Posted on 05/29/2015 10:41:25 AM PDT by PoliticallyShort
George Orwell wrote in his preface to Animal Farm that “Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban…At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question, anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness.” This prevailing orthodoxy defines the ideology of the contemporary Left of today.
Motivated by abstractions and a vision of a utopian future based upon that which has never existed but which they are convinced they can create, the Left is consumed by this belief as it strives towards an unattainable future. A future whose sole practical effect is to provide a measure by which it can condemn the present. The basic premise of their politics is that “forward” is necessarily a good direction, and that fundamental transformation of social relationships is both possible and desirable as they see themselves as apostles of “hope and change“.
David Horowitz elaborates, “as expression of its nihilism, the contemporary Left defines and organizes itself as a movement against rather than for. They are less concerned about creating the future than they are about their war against the present.” The Left provides no realistic answer to actual issues as they lack the moral clarity and outright intellectual ability to understand that their ideas are not rooted in reality. Their own rejection of America is “explained by their illusions of a worldview based on an imaginary future that has no anchor in any past or present human reality, and whose complaints, can never be assuaged or redressed”, writes Horowitz. Their influence has been unprecedented as those who ascribe to the belief in conservative values, such as millions like myself, are counter to today’s mainstream culture and politics. Anything and everything that is promoted by conservatives and happens to shine a positive light on America is censored, ostracized, attacked, and eventually silenced.
“Dissent from liberal orthodoxy is cast as racism, misogyny, bigotry, and phobia”, writes Kirsten Powers in her new book The Silencing. Powers notes that the “left believes that people who express ideological, philosophical, or political views that don’t line up with their preferences should be completely silenced. Instead of using persuasion and rhetoric to make a positive case for their causes and views, they work to delegitimize the person making the argument through character assassination, demonization, and dehumanizing tactics.” Powers, a liberal herself, goes on to make a damning indictment of the left in her book but she fails to point out the overall reason as to why the left wants those who oppose them silenced. That reason being that the left is virtually bankrupt of ideas. It has nothing more to say, nothing to add to the debate. It has, in the words of Ronald Reagan, “spent its intellectual capital”, and now it is on the move to all but silence the only real opposition it faces, conservatives.
We, as conservatives, represent the counter-culture today as the Left has gone on the offensive by putting the average American on the moral defensive. They have used a litany of issues to attack good, decent, and faithful Americans for holding beliefs and principles that the Left considers out of date and reactionary. If you want to invoke God in a National Day of Prayer address and you’re a U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen., you should be met with nothing less than a court-martial, says the Left. Such is the case surrounding U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Craig Olson who used the National Day of Prayer forum to share with the audience what he believes has been the guiding force throughout his career: God.
In their latest attempt to silence God and Christianity, Michael L. Weinstein, Founder and President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has led the charge calling for Olson’s court-martial. In his statement to the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, Weinstein demands that “Major General Craig S. Olson be immediately, aggressively and very visibly brought to justice for his unforgivable crimes and transgressions via trial by General Courts Martial and that any and all others who assisted him with his NDPTF speech of fundamentalist Christian supremacy be likewise investigated and punished to the full extent of military law.” Weinstein’s demands to make an example of Olson by punishing him and those like him for their belief in God and Christianity epitomizes the overall viewpoint, in regards to Christianity, of those on the Left. Your religion is primitive in their eyes for you dare invoke God and hold true to your “fundamentalist Christian supremacy”. Take a look at abortion and gay marriage to see other examples of where the Left is on the attack against Christians.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t end at religion, for the Left is relentless in its pursuit to silence the debate and inconvenient facts of climate change. Speaking to graduating cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy last Wednesday, Barack Obama called out “climate change deniers” for being weak, going as far as to claim that “it is a dereliction of duty for the United States to ignore the national security implications of rising global temperatures.” To even debate the reality of the fact that scientific evidence shows that global temperatures are not on the rise, will result in the Left slandering you a “denier” as if you’re an idiot for even attempting to question such a benign thing as the climate. If you argue the factual evidence of what was once dubbed “global warming”, the president wants you called out for “blocking progress in the fight against climate change.” Take a look at Rep. Raul Grijalva and his seven different congressional witch-hunt investigations into the funding sources of scientists he derides as climate-change “deniers” to see other examples of where the Left is on the attack against dissent.
The smear campaign launched by the left isn’t solely reserved for Christians or those they deem as “climate-change deniers” as much as it is against all conservatives who adhere to our constitution. For instance, in response to Obama’s proposed nuclear detente with Tehran Sen. Tom Cotton penned an open letter, signed by 46 other Republicans, to Iran explaining Congress’ role in approving binding diplomatic agreements under our constitutional system. He was met collectively with a response by the left that labeled him and the other 46 Republicans as traitors.
The collective response by the left is best embodied by the following comments made by Sen. Debbie Stabenow. She stated the following; “When war hangs in the balance, and specifically nuclear war hangs in the balance, should members of the United States Senate be in the position of publicly undermining the United States president?” she asked. “It is shocking, dangerous, and deeply troubling to me that 47 members of this body decided … to stand on the side of the ayatollahs and the most extreme voices in Iran.”
It never ceases to amaze me the lengths that the left will go to not debate but destroy the voices of those that they oppose. Christians, conservatives, and ordinary Americans are those that are constantly ridiculed and attacked by not only the “fringe” elements of the Democratic party but the mainstream elements between both Democrats and Republicans. It has become evidently clear that as conservatives, as Christians, and as ordinary Americans we have become the counter-culture in a country that is predominately ruled under the left’s orthodoxy. This is a point that is hard pressed to deny as each day we find ourselves on the defensive. With that in mind, to be conservative in this day in age is ultimately to be attacked, it matters little if you choose to remain complacent or fight, we are the counter-culture. So why not go on the offensive now before we are completely demoralized? We are the counter-revolutionaries of the 21st century and its time we begin to fight as such.
More like conservatives still represent culture while the left represents (as it always has) anti-culture—the left being the type calling good evil and evil good, putting sweet for bitter et al.
Some pretty deep seeded thoughts here.....I’ll still have to go back more slowly to appreciate. Overall, I do appreciate that you posted the entire article from your blog.
Imagine a few thousand conservative activists gathered in a public square, all chanting in loud unison, “HEY HEY, HO HO, THAT LEFTIST [expletive] HAS GOT TO GO! HEY HEY, HO HO, THAT LEFTIST [expletive] HAS GOT TO GO!”
You can’t imagine it? Neither can I. That is why they will win, until the day when everything collapses and we will have to take over, just for the sake of survival.
bkmk
You can’t win ultimately by using Satan’s tactics, as the left does.
Bookmark.
Thank you for reading!
So what do we do then? When the other side is destroying the very foundations of our Republic.
Whoah!
By that time the culture will be so indoctrinated it won’t even matter
Not the first time civilizations have collapsed in history. One has to go back to the foundations of the society for the answer as to how to save it.
Are we not following the example of Rome?
All one has to do is to watch any of the late night talk shows to witness this in real time. Virtually all of the jokes about Emperor Zero or Mrs. Bill Clinton are of the softball variety while still being friendly, like you would give a friend a hard time about something, etc. Meanwhile all of the ones targeting Cruz, Paul or any of RINO’s even are generally nastier and definitely more political.
“They” certainly are, what with embracing authoritarianism and those elements that undermine society. History is still prophecy.
Important post: will read later.
A self-fulfilling one if we refuse to learn from it.
Let me know what you think!
Look at the relentless assault on Conservatives for instance. If you really want to know what our supposed “press” thinks of not only Conservatives but the traditions in which we as Americans hold dear, do a google search on July 4 & look at what the main articles on websites like NYTIMES, HUFFPOST, SALON, YAHOO, WASHPOST, ETC. have to say.
They despise our culture, values, traditions and basically anything that reflects positively on America.
The following excerpt is taken from Kirk's closing paragraphs:
So said Dr. Kirk in the Year 1992."In short, it appears to me that our culture labors in an advanced state of decadence; that what many people mistake for the triumph of our civilization actually consists of powers that are disintegrating our culture; that the vaunted "democratic freedom" of liberal society in reality is servitude to appetites and illusions which attack religious belief; which destroy community through excessive centralization and urbanization; which efface life-giving tradition and custom.
History has many cunning passages, contrieved corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities.So Gerontion instructs us, in T. S. Eliot's famous grim poem. By those and some succeeding lines, Eliot means that human experience lived without the Logos, the Word; lived merely by the asserted knowledge of empirical science--why, history in that sense is a treacherous gypsy witch. Civilizations that reject or abandon the religious imagination must end, as did Gerontion, in fractured atoms.
Restoring Religious InsightsIn conclusion, it is my argument that the elaborate civilization we have known stands in peril; that it may expire of lethargy, or be destroyed by violence, or perish, from a combination of both evils. We who think that life remains worth living ought to address ourselves to means by which a restoration of our culture may be achieved. A prime necessity for us is to restore an apprehension of religious insights in our clumsy apparatus of public instruction, which --bullied by militant secular humanists and presumptuous federal courts --has been left with only ruinous answers to the ultimate questions.
What ails modern civilization? Fundamentally, our society's affliction is the decay of religious belief. If a culture is to survive and flourish, it must not be severed from the religious vision out of which it arose. The high necessity of reflective men and women, then, is to labor for the restoration of religious teachings as a credible body of doctrine.
"Redeem the time; redeem the dream," T. S. Eliot wrote. It remains possible, given right reason and moral imagination, to confront boldly the age's disorders. The restoration of true learning, humane and scientific; the reform of many public policies; the renewal of our awareness of a transcendent order, and of the presence of an Other, the brightening of the corners where we find ourselves such approaches are open to those among the rising generation who look for a purpose in life." - Dr. Russell Kirk, Civilization Without Religion?
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