EXCLUSIVE: A REPUBLIC IN PERIL
by Joseph Kuhns
Americans seem to sense at a very deep level that something has gone very wrong with our country. But most people cannot put their finger on exactly what it is.
I will state right at the beginning of this essay what I believe is the explanation for the social and political chaos enveloping the nation and society. It is the rise of the extreme Left, the Marxist Left, in our society. They have become very influential, and even dominant in many of our vital cultural institutions, especially our education system. This is true on all levels of education, but especially in higher education. They are also influential in journalism, mass media, and Hollywood. And most ominously, the left wing of the Democratic Party clearly dominates the party and its policies.
But from the very start, I want to emphasize one thing. I am not talking about ordinary American liberals, or even moderate Democrats. I am talking about the extreme Left, the Marxist Left, or in our current parlance, the “Woke-Left”.
Where did this phenomenon come from and what are its goals? In explaining it, since I myself have never been a part of this movement, I will defer to a man who was a key member of the extreme Left earlier in his life but then had a conversion to conservatism.
As he related in his book, “Radical Son”, David Horowitz came from a family of leftists. His parents were members of the Communist Party USA. He grew up in a social world populated by leftists. For those like me who lived in the 1960's and 1970's, Horowitz was a memorable character. He was central to the anti-Vietnam War movement while I was in college in the 1960's. All of the people in the movement were avidly reading an anti-war magazine called Ramparts, which was available on newsstands. David Horowitz was one of the two editors of Ramparts.
But in the mid 1970's, shortly after the fall of Viet Nam and all Indochina to the Communists, he had a complete change of heart, abandoned the Marxist Left, and gradually became a conservative. Today, Horowitz makes his life's work trying to expose to the American people the threat to our country from the extreme Left. To do this, he founded the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Horowitz makes clear in his writing one very essential fact. The American Extreme Left hates the United States of America and wants to destroy it. It is to this goal that their efforts are directed. This is hard for many ordinary people to come to grips with, but it is true.
Many Americans naturally assumed that after the fall of the Soviet Union and other communist countries, surely American communists would recognize their errors and quietly abandon their communist views. No, Horowitz said, they would not abandon their ideas. They would instead be energized by no longer having to defend the actions of the Soviet Union, which had become like an albatross hanging round their necks. Gus Hall, the head of the American Communist Party for many years, when asked to explain the fall of Soviet and Eastern European Communism, said that there was nothing wrong with his communist ideas. The Soviets had just implemented them incorrectly.
And for those people who would be tempted to say that this hatred for America is a figment of right wing fantasy, or that it might only have been true decades ago, I would point to the present-day activities of Antifa; young leftist radicals who will violently attack those who disagree them on anything. They commonly dress all in black, often carrying flags or wearing clothing emblazoned with the communist hammer and sickle emblem.
When Mark Bray, the author of a book on Antifa was asked during an interview just who the Antifa people were, he replied “anarchists, socialists, and communists”.
In July of this year we witnessed young Americans in Washington DC and other places publicly hauling down and burning American flags during pro-Hamas demonstrations. If that doesn't indicate hatred for our country, what does?
But while they may not have given up communist ideas, most of them did make one change. They no longer publicly call themselves “communists”. Now they are “progressives”. It sounds so much better and less threatening.
I am going to engage now in a mental exercise. I am going to put myself in the place of these radical leftists and ask a simple question. If I were a member of the political far Left and had as my goal to destroy the United States of America, how would I go about doing it? What methods would I use? Let us begin.
1. To start, I would look for the key institutions, ideas, and beliefs that make the America a viable nation, then subvert, and corrupt them however I could. I would look at the civilization that America was a part of and then denigrate and discredit it in every possible way.
Unlike most countries, America is not a nation based in “blood and soil”. It is a country of people whose roots are in many foreign countries, continents, and cultures. The dominant culture is rooted in European or western civilization, but we have people from all cultures and countries. The forging of the country required that immigrants assimilate into the dominant culture, becoming familiar with and eventually adopting its major ways and tenets. That does not mean that they must completely abandon and forget the culture they came from, but rather that they become in every sense a part of their new society by learning its culture and language. We need them to feel a part of America and come to identify with their new country regardless of their ethnic or racial background.
So in my efforts to tear down the US, I would ruthlessly denigrate everything about America, its ideals, its history, its culture, its traditions, and its constitution.
2. I would want to see Americans divided and fighting with each other on the basis of race and ethnicity. Rather than celebrating a common identity, I would want Americans to see themselves instead as primarily members of this or that racial group or other identity group and in an adversarial relationship with other groups within society. I would want as many people as possible to view themselves as victims, and to wallow endlessly in that feeling of victimhood. I would endlessly expound on racial injustices from the past, but never, never talk about the enormous progress made by the country in addressing these evils.
Specifically, I would first do everything I could to promote “Identity Politics”. For identity politics indoctrinates the individual to identify not with the country but with his small part of the whole. If you belong to an ethnic, racial, or religious minority, you would be encouraged to see yourself primarily as a member of that group instead of as an American.
To facilitate this, I would make “critical race theory” central to the whole effort. Critical race theory takes the traditional Communist (Marxist) theory of history and applies it to domestic race relations. You may recall that the Marxist paradigm of history is based on the ideas of class warfare and class oppression. Humanity is divided into an oppressor class, the capitalists, and an oppressed class, the proletariat or workers. All of human history is a tale of the struggle between these two groups. According to Marx's law of history, in the end the workers inevitably win and the capitalists are defeated and suppressed. The final goal of all human history is the creation of the ideal society, a utopia, here in this world. Everyone will be equal. There will be no injustice or suffering. It will be the perfect society.
A core aspect of Marxist thought is that people are not looked upon and judged as individuals but only as members of a social class. If you a member of the upper class (capitalists) or the working class, then that is how you are to be considered, judged, and treated.
This was the basic social and political doctrine which informed the political program of the Soviet Union and all communist countries, as well as communists world-wide, including those in the US. A very stark historical example of this thinking is the advice given by Martin Latsis, one of the first heads of the Soviet Secret Police, when in 1918 he advised his men on how to decide whom to arrest as enemies of the Soviet state. He said “In your investigations don't look for documents and pieces of evidence about what the defendant has done, whether in deed or in speaking or acting against Soviet authority. The first question you should ask him is what class he comes from, what are his roots....”(1)
In other words, everyone was to be judged according to what group in society he came from, and not by his character or personal traits, or even if he had ever done anything wrong.
And people were to be arrested accordingly.
What the Woke Left in America today does is to appropriate the Marxist class warfare doctrine directly to domestic race relations. The white race is the “oppressor” and non-whites or “people of color” are all the “oppressed”. If you are white, you are bad by virtue of this fact. Your only salvation is to admit you are an oppressor and a racist, apologize for your whiteness, renounce your “white privilege”, and become an “ally” of the oppressed.
So people are to be penalized for past American racism based on the color of their skin, despite the fact that they personally had nothing to do with it. There are a flood of reports from schools across the nation of white students being told by their teachers that “whiteness” and white people are bad.
By doing this, they fundamentally undermine this country.
3. All societies have a cultural basis. That entails a foundation of ideas, attitudes, and ways of looking at the world and reality. It also entails a web of customs which hold a society together. The foundation of American society is western civilization which developed over the centuries in Europe.
And like all civilizations, ours has concepts of accepted truth. In line with these truths there are accepted barriers and behavioral lines which should not be crossed.
If my goal was to destroy the United States of America as a coherent, functioning society, I would undermine these cultural ideas which form the basis of our society. I would attack all boundaries and behavioral norms. I would first attack all of society's sexual norms, and aim especially at children. I would make sure children were exposed to teaching on sex of every variety starting at a young age. They would be exposed to it in school, in entertainment, in libraries. When traditional sexual norms are attacked and undermined, eventually the family is undermined. This does tremendous damage to any society.
It is in this light, I believe, that we have to consider our society's latest insanity du jour: transgenderism.
Transgenderism is one of the Left's latest obsessions, and in particular, the Left emphasizes pushing the idea on children. Why? They will say they want to “support” children with gender dysphoria by “affirming their gender identity”. But if you look at their actions in schools and gender clinics, you begin to realize that the welfare of the children is not the goal. In fact, they couldn't care less about the children. So besides profit for gender clinics, what is the larger goal?
I believe that an indication may be found in a book written by NYU professor Michael Rechtenwald. Previously a left-leaning professor, he was forced to take leave from NYU because he took a stand against the political cancel culture at his school. In his subsequent book “Springtime for Snowflakes”, he identified transgenderism as a manifestation of the philosophy of Postmodernism.
This is a philosophy which denies there is any absolute truth or objective reality. Relativism is the overriding truth. Each person has his own truth. Thus if I feel and say I am female despite being born a male with the XY chromosome in every cell of my body, then that is my “truth” and nobody has any right to dispute me. Nobody's truth is any more valid than any other person's truth. Everyone must indulge my delusion about being a woman. In this bazaar template for society, feelings are given far more weight than scientifically provable facts.
The insanity doesn't stop there. If I “identify” as a cat, then that is what I am, according to this insane ideology. And everyone has the obligation to treat me as a cat. Thus the phenomenon of “furries,” kids who identify as animals and demand others recognize and treat them as such, even to the point of being allowed to use litter boxes as toilets. (This is actually happening in some places.)
Forces on the Left not only go along with this; they actively promote it, particularly to children and for what reason? A society cannot sustain itself when it adopts a philosophy which requires that unreality be accepted as reality, where feelings take precedence over facts.
Western philosophy, based on Greek rationalism and Judeo-Christian thought, declares that there is an objective reality and objective truth which can be rationally determined. A society which buys into irrationality will come apart and collapse. After all, if people can be persuaded to believe that a woman really becomes a man because she feels like a man, and that a child is a cat because he or she identifies as a cat, then they can be persuaded to believe just about anything, no matter how absurd. Rational debate becomes impossible. What better way to undermine a society?
4. If I wanted to destroy this country, I would attack its Judeo-Christian religious foundation. I would not publicly and directly attack religious doctrine. Instead I would seek to enact policies which fly in the face of most religious belief or sentiment.
I would use means to restrict and censor religious speech, wherever possible censoring it under the guise of protecting the idea of the separation of church and state or else prohibiting speech which is offensive to anyone. I would enact regulations to harass religious people and institutions, gradually limiting their freedom, their financial resources, or even better, pressuring them to violate their religious principles.
5. If I wanted to destroy this country, I would abolish the country's borders. Every nation on earth has a border. It separates that country's land and population from the outside world. A border is necessary, both as a matter of national security and to maintain some kind of domestic social and cultural cohesion as well as economic stability.
America has always been a magnet for immigrants, and the country has always benefited from immigrants. However, at least in the 20th century forward, immigration has never been unlimited and unrestricted. The policy has been to admit in limited numbers prescribed by law immigrants who can benefit the country and who will not threaten the safety of the country and its people. It was also a policy to not admit people who would not be able to support themselves and contribute to society. In other words we wanted people who would become self-supporting, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens.
If I wanted to destroy this country, I would throw all of these considerations to the wind and just allow people to flow in unrestricted. If this policy began to harm American citizens and communities, well, so be it.
6. The first responsibility of a government at any level is to protect the safety of its citizens and their property. Law enforcement to control crime is the first job of government. When government fails to carry out this function, society begins to unravel. Economic activity begins to collapse as people are afraid to go to downtown areas to shop. Stores close when there is so much theft that stores are no longer profitable.
When laws are not enforced, people begin to lose faith in the system and the country itself. That is just what I would want to happen.
So, if I wanted to bring down the country, I would do everything I could to hamstring law enforcement. Wherever possible, I would stop enforcing the laws. I would decriminalize most theft. I would allow people to violate the vagrancy laws. I would eliminate cash bail so as to let criminals out on the streets as quickly as possible. I would look upon the criminals as “victims of society” instead of people responsible for their own actions. I would want lawlessness and violence on our streets.
I would consider the police to by my enemy, and do what I could to restrict their morale and effectiveness. I would decrease their numbers and their budgets.
7. Ultimately, the most effective way to bring down a country might be to bankrupt it. Therefore, I would abandon financial restraints. I would spend money like water. I would pursue deficit spending at an ultimately unsustainable level. I would spend trillions on domestic welfare programs, essentially “give away programs” which addict much of the population to getting free stuff from the government. How would I finance all of this? Of course, the answer is by borrowing. I would grow the national debt to such an unsustainable level that it could never be repaid. It has been said that we are approaching this level now.
Up to this point I have imagined what I would do if I wanted to destroy this country. The frightening thing is that these things are already being done. If we go through them one by one we see that they are being done primarily by the Democratic Party, not just on the federal level, but on the state and local levels. Why is this? It’s simple, really. The Democratic Party is effectively under the sway of its far left wing.
In education, change is being affected through leftist state government, local governments, school boards and educators, particularly but not exclusively in the Democrat-controlled blue states. Let us look at this.
It is no secret to those watching the situation that universities and schools throughout the countries are pushing the narrative of critical race theory, even though they often deny they are doing it. What this may mean is that they teach the ideas but don't call it critical race theory, and therefore can deny it.
The reports of this from around the nation are too numerous to catalog. As one isolated example, I personally know a young man who graduated recently from high school in a New Jersey town near me. He told me that in his high school they constantly disparaged white people and told him he was bad because he was white.
In blue states, in particular, state and local governments and local school boards do everything they can to support the ideas of transgenderism among children. In New Jersey, for instance, the state Board of Education passed a Policy #5756, which required that children must be allowed to use rest rooms and locker rooms in accordance with “gender identity”. If a child requests it, he or she could be “socially transitioned” to the opposite gender, being given pronouns and even a name appropriate to the opposite sex. And, if the child desires, it will be done without the parents ever being told. Thus the state in the form of the public school comes between parents and children, which, by the way, is a common factor of life in communist countries.
Finally, this year, three New Jersey school districts announced they were refusing to abide any longer by Policy #5756. The state Attorney General brought legal action against them, but the decision finally came down that school districts were not legally required to adhere to #5756, whereupon numerous districts across the state opted out of compliance.
Nevertheless, the state government in Trenton continues to pass laws and regulations which have the effect of taking authority away from parents and transferring it to the state.
Historically, it is the most obvious of facts that the far Left hates religion. Atheism has always been its hallmark. I won't go deeply into the reasons why, other than to make these observations. First, the far Left cannot tolerate any ideology or system of belief other than its own. It wants an ideological monopoly over society. And it tolerates nothing standing in its way to achieve its goal of completely reordering society. The Judeo-Christian tradition says that in terms of morality the ends do not justify the means. To the far Left, such a limitation on their actions is simply not acceptable.
How do the far Left oppose religion? It’s mainly by attacking it around the edges. They seek to hamper the activities of religious people and groups by laws and administrative decisions. And they try to coerce religious persons and institutions to violate their own beliefs. While once again examples are far too many to list comprehensively, below are a few representative examples.
A blatant example occurred in 2021 when the IRS denied tax exempt status to a Texas religious group called Christians Engaged. The reason, the IRS said, was “Specifically, you educate Christians on what the Bible says in areas where they can be instrumental, including the areas of sanctity of life, the definition of marriage, biblical justice, freedom of speech, defense, and borders and immigration, U.S. and Israeli relations.” The problem with these teachings, according to the IRS, is that they typically are associated with those of the Republican Party, and therefore teaching them violates the prohibition against tax-exempt organizations engaging in political action. Note that the IRS never stated that Christians Engaged ever actually told anyone to vote Republican, but only that what it taught from the Bible perspective was the same as Republican positions.
First Liberty, an organization of lawyers that specializes in cases of threats to religious freedom, took up the case. In their defense they emphasized that Christians Engaged never engaged in actual political action, never told anybody which party to vote for, and did nothing that should prevent getting tax-free status. The IRS, in the end, relented, most likely to avoid a lawsuit and granted them tax-free status. (2)
But here is an interesting thought. Many pro-abortion advocacy organizations take a position on abortion that is identical to the Democratic Party's. Is their tax-exempt status ever questioned? Of course not!
Another case from 2023 involved a Catholic couple, Mike and Kitty Burke of Massachusetts, who wished to adopt children, but was denied by the state because of their religious views. The Burkes received training as part of the application process and received high marks, but during the interview process they were asked about their religious views. The Burke's attorney stated: “As faithful Catholics, the Burkes believe that all children should be loved and supported, and they would never reject a child placed in their home. They also believe children should not undergo procedures attempting to change their sex, and they upheld Catholic beliefs about marriage and sexuality”. (3)
Despite the fact that Massachusetts has a serious shortage of willing foster families, the Burkes were turned down because of their religious beliefs, which will result in some child lingering in an institution instead of having a family.
Perhaps among the most absurd anti-religious acts of the Biden Administration was an order from the Department of Health and Human Services to St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to extinguish the sanctuary candle in the hospital chapel-calling it a “fire hazard”. They cited regulations forbidding an open flame within 15 feet of oxygen equipment. A sanctuary candle is found in every Catholic and Orthodox church in the world, and acts as a symbol of the Divine presence in the Eucharist. They are not causing buildings to burn down. Also, it is not an open flame but a very small candle entirely encased in glass. HHS threatened to cut off Medicare and Medicaid funding if the flame were not removed. Under criticism because of their move against St. Francis Hospital, HHS finally backed down. (4)
Regarding border policy, what the Democratic Party is doing with the nation's borders and immigration is blatant and obvious and familiar to the American people, and for that reason is a major political issue. The current regime in Washington has essentially removed all barriers to illegal immigration. In the last three and a half years by common estimates around eight million or more illegal immigrants have walked into our country and are being allowed to remain. Nobody knows exactly how many they are, where they are now, and most importantly exactly who or what they are. Many come from countries which are our adversaries, like China, which entails an enormous national security risk. If I hated this country and wanted harm to her, this is what I would want to see happen.
As I stated earlier, enforcement of criminal law is the central responsibility of a government. The government's consistent failure to do this gradually will cause society to unravel.
Look at what is happening in Democrat-run cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and so on. Democrat District Attorneys with mayoral and city council support routinely let dangerous criminals out on the street with no cash bail policies, and in general the greatest possible leniency is given to even violent criminals. In some places, they announce that they will not prosecute shoplifters for stealing goods worth less than around one thousand dollars, essentially legalizing shoplifting. The result? Large gangs of young thugs loot stores of all types with impunity, eventually causing the stores to go out of business. It causes businesses to leave the city on a large scale. And as many businesses leave, so do people. Citizens, vote with their feet and move to safer areas.
Of course, it is worthwhile noting that these deteriorating cities seem to be limited to those that are Democrat- controlled. Those in power in these cities must see what is happening, but they do nothing but double down on their failed policies. What is their goal in doing this? It is hard to explain in any normal political terms.
While neither party is a model of fiscal responsibility, it does not take a believer in conspiracy theories to understand that the Democrats are driving the country into insolvency. They will not restrain domestic spending. Various economists warn that the national debt is getting to a point (about 35 Trillion Dollars at present) where it is simply unsustainable. To continue down this path is suicidal. So why do they do it?
Looking at the last 50 years or so, the Democratic Party relies for its political support upon masses of people taking public assistance in one form or another. “Give away programs” are their stock in trade. Rather than helping poor people get on their feet and be self-supporting, the Democrats prefer to see people living on free handouts from the Government. They know that people on the dole can be relied upon to vote for those whose largess they rely on.
But a large number of people on the dole long term are also a vehicle of social disintegration and decline.
I believe that what I have described in this essay amply demonstrates that the extreme Left and the Democratic Party represent a mortal threat to this country.
As a final note, it would be worthwhile for all Americans
who are concerned about our country to consider the following statement by Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.”(5)
Those who hate our country seem to understand this. The American people as a whole need to understand this and act on that understanding.
1.The Black Book of Communism, Stephane Courtois, et al, p.8
2.https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/irs-denies-tax-exemption-to-texas-religious-group-because-prayer-bible-reading-boost-the-republican-party-3861757
3.https://www.detroitcatholic.com/news/catholic-couple-alleges-state-denied-them-foster-parenting-chance-over-religious-beliefs
4.https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-admin-backs-down-battle-catholic-hospitals-chapel-candle
5.https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f52c347ae046125e87a148e/t/6073a92fc7789b592ea0489e/1618192687890/Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn+Quotes.pdf
The author has a background of 25 years in law enforcement and 12 years as a high school history teacher.
