The Berlin Wall may be nothing but chunks of souvenirs now, but the soul-killing ideology that created it lives on. Of course, Christians know this all too well. We call it "the Devil."
from the Daily Mail:
For many communist fellow travellers, the scales fell from their eyes when the Hungarian uprising was crushed in 1956. Others, over the years, lost faith not just in communism but in its less radical sister, socialism, as their core tenet of 'equality' proved itself in a myriad different ways to be the enemy of freedom and justice, with market forces appearing to carry the torch of liberty instead. [I have come to believe that you can have Equality or Freedom but not both. . .if "equality" is understood as "equality in result" rather than "equality of opportunity"].
But as communism slowly crumbled, those on the far-Left who remained hostile towards western civilisation found another way to realise their goal of bringing it down. [And insofar as they remain hostile to western civilization, they remain hostile to Christianity. As Pope Benedict has said many times--there is a direct, intractable connection between the Christian faith and Greek philosophical culture.]
This was what might be called 'cultural Marxism'. It was based on the understanding that what holds a society together are the pillars of its culture: the structures and institutions of education, family, law, media and religion. Transform the principles that these embody and you can thus destroy the society they have shaped. [This is basically what I was taught in grad school. In turn, I taught it to my students and graded their work on the degree to which they were willing to support a leftist cultural revolution. We dressed it in liberal democratic terms, but what we pushed and pushed and pushed was cultural Marxism. The family is a particularly vile institution to the leftist b/c the family is the most immediate threat to the power of the state.]
from the Daily Mail:
For many communist fellow travellers, the scales fell from their eyes when the Hungarian uprising was crushed in 1956. Others, over the years, lost faith not just in communism but in its less radical sister, socialism, as their core tenet of 'equality' proved itself in a myriad different ways to be the enemy of freedom and justice, with market forces appearing to carry the torch of liberty instead. [I have come to believe that you can have Equality or Freedom but not both. . .if "equality" is understood as "equality in result" rather than "equality of opportunity"].
But as communism slowly crumbled, those on the far-Left who remained hostile towards western civilisation found another way to realise their goal of bringing it down. [And insofar as they remain hostile to western civilization, they remain hostile to Christianity. As Pope Benedict has said many times--there is a direct, intractable connection between the Christian faith and Greek philosophical culture.]
This was what might be called 'cultural Marxism'. It was based on the understanding that what holds a society together are the pillars of its culture: the structures and institutions of education, family, law, media and religion. Transform the principles that these embody and you can thus destroy the society they have shaped. [This is basically what I was taught in grad school. In turn, I taught it to my students and graded their work on the degree to which they were willing to support a leftist cultural revolution. We dressed it in liberal democratic terms, but what we pushed and pushed and pushed was cultural Marxism. The family is a particularly vile institution to the leftist b/c the family is the most immediate threat to the power of the state.]
[. . .]
[Antonio] Gramsci [Italian Marxist philosopher] understood that the working class would never rise up to seize the levers of 'production, distribution and exchange' as communism had prophesied. Economics was not the path to revolution. [No, it's not. Humans beings were created to perfect their natures against the model of the Word Incarnate. We are not here merely to survive but proposer! Leftists consistently prop up gov't programs that help people survive. Not a bad thing in itself, of course, but how often do these programs trap people in mere survival? One of Aquinas' many insights was that even the Virtuous Pagan can embrace the Good in the context of striving for perfection by living a virtuous life. You don't need Christ to be a good person. . .but you do need him to be a Perfected Person.]
He believed instead that society could be overthrown if the values underpinning it could be turned into their antithesis: if its core principles were replaced by those of groups who were considered to be outsiders or who actively transgressed the moral codes of that society. [Thus B.O.'s appointment of Bizarre Czars with radical backgrounds. It's all about diversity and tokenism and never about competence or talent.]
So he advocated a 'long march through the institutions' to capture the citadels of the culture and turn them into a collective fifth column, undermining from within and turning all the core values of society upside-down and inside-out. [A perfect description of the academic professoriate! And why you should be sending your kids to colleges like the University of Dallas.]
He believed instead that society could be overthrown if the values underpinning it could be turned into their antithesis: if its core principles were replaced by those of groups who were considered to be outsiders or who actively transgressed the moral codes of that society. [Thus B.O.'s appointment of Bizarre Czars with radical backgrounds. It's all about diversity and tokenism and never about competence or talent.]
So he advocated a 'long march through the institutions' to capture the citadels of the culture and turn them into a collective fifth column, undermining from within and turning all the core values of society upside-down and inside-out. [A perfect description of the academic professoriate! And why you should be sending your kids to colleges like the University of Dallas.]
Read the whole thing.
