Poetic Irony: A. Mitchell Palmer and the FBI

After World War 1, the first “Red Scare” happened. It wasn’t quite as intense as the McCarthy era, but it caused many similar problems.

The problems were not caused by communists, however. They were caused by the limp-wristed conservatives.

After World War 1, labor problems exploded. The communist labor party was founded in 1919 by a small group, due in no small part due to these labor issues. But they also saw major international success, given the communist victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia just a couple of years prior.

The Wilson Administration would not allow this to spread, especially right after the war. President Wilson put his attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, on the job of crushing the commies during this Red Scare of 1919.

Palmer deported Russians, raided communist individuals, and performed similar actions.

But his main legacy is creating the GIU, otherwise known as the General Intelligence Unit. This was a branch of the Bureau of Investigation, which would later become the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

He recruited J. Edgar Hoover to head the GIU. This position and influence later put Hoover in as the first FBI director, a position he would hold from 1924 to 1972.

One of Hoover’s first assignments was to carry out the A. Mitchell Palmer communist raids. So, he jumped right in with illegal actions and covert operations.

Some of my readers would read about raids on communists and give an immediate stamp of approval.

Don’t.

Hoover was a self-righteous political player who was always out for himself. It was popular to hunt communists back then, so he did. If he were around today, he’d just as happily hunt us. He cared only about the power, not the purpose.

I speak more about him and the FBI in this article, which if you have not read, it is a must read:

• The Truth About The Federal Bureau of Investigation

Hoover is not the focus of this article. Instead, it is the irony of what Palmer created under Hoover.

A. Mitchell Palmer set out to do whatever he could to stop the communist scourge.

But what a great irony, that the beastly invention he created is what is now being used to force a communistic scourge upon us.

The FBI once raided communists, but now they raid those who criticize communists. It was first created as a tool to investigate communist dissent, now it solely investigates patriotic dissent.

The institution has completely switched from its founding purpose.

There is a lesson in this ironic comedy. It is a lesson that conservatives never learn.

It is this:

• If you have power, you have to use it to finalize your victory.

Principles do not matter in a war. The greatest failure of the conservative is in not realizing that this is a war. Leftists recognize this, the average right-winger does not. The average conservative plays by the rules, morals, and procedures of a republican system, the leftist does not.

The conservatives created an institution (the FBI) to target the worst offenders of the communists. What happened? The leftists took it over and use it to target the average conservative now.

This happens literally every time. Look at things like the Patriot Act, or the strength of the executive order.

When in office, the conservative expands power to slightly push back against the Left, and then the Left regains office and uses the new power to completely obliterate the Right. The Left correctly sees this as a total domination—win at any cost—battle.

While the Right is harping on about “muh principles and procedures,” the Left is centralizing everything. You want to know why all the conservative institutions seem to be left-leaning? It’s because conservatives continue to surrender them through this form of failure.

If you simply create the tools and institutions, but leave the virus, the virus will overtake those very instruments you have formed against them. You have to use the power to cure the virus, permanently.

Look at states like Massachusetts. They will never be a Red State because the leftists have completely overtaken the political machine and made it into something that can never be overcome. The same tactics are now being employed in states like Arizona. Meanwhile, Republicans are sitting with their hands crossed and saying, “we need to play fair.”

The leftists have no issue using our own creations against us and not playing fair. But the difference is they use it to finalize their victory and reduce us to dust, so we never have a chance again.

Conservatives use their tools sparingly and temporarily, leaving them open to leftist centralization at a later time.

The FBI is the quintessential example of such a tactic by the Left, and an abysmal failure by the Right.

A. Mitchell Palmer created the foundation of the FBI. Against communists, his was a noble purpose, and an honorable principle. But then his tool was handed over to the Left on a silver platter, so that they can use it however they decide. He resembles modern conservatives in this failure to recognize the gravity of the conflict with the Left.

At some point, we have to learn from the mistakes of the conservatives. We need to make our institutions immune to leftist centralization, no different from what the leftists do.

To hell with the “conservative principles,” because if we keep following them, we’ll have literally nothing left conserved.

We are in a war for the battle of this land. War principles apply, not democratic ones. And if conservatives paid any attention to leftists at all, they would have realized that the leftists have had this mindset since the 1950s.

As usual, the conservative must try his best to catch up.

There is a very popular quote conservatives enjoy repeating that comes from Ben Franklin:

‘A republic, if you can keep it’.

But then they leave out the statement that Ben Franklin follows it up with:

There’s an extended version of “A republic, if you can keep it” too. In McHenry’s 1803 account, Powel immediately rejoinders, “And why not keep it?”

Franklin responds, “Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.”

Which clearly demonstrates that Franklin knew that such a system could not be sustained, given the nature of the people.

And they also often leave out Franklin’s true recorded thoughts on the matter:

“The executive will be always increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a monarchy.”

Of course, what Franklin correctly identifies is that debilitating centralization is inevitable in a republic. A republic cannot be kept, period.

The centralization is now here, and it was always inevitable.

The only question that remains is if it becomes our hegemony or theirs.

Given the fact that our average conservative still has the demonstrably failed mindset of A. Mitchell Palmer from the 1910s, it’s not looking too great for us.