I should have taken up my cudgel as a writer in the 1960s when “anti-establishment” rebels of a Marxist bent staged huge riots––not in the 1980s when it was really too late to stem the tide of destructive subversion against America from the radical Left. The mainstream media was not only missing in action about this––they didn’t even report on the culture war that broke out against the attacks on America––but had joined the Left. Even the prestigious PBS took a sharp turn to the Left.
It wasn’t just a complicit media acting against America during the second half of the 20th century. It was a growing body of professionals with weak or missing moral sense that allowed “liberals” and “progressives” to lead the direction of America. By the 1990s, in spite of the culture war against the domestic enemies of this country, it was difficult to redirect the course of this country.
What authority did leftist “reformers” have to change America? I remember the rage of Sixties rebels against authority, which they aimed to abolish. The irony escaped them that it was the authority of their Marxist mentors and bosses that sent them rioting––an authority they would force upon the rest of us!
That is the authority of a gun pointing at you. It reminded me of the 1789 storming of the Bastille that led to the mass beheading of all unwanted people during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. The 1960s storming of campuses to bring down authority and level everyone to common denominators (theirs) was, as with the assault on the Bastille and subsequent blood bath, the wrong cure for the wrong disease.
It was of course impossible for fervor-blinded Sixties rebels to see that better social and political ideas and practices could exist than theirs, a conviction they articulated in rap sessions and in Aquarian lyrics sung over twanging guitars. That there could be insights into real social and political progress from minds greater than their own and deeper, more penetrating than the Dylans, the Ginsbergs, and other notables of their generation, was beyond their capacity to comprehend. It remained a blank in their mind that countless notables no longer living inspired the creation of a civilization that gave them and everyone else the fuller richness of life than otherwise possible.
Returning to the issue of authority, it was and still is not a question of do we need it but which authority is best to follow? Is it the authority of God-dismissing Marxists? Is it the authority of near-sighted secular humanists? Or of brave-new-world fabricators who like to mess around with human life? Or of hollow-headed Nihilists? Or the authority of those wise in their own mind and full of their own importance verbalizing pretentious nonsense in auditoriums, media, and research centers?
We shouldn’t fail to mention the “authority” of traitors. From a prominent one came this message: “When we get ready to take the United States, we will not take it under the label of communism; we will not take it under the label of socialism. These labels are unpleasant to the American people, and have been speared too much. We will take the United States under labels we have made very lovable; we will take it under liberalism, under progressivism, under democracy. But take it, we will.” (These are the words of Communist spokesman Alexander Trachtenberg, 1944.)
The warp in minds bent by leftism keeps them from considering thoughts much deeper than their wants. The thought is beyond them that we are our ancestor’s future, that we in turn will be our future’s ancestors. And what will we pass on to our offspring and they to theirs? Will the children of each generation continue to receive the knowledge and wisdom assembled over millennia of experience, struggle, and bloodshed? Must the flesh and blood of future generations be left to follow the loudest voices regardless of sanity? Must they drift and shift for themselves seeking to reinvent the wheel of culture with less to work with than in former times? Will technology dictate the conditions of their existence, with no intelligent human input to guide it?
To face any of these questions requires human intelligence and wisdom, difficult in a culture that is ill, such as ours, with props like “artificial intelligence,” currently demonstrating both “cleverness” and “stupidity.” (It is nonsense to designate something intelligent that is in fact lifeless and vulnerable to endless manipulation.)
Appalled by the growing loss of common sense and morality in our society, and alarmed by the increasing violence across this country, many are turning to divine authority for the power to move in the right direction. To connect with that power and authority, however, it is necessary to avoid places of worship that preach “wokeness” instead of the Word of God.
The clear-headed Bishop Fulton J. Sheen offered an insight into that ultimate authority and power in 1953 when he said: “Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.”
The climb out of chaos is steep.
Image from Grok.