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The deadly hypocrisy of Black Lives Matter

Posted by :admin On : June 19, 2020
1

Category: Culture Wars, Humanism, Marriage, Socialism, Truth

“To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.”[1]

The above quote is from one of the twentieth century’s greatest truth tellers—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008). Born in Russia, Solzhenitsyn studied mathematics, philosophy, literature, and history at the university level. He was thrice decorated for personal heroism as a Russian Army Officer during the fight against the Nazis in World War II. In 1945 he was arrested for criticizing Stalin in private correspondence and sentenced to an eight-year term in a labor camp. From that experience he wrote One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which was published in 1962, the first of many books. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1974, he was stripped of his citizenship and expelled from the Soviet Union whereupon he moved to Vermont with his wife and four sons.[2]

I have taken time to briefly describe Solzhenitsyn’s background because his experiences and quiet words in defense of truth from such a man speaks far louder than the din of lies shouted by Black Lives Matter and their toadies including spineless politicians, the corrupt media, universities in name only, complicit mega-corporation billionaires, ranting Hollywood leftists, self-proclaimed “intellectuals,” and many corrupt voices/false teachers in the Church. Such lies cannot long stand against the timeless truth of which God is the author and finisher.

Regardless of their self-professed good intentions, the devil-doing of those leading and promoting Black Lives Matter is exposed by its own words on BLM’s official website[3] with regard to its beliefs and true objectives.

Black Lives Matter Beliefs and Goals

A thoughtful examination of just three of BLM’s goals gives a clear and frightening understanding of the damage that is being done in the war against the soul of American life and liberty including the culture at large and the average American family, black or white.

1. “We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.”

BLM wishes to dismantle cisgender privilege. The term “cisgender” means “of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth.”[4] Although the word may be unfamiliar to many, the concept that the two sexes equate to two genders is obvious to the vast majority of Americans and needs no label to explain it unless one is of the “woke” crowd.

Carla A. Pfeffer expands on Merriam Webster’s definition: “I grew up in a family with a cisgender and heterosexually identified mother and father of the same race (White) who had 2 children when they were well into their late 20s and early 30s and after they legally married with the full support of both their families.”[5]

For BLM, cisgender privilege has been transformed to be equivalent to white privilege. Such privilege cannot be eliminated without suppressing the carriers of this disease (privilege) by denigrating their belief systems. Therefore, the supposed evil that adherents to BLM ideology desire to dismantle are the dominant Judeo-Christian beliefs in the nuclear family, heterosexuality, marriage, and monogamy from which “white privilege” supposedly arises. However, the fatal flaw of BLM’s ideology regarding cisgender families is that the very nature of these beliefs is color-blind. To the contrary, the strength of cisgender families (of whatever color) rests on the universal truth of the values, beliefs, and structure of Judeo-Christian families.

2. “We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).”

Now we come to “trans” by which is meant transgender and defined as “of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity differs from the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth.”[6] And trans does not mean just male and female but a whole alphabet of identities such as LGBTQ+. However, deny it as they might, it is one’s biological sex that determines gender, and there are just two. BLM calls this belief being in the “tight grip of heteronormative thinking.”

3. “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”

BLM wishes to disrupt (disorder, upset) the nuclear family structure by supporting (replacing) it with extended families and “villages” (also infamously promoted by Hillary Clinton). This group care for children promises to limit such care “to the degree that mothers, parents, and children (what about fathers?) are comfortable.” Tell that to parents who have unsuccessfully objected to the things taught in their child’s classroom that made them uncomfortable (e.g., transgenderism).

History reveals the fatal flaw of BLM ideology with regard to the nuclear family, marriage, monogamy, and heterosexuality.

1. Nuclear family, marriage, and monogamy

Daniel Patrick Moynihan retired from the United States Senate (Democratic Senator from New York) in 2000. Near the beginning of his career he was an assistant Secretary of Labor in Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. At the time of his retirement, the senator was asked to describe the biggest change he had seen in his forty years of government service. Articulate and intellectual, the distinguished public servant, having served both Democratic and Republican presidents, replied, “The biggest change, in my judgment, is that the family structure has come apart all over the North Atlantic world” and had occurred in “an historical instant. Something that was not imaginable forty years ago had happened.” Author of the 1965 Moynihan Report officially known as “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action”, Moynihan knew that of which he spoke.[7]

Enormously controversial at the time of its release, the report continues to be a topic of debate in the twenty-first century. The report characterized the instability of the black families in America and the importance of the family unit in providing that stability.

At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro Family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time…The role of the family in shaping character and ability is so pervasive as to be easily overlooked. The family is the basic social unit of American life; it is the basic socializing unit. By and large, adult conduct in society is learned as a child…the child learns a way of looking at life in his early years through which all later experience is viewed and which profoundly shapes his adult conduct.[8]

Writing shortly after Moynihan’s perceptive summation of the condition of the family structure, William Bennett noted the deep concern of Americans with regard to the family. Bennett pointed to the general instability of the American family and the contributing factors such as the decline in the status and centrality of marriage in society, substantially greater percentage of out-of-wedlock births, and the significant increase in co-habitation. With the decline of social perception and necessity of matrimony, children are less valued, more neglected, more vulnerable to non-family influences, and have less resources devoted for their care and benefit. Bennett wrote that, “Public attitudes toward marriage, sexual ethics, and child-rearing have radically altered for the worse. In Sum, the family has suffered a blow that has no historical precedent—and one that has enormous ramifications for American society.”[9]

Two decades have elapsed since Moynihan’s diagnosis of the disintegration of the family unit as the major modern affliction of the Western world and Bennett’s reporting of Americans’ purported concern for the survival of the family. It is no longer the problem of the black population. The deterioration of the family unit is pervasive and crosses all ethnic, socio-economic, and religious lines although the poor and disadvantaged bear a greater portion of the misery. Yet, there has been no public hue and cry to reverse the decline, no urgency or sense of crisis in dealing with the problem, no new series of government studies explaining the situation, and no investigative reporting or meaningful media attention regarding the most profound change in society that has had no historical precedent. Why is this so? The answer is that the solutions to reverse the decline and devastation of marriage and the family unit stand as polar opposites of the prevailing and pervasive humanistic worldview of which Black Lives Matter is the current purveyor of this cultural carnage. Its own website condemns it.

2. Heterosexuality

Heterosexual marriage is the central organizing concept in society. By contrast, homosexuality is a disorganizing concept with regard to human relationships and ultimately disorganizing in building stable, enduring societies. Heterosexual marriage orders the soul whereas sexual intimacy outside of marriage, co-habitation, divorce (apart from infidelity and willful desertion), and homosexuality (with or without benefit of a civil union) are inherently disorderly and destructive. History and human nature attest to these assertions for according to researchers, heterosexual married life as opposed to all other similar social arrangements provides greater financial security, better health and sex, and a longer and better life.[10]

Bennett called marital love that rests upon a foundation of unconditional commitment as “…safer, more enduring, and more empowering that any sentiment yet discovered or any human arrangement yet invented.” He credits these attributes to the basic heterosexual complementarity of man and woman joined together as one in marital love. The complementariness of the relationship is based on the differences, not just the physical but also the emotional and psychological. As the physical differences make sexual union possible, so too do the emotional and psychological differences of the marriage partners complement and complete each other.[11] The union becomes stronger than its parts.

In the longer term, homosexuality and same-sex marriage undermine society. The central cultural vision upon on which the nation was founded was based on biblical Christianity and its understanding of the nature of man and his origins. The truth of the Christian worldview of marriage as being between a man and woman is supported by the fact that it is a cultural universal imprinted on human nature and common to all people groups, all cultures, and all ages in history. Heterosexual marriage is the well-spring of civilization, and its centrality in the human experience is indisputable. Humans have fashioned numerous methods by which to organize their societies, but the common link to all is the family unit—a father, a mother, and children living together in bonds of committed caring.

God created heterosexual marriage as a cultural universal, and the strength and unity provided by this universal is the foundation of a strong and enduring society. Where traditional marriage is in broad disarray, as it is in most Western societies, it does not disprove the truth of the heterosexual marriage universal but rather speaks of the ravages caused by the ascending humanist worldview. Where traditional marriage declines, so do those societies decline that allow it to occur.
______

During the turmoil in America of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Russell Kirk wrote The Roots of the American Order, a book of exceptional scope and insight into the origins of America. Summarizing the words of Simone Weil, Kirk states that “…order is the path we follow, or the pattern by which we live with purpose and meaning. Above food and shelter, she continues, we must have order. The human condition is insufferable unless we perceive a harmony, an order in existence.” Kirk identified two roots of this order: the order of the soul (moral order) and the order of the republic (social order), and they are intricately linked and dependent on each other. Disorder of one leads to disorder of the other.[12]

The American order that was established by the founders was not an “ideology” nor a “thing” created for the moment. Rather, the American order is a living culture whose roots have grown over millennia and were watered by the sound principles of moral and civil social order arising from eternal truths and the revelation of God to the Hebrews and the first century Christians. America was established on these eternal truths and the revelation in which the Founders believed, and upon these pillars they built the greatest nation in the history of the world.

Kirk’s roots of order are the same roots of which Solzhenitsyn spoke in the quote given at the beginning of this article. BLM is attempting to sever those roots along with America’s cultural norms, traditions, beliefs, and even our history and that of Western civilization. Those severed roots are to be replaced with a humanistic cultural Marxist society whose citizens will be subject to machinations of an autonomous socialistic state and its evil overseers. Such a society will be devoid of the three essential elements of the good society: divine order, justice, and freedom.

Do not fool yourselves by blithely dismissing the challenge of BLM. Our present struggle is an existential war of the highest magnitude between good and evil, and the conflict is spreading around the world. What must Americans to do who love this nation and its history? For the answer we look once again to the wisdom of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in which he gives us both the diagnosis of our plight and a prescription for preserving America’s Judeo-Christian cultural heritage and its attendant freedom.

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it (evil) will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers . . . we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”[13]

“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”[14]

Larry G. Johnson
June 19, 2020

[1] “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,” AZQuotes, https://www.azquotes.com/author/13869-Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn (accessed June 18, 2020).
[2] “Biography,” The Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Center, https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/his-life-overview/biography (accessed June 18, 2020).
[3] “What We Believe,” Black Lives Matter, https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/ (accessed June 18, 2020).
[4] “Cisgender,” Merriam Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cisgender (accessed June 18, 2020).
[5] Ibid.
[6] “Transgender,” Merriam Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transgender (accessed June 18, 2020).
[7] William J. Bennett, The Broken Hearth, (New York: Doubleday, 2001), pp. 2, 85.
[8] Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy, (Cambridge Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1967), p. 3.
[9] Bennett, pp. 1-2.
[10] Ibid., pp. 14-188.
[11] Ibid., pp. 186-187
[12] Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, (Washington D. C.: Regnery-Gateway, 1991), pp. 3-5.
[13] Solzhenitsyn, AZ Quotes.
[14] Ibid.

Tis the Season for Secular Silliness

Posted by :admin On : December 8, 2017
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Humanism

[This article was first posted on culturewarrior.net on December 13, 2013. Given the growing hostility of the majority of secular culture to all things Christian,it seems appropriate to publish it a second time.]

Holiday letter to my secular humanist friends,

The first signs of the holiday shopping season peek from store shelves in September. October’s chill warns that Halloween nears. We must select a costume that tops last year’s. November heralds that most wonderful time of the year—Black Friday. But Oh My! What shall we do with December and that highly embarrassing “other” holiday? You know the one I mean. We once masked it by calling it Xmas. But the X could be misconstrued as a cross. And a cross can be associated with you know who, and that will never do. Now we call that “other” holiday by many names such as Winter Solstice celebration, Festival of Lights, and Winter Carnival. Those are so inclusive, so democratic…so…so generic. (I almost said ecumenical, but that sounds too religious.) With these new names, the holiday season can mean whatever one wants it to mean rather than have a religious meaning crammed down our throats each December. Why must we be subjected to those old-fashioned myths and fables that have lingered for two thousand years? We have Santa Claus!

But there are still millions out there who haven’t gotten the message. They are generally backward, unintelligent, and remain culturally insensitive unlike those of us who have progressed beyond those crude expressions of faith. Unfortunately, not everyone wants to join our shining, non-offensive, tolerant, all inclusive, sensitive secular society.

You hear those sentimental Christians whining every year at this time. They are always hiding behind the Constitution which they say guarantees their religious freedom. Well of course they have religious freedom as long as they don’t flaunt it in public!

We must be ever vigilant and ready to crush any efforts to return to those bad old days. Just a couple of years ago, a group of carolers singing at various businesses in a Silver Springs, Maryland, shopping center entered a U.S. Post Office also located in the shopping center. Dressed in period costumes reminiscent of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” they were only a few words into their first carol when the vigilant and brave Post Office manager rushed into the lobby to stop the indiscretion. “You can’t do this on government property,” the angry manager shouted. He ordered them to leave immediately because there was a Post Office policy prohibiting solicitation. They attempted to explain that they were going to all the businesses in the shopping center. But he would have none of it and insisted they leave in spite of boos from the patrons waiting in line.[1] Even though there was no such policy, this Post Office manager should serve as a role model for that small minority of managers who aren’t so enlightened and have allowed caroling in their Post Offices. Fortunately, our government is filled with like-minded militant secularist bureaucrats rigorously defending society from such unauthorized merriment.

But we can never let down our guard. Just the other day the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives announced that its members would be allowed to use previously banned holiday greetings in official mailings to their constituents. Representative Candice Miller said, “I feel it is entirely appropriate for members of Congress to include a simple holiday salutation, whether it is Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and so on.[2] Shameful! How could these legislators abuse their franking privileges by including messages of Merry Christmas to thousands of their constituents? Such episodes tend to be contagious and must not be allowed to go unchallenged.

Such blatant relapses can cause others to become weak-kneed when banning Christmas from any public display or expression. One example is the Bordentown, New Jersey, Regional School District administration that had banned religious Christmas music at winter public school concerts effective as of October 18th. Less than two weeks later the superintendent backed down after national attention was focused on the school’s ban. The superintendent announced that the religious Christmas music would be allowed for now “…after reviewing additional legal considerations and advice on this matter and the expressed sentiments of the community at large…” However, she promised that, “…the school board will continue to examine the issue to determine how the policy will be handled in the future.”[3] Of course it is always wise to impose these unpopular restrictions on a low-key basis. The school administration should have imposed the restrictions banning religious Christmas music in, let’s say, March. Once policies are established and in effect for a period of time, opposition to those policies can usually be attributed to a fringe element of religious fanatics bent on imposing their religion on others and which violates our constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. It doesn’t matter that the words “separation of church and state” aren’t in the Constitution; we know the Founders really meant freedom from religion instead of freedom of religion. You see, that Constitution thing can work both ways.

Wait a minute. I must go to the door. No, it can’t be! There are carolers out there singing religious Christmas songs and indiscriminately shouting Merry Christmas right there on the public sidewalk for everyone to hear. Where’s my cell phone? Hello! 911? Send the police. No, better yet send a SWAT team. We are having a major public insurrection right here in River City in direct violation of the Constitution. Hurry! There are children in the neighborhood being exposed to this brazen criminal activity!

I must go. I think I see one of my neighbors putting a nativity scene on his front lawn. Hmmm. Would that violation fall under the city’s building code or advertising ordinance? Where’s my cell phone?

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] J. P. Duffy, “Post Office Manager Throws Christmas Carolers Out into the Cold,” Family Research Council, December 12, 2011. http://www.frcblog.com/2011/12/post-office-manager-throws-christmas-carolers-out-into-the-cold/ (accessed December 10, 2013).
[2]Chris Deaton, “Victory: House members no longer prohibited from saying “Merry Christmas” in official mail,” Red Alert Politics, December 4, 2013. http://redalertpolitics.com/2013/12/04/victory-house-members-no-longer-prohibited-from-saying-merry-christmas-in-official-mail/ (accessed December 10, 2013).
[3] Billy Hallowell, “N.J. School District That Banned Christmas Music With ‘Religious Origins’ Backs Down,” The Blaze, November 6, 2013. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/06/n-j-school-district-that-banned-christmas-music-with-religious-origins-backs-down/ (accessed December 10, 2013).

Talk, trust, and truth – Polarization of American society

Posted by :admin On : January 27, 2017
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Culture Wars, Humanism

Mark Brewin is an associate professor and chairperson of the Department of Communications at the University of Tulsa. Mr. Brewin’s guest editorial for the Tulsa World’s Sunday Opinion section titled “Can we talk?” states that there are remarkably high levels of distrust in America which is creating an unhealthy nation. He says that, “We owe it to ourselves, and to each other to make a more conscious effort to listen to different voices, to forcibly and consciously move ourselves out of our networks.[1]

Brewin believes that the opposing ideological sides evident in 2016 presidential election have created this unhealthy situation. Brewin described the opponents.

At times over the course of the fall election period, it seemed as though half the country existed of mean-spirited racist and misogynistic troglodytes, who lacked either the ability or the inclination to use their reason; whereas the other half was composed of entitled elitists who drank craft beer, traveled to places like Paris or Ulan Bator for their summer vacations, and looked with utter contempt on God-fearing folk who fixed their plugged-up toilets and bagged their groceries.[2]

What Brewin is really describing is the centuries-long clash between conservatism and liberalism. With this understanding we can restate his caricatures of the two groups: The first group identified is the hateful, bigoted, women-hating, caveman conservatives who won’t use their reasoning ability (assuming they had the brains to do so which is doubtful). In the second group we have the snobbish liberals. Their great sin is not who they are or what they believe but merely looking down their noses and failing to appreciate the lower classes of society.

Brewin says that the inability of well-meaning people of all political and cultural persuasions is of recent origin. He states that only twenty years ago Americans could disagree without resorting to charges of moral corruption for merely supporting the other side. However, Brewin’s claim is clearly bogus with regard to the political spectrum. Even a cursory examination of American history (dating back to the Adams-Jefferson presidential campaign of 1800) will prove the fallacy of his statement. With regard to the cultural spectrum, the drift apart began occurring mid-way through the first half of the twentieth century beginning with Franklin Roosevelt’s administration when he successfully purged the Democratic Party of its conservative voices. Thus, the cultural and political divide is not of recent origin and will not be bridged by conciliatory dialog and understanding of the other side’s point of view.

Brewin suggests that the path to a mutual disdain between the two sides of the culture wars is long and complicated. In that he is correct. This complexity arises because the nation’s problems flow from non-negotiable issues that have risen as a result of the liberal-conservative split and a consequent loss of a cohesive central cultural vision once held by Americans for over 150 years. Talk alone will not heal this loss of cohesion in the nation’s central cultural vision.

The networked society

Brewin says that we can begin to gain an understanding of the development of this divide by looking at the concept of “network.” Social scientists have theorized that modern culture has evolved into a “networked” society and that these changes came about because of the way Americans get their information. The “mass” media in the twentieth century tended to be large and centralized. Social scientists feared that it was possible for the mass media to dominate society by controlling what they saw and heard thereby create a “mass” society of apathetic clones that were easily manipulated.[3]

In the latter part of the twentieth century the power and domination of the mainstream media was supposedly replaced by the Internet and other alternative media sources which collectively became known as the “networked” media. Mass media’s so-called passive audience had become an active group of information seekers that turned to the networked media which was supposed to bring them freedom and variety. However, Brewin is concerned that information networks may only “provide a vision of the world that flatters our opinions rather than challenging them. We do not hear arguments from opposing sides that might work to change our minds, or at least modify our opinions into something less radical.” Put another way, he sees the new networked media as appealing to our worst instincts because we listen to only those things with which we agree.[4]

But who decides what is radical? Although Brewin admits that the mainstream media produced a lot of “bad cultural product,” it sounds like he longs for a return to the good old days when the secular mass media controlled content and presented its humanistic vision of society. Thus, the liberal elitists could once again protect the masses from their “worst instincts.”[5] He provides an example.

But some of the things [delivered by mass media] that we didn’t like and didn’t want to listen to were good for us anyhow. It was good for pro-lifers and pro-choicers to be forced to listen to spokespeople for the other side every night on the evening news.[6]

Given the mainstream media’s decades-long support of abortion, when in the last forty-four years since Roe v. Wade have pro-choicers been forced to listen to spokespersons from the pro-life side every night in the mainstream media? Such would be a rare and brief occurrence comparable to an eclipse of the sun. Here Brewin reveals either his naiveté or duplicity. It is no secret that Christianity and its beliefs have been substantially evicted from the public square for decades.

In summary, Brewin believes that networked media makes it possible for information consumers to “bypass challenging but important views” which leads to ideological cocoons that foster distrust among the citizenry and produces an unhealthy nation. Brewin would have us break out of these cocoons by making a conscious effort to listen to different voices, to forcibly and consciously move ourselves out of our networks so that our radical ideas caused by our worst instincts can be moderated.

Clash of Worldviews

Here we arrive at the crux of the problem that Brewin misses. Brewin and the social scientists’ assume that people were weaned away from the mass media and now have developed an ideological cocoon in their brains because they have spent too much time imbibing their chosen narcotic provided by the networked media. But the mass media continues to have much greater power to manipulate and indoctrinate the populace than the networked media. Television was by far the dominate segment of mass media since the early 1950s and continues to do so today. In 1981, Richard Adler described the power of television in forming the worldviews of the nation’s citizenry.

The TV set has become the primary source of news and entertainment for most Americans and a major force in the acculturation of children…Television is not simply a medium of transmission, it is an active, pervasive force…a mediator between our individual lives and the larger life of the nation and the world; between fantasy and fact; between old values and new ideas; between our desire to seek escape and our need to confront reality.[7]

In his article “Television Shapes the Soul,” Michael Novak called television a

…molder of the soul’s geography. It builds up incrementally a psychic structure of expectations. It does so in much the same way that school lessons slowly, over the years, tutor the unformed mind and teach it “how to think.”[8]

To Novak, television is a “homogenizing medium” with an ideological tendency that is a “vague and misty liberalism” designed “however gently to undercut traditional institutions and to promote a restless, questioning attitude.”[9]

Therefore, we must ask the question with regard to Brewin’s conclusions. Have Americans in this polarized age retreated into information cocoons fed by like-minded media sources? This is the question asked by Brendan Nyhan when writing for The New York Times website in 2014. Nyhan’s answer was spelled out in the title of his article: “Americans Don’t Live in Informational Cocoons.”

In short, while it’s still possible to live in a political bubble [Brewin’s ideological cocoon] of your own choosing, the best evidence suggests that very few people are getting their news only from like-minded outlets. Why, then, do so many Americans seem to live in different political realities?

The problem isn’t the news we consume, it seems, but the values and identities that shape how we interpret that information — most notably, our partisan beliefs. In other words, Democrats and Republicans don’t see the world so differently because they see different news; rather, they see the news differently because they’re Democrats and Republicans in the first place.[10] [emphasis added]

If Nylan’s conclusions are correct, then Brewin’s contention that Americans have retreated into information cocoons fed by like-minded media sources appears to be erroneous. Additionally, the origins of this distrust and ideological differences are far older than suggested by Brewin and his social scientist theorists. This raises a second question. If the theory that the networked media causes an ideological cocoon is a fiction, then what is the source for the polarization of American life? It occurs because of the way the two sides see the world, that is, their worldviews are fundamentally different.

One’s worldview is built throughout life and reflects the picture of one’s understanding of reality (truth). From this understanding of truth we form our values, beliefs, and identities from which we attempt to answer the basic questions of life: who are and where did we come from, how did we get in the mess we are in, and how do we get out of it.

In a free society, the worldviews most commonly held generally form the central cultural vision that brings order to that society or nation. In a humanistic society order is achieved through socialism, and in a socialistic society it is the worldviews and philosophies of the state, as crafted and dictated by its ruling elites, which flow downward to the citizenry and are imposed on each sphere of society. As Western civilization moved away from the Judeo-Christian to a humanistic worldview over the last three hundred years, the pathologies in these societies have exploded because of the tyrannical demands of relativistic humanism contradicts the God-given innate nature of man that seeks objective truth and freedom.

Requirements for cultures to survive: Unity and Truth

The two essentials that any culture must have and without which it disintegrates over time are unity and truth. A society’s central cultural vision must command unity, and such unity must filter up from individuals, not be coerced or forced down on society by its elites. Also, a culture’s central cultural vision must be based on truth with regard to the nature of God, creation, and man. Without a central cultural vision that commands unity and is based on truth, there can be no order to the soul or society, and without order in both, society deteriorates over time and eventually disintegrates.

In America there are two worldviews competing for dominance in the nation’s central cultural vision—the Judeo-Christian worldview and the humanistic worldview (defined by its various components – liberalism, progressivism, relativism, and naturalism among others). For most of the nation’s history its central cultural vision has been built on the foundation of the Judeo-Christian worldviews of its citizens.

This central cultural vision has been under attack since the late nineteenth century. Beginning in the 1960s, the humanistic worldview gained momentum and by the end of the century the predominate leadership in the spheres of American life held a humanistic worldview (in politics, government, the sciences, economy, education, law, media, entertainment, popular culture, and much of the church). As these leaders consolidated their power, they began to fashion and impose a network of humanistic laws, policies, rules, and regulations on a society that is still predominately of a Judeo-Christian worldview. Each side holds diametrically opposed views of reality (truth) with regard to God, nature, the origins and purpose of man, and a host of other flashpoints in the culture wars. These differences are immutable and irreconcilable which no amount of discussion and negotiation will bridge. This is the reason for America’s polarization.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Mark Brewin, “Can we talk?” Tulsa World, January 22, 2017, G1.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Richard P. Adler, Understanding Television – Essays on Television as a Social and Cultural Force, ed. Richard P. Adler (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1981), p. xi-xii.
[8] Michael Novak, “Television Shapes the Soul,” Understanding Television – Essays on Television as a Social and Cultural Force, ed. Richard P. Adler, pp. 20.
[9] Ibid., pp. 26-27.
[10]Brendan Nyhan, “Americans Don’t Live in Informational Cocoons,” New York Times.com, October 24, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/25/upshot/americans-dont-live-in-information-cocoons.html (accessed January 25, 2017).

The failure of Western liberal ideology

Posted by :admin On : January 20, 2017
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Category: America, Archives, Culture Wars, Humanism, Progressivism

Nothing has exposed the falsity of the reigning humanist-progressivist worldview and its tenets of tolerance, multiculturalism, and diversity in Western civilization as has the massive flood of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East to Europe. The same is occurring to a lesser extent along America’s porous southern border. Floods are destructive, but a steady flow of unpolluted water is crucial to sustain a beautiful and bountiful land. Is the analogy of the hydrology of water and the occurrence, flow, movement, and distribution of immigrants into a country not accurate?

One is not anti-immigrant to want an orderly, lawfully conducted immigration process that respects the existing citizens of a nation whether they were natural born or properly immigrated and assimilated. Progressivist policies that fail to stem the continuing surge of large numbers of illegal immigrants were one of the greatest flashpoints of conflict in the campaigns of the two aspirants for the presidency in 2016. These progressivist policies undermine American society because they reflect a failure to understand the true meaning and importance of culture.

There is a ceaseless struggle between a culture’s will to survive and the agitant of modernist pluralism. Pluralism, rightly defined, is “a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups maintain and develop their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization.”[1] [emphasis added] But modern progressive definitions of pluralism have attempted to displace the general synthesis of values in America, that is, its central cultural vision. Humanistic forms of pluralism attempt to supersede and thereby shatter the confines of a common civilization through imposition of perverse definitions of tolerance, multiculturalism, and diversity in all spheres of American life.

Progressivist tolerance

Progressivism’s idea of tolerance is a consequence of the humanistic doctrine of cultural relativism. But how does one order a society if it is culturally relativistic, that is, what anchors its beliefs and welds together a cohesive society? Humanists claim that order is achieved by a tolerance that requires a suspension of judgment as to matters of truth and beliefs with regard to moral judgements of right and wrong since all belief systems contain some truth within while no one belief system has all the truth. In such a progressivist view, a strong belief in anything becomes a desire to impose those beliefs on other people which translate into loss of freedom. It is humanism’s values-free approach which must ultimately deny any absolutes. Through the humanist understanding of toleration comes liberty by preventing the development and promotion of strong beliefs.[2]

One dictionary’s definition of tolerance is “…the allowed deviation from a standard.”[3] This definition implies a standard by which to measure the value of other cultures as well as a limit to the extent to which deviation from the prevailing culture’s standard will be allowed. However, this definition violates the humanistic understanding of tolerance which suspends all judgement as to standards of truth and morality.

Progressivist multiculturalism

Progressivist ideas of multiculturalism closely mirror its rationale for tolerance which is based on a relativistic, values-free society and a denial of absolutes. Multiculturalism is a humanist doctrine that came into vogue during the late twentieth century. As humanists see it, morality shouldn’t be imposed by religions or legislated by governments. Rather, the alternative is to develop civic and moral virtues in accordance with humanist doctrine by means of moral education.[4] As a result the humanists’ doctrine of multiculturalism has spread throughout the educational system in America. Humanist educational elites believe that America has been too immersed in Western “Eurocentric” teachings to the detriment of other cultures. It has been their goal to redirect the education curriculum toward various counterculture teachings (i.e., Afrocentrism, humanistically defined feminism, legitimization of homosexuality, and radical doctrines such as neo-Marxism) that challenge the “white, male-dominated European studies.” But a closer examination of the humanist agenda reveals that multiculturalism is not intended to supplement but rather to supplant Western culture that is so steeped in Christianity.[5]

Progressivist diversity

Humanism’s diversity is a close kin of multiculturalism and focuses on the differences within society and not society as a whole. With emphasis on the differences, mass culture becomes nothing more than an escalating number of subcultures within an increasingly distressed political framework that attempts to satisfy the myriad of demands of the individual subcultures. There is a loss of unity through fragmentation and ultimately a loss of a society’s central cultural vision which leads to disintegration. Humanism’s impulse for diversity is a derivative of relativism and humanism’s perverted concept of equality.[6]

The meaning and defense of culture

Once again we must turn to Richard Weaver for his brilliant insights into the meaning of culture and its defense against becoming syncretistic (a culture that attempts to mix or combine different forms of belief or practices).

It is the essence of culture to feel its own imperative and to believe in the uniqueness of its worth…Syncretistic cultures like syncretistic religions have always proved relatively powerless to create and to influence; there is no weight or authentic history behind them. Culture derives its very desire to continue from its unitariness…There is at the heart of every culture a center of authority from which there proceed subtle and pervasive pressures upon us to conform and to repel the unlike as disruptive…it must insist on a pattern of inclusion and exclusion…[It is] inward facing toward some high representation…Culture is by nature aristocratic, for it is a means of discriminating between what counts for much and what counts for little…For this reason it is the very nature of culture to be exclusive…There can be no such thing as a “democratic” culture in the sense of one open to everybody at all times on equal terms…For once the inward-looking vision and the impulse to resist the alien are lost, disruption must ensue.”[7]

The essence of a culture may be described as a general synthesis of values common to a group’s vision of the world, that is, the way things ought to work. Every culture has a center which commands all things. Weaver called this center imaginative rather than logical and “…a focus of value, a law of relationships, an inspiring vision…to which the group is oriented.” The foundation of the cultural concept is unity that assumes a general commonality of thought and action. A unified culture requires a center of cultural authority from which radiates a subtle and pervasive pressure to conform. The pressures to conform may range from cultural peer pressure to moral and legal restraints. Those that do not conform are repelled of necessity. Thus, in any culture there are patterns of inclusion and exclusion. Without such patterns, the culture is unprotected and disintegrates over time.[8]

There is an inherent tension between the exclusivity demanded by culture and progressivism’s doctrines of tolerance and its corollaries of multiculturalism and diversity. Tolerance suggests acceptance and inclusiveness while exclusivity implies segregation and denial. By segregation is not meant segregation within a culture but between cultures. The culture that values its central vision welcomes integration of diverse groups that share or at least respects that culture’s common central vision. Because of such diversity, a culture becomes a stronger.[9] It is in the humanistic definition of pluralism in which cultures are prone to failure because the central cultural vision becomes fragmented as the values-free central cultural vision does not provide the cohesion necessary for survival.

By its very essence, culture must discriminate against those outside its boundaries that do not share or respect its central vision. A culture must believe in its uniqueness, worth, and the superiority of its worldview. To attempt to meld together or comingle multiple cultures into one culture with multiple centers of vision is to create a powerless culture with little influence and place it on the road to disintegration. By definition, culture must be an inward-looking vision and resist the alien. Without such is a loss of wholeness, and a culture’s cohesiveness dissolves into chaos as its various parts drift into orbits around parochial interests and egocentrism.[10]

Failure of Western liberal ideology

There is hope that Western civilization is awakening to the real and looming dissolution of its respective cultures because of decades of dominance by liberal elitists who promote a humanistic culture and impose policies in support of that worldview.

In the evening of December 19th, a terrorist hijacked a truck and ran over and killed twelve people and injured forty-eight more at a Christmas market in Berlin. Patrick Buchanan wrote of this tragedy and points out that it was merely the latest of a decade of similar attacks in London, Brussels, Paris, Madrid, and Berlin. Buchanan wrote that the responsibility for the attacks can be laid at the door of Western liberal ideology which is says is the ideology of Western suicide.[11]

…the peoples of Europe seem less interested in hearing recitals of liberal values than in learning what their governments are going to do to keep the Islamist killers out and make them safe…Liberals may admonish us that all races, creeds, cultures are equal, that anyone from any continent, country, or civilization can come to the West and assimilate…But people don’t believe that. Europe and America have moved beyond the verities of 20th century liberalism…Only liberal ideology calls for America and Europe to bring into their home countries endless numbers of migrants, without being overly concerned about who they are, whence they come or what they believe.[12] [emphasis added]

Buchanan rightly identifies the first duty of government is to protect the safety and security of the people. But the responsibility for our present peril in the West goes beyond a failure of government to protect its people. It is the failure of the peoples of Western civilization to defend their respective cultures from the false claims of those holding and promoting a humanistic view of the world. The rapidly approaching demise of the Western ethic can be stopped and reversed. It will not be quick, easy, or painless, but we have no choice other than to battle this menace if we care about what kind of world our children and grandchildren will inherit.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] “pluralism,” Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pluralism (accessed December 29, 2016).
[2] M. Stanton Evans, The Theme is Freedom – Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994), pp. 40-42.
[3] “tolerance,” Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, (Springfield, Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Company, Publisher, 1963), p. 930.
[4] Paul Kurtz, Toward a New Enlightenment – The Philosophy of Paul Kurtz, (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1994, p. 101.
[5] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity –The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, LLC, 2011), pp. 188-189.
[6] Ibid., p. 398.
[7] Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order – The Cultural Crisis of Our Time, (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995, 2006), pp. 10-12. Originally published by Louisiana State University Press, 1964.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., pp. 11-13.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Patrick J. Buchanan, Patrick J. Buchanan – Official Website, December 22, 2016.
http://buchanan.org/blog/europes-future-merkel-le-pen-126291 (accessed January 4, 2017).
[12] Ibid.

The Church triumphant – Part II

Posted by :admin On : November 11, 2016
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Category: America, Archives, Christianity, Humanism

[Part II was intentionally written before the results of the November 8, 2016 elections were known. It was released for posting on November 11, 2016.]

Will the church of Jesus Christ survive in Western civilization? If Christianity does not survive, then the church must also die, and there have been many predictions of the imminent death of both over the last three centuries.

The skeptics

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock n’ roll or Christianity.[1]

These are the words of John Lennon of Beatles fame who made these statements during an interview for a magazine article fifty years ago (1966). But Lennon won’t be the last and he certainly wasn’t the first to predict the demise of Christianity and the Church.

However mild and reasoned their protestations against God and His church are in the beginning, skeptics invariably end with the creature murdering his Creator. The anti-God philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) thought this the most promising and glorious event in human history. He continued his vitriolic harangue about the death of God to the end of his life from a padded cell in a Venetian insane asylum.[2]

What if our modern skeptics could be transported back in time and allowed to stand at the back of the crowds and listen to and observe Jesus during His earthly ministry, eavesdrop on His private conversations as He taught His disciples, and follow Him as He trod down dusty paths and ministered to people along the way such as the Samaritan woman at the well. Would a seeing-is-believing moment change their opinion as to the longevity of the church of Jesus? No, they would have been like the pagan rulers and religious elite of Jesus’ day who most certainly believed that the itinerant preacher who claimed to be the Son of God and his little congregation of twelve were undoubtedly destined for failure, and sooner rather than later. They would call this little church anything except “The Church triumphant.”

They had multiple reasons for their skepticism. The church did not have the right venue to be successful. It was located in a troublesome little backwater country on the fringes of the Roman Empire. The preacher had little formal education and obviously was not born to wealth and privilege. He was the son of a carpenter and trained as a carpenter. Rumor was that the carpenter may not have been His real father. Even members of his own family thought him delusional. The members of His congregation were not found on the social registers of the day. Most of these men would be called blue-collar workers in today’s vernacular—fishermen and other low-ranking occupations and one hated tax collector. Above all, the preacher’s message was too demanding and short on benefits in this life. He called His followers to a life of surrender, sacrifice, and death to self. He told them that in this life they would be hated of men, persecuted, and that many would be killed for their faith. And He was always in trouble with the establishment—both political and religious.

After only three years of ministry, the preacher was executed on a Roman cross, and his little band of followers went into hiding. The skeptics must have felt assured that their original predictions of the demise of the little church had been justified. The skeptics stooped to etch an epitaph on the tombstone being prepared for the little church. It read, “The Church humiliated.” And the skeptics would have been correct except for one thing. The itinerant preacher really was the Son of God.

The Church triumphant

Why did Jesus’ followers believe He was the Son of God? Was it blind faith? Low intelligence? Lack of education? Hysteria? Wishful thinking? Delusion? Kevin Swanson gives us the correct answer. His followers knew Jesus had defeated death and that only God could do that.

It is an indisputable fact: the Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and He is reigning as sovereign Lord on the right hand of the Father, until all of His enemies are under His footstool. For the Christian this is the historical fact by which all other previous and future events are to be understood. It is the most important historical fact of all. Marx and Nietzsche hated this historical reality, and they fought it with all that they had within them…

However the future is viewed, there is no avoiding one stubborn, historical fact—Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, and His kingdom will never fail. Faithless men will put together eschatological scenarios that ignore this fact. Faithless men will minimize the antithesis or compromise with it. Faithless men will give too much credence to the antithesis and not enough to Christ. Contrary to John Lennon’s premature pronouncements, this is not the end of Christian influence in the world. It is only the beginning.[3] [emphasis in original]

The Church and the end of the age

In light of the seeming meltdown of Christianity in America and the Western world, many Christians are exceedingly distraught about the future. Although Christians should be greatly disturbed and dismayed at what is happening in America, they should never be fearful of the future and never believe that the church has been defeated. The words of Isaiah assure God’s people of His and their ultimate victory. “So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him.” [Isiah 59:19. KJV] Even when the ungodly rule the land, Daniel reminds us that God is in charge of the times and seasons and that He removes kings and sets up kings (See: Daniel 2:21). Thus we know that God is sovereign and that He orders the affairs of men in all ages.

As the last scenes of history play out, proud, boastful, and seemingly independent man is oblivious to the reality that he is being drawn as though by a hook in his nose to the prophetic conclusion of the age. Mankind is on its last downward slide and nears the end of the last days. The Bible’s itinerary for a sin-filled world cannot be ignored or changed as it nears its final destination. There is no escaping it. The only questions that remain are the final dispositions of the lives of men and women living at this defining moment in history. Nations are also being sifted, tested, and tried to determine the final outworking of events within each before His soon return.

The circumstances and events in the political, economic, and social arenas that Christians see as disastrous for the church are only passing scenes in the unfolding drama that God is directing as the end of the age approaches. Nations that turn their back on God and His laws are paying a high price for their disobedience. Although Christians are aliens in a foreign and hostile land, they are also citizens of these earthly regimes and will also suffer because of their nation’s descent into wickedness. Even now the body of Christ (the Church) in many nations is experiencing a measure of this suffering before the rapture. But the church must never forget that its real home is in the wonderful and eternal presence of God. His purposes in allowing these momentary afflictions are often beyond our ability to comprehend, but He has assured His followers that, “…all things work together for the good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” [Romans 8:28. KJV]

Becoming impossible people

Satan is attempting to destroy the church through the destruction of the Christian culture of America and all of Western civilization. He and his evil empire oppose righteousness, weaken the church through compromise, debauch the truth of God’s word in the minds of men, and pollute the land with a vile stream of wickedness that is flowing into every facet of life. Knowing this, Christians who in the world’s eyes are “impossible people” must have

…hearts that can melt with compassion, but with faces like flint and backbones of steel who are unmanipulable, unbribable, undeterrable and unclubbable (i.e., coercion through comfortable conformity), without ever losing the gentleness, the mercy, the grace and the compassion of our Lord.[4]

Perhaps the best advice for the church in this troublesome age comes from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. First, he makes certain that we understand who the real enemy is that the church battles. Then, he tells it how to prepare for battle.

For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. [Ephesians 6:12-13. RSV]

In his commentary, Donald Stamps gives our modern minds insight into what Paul is saying.
Satan and a host of evil spirits are the spiritual rulers of the world. They empower ungodly men and women to oppose God’s will and attack believers. They form a “vast multitude and are organized into a highly systematized empire of evil…”[5]

The church must confront this empire of evil and does so by putting on the whole armor of God (see Ephesians 6:13-17). And when the battle is heated and defeat seems near at hand, having done all, the Church must continue to stand. It can do so because that itinerate preacher who trod the hills and valleys of ancient Palestine two thousand years ago really was the Son of God, and his kingdom will never fail.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Kevin Swanson, Apostate – The Men who Destroyed the Christian West, (Parker, Colorado: Generations with Vision, 2013), p. 277.
[2] Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980), p. 11.
[3] Swanson, pp. 289-290.
[4] Os Guinness, Impossible People – Christian Courage and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization, (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2016), pp. 31-32.
[5] Donald C. Stamps, Study Notes and Articles, The Full Life Study Bible – New Testament, King James Version, gen. ed. Donald C. Stamps, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1990), p.439.