Thursday, January 10, 2013

The Book That Explains It All


By Alan Caruba

In October last year I included a book by B.K. Eakman in my monthly report, Bookviews.com, and recommended it, having perused it sufficiently to know it was quite extraordinary. “Agenda Games: How Today’s High-Stakes Political Combat Works” ($19.95, Midnight Whistler Publishers, softcover). As someone who has been a reviewer for over fifty years, I receive fifty or more books every month and I often have to return to a book to read it completely.

B.K. Eakman’s columns and speeches have appeared in The Washington Times, National Review, the Washington Post, Insight Magazine, Crisis Magazine, Vital Speeches, and many comparable publications. She has authored a number of books that include two award-winners, “Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education” and “Educating for the New World Order”, and an aptly named “Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks.”

An educator, researcher, and a Voice of America and Justice Department writer, she has a professional background that has culminated in an insightful and frightening analyses of the nation’s educational system that has produced several recent generations of Americans who are ill-equipped to understand what is happening to the nation—the steady infiltration of the system designed to create the kind of voters who elected and have reelected the nation’s first Marxist President.

In “Agenda Games”, she says that “today’s political contests bear no resemblance to the post World Wars I and II eras. Rather, there exists a calculated effort, by all sorts of demagogues, to sow dissention—to alienate, demoralize and, if possible, neutralize entire pools of voters, with all the negative energy such a scheme entails: coercion, ostracism, intimidation, loss of status or job, and outright censorship. In this scenario, the agenda becomes all-important; the individual recedes into expendability.”

The agenda “is nothing less than a replacement of the Founder’s vision of an independent, self-sufficient nation, based in individual resolve and grit, and minimal interference from government, with a super-State based in Old World notions of dependency, maximum government intrusion, crushing regulation and regimentation.”

If this sounds like America today, you’re right. This agenda has been advanced, knowingly and unknowingly, by the presidents of the past century, starting with the “progressive” Theodore Roosevelt with brief interludes of men like Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan who knew socialism when they saw it. The result has been government “entitlement” programs like Social Security and Medicare, the complete takeover of the nation’s educational system, and most recently the takeover of the nation’s healthcare system with Obamacare.

There was so much opposition to Obamacare it was only passed with a straight Democratic Party vote in Congress late night on Christmas Eve 2009. Senators were bribed and coerced into voting for it. Obama’s first term included a failed “stimulus” bill that wasted billions, oddball programs like “Cash for Clunkers”, and programs that wasted more billions on “renewable energy” companies—all heavy donors to Obama—most of which were bankrupt within a short time.

“Another red flag,” wrote Eakman, “is a president or high-level member of Congress who says something, with great conviction, to one audience, then turns around and declares the opposite to an interviewer weeks or months later (“political posturing”). Another bad sign is a town hall-style meeting which has been ‘packed’ in order to build a predetermined consensus.” This explains how Obama could tell people that he only wanted to raise taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” while all the time crafting legislation that has raised taxes on all Americans—especially the middle class whom he declared he was seeking to protect. Throughout his first term, Obama ignored or excused an unemployment rate that only rarely dipped below 8%.

“From pundits to porters, people from all walks of life,” wrote Eakman, “are noticing an uncomfortable shift in government priorities. From federal agency decrees, to Appeals Court verdicts to high-profile U.S. Supreme Court decisions an increasing contempt for the rights of average citizens is evident. Many of the issues in dispute are quite different from one another; and yet…there is an elusive similarity to all of them—primary among them being a demand for ‘compliance’. Failure or outright refusal to ‘comply’ comes with untenable fines and nonstop harassment by officials.”

This is the America in which we live today and, to understand why, the one book you need to read this year is “Agenda Games.” 

The one election that may save Americans from complete submission to the agenda will occur in 2014. If the same men and women who imposed Obamacare on America and failed to heed the warnings of the Simpson-Bowles commission are reelected, we are all headed into a Marxist and economic abyss.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

8 comments:

Lime Lite said...

Socialism requires that you take from those who 'have' and give to those who 'don't'. To achieve this a few things need to happen. Those who want to 'redistribute' need to have total control, so eventually only a small elite group will decide who gets what from whom. To get to the point where people allow this control and taking away of their material possessions and freedoms, the elite have to condition them. This is done through our schools,universities and complicit media etc. using things such as 'political correctness' into manipulating peoples thoughts above common sense. And they are becoming so effective that those giving actually thank and praise those who take away from them, because it's the 'right' or 'fair' thing to do. Yes people, these Marxist follow the same recipe generation after generation without producing a successful socialist society and yet they believe that it will work someday - that we will all be treated fairly and equally because it's the right thing to do. What they fail to recognise is human nature triumphs every time. No matter how often they try, our nature eventually tells us that what they're pushing is rubbish. But that doesn't stop them trying.

Lime Lite said...

Alan, on another point, as a book reviewer, how do you go about reviewing a book if you don't agree with the contents? Has that ever happened to you? I know I wouldn't be able to.

Alan Caruba said...

I have on occasion reviewed books by people I don't like, but proceded on the basis of the book's merit, organization, facts, etc. I did that not long ago with a book by Rachel Maddow of MSNBC.

If I believe a non-fiction books is a bunch of crap, I just say so. Mostly, though, I select and recommend books I thought people should know about.

Re: Socialism. It is an utterly failed economic theory, but the world is full of dreamers and idiots who fall for it every time.

dfordoom said...

Socialism is adolescent wish-fulfillment. It all seems so simple - all we need is a world where everything is fair and everyone is happy.

When you have entire populations stuck in permanent adolescence, which has been the case in the West since the 70s, such an adolescent ideology is unstoppable.

Alan Caruba said...

@dfordoom: Permanent adolescence is a pretty good description of the cultural depths in which we find ourselves. It applies to Obama as well.

gregtuco said...

Speaking of permanent adolescence and books in general, I have to recommend one of the most compelling books I have ever read on this or any subject: "The Death Of The Grown Up" by Diane West.

Since the mid-eighties or so, I've had the sneaking suspicion that my generation has had more than the usual troubles growing out of its childlike/childish ways. The former of these mindsets is, at appropriate times, something to enjoy and relish as a respite from the chores and drudgery of our responsible years; the latter, quite disasterous in an adult population who is supposedly raising the next generation of leaders. Although I don't agree fully with the author's summation, this book confirmed many of my nagging questions regarding the so called Baby Boom Generation and is a great piece in the puzzle that explains our nation's downfall.

Alan, if you haven't yet read or reviewed this book, I heartily recommend that you do.

Greg O.

Ronbo said...

The Communist coup against America started 100 years ago with the election of "Progressive" President Wilson, and has finally evolved from "Socialism Light" into "Communism Heavy" under President Obama.

The next act in the drama will either be the restoration of the Republic and the purge of Communists from all aspects of life in America, or the creation of the United Socialist States of America under the Obama Constitution.

The woman asked in 1787, "What will it be, Dr. Franklin, a republic or a monarchy?"

"A republic," answered Franklin "If you can keep it."

TexasFred said...

Wise men have long advised and warned of what would happen to America, no one listened, it's happened and now many are saying, "Well, it's not so bad"...

God help us all...