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[Order Daniel Greenfield’s new book, Domestic Enemies: HERE.]
Our particularly American addiction to the now, the new, and the what’s next means we tend to perceive our political conflicts through the lens of “breaking news,” or at most, the weekly news cycle. It doesn’t help that more and more of us, especially young people, get our news from the ever-advancing timelines of social media, which draw us constantly forward moment by moment, denying us the time to reflect upon events in a broader historical context.
But as my brilliant colleague Daniel Greenfield reminds us in his long-awaited first book, Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left, “current events” is a misleading label for an ongoing, epic political struggle between Left and Right that is actually rooted deep in America’s origins.
As every regular reader of FrontPage Mag knows, for many years prolific columnist and investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Fellow and Executive Vice President of Programs at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, has been a veritable water cannon of insightful, original reporting at FrontPage Mag and at his Sultan Knish blog site on every imaginable political topic, from the external threats of China and Iran to the internal subversions of TikTok and DEI, from domestic political corruption and Big Tech censorship to pandemic totalitarianism and environmental alarmism, from jihadists to European globalist elites, from the weaponization of the IRS to the left-wing radicalization of our military leadership.
In his brand new work from Bombardier Books, Greenfield demonstrates the truth of the axiom attributed to Mark Twain that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. The present-day battles in which we are engaged – “pandemics, stolen elections, race riots, fake news, globalism, terrorism, class warfare, inflationary spending, school indoctrination, and socialism” – are not new but echo ones faced as far back as America’s founding.
“The Left has been plotting against America for more than two centuries,” Greenfield writes in his preface. “Domestic Enemies shows how we arrived here and reveals how the great men and women of our nation’s history took on the same challenges we face now, and how America prevailed against the left.”
Relying heavily on first-person accounts of early American letters, diaries, autobiographies, and newspaper reports, Greenfield elucidates “some of the most explosive periods in our nation’s history, when, much like today, the very notion of truth had been cast aside in the heat of causes whose stakes to the participants appeared to be the future of the nation and even of the human race.”
Greenfield explains in his introduction that the origins of the Democrat Party are rooted in the French Revolution of 1789. The Jacobin radicals dreamed of bringing that violent upheaval to America’s shores, where revolution had fallen short of the French vision of the ideal society. The Founding Fathers, after all, “had unleashed a revolution and then bound it within the confines of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the constitution.”
The American left, just like the French left, wanted not a republic restrained by a recognition of the limitations of our flawed human nature, but a utopian new world order. To lay the groundwork for that, clubs or organizations called Democratic Societies, modeled on radical Jacobin clubs, were set up with the assistance and funding of foreign emissaries of the French Revolution. These societies “formed the backbone of what would become the country’s first true political party as part of a radical plan to bring the French Revolution to America.”
“They functioned,” Greenfield writes, “as incubators, organizing, radicalizing, and imbuing their members with an ambitious vision before paving the way for a new generation of mainstream organizations that would go on to implement their radical visions.” As a strategy, they learned to scale back from apocalyptic utopianism to radical change through incremental progress – a revolution in stages from within the system.
This sets the stage for Greenfield’s examinations of various conflicts in American history in subsequent chapters, the titles of which cleverly emphasize the correlation to today’s political battles: “1793-1800: How America’s First Community Organizer [Aaron Burr] Used a Pandemic to Build the Democratic Urban Political Machine and Steal an Election,” for example; “1794-1800: How Fake News and the First Globalist Plot Against America Created the Democratic Party”; “1863-1864: How the Democrats Set Off America’s Worst Race Riots to Steal an Election.”
For those readers like myself who are history buffs (as conservatives typically are), Domestic Enemies is packed with entertaining revelations. (It’s no wonder that pundits Victor Davis Hanson, Robert Spencer, and Bruce Thornton, all of whom bring an erudite historical perspective to their work, contributed glowing cover blurbs.) Greenfield proves to be a riveting storyteller, taking us on page-turning deep dives into such characters and topics as:
- how the yellow fever epidemic of 1798 created a subversive opportunity for the nation’s first true community organizer – darkly ambitious Vice President Aaron Burr;
- the forgotten story of the struggle for the Constitution against socialism in the inflationary paper money that Rhode Island’s secessionist radicals were printing for social justice;
- how the globalist Left sought to destroy their hated enemy George Washington through smears and lies for his refusal to bow to French radicalism;
- how failed experiments in radical utopian communes nevertheless inspired transcendentalists, socialists, anarchists, and other radicals and paved the way for the “slow long march of the counterculture through the culture”;
- how a bad novelist created a secret society – the Knights of the Golden Circle – which plotted political terror and an invasion of Mexico, spawned assassin John Wilkes Booth, and ultimately gave way to a new organization for territorial expansionism, the Ku Klux Klan;
- how one of the most pivotal battles of the Civil War, America’s first true race riot, and New York’s first major terror plot all took place on the island of Manhattan;
- and much more.
Greenfield’s first book truly is one of the most unique and compelling works of political history on the shelves today.
In his conclusion “What We Can Learn From America’s Long War Against the Left,” Greenfield notes that the left is constantly waging war on the past – consider, for example, the desperate historical revisionism of the Left’s propagandistic 1619 Project. “The Utopian Left is convinced that history can be broken away from the past and that its ideology will carry us away to ‘the right side of history,” writes Greenfield. The past is an inconvenient reminder to these utopians that human nature exists – it is not merely a social construction – and that any endeavor to engineer a perfect society inevitably begins with coercion and ends not in the ideal society but in mass misery and death. “History offers the undeniable truth that the Left will lose,” Greenfield asserts.
But that is no excuse for our complacency. Unlike the Left, conservatives are often afflicted with a debilitating streak of pessimism, even fatalism. We cannot allow this to take us out of the fight. Daniel Greenfield concludes Domestic Enemies with a stirring exhortation to remember that “We fought these battles before. We will fight them again. And we can win.” He lays out the strategy that the Right must pursue, drawn from America’s successes against the relentless Left throughout our short history. “When conservatives forget the past,” he declares, “we lose. But when we use it as our moral and intellectual fortress, we win the future.”
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior
Since Monarchy, Oligarchy, Fascism, and Communism are all far left on a political spectrum where “Left” is defined as total or near total government control of the people, it becomes clear that the American Revolution was anti-left from the beginning. Far Right, being anarchy and chaos, is undesirable, as it inevitably leads to a far Left resolution, but Center Right is a badge of honor – just enough government power to secure the people’s God given natural rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
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agreed. unfortunately present day “just enough” has well surpassed into filthy lucre against the poor. i see no way to stop the feeding with all forms of government manipulation through deceit on the exponential rise. tragedy and hope may give some insight. hold on to your faith its going to take a hit.
Donald Trump is not a “threat to democracy.”
Biden and the democrat party and Islam itself is the real insidious depraved psychopathic
murderous berserk hate-filled threat to Freedom and Liberty and Democracy
Absolutely spot on. Thanks. Thus, the recuring theme: Jean-Jacques, Robespierre, and Saint Just v. Jefferson, Madison, John Locke, and others. “History illuminates for us what to imitate, and what to mark for avoidance.”–Livy
“The American left, just like the French left, wanted not a republic restrained by a recognition of the limitations of our flawed human nature, but a utopian new world order.”
If human nature is inherently flawed as claimed by the doctrine of Original Sin, then man cannot be allowed to be free. A monster of depravity requires a moral elite to curb and leash a flawed human nature.
The doctrine of Original Sin, of inherently flawed human nature, leads to the tyranny of a moral elite. It leads to collectivism. To a secular or religious priesthood. To a secular dictatorship or a theocracy.
“The political philosophy of collectivism is based on a view of man as a congenital incompetent, a helpless, mindless creature who must be fooled and ruled by a special elite with some unspecified claim to superior wisdom and a lust for power.” – Ayn Rand
“The philosophy of collectivism upholds the existence of a mystic (and unperceivable) social organism, while denying the reality of perceived individuals—a view which implies that man’s senses are not a valid instrument for perceiving reality. Collectivism maintains that an elite endowed with special mystic insight should rule men—which implies the existence of an elite source of knowledge, a fund of revelations inaccessible to logic and transcending the mind. Collectivism denies that men should deal with one another by voluntary means, settling their disputes by a process of rational persuasion; it declares that men should live under the reign of physical force (as wielded by the dictator of the omnipotent state)—a position which jettisons reason as the guide and arbiter of human relationships.
From every aspect, the theory of collectivism points to the same conclusion: collectivism and the advocacy of reason are philosophically antithetical; it is one or the other.” – Leonard Peikoff
Can’t wait for your “inevitable” secular dictatorship or a theocracy. Of course we all know who would be running your secular dictatorship, don’t we.
you forgot about god. every good christian knows the natural man is an enemy to god. put away the natural man and you have a moral code, which is practiced to this day in america. a self governed apparatus that belays the elite. what you see present day is a bloated government intent on the destruction of the moral code and enslavement of its citizens through all forms of manipulation and deceit. the infinity of god will not take a backseat to man, who knows nothing of the universe and the contents of creation.
You’re perfectly correct, the natural man happy to be natural, not wishing for the impossible, at peace with being mortal, fragile, limited, not omniscient, not omnipotent, alone in his own skin, in an intelligible universe, has no need or desire for the supernatural, miracles, salvation from a natural universe, or eternal life in a magical utopia after his dead.
“Christianity has nothing to offer a happy man living in a natural, intelligible universe.” — George H. Smith
“All rights rest on the ethics of egoism. Rights are an individual’s SELFISH possessions—HIS title to HIS life, HIS liberty, HIS property, the pursuit of HIS own happiness. Only a being who is an end in himself can claim a moral sanction to independent action. If man existed to serve an entity beyond himself, whether God or society, then he would not have rights, but only the duties of a servant.” – Leonard Peikoff
mans existence is to serve. love one another is based on the idea of loving your fellow man as yourself. if a man truly loved his fellow man as himself, his days would be filled with service to his fellow man. if every man truly loved his fellow man their would be no need for the moral code. to say the man is happy in his natural state, is to say he is a man with no remorse. happy at whose expense? you are describing a happy natural population who have no boundaries. meaning civil society is gone. your description puts us back to survival of the fittest. is the natural man happy to kill his fellow man? what of the natural man who is killed? is he happy to die?
i am a god of laws. there are rules, as in his creation.
Oh T. You have never sounded happy. You are always complaining about the Christians and the Jews. Complaining about religion in general. Complaining about your perceived lack of laissez faire Capitalism in America. Complaining about Objectivism not being taught in schools. Complaining about life in general.
You are that most miserable of people who never gets their way. Have a nice life.
No where in those arguments is there any mention or consideration of free will and/or freedom of choice. In my humble opinion, to say such things one has to believe that most, if not all, human beings are sheep or cattle who can be easily led astray by charismatic charlatans.
The presumptuousness of such beliefs are astounding to me to say the least.
THX1138, Examples, please of The doctrine of Original Sin, of inherently flawed human nature, leads to the tyranny of a moral elite. It leads to collectivism. To a secular or religious priesthood. To a secular dictatorship or a theocracy.
You want an example? The approximately one-thousand years of the Christian Dark and Middle Ages. Christianity was the essential and crucial cause of the Dark and Middle Ages.
“What about freedom in this era [the Christian Dark and Middle Ages]? Study the existence of the feudal serf tied for life to his plot of ground, his noble overlord, and the all-encompassing decrees of the Church. Or, if you want an example closer to home, jump several centuries forward to the American Puritans, who were a medieval remnant transplanted to a virgin continent, and who proceeded to establish a theocratic dictatorship in colonial Massachusetts. Such a dictatorship, they declared, was necessitated by the very nature of their religion. You are owned by God, they explained to any potential dissenter; therefore, you are a servant who must act as your Creator, through his spokesmen, decrees. Besides, they said, you are innately depraved [because of Original Sin], so a dictatorship of the elect is necessary to ride herd on your vicious impulses. And, they said, you don’t really own your property either; wealth, like all values, is a gift from heaven temporarily held in trust, to be controlled like all else, by the elect. And if all this makes you unhappy, they ended up, so what? You’re not supposed to pursue happiness in this life anyway.” – Leonard Peikoff, “Religion versus America”
“Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity?” -Arthur C. Clarke
Thanks for proving my point about your personal happiness. You couldn’t even provide your own explanation. Just more blah blah about your moronic historical invention, the Christian Dark and Middle Ages.
I would say your life pretty much sucks.
the example of the dark ages is a catholic authority not christian. do you see catholics and christians the same? while it is true many christian faiths are broken off the catholic faith, the authority of jesus christ is the binder. some christian faiths do not recognize the catholic faith as the means of authority. some christian faiths do not bother with the lineage of jesus christs authority. some faiths believe the authority of jesus christ was was lost on the earth during the dark ages and has been restored, your example of the dark ages is an example of what happens when the authority of jesus christ is lost on earth, leaving the natural man and a corrupt elite class an enemy to god.
love one another. many people
If flawed man cannot be set free to think, as your post suggests, then on what basis can anyone proclaim philosophical truth, including yourself? Put another way, would your assessment of truth not be tainted as well? But, if truth is separate from the human condition, and if truth can be discovered, then the constant state man finds himself in is in many ways irrelevant to discovery of moral law.
“ When will you let go of human intellect and understanding, and Look to Me alone?”
“ Beloved, be quick to repent of your pride and relinquish the need to be in control.
Why make Me wait and delay My Divine Deliverance and wonder-working Power to perform Miracles in the midst of you, because you have chosen to rather explore and exhaust all other man-made ideas and quick fix solutions?”
It’s difficult to discern what’s Left vs what’s Right, historically and today. I think the lynchpin was Woodrow Wilson, who considered himself (a former college professor) a Dem progressive but was a champion of European elites and intrigued by eugenics. He premiered “the Birth of a Nation” at the White House, which spawned a rebirth of the KKK and lynchings again (they previously paused long ago). Wilson had a stroke and was likely manipulated by his new wife and other Gilded Age fans, which they needed to defend as “democracy” for WW I entry. WW I led to Bolsheviks taking Russia and Hitler taking Germany, which led to the Holocaust and A-bomb, Cold War capitalism vs communism, and globalism — instead of just staying focused on the Monroe Doctrine like we should have. There’d been none of the above WASTE had we let Old Europe keep sorting itself out like our ancestors saw and fled away from. And the Border today wouldn’t been flooded since we would have invested in Latin America instead of authoritarians in the Mideast and Asia.
This is something that I actually discuss in Domestic Enemies. The American Left was driven by the European Left from the very beginning and it was obsessed with spreading the revolution around the world.
Even before the Civil War, there was a good deal of entanglement between the predecessor organization of the KKK, urban Northern Democrats, and leftist radicals who were championing revolutions in Europe.
Much of this is covered in Chapter 5.
Absolutely. Thanks for sharing. The American Left indeed has its intellectual antecedents in the European leftist tradition, extending back at least to the French Revolution. In fact, the very term, Left, is said to have it roots in the location of the Jacobins in the French Assembly. They sat on the left. That may or may not be historically factual though. Later, many American scholars attended German universities. Woodrow Wilson is an example. They brought back many of the ideas of European scholarship that were at variance with the American ideas of liberty, and even ideas of education and governance. In the 1930s, the Frankfurt School came to America. Why is that important? It gave us Critical Theory and Cultural Marxism. So, the connection of the American Left with the European left is well documented. So called American Progressivism is greatly influenced by all this a well. See today’s Democratic Party for details,
Progressives were in love with eugenics. I don’t understand why you think that is weird. Every crazy new idea is grabbed onto and the old, tried and true ways must be thrown out. This is “progressive”. The left has always been enamored with European elitism and is still to this day.
Leftist ideologies always reject authority not realizing that authority is God’s plan to maintain peace in this fallen creation. Corrupt authorities are often God’s judgment against those that abandon His moral law. It’s like there is a gravity of moral law, enforcing violations thereof,
All leftists are atheists or have outright reject the authority of the Judaeo Christian ethic, inventing their own deity in the process.
Former mayor of New Orleans Marc Morial argued against local ministers that protested the public debauchery during the homosexual festival perpetrated on the streets of the French Quarter. He claimed the ministers were representing the wrong God. His invented deity approved of the public displays. Morial was promoted to head up the Urban League in D.C..
And as a result of the mayor’s endorsement, God answered with “Katrina”. Point being, it’s never a good idea to mock God.
I hope they come out with an audible version.
There’s a plan for it.
Something they don’t print in Liberal written History Books that’s Truth
Stop your censorship wait period! That is what it is (period).
1A OVER everything
2A assures the former
Simply put reporting buttons in the comment section FOR US to report spam since that is your ALLEGED concern.
The American Revolution was for a change in government. The French Revolution was for a change in society.
There are some other interesting books on lost information in history. They are “The South was Right.” and “Germanys’ War”
The Democrat Communist Criminal Terrorist Organization of America, MUST BE DESTROYED. Forthwith.
God Bless America.
DEATH TO HAMAS.
God Bless Israel.
M.A.G.A.
Sounds really interesting. The description reminds me of some good works on the fall and or decline of civilizations; always fascinating. Thank you. I will order a copy.
Read this book that accurately points at early Democrat Anti-American dirty tricks!
Eagle’s Cry
David Nevin
3.78
192 ratings 23 reviews
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison are leading the nation from an incipient aristocracy toward a modern democracy in what Jefferson would call the Second Revolution.
But with the death of George Washington comes the two party system and
struggles for which the young nation is ill prepared. First comes an internal coup attempt and then the threat of Napoleon’s army landing in New Orleans which leads ultimately to the triumphant Louisiana Purchase and the emergence of America as a continental nation. All this as the greatest minds and visionaries of young America lay the foundation for the America we know today.
The French Revolution was w example of o what leftists can do like with King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antonette who by the way never said LET THEM EAT CAKE because there were no cakes back then