That doesn't answer the fundamental "why" of how this happened. WHY did communism get a foothold in the children of the "Greatest Generation?" WHY did God's commandments get trampled?
I don’t know if you are familiar with the prophecy of Fatima, but Our Lady predicted this, the spread of communism from Russia.
Not trying to make this into a religious discussion, but she did predict this in the early 1900’s.
Communist took over every aspect of society, the press, the schools, many businesses, courts. I think there is a document called the Communist Manifesto and it outlines their agenda. It’s chilling because most if not all of it has come true.
Communism and the removal of God and His holy commandments.
That doesn’t answer the fundamental “why” of how this happened. WHY did communism get a foothold in the children of the “Greatest Generation?” WHY did God’s commandments get trampled?
I’m writing from the protestant Christian viewpoint, diamond6 might have some thoughts from the Catholic perspective.
The (protestant) church in the late 1800s, early 1900s became weak and corrupted. It split into the “liberal social justice” camp - who basically rejected scripture for the most part- influenced by the German “higher critical” movement, and the fundamentalists who became mostly interested in evangelism, saving souls, but pulled out of the institutions of society, their salt lost it’s “saltiness” and they “hid their light under a bushel”. They decided that areas like education, politics and journalism were too “dirty” to bother with, and just focused salvation and the afterlife. We are supposed to be “discipling all NATIONS”, not just evangelising individuals. (Both are important and shouldn’t neglect either responsibility.)
The biggest effect was that the true, fundamental Christians pulled out of universities, colleges and schools. (We NEVER should have given schools over from church control to government control). John Dewey was a big Fabian socialist and his influence on the public schools was enormous. The liberal social justice Christians still had a lot of influence and were very involved in these “pillars” of society, and became the “useful idiots” in handing over the reins to the socialists.
The teaching universities - (that set the agenda for what public school teachers would learn) became very communistic/socialistic. So now you can hardly even find private school teachers who can think clearly about what liberty really means, what a free country is, what are really rights and what are “wants”... etc. because they were raised in public schools and went to public universities. So we’ve had several generations now, and that kind of thinking is almost lost.
At the same time, the socialists were working very hard to morally corrupt our society, because as the family fabric tears and disintegrates, then the government steps in to be “Dad”. Children are not taught morality and reponsibility in the home - they are handed over to government schools to be socialized.
This has been Satan’s agenda since the beginning of time, but as long as Christian churches are strong and people are truly God fearing and believe and OBEY scripture, then it doesn’t matter what kind of corrupting influence is “out there” - it wont take effect. Unfortunately, the churches and pastors are weak and they have been weak for a long, long time - so people are vulnerable to any false teaching.
Read the book of Jude in the scripture - written 2000 years ago but it could have been written this morning.
That’s why I keep pounding the drum that if we ever get free again, whether it’s thru financial collapse and chaos, secession, or a civil war, one of the first things that any new free society needs to put in their social compact or new constitution is to OUTLAW government schools althogether. Force parents to be reponsible for private schooling/homeschooling/internet schooling their kids - or at the very most allow small communities to create a charter for just their community to go in together to create a school, but only if everyone commits unanimously at the beginning as to what will be taught. And make it illegal, written in the constitution, for any “government” to have any sayso at all in what schools teach. Give that responsibility for a child’s education back to the parents and families.