Rss

  • youtube

Shake and Bake History – Engineering the future while forgetting the past

Posted by :admin On : August 1, 2014
0

Category: Archives, Education, Progressivism, Worldview

Two recent syndicated newspaper columns contained two views of history that frame the two worldviews contending for dominance in the nation’s central cultural vision—humanism and Christianity. The first was written by David Turnoy, a retired elementary teacher and author.[1] Mr. Turnoy is a proponent of ‘honest” history of the warts and all variety with a strong emphasis on the warts. Turnoy’s article is peppered with numerous phrases descriptive of the humanistic worldview, and some of his quotes will help understand that worldview.

For any progressive student or observer of history, it is well-known that the United States has a mixed record in its treatment of Native Americans, African Americans, women and other groups, including some especially cruel treatment…So what information should be taught? Should it be the traditional bland summary showing America as always in the right, led by truly admirable heroes who bring about change while leaving out any negative actions, which leads to disinterested, unquestioning citizens who allow government and other elites to do as they like? Or should it be a more balanced, honest approach?…If we want a better country with more equality and justice, this is where it starts.[2] (emphasis added)

To summarize, it appears that Turnoy believes that traditional history lessons will be bland summaries if not focused on the negatives and therefore produce disinterested and unquestioning citizens who are unconcerned about equality and justice. Turnoy assumes his approach is more balanced and honest. We will examine how Turnoy’s “honest and balanced” approach really plays out in the American education system dominated by a humanistic worldview.

A contrary view is held by Daniel Burnett who believes that there has been a “…growing trend in historical illiteracy for years, and the culprit is our nation’s education system…it fails to prepare students with the knowledge they’ll need for informed citizenship.” Quoting various research studies on knowledge of history in America, Burnett reported that only five percent of the top fifty public universities in the U.S. required even one survey course on American history. Most college and university curricula require only niche courses to take the place of American history courses. He cites several examples: “Foundations of Rock,” “Human Sexuality,” “History of Avant-Garde Film,” and “America Through Baseball.” Burnett believes that the American education system has produced a population of illiterates and amnesiacs as it relates to the nation’s history.[3]

One must ask why there is such an aversion to teaching American history in primary and secondary schools and at colleges and universities. Turnoy argues that history teachers are not honest with regard to America’s failures. Burnett cites the educational system’s focus on niche courses and a failure to teach a comprehensive history of the nation. Both points of view are a result of the educational system’s dominant humanistic worldview and its aversion to the lessons of the past.

American education’s humanistic worldview

The American education system is extremely humanistic in its worldview, teaching, policies, practices, and course content. The great architect of engineering the future through education without a historical foundation was John Dewey. Dewey was “…recognized as the leader of the ‘progressive movement’ in education.”[4] (emphasis added) His educational philosophy, writings, and twenty-five years at Columbia University dramatically shaped the educational system in the U.S. from the early years of the twentieth century until the present day. His philosophy was centered on humanistic concepts of man with regard to his origins, purpose, and future. Dewey had a substantial disdain for historical influence, tradition, patrimony, and religion (particularly the Christian worldview), all of which were noticeably absent in his development of American education’s modern paradigm.[5] The progressive movement in education resulted in faculty hostility to the courses and fields of study that examine the traditional roots of Western civilization and American institutions. Turnoy’s sought after “honest and balanced” presentation of history has been cast aside in favor of indoctrinating American students with a humanistic worldview.

Humanism’s aversion to history

In the humanist worldview history is excess baggage that must be tossed to make way for new, bold, and progressive ideas. Therefore, humanists subscribe to the Whig theory of history which states that the most advanced point in time is the point of its highest development. This fits nicely with humanists’ progressivism whose foundation is the Enlightenment belief of the perfectibility of man, a “…belief that critical and autonomous human reason held the power to discover the truth about life and the world, and to progressively liberate humanity from the ignorance and injustices of the past.”[6] Those holding the humanistic worldview eliminate the traditional historical narrative of America unless that narrative can be sifted and parsed to present selected evidence of America’s supposed widespread historical inequality and injustice.

Rob Koons, a philosophy professor at the University of Texas, has called the modern American university’s array of unconnected courses the Uncurriculum. Koons describes the Uncurriculum as a smorgasbord approach to curriculum offerings whose design usually exhibits a general lack of required courses, structure, and systematic order in meeting core course requirements for liberal arts studies.[7] From such comes a citizenry that is profoundly illiterate with regard to America’s story and the reasons for its preeminence among the past and present nations of the world.

The story of America

America cannot be understood without a comprehensive historical narrative. Such a narrative reveals that America’s founding originated from a biblical worldview that runs through the history of Western civilization since its inception. One cannot understand America by substituting a shake and bake curriculum that substitutes courses such as “America Through Baseball” or “History of Avant-Garde Film” for traditional comprehensive history courses that present the matchless story of America.

Russell Kirk expressed the true ideal of education.

True education is meant to develop the individual human being, the person, rather than to serve the state. In all our talk about “serving national goals” and “citizenship education”—phrases that originated with John Dewey and his disciples—we tend to ignore the fact that schooling was not originated by the modern nation-state. Formal schooling actually commenced as an endeavor to acquaint the rising generation with religious knowledge: with awareness of the transcendent and with moral truths…to teach what it is to be a true human being.[8]

Writing of the humanistic view of education, Richard Weaver’s words capture the goal of such education. “The student is to be prepared not to save his soul, or to inherit the wisdom and usages of past civilizations, or even to get ahead in life, but to become a member of a utopia resting on a false view of both nature and man.”[9]

It is safe to say that the great majority of modern Americans do not understand the true story of America and its institutions. Turnoy and Barnett’s prescriptions to achieve an informed citizenry with regard to American history follow starkly different avenues. Turnoy’s humanistic education model has ruled for the better part of a century and has utterly failed. Barnett offers hope that a return to telling the comprehensive though politically incorrect story of America will result in an informed and politically adept citizenry.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] David Turnoy, “When can we introduce children to honest history?” Tulsa World, June 8, 2014, A14.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Daniel Burnett, “Historical amnesia: Let us never forget D-Day,” Tulsa World, June 6, 2014, A14.
[4] Robert B. Talisse, On Dewey, (Belmont, California: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning, 2000), pp. ix, 1, 4.
[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, 2011), pp. 23-25.
[6] Christian Smith, The Secular Revolution, (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2003), p. 54.
[7] Johnson, p. 300.
[8] Russell Kirk, The Essential Russell Kirk, ed. George A. Panichas, (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2007), p. 400.
[9] Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 117.

Mainstream Environmentalism – The Dark Side – Part II

Posted by :admin On : July 18, 2014
0

Category: Archives, Christianity, Humanism, Worldview

The unifying element between mainstream and radical environmentalism is the status or position of human beings in nature’s hierarchy. In Part I we noted that this unifying belief is sometimes called “deep ecology” by which is meant “a movement or a body of concepts that considers humans no more important than other species and that advocates a corresponding radical readjustment of the relationships between humans and nature.”[1] This false concept of the value of human beings has its roots in humanism, one of two worldviews contending for dominance in Western civilization and particularly America, the other worldview being Christianity.

Modern environmentalism and its humanistic worldview

This humanistic worldview offers two pillars upon which environmentalists rest their efforts. First, life is the product of a long evolutionary process of nature. Corliss Lamont was one of the twentieth century’s leading humanists and author of The Philosophy of Humanism. Lamont brings together all of the variations and branches of humanist thought under the title of naturalism.

Naturalism considers that human beings, the earth, and the unending universe of space and time are all parts of one great Nature. The whole of existence is equivalent to Nature and outside of Nature nothing exists. This metaphysics has no place for the supernatural, no room for superphysical beings or a supermaterial God, whether Christian or non-Christian in character, from whom we can obtain favors through prayer or guidance through revelation. But the adherents of Naturalism recognize and indeed rejoice in our affinity with the mighty Nature that brought us forth…[2]

It is from naturalism that springs forth the environmental movement’s current adulation of “…mighty Nature that brought us forth…” and in which we “…are all parts of one great nature.” But such beliefs require that we jettison belief in the supernatural and the specialness of man’s creation. In other words, humans are no more important than other species which requires a new view of the relationship between humans and nature which is articulated in the numerous environmental laws, regulations, and restrictions to enforce the ordinariness of humans.

The second pillar of environmentalism is that man has the ability to solve his problems through science and reason and without help from God. Modern concepts of humanism emerged from eighteenth century Enlightenment which “…promoted the belief that critical and autonomous human reason held the power to discover the truth about life and the world, and to progressively liberate humanity from the ignorance and injustices of the past.”[3] But Charles Colson has identified the singular riff in the humanist reverence for both progressivism and naturalism and has labeled them the optimistic and pessimistic sides of the same coin. With the rise of science and technology during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, humanist philosophy optimistically exalted the ability of humans to solve their problems without God. Human reason allowed man to control his own destiny.[4] However, any student of world history over the last two hundred years will agree that man’s ability to solve his problems without God has failed miserably.

So what is the humanist to do? As humanist optimism fades to pessimism that man can fix his own problems through evolutionary progressivism, the humanist overlords intercede to save man and nature from man himself. Environmentalism is once again man’s attempt to control all the variables without God or even knowing what the variables are or the impact of the unintended consequences resulting from their efforts. Man’s solutions for the environment almost invariably come at great cost of time, money, and freedom to humankind and often at great cost to the ecosystem they propose to protect. “In today’s clash between two forms of humanism, Christianity can offer a balanced alternative.[5]

Tactics of environmentalism’s activists

The early history of the Sierra Club illustrates the tension between the worldviews of biblical Christianity and humanism with regard to nature and the environment. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln had originally set aside a portion of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in northern California in a public trust under the jurisdiction of that state. Efforts by naturalist John Muir to restrain local interests and curb development of areas in and around the Yosemite Valley led to a shift of control of the area to the federal government and the establishment of Yosemite National Park. Muir’s successful efforts to bring the area under federal jurisdiction led directly to the founding of the Sierra Club in May 1892 with the expressed purpose to protect the new park. From the very beginning of the club there was a tension between utilitarian conservation as directed by Gilford Pinchot, the first director of the U.S. Forest Service, and the aesthetic preservation of Muir and the Sierra Club. This tension between the two dissimilar environmental philosophies and tactics would continue for decades.[6]

As Muir and the Sierra Club began promoting its philosophies and exerting its influence, the club’s leaders learned two important lessons for successful environmental activism: first, the need to build a broad base of membership through the establishment of chapters far from local and even state boundaries, and second, “the need to elevate local or regional preservation issues to the national agenda to overcome the entrenched political power of local interests.”[7] Over one hundred years later, we see the success of these tactics as the environmental movement has indoctrinated the federal government, academia, and science with its humanistic approach to the environment and has influenced the enactment of environmental policies and practices that fit its humanistic worldview.

Be it Smokey the Bear and fire prevention, recycling campaigns, or cleaning up trash at a local park, few elementary school rooms in America are devoid of worthwhile and reasonable instruction with regard to conserving and protecting the environment. These efforts are in agreement with the Christian worldview that we are stewards and conservators of the earth and its environment. However, these early efforts at stewardship and conservation are used by environmental activists to condition children to accept the larger and more radical message and agenda of environmental activists and their humanistic worldview. This normalization or reasonableness of what was once thought radical is a standard practice in the humanistic attack on the larger culture (e.g., acceptance of homosexuality, abortion, gay marriage, and co-habitation). This was a favorite tactic used by David Brower, the reputed father of the modern environmental movement. Brower described the increasingly radical direction of his environmental activism throughout his life.

The Sierra Club made the Nature Conservancy look reasonable. I founded Friends of the Earth to make the Sierra Club look reasonable. Then I founded Earth Island Institute to make Friends of the Earth look reasonable. Earth First! now makes us look reasonable. We’re still waiting for someone else to come along and make Earth First! look reasonable.[8]

However, when one removes the façades of many of these seemingly reasonable environmental organizations, the deep ecology dark side is revealed. And however successful the environmental movement is in promoting the supposed reasonableness of its philosophy, its deep ecology dark side remains immersed in a false and destructive worldview, and its efforts will continue to fail as it has over the last one hundred years.

Charles Colson succinctly captures the dilemma of humanists and their environmental activist cohorts as well as the solution.

The lesson is clear: Humanism in any form is not only arrogant but mistaken. We are not God and we cannot control the variables—or even foresee them. The solution to our environmental problems must be found elsewhere: in the biblical teaching that God made human beings to be stewards over creation. That means that God intended us to develop the potential in creation through industry and technology. But it also means creation is not ours to misuse for our own purposes. We are responsible to someone higher than ourselves for how we treat creation.[9]

From Colson’s observations we see the fundamental difference between the biblical prescription of stewardship and conservation and the hammer of humanistic environmentalism that devalues and controls man through worship of the creation instead of the creator.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1]“deep ecology,” Merriam-Webster. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deep%20ecology (accessed July 7, 2014).
[2] Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism, 8th Edition, (Amherst, New York: Humanist Press, 1997), p. 35.
[3]Christian Smith, ed., The Secular Revolution, (Berkley, California: University of California Press, 2003), p. 54.
[4]Charles Colson with Nancy R. Pearcey, A Dance with Deception, (Dallas, Texas: Word Publishing, 1993) pp. 223-224.
[5] Ibid., p. 224.
[6] Christopher J. Bosso, Environment, Inc., (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2005), pp. 23-24.
[7] Ibid., p. 24.

Mainstream Environmentalism – The Dark Side – Part I

Posted by :admin On : July 11, 2014
0

Category: Archives, Christianity, Humanism, Worldview

According to his website, Finland’s Pentti Linkola is “…an ecological activist of the most serious kind: those who believe humans must set aside individual desires in order to preserve nature.”[1] The 82 year old Mr. Linkola’s eco-fascism includes extreme population control measures. His objectives and methods become clear when we read his thoughts on protecting the environment.

What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides. (emphasis added)

If the present amount of Earth’s population is preserved and is reduced only by the means of birth control, then…birth giving must be licensed. To enhance population quality, genetically or socially unfit homes will be denied offspring, so that several birth licenses can be allowed to families of quality.

In this time and this part of the world we are heedlessly hanging on democracy and parliamentary system, even though these are the most mindless and desperate experiments of the mankind…In democratic countries the destruction of nature and sum of ecological disasters has accumulated most…Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromising control of the individual citizen.[2]

David Brower (1914-2000) is considered as the father of the modern environmental movement and whose message has helped recruit generations of environmental activists. He was the executive director of the Sierra Club from 1952 to 1969 and whose membership increased from 7,000 to 70,000 during his tenure. Later he founded Friends of the Earth and Earth Island Institute. A three-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, his accomplishments are listed as fighting dams in the Grand Canyon and Dinosaur National Park, campaigns to establish ten new national parks and seashores, and significant work in passing the Wilderness Act of 1964 which restricted usage of millions of acres of public lands.[3]

Many may object to linking Brower’s environmentalism with Linkola’s brand of eco-fascism; however, most American’s would be shocked that Brower’s beliefs are remarkably similar to Linkola’s in the callous disregard for the human element in environmentalists’ efforts to advance their ecological agenda.

While the death of young men in war is unfortunate, it is no more serious than the touching of mountains and wilderness areas by humankind.

Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license…All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.

Loggers losing their jobs because of Spotted Owl legislation is, in my eyes, no different than people being out of work after the furnaces of Dachau shut down.[4]

In Mr. Brower’s world, war casualties, freedom to bear children, and loggers are the equivalent of touching mountains and wilderness areas, unlicensed childbirth, and death camp executioners. It is these statements we see the similar worldviews of Brower’s mainstream and Linkola’s radical environmentalism.

Based on Linkola and Bower’s similarity of views as to the value of human beings in relation to nature, it becomes very difficult if impossible to distinguish between mainstream environmentalism depicted by Smokey the Bear and lovable dolphins as opposed to radical environmentalism. The foundation of both rests on a philosophy often called “deep ecology” which is “a movement or a body of concepts that considers humans no more important than other species and that advocates a corresponding radical readjustment of the relationships between humans and nature.”[5] In reality, the kid-friendly icons and school programs offered by the environmental movement are mere cover for the real agenda of indoctrination of children into a worldview that leads to the enslavement of humanity to the god of nature and its humanistic enforcers.

One example of environmental activists’ deep ecology that elevates nature over man is their efforts to have the federal government declare the greater sage grouse as an endangered species. The obscure chicken-sized bird is known for its mating dance. The government’s proposal will have the effect of limiting hunting, energy exploration, and ranching on 165 million acres of the bird’s habitat spread over eleven western states. This acreage is in addition to 400,000 acres that the federal government has already declared off-limits for development to protect the bird. Opponents state that the federal limits will cost between 5,000 and 31,000 jobs, but local and state efforts to protect the bird’s habitat will avoid most of the job losses. Hinting at a much wider agenda, several environmental groups say the bird is a merely a stand-in as a means of preserving a vanishing Western ecosystem.[6]

The environmental movement’s legal and regulatory demagoguery not only costs thousands of jobs but is so uncompromising in its eco-theology that it willingly sacrifices millions of taxpayer dollars to enforce its will even when their actions damage the very environment they profess to protect. One recent example is the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency agreement to end the Federal Excess Personal Property and Firefighter Property program which provides excess DOD vehicles to rural fire districts. Under the twenty-five year old program, 8,812 vehicles and pieces of equipment valued in excess of $150 million have been remanufactured and transferred to rural fire departments for use in wilderness areas. The U.S. Army stopped providing the vehicles in order to comply with a previously unenforced twenty-five year old agreement with the DOD and EPA originally aimed at the reduction of emissions for vehicles not meeting EPA standards. Rather than giving these to rural fire departments, these vehicles, ten years old or newer with fewer than 20,000 miles, will be destroyed. A spokesman for the Oklahoma Forestry services said the decision will expose those communities to increased risk of loss of life and property, and “The greenhouse gas emissions associated with the vehicles are marginal at best compared to emissions of an uncontrolled wildfire.” [7]

These are just two recent examples of a vast array of laws, regulations, and restrictions generated over decades by activist environmental movements in which American citizens are being subjugated to the whims and beliefs of radical environmentalists and their humanistic worldview. They have captured much of the nation’s political and regulatory machinery and insulated it from the will and wishes of the people.

The beliefs of environmental activists and the agendas of the organizations that support them have their roots in the humanism. In Part II, the foundational beliefs and tactics of the environmental movement will be examined in some detail.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Pentti Linkola,” penttilinkola.com, http://www.penttilinkola.com (accessed July 5, 2014).
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Who was David Brower?” David Brower Center. http://www.browercenter.org/about/who-was-david-brower (accessed July 5, 2014).
[4] “David Brower,” Activist Facts, https://www.activistfacts.com/person/3507-david-brower/ (accessed July 7, 2014).
[5] “deep ecology,” Merriam-Webster.com http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deep%20ecology (accessed July 7, 2014).
[6] Nicholas Riccardi, “Bird known for mating dance may decide Senate fate,” Associated Press, July 5, 2014. http://news.yahoo.com/bird-known-mating-dance-may-decide-senate-fate-124650685–election.html (accessed July 7, 2014).
[7] Rhett Morgan, “Federal deal may hit rural fire departments hard,” Tulsa World, July 5, 2014, A11.

Baphomet – Another symbol of American cultural decline

Posted by :admin On : May 23, 2014
0

Category: Archives, Culture Wars, Truth, Worldview

These days it seems that nonsense and silliness have more than their share of the headlines. If you haven’t followed the moral indignation of the Left regarding the 2012 placement of a privately-funded monument depicting the Ten Commandments on Oklahoma’s State Capitol grounds, then you probably haven’t heard of Baphomet. Baphomet is a supposed depiction of Satan, a goat-headed figure with horns, wings, and a long beard sitting on a pentagram-shaped throne surrounded by smiling children. The New York-based Satanic Temple has proposed to erect a statue of Baphomet on the Capitol’s grounds in response to the erection of the Ten Commandments monument which a Satanic Temple spokesman says opened the door for placement of their statue on the property. [1]

But sometimes a pesky cultural rash evidenced by an overabundance of nonsense and silliness (e.g., the Baphomet statue) is merely a symptom of a more serious disease that is attacking the culture’s central nervous system—its central cultural vision. A culture’s central cultural vision develops over time as an expression of the collective worldviews of its citizens which create a pattern, design, or structure that fits together in a particular way to explain the world. This explanation of order generally must have a coherence or consistency to give that society orientation and direction for living life. The central vision of a culture reflects its citizens’ values, those things and ideals it considers worth fighting for. Healthy cultures become diseased and decline for two reasons. First, a culture declines and ultimately fails as it loses it cohesiveness or ability to unify its citizenry. Second, even if a culture maintains unity and cohesiveness, its vision of order needed to answer the basic questions of life must over the longer term be based on truth.

In America, the central cultural vision of the Founders and the American colonists before them was based on the principles of biblical Christianity. However, in spite of voluminous historical evidence from the colonial period and founding era, secularists and humanists deny the special role that Christianity played in America’s founding.

A popular culture that misreads and wars against the validity of a morally sound central cultural vision will either be destroyed or cause that society to disintegrate. That is happening in America. The post-Christian and post-modern worldviews misread and are warring against the morally sound central cultural vision upon which the nation was founded, that is, the principles flowing from the biblical Christianity.

Due to rampant radical egalitarianism, surgically precise efforts to separate church and state, and a growing humanistic worldview, all evidence of our Christian cultural heritage is being swept from America and its institutions. Even our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of religion and speech are no longer sacrosanct from such assaults.

America’s central cultural vision built upon biblical Christianity is in danger of utter removal because of a loss of an understanding of the uniqueness of its worth, the loss of America’s ability to exclude those things which strike at the heart of its central cultural vision, and America’s inability to distinguish that which counts for much and that which counts for little. With the steady dismantling and removal of the central cultural vision upon which the nation was founded, America is staggering in a moral stupor as it drinks the poison of humanism with its disintegrating notions of the autonomous individual, relativism, radical egalitarianism, progressivism, and denial of a supreme being. [2]

Without its central cultural vision firmly anchored in transcendent unchanging biblical truth, America will continue its cultural drift to oblivion in a sea of competing voices, each clamoring for recognition of their particular brand of truth. The Baphomet statue controversy is one more fitting symbol of America’s cultural decline because of its loss of cohesion and flight from transcendent truth. If there is doubt about this assessment, one needs only to look at Baphomet’s competitors who also want space for a monument on the Capitol grounds: a Hindu leader in Nevada, an animal rights group, and the satirical Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. [3]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Sean Murphy, “Satanists want Baphomet statue in Oklahoma,” 3NEWS, January 7, 2014. http://www.3news.co.nz/Satanists-want-Baphomet-statue-in-Oklahoma/tabid/417/articleID/327468/Default.aspx (accessed May 6, 2014).
[2] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods-Humanism and Christianity-The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishing, 2011), pp. 404-405.
[3] Murphy, “Satanists want Baphomet statue in Oklahoma.”

Sickness in the Soul of the American Republic – Part I

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : February 21, 2014
0

Category: America, Archives, Culture Wars, Truth, Worldview

The soul of a republic can be viewed as its central cultural vision—that collective worldview that animates and informs all of society. Rooted in their hearts and minds, that vision is also supported and invigorated by its citizens. However, the American Republic is comparable to the demise of high civilizations in ancient times in that certain elements of alienation have entered into America’s central cultural vision which has weakened its citizens’ love for and belief in its compelling purposes. [Reinsch, p. 98.] These elements deny the value and truth of the Republic’s beleaguered central cultural vision and attempt to replace it with multiple centers of cultural vision based on arbitrary and ever-changing inventions of man. In other words, the sickness of the American Republic’s soul is cause by a loss of unity and the denigration of the truths upon which the nation was founded.

Loss of Unity

Culture is a product of the collective consciousness of a group seeing certain felt needs, “…a complex of values polarized by an image or idea.” The very foundation of the cultural concept is unity that presupposes a general commonality of thought and action. As a culture is formed and begins ordering its world to bring the satisfactions for which it was created, directions must be imposed on its members. These directions, limits, and required behaviors radiate through a center of authority with a subtle and pervasive pressure to conform. This pressure 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. Every culture has a center which commands all things. Weaver calls 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 intrinsic nature of culture compels that it be exclusive rather than all inclusive. Cultures fail and disintegrate without the power to reject that which does not adhere to its central force. [Weaver, pp. 10-12] When a culture’s complex of values is polarized by an image or idea, we describe this image or idea as its central cultural vision, that is, its collective worldview.

In America, disunity is pandemic in every facet of cultural life including government, education, family, politics, standards of moral behavior, arts, economics and business, and religion. Disunity is evident as the war of words flow from daily newspaper headlines and radio and TV sound bites. This disunity occurs because of the ubiquitous attack on America’s original central cultural vision.

Denigration of Truth

For a culture to survive over the long-term, its central cultural vision must be based on truth. In other words, a culture’s central cultural vision must be informed by and reflect that which is true. In Western civilization, the Christian worldview reflected this truth. Since the nation’s founding, this central cultural vision has been under assault by the humanistic worldview that gained ascendance in Europe during the eighteenth century. The core of the battle revolves around the truth about the nature of man—who he is.

In the Christian worldview, the Supreme Being (God) created matter out of nothing and formed the universe. He impressed certain principles upon that matter, from which it can never depart, and without which it would cease to be. These principles dictate rules of action and applies to animate and inanimate objects. These “laws of nature” must invariably be followed by the universe and the created matter therein. One exception was man, the pinnacle of God’s creation, who was allowed to choose to follow or depart from those principles as they relate to human nature. Those principles are truths that are intrinsic, timeless, and are essential elements that provide a coherent and rational way to live in the world. These absolutes are called by various names: permanent things, universals, first principles, eternal truths, and norms. [Johnson, p. 392.] These absolutes were revealed to man by God through His creation and His revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians.

The humanistic worldview regarding truth is one of cultural relativism which requires a suspension of judgment since all belief systems contain some truth within while no one belief system has all truth. For humanists, all social constructions are culturally relative as they are shaped by class, gender, and ethnicity. Thus, there can be no universal truths because all viewpoints, lifestyles, and beliefs are equally valid. As a result, no man or group can claim to be infallible with regard to truth and virtue. Rather, truth is produced by the free give and take of competing claims and opinions—i.e., truth can be manufactured. [Johnson, pp. 392-393.] Man is merely the end-product of a long evolutionary process that occurred by chance and not the result of some supernatural Creator.

The central cultural vision of colonial Americans and the nation’s Founders was built on the truth of Christian principles. The assault by the opposing forces of humanism was repelled until the mid-twentieth century when they gained critical mass in the various spheres of American life.

For those that adhere to the central cultural vision of the Founders, we will examine in Part II what must be done to defend and reverse the decline of the central cultural vision of the Founders?

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Richard M. Reinsch II, Whitaker Chambers – The Spirit of a Counterrevolutionary, (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2010), p. 98.

Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order – The Cultural Crisis of Our Time, (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995, 2006), pp. 10-12.

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, 2011), pp. 392-393.