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Rush Limbaugh
Rush
is like an alarm clock trying to wake up America that is in the
situation of the boiled frog. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling
water it will jump out immediately to escape the immediate danger and
threat to his survival. But, if you put a frog in a pan that is
filled with water that is cool and then gradually heat the pan until
it starts to boil, the frog will not realize the threat until it is
too late. He will get more and more groggy and less conscious, until
he eventually is boiled to death. The lesson in this parable is that
slow, gradual change can be subtle and insidious and sneak up on
people. Unsuspecting and complacent people tolerate ever increasing
life-threatening cultural changes and wake up one morning and find
themselves in deep trouble. This is a story that is used to
teach
people how we must be careful to watch changes that slowly threaten
our lives. Feminist/socialists have continually chipped away at
traditional values until America now sees the liberal ideology as
normal and America is now close to being boiled to death.
Limbaugh correctly teaches that America is moving "toward socialism and statism" because conservatives "have lost control of ... cultural institutions" ... "the left has been very successful because it understands the importance of culture -- of framing the debate and influencing the way people think about problems." ... "Why don't we simply get in the game and start competing for control of these key cultural institutions? In other words, why not fight back?" (Check out his website at www.rushlimbaugh.com).
Trickle Down Effect
In this war of ideology we should fight the liberals with
civility and always keep a lookout for common ground, but
we
must never get lulled into thinking there is no severe conflict or
get lazy and not stand up for our principles.Public intellectuals are
powerful. Their ideas trickle down to the masses. They set the
agenda.
JAMES DOBSON
James Dobson writes in his book Children at Risk:
"Nothing short of a great Civil War of values rages today throughout
North America. Two sides with vastly differing and incompatible world
views are locked in bitter conflict that permeates every level
of society . . . Let me put it in another way. Children are the
prize to the winners of the second great Civil War. Those who control
what young people are taught and what they experience -- what they
see, hear, think, and believe -- will determine the future course for
the nation."
CAL THOMAS
In a June, 1994 column, Cal Thomas wrote:
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These vicious scare tactics aside, most people have awakened to the fact that something has gone dreadfully wrong in America. We won the Cold War, but we have lost the Culture War. More people fear guns and drugs in the schools and on the streets than they do someone who might say a prayer over the public address system. A warning to the pagan left comes form a CNN-USA Today-Gallup survey, which reports that most American prefer a president with strong morals to one with compatible political views. The pagan left smears conservative Christians by
conjuring up images of snake handlers and the like because
it knows it has lost the issues. It raises the specter of
imposed morality, but Is the pagan left, suggesting that the imposition of some of the Christian right’s morality would be worse that this? |
Beverly Eakman
Beverly Eakman wrote an excellent article in the WashingtonTimes blasting Cal Thomas' wimpy view on the cultural war. She is the author of several great books that attack the evil of public schools.
How we lost the culture wars By B.K. Eakman Paul Weyrich, Cal Thomas, and Ed Dobson recently announced that the culture wars are lost, that most people don't defend, or even necessarily believe in, the values that characterized the Moral Majority and the Reagan revolution. They say social conservatives have failed politically since virtually none of their agenda items have seen the light of day in seven years. Indisputably, the polls surrounding the Clinton scandals reveal a vastly different public reaction from parallel events under former administrations. Recall the outrage at Richard Nixon's enemies list; the knee-jerk indignation during the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. One can only imagine the howls if, say, North Korea had conducted a money-laundering operation to underwrite the Reagan or Bush campaigns. Even the recent atrocity in Littleton, Colo., attests to an acceptance of behavior that would have incensed us 20 years ago. Why did we lose? We lost because we failed to apply the strategic lessons of warfare to the attack on our culture. We lost because we gave away the psychological environment. We spent 30 years playing by our opponents' rules of engagement instead of forcing them to play by ours. During that time, we imagined that all we had to do was be right, present our views logically, and provide reams of documentation. We were under attack, whereas we thought we were merely under disagreement. We said we just needed to understand each other. The truth was, our adversaries understood us better than we knew. We started off by violating the most basic principle of warfare, iterated as long ago as 550 B.C., by (ironically enough) a Chinese philosopher named Sun Tzu in "The Art of War": "Those skilled in war bring the opponent to the field of battle. They do not allow themselves to be taken or drawn there," wrote the Chinese strategist. We fell all over ourselves for the privilege of debating issues on our adversary's turf. Our opponents proceeded to frame all the debates and dictate to the public what it would think about, and for how long. We care about integrity i.e., the end doesn't always justify the means. The opposition doesn't. We anguish over aligning ourselves with those who might disagree with us on some nonrelated issue. Our adversaries work with anybody, including pornographer Larry Flynt, on an issue-by-issue basis. We worry about our families getting hurt. The counterculture doesn't care who gets hurt -- i.e. Hillary Clinton, Vince Foster -- as long as the larger agenda moves forward. We don't wa nt our spouses maligned, our privacy invaded, and our good names dragged through the mud. Mudslinging is our adversaries' forte. Our counterculture adversaries replaced the old-style liberals as a political force and elevated the sales pitch to an art form. They bought up every source of media they could in the 1960s and 1970s, and slapped their messages on everything that stood still. Newspapers, magazines, billboards, movies, op-eds, or grant proposals: They understood that psychological impact is paramount -- not facts, not anybody's principles, not right and wrong. Our counterculture adversaries learned important lessons from totalitarian regimes. Redefining terms through media repetition, isolating and labeling holdouts, provoking opponents to irrational rage -- such tactics virtually guaranteed the marginalization of any political or social faction, driving its members to a comfortable anonymity for fear of ridicule and ostracism. People think because they aren't stepping over dead bodies in the streets that we are not at war. They don't stop to think that people are, in fact, dying physically, emotionally and spiritually in the schoolyard, via sick video games and Internet stalkers, through Prozac-style drugs that steal the will and compromise judgment. Today Americans are conditioned to view juvenile crime, illegitimacy, abortion, suicide and drug addiction as mental problems instead of moral problems. We can't tell the difference between a love affair and exploitative sex, between flirting and sexual harassment, between white lies and perjury, between a schoolboy carrying a butter knife and a 6-inch switchblade. What Americans bought were critical changes in behavior, beliefs and world views. By applying advertising and agitation in just the right proportions, our adversaries learned they could create a mob mentality and suppress independent thinking. Technically, this is called the science of coercion. If done properly, one can fool nearly all the people all the time. Looking back, we can discern a pattern whereby unpopular policies first were legitimized, then institutionalized, before average people knew what hit them. Every societal faction was presented a different pitch: business, the intelligentsia, religious organizations and lawmakers. Counterculture leaders incorporated Karl Marx's "Theory of Alienation," Theodor Adorno's "Theory of Thought Disruption," Erich Fromm's "Authoritarian Personality" and James Rawlings Rees' experiments in mass neurosis to reorient American values, eventually generating what Messrs. Weyrich, Thomas and Dobson now see as political and moral impotence. Today, the war against authority, parents and the American dream has taken a blatant and frightening turn, as students from Littleton to Paducah, Ky., run for cover. Like the proverbial frog that eventually meets its demise in the simmering pot, our society has moved from the innocent relaxing of school dress codes and removal of "Yes, Maam's" to police roaming school hallways and pornographic, sado-masochistic Web sites. We cocoon behind gated communities, install remote locks in our cars, and when our kids go to school dressed like something out of "Nightmare on Elm Street," we just shut up. How did we lose? We lost by basing our strategy on wishful thinking instead of on the realities of war, by allowing turf battles to split our alliances, by treating our allies like competition instead of welcoming them as friends. If we are to save our way of life in the coming century, individuals of principle will have to don the mentality of the resistance fighter. We no longer have the luxury of time for righteous indignation. B.K. Eakman is executive director of the National Education Consortium and author of a new book, "Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education" (Huntington House). |
Rabbi Daniel Lapin wrote a book America's Real War . He writes, (January 14, 1999):
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book. We Jews have a religious obligation to
acknowledge the good done to us--an obligation we have
shamefully neglected. Indeed far too many Jewish leaders
vilify religious Christians, even while accepting their
support for Israel and other causes. Many Jews--including
some of my dearest friends--feel threatened or insulted by
the assertion that America is, and should be, a Christian
nation. On the contrary, such a statement, with which I
heartily agree, should be welcomed by Jews and all other
minorities. No one is suggesting that Christian theology
should in any way be imposed on Americans, and the
Constitution would utterly forbid such an imposition. But in
the realms of ethics (how we behave as individuals toward
one another) and politics (how we order our lives together
with one another), a great many well-meaning, patriotic
Americans believe that we should find guidance in the Laws
of Moses, and I am proud to stand among them. In this book I
answer questions such as 1)Why are Jews so I show that the underdog is not always noble and the poor are not automatically virtuous. Also that anti-Semitism is more of a political bludgeon to silence conservatives than a real threat to Jews today. I wrote this book in the sincere hope that it will not only be interesting but, more importantly, useful to you |
Patrick Buchanan correctly says that we are in a culture war:
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WHY WE CAN'T QUIT THE CULTURE WAR by PATRICK J. BUCHANAN February 19, 1999
With the Senate's failure to muster even a bare majority for the conviction of Bill Clinton, some conservatives are near despair. "I no longer believe that there is a moral majority," writes veteran activist Paul Weyrich. "I do not believe that a majority of Americans actually share our values." "If there really were a moral majority, Bill Clinton would have been driven out of office months ago," he laments. "The culture we are living in has become an ever-wider sewer. ... we are caught up in a cultural collapse ... so great that it simply overwhelms politics." He urges conservatives to "drop out" and "quarantine" themselves from a poisoned culture and the politics it has produced. Henry Hyde echoes his despair, "I wonder if, after this culture war is over ... an America will survive that will be worth fighting to defend." Is the culture war over? Has our culture become so debased that conservatives have no choice but to secede? To answer those questions, we must ask first: At its original and deepest level, what is the culture war all about? Who are the contending forces? Ultimately, our culture war is about one question: Is God dead, or is God king? For centuries, this issue has been crucial. If God is dead, as Nietzsche wrote, everything is permissible, and eventually, one will logically reach the conclusion of Paris' student radicals of 1968: The only thing that is forbidden is to forbid. But if God is king, men have a duty to try, as best they can, to conform their lives to his will and shape society in accordance with his law. Defection and indifferentism are not options open to us. We are commanded to fight. Yet, looking back over recent decades, it is impossible to deny that an anti-Western counterculture has completed its long march through America's institutions, capturing the arts, entertainment, the public schools and colleges, the media and even many churches. In politics, conservatives have won more than they have lost, but in the culture, the left and its Woodstock values have triumphed. Divorce, dirty language, adultery, blasphemy, euthanasia, abortion, pornography, homosexuality, cohabitation and so on were not unknown in 1960. But today, they permeate our lives. The critical change has come in the attitudes of our elites. What our leaders once believed to be symptoms of social decline many now celebrate as harbingers of a freer, better society. What was once decried as decadence is now embraced as progress.
The counterculture of the 1960s is now the dominant culture. As in France in 1789, most of the intellectuals have gone over to the revolution. America has been converted, and her conversion may prove as historic as that of Constantinian Rome to Christianity. Politics is the last contested battlefield of our culture war, for only through politics can the new cult, a militant and intolerant secularist faith that will abide no other, impose its values on us. But how, then, does it avail us to withdraw from politics, to retreat, to give up? Where do we go? What shall we do? We cannot quit. We can no more walk away from the culture war than we could walk away from the Cold War. For the culture war is at its heart a religious war about whether God or man shall be exalted, whose moral beliefs shall be enshrined in law, and what children shall be taught to value and abhor. With those stakes, to walk away is to abandon your post in time of war. Is the battle truly lost? Or, as traditionalist Russell Kirk argued, can a culture renew itself by its very struggle to renew itself, even as the striving of sinners to lead good lives is the making of saints? Perhaps T.S. Eliot was right when he said there are no lost causes, because there are no won causes. The struggle is eternal. What is needed today is the same awareness that finally hit the conservative men of America in the early 1770s. Loyal to their king, they had rejected the counsel of Sam Adams to rebel against him and fight. Finally, it dawned on these conservatives that they had to become radicals; they had to overthrow the king's rule to keep what they had. And they found in George Washington a conservative leader with the perseverance to take us to victory over an enemy superior in every way but courage and character. |
At his website Buchanan writes:
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THE CULTURE WAR America is locked in a cultural war for the soul of our country. A battle between the values for which America has always fought-family, faith, freedom, and country-and the gospel of New Age relativism rages in our schools, our courts, and our popular culture. On one side: secularists armed with the proposition that God is dead. They preach a hedonistic dogma where man is the highest authority and his whim is the only absolute. They claim that God's law has no place in our courtrooms, and his name no place in our classrooms. Their governing axioms reduce faith to superstition and traditional morality to quaint nonsense. No fixed standards of right and wrong, beautiful or debased, healthy or sick. If it feels good, do it. The mob listened, and today, we reap relativism's poisoned harvest. Filthy art financed by our tax dollars. Television steeped in raw sex and romanticized violence. Movies that mock religious faith. Rock concerts that extol lust and cop-killing. Most of Hollywood has crossed the cultural divide-and left people of faith and principle on the other side. After generations of feeding our children filth and allowing moral polluters to dump poison into cultural well, why are we surprised that ours has become a stunted and sick society? The road back is rutted with the efforts of patriots gone before. "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to prosperity," George Washington said, "religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man seek the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness." If we are to reclaim American morality, we must pour truth into the void carved out by relativism. We must revalue life by promising that our weakest, from the unborn to the elderly, will be protected. We must restore traditional values-patriotism, loyalty, courage, and decency. We must revitalize our popular culture with magazines, movies and TV shows detoxified of raw sex, violence, and filthy language. We must ensure that the schools for which we pay taxes teach the values we hold dear. The stakes are high: the safety of our children, the state of our society, the soul of our country. But if America is to once again be "one nation under God," this Culture War must be won. |
Richard John Neuhaus called our secular society -- "The Naked Public Square" ... public life stripped of all reference to religion and religiously grounded morality." He believes that America is in a dangerous situation because it has abandoned religion for the secular and secular values are dangerous. In a lecture at The Heritage Foundation delivered October 8, 1996 titled "A Strange New Regime: The Naked Public Square and the Passing of the American Constitutional Order" he said:
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... I have argued that the naked public square is a very dangerous place, especially for minorities. Where there is in the public square no transcendent aspiration to the good, there is no transcendent barrier against the inclination to evil. And so Jefferson's question: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?" The answer, I am convinced, is "No." There is a new pluralism in American life, and it is a
moral pluralism. It is not because the American people are
less attached to what is called the Judeo-Christian
moral tradition. It is, rather, a pluralism created by the
rise of a new class -- call it the knowledge class,
if you will -- that has entrenched itself in the
institutions least accountable to the people, and especially
in the judiciary. This is the phenomenon that gives
form to what are called "the culture wars." When I first
began to write about the culture war many years ago,
critics Let me say what I mean by culture war. We are two nations: one concentrated on rights and laws, the other on rights and wrongs; one radically individualistic and dedicated to the actualized self, the other communal and invoking the common good; one viewing law as the instrument of the will to power and license, the other affirming an objective moral order reflected in a Constitution to which we are obliged; one given to private satisfaction, the other to familial responsibility; one typically secular, the other typically religious; one elitist, the other populist. These strokes are admittedly broad, but the reality is evident enough to anyone who attends to the increasingly ugly rancor that dominates and debases our public life. And, of course, for many Americans, the conflicts in the culture wars run through their own hearts. The conflicts also run through our institutions, including the courts. But I believe it is accurate to say that, in a long series of decisions, the Supreme Court -- and therefore, in due course, the entire federal and state judiciary -- has tended to put the law on one side of the culture war. |
Susan
Estrich, who managed Michael Dukakis’ 1988 presidential
campaign, accused ‘religious extremists’ of coming
out of the closet and beating the system. That used to be
called democracy before what ought to be called the pagan
left decided that only people who think as they do are
entitled to hold office.
cannot
defend its imposed immorality, which has produced, according
to the Census Bureau, the highest divorce rate in the world,
the highest teen pregnancy rate, the most abortions, the
highest percentage of children raised in single-parent
homes, the highest percentage of violent deaths among the
young, and a male homicide rate that is five times greater
than any other developed country except Mexico.
Paradoxically,
Christianity is vital for America's survival. This book is
an Orthodox rabbi's profoundly personal statement about the
importance of Christian faith to the survival of American
civilization. Precisely because I am a Jew, a religious
leader, and a student of my people's history in its two
millennia of exile, I felt compelled to write this
liberal? 2)Why political conservatism and free market
capitalism depend on religious Faith. 3)Why anti-Semitism
and racism are not bigger threats to America than sexual
depravity.
Is
the culture war over? Has our culture become so debased that
conservatives have no choice but to secede? To answer those
questions, we must ask first: At its original and deepest
level, what is the culture war all about? Who are the
contending forces?...
Born
to sin, men have always done wrong. The sea change is that
society no longer accepts the old distinctions between right
and wrong. Thus, the young are astonished that Clinton,
having been consecrated in the secular sacrament of free
elections, might be punished and removed for something so
trivial as perjury.
We
are incessantly told that it is impossible to return to the
days of the Founders. The Constitution, it is said, is a
"living document" responding to the ever-changing
needs of a rapidly changing society, and so forth and so on.
I believe it is not too much to say that those who
talk about a "living Constitution" are in fact saying that
the Constitution is dead. For them, it is an
infinitely pliable text that, in the words of
contemporary literary criticism, has no authorial voice, but
only the voice that we attribute to it. We should not
want to deny that there have been important changes since
the founding period. Of course much has changed in
America, and much has changed also for the better. One has
only to mention slavery, the thought of which
occasioned Jefferson's trembling before the justice of
God.
thought the term excessive, especially when I referred to
the Kulturkampf, an analogy to Bismarck's campaign of
the 1870s to eradicate the influence of religion in German
public life. I believe the analogy is apt. What has
happened in subsequent years has, in my judgment, only
provided added confirmation of the culture war
analysis.