By Stan Gudmundson
Peterson, MN
The consequences of November’s election began long ago. Shortly after the Civil War some of the day’s “intellectuals” concluded that the U.S. constitution was badly flawed. It’s a bit simplistic, but that has divided Republicans and Democrats ever since. President Wilson probably summarized their position best when he said there was a lot of nonsense in the constitution.
They thought the country should be run by government experts based on “scientific” management principles even when they conflicted with the constitution. The last Democrat president to govern by the constitution was Grover Cleveland. Since then, only Coolidge, Reagan, and Trump have even tried.
Many “intellectuals” have been happy to provide theories of how it could be “fixed.” In the ‘30s, “scholars” from Germany brought us the malign Marxist derived Frankfort school, i.e. a “critical theory as social critique… to effect sociologic change and realize intellectual emancipation, by way of enlightenment.” “It analyzes the significance of the ruling understandings (the dominant ideology) generated in bourgeois society… to show that the dominant ideology misepresents how human relations occur in the real world and how capitalism justifies and legitimates the domination of people.” (Wikipedia) Like many idiotic leftist ideas, this swept through our campuses, where it remains influential.
Italian Antonio Gramsci provided the blueprint for what has followed. It wasn’t a conspiracy led by dark forces but it took on a life of its own. That is not to say that there weren’t people who understood Gramsci and who did their best to influence the direction of his scheme. How effective particular individuals were may never be fully understood but certainly some with great wealth were and are huge contributors to its “progress.” People like George Soros and many groups he funds along with other very wealthy supporters providing “dark’’ money.
Gramsci believed that the culture had to be changed. Even its language. He proposed a Marxist cultural revolution to be achieved by a “long march” through the institutions.
There are virtually none that are not now completely dominated by the left. Schools and universities, the mainstream media, Hollywood and the entertainment industries, mainstream church denominations, government bureaucracies. Even our military’s capability has been circumscribed by political correctness, a leftist strait jacket that brooks no contrary opinions. Now the left is beginning an effort to purge it of conservative thought.
Those in law enforcement generally oppose this cultural Marxism but they cannot overcome the judiciary’s double standard. Worse, the vast majority of Americans don’t care or hate so much they are willing to ignore this criminality.
Our founders believed that only a virtuous people could make this nation work in the way they set it up. That may be the worst part of the success of cultural Marxism. Arrogant politicians of both parties have abrogated their responsibilities for sinecure and graft. Politicians will always be what they are, but a virtuous people would never have put up with the criminality of the Clintons nor would they have stood for an attempted coup on a sitting president and all of the rest.
Our mores and language also have been corrupted. Homosexual marriage, for example, is nothing but the destruction of the meaning of the word marriage. Television programs have become so vile that I can no longer watch them. In the least racist society on earth, we are assaulted by “big lies” about nonsense like that of white privilege. This foolishness tribalism only serves to divide us and provide contemptible race-baiters and diversity specialists employment/political opportunities for themselves. Worse, they create “victims,” which literally destroys lives and perpetrates ideas like the insane notion that successful minorities are acting “white.”
The culture has been dramatically changed as confirmed by the motive of most leftist voters during the recent election. It was pure hatred. The long march has reached the tipping point.
Will the American people understand what they have done to themselves? Eventually, maybe. But by then it will be too late. I’m not optimistic. A return to basic principles and a virtuous citizenry will not happen during my lifetime. And I doubt it will occur during the lifetimes of anyone alive on earth today.
I am glad I am not young.
Stanley J Gudmundson says
For goodness sake. Dale Jones and the long-dead Norwegian Knut Hamsun, you are living in an intellectual wasteland. I’d like to help you out. Following are a beginners list of few books you should read. And I will be happy to provide them for you.
Tom Sowell (He’s written upwards of 50 books – all really good)
Intellectuals and Society
Discrimination and Disparities
Basic Economics
Wealth Poverty and Politics
Burton Folsom
New Deal or Raw Deal –
Amity Shlaes
The Forgotten Man
Hayek
The Road to Serfdom –
Pekka Hammalainen
The Comanche Empire –
Lakota America
Bernard Bailyn
The Barbarous Years –
Michelle Malkin
Sold Out
Lewis Sorley
Westmoreland
A Better War
Booker T. Washington
Up From Slavery
Bernard Lewis
The Crisis of Islam
David Mamet
The Secret Knowledge
When you are done with those, I have at least a thousand more you should read.
Stanley Gudmundson says
For goodness sake. Dale Jones and the long-dead Norwegian Knut Hamsun, you are living in an intellectual wasteland. I’d like to help you out. Following are a beginners list of few books you should read. And I will be happy to provide them for you.
Tom Sowell (He’s written upwards of 50 books – all really good)
– Intellectuals and Society
– Discrimination and Disparities
– Basic Economics
– Wealth Poverty and Politics
Burton Folsom
– New Deal or Raw Deal –
Amity Shlaes
– The Forgotten Man
Hayek
– The Road to Serfdom –
Pekka Hammalainen
– The Comanche Empire –
– Lakota America
Bernard Bailyn
– The Barbarous Years –
Michelle Malkin
– Sold Out
Lewis Sorley
– Westmoreland
– A Better War
Booker T. Washington
– Up From Slavery
Bernard Lewis
– The Crisis of Islam
David Mamet
– The Secret Knowledge
When you are done with those, I have hundreds more to you should read.
Knut Hamsun says
If this isn’t satire, please.
The young are glad you’re not young either and look forward to the departure of your heedless generation of psychopathic plunderers of every abundance.
– By a “virtuous citizenry” or a return to what once was one, do you mean we should bring back slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, and persecution of anyone not white bread heterosexual? Let’s also round up the Asians in camps and shoot or hang some more Indians and take their last reservations.
The last good republican president was none you listed, it was Eisenhower, and by comparison Trump was a pathetic farce with neither integrity nor the slightest respect for the constitution. Unless you are a billionaire, if you support Trump you have been fed quite a bill of goods.
George Soros – another bogeyman of the Right, vastly outspent by the Koch brothers, the Mercer family and a multitude of dark money organizations and businesses. Get a grip on some numbers before you publish misleading claims like this.
Your reference to law enforcement stinks. Sure, the police here in Fillmore county are upstanding good men and women trying to do right. Try being black in Minneapolis or many larger cities, or other places not so nice. Police departments across the country have some dark histories of discrimination and abuse. To say otherwise is turn away from facts and bury your head in the sand.
The so-called intellectuals you reference are long forgotten, having more impact as bogeymen for the right than any real imprint upon the left. The last conservative pseudo-intellectual was Christopher Buckley, and even his ideas were deeply flawed and based upon false premises, much like Ayn Rand’s works on the justification of greed and selfishness which your generation embraced, hook, line, and scripture, singing praises of capitalism – which mostly became crony capitalism, old boy’s clubs, and over time via republican pro-business majorities, destroyed the unions and watered down every kind of social protection that might be a hindrance to business; environmental, tax, litigation protection, consumer protection, and on and on. Then when the wind changes and they go bankrupt the taxpayers are saddled with the bailouts. It’s a non-livable wage for workers, graft and privatization of the profits and socialization of the losses. What we have is no longer capitalism. Fix that instead of stirring up cultural outrage over what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms.
– But you don’t really want to fix anything do you?
Dale Jones says
I find it ironic that Red State America leads in poverty, people in prison, violent crime, higher infant mortality, lower life expectancy, lower incomes, more teen pregnancy, divorce.
I wonder if the most renown financial flubs, the Great Depression, the Savings and Loan debacle and the 2008 Greatest Financial collapse in history all happening under Republican Laissez-faire administrations could just be a coincidence?
Now because Trump was so incompetent with his covid response he’s now the only president, at least since Hoover left office, will have a few million less jobs than when he came to office.