Table of Contents

Home

 

GOOD AND EVIL

During the cold war with Soviet Union, Richard Nixon wrote a book, The Real War. He correctly wrote wise wordsThe Real War that apply to our situation in which socialist/feminists are taking America down the road to totalitarianism in America. The cultural war is between two sides that cannot find compromise because one side is more of God and the other more of Satan. When President Reagan blasted the Soviet Union he was denounced by the liberal media as calling them the "evil empire." He was right and I am right in denouncing feminists as evil. Nixon writes: "Victory [requires] a firm, unflagging faith, as Lincoln would put it, that we are on God's side, that our cause is right, that we act for all mankind.

"It may seem melodramatic to treat the twin poles of human experience represented by the United States and the Soviet Union as the equivalent of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, God and the Devil; yet if we allow ourselves to think of them that way, even hypothetically, it can help clarify our perspective on the world struggle. As the British writer Malcolm Muggeridge has pointed out, 'Good and evil ... provide the theme of the drama of our mortal existence. In this sense, they may be compared with the positive and negative points which generate an electric current; transpose the points and the current fails, the lights go out, darkness falls and all is confusion.'"

EVIL EMPIRE

Charles Krauthammer, wrote a newspaper article called "Reluctant Cold Warriors" blasting the liberals who denounced President Reagan's so-called "Evil Empire" speech and their history of being naive to evil in the Cold War. He also denounces them for now saying they were anti-Communist and helped bring down the Soviet Union. He wrote:

It was on our side that people had trouble understanding the thoroughness of the Soviet evil. Reagan's "evil empire" speech drew ferocious criticism. Anthony Lewis called it "primitive." Tom Wicker called it "smug." Historian Henry Steele Commager said, "It was the worst presidential speech in American history, and I've read them all." Even months later, George Ball, a former high official in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, published an open letter to President Reagan in which, almost in passing, he referred contemptuously to "your obsessive detestation of what you call 'the evil empire.' "

"What you call the 'evil empire'." Today everyone pretends that we were all singing from the same anti-Communist songbook. We were not.

In 1983 President Reagan asked for military aid to the government in El Salvador fighting communist guerrillas. Sen. Christopher Dodd went on national TV with the Democratic response. He called the Reagan policy "folly, pure and simple," as it proposed "to wage a conflict which cannot be won." The United States, said Dodd, had "to move with the tide of history rather than stand against it."

Well, it turns out the tide of history was not communism spearheaded by revolution, but freedom backed by American power. We are the tide of history.

The fall of the wall was the final vindication of that view, the view of the much-maligned cold warriors.

Like Rush Limbaugh, Charles Krauthammer speaks strongly for conservatives to not compromise their values. He blasts the concept of "bipartisanship" that only means in the eyes of Liberals that they are the epitome of truth and principle while Conservatives are ideologues that think it should only be their way or the highway. Democrats have no interest in a "middle ground" and have been successful in getting Republicans to compromise their values for decades. Krauthhammer says "The instrument of emasculation is 'bipartisanship.'" Limbaugh speaks strongly every day on his influential radio talk show saying that Liberals need to be "defeated." Period.

WOMEN CAUSE OF BIG GOVERNMENT

There is an excellent article by John Lott printed in a distinguished political journal that explains how womenMore Guns, Less Crime are more liberal than men and are the major cause why America has become progressively socialist since women got the vote. If women had not voted, Senator Bob Dole would have easily won the presidency in 1996. You can read his paper by clicking HERE The paper in PDF format or you can find this and other papers he has written at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=16317. I found this paper at an interesting website: http://www.stanford.edu/~john1/SCF.html in which the author gives his arguments why the 19th Amendment was harmful for America.

John LottJohn R. Lott, Jr. is a scholar at the Yale Law School. In the cultural war there is a raging debate over violence and Lott has an great book titled, More Guns, Less Crime. In the Journal of Political Economy he wrote an article called "How Dramatically Did Women's Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?" (You can hear Professor Lott speak on this controversial topic at www.Cato.org -- click here or http://www.cato.org/realaudio/audiopages/gunlaws.html to hear)

He begins his paper saying, "This paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of givingJohn Lott women the right to vote. Using cross-sectional time-series data for 1870 to 1940, we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by U.S. House and Senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives, and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise. Contrary to many recent suggestions, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s, and it helps explain why American government started growing when it did."

No matter what idea a person may have, there will be many who disagree. There are lots of people who disagree with Hunter such as Rhys Williams' Cultural Wars in American Politics. The preface to his book says, "That contemporary American politics is divided into two differing ideological, moral, and lifestyle groups- a divide so severe as to constitute a "cultural war" - is a widely-held popular belief. The most systematic academic version of the culture wars claim has appeared in two influential books by sociologist James Davison Hunter, the earlier dating from 1991." They go on to say that Hunter's views are a "myth," that polarization is an illusion and Williams' book gives a "more measured analyses to the rhetorical overstatement in Hunter's claim." The argument against Hunter is that most Americans look for common ground instead of being radicals who are intolerant and will not compromise.

IS AMERICA BREAKING APART?

George Will praises the book Is America Breaking Apart? saying, "Their book is a timely appreciation of "the cohesive power of the American experiment." In spite of "endless talk of difference," American society is an amazing machine for homogenizing people." The Library Journal says of their book, " present a reasoned polemic, arguing that the United States, while not without self-doubt, the stain of racism, and other internal conflicts and disparities, has emerged as the worlds most powerful and stable society, not likely to break apart soon." The publisher says their book gives " a balanced viewpoint into this intense debate" In an article in the Christian Century Rhys Williams says, " The book is an important corrective to the sensationalist literature that contributes to the problems it supposedly decries." He says, "we have a nation of individualists all concerned about getting along and being nice to each other in public."

John D. Woodbridge in Christianity Today (March 6, 1995) writes:

THE DANGERS OF WAR TALK

I regret the haunting title of James Davison Hunter's recent book: Before the Shooting Begins. Such rhetoric may sell books. But such rhetoric does little to foster an ambiance in which those Americans who are alienated from each other can seek reconciliation. Indeed, it reinforces the mindset of people like those extremists who laud the killing of abortion doctors and staff.

The vast majority of other Americans are not hostile toward evangelical Christians and are not ready to shoot anybody. We would be more accurate to portray the bulk of the American public not as belonging to two giant phalanxes of the Right and Left engaged in mortal combat, but as religious centrists, remaining to varying degrees committed to Judeo-Christian values and to First Amendment guarantees regarding freedom of religion. There are theaters of cultural warfare, but millions of Americans are not self-consciously enlisted soldiers in them.

The following is an excerpt from Culture Wars in American Politics: Critical Reviews of a Popular Myth, by Rhys H. Williams:

THE USE OF WAR METAPHORS

Patrick Buchanan brought the glare of 'the national spotlight to the phrase "culture war" when he used his address to the 1992 Republican National Convention to declare a "war for the nation's soul." That moment was both the apex and the nadir of a presidential campaign that styled itself as a moral crusade. Oliver North's 1994 Senate campaign in Virginia echoed those themes. Buchanan's 1996 campaign was no less crusade-like, and the war metaphors were even more prominent as partisans were advised to "lock and load" and "ride to the sound of the gunfire." Other Republican hopefuls, Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and such "cultural warriors" as Rush Limbaugh, former Secretary of Education William Bennett, and James Dobson, director of Focus on the Family, have claimed there is an encompassing social divide over morality and values.
...

War rhetoric obviously fits these three requirements. It names an issue of abiding moral seriousness, it identifies the good guys and the bad guys, and it implores people to get involved lest the cause be lost. Because of the need for a certain amount of the us-vs.-them approach, activist rhetoric easily escalates toward uncompromising portrayals of good and evil. That is what Hunter and others discovered in their narrow version of "culture wars"--the rhetoric of movement partisans trying to break through to the nonactive and prod them to action.

But this is not an ideological divide that pits half of America vs. the other half; this is the hype -- the "pep talk" of those who are trying to rally troops to their side. What is often identified as evidence for a culture war has more to do with the requirements of activist rhetoric than the attitudes or actions of the body politic generally.

HOW TO AVOID FURTHER POLARIZATION

Do some people talk in "culture war" terms? Of course they do. Is that talk a good guide to the world views, values or opinions of the public? Clearly not. In sum, the narrow version of the culture-war idea ignores the crucial difference between social-movement mobilizing and institutional politics.

While it may be comforting to know that America is not as divided or as unreasonable as the narrow culture-war thesis suggests, that does not make the current state of American politics any easier to take. Many people feel that their involvement is useless. Further, the stridency of much public culture no doubt discourages many people from involvement, even if they do care about an issue. I find myself turning off news programs when I feel that all I am hearing are the prefabricated ideological sound bites of spokespersons from interest groups. What can be done about this? If we care about our collective political life, and want as many people as active in public decision-making as possible -- which is, after all, part of the definition of democracy -- how do we avoid this cycle of polarizing activist rhetoric, public indifference and a resulting escalation of rhetoric?

Before addressing such questions, I want to emphasize that I am in no way opposed to social-movement politics. I have been active in some movements. I am suggesting, however, that there is a problem with a rhetorical cycle that seems to reward an uncompromising, absolutist approach to public life, for it results in as much political disengagement as political mobilization. I am searching for a type of politics that is inclusive and open, even to one's ideological opponents.

I pointed out above that the politicians who campaigned on a strident culture-wars theme were not particularly successful in electoral politics. Though cultural warriors won some primaries, and on occasion a seat in the House of Representatives, at the national and institutional level they lost--and generally they continue to lose. Elections have provided culture-wars campaigns with a platform, but have denied them power The institution of the two-party electoral system has historically fostered compromise, moderation and stability. Therefore, as counterintuitive as it sounds, I think a way to make the political system healthier is to strengthen political parties ....

ONE NATION ... INDIVISIBLE?

Another book that says we are not in a cultural war is Alan Wolfe's, One Nation After All. He says that there is a war between intellectuals but not the average person. The problem with this is that the average person eventually believes what the dominant ideology is. In the year 2000, the dominant ideology is set by liberal intellectuals, but their days are numbered.

All Moon in Jailof these arguments that there is no cultural war are intellectually bankrupt. I will give you two quick examples of how fierce this cultural war is -- the innocent Sun Myung Moon was put in jail in America and the innocent Boy Scouts are taken to court. The book Inquisition by Carlton Sherwood shows that Rev. Moon was innocent and a victim of persecution. Those who believe that America is basically okay are blind to the tragic situation that liberals have put all Americans into. Because of the massive amount of regulations and size of government, we are immersed in a state of violence and the threat of violence from well meaning government officials. I talked to a person who had been permission by China to study in the US. He said that America was violent and he didn't feel safe walking the streets at night. China, he said, had less crime. I told him, "Try walking out of China. You and I both know that you will be shot. China is a concentration camp. China is immersed in the threat of violence and everyone passively obeys. Liberals in America work very hard to keep America on a socialist course. Most Americans wake up each morning not realizing that more of their freedoms have been taken away and buy the liberal elite's latest explanation like the animals in Animal Farm did. If America does not change it will fall. There has always been divisions in America but the current situation is the worst in its history because we are living in the Last Days as professed in the Bible. To read more about this, see my book Divine Principle in Plain Language.

The Boy Scouts are a Victorian organization that has Victorian traditional values. The politically correct in America have forced them to spend millions of dollars to defend the common sense belief that that homosexuality is not moral. They barely won the right to exist because the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 along conservative and liberal lines. Click here to read an excellent article about this.

So-called radicals like Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan are right when they say there is a cultural war and America is in danger of falling. In Rush's book See, I Told You So he writes:

"When you hear about 'the Culture War,' ladies and gentlemen, know that this is what it's all about. It's a war of competing ideas and worldviews. On one side, you have people who believe in living by a set of divinely inspired moral absolutes--or, at the very least, they believe that following such a moral code represents the best way to avoid chaos and instability. On the other side, you have people who insist that morality is simply a personal decision. Any attempt to enforce it is viewed as oppression. Quite simply, many liberals believe that efforts to adhere to and enforce behavioral rights and wrongs is simply the powerful in society attempting to force their views and judgments on the 'victims' of society, rather than what it is: an attempt to maintain the standards that have evolved and survived throughout human civilization and which produce a quality life."

The following are excerpts from Charlton Heston's book Courage to Be Free (http://www.couragetobefree.com/shorts.html):

On cultural war ...

Cultural warfare, while no less a transfer of power from one group to another, is for the most part seemingly painless. There are no tortured screams or bloody wounds, no limb-strewn nightmares to haunt a generation. In fact, cultural warlords seek to keep the battle from becoming bloody. Modern media fills the cultural airwaves with a mist of anesthesia, so that principles and values are slowly desensitized to the coming onslaught. The new culture arrives on the heels of this propaganda. It simply moves in and takes over, like slipping a fine new glove over a numbed hand. The outcome of the war is just as devastating, but without bombs bursting, twisted bodies to bury, or rubble to rebuild. A new class, a different culture, simply takes over.

On tolerance ...

The Bill of Rights, as I and the best of America's constitutional scholars read it, embraces religious opportunity for shakers and glossolalians as well as believers who receive communion at gothic-cathedral altars, as well as Quakers who quiver under the Spirit, as well as those who carry Torah scrolls high on their shoulders, as well as Hispanics who bear the lash of the Penitentes. Religious freedom in America is not reserved territory for Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, or Lutherans. Religious tolerance here must also embrace religious practices which some - perhaps even the majority -- find bizarre and perhaps even offensive.

On cultural warmongers ...

The message from the cultural warlords is everywhere, delivered with the arrogant swagger of absolute confidence. Summarized, it is this: Heaven help the God-fearing, law-abiding, Caucasian, middle class, Protestant (or even worse evangelical) Christian, the midwestern or southern (or even worse rural) hunter, apparently straight or admitted heterosexual gun-owning (or even worse NRA-card-carrying) average working stiff, or even worse still male working stiff, because not only do you not count, you're a downright obstacle to social progress. Your tax dollars may be just as welcome and green as you hand them over, but your voice deserves no hearing, your opinion is not enlightened, your media access is virtually nil, and frankly mister, you need to wake up, wise up, and learn a little something about your new America. And until you do, why don't you just sit down and shut up!

Too many Americans are doing just that. That's why I'm here with a wake-up call.

On being an American ...

Most rank-and-file Americans I know resent the fact that this war has been foisted upon them. They already go to war for their families every day. They fight to hold down a job, raise responsible kids, make their payments, keep gas in the car, put food on the table and clothes on their backs, and still save a little to live their final days in dignity.

They prefer the America they built - the America where you could pray without feeling naive, love without being kinky, sing without profanity, be white without feeling guilty, own a gun without shame, and raise your hand to say so without apology. They long for leaders who will muster some guts, stand on principle, and lead them to victory in this cultural conflict. They are tired of being under siege for their principles and values that have been declared good, right, and just for more than two centuries.

On elitism ...

In twenty-first century America, however, just by signing on to a point of view or specific social agenda, a person can become part of the preferred class. In other words, by no more than posturing and parroting the party line, a person gains otherwise effortless admittance to the "us" and rejects the "them."

The entrance fee to the elite class is at an historical all-time low, requiring only that a person agree to the general tenets, for example, that white males are disposable, corporate America is inherently evil, southern Christians are somewhat dumb and misguided, guns are dangerously prevalent, and lesbian Islamic rainforest biologists (or name any other interest group you like) have more worthwhile views than other people. By no more than learning the language of political correctness, taught by modern media, you're more enlightened.

On religion ...

Several decades ago, the cultural elitists declared that God was dead in America. Many remember the infamous Time magazine cover that declared His demise. Since then God has recovered, rebounded, and proved His resilience. Despite a cultural spin that sought to reduce religion to backwoods superstition, the majority of people in America still find solace in religious traditions. In order to practice their religion freely, however, many Americans are being forced to wade through a thick muck of egotistical and elitist posturing that I doubt the Almighty is proud to witness.

On courage ... I seek to resurrect your greatness of purpose as a citizen of the greatest nation on earth, to reorient the compass of patriotism and conviction that already dwells in your heart, and to move you to action. I want to challenge you first to examine your own heart for the courage to be free, and then to do what it takes to live out that destiny. If I do my part well, the battle will be engaged by one more voice that refuses to let our most basic freedoms as a people be taken captive - yours.

On cultural collision ...

Let me draw the distinctions in broad strokes. On one side, we have a rural society based on farming, with a belief in independent self-determination, individual initiative, and mutual trust. On the other side stands an urban culture in which the individual is subordinate to the group, where transience and congestion alienate man from the land and from his fellow man, where upheaval and social decay give way to crime and a climate of fear, and where many are satisfied to sacrifice essential liberty for the illusion of safety.

So who started the cultural war, and why? For the answer, meet me at the city limits. In almost every act of cultural war, it's there somewhere: the fight between the city boys and the country boys. Look past the facts and faces of issues under debate, and you'll see one party calmly chewing on a wheat stalk while the other is flip-phoning 911.

On personal courage ...

In this collection of essays, I admit I've been critical of societal bullies, posturing elitists, cultural warlords, and other self-appointed engineers who would remodel the Bill of Rights. They should rightfully be "outted" and revealed for the damage they're doing. But I hope you've noted my admonition that the final solution isn't to accuse and condemn them, hoping they'll become converts while we commiserate and lament for a better world. That's a futile waste, since we have an infinitely more powerful weapon at our disposal.

No, the path to victory in cultural war, as it is in most matters of personal conviction, is to live by example - and live loud. All true teaching, like parenting, is best conveyed not by talking it up, but by living it out.

 

MICHAEL MEDVED

Michael Medved wrote at his website (www.MichaelMedved.com) the following:

God's Election Lesson (November 14, 2000)

For people of faith, the deadlocked presidential election raises an urgent question: what is God trying to teach us with this unprecedented, painful situation?

This election - like the recent impeachment struggle-reminds us there's no 'moral majority' in America.

The lesson of this election is that we can't make progress by mobilizing a consensus that doesn't exist and forcing the other side into submission. We need to win converts, not arguments. This is not a culture war -- since wars involve destroying your opponents. We shouldn't try to destroy anybody -- but rather to persuade everybody.

 

.

I appreciate Medved's heart. He has a talk radio show and I enjoy listening to him. He calls himself a cultural crusader and is eloquent in criticizing the Liberals. But Rush is still the king of talk radio because he talks more strongly about how we are in a war and must "defeat" the enemy. We must first "destroy" the Democrats by winning a huge majority in politics. Jesse Jackson will never be converted, but millions of other people can if they understand the seriousness of our situation. The best way to "persuade" others is to impress upon them the danger this world is in from those who love big government and feminism. I don't know what Medved means by saying "We shouldn't try to destroy anybody." Rush and other culture warriors are not talking about using force. They want to stop the Liberals from using government to force everyone to live by their millions of regulations. We are living in the Last Days when evil spirit world still dominates this planet and the majority is not moral and righteous.

When Bob Dole ran against Bill Clinton for the Presidency in 1996, Dole made a point during the debates on TV to say Clinton was his "opponent," not his "enemy." Clinton and the Left are not so nice. Clinton did not agree. He was silent because he does see Republicans as the enemy who must be beaten and never lead this country. The Right must be more determined to not let the Left lead.

 

Inquisition

 


Next