Understanding the enemy we face
July 8, 2020
Mike Huckabee
Yesterday, I brought you the story of what has happened to the rights of the people of Hong Kong in an attempt to show how quickly it can happen here. Truly, the Democrat Party cares no more about your rights than the Communist Chinese Party cares about Hong Kong’s. As a follow-up today, I’d like to explain a bit about the philosophy we’re up against and the grip it currently has on our media and culture. We have to know about our enemy – and, yes, it is our ENEMY – in order to figure out how to defeat it.
To help me in this, I’ve linked to an excellent piece in THE FEDERALIST by John Andrews, former president of the Colorado Senate (where I’m sure they could use him now) and former vice president of Colorado Christian University.
Andrews is right in seeing “Marxist fingerprints” all over the current mess in our country. The infiltration has been going on for decades. I’m sure it once seemed farfetched to many when the more outspoken conservative commentators, such as Mark Levin, frequently warned of Marxism in America. Today, no one would call that over-the-top. He has always been right about this; it's just more obvious now.
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As Andrews notes, the assumptions underlying Marx have pervaded schools and universities, mass media and popular entertainment, corporate philosophy, medicine, the arts and sciences, even many churches and seminaries. They define today’s Democrat Party as well, “Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi no less than Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama.” That’s why I said yesterday that it doesn’t matter whose names are on the ticket this fall.
So what are these Marxist assumptions? Well, they certainly don’t spring from the Judeo-Christian values we hold dear, the spiritual connections that enrich our lives. Both Marx and Hegel were materialists, considering all things spiritual to be inconsistent with their way of looking at the world. The idea gives new meaning to Madonna’s song about “living in a material world.” Living in THIS “material world” is a grim, empty way to exist, with no real objective concepts of right and wrong, only what your leaders tell you. But in places such as North Korea, it’s how the people exist. They know nothing else. They are ALLOWED to know nothing else.
Atheists tend to see the world as a random collision of atoms affected by physical forces, so they’re much more likely to “gravitate” (ha) to this way of seeing life. And it’s true that more Americans are atheists today than in previous generations. But it should be stressed that many people who doubt the existence of God have still been exposed in our culture to religious beliefs about right and wrong and understand the value of these concepts in our lives. They love America and dread the thought of our freedoms being taken away just as much as any churchgoer. Some of them may even be induced to start praying for our country, as in the old saying, “There are no atheists in foxholes.”
Still, as Andrews says, “Cultural Marxism is increasingly defining the worldview within which all debates and decision-making take place, even for most of those who rightly fear and despise Marx.” The goal: “deconstructing the American way of life from top to bottom, leaving no sphere of our lives untouched.”
I would add that race is just a pretext for all of this. Create chaos, add heat, mix well, cook until done.
Andrews warns of the three main ways Marxism accomplishes this deconstruction. (If you’ve read George Orwell, especially ANIMAL FARM, you’re ahead of the game. Ironically, Orwell himself was a democratic socialist but an unsparing critic of how Marxist societies worked in practice, particularly under Stalin. Brilliant as he was, it seems he was too much of an idealist to realize in those days that his socialist dream of a classless society and nationalizing everything was not also going to be free.)
Anyway, the first step: dehumanizing of the individual. We’re seeing the Democrat Party doing this with identity politics, which reduces every person to his or her group victimhood or guilt.
Second, demoralizing relationships. In a world with no objective right and wrong, everything boils down to the material; forget such things as personal dignity, family ties and duties, promises, tradition and heritage, even love and life itself. Really, all the things that make us human have no value in such a world.
I would add that if you’ve read Orwell’s “1984,” you know that in such a society, truth itself is meaningless, as the truth is whatever your leaders say it is. (It’s not enough for you to say that 2+2=5; you must truly believe that 2+2=5.) To give a current example, if it’s politically correct for you to believe that, as a white person, you are a racist, but you know you’re not, you will have to undergo sensitivity training and read WHITE FRAGILITY as many times as it takes for you to sincerely believe you are one. If you can’t believe this about yourself and do what is required of you to atone, you will have to be a nonperson.
Third, institutions must fall. The idea of civics and the citizen, with a shared history, is seen as absurd. Look at how it’s being destroyed now, with statues crumbling and history being twisted. Even language has to be controlled, as it’s a shared part of the culture used to communicate and seek truth. We can see that happening today as well.
Importantly, ANIMAL FARM shows that the noble idea that “all animals are equal” inevitably is tweaked into “...but some are more equal than others.” We see this now in the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Try saying that “all lives matter” and see where it gets you. And don’t think that those at the top of the socialist pyramid will ever give up their wealth and control. Rather, they will cast it in stone and make sure no one else gets it.
Why would “educated” young people and “the masses” living in leftist cities ever want this kind of nation? They’ve been brainwashed into thinking capitalism must be overthrown. In their artfully poisoned minds, America must atone with “social justice” for generations of racism and exploitation. America is evil, with an evil history and corrupt values that must be erased for all time. Even seeing an American flag "triggers" them. Trying to reason with a person indoctrinated in this view is like trying to communicate with a cult member. He’s not interested in what you think, only in getting you “woke” or getting you out of the way.
We’ve got people like this expressing themselves quite openly in the House of Representatives. Here’s just one.
I realize that today’s commentary hasn’t exactly been a treat to read, but knowing what we’re dealing with is the first step in developing a plan of action. Many of you have written in frustration to ask, “What can we DO??” Tomorrow morning, we’re going to talk about what we can do. A long-term plan is important, but we’ll focus on the short-term for now, as we have four months to keep leftists from taking over America.