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We seem to be turning into a low trust society — 38 Comments

  1. The idiocy of the leftist slogan “diversity is our strength” (leftists do love their insipid and mindless slogans) notwithstanding, it was a left-leaning professor (Robert Putnam of Harvard) who produced, some years ago, a study (later expanded into a book entitled Bowling Alone), which demonstrated, despite his initial reluctance to publicize the results, that social trust within a community or within a larger polity was eroded through the artificial and rapid introduction of non-assimilable groups into an existing population. This is exactly what any person well-informed about history and science would have predicted, but it is seldom acknowledged except by certain brave souls, such as the South African expat Ilana Mercer, who often posts incisive commentary at Townhall.com.

  2. I grew up in a high trust society. The family car always had a key in the ignition. Our front door was never locked. The grocer and druggist ran a tab, which was expected to be paid each month. And it was. School lockers never had locks. People shared tools with one another, expecting they would be returned. And they were. It was a different time. I miss it.

    A big worry around here these days is leaving your car outside the garage for any time, especially at night. The catalytic converter may be gone in the morning. Alarm systems, surveillance cameras, extra strength locks, and guns are common in most urban neighborhoods today. Exhibits of low trust. Not to mention the constant need for on-line security. The crooks, con-artists, swindlers, and fraudsters are everywhere. It’s sad.

    What has gone wrong? I can point to two things. (Not the only things, though.)
    1. A growing lack of fathers in homes.
    2.The war against the Boy Scouts.
    Fathers and Bopy Scoutmasters had a large impact on the characters of young men (Young men commit most crimes) back in the day. Both institutions have been under siege by the Democrats for many years. Those aren’t the only things, of course, but they were big when I was a kid growing up.
    We need good dads and scoutmasters to help youngsters find a straight path and develop an ethical core. Simple, no? Ha, going back to the days of my youth would take a major revolution in political and social thinking. Not going to hold my breath waiting for it. 🙁

  3. I agree with all that has been said.
    I would add that we are also an ill informed society. Last evening after dinner, my wife asked a guest what he thought of the Rittenhouse verdict. Although I cringed that she brought that up at that time, I was confident that we were on the same page. I was wrong. It became painfully obvious that he did not even know what she was talking about. This man is a professional. I suppose that is better than the situation with my daughter–who is also a professional. A few days ago we stumbled into a conversation about the verdict; something I normally would avoid. It became obvious that her factual sources were completely 180 degrees from mine. The conversation turned acrimonious before I finally cut it off. She actually believed that Rittenouse was armed with a military style, automatic assault rifle–after all it is even called AR; and that he carried it across the state line illegally.
    It is hard to develop trust, when you cannot even agree on basic fact. As we know the sources of false facts frequently overwhelm the truth.

  4. In my area there are an increasing number of cars being broken into, and while those who have been victimized complain, it appears that many of them had left their cars unlocked.

    They apparently insist on believing that today’s society is the high trust society they grew up in, and/or want to believe that people are generally honest, and not more and more of them thieves.

    Of course, as to who are just thieves statistics seem to show that a very small minority of people commit the vast many of crimes.

    To catch vigorously prosecute, and lock up these career criminals for long periods of time would seem to.be the obv solution.

  5. @ j e > you beat me to the Bowling Alone study, so I’ll go with Neo’s Door #2 “increasing numbers of people in the left’s favorite ethnic groups (black people, Hispanic people) don’t like the idea and are starting to see that they’re the ones who are suffering most at the hands of the left.”

    Not the Bee, a couple of days ago, linked an essay from the website Wrong Speak, and I was so captivated by the author that I read a half-dozen others.

    https://notthebee.com/article/read-on-as-thoroughly-based-black-man-andrew-b-coleman-dismantles-virtue-signalling-leftists-and-their-white-savior-syndrome

    (His name is actually Adam; the corresponding headline is correct; I’ve noticed that fixes seldom extend to URLs, because that probably causes too much linkage chaos.)

    The article itself. Powerful and so true:
    https://wrongspeak.net/you-are-our-villains-pretending-to-be-our-saviors/

    In case you missed it today, Ammo Grrrll’s post is a fitting counterpoint. Easily found, so I won’t add the link.

    Other recent posts by Coleman:
    https://wrongspeak.net/why-is-there-a-growing-black-conservative-movement/

    https://wrongspeak.net/conservatives-the-people-that-want-to-be-left-alone/

  6. I’m currently working on a post (tentative title, The Great Liquidation), discussing the way in which the key structures that support American society..or, in some cases, any viable society…being kicked away, sold off piecemeal, or just wantonly destroyed.  I’m talking about physical structures, legal structures, and social structures.

    The point about High Trust>>Low Trust transition is definitely worthy of inclusion in this list of bad things.

    I also hope to wrap the post up a few signs of potential hope…

  7. A visit to the FBI’s “Uniform Crime Statistics” (presuming the haven’t already been monkeyed with in the name of wokeness and “social justice”) is very informative as to just who has been committing all of the violent and other crimes in this country, and it ain’t the Amish.

  8. Wrong Speak is a group platform, founded by Coleman, and has a (surprise!) diverse group of writers.
    https://wrongspeak.net/contributors/

    These appear to be “normal” people, not professional pundits.
    It’s a nice change.
    I haven’t read too many more (yet; they are kind of addictive), so can’t speak to their range of ideological diversity, but if we average them with any given Democrat site I think things would come out even.

    I was prepared to argue with this poster’s viewpoint (Thomas St. Thomas), until I got close to the end. Could be a useful piece to send to wavering liberals, as the site is not yet a knee-jerk VRWC toxic name.

    https://wrongspeak.net/is-critical-race-theory-racist/

    Another “wedge” post, by Rachael Jean.
    https://wrongspeak.net/majority-privilege-is-real-yet-inevitable/

    And I really liked these, both by Coleman.
    https://wrongspeak.net/the-difference-between-the-elite-elitists-and-why-it-matters/

    https://wrongspeak.net/the-insinuation-that-black-conservative-thought-is-not-their-own/

  9. I have noticed a start of a conservative trend among people that I know, that used to be stalwart Democrats. I think the excesses of the current Democrats are forcing people to wake up, and start paying attention.

    At least I hope so.

  10. http://www.amerika.org/politics/what-is-a-middleman-minority/

    “At this site, we promote the idea that instead of blaming certain ethnic groups for the dysfunction of our society, we look at diversity itself and see that it inevitably produces conflict, culture erasure, and genocide.

    The middleman minority theory backs up our view:

    In many countries around the world, particular ethnic minorities have played the role of tradesmen and small businessmen. These groups include the Jews in Europe, the Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Indians in Africa, and the Parsis in India (Eitzen 1971; Palmer 1957; Porter 1981). These middlemen occupy a unique position of. intermediate status as they operate between the elite and the masses, between the producers and the consumers (Bonacich 1973). The similarities in the social, political, and economic situations of these various groups are reflected in what has been referred to as “the Jews of” metaphor (Zenner 1991, pp.52-54). For example, the Chinese have been described as “the Jews of Siam” and “the Jews of the East,” and Indians as “the Jews of East Africa.” Indeed, this metaphor has been applied to many different ethnic groups by both Western and non-Western observers.

    Middleman minorities are often hated by both sides of the host society’s distinct status gap. Middleman minorities are perceived as being clannish, disloyal, and unscrupulous outsiders.

    If a group of higher-IQ — let us say on average above 95 — minority people comes into a foreign land, they will immediately seek out a niche, generally consisting of the economic activity that for cultural reasons (even if aesthetic) the host population avoids.

    This puts them into a horrible position. They have a niche, sure, but at the same time, a detested niche, and any time things go wrong, they are suspected of using this niche to manipulate others.

    This came to the front in the L.A. Riots where the impoverished Black residents of South Central saw their Korean shopkeepers as exploiting them, despite being businesspeople risking an investment that no one else would take.

    Diversity makes enemies of us all.”

  11. It does seem intentional. The left/Democrats have long seen their own road to greater power as appealing to a bunch of special interest groups that together will add up to a majority, if only a bare majority.

    In 1921, when the theses on the united front were issued, the issue of unity was conceived of one in which communists would seek to establish certain common goals with the opportunist parties, and then reveal the opportunists as traitors when they failed to take the fight to its logical conclusion. As the tide of revolution receded, it was seen as a good idea – if you’ll permit us to stretch an analogy – to hitch the cart of communism to the social democrats and hitch a ride until the next revolutionary wave came along. In order to accomplish such a manoeuvre, it was understood that the dedication and commitment of the communist parties would ensure that they were left ideologically unscathed by this dangerous manoeuvre. What this left out of account, or at least failed to take nearly seriously enough, was that the Third international, formed in 1919 was itself a sort of federation of parties, for despite acceptance of the 21 points being the condition of membership, many of the parties nevertheless included strong opportunist wings.

    Out of that came the modern version of the United Fronts… ie. womens movement, gay rights movements, etc… and all being the victims of the same race (as in germany dictating all were victims of the same race/religion)…

    each group is made up of hundreds of contradictory groups like tiny fishing nets catching things and standing for everything and nothing at once… how do you resolve women who think men looking at women is hostile in one faction with women who find liberation in showing their nude bodies to men for money as a career choice? you dont… you just pretend to foment both, tell them they are great no matter what twisted wacked out thing they do (just as long as that puts them on the side that grants power), and do what you want as their factions represent every point including contradictory ones, so you cant misrepresent them… anything you do they see as power in their favor… its truly genius…

    and like a quilt of women, gays, trans, homeless, addicted, criminal, etc… they will storm the Bastille and cut the heads off of the target on behalf of those that pretend to represent them in exchange for the power to help cut heads…

    Oh… and the funniest part is what bella dodd clues us into… that this is run by very wealthy families and groups of means… which is why people like musk and others dont fear the revolution but think to embrace it… with that they win permanent rulership for their posterity over everything else..

  12. Oldflyer wrote: “Last evening after dinner, my wife asked a guest what he thought of the Rittenhouse verdict. Although I cringed … ”

    Talk politics at Thanksgiving, and you’ll save on Christmas gifts. Follow me for more holiday tips.

    … I stole that joke — how’s that for low trust 😉

  13. Generally speaking homogeneous societies tend to be high trust. Good chunk of GDP in the Nordic countries is attributed to lack of heterogeneity in the society. A good book on this topic is Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity
    by Francis Fukuyama

  14. Speaking of Thanksgiving, loved the person on a major TV network whose suggestion for dealing with inflation in the cost of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner was to ditch the Turkey, to serve a lot of sides instead, and to charge each guest for the cost of their meal.

    What a classy and elegant solution!

  15. @Snow on Pine:

    Wait until you get the North Korean Newsreader extolling the virtues of Grass Soup.

  16. Andy reminds us of “Trust” by Fukyama.
    THANKS!

    AND Mesonman’s short essay and long commentary remind me that the US is uniquely fragile in this respect: because we are the most heterogeneous nation in earth. And absent a unification around the idea of America as an ideal, we have no glue remaining to be a coherent and governable nation.

    Destroying this ideal and possibility, and our history of renewing and reinvigorating it, is precisely the Woke/neoMarxist/CRTs objective.

    Deny them this prize and it’s “Game Over,” man!

  17. @ j e – back to Putnam’s book Bowling Alone:
    “that social trust within a community or within a larger polity was eroded through the artificial and rapid introduction of non-assimilable groups into an existing population.”

    I don’t remember that argument from the book, and a quick search on the internet isn’t turning up that assertion. It seems plausible, but determining whether plausible hypotheses hold up is the point of doing the studies. Do you have a reference, so I can see what you think Putnam used to support that claim?

    If he did make the claim as stated by j e, with supporting evidence, then I would venture to suggest that the existence of all three factors simultaneously is what really “breaks” the trust bonds, and not the factors individually.

    Otherwise, the high trust era of the early 20th century would not have been so characteristic of a nation comprised of so many different immigrant groups.

    Additional resources for the interested:

    Here’s an article by Putnam himself summarizing his thesis and research; “trust” is a factor of the primary theoretical construct.

    https://www.historyofsocialwork.org/1995_Putnam/1995,%20Putnam,%20bowling%20alone.pdf

    By analogy with notions of physical capital and human capital–tools and training that enhance individual productivity–“social capital” refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.

    https://beyondintractability.org/bksum/putnam-bowling
    Summary written by Brett Reeder, Conflict Research Consortium

    Having described what social capital is, Putnam turns his attention to how it has changed over time by conducting a meta-analysis of a large body of data from various sources. In doing so, he identifies a dominant theme: “For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago–silently, without warning–that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current” (p 27). Thus, social capital increased in the US until the 1970s and then suddenly decreased right up to the present. This theme is consistent across seven separate measures of social capital, including: political participation, civic participation, religious participation, workplace networks, informal networks, mutual trust, and altruism.

    Chapter by chapter explanations; this is the one about trust.
    https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Bowling-Alone-The-Collapse-and-Revival-of-American-Community/section-2-chapter-8-summary/

    Putnam explores changes that have occurred in Americans’ trust in one another. Citing the golden rule (do unto others as you would have others do unto you), he describes the idea of “generalized reciprocity.” People who believe in generalized reciprocity, he explains, are willing to help out another person with the assumption that, at some point, that person will probably help them in some way. This trust in others’ willingness to return a favor results in many positive outcomes for society. For example, members of a trusting society are healthier, more efficient, and often happier. According to Putnam, “Honesty and trust lubricate the inevitable frictions of social life.”

    The question “How trustful are Americans?” has been asked by pollsters for decades. As a result, Putnam is able to compare levels of social trust and honesty as they have changed over the 20th century. He uses charts and statistics to show social trust rose from the mid-1940s, peaked in the mid-1960s, and has been dropping ever since. The reason for the drop, he says, is generational. Even though the generation that grew up prior to the 1960s continues to be trustful, that generation is dying out. Younger generations, meanwhile, are increasingly distrustful of one another.

    Putnam describes two levels of trust: thin and thick trust. Thick trust is the trust that is earned over time through experience of a personal relationship. Thin trust, which is crucial to social relationships, is generalized trust in other peoples’ goodwill and honesty. It is thin trust that allows individuals to make agreements based on a handshake, or to believe another person will do the right thing. As levels of thin trust drop, Americans are more reliant on legal documents such as contracts to establish trust.

    I note that the decline in thick trust is amply illustrated by the rise of Trump Derangement Syndrome and its negative affects on family and friends with differing opinions. People have always fallen out over politics, but I don’t think there was anything as vehement in the era Putnam studied, and perhaps not since the Civil War, until the disruptions of the 1960s.

  18. Wikipedia isn’t too bad, although very brief, and points out something interesting that might have been more prominent if Putnam was doing his study today:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

    Putnam also cited Americans’ growing distrust in their government. Putnam accepted the possibility that this lack of trust could be attributed to “the long litany of political tragedies and scandals since the 1960s”,[1] but believed that this explanation was limited when viewing it alongside other “trends in civic engagement of a wider sort”.

    Compare to the relevant section from Putnam’s own article, linked at the beginning of my prior comment.

    Not coincidentally, Americans have also disengaged psychologically from politics and government over this era. The proportion of Americans who reply that they “trust the government in Washington” only “some of the time” or “almost never” has risen steadily from 30 percent in 1966 to 75 percent in 1992.
    These trends are well known, of course, and taken by themselves would seem amenable to a strictly political explanation. Perhaps the long litany of political tragedies and scandals since the 1960s (assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, Irangate, and so on) has triggered an understandable disgust for politics and government among Americans, and that in turn has motivated their withdrawal. I do not doubt that this common interpretation has some merit, but its limitations become plain when we examine trends in civic engagement of a wider sort.

    Up until the recent revelations about the corruption of the Obama-era FBI, DOJ, Department of State, Congress, and the White House, Americans still had a relatively high level of trust in most institutions of government.
    The additional revelations about corruption predating Obama and continuing after his tenure didn’t help.

    https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/05/17/public-trust-in-government-1958-2021/

    Public trust in government remains low. Only about one-quarter of Americans say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (22%).

    Thin trust got a lot thinner.

  19. ‘One is that increasing numbers of people in the left’s favorite ethnic groups (black people, Hispanic people) don’t like the idea and are starting to see that they’re the ones who are suffering most at the hands of the left.’

    I have been saying for decades that the left may not like how their antics turn out. The Virginia election demonstrated that majority of (for example) Hispanic’s voted Republican. Also, people of colour are active followers of God. Many are Christian.

    The heathens are about to wake up to the reality that the majority of people do not like their views on life.

  20. @ Artfldgr – “hitch the cart of communism to the social democrats”

    Tracking down your sources is always an interesting exercise. I thought that Bella Dodd was the best clue; however, the above phrase proved to be the key to the Internet Archives.

    From the International Library of the Communist Left:
    http://www.sinistra.net/lib/upt/comlef/cote/cotesdacoe.html

    The Comintern and the united front
    ….
    The united front tactic, launched by the Comintern in 1921, is still a problem of very contemporary significance for communists and workers today, because it is behind the banner of «Unity!» that workers’ struggles, over and over again, have been, are, and will be led down the path to defeat by the opportunist parties which infect the workers’ movement.

    It is therefore important for communists, as political leaders of the working class (whether the workers always appreciate that or not!) to wield the slogan of unity in a precise way that leads to the path of revolution and not onto the path of compromise with capitalism, and into that bosses hospitality tent known as parliament.

    In 1921, when the theses on the united front were issued,

    ..and so forth with Artfldgr’s excerpt.

    The infighting of the British Marxists in 1996 didn’t hold my attention, sorry; however, what I turned up about Bella Dodd did, because it shows that the loss of trust & social capital in America (per Putnam) was not in any way accidental.

    He might have been right about the contribution of generational trends and the isolating effect of television (and radio before that, and the internet afterwards), but the seeds were sown in the garden by the communists, and cultivated assiduously.
    (continued to another comment)

  21. Why is there so little social capital in America?
    Because the communist left has been deliberately eroding it for at least a century.

    https://unconstrainedanalytics.org/forgotten-testimony-dr-bella-dodd-warns-about-communism/

    Dr. Dodd was a lawyer, union activist and member of a the US Communist Party from 1932 to 1949, rising through its ranks in the national committee until 1949 when she was expelled during an internal purge of the Party. Interestingly and having parallels to the Left name-calling today on social media, the Party publicly denounced her by labeling her as being, “anti-Negro, anti-Puerto Rican, anti-Semitic, anti-labor, and the defender of a landlord.”

    She talks about how easy is [it] was to become part of the Left philosophy as, like many Americans, her heart went out to the underdog. “The Communist support seems to be large because people are sucked into things which seem to be good in themselves. They don’t recognize that the Communist Party uses these slogans, these generalizations, in order to break down their resistance, and ultimately they are tied in with the Communist movement. Some were against discrimination. We are against repression, against war, against fascism, and the Communist Party takes our best instincts and uses them against us by twisting us into a program which they want us to follow.”

    UA is making her complete 1953 testimony available for those who wish to read further into her remarkable testimony:

    Selected quotes follow, including these:
    (The linked article is in my next comment in this series.)

    “I was told by Gil Green, chairman of the party in New York State, that if ever communism came to America it would not come under the Socialist label or the Communist label but it would come under a label palatable to the American people.”
    ~
    “When we get ready to take the United States, we will not take it under the label of Communism; we will not take it under the label of Socialism. These labels are unpleasant to the American people, and have been smeared too much. We will take the United States under the labels we have made very lovable; we will take it under liberalism, under progressivism, under democracy. But, take it we will.”—Alexander Trachtenberg, member of the CPUSA’s Central Control Committee, at the Communist Parties National Convention, Madison Square Garden, 1944

    They weren’t making much of a secret of it, were they?
    But as Artfldgr often tells us, people didn’t listen.

    Or not enough, anyway, and those that did were vilified and marginalized.

    “We had men and women who were members of the State Legislature, over 100 men and women who were members of state legislature from Washington to New York. They were not elected on the Communist Party ticket, they were elected on the Republican ticket on the Democratic Ticket, the Farmer Labor Party ticket, Labor Party ticket.”

    And about that Bowling Alone thesis (I don’t know if Putnam ever referenced the CPUSA, but he should have):

    “The Communist conspiracy provides for the infiltration of every phase and field of American life. Communist objectives are [bullet points]:
    to create strife between labor and management and within the labor group itself,
    to cause people to be suspicious and distrustful of the Government and the law enforcement agencies thereof,
    to make them dissatisfied with the American way of life, particularly its economic system,
    to create doubts concerning their religious teachings,
    to set class against class, minorities against majorities,
    and even minorities against minorities when it suits their purpose.”

    Why do Socialist leaders like Bernie Sanders have 3 houses?
    Because that’s what they’ve always had.

    “There had been many things I had not really understood. I had regarded the Communist Party as a poor man’s party, and thought the presence of certain men of wealth within it accidental. I now saw this was no accident.I regarded the Party as a monolithic organization with the leadership in the National Committee and the National Board. Now I saw this was only a facade placed there by the movement to create the illusion of the poor man’s party; it was in reality a device to control the “common man” they so raucously championed.”

    But wait! There’s more!

    Some of which I recognized from other commenters and general “conversation” on the internet, but we really do need to bring it all out into the open again.

    Free if you order today!

    Setting themselves up as anti-Fascists so that people would assume anyone opposing them must be fascists; manipulating the black population in service to the revolution; control over money; control over language by changing the meaning of “good” words; creating conflict if none exists already, so it can be exploited to drag the public to the left.

    Teacher’s unions, including New York’s, were explicitly a part of that last technique.

    Seriously, RTWT – and that’s just excerpts from her testimony.
    (continued to another comment)

  22. The LINKs from the aforementioned sources.
    A very short excerpt from the 77-page document.

    https://unconstrainedanalytics.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Bella-Dodd-June-July-1953-HUAC-Testimony-1.pdf

    Mr. CLARDY. Did Communists, and did you when you were working with the Communists, make use
    of teachers to infiltrate political organizations?
    Dr. DODD. Teachers are an extremely valuable part of the Communist Party.
    First, they are great people for raising money and contributing money to the party. Secondly, they are an articulate group and good to look at. You can send them into any organization, and they can stand on their own two feet and speak up and be heard. One of the things we did was to use teachers in the various political parties. In New York State, we used them in the American Labor Party, and in the Progressive Party. There have been places where we sent them into the Democratic Party or the Republican Party to operate as Republicans and Democrats, you know, but to operate as Communists within their organizations.

    Mr. CLARDY. How do Communists on a college campus function?
    Dr. DODD. Where there was a unit of at least three or more members, they would meet regularly and function as a unit. …. At their meetings, they would discuss first the party line, get education on the Marxist-Leninist line and, second, they would discuss the question of how to penetrate other organizations. If there was no union on the campus, they would form a union.
    If it was too difficult to form a union, they would form a loose association in which the common problems might be discussed. They would attach themselves or form some connection with the youth, the young people, with the students on the campus.

    If there was a parents’ organization, they would join the parents’ organization. They would discuss their meetings and how to function in each of the organizations attached to the college. ….
    If the party wanted to issue something on the monetary system or on the question of immigration, or some other question or whatever it might be, the people who were specialists on the college campus were asked to send in research material.

    Mr. KUNZIG. How would the Communist professor attempt to influence students and other people?
    Dr. DODD. Well, as I said before, communism is a way of life, and it is almost like a religion. It becomes a part of you. It affects your entire thinking. It affects your attitude toward your students, toward your government, affects your attitude toward things that are happening day by day. Most Communist college professors begin by being very much interested in their students, and if they have a Communist philosophy, they pass it on.
    Many of them try to influence their students to become Communists. Any number of students have become Communists because they admired a professor who was going in that direction. Then he functions within all the other organizations on the campus in affecting their thinking, the question of choosing books for the library, the question of establishing curricula for the college.

    For instance, if you go through the catalogs of various colleges of America, you find from the period of 1925 to about 1948 or 1949 that most of the colleges, for instance, have dropped all their courses on ethics or religion; you will find most of the colleges dropped their courses — even the law schools dropped their courses — on constitutional law. That is a strange kind of thing, even in New York State. Many law
    schools dropped the courses on constitutional law.
    Mr. SCHERER. I didn’t know that.
    Dr. DODD. That is true. That change in curriculum is an interesting thing because it changes your method of approach. If your law schools drop their courses on constitutional law, how much more do the liberal arts colleges do it? Within the Constitution, within the Bill of Rights, we are very fortunate in that they were written at a particular time by a particular group of men. We have the whole genius of the American type of government. Unless the American people understand it and appreciate it, they can’t fight to defend it. When the Communists come along with something that seems so superior,
    they have nothing with which to oppose it.

    Mr. CLARDY. You say some of the law schools you are acquainted with in New York have actually dropped the study of constitutional law?
    Dr. DODD. In most places, it was not a compulsory part of the curriculum.

    AesopSpouse has often remarked to me that it seemed odd to study Constitutional Law without ever being required to read the Constitution itself, and that was at BYU law School in the 1970s, where the LDS Church explicitly holds as doctrine that the Founding and the Constitution were divinely inspired and supported.
    At least they still studied the precedents and cases!

    Her 1954 book, “School of Darkness” – full pdf.
    http://genus.cogia.net/

    And a short review.
    https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/bella-v-dodd/school-of-darkness/

    During the depression years she became concerned with the plight of the unemployed particularly in the teaching profession. There she encountered many communists who seemed to her to be the ones most concerned with the plight of teachers. She saw in the Communist Party a vehicle thru which she could express her love of humanity, and her vision of a better society with wider social justice. In time she became a member of the Party’s National Committee, and was intensely active in combating the Rapp-Coudert investigation of communist teachers, in supporting Loyalist Spain and in the “”united democratic front”” maintained during World War II. She was gradually repelled by the dictatorial methods of the Party and the constant struggle for power on the part of individuals and groups.

    Surprisingly, the left hasn’t completely corrupted her Wiki entry, perhaps because it is too well documented.
    Doesn’t mean nobody is trying.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_Dodd

    Dodd worked for NY Teacher’s Union (TU) and the American Labor Party, but also secretly for the Communist Party. City College of New York expelled 50 teachers, including Morris U. Schappes. Dodd spent 1940-41 defending teachers or finding them new jobs. She also led the TU into new affiliation with United Public Workers as Local 555 UPW. In 1942, she found herself deep in political infighting between communists and socialists over control the American Labor Party.

    During her time with the TU, Dodd worked closely with the Party, but she was not an open member. As she testified before HUAC in 1953, “the Communist Pary was emphatic that professional people engaged in public service who had public jobs were not to be exposed and were not card-carrying members. Rather, she served in the faction that moved the TU “in the direction of the Communist Party.”

    By 1943, Dodd’s feelings toward the Communist Party had changed:

    During the war period I saw how opportunism and selfishness engulfed many [Party] comrades. They wore expensive clothes, lived in fine apartments, took long vacations at places provided by men of wealth…. There were the trade union Communists who rubbed elbows with underworld characters at communist-financed night clubs, and labor lawyers who were given patronage by the Party…and now were well established and comfortable.

    …[In 1945] Dodd began angling to leave the Party but was refused.
    ….
    [In 1946] Dodd began to come under government suspicion. She told the New York County district attorney’s office she had become a Communist “because only the Communists seemed to care about what was happening to people in 1932 and 1933…. They were fighting hunger and misery and fascism then; and neither the major political parties nor the churches seemed to care.”

    By late 1947, Dodd became convinced of her pending Party expulsion for Browderism, and focused on her law work. On June 17, 1949, she heard from the Associated Press: “We have received a statement from the Communist Party announcing your expulsion from membership.

    Looks like the “I only learned about it in the press” is an old technique of the left.
    Pardon me, The Left.

  23. My feeling is the Left is just about Power.

    And spreading their woke dogma.

    It’s their abuse of trust to gain more power, that is reducing it in the US.

    And once trust / credibility is lost, it’s hard to regain.

    Trump showed how corrupt, politicized, and incompetent the uniparty / elites are. He ripped the masks off.

  24. Great topic. One of the values and norms of a western democratic society must be high-trust.

    What is necessary for TRUST? I think it is:
    (1) Integrity
    (2) Competence
    (3) Mutual respect

    In a high-trust society, you can count on the other party to: (1) do the right thing; (2) do it properly; and (3) treat you the same way that they would want to be treated. I used to live in such a society, but not any more.

    Many examples come to mind, but I keep going back to the 2020 election. Public officials clearly didn’t act with integrity. Many openly broke the law (e.g. interfering with observers). When the results didn’t add up (e.g. more votes for President than the total vote count), officials fell back to the “dog ate my homework” excuse: the failure is due to clerical errors. In other words, we’re not corrupt; we’re incompetent, and you can’t prove otherwise. And through it all, leftists look down on their political enemies. (Not fellow Americans, but enemies to be beaten or stupid rubes that must be controlled for their own good.) In years past, foreign observers were shocked to discover how loosely-controller our elections were. Compared to other countries, our elections are based on trust. After 2020, that theory no longer works.

    Can the system survive the leftist tribalism? The rule of “divide and conquer” worked well for the British in India, but I’m not sure that leftists can carry it off. But I may be optimistic.

    Can the country survive the lack of trust? Probably not. For one thing, we need trust to maintain a vibrant economy. Furthermore, our Constitution, with it’s separation of powers, depends on it. We trust the President to abide by his oath of office to faithfully execute the laws passed by congress — even the ones he doesn’t like. We trust that prosecutors, judges, and officials in the DOJ will act with integrity to serve justice, even though they have few controls on their actions. And then there’s the Intelligence community monitoring our every move …

    “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams

  25. Many everyday folks who are progressive actually believe the crazy (including many of my own friends and family). They believe that police are killing thousands of innocent, unarmed African Americans every year. They believe that the criminal justice system is irredeemably racist. They believe that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist wannabe-Rambo who showed up at a peaceful protest spoiling for a fight. They really believe that we would have eliminated COVID a long time ago if only everyone had done exactly what Fauci said.

    I think a big part of the problem is that once you pull too hard on one of those threads, the whole sweater unravels. Losing one’s entire philosophical view of the world is painful. People resist that. I’m sure that there are some Gramsci disciples who are deliberately sowing chaos to obtain power. For many, though, I think the fear of losing a worldview is a more powerful motivator.

    The result is a self-reinforcing feedback loop of decline. From the right, we can see the difference between the media coverage of the Atlanta massage parlor shooting and the coverage of the Wisconsin parade massacre. We can see the president repeating lies about Rittenhouse. We can see that the COVID restrictions are not working and that Fauci is a demonstrated liar. How can we believe anything they say? Add that to the things that the left wills themselves to believe and you end up with exactly what neo calls out – a low trust society.

    I’m don’t see how this cycle ends without getting through to the mass of people who believe the progressive jiberish in good faith. That’s one of the reasons I’m so hard on Trump. I can’t think of a better way to give ordinary progressives permission to continue believing their comforting lies than to offer an uncouth jerk like Trump as the only alternative. There were some conservative policy victories during the Trump administration, sure, but on the whole, the progressive lies gained ground from 2017-2020.

  26. My 91 year old mother just forwarded a Penzey’s email, with a message about their “great sale” I should take advantage of. I had dropped Penzey’s from consideration after the 2016 election, but nevertheless was gobsmacked to read the copy of the email they sent their customers, and that my mother felt perfectly comfortable sending to me.

    It starts: “What has the Republican Party, the NRA, and Russia all in bed together like Charlie’s grandparents at the beginning of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? Fear. Fear sells guns, gets Republicans elected, and destroys American values. So comfy-cozy under the covers those three are.”

    And gets worse after that….

    American culture isn’t crumbling, it’s being razed.

  27. Bauxite boiled down: Orange Man Bad. But Orange Man Bad prevents you and your oh so sensitve and progressive accomplices from seeing what the the venal, racist, creepy, and corrupt President Brandon is doing?

    Otay Bauxite. Pride in one’s folly?

  28. “…creation of tribalism, violence, uncertainty, insecurity, mistrust, and lack of confidence in our key institutions…”

    Who is Abner Doon?

  29. Seen at another blog’s comment section:

    https://twitter.com/bevo_fox/status/1464157973052203011

    A commenter makes an observation that is almost certainly correct.
    helena: “if kyle had been shot and killed i feel like the story we would be remembering is “antifa good guy with a gun kills right-wing active shooter” because kyle wouldn’t have been there to defend himself and there wouldn’t have been a trial demonstrating his innocence”

  30. American culture isn’t crumbling, it’s being razed.

    Penzey has a competitor who is, if I’m not mistaken, his sister. Buy spices from her company. She’s selling spices, not politics. Penzey’s kept in business by people who tolerate his self-indulgence.

  31. Thanks to the Dgr and Aesoofan for the Bella Dodd info. Like termites eating away at a foundation, the Communist have been slowly hollowing out many of our institutions. And they have been able to disguise their activities because we have all forgotten her testimony and how true it was. The hour is late. The Communists are seeing the end of their Gramscian march coming nearer. Turning them back with the MSM in their corner will be doubly hard. The MSM manages to keep the “useful idiots” from seeing the truth.
    Thank goodness for the conservative blogosphere and a few conservative news outlets (Fox, Newsmax, OAN, & NY Post.)

  32. I think the following has been commented on by this blog: Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov’s Four Stages of Marxist Takeover: Demoralization, Destabilization, Crisis, and Normalization.
    https://spectator.org/yuri-bezmenov-crisis-america/

    Also, the radio news headline yesterday was Biden’s drooping poll numbers. But the report said ~80% of Dems approved of his handling of his office!

  33. Art Deco: Need a name for Penzey’s competitor. Let it be lost on no one that Penzey’s home is in Wisconsin, and that it now has spice stores in about 50 US cities, all run by Democrats. It is invading the South. It kinda operates on the ChiComm model.

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