Year End; Time to Wake Up

It has become somewhat traditional for me to review the Spherical Model on the last post of the year. (Also at other times, such as early March, the anniversary of when I started the blog in 2011.) I’ll get to that eventually. But I want to lead into that by first talking about a podcast I was listening to the other day.

The host of Cwic Show is Greg Matsen, and the person being interviewed, Julie Behling, did her master's thesis on the underground Christian churches in the Soviet Union. She is the author of Beneath Sheep's Clothing and has a documentary with the same name coming out in January. 

screenshot from Cwic Show December 15, 2023

One detail I hadn’t known about the Soviet Union was that the KGB had infiltrated the churches. All of them. The clergy were either cooperating with the KGB, or they were KGB agents. Behling offers details about how they had done this, and why. But it came down to controlling what people believe, because that is what totalitarian tyrannies must do.

Then she added that, in her research, she was somewhat shocked to find that Communists had also infiltrated a solid half of American Christian churches, more than a century ago.

She mentioned Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, who spent some time in the US in the 1930s (I wrote about him here), who was sad to come to the Union Theological Seminary only to find that they scoffed at the idea of Christ’s divinity and atonement for sin. Those were the same lapses he had found in the German clergy as they acquiesced to Hitler.

Back when I was attending homeschool conferences, more than a decade ago, I heard Pastor Voddie Baucham speak. He defined having a Biblical worldview as believing in Jesus, who lived a perfect life, died for us, and suffered for our sins as our Savior. That is what I believe, and that is doctrine in my religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So I was shocked when he told us that less than 10% of professed Christians have this Biblical worldview, and only 51% of pastors have it. I think that’s evidence of the infiltration.

I heard a talk recently—I think it was Ken Ham telling a story from his childhood, but I could be wrong about who it was. Anyway, he recalled the pastor had been telling the story of the feeding of the 5000 with the loaves and fishes. The pastor had explained that, once a young boy had pulled out his meager amount of fish and bread to share, it had incentivized everyone else to share what they had, and then there was plenty. The storyteller’s father went up to the pastor afterward and told him, “That’s not what happened.” The pastor had taken the miracle out of the story, along with Jesus’ divine power. And he’d made the story pointless. If enough people had brought food and to spare, there was never anyone in need of being fed, so why would the story even show up in scriptures? More likely, it was remarkably miraculous, and that’s why it got recorded. Church leadership that doesn’t believe in the divinity of Christ means they are not Christian, and they are leading the flock toward something else that is not good.

What Behling said had taken place in the infiltrated churches was a replacement of the divine doctrine with the “Marxist construct of oppressed versus oppressor”; in other words, social justice—even though it took until recent decades for them to start using that term.

Matsen and Behling got into a section where they were discussing some various flavors of authoritarian tyranny.

I’ll share some of the transcript here, so you can see the attempts to define various forms of authoritarian tyranny. [GB is Greg Matsen, and JB is Julie Behling.]

GM: I’ve noticed in reading your book—obviously I don’t know about the documentary yet—but in the book you use the term Communism quite a bit. That’s kind of a term that isn’t used as much. It’s Marxist, maybe, or, moving on to 2.0 here with woke, etc. You have a background in studying Communism, right?

He asks her about the terms, so she begins with some definitions:

·        Socialism is when the government owns the means of production and is in charge.

·        Communism is when the government owns the means of production, and this government is instituted through a violent overthrow of the previous regime.

·        Marxism is the oppressed versus oppressor construct that's the playbook for preparing a society to fall to Communism.

JB: So if you can identify a group of people who either are oppressed or who can be made to feel oppressed, you can rile them up to anger and stoke the grievance and say, “Hey there's your oppressor. Tear down that system of power.” The systems of power are torn down and weakened, and now the Communists can come in and assume authority.

This caught my attention, because I have this in my basic article about the Spherical Model:

People tend to be afraid of the chaos of anarchy. Lenin saw this. One way to gain totalitarian power is to create chaos and then promise to solve the problems of chaos (crime, poverty, lack of safety on all levels) by offering government solutions, until the revolutionaries have managed to get themselves installed as dictators. This was the purpose of Trotsky’s idea of perpetual revolution: Place power in our hands, and we will see that you are fed and housed and protected—that is, if the dictator was so minded once the power was achieved. Everywhere that Communism has been tried, it took hold because people gave in to this desire for government to provide protection and food and shelter. It works on a people who do not trust their own ability to provide, and it works especially well when chaos reigns to make it difficult for people to provide for themselves. Revolutionaries therefore cause anarchy so that they can implement their own totalitarian tyranny.

I think Behling is right when she is saying that the oppressed versus oppressor tactic is to create chaos that will allow the tyrants to step in and take control.

Behling says, “What we have brewing here, it's not exactly like the type of Communism that the Soviets had. It's worse.” Matsen asks her why it’s worse.

JB: Because it's more crafty. And it's more like the Communist Chinese system, where it's this weird marriage of Communism and Fascism and then, honestly, a little bit of Monopolistic Capitalism thrown in for good measure. It's the most abusive forms of government fused together with this—what they're hoping for—Global Leadership with all the technocratic controls that they— we now have with being in the 21st century, and it's truly frightening.

The Spherical Model allows us to see the relative badness or goodness of a philosophy graphically. You can determine how close the ideas bring society to freedom, prosperity, and civilization, or alternatively how close they bring society to tyranny, poverty, and savagery. For a fuller discussion see this summary. Or, for more detail, see all the articles on the website, starting with "The Political World Is Round."

The political, economic, and social spheres of the Spherical Model

There are slight flavor differences between Communism, Socialism, Fascism, the overarching philosophy of Marxism, as well as what Behling calls Monopolistic Capitalism—another way of saying Oligarchy or rule by businesses and controllers of money. These are all southern hemisphere on the Spherical Model, mostly on the statist side, or controlled by the government, although some (oligarchs and organized crime possibly) on the chaos or anarchic side of tyranny. But they’re all bunched together, down toward the bad pole of tyranny.

Fascism, Socialism, and Communism are all statist tyrannies,
and thus they take up approximately the same location
on the Spherical Model.

There’s discussion about the way tyranny—Marxism, Communism—is being presented here in the West, particularly in the US. It’s like a virus, or a cancer, that spreads. But, because the West was healthy (not a lot of abject poverty), it was hard to convince a poor class to rise up in rebellion, allowing for the tyrannical takeover.

JB: Communism—you can see it as a virus, or as a cancer, and it spreads to various parts of the—different organs and different systems, and eats it up, and takes it over. And, you know, Antonio Gramsci, his whole plot, you know, he was back there in Italy as a Marxist, and very stressed out that the West was not falling to Communism, in the 1930s. And so he’s the one who came up with cultural Marxism, and said, “OK, we’ve got to infiltrate these cultures—the West has this cultural hegemony that is resistant to Communism; we’ve got to go in and take those things over.”

I mean, before the businesses could be taken over, our culture was already taken over to a good enough extent that that was possible. So, yeah. We’re in a very late stage, because it’s far beyond the culture at this point.

There’s a part of the book of Revelation that I’ve been looking at, in chapter 13, about the beast that rises up out of the sea. This beast has multiple heads and crowns. Symbolically, it seems to be the various powers reigning around the world, and interconnected together as one “beast.” One of the heads is mortally wounded—but then comes back to life. I have looked at this and wondered if this is Communism, or one of the other words we’ve listed and defined above. We fought a World War to wipe out this attempt at controlling all the peoples of the earth. We said, “Never again!” And yet, here we are, with our college campuses preaching the Gramsci version, cultural Marxism, where everyone is either oppressed or oppressor. There’s an attempt to control our ability to make a living, or to buy and sell, based on whether we have bought into this party line. It’s as ugly as it ever was. “We’re in a very late stage,” Behling says.

"La Bete de la Mer," a French tapestry showing
John the Revelator, Satan the dragon, and the sea beast
of Revelation 13. Image from Wikipedia.

Matsen, at one point, adds this:

GM: I really like that you said that they’re using Fascism, because that’s 100% true. It’s so funny, because they call anyone who leans right of them, which is almost everyone, a Fascist. What a Fascist really means, they’re using business; they’re using the current institutions, right, that are not owned by the state. And that is Fascism. And they’re using it better than any Fascist has ever used it before. And so, again, that’s the idea of adapting to the West and using their system, where now they are the Fascists that are, again, infecting and using and coercing the free enterprises to—and free organizations and institutions in the West—to tow the party line.

So, again, it isn't what you call it; it's how far into tyranny the idea is. If people used the Spherical Model, they couldn't be fooled into thinking anything "right" of cultural Marxism is Fascist; cultural Marxism is just a way of being Fascist—or totalitarian tyranny. 

Behling tries to give us some hope. I mean, why point out these things if there isn’t any hope of recovery?

JB: And I really do have hope—I mean, I’m a little bit doom and gloom here—but I do have hope that there are so many good people, so many good Christians, so many good people who love freedom that, if we can wake up enough people, we have this window of time right now—if we can wake up enough people—that these agendas will not be able to come to full fruition. That is my hope.

There is some reason to hope. I know so many good people, as she does, so many good Christians and also good people of other faiths, who love freedom, and truth, and want to preserve our God-given rights. Governments are instituted to protect those God-given rights, but government is fire, and it seems to fuel itself and grasp power unto itself that it hasn’t been given by the people.

One purpose of the Spherical Model is to clarify. It isn’t necessary to understand all the nuances and differences among the various words we use for tyranny. It’s only necessary to know whether something leads to Freedom, Prosperity, and Civilization, or whether it instead leads to Tyranny, Poverty, and Savagery. Those things are ascertainable with a few basic questions—and a lot of truth.

May this coming year be a year where we bring more people to an awakening, with truth—offered with love and caring, but always by giving and sharing truth.

Fascism Isn’t Right or Left; It’s South

Earlier this week Ben Shapiro wrote a piece called “Fascism Isn’t Right-Wing.” It's in response to a typical question from media, this one from Jake Tapper to Chris Christie, asking whether support of Trump is a sign of authoritarianism. Shapiro explains a few things rather clearly, which I’ll share. But, as with many attempts to explain fascism and other ideologies, I think, “This is clearer on the Spherical Model.” Every now and then it’s worth re-sharing that model—after all, it’s what the blog is about—so I’ll do some of that today, after what Shapiro brings up in his piece:

Authoritarianism is not what people in the media think it is. They think authoritarianism is Donald Trump tweeting. But there are many forms of authoritarianism. In fact, fascism is an element of both Left and Right. It is not merely a Right-wing action. Authoritarianism can just as easily be implemented by a series of executive orders that go outside the Constitution, that radically re-shift the balance between people in the government, something Joe Biden does with alacrity.

It's likely Churchill didn't actually say this, but the
quote will do for today's post. Found here.

So, fascism = authoritarianism. The error is in assuming it’s always right-wing authoritarianism and that the left wing could never be that. Later in the piece, he says this:

The truth is that fascism as an ideology is closer to the American Left than it is to the American Right. Fascism is an ideology that was generalized in response to communism, but it drew from Marxism, Hegelian politics, and progressive-era ideas, which is why many of the early supporters of Mussolini were members of the Left, including people who had worked in Woodrow Wilson’s administration who went on to work in the FDR administration.

So we know that fascism means authoritarianism. And it’s related to Marxism, which spawned communism and socialism, also progressivism and probably a few more -isms as well—each one authoritarian, meaning coercion and top-down control.

But what do we mean by Right and Left?

Common belief says that fascism is right. Far right. So, to stay as far away from that as you can, you go left. Maybe all the way to communism.

Is communism as far as you can get from fascism? Because communism is authoritarian. And, didn’t we say earlier, fascism = authoritarianism?

On August 29 Glenn Beck was talking about authoritarianism as well. First he quoted the entirety of a piece by Emma-Jo Morris, the political editor for Breitbart: “Morris: The 2024 Election Is Going to Be a Vote of Defiance.” Here’s the first paragraph of that piece:

Leading up to the 2024 election, there are a number of pressing issues Americans will consider—rampant illegal immigration, skyrocketing inflation and price of living, violent crime marring cities—but those issues are now against the backdrop of a palpable shift toward authoritarianism. And a vote for Trump in 2024 will be a vote of defiance.

Her assertion is that people will be voting against the authoritarian regime that has been imposed on them. And she offers plenty of examples of that authoritarianism—that tyranny that we’ve been tolerating, hoping it was just something that would pass, but that we can no longer tolerate.

Then Glenn Beck responds, with a warning about an overreaction.

Now, I think that there are real ways that can be done constitutionally. But I warn you, there is going to come a time where, even on our side, many will say, “Screw the Constitution. There are things we have to do.” That is always trouble. Always a sign you don’t want to be in that group.

Please, be aware of this. There are forces, on many fronts: on the left, who wants to destroy the Constitution; and those now posing as the right, but they’re not the right. They’re the fascistic left.

In America the choice is not right or left. It is either anarchy or complete control.

I’ve heard him use that last line before, changing the left/right model from communism to fascism, and instead labeling the far extremes as either anarchy or complete control.

I’m not saying he’s wrong. And neither is Ben Shapiro. I’m saying the Spherical Model can clarify. It offers more perspective on the relative closeness or distance of various political ideas, or ways of governing. I’ll just review it quickly (repeated from here, and from the website).

 

Political conversations tend to describe the far ends as extreme, assuming there’s some virtue in being balanced in the middle. And we refer to our nation as center right—just a little more conservative than exactly center.

But what are the extremes? Do we assume communism or socialism at the extreme left, and fascism at the extreme right?

That can’t be right, because communism and fascism are both totalitarian statist tyrannies, just slightly different flavors. Nazi means “national socialist party” and the communist Soviet Union’s name was Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

So if Nazism and communism aren’t diametric opposites, then what are the logical extremes?

How about total government control, or tyranny, versus total lack of government control, or anarchy?

That’s better. Then freedom is that perfect balance in the middle.

But wait; there’s a problem with this model too: It’s common in history for people suffering in anarchy to turn for relief to total government control—anything for security. But in this model, as a people move to the left, they have to pass through that balanced freedom section. You’d think that it would be very common for someone to stop and say, “Hey, this freedom is good. Let’s stop going leftward and stay here.” Yet that pretty much never happens. But going directly from chaos to state control is historically common.

Plus, notice that there’s not that much difference between the tyranny of the state and the tyranny of anarchy. Total government control means the state has all the power—the police, the military. The state can do what it wants, and the mere citizen is without any rights except what the state decides to grant.

Anarchy, on the other hand, means that power belongs to whoever is stronger and meaner than the next guy. If you threaten to beat people up (or kill them) if they don’t give you all their belongings, and you’re strong enough to mean it, then you have power. If someone else is stronger or better armed than you are, then you have to yield power to them.

In other words, anarchy, while less organized, is power in the hands of the strongest and best armed—just like a tyrannical government.

So maybe government tyranny and anarchic tyranny are pretty close to the same thing. When I show this, I use a ribbon, labeled at the ends, and fold it in half, so it looks something like this:

Tyranny and freedom are really the opposite extremes.

Not bad. But it puts all those different kinds of tyrannies in the same location, and maybe there are differences.

A simple line doesn’t give us the dimensions we need.

So, how about if we use three dimensions—a sphere? If we draw a line at the equator, we can separate freedom (northern hemisphere) from tyranny (southern hemisphere). And then we can draw a longitudinal dividing line, with more local interests in the western hemisphere and larger interests—from state to nation, to international, in the eastern hemisphere.

I call this the Spherical Model.

The Political Sphere

Down in the south, you can see that one side of tyranny is the chaos of anarchy, and the other side is the totalitarian control of government tyranny. It’s easy to get from one to the other—which is what much of world history has shown us. You can have communism, socialism, and Nazism as separate patches in their quartersphere, based on how much control they exert on their people (southern direction), or how far they plan to expand (toward the eastward extreme of world domination).

Up north in the freedom zone, location is mostly a matter of whose interest. Free people don’t yield power to a governing authority beyond the appropriate interest. Families make their own decisions about the care, upbringing, and education of their children. Communities on up to cities and counties decide on local law enforcement and protection needs. States (or provinces) deal with their particular infrastructure and laws. Only very limited powers are granted to a nation—as are enumerated in the US Constitution. And that sovereignty would never yield to an international power, but would cooperate with other free sovereignties concerning international issues.

 

OK, so, you find Nazism/fascism, communism, and socialism all in the south—toward tyranny and away from freedom. And they’re all in the bottom section we call statist tyranny, because the tyrants are the government, rather than simply mob bosses, as you’d see in chaotic tyranny. Either way, you have coercion of people by those in charge—and they’re in charge because they have the power to force their will on others.

Fascism, Socialism, and Communism are all statist tyrannies.

Why does this matter today? Because authoritarianism—that is, tyranny—is not Donald Trump tweets (or Xs, or Truths, depending on what you call the platform he uses). A tweet doesn’t coerce anyone to do anything against their will. It’s just an expression of a few words. They may or may not represent an idea that you like. But, unless they come from a person in power with commanding force behind them, they’re just words.

But there’s been a consistent mislabeling of Trump as a fascist—because he’s “a right-wing extremist”; i.e., a Republican. And we know the worst fascist was Hitler; ergo, Trump = Hitler. And, they think, we have to do anything to stop today’s Hitler from getting power.

What do they mean by anything? Keeping your vote for him from counting. Stopping you from expressing your opinions in the marketplace of ideas. Using lawfare. Suing him—and anyone supporting him. Lying about him. Covering up crimes of those he opposes. Instigating powers over the people, particularly over the people supporting him. In fact, anything includes any fascist and/or corrupt anti-Constitutional thing you can think of. (See examples here, from a couple of years ago, before we were seeing this year’s attacks.) 

So, if you put the opponents of Trump on the sphere, they’re definitely in the southern hemisphere of tyranny. And they’re mainly on the statist side of the tyranny hemisphere.

Meanwhile, the one they call the authoritarian: in reality, his ideas, and his followers resemble a lot of ideas you find in the northern hemisphere—the freedom hemisphere.

How do you know? You ask questions about the ideas, rather than throw out epithets about the person. You find out if those ideas coincide with freedom. And a good gauge is whether they adhere to the US Constitution.

I was surprised as anyone to find Trump’s presidency mainly up in the freedom zone. His stated positions during his campaign said he would be, but I hadn’t believed him. Not everything got fixed. But, as you’d expect in a freedom society, economic security went up—for all demographics. That was after a decade of statist tyranny had tried to convince us America was in decline and all we could do was manage the decline.

I was never sure—I’m still not—that Trump fully understands and embraces the US Constitution, which is based on God-given rights. But I know the Constitution is up in the freedom zone. And he adhered to it better than we’d seen, at least since Reagan. The contrast between Trump and the current White House resident is stark—as different as north from south.

So what are the questions? What are the principles of freedom? I’ve provided a few lists over the years, depending on purpose. Here’s a list I quoted in 2016, from Benjamin Constant in 1816. I used only Benjamin Constant’s words, but I turned it into a bullet-point list to make it easier to grasp:

First ask yourselves, Gentlemen, what an Englishman, a French-man, and a citizen of the United States of America understand today by the word “liberty.” For each of them

·        it is the right to be subjected only to the laws,

·        and to be neither arrested, detained, put to death or maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will of one or more individuals.

·        It is the right of everyone to express their opinion,

·        choose a profession and practice it,

·        to dispose of property, and even to abuse it;

·        to come and go without permission, and without having to account for their motives or undertakings.

·        It is everyone’s right to associate with other individuals, either to discuss their interests, or to profess the religion which they and their associates prefer,

·        or even simply to occupy their days or hours in a way which is most compatible with their inclinations or whims.

·        Finally it is everyone’s right to exercise some influence on the administration of the government, either by electing all or particular officials, or through representations, petitions, demands to which the authorities are more or less compelled to pay heed.

 

That’s what it looks like to have freedom. If you’re considering policy—or the policies supported by a candidate that you’re vetting—then you might find this list useful:

·        Is the policy being debated something that an individual has the right to do, and therefore has the right to delegate to his/her government? For example, a person has the right to protect his own life and property. He can, therefore, combine resources with his neighbors and hire a government entity, such as a sheriff, to do that job for him. Similarly, the several states can combine to delegate the power of defending the nation to a national government entity. Conversely, a person does not have the right to take his neighbor’s excess grain production, for example, and bestow it on himself, because his neighbor was more prosperous in a particular season. He can, of course, ask his neighbor for charity, but he cannot coerce the neighbor to give. That would rightfully be considered theft. Therefore the person cannot delegate the redistribution of wealth to the government to do for him—that would place him too far south on the sphere.

·        Does the policy infringe in any way on God-given natural rights, such as those enumerated in the Bill of Rights? Does the policy infringe on the free exercise of religion or try to establish a particular sect as a state religion? Is political speech hindered? Does the policy infringe on the right of citizens to bear arms? Does the policy constitute an illegal search or seizure? Does the policy deprive a person of life, liberty, or property when the person has not committed a crime for which that deprivation is the just sentence? Does the policy try to claim for government a power that was not specifically granted in the Constitution? etc. If the policy infringes on the God-given rights, then government cannot take that power without usurping power from the people—which is too far south on the sphere.

·        Is the idea being debated a proper role of government: some aspect of protection (including national defense, protection from interstate crime, enabling international and interstate commerce, standardized weights and measures and currency to protect the value of wealth, the judiciary that guarantees the protective laws), as enumerated in the Constitution? If not, then accepting the idea is outside the Constitution—and is too far south on the sphere.

·        Is the perspective appropriately local? It is important that any issue be handled at the most local level possible. Parents should decide the means, methods, and curriculum for educating their children, for example. An issue that affects a state should be handled at the state level, not the national level. National decisions should not be ceded to some international body. An inappropriate interest level is too far south on the sphere.

We’ve only talked here today about the Political Sphere. There are two other spheres that overlie the political sphere: the Economic Sphere and the Social Sphere. For the Economic Sphere, the polar opposites are north/prosperity and south/poverty, with the same east/west lines. For the Social Sphere, north is civilization and south is savagery, again with the same east/west lines. 

There are additional questions for these. You can read them here. 

Pending a theoretical book someday, the largest explanation of the Spherical Model is the website: SphericalModel.com. While I don’t have the illusion that this obscure website and blog will change people from thinking with the right/left model, I nevertheless think it would be a better way for people to understand abstract ideas that they only think they understand.

The Existential Threat

It was not a unifying speech Biden gave September 1^st. Once again The Babylon Bee gets it right. They satirically quote him as saying, "It's real simple, folks! America can be united if we can just murder everyone who disagrees with me. Peace in our time, Jack!"

Joe Biden give angry anti-Republican speech
amid scary lighting, September 2, 2022.
Image found as a screenshot from here.

Some have speculated that the dark, scary lighting and angry, hate-filled rhetoric was not necessarily intended to get his base to hate Republicans; that would just be a bonus. The speculation is that he intended to upset the people he is accusing—us conservatives—to the point that we will riot or take to the streets, or otherwise do something overt that they can construe as insurrection. And then they can make some arrests and say, “See, we told you so,” thus silencing the rest of us.

Maybe. It’s hard to get into the head of evil unless that’s a place you frequent.

Mocking is probably the best response. And there has been quite a lot. Here are a few, plus some other brief responses.

Responses

Communist version as a meme,
found here

No need for comment. Found as a screenshot here,
where memes were discussed, not created.

Post on a Facebook group, including
the ubiquitous and unhelpful COVID-19 warning.

Ben Shapiro tweet about the speech.
Found as a screenshot here.

 

Ted Cruz tweet about the speech.
Found as a screenshot here.

Law vlogger Viva Frei points out the detail
about the timing of the speech.
Found as a screenshot here.

 

Video and Written Responses

·        “Biden’s Catastrophic Speech” by Charles C. W. Cooke for National Review, September 2, 2022. 

·        “Biden is Trying to be Trump but Turning into Hitler” Mr. Reagan podcast, September 2, 2022. 

·        “POTUS Speech; More Oh Canada; Viva Frei-Days (& Anniversary Stream)” Viva Frei livestream, September 2, 2022. 

·        “Ep. 127: Trump's EMPTY FOLDERS! Biden Speech; Zuck LOSES; Louden; Danchenko & MORE!” Viva & Barnes Sunday night livestream, September 4, 2022. 

·        “Trump Judge UNSEALS More in Mar-a-Lago; Biden Declares WAR on MAGA; Hungover Joe BACKPEDALS” Robert Gouveia livestream, September 2, 2022. 

A Better Plan for Unity

I have a better plan for being unified: We all unify around the Constitution, the document detailing the limits of government, enumerating the powers granted to this government, and enshrining the natural rights government cannot be allowed to infringe upon—that ideal we have pledged allegiance to, after all. This will lead to peace and prosperity.

Or, in Spherical Model terminology: freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

This speech was just a week or so after Biden referred to his political opponents as “semi-fascists.” When confronted about what he meant by that, he said, “You know what I meant.” Yes, we do. We recognize that he is going to throw a hateful label on anybody who dares to disagree with him and his agenda (and that of his behind-the-scenes controllers).

There isn’t any amount of name calling that will actually confer the status of fascist onto Constitution-abiding citizens. What we’re seeing is more accurately confession by projection; they’re doing what they accuse us of. 

In a recent post we quoted Michael Millerman saying,

If you can legitimate calling all of your enemies fascists, and you can legitimate, you know, fascists are so much the scum of the earth that they should be cancelled—or killed—well, you’re not very far from legitimating the killing of your political enemies.

In other words, The Babylon Bee’s assessment of the speech is on point.

The term fascist has been tossed around as an epithet more than usual lately. But my guess is, if you did one of those man-on-the-street interviews, you would find people who know it’s a bad thing, but they can’t define it or accurately identify fascist behavior.

I think the Spherical Model can help with the needed education. This is an ongoing education project. I’ve done this before. The fact that my blog does not reach millions of people means I need to repeat a lot.

Back in April 2019 I used my dictionary to define fascism. The essential definition is:

A system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, private economic enterprise under centralized governmental control, belligerent nationalism, racism, and militarism, etc.

A couple of months ago, while talking about the EPA ruling, Joshua Philipp on Crossroads casually defined Nazism this way:

Essentially government using corporations and their control over corporations or public private partnerships to do things that they can't legally do.

I think that’s only part of it. But it’s a part we’re increasingly seeing, here in America, where we pledge allegiance to a constitutional republic, not some sort of authoritarian dictatorship. So it’s disturbing. (See Mark Zuckerberg’s interview on Joe Rogan's show.)

Even people on our side seem to be unclear on the definition, especially when comparing it to the fellow Marxist labels of communist and socialist. They’re not different, except possibly in some particular seasoning in the standard recipe. On the Spherical Model all the flavors of totalitarian statist tyranny occupy the same portion of the sphere.

The Spherical Model, showing fascism, socialism,
and communism all occupying the same quadrant, 
because they are all just forms of statist tyranny.

 

What Was in the Speech?

I read, rather than listened to, the speech. I used this transcript. 

Biden used the word “democracy” 31 times. He referred to our “republic” twice, one of those calling the “republic” the guardrails for our “democracy.” So he seems unclear on the concept of our being a constitutional republic.

He refers to Republicans 16 times. Two of those had “mainstream” attached as a modifier; all others were used to reference this threat to democracy, which I’m inferring means “threat to our power.”

He doesn’t define precisely how to identify those threatening, evil MAGA Republicans, who are different somehow from other Republicans that he "can work with." But he does characterize them as extreme—more than once. He says they do not respect our Constitution—and he spent some time, using the historical setting, to set himself up as a Constitution follower and protector, against all obvious reality. He claims these evil extreme Republicans are angry, hateful, and violent. In fact, he used the term "clear and present danger," which is a term used to justify entering into war.

What are the crimes of this existential threat to America?

1.      They refuse to accept the results of a “free and fair” election.

2.      They support pro-life rather than a mother’s “right” to kill her baby in the womb (or possibly shortly thereafter in California).

3.      They support the definition of marriage that has been used by societies for millennia.

4.      They don’t characterize January 6, 2021, as an insurrection.

That first one seems to be the biggest sticking point. “Elections” comes up 11 times. Twice he uses the term “accept the results” of “free and fair elections.” The thing is, we so-called MAGA Republicans, more than any other segment of society, want free and fair elections. That’s why we have been insisting on the rule of law. And each time Biden insists that election fraud is without evidence, we bring out more evidence. (I’ve offered some here, here, and here.) There are boatloads of evidence showing that the results are not what was foisted upon us. Meanwhile, these accusers have spent six years trying to assert that Donald Trump was not a legitimate president.

Yet our reaction has not been to riot in the streets. It has been to amass evidence, bring it before courts when possible, but look mainly toward the future by writing legislation to prevent fraud in the future. And to activate as poll workers and poll watchers. How dangerous!

He claims, “We’ve seen election officials, poll workers—many of them volunteers of both parties—subjected to intimidation and death threats.” I have seen zero evidence of intimidation and death threats toward Democrat poll workers. Zero. Not a case. If there is one somewhere, it is an anomaly. If there are threats against Republicans, that is the Democrat machine doing business as usual.

Neither the second nor third on that list of accusations was a Trump agenda priority. Those were priorities of the people who were looking for someone to represent our viewpoint. He was smart enough to go along with us, particularly in our desire to have Constitution-adhering justices.

That fourth one—we don’t call it an insurrection, because it wasn’t one. Definitions matter. There was violence that day; no one disputes that, and we all decry any violence. However, it is appearing more and more to be instigated as entrapment. Despite their hopes that mass riots would result, only a small fraction participated in violence. The only deaths were caused by police toward non-violent protesters. Most of the rally goers that day remained outside, nonviolent, and uninvolved in anything but a rally. Among the ones they’re accusing are regular Americans, grandparents, patriots, the vast majority of whom at worst walked through the capitol peacefully after being invited in by police. Yet good, nonviolent American citizens have been held, often without charges, unable to talk with counsel, unable to see family, often in solitary confinement, for months going on years so far—just the way authoritarian dictators treat their political opposition.

But we nonviolent law-abiding citizens who voted for Trump are the biggest threat to America?

There’s a segment where he says things I agree with:

This is a nation that honors our Constitution. We do not reject it.

This is a nation that believes in the rule of law. We do not repudiate it.

This is a nation that respects free and fair elections. We honor the will of the people. We do not deny it.

And this is a nation that rejects violence as a political tool. We do not encourage violence.

We are still an America that believes in honesty and decency and respect for others, patriotism, liberty, justice for all, hope, possibilities.

It’s just that each of these things means something different in reality than in Biden world. He and his “team” do not honor our Constitution. They repudiate the rule of law (see my last post). They don’t want “free and fair elections”; they want outcomes their way at all costs. They stoked violence all through the summer of 2020, refusing to call it violence when we saw our cities being destroyed. And then they falsely accused hundreds if thousands if peaceful rally goers of trying to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021, describing it as the worst violence since Pearl Harbor. Worse than 9/11.

As Mr. Reagan said on his September 2 podcast linked above, Trump didn’t create a movement; he got in front of it. He said he would represent the people who weren’t getting represented. He would stand up for them, and he would do what he said he would do. His following through on that is what got my vote the second time around.

Trump is a populist, not a constitutional scholar. So, as long as he keeps his promises to uphold our Constitution—to get back to it—he has supporters. These are not blind followers. And these are certainly not a threat to our constitutional republic.

Biden, et al., meanwhile, is the actual threat. The liar. The hater. Perhaps the most stunning line of the evening was, “I give you my word as a Biden.” We know what that is worth, as he sells his country to China and anyone else willing to pay.

He’s right that America faces a dire threat. But it is from him and his authoritarian fascist cronies, not from the MAGA Republicans or any other keepers of the Constitution.