Reflections, Reflections

This significant letter by Paul Weyrich clinches on so many of the most crucial problems in society today, it´s kind of amazing how he got it all in so little space. It will merit more written reflections in the future, for now, some initial thoughts only. Basically it addresses the problem that conservatives have won on political elections and lost the culture war. Therefore, it makes this political win more meaningless with each passing day.

And politics has failed because of the collapse of the culture. The culture we are living in becomes an ever-wider sewer. In truth, I think we are caught up in a cultural collapse of historic proportions, a collapse so great that it simply overwhelms politics.

That's why I am in the process of rethinking what it is that we, who still believe in our traditional, Western, Judeo-Christian culture, can and should do under the circumstances. Please understand that I am not quarreling with anybody who pursues politics, because it is important to pursue politics, to be involved in government. It is also important to try, as many people have, to re-take the cultural institutions that have been captured by the other side.

But it is impossible to ignore the fact that the United States is becoming an ideological state. The ideology of Political Correctness, which openly calls for the destruction of our traditional culture, has so gripped the body politic, has so gripped our institutions, that it is even affecting the Church. It has completely taken over the academic community. It is now pervasive in the entertainment industry, and it threatens to control literally every aspect of our lives.

I think this profound loss in the cultural sphere is being felt more and more with each passing day. Given that it didn´t happen overnight, and it is a war, not some smooth transition, it has taken people time to react and start devising strategies. Although it is a profound loss, it has at least served to show conservatives how important the personal sphere is. I wouldn´t want to go back to a Stepford Wives conservative scenario, which was highly oppressive and full of problems, but I certainly don´t want to live in today´s oppressive pigsty, with this garbage of homosexuals and bisexuals and the legitimation of homosexuality (in all its most dysfunctional modes) as normal, sexually degenerate/violent people, people who spit on respect and commitment regarding relationships, etc., dominating education, law, social relations.

It used to be that conservatives suppressed the truth on sexual violence, on the problems of pornography, on adultery/battering, on child abuse, on homosexuality. Now, some of them, much more than liberals, fight to get rid of the stuff and protect society from it. Liberals, who in diverse social movements led the way to making society aware of a lot of problems for women, children, sexual violence and abuse, are now the enforcers and legitimizers of a lot of dysfunctional, harmful, violent attitudes and behaviors which result not only in a very sleazy culture, but which is automatically then played out in how people act towards others.

Those who came up with Political Correctness, which we more accurately call "Cultural Marxism," did so in a deliberate fashion. I'm not going to go into the whole history of the Frankfurt School and Herbert Marcuse and the other people responsible for this. Suffice it to say that the United States is very close to becoming a state totally dominated by an alien ideology, an ideology bitterly hostile to Western culture. Even now, for the first time in their lives, people have to be afraid of what they say. This has never been true in the history of our country. Yet today, if you say the "wrong thing," you suddenly have legal problems, political problems, you might even lose your job or be expelled from college. Certain topics are forbidden. You can,t approach the truth about a lot of different subjects. If you do, you are immediately branded as "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", "insensitive", or "judgmental."

I don´t think the current liberal, sleazy, dysfunctional dominant culture can be appropriately labeled Marxist, since, although I have hardly read Marx, the little I´ve read about him doesn´t really point in this direction. I´m not sure what Marx thought about child abuse, battering, homosexuality, pornography, prostitution, etc, but I think he was more neglectful than outright endorsing such things. I do vaguely remember having seen criticism that he was very sexist, but that was probably the extent of his thinking into these social issues.

To say that sleaze has been a fabrication of communism, therefore the "Marxism" label, is also not appropriate. The greatest sleaze "manufacturers" right now are all capitalist and liberal.

One cannot escape from seeing how hostile this capitalist/liberal culture is, how totalitarian, hypocritical, and self-serving it is, how McCarthyist it operates.

It used to be that Christianity dominated the religious/cultural scenario in the US, and so, conservatives could live under the illusion that religion pluralism was possible without major clashes in society, and that the separation of church and state would still allow them to live out their values. No more.

Having studied religion from an anthropological perspective, it has always been very clear to me how “liberalism” is very much a religion, if we consider some of the basic functions of religions in their respective societies. Religions tell people what is right and wrong, good and bad, what is allowed and what is forbidden, what reality is and isn´t. It gives them an explanation to social and individual problems. “Liberalism” does all of this, and it does it with an iron hand, which is very common with most mass religions, that is, each one states they have a hold on truth, the Absolute Truth.

I have found that most conservatives shun this anthropological framing of liberalism as a religion, perhaps because there is one aspect of liberalism that is different than Judeo-Christian religions. Liberalism does not preach anything about a God, neither does it claim to be a religion. This does not mean it does not function just like one. And what a sorry, corrupt religion it is.