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[Today is the release date of Daniel Greenfield’s new book, Domestic Enemies. Order it NOW.]
That there’s always more history to learn is one of the many lessons of Daniel Greenfield’s truly magnificent new book, Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight against the Left. In six riveting, eye-opening chapters, Greenfield guides us through untold or little-told stories of leftist perfidy beginning in the days prior to the ratification of the Constitution and concluding in the last years of the Civil War. It is a genuinely remarkable work, which even for many people who consider themselves relatively well-informed students of history is full of one revelation after another – all of which serve to underscore that the far-left phenomena that today seem to portend nothing short of apocalypse (from BLM riots to outrageous election irregularities to the breathtaking efforts by New York officials to destroy Donald Trump’s financial empire) are in fact nothing new.
The late writer Howard Zinn, in his appallingly successful People’s History of the United States (1980), pushed his far-left agenda on naive young readers by, at every turn (and here I adapt from Johnny Mercer’s immortal lyric), fanatically accentuating the negative aspects of American capitalism and liberal democracy and utterly eliminating the positive. Greenfield is the anti-Zinn: whereas Zinn besmirched American liberty at every turn, Greenfield tells the plain truth about far-left challenges to that liberty that have either been whitewashed in most history textbooks, given very short shrift by them, or scrubbed from their pages entirely. The result is a superbly illuminating book that has the drive and urgency of a great political pamphlet as well as the density and detail of a distinguished three-volume historical opus.
To recount these far-left challenges is to touch time and again on the early history of the Democratic Party, which began as Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans and whose founding was inspired, in very large part, by the French Revolution. We all learned in school about Jefferson’s support for that uprising – but many of us, I suspect, were spared the news that his enthusiasm extended, as Greenfield underscores, even to some of that revolution’s more sanguinary aspects. We were also assured that Americans were universally fond of George Washington, who had no serious challenger for president, and whose sheer popularity and force of character are said to have kept his administration from being fractured by partisanship; the full truth, as Greenfield reveals, is that during Washington’s tenure there were a good many Americans who actually talked about guillotining him for not marching in lockstep with Robespierre and company. “Ten thousand People in the Streets of Philadelphia, day after day,” a rightfully alarmed Adams wrote to Jefferson, “threatened to drag Washington out of his House, and effect a Revolution in the Government, or compell it to declare War in favour of the French Revolution.”
If those crowds in Philadelphia hated George Washington, they loved Edmond Genet, an agent of the French government who was dispatched to America with the goal of uniting the two countries in an “Empire of Liberty”(as Greenfield points out, this scheme “foreshadowed the globalism” of today’s Democratic Party) and who in 1793 – the year Washington began his second term and the Reign of Terror got underway – took part in the establishment of a “political network that…helped to usher in the era of the Democratic Party.” Far from being scared by what was going on in France, Genet’s American fans wanted to copy it at home. Amusingly, as the French Revolution proceeded to devour its own, Genet, who had come to America to promote it, ended up begging to be saved from it. Fortunately for him, the leaders whom he would gladly have guillotined took pity on him: at Hamilton’s urging, Washington granted asylum to Genet, who lived out the rest of his life as a farmer in New York State.
Another key chapter in the story of the early American left concerns the utopian communes. My school textbooks treated them as the essentially benign creations of virtuous idealists; in truth, they were nothing less than laboratories in totalitarianism. For example, Nashoba (1823-6), in Tennessee, which is now “remembered as a feminist interracial commune where freed slaves and white progressives built a new kind of society that was too modern for the era to tolerate,” and whose founder, Fanny Wright, was praised by the New York Times in the 1980s as “the first woman in America to act publicly to oppose slavery,” was in reality “a hideous prototype for the socialist experiments on black people that continue today.” Nashoba was appalling, indeed, in a number of ways. It banned marriage, property, religion; it even forbade contact between parents and children. Reading about these communes in school, we may have pictured the members laboring in the fields all day to keep them going; in reality, the work at Nashoba was done by slaves, whom the white idealists “whipped and sexually exploited.” Indiana’s New Harmony (1814-27) operated pretty much the same way: its socialist founders were “eager to build a new society but unwilling to get their hands dirty.” And the Oneida Community (1848-81) in New York was “a eugenics sex cult complete with free love and the sexual abuse of young girls by cult members in the name of socialism and equality.”
Then there were the urban political machines, notorious for their innovations in the fields of graft and patronage. In one history class we read Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (1905), the highly revealing memoirs of George Washington Plunkitt, a cheerfully cynical cog in New York’s Democratic machine. But the picture of Tammany Hall painted by Greenfield is far darker than anything I remember from that little book, which made political corruption look almost quaint and charming. As Greenfield records, Tammany Hall started out as one of the many secret societies (complete with its own “costumes, rites, and rituals”) that “played a fundamental role in the rise of the Democratic Party and the Left.” Tammany’s influence extended far beyond New York: it swung the 1800 election and engineered the 1836 presidential victory of its then boss, Martin Van Buren. Another key Tammany Hall figure was Aaron Burr, whose “vision of urban political machines controlling elections, stuffing the voter rolls, and exploiting crises came to define the country, the Democratic Party, and the 2020 election.”
One of Greenfield’s chapters is about the state of Rhode Island. What did you ever learn about Rhode Island? All I remember is that it was founded in 1636, in the name of religious liberty, by an American hero named Roger Williams. What I never learned was that by the late eighteenth century it was a “fanatical, insular, and strange” little corner of the union, “rife with intrigues, grand schemes, and the fanatical conviction of its exceptionalism” and boasting an “explosive combination of cults and political radicalism, utopian idealism, and greed.” During the years when the Articles of Confederation were in force, the state, under the strict rule of the Country Party, devolved into agrarian socialism, and thence into outright feudalism of the sort that Klaus Schwab apparently has in mind for you and me. The key to it all was paper money, which, issued by the state in massive amounts, was constantly depreciating, and thereby enabled the ruling landlords to pay ever-struggling merchants in a way that cheated the latter while preserving the wealth of the former. When merchants balked at this systematic ripoff, the Rhode Island legislature passed the 1786 Forcing Act, under which those who refused to accept the state’s increasingly worthless currency as legal tender could be fined, imprisoned, and denied trial by jury; when the state’s highest court found the Forcing Act unconstitutional, the legislature called the judges in on the carpet and had most of them removed from office.
By this point, political dissent was effectively banned in Rhode Island. When the Constitutional Convention was called in 1787, the state refused to take part, and consequently the new Constitution was ratified without its participation. This, notes Greenfield, raised the question: “Was Rhode Island part of the United States, or wasn’t it? The smallest state hadn’t formally seceded from the United States, nor had it joined.” During the next three years, its ports prospered because they didn’t charge duties on British imports, which could then be transported without tariff to other states. Then the U.S. Senate passed the Rhode Island Trade Bill, which forbade Rhode Island’s ships to land at U.S. ports and barred Rhode Island’s products from entering the rest of the country. In response, the port cities of Providence and Newport “announced that they would secede and join the United States if Rhode Island did not ratify the Constitution.” Only then did the state’s rulers cave in and join up – thus spelling the beginning of the end of an exceedingly disturbing experiment in autocracy.
There’s more – much more – in Greenfield’s book, but let’s leave it at that: a few morsels from an extraordinary smorgåsbord. It’s all fascinating stuff, and deeply sobering. And let me add this: as Adams famously wrote about Jefferson, Greenfield possesses “a peculiar felicity of expression”; even as he makes clear just how deadly serious these stories are, his style is lively and entertaining. Put it this way: reading this book, you feel as if you’re gorging on pistachios, only to feel at the end as if you’ve had the heartiest of meals. And it’s a meal with a vital lesson: namely, that while we can sometimes feel overwhelmed these days by “the scale of the leftist subversion, treason, and violence” all around us, today’s perfidious attempts by the left to undermine our liberty are nothing new. Two centuries before Antifa arson and let-’em-loose Soros DAs and the deliberate flooding of the country with illegal aliens, America faced equally formidable assaults by an aggressive, unprincipled left that was determined to see our streets flow with blood like the Place de la Concorde. Bottom line: to view our nation’s history through rose-colored glasses is absolutely historyless – and a formula for defeatism. For there was, as Greenfield puts it, always a snake in the garden. What matters is that we routed it – repeatedly. Which means that we can rout it again. At this moment in American history, it’s a message that urgently needs to be heard.
Did anyone besides me ever read Louisa May Alcott’s essay “Transcendental Wild Oats?” They avoided drudgery and disorder by having Abba,May Alcott drudge herself to death in the kitchen, and when the commune fell apart, the man who owned it was prepared to leave tha,Alcotts to freeze,and starve.
Van Morrison latest album includes Accentuate the Positive, he is one of the few artists who fought against the insanity of lockdowns. I recommend listening.
How do we route all the illegal immigrants that will vote for Biden. Biden is in the process of increasing immigration from Muslim countries. How do we stop that? He’s bringing in the voters so that the small power we have the vote is being cancelled.
Islam must be banned in America.
It is not a religion.
Islam is a depraved psychopathic murderous berserk cult that stands for the exact opposite of American
Freedom and Liberty and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Islam is the enemy of America and US citizens, as well as the leftist democrat party,
and Mexico which is sponsoring and facilitating
the INVASION of America with millions and hordes of illegal aliens,
and Mexico is murdering more than 100,000 US citizens every year with Mexican manufactured
drugs/fentanyl.
Islam and Mexico are the two greatest enemies of America and US citizens.
America and US citizens must recognize this fact and immediately take decisive action to crush these insidious enemies.
SENATOR CORY BOOKER: “Our Founding was rooted in White Supremacy.” And yet he took The Oath to defend the Constitution written by a bunch of Whites?
“Using the Freedoms in The Constitution to overthrow the Constitution.” SC
“WHEN, NOT IF, the Com-Left rules SCOTUS, they will rule that the Constitution itself is unconstitutional!” SC (“Stack the Court.”)
“WE THE PEOPLE want our Founding Articles not the Rules for Radicals!” SC
MILLIONS are now supporting a terrorist group, meaning they also support a Terrorist Regime, Iran, and their numerous proxies. WHEN the American Terrorist Sleeper Cells awaken, whose side with these millions be on, including those who took The Oath? Many in Congress are burning the Constitution, OPENLY, and siding with a foreign enemy, including since Vietnam, and they are now supporter a Domestic Enemy we are now seeing at our universities and streets.
IRAN’S AHMADINEJAD: “Wipe Israel off the Map!” How many Americans also supported that goal but most stayed quiet about it?
AMERICAN/WORLD PROTESTERS: “From the River to the Sea!” MILLIONS NOW OPENLY SUPPORTING THAT, some in Congress, many in Congress secretly supporting that too while supporting a State Department designated TERRORIST GROUP!
Now Universities are being trashed. Here at UNM, slogans painted all over the Student Union, now a pitched tent. (When Tomi Lahren came here, the Mob trashed a wall with many holes kicked into it. The SUB director didn’t file a police report. I did since I was in the speech which was too dangerous to continue. I talked to her: “We took care of it internally.” Two wall had to be replaced. “Destruction of University Property.” “We don’t know who did it.” There were Youtube videos.)
This will be an excellent book to read. People need an education on how nations fall through the enemy within. When the Left champions the principles of Islam, Jihad, (armed struggle) come to our shores.
What is the most fundamental moral principle of Islam, Marxism, and Christianity? The moral principle of altruism and self-sacrifice that claims that man is NOT and end in himself but the servant of God or society. That man is a sacrificial animal.
“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, “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”
For Christ’s sake, put an effing sock in it. No one wants to answer your endlessly stupid questions about religion.
But since you mentioned the two words from the “THX beer drinking game”, Christianity and altruism, I’ll gladly raise a glass, since you obviously have nothing else to talk about.
You could always sacrifice yourself and save us from your endless hectoring.
“In the history of mankind, it is earlier than we think.” – Ayn Rand
As monumental and historical as the American Constitution is, it had, and still has flaws. That’s why the conservative idea that all America has to do is go back to the original Constitution and the original philosophy on which the Constitution is based, and everything will be fine once again, is ludicrous.
Even the best of the Founding Fathers did not fully understand the philosophical and above all, moral, basis of freedom and all of its implications and ramifications. For example, Thomas Jeffersons’ proposal for public schools and Benjamin Franklin’s proposal that the “excess” wealth of the rich should be redistributed to the needy.
“The Founders erected a glorious political structure to secure our liberty, but did not realize that its foundation — its code of morality — was flawed. They implicitly embraced the ideas of egoism, while explicitly they accepted the tenets of altruism. By upholding individual liberty, they tacitly endorsed the egoist idea that man is an end in himself. But when directly addressing the question of what constitutes the good, they generally believed that to be good is to serve the needs of others. For example, Thomas Jefferson, who rejected the supernaturalism of the Bible, nonetheless regarded the altruistic teachings of Jesus as “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man,” Holding an innocently benign interpretation of altruism, the Founders did not understand its full ramifications. They did not realize that the view of man as a free, autonomous, being would ultimately be nullified by the view of man as his brother’s keeper. Over time, however, the contradiction unfolded.” – Peyer Scwartz, “In Defense of Selfishness: Why the Code of Self-Sacrifice is Unjust and Destructive”
Wow, another oldie but goodie from the Objectivist thought control wars.
You do realize no one reads your crap…..don’t you?
Here is the situation in America today ….
There is a deadly power struggle going on in America.
It is a fight to the death … not “politics as usual.”
The GOP does not seem to comprehend the seriousness of the situation.
The democrat leftist party is absolutely committed to harm and destroy America and US citizens.
The GOP debating and investigation society has its head up its arse.
The GOP is doing absolutely nothing that is effectively protecting and defending America and US citizens.
The crimes of the democrat party against America and US citizens are now so outrageous that the GOP response should be to protect and defend America and US citizens from their harm and destruction.
The democrat party has declared war on America and half of the US population.
If what Biden/Obama/the Clintons/Pelosi/Schumer/Schiff and the democrat administration have done to America and US citizens is not to deliberately harm and damage and destroy and make war on them ….. then what could possibly be their objective ?
The 2020 Flu d’etat was their 1917 moment of no return ; they don’t ever intend to give up power again . This is the ”Globalist GREAT RESET”
If TRump wants to be President again, then he’ll need to fight for it as the Dem Bolsheviks intend to ”Color Revolution him” like they did to the leader of uKraine in 2014.
WAshington DC is going to look like KIEV
You should really be directing your ire at Lincoln instead of the Founders.
This book should be thought in all schools.
The type of book the Liberal left Collage Professors and Administrators with the heads full of sawdust will no allow in which case to tell those mindless twats to GO POUND SAND
This article reminded me of something I haven’t thought about in awhile. I might have an unusual perspective of Marxism, but here it is. In its fundamental essence, Marxism is an ideology that seeks to transform the human species into something that it’s not. For better or worse, we have instincts and behavior like any other creatures who inhabit the earth. Karl Marx wanted to change that. Just like Obama, he wanted to “fundamentally transform” us into a group-think entity not unlike a colony of bees in a hive, where individuality doesn’t exist, where each member performs only the designated jobs for which they have been bred. And most important to my analogy, the hive will only tolerate one queen to rule them all.
Well duh, when political parties unite with Islam so they can grind down a free nation and control it, and use violence to get their way, you know something has been definitely changed for the worst.
Throughout history, the evil one, Satan has utilized a devestatingly repetitive pattern.:
Egypt’s Pharoah commanded that all males born of the Hebrews be killed. Exodus. 1
The Edomites tried to annihilate the Israeliites and possess their Promised Land. Ezekiel 35:1-10 and Obadiah 1.
Haman offered the Persian King Ahasuerus an attractive sum of money to murder all the Jewish people in the Perisan Kingdom. Ester 3:5-11.
Antiochus Epiphanes (171-164 BC tried to destroy the Jews. (See 1 and 2 Macabees.)
Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany tried to to likewise. Today, many nations religiously believe erasing Israel and the Jewish people from the world is their God-given command. (Satan continues to pursue his evil plan.)
The Way to advancing peace in the Middle East lies in advancing education and developing prosperous economies that offer equal opportunities for Jews and Arabs. These factors produce many advantages, but none is able to change the sinful nature of human beings and heal the broken relationship between us and a Holy God.
Therefore any peace without God is a launching pad for the next war. See Joshua 9:14..
No matter what angle you take to look at these events, they still all point again and again to Israel and Jerusalem. Why? Because from the moment God declared Jerusalem to be His, Satan’s fixation has been to destroy God’s chosen People and rule the world from Jerusalem. The book of Judges historicity is crucial in determining the valididity of Israel’s residence in the Holy Land and, therefore the Bible’s trustworthiness, and the bible’s archeological evidence that supports the history of Judges account of Gideon.
I am so glad frontpagemag.com provides a forum for the excellent work of Bruce Bawer, among others.