A call for a new faction ... one which might very well do America
proud
By Daniel Ryan
web posted April 14, 2003
Students that are dazzled by Marx often don't get very far with
their new calling when they hunker down to spreading
discontent, insubordination, etc. in America. After preaching their
new-found message to the masses most fervently, they first find
many Americans nodding, which of course feeds their hopes for
imminent revolution. So they keep pressing, subverting,
exposing, until they are sure that the wicked capitalism which
seems to be synonymous with the United States is about to fall!
It's going down, baby!
Until they find that their "maximization of America's
contradictions" had exactly the same effect as an old-style
Geraldo talk show. Social nirvana – for two weeks.
Why is it that a philosophy which – many fine scholars have
insisted – represents the very quintessence of science always
ends up being the Kato Kaelin of American political discourse –
or the Joey Buttafuco of it?
The answer is simple, and can be found in a highly complex text
known as The Federalist, Issue X. In it, James Madison explains
what a faction is, and the harm that an overbearing one can
cause. Then he says that factions, though always potentially
harmful, are easily checkmated in a system of liberty because
such political freedom allows other factions to do battle with one
that's becoming more and more of a threat. So it's only a matter
of time before any potentially mighty faction will fall.
This is precisely what happened with the Stalinists. In the 1930s,
many were preaching, and more than a few were subverting.
One was Whittaker Chambers, who was part of a Soviet spy
ring. He was the errand boy for a more direct spy by the name
of Alger Hiss, a man of good breeding that came from a fine
home. The kind of fine home that associates "common" with
"criminal."
Chambers basically crawled away once he lost faith in
Communism as an ideal. He knew very well that, when a faction
is riding high, opening your voice against it will only get you
singled out.
In fact, he knew it so well that he considered himself damned
lucky that his – literal – pleading for a job was answered by
TIME magazine shortly after his defection.
It wasn't until the Stalinist faction was being slowly, but
inexorably, brought to heel that Chambers decided that it was
safe to open his mouth. Stalin's regime had gone from exotic
foreign land to fair-weather-jilter to war ally as of December
1941; this probably made Chambers' mouth clap shut even
more. As of 1947, though, it was becoming apparent that the
Soviet Union was not really America's friend and partner in the
quest for a more progressive future but a slowly growing enemy
of the West. This became apparent when the government of East
Germany – a Soviet ally - began blocking the (other) Allies'
ground transportation routes to West Berlin, a show of
unfriendliness which looked suspiciously like breaking one's
word to a recent war partner.
Truman's administration successfully parried that blow with a
Napoleonic maneuver – the Berlin Airlift – but it also noted,
quietly but definitively, that the bear with what appeared to be a
playful smile was actually signaling an aggressive challenge. It
wasn't long before a new consensus began spreading that the
Stalinists were no longer cute and exotic anymore.
George Kennan spearheaded this at the theoretical level with his
famous "containment" article, which was soon adopted as
administration policy. Let the bear feast in his own turf, as
defined by the post-World-War-2 divvy-up, but don't let him
feast on yours. This was generally taken as a compromise at the
time, but even compromises have losers: this one's was the
"Uncle Joe Is A Good Man To Know" clique. Also losing out
were the one-worlders who hadn't already abandoned their
dream in exchange for complaining about "preferential treatment
for veterans" in the loan market.
It looked like American Stalinism was going to meet the same
fate as an earlier flirtation with Mussolini worship, which
Stalinolatry had basically replaced. After having the run of the
best-seller list, it looked very much like the Stalin fad would sink
to the dust-covered shelves of the library, the ones browsed only
by frightened-looking scholars.
Right after "Communism's Last Stand" in 1948. A faction which
is on that downward slide tends to not take such a lowering lying
down, and the Stalinists were true to form in this regard.
Deciding that it was time for Roosevelt's successor to meet a
type of candidate of the same mettle as an earlier Roosevelt, the
Progressive party quickly formed, and nominated Henry Wallace
to carry the "somewhat assertive but basically friendly Soviet
bear" standard. Many a one-worlder and many a socialist rallied
to the Progressives, and its slogan of the twentieth century being
that period of history born and raised for the common man.
It was at this point that other factions began picking at what
could loosely be described as the "social democracy" one. The
remaining Menckenite conservatives took Wallace's pro-
common-man stand as an opportunity to brush off their old, pre-
Mussolini, wit, and indulge in some jokes at the Wallaceites'
expense. One of them was a young World War II veteran
named William F. Buckley, who decided to carry a sign to a
Wallace rally proclaiming "Give The Atom Bomb To The
Russians!"
As of pre-November 1948, such a dally was only a prank,
whose purpose was to make the one-worlders look like squishy-
faced wimps. The government investigations that are always part
of any retooling on the world stage were, as usual, being
conducted out of the ken of the public; Parnell Thomas' decision
in April 1947 to begin examining suspected "fifth columnists" for
possible subversion had not really caught the public's
imagination. Nor, I should add, Buckley's, either.
It was at this point that Whittaker Chambers decided it was safe
for him to step forward, and to testify against his old deliverer
and "cross-class chum" Alger Hiss. This too passed out of the
national spotlight: it wasn't until Chambers had repeated his
charge that Hiss was a Communist over the public airwaves
instead of on the Congressional witness stand – an accusation
which successfully provoked a slander suit from a newly-class-
conscious Hiss, and led to Chambers introducing the now-
famous "pumpkin papers" into evidence - that the New York
Times decided that there was something printable about this
seemingly newsless case. A write-up
published on December 12, 1948 suggested, though, that
this new sensation was little more than a curiosity; the tone of the
article shows it.
This was where the Stalinist subversion issue stood as of the end
of 1948: a basically routine spy sweep to look for friends of a
foreign nation that seemed to be fast becoming a new enemy.
Had it been confined to this, chances are that the fate of the
Stalinist faction would have been akin to the libertarian faction:
basically laughed down to a few true believers, ones easily
stigmatized as "cranks," and then slowly coming back into the
semi-mainstream through the efforts of those believers and other
characters of the happy-few type. From the standpoint of the
public, the anti-Communist sweeps were too low a flyer to merit
a blip on the political radar screen as of the end of '48; Wallace's
defeat, and Truman's victory, meant the end of the trend. Most
of the ones caught up in it were just there because they were
broke, most probably, or had gone Communist about the time
when the U.S.S.R. was sort-of on our side. No need to worry,
really; the recent defeats were alarm bell enough for those types,
and government investigators would deal with the ones who
needed a different kind of dinger. The scenes of this issue were
basically played out underneath the stage, with only the
occasional bit player surfacing from the stage floor, briefly.
This is where the issue stayed until this new underground stream
burst out into the newspapers the following year. The Soviets,
despite the predictions of the best experts which had all insisted
that the atom bomb would not be deployable by the U.S.S.R
until 1955 at the earliest, had exploded one successfully in 1949.
The public began seriously wondering how.
The real reasons are still being debated today, making "the truth"
of this issue more of a litmus test for the beliefs of the expounder.
But the American public soon found "reason enough" when the
more casual reader of the newspapers was buttonholed by
evidence gathered by the more thorough. The government of the
United States, it became evident to the common-sensical, had
been seriously compromised in the area of security by a foreign
power that was becoming increasingly hostile.
That made the Hiss Case "suddenly" fit to print. The drama
involving an "idealistic" young Establishment lawyer befriending,
or falling in with, a genuinely dedicated "old-boy" Communist –
one who converted right around the time of the market crash of
1929 – became compelling. Especially for the less-than-genteel
sector of the free press, who began to see more than a hint of
"the boss's son" in Hiss – the kind of son that was supposed to
make more of himself than a mere "common criminal."
It must have been a bit of a shock for the Posh Hills country club
set to see one of their own take that all-too-familiar two-word
phrase a little more literally than most, but that didn't stop them
from closing ranks with each other to assert a kind of class
interest that is characteristically their own. Hiss might have "fallen
down" a wee teensy bit, but he was still One of Them!
So out came the worthies, from Eleanor Roosevelt on down.
Which awoke a name who used to be one of her husband's own.
Joe McCarthy was the Senator who had successfully been
elected to the seat of Robert LaFollette, and as such had to have
more than a trace of liberal in him. Had he not been awakened
by what was largely the class-conflict side of the issue, he
probably would have been held up as a fine example of the "new
modern liberal Republican."
But destiny called, and he was soon at the head of a faction
which been almost non-existent in 1945: the anti-Communist
faction. He began a four-year, publicity-drenched campaign to
hunt out Communist subversives in the United States
government, which quickly spilled over into "society." The Battle
of the Factions was on; those who had had nothing but dislike
for Communism and/or Communists now had their champion,
and a real political momentum which always feeds a growing
faction. In 1950, they not only had the U.S.S.R's flouting of the
United Nations as a mediating body for the Korean conflict, but
they also had in their hand the exposure of "the atomic spies"
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, arrested for espionage relating to the
A-bomb. 1951 added to this by
the judge presiding over their trial blaming the
Rosenbergs explicitly for making the Soviets far more
aggressive on the world stage than they would have been had the
A-bomb blueprints not been sent to them.
One of those who fell in quickly with the McCarthyite ranks was
that same William F. Buckley. His first book, God and Man At
Yale, had resulted in him being pasted by the finer set in a
manner similar to that faced by both Chambers and McCarthy,
and he had also spawned imitators. His next book was a defense
of McCarthy from the outside, unlike another rich Irish family
who was giving old Joe a little help from the inside – the
Kennedys. Bobby was one of McCarthy's staffers.
But if the moralities were stern and the cause was just, then why
did McCarthy crash and burn? And come to think of it, why was
he, and his enemies, so hard to peg as either "bourgeois" or
"proletarian?"
Because of something the Founders knew, which every
American Marxist has un-learned: America is a multi-factional
society. What is known by the Marxist as "capital" and "labour"
is seen by the average American as only two of many factions.
Such as the two others which McCarthy tackled: the university
faction...and the armed forces. McCarthy's accusations against
General George Marshall was the beginning of the shift in public
perception of him from crusader to demagogue. Murrow's
frappe de grâce would have fired a blank had McCarthy not
pre-supplied the bullets by his own blundering.
This was how the most dangerous faction ever to hit America
was successfully brought to heel, along with its extinguisher too -
much like Oswald's assassination of Kennedy followed by
Ruby's shooting of Oswald at the end of 1963. Somewhat
weirdly, the next attempt at mass subversion during the Vietnam
War saw the "Hate America First" faction using an anti-armed-
forces strategy themselves, with the place of Marshall being
taken by Robert McNamara.
The United States has been able to win a series of quick wars
ever since the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, and has indeed
been the victor of the Cold War for approximately twelve long
years. Long enough for the internationalist aginners to be looked
at as ineffectual idealists again.
Until recently. When the anti-war machine got up and running,
the same old fears concerning foreign subversion got up and
running – because the presently-being-wound-up war was a
telegraphed response to the destruction of the World Trade
Center in the public mind. This made the peace types look less
like pro-Communists in the public mind and more like pro-Nazis.
The obvious anti-Semitism among some of Saddam Hussein's
faithful allies merely emphasized the point that the present anti-
war faction cheered for a side that had launched an aggressive
attack on the scale of Pearl Harbor. The objection that Iraq isn't
the same as al-Qai'da sounds almost as obfuscatory as a 1942
protest that the Nazis were only dragged into enemyship with the
United States as a result of an imprudent alliance with a
completely different nation, the Empire of Japan.
Politics tends to work with taboos. Despite the relative
ineffectualism of the stop-any-war faction at this point in time, the
perceived threat they pose is now seen as worse than at the high
point of Communist infiltration simply because the peacies
stomped on the we-must-defend-American-soil-at-any-cost
taboo. The best they can hope for, it looks like, is to be cast in
the role of Blubber the Wonder Mouth, as Michael Moore was
at the recent Academy Awards.
I happen to feel a sort of filial affection for this crowd, to the
point of offering some faux-grandfatherly advice to them: If you
want your teeth to stay intact, dear lad [sayeth this wise old 33-
years-of-age slacker], you have to get less gallantish and more
cagey. Here's how you do it:
It's obvious that the pose of "the higher loyalty" is wonderful for
getting the attention of the American public, especially when it
looks as if you've become a sort of permanent advocacy group
for whatever world power, great or small, single-nation or
collection of them, happens to be hostile to "America." I know
that some of you suspect that you're being used by such hostile
powers, or are stigmatized as "Yankee as******" – Wilsonians in
lotus-eater form – but nevertheless accept is as the burden of
carrying the standard of peace...that Old Glory of yours, the
nuclear disarmament sign, known to the less initiated as the
"peace sign."
I also know that you have to be sticklers in the area of principle,
and I even know how it's enforced. You don't want those
lounge-lizard types successfully arguing in the singles bars that
you guys are nothing more than a bunch of skirt-chasers with a
pose, now do you? That, most probably, is what got a few of
you older ones beaten up, isn't it?
I do feel an affection for you guys; the sight of the younger ones
being beaten up après-guerre would cause me real pain. And
slipping from your standard would probably make you look
weak – thus inviting a real crusade against all of you.
It seems time for you guys to live in the catacombs, and I have
the perfect way. Not only does it square with your traditions, but
it also carries a real risk (for the sake of principle) combined with
an avoidance of the taboo-stomp which your present course
seems to have led to. Here it is:
The peace sign was designed by none other than the Third Earl
of Russell. The job of an Earl is to be a representative of the
British Sovereign – presently Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
This is the head of the same State that was America's staunchest
ally in the current conflict.
I remember, as do you, how central Anglophilia was to the
forging of the peace faction. This is part of your roots, a
legitimate and unquestionable part of them. Why not go back to
this?
If you're worried about losing your force as a goad, there's no
need to be: the position I'm about to suggest for you is
sufficiently counter-cultural for you to garner the press attention
you most definitely need.
There is a way for different ethnic groups and classes to live
peaceably with one another, one that has been proven to work
most of the time throughout history. That means of promoting the
peace is monarchy.
What's wrong with making universal peace part and parcel of a
political institution that has been proven to work almost
continuously for the Nation that's the "Mother of Parliaments,"
Great Britain? If it can be done for Communism, then surely it
would be not much of a stretch to do so for monarchism, now
would it?
Best of all – a good and enlightened Sovereign would not only
not interfere with a sub-institution featuring goods and property
held in common, He or She would probably go out of His or Her
way to protect it! (Never mind the terminology usually used; it'll
be as easy to master as those in the Marxist lexicon.
(It'll be educational too. Good for you.)
© 2003. Daniel Ryan.
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