If we’re inclined to glide past the Marxist fingerprints all over America’s current turmoil, assuming its ideas will flare up for a while and then burn out, we’re not paying attention.
By • The Federalist
American institutions have stoked the coals of Karl Marx’s destructive ideology, fanning its flames until his notions have consumed our cultural pillars.
Far from being forgotten and irrelevant, Marx’s ideas pervade key institutions, from universities and schools, to mass media and popular entertainment, to major corporations and medicine, to the arts and sciences. They’ve even seeped into many churches and seminaries. Of course, they also define the Democratic Party, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi no less than Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama.
I don’t mean such clunky ideas from “Das Kapital” as the dictatorship of the proletariat, the labor theory of value, or the withering away of the state. No, we’re talking about the substratum of assumptions about how the world works, underlying those discredited notions from bygone days.
The poisoned root of all of it is something called “dialectical materialism,” a concept Marx borrowed from Hegel that describes how material needs create social conflict. The two men saw the material world as distinct and independent from the spirit and mind, and maintained that attempting to combine the material and immaterial bred inconsistencies. For our purposes here, suffice it to say the “materialism” part disallows all things spiritual, and the “dialectical” part disallows all things fixed or permanent or unchanging.
So we’re left with nothing but atoms in endless flux, physical forces violently colliding in a grim world where might makes right and brutal will reigns supreme. If that sounds like the radical autonomous zone in Seattle, it’s no coincidence.
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. This philosophy is on an accelerating trajectory to deconstructing the American way of life from top to bottom, leaving no sphere of our daily lives untouched.
Its deconstruction agenda takes three main forms: Marxism dehumanizes all persons, demoralizes all relationships, and decivilizes all institutions.
Dehumanizing all persons. No one is anything more than his or her DNA and appearance, plus whatever animal instincts he happens to feel at a given time. From this comes identity politics, racial and sexual polarization, group victimhood, and group guilt. This logically results in demoralizing relationships.
Demoralizing all relationships. Since individuals are mere meat in motion, and existence is mere randomness, morality as all the world religions have known it is gone. No two people can interact on the basis of objective right and wrong.
What’s right or good is instead the mere product of quantitative mass (how many persons want it) times qualitative intensity (how much emotion they express). Dignity, property, marital and family ties, marketplace exchanges, contracts and promises, tradition and heritage, vulnerability, duty, love, and life itself — all go to zero.
Decivilizing all institutions. People and relationships having thus been zeroed out. Institutions of whatever sort, including communities or nations, obviously cannot stand either. An institution is but an agreement or understanding entered into by people, meant to outlive them and endure through time, all of which is viewed as absurd and dissolves under the acid of dialectical materialism. All bets are off.
Civis, Latin for city, which gives rise to our ideas of civilization and civility, civics and the citizen, goes on the ash heap of history. Language, the institution enabling people in communities to communicate — even to seek and express truth — gets trashed as well. Truth is whatever one wants it to be. Plain speaking must bow to political correctness, itself a purely Marxist term.
It bears repeating that life is devalued to zero under this nightmare of deconstruction America is now experiencing. One can draw a connection to George Orwell’s anti-Marxist masterpiece “Animal Farm.” All animals are equal, says Napoleon the pig reassuringly. It’s just that some animals are more equal than others.
In the same way, we’re now being told some lives matter more than others by the leaders of a mass movement decivilizing our cities and seeking to incite a race war. It shouldn’t surprise us that one of those leaders has bluntly and proudly said on camera, “We’re trained Marxists.” Hearing that, do we shrug and make excuses for her since, after all, a lot of pain can accompany being black in this country?
Or are we shocked at the cynicism that would so disserve the very people her movement claims to champion? Are we surprised at the gullibility of so many of our fellow citizens of all colors who would trust a Marxist to do anything but defame and damage the United States of America at every opportunity?
If we’re not shocked, angered, and determined to turn back this and every attempt at deconstructing our country by the disciples and dupes of Marx, a hater of humanity and agent of evil, we are unworthy of our forebears’ sacrifices and our descendants’ hopes.
If we’re inclined to glide past the Marxist fingerprints all over America’s current turmoil, chalking it up to “wokeness” or “cancel culture” or “the left” or some other vague fad we assume will flare up for a while and then burn out, we’re not paying attention.
It was specifically Marx’s ideas, according to the “Black Book of Communism,” that took 100 million lives worldwide in the last century. How many more will they take in this one? That’s up to you and me. We can’t say we weren’t warned.
Garden State Equality claims its curriculum is for the good and safety of vulnerable children. Its teachings, however, result in the exact opposite.
By • The Federalist
A little more than a year ago, the New Jersey Legislature passed, and Gov. Phil Murphy signed, a law mandating the teaching of LGBT subject matter in public school curriculum, beginning in 2020-21.
In response to the law, the activist group Garden State Equality has prepared a curriculum, currently piloted in 12 New Jersey schools and planned to be employed statewide in the fall. This is consistent with Murphy’s vision. At Garden State Equality’s 2019 Ball, he said, “I applaud Garden State Equality for not only leading this effort, but for your continued work in helping to craft this curriculum.”
Garden State Equality (GSE) is an LGBT advocacy organization devoted to instilling its vision of “justice” through an “LGBT lens” in society. Consistent with its vision, GSE’s self-described “LGBT-inclusive” curriculum spans all subjects — math, English, social studies, health, science, visual and performing arts, and world languages — beginning in fifth grade. Having New Jersey’s 1.4 million public school students see the world through a LGBT lens is the goal in every class and, thus, now the goal of public education. This is well in excess of the curriculum law’s vague requirements.
In the way it is being implemented, the law is simply an instrument empowering GSE to accomplish its mission and vision, embedding sexual and gender ideology throughout curriculum. GSE envisions its curriculum “as a model that we can bring to every other state in the nation.”
A number of grassroots parent coalitions from across New Jersey, representing the state’s diversity, are raising awareness about and opposing the co-opting of public school curriculum for such ideological purposes. Historically, public schools have been the gateway to American society for immigrant families. But now, immigrant families all over New Jersey are deeply troubled and perplexed regarding the apparent goals of public education and the interests it serves.
New Jersey’s more than 600 school districts are not technically required to adopt GSE’s curriculum, although they are required to comply with the new state LGBT curriculum law. GSE is also substantially involved in drafting the New Jersey Department of Education’s “guidance” to schools about implementing the LGBT curriculum law. However, New Jersey school districts are not required to accept such state “guidance,” allowing districts to take a careful and educated approach to the curriculum law’s implementation.
The sexual and gender ideology advanced through GSE’s curriculum, and through its direct involvement in the state’s guidance to public schools, should be rejected by the boards of education of all New Jersey school districts for at least the following reasons.
The stated goal of sexual and gender ideology is to “get rid of the gender binary.” At public hearings concerning the school curriculum, advocates consistently characterize such a goal as a “must.”
We cannot get rid of the gender binary, however, as humans are a sexually dimorphic species. This reality can be denied, silenced, threatened, and punished. But it cannot be “rid of.” The existence of every person is proof of the union of what is uniquely male and uniquely female. While GSE may reject this most basic truth of humanity, it cannot eradicate it. And New Jersey public schools should not partner with its futile efforts to do so.
Beyond denying the gender binary, GSE insists a biological male who calls himself a woman is, in fact, a woman. If that’s the case, what is a woman? “Woman” becomes a word without meaning — as is the case when a biological female claims she’s a man. GSE’s ideology commands students to use such words. This does not educate, enlighten, or advance understanding. It mandates irrationality within school curriculum.
GSE claims its teachings are for the good and safety of vulnerable children. Those teachings, however, result in the exact opposite. GSE demands giving puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children, impeding the development of their bodies’ more than 37 trillion cells. It even demands the removal of healthy body parts, which is profoundly evil. These practices are the sexual, physical, mental, and emotional abuse of children, manipulating their bodies to conform to an ideology.
Teaching and endorsing such practices doesn’t educate, but makes students vulnerable to abuse. I don’t use the words “abuse” and “evil” to be inflammatory, but because they fit the described practices. GSE doesn’t accept the right of anyone to impede the imposition of its will on children’s minds and bodies, preventing even parents from taking actions to protect their own children from abusive measures.
The sexual and gender ideology of GSE and like-minded advocates addresses the most basic questions of life and meaning concerning our humanity. It even has its own language and vocabulary, which it expects everyone to adopt. It is a totalizing and comprehensive belief system, which functions as a religion. Instituting compulsory teaching within public schools effectively establishes such ideology as a state religion.
One of its core convictions is intolerance for any dissent. It mars those who disagree with epithets, such as “haters” and “bigots,” applying these labels to many families and students within every school district in New Jersey who would dare express disagreement. These accusations even include parents who object to giving their own child the harmful drugs commanded by sexual and gender activists.
The ideology insists that every new word or idea must be affirmed. Acceptance of sexual and gender ideology renders a person defenseless to its demands. None of this carries educational value.
The Kelsey Coalition, formed in 2019 by “a group of concerned parents whose children have been harmed by transgender healthcare practices,” can serve as a resource to school districts, allowing them to make informed decisions for educating and protecting New Jersey students. As its website indicates, its membership now includes:
Surely, it would be highly immoral, unethical, and contrary to the educational and health interests of students not to inform them of the severe and irreparable harms that result from transgender physical interventions. Sexual and gender ideology pathologizes puberty, teaching that its suppression is a “treatment.” This article from an endocrinologist would educate students regarding life-altering effects on brain development, bone density, and sexual function, among other harms.
Regarding sex and gender, we are often warned against being on the “wrong side of history.” One day, the story will be told, and a chapter will cover what was done to children’s minds and bodies in the latter half of the 2010s into the 2020s. It will be included among the atrocities in the story of humanity’s inhumanity. It will be regarded with special horror because children will have been victimized in an impossible attempt to vindicate false adult beliefs and behaviors.
This historical moment provides an opportunity for every board of education member of every school district in New Jersey to be on the side of the story in which people courageously took a stand to protect children from such harms and horrors.
I was among the student radicals at Berkeley in 1964, back when colleges actually had intellectual freedom.
by Sol Stern • The Wall Street Journal
This fall the University of California at Berkeley is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, a student-led protest against campus restrictions on political activities that made headlines and inspired imitators around the country. I played a small part in the Free Speech Movement, and some of those returning for the reunion were once my friends, but I won’t be joining them.
Though the movement promised greater intellectual and political freedom on campus, the result has been the opposite. The great irony is that while Berkeley now honors the memory of the Free Speech Movement, it exercises more thought control over students than the hated institution that we rose up against half a century ago. Continue reading