{"id":769,"date":"2007-07-04T04:50:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-04T04:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.arkansasfreedom.net\/?p=769"},"modified":"2007-07-04T04:50:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-04T04:50:00","slug":"an-important-summary-of-what-has-happened-to-our-country-and-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/?p=769","title":{"rendered":"An important summary of what has happened to our country and why"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/font><\/p>\n

Who
\nstole our culture?<\/o:p><\/span><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/div>\n

Posted: May 24, 2007
\n1:00 a.m. Eastern<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/span>Editor’s note: This
\ncolumn is an excerpt from Dr. Ted Baehr and Pat Boone’s new book <\/span><\/i>“The Culture-wise Family: Upholding Christian
\nValues in a Mass Media World.”<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/i> In the book, entertainment expert
\nDr. Ted Baehr and legendary musician Pat Boone urge people to make wise choices
\nfor themselves and their families so they can protect their children from toxic
\nmessages in the culture. <\/span><\/i><\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/font><\/p>\n

The
\nfollowing is Chapter 10, written by historian Williams S. Lind.<\/span><\/i> <\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

By William S.
\nLind<\/font><\/span><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Sometime
\nduring the last half-century, someone stole our culture. Just 50 years ago, in
\nthe 1950s, America was a great place. It was safe. It was decent. Children got good
\neducations in the public schools. Even blue-collar fathers brought home
\nmiddle-class incomes, so moms could stay home with the kids. Television shows
\nreflected sound, traditional values. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Where did it
\nall go? How did that America become the sleazy, decadent place we live in today
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201c so different that those who grew up prior to the ’60s feel like it’s a
\nforeign country? Did it just “happen”? <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

It didn’t
\njust “happen.” In fact, a deliberate agenda was followed to steal our
\nculture and leave a new and very different one in its place. The story of how
\nand why is one of the most important parts of our nation’s history \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and it
\nis a story almost no one knows<\/i>. The people behind it wanted it that way. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

What
\nhappened, in short, is that America’s traditional culture, which had grown up
\nover generations from our Western, Judeo-Christian roots, was swept aside by an
\nideology. We know that ideology best as “political correctness” or
\n“multi-culturalism.” It really is cultural Marxism, Marxism
\ntranslated from economic into cultural terms in an effort that goes back not to
\nthe 1960s, but to World War I. Incredible as it may seem, just as the old
\neconomic Marxism of the Soviet Union has faded away, a new cultural Marxism has
\nbecome the ruling ideology of America’s elites. The No. 1 goal of that cultural
\nMarxism, since its creation, has been the destruction of Western culture and
\nthe Christian religion. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

To
\nunderstand anything, we have to know its history. To understand who stole our
\nculture, we need to take a look at the history of “political
\ncorrectness.” <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Early
\nMarxist theory<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Before World
\nWar I, Marxist theory said that if Europe ever erupted in war, the working
\nclasses in every European country would rise in revolt, overthrow their governments
\nand create a new Communist Europe. But when war broke out in the summer of
\n1914, that didn’t happen. Instead, the workers in every European country lined
\nup by the millions to fight their country’s enemies. Finally, in 1917, a
\nCommunist revolution did occur, in Russia. But attempts to spread that
\nrevolution to other countries failed because the workers did not support it. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

After World
\nWar I ended in 1918, Marxist theorists had to ask themselves the question: What
\nwent wrong? As good Marxists, they could not admit Marxist theory had been
\nincorrect. Instead, two leading Marxist intellectuals, Antonio Gramsci in Italy
\nand Georg Lukacs in Hungary (Lukacs was considered the most brilliant Marxist
\nthinker since Marx himself) independently came up with the same answer. They
\nsaid that Western culture and the Christian religion had so blinded the working
\nclass to its true, Marxist class interests, that a Communist revolution was
\nimpossible in the West, until both could be destroyed. That objective,
\nestablished as cultural Marxism’s goal right at the beginning, has never
\nchanged. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

A new
\nstrategy<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Gramsci
\nfamously laid out a strategy for destroying Christianity and Western culture,
\none that has proven all too successful. Instead of calling for a Communist
\nrevolution up front, as in Russia, he said Marxists in the West should take
\npolitical power last, after a “long march through the institutions” \u00e2\u20ac\u201c
\nthe schools, the media, even the churches, every institution that could
\ninfluence the culture. That “long march through the institutions” is
\nwhat America has experienced, especially since the 1960s. Fortunately,
\nMussolini recognized the danger Gramsci posed and jailed him. His influence
\nremained small until the 1960s, when his works, especially the “Prison
\nNotebooks,” were rediscovered. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Georg Lukacs
\nproved more influential. In 1918, he became deputy commissar for culture in the
\nshort-lived Bela Kun Bolshevik regime in Hungary. There, asking, “Who will
\nsave us from Western civilization?” he instituted what he called
\n“cultural terrorism.” One of its main components was introducing sex
\neducation into Hungarian schools. Lukacs realized that if he could destroy the
\ncountry’s traditional sexual morals, he would have taken a giant step toward
\ndestroying its traditional culture and Christian faith. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Far from
\nrallying to Lukacs’ “cultural terrorism,” the Hungarian working class
\nwas so outraged by it that when Romania invaded Hungary, the workers would not
\nfight for the Bela Kun government, and it fell. Lukacs disappeared, but not for
\nlong. In 1923, he turned up at a “Marxist Study Week” in Germany, a
\nprogram sponsored by a young Marxist named Felix Weil who had inherited
\nmillions. Weil and the others who attended that study week were fascinated by
\nLukacs’ cultural perspective on Marxism. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

The
\nFrankfurt School<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Weil
\nresponded by using some of his money to set up a new think tank at Frankfurt
\nUniversity in Frankfurt, Germany. Originally it was to be called the
\n“Institute for Marxism.” But the cultural Marxists realized they
\ncould be far more effective if they concealed their real nature and objectives.
\nThey convinced Weil to give the new institute a neutral-sounding name, the
\n“Institute for Social Research.” Soon known simply as the
\n“Frankfurt School,” the Institute for Social Research would become
\nthe place where political correctness, as we now know it, was developed. The
\nbasic answer to the question “Who stole our culture?” is the cultural
\nMarxists of the Frankfurt School. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

At first,
\nthe Institute worked mainly on conventional Marxist issues such as the labor
\nmovement. But in 1930, that changed dramatically. That year, the Institute was
\ntaken over by a new director, a brilliant young Marxist intellectual named Max
\nHorkheimer. Horkheimer had been strongly influenced by Georg Lukacs. He immediately
\nset to work to turn the Frankfurt School into the place where Lukacs’
\npioneering work on cultural Marxism could be developed further into a
\nfull-blown ideology. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

To that end,
\nhe brought some new members into the Frankfurt School. Perhaps the most important
\nwas Theodor Adorno, who would become Horkheimer’s most creative collaborator.
\nOther new members included two psychologists, Eric Fromm and Wilhelm Reich, who
\nwere noted promoters of feminism and matriarchy, and a young graduate student
\nnamed Herbert Marcuse. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Advances
\nin cultural Marxism<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

With the
\nhelp of this new blood, Horkheimer made three major advances in the development
\nof cultural Marxism. First, he broke with Marx’s view that culture was merely
\npart of society’s “superstructure,” which was determined by economic
\nfactors. He said that on the contrary, culture was an independent and very
\nimportant factor in shaping a society. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Second,
\nagain contrary to Marx, he announced that in the future, the working class
\nwould not be the agent of revolution. He left open the question of who would
\nplay that role \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a question Marcuse answered in the 1950s. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Third,
\nHorkheimer and the other Frankfurt School members decided that the key to
\ndestroying Western culture was to cross Marx with Freud. They argued that just
\nas workers were oppressed under capitalism, so under Western culture, everyone
\nlived in a constant state of psychological repression. “Liberating”
\neveryone from that repression became one of cultural Marxism’s main goals. Even
\nmore important, they realized that psychology offered them a far more powerful
\ntool than philosophy for destroying Western culture: psychological
\nconditioning. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Today, when
\nHollywood’s cultural Marxists want to “normalize” something like
\nhomosexuality (thus “liberating” us from “repression”),
\nthey put on television show after television show where the only normal-seeming
\nwhite male is a homosexual. That is how psychological conditioning works;
\npeople absorb the lessons the cultural Marxists want them to learn without even
\nknowing they are being taught. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

The
\nFrankfurt School was well on the way to creating political correctness. Then
\nsuddenly, fate intervened. In 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to
\npower in Germany, where the Frankfurt School was located. Since the Frankfurt
\nSchool was Marxist, and the Nazis hated Marxism, and since almost all its
\nmembers were Jewish, it decided to leave Germany. In 1934, the Frankfurt
\nSchool, including its leading members from Germany, was re-established in New
\nYork City with help from Columbia University. Soon, its focus shifted from
\ndestroying traditional Western culture in Germany to doing so in the United
\nStates. It would prove all too successful. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

New
\ndevelopments<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Taking
\nadvantage of American hospitality, the Frankfurt School soon resumed its
\nintellectual work to create cultural Marxism. To its earlier achievements in
\nGermany, it added these new developments. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Critical
\nTheory<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

To serve its
\npurpose of “negating” Western culture, the Frankfurt School developed
\na powerful tool it called “Critical Theory.” What was the theory? The
\ntheory was to criticize. By subjecting every traditional institution, starting
\nwith family, to endless, unremitting criticism (the Frankfurt School was
\ncareful never to define what it was for, only what it was against), it hoped to
\nbring them down. Critical Theory is the basis for the “studies”
\ndepartments that now inhabit American colleges and universities. Not
\nsurprisingly, those departments are the home turf of academic political
\ncorrectness. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Studies
\nin prejudice<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

The
\nFrankfurt School sought to define traditional attitudes on every issue as
\n“prejudice” in a series of academic studies that culminated in
\nAdorno’s immensely influential book, “The Authoritarian Personality,”
\npublished in 1950. They invented a bogus “F-scale” that purported to
\ntie traditional beliefs on sexual morals, relations between men and women and
\nquestions touching on the family to support for fascism. Today, the favorite
\nterm the politically correct use for anyone who disagrees with them is “fascist.”
\n<\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Domination<\/span><\/i> <\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

The
\nFrankfurt School again departed from orthodox Marxism, which argued that all of
\nhistory was determined by who owned the means of production. Instead, they said
\nhistory was determined by which groups, defined as men, women, races,
\nreligions, etc., had power or “dominance” over other groups. Certain
\ngroups, especially white males, were labeled “oppressors,” while
\nother groups were defined as “victims.” Victims were automatically
\ngood, oppressors bad, just by what group they came from, regardless of
\nindividual behavior. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Though
\nMarxists, the members of the Frankfurt School also drew from Nietzsche (someone
\nelse they admired for his defiance of traditional morals was the Marquis de
\nSade). They incorporated into their cultural Marxism what Nietzsche called the
\n“transvaluation of all values.” What that means, in plain English, is
\nthat all the old sins become virtues, and all the old virtues become sins.
\nHomosexuality is a fine and good thing, but anyone who thinks men and women
\nshould have different social roles is an evil “fascist.” That is what
\npolitical correctness now teaches children in public schools all across
\nAmerica. (The Frankfurt School wrote about American public education. It said
\nit did not matter if school children learned any skills or any facts. All that
\nmattered was that they graduate from the schools with the right
\n“attitudes” on certain questions.) <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Media and
\nentertainment<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Led by
\nAdorno, the Frankfurt School initially opposed the culture industry, which they
\nthought “commodified” culture. Then, they started to listen to Walter
\nBenjamin, a close friend of Horkheimer and Adorno, who argued that cultural
\nMarxism could make powerful use of tools like radio, film and later television
\nto psychologically condition the public. Benjamin’s view prevailed, and
\nHorkheimer and Adorno spent the World War II years in Hollywood. It is no
\naccident that the entertainment industry is now cultural Marxism’s most
\npowerful weapon. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

The
\ngrowth of Marxism in the United States<\/span><\/i> <\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

After World
\nWar II and the defeat of the Nazis, Horkheimer, Adorno and most of the other
\nmembers of the Frankfurt School returned to Germany, where the Institute
\nre-established itself in Frankfurt with the help of the American occupation
\nauthorities. Cultural Marxism in time became the unofficial but all-pervasive
\nideology of the Federal Republic of Germany. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

But hell had
\nnot forgotten the United States. Herbert Marcuse remained here, and he set
\nabout translating the very difficult academic writings of other members of the
\nFrankfurt School into simpler terms Americans could easily grasp. His book
\n“Eros and Civilization” used the Frankfurt School’s crossing of Marx
\nwith Freud to argue that if we would only “liberate non-procreative
\neros” through “polymorphous perversity,” we could create a new
\nparadise where there would be only play and no work. “Eros and
\nCivilization” became one of the main texts of the New Left in the 1960s. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Marcuse also
\nwidened the Frankfurt School’s intellectual work. In the early 1930s,
\nHorkheimer had left open the question of who would replace the working class as
\nthe agent of Marxist revolution. In the 1950s, Marcuse answered the question,
\nsaying it would be a coalition of students, blacks, feminist women and
\nhomosexuals \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the core of the student rebellion of the 1960s, and the sacred
\n“victims groups” of political correctness today. Marcuse further took
\none of political correctness’s favorite words, “tolerance,” and gave
\nit a new meaning. He defined “liberating tolerance” as tolerance for
\nall ideas and movements coming from the left, and in<\/i>tolerance for all
\nideas and movements coming from the right. When you hear the cultural Marxists
\ntoday call for “tolerance,” they mean Marcuse’s “liberating
\ntolerance” (just as when they call for “diversity,” they mean
\nuniformity of belief in their ideology). <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

The student
\nrebellion of the 1960s, driven largely by opposition to the draft for the
\nVietnam War, gave Marcuse a historic opportunity. As perhaps its most famous
\n“guru,” he injected the Frankfurt School’s cultural Marxism into the
\nbaby boom generation. Of course, they did not understand what it really was. As
\nwas true from the Institute’s beginning, Marcuse and the few other people
\n“in the know” did not advertise that political correctness and
\nmulti-culturalism were a form of Marxism. But the effect was devastating: a
\nwhole generation of Americans, especially the university-educated elite,
\nabsorbed cultural Marxism as their own, accepting a poisonous ideology that
\nsought to destroy America’s traditional culture and Christian faith. That
\ngeneration, which runs every elite institution in America, now wages a
\nceaseless war on all traditional beliefs and institutions. They have largely
\nwon that war. Most of America’s traditional culture lies in ruins. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

A
\ncounter-strategy<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Now you know
\nwho stole our culture. The question is, what are we, as Christians and as
\ncultural conservatives, going to do about it? <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

We can
\nchoose between two strategies. The first is to try to retake the existing
\ninstitutions \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the public schools, the universities, the media, the
\nentertainment industry and most of the mainline churches \u00e2\u20ac\u201c from the cultural
\nMarxists. They expect us to try to do that, they are ready for it, and we would
\nfind ourselves, with but small voice and few resources compared to theirs,
\nmaking a frontal assault against prepared defensive positions. Any soldier can
\ntell you what that almost always leads to: defeat. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

There is
\nanother, more promising strategy. We can separate ourselves and our families
\nfrom the institutions the cultural Marxists control and build new institutions
\nfor ourselves, institutions that reflect and will help us recover our
\ntraditional Western culture. <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Several
\nyears ago, my colleague Paul Weyrich wrote an open letter to the conservative
\nmovement suggesting this strategy. While most other conservative (really
\nRepublican) leaders demurred, his letter resonated powerfully with grass-roots
\nconservatives. Many of them are already part of a movement to secede from the
\ncorrupt, dominant culture and create parallel institutions: the homeschooling
\nmovement. Similar movements are beginning to offer sound alternatives in other
\naspects of life, including movements to promote small, often organic family
\nfarms and to develop community markets for those farms’ products. If Brave New
\nWorld’s motto is “Think globally, act locally,” ours should be
\n“Think locally, act locally.” <\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, our
\nstrategy for undoing what cultural Marxism has done to America has a certain
\nparallel to its own strategy, as Gramsci laid it out so long ago. Gramsci
\ncalled for Marxists to undertake a “long march through the
\ninstitutions.” Our counter-strategy would be a long march to create our
\nown institutions. It will not happen quickly, or easily. It will be the work of
\ngenerations \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as was theirs. They were patient, because they knew the
\n“inevitable forces of history” were on their side. Can we not be
\nequally patient, and persevering, knowing that the Maker of history is on ours?
\n<\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/i><\/font><\/div>\n

William
\nS. Lind has a B.A. in History from Dartmouth College and an M.A., also in
\nHistory, from Princeton University. He serves as director of the Center for
\nCultural Conservatism of the Free
\nCongress Foundation<\/a> in Washington, D.C., and as a vestryman at St. James
\nAnglican Church in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio.<\/span><\/i><\/o:p><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who stole our culture? Posted: May 24, 2007 1:00 a.m. Eastern Editor’s note: This column is an excerpt from Dr. Ted Baehr and Pat Boone’s new book “The Culture-wise Family: Upholding Christian Values in a Mass Media World.” In the book, entertainment expert Dr. Ted Baehr and legendary musician Pat Boone urge people to make … Continue reading An important summary of what has happened to our country and why<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arkansas-freedom-purpose","category-cultural-marxism-destroying-united-states"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}