Right now in America you get the feeling that the wheels are falling off if we look at our nation as a vehicle. Many millions of people feel this way. Our guest gave a lecture recently to business leaders, educators, and moms and dads in his area. They were discussing the roots of the decay that we are seeing. Where did this come from? What is going on? Are there any plans we should follow going forward? Our guest says that none of what we are seeing should catch us by surprise. All of this has been coming for a very long time - well over a century in incremental steps. These people who had these nefarious desires, essentially "borrowed" some principles from the kingdom of God! As part of the roots of the cancer, he points back to Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist philosopher. He spent much of his career in prison, and yet his prison diaries contained a plan for the cultural transformation of society. This would later become known as "Cultural Marxism." The approach was to capture "the robes" of culture. This would entail the academic robes, judicial robes, and ecclesiastical robes. The idea was to "seed" these Marxist views into our educational systems including law schools thus radicalizing them. The media was in a sense already radicalized. By sowing these seeds into the university and judiciary, then the media would follow along. He felt that for the ecclesiastical realm (i.e., mainstream churches), that they would pretty much conform to the popular fashions of the day. The approach was one of slow influence and building upon itself, as minds got changed. It was this slow growth approach that was "borrowed" from the gospel truth of leaven in the dough, permeating the whole. For the Marxist, they exhibited patience, and knew this approach would take 3 or 4 generations. Over time, the culture could be won to this radical and anti-biblical view. The means by which this would be driven would be open and "free" human sexuality, and the dismantling of the traditional home, and the removal of the distinctions of gender all of which gave structure to western civilization. Gramsci found disciples in Roger Baldwin (founder of the ACLU), Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood), and Emma Goldman (associated with modern anarchism). Gramsci's diaries were introduced to Notre Dame by Joseph Buttigieg II, the Maltese-American literary scholar and translator (this is Pete Buttigieg's father). The overall goal of the movement was to win people's hearts not so much via politics, but through culture. Politics would eventually follow the culture, they believed. If the things mentioned above (sexual revolution, abortion, etc.) could be disseminated, then Gramsci believed that the Marxist cultural revolution would have been won. This would have ties to the Frankfort school in Germany between the two world wars, with Herbert Marcuse the German-American philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist, and the teaching of critical theory. This would extend to the development of the Bauhaus architecture movement as well. The Gramsci influence would also reach into the arts through people like Salvador Dal�. And so these ideas could be marshalled through the arts and radical post modern architecture influencing people like Mies van der Rohe. It was felt that all of this would help shape the future of western civilization. Sadly, this plan has been spectacularly successful. Our guest points out, that by contrast, Christians have become alarmed by the "bits and pieces" of the issues, yet often don't see the landscape in "totals." He references Francis Schaeffer, the American evangelical theologian, philosopher, and Presbyterian pastor. He wrote the book "A Christian Manifesto," which shows why morality and freedom have crumbled in our society. He calls for a massive movement-in government, law, and all of life-to reestablish our Judeo-Christian foundation and turn the tide of moral decadence and loss of freedom.
Again, the bits and pieces approach that we often attempt as evangelicals, such as our effort to address pornography, or a single issue like abortion is good as far as it goes, but is also short sighted. We have not done particularly well seeing the cultural assault from the larger perspective, that is in terms of the whole. Participants: Dr. George Grant, Dan Elmendorf
