#48: Why the Left Needs American Exceptionalism Defeated

I don’t know if there is an antecedent to the French Revolution’s radical rejection of the Ancien Regime, but it is one of the most significant features of this defining event in European history. Similar things happened in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the bloodless German Revolution of 1918, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966. Perhaps we could add other smaller instances as well, such as communist takeover of North Korea in the late 1940s. The sequelae of these revolutions were qualitatively different, but almost all of the revolutions still exhibited the common trait that they were either proto-communist or explicitly communist in their platforms and they identified the existing culture as a severe threat to their dominance. The lone possible exception to this rule was the German Revolution which still involved a very influential socialist element.

The lesson to be learned from this is that Socialism/Communism is intent on the removal of culture from the world-historical scene. The reason is very simple. The socialist doctrine is committed to the principle that a just society can only be achieved through total centralized power acting on purely “rational” principles that are utterly unconstrained by any other considerations. Since the actions of such a power may well contravene the moral/cultural values existing cultures, they must be erased. In effect, cultures are simply powerful competitors in the world-domination game.

I should add that there is yet another converging motivation for the expunging of existing cultures, namely that socialism’s imperialist strategy demands it. The socialists want to achieve a whole world dominated by a central power, not just individual nations. In this way, they do not differ from their nationalist cousin, Nazism. But while Hitler wanted to impose his culture (an almost totally invented one, by the way) on the whole world, the socialists want to gain the whole world through the simple expedient of eliminating the cultures that separate national entities from each other. They reason this way: If there are no longer any cultural differences among nations, no reasons will exist for borders, nor for the existence of independent local governments. The European economic union was the camel’s nose of this agenda, but the socialists are finding it increasingly difficult to neutralize nationalist passions. The stupid, stupid, stupid cultures just insist on persisting. But the socialists are still convinced that culture must be destroyed.

The socialist revolutionaries of the past believed that this was best accomplished in their own venues by brutal military and police action, but this does not entail that where such action is absent, there are no other measures being implemented. I think the ongoing effort to indoctrinate Canadians in the desirability of “multi-culturalism” as well as the U.S. efforts 1) to sell “diversity” to the people, 2) to attack expressions of patriotism and Christian faith, and 3) to deny U.S. exceptionalism are all part and parcel of the “peaceful” equivalent of such earlier attempts.

My point is simply this: the emotional and social utility of a culture lies precisely in the members of that culture passionately holding it to be superior to others. Once that passion has been neutralized, so has its ability to strengthen the social unit and make it a cohesive and autonomous unit. Yes, I know, I’m talking nationalism here, and nationalism is the big bogey bear.

But this is a doctrine that has been sold to us by a progressive-liberal academic establishment since the time of Woodrow Wilson (himself a professor), a very unfortunate choice of president for the time. The League of Nations, One-worldism, Esperanto, a whole bag of really bad ideas. These festering progressive ideas thrived after World War II when the socialist “intellectuals” really managed to tie the blame for the war on German nationalism (oooooohhhhh!!).

There was actually “plenty of blame to go around”, as the talking heads like to say. Yes, the Germans did have Hitler and, yes, there was nationalism, but French, U.K., and U.S. policy in 1918 also had a lot to do with there being a second World War.

I would venture to suggest that the second World War had as much to do with Hitler’s socialism as it did with his nationalism. But, since for all intents and purposes, the German defeat left the spoils of war, all of Europe, completely to the internationalist socialists (supported in their post-war ascension to power by the Marshall plan), we should not be surprised that the marketers of socialism should have blamed the war on German nationalism. They sure wouldn’t blame it on German socialism, eh?

Does nationalism cause wars? It surely has been used in wars, the more so the farther back one goes, but the actual causes were almost always for perceived economic objectives. In other words, wealth. This is not to say that the war-mongering powers were always (or even often) correct in what they perceived their own advantages to be, but I would venture to guess that wars caused by nationalism are far fewer than socialist “intellectuals” would care to admit.

The threat of nationalism is a socialist bogeyman distraction from the far more terrifying threat of unconstrained centralized government.

What makes this threat so powerful these days is that the socialists have hugely influential free-enterprise partners, namely in the multi-national corporations. As far as these non-national super-wealthy entities are concerned, the existence of national boundaries is an impediment to their trading and wealth accumulation activities. As far as they are concerned, nothing would be more desirable than to turn the entire world into a single homogeneous consumer base, and this objective overlaps nicely with the socialist objective.

Thus, what is called “globalization” is nothing other than an objective shared by socialists. What is ironic is that the anti-globalization activists believe themselves to be leftists, while they are actually working against the one-world utopia dreamed of by their more theoretically educated co-conspirators. Globalization activists and socialists are actually bed-fellows, albeit very strange ones. Both the globalists and the socialists see nationalism as their enemy, and since the enemy of my enemy is my friend, they should be friends. This means that nationalism has two very powerful enemies.

How can nationalism be attacked in the West? Since the brown and the black shirt technique is frowned upon these days, some other forms of aggression are necessary. We don’t have to look far.

The three arenas in which this war is being fought are 1) our schools, 2) our courts, and 3) the main-stream media. And the battle is over “diversity” or “multi-culturalism” and the biggest prize the existence of "American Exceptionalism." The socialists want to deny it, the nationalists to extol it.

It is no secret that our primary and secondary schools, and universities have been transformed into socialist madrassahs, centers of left-wing indoctrination. The text books now contain re-written leftist history and the lecturers are themselves the products of leftist teacher training camps. A recent news item informed us that the governor of Wisconsin just signed a bill requiring the teaching of “union history” in the schools. Hmm, I wonder whether they will include the history of the Teamster’s Union.

In recent years, case after case concerning “Christian” manifestation in the culture, religious manifestation in the culture, has been brought before the courts, usually by the Jewish socialist ACLU.

And, of course, the main-stream media have shown themselves to no more be impartial reporters of the news (if ever they were!), but to have become, in effect, an arm of the socialist democratic party, sometimes pushing it further to the left than even it wants to go.

The push for “diversity” and the “tolerance for difference” is nothing other than an effort to neutralize nationalism, the passionate preference for one’s own culture.

Acceptance of “diversity” is, for the socialist, just a “stage” on the path to the single, one-world classless, cultureless society.

And this is why American “Exceptionalism” must be defeated!