August 27, 2017

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

The Mainstreaming of Cultural Marxism in Our Culture: Monuments are Only the First Step

Friends,

Once again we turn to the continuing and predictable national “debate” over monuments and—more so—symbols of our nation’s history, our past. It is a very comfortable “out” for some prominent politicians, mostly Democrats but with many Republicans scrambling not to be left behind, to righteously stand up, with solemn and pained expressions, in studied tones of seriousness, and denounce any monument to a Confederate general, soldier, or official. The underlying reason for this, always piously pointed out, is that “the Confederacy was defending slavery and racism.” 

That being said, the logical and dedicated leftists understand, and have always understood, that “racism” is not a charge that might be leveled just at the Confederacy. Indeed, its reach is potentially much broader and more expansive than that, depending on who is doing the defining. The Marxist narrative continues—again, logically—that if it is “racism” (or “sexism”) that we must erase and eradicate, then we must also take aim at a wide assortment of symbols, monuments, and figures of our history. So, now across the nation, the zealots of the Marxist left take aim at George Washington (slaveholder), Thomas Jefferson (slaveholder), Andrew Jackson (slaveholder), and ranging out to encompass Christopher Columbus (racist with Native Americans), General Grant (maybe an anti-Semite), Woodrow Wilson (he screened “The Birth of a Nation” in the White House), and the list goes on and on, and as it does, it includes more and more historical figures and events.

But it doesn’t end even there. It encompasses more diverse elements of our culture, including serious calls to “censor” what films we may see (“Gone With the Wind” and “The Song of the South” are obviously racist, so ban’em!), what books we may read (remove “Huckleberry Finn,” maybe even Shakespeare!), and which Internet sites can be seen or accessed. Increasingly there are demands for various forms of purging and censorship to protect us from “racism, sexism, homophobia, and white oppression.”  Already Silicon Valley’s technologically brilliant but historically naïve and stupid masterminds have begun this chilling process. Is this not the advance of real totalitarian mind control?

What is ironic about this invasive cancer is that, in effect, it is the burning and inextinguishable iconoclastic madness of the noisy “antifa” and Black Lives Matter extremists on the Marxist left that now determines the tone, standards of judgment, and operational praxis of the so-called “mainstream.” The most hard core Marxist tails increasingly wag the Mainstream Media and establishment political dog. And we witness the specter of the near entirety of the Democrat Party and most GOP leaders, as well, not only countenancing this lunacy, but denouncing anyone who even mildly dissents or objects (including the president) to this destructive process.

Thus, what began as attempt by small groups of extreme Marxists and Communists to eradicate any monument or symbol that might in some way offend a scraggly, poorly-educated brainwashed college student at the University of North Carolina, or might upset an unwashed obese “gal” who has been injected with gallons of feminist venom, and whose only life-fulfillment is to join the daily demonstrations and to scream profanities at perceived statuary symbols of “male sexism” and Confederate “racism,” ends with the governor of North Carolina  adopting that narrative and advocating it, while many Republicans flee in abject and cowardly fear to the tall grass.

What we behold is a wide-ranging, multifaceted attempt to completely “cleanse” the country of any and all reminders and symbols of a past that does not fit the narrow ideologically revisionist historical template of the extreme Left who have been advancing this initiative for decades. It is nothing less than a massive and sustained effort to transform our nation by eradicating the symbols of our historic tradition and culture, and to progressively replace them. Who we remember, not just who we give honor to, undergirds our understanding of ourselves, who we are as a people, what our beliefs and values are, and how we talk and communicate.

In the study of the Latin liturgy there is a standard maxim that asserts, “Lex orandi, lex credendi,” which can be rendered as “how you pray is how you will believe.” The symbols of our culture, our history and our civilization, and how we talk about them, shape not only our existence as a people but the future of our society, as well.  The Marxist left understood and understands this principle, and too many of our leaders do not.

The fact is that today the cultural Marxist narrative is not circumscribed or limited to the far left. It is shared by “mainstream” political leaders, zealously propagated by the Mainstream Media, presented to us in nearly every aspect of our popular culture and entertainment, taught as gospel in our schools, and preached in the pulpits by heresiarch pastors who are about as Christian as Joe Stalin.

Whatever future this nation--and the nations of Europe--will have, will be determined by whether this radical transformation succeeds, or whether it can be turned back and defeated. It is that simple.