Dick Bishirjian

Campus violence has occurred as “students” protest conservative speakers invited by conservative groups. As these activists are interviewed, it becomes clear that some are motivated by the ideology of “democratic socialism.”

That caused me to visit lecture notes that I prepared in courses I taught on the subject of Communist Ideology in the late 1970s and early 1980s. More than 35 years ago, a “Cold War” with the Soviet Union shaped U.S. foreign policy and the Soviet Union had engaged in acts of subversion as many American intellectuals joined the Communist Party.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, I was thankful that I would no longer have to study the theoretical works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. And I put aside my notebooks on Communist Ideology.

Recent interviews with anti-Fascist activists, many dressed in black and their faces covered to protect their anonymity, indicate that some form of Communist ideology–called “Democratic Socialism”–is being taught to impressionable high school and college students.

Look for a high school or college teacher, if you see bad behavior by young people and Tucker Carlson has found one.

Michael Isaacson is, or was, an Adjunct Instructor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.  Tucker Carlson’s interview with this “professor” is very informative both in terms of what Isaacson espouses  and the weakness of arguments for free speech when faced with a  committed revolutionary.    We’ll hear more from the likes of Michael Isaacson and the students he corrupts with appeals to “democratic socialism,” but listen carefully to Carlson’s interview and the careful, ideological, distinctions that this Marxist-trained “professor” makes in defense of radical, violent, activism.

Frankie Dettori wins today’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp Racecourse (Paris), today, Sunday, October 7, 2018

On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated and Barry Goldwater put aside his ambitions to run for President of the United States.  Sen. Goldwater was cantankerous, but not stupid.  He knew that after the assassination, 1964 would not be a Republican year.  F. Clifton White thought otherwise, and organized a “Draft Goldwater” movement.  That effort, focused on the person of Sen. Goldwater is responsible for what became the modern “Conservative movement” that, in time, supported a former actor, Ronald Reagan, in two campaigns for Governor of California and three efforts to win the nomination of the Republican Party for President of the United States.

Today, thirty years after President Reagan left office, we’d like to rally once again for a candidate for President who shares our principles of limited government, free trade, reduced government regulations, reform of regulations driving up the cost of a college education, a national security policy designed to protect us from enemy states, and clear headed proposals to addressing the fiscal burden of our bloated “entitlements.”

The incumbent President who plans to run for re-election in 2020 will curry favor with conservative Republicans, even though of the five principles listed above, President Trump is serious only about deregulation.

We can do better, but to whom shall we rally?

The absence of a conservative candidate for President is the reason that Donald Trump is President. Our politics have become so hazardous that few choose to run for political office.  With few exceptions, those who have are tired and shopworn.

Except, that is, for Cong. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Cong. Dave Brat (R-VA), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Senators Cotton and Cruz come to mind as potential candidates in 2020, but the lowly status of the U.S. House of Representatives disqualifies Congressmen Jordan and Brat as candidates until they win election to the U.S. Senate.

At least, that’s how it worked in the old days when experience as a Governor or Senator gave name recognition sufficient to launch a campaign.

Today, however, another condition has been added–“Celebrity”–and there are many of them. Ronald Reagan in 1964 was a celebrity, but search as we may for a celebrity “conservative” with political ambitions, we find none.

That suggests that it will be necessary for conservatives aspiring to become President become celebrities. Though manufacturing celebrity is difficult, it can be done, and for aspiring conservative politicians like Jim Jordan or Dave Brat, that can be accomplished by forming a national conservative party.

I made the case for a national conservative party twice, once in 2017 and most recently in 2018.

Jim Jordan’s rural Ohio district has few resources for a run for President, but a national audience and significant numbers of wealthy Americans will respond him if he starts an effort to form a national conservative party. Dave Brat’s district in Virginia was the capital of the Confederacy and an effort to revive Richmond, Virginia’s national influence will be well received in some Southern circles.

Also, Dave Brat is an accomplished economist with a degree in theology!

With a benevolent God behind him, even a bean counter may become President of the United States.

Though we are focused on the fight to nominate a conservative justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, we should be more concerned about the absence of a strategy to win the next war.

Recall that newly elected President Donald Trump announced that he was sending an “armada” to back up his threats to “Little Rocket Man.”  Somehow the Navy Department wasn’t notified where the carrier attack group was to go. The Carl Vinson “armada” was engaged in a joint action with the Australian Navy in the Indian Ocean. Eventually, President Trump deployed several carriers in the South China Sea.

Good strategy–for World War II. But, not for 2018 when Russia and China have readied new anti-aircraft carrier missile systems.

As long ago as 1982 when Argentina used French Exocet missiles to damage or destroy British ships including a guided missile destroyer and a container ship, it became clear that aircraft carriers were, as one Defense Department analyst observed, “floating coffins.”

Apparently, President Trump isn’t aware of that and in March 2017 aboard the USS Gerald Ford declared that this most expensive aircraft carrier was unsinkable and pledged to fulfill a plan to build twelve new carriers.

It takes about five years after a major war for the U.S. military to decline and lose its ability to fight the next war. That was the case after WW II when, in 1950, General McArthur was caught unprepared when communist China crossed into North and South Korea. After the war in Vietnam concluded in 1975, it took about eight years to understand that we were not adequately prepared for even a minor invasion of Grenada.

Military strategy, like national security strategy, requires grand strategists, but they are hard to find.

Ronald Reagan, though a former actor, thought long and hard about how to win a war with the Soviet Union and conceived of a space-based Strategic Defense Initiative. That was nearly 40 years ago and James Holmes , Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College, finds only two 20th century strategists who may be ranked in the top five: Sir Julian S. Corbett (1854-1922) and the American, J. C. Wylie (1911-1993).

Like millions of other Americans concerned about the divisiveness of American politics, my attention was riveted on the confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh.  While surfing from MSNBC, CNN to Fox, I often turn to C-SPAN and find myself watching  rock music performers at MTV.  They jump about in what I like to call “Gymn Choreography” and the audience sways to the beat of the music with arms upraised, as if in a Protestant tent meeting. I infer from this display that many millions more of youthful Americans are preoccupied with the many venues that offer access to rock, rap and other forms of popular music.

Allan Bloom, author of Closing of the American Mind, was very critical of the effect of this form of music on the young.

“This is the age of music and the states of soul that accompany it.” Rock music is king, Bloom writes, and very few students have any familiarity with classical music.  Rock music responds to students’  sexual desire. They understand that “rock has the beat of sexual intercourse.”  Feeding that desire is a music industry whose market is children.

The rock business is perfect capitalism, supplying to demand and helping to create it. It has all the moral dignity of drug trafficking, but it was so totally new and unexpected that nobody thought to control it, and now it is too late.

Bloom’s dismal conclusion must be balanced by a report in PJ Media for September 20 that features an essay by Chris Queen titled “The 10 Most Influential Songs of the Early Years of Contemporary Christian Music.” The prevalence of Christian music and Christian publishing should remind us that a vibrant Christian culture still exists in which music has other uses than sexual arousal.

The word “bizarre” best describes last week’s confirmation hearings of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. That led to a discussion I had with a colleague–a former English literature professor–about Christine Blasey Ford.

Neither of us are psychologists and cannot bring knowledge of that discipline to explain Dr. Ford’s actions, but my colleague began the discussion by commenting that in a former era, Dr. Ford would be described as an “hysteric.” I commented that it would be interesting if someone in the field of Psychology– if we could find one who is not a Progressive leftist–would explore the range of behavior of “hysterics,” or other conditions related to repressed memory.

There is a similarity, I thought, to Dr. Ford’s recovery of an experience of sexual assault to the more common recovery of memory by some women that they were molested by their father. My colleague recalled the case of a friend who was, as she described it, “horrifically abused” by her stepfather as a young girl, with her mother’s consent. Her response, unlike the tremulous Dr. Ford’s, was to get a handgun.

I’m convinced that Dr. Ford falsely remembers that Judge Kavanaugh assaulted her when she was fifteen, and sees that event, and herself, in world historic terms. Once on track with a “confidential” allegation  that she knew would be made public, Dr. Ford cooperated with politicians and “attorneys” whom she knew would use her as a political weapon.

That Kavanaugh’s friends in prep school were heavy drinkers who enjoyed their “Animal House” reputation may explain how Dr. Ford connected Judge Kavanaugh with a repressed memory of an incident conveniently remembered at a time when that memory would command a large public.

The historian of Medieval millennialism, Norman Cohn, recounts many examples in Pursuit of the Millennium of persons who appear–seemingly from nowhere–carrying a letter from God. A gullible public believes their claims to be divinely inspired and  joins him on a journey leading to murder and mayhem. One such character was Hans Bohm, known as the Drummer of Niklashausen, who in 1476 had a vision that led to deadly consequences.

In the case of last week’s bizarre hearings, we are faced with two choices: accepting that Dr. Ford recovered her memory of an assault by Judge Kavanaugh only many years later when Kavanaugh became a public personality. Or, explaining her claims as similar to visionaries, half a millennium ago, whose apocalyptic claims disrupted civil society in late Medieval history.

The 17th Amendment provided for direct election of U.S. Senators. The history of that act is told by Dr. Ralph Rossum in his 2013 study titled Federalism, the Supreme Court and the 17th Amendment.  Progressives, frustrated by the election of U.S. Senators by the Legislatures in the States, threatened to call for a Constitutional Convention to replace the one ratified in 1788.

Replacement of the method of election of member of the U.S. Senate by direct elections allowed ideological currents to take precedence over the interests of States in elections for U.S. Senators. There are now a sufficient number of ideologically driven members of the U.S. Senate to place modern ideology in the forefront of American politics. That is visible in today’s hearing on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Dr. William Miller’s lecture on the nature of “ideology” was prepared for his course at Yorktown University on “Roots of Modern Ideology.”

William Miller received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy, with a minor in English literature, from Gettysburg College. He subsequently went to Notre Dame where he was a student of Gerhart Niemeyer and Charles Rice and received his doctorate in Government and International Studies and his law degree. In this lecture from his course on “Modern Ideology,” Dr. Miller introduces his subject and explains the importance of understanding the nature of modern ideology.

Introduction to Modern Ideology