Where Does America’s Newfound Enthusiasm for Socialism Come From?
Who ever imagined that the Democrat Party would move so far let that their main selling point would be “socialism”? With the leading candidate for Democrat nominee for president and the most influential junior member of the House declaring themselves “democratic socialists”—as if the modifier “democratic” was ever honored in socialist regimes—and most Democrat candidates for president supporting similar policies as the self-declared socialists, this is not President Clinton’s or even President Obama’s Democrat Party. The Democrat Party has not only congregated in far left field, but half of the party has also climbed over the fence.
According to a Rasmussen poll
reported on 27 February 2020, “45% of Democrats have a favorable view
of socialism.” Of all voters, “eighteen percent (18%) believe the
individual has more power” than the government under socialism.
(Breakdown by party is not specified, but it seems likely that most are
Democrat.) According to a Pew poll reported on 25 June 2019, 65% of Democrats and voters who lean Democrat have a favorable attitude toward socialism.
How
did this newfound love for socialism come about? Just as with a disease
pandemic we search for the origin of the disease, so too with an
ideological pandemic, we need to know the origin of this ideological
transformation. As it turns out, the origin of our socialist epidemic is
clear. According to Ned Ryun,
“The Left’s long march through our educational system, which has
resulted in deep dishonesty about socialism and Communism and
indoctrinated generations with socialist ideas and a loathing of
America, set the stage for Sanders.” Let us explore in more detail what happened in our universities and then in our schools.
The
leftist transformation of education in America began with the
counterculture of the 1960s which rejected wholesale the values and
institutions of modern America, replacing them with getting high,
dropping out, returning to subsistence agriculture, and commune living —
in short, anything contrary to the status quo. As the years went by,
many, disillusioned with poverty and social chaos but not having lost
their distaste for America, returned to education, some eventually
becoming teachers and professors. The counterculture rejection of
America became the theoretical debunking of America through the adoption of revolutionary Marxism
in its many varieties, Leninist, Stalinist, Trotskyist, Maoist, and its
many heroes, such Mao, Che Guevara, and Ho Chi Min. Thus, through the
second half of the 20th century, professional organizations of
anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists had Marxist sections
and regular Marxist sessions at their annual conventions.
However, orthodox
Marxism, which claims that capitalist society is characterized by a
wealthy, capital-owning bourgeois oppressing and exploiting a
subservient proletarian working class, never had much attraction for
Americans generally, who saw themselves as middle class and appreciated
the prosperity and opportunity in America. The orthodox vision of
Marxism with its conflict between economic classes never conquered the
liberal vision of free citizens associating by choice and using their
initiative and talents to gain success.
The
great challenge to liberalism, and the new champion of a neo-Marxist
vision of a class-based society, came from feminism, the second wave of
the 1960s through the fourth wave of the 21st century. The class
struggle was no longer seen as between economic classes, but between
gender classes, with males manning the “patriarchy” and oppressing
blameless female victims. Feminists dedicated themselves to overthrowing
the patriarchy, and despite claims of wishing to advance “equality,”
aimed to displace males and advantage females. This gender
class-conflict model was adopted as the central truth of feminist
professors in women’s studies, sociology, anthropology, political
science, “cultural studies,” education, social work, law, and throughout
colleges and universities. Females widely accepted the feminist vision, as did many males anxious as always to gain favor from the females.
The
feminist movement gained great success. Throughout America’s
institutions, females were given preference and special benefits, so
that by the 21st century, females dominated some spheres, such as the
schools, colleges, and universities, and the legal profession. Males only outstrip females in the hours, days, weeks, months, and years worked, as well as, by a vast difference, those injured or killed
in work-related accidents. For some feminists, all of this is not
enough; they demand that males “step back” from leadership and power,
turning all institutions over to females.
The
feminist identity class-conflict model was adopted by other categories
of people to advance their interests. LGBTQ++ framed their demands in
terms of their oppression and victimization by heterosexuals who formed
the superordinate class. They too demanded “equality,” but have been
celebrated and given preference in the name of “diversity and
inclusion.” Race activists adopted the identity class model, arguing
that America is a thoroughly racist society that has victimized African
Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and others. American
institutions responded by giving members of racial and ethnic categories
claiming victim status and marginalization special preference and
benefits, under programs such as “affirmative action” (which, when first
launched by President Kennedy, forbade racial preferences). Racial
activists often characterized members of the “oppressive” class of
whites as evil.
The
new criterion of “representation” of categories of people in the same
percentages as in the general public became the measure to which all
institutions were held. If some categories of people were
“underrepresented,” it was deemed by advocates and activists proof that
the “underrepresentation” was the result of discrimination, alternative explanations
being disregarded. Under the increasingly coercive regulations and laws
supporting “diversity and inclusion,” any membership less than 50%
females, 14% African American, 16% Hispanic, and so on, was regarded as
sexist and racist exclusion. Other criteria for recruitment, such as
past achievement, merit, excellence, and potential, were set aside
as allegedly being “white male supremacist” talking points, and people
were recruited on gender, racial, ethnic, sexuality grounds to insure
statistical “representation” and “diversity and inclusion,” the new criteria
that trumped all others. Needless to say, in terms of functionality,
weak candidates were accepted, and strong candidates turned away on the
basis of the new criteria. The label for these criteria and selections
is, ironically, “social justice.”
At the same time
as the identity class-conflict model displaced the liberal model of free
individuals, the basis of knowledge, research, scholarship, and the
search for truth was undermined in colleges and universities by a new
set of European ideas called “postmodernism.”
This nihilistic epistemology argued that everything is subjective, so
no objective truth could ever be established or maintained. Feminists
adopted this rationale for subjectivity with enthusiasm, claiming that
only they could understand who they are and what they need. Some ethnic
activists among professors invented new histories to show the
superiority of their groups. The result of “postmodernism” was to negate
the traditional search for truth and the value of objective knowledge. With truth and knowledge out of the way, all that was left for “higher
education” was advocacy for the “subaltern,” oppressed, and
marginalized, so political advocacy replaced scholarship and professors
became not seekers of truth, but advocates of preferred categories of
people. The question was no longer what you know, but whose side you are
on.
Orthodox
Marxist-Leninism did not disappear entirely. It was resurrected when it
served to advance the interests of oppressed and marginalized
minorities. Among professors of anthropology, political science,
international studies, geography, and the like, “postcolonial theory”
was adopted as the central theory of international relations. Following
Leninism's argument that the capitalist class struggle was exported to
third-world countries through imperialism and colonialism, “postcolonial
theory” tried to explain the weakness, corruption, and violence of
newly independent third-world countries by their previous colonial
status. The main point of this theory is to blame Europe and America,
the West, for any and all ills in the world. The world before Western
imperialism is anti-historically portrayed as peaceful, loving, and
productive, this wonderful Eden transformed and destroyed by the evil
West. The world is, according to this theory, an example of class
conflict writ large, with the West as the oppressors and the rest as
blameless victims of the West’s depredations. This vision is one of the
rationales of the open border policy so beloved by the Democrat Party,
the flooding of America by non-whites and minority ethnics in order to
erase the racial and economic class oppression of the past and present.
The
upshot of the ideological transformation of colleges and universities
is that the identity class-conflict model of America has been widely
accepted as the true picture. And although Americans in the past had not
identified as proletarian members of the working class, having adopted
the identity class conflict model, they increasingly accept the orthodox
Marxist economic class-conflict model, as consistent with their
class-conflict worldview. The orthodox Marxist solution to class
conflict and oppression is socialism, which has been adopted by a large
part of the Democrat Party and is the explicit objective of some leaders
of the party.
It is worth keeping in mind that all of our college and university graduates of the past fifty years have been indoctrinated
with identity class conflict theory and the sexism and racism that it
claims to be the main attributes of America. Our education graduates
have entered the school system where they spread the ideology that they
learned in university to the pupils that they are supposed to educate.
Other graduates enter the civil service bureaucracy, aiming to direct
their actions to advance “social justice” in spite of its exclusionary
injustices. Graduates have transformed business and industry, applying
criteria of “diversity and inclusion” in place of merit and potential.
And, of course, our elected officials, infected with the same ideology,
act to legislate their Marxist vision and their “social justice” goals
into law.
It is no mystery
where America’s newfound and counterfactual enthusiasm for socialism has
come from. It has come from the ideological infection that is pandemic
in our educational system.
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