Posted on 04/14/2019 6:40:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
To write a thorough and well-documented history of the Left is an impressive accomplishment in itself. To write such a history so that it reads with the ease and flow of a good, gripping novel is another thing altogether, but that is what Mark Melcher and Stephen Soukup have done with Know Thine Enemy: A History of the Left (Volume One). This comprehensive history of the Left’s major figures and movements is page-turning read for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the threat to America’s culture, politics, and future posed by the Left’s radical agenda.
The book’s opening alerts the reader that the history in the following pages will not be a dry recitation of ideas, events, and dates: “The United States is engaged today in a civil war that is testing whether it—or any nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal—can endure.”
A civil war testing whether America can endure? That assertion hits with the clarity and force of President Trump’s historic 2017 speech in Warsaw in which he boldly asked whether the West had the will to survive and the confidence in our values to defend them regardless of the cost. But those questions apply to the United States as well as to the West as a whole, and it has become increasingly evident that civil war is an apt description of our current state in America.
The days are over when American liberals and conservatives shared the same Judeo-Christian worldview and struggled over policy from within our constitutional system, with neither side seeking the destruction of our constitutional republic. As carefully detailed by Melcher and Soukup, “one side in the current civil war seeks to demolish the entire Judeo-Christian belief system upon which Western Civilization was founded.”
As described by the authors, today’s Left, whether they call themselves liberal, progressive, communist, socialist, fascist, or Marxist, seeks the destruction of our constitutional system by attacking the worldview on which it stands. Regardless of minor squabbles over the ideological details, the American Left shares a rejection of the Judeo-Christian worldview, with its view of humanity as fallen and therefore prone to abuse power. That worldview and its view of human nature are essential to the limits and separation of governmental powers in our Constitution. Throughout the book, Melcher and Soukup explore the Left’s hostility to Christianity, capitalism, and private property, which in the leftist mind are relics of an earlier and darker age. With centralized power in the right “enlightened” hands, the Left claims that their policies will propel us into a future of absolute equality, prosperity, and peace.
For example, the Left’s obsession with radical notions of equality and their aversion to individual excellence are captured in this quote from the trial of Gracchus Babeuf from the period of the French Revolution:
“Even someone who could prove that he is capable, by the individual exertion of his own natural strength, of doing the work of four men, and so lay claim to the recompense of four, would be no less a conspirator against society, because he would be upsetting the equilibrium of things by this alone, and would thus be destroying the precious principle of equality.”
This radical view of equality permeated the Left’s thinking in everything from the development of communist theory that followed to participation trophies today. But somehow the rhetoric about equality seems to conflict with the air radiating from today’s Left that they are superior to everyone else, and the authors explore that aspect of the Left’s history as well. In describing the Salons of the French Enlightenment, they quote Roberto Calasso’s insightful description of the “alliance between snobbery and the Left.” Calasso could have been describing the virtue-signaling of a Hollywood awards ceremony when he wrote, “From that moment on, the higher snobbery, which always needs some discreet disguise, would know what cloak to cover itself with: the worthy Cause.”
The authors continue with their exploration of Kant, Hegel, Marx and other European philosophers and then on to other leftist movements such as Fabianism in England and anarchism and the forerunners of fascism on the Continent. Volume One ends with a detailed description of the damage done to the American Constitution by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and the so-called “Progressive” movement. At each step, regardless of the subject, the authors combine scholarly depth with a presentation style that is enjoyable and even gripping to read.
America is indeed in the midst of a moral and ideological civil war. With Know Thine Enemy, Melcher and Soukup have done a great service for those on the side of liberty.
It is too bad that none of the folks that really should read this will.
I recommend Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”. He clearly elucidates the inexorable dynamics of statism.
It all comes down to ONE Simple Phrase.
“Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
This is where the battle lines have been drawn.
...and I would suggest “The Naked Communist” by Skousen, to tell you how far your enemies are willing to, and will go in the pursuit of power and domination of their fellow man. Though no one seems to be willing to call them what they really are, servants of Satan, and enemies of God and man, right down to the individual members of the Democrat Party. There, I said it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ooops, I forgot to share the wealth. My previous should have included some individual members of the Republican Party as well. They know who they are and refuse to admit it.
For later.
L
The universities in the United States are using anti-Creator instruction. Anti-God indoctrination is embedded in our obstetrics training.
Bookmark
Ping
Should be required reading for anyone who spends much time on FR.
I keep an insightful passage on the similarities between Nazis, Communists and Socialists on my FR profile page. It’s the 3rd one down, 2 paragraphs.
This country is is pretty much evenly divided and that other half is hopeless even more so than the South during the Civil War.
Great quotes on your page.
The second of the two paragraphs (fourth on your page) contains a salient point often obscured.
It’s not just Hitler, or Stalin, or Obama, or whoever. It’s the ideas they purvey that sway untold millions to buy into the scam.
For centuries, such totalitarianism was the rule (pharoahs, kings, tyrants, etc. - even the French revolution so devolved.) The American Constitution was the exception. Hence its demonization by the statists, because they know how to live high on the hog by shilling for the big lie.
As a Christian, I have long considered the implications of a society without a foundation in the Creator. It’s the difference between trusting flawed men as a group or flawed individuals that are moral.
The groups morality quickly becomes subjective and a hierarchy emerges that is sustained by compromise. There is no way around this.
Our Constitution is built around the Sovereignty of the Individual. The Framers clearly understood and feared the Tribal nature of consolidated power whether from the Government or the Church.
If they can take away God, the Christian God, they take away our foundations for all our beliefs.
The Left replaces those foundations with uncertainty as the Norm. They promote and embrace uncertainty by abusing science and its methods.
Satan vs. God.
It’s my humble opinion that if the Left accepts Satan as being real, they will have no choice but to accept God.
Thanks for posting.
Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man’s soul to waste
And I was ‘round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
,,,,,,,,,,,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2KrpoajFY4
Communism differs from a socialism in one regard only, that being the socialism is implemented in nations who have royal families or people who previously ruled the nation state; communism is implemented without regard for prior leaders usually by putting them to death. The politics of both ‘isms are the same, as are the outcome and inability of the people to remove the communist or socialist government.
secular humanist worldview + marxist worldview + new age + postmodernism + mohammedumism = leftardism worldview
Here is a downloadable pdf synopsis of this very fine book.
Hope to meet you. Won’t you fix my veins.
Cuz what’s puzzlin’ you is why
Keith still looks the same.
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