In 1886, Sir Edward Clarke delivered a speech in the U.K. House of Commons and in polite way of insulting someone, he said:
"The mind was indeed so open that it had nothing in it at all." In 1908, a periodical called "The New Quarterly" published excerpts from "The Note-Books of Samuel Butler," and in Butler's notes, he commented:
"Cursed is he that does not know when to shut his mind. An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it. It should be capable of shutting its doors sometimes, or it may be found a little draughty (empty)."
In 1940, Professor Walter Kotschnig at Holyoke College once told his students: "Keep your minds open-but not so open that your brains fall out." (Some credit Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer and author, with the phrase, but they are wrong). We've all heard this line. I've even seen it in a fortune cookie - several times.
Shortly thereafter, Kotschnig gave in the campus chapel at Smith College in which he repeated his "open mind" expression. In part, he spoke: "Let us keep our minds open by all means, as long as that means keeping our sense of perspective and seeking an understanding of the forces which mold the world. But don't keep your minds so open that your brains fall out! There are still things in this world which are true and things which are false; acts which are right and acts which are wrong."
And in 1951, then-president of Smith College, William Allan Neilson, addressed its graduating class:
"Go out and face your new job with an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out." He explained that viewpoints should not be so fixed that there is no possible chance to investigate new and sometimes better ideas, but in contemplating situations, the urge to bring about change should not blind the person from using reason and intelligence.
The point is that colleges use to employ professors who urged students to keep an open mind to further the advancement of society, to improve our country, to enrich our body of thought, and in general to further our culture and civility; they urged students to keep an open mind to show intelligence and a willingness to improve, always to be dignified human beings, worthy of the brain that God gave us in order to sustain us as a species exponentially more intelligent than any other.
Today, colleges employ professors who indoctrinate their students in the opposite direction - to open their minds so completely that in fact their brains fall out. And so, we see the extent of social decay that their empty skulls have produced.
There are many examples that can be given as to the ridiculousness of the liberal mind, and the insane policies and insane circumstances that exist because of it, such as the creation of "safe spaces" so that certain fragile liberal individuals can retreat in safety from harsh words and uncomfortable situations, the chilling of free speech for fear that certain words, terms, and certain thought might hurt someone's feelings, the removal of historic monuments and the Confederate flag because liberals believe there can be no explanation for their existence than it supported or represented slavery, or the violent protests on campus or when conservative guests are set to speak simply to prevent their message from reaching any audience at all (common sense tells us that if one believe he/she holds the superior position, then he/she shouldn't be afraid of the other side), or the creation of the violent, terrorist liberal group known as Antifa, or the near-fatal assault on Republican congressmen at a baseball field, or the mock beheading of President Trump, or the mock gangland style execution of Trump in a music video, or the direct (and indirect) calling for the assassination of Trump, or the first-time ever on-air commentary during a presidential inauguration imagining what would happen if Trump were assassinated and who would take over (they happily concluded that Obama would continue as POTUS), or the willing acceptance by a woman that she doesn't need to be married or have a father around to have a baby and then raise it, or indoctrinating our youth to think that gender shouldn't follow a strict "male" or "female" choice, or indoctrinating our youth to think that sexuality is a choice (and not determined by birth, or genetics; imagine that logic?), or indoctrinating our youth to believe that gender is fluid (it can change depending on what the person feels), or pushing the narrative that raising a child by a same-sex couple is equivalent to a mother-father couple (each gender teaches a child certain qualities; it's not about the child not getting enough love or care), or the destructive belief that because others have so much more than they need, that wealth should be redistributed so others can be comfortable. The liberal mind disavows religion, disavows the laws of Biology, promotes implicit theft (by all-too-willing to take from others; jealousy), promulgates poverty, and furthers the decay and erosion of society and the dysfunction of its members.
I have gone into a few chosen examples below of what liberals believe and what the liberal mind has produced, and I apologize that they are disjointed and perhaps not the best of examples, but they happen to be the ones I've chosen for this article.
SOCIALISM - Liberals want stuff; they believe government should take care of them and they don't care at what cost it is provided.
Today's liberal colleges and universities, today's Democratic Party, and today's minority groups clamor for a socialist government - one that provides the country's non-achievers and underachievers every essential service and benefit for a comfortable life. They claim that these are what every individual is "entitled to" from their government. Why should they be constrained by a lack of education, or lack of ambition, or lack of a job, or lack of a father to the children they willingly bear?
Socialism is a system of government control over the economy of a nation. In a socialist country, the individual is unimportant when compared to the welfare of the group.
To accept this is to reject the Declaration of Independence. To reject the Declaration of Independence, in favor of socialism, is to reject the very premises on which this country was founded: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness...." The premises, of course, are four-fold: (1) That every individual enjoys certain inalienable rights (rights that can never be surrendered to a government), including Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (ie, property and all the efforts and rewards in obtaining property); (2) That government is instituted among men, deriving its powers from the consent of the governed (individual sovereignty; government derives from the people - they decide, through consent, which powers government will have over their lives and communities; (3) That the primary role of government is to secure and safeguard the individual's inalienable rights; and (4) That when government fails in this primary purpose or otherwise becomes destructive of its ends, the people have a right to alter or abolish it (including deciding to separate or secede from the body politic tied to that government, thus breaking allegiance/political bonds with that government).
To reject these foundations is to accept the notion that government, and not the people, hold all political power and that government can rule over the individual in any way it thinks is best for the "good of the collective" (the general good) and make decisions accordingly, including suspending rights that can no longer be viewed as "inalienable." Under socialism, individual rights become temporary until they need to be surrendered or regulated for the good of others.
Benjamin Franklin's words remind us of the consequences:
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." But the consequences are far worse. Far from "not being deserving of Liberty," the liberal who adopts socialism over the assurances in the Declaration, actually will surrender his liberty, probably never to regain the notion of individual sovereignty again.
Willing ignorance and rejection of our founding ideals isn't "open-mindedness"; it is sheer idiocy.
ALINSKYITES - Liberals see themselves as change-agents, with total disregard to the norms, institutions, guidelines, and boundaries that help provide a framework for acceptable conduct in civilized society and total disregard for acceptable tactics.
Because liberals are often one-issue individuals (gay rights, transgender rights, BLM, abortion rights, open immigration, no racial profiling for Muslims, freedom from religion, anti-Trump), they are often passionate about that issue and also oblivious to the views of others. We recognize many of them as protesters; We see them with their faces covered up in some instances, we see them protesting whenever and wherever they can, we see them all over college campuses, we see them carrying signs that most would find offensive (yet they are the first to cry when something offends them), we often have a hard time figuring out if they are males or females, we hear them chanting rehearsed, pre-fed lines and sound bites, and we spot them all over social media. The one thing we know is that when we hear them speak or see what they write, we know they are clueless, essentially functionless, and unfortunately, useless to society. They offer nothing positive. They don't want to take us forward down the road, only backward.
And hence, they are perfect Saul Alinskyites. These functionless idiots serve a purpose to someone like Saul Alinsky, to a party like the Democratic Party, to socialists and communists like Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.
In 1971, a rabid progressive/liberal named Saul Alinsky wrote a book titled Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. Essentially, he wrote it as a playbook for those who think like him and who desire radical change through politics. His book would be the foundation for today's Democratic Party's "community-organizing" initiative. It would outline how to use subversive tactics in order to seek political power. It was such an influential book that some very notable persons subscribed to it, including Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Frank Marshall Davis, and President Barack Obama. [One might recall how Obama was a protégé of Ayers and Dohrn, and that his mother was linked to Frank Marshall Davis].
What Rules for Radicals teaches, specifically, is how Liberals and Progressives (ie, the Democratic Party) can effectively use the weaknesses in our political system, as well as the weakest members of society, and how they can ultimately bring about the socialist state that they ultimately seek. In fact, he begins the book: "What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away." Alinsky then provides a collection of rules (12 to be exact) to guide the process. If anyone should doubt that the playbook he outlined is for ignoble (shameful) goals, just read his forward, in which he acknowledges who inspired him: "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins - or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer."
[Taken from Steel-On-Steel; see reference that follows] Progressives exploit the weaknesses inherent in the system, made weaker by pitting opposing forces against one another. They also oppose independent, morally strong, educated people because those individuals, especially in groups, can't be manipulated easily. They attempt to end-run constitutional rights with social contract and dialectic consensus methods. Alinskyites engage in large-scale social engineering, attempting to unfreeze a society using chaos, and to then refreeze it in a new predefined shape. The dividing lines they polarize people on are most often racial, economic, religious and political. The main goal of Alinskyites is to cause social instability through subversive and divisive rhetoric. One method is to control the outcome of the education system by lowering the standards of education so that it creates a dependent class. As adherents to the Cloward-Piven strategy, they use their political platforms to overload a society with social spending programs and class warfare to the point that hatred and division cause social panic. Once they've created a problem,
they propose themselves as the answer and use wealth transfers and the trumping of rights as the method to bring about "equality."
In his book, Alinsky further discusses the eight (8) levels of control that must be obtained before a true social state can be created and how, once again, to turn America's "useless idiots" into "useful" ones in order to achieve that goal. The eight levels of control are: Healthcare (control healthcare and you control people), Welfare (take control of every aspect of their lives), Poverty (increase the poverty level; poor people don't fight back when everything they need to live is provided to them), Debt (increase the debt as high as possible; that way taxes have to be increased, this producing more poverty), Gun Control (remove the ability of people to defend themselves from government; that way government can establish a police state, if necessary), Education ( thought control), Religion (remove the belief in God from the government and schools), and Class Warfare (divide people into the wealthy and the poor and vilify the wealthy; this will cause discontent and make it easier to tax the wealthy even more to support the poor).
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they've come to revere."
Question: How many liberals and progressives know that through their activism, their one-issue politics, their participation in community organizing efforts, they are moving the United States towards socialism? Do they even know what "socialism" is? Do they know that Alinsky merely simplified and modernized Vladimir Lenin's original scheme for world conquest by communism (under Russian rule, of course)? Do they know that the same levels of control were originally embraced and promoted by Karl Marx? Do they know that "useful idiots" (that is, useless idiots "weaponized" for political power) have destroyed every nation in which they happened to seize power and control? And if they actually knew and understood all this, do you think that they would willingly seek the destruction of this country?
Question #2: How many levels of control have been obtained already in the United States? All but one, right? All levels of control have been achieved except gun control, and we see how aggressively and rabidly liberals are seeking it. You have to ask yourselves why it is such a top priority for them. President Obama sought gun control and Hillary Clinton was even a stronger advocate. She, as most other liberals do, immediately turn a shooting incident into a mandate for gun control laws (even though most incidents could have been prevented if the government had been diligent in actually enforcing the laws already on the books!) As you can see, the Progressives have done their homework, have embraced the Alinsky model, and have been successful at fundamentally transforming not only the character of too many people in this country but transforming the country in general.
Question #3: How have the "useless idiots" (the ones targeted through so-called "community-organizing" efforts) been benefitted? Who has really benefitted by the Alinksy method? Feeling empowered by the hype and promises made in community-organizing, and feeling empowered by being part of a social-change movement, liberals open their minds so much to grasp this power that, in the process, they lose reason, accountability, common sense, and yes, even grey matter. They become like Stepford Wives... totally submissive to the party and robotic in their speech and actions. They are pawns without realizing it, and having no understanding of how politics works (the intense adversarial nature of it), they don't see how they are simply being used for the benefit of others. In what world would a government that has complete political control allow a large group of people to breed without consequence and without responsibility, while providing little or nothing by way of economic benefit? At some point, the free ride will end and they will be treated like the liability and burden that they are. By the way, Josef Stalin was the one who coined the term "Useful Idiots." (Once he concentrated his power by manipulating them, how did his regime treat them?)
Ironically, if you look at the history of the Alinsky model and its place in progressive/liberal politics, you'll notice that making temporary "useful" idiots out of "useless" idiots, for social change often does nothing meaningful for those "idiots." They may get a bone here and there, but the real benefits are to others (ie, the wealthy political leftist elite)
Conservatives are finally catching on the Alinsky method and are familiarizing it for several reasons: (1) They want to help identify and defeat the divisive tactics of the left; (2) They want to use those same tactics to their own advantage or to counter the left; and (3) They want to help explain to certain groups that they are intentionally being manipulated. As we on the right can easily see, many of the people (drinking the "kool-aid") aren't even aware that they are being manipulated ("Being, in essence, weaponized against their fellow man." Steel-On-Steel)
As political elites and strategists have known for a very long time now, certain groups, including the poor, the dependent, and the overly open-minded liberal, are easily manipulated. Hillary Clinton herself remarked that they are stupid and easily manipulated. James Carville, a onetime Democrat political consultant and former Bill Clinton campaign manager, came right out and said that "not only are most Democrats politically clueless; they're easily manipulated by the puppet masters of their party as well."
IMMIGRATION - Liberals see immigrants (lots of them) as essential to their cause - to their plan for social and political change - and don't care about the legality part