Return to Cloward-Piven Strategy: Beckman Interviews McCotter

Last week on Frank Beckman's show on WJR 760AM, Frank asked Michigan Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-11) if he thought that Obama was engaging in Cloward-Piven Strategy. This question surprised and intrigued me. I wrote about the Cloward-Piven Strategy before (see post Cloward-Piven Strategy), but for those of you who are sadly not frequent readers of my blog, I'll explain it to you now.

The strategy is called the Cloward-Piven Strategy after a pair of radical socialist professors from the 60's who came up with it. The idea is to purposefully create a series of crisis, each one of which will then be blamed on capitalism, de-regulation, low taxes, free markets, etc. After the crisis is at its peak and conservative ideals have been successfully blamed, you then advance a solution for the crisis- a solution to put in place a more socialist, state-run, liberal society. This solution will not make society better, but will instead create more crisis, which you then in turn blame on conservative ideas, and advance more solutions that are liberal. Eventually, the state will take over every aspect of our lives and run our society as a radical socialist utopia.

When I first suggested that the national Democrats were engaging in this policy back in 2008, I was drawing on my long experience watching Democrats in Michigan, particularly Detroit. In our state, Democrats put in place their liberal ideas, they backfire, and we get more liberal ideas, which backfire, leading to more liberal ideas, and eventually, you get Detroit (dominated by liberal Democrats for over 40 years) and to a lesser degree Michigan (dominated by liberal Democrats for almost 8 years). I figured that the series of crisis which followed the Democrats regaining control of Congress in 2006 were not due to bad ideas, incompetence, or just plain stupidity, but due to an organized and concentrated plot to create crisis so that that you could then advance liberal solutions.

For example, this current healthcare bill is not just an idiotic attempt to destroy our nation out of a foolish and misguided attempt to make things better, but a grand conspiracy to actually create a crisis in the healthcare system by putting in place laws and regulations that will lead to higher costs and lower coverage and benefits, and the response then will be an even bigger and stronger healthcare bill (which will then create an even worse situation, like we see in Canada, which will then lead to calls for more government, etc, until government controls everything).

In other words, the Democrats are purposefully overloading the system in an attempt to collapse it- adding more regulations and laws and taxes to our capitalist free-market system so that people will then think that the capitalist free-market system is failing, where in reality it is the very liberal policies that are creating the crisis.

In his interview, Frank Beckman suggested that the Democrats were engaging in this policy. Congressman McCotter disagreed.

McCotter thinks that it isn't an intelligent conspiracy of not letting any crisis go to waste to put in place more government, but rather just plain out liberal elitism and incompetence. He thinks that it is instead simply a selfish desire to create permanent dependent constituencies that will then vote Democrat, who will then distribute benefits to them. It isn't 1984, but rather more like the People's Republic of Haven (from the Honorverse). He makes a good argument, as most liberals that I have come across are really not evil manipulative people, but rather idiots and fools who lack an understanding of people, history, economics, and policy.

It does bear watching though if the pattern laid out in the Cloward-Piven Strategy holds true- if we get another crisis followed by more government control which leads to another crisis and more government control, etc. Keep your eyes on it- we have one more year of Democrats running the show in Congress, and they are sure to create more crisis in our society, either through an orchestrated strategy or incompetence, and keep your eyes out for the resulting 'the market failed' rhetoric and the 'more government is the solution' rhetoric that will follow.