By Selwyn Duke
There was, of course, nothing unpredictable about Sunday’s
health-care vote. It was fairly obvious
that the Chicago mobsters would, using the Escobarian silver-or-lead
principle, scare up the votes needed to pass Obama’s baby. It was plain that “pro-life” Democrats such
as Bart Stupak would, after the requisite posturing, find the rationalization
they needed to cast aside a position that was never really a principle. That it came in the form of an executive
order with the credibility of the Hitler-Stalin Pact is of little consequence. It was also predictable that the Monday after
would bring talk about the extinguishment of liberty and the republic, and
heads hanging so low that good Americans could look up and see their
shoelaces.
Yet there is a somewhat larger view a person can take here. It is one that distinguishes between symptoms
— even very severe ones — and the underlying disease.
Some have asked
a very predictable question: “Where were you the day the republic died?” But there is a better one: Where were you
when you first knew our republic was dying?
As for me, I can’t tell you exactly where, only when. I believe it was the early 1980s. And I was still a teenager.
Our moral decay — or, as some would say, progressivism —
which yields political decay, was not predictable a generation or two ago. It was in progress. And this was obvious. Big government programs — the great exception
to the rule that it’s easier to destroy than create — are spawned but hardly
ever slain. Laws, regulations and
mandates — which by definition are the removal of freedoms and imposition of
values — are instituted but hardly ever rescinded, resulting in the true
progressivism of our times: the progressive loss of liberty. And do we only now have our Tea Parties and
complain about the “loss of constitutional government”? For decades our national contract has been
trampled, from the separation-of-church-and-state ruling to misapplications of
the Commerce Clause and General Welfare Clause.
But people only start to notice when their ox finally gets gored.
Even more telling symptoms of this moral decay are the cultural
shifts. Sexual mores are ever loosened,
never tightened; childrearing becomes continually more permissive, education
more dumbed-down, entertainment more decadent, and the media more frivolous. This is inevitable in a morally relativistic
civilization, by the way. After all, a
corollary of the idea that there is no Truth is that there is no morality, and,
hence, no moral boundaries. And, without
them, the only thing left to guide our moral decisions is emotion. Thus do we
hear “If it feels good, do it.” The
problem is that passion is a siren; follow your heart and you’ll follow it
straight to Hell.
Now, we generally identify this phenomenon with euphemisms
such as liberalism, leftist ideology, socialism, or cultural Marxism (yes, even
that’s too kind), but it is something else entirely: a philosophy of vice. It is evil.
This isn’t hard to understand. Vice-ridden people are greedy, covetous,
envious and slothful, so they want the fruits of others’ labors; they are
lustful pleasure seekers and dismissive of life, so they want abortion on
demand; they are irresponsible and animalistic, so they will accept the collar
in exchange for promises of security; they are wrathful and uncharitable, so
playing the race and class-warfare cards can easily make them scapegoat their
fellow man. Divorced from Truth, they
are emotion-driven and thus easy prey for demagogues. And the “left,” craving power, wants
vice-ridden people.
So Obamacare was entirely predictable, even decades ago. Oh, I couldn’t have told you it would pass
the House on Sunday, March 21, 2010 by a margin of 219-212. But, given our decay, socialized medicine was
inevitable. And, unless something upsets
the rotten apple cart, so are amnesty for illegals, faux marriage, hate-speech
laws and . . . well, civilizational death is the limit. Don’t believe me? Know that each generation is more liberal —
that is, more vice-ridden — than the preceding one, as we venture further on the
road more traveled. Polls show, for
instance, that while a majority still opposes faux marriage, young people do
not. They will change as they age, you
say? You dream. A few will, but the pattern is unmistakable:
One generation put homosexual characters on TV and laughed at them, the next
(today’s majority) accepted civil unions, and now the new wave thinks faux
marriage is a “right.” And, should this
pattern continue, we will next have polygamy and one day, even, pedophilia,
which some are already joking about (e.g., the “Pedobear” Internet
meme).
If talk of sexuality makes you nervous, another example is
our departure from constitutional governance.
Many scream about the unconstitutionality of Obamacare, but the next
generation will be inured to it just as we’ve become inured to Social Security,
the “greatest generation’s” comfortable constitutional trespass. Hey, if it feels constitutional, do it.
So what is the solution?
Is it political? Will we talk
about the next Reagan when even the first couldn’t halt moral decay? The “Reagan Revolution” was incorrectly
named; it was only the Reagan Impedance.
And will we talk only about the next election when that also is, at best,
an impedance? No, we cannot understand
the solution till we grasp the problem: the people. The citizenry has been, for almost a hundred
years now, degraded morally — or, as some call it, pulled toward the left.
This has been effected in two ways, one of which is through
the importation of socialist voters.
Eighty-five percent of today’s immigrants come from the Third World and
Asia, and the vast majority vote for leftists once naturalized. Is this a surprise? They support socialists in their native lands
(e.g., Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Robert Mugabe), and stepping on American
terra firma doesn’t magically transform one’s ideology.
To illustrate the tangible effects of this, I’ll mention just
two things. It doesn’t take a rocket
scientist to realize that since new immigrants generally oppose enforcement of
immigration law, their population’s constant growth guarantees eventual amnesty
for illegals. It also, of course, ensures
the eventual death of our traditions and the attendant descent into
uber-statism. And if you would dispute
this, just ask, why would these folks care about American culture and
history? Do you care about promoting
others’ culture and history, such as, let’s say, that of the Mayans? These new arrivals are not American. And we
become less so all the time. We are
being colonized.
This is where some will say it just takes time for
acculturation, that immigrants always become “American.” But how is this realistic when we don’t even
agree anymore on what it means to be American?
Assimilation is impossible unless there is something to assimilate into; it’s not likely unless that
something is appealing. And what do we
offer? Reality TV? An amorphous, whatever-works-for-you cultural
blob of we know not what? What works for
these folks is to retain their own culture.
This brings us to the crux of the problem and the second way
in which the people have been transformed: through academia, the media and
entertainment. The destroyers of
civilization — or, as some say, the left — long ago seized control of these all-important
agents of change. Through these vehicles
they make all that created Western civilization seem wholly unappealing and
toxic, thus ensuring that the native born will become anti-American and that
the alien will, at best, remain un-American.
After all, why preserve or adopt something seen as the bane of man?
It is this, the lack of moral health care, that is our
problem. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln,
the teaching in the schools today is the ideology of tomorrow. As for our “entertainment” and media, Hitler’s
filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, only
could dream of such power to twist minds.
Antonio Gramsci’s
“War of Position,” which places leftist ideologues in positions of influence in
the West for the purposes of undermining its culture, is long over. And, as Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov pointed out, once the
process of “demoralization” is complete, you are “stuck with ‘them,’” meaning,
the degraded and deluded. You cannot
change their minds because, divorced from Truth and hence immune to reason,
that isn’t what you have to do. You have
to change their hearts.
The political merely reflects the moral, and political
campaigns don’t shape morality; rather, they are referenda on how it has already been shaped. And he who controls the media, entertainment,
academia and immigration policy molds the American mind.
Republicans may win the next election; there is even the
off-chance they may repeal Obamacare or that the courts may overturn it. But these would just be movements toward the
right on a ship steadily drifting left.
As for how to take control of the helm, the solution isn’t hard to
figure out — just hard to accept and effect.
And all I’ll say for now is this: After years of the Gramscian
corruption of America, only a third of the population would do what’s necessary
to protect our culture — even if armed with the correct information.
I have given you the dots.
All you have to do is connect them.
© 2010 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved
This article first appeared at American Thinker
selwynduke.com 
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