Curtis Dahlgren
Cultural avant-garde? There's nothing new under the sun!
By Curtis Dahlgren
"You wondered whether . . the worst enemies of civilization might not prove to be its petted intellectuals who attack it at its weakest moments — attacked it in the name of reason and in the name of irrationality . . in the name of sex, in the name of perfect and instant freedom." — Saul Bellow, "Mr. Sammler's Planet" (quoted by Chas. Sykes)
THIS COLUMN WILL PROVIDE GRIST AND CUD MATERIAL NOT FOUND THESE DAYS IN ANY OTHER. President Reagan said, "We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth . . If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before."
BUT WHERE ARE WE NOW?
Reagan also said, "We've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" [quoted by John Marini, Imprimis March 2007, www.hillsdale.edu ]
Paradoxically, the "perfect and instant sexual freedom" promoted by our 65-year-old hippies has led to more and more government and less and less real individual freedom. The Great Society can now be officially declared a FLOP. The "establishment" educators and media try to distract us with talk about a "hockey-stick graph" regarding greenhouse gases and global warming (an urban legend, by the way).
THE REAL "HOCKEY-STICK GRAPH" IS THE ONE MEASURING OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS!
William Bennett called this graph the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators. In really obvious "hockey-stick" fashion, our statistics for divorce, illegitimacy, crime, and school dropoutism have gone through the roof, so to speak. The 1800s may not have been Utopian, but as Thomas Sowell says, at least the people who engaged in Wild West shootouts or lynch mobs "spared us the pretense that they were upholding the Constitution." [Newsmax magazine, February 04]
Did you ever stop to think — we now have more murders in one year in the United States than during all the years of the "Wild, Wild West"? The City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, has been averaging more than one murder per day this year, not to mention DC or the rest of our urban centers shining on a hill. These are the fruits of Woodstock and Berkeley and our popular culture. Because there are laws of cause and effect, including the Law of Unintended Consequences. The decline and fall of a nation don't happen overnight, you know.*
A LITTLE HISTORY
In the 1830s and forties, America witnessed a sort of Second Great Awakening. The churches brought the festering sore of slavery to the attention of the general population. The elite political class, of course, desperately tried to side-step the issue by occasionally throwing a bone to the abolitionists while banning anti-slavery materials from the U.S. mails (the Gag Rules of 1835-44, with the approval of the Whig party).
In 1852, the Whigs nominated a military hero, General Winfield Scott, who was thought to be "electable." Alas, the results were not as anticipated: two Democrat Presidents, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, the latter being a disaster (he supported the pro-slavery "special interests" and couldn't figure out what the big deal was about the new Republican party movement). The Whigs had long since withered on the vine.
Following the Civil War and many years of domination by the Republicans, the country's zeal began to turn to apathy again. Here are a few lines from the 1992 book by Charles Sykes, "A Nation of Victims":
"As the mainline churches fell into decline [in the late 1800s], there was an upsurge in spiritualism . . and New Thought [Darwinism/Utopianism]. . . By the time Freudianism first arrived here, Americans were already well-disposed to listen; the groundwork had been thoroughly laid . . Social Darwinism and the rise of an insatiable consumer society — a culture of expectations and entitlements — were the flotsam and jetsam of the triumph of science over faith . . .
"The results were not what the prophets of liberation had envisioned . . Instead of being freed from the oppressive bonds of the past, [man] found himself alone in a world without mooring, norms, sense of direction, or purpose."
ENTER THE FOLLOWERS OF FREUD, STAGE LEFT
"Filling the vacuum created by the decline of institutional faith and the collapse of the moral order it has provoked, psychoanalysis has assumed many of the functions traditionally performed by religion . . Freud himself set the tone for the assault on faith.
"He regarded religion in all its forms as an illusion and therefore recast it as a form of neurosis . . an instance of mental disorder — of madness."
Sykes wrote that this New Establishment didn't need to debate the strictures of family identity or religious faith or sexual morality when they could simply be dismissed as products of the 'authoritarian syndrome. An unsophisticated . . or backward-looking populace hardly needed to be argued with when it could be "cured"!
"By identifying the 'liberal personality' as the antithesis of the authoritarian personality, [the Intelligentsia] equated mental health with an approved political position." — T.W. Adorno in "The Authoritarian Personality" (1950)
In a current column by Mike Heath, "The Sexual Revolution Costs Us Much" (November 11, 2007) NewsWithViews.com Heath says:
"The unrelenting campaign to loosen sexual morals derives its name from a book written by Wilhelm Reich in 1929, which was entitled, appropriately enough, 'The Sexual Revolution.' The original title was 'Sexuality in the Culture War.'
"In the book, Wilhelm Reich — a disciple of Sigmund Freud — set forth his program for radicalizing society by undermining sexual morality. Central to the thinking of Reich was the idea that conservative political views have their origin in the repression of sexuality in the child by an authoritarian father. With time, the conservative ideology becomes incorporated in the character of the child. Character, for Reich, was a bad thing.
"To change an individual's political viewpoint from conservatism to liberalism, the character of the individual must be altered or destroyed through sexual liberation.
According to Reich, the path to a better world lies through the loosening of sexual morality — in others words, a sexual revolution. "
The perfect epitome of this old, old game is the news report that a public school board in Maine voted to offer free birth control (behind the backs of parents) to 11-year-old girls! Charlie Sykes wrote a column in which he suggested that if you know an older male who is having sex with an 11-year-old girl, call 9-11 and her parents, not the school nurse, because a crime is being committed. Freudian political correctness has now reached the point at which it is "appropriate" for a fifth grader can be used like an animal, as long as the couple doesn't light up a cigarette afterwards!
The Woodstock party-goers saw themselves as pioneering something brand new, just like the philosophers in ancient Athens, and the "free love" Nihilists in 1860s Russia. But there's "nothing new" under the sun [NOT EVEN THIS COLUMN].
P.S. In case no one noticed, this column was first posted November 14th, last, under the title The social engineers: Brilliant people or just "primordial pond scum"?
AND THE POINT IS: The term "free love" was coined at least as early as 1910 by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, eleventh edition (article, "Nililism"). Almost immediately after the publication of Darwin's "Origin of Species," the Russian intellectuals went on a cultural rampage in the 1860s — a deliberate attempt to tear down the traditional Family. Their efforts led eventually to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, to Stalinsm, to Maoism, and to the Vietnam War - that ironically, our 1960s "idealists" were protesting! Weird, eh?
© Curtis Dahlgren
"You wondered whether . . the worst enemies of civilization might not prove to be its petted intellectuals who attack it at its weakest moments — attacked it in the name of reason and in the name of irrationality . . in the name of sex, in the name of perfect and instant freedom." — Saul Bellow, "Mr. Sammler's Planet" (quoted by Chas. Sykes)
THIS COLUMN WILL PROVIDE GRIST AND CUD MATERIAL NOT FOUND THESE DAYS IN ANY OTHER. President Reagan said, "We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth . . If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before."
BUT WHERE ARE WE NOW?
Reagan also said, "We've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" [quoted by John Marini, Imprimis March 2007, www.hillsdale.edu ]
Paradoxically, the "perfect and instant sexual freedom" promoted by our 65-year-old hippies has led to more and more government and less and less real individual freedom. The Great Society can now be officially declared a FLOP. The "establishment" educators and media try to distract us with talk about a "hockey-stick graph" regarding greenhouse gases and global warming (an urban legend, by the way).
THE REAL "HOCKEY-STICK GRAPH" IS THE ONE MEASURING OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS!
William Bennett called this graph the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators. In really obvious "hockey-stick" fashion, our statistics for divorce, illegitimacy, crime, and school dropoutism have gone through the roof, so to speak. The 1800s may not have been Utopian, but as Thomas Sowell says, at least the people who engaged in Wild West shootouts or lynch mobs "spared us the pretense that they were upholding the Constitution." [Newsmax magazine, February 04]
Did you ever stop to think — we now have more murders in one year in the United States than during all the years of the "Wild, Wild West"? The City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, has been averaging more than one murder per day this year, not to mention DC or the rest of our urban centers shining on a hill. These are the fruits of Woodstock and Berkeley and our popular culture. Because there are laws of cause and effect, including the Law of Unintended Consequences. The decline and fall of a nation don't happen overnight, you know.*
A LITTLE HISTORY
In the 1830s and forties, America witnessed a sort of Second Great Awakening. The churches brought the festering sore of slavery to the attention of the general population. The elite political class, of course, desperately tried to side-step the issue by occasionally throwing a bone to the abolitionists while banning anti-slavery materials from the U.S. mails (the Gag Rules of 1835-44, with the approval of the Whig party).
In 1852, the Whigs nominated a military hero, General Winfield Scott, who was thought to be "electable." Alas, the results were not as anticipated: two Democrat Presidents, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, the latter being a disaster (he supported the pro-slavery "special interests" and couldn't figure out what the big deal was about the new Republican party movement). The Whigs had long since withered on the vine.
Following the Civil War and many years of domination by the Republicans, the country's zeal began to turn to apathy again. Here are a few lines from the 1992 book by Charles Sykes, "A Nation of Victims":
"As the mainline churches fell into decline [in the late 1800s], there was an upsurge in spiritualism . . and New Thought [Darwinism/Utopianism]. . . By the time Freudianism first arrived here, Americans were already well-disposed to listen; the groundwork had been thoroughly laid . . Social Darwinism and the rise of an insatiable consumer society — a culture of expectations and entitlements — were the flotsam and jetsam of the triumph of science over faith . . .
"The results were not what the prophets of liberation had envisioned . . Instead of being freed from the oppressive bonds of the past, [man] found himself alone in a world without mooring, norms, sense of direction, or purpose."
ENTER THE FOLLOWERS OF FREUD, STAGE LEFT
"Filling the vacuum created by the decline of institutional faith and the collapse of the moral order it has provoked, psychoanalysis has assumed many of the functions traditionally performed by religion . . Freud himself set the tone for the assault on faith.
"He regarded religion in all its forms as an illusion and therefore recast it as a form of neurosis . . an instance of mental disorder — of madness."
Sykes wrote that this New Establishment didn't need to debate the strictures of family identity or religious faith or sexual morality when they could simply be dismissed as products of the 'authoritarian syndrome. An unsophisticated . . or backward-looking populace hardly needed to be argued with when it could be "cured"!
"By identifying the 'liberal personality' as the antithesis of the authoritarian personality, [the Intelligentsia] equated mental health with an approved political position." — T.W. Adorno in "The Authoritarian Personality" (1950)
In a current column by Mike Heath, "The Sexual Revolution Costs Us Much" (November 11, 2007) NewsWithViews.com Heath says:
"The unrelenting campaign to loosen sexual morals derives its name from a book written by Wilhelm Reich in 1929, which was entitled, appropriately enough, 'The Sexual Revolution.' The original title was 'Sexuality in the Culture War.'
"In the book, Wilhelm Reich — a disciple of Sigmund Freud — set forth his program for radicalizing society by undermining sexual morality. Central to the thinking of Reich was the idea that conservative political views have their origin in the repression of sexuality in the child by an authoritarian father. With time, the conservative ideology becomes incorporated in the character of the child. Character, for Reich, was a bad thing.
"To change an individual's political viewpoint from conservatism to liberalism, the character of the individual must be altered or destroyed through sexual liberation.
According to Reich, the path to a better world lies through the loosening of sexual morality — in others words, a sexual revolution. "
The perfect epitome of this old, old game is the news report that a public school board in Maine voted to offer free birth control (behind the backs of parents) to 11-year-old girls! Charlie Sykes wrote a column in which he suggested that if you know an older male who is having sex with an 11-year-old girl, call 9-11 and her parents, not the school nurse, because a crime is being committed. Freudian political correctness has now reached the point at which it is "appropriate" for a fifth grader can be used like an animal, as long as the couple doesn't light up a cigarette afterwards!
The Woodstock party-goers saw themselves as pioneering something brand new, just like the philosophers in ancient Athens, and the "free love" Nihilists in 1860s Russia. But there's "nothing new" under the sun [NOT EVEN THIS COLUMN].
P.S. In case no one noticed, this column was first posted November 14th, last, under the title The social engineers: Brilliant people or just "primordial pond scum"?
AND THE POINT IS: The term "free love" was coined at least as early as 1910 by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, eleventh edition (article, "Nililism"). Almost immediately after the publication of Darwin's "Origin of Species," the Russian intellectuals went on a cultural rampage in the 1860s — a deliberate attempt to tear down the traditional Family. Their efforts led eventually to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, to Stalinsm, to Maoism, and to the Vietnam War - that ironically, our 1960s "idealists" were protesting! Weird, eh?
© Curtis Dahlgren
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
