Moral Factors Decide Wars and Revolutions

In war, the moral is to the physical as three is to one.

Napoleon Bonaparte

It is said that victory in war goes to the bigger battalions. But Napoleon, who was a master in the art of war, disagreed. He suggested that moral factors were more important than numbers. And what are moral factors? According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, the moral is “concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character.”

How can principles of right and wrong behavior effect the outcome of a battle? War is an exacting business, full of danger and hardship. Under such conditions, honor and integrity are highly prized. Also, a belief in the rightness of one’s cause strengthens a country’s will to resist. Napoleon pointed out that, “Victory belongs to the most persevering.” He added, “The most important qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only second….”

Consider, now, the possibility of a new kind of warfare in which an enemy, instead of launching a direct attack by armies and navies, attacks a country’s moral foundations — its moral character, its moral discipline, its heroes and its founding philosophy. Imagine an attack that seeks to “demoralize” a country on this basis; that is to say, strip it of all those moralizing factors that are — as Napoleon said — “as three is to one.”

Here is the most effective way to weaken an enemy in advance of open warfare. This is not simply a theory, but an historical reality. Think of all the subtle ways America’s moral strength has been sapped. The communists and their political allies on the “progressive” left have not only attacked traditional morality, but they have offered up a false morality, a morality that celebrates cultural and sexual suicide. They have crippled marriage as an institution. They have corrupted the courts. They have removed corporal punishment from the schools. (Then again, would you trust today’s teachers to administer discipline in loco parentis?) A wave of rule breaking now coincides with a regime of unprecedented permissiveness. Contracts are not held sacred, honesty is no longer prized as it once was. Employees steal from their employers. Good manners are gone as entertainers commit violent assaults after which they are given awards and standing ovations. In Washington, D.C., the laws are enforced against one party and not another. This is the malaise that grips all Western countries, and it is no accident.

The worldwide communist movement stands at the center of our demoralization. The communists advocate a new kind of morality, which has little regard for honesty, respect for property, family, God or country. Their new morality is anti-racism, universal equality, concern for “the planet,” the championing of sexual deviancy, abortion tending toward infanticide, the redistribution of wealth, and unilateral American disarmament. If someone disagrees with these new ideals, they are trash. And as the left’s revolution advances, the trash is “taken out.”

Through all the confusing rhetoric and mock moralizing about race and gender, we must never lose sight of the communist bloc’s military end-game. There is a strategic method at work behind the communist attack on our morality. If you demoralize a country prior to war, victory is made easier. Therefore, morality in the West has not been attacked for its own sake. It was attacked to smooth the path to victory for the world’s largest country (Russia) and the world’s most populous country (China). What almost nobody has grasped is that these two countries are working together; and they have been working together for a long time with a communist fifth column.

We also find several smaller countries working with Russia and China that are also heavily armed — like North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Angola, Congo, Syria and Iran. Consider, as well, mineral-rich South Africa. The communist bloc is dominant in strategic minerals, oil, natural gas, fertilizer, and nuclear weapons. Yet none of these resources matter if there are no operative moral factors.

The moral decline of a people may be traced out in the moral decline of its leaders. If the United States Congress, once described by Mark Twain as America’s “distinctly native … criminal class,” is now so demoralized that it is as likely to pass laws to destroy the country as to defend it, then what kind of people have we become? Anyone who thinks this is an exaggeration need only look at the House majority’s readiness to let our nuclear deterrent collapse for want of appropriate funding, or the federal government’s disregard for border security.

This may be a simplification, as many factors were at work, but: – Within our very souls, our spiritual flanks were turned long ago; for the real war has been raging in the human heart and mind. This is the war we have been losing, the war that plays out prior to the advent of tanks and jets and missiles and nuclear bombs. We have opened a causeway into pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth. The dark side of human nature is always evident during a period of decline, during a period of materialism. Think of what a little pink worm will do on a warm day with a cold carcass.

The war that has begun in Eastern Europe has surprised many observers. But the greatest surprise is the fighting spirit of the Ukrainians, who partake of moral factors that the Russian side lacks. One hears the moralizing of Americans who say that Russian prisoners have been murdered or tortured by the Ukrainian side. Such incidents, as regrettable as they are, and as inexcusable, do not unmake the larger moral ledger. Ukraine is fighting for her existence. And this is the same moral position occupied by Finland during the Winter War, or Britain during the blitz, or the Russians from 1941-1943.

“In war,” said Napoleon, “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” The so-called miracle of Ukraine’s defense against Russia is not a function of Russian incompetence. The so-called miracle in Ukraine is a function of moral factors which lie at the root of the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014.

I have said before that the Russians, if they persevere, will probably break the Ukrainian defense when the ground is dry. Yet Russia must now endure a war of attrition for eight to ten weeks. Does the Russian Army possess the stamina for this? Does Russia possess the necessary moral factors? Despite all that we have heard on television, the Russian troops might prove more resilient than we imagine. Only time will tell. The most important and frequently used method in war, said Carl von Clausewitz, “is to wear down the enemy. That expression is more than a label; it describes the process precisely, and is not so metaphorical as it may seem at first. Wearing down the enemy in a conflict means using the duration of the war to bring about a gradual exhaustion of his physical and moral resistance.” [Book One, Chapter Two]

Only time will tell.


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China’s 2023 Plans: An Interview with Man in America


Get prepared for actual combat….

Xi Jinping

Below these notes is my June 6 interview with Seth Holehouse. A little editing is in order. Viewers should note two verbal slips in this interview: (1) I referred to Deng Xiaoping instead of Xi Jinping at one point, (2) When I said, “most of the people in the communist movement are communists” I was trying to say, “most of the people in the communist movement aren’t communists.” I prefer the written word because you can catch mistakes of this kind; but when you speak off the top of your head, trying to think of simple ways to explain complicated things, your brain can skip a step.  

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Grand Strategy, Part I

Whether it is a coincidence or not, it is nevertheless a fact that [our] decreasing moral sense has steadily kept pace with the growth in armament; for as explosives have gone up, morality has gone down. Treaties are now scraps of paper, war aims weathercocks which change with each political breeze; pledged words are sugared lies; honor between allies, veiled deceit, and obligations towards neutrals implements of betrayal.

Major General J.F.C. Fuller

Strategy is all around us. People strategize in business, sports, politics, and war. Of course, war is one of the most consequential human activities. In his book On War, Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “Strategy is nothing without battle; because battle is the agent which it uses, the means that it applies. Just as tactics is the use of armed forces in a battle, strategy is the use of battle, — i.e., the linking of the individual battles to a whole, to war’s ultimate end.” And what is war’s ultimate end? It is, says Clausewitz, “the political object of the war.”

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Interview With Renato Cristin

introduction

Renato Cristin is a professor of hermeneutic philosophy at the University of Trieste, Italy. He is the promoter of a worldwide campaign to conduct a “Nuremberg” trial against communism. This was an idea of Professor Cristin’s friend, the late Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who believed that a trial of communism was necessary if only to confront the world with communism’s many unpunished crimes. Cristin has a unique way of explaining the collapse of communism. It is a collapse, he says, in which the Iron Curtain was replaced with emerging communist movements in every Western country. Now every country is split within itself. In this process, the communists no longer use their old labels as before. He offers us a striking example of anti-communists being marginalized at the end of the Cold War (instead of Marxists being marginalized). Professor Cristin describes the system of the Chinese Communist Party as a mix of communism and capitalism. He does not mention the revolutionary/strategic significance of Lenin’s NEP or Deng Xiaoping’s Four Modernizations. Even so, he recognizes the communist ideology at the heart of the Chinese ruling system. Here is the reason for the ruling party’s many crimes. Cristin’s emphasis on the immoral nature of communism deserves special appreciation. Please read his words with careful attention

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Political Discernment in an Age of Decline

Even the bravest of us rarely has the courage for what he knows

Nietzsche

In his small, strange little book, Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche discussed the “problem of Socrates,” starting from the premise that “the great sages are declining types.” He suggested that Socrates and Plato were “symptoms of decay” and “agents of the dissolution of Greece.” In fact, he claimed they were “pseudo-Greek [and] anti-Greek.”[1] Of course, Nietzsche saw a parallel with modernity. He saw that modern thinkers have also proven to be declining types. In fact, our thinkers, our intellectuals, have busied themselves with destroying civilization through the “organization of political hatreds.”

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About the “S” Word: A Polemic


Another anniversary of the 1991 putsch against Gorbachev and our liberation from it. About 800 people went to a celebration organized by the Free Russia Party. I felt no inclination to stop as I drove past the meeting. There is no freedom, so what is there to celebrate? The years since then have been spent bringing back what we had before, only now in an even more twisted form.

Anna Politkovskaya, 21 August 2005

On 2 June 1990 Boris Yeltsin held a press conference on Soviet television. He wanted to discuss the word “socialism.” Yeltsin said, “I think that the socialist nature, or the level and share of society’s socialist nature does not depend on the number of times the word ‘socialism’ is pronounced….” Yeltsin was at pains to explain that words were not everything. Some words, like the “s” word, were going to disappear. Russia was embarking on a very special game, a very special manuever. Yeltsin continued, “That is why the absence of the word ‘socialism’ in my speech does not in any way show that I altogether reject this idea. We simply have to give it a different sense. That’s the crux of the matter – [giving the word] a different sense, a different model. I will not depend on the name.”

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Our Schizoid Ochlocracy

The nominalism of a dogma that has separated from experience … has become the dominant form of the West because it was, beginning with the eighteenth century, adopted as the intellectual form of ideologizing.

Eric Voegelin [i]

The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses. With this change in the affirmation of what is real, the whole orientation of culture takes a turn….

Richard Weaver [ii]

Psychopathic individuals generally stay away from social organizations characterized by reason and ethical discipline.”

Andrew M. Lobaczewski

To paraphrase Richard Weaver, this is another essay about the dissolution of the West. It is an account of dissolution not based on analogy but on psychiatry and philosophy. It argues that we have given in to the defective thinking of defective people in an Age of Ideology; that is, an age of political lying. The result is an ochlocracy[iii] cut into two warring halves.[iv] 

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Grand Strategy, Part IV (1940)

In the Event of a general conflict, only one country can win. That country is the Soviet Union.

Adolf Hitler, 19 November 1937
(conversation with Lord Halifax)

According to Viktor Suvorov, “Everything in the Soviet Union relating to the beginning of World War II is concealed by the impenetrable darkness of state secrecy.” Suvorov’s words are as true today as when they were written. What is Moscow concealing about the Soviet Union’s entry into World War II? The answer is simple. If we understood the Kremlin strategy before World War II, we might understand the Kremlin’s strategy today.

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How Communists Discredit Anti-Communists

Among the groups who tried to distinguish the truth from the lie were the White emigres, Russians who had fled their homeland after the Soviet takeover. They were particularly vulnerable to the attack of disinformers. In Western Europe in the early 1920s they were considered to be a valuable and important anti-Communist factor. The emigres numbered about a million people of whom some 135,000 were still under arms and were thought to represent a potential anti-Communist armed force. Among the leaders of this group were men .. who exerted considerable influence over some Western statesmen.

Natalie Grant

In 1921, in order to discredit anti-communist White Russian emigres, the Soviet special services spread false information connecting White Russians with anti-Semitism. According to Natalie Grant’s book on Soviet disinformation, Moscow wanted to portray the average White Russian “as a person dangerous to society, politically immature, conservative to the point of stupidity and engaging in criminal pursuits.”

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Putin’s Russia at the End of Its Tether, Part II

…Gorbachev was not what he seemed. Because he understood his dependent position … he deliberately demonstrated his distance, and he was afraid of fighting with the Party apparat….

Lev Timofeyev [i]

[You will be part of a] new clandestine structure where you will work with the best of the best. Your personnel files will be removed from the archives. No one will ever know your past. You will become a clandestine agent; you will begin to work for the Fatherland against those who want to destroy it…. I agreed…. I worked directly on cleaning up the archives of the KGB. Together with my files, hundreds of others were removed, including that of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

Nikolay (Anonymous KGB Official) [ii]

The criminal nature of Russia’s ruling structures is well known. The criminal nature of Marxism-Leninism is also known, but often ignored. Today the outward trappings of communism in Russia have been papered over – but not entirely. In Red Square, near the Kremlin, we see communist superstar Vladimir Lenin lying in state, after nearly 100 years, mummified in his mausoleum. The music of the Soviet anthem remains, with different words. Instead of “Leningrad” we have “St. Petersburg.” The tricolor flies over the Kremlin instead of the red banner with its hammer and sickle. The Nomenklatura controls the economy, with dolled-up Jewish oligarchs as front men. The KGB and GRU still function as before. The nuclear arsenal and nuclear defenses are new and improved. The army, however, is still the army of Stalin, the Army of 22 June 1941, the Army that lost a quarter of a million men in Finland during the Winter War, etc. And, for reasons unknown, Moscow has attempted to use this army – this Soviet artifact – to force Ukraine back into Moscow’s fold.

Oops! –

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Beijing’s War Plan: An Interview with Lude Media

Red Dawn is not really a movie anymore.

Lude Media

I have interviewed Mr. D. Wang and associates, of Lude Media, whose organization acquired a 56-minute recording of a military-civil meeting in Guangdong province tasked with preparing China for war. According to Mr. Wang, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is financing Russia’s war in Ukraine. However, he says, Russia’s best forces are not being used in Ukraine. They have been deployed in the Far East, prepared for action against America.

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The Gathering Storm: An Overview

It is naïve to assume that the lower depths of the Sovietological inferno – that is, of Western ignorance and ineptitude in the study of totalitarianism – are where they have always been politically. The new strategy of totalitarianism has made havoc of the political spectrum in Western democracies, and the Right today is scarcely less inclined to self-deception than the Left.”

Andrei Navrozov, 1991 [i]

Again and again, we repeat the same mistake. We make unwise bargains with murderous dictators. After all, they changed from bad guys into good guys. They have embraced capitalism and democratic reforms. They are no longer bad. Therefore, we engage with them. We trade with them. We invest in them. We become accessories after the fact, strengthening regimes that routinely murder their own citizens. Eventually, these same regimes point nuclear missiles at us and demand that whole countries be turned over to them.

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Are Russia and China Igniting a Third World War?

Surprise makes it possible to inflict heavy losses upon the enemy in short periods of time, to paralyze his will, and to deprive him of the possibility of offering organized resistance. Surprise is achieved in the following ways: by using various types of methods of combat; by misleading the enemy as to one’s own intentions; by safeguarding the security of operational plans; by decisive action and skillful maneuver; by unexpected use of nuclear weapons; and by using means and methods with which the enemy is unfamiliar.

Soviet Dictionary of Basic Military Terms

On 16 October of last year, during a presentation at a forum in Shenzhen, Chinese sociologist Li Yi made the following statement: “It turns out that China is going to overtake the United States….” He explained that COVID-19 was “a test” that is “bad for Europe and America” but “beneficial for China and North Korea.” Then Li spoke of China being “ahead of schedule” in terms of overtaking the United States. “The U.S. will not survive,” he predicted. “We have gained absolute superiority over the U.S. military in the Bohai Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the Taiwan Strait, and we are expanding our military at a rate unprecedented in human history.” He added that, for several years running, China has launched a new fleet every year the size of the French Navy. This rate of naval production will continue for the next decade. Then he said, “As long as 1.4 billion Chinese people eat, sleep, defecate, and urinate every day … we will drive the U.S. to its death.”

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Defeatism and Revolutionary Strategy

I would say another ten days it should be completely over.

Col. Douglas Macgregor,
on day 9 of the war in Ukraine [i]

The term defeatism is commonly used in politics as a descriptor for an ideological stance that considers co-operation with the opposition party. In the military context, in wartime, and especially at the front, defeatism is synonymous with treason.

Wikipedia

When a strategist can manipulate both sides in a conflict, where each side represents one blade of a scissors, he can use the slicing of the blades to cut his way through anything. The conflict then becomes a controlled experiment in which the contenders, as thesis and antithesis, are used to establish a new thing (i.e., synthesis). In the present case, Russia and China (using their Western agent networks and “useful idiots”) are playing out this strategy. They are attempting to destabilize Europe and America to remake the world. An essential ingredient in this strategy is defeatism.

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China’s Fifth Column: An Interview With Trevor Loudon, Part 1

Two pro-China communist parties — Freedom Road Socialist Organization and Liberation Road — are playing leading roles in coordinating the often-violent protests now occurring across the United States.

Trevor Loudon

🕷

In previous articles I have asserted that communists are behind the Black Lives Matter “protests.” Many would disagree, citing police brutality and racial equality as causal factors. Any reference to communism nowadays is rejected as “Cold War” thinking. Yet the violent unrest of 2020 was organized and prepared by communists. This is undeniable, says Trevor Loudon — an expert on communism.

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Is ”Liberal” Democracy Doomed?

Claire Berlinski has written another book, which she intends to serialize on her blog/newsletter — found at the following address:

https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/is-democracy-doomed

I will be following Claire’s work with comments and asides, posted as the occasion warrants. It’s rare to find someone like Claire, who is working through “big picture” questions in an entertaining way. She keeps the reader guessing as to her final destination. Perhaps she does not know herself.

After three installments on the question of democracy’s survival, i cannot resist commenting. Readers are encouraged to read Claire’s essay on the question of democracy’s future — parts 1-3.

It is in Part 3 where she suggests “right wing” populism shares intellectual roots with fascism. That got me thinking. In what sense could this be true? If we understand fascism as the collectivist nationalism of Mussolini and Hitler, whatever could she mean?

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The Communist Program

At that point the shift in the political and military balance would be plain for all to see. Convergence would … be on terms dictated by the communist bloc. The argument for accommodation with the overwhelming strength of communism would be virtually unanswerable. Pressures would build up for changes in the American political and economic system…. Traditional conservatives would be isolated and driven toward extremism. They might become the victims of a new McCarthyism of the left.

Anatoliy Golitsyn, New Lies for Old, p. 346

America is on the road to socialism. Friedrich Hayek called it The Road to Serfdom. Presently it is a road lined with soldiers, in a capital fortified and afraid. One might ask how a socialist dictatorship begins? Always, it begins with fear. First there is fear on the side of the government. Then the government begins to make the people afraid. It is all part of a “process.”

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The Anthropogenic Global Warming Scam and the Grand Solar Minimum

“[The] Solar Minimum is becoming very deep indeed. Over the weekend, the sun set a Space Age record for spotlessness. So far in 2019, the sun has been without sunspots for more than 270 days, including the last 33 days in a row. Since the Space Age began, no other year has had this many blank suns.

Spaceweather.com
“Sunspots Set a Space Age Record”
17 December 2019

New Zealand solar physicist, Dr. John Maunder, in a 2012 essay titled “Reflections on a changing climate,” reported on a UN-sponsored climate conference held in Villach, Austria in October 1985. According to Maunder, one of the principal findings of the conference was that “greenhouse gases are likely to be the most important cause of climate change over the next century.”

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