In 1837, Daniel Webster wrote:

I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe . . . Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger.
— Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837

I’ve been thinking about that statement lately. I also came across a video that’s part of an interview with Soviet defector Yuri Bezmanov. Mr Bezmanov was a former KGB agent who defected to Canada in 1970. During an 1984 interview with author and Freedom Force International founder G. Edward Griffin, he exposed a long-term Soviet plan to defeat America not by force of arms, but through psychological warfare.

What does a late 20th-century defector have to do with a 19th-century lawyer and statesman, and how could it possibly be relevant to our situation in the 2020s? I came to find out both of these men were quite prescient in their warnings to the American people.

Daniel Webster
As Webster warned, America is not being destroyed from without, but from within. Our apathy about what the federal government does, our carelessness in dealing with the bad actors that inevitably enter government services, and our negligent attitude when the Constitution is violated, has certainly led the United States to the brink of collapse. Mr. Webster went on to warn:

I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing.
— Daniel Webster

Just think of the things the American people have blindly trusted the government for: retirement, health care, food and drug safety, education and energy, just to name a few. Yet no matter how often government fails, the answer always seems to be a call to give them more.

However, there is one area where Mr. Webster appears to have gotten things wrong—there was indeed a danger from a foreign foe. They used our carelessness and neglect to not only accelerate our destruction, but also to supplant the American way with a collectivist and communist agenda.

Yuri Bezmanov
As a former KBG officer, Bezmanov was aware of many of the methods used by that organization to subvert the United States. In his 1984 interview, he detailed some of these techniques, starting with “ideological subversion” (grammatical flaws are as they appear in the original transcript).

Ideological subversion is is the process which is legitimate overt and open you you can see it with your own eyes all all you have to do all American mass media has to do is to unplug their bananas from their ears open up their eyes and they can see it . . . The main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all according to my opinion and opinion of many defectors of my caliber only about 15% of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage as such the other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion or active measures . . . psychological warfare what it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves their families their community and their country. It’s a great brainwashing uh process which goes very slow and it’s divided in in four basic stages.
— Yuri Bezmanov, G. Edward Griffin Interview Transcript, 1984

Bezmenov goes on to describe ideological subversion in some detail.

It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years which requires to educate one generation of students . . . Marxism, Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of of at least three generations of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism. The result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in ’60s, dropouts or half baked intellectuals are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, educational system. You are stuck with them you cannot get rid of them they are contaminated they are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you if you expose them to authentic information even if you prove that white is white and black is black you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. In other words these people uh uh the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible.
— Yuri Bezmanov

In 1960, then-First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, spoke at the United Nations, stating that Communism would outlast the United States. While the 1990s made it look like Mr. Khrushchev was wrong, it seems the KGB’s plans may have won in the long run.

Today we have people who refuse to believe video evidence of the atrocities committed by Hamas against civilians in Israel. Others continue to line up to get vaccinated in the face of evidence that these “vaccines” are neither effective nor safe. As Bezmenov describes, there is more to come.

Unlike in present United States there will be no place for dissent in in future Marxist Leninist America uh here you can you can get uh popular like Daniel Ellsberg and filthy rich like Jane Fonda for being dissident for criticizing your Pentagon. In future these people will be simply squashed like cockroaches nobody’s going to pay them nothing for their beautiful noble ideas of equality.
— Yuri Bezmanov

Today, we have not only governments but private actors censoring information they don’t like. Cancel-culture attempts to punish individual and businesses for expressing ideas contrary to the agenda of the apparatchik. In short, as Bezmanov describes, this phase of the demoralization of America was completed even before his 1984 interview, and we have been moved far, far beyond what the KGB had hoped.

The demoralization process in the United States is basically completed already uh for the last 35 years actually it’s over fulfilled . . . most of it is done by Americans to Americans thanks to lack of moral standards . . . even if you start right now here this minute you start educating new generation of American it will still take you 15 to 20 years to turn the tide of uh of ideological perception of reality back to normal and patriotism.
— Yuri Bezmanov

Ladies and gentlemen, this was 40 years ago! We could have turned the demoralization around twice, yet the American people were unwilling to do so. Rather, we have let the American education system poison the minds of several generations with little if any challenge. We stood by while the federal government illegally meddled in our educational system, making things worse.

The KGB may have started this process, but ultimately, we have done it to ourselves.

The next stage is destabilization this time subverter does not care about your ideas and the patterns of your consumption . . . it doesn’t matter anymore this time and it takes only from two to five years to destabilize a nation uh it’s what what matters is essentials, economy, foreign relations, defense systems uh and you can see it quite clearly . . . the influence of Marxist Leninist ideas in the United States is absolutely fantastic I could never believe it 14 years ago when I landed uh in this part of the world that the process will go that fast.
— Yuri Bezmanov

Have you seen how the collectivist ideas have taken over our businesses, foreign relations, and defense? Businesses are being forced to hire people based on the color of their skin rather than their skills. Under Obama we turned our back on two of our staunchest allies, the United Kingdom and Israel, to support China and Iran. The Defense Department not only has placed the “climate change” agenda above national defense, but the transgender, racial and sexualization agendas as well.

The next stage of course is crisis. It may take only up to six weeks to to bring a country to the verge of crisis you can see it in in Central America now and after crisis with a violent change of of power structure and economy you have so-called the period of normalization . . . promise people all kind of goodies and the paradise on Earth uh to to destabilize your economy to eliminate the principle of free market competition and to put a big brother government in Washington DC.
— Yuri Bezmanov

How many crises have we had since 1984? The first and second Gulf Wars, 9/11, the Afghanistan War, the dot-com bust, the housing crisis, the Patriot Act, the surveillance state, COVID, the 2020 election, and the January 6 insurrections. Now we’re told that these are normal.

With every second the disaster is coming closer and closer unlike myself you will have nowhere to defect to unless you want to live in Antarctica with penguins this is it; this is the last country of freedom and possibility.
— Yuri Bezmanov

This time bomb Mr. Bezmanov has been talking about has been ticking for almost four decades; four decades of propaganda being pumped into the minds of the rising generations. Four decades of people being told the lie is the truth. Four decades of opportunities to restore not only the Constitution, but the American way of life, lost. Where does that leave us? What can we do?

The immediate thing that comes to my mind is of course there must be a very strong national effort to educate people in in the spirit of real patriotism number one number two to to explain them the real danger of Socialist, Communist, whatever, welfare state, Big Brother government.
— Yuri Bezmanov

Step one must be an effort to educate the people. As John Jay put it, to teach the rising generation to be free. We need to teach the spirit of real patriotism and the dangers of all collectivist systems. If we fail at this, then we can wave goodbye to our freedoms.

If We the People wish to remain free, it’s up to us to force the government to stop aiding the collectivists. I don’t mean denying their rights, but stop aiding and abetting those who are trying to destroy this country. Stop federal funding of education. Stop subsidizing the collectivist agenda. Make the politicians more afraid of disappointing the American people than their donors and political parties.

Conclusion
Webster was correct when he wrote:

Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.
— Daniel Webster

While Mr. Bezmanov is right about many things, the one thing I think he missed is the how. How do we force governments to stop supporting collectivism and start honoring their oath of office to support the Constitution? How do we educate the people in the spirit of real patriotism? We can’t expect the same government that is promoting collectivism to teach our children the spirit of liberty. That job falls to us. Actually, that job was always ours; we’ve just been convinced to turn it over to government. Now it’s time to take it back.