Stratagems of the Right

We all know the cowering rightist when we see him. Ask him about politics, and, if he's not trying to change the subject, he'll inevitably say something akin to "both parties are a fraud." Corner him on his views, and you'll reveal he believes in some mix of conservative, libertarian, and/or nationalist positions on laws and public policy. But then, why won't he simply say who and what he supports? Why is nearly every statement affirming his rightist positions qualified with some eye-rolling iteration of "I don't like either [insert rightist politician] or [insert leftist politician], but... [insert meekly articulated rightist position in careful dialectic]"? Because, he knows the social consequences of wrong-think and is hedging his bets accordingly. Welcome to the world of Foucauldian power capillaries, a phrase associated with Michel Foucault, a leftist 20th century French philosopher and communism espouser associated with poststructuralism ...

Contrary to what the arbiters of truth at  Google and Wikipedia prioritize in our search  [*1], the origin of communism (property held in common for the public, private ownership outlawed) lies not in the 19th century with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As noted in an article  originally published by  The Freeman  in 1951  [*2], it lies around 380 B.C. in ancient Greece when Plato wrote his most famous dialogue (a book written as a dialectic conversation),  the  Republic  [*3], probably the first literary work in antiquity to espouse banning private property. Plato abandoned the idea in his later dialogue  the  Laws   [*4]. And his most famous student, Aristotle, in a treatise entitled Politics , around 350 B.C., lambasted him for even considering it  [*5]. Thereafter, communism, as a serious political idea, lied nearly [*6] dormant for 2,200 years. Why the two-millennia gap? Marx and Engel's communism was argued a...