Lions and Foxes

Commentary of 27 January 2014

J.R. Nyquist

Continuing our analysis from last week, we now must look at the U.S. domestic situation. The best overview, which largely remains current, is that offered by James Burnham in The Suicide of the West, p. 249:

During the current century the liberal ideology has gradually increased over the formation of public opinion within the United States, Britain, Italy and to a greater or less degree [in] nearly all the advanced Western nations; and at the same time liberals, or persons accepting the liberal ideas relating to the decisive issues of war and the social order, have come to occupy more and more of the key positions of government and social power. This has meant a basic shift in the governing 'mix' of Western civilization: the foxes have been getting rid of the lions; the lions, as one of them put it a few years ago, have been fading away....

Burnham is here referring to Vilfredo Pareto's sociological theory in which the balance between lions and foxes within the elite of society has been upset, with the foxes now taking complete control. This signals the society's decadence and decline. According to Burnham, liberalism is not only an ideology of decadence. It is the ideology of Western suicide. At the time of publishing the 1985 edition of his work, Burnham felt that the ruling politicians of both major U.S. political parties were foxes. They no longer have fixed beliefs or firm principles. They have cunning manuevers that require suppleness and flexibility. Burnham quoted V. Pareto about the debility which accrues when the "artistry and resourcefulness required for evolving ingenious expedients as substitutes for open resistance" prevail within an elite. When this occurs, said Pareto, the following may be observed:

Policies of the governing class are not planned too far ahead in time. Predominance of the combination instincts and enfeeblement of the sentiments of group-persistence [i.e., patriotism] result in maknig the governing class more satisfied with the present and less thoughtful of the future.... Material interests and interests of the present or near future come to prevail over the ideal interests of community or nation and interests of the distant future.... Some of these phenomena become observable in international relations as well.... Efforts are made to avoid conflicts with the powerful and the sword is rattled only before the weak.... [The] country is often unwittingly edged toward war by nursings of [disputes] which, it is expected, will never get out of control and turn into armed conflicts. Not seldom, however, a war will be forced upon [the] country by peoples who are not so far advanced in the evolution that leads to the predominance of [foxes]....

If we want to know what has happened to the Republican Party, or to the conservatives, or to National Review magazine, we need only consult Pareto. It is not a question of treason. It is a question of the foxes becoming culturally dominant on the Right as well as the Left. What is most important, however, for the present analysis, is Pareto's observation that foxes cannot plan ahead. Their thinking is always short term thinking. In the very next chapter of his book, Burnham begins by observing that U.S. foreign policy "has seldom been deliberately directed for any length of time toward clearly defined Grand Strategic Goals." Foxes do not follow long-range plans. They do not believe such plans are effective or even possible. Their manipulations are short-term.

Other countries, however, are not led by foxes. They are often led by lions. If we look at various great nations throughout history, or if we look at Russia and China today, we will find Grand Strategy at the center of what they do. The absence of Grand Strategy is a key fact which many "experts" have not fully appreciated about the United States. America is not a country with a coherent or consistent strategy. America remains domestically focussed, even now. There is no strategic plan for America. Americans do not even have a clear idea of who their enemies are. In fact, our political system has become penetrated by enemy agents of influence whose politics effectively sabotage or misdirect U.S. strategy. This is evident from the detailed work of New Zealand researcher Trevor Loudon, especially in his book The Enemies Within: Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress. Loudon describes a complex array of Communist Front and fellow-traveling organizations which effectively support Communist subversion in the United States. Diana West's book, American Betrayal, shows how the Communists in fact subverted U.S. strategy during World War II. 

Therefore we can see that the politics of the fox, plus the politics of Communist subversion, has brought America to the crisis of today. The problem of U.S. domestic politics has everything to do with Communist strategy and Soviet planning. It is impossible to understand our present domestic crisis without understanding the Communist role. Many will wonder why Communism should be regarded as a threat since the Soviet threat has supposedly disappeared. After all, the remaining Communists are a small minority of the population. Why should we worry about them?

The misunderstandings here are many, and cannot be dispelled without considerable effort. It must be understood that Communists are committed, organized, and all pervasive in the halls of power. Furthermore, Moscow remains -- along with China -- a chief strategic partner of the American Communists. We must not forget Moscow's support for Communist regimes and parties around the world. You may argue that Moscow is no longer oriented toward Communism, but you cannot argue that Moscow is not presently supporting the Communists in Africa, Latin America and Asia. It follows as the night follows the day that Moscow presently supports the Communists here in the United States.

Readers can hardly grasp the extent to which the events of the past 25 years have been, in so many instances, predicted by Soviet Bloc defectors on the basis of knowledge they had regarding Soviet strategic plans. Anyone with knowledge of such plans from the 1960s, 70s and 80s was bound to produce remarkably prescient snapshots of the future -- a future which is now our past. And this is exactly what we find in the defector literature. Even the collapse of the Soviet Union has been mentioned as part of the Soviet long-range strategy.

In 1967 Gen. Jan Sejna, then chief of staff to Communist Czechoslovakia's Minister of Defense, was told of the Soviet long-range Strategic Plan. He wrote about it in a book titled We will Bury You, which I quoted in last week's installment. The Soviet Plan was comprehensive and involved all the important countries of the world. Sejna was told, for example, that Yugoslavia would be "broken up along ethnic lines" after Tito's death (which is exactly what happened). He was also told that the U.S. economy would somehow be "disrupted" by the Soviet Union. Soviet strategist Konstantin Katushev briefed the Czech leaders on the plan, saying that America was politically volatile. "It can move to either extreme." Katushev continued with the following clarifying remark.

as we've seen in the McCarthy period and the Vietnam War. If we can impose on the U.S.A. the external restraints proposed in our Plan, and seriously disrupt the American economy, the working and lower middle classes will suffer the consequences and they will turn on the society that has failed them. They will be ready for revolution.

This must be understood: The goal of the Communist is revolution, and his method is economic disruption. Again, I should ask readers to listen to my interview with Kevin Freeman if they think the crash of 2008 could not have been caused by a foreign power. See also Freeman's book, Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why It Can Happen Again. The Russians have long since studied the weaknesses of the U.S. economic and social systems. It is absurd to think that such a system, so ready of access, could not be disrupted by a creative enemy.

The Russians also realized, back in the 1960s, that the United States might turn to the far right instead of to the left. With that possibilty in mind the Russians have infiltrated various American far right movements and organizations, going so far as sponsoring a kind of right wing Marxism. If you hear about Alex Jones or other pundits of a like-mind getting funding through Soviet-allied sources (like Lyndon Larouche) then you should be on your guard. In fact, Cliff Kincaid has already discussed this connection with the host of Cross-Talk.

The most likely scenario is, of course, a left wing takeover through the Democratic Party. This is the political party which the Communists sought to infiltrate and capture many decades ago. The extent of their success cannot be exactly measured. But there is plenty of reason to worry. We are only now asking ourselves what would happen if the Democrats turn out to be Bolsheviks who have crafted a way of using minority politics and illegal voting practices to build a one party state. In that event, a revolutionary situation might well be in the making; for if the middle class cannot find adequate representation for the redress of grievances, there is bound to be an internal upheaval. If the Communists successfully disarm the United States in advance, and if Russian and/or Chinese missiles and troops can be used to "support" today's "transitional liberal and progressive government" in an attempt to sweep aside the U.S. Constitution in favor of a Soviet type of system, then we have come to the true end of the Final Phase of the long-range strategy without the least occasion for an all-out nuclear war. The problem remains, of course, that millions of people within the United States would not accept this situation.

Some observers say that the Americans are finished and no longer capable of functioning as free citizens. Others believe a revolution most certainly will occur when the middle class "wakes up." In 1967 the Soviet strategists believed that America was "a volatile society." They currently suppose that civil war could break out in the United States. The trigger for civil war, of course, is economic collapse. We see, of course, the high levels of indebtedness. We see that the financial situation cannot continue to move along the same lines as today. The intelligent observer knows that something has to give way. Fundamental change is coming, one way or another. But as we have seen, the management of the system has fallen to foxes instead of lions; and foxes do not think very far ahead. They manipulate from month to month, holding the financial system together through a series of artful frauds.

This brings us to the analysis of Ann Barnhardt, who in every respect presents the face of the outcast lion. She gives voice to everything that is out of fashion, yet obviously true. What she says is impossible, and what she proposes is outlandish in the eyes of all foxes. Yet there has never been another way out of our situation than that which is stated by the lion.