truth. Their job is to sell the official lies and they take that job seriously. They are lying and they know they are lying but they keep lying because that is their job.

Of course, a real journalist would be curious about these sources that all seem to say the same things about current events. For example, a story on the “Institute for the Study of War” and who pays their bills would be interesting. It would provide the public with some understanding about who is trying to convince them that nuclear war is the price we must pay to defend Ukraine. Instead, they investigate a popular Twitter account called The Libs of TikTok.

That last bit is another good example of the mendacity of the media. This story was created by the Washington Post. They assigned credit for it to a vulgar dingbat calling herself Taylor Lorenz. This woman is so dumb she could count her boobs twice and get the wrong number both times. The real source was German intelligence who employs a former Twitter employee named Travis Brown. He works for the Protoype Fund, which is funded by the German government.

Again, like the Examiner piece using the “Institute for the Study of War”, the real story her is a foreign government attacking an American citizen. A real news organization would want to know who facilitated this. The Post surely knows that Taylor Lorenz is too stupid to work a phone so she did not call Travis Brown. Of course, that story will never happen because that idea would never cross the minds of the editors. Their job is to sell the official lies and they take that job seriously.

That is the main point of this exercise. At all levels of what is called journalism you will find people who lie with enthusiasm. The selection pressure is all in favor of people who enjoy lying to the public. They like the scheming and the deception. Like all sociopaths, they are shameless about it. Shame requires a soul. As Solzhenitsyn put it, “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”

However, the Z-man is wrong. At least there at the end. While many people do in fact know that the media are lying, many people still believe most of what they read in the media anyway. The Z-man himself talks about the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect in yesterday's post. This is still a real thing. I think most people are still convinced that Putin is a terrible person who unjustly invaded the Ukraine because he's just a bully who wants to create a new Russian Empire or something. While Putin may indeed be a terrible person—in fact, he very probably is—nothing else about that narrative is correct. As I've said before, with all of the facts (or at least more of the facts—facts that aren't even very difficult to uncover, because they're not secrets, they're just not part of the narrative) it quickly becomes clear that Washington is the villain in the Ukraine story, Zelensky is a thoroughly corrupt puppet of Washington, and you could actually make a reasonable case that Russia is rushing in to save the Ukrainians, and even more specifically the ethnic Russians of the Donbass region in a humanitarian effort because of the oppression and corruption and outright violence in the case of the Donbass Russians that they face on a daily basis. Their care, even though it is costing them dearly, to try and preserve as much of the infrastructure and civilian populace as they can, is proof of that.

In fact, again using facts that aren't exactly secret and are actually easy to dig up, although most people don't know them, it's easy to make the case that Washington has been the villain for most of the world since about 1860. It's no wonder that there's a stereotype that everyone hates Americans, even though Americans themselves—normal everyday Americans—tend to be fairly nice, likeable people. It's because our government has been infiltrated with thoroughly corrupt sociopaths for generations, who make a living by rapine across the globe whenever there's an excuse to do so. Even the Washington Post, while lying about the Russia Collusion hoax with regards to the Trump presidency, admitted in 2016 that the US attempted to overthrow 72 legitimate governments during the course of the Cold War alone for their own economic-political reasons. Following the Cold War, they hardly seem to have been bothered to hide these efforts. They made a big public show of overthrowing Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance.

Unsurprisingly, the Ukraine makes the list of one that had it's government successfully overthrown and replaced by Washington. Twice, even, since the beginning of the century. Most recently, with the installation of Zelensky's fraudulent, illegitimate government in 2014 during the so-called Maidan Revolution. The US government are not the good guys. They aren't good guys at all. 

2 Nephi 28:21 "And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well--and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell."

That scripture isn't just spiritual, although it mostly is. I'm often shocked and disappointed by how many people refuse to see wickedness all around them, and put themselves and their families under its power because of their naïve belief that all's well in Zion. The fact that our government is thoroughly corrupt is actually less important personally to most than the fact that everything else around them is corrupt—unless you work for the government or are thinking of joining the military. But the entire ecosystem is corrupt, and seeing the corruption clearly in one place helps us to understand that the rot is almost certainly present everywhere else in the ecosystem too. How many parents would send their kids to school knowing that they are being exposed to not only adult groomers trying to teach them the wonders of gay sex at a young age, but to a toxic environment where their kids' own friends and peers will talk them into believing that they are "pangender" or whatever the latest fad is? (I can attest to that from several personal albeit second hand experiences. But what I heard from my own kids was enough to convince me that I should have homeschooled them, and what I've seen from my own nieces, nephews, and kids in my ward and stake is bad enough.) Some will come out on the other side of this toxic environment OK. Others will have had problems even in a more nurturing, controlled environment because of friends in the neighborhood or even in their wards and stakes. Nothing is perfect. But having a clearer understanding of the lay of the land is crucial to make good decisions that will minimize the losses due to the spiritual casualties of the world. All is not well in Zion. 

Andrew Torba: Go and Build

I'm always pleased when people who are Christian, but lacking the understanding of the restored Gospel still manage to impress me with their virtue courage. I'm also sometimes embarrassed by people who do have the restored Gospel and who therefore should know better, who fail to do the same, but... eh. That's another post for another day, maybe. Or perhaps just a sad thing that's best left alone. It is one of the saddest epiphanies that I've had to realize that most people of the Church would turn their back on Captain Moroni, complain about his tone, and say that's not who we are. And Captain Moroni's message is almost identical point for point with that of Torba's; which Torba came up without the benefit of ever having heard of Captain Moroni.

Anyway, the following speech from Andrew Torba at the America First Political Action Conference should resoundingly defeat all of the ignorant or dishonest voices who say that America First as a very idea is "racist" or something (racism, as its used in our society, is 100% a hoax). It won't, but all I can do is stand for what's true, regardless of what the ignorant, willfully ignorant, or liars, in progressive order of uselessness, will say about what is true.

https://news.gab.com/2022/02/25/gab-go-and-build/

God is real, the Bible is True, and Jesus Christ is King of Kings.

These are the fundamental truths on which we must stand if we are going to do what must be done in order to reclaim what is rightfully ours. 

America is a Christian nation, but somewhere along the way our tolerance for evil allowed subversive agents of Satan to invade every facet of our country and culture. 

Our worldly institutions may have been conquered by secular humanists who hate God, but we worship a God who overcomes all worldly institutions. 

The good news is that public trust and faith in these institutions is waning. For the first time in one hundred years we have an opportunity to rebuild and restore our once great society. 

The people in power want a Great Reset, but what we are going to give them instead is a Great Restoration.

Buckminister Fuller once said that “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

If we are going to win—and we are going to win—we must work together towards the common goal of building parallel Christian systems that are beyond the influence and control of the existing demonic ones. 

Parallel systems can only work if they are built on the firm foundation of our faith in Jesus Christ and the Truth of God’s Word, the very same foundation that the United States of America itself was founded upon. 

The challenge before us is to build these new systems and models based on the traditional and Biblical values given to us by God. 

It’s a synthesis of new tools combined with the sturdy tradition of order.

It’s a revolt against modernity through the embrace of our rich traditions and through the wisdom of the Word of God. 

David Chilton once said that “Freedom cannot be exported to a nation that has no marketplace for the Gospel” and of course he was echoing 2 Corinthians 3:17 which tells us that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty.”

Our dissent against the ruling Regime must be rooted in the desire to preserve liberty and live authentically according to God’s Word. 

Dissent is impossible without the freedom of speech.

It’s the ability to say “no” in the face of evil. 

Our participation in communion with God means that we are divinely endowed with the gift of restoring order, guided by His hand, in a chaotic and broken world. 

The reason that I started Gab almost six years ago is because I saw dissenters being silenced.

American citizens are being banned from the internet, frozen by banks, blacklisted from flying on airplanes, and labeled terrorists for daring to have a political opinion that dissents from the ruling Regime’s. 

By refusing to bend to the demands of the Regime I myself became a dissenter.

My family has been doxxed, harassed, stalked, swatted, and regularly faces death threats from people all over the world. Gab has been banned from dozens of service providers including App Stores, payment processors, multiple banks, email services, and so much more. 

This is the cross I will gladly pick up and carry if it means that my children will grow up in a world where they can speak freely and worship God Almighty.

I may be a dissident in my own country, but I am a happy liberated warrior for the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. 

What we are facing is so much more than just censorship.

We are facing the total replacement of good and Holy things with filth and decay.

We can no longer overlook social issues in favor of economic ones.

We can no longer ignore the depravity and degeneracy that is perverting and destroying our minds.

We must never allow the demonization and destruction of the nuclear family and the corruption of our children to happen.

We must stare into the face of Silicon Valley, the mainstream media, and the political establishment on both sides of the isle and dare to say: “no.” 

Jesus did not command us to sit around getting crushed by Satan waiting to die. He commanded us to make disciples of all nations and we need to take dominion in His name.

His Kingdom may be in Heaven, but He Himself told us in Matthew 28:18 that He has ALL authority on Earth as well. 

It’s time to start acting like it. 

So often we are called hateful by people who hate our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, so to them I say: yes I am hateful. I hate sin. I hate evil. I hate Satan and I hate the Antichrist.

They will call our speech “hate speech” because we dare to speak the Truth of God’s Word. 

You’re a racist if you don’t hate yourself for the color of your skin. 

You’re a bigot if you don’t want men in dresses walking into the bathroom with your daughter.

You’re an antisemite if you question sending Israel American taxpayer money to build their wall, while our own border is being invaded. 

Their shame words no longer hold any power over me and they should never again hold any power over you.

Tolerance is NOT a Christian virtue.

God has zero tolerance when it comes to sin, which corrupts our bodies, hearts, and minds. We are commanded to hate that which is evil. Without hatred we can’t understand love, but we must be careful to not aim our hatred at one another. Instead we must unite and aim our hatred at the sin and evil in our own hearts. 

What is at stake is not only the future of our country, but the future of Christendom as a whole.

Christians are being demonized, dehumanized, discriminated against, demographically replaced, and disenfranchised. We are being attacked, harassed, fired, and banned from the internet and financial systems for our political and religious beliefs.

None of this is okay.

Christians should be boldly denouncing these things, but we look to our churches, our so-called Christian leaders, and even our politicians and we are met with a deafening silence–or worse a proud endorsement of this madness. 

Christians are no strangers to persecution.

We have always and will continue to overcome the advances of the Enemy.

Imagine being among the first group of Christians after Christ’s resurrection who spent forty years preaching the Gospel waiting while those practicing the Old Covenant law mocked them.  We can’t even comprehend the persecution they faced in order to defend and spread the Gospel. Many ended up giving their lives for it.

This group of Christians is the most inspiring to me because they had to have the most faith of all. In Luke 21:6 Jesus prophesied about the Temple that “not one stone would be left on another, every one of them will be thrown down.”

For forty years that didn’t happen and a generation of Christians had to patiently wait and have faith that what Christ said would come true. Then in 70 AD, it did happen, just as he said it would, and that Temple was absolutely annihilated. Almost 2,000 years later it’s still not standing despite multiple attempts throughout history to rebuild it. 1 Corinthians 3:16 tells us that WE are the Temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells within us.

This is the enormous amount of faith that we need to have today. We need to be in this for the long haul. We need to be willing, like the very first followers of Christ, to have an entire lifetime of faith.

Christians are not revolutionaries.

We are reformers. We do not destroy things, we build and create them, mirroring our Creator. God will handle the destruction of our wicked and corrupt global regime, in fact I think He’s already started.

If we are going to save our country we must adopt a mindset of seven generations thinking.

Previous generations, including my own, have lived in the moment for themselves.

We must learn from this mistake.

Short term pleasure at the expense of longterm pain for our kin is unsustainable. We must be the ones who are willing to put in the work to build a Christian future not only for our children and our children’s children, but for Christendom as a whole. Now is the time for us to build.

This is a spiritual war.

They are targeting our very humanity. This is evidenced by everything that our enemies promote.

Their “values” are inherently anti-human.

Abortion. Moral decay. Sexual degeneracy. The destruction of sovereign nations and the ethnic cleansing of people. The persecution of everything and anything related to God Almighty our Creator.

We must realize that King Jesus is not some hippie Mr. Rogers that our culture makes Him out to be. He is King of Kings. He reigns. He rules. He flips over tables in the temple. He scorns the Den of Vipers. He rebukes the Synagogue of Satan. This is the Jesus I know and worship. This is the Jesus of Scripture. This is the Jesus that will lead us out of this mess.

We must strive to be more like Him. 

All great civilizations are built on the back of strong nuclear families because strong nuclear families are God’s design. Strong men lead strong women. Strong women support strong men and they raise strong children together. This leads to strong families and strong families lead to strong nations. 

Where are our Christian men today?

Unfortunately many American Christians have adopted a secular human worldview. Instead of worshipping God, they worship idols in the form of celebrities, sports players, and even politicians. They are “Christian” in name only. 

They value material “stuff” over the fruits of the Spirit. They seek comfort and fleeting pleasure over the suffering and courage it takes to live an unapologetic and authentic Christian life. They are lukewarm Christians.

I’m here to tell you today that lukewarm Christianity is over.

Christians need to rise up and proclaim the name of Jesus Christ the King of Kings to the world.

We are the ones establishing nuclear families. We are the ones bringing up our children to know and love the Lord. We are the ones building sovereign businesses and infrastructure. We are the ones with a future worth fighting for and we are the ones who will restore order.

We are reformers, builders, and pioneers.

We need to go all in, take a leap of faith, and live fully for Christ at every moment of our lives.

We must prepare ourselves for what is coming by exiting their entire system and raising up our children to be builders for the Kingdom of God. We need to build our economy, our own technology, our own education systems and our own political movements. This requires a multi-generational effort. 

The tolerance of the generations before us has led to the subversive takeover of every facet of society and even our churches by the global elite. That does not mean that they cannot be defeated. 

I believe that God has a plan to do so, but it will take the organized and longterm commitment and effort of His people to accomplish this. We must never again tolerate evil and the spirit of the antichrist in our culture, governments, education systems, homes, churches, and most importantly our own hearts.

So if you don’t have a sword, then sell your cloak and buy one because we have a lot of work to do.

GAB: Go and Build. 

To God Be The Glory,

Andrew Torba

CEO, Gab.com

Jesus Christ is King of Kings

The Ukraine and Russia

Posting some commentary by Vox Day on the issue:

Russia announces a “special military operation” intended to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine:

Russia has taken out Ukraine’s air defenses and airforce with a series of precision attacks, the country’s Defense Ministry has said in a statement, after airports and runways across the country were rocked by explosions.

Officials also claimed on Thursday morning that Ukrainian border guards are not resisting advancing Russian troops, who have moved in after President Vladimir Putin signed an order to begin a “special operation” in the Donbass. At the same time, officials denied claims made by Kiev’s defense chiefs that Russia had lost at least one military plane over the country during the offensive.

In an earlier statement, Moscow reported that it was carrying out strikes at elements of Ukraine’s military infrastructure. Russia launched the offensive against Ukraine on Thursday morning on the orders of President Vladimir Putin, who said the goal of the operation was to demilitarize and “de-Nazify” Ukraine.

The Russian leader claimed military action was necessary to stop Ukrainian attacks on the two breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, which Moscow recognized as sovereign states on Monday. He claimed Russia could come under attack by Ukrainian radicals, unless their influence in the country is diminished, and accused Western nations of arming Kiev against Russia.

The Western media, on the other hand, reports a “Ukraine in flames” and a “full-scale invasion” by Russia.

War in Ukraine begins as Putin launches full-scale invasion: Missiles rain down on Kharkiv and tanks roll across border from Belarus as ‘hundreds’ of Ukrainians die, martial law is declared and five Russian jets are shot down.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has imposed martial law and defiantly urged his people to stay home after warmonger Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Russia’s neighbour, plunging mainland Europe into its worst military crisis in decades.

In a video message published on Facebook after the Kremlin began its attacks, Zelenskyy said Moscow had carried out missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure and border guards, and that explosions had been heard in many cities, in the north, south and east of the country.

Later, the President cut diplomatic ties with Russia and pleaded with Western leaders to provide large-scale defence support and to protect Ukraine’s airspace from the ‘aggressor’.

Major General Valeriy Zaluzhny, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said this morning that he had received orders from the Ukrainian President to repel Russia’s invasion by inflicting ‘maximum losses’. The Ukrainian military claim to have killed ‘50 Russian occupiers’ so far today, shooting down six Russian planes in the process.

The mere fact that the Jewish comedian at the head of the neocons’ puppet government is still in a position to impose martial law tends to indicate that the Western media narrative is false. It’s fascinating to see the difference between the way a) Russian missile strikes on Ukraine, b) Israeli missile strikes on Syria, and c) US missile strikes, well, pretty much anywhere, are reported. It’s also informative to note the restrained tone of the Russian statements in comparison with the Baghdad Bob-style statements being issued by the Ukrainians.

This doesn’t mean that Russia won’t launch a “full-scale invasion”. But a close reading of the reports does not tend to currently support the media’s “official story” and we’ll know who is telling the truth if Kiev isn’t completely occupied by Russian troops by the end of the weekend.

There is also a third narrative, as Clandestine notes that the location of the reported Russian strikes appears to be suspiciously in harmony with the location of the US bioweapon laboratories in Ukraine. But I doubt we’ll hear much about this narrative even if it is the most consistent with what’s actually happening.

Always keep in mind that the official story as reported by the media is the one thing you can be certain is not true. I’m confident it will shock the media to discover how much support Putin has across the West, especially after two years of unrestrained vaccine dictatorship on the part of the so-called liberal democracies. The media is already openly stating that “this is not just an attack on Ukraine, it is an attack on the Western liberal democracy system and the entire Free World.”

I, for one, certainly hope so. It’s long past time to end Clownworld and its unrestrained satanry.

China has already signaled its support for Putin’s protection of the Donbass republics, has blamed the situation on the USA, and is publicly encouraging everyone else to stay out of the conflict, so I very much doubt NATO forces are going to get directly involved regardless of how comprehensive the Russian operations turn out to be.

For those conflicted about "who to support" I humbly suggest, as the Lord told Joseph Smith, "none of them, for they [are] all wrong." It has long been a pattern that the Lord uses one wicked nation to scourge another, especially if the second wicked nation is one that should have known better. Just because Putin isn't a good guy by any means doesn't mean that the leaders of the "free" world are either; they are incredibly wicked members of secret combinations who had much more light, knowledge, and blessings than the beleaguered Russian people have had the last several generations, therefore they are fallen from a much higher height than Putin ever did. Furthermore, Putin is no Imperialist. He's not trying to expand his influence into "our" territory and at "our" expense. He mostly just wants us to leave him alone. 

Like Vox Day, I see our own "leadership" as a runaway force for wickedness. If Russia or China did want to actually conquer and occupy us, I could hardly say that such wasn't justified at this point in the eyes of those nations and in the eyes of the Lord, nor can I suggest that it's likely to be worse for us than it is now. If either the Chinese or the Russians saw the Americans as second-class citizens in a Vichy occupied country, how is that any different than it already is, where Americans are second-class citizens to Jewish overlordship and the false claims of every covetous, entitled minority who comes along?

I often hear patriotic people praying in Church for the Lord to bless our leaders with wisdom, but it is clear that our entire leadership caste is not only lacking in wisdom and righteousness, but has actively and definitively rejected them. I pray, rather (although not in Church, because I don't pray to make a political statement and the majority of those at Church still have not yet opened their eyes to their awful situation) that we can be led to preserve or restore the freedoms of the righteous among us, and that we can be delivered from the oppression of the wicked who rule over us currently.

Here's a good history to establish some context in what is going on. The narrative that emerges is pretty pro-Russia and anti-West. But not because of bias, but because that's how the events play out. The West is not the good guy in this narrative. The Russians kind of are. Whether or not that means that the Russians are the "good guys" more generally is unaddressed by whether or not they are in this situation. But the key takeaway is that if you are not familiar with what has happened in the Ukraine over the last several years, and only know what you hear on CNN, or even Fox News, then you have no understanding of what's actually happening in the Ukraine today or why.

Secret Combinations

Aren't always so secret. They actually get brazen when they're convinced that their ascension is inevitable.

President Benson once said that we can know more about current events by reading the Book of Mormon than by reading the news. And he was quoting, or at least reaffirming the concept, which had been said earlier by, if I remember correctly, Heber J. Grant (although I could be wrong and it's Joseph Fielding Smith.)

That said, the news is damning enough, although you have to know where to find it. There's a lot of things that are widely and in fact openly reported... but which most people still don't know and don't believe. Here's one:

https://gab.com/ChrisLangan/posts/107699059545987596

Very interesting. I just watched a video containing an old clip featuring a sycophantic interview of Klaus Schwab by CFR / Trilateral Commission / Bohemian Grove member David Gergen at some globalist shindig they put together. I'm still not sure I heard it correctly.

But first, what do the names Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Justin Trudeau, Jacinda Ardern, Sergei Brin, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Anderson Cooper, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ashton Kutcher, and Charlize Theron have in common? They're former Schwab proteges who were recruited decades ago as "Young Global Leaders", taught how to infiltrate the governments and subvert the constitutions and cultures of Western nations, and charged with cementing globalist domination and committing genocide against White Western majorities. This we already knew.

Here's the surprise: according to the interview, this dark distinction is shared by Vladimir Putin. Schwab found and mentored not just little Justine Trudeau and Teutonic Battle Axe Angela Merkel, but Russian dictator Vladimir Putin himself. I don't find it surprising that Schwab intended to mold them all into the tyrannical caricatures that we see before us today, or that their kindly "Uncle Klaus" deserves full credit for their antihuman mindset and every dastardly deed they've ever done. That much is common knowledge. What surprises me is that Schwab would take the risk of admitting it, especially in the case of Putin. It's not good for the kind of political theater in which these people habitually engage.

https://banned.video/watch?id=61f1a830c5d2221b863809b2 (Cue it up to 5:10.)

In short, Klaus Schwab is foolishly crowing about having trained and planted treasonous globalist agents in our governments, including the government of Russia, for the purpose of ensuring that our lives and destinies would be totally controlled by a gruesome gaggle of shifty, shady, power-drunk globalist vampires who wouldn't know what it's like to do an honest day's work if you dressed them in orange jumpsuits, put them on a chain gang, stuck picks and shovels in their soft pink-palmed hands, and cracked a bullwhip over their pointy little heads.

The set-up has been long in the making. Schwab and his fellow oligarchs are absolutely certain that they're going to win. Better hope they're wrong. A win for them means the total loss of basic rights, human dignity, and every kind of freedom for every decent human being on the planet.

At one time they could have tried to deny it. But at this point, they might as well deny that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down (even when it's deadly).

American Soviets

I don't really like to reproduce someone else's post in its entirety, but sometimes there's nothing more to be said about a post than what was said in the post. That said, I'm doing a little bit of judicious editing and a handful of embedded editorial comments, just so I can claim to be making some kind of commentary on the post by focusing it a bit more on the topic that I think it's most importantly saying. The Z-man is completely correct in pointing out that if the Soviet Union was the evil empire 40-50 years or so ago, which arguably it certainly was, then the United States has become the new evil empire, and it is indistinguishable from the Soviets in most of the dimensions that actually matter.

Of course, that meant I had to include the old 80s dance classic as the soundtrack to this post...

At the end of World War II, the West was not unreasonable in thinking that the next great threat was the Soviet Union. While Stalin had been an indispensable ally during the war, the Soviets remained committed to exporting communism. Since sensible people at the time understood that fascism was made possible by communist subversion of the established institutions, communism was a serious concern. [ed. communism was always more dangerous than fascism. Fascist governments existed in Spain until the 70s, and persist in Argentina to this day. It was communism that was the great evil of the 20th century. Fascism was a more realistic, toned down version of communism. You'll have to do your own research on where you've been deceived about WW2. I recommend starting with the American Pravda series of articles by Ron Unz.]

It was not just in the wreckage of Germany where communism was a threat, but in every Western country. In his famous speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., Churchill said, “Except in the British Commonwealth and in the United States where Communism is in its infancy, the Communist parties or fifth columns constitute a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization.”

The speech is remembered as the “Iron Curtain” speech. It was intended to be a wake-up call to American elites about the reality of Soviet communism. It was such a masterful speech, it drew international attention and introduced popular phrases like “special relationship” into American public discourse. Russian historians date the start of the Cold War to this speech.

“America’s crusade to impose liberal democratic morality on Eurasia is viewed as hostile aggression.”

Churchill’s message hit the mark. The fight against Soviet communism was cast as a “long twilight struggle” against “the common enemies of man” in which normal people would “bear any burden year in and year out.” For a newly minted imperial class looking for a reason to exist, defending the world from communism was manna from heaven.

In fairness, the Soviets were committed to world revolution and they did underwrite subversive movements throughout the world. One of the assumptions of communism was that eventually, all the world’s people would live under communism. Therefore, supporting communist groups throughout the world was just betting on the winners, as far as the Soviets were concerned.

The inevitability of communism also meant that any alternative ideology was not just wrong, but dangerously wrong. An alternative ideology supposed the potential for an alternative ending. This not only called into question the universal truth of communist historical theory, but it also threatened to derail the project. From the perspective of the communists, their subversion was justified as a form of self-defense.

America did not always operate with the best of intentions during the Cold War, but there is no questioning who was on offense and who was on defense. For close to forty years, the United States defended the West from communist aggression and policed the rest of the world for communist insurrection. Of course, we know how the Cold War ended. The Soviet empire collapsed and Western democracy prevailed.

Fast-forward to the present and the roles are reversed. It is Russia on the defensive, trying to protect her way of life from an ideological opponent. Instead of promising a world of material equality, the West promotes a world of cultural equality in which all the world’s people are turned into consumers and the affairs of the world are managed by a class of experts. The “end of history” will be the universal managerial state.

Russia, on the other hand, sees itself as the protector of Eurasia, a world that is not quite Europe and not quite Asia. Along with most of the former Soviet republics, Russia rejects the universalism of the West. Liberal democracy has its place, but it does not fit the culture and traditions of Eurasia. America’s crusade to impose liberal democratic morality on Eurasia is viewed as hostile aggression.

This is why Putin views the recent events in Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan as part of an asymmetrical war on Eurasia. America overthrew the government of Ukraine in 2014 and tried to do the same in Belarus last year. Further back, they instigated unrest in the former republic of Georgia, which led to the Russo-Georgian War. Of course, it is clear that the West was instrumental in stirring up unrest in Kazakhstan last month.

The ultimate target for America is Russia. Not even the usual suspects in the State Department care all that much about their ancestral homelands in Ukraine, but it is a pressure point they use to undermine the Russians. The same is true of Kazakhstan, which has been willing to play ball with the West. The American empire will not rest until the rainbow flag flies over the Kremlin.

In isolation, these international shenanigans are not all that interesting, but they do suggest something about liberal democracy. Like communism, it cannot exist without an enemy and it cannot tolerate dissent. In order to maintain its own sense of legitimacy, it has to be involved in a great struggle. Now that the crusades against Islam have run their course, America has returned to an old foe to be that much-needed foil. [ed. we never fought any crusades against Islam. We fought a crusade against "terrorism" while naively believing that Islam was somehow separate from terrorism. We bent over backwards to delude ourselves about the hostile nature of Islam as an ideology, while coincidentally fighting some people who happened to be Islamic and who happened to either be in Israel's way towards regional hegemony, or who had something to offer the elitist class, such as access to money from the poppy trade in Afghanistan. Not that we would have been justified in fighting a war against Islam either, but ironically we would at least have been able to create a better justification for doing so than what we actually did.]

Like communism, liberal democracy has become doctrinaire and intolerant. Lost in the tumult of the Cold War is the fact the Bolsheviks were initially quite open to alternative opinions about Marx and Marxist theory. Over time that openness gave way to intolerance and then the terror of Stalinism. Even after his death, dissent was no longer tolerated in communist countries.

We see the same thing happening in Western democracies. Domestic intelligence agencies scan social media sites looking for unapproved opinion. Agents of the state turn up on the doorstep of unsuspecting citizens, asking them about things they posted online or were heard saying in public. Political crimes now carry harsher punishments than violent crimes in many places.

There is also that sense of inevitability that drove the communists. America operates on the assumption that liberal democracy is inevitable. Therefore, like the communists of the last century, they see any resistance as aggression. The attempt to overthrow the government of Belarus last year was framed as a defensive action. They were rescuing the people from authoritarianism.

Seventy years after Churchill’s speech warning Americans about the great threat of communism, there is a new threat to peace in Europe. This time it comes from the West and is seeking to devour the East. The Cold War ended when the Soviets finally went bankrupt trying to maintain the system. Perhaps Europe gets lucky again and this time it is America that goes broke trying to prove nature wrong.

Secret combinations

This was said in 1913 by Woodrow Wilson. More than 100 years ago now, by a person who was most likely himself a secret combination member of no small renown. As Jonah Goldberg pointed out many years ago now, he created the first fascist government in the world. But that doesn't make what he said any less true.

"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

They know that America is not a place of which it can be said, as it used to be, that a man may choose his own calling and pursue it just as far as his abilities enable him to pursue it; because to-day, if he enters certain fields, there are organizations which will use means against him that will prevent his building up a business which they do not want to have built up; organizations that will see to it that the ground is cut from under him and the markets shut against him. For if he begins to sell to certain retail dealers, to any retail dealers, the monopoly will refuse to sell to those dealers, and those dealers, afraid, will not buy the new man's wares.

And this is the country which has lifted to the admiration of the world its ideals of absolutely free opportunity, where no man is supposed to be under any limitation except the limitations of his character and of his mind; where there is supposed to be no distinction of class, no distinction of blood, no distinction of social status, but where men win or lose on their merits.

I lay it very close to my own conscience as a public man whether we can any longer stand at our doors and welcome all newcomers upon those terms. American industry is not free, as once it was free; American enterprise is not free; the man with only a little capital is finding it harder to get into the field, more and more impossible to compete with the big fellow. Why? Because the laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak. That is the reason, and because the strong have crushed the weak the strong dominate the industry and the economic life of this country. No man can deny that the lines of endeavor have more and more narrowed and stiffened; no man who knows anything about the development of industry in this country can have failed to observe that the larger kinds of credit are more and more difficult to obtain, unless you obtain them upon the terms of uniting your efforts with those who already control the industries of the country; and nobody can fail to observe that any man who tries to set himself up in competition with any process of manufacture which has been taken under the control of large combinations of capital will presently find himself either squeezed out or obliged to sell and allow himself to be absorbed"