12-7 and 9-11

Vote Republican.net ^ | 12-3-03 | Michael P. Tremoglie

[Hill Street Blues]

12-7 and 9-11

by Michael P. Tremoglie

The 1930’s were known as the Red Decade. It was an era when American culture and political thought were becoming increasingly leftist in orientation.

In the words of Eugene Lyons in his book The Red Decade: "Never before --or since-- had all areas of American society been so deeply penetrated by a foreign nation and a foreign ideology. Never before had the country's thinking, official policies, education, art, and moral attitudes been so profoundly affected by the agents, sympathisers and unwitting puppets of a distant dictatorship."

Pearl Harbor changed that orientation.

After Pearl Harbor Americans became more patriotic, more religious, and more democratic after Pearl Harbor. The institutions of American culture were changed. Media, art, music all became more appreciative of American democracy and less appreciative of foreign “utopias.”

For the next two decades, American culture promoted the ideas of democracy, religion, equality, capitalism, and patriotism. The uniformed services were regarded with esteem. Capitalism was enjoyed and revered. The only bastions of leftist culture were in the very influential (albeit small) fields of art, literature, entertainment, journalism, government, and academia. However, unlike the 30’s, leftist philosophy was not the preeminent belief among Americans even though it may have been among some elites.

All that changed in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Leftist/socialist/communist thought became the major philosophy, the zeitgeist as it were. It was represented sympathetically in movies, theater, television, art, books, and most importantly academia. These institutions promoted ideas that were antithetical to the American ethos. Uniform services were reviled. Capitalism was disdained.

The average American reverted to being skeptical about the American ideal and public opinion was receptive to the communist propaganda. After all, many soldiers in Viet Nam believed it was an “economic war.” Many citizens believed that it was only the “poor and the minorities who were being sent to Viet Nam” - a myth that to this day is being recited by such influential journalists as Chris Mathews and historians like Doris Kearns Goodwin.

We were told that Ho Chi Minh modeled his declaration from the Declaration of Independence. Americans serving in Viet Nam were given the analogy by the media of comparing Viet Nam to our own Revolutionary War. They were made to feel that we were the British and they the redcoats. The Communists were like the American colonists - patriots who only wanted freedom.

These anti-American feelings precipitated a purge of the government institutions like defense and intelligence in the post-Viet Nam era. Public opinion, disillusioned by Viet Nam and Watergate, and fueled by a liberal media, was ripe to begin dismantling intelligence because of the “revelations” of Cointelpro. These revelations of FBI spying on “civil rights” groups and leaders; clergy; and charitable organizations were portrayed by the media as fascism.

9-11 changed all that.

Since then, we have noticed a reverence for the uniform services. A reverence that has not existed since WWII. This reverence has been shared by and, in some instances implemented by, the artistic and literary community. American capitalism and military have a new appreciation as imperfect as they are.

Those in the media or on campus may question whether the flag should be displayed. However, this question would never have been considered before. They would have considered displaying a flag jingoistic.

It is only among some academicians, some government officials and the mainstream media that the anti-American status quo is retained. It is only among them that this transmogrification from loathing of American culture to an appreciation of what America provides them has not occurred.

Yet, this is a positive thing. It is positive because the public needs to know about: professors who proclaim that any group that can destroy the Pentagon is admirable; professors who proclaim that it is America who is responsible for the Taliban; CEO’s of media corporations who proclaim that they cannot issue a condemnation of terrorism because of their objectivity; government officials who prohibit patriotic displays; librarians who unctuously reprimand an employee for furnishing the FBI information about terrorists.

As long as the average American is aware of such anti-American fanaticism these people will be discredited. Ordinary America will now know these liberal elites are not altruists. They do not believe in democracy. They are demagogues. They are totalitarians. They are aristocrats.

The liberals are becoming increasingly marginalized as more is known about them. As ordinary Americans are learning about who is operating their cultural institutions and as they learn that they have not been told the truth, those institutions will change. As more and more Americans learn that educators do not want the pledge of allegiance recited because it somehow might make some students uncomfortable, Americans might ask themselves - is the prohibition of prayer in school really a constitutional issue or an attempt to bowdlerize religion from the culture? Are the proclamations by civil libertarians opposing military tribunals really a civil liberties issue or just fanaticism?

As more Americans hear and read mainstream media journalists describe as jingoistic Lee Greenwood singing “ I’m proud to be an American, God Bless the USA,” those journalists will be recognized as the as the sanctimonious, supercilious twits they are.

December 7th ended the Red Decade. September 11th will change American culture as well.

[JohnGalt]

The author seems to suggest that nationalism is synonymous with the 'right' and then suggests that somehow the Right won the the post-30s culture war.

That is about as ahistorical as it gets.

[netmilsmom]

Sorry, I went to public school. Could you please explain further?

[Maelstrom]

Those are both problems since the Left in America has not always been so consistently anti-American as it has since the 60's and the Right lost the culture war and only since 9-11-2001 has begun to join the battle.

Forty years and more of a one-sided battle.

[JohnGalt]

I can add a little more, sure, and note, I did not put in my customary links, but I would be happy to provide further info on any point if I can.

The author claims that the 1930s were the Red Decade and that somehow things magically changed when Pearl Harbor was bombed, at which point, the author suggest using patriotic and the right interchangeably, came back into fashion.

That is ahistorical.

The Right of the 40s and through the mid-50s viewed Pearl Harbor as an act of Deceit by FDR whose administration was filled with Stalinists (Reds in the authors parlance) in an effort to get Japan to attack the United States rather than invade the Soviet Union from the West through Siberia.

The Hollywood of the 1940s was riddled with Communist sympathizers (useful idiots) who happily went to work for Uncle Joe in propagandizing the war effort. Even Frank Capra was investigated by Hoover's FBI for Communist themes in the very popular 'Its A Wonderful Life.' All that really happened was that the goal of the Communists changed and coincided with that of the Democratic party.

I mean, half of Europe was given to Stalin after the efforts of a Communist spy, Alger Hiss, advised the President to do so. The secrets of the bomb were handed over to the Stalinists by the very people hired by the US taxpayers to build it.

After the war, the Right was sold-out in 1948 and forced to back in current parlance, a RINO, Dewey, who supported the socialist New Deal programs. Truman then launched a half-hearted war in Korea where he hamstrung the General MacArthur in fighting to a conclusion.

In 1952, a very anti-New Deal, anti-war, anti-defect, anti-Big Government candidate of the Right Taft was sold out by the Wall Street RINOs for Ike. Ike did take on an anti-Communist Nixon as the VP, but Nixon was not actually a conservative, but simply an anti-Communist who leaned to the Right. Ike did a fairly good job for 8 years of course, but he instated no reforms and when he left office he warned against the "Military Industrial Complex" in his farewell address.

For the next 20 years, the Warren court and leftists in Hollywood attacked every social standard from the West in a search of the egalitarian ideal.

The Republicans and the culture sold out the ancient English custom and concept of Property Rights with the 1963 Civil Rights bill and then pretended to be surprised that it quotas and Nixon's implementation of Affirmative Action caused so much anger. The Warren Court destroyed the last vestiges of the Republic's judicial system with Miranda and the Roe V Wade case that still haunts us.

There was a brief respite in 1980, but Reagan had to take on the RINO of his time, George Bush as a VP, and when Reagan was elected he started appointing Ford and Nixon hold overs rather than the outside "radicals" that got him there. Then the assassination attempt from the son of a George Bush for President contributor---but that is another story.

Reagan did a great job in fixing the welfare state, rebuilding a military that was completely obsolete and lowering taxes for a couple of years until he went back on that in 1983 and raised taxes, but he also had no effect on reducing the size of government. Still, he brought down the Soviet Union with nary a shot and should be remembered in the pantheon of great world leaders and great Americans.

9/11 was the end result of a trillion dollar centralized intelligence agency that could no longer function, like the Old Soviet Union. Rather than dismantle the system and look to solve the problem internally (armed passengers, tighter borders, and firings/pension strippings of government hacks) the central government set off to slay a foreign monster that may or may not have had anything to do with 9/11 and debt financed the whole thing, similar to LBJ's reign.

Meanwhile, gays can now marry, and doctors will have to kill the baby while still in the uterus rather than in the birth canal-- and conservatives call it a victory.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[sergeantdave]

Out in "Fly-Over Country" we've been fighting a rear guard action in the "War Against Rural America" since the early 1990s. We knew it would take awhile for the people in the dense population areas to take notice that there's a war going on. We've been outgunned and outspent by the eco-fascists and their sock pocket media.

The attack on religion, brainwashing in the schools, leftist judges writing law, theft of property via regulation - it's all tied in. Glad the rest of America has finally noticed.

Welcome to the war.

[Protagoras]

Good post.

[JohnGalt]

TY.

I also forgot to add that 2/3rds of the WWII military was drafted compared to only 40% for Viet Nam. One could easily make the case that by the author's judgment the '60s were more, by the authors definition of patriotism, 'patriotic' i.e. loyal to the DC tax regime, than the 40s.

Hence my critique.

[Maelstrom]

Jesus Almighty

You're the last bastion, not a rear guard action that nobody's noticed!

[gcruse]

After Pearl Harbor Americans became more patriotic, more religious, and more democratic after Pearl Harbor. The institutions of American culture were changed. Media, art, music all became more appreciative of American democracy and less appreciative of foreign “utopias.”

I think the author is overreaching here in his attempt to connect 12-7 to 9-11.
We didn't drop the idea of 'utopias' until the war was over.  Uncle Joe was still our ally, after all.  We didn't become steeply anticommunist until the fifties.

[Young Werther]

When you study 19th Century Radical Thought the concept of Progressive or Liberal thought, (Left), is associated with nationalistic aspirations. Progressives wished to do away with the monarchies and looked to the American Revolution as the mechanism to accomplish this change.

That's why it is odd to equate the Right with Nationalism!

[gcruse]

Is the term nationalism, like fascism, so widely used and misused that it doesn't mean anything in the vernacular?

"My country right or wrong" strikes me as nationalism and is a mantra of the right.

[wayoverontheright]

The liberals are becoming increasingly marginalized as more is known about them.

Yes.....Thanks to the Fox News, talk radio, internet..... AXIS OF TRUTH!

As ordinary Americans are learning about who is operating their cultural institutions and as they learn that they have not been told the truth, those institutions will change.

Ohhh....Ohhh...I smell another HISSY FIT, coming soon to an election near us.

[JohnGalt]

It's more of an aesthetics' issue.

Patriotism, love of the land of our fathers, has always been considered a positive trait in Western culture.

Nationalism, a rather arbitrary love of political borders, has always been considered lower and often leads to dangerous outcomes.

For example, the nationalist believes his country is always right, where as a patriot tends to believe in his country, right or wrong, which suggests that his country is capable of being wrong.

As an aside, nice catch with the comment on Utopia's but take it a step further. The War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, the War on Terrorism are all utopian ends that can never actually end.

[Grampa Dave]

Amen Brother Dave! The Watermelon EcoJihadists have been rurally cleansing farmers, ranchers and land owners in the west for the fish for two decades. Finally things are turning around some. We haven't won the war, but the rest of America is starting to see what we have seen for two decades. I'm reposting your timely and on target remarks:

Out in "Fly-Over Country" we've been fighting a rear guard action in the "War Against Rural America" since the early 1990s. We knew it would take awhile for the people in the dense population areas to take notice that there's a war going on. We've been outgunned and outspent by the eco-fascists and their sock pocket media.

The attack on religion, brainwashing in the schools, leftist judges writing law, theft of property via regulation - it's all tied in. Glad the rest of America has finally noticed.

[gcruse]

The "War On" syndrome is, agreed, a utopian tool of the times.
We can't win, we can't break even, and we can't get out of the game.

[Calpernia]

Good read ping

[Calpernia]

Come by and read this one.

[Hill Street Blues]

Galt your comments about the article bespeak a lack of knowledge of history. Your specious all or nothing proposition is quite apparent as well.

Perhaps you missed his comments about the 1930's. In the context of an era in which the United States of America was indeed very close to becoming a communist country - any communist who may have been in government post-Pearl Harbor was of relatively minor concern. In the 1930's the WHOLE government was almost communist.

Do you really think that all communist influence would be expurgated in a few short years ????

And indeed considering what was done - quite appropriately to communists in the post WWII era - how can you even suggest there was no change? This is absurd.
Was there a HUAC investigating communists in the 1930's as there was in post WWII?

Tremoglie then suggests that Viet Nam changed this patriotic anti-communist fervor. It did. Communist ideology and conspiracy theories were much more palatable because of Viet Nam. Read David Horowitz.

You are making specious arguments born of a misreading of the material.