Curtis Dahlgren
"DEMONIC: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America": Coulter's new book
By Curtis Dahlgren
"Among the antiquated institutions which had to be abolished as obstuctions to real progress were, religion, family life, private property [etc[ . . Religion was to be replaced by the exact sciences, family life by free love, private property by collectivism . . " — Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910) re "Nihilism"
"If the very old will remember, the very young will listen." — native American saying
I'M NOT SAYING ANN COULTER IS VERY "OLD," BUT SHE DOES A FINE JOB OF REMEMBERING — especially those 1960s. I've used the word nihilism in 26 of my columns and Ann opens chapter one by saying:
"The demon is the mob, and the mob is demonic. It is the nihilistic mob of the French Revolution; it is the revolutionaries who seized control of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century; it is the Maoist gangs looting villages and impaling babies in China; it is the Ku Klux Klan terrorizing Republicans and blacks in the South; it is the Los Angeles riot that left fifty dead and did $1 billion of damage after the first Rodney King verdict; it is the bloody riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention . . "
How soon we forget! Not to mention, the Cambodian Killing Fields.
"A century earlier, Fyodor Dostoyevsky captured the identical sickness in 1860s Russia in his novel The Demons, depicting the corrosive effect of the French Revolution's ideas on Russian society. After so many years of peace and calm, the older generation couldn't imagine that anything could go wrong with the conscienceless children they had raised. Exhibiting the mad narcissism of the liberal intellectual set, the fashionable people in the Demons are constantly entertaining deranged revolutionaries at the town's most desirable social events." [Coulter, p. 172]
"[T]he term [nihilism] was first used by Turgueniev in his celebrated novel, Fathers and Children, published in 1862. Among the students of the universities and the higher technical schools Turgueniev had noticed a new and strikingly original type — young men and women in slovenly attire, who called in question and ridiculed the generally received [traditions] of social life, and who talked of reorganizing society on strictly scientific principles. They reversed the traditional order of things even in trivial matters of external appearance, the males allowing the hair to grow long and the female adepts cutting it short, and adding sometimes the additional badge of blue spectacles." — Dahlgren; August 18, 2010; Those Sixties Hippies: When Rascals Rule (re 1860s)
"This was the basic set piece for all the university protests of the sixties. The students would cook up some synthetic 'cause' that seemed to link them to the Third World people, and law enforcement would move in and restore order. Then college administrators would demand an immediate surrender to the drug-fueled protesters while heaping praise on them as the most idealistic and brilliant generation in all of human history. It was the perfect icubator for creating the Worst Generation." [Coulter, p. 159, re 1960s]
"In material and moral progress Russia had remained behind the other European nations, and the educated classes felt, after the humiliation of the Crimean War, that the reactionary regime of Emporer Nicholas must be replaced by a series of drastic reforms. With the impulsiveness of youth and the recklessness of inexperience, the students went in this direction much farther than their elders, and their reforming zeal naturally took an academic, pseudo-scientific form.
"Having learned the rudiments of positivism, they conceived the idea that Russia had outlived the religious and metaphysical stages of human development, and was ready to enter on the positivist stage. She ought, therefore, to throw aside all religious and metaphysical conceptions, and to regulate her intellectual, social and political life by the pure light of natural science." — Dahlgren, ibid (re 1860s)
"Student radicals behaved like feral beasts not only because of the group dynamic of a crowd, but because they had no criticism. They never had a reason to pause, reflect, or repent because, between acts of violence, they were busy reading press reports describing them as 'idealists' — indeed, 'the best informed, the most intelligent and the most idealistic this country has ever known' . . . " [Coulter, p. 159, re 1960s]
"I will it, I insist on it! Let my will stand instead of reason." — Juvenal (60-130 A.D.)
"More than a century ago, Gustave Le Bon perfectly captured the liberal psychological profile in his 1896 book, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Le Bon — a French physician, scientist, and social psychologist — was the first to identify the phenomenon of mass psychology. His groundbreaking book . . paints a disturbing picture of the behavior of mobs. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini used his book to learn how to incite a mob. Our liberals could have been Le Bon's study subjects." [Coulter, p. 5]
—
"Such doctrines [revolution] could not, of course, be preached openly under a paternal, depotic government, but the press censure had become so permeated with the prevailing spirit of enthusiastic liberalism, that they could be artfully disseminated under the disguise of literary criticism and fiction, and the public very soon learned the art of reading between the lines . . .
"The programme of the government was extensive enough and liberal enough to satisfy, for the moment at least, all reasonable reformers, but the well-intentioned, self-confident young people to whom the term Nihilists was applied were not reasonable. They wanted an immediate, thorough-going transformation of the existing order of things according to the most advanced socialistic principles, and in their youthful, reckless impatience they determined to undertake the work themselves, independent of and in opposition to the government . . ." — Dahlgren (re 1860s)
—
"Liberals don't like to talk about the French Revolution because it is the history of them. They lyingly portray the American Revolution as if it too were a revolution of the mob, but merely to list the signposts of each reveals their different character. . .
"The markers of the French Revolution were the Great Fear, the storming of the Bastille, the food riots, the march on Versailles, the Day of the Daggers, the de-Christianization campaign, the storming of Tuileries, the September Massacres, the beheading of Louis XVI, the beheading of Marie Antoinette, the Reign of Terror, , and then the guillotining of one revolutionary after another, until finally the mob's leader, Robespierre, got the 'national razor' . . " [Coulter, p. 100]
—
"As fiercely as ever he had arraigned the royal tyrant in the past, Patrick Henry denounced the presidential tyrant of the future, who would take the field at the head of his army, fasten his galling yoke upon the necks of the people and make one rush for the American throne." — James Morgan ("Our Presidents";Macmillan)
"President Hayes said that a Napoleon in the White House in time of war could do almost as he pleased. Possibly he could, but it is doubtful. Anyhow, the popular instinct has seen to it that no man of that stamp has approached the White House." [Dahlgren, ibid]
CONCLUSIONS
"UNTIL NOW" we have never had a Napoleon in the White House in time of war who failed to go to Congress for advice and consent, but the 1960s radicals Coulter writes about are in High Places. That brand lives by the Executive Order, not government by Checks-and-Balances.
Ann Coulter's new book is her best ever and should go down in history as a very significant one (it took two years to research). Ann's not just a columnist joking around anymore, but a much more "sober" historian.
Rush Limbaugh says that he'll tell us when it's time to panic, and he hasn't done so yet. But even Rush sounds more "sober" than ever.
Put your money where your mouth (or pen) is, and buy Ann Coulter's book!
P.S. A headline in the June 15, 2011 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said:
"Tests show U.S. children ignorant of history; 80% or more fail to demonstrate they're proficient" [Sam Dillon; reprint from New York Times
"Overall, 20% of fourth-graders, 17% of eighth-graders and 12% of high school seniors demonstrated proficiency on the exam . . . "
"SO WHAT?" you might say. "Isn't history just a bunch or names, dates, and places?"
NOT! History is a lot more than the who and the when and the "what," but also the WHY! Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.
And our public schools aren't even trying to teach those "LESSONS." That's why the publication of a book such as Demonic is so encouraging.
Annie, your timing is impeccible.
© Curtis Dahlgren
June 19, 2011
"Among the antiquated institutions which had to be abolished as obstuctions to real progress were, religion, family life, private property [etc[ . . Religion was to be replaced by the exact sciences, family life by free love, private property by collectivism . . " — Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910) re "Nihilism"
"If the very old will remember, the very young will listen." — native American saying
I'M NOT SAYING ANN COULTER IS VERY "OLD," BUT SHE DOES A FINE JOB OF REMEMBERING — especially those 1960s. I've used the word nihilism in 26 of my columns and Ann opens chapter one by saying:
"The demon is the mob, and the mob is demonic. It is the nihilistic mob of the French Revolution; it is the revolutionaries who seized control of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century; it is the Maoist gangs looting villages and impaling babies in China; it is the Ku Klux Klan terrorizing Republicans and blacks in the South; it is the Los Angeles riot that left fifty dead and did $1 billion of damage after the first Rodney King verdict; it is the bloody riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention . . "
How soon we forget! Not to mention, the Cambodian Killing Fields.
"A century earlier, Fyodor Dostoyevsky captured the identical sickness in 1860s Russia in his novel The Demons, depicting the corrosive effect of the French Revolution's ideas on Russian society. After so many years of peace and calm, the older generation couldn't imagine that anything could go wrong with the conscienceless children they had raised. Exhibiting the mad narcissism of the liberal intellectual set, the fashionable people in the Demons are constantly entertaining deranged revolutionaries at the town's most desirable social events." [Coulter, p. 172]
"[T]he term [nihilism] was first used by Turgueniev in his celebrated novel, Fathers and Children, published in 1862. Among the students of the universities and the higher technical schools Turgueniev had noticed a new and strikingly original type — young men and women in slovenly attire, who called in question and ridiculed the generally received [traditions] of social life, and who talked of reorganizing society on strictly scientific principles. They reversed the traditional order of things even in trivial matters of external appearance, the males allowing the hair to grow long and the female adepts cutting it short, and adding sometimes the additional badge of blue spectacles." — Dahlgren; August 18, 2010; Those Sixties Hippies: When Rascals Rule (re 1860s)
"This was the basic set piece for all the university protests of the sixties. The students would cook up some synthetic 'cause' that seemed to link them to the Third World people, and law enforcement would move in and restore order. Then college administrators would demand an immediate surrender to the drug-fueled protesters while heaping praise on them as the most idealistic and brilliant generation in all of human history. It was the perfect icubator for creating the Worst Generation." [Coulter, p. 159, re 1960s]
"In material and moral progress Russia had remained behind the other European nations, and the educated classes felt, after the humiliation of the Crimean War, that the reactionary regime of Emporer Nicholas must be replaced by a series of drastic reforms. With the impulsiveness of youth and the recklessness of inexperience, the students went in this direction much farther than their elders, and their reforming zeal naturally took an academic, pseudo-scientific form.
"Having learned the rudiments of positivism, they conceived the idea that Russia had outlived the religious and metaphysical stages of human development, and was ready to enter on the positivist stage. She ought, therefore, to throw aside all religious and metaphysical conceptions, and to regulate her intellectual, social and political life by the pure light of natural science." — Dahlgren, ibid (re 1860s)
"Student radicals behaved like feral beasts not only because of the group dynamic of a crowd, but because they had no criticism. They never had a reason to pause, reflect, or repent because, between acts of violence, they were busy reading press reports describing them as 'idealists' — indeed, 'the best informed, the most intelligent and the most idealistic this country has ever known' . . . " [Coulter, p. 159, re 1960s]
"I will it, I insist on it! Let my will stand instead of reason." — Juvenal (60-130 A.D.)
"More than a century ago, Gustave Le Bon perfectly captured the liberal psychological profile in his 1896 book, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Le Bon — a French physician, scientist, and social psychologist — was the first to identify the phenomenon of mass psychology. His groundbreaking book . . paints a disturbing picture of the behavior of mobs. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini used his book to learn how to incite a mob. Our liberals could have been Le Bon's study subjects." [Coulter, p. 5]
—
"Such doctrines [revolution] could not, of course, be preached openly under a paternal, depotic government, but the press censure had become so permeated with the prevailing spirit of enthusiastic liberalism, that they could be artfully disseminated under the disguise of literary criticism and fiction, and the public very soon learned the art of reading between the lines . . .
"The programme of the government was extensive enough and liberal enough to satisfy, for the moment at least, all reasonable reformers, but the well-intentioned, self-confident young people to whom the term Nihilists was applied were not reasonable. They wanted an immediate, thorough-going transformation of the existing order of things according to the most advanced socialistic principles, and in their youthful, reckless impatience they determined to undertake the work themselves, independent of and in opposition to the government . . ." — Dahlgren (re 1860s)
—
"Liberals don't like to talk about the French Revolution because it is the history of them. They lyingly portray the American Revolution as if it too were a revolution of the mob, but merely to list the signposts of each reveals their different character. . .
"The markers of the French Revolution were the Great Fear, the storming of the Bastille, the food riots, the march on Versailles, the Day of the Daggers, the de-Christianization campaign, the storming of Tuileries, the September Massacres, the beheading of Louis XVI, the beheading of Marie Antoinette, the Reign of Terror, , and then the guillotining of one revolutionary after another, until finally the mob's leader, Robespierre, got the 'national razor' . . " [Coulter, p. 100]
—
"As fiercely as ever he had arraigned the royal tyrant in the past, Patrick Henry denounced the presidential tyrant of the future, who would take the field at the head of his army, fasten his galling yoke upon the necks of the people and make one rush for the American throne." — James Morgan ("Our Presidents";Macmillan)
"President Hayes said that a Napoleon in the White House in time of war could do almost as he pleased. Possibly he could, but it is doubtful. Anyhow, the popular instinct has seen to it that no man of that stamp has approached the White House." [Dahlgren, ibid]
CONCLUSIONS
"UNTIL NOW" we have never had a Napoleon in the White House in time of war who failed to go to Congress for advice and consent, but the 1960s radicals Coulter writes about are in High Places. That brand lives by the Executive Order, not government by Checks-and-Balances.
Ann Coulter's new book is her best ever and should go down in history as a very significant one (it took two years to research). Ann's not just a columnist joking around anymore, but a much more "sober" historian.
Rush Limbaugh says that he'll tell us when it's time to panic, and he hasn't done so yet. But even Rush sounds more "sober" than ever.
Put your money where your mouth (or pen) is, and buy Ann Coulter's book!
P.S. A headline in the June 15, 2011 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said:
"Tests show U.S. children ignorant of history; 80% or more fail to demonstrate they're proficient" [Sam Dillon; reprint from New York Times
"Overall, 20% of fourth-graders, 17% of eighth-graders and 12% of high school seniors demonstrated proficiency on the exam . . . "
"SO WHAT?" you might say. "Isn't history just a bunch or names, dates, and places?"
NOT! History is a lot more than the who and the when and the "what," but also the WHY! Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.
And our public schools aren't even trying to teach those "LESSONS." That's why the publication of a book such as Demonic is so encouraging.
Annie, your timing is impeccible.
© Curtis Dahlgren
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