'Crushing the Collective'

Radio America News

From the podium of the United Nations to domestic U.S. politics, socialist ideas are frequently discussed and in many cases seem to be advancing in our society, and a new book concludes that the far left has been on the march for a full century in this country and is now on the verge of victory. President Trump took heat for denouncing the socialist regime in Venezuela during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday and for pointing out socialism and communism result in poverty and misery whenever it is tried. On the domestic side, in just the past few weeks, over a dozen Senate Democrats have lined up in favor of single payer health care, meaning the government would be in complete control of one-sixth of the economy. Charles Sasser is a veteran of U.S. Army Special Forces. He's a history teacher and a prolific author. His latest work is "Crushing the Collective: The Last Chance to Keep America Free and Self-Governing." He says history is replete with examples of people being convinced to give up their rights for the supposed good of the larger community. He says collectivism still pushes the same message today. "Collectivism means the collective is of more value than the individual. That's been used by every tyrant ever. It's always for the cause, for the people. You give up this freedom for this and this," said Sasser. "Throughout history, the individual has always devolved into the collective. That's been the historical movement, from individualism to collectivism, and collectivism always ends in tyranny," he added. To prove the rise of collectivism in our own society, Sasser says we only need to examine the widespread popularity of avowed socialist Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential race. "He could have won it because so many of our young people have been indoctrinated into this idea that you can have free college. You can have everything free now. So like pigs squealing at the trough, we're all running for that trough to get whatever is thrown into the trough for us. As a result, we give up our independence," said Sasser. He says we're already well down that road as a nation. "We're already socialist. Right now we have 47 percent of the people living off the government. When you've got that many people dependent, guess what? They continue to want more and more. You can hear them at the trough, demanding more and more," said Sasser. Sasser says it's not just Sanders. He says Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are also clear that they embrace collectivism. "Obama revealed one of his slogans at the 2012 Democratic convention. He said we belong to the government. That sounds fascist to me. It's definitely collectivism. Hillary (said) deep-seated cultural codes and religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed. In other words, we have to condition the people to change it," said Sasser. He says the course America chooses to chart in the coming years is critical since most of the modern world, including western Europe, are already lost down the road to collectivism. "Europe's gone. It's declined already. It's on its way to collapse," said Sasser. "And now the U.S. is collapsing. As a result of this, we're no longer seen in the world as a stabilizing force," said Sasser. "So what happens? We're not longer a stabilizing force. The world is going bonkers. Who's going to stabilize it? Nobody. We're in for some interesting times," said Sasser. Sasser refers to the Tytler cycle, a concept created by Scottish historian Alexander Tytler in the 1780's. The cycle suggests people in bondage turn to faith, which in turn leads to courage and then liberty. According to Tytler, liberty creates abundance, which then brings on complacency, apathy and dependence before resulting in bondage again. He says we're frighteningly far along in that progression. "Every society throughout history has gone through that same cycle and end up in bondage. The average endurance of any empire has been about 200 years. We have exceeded that so far, but in Tytler's liberty-tyranny cycle, we're back to the stage of dependency," said Sasser. While there may be an historical process to observe, Sasser points out this erosion of the American experiment doesn't just happen. He says a very organized and determined effort from the far left has been applying pressure for a full century, with the Frankfurt School in 1917. He says a key tenet of the Frankfurt School was a "long march" to take over or destroy institutions, from education to the church to the family. "You take over or destroy whatever stands in the way of socialism. Never mind that socialism has never worked, never throughout history has it worked and it's always ended up in tyranny. It's just that we call it by different names, but it always ends the same way," said Sasser. The Frankfurt School emigrated to London and eventually to the U.S. Sasser says a key figure in the movement, a German professor named Herbert Marcuse who later taught at the University of California-Berkeley, pioneered the type of selective tolerance we see rampant on campuses today. "He said to tolerate whatever ideas and movements the left does, but have intolerance for the right. As a result of that, [they] just destroy everything and take it over in the march through the institutions," said Sasser. Sasser says many colleges now cater to keeping the students ignorant, ushering them away from learning history and economics and instead focusing them on gender and race studies. However, he says opponents of the march to collectivism are fighting with their hands tied behind their back due to the intimidation of political correctness. "Did you know America now ranks 46th in the world when it comes to first amendment rights of freedom of press and freedom of speech? Forty-sixth in the world, somewhere near Albania. Primarily it's because of political correctness and self-censorship. We won't speak out," said Sasser. He says the recent debate over the transgender movement is a prime example. "Men are calling themselves women. Women call themselves men. We have 50 different genders now, and we're not supposed to say something is absurd here?" "We don't. We keep silent. We accept it. Once you tolerate something in the first generation, you accept it in the second generation, and then in the third generation you extol it and light up the White House in rainbow colors," said Sasser. He says winning the fight against collectivism is very difficult and may well end up being a losing cause, but he says those who want to preserve the best of America must stand up and have their voices heard as the push form the left gets more fierce. "We have to have courage. We have to have the courage to say something is wrong. This is insanity. It is total insanity and if we follow that over the cliff then we all go over the cliff," said Sasser. "That's what I try to do in this book, to lay it out in a cohesive order so people could understand where we came from, how we got here, what is occurring around us at this moment, and what it's leading to, and what we can do is mainly speak out," said Sasser.