Causing a System Crash

The Cloward/Piven strategy was named after a pair of sociologists from Columbia University in the 1960s,  They were committed Marxists who wanted to crash the welfare system to precipitate a "blue screen of death" for the U.S. as we know it. Their shtick was to pile people on to the welfare rolls until the system broke down under its own weight, in turn causing a societal crisis and conditions for a Marxist overthrow. The New Order would be a system much more simpatico for all good progressives. Their strategy worked for awhile, but fortunately there was a big blowback from the folks who pay the bills and welfare reform was ultimately passed and signed by President Clinton. The key points to remember are: overwhelm the system and Marxists because we are seeing a reprise today.

It is apparent from what the Democrats did when they controlled Congress and the White House and with the new budget submitted by President Obama, that they are not interested in economic recovery. Their plain strategy is to overwhelm the economy with deficit spending in the hope that it will collapse, leaving the way open for a socialist/Marxist state. The flood of deficit dollars is primarily flowing to the Democrat's government and private union allies who will be the ones actually manning the barricades if things do get as bad as they hope. Using Cloward/Piven II, they hope to institute a new order presided over, of course, by themselves as the Ruling Class - the Enlightened Ones. The Nancy Pelosi era in the House gives you some faint idea of what this might look like. Why so many believe that a socialist state would be any better this time around than in the past is a mystery, since it has never worked anywhere on a sustained basis for even 100 years.

Government doesn't do economics well because it has no incentive. A private company has to keep its customers happy and run efficiently or it goes out of business. Government does neither. It simply requires people to use its services (think health care) and if it runs deficits, it just prints money and raise taxes/prices (think the US Postal Service). Without even a 2-party system to keep the politicians honest, the situation gets worse and worse until it gets so sclerotic that a thriving black market develops as a workaround and even so, the whole system ultimately grinds to a halt (think the late and not-so-great USSR). The general populace does not do well in a socialist system.

The cynical view is that the Ruling Class wannabes don't believe that things will be better for most folks - just that they will be in charge. That answer does have some historical validity. Such magnificent moments in history as Mao's Great Leap Forward, Stalin's Gulags, and Hitler's Auschwitz, Belsen and others garden spots come to mind.  "They" know better and it will be different this time. Sure.

As a Ruling Class becomes entrenched it also enjoys special privileges and immunities from the grim situation that it imposes in the name of the people. Power has its perks and this is something to grasp firmly as well.

Many people pushing for revolutionary change think that they will be on the inside when the New Order emerges and be the "doers" rather than the "do-ees.". The dirty little secret is that they are wrong. Lenin called such people "Useful Idiots." Historically the Ruling Class is a small cohort and the Useful Idiots get themselves shot, sent to Siberia, or other similarly glamorous postings.

For the rest of us a massive state security apparatus is the prescribed course. More rules, regulations, violations, administrative hearings - all to keep you in line. Look for new Federal quasi-police agencies. Obama has already hired 16,000 IRS agents for his health insurance plan. Does that ring any alarm bells for you? Health insurance and IRS agents are not terms that normally go together. It is also not an accident that Democrats and "progressives" want gun control so badly. Americans have always had an independent streak which, when combined with guns, does not bode well for such an American KGB or the Ruling Class.  In fact, many of the military and police would probably join the citizenry which is a further conundrum for the Ruling Class. They're working on it.

Freedom is something that must be zealously guarded or it will be lost. You can lose it by invasion, or by selling out for a mass of pottage, or by indulging frivolous Utopian ideas that will never come to fruition, or by simple neglect and indifference. Classical thinker Edmund Burke said that "Evil flourishes when good men do nothing." Evil people are afoot in this country and around the world. America has been the Land of the Free and an ideal for the rest of the world for 235 years. It is going to take some hard work by a lot of good people to keep it that way.

www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/the_clowardpiven_strategy_of_e.html