Lesson 80- Strategies of Humanists and the Communist Manifesto

          If there is anything that you can say about the secular humanist it’s, first, they have a clear vision of what they want; second, that are willing to work over the long-haul to get it; third, they have a well mapped-out strategy for accomplishing their ends; and lastly, they aren’t afraid to tell other people what they intend to do and how they intend to do it.

          Since the time of the Renaissance, the ancestors of today’s humanist have yearned to return to the pagan past of ancient Rome and Greece that preceded Christianity. Much of the art, sculpture, and poetry that came out of that period was about Greek and Roman gods and the legends that surrounded them. They dreamed of a utopian society similar to the one described in Plato’s Republic where an enlightened few, like Plato’s philosopher kings, would assume control and make decisions for the benefit of everyone else. In other words, they dreamed of a world ruled by “enlightened despots” who, in their pride, believed that they knew what was good for everyone else.

 

The climax of their efforts came with the French Revolution of 1789 and when this failed they simply accepted the fact that their vision for a New, non-Christian, World Order would take a little longer to accomplish than they had expected. Thus, they planned for the long term and successfully passed their vision from one generation to the next.

The plan was simply to infiltrate the major social institutions and to slowly shift their policies away from their Christian perspective and replace it with a new perspective based on humanistic values. To do this they needed an organization that would attract powerful and influential men and, at least in Europe, the Masonic lodges with their secret ceremonies that moved its members from lower to higher positions in the organization became the perfect tool for recruiting them. As members moved higher, the ceremonies could be tailored to find out whether the candidates were sympathetic or non-sympathetic to their vision for a New World Order. Those that were, advanced; those that weren’t, remained where they were. In this way, they could use the power and influence of these men to reshape Western culture. And nowhere was this influence more powerful and effective then in their infiltration into the realm of education. John Dewey, the Father of Progressive Education and the driving force behind the first Humanist Manifesto, dominated the training of teachers in the United States for many, many decades. And thus, even those who were not secular humanists themselves were infected by its premises through the training that they received.  Thus, our educational institutions are rightly identified with liberal values and the students that they produce are, for the most part, more liberal than their parents.

At first, it was the colleges and universities, then the high schools, and now their influence is reaching down to the elementary schools where teachers are teaching “diversity training”, a code word for accepting the gay lifestyle, along with the three R’s. And if they, and the teacher that they trained were less than  successful in replacing traditional values in their students, they could depend on the authors and publishers of textbooks to finish the job. One of my daughters attended a local Catholic junior college operated by Ukrainian nuns, a conservative group if there ever was one. Yet, the business textbook that she used supported situational ethics, which is based on the atheistic philosophy of Existentialism.

This raised two questions in my mind. First, what is a moral philosophy doing in a business textbook? And, second, what is a textbook like this doing in a Catholic junior college? This same junior college had a Buddhist teaching the freshman religion course and, according to my daughter, he spent most of his time attacking or undermining the teachings of the Catholic Church. Another friend sent his daughter to another Catholic college and was shocked to discover that one of her assignments from a lay teacher was to view pornographic movies. Fortunately, when the parents complained, the nun in charge cancelled the teacher’s assignment.

In a previous program I mentioned that viruses are unable to reproduce themselves and thus, when they invade our bodies, they take over the cells reproductive mechanism and use it to reproduce themselves. It appears that some Catholic institutions have been infected by the social virus of secular humanism and either through the books that they use or the teachers themselves have transmitted to their students secular humanistic values rather than Catholic ones.

The influence of secular humanistic values on both our secular and Catholic educational institutions was highlighted by an article in “The Catholic Standard of Times” that quoted Professor Alan Charles Kors, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania who co-authored a book entitled, “The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses.” Professor Kors, who is Jewish, said, “most universities are trying to imitate their Ivy League counterparts, which have become havens for a new kind of politically correct orthodoxy…” He described that orthodoxy as, “A systematic bigotry toward, and discrimination against, Christians - and specifically Catholics- perspectives in American education.”… “The very universities that ban anti-feminist speech in the name of civility and sensitivity to the cultures of others, in a hypocritical double-standard, proclaim Catholic-bashing to be the very model of their academic freedom and devotion to freedom of expression.” For example, he says, “Catholic students must bear the insult of Andres Serrano’s (art of a) crucifix immersed in the artist’s urine- and Serranno is invited to university after university to exhibit his work, and give speeches on art. If the exhibit had immersed a Star of David or a portrait of Malcolm X in urine, the exhibit would be closed. Heads would roll. The (academic) administration would lead candlelight vigils against bigotry, and institute a mandatory sensitivity training for all concerned.”… He continues,  “If a large number of our secular universities were honest, they would (state) explicitly: ‘ We believe that the United States of America is a racist, sexist, homophobic, repressive nation, and for high tuition, we will spend the next four years to try to un-brainwash your children from what their families and communities have taught them.” In other words, Professor Kors believes they should openly admit the real aim of their educational program.

According to the article Professor Kors says “he finds it troubling that Catholic universities are adopting” the very attitudes of the secular universities that are attempting to undermine Catholicism. If the Catholic tradition is not going to be kept alive in the secular universities and public universities, then where are we going to find this core preserved- if not in the Catholic universities…?”

Kors, who teaches 17th and 18th century intellectual European history, says, “Never, in the history of all creeds, has there been more intellectual dynamism, vitality, philosophical diversity, mutual criticism, and natural philosophical liberty than in the history of the Catholic Church… Against the crude, current academic categories of (political correctness based on) race, ethnicity, and sexuality, (the Catholic Church and Catholic education) affirms the moral truth of a common humanity based upon our existence as beings with rational and responsible souls…Catholic universities… must bear witness that freedom is a gift that distinguishes us from the beast.”

Thus, the anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, “political correct” spirit of today’s secular universities has invaded the Catholic universities too and it is either a direct or indirect consequence of the secular humanistic movement that began in the French Revolution that set out to destroy the Judeo/Christian roots of Western culture.

The secular humanist understand that whoever controls the educational institutions controls the future because those that you educate will eventually influence the direction and policies of the other institutions which they will come to lead.   

The success of this strategy is obvious to anyone who is paying attention to the flow of Western history. The United Nations has been heavily influenced by their efforts. The European Union, which is attempting to united all the different countries of Europe under one standard, refused to include in its new constitution any reference to the role that Christianity played in the shaping of European culture. Christianity, for all practical purposes, is a dead or dying religion in most European countries. However, contrary to the expectations of the secular humanist, a militant Islam is about to replace it. One day, I suspect, these social engineers, when they are faced with a dominant Muslim culture, will regret the day that they ever undermined Europe’s Christian roots for, as Professor Kors pointed out, the intellectual tradition of freedom is the heritage of the Catholic Church.

But one doesn’t have to go to Europe to see the effectiveness of their plan. There is plenty evidence of it here in the United States. By strategically placing their adherents in the colleges and universities they have gained access to the “best and brightest” of our children and have succeeded in turning out generations of students who had been infected with their vision. These students, who rise to important positions in society, either knowingly or unknowingly, work towards the implementation of the humanist’s dream.

Thus, those who wrote the textbooks for our schools began to revise history by leaving out any references to the Christian foundation of this country or the Christian beliefs that motivated our Founding Fathers. Judges in our courts started to hand down decisions that rejected the Christian values of our nation and replaced them with ones that reflected the values of the secular humanist. The term “separation of church and state” was quoted so often that many came to believe that it was part of the Constitution instead of part of a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a church group to assure them that no government would be permitted to interfere with their right to exercise their religious freedom. Strategic test cases were brought before the federal courts which resulted in the Supreme Court prohibiting prayer and Bible reading in the public schools while, at the same time,  school boards voted to include courses in “Value Clarification” based on “Situational Ethics, and to require schools to distribute condoms and to refer girls to abortion clinics without their parents’ knowledge. Other strategic tests cases were brought before the court to prohibit religious displays, such as the Ten Commandments, in public buildings and one federal judge actually rendered a decision stating that the words “under God” in the Pledge Allegiance violated the “separation of church and state.” Recently, the Declaration of Independence has come under scrutiny because it mentions the Creator as the source of our rights. The Girl Scouts added a new badge entitled “To Be A Women” which required the girls to visit an abortion clinic as part of the requirement. In protest, Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia instructed all Catholic churches and schools to replace their Girl Scout Troops with the Camp Fire Girls. However, as time passed and it faded from memory, the Girl Scout Troops returned. It is for this reason that I refuse to buy Girl Scout cookies to this day. I will make an individual donation to the troop but I will not buy anything in which the central agency shares. Then the Boy Scouts came under attack because they excluded openly gay scouts and scoutmasters from their organization. The humanists have fought to get federal installation to prohibit them from using any federal facility and the United Way has excluded them from receiving any funds for the same reason. As a result of this, I called the United Way and informed them that I will no longer contribute to them.

I could go on and mention other victories won by the secular humanist but I think that what I have mentioned should convince any thinking person that a numerically small group of people, who have placed themselves in strategic areas of society, have succeeded in pushing their programs far more effectively than the disorganized general public. Reverend Jerry Falwell was correct when he named them “The Silent Majority.”

And, if “The Silent Majority” is unaware of the Cultural War that is taking place, the secular humanists are not. They know that they have been involved in a war and have acted accordingly. Unfortunately, it’s not much of a war because the forces of Christianity are either unaware, indifferent, incompetent, or so disorganized that they couldn’t muster an effective counter-attack even if they could figure out what to do. What’s even worse is that many liberal Christians have joined the other side by supporting contraception, abortion, and the gay agenda while many conservative Christian groups would rather spend their time and energy fighting other Christians over minute theological points.

The ancient Romans principle of “divide and conquer” proved its effectiveness when in October of 1976, Leo Pfeffer,  a leading humanist, professed hater of the Catholic Church and  professor of constitutional law and chairman of the Department of Political Science at Long Island University, gave a speech in Philadelphia entitled “Issues that Divide: The Triumph of Secular Humanism.” The gist of the speech was that the battle was over and secular humanism had triumphed over the churches, especially the Catholic Church.

Pfeffer’s speech displays the final characteristics of the secular humanist. They are not afraid to tell you what they intend to do and how they intend to do it. They love to issue manifestos. The Humanists Manifesto of 1932, and updates that followed, have spelled out their objectives for anyone to read. And, of course, the most famous manifesto is the Communist Manifesto that Fredrick Engel wrote in 1848 with Karl Marx. Anyone who wants to know what the Communists believe, why they believe it, and what they intend to do about it, need go no farther than to read what they themselves have written. Therefore, I am going to review the major points of the Communist Manifesto so that we might better understand what they believe and what they intend to do about it.

Marx and Engel open the Communist Manifesto by saying that Communism was a ghost that was haunting Europe which had all the rulers trembling over their fear of a Communist Revolution. In fact, their fear causes them to unite against communism and to suspect anyone who objected about anything of being a  communist. There is an element of truth in this for two reasons. First, conservative forces are inclined to charge any attempt to change the “status quo” as being communist led or communist inspired. Thus, both the labor leaders who fought for unionization and Martin Luther King were suspected of being agents of the communist by those who opposed them. Second, communist do try to infiltrate any revolutionary movement that might be able to be steered towards communistic goals. However, this does not mean that anyone who objects to the “status quo” is a communist.

History, says the Manifesto, is the dialectical story of class struggle between the “haves” and “have nots” that always resulted in a revolution that led to new groups of “haves” and “have nots.”

          Modern capitalistic society, according to Marx and Engel, has reduced the struggle to a conflict between the bourgeoisie, or business class, and the proletariat, or working class.

          The rise of the bourgeoisie class began with the increase in trade following the discovery of America and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope.   

This, in turn, led to the destruction of Feudalism because the hand-made methods of production used during the Feudal period were not fast enough to keep up with the increased demand. Consequently “hand-made” production method were replaced by a manufacturing method in which machines and mass production began to replace workers and personal craftsmanship. In other words, the shoemaker who used to craft each shoe to the individual’s foot couldn’t meet the increased demand that came with world trade. First, he couldn’t measure the customers’ foot when he lived thousand of miles away. And, second, he couldn’t keep up with the increased demand. Therefore, the idea of custom-made, hand-crafted shoes had to be replaced by mass-produced, machine made shoes with standardized sizes.

You might recognize that this is an example of the movement from the right lobe to the left lobe of the brain. The feudal shoemaker was, in a sense, an artist who crafted each shoe as a personal expression of his art. The workers who operated the machines that mass produced standardized shoes did not have the same personal input in the product that the shoemaker had. In fact, no one worker could even claim to have made the shoes because the left lobe had broken the process down into individual logical steps which were performed by different workers. Thus, according to Marx, the new manufacturing system cut two way. On the plus side, it made shoes available in greater quantity, in greater variety, to a greater number of people. On the negative side, it eliminated the worker’s sense of personal satisfaction in having created something that expressed his own talent. In fact, one of the major cultural impact of this new capitalistic society was the movement away from the personal relationships of the Middle Ages in which each person felt tied in and related to others towards an impersonal modern world which emphasized individualism and isolation from others.

According to Marx, Capitalism has destroyed all these personal bonds and relationships and has made money or profit the only connection that remains among people. No longer do people see themselves as functioning members of a group with shared beliefs, values, and goals that have come together for mutual survival. According to him, the only thing that ties one person to another is profit. The doctor is not interested in your health; he is interested in your money. The lawyer is not interested in justice; he is interested in money. The priest is not interested in your soul; he is interested in what you contribute to the collection plate. 

The modern day athlete is an example. In the past, the athlete was a member of a community who represented it in competition with other communities. In a sense, the events were turf battles in which one area competed with another area to display the dominance of their males over the other males. The members of the team were residents of the area that they represented and had a basic loyalty to it. However, today the professional athlete is like a hired-gun who will move from team to team depending upon who offers him the most money. There is rarely any loyalty that he has to the team or its owner and, in return, they don’t have any loyalty to him. The moment he becomes unproductive or someone better than him comes along, he is “history.” Such, says Marx, is the result of Capitalism. We have traded relationships for things and personal loyalty for profit.

The result of this movement from hand craft to machine crafted products has been the movement of the population from the rural areas to the cities. Machines need factories; factories need large work forces and railroad lines and harbors to bring in the raw materials and export finish products. Thus, before the Industrial Revolution, women used to sit by their farmhouse fires at night spinning cloth which was collected by a roving merchant who paid them for their work. However, to keep up with the demand, the merchant settled down near the routes of transportation and built a large building, called a factory, to harbor the large machines that would replace the women’s spinning wheel. If they wanted to work for him, then they had to move to where his factory was. Those families that did created a need for other  services, such as, doctors, teachers, lawyers, carpenters, repairmen, clergymen and a host of others who added to the overall population. Eventually, buildings arose around the factory and as time passed, a city arose where there had once been open land. Marx considered this to be a blessing because he saw the city as a place for intellectual stimulation and the rural, farm areas as a place for mental stagnation.

A process of centralization was taking place as manufacturing caused populations to become centralized in cities, government and other institutions also became centralized. Scattered rural areas became towns; towns joined to become cities; cities united to become states; states united to become nations, and eventually nations would unite in some type of international organization.

People during the rural feudal period had established hereditary roles which they followed during their entire lives. Once a shoemaker, always a shoemaker. They could live their entire lives in a five square mile area where they were born, grew up, married, assumed the job or craft of their parents, raised their children to duplicate themselves, and die. It may not have always been a good life but it was secure. One knew who he was and what was expected of him.

In this new system people were on the move. You could be born in one place, grow-up in another place, educated in a third, marry in a fourth, settle down in a fifth, retired in a sixth, and be buried in a seventh. It was a life of change and uncertainty that sacrificed security for freedom and choice.

As world trade increased, said Marx, underdeveloped nations had a choice when they came in contact with developed ones. They could either become extinct or adopt the manufacturing model themselves. In other word, they couldn’t compete against capitalistic science and technology. Once any primitive or underdeveloped group accepted any product made by this new system, they were hooked. Once they took a metal axe to replace their stone axe, they either became dependent on the developed countries to replace them or they had to learn how to make these axes themselves. If they chose the latter, they began a metamorphosis which changed them from “non-economic men” to “economic men.”  They built factories, created cities, wore Western clothes, had wrist watches, ran their days by a schedule, and worked longer than their basic needs required. In other words, they had become capitalist and were Westernized. Eventually, this process would create, for better or worse,  a  world culture based on the Western world’s economic model of Capitalism. In doing so, they would reap both the benefits and problems that accompanied this system.

The agents of this world culture would be the businessmen who, in their quest for higher and higher profits, were unwilling to stay home and simply service local markets. Their motto was “he who doesn’t grow, falls behind.” Thus larger businesses swallowed up smaller ones and moved from local markets to state markets, to national markets, and, finally, to international markets. As these businessmen and merchants flitted about from one country to another they became transmitters of culture. Like bees cross-pollinating flowers as they flitted from one flower to another seeking nectar, the capitalistic businessman was cross-pollinating cultures as they flitted from one culture to another seeking profits. In their travels, they brought American jeans to Asian consumers and brought back Asian martial arts and meditative practices to American consumers.

They were organizing the world on the international level faster and far more effectively than any government or religion had ever done because they didn’t care about your race, religion, morals, or ethnicity. All they cared about was the “color or your money.” Eventually, there would be little cultural distinction in appearance, dress or lifestyle between Asian, African, European, or American children. And, as these business moved to the international level, long before anyone else, they would start to demand the creation of international law and government to protect their business interests. It was inevitable and part of the natural flow of history.

However, according to Marx, Capitalism is not the final chapter in this historical drama because there is another chapter to be written following it. It was the chapter on Communism. Capitalism was only setting the stage for Communism by creating the means of production that would make Communism possible. In other words, you cant Communism until you first have Capitalism. Why is this so?

No economic system ever produce goods and services in the quantity and at the rate that Capitalism does. However, Capitalism has a fatal flaw, says Marx, that will eventually destroy it. It is like Dr. Frankenstein who created a monster who turned on him. Its very ability to produce in such quantity, will eventually destroy it because, although it is a suitable system when the human race is living in want and poverty, it will collapse by the very fact that it will eliminate them.

The flaw in its system is the problem of “overproduction.” Capitalism, in order to motivate people to work beyond their basic needs, entices people by offering them money in relationship to the quantity of things they produced. In other words, they tied “production and distribution” together. Your share of the distribution of good and service us related to the amount that you produce. The more you make the more you get. And, if you don’t produce anything, you don’t get anything.

The problem arises when the system has finally met all of the legitimate needs and wants of the consumer. If the consumer should ever decide that he “has enough”, the system would find itself in a terrible dilemma. When the  demand for their product decreases, the manufacturers are faced with warehouses full of  unwanted goods. Therefore, having over-produced, the owners logically begin to fire or lay workers off and the unemployment rates rises. As more workers become unemployed the demand for other products decrease and the workers in those areas are also fired or laid off. Eventually, Capitalism has a ludicrous situation where millions of workers, who want to work and want to buy the products that are stored in the warehouses, are unable to acquire any money because they only way to get it is to produce something.

In short, Capitalism has tied distribution to production and it can’t stop production without stopping distribution. Never before in history, say Marx, has the human race had a problem where people are starving because there is too much. It’s like a man dying from the lack of food and water in an apartment with a full refrigerator and running water. It defies logic and common sense.

And how does Capitalism solve this problem, asks Marx. In two ways, it either tries to find new markets to buy its surpluses or it destroys what is has produced in order to pay the workers to produce it again. The first solution adds to the expansion of Capitalism throughout the world and the establishment of a world culture as the businessmen try to convince Third World nations that they need to have all of the trinkets and gadgets that Western people have.

The second solution leads to a culture of waste in which the depletion of natural resource and the disposal of waste become major problems that threaten the environment and the quality of life on earth. No longer will producers wait for the consumer to decide what he needs or wants. Billions of dollars will be spent on advertising to stimulate his desire for things that he never knew that he wanted or needed. Products will be assigned “death dates” by the engineers so that they will have to be replaced. Clothing and other products will be manipulated thorough “design obsolescence” so that people will want to replace them simply because they are no longer in sltyle even though they haven’t lost their usefulness.  People will be encouraged to “throw things away” rather than repair them by making the cost of repair almost equal to the cost of a new item. New features on a product will be added bit by bit so that the consumer will want to replace the one he has because it lacks the feature.

Marx says that all of these solutions will ultimately fail because Capitalism will be plagued by reoccurring depression brought on by the problem of “overproduction.” Each time one occurs, smaller manufacturers, will go bankrupt and will be swallowed up by larger ones until finally the world is ruled by super conglomerates which are controlled by just a few super-rich capitalists. At this point, the proletariats, who are living in poverty, will notice that they are the overwhelming majority and, under the leadership of the Communist, they will rise up and overthrow the capitalists. Then the Communist will declare a “dictatorship of the proletariat” and, after seizing control of the factories and other productive forces, they will create a “worker’s paradise” in which “everyone will work according to his ability and receive according to his need.” In other words, they will separate distribution, what one gets, from production, what one makes, and thereby solve the basic flaw in Capitalism.

I’ll have more to say on this but I see that my time is up. Here’s Dom!