A liberal plot for domination?

Q: What would happen if you flipped a liberal article about a “Christian plot for domination” on its head, replacing the religious argument with an equally conspiratorial “Liberal plot for domination”?

A: Like filling in a liberal media mad lib (with a little room reserved for our own editorial merriment), it would look a little something like this…

With it appearing less and less likely that a moderate Democrat will mount a primary challenge in the presidential race, it is now fairly clear that the Democratic candidate will be an incumbent president who makes Jimmy Carter look competent. While complete lack of anything that even begins to approach positive results from his policies might appear on the surface to be the greatest chink in President Barack Obama’s armor, it is his association with a theocratic strain of Liberal fundamentalism known as Dumbinionism that should send a shiver down the spine of voters. If you want to understand Barack Obama, understanding Dumbionism isn’t optional.

Put simply, Dumbinionism means that liberals have a God-given right to rule all American institutions without consideration of the law of the land. Originating among some of America’s most radical progressives, it’s long had an influence on radical-leftist education and political organizing. But because it seems so outré, getting ordinary people to take it seriously can be difficult. Most writers, myself included, who explore it have been called racists, terrorists, and hostage takers.

Now, however, we have the most far left president in American history, and suddenly, the concept of Dumbinionism is reaching mainstream audiences.

In many ways, Dumbinionism is more a religious phenomenon than a political one. It cuts across the political spectrum, from the whining crybaby environmental tools to the pro-tax millionaires who can’t seem to find the time to pay the taxes they already owe. Think of it like political Islamism, which shapes the activism of a number of antagonistic fundamentalist movements, from Sunni Wahabis in the Arab world to Shiite fundamentalists in Iran.

Dumbinionism derives from a formerly popular political movement called progressivism founded by a handful of European academics and philosophers, and came to American shores in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Progressivism openly advocates replacing American law with the fundamentals of European style socialism, replete with the circumventing of the American Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and it even promoted ignoring the philosophical underpinnings of the nation outlined in the Declaration of Independence. The appeal of Progressivism has been, surprisingly, popular, and few mainstream liberal figures have denounced it.

But while Progressivism’s founders had utter contempt for institutions that limited government authority, they were prolific and influential elaborating their theories in a number of books, including Rules for Radicals, the missive of latter day progressive saint Saul Alinsky. And their ideas, along with those of their followers, have had an incalculable impact on the milieu that spawned President Barack Obama.

Progressives pioneered the public schooling movement, as well as the revisionist history, ubiquitous on the liberal left, that paints the U.S. as the cause of all oppression, exploitation, and misery in the world. Mighty progressive thinkers like John Dewey consistently defended Marxist socialists, going so far as to head a commission that whitewashed the crimes against humanity committed by the likes of Arch-communist Leon Trotsky.

Progressivism’s most influential idea, though, was the concept of Dumbinionism, which spread far beyond the leftist political fringe. Dumbinionists lay great emphasis on the idea that the bureaucratic state is far superior at meeting the demands of society than the cold mechanics of free markets.

For believers in Dumbinionism, rule by non-liberals is a sort of sacrilege—which explains, in part, the political fury that has accompanied the election of our last two Republican presidents. “If I lived in Massachusetts, I’d try to vote ten times,” progressive radio host Ed Schultz said on his radio show. “Yeah that’s right,” he went on. “I’d cheat to keep these bastards out. I would. Because that’s exactly what they are.”

Obama attended a church for 20 years called Trinity United Church of Christ. For those years, Barack Obama sat in the pews and listened to the sermons of the Reverend Jeramiah Wright. In them, Wright espoused the ideas of “liberation theology”, common in progressive circles, that is essentially a union of catholic theology wrapped around a healthy dose of Marxist political ideology, and Black Nationalism. When pressed about his radical spiritual mentor, Obama replied, “I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

One could go on and on listing the Dumbinionist influences on Obama’s thinking: Frank Marshall Davis, a communist, who Obama made several references to as a mentor-like figure in his memoir Dreams from my Father; Father Michael Pfleger a race baiting, socialist “activist” from Chicago; an unrepentant terrorist named Bill Ayers whose actions during the 1960’s and 70’s made him responsible a number of deaths.

In elaborating Obama’s Dumbinionist history, though, it’s important to point out that he is not unique. Hillary Clinton, for example, tends to be regarded as marginally more reasonable than Obama, but she is as closely associated with Dumbinionism as he is.

We have not seen this sort of thing at the highest levels of the Democratic Party before. Those of us who wrote about the radical progressive influence on the Clinton administration were alarmed that his wife, Hillary Clinton, labeled herself a progressive. It seemed unthinkable, at the time, that an American president was taking advice from even a single person whose ideas were so inimical to limited governance. Few of us imagined that someone who actually championed such ideas would have a shot at the White House. It turns out we weren’t paranoid enough. If Clinton eroded the separation of powers and the constitution, the Democratic party is now poised to re-elect someone who will mount an all-out assault on it. We need to take their beliefs seriously, because they certainly do.