WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT...

There can be no doubt in the mind of any reasonable, intellectually-honest citizen of our exceptional nation that regardless of who occupies the White House there are important sectors of our culture that are controlled by a Left-wing element.  It was true while George W. Bush was in office.  It's true now, during Barack Obama's administration, and it will be true in January of next year when Mitt Romney is inaugurated as the 45th President.  It was true when the GOP controlled Congress and when the Democrats controlled Congress.  It's true now with a divided Congress and it will be true next year when the GOP is once more in control of both chambers.

It's not political, per se.  It's something else.  As Left-wing academic Todd Gitlin  has written: 

My generation of the New Left -- a generation that grew as the [Vietnam] war went on -- relinquished any title to patriotism without much sense of loss. All that was left to the Left was to unearth righteous traditions and cultivate them in universities. The much-mocked political correctness of the next academic generations was a consolation prize. We lost -- we squandered the politics -- but won the textbooks.

 And yet it is political in that it all boils down to the voters and every single American voter is affected to some degree by the three elements on which I am focusing: Academia, the Entertainment Industry (Hollywood) and the Establishment Media.  Even those folks who make a point of avoiding as much of Hollyweird and the Marxstream media as possible can't entirely avoid it.  We are all surrounded by people who are infected affected by the culture.  Thus, political outcomes can and are heavily influenced by the culture. 

Gitlin's quote is useful in that it illustrates some of the main reasons why this issue is so vital to those of us who pay attention to what's going on around us.  He mentions "patriotism" and boasts that the loss of any sense of patriotism was no big deal for him and people who share his ideology.  This begs the question: Why do Leftists consider patriotism a bad thing?  Why do they find even the most simple displays of patriotism to be highly embarrassing and uncomfortable?  

The answer is Marxism, an ideology that promotes international class warfare rather than patriotism, which is love of one's homeland.  How did Marxism become so pervasive in our culture?  This blog is dedicated to closely examining the history of the subversion as well as the ongoing struggle to treat the symptoms and heal the damage.

Gitlin mentions "political correctness" and seems to be a little embarrassed by it. Political correctness, as you will quickly see by perusing this site, will be a major recurring topic as it is both the fruit of Marxism and it's vehicle.  Watching Bill Whittle's excellent video provides a brief explanation of the origins and how it continues to affect us.  I will be revisiting the topic of political correctness quite a bit. 

Gitlin also mentions the text books.  The Left-wing hegemony on most college campuses, including all of the highest-profile schools across the country, will be another recurring topic for me. In fact, it's my principal motivator in starting this blog.  After all, Hollyweird can be turned off and ignored.  And New Media (thank God for it!) is rapidly vanquishing the Establishment Media.  But Left-wing Academia is like an octopus with unlimited tentacles.  Sooner or later the majority of young people will have to deal with it in one way or another.  And many of those young people will be Conservatives who will have to make some decisions as to how they will deal with the oppressive, frequently totalitarian, realities of life in a classroom ruled by a tenured radical and on a campus run in a manner that sometimes reminds me of the movie Cool Hand Luke. 

If comparing a college campus to a prison farm seems pointlessly extreme then keep in mind a situation at the University of Delaware that is all too common. In 2007, students in the university's residence halls were subjected to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that was referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The details of the program, designed mostly by an outside organization, were disturbing in part because of the mandatory nature of the program. 

But this is where it gets interesting...and encouraging.  Following an intense campaign by FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and national media attention, the university dropped the program.  So awareness and resistance, aided by support groups, can reverse trend on campuses.  This is hopeful.  But it's not easy.

There's no legitimate reason for these kinds of coercive programs to exist on campus.  They exist because many of the people in charge of running things on campus have an ideological aversion to independent thinking combined with a totalitarian compulsion to intimidate others.   The "success" of their ideology requires absolute conformity.  Any student who doesn't wish to conform must be "corrected."   

Ben Shapiro wrote a book that was published in 2004 called Brainwashed: How universities indoctrinate America's youth. It was written while he was still in college and was based on his own experiences at UCLA.

 In this explosive book, Ben Shapiro, a college student himself, reveals how America's university system is one of the largest brainwashing machines on the planet. Examining this nationwide problem from firsthand experience, Shapiro shows how the leftists who dominate the universities -- from the administration to the student government, from the professors to the student media -- use their power to mold impressionable minds. Fresh and bitterly funny, this book proves that the universities, far from being a place for open discussion, are really dungeons of the mind that indoctrinate students to become socialists, atheists, race-baiters, and narcissists.

  As usual, the response from the Reactionary Left was as disingenuous as it was scornful.  That is how they always react when the truth is told about their agenda.  But it's precisely why the status quo must be challenged over and over again in spite of the vitriolic backlash.  Since then, Shapiro has written other books, including his latest one, Primetime Propaganda, which deals with the Hollywood Establishment and how they deliberately and blatantly discriminate against Conservatives.

Shapiro argues that left-leaning entertainment kingpins in Los Angeles and New York have leveraged—and continue to use—their positions and power to push liberal messages and promote the Democratic Party while actively discriminating against their opponents on the Right. According to Shapiro, television isn’t just about entertainment—it’s an attempt to convince Americans that the social, economic, and foreign policy shaped by leftism is morally righteous.

To promote his new book, Shapiro posted several YouTube video clips of interviews he had done with various Hollywood insiders.  Thinking they were talking to a fellow "liberal" they were more than happy to confirm what the rest of us already know: Yeah, Conservatives must keep their views and values on the DL if they know what's good for them and want to keep working or get work. Shapiro, who was born into the business, has many good ideas and long-range strategies for gradually turning things around in the entertainment arena.

As for that other Left-wing dominated area of our culture, the Establishment Media, well...it goes without saying that the so-called "mainstream" media, represented by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, CBS, NBC, and all of their associated enterprises, are so pathetically compromised when it comes to professional ethics that it's easier to pick out the few times when they handle the news correctly rather than slog through the mountains of evidence of their malpractice (failure to act on behalf of the client, in this case, the public) and malfeasance (a hostile, aggressive act that is harmful to the client's interest). For example, this guy:

A smarmy ambulance-chasing Left-winger with a $400 haircut who had nothing to fear from the "mainstream" media.  Unfortunately for him, the National Enquirer was less interested in covering for him than it was scooping the rest of the #lapdogmedia.  If the "mainstream" media had done its job properly at the time then Edwards would have been taken out of the Democrat primaries well before the Iowa caucus.  And if that had happened, the odds are that Clinton would have won the caucus, in which case the Obamas themselves said that he would have dropped out. 

How would a 2008 presidential campaign between Clinton and McCain have played out? We'll never know, because after having shielded John Edwards the #lapdogmedia offered the same foot-washing services to Obama and they've been working for him ever since.  

These are the elements that enable an empty suit like Barack Obama; a divisive, race-baiting, anti-American, Left-wing composite to occupy the White House. And these are the elements that negatively inspired my blog. Everybody has some role to play in turning things around. This is part of mine.