Posted on 01/23/2003 10:51:43 PM PST by Askel5
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A Nation of FrogsWilliam W. Borst Just recently, I was discussing the tax system with my attorney who had just completed my mother's estate. When I informed him of the Marxist underpinnings of, not only the so-called "death tax," but also the graduated income tax, he was shocked. He had no idea that Karl Marx had wriuen the major elements in the tax code with which he had been working his entire professional life. All one has to do is read the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848. The fact that an educated, sophisticated man, such as my lawyer, had been totally unaware of this fact speaks volumes about the vast majority of Americans. As Yankee manager Casey Stengel used to say, "You could look it up!" Most Americans believe that when the Berlin Wall went down with a thundering crash in 1989, it marked the end of the bloody ogre that had enslaved half of Europe for over forty years. They believe that the country has nothing to fear from Communism any more. Thev have been conditioned to believe that the antiCommunism crusade of the 1950s was nothing more than paranoidal ranting of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. The fact is Communism is still very much alive and thriving in this country. it has taken on a more subtle, destructive guise. The situation is analogous to the frog that is put into a pot of tepid water. if the cook were to quickly increase the temperature of the water, the frog would quickly jump out to safety But the smart cook increases the temperature, onlv gradually, so that the poor frog does not realize it is being slowly but surely boiled to death. William Lederer once referred to America as a "nation of sheep." I believe America is more a nation of frogs.
ANTONIO GRAMSCIHow did this happen? The place to start is with the writings of a Sardinian intellectual, Antonio Gramsci. Born in the village of Ales on the island of Sardinia in 1891, Gramsci became the most successful interpreter of Marxism. He left Sardinia for the mainland where he studied philosophy and history at the University of Turin. In 1919 he founded a newspaper in Italy, the L'Ordinine Nuovo, or the New Order In 1921 with Palmiro Togliatti, Gramsci founded the Italian Communist party. When Italy adopted Mussolini's fascism, Gramsci fled to Russia where he analyzed Lenin's adaptation of Communism. He was profoundly disturbed that Communist Russia failed to show any great interest in a "workers' paradise." Gramsci clearly understood that the Russian ruling class had maintained its hold on the workers, by resorting to sheer terror and mass extermination. Communism had merely replaced one with the other. After Lenin's death and the ensuing struggle for power, even Russia became a dangerous place for Gramsci. Lenin's successor Stalin eliminated anyone suspected of deviation from his party line. Gramsci returned to Italy to struggle against Mussolini, was arrested as a likely agent of a foreign power, and imprisoned in 1926. He spent the remaining years of his life expounding on his philosophy. it was here that he wrote Prison Notebooks and Letters from Prison, which have become extremely influential on the college campus. When he died after being released in 1937, he had produced a total of nine volumes on history, sociology, and Marxist theory. Since economic Marxism was a failure, Gramsci reasoned that the only way to topple the repressive Western institutions was by, what he called, a "long march through the culture." He repackaged Marxism in terms of a bona fide "cultural war," not its doctrinaire class struggle. He was well aware that most people did not believe in the Communist system. Their Christian faith was the big obstacle, preventing the necessary leap to Communism. Gramsci knew that the civilized world had been thoroughly indoctrinated with Christianity for 2000 years, so much so that civilization and Christianitv were inexorably bound.
DE-CHRISTIANIZE THE WESTGramsci hated marriage and the family, the very founding blocks of a civilized society.To him, marriage was a plot, a conspiracy if you would, to perpetuate an evil system that oppressed women and children. It was a dangerous institution, characterized bv violence and exploitation, the forerunner of fascism and tyranny. Patriarchy served as the main target of the cultural Marxists. They strove to feminize the family with legions of single and homosexual mothers and "fathers," who would serve to weaken the structure of civilized society. It was another cultural Marxist who brought the Gramascian strategy into the schools. George Lukacs was a wealthy Hungarian banker. He was reputed to have been the most brilliant theorist since Marx himself. Echoing the future sentiments of Jesse Jackson, Lukacs cried out "who will free us from Western civilization?" Gramsci's and Lukacs' ideas came to fruition through the Frankfurt School or institute of Social Research, as it was originally called, in the 1920s. They translated Marxism from economics into culture terms. one of the keys in the Frankfurt School was to merge Marxist analysis with Freudian psychoanalysis and psychological conditioning. According to their Freudian and Marxist amalgamation, just as under capitalism, the working class was automatically oppressed, so under Western culture, blacks, homosexuals, Hispanics, and women, that is, everybody but evil white males, were automatically the collective targets of Western oppression. The notion of group solidarity or what is called "identity politics" was designed to create nothing but division, leading to violence and social anarchy. In order to undermine Western society, the cultural Marxists would constantly repeat the charges that the West was guilty of genocidal crimes against each and every civilization that it had ever encountered throughout its history, and the historical oppressions of mankind.
CRITICAL THEORYThis idea evolved into "Critical Theory," which has served the left as its main weapon in the battle for the soul of American culture. The "Crits" employed destructive criticism of the main pillars of Western civilization, including Christianity, capitalism, authority, the family, morality, tradition , sexual restraint, loyalty, patriotism, nationalism, heredity, ethnocentrism, convention, Conservatism and especially the language. Critical Theory, which is endemic to all the major law schools in the country, holds that the patriarchal social structure should be replaced with matriarchy. The belief that men and women are different and have properly defined roles would be replaced with androgvny and with that, the heterodox belief that homosexuality is normal. The differences between the genders, not sexes, had to be minimized. According to Marxist feminists men and women were fungible. That is they could be easily interchanged. Genders' differences were nothing more than mere anatomical accidents. Another key ingredient in Cultural Marxism was Theodor Adorno's idea of the "Authoritarian Personality." His book, which he published with Else Frenkel-Brunswick, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford in 1950, was premised on the singular principle that Christianity, Capitalism, and the patriarchal or authoritarian familv created a character susceptible to racial prejudice and fascism. To them anyone who upheld the old traditional standards had an authoritarian personality that was basically fascist in nature. If a family adhered to Christian and capitalist principles, the children would most likely grow up to be fascists and racists. Pat Buchanan called Adorno's book, "the altarpiece of the Frankfurt School." if fascism and racism are endemic to the culture, as Adorno believed, everyone who was raised in the traditions of God, motherhood, and family is in need of a psychological help. This is Orwellian logic that seems to have already established a beachhead in the American consciousness. Cultural determinism had replaced Marx's economic determinism. This corresponds with the idea of "political correctness." Political correctness is the key to understanding the plight of the American culture since the dawning of the sixties. P.C. represents the lead vehicle through which the Marxist mind has driven its cancerous ideas in undermining the genius of American politics and culture. Under the rubric of "diversity," its hidden goal is to impose a uniformity of thought and behavior on all Americans. The cultural Marxists, often teachers, university professors and administrators, 'I'V producers, newspaper editor and the like, serve as gatekeepers by keeping all traditional and positive ideas, especially religious ideas, out of the public marketplace. one can easily see that happening in our society every day.
HERBERT MARCUSEProbably the most important member of the Frankfurt School was Herbert Marcuse. He was largely responsible for bringing Cultural Marxism to the United States, when he moved to New York City to escape the Nazi persecution in the thirties. In the sixties he became the guru of the New Left while a professor at University of California at San Diego. Marcuse was a full-blooded social revolutionary who contemplated the disintegration of American society just as Karl Marx and Georg Lukacs contemplated the destruction of German society. In his book, An Essay on Liberation, Marcuse proclaimed the means for transforming American society. He believed that all taboos, especially sexual ones, should be relaxed. "Make love, not War!" was his battle cry that echoed through the ivy-covered college campuses all over America. His methodology for rebellion included the deconstruction of the language, the infamous "what does 'is' mean?" which fostered the destruction of the culture. By confusing and obliterating word meanings, he helped cause a breakdown in the social conformity of the nation, especially among the more uninformed voung of America. He deliberately acerbated race relations by emphasizing the idea that white men were all guilty, for slavery and blacks could do no wrong. These cultural revolutionaries were faced with a serious question raised by the Graniascian shift. if the proletariat was not the basis of the revolution, what was? Marcuse said that women should be the cultural proletariat who transformed Western society. They would serve as the catalyst for the new Marxist Revolution. If women could be persuaded to leave their traditional roles as the transmitters of culture, then the traditional culture could not be transmitted to the next generation. The idea that "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," is no idle statement. What better way to influence the generations to come than by subverting the traditional roles of women? The Marxists rightfully reasoned that the undermining of women could deal a deadly blow to the culture. One of the heirs to this cultural strategy was Betty Friedan, the former Naomi Goldstein. Her book, The Feminine Mystique, served as the textbook in sabotaging the American family. Friedan's described the traditional housewife as a "parasite, who was forced to deny her true nature. To Friedan, the stay-at-home mom was a mindless robot devoid of a real brain. Though she was not a member of the Frankfurt School, Friedan's hatred and disdain for men and patriarchy made her the "godmother of radical feminism." The subversion of the family and the decline in respect for patriarchy has led to the increased feminization of the nation's cultural institutions, including the churches, schools, and universities, political parties and even the military and our police forces. "Modern man" resembles more the saccharine sensitivity of an Alan Alda than the lusty bravado of a John Wayne. According to Carolyn Graglia's book Domestic Tranquility, the "editors at Playboy could not have orchestrated the women's movement" any better. If women were the target, then the Cultural Marxists scored a bullseye. Today women unrealistically aspire to anything a man does from being a fighter pilot, a combat soldier, policemen, firemen, priests, boxers, and several jobs that require manly strength or a masculine disposition, even the presidency. They have lowered themselves from their lofty pedestals and sacrificed their natural moral superiority to men on the altar of equalitv and choice. Women have traded the domestic tranquility of family and the home for the power surge of the boardroom and the sweaty release of casual sex. Divorce court statistics, wife and child abandonment, abortion and even spousal murder can be laid at Bettv Friedan's doorstep to a large degree. This has not happened like the Biblical "thief in the night." it has been a gradual process, as Americans lay fat and lazy on their lily pads, watching Oprah or the next big game. To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, our civilization will end, not with a big bang, but with a faint croak, if we do not do something now.
William A. Borst holds a Ph.D. in American History from St. Louis University. He is a weekly talk show host on WGNU radio and the author of the book, Liberalism: Fatal Consequences, available by sending $17.50, pre-paid, to William A. Borst, PO. Box 16271, Clayton, MO 63105.
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I think you'll enjoy this also.
Great post, Askel5. Thanks so much for the ping.
I was amused to read the above hoary motto on my drive into work this morning. It was 15 degrees below zero with the wind chill factored in; and yet here were these caitiff peaceniks out there shivering with their stupid, "moldy-oldie" signs at a busy intersection in toney Lincoln, Mass. Their presence seems to grow larger daily. It absolutely enrages my husband to see these "protesters"; me, I kind of feel sorry for them, these hapless people with "braces on their brains." The braces, of course, are the strictures of crackpot cultural Marxism, of which Hitlery Rodham Clinton is High Priestess and Pythia. Gramsci's dreams are coming true, thanks to people like her and her hideous husband, and their legions of brain-dead, lock-step epigones... a vision straight out of The Night of the Living Dead.
God help us all!
Siobhan, thanks for the heads up!
The differences between the genders, not sexes, had to be minimized.
Here I am either missing something, or else the author himself has fallen into a Gramscian trap. To employ "gender" as anything other than a grammatical category is to admit the idea that man is somehow self-constructed. If the author wants to point to a willful and destructive blurring of the cultural boundary between male and female behavior, there are ways to say so without conceding the adversary's rhetorical abuses.
Just as forgiveness and compassion are more commonly perceived as feminine, there's a parallel and not inferior morality in courage, endurance, and self-discipline. It's useless to speak of either sex's moral superiority. As neither sex exists independent of the other, to speak of one without reference to the other's contribution to its formation and completion is to overlook John Paul II's penetrating insight in Mulieris Dignitatem ("Womanly Dignity"), that man and woman are completed and realised in each other.
...he refers, I believe, to the fact women are -- generally speaking -- more forgiving, more tolerant, more compassionate, more Christ-like than men.
Let's not forget that there's no one more Christ-like than Christ -- indisputably male, and self-giving ("emptying himself" is how Paul puts it -- a bloody image, but also a spousal one), whose maleness is definitively revealed in a stripped crucifixion that's not about wrath-appeasement but self-revelation.
... that it's when men fall in love with Christ the Bridegroom -- Real Men ... men like St. John of the Cross, for example -- they come close to what is more natural to a woman.
Additionally, having never actually been a woman, I don't think you have any notion of the day-in, day-out selflessness and struggle for worth when posited perpetually somewhere between the Virgin and the whore and excluded from the sanctuary.
Just as menarche imposes maturity on women, all sorts of realities on this earth impose a cross on women that is a sort of shortcut to understanding.
This could possibly be due to the original natural superiority of men that was having to be wheedled by Eve to partake ALSO of the fruit of which she chose to eat. A guilty conscience usually goes a long way in instilling the regret and wisdom from which spring real empathy, sympathy, compassion and forgiveness.
Perhaps Woman has one of these as a matter of course.
I read the "not sexes" interjection as a pointed reminder that the Gender business is bogus. I think he was being sarcastic.
Also, I do not agree that male and female must needs find their fulfillment in each other even if mankind be made male and female. In fact, I don't believe that most men and women who look first to their partner in life for ultimate fulfillment end up fulfilled. God must come first and, for some, He's enough.
It pays to ping you ... I learn a new word or two every time you respond. =)
Trust all is well with you and yours, Miss B.
Have you ever delivered a child?
There are certain procedures involved beforehand designed specifically around the fact that indeed the woman empties herself ... in great pain, to boot.
Women have a mild -- for most -- rehearsal of this emptying of the self as regularly as the full moon from the moment they become fertile to the moment they wither on the vine.
I do not agree that male and female must needs find their fulfillment in each other
Me neither. I said "man and woman", not "men and women".
Please do not suppose that I'm promoting -- in the manner of Plato's Symposium -- the weird theory of Aristophanes (who wrote The Frogs, btw), of man and woman as the Zeus-severed components of a primeval Whole Human, perpetually striving to re-unite, to recover their original integrity. Man -- the sex, I mean -- does not exist without woman, nor woman without man. It seems a commonplace, scarcely worthy of comment, to say that humanity can't not exist without a coming-together of the sexes. But this is not at all the same as insisting that every single person is humanly incomplete if not paired off with a sexual complement.
Far better to say -- drawing from the same well of Eastern Christianity that I perceive in Mulieris Dignitatem -- that there's no such thing as a single "person", because personhood implies life-in-communion, knowing and being known:
"In the Book of Genesis we find another description of the creation of man - man and woman (cf. 2:18-25) - to which we shall refer shortly. At this point, however, we can say that the biblical account puts forth the truth about the personal character of the human being. Man is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal God. What makes man like God is the fact that - unlike the whole world of other living creatures, including those endowed with senses (animalia) - man is also a rational being (animal rationale)...By reflecting on the whole account found in Gen 2:18-25, and by interpreting it in light of the truth about the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen 1:26-27), we can understand even more fully what constitutes the personal character of the human being, thanks to which both man and woman are like God. For every individual is made in the image of God, insofar as he or she is a rational and free creature capable of knowing God and loving him. Moreover, we read that man cannot exist "alone" (cf. Gen 2:18); he can exist only as a "unity of the two", and therefore in relation to another human person. It is a question here of a mutual relationship: man to woman and woman to man. Being a person in the image and likeness of God thus also involves existing in a relationship, in relation to the other "I". This is a prelude to the definitive self-revelation of the Triune God: a living unity in the communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."
The life-in-communion of which JPII speaks here is the very antithesis of alienated individualism, which amounts to metaphysical suicide.
... that it's when men fall in love with Christ the Bridegroom ...
JPII again: "From a linguistic viewpoint we can say that the analogy of spousal love found in the Letter to the Ephesians links what is "masculine" to what is "feminine", since, as members of the Church, men too are included in the concept of 'Bride'."
Additionally, having never actually been a woman, I don't think you have any notion...
Dear lady, I'm sure you're right. Nor do I need to, if I pray in Christ for well-loved friends and complete strangers, asking to have my prayer made pure, self-giving and cleansed of needy human self-regard. I have never been anyone except who I am. Similarly for you. Charity and humility and forgiveness derive not from gifts peculiar to one sex, nor from life experience, but because -- speaking of the crosses of this world -- we're crucified in Christ. Though every human person, man and woman, suffers privately and ineffably (the best of them striving to resist self-pity), it's Christ who gives it all the meaning it needs.
a cross on women that is a sort of shortcut to understanding.
Only when it's an occasion for grace, and that's a gift. Notwithstanding the unique case of the Mother of God, it seems a bold thing to say, that men's spiritual perfection lies in attaining "what is more natural to" the daughters of Eve, bless their hearts.
Of course, Adam was every bit as guilty.
The objective is the same -- man or woman. Women would do well to take a page from male discipline and rationality, men would do well to practice a little natural subservience and absolute trust in the notion they will cared for by whom it is they obey.
As it is, the sexes seem to be exchanging only the bad qualities natural to each.
The ultimate example being the homosexuality whereby women end up just as abusive as men (or more, given their sacramental homocide in the womb) and men end up meddlesome, calculating, shrewish and insulting whiners. Both are at the vanguard of the distorting of human being.
I'm hangin' in there, Askel5! I hope all goes well with you.
WRT the "new vocab" issue here: I apologize!!! Sometimes I am just so besotted by the richness and beauty of my native tongue that I just get carried away! :^)
The "make love not war" anecdote I gave really obscured the larger point in this essay: That women have been designated by the Cultural Marxists as the main schock troops, the myrmidons of cultural change.
That observation, IMHO, is right on the money. Women on a wide scale have been encouraged to repudiate nature and biology, and have largely succumbed to this appeal, with little or no protest -- probably thinking they were being "liberated" from nature by so doing. (As if one can be "liberated" from one's own nature. To me, that's the very form the death wish takes.)
It's all an enormous embarrassment to me, speaking as a woman. But then, maybe it really is true that women are more "tractible" than men. I suppose Evil is always happy to make an "easy score."
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