The Democracy Initiative: a Coup in Plain Sight

By Clarice Feldman

Matthew  Continetti, one of my favorite writers, wrote an eye opener last week, “‘A  Conspiracy so Immense’: ideological commitment and the timidity of pragmatic  politics”, too late for me to discuss in my column. It is one of the most important stories you’ll ever read anywhere and shows how far behind  conservatives are in the fight against “progressive “  ideologues.

He  picks up on a report by Andy Kroll in Mother Jones about a coordinated  effort by about 36 different interest groups with reported revenues of no less  than $1.69 billion, pledging millions of dollars to work together to attack  conservative supporters and organizations, to intervene directly in Democratic  politics, to push for filibuster reform to better enable a push through their  agenda without any input from the opposition, and expanding “voting rights” and  fighting voter registration laws to further grease the skids for their  legislative agenda.

The  group’s organizers are Michael Brune, formerly director of the radical  Rainforest Action Network, and presently director of the Sierra Club , Phil  Radford, head of Greenpeace, Larry Cohen, president of the Communications  Workers of America and Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP.

All  of this is taking place with no comment by the media — which like their  counterparts in academia, Hollywood. Silicon Valley (and unfortunately too many  big corporations) — are ideological partners in  “progressivism”.

Here  are some of the highlights of the article, though I strongly urge you read it  all:

1. Who belongs: Kroll didn’t name all the  participants in the organization’s latest retreat in December which took place  within blocks of the White House at the headquarters of the National Education  Association. Here are those he did name:

“the AFL-CIO, the Center for American Progress,  Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Color of Change, Common  Cause, Demos, the Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters,  Mother Jones (in a “non-editorial” capacity!), National People’s Action, the  National Wildlife Federation, People for the American Way, the Piper Fund,  Public Campaign, the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto  Workers, and Voto Latino. Brune of the Sierra Club predicts there will be 50  participating organizations by spring.”

2. How much money will they throw into their effort?  Continetti thinks there should be “at least two high numerals inserted before  Kroll’s estimate of “millions of dollars”. This from people claiming they want  to get money out of politics.

Continetti  repeatedly attacks the mainstream media for failing to cover this story,  concluding,

What little we know of the Democracy Initiative  provides a useful lesson in the ability of fantasy to inspire political action.  Progressivism sets the political and cultural and social agenda; it is embedded  in Hollywood, in Silicon Valley, in the academy, in journalism, and in much of  corporate America; many of the richest counties in the nation support liberal  Democrats; President Obama outraised and out-spent his  Republican challenger; the combined budgets of progressive interest groups  and foundations and think tanks and nonprofits and community organizations is  practically incalculable; the most liberal president since Lyndon Baines Johnson  is barreling ahead with a confrontational and ideological approach to cabinet  appointments and budget fights; Republicans and conservatives are in their  greatest state of shock and disarray since 1992 and perhaps since 1964; and yet  progressive elites such as the well-compensated Radford of  Greenpeace still are swinging at the windmill of the “40-plus-year strategy by  the Scaifes, Exxons, Coors, and Kochs of the world” to “take over the  country.”

Someone needs to give the members of the Democracy  Initiative a tap on the shoulder, a kick in the pants, a wonk-like nudge –  anything to wake them from their fantasy of being weak and isolated and  besieged, anything to alert them to the fact that it is they, not “the Scaifes,  Exxons, Coors, and Kochs of the world” who actually run the country and  therefore ought to be covered in a diligent, scrupulous, and adversarial  fashion. One thing is for sure: It won’t be the mainstream media that holds the  progressive movement to account.

Jeff  Goldstein of Protein Wisdom, like me, found the Continetti article extremely  important. Jeff’s forte is language as a tool to stifle debate and control  thinking, and he viewed the article largely from that angle.

It is post-modernist philosophy put into physical  usage: we have witnessed, if we cared to take notice, the studied and inexorable  deconstruction of our Constitution, such that we now have laws deemed  Constitutional by the Court that claim that of course a country formed on a  Declaration of Independence from a tyrannical centralized authority can be  compelled by that centralized authority to enter into private contracts — and  that businesses be compelled to offer those contracts — the specifics of  which are set by the central government. We have a Court that deemed it  Constitutional that of course the government can take private land and give it  to a shopping mall developer if the promise of increased revenue for that  government comes to be considered and act in the public interest. And soon,  we’ll be told that “shall not be infringed” is naturally open to infringements  of all kinds, because shut up and think of the children.

“Equality” today means equality of outcome, or  egalitarianism and homogeneity. “Tolerance” today means how dare you give  offense — and your “hate speech” must be controlled. “Fair share” today means  an immensely disproportionate amount is paid by those scapegoated by the left  and given over to the left’s cronies, with some crumbs going to the poor, who  become more and more entrenched in their dependence on the state, and more and  more permanent clients to the state’s war on the free market.

To anyone who has studied language – and done so in a way where they didn’t feel  compelled to follow the academic party line and pretend the sophistry of the  post-structural movement, which has reached its zenith (or from the perspective  of Enlightenment classical liberalism, its nadir) in anti-foundationalism – the physical, policy manifestations of such a  corruption of our epistemology, informed by the premises we accept for the  language that must necessarily describe and construct that epistemology, was an  inevitability. As certain linguistic kernel assumptions were adopted,  entrenched, and finally institutionalized — by all political stripes  (“Yay, it’s the ‘democratization of language and meaning!’ We’re all for  democracy! Go us!” — the effects of that adoption, played out in the world  of language where language has performative functions (and no where is  this more so than in law and legislative policy), were preordained:  collectivism, consensus, mob rule, all dressed up in the finery of studied,  rigorous legal interpretation that, once certain conditions for “interpreting”  were legitimated, were inevitable. And that’s precisely because the kernel  assumptions were all cleverly laid by collectivists to deconstruct and or  subsume the notion of individualism on every level.

This is a coup. And we’ve relied on cowards,  charlatans, or know-nothings on “our” side to help push back against it.

While  I agree with Jeff on the attempted coup and the failure of conservatives and the  Republican party to effectively communicate what is going on and fight back  against it, there are ways to counter this sort of thing but it takes time and  the kind of effort I am not seeing.

In an  article describing how the National Rifle Association became  a political force to reckon with, the Washington Post ‘s Joel  Achenbach, Scott Higham and Sari Horowitz show us how it was  done.

1. Be firm in advancing your convictions and welcome  controversy. “They are absolutist in their interpretation of the Second  Amendment. The NRA learned that controversy isn’t a problem but rather, in many  cases, a solution, a motivator, a recruitment tool, an  inspiration.”

2. Don’t try to be all things to all people. “The  group has learned the virtues of being a single-issue organization with a very  simple take on that issue. The NRA keeps close track of friends and enemies,  takes names and makes lists. In the halls of power, it works quietly behind the  scenes. It uses fear when necessary to motivate supporters. The ultimate goal of  gun-control advocates, the NRA claims, is confiscation and then total  disarmament, leading to government tyranny.”

3. When the old order needs changing, change  it:

In the second half of the 1970s, the NRA faced a  crossroads. Would it remain an Establishment institution, partnering with such  mainstream entities as the Ford Foundation and focusing on shooting  competitions? Or would it roll up its sleeves and fight hammer and tongs against  the gun-control advocates? [Snip]“Because of the political direction the NRA was  taking, they weren’t being invited to parties and their wives were not happy,”  says Jeff Knox, Neal’s son and director of the Firearms Coalition, which fights  for the Second Amendment and against laws restricting guns or ammunition. “Dad  was on the phone constantly with various people around the country. He had his  copy of the NRA bylaws and Robert’s Rules, highlighted and marked. My father and  a lot of local club leaders and state association guys organized their  troops.”

Theirs was a grass-roots movement within the NRA. The  solution was to use the membership to make changes. The bylaws of the NRA gave  members power on the convention floor to vote for changes in the NRA governing  structure.

“We were fighting the federal government on one hand  and internal NRA on the other hand,” Aquilino says.

In Cincinnati, Knox read the group’s demands, 15 of  them, including one that would give the members of the NRA the right to pick the  executive vice president, rather than letting the NRA’s board decide. The coup  took hours to accomplish. Joe Tartaro, a rebel, remembers the evening as  “electric.” The hall’s vending machine ran out of sodas.

By 3:30 in the morning the NRA had a whole new look.  Gone were the Old Guard officers, including Maxwell Rich, the ousted executive  vice president.

3. Clean House when you need to,

Don’t ignore your membership and their concerns and  change leaders who go wobbly, but don’t go off and become some fringe  organization.

4. Choose spokesmen who effectively communicate your  position in words that strike a responsive chord in listeners:

By 2000, the NRA had become even more closely aligned  with the Republican Party and worked strenuously to keep Al Gore from becoming  president. At the annual meeting in May of that year, Hollywood legend Heston  provided what might be the signature moment in the history of the NRA. He spoke  of a  looming loss of liberty, of Concord and Lexington, of Pearl Harbor, the  “sacred stuff” that “resides in that wooden stock and blued  steel.”

Handed a replica of a Colonial musket, he said: “As  we set out this year to defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away,  I want to say those fighting words for everyone within the sound of my voice to  hear and to heed — and especially for you, Mr. Gore.”

He held the gun aloft.

“From my cold, dead hands!”

Of course, the NRA has been fortunate in its enemies.  The Democratic party has done a lot to make it the heavily financed, powerful  organization it has become:

“The D’s keep coming back to this. This is so  visceral to them,” Norquist says. “Again, it’s an expression of contempt for  Middle America. They don’t like you and yours and don’t think you should be in  charge of the capacity to take care of yourself. They know they can’t do this  for you, but they’ve hired these nice people to draw chalk outlines of your  kids, and that’s supposed to make you feel better.

5. Don’t be afraid to just say no to people who want  you to compromise your principles for their political  advantage.

It’ll  be the death of you.

source American Thinker