Curtis Dahlgren
America's nervous breakdown: Deviltry gets a smack-down
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By Curtis Dahlgren
June 3, 2021

Note: Republished from June 24, 2015 and October 14, 2020

"We're going insane, folks. We're literally being swept up by the insane and being told we have to join them in their insanity . . When there are no objective facts, when everything is up for dispute, when things that are undeniably fact are not permitted to be, we have a problem." – Rush Limbaugh

RUSH IS NOT OUT ON A LIMB ALL ALONE. In the mouth of two or three witnesses, a thing is established:

"We are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that's about to hijack your birthright to think and say what resides in your heart . . I serve as a moving target for the media who've called me everything from 'ridiculous' and 'duped' to a 'brain-injured, senile, crazy old man.'" – Charlton Heston (at Harvard Law, 1999)

"I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of insidious forces working from within." – Gen. Douglas MacArthur

"An elective despotism is not the government we fought for." – Thomas Jefferson

"Everywhere you look you see the cultural and societal degradation of America." – Michael Savage

Savage added that someone at the head of a national ticket needs to come right out and say so! Ever since the 1992 election, consultancy "experts" have told the Establishment candidates to do the opposite. The term "culture war" is the equivalent of "slavery" to the Whigs in 1852. They thought that the issue would go away if they didn't talk about it. The Whig party went out with a whimper, not a bang. The "shy" GOP still wins elections because the other party is so far out there. The Democrats have jumped the shark (and the Clintons have been right in the swim there for years). The following is an excerpt from "America's nervous breakdown; another legacy of the '60s" (CD, 2-21-2004):

"For decades, the theory of deconstruction has enjoyed a vogue in academe. It originated in linguistics, where it posited the none-too-radical idea that language was a function of shared meaning . . From linguistics, however, deconstruction passed into textual interpretation . . . If deconstruction had confined itself to English departments, it might have served as just another analytical tool. But deconstructionists were rabid partisans who realized their theory had grave implications not just for literature, but for the very notion of reality . . .

"When reality itself is a subjective construct, morality is also relative. . [and] in the longer view, the Clinton scandal not only raised the issue of deconstruction; it was the latest and fiercest battle in what we might now recognize as a long cultural civil war . . . " – L.A. Times (quoted in Las Vegas Review-Journal (Jan. 7, 1999)

"We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." – George Orwell

Like "thou shalt not bear false witness," etc. Full-time politicians will say, "We're into government, not culture." RINOs will say "Leave that to the theologians." However, one legacy of the 1960s is barometer shepherds who also put a finger to the wind to see which way it's blowing – to see what's the "HOT" issue du jour. In the first "nervous breakdown" column, I quoted a Senate speech by Zell Miller of Georgia:

"The Old Testament prophet Amos was a sheep herder who lived back in the Judean hills, away from the cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Compared to the intellectual urbanites like Isaiah and Jeremiah, he was just an unsophisticated country hick. But Amos had a unique grasp of political and social issues and his poetic literary skill was among the best of all the prophets. That familiar quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. about 'Justice will rush down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream' are Amos' words . . This blunt speaking moral conscience of his time warns . . as if he were speaking to us today:

"'The days will come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord'!"

We are beginning to see that famine. Christians shall soon be hated "of all nations" – including this one – judging by the trends of popular culture. The "way" was being prepared over one hundred years ago, as elaborated by Charles J. Sykes in "A Nation of Victims" in 1992:

"As the mainline churches fell into decline [in the late 1800s], there was an upsurge in spiritualism . . and New Thought. . . By the time Freudianism first arrived here, Americans were already well-disposed to listen . . 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 . .

"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 . . . 'By identifying the liberal personality as the antithesis of the authoritarian personality, [the intelligentsia] equated mental health with an approved political position'!"

Sykes was citing T.W. Adorno in the previous sentence ("The Authoritarian Personality," 1950). If you think we're going "insane," as Rush does, just be aware that the Plan has been a long time coming. A professor wrote "This Beats Working For a Living" in 1973 to anonymously spill the gambit of Academe:

"Too many professors pander to their audience and help the student believe what his feelings of inadequacy have led him to assert: that he is smart and educated, that youth equates with eternal wisdom, that age equates with obstinacy and wrongness, and that the past has no lessons for the present . . they place self above all those things that history taught to be important . . .

"In short, their attitude of elitism leads them to believe they know better what is best for the country than do older or less educated yokels, and they intend to give it to the country whether it wants their solutions or not."

The "Plan" was to let the old people and their notions of Liberty die off; then replace them with a new breed of cat that doesn't mind a little "elective despotism" – in the words of Jefferson. Napoleon crowned himself emperor because he was tired of "gridlock." Benito's power grab was intended to "get things done." Hitler just wanted to build infrastructure and get the trains running on time (a little sarcasm there). Liberals may be winning the battles and losing the war though; the millennials are more pro-life than some earlier generations. The young are not as anti-God as the politically insane were counting on. Interest in ancestry is growing. Interest in useless college courses is waning. There may be a backlash against "the approved political positions." Atheists such as Dawkins and Harris thought that by now there would be so much social pressure against belief in God that it would be embarrassingly unthinkable. The church would be driven underground. That is not the case yet, so the Left turns unabashedly to censorship via lawsuit and intimidation. Anything "annoying" – to them – is considered harassment. Well, as George Orwell once said:

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear."

P.S. Happy birthday, Magna Carta. One of our Founding Fathers, Dr. Benjamin Rush, was once asked "are you a democrat or an aristocrat?" "I am neither," he said. "I am a Christocrat. I believe He, alone, who created and redeemed man is qualified to govern him."

President Monroe said, "While then [America] retains its sound and healthful state, everything will be safe. They will choose competent and faithful representatives . . [but] It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin."

PPS: The current Congress has deconstructed the obvious meaning of "infrastructure."

© Curtis Dahlgren

 

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Curtis Dahlgren

Curtis Dahlgren is semi-retired in southern Wisconsin, and is the author of "Massey-Harris 101." His career has had some rough similarities to one of his favorite writers, Ferrar Fenton... (more)

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