Posted on 12/01/2005 7:48:34 PM PST by NixonsAngryGhost
Or are we to presume that only those who believe in God have rights?
I will disagree, though I see your point.
"Rights" aren't given or taken, they just "are". Now in order to preserve or obtain or obey the "natural law" and it's responsibilities you will need to "fight" for them. Because others ,due to envy, greed, or other social pathologies will want to take what is not theirs in property, money or labor .... by removing it from your possesion against your will or desire.
In other words bad people want to steal what they don't want to work for...... most politicians, lawyers, environmentalists and other assorted "liberals" fall into this category.
As far as "God" getting into the picture...... well, everything we have, will have and hope to have is given to us by him. That is, the only things worth having, hoping to have, or will have is through him.
If you're up for a suggestion, I'd recomend CS Lewis's "Mere Christianity" and "Screwtape Letters".... he kind of sums it all up in a tidy little package from a former atheist's and university scholar's point of view.
Correct you are in describing what I can only call 'classic Marxist doctrine'.
As someone who was born and educated in my formative years in a communist country, I can expound on this a bit from the perspective of being in a place where the Marxist doctrine was out in the open.
As a child, you are taught the usual lies about religion and the "bourgeoisie", taught a stunted and often rewritten version of history, and, above it all, is this thread (which neatly ties the old world real communists with their current American fellow-travelers:
An almost religious faith in the inerrancy of their doctrine (but based on what used to be called "scientific socialism" and frankly, lifting a page right out of Charles Darwin) - to wit, that Marxism was the natural and last evolution of human society, and its spread and success was a SCIENTIFIC CERTAINTY.
This is the kind of mindset (whether openly held as in former communist countries) or simply unconsciously absorbed as a life philosophy due to the educational and cultural (hidden) Marxist brainwashing of several generations of American youth) that is the very definition of fanaticism.
If you have a mathematical certainty about your own superiority and your duty as an agent of change to bring it about, then of course you will never sleep, never rest, and foment your revolution tirelessly with every waking breath in your body.
This way of thinking took over the Democrat party in the 1970s and flowered under the first cultural Marxist to hold the office of President of the United States - Bill Clinton (who is married to a REAL Marxist).
Hence all rules and propriety went out the window, and the Democrats agenda essentially became running a constant campaign using the tools of the big lie, smear, slander and ceaseless character assassination.
The foolish 'bourgeoisie" of 'traditional' Republicans found this to be annoying but suffer from a complete lack of ability to see what is the 'infernal mechanism' behind this culture change in our politics, much less the ability to devise an effective counter-strategy or the will to implement it.
Hence the Marxists always appear to be on the offensive in every arena (Academe, media, culture, politics) while traditionalists wind up fighting a rear guard action at best, and trying to appease the insatiable monster at worst.
Either way - the traditionalists lose.
Communism, of course, was completely unnatural and practicably untennable due to being an ideology running completely counter to human nature. It collapsed of its own weight, helped in no small measure by those in the West who saw the danger for what it was, held the line, and fought a clandestine (and sometimes overt) war to contain communism until it disintegrated.
Lest you think that I offer this historical perspective as a branch of hope, however, I must now introduce some bitter sobriety; yes, Leninist communism collapsed all right - but only after utterly and completely destroying the economy, culture, and 4 generations of the nations that fell under its grip.
Human nature and the laws of nature (and of nature's God) likewise dictate that the American experiment with cultural Marxism is doomed to wind up on the ash heap of history.
Unfortunately, the history of the 100-year war against communism suggests that this ultimate defeat of the monster will come at a frightful price - the preceding disintegration of American and Western culture and it way of life.
And already, in the wings, lurk other systems (Islamicism, coming out of a dark mideaval past, and a kind of leftist fascism that is increasingly emanating out of China), that are skirting our borders, like wolves looking for an opportunity to supplant and devour Lady Liberty and replace her with another totalitarian (though not quite so thumb-suckingly utopian) ideology.
"Gramsci, a young communist,... conjured up the notion of a 'quiet' revolution that could be diffused throughout a culture -- over a period of time -- to destroy it from within. He was the first to suggest that the application of psychology to break the traditions, beliefs, morals, and will of a people could be accomplished quietly and without the possibility of resistance."
I had a communist political science teacher back in 1990. His feeling back then, when everyone was saying that communism was dead, was that people had it all wrong; that the international communist movement was far from finished and that it would evolve and become stronger in the coming years now that the Western democracies had lost their fear of it.
As they say, "When you open the window, you let in the flies, too."
for later reading
The rights you describe are the rights pertaining to particular cases. Think more abstractly.
The universal rights of individuals are indeed granted by God. For example, the right to opportunity, the right to choose good over evil.
The major flaws of the cultural Marxist revolution will be the cause of its failure. Here are some I can think of:
1)A disregard for Nature and for absolute reality. These things cannot be imagined away.
2)The mindset of the contemporary liberal contains paradoxes, two that I can think of for the moment, that twist the doctrinal fabric in such a way that it will ultimately collapse. The indoctrinated masses are taught to view themselves as tolerant and selfless as they gratify highly intolerant and narcissistic impulses, and they are taught to think of themselves as brilliant though by definition they are fools.
I don’t find in your post any concrete facts from which to conclude that one can predict the downfall of Western civilization. We can still win. Overwhelmingly.
The useful idiots are dropping off slowly but surely. And to the wolves, I say bring it on.
It had occurred to me several years ago that Ross Perot and Jimmy Carter were Naval Academy grads and I wondered how they could have the Anti-American attitudes they did with that background. Perhaps now I know.
Forgive me if I periodically sound pessimistic.
It is disheartening to try fighting a foreign war while being stabbed in the back (I speak from personal experience).
I'm getting to the age where some men just don't give a hoot anymore and just go about their personal business. I'm certainly not spent, but its a struggle sometimes...
And I will third it.
The Greening Of America was written in the 1970s not the 90s, and Charles A. Reich was born in 1928 and so was not a boomer unless by "Boomer author" the writer means he was a favorite of boomers.
Well they sure ruined the American theatre.
Islamism and Communism cannot coexist as each are exclusionary. What is your thought on how that problem will be solved? I don't know that China has reached a final form yet.
later read/pingout/
Survival of the fittest. War of civilizations. With nukes. God help us.
Fascism is actually a very effective form of government in my opinion, so long as the economy is kept humming without excessive interference. China will dominate Asia by the end of this century. That much is as plain as day. Its neighbors better hope that China democratizes a bit more before then....
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