WHY THE LEFT WANTS TO DESTROY THE FAMILY

In Reliapundit's well-documented post, below, you can read the sad consequences that befall children who grow up without fathers and without the structures of traditional family life that have been the bedrock of human culture since time immemorial.

In two recent articles posted at National Review Online, "The Confession" and "The Confession II," Stanley Kurtz shows how many advocates of same-sex marriage are actually committed to a radical program of undermining and ultimately destroying the traditional family. Writes Kurtz:

The Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement is nothing if not radical. It calls for extending government recognition beyond traditional married couples to groups of senior citizens living together, extended immigrant households, single parent households, “queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple in two households,” unmarried domestic partners, polygamous/polyamorous households, and many other diverse family forms.

Advocacy of same-sex marriage is being used to create the conditions in which marriage itself will be superseded. This is not a new goal for the statist left. Plato, in his Republic, describes a society in which males and females of the appropriate social stratum reproduce like breeding animals, their children being raised communally, and without any family structure at all. Parents and children would not be permitted to know each other as such. Similar projects were conceived during the "War Communism" phase of the Soviet State, and the SS "Lebensborn" breeding program is also well known.

Remember the sad truth that Mark Alexander documented, (hat tip Reliapundit):

To wit, the truth -- and it is a hard truth for men who have abandoned their families, but a harder truth for their children: According to the CDC, DoJ, DHHS and the Bureau of the Census, the 30 percent of children who live apart from their fathers will account for

63 percent of teen suicides,
70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions,
71 percent of high-school dropouts,
75 percent of children in chemical-abuse centers,
80 percent of rapists,
85 percent of youths in prison,
and 85 percent of children who exhibit behavioral disorders.

In addition, 90 percent of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes. In fact, children born to unwed mothers are 10 times more likely to live in poverty as children with fathers in the home.

So why do the socialists advocate creating such dysfunctional social conditions? I think that the answer is because they feel that it will be possible for them to seize and maintain power only in such a dysfunctional society.

Remember, as I suggested last week in a discussion of why the theme of "global warming" is so important to the statist left, that Antonio Gramsci asserted that the survival of a free market society was based on "cultural hegemony," and that the communist vanguard had first of all to subvert that cultural hegemony in order to seize power. As the Wikipedia article puts it:

Gramsci therefore argued for a strategic distinction between a "war of position" and a "war of movement". The war of position is a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in mass media, mass organizations, and educational institutions to heighten class consciousness, teach revolutionary analysis and theory, and inspire revolutionary organization. Following the success of the war of position, communist leaders would be empowered to begin the war of movement, the actual insurrection against capitalism, with mass support.

The hard left understands that it must undermine, subvert, and liquidate traditional culture in order to replace all of the multitudinous relationships which form the dense network of family and community life with a univocal culture in which every nexus of human contact is mediated by the state. As the Gramsci biography puts it:

Gramsci stated that, in the West, bourgeois cultural values were tied to Christianity, and therefore much of his polemic against hegemonic culture is aimed at religious norms and values [umph added - Relipaundit]. He was impressed by the power Roman Catholicism had over men's minds and the care the Church had taken to prevent an excessive gap developing between the religion of the learned and that of the less educated. Gramsci believed that it was Marxism's task to marry the purely intellectual critique of religion found in Renaissance humanism to the elements of the Reformation that had appealed to the masses. For Gramsci, Marxism could supersede religion only if it met people's spiritual needs, and to do so people would have to recognise it as an expression of their own experience.

The destruction of the family will condemn millions of children to dysfunctional outcomes. The left would sacrifice those children - future drop-outs, wards of the State, prisoners, runaways, and suicides - in order to create a society in which everyone is essentially institutionalized from birth to the grave, and in which every decision affecting everyone's daily life is made by a bureaucratic elite and enforced by violence.

For further details, see The Road to Serfdom, the must-read and re-read book by the economist F. A. Hayek.

GRAMSCI TRIUMPHANT!

Andrew C. McCarthy notes the leftward drift of youthful voters:

Preliminary indications are that the youth vote (ages 18-29) was way up: an increase of somewhere over 2.2 million (maybe way over) from 2004 (a year in which it was very high), and as much as 13% over 2000. The Left's dominance of the academy is now having a material impact on electoral politics. As we think about the future of conservatism, we ignore that at our peril. [Emphasis added.]

The "left's dominance of the academy" includes not only Ivy League institutions, large State universities, but also the teachers' colleges that prepare young people to promulgate the Teachings of Chairmen Chomsky, Zinn, and Ayers to elementary and high school students. This is the triumph of the Gramscian walk through the institutions of the West, weakening our culture from within.

There was never any chance for a Maoist peasant revolt in the 20th century West, and the Leninist vanguard of the working class has also faltered. But Gramsci's approach is still working. Gramsci was perhaps the most dangerous communist strategist of all.

Lenin held that culture was 'ancillary' to political objectives but for Gramsci it was fundamental to the attainment of power that cultural hegemony be achieved first.

It is no accident that self-avowed revolutionary communist and unrepentant would-be mass murderer Bill Ayers chose to follow up his underground career in terrorism with a career as an "educator," transforming America's schools from places where our history, our freedoms, and our technological know how are preserved, into places where our own children are indoctrinated into becoming the radical insurgents who will bring down their own country, and with it the rest of the free world.

McCarthy recommends study of Roger Kimball's book, Tenured Radicals. In addition to that resource, I'd like to add a note of praise to the often unheralded but surely vital work of David Horowitz, who has struggled against the radical corruption of the academy for years. Check out the resources at Front Page.

THE GRAMSCI EFFECT

On November 21st, Astute Blogger Punditarian wrote:

Remember, as I suggested last week in a discussion of why the theme of "global warming" is so important to the statist left, that Antonio Gramsci asserted that the survival of a free market society was based on "cultural hegemony," and that the communist vanguard had first of all to subvert that cultural hegemony in order to seize power. [...] The hard left understands that it must undermine, subvert, and liquidate traditional culture in order to replace all of the multitudinous relationships which form the dense network of family and community life with a univocal culture in which every nexus of human contact is mediated by the state.

Nine days later, on November 30th, Selwyn Duke wrote an excellent piece in the American Thinker (linked to by PJM) about how many on the Left use the phrase: "This is not free speech, this is hate speech!" in order to convince the public over time that hate speech is in a different catagory and not protected speech. He writes:

Oh, you think it won't work? To a great degree it's already a fait accompli. After decades of positioning (this refers to Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci's idea about the placement of leftist ideologues in positions of influence for the purposes of altering the culture), with social engineers in academia, the media, entertainment and various organizations and activist groups, it isn't uncommon to find Americans possessed of this lie. I myself have met them, and even pundit Bill O'Reilly uttered this misconception on his cable television show. Remember, as eighteenth century philosopher William James said, "There is nothing so absurd but if you repeat it often enough people will believe it."

(Reliapundit adds: Instapundit linked to ANOTHER article about Gramsci today.)

POPINJAY: As usual, we're ahead of the curve at The Astute Bloggers.

UPDATED: PERFECT SYMBOL FOR THE POSTMODERN LEFT: BRADLEY MANNING WANTS TO TRANSFORM HIMSELF INTO A GIRL

Bradley Manning, the Army private sentenced to military prison for leaking classified documents, revealed he intends to live out the remainder of his life as a woman. 

“I am Chelsea Manning. I am female,” the Army private wrote in a statement read on TODAY Thursday. “Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition.” 

Manning, 25, was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Wednesday after having been found guilty of 20 charges ranging from espionage to theft for leaking more than 700,000 documents to the WikiLeaks website while working in Iraq in 2010.

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY THE PERFECT METAPHOR FOR THE POSTMODERN LEFT, WHICH HATES AMERICA AND THE WEST.

HE STOLE NATIONAL SECURITY SECRETS AND EXPOSED THEM TO HURT THE USA AND THE WEST.

NOW - TO BE HAPPY AND FULFILLED -  HE WANTS TO BE TRANSFORMED INTO A FEMALE AND HAVE HIS PENIS CUT OFF.

AND THE LEFT SEES NOTHING WRONG HERE.

WHY DOES THE POSTMODERN LEFT HATE THE USA AND THE WEST?

SIMPLE:

IN THE TWISTED LITTLE PROPAGANDIZED MIND OF THE POSTMODERN LEFTIST, AMERICA - AND THE WEST THAT WOULD FALL WITHOUT AMERICA'S SUPPORT - IS RESPONSIBLE FOR:

1. MOST OF THE WORLD'S GENOCIDE - ESPECIALLY RACIAL GENOCIDE; 
2. SEXUAL REPRESSION;
3. CATASTROPHIC GLOBAL WARMING;
4. AND POVERTY - ESPECIALLY THIRD WORLD POVERTY.

ALL OF THESE ARE DEMONSTRABLY, FACTUALLY FALSE - PROOF HERE.

POSTMODERNISTS WILL ARGUE THAT THEY LOVE AMERICA. BUT THEY REALLY ONLY LOVE AMERICA THE WAY A NAGGING BITCHY WIFE "LOVES" THE HUSBAND SHE CAN'T STAND AND TRIES TO TRANSFORM.

THEY DON'T LOVE AMERICA FOR WHAT AMERICA WAS FOUNDED UPON, HAS ACCOMPLISHED OR REPRESENTS. 

THEY HATE THOSE THINGS ABOUT AMERICA. 

THEY LOVE THE BOUNTY AMERICA LABORED TO BRING FORTH AND THEY WANT TO GET THEIR FILTHY STINKIN' PAWS ON IT SO THEY CAN DOLE IT OUT TO THEIR FACTIONS.

UPDATE: 

Addendum: SEX CHANGE SURGERY AND THE GRAMSCIAN AGENDA

Like Lysenkoist science, the postmodern assertion that the choice of male or female sexual partners is rigidly fixed at a genetic level, but that gender is infinitely transformative, that gay men cannot turn back to straight, but that men can become women and women can become men, makes no logical sense. It makes even less scientific sense.  

But it makes perfect political sense. 

The left’s version of the old racist “one-drop rule” that treated anyone with even one drop of black blood as black is to treat anyone with even the loosest claim to minority status as a minority and to mandate the irrevocable nature of that minority status.  

That is why Obama is black, rather than half- white, why Elizabeth Warren can be a Cherokee and why a straight man can become gay, but a gay man cannot become straight. [AND WHY GOV. CHRISTIE FELT HE HAD TO OUTLAW "GAY CONVERSION THERAPY".]

It is why a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man and gain an entirely new transgender minority status. 

The scientific principle at work here is the conservation of minority status.  

The left’s policies are meant to diminish the size of the majority and enlarge the size and number of minorities. 

Political diversity when applied to science logically leads to immutable homosexuality and mutable gender. It leads to a construct of race governed by a politically correct version of the one-drop rule in which racial identification always trends toward minority status, rather than majority status.  

The science is bad, but the political calculation is impeccable.  

Biology is just as irrelevant in 2013 America as it was in 1923 Russia.  

How the human body works doesn’t matter. How the body politic ought to work is of obsessive importance.  

The individual is a metaphor for the collective. 

The power of the state to transform the individual from male to female is a metaphor for its power to transform the entire nation through the transformation of language. 

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it,” George Orwell wrote in 1984. “It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.

WHAT'S THE POLITICAL MOTIVATION OF THE POSTMODERN LEFT'S EMBRACE OF TRANSGENDERISM? Simple:

By dividing the majority into a series of tiny minorities, they diminish the ability to oppose them, AND BECAUSE - AS FAVORED MINORITIES THEY BECOME PART OF THE LEFTIST COALITION QUALIFYING FOR THE PLETHORA OF DOLED-OUT GOODIES AND SPECIAL RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES THE LEFT HAS MADE AVAILABLE AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE. 

"Gay marriage" actually has a similarly POLITICAL goal: 

 "Homosexual Activist Admits True Purpose of Battle is to Destroy Marriage"

And then there's this:

Children’s Television Network Launches Transsexual Superhero Show…

The postmodernist's Gramscian Agenda doesn't stop there, either: 

Gov’t-Run School Curriculum… Children Forced to Kiss Same Gender In Simulated Homosexuality (Video)

This is tantamount to the enforcement of perversion and goes beyond even the nightmarish world Antony Burgess imagined in "The Wanting Seed."

BOTTOM-LINE - ALSO FROM DAN GREENFIELD:

... why stop at gender when you can also do species? There are people who believe that their true identity is that of an animal. And who is to say that species isn’t in the mind, just like gender is in the mind?

This isn’t just a thought-experimentor satire. It’s reality.

Species dysphoria is the equivalent of Gender dysphoria. Mentally ill persons with gender dysphoria are fashionably diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder. There is as of yet no Species Identity Disorder, but that is no doubt coming.

Like Trannies, Transpecies Americans create special pronouns for themselves and insist that refusing to pretend that they’re cats or wolves is a hate crime.

Like most newly minted civil rights groups, Trannies are intolerant of Transpecies Americans accusing them of only pretending to think that they’re cats and playing the old, “How dare you compare your pain to my pain and your imaginary identity to my imaginary identity” game.

Men who claim that they were really born women based on their personality insist that the idea of men who claim they were born cats is just nuts.

“Trying to legitimize your “species dysphoria” is despicable and insensitive to people with gender dysphoria,” one site says. “Denial of a biological link to sexuality/gender-identity is harmful to all queer (LGBTQI) people.”

Identity is apparently only in the mind, until you encounter people whose identity is also in the mind and make your mind identity look stupid.

ADDITIONAL READING:

WHY THE LEFT WANTS TO DESTROY THE FAMILY

 EXCERPT:

 As the Gramsci biography puts it:

Gramsci stated that, in the West, bourgeois cultural values were tied toChristianity, and therefore much of his polemic against hegemonic culture is aimed at religious norms and values [umph added - Relipaundit]. He was impressed by the power Roman Catholicism had over men's minds and the care the Church had taken to prevent an excessive gap developing between the religion of the learned and that of the less educated. Gramsci believed that it was Marxism's task to marry the purely intellectual critique of religion found inRenaissance humanism to the elements of the Reformation that had appealed to the masses. For Gramsci, Marxism could supersede religion only if it met people's spiritual needs, and to do so people would have to recognise it as an expression of their own experience.

The destruction of the family will condemn millions of children to dysfunctional outcomes. The left would sacrifice those children - future drop-outs, wards of the State, prisoners, runaways, and suicides - in order to create a society in which everyone is essentially institutionalized from birth to the grave, and in which every decision affecting everyone's daily life is made by a bureaucratic elite and enforced by violence.

For further details, see The Road to Serfdom, the must-read and re-read book by the economist F. A. Hayek.

GRAMSCI EFFECT: SILENCING MUSLIM MODERATES

The Gramsci Effect is in full force at PBS. Everyone's favorite tax-dollar funded broadcasting corporation is all set to run an 11-part series on America in the post-9/11 era. Called America at a Crossroads, the documentary spends a lot of time looking at the clash between Western civilization and Muslim fundamentalists, however, some of the producers are concerned with segments that deal with "moderate Muslims."

If Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix were a Christian - and he emphatically is not - we might deem him a saint.

But Jasser is a Muslim. He believes in his religion as fervently as any Catholic bishop believes in his. Or any Muslim imam, for that matter. He is faithful to the Quran, which Jasser believes conveys a message of peace.

Because of his faith, and because of what he has done to act on his faith, Jasser has evolved into an extraordinary symbol of what true heroism means in the post-Sept. 11 world. He is a Muslim and an American. And he is a man of peace - a rare, bold iconoclast who is willing to speak out against people who, he believes, have stolen his faith for evil ends.

So, is Zuhdi Jasser what you might call a "moderate" Muslim? If you do, then the Public Broadcasting Service has a problem with you.

[...]

As the PBS producers affirmed time and again in their letters and e-mails, who is an Islamic "extremist" and who is a "moderate" depends entirely on which side of the street you're standing. In large part, it is about "context."

"We felt the program was flawed by incomplete storytelling and problems with fairness," said Jeff Bieber, executive producer of the Crossroads series. "We felt the writing was alarmist and without adequate context."

And there you have it. Gramsci's legacy in a nutshell. There is not good and bad, no right and wrong...it's all a matter of perspective. However, Bieber then slips on his own rhetoric.

"We just felt there was incomplete context, (that) could lead viewers to the wrong conclusions."

Hold on! "The wrong conclusions?" Maybe it's not that these PBS producers are practicing postmodernists, maybe it's that they've chosen a side and are doing what they can to protect them. Can you guess who I'm talking about?

RTWT.

UNREAL: NEW JERSEY SCHOOL DEMANDED BOYS CROSS-DRESS AS PART OF SCHOOL ASSIGNMENT

UPDATED - SCROLL DOWN!

ALL PART OF THE GRAMSCIAN AGENDA:

STACLU:

Teachers forcing boys to cross-dress is wrong, even if they’re wearing jeans

Over the past week, there has been a big controversy regarding a grade school in Maple Shade School District in Burlington County, New Jersey. A teacher recently sent home a letter to parents telling them that there was going to be a fashion showstudents were required to participate by dressing up in women’s clothes, even the boys. Some parents were, of course, upset and complained. This caught the eye of Warner Todd Huston, who wrote about it on Monday. in which the history of women’s clothes could be modeled.

The cross-dressing day is to take place April 16 to coincide with the gay activist’s school event called “Day of Silence,” a nation-wide effort ostensibly meant as an anti-bullying program. However, the real purpose of the event is an effort to spread the homosexual agenda in our schools.

THIS IS PART AND PARCEL OF THE GRAMSCIAN AGENDA PROMOTOED BY THE POSTMODERN LEFTIST MACHINE - WHICH PROMINENTLY INCLUDES RADICAL HOMOSEXUALS AND GOVERNMENT UNIONS.

OBAMA'S SAFE SCHOOL'S CZAR HAS BEEN AN ACTIVE LEADER OF THIS FOR DECADES. OBAMA KNOWS THIS AND ENDORSES IT.

WE CAN BEGIN TO PUT AN END TO THE LEFT'S WAR ON JUDEO-CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION BY PUTTING A STAKE THROUGH THE HEART OF IT THIS NOVEMBER: VOTE GOP.

THIS NOVEMBER: VOTE GOP.

(MORE GRAMSCI POSTS HERE.)

ANOTHER GREAT GRAMSCI POST HERE AT THE AMERICAN THINKER.

GRAMSCI, BOSS TWEED, AND A QUESTION ABOUT THE IMMIGRATION AND DRAFT POLICIES OF THE POST MODERN LEFT

The Left believes that the military is overwhelmingly poor and under-educated (a factually FALSE claim repeatedly made by Charles Rangel, among others).

The Left believes that the biggest reason most people join the military is that they are under-educated and can't find a good job in the Bush economy - because the Bush economy is horribly bad; (ALSO FACTUALLY FALSE - AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS).

Phenomenal US economic growth - AND CONSUMPTION - helped the entire world economy. FACT (Clinton Sec Treas Summers):

"...the world economy in aggregate grew more during the last five years than in any five-year period since World War II."

So... if the Lefties REALLY believe that the economy is bad and that wages are too low and that this is forcing people to join the military then why don't Lefties favor severely curtailing legal immigration and ENDING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION altogether by building a wall on our border with Mexico?!

These two policies would create a huge labor shortage, which would, in turn, drive wages up and lure these under-educated people away from the military. This would hobble the military's recruiting, and force the Pentagon to request a return to the draft, and it would drive up wages - two goals the Left claims are central to their platform. IOW: It seems to me that Leftie Doves should be immigration hawks.


I think they don't pursue these policies because they run counter to their deeper agenda, (their post modernist agenda - THEIR GRAMSCIAN AGENDA), which is an agneda designed to permenantly hobble the USA and weaken the West.

Toward that end, they want the USA to be less Anglo-American, and unfettered immigration - coupled with multiculturalism which doesn't demand assimilation - helps mightily to achieve that end.

And it's also because they want to use the immigrants as a voting bloc - as they have for a century. Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall are alive and well.

The more they let in, the more potential voters they think they'll be able co-opt. Like most elitist power-seeking groups, the Left - the Democrat Party - places achieving power for themselves above policy consistency and policy goals.

Proving once again that they are a cynical bunch of hypocritical demagogues. They seek to exploit race and class differences - and even faith in God - ONLY to achieve power. Even if it weakens our national defenses - as a draft would.

In a nutshell: the Democrat Party is controlled by two forces: one Gramscian and post modernist; the other Tammany-esque and all about partisanship, patronage and exploiting class and race differences, and this part is as old as the party itself. Both of these forces are bad for America - and therefore bad for the Free World.

[NOTE: I call them the post modern Left to distinguish them from the the Old Left - (the idealistic dupes of the 1930's), and the New Left - (the "anti-war" dupes of the 1960's), and to highlight the centrality of their moral and cultural relativism and their anti-Western attitudes.

Though post modernism began in the ashes of WW1, (which seemed for many - especially the so called intelligentsia who controlled the academy and the bureaucracy - to be such a collossal waste that it led them to hate the West and everything Western), it didn't get control of the Left until China abandoned Marxism and the USSR collapsed.

Faced with the utter failure of their economics-driven ideology in the economic sphere, the Left whole-heartedly enlisted in a culturally-drive war against the bourgeoisie - which Gramsci had agitated for and which had been present in "bohemian" Leftism before the 1990's but which hadn't yet dominated it. Now Gramscian ideologues dominate the Left and the Democrat Party.]

MONCKTON DEBUNKS GLOBAL WARMING ECONOMICS

Christopher Monckton, Viscount Brenchley, continues his dispassionate dissection of the foolishness in Sir Nicholas Stern's economic analysis of the global warming conundrum in this week's Sunday Telegraph. In brief:

By 2035, says Sir Nick, temperature will have risen by "over 2C". It sounds alarming. What he means, though, is over 2C since 1750, when we don't know what the temperature was. Stern's 485 parts per million by 2035 is based on the UN's worst case. Even then, the increase compared with today would be just 0.7C. On the UN's lower projection, implying 425ppm by 2035, only 0.3C.

The UK accounts for just 2 per cent of global emissions, and falling. Even if Britain stopped using energy altogether, global temperature by 2035 would be six thousandths of a degree C less than if we carried on as usual. If we shut down once a week on Planet Day, make that less than one thousandth of a degree. Even if every Western country complied with Kyoto (and most won't), Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma says temperature a century from now would be a 25th of a degree lower than without Kyoto.

But do read the whole thing. Viscount Brenchley also includes a 77-page pdf file of e-mails he received following publication of his first article last week.

The views of 200 readers who emailed me are in the link above. About a third are scientists, including well-known climatologists and a physicist who confirmed my calculations. Some advise governments.

Nearly all condemn the "consensus". Most feel that instead of apologising, the UN has misled them, especially by using the defective "hockey-stick" temperature graph.

Global Warming Hysteria is advanced by the left in order to give them yet another reason to place all human activity under the control of a bureaucratic elite.

In the XIXth Century, and through the first half of the XXth Century, statists in the United States (an elsewhere) promulgated the idea that a rational society required a "dictatorship of the proletariat" so that the economy could be controlled by wise men who knew better than the market. The idea became quite popular in Europe, and spawned communism, fascism, and National Socialism. But it never caught on in the United States.

By the 1950s, it was obvious even to the American communists that communism had turned Russia and Eastern Europe into a hellhole. "No More Since Hungary." Besides which, the American worker had never been fooled by communist propaganda.

So instead of promulgating a worker-controlled demand-economy, leftists created a "new left" based not on economic justice but on social issues like civil rights, disarmament, and, eventually, opposition to the War in Vietnam.

This was a Gramscian movement. Following the path outlined by the Italian communist leader Antonio Gramsci, the New Left engaged in a cultural struggle to disrupt and destroy the cultural bases of America's successful free market society, in order to replace them with a new, revolutionary culture. That culture war continues.

Gramsci argued that the failure of the workers to make anti-capitalist revolution was due to the successful capture of the workers' ideology, self-understanding, and organizations by the hegemonic (ruling) culture. In other words, the perspective of the ruling class had been absorbed by the masses of workers. In "advanced" industrial societies hegemonic cultural innovations such as compulsory schooling, mass media, and popular culture had indoctrinated workers to a false consciousness. Instead of working towards a revolution that would truly serve their collective needs, workers in "advanced" societies were listening to the rhetoric of nationalist leaders, seeking consumer opportunities and middle-class status, embracing an individualist ethos of success through competition, and/or accepting the guidance of bourgeois religious leaders.

Well, that didn't work either. Communism finally collapsed in the Soviet Union (and in China, and almost everywhere else except for North Korea, Cuba, and Zimbabwe) and although the "Movement" advanced a variety of causes, America remained a basically conservative bastion of free-market economics. The left is splintered into a bewildering array of factions and fractions, each dedicated to one or another narrowly focused special interest. There was no unifying cause around which to orchestrate the need for bureaucratic domination of the world's economy.

That's what the left thinks it has found in "global warming." It is part of their luddite religious belief that prosperity is bad and that the pristine poverty and ignorance of the masses must be maintained in order that the elite might better manage every detail of daily life.

But unlike the other-worldly promises of other forms of belief-based ideologies, communism promised a material reward in this world -- and when it didn't materialize, communism collapsed.

There are already signs that the Earth is beginning to cool off again, and that the recent warm period of 1975-2000 is over.

Perhaps after a cool 5 years or so, the left will move on to another fantasy.

BRUCE JENNER IS MENTALLY ILL

Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist: Transgender is ‘Mental Disorder;' Sex Change ‘Biologically Impossible’

Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder. Dr. McHugh, the author of six books and at least 125 peer-reviewed medical articles, made his remarks in a recent commentary in the Wall Street Journal, where he explained that transgender surgery is not the solution for people who suffer a “disorder of ‘assumption’” – the notion that their maleness or femaleness is different than what nature assigned to them biologically.  

He also reported on a new study showing that the suicide rate among transgendered people who had reassignment surgery is 20 times higher than the suicide rate among non-transgender people. Dr. McHugh further noted studies from Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic of children who had expressed transgender feelings but for whom, over time, 70%-80% “spontaneously lost those feelings.” 

While the Obama administration, Hollywood, and major media such as Time magazine promote transgenderism as normal, said Dr. McHugh, these “policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention. ... This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken – it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.” The transgendered person’s disorder, said Dr. McHugh, is in the person’s “assumption” that they are different than the physical reality of their body, their maleness or femaleness, as assigned by nature. 

It is a disorder similar to a “dangerously thin” person suffering anorexia who looks in the mirror and thinks they are “overweight,” said McHugh. This assumption, that one’s gender is only in the mind regardless of anatomical reality, has led some transgendered people to push for social acceptance and affirmation of their own subjective “personal truth,” said Dr. McHugh. As a result, some states – California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts – have passed laws barring psychiatrists, “even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor,” he said. 

The pro-transgender advocates do not want to know, said McHugh, that studies show between 70% and 80% of children who express transgender feelings “spontaneously lose those feelings” over time. Also, for those who had sexual reassignment surgery, most said they were “satisfied” with the operation “but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn’t have the surgery.” 

“And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a ‘satisfied’ but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs,” said Dr. McHugh. The former Johns Hopkins chief of psychiatry also warned against enabling or encouraging certain subgroups of the transgendered, such as young people “susceptible to suggestion from ‘everything is normal’ sex education,” and the schools’ “diversity counselors” who, like “cult leaders,” may “encourage these young people to distance themselves from their families and offer advice on rebutting arguments against having transgender surgery.” 

Dr. McHugh also reported that there are “misguided doctors” who, working with very young children who seem to imitate the opposite sex, will administer “puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgeries less onerous – even though the drugs stunt the children’s growth and risk causing sterility.” Such action comes “close to child abuse,” said Dr. McHugh, given that close to 80% of those kids will “abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated ….”

WHO IS MCHUGH? HERE:

• University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry

• Former Henry Phipps Professor and Director (1975-2001)

• Former Psychiatrist-in-Chief, The Johns Hopkins Hospital (1975-2001)

• Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Paul Rodney McHugh (born 1931) is an American psychiatrist, researcher, and educator. He is University Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine[1] 

Education 

McHugh was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of a Lowell High School teacher and a homemaker,[2][3] He graduated from Harvard College in 1952 and from Harvard Medical School in 1956. While at Harvard he was "introduced to and ultimately directed away from the Freudian school of psychiatry."[4][5] 

Following medical school, McHugh's education was influenced by George Thorn, the Physician-in-Chief at the Harvard-affiliated Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham and Women's Hospital). Thorn was disillusioned with Freudian psychiatry and felt that those who devoted themselves to it became single-minded, failing to grow as doctors. Thorn encouraged McHugh to develop a different career path, suggesting that he enter the field of psychiatry by first studying neurology. At Thorn's recommendation, McHugh was accepted into the neurology and neuropathology residency program at the Massachusetts General Hospital where he studied for three years under Dr. Raymond Adams, the chief of the Neurology Department.[6] 

From Massachusetts General, McHugh went to the Institute of Psychiatry in London (where he studied under Sir Aubrey Lewis and was supervised by James Gibbons and Gerald Russell). Following his year in London, McHugh went to the Division of Neuropsychiatry at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.[7] 

McHugh believes that adult males who wish to surgically alter themselves to appear anatomically female fall into two main groups: (1) "conflicted and guilt-ridden homosexual men"[24] and (2) "heterosexual (and some bisexual) males who found intense sexual arousal in cross-dressing as females".[25] McHugh, had several other impressions: First, "they [the transgendered individuals] were little changed in their psychological condition. They had much the same problems with relationships, work, and emotions as before. The hope that they would emerge now from their emotional difficulties to flourish psychologically had not been fulfilled".[26] 

Second, they expressed little interest in and seemed indifferent to babies or children (typically female interests).[27] Third, they came off as caricatures of the opposite sex.[28] McHugh, P. R. (2006). "Surgical Sex" in The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp.220-228

THE PUSH TO NORMALIZE TRANSEXUALITY IS ART OF THE POSTMODERN LEFT'S GRAMSCIAN AGENDA.

SEEING THAT MARXISM HAD FAILED TO TAKE OVER AS MARX HAD PREDICTED, GRAMSCI PROPOSED THAT THE LEFT NEEDED TO DISMANTLE THE CULTURAL FOUNDATIONS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION FIRST, BEFORE THE STATE COULD BE TAKEN OVER BY SOCIALISTS.

HENCE THE LEFT'S ATTACKS ON FAMILY, AND CHURCH - AND EVERYTHING TRADITIONAL.

WHAT WAS ONCE DEVIANT BECOMES NORMAL UNDER POSTMODERNISM - NORMAL IF NOT LAUDATORY.

THE POSTMODERN LEFT CELEBRATES THE DEVIANT AND TRANSGRESSIVE AND SUBVERSIVE AND ATTACKS WHATEVER IS TRADITIONAL IN THE WEST.

OFTEN THE POSTMODERN LEFT ALSO CELEBRATES CULTURES THAT ARE NOT WESTERN - SUCH AS ISLAMIC CULTURE OR NATIVE AMAZONIAN CULTURE - USUALLY BY SHOWING THEM TO BE EQUAL TO OR BETTER THAN WESTERN CULTURE. THEY DO THIS TO UNDERMINE OUR OWN FAITH IN OUR OWN CULTURE AND TO FOMENT OIKOPHOBIA.

GRAMSCIAN LEFTISTS KNOW THAT ONCE WE LOSE FAITH IN OUR OWN CULTURE, WE CAN BE MORE EASILY SWAYED TO ACCEPT THE CHANGES AND INSTITUTIONS THEY BELIEVE IN.

MORE POSTS ON GRAMSCI AND THE LEFT'S GRAMSCIAN AGENDA HERE.

OTHERS COMMENTING ON THIS NEWS HERE.

OBAMA APPOINTS PEDOPHILE AS DEPUTY SECRETARY FOR EDUCATION: THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS SCOOPS WEASEL ZIPPERS AND GATEWAY BY 3 MONTHS

WEASEL ZIPPERS TODAY:

President Obama's "safe schools czar" is a former schoolteacher who has advocated promoting homosexuality in schools, written about his past drug abuse, expressed his contempt for religion and detailed an incident in which he did not report an underage student who told him he was having sex with older men.

Conservatives are up in arms about the appointment of Kevin Jennings, Obama's director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, saying he is too radical for the job.

AND GATEWAY TODAY:

Obama's Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings Hid Pedophilia

Since when is this safe?

Barack Obama's "safe school's czar" Kevin Jennings hid pedophilia from authorities.

THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS THREE MONTHS AGO:

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

BEND OVER: HERE COMES OBAMA'S EDUCATION TEAM...

SCIPIO:

Obama just appointed Kevin Jennings to the Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. Who is this Jennings? He is

is a homosexual activist with a history of using foul and abusive language against those who have opposed his homosexualist agenda.

He is also a founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) whose specialty is going around to K-12 schools and giving graphic demonstrations of homosexual sex. One might say of Jennings that he believes that it takes more than a village to raise a child, it takes sodomy.

OUCH!

BUSH: NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.

OBAMA: NO CHILD'S BEHIND LEFT ALONE.

• SERIOUSLY: FORCING THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA ON OUR CHILDREN IS A KEY PART OF THE LEFT'S GRAMSCIAN AGENDA.

• THE GRASMICAN EFFORT AIMS TO DEMOLISH THE TRADITIONAL FOUNDATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION IN ORDER TO MAKE ROOM FOR THE SOCIALIST STATE.

• OBAMA IS USING GRAMSCI'S AGENDA AS WELL AS ALINSKY'S.

IF YOU VALUE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN CIVILISATION THEN YOU MUST ... DISSENT ACCORDINGLY.

REGULAR READERS KNOW THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME.'

SPREAD THE WORD.

DEMS IN CONGRESS ATTACK ANOTHER AMERICAN ALLY: ETHIOPIA

The Democrats in Congress continue to seek new fronts in which to aid America's enemies. Having failed to defeat America in Iraq, and after their second-place Presidential aspirant threatened to bomb American ally Pakistan, the Dems are now turning against Ethiopia, a critical ally on the front lines of the jihad in the strategically critical Horn of Africa.

As described in an op-ed by two former chiefs-of-mission at the American Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the New Duranty Times:

Sadly, Congress is poised to fuel the march toward war by passing a bill that threatens to cut off technical assistance to Ethiopia, one of our closest allies, if it does not, among other things, release political prisoners, ensure that the judiciary operates independently and permit the news media to operate freely. Ethiopia has already freed opposition leaders, reformed parliamentary rules to give opposition parties greater legislative responsibility and approved a new media law that meets international standards. By singling out Ethiopia for public embarrassment, the bill puts Congress unwittingly on the side of Islamic jihadists and insurgents.

Well said, as far as it goes. But after we have seen the Democrats repeatedly attempt to torpedo the war against the jihadi terrorists in Iraq by attempting time and again to cut off funding to our frontline troops, and repeatedly attempt to defeat the counter-terrorism measures the Bush administration has employed in the United States, and repeatedly attempt to undermine the administration diplomatically by privately treating with our enemies in Syria and Iran, and repeatedly act to snub and humiliate American allies as they did with Colombia and Turkey, you have to wonder just why anyone would think they are "unwittingly on the side of Islamic jihadists and insurgents."

I think the Democrats know what they are doing. They are trying to defeat President Bush every which way but loose, and in the blind madness of their partisanship and Bush-hatred, they don't realize that they are working to defeat America. And they know very well that they are doing everything they can to establish a socialist nanny-state in America and carry out Gramsci's program of undermining the social and cultural foundations of our republican democracy.

You and I are on the front lines of this momentous cultural struggle. The lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world depend on our ability to defeat the left in America. If America falls to the left, there will be nothing to hold back the tide of tyranny. I mean this with the utmost seriousness. There is no rear echelon in the war against jihadi terror. We are all on the front lines, one way or another.

MUST SEE TV: THE HISTORY OF PC: FROM MARX TO GRAMSCI, MARCUSE AND OBAMA

Link:

MORE HERE.

GRAMSCI IN MASSACHUSETTS

VIA WZ: Concord-Carlisle High School's “Falsettos” Promotes Polyamory, Bisexuality and Homosexuality

Concord-Carlisle High School is promoting a take-down of family values on Thanksgiving Day – engineered by Mr. Peter Atlas, an old friend of Kevin Jennings (Obama’s “Safe Schools czar” and founder of GLSEN).

THE LEFT WANTS TO DESTROY THE FAMILY AND RELIGION AND FILL THE VACUUM WITH A LIBERTINE NANNYSTATE.

HOLLANDE'S LATEST PIECE OF ASS MOVES INTO ELYSEE PALACE

HE NEVER MARRIED SEGOLENE ROYAL - THE MOTHER OF HIS CHILREN. AND, THE SOCIALIST PRESIDENT OF FRANCE NOT MARRIED TO HIS CURRENT SQUEEZE EITHER:

Mr. Hollande and Ms. Trierweiler are the first unmarried couple to occupy the presidential Élysée Palace together, following close on the heels of the new president of Germany, Joachim Gauck, whose live-in companion is also a journalist. That these arrangements were no bar to office is a sign of how European attitudes about families have changed.

CHANGED!?!?!

ERODED COMPLETELY TO THE POINT OF NEAR NON-EXISTENCE.

MARX WANTED IT DESTROYED:

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx several times wrote openly of the "abolition of the family" and of communism abolishing "eternal truths" and "all religion, and all morality."  "The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional relations," Marx affirmed. 

THE LEFT IS CLOSER THAN EVER TO THEIR GOAL AS A RESULT OF A RELENTLESS, DECADES OLD GRAMSCIAN POSTMODERN ASSAULT.

DESTROYING THE FAMILY HAS SINCE GRAMSCI BEEN THE #1 GOAL OF THE LEFT BECAUSE IN ORDER TO HAVE THE NANNYSTATE STATE TAKE OVER THE SOCIETY YOU HAVE TO DESTROY SOCIETY'S EXISTING INSTITUTIONS.

IN EUROPE, THEY'VE VERY NEARLY COMPLETELY SUCCEEDED.

EUROPEANS ARE NO LONGER GOING TO CHURCH, MARRYING, OR HAVING ENOUGH KIDS.

AT LEAST NOT CHRISTIAN EUROPEANS.

MUSLIMS IN EUROPE SURE ARE!

MORE ANTI-CONSERVATIVE/PRO-GRAMSCI SPIN FROM THE NYTIMES: THE ANGLICAN SCHISM OVER A HOMOSEXUAL CLERGY

FRONT PAGE OF THE NYTIMES:

Conservatives to Split Episcopal Church

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN 51 minutes ago

Conservatives disaffected over the ordination of an openly gay bishop are expected to declare that they are founding a rival Anglican province in North America.

The move threatens the fragile unity of the Anglican Communion, the world’s third largest Christian body, made up of 38 provinces around the world that trace their roots to the Church of England and its leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury. This is the first effort to create a province defined by theological orientation, not by geography.

The schism would create two competing provinces on the same soil, each claiming the mantle of historical Anglican Christianity.

THE CULPRITS - ACCORDING TO THE GRAMSCIANS AT THE NYTIMES - ARE NOT THE PEOPLE WHO MILITATED FOR THE CHURCH TO CHANGE IN ORDER TO ACCEPT AN OPENLY HOMOSEXUAL CLERGY, BUT THOSE WHO WOULD HAVE THE CLERGY REMAIN AS IT HAS BEEN FOR A THOUSAND YEARS.

A THOUSAND YEARS.

• THE PRO-HOMOSEXUAL CROWD COULD FORM THEIR OWN CHURCH; NOTHING PREVENTS THEM FROM DOING THIS.

• BUT THEIR REAL INTEREST IS IN DESTROYING THE CHURCH, NOT HAVING THEIR OWN CHURCH BE WHATEVER THEY WANT IT TO BE.

• THIS SAME EFFORT IS OCCURRING IN JUDAISM, WHERE - NOT CONTENT TO BE ABLE TO GET MARRIED BY REFORM RABBIS - THE GRAMSCIAN JEWS RECENTLY FORCED THE USA CONSERVATIVE SECT TO SANCTION HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE, TOO.

• THERE'S NOTHING PREVENTING HOMOSEXUALS FROM WORSHIPPING IN OLD FASHIONED CHURCHES OR CONSERVATIVE SYNAGOGUES. THEY JUST HAVE NO RIGHT TO CHANGE THE SCRIPTURE.

A SIN IS A SIN IS A SIN. WHILE MOST OF US SIN, MOST OF US CONSERVATIVES DON'T ASK OUR CLERGY TO PUT A BLESSING ON IT!

THERE'S DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOME SYNAGOGUE MEMBERS EATING TREIF ONCE IN A WHILE IN THE PRIVACY OF THEIR LIVES AND SERVING TREIF IN SYNAGOGUE AND DEMANDING THE RABBI BLESS IT.

WHY IS THAT?

John Kirkwood wonders:

So the demonic bastards in Syria who are normally occupied with how to kill Westerners and how to drive Israel into the sea are now focused on killing Al Qaeda … and our President wants to interfere. Imagine that?

Good question. He provides sort of an answer:

Col. Ralph Peters called the President’s plan “senseless” and “without logic,” – “our enemies are killing our enemies … they’re doing our job!” Well, we can’t let that happen. So, let’s do the math on this one. The President, who rose to glory as the Senator who mocked Bush’s War, unilateral action and weapons of mass destruction, has now alerted our congress (and our enemies) that he will act unilaterally, despite the world and the United Nations disapproval and because of WMD’s. Makes sense to me – that is, if the President is a Manchurian Executive who is operating as a closeted Sunni Muslim that happens to be a Gramsci/Alinsky Marxist. What could be more predictable than to act against American interest?

Reliapundit has asked again and again, if the United States actually had a President who ("unlike BHO!!!") was an anti-American, anti-Christian, pro-Jihadi, communist -- what would he be doing any differently? Kirkwood's appraisal of the Syrian regime is somewhat un-nuanced, however. To understand what drives the Assad dynasty, you have to start with his grandfather Suleiman Assad's 1936 letter to the (departing) French "colonialists":

The spirit of fanaticism and narrow-mindedness, whose roots are deep in the heart of the Arab Muslims toward all those who are not Muslim, is the spirit that continually feeds the Islamic religion, and therefore there is no hope that the situation will change. If the Mandate is cancelled, the danger of death and destruction will be a threat upon the minorities in Syria, even if the cancellation [of the Mandate] will decree freedom of thought and freedom of religion. Why, even today we see how the Muslim residents of Damascus force the Jews who live under their auspices to sign a document in which they are forbidden to send food to their Jewish brothers who are suffering from the disaster in Palestine [in the days of the great Arab rebellion], the situation of the Jews in Palestine being the strongest and most concrete proof of the importance of the religious problem among the Muslim Arabs toward anyone who does not belong to Islam. Those good Jews, who have brought to the Muslim Arabs civilization and peace, and have spread wealth and prosperity to the land of Palestine, have not hurt anyone and have not taken anything by force, and nevertheless the Muslims have declared holy war against them and have not hesitated to slaughter their children and their women despite the fact that England is in Palestine and France is in Syria. Therefore a black future awaits the Jews and the other minorities if the Mandate is cancelled and Muslim Syria is unified with Muslim Palestine. This union is the ultimate goal of the Muslim Arabs.

Is that also the ultimate goal of Barry Soetoro's foreign policy? Think about it. If that was a President's agenda, what would he be doing any differently than what BHO is doing now?

QOTD: "...progressives are the main threat to freedom of speech."

DONALD DOUGLAS: 

As I've argued here for some time now, progressives are the main threat to freedom of speech. It's a sad day when folks speaking truth to barbarity, in the case of Islam, are threatened with prosecution. And it's not just Islam, although much of the current attempts to criminalize speech come from progressive terrorism-enablers. It's conservative speech all around that's being criminalized.

RTWT. EXACTLY:

THE LEFT'S COMMITMENT TO FREE SPEECH IS NOT ABSOLUTE OR UNIVERSAL; IT IS RELATIVE AND CONTEXTUAL.

THE LEFT TYPICALLY AND REPEATEDLY EMPLOYS AND DISCARDS PRINCIPLES EASILY.

ALL THAT MATTERS IS THAT THEY SERVE THE PARTY AND THE GOAL OF SOCIALISM.

WHEN OBAMA OPPOSED GAY MARRIAGE, THAT WAS FINE.

BUT NOW THAT OBAMA FAVORS IT, THOSE OF US WHO OPPOSE IT ARE DEEMED RACIST, HOMOPHOBIC, "SKY-FAIRY WORSHIPING" TROGLODYTES BY THE LEFT.

MEANWHILE, OBAMA AND THE LEFT KOWTOW TO MOHAMMAD AND ISLAM - (A TRULY HOMOPHOBIC CREED!), WHILE TRAMPLING ROMAN CATHOLICS AND EVANGELICALS AND "A MAN NAMED JESUS" (AS OBAMA RECENTLY SAID!) LIKE DIRT.

THE POSTMODERN LEFT SUPPORTS ISLAMO-HEGEMONY AND ATTACKS TRADITIONAL WESTERN VALUES BECAUSE BURGEONING GLOBAL ISLAMIC HEGEMONY SERVES A BASIC GOAL OF THE POSTMODERN LEFT:

IT WEAKENS THE USA AND THEREBY WEAKENS THE FREE WORLD,

A WEAKER FREE WORLD IS A WORLD WITH DIMINISHED JUDEO-CHRISTIAN VALUES - VALUES THAT (AS GRAMSCI WROTE) STAND BETWEEN THEM AND THEIR SOCIALIST UTOPIA.

So, who really won the Cold War?

Post below lifted from Whats that Smell. See the original for links

Particularly here in Great Britain:

How many citizens who were robbed knew that the police didn't even bother to look for the criminals, didn't even set a case in motion, so as not to spoil their record of completed cases - why should they sweat to catch a thief if he would be given only six months, and then be given three months off for good behaviour? And anyway, it wasn't certain the bandits would even be tried when caught.

Finally, sentences were bound to be reduced, and of course for habitual criminals especially. Watch out there now, witness in the courtroom! They will all be back soon, and it'll be a knife in the back for anyone who gave testimony!

Therefore, if you see someone crawling through a window [...] shut your eyes! Walk by! You didn't see anything!

Three guesses as to who wrote that.

Peter Hitchens? No.
Melanie Phillips? No.
Theodore Dalrymple? No.

It was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn describing the state of Soviet criminal law under Stalin in The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956. It is what happens in a society when they accept the Marxist idea that crime (of the non-political type) is borne out of economic hardship rather than having a cost-benefit and moral implication. When I read that part of his book, I became more and more convinced, not that I needed it, that the West may have won the military conflict, but the Communists won the ideological conflict. Particularly here in the UK.

As time goes by, and more and more records are declassified, it is becoming more and more apparent that Joe McCarthy was mistaken about the amount of Soviet infiltration of American institutions: He underestimated it. There was something like over 400 Soviet agents and fellow travellers in the State Department, alone, where he had estimated 200.

Now, imagine the amount of Soviet infiltration into institutions in a country that was not actively looking for Soviet infiltrators. And what you get is modern-day Britain.

My wife is doing some research for her Fine Arts degree on Abstract Expressionism. Her research is leading her down toward the direction in which madness lays...She has discovered the physical, academic, and institutional links between modern art, the Institute for Social Research (aka the Frankfurt School), Antonio Gramsci, the Ford Foundation, and loads of other links in the Communist/Socialist movements of the 20th Century. She had no idea the full extent of the forces working to undo Western Civilisation, with that end being part of their stated goals.

And it is becoming more and more apparent, the more one looks at what these people and their fellow travellers actually stated what they would do, and what has come about in the West over the last 50 years, that there just might be a link between the collapse of the Church, the state of higher education, the intellectual dishonesty of the mass media, and the intentions of the Communists.

Unfortunately (?), there is no central COMINTERN to control the direction of the growing disorder in the West. And now that the Pandora's Box has been opened, one wonders whether these forces that were unleashed beginning from the 1920s (or even before), will ever be stopped. I do believe we live in "interesting times" as the Chinese curse goes. There is more Solzhenitsyn to come...My copy of The Gulag Archipelago now has several dog-eared pages to indicate more gems like the one above.

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your summary of Obama news and commentary at OBAMA WATCH

Europe not out of the woods: Spain and Greece teetering

NYT:

Day by day, fears are growing that Greece or another weak country may default on its sovereign debt obligations, forcing the richer countries in Europe to ride to the rescue or risk having one or more of its most vulnerable members leave the 16-nation euro zone.

Many European economists discount such a fracture as a remote possibility. But that doesn’t mean Europe has safely emerged from crisis.

... France and Germany have already emerged from the recession. Business confidence in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has hit a 17-month high.

Yet on the periphery, the hangover from more than five years of a credit-infused boom shows little sign of diminishing.

Ireland, the first economy to stumble, has taken the most severe fiscal action, cutting public wages sharply. A new Greek government, punished by the rough treatment of bond investors no longer willing to countenance soft promises of reform, is just now promising steep spending cuts. But it is not clear whether the political system in Greece will accept them.

Meanwhile, Spain, to the frustration of many major lenders, seems to be putting off difficult fiscal questions in the hope that its economy will soon recover.

Critics of the euro zone contend that weak governments in the peripheral economies, facing high unemployment and restive voters, will not have the stomach to hold down wages, pensions and public expenditures.

I THINK MUCH OF EUROPE WILL DO BADLY IN 2010 - THE PINKEST PARTS WILL DO THE WORST. TOO MUCH SOCIALISM YIELDS STAGNATION AND A TOP HEAVY GOVERNMENT - WHICH BECOMES A BALL AND JACK.

WHICH IS WHAT OBAMA DREAMS OF, REALLY. DREAMS FROM MY FUHRER AND THE AUDACITY OF MUSSOLINI, MARX AND GRAMSCI.

IT'S THE PROGRESSIVE WAY, DONTCHYA KNOW... TURN LEFT, AND KEEPING WALKING UNTIL YOU FALL OFF A CLIFF.

I THINK OBAMA AND HIS COMRADES WILL ATTEMPT TO ENLARGE THE GOVERNMENT RIGHT UP UNTIL THE NOVEMBER ELECTION.

THEN, THE VOTERS WILL GIVE THEM ALL A RUDE AWAKENING.

WHEN WILL HOLLYWOOD MAKE AN X-RATED MOVIE ABOUT SLEAZEBALL JFK???

I AIN'T HOLDING MY BREATH!

THEY LEAPED AT THE CHANCE TO TRASH REAGAN AND THATCHER AND NOW PALIN.

BUT JFK - THE SLEAZEBALL WHO DEMANDED THE 19 YEAR OLD INTERN HE WAS SCHTOOPING GIVE A BLOWJOB TO HIS AIDE!?!?

NO EFFIN' WAY.

WHAT SCUM. JFK AND HOLLYWOOD.

THEY OUGHT TO RENAME THE OSCARS "THE GRAMSCI'S".