Finally, Destruction for Destruction’s Sake

Last week, at his website -- “The Blade of Perseus” -- Victor Davis Hanson wrote about the nihilism that’s destroying our society. Hanson surveys the American scene better than any observer. The recent acceleration of that destruction may surprise us but shouldn’t. The dam holding back these deadly forces has been under relentless assault for decades.

Hanson says that nihilism is the root of modern leftism. He is quite right. In fact, he’s frighteningly right. Yet, there’s nothing new about the connection between leftism and nihilism.

Nihilism is a school of thought – often expressed in political and social terms – holding that that traditional values are worthless and empty due to the meaninglessness of existence. The sole stance of nihilism is defiance, the sole goal the destruction of all that stands. Back in 1946, the great C.S. Lewis “warned that ‘post-Christian’ thought, a way of thinking that rejects absolute rights and wrongs, leads to nihilism.” In the mid-20th Century, existentialism was in full flower. It was mostly a movement among agnostics and atheists (Jean-Paul Satre and Albert Camus, notably) to urge invention of meaning to render a meaningless world livable. Fictions were needed to stave off the life-draining sense of purposelessness that atheists, in particular, are prone to.

Nihilism has always been at the heart of leftism. In 19th-century Russia, the nihilist movement grew in tandem with Marxism. Marx himself had nihilistic tendencies, and figures such as Nikolai Chernyshevski and Sergei Nechaev were a strong influence on Russian Marxists (Chernyshevski was likely Lenin’s greatest inspiration). That destructive thread has continued down to this day.

Marxism, throughout its history, has been a refuge for the resentful; for those who nurse grudges...

I agree with you that there is a serious rot in the U.S. and it is difficult to impossible to separate that "organic" rot from the rot that is the result of the Marxist plan to take over the country.

Here are some of the 45 goals of the Communist agenda that were submitted in a letter to Congress and included in the Congressional Record on January 10, 1963. They were taken from a publication of The Naked Communist by Cleon Skousen (LINK).

Keep in mind that this was submitted to Congress in 1963.

I think you'll agree that most of these goals have been accomplished. And they have definitely resulted in much of the rot we see today.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities. 35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use [“]united force[“] to solve economic, political or social problems.

I wholeheartedly agree that your comments about The Naked Communist points have been mostly achieved. Where we disagree is were the commies behind this success. And, further, blaming something so simple as a commie manifesto as the cause.

Anyway, I'm proud to be an American -- or was until our recent past. I believed our form of governing was the "shining light on a hill." I'm afraid that light is about to burn out.

It won't be the first time in our 250-year history that we've come apart. We will not have a solution if we continue to play the blame game and blame the wrong cause.

We are like a huge team that has lost our team spirit. Just like a football team that is not a team but a bunch of individuals not joined by a common goal or spirit. The same is true for the military. They are indoctrinated to be a coherent team if they are to be successful. That spirit is like a glue that binds us together as somewhat of a single unit and we are generally working together toward the same goals.

Anyway, we will spiral out of control until we find a way to include most of our population in a common goal.

Communism can be a form of government that works -- just like a representative democratic government is not always workable.

After all, look at how far China has come in the last three decades. They are one of the most powerful nations on the planet today under their form of communism. I don't want to live that way, but let them do their own thing. I don't see a massive exodus of unhappy people coming from that place.

Commies weren't around in the days of Rome, as I pointed out. Nor were they as aggressive in spreading their ideology in the early 20th century at the beginning of the decline of the British Empire.

Will we overcome this? I don't know. But if we do, it will become worse before it gets better. That much I am sure of.

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