That Old-Time Religion…Again. And Again.

59 Comments

1. Freedom OF religion also means Freedom FROM religion. Another good column, Sheila. Thanks.

2. Pat; thank you, thank you, thank you. I have stated the same “freedom FROM religion” comment numerous times. Recently on this blog, either Gopper or Paul K. Ogden corrected my statement, saying that nowhere in the Constitution of Amendments is this issue mentioned. They have little understanding of the English language, especially regarding the 1st and 2nd Amendments.

   Regarding those letters from the Indiana State Department of Health; nowhere in the letter were they REQUIRED to get these vaccinations, it was simply an important health RECOMMENDATION for females. It can spread to males; remember Michael Douglas’s HPV throat cancer not long ago? I get USPS mail from many sources, also flyers stuck on my door handle, recommending countless treatments, items to purchase, businesses to spend my money at and churches to attend. I simply read and trash those I have no need for or interest in. Can I file harassment charges against the churches who leave flyers…or the Jehovah Witnesses who come en masse to my door or the missionaries from the LDS?

   Maybe the founding fathers should have included using common sense – and truth – when they wrote the Constitution and all Amendments. This could have prevented some of the later Amendments added by SCOTUS such as Citizens United, overturning Voting Rights and repealing the Civil Rights of many Americans.

3. First they went after the Muslims, but I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t one of them. Then they went after the Jews, but again I was not one of them so I did not speak out and protest. Then they went after the Mormons and the Catholics. I didn’t even speak out against that either. Then the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians and the Methodists were targeted. I was fearful but did not protest. Then they came for me and there was no one left to raise a voice.

   The religious far right has no boundaries when it comes to ideology. Nothing is pure enough. It is little consolation that they end up destroying themselves, but not before they have destroyed everything else first.

4. Advanced nations can get into all kinds of trouble when they let the ignorant and bigoted get control. We are in danger I feel. For goodness sake, please help get the crazies OUT of office. Mike Pence belongs in a small country church, not in the governors office.

5. Providing public health information and encouraging citizens to act to protect their children from preventable illnesses is a persecution of Christians? These are strange times indeed. Instead of Back To the Future, we are headed Back To the Past when we enjoyed state sponsored eugenics and forced sterilization in Indiana.

   Churchmen were at the forefront of the move to criminalize “feeblemindedness” and provide the state an avenue to force those individuals to be sterilized. Paternalistic arrogance by Christian groups disguised as charitable outreach to those who were poor and judged to be inherentlyand morally ill-suited to propagate themselves was a driving force behind draconian laws (later ruled unconstitutional) intended to eliminate the possibility of lesser beings.

   The moral failings of the poor and indigent are still used as thinly veiled reasons for withholding services. Racial and ethnic stereotyping continue to rear their ugly heads in certain “Christian” circles. Listen to the political candidates of a certain party to hear the modern day equivalent of “Christians” going back to the past. They aim these claims at their base who are fearful of the “other” and willfully ignorant of any compelling evidence to the contrary.

6. The Hebrew and Greek Bibles are filled with what scholars through the ages have called, “Midrash.” It is a type of literature that interprets or adds wisdom to an old piece of literature. The story of the virgin birth in Matthew and Luke is based on the words of Isaiah I who said, “Judah will be at peace before the young maiden (alma (fruitful olive tree, or sometimes virgin) bears her child. It is a passage accenting peace and not virgin birth, though that would not matter so much in the mind of the midrash writer. The beauty of Midrash was that it allowed use of old literature for new insights. Unfortunately for moderns, fundamentalists have no understanding of Midrash and continue to be stuck on pathetically old and false concepts. They will cost not only the lives of many of their children, but others’ children as well. The absence of good, updated health practices in “religious” communities is gross false witness to the truth.

7. “It’s hard to see how a reminder letter from health professionals usurps that parental prerogative,”

   Not at all. A letter is governmental pressure attempting to create a conflict between parental supremacy and religious supremacy in favor of governmental supremacy.

   Cultural Marxists don’t believe in the church or parents having the ultimate say in family matters, in which is included the raising of children.

   “I don’t know about others, but I am very, very tired of fundamentalists trying to impose bad history and narrow theology on the rest of America.”

   And I’m very tired of Cultural Marxists attempting to subvert the supremacy of family and Church authority.

   “The CPC wants “In God We Trust” signs and Ten Commandments monuments in public places, they want prayer to be part of government activities, and they defend gay-bashing chaplains in the military. ”

   Cultural Marxists are very much opposed to fixed moral standards such as the Ten Commandments; they are very anti-religion, and they’re great supporters of fundamental attacks on the family, such as gay marriage. Good for the CPC in ignoring critics of morality, tradition and patriotism.

   “The CPC criticized President Obama for referring to E Pluribus Unum as the American motto, and advocates removing Establishment Clause cases from the jurisdiction of federal courts.”

   Again, good for the CPC. Diversity is our weakness. Assimilation is our strength. Immigration is only acceptable to the extent that foreigners are able to become American, acting, thinking and praying like Americans. Too much immigration prevents the foreigner from properly and fully assimilating.

   “It isn’t a small group, either. According to David Niose, at one point the CPC had 100 members.

   If that isn’t enough to terrify those of us who reside in the 21st Century, take a look at this recent poll, reported by Dailykos. ”

   The poll by DailyKos wasn’t taken of the CPC, so it was academically improper of you to cite to it as proof of the CPC’s position.

   That said, speaking not as a member of the CPC, I have no problem making Islam illegal and making Christianity the official umbrella faith of the United States. Note that there are many religions within Christianity.

   Take some pride in being an American. Cheer the flag; marry a pretty girl; raise kids, and be strong parents; celebrate Christmas; go to church on Sunday as a family; girls, bake cakes for your husband, and keep a clean house, so he has something nice when he comes home from work.

   Get back to Americanism. This is the way to a happy life.

8. You have no “freedom from religion” in the United States. What silliness to think that such a “freedom from religion” ever exists.

   Congress is merely prevented from enacting a “Church of America.” That’s it.

9. Ah, yes. Trolled again. Without Groper bringing his/her perspective, we wouldn’t fully appreciate Sheila Kennedy’s remarks.

10. It’s informative to read Gopper’s magnum opus late yesterday because he’s been recently programmed with a new phrase. “Cultural Marxism”.

    To understand the historical perspective of its meaning one has to consider that those past times when oppressed people have been freed the trouble always starts because of their oppressors losing a favored position that they feel culturally and historically entitled to.

    Slavery in the US: It was the slave owners who felt entitled to having other people do their work.

    The women’s suffrage movement here at the beginning of the last century: Men felt entitled to make all important decisions.

    The insistence on and resistance to Sharia Law underway today in the Middle East today: Men are resisting change because they feel entitled to sexual dominance.

    The Jews in Germany, Mahatma Ghandi, the Civil Rights acts here, all of the Middle East instability today, any number of historical events: to see the trouble consider those who are threatened by loss of entitlement.

    These are the feelings consuming Gopper. He feels entitled to superior position and is threatened with the moral fact of equality.

    This explains his allegiance to oligarchy, theocracy, the power of personal armament, his superior race meme, and his animosity towards women. All superior societal positions that he feels entitled to.

    While I know that soothing his hurt feelings is a priority here we must also attend to reality. The world simply doesn’t work well when people are oppressed and there is trouble to be expected from those who feel entitled to superior position over them.

    Welcome to cultural evolution and natural selection unfolding progressively.

    Gopper is reacting to cultural extinction.

11. You didn’t answer the question from that post, Pete.

    Are you a Marxist?

12. I am a member of a church but I recognize that the purposes of religion (soul-saving and an ethical culture etc.) and the secular activities of government (democratic idealism and nurturing of its people etc.) are two different animals and an attempt to mix them (like oil and water) is destined for failure. I am not the first to so distinguish; the Founding Fathers rightly recognized such chasm and the unworkability of the two in combination as well with their “no religious tests for office” language, among other such understandings. The right is trying to manufacture a crisis where none exists other than in the minds of zealots, including zealots from the left who are taking the right’s bait. I have no problem in segregating the divine from the profane when it comes to fleshing out the rights and responsibilities of citizens in a democracy, and in view of the language of the Constitution and history itself, cannot understand why this is at issue in the 21st century. I suspect that such manufactured crises as this are designed to divert our attention from the really pressing issues of the day, issues like wage inequality, health care, regulation of Wall Street predators etc., all secular issues in need of our attention if we are to avoid descent into Third World status.

13. Angry old white men at work. I’d like to see an analysis from the demographers as to what the country will look like when the Fox News demographic is horizontal. I’m sure Groper will see this as disaster, but I’m interested in reading something responsible. Has anyone seen anything about that?

14. I do not think Gopper understands the true meaning of Christmas. According to biblical scholars, records of Herrod’s tax collection (“census”), and other historical records, if there was a Jesus, that person was born in April or August of the year 6 Common Era. At a later conference of leaders of what was first considered a Hebrew sect, the problem of competition with other religions was addressed. A day popular with pagans was the Winter Solstice, as it represented the lengthening of days. December 25 was popular with worshippers of Mithra (who was born of a virgin, died for the sins of mankind, and rose from the dead, but all that is for a different time). So we had December 25 chosen as Jesus’s birthday. I would suggest people leave untouched pagan customs. Christmas in August would be a good holiday. I don’t know how Santa Claus and his reindeer would deal with the absence of snow. Maybe they would do as they have in the southern hemisphere all these decades.

15. The early Church only celebrated Easter. Should have left it alone.

16. Gopper, I answered your question about Marxism yesterday by specifying what I do believe in. It was not on the list.

    Marxism (Communism) has been tried and (predictably IMO) it failed. I believe that people who still believe in it are pretty rare in the world today even though prevalent still in your mind.

17. Pete, in response to your 11:09, I don’t want to have to solve a symbolic logical expression to get your answer.

    Answer plainly, with a yes or a no. Are you a Marxist?

    Your comments, and the comments found on this blog, are drawn heavily from Frankfurt School/Cultural Marxism. The question is fairly put.

18. Yesterday Gopper posited that everyone who favors freedom over entitlement is a member of the Frankfort School of Cultural Marxism. Sounds very ominous doesn’t it? Conspiracists for sure.

    Never having heard of it I thought that at least a Google would be informative: here’s a result.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism#Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory

    Entertaining and informative psychosocial drivel attempting to demonize freedom and democracy.

    The dark side.

19. Like I clearly said yesterday Gropper: I believe in the American Constitution, democracy as the only true source of freedom, science as our provable insight into reality, and culture as explanation for common societal behavior.

    Let me ask you – is that Marxism in your book?

    Please answer specifically.

20. Pete, that group is, shall we way, “different”. If, on the other hand, you talk to 90% of the walking-around public and ask whether they agree with “cultural Marxism” and explain exactly what it is, they look at you like a deer in headlights, because they hardly know anything about who is running for town council. Oh, the dark conspiracies from the ones from the outside that will get us all! On the other hand, I’m afraid that what will really get us in inside of us and our own willful ignorance of ordinary stuff we need to know.

21. Somebody opined long ago that history is written by the victors. That explains why history is mostly the stories of revolutionaries gaining freedom and equality. But what about the losers? Those who felt entitled to oppress others?

    “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

    That’s why the entitled mostly lose.

22. Gopper wrote: “Take some pride in being an American … girls, bake cakes for your husband, and keep a clean house, so he has something nice when he comes home from work. Get back to Americanism. This is the way to a happy life.”

    Pardon my 80s expression, but GAG me with a spoon! Ahhh, the “good ol’ days,” when men were men and their “girls” were property. Ugh.

    First, most people can’t survive on one income any more, even if their lifestyle is modest. Secondly, maybe women WANT to work. Stop watching “Mad Men.” Those days are long gone.

23. Let’s keep in mind that when intelligent people respond to trolls, the response only encourages them. I choose to ignore them.

24. Haadi, it’s stuff like you quoted that leads me to believe that Groper is just a troll. Even in those bad old days, few people really believed in that sort of ideology. People do what seems to make sense and they try to work out things the best they can, and don’t seem to be very ideological. Sure, everyone has his/her ideological moments, but very few tack down every corner of their lives with ideology. If this guy is real, though, it’s pretty sad.

25. “Cultural marxist”????? ROTFL. Where do I sign up?

26. Mark S. We already have Christmas in August. I have seen it in all the Christmas items for sale in many stores.

27. Pence’s knees weaken and buckle again, when the Bibles start a thumping. Perhaps some clever person can write a play – No Sex Education or Vaccines Please, We’re Hoosiers.

28. Enlightened One; I’m trying to think of a polite way to tell Gopper and Pete to “do lunch” and duke their differences out in private. Any suggestions?

29. If all Americans were required to be Christians, then the Christians would choose up sides against each other as they did in the formative years of our country. Come to think of it, we Christians do that today too.

    Apparently some Christians feel threatened with information on how to prevent cancer –
    especially the kind of cancer that most infects women. As Sheila noted, how dare those health professionals share information that can save one’s children.

    My understanding of Christianity is Jesus’ example of reaching out to everyone, especially those very different from himself and those who didn’t follow societal norms of the day. He associated with prostitutes, lepers, and even the hated Samaritans.

    Apostle Paul was very inclusive of Gentiles and rejected imposition of Jewish customs on Gentiles as a condition of their becoming followers of Jesus. Both Jesus and Paul welcomed women as apostles of faith. If such acceptance and promotion of diversity makes Jesus and Paul cultural Marxists, Gopper needs only to repent and ask forgiveness.

30. Most of us think of the Goppers of the world as “wingnuts” who have been misled by mass media into a fairy tale of entitlement for wealth. Then we realize that what seems trivial has coopted an entire political party. There must be more to it.

    It turns out, thanks be to Gopper, that we know now that there is substance behind it. Delusional for sure, but high sounding.

    Here’s a too long quote from the Wikipedia link above that explains the philosphical underpinnings for the conspiracy theory that is behind their paranoia.

    “Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory”

    “A 21st-century conspiracy theory regards the Frankfurt School as the origin of a contemporary movement in the political left to destroy western culture, referred to as “Cultural Marxism” by theory proponents.[51][52] It advocates the idea that multiculturalism and political correctness are products of critical theory, which originated with the Frankfurt School. The theory is associated with American conservative thinkers such as William Lind, Pat Buchanan and Paul Weyrich, and has received institutional support from the Free Congress Foundation.[53][54]”

    “Although it became more widespread in the late 1990s and 2000s, the theory originated with Michael Minnicino’s 1992 essay “New Dark Age: Frankfurt School and ‘Political Correctness'”, published in Fidelio by the Schiller Institute.[55][56][57] The Schiller Institute, a branch of the LaRouche movement, further promoted the idea in 1994.[58] The Minnicino article charges that the Frankfurt School promoted Modernism in the arts as a form of Cultural pessimism, and played a role in shaping the 1960s counterculture.[55] In 1999 Lind led the creation of an hour-long program, Political Correctness: The Frankfurt School.[56] The documentary
    “… spawned a number of condensed textual versions, which were reproduced on a number of radical right-wing sites. These in turn led to a welter of new videos now available on You Tube, which feature an odd cast of pseudo-experts regurgitating exactly the same line. The message is numbingly simplistic: all the ills of modern American culture, from feminism, affirmative action, sexual liberation and gay rights to the decay of traditional education and even environmentalism are ultimately attributable to the insidious influence of the members of the Institute for Social Research who came to America in the 1930’s. The origins of “cultural Marxism” are traced back to Lukács and Gramsci, but because they were not actual émigrés, their role in the narrative is not as prominent.”[56]”

    “According to Chip Berlet, who specializes in the study of extreme right-wing movements, the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory found fertile ground with the development of the Tea Party movement in 2009, with contributions published in the American Thinker and WorldNetDaily highlighted by some Tea Party websites.[59]”

    “More recently, the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik included the term in his self-authored document “2083: A European Declaration of Independence”, which along with the Free Congress Foundation’s “Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology” was e-mailed to 1,003 addresses about 90 minutes before the 2011 bomb blast in Oslo for which Breivik was responsible.[60][61][62]”

    “Philosopher and political science lecturer Jérôme Jamin has stated that “Next to the global dimension of the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, there is its innovative and original dimension, which lets its authors avoid racist discourses and pretend to be defenders of democracy”.[53]”

    Now wonder it’s so compelling to the folk that it is. It “lets its authors avoid racist discourses and pretend to be defenders of democracy”.

    Gopper revealed and explained.

31. JoAnn – 12:56 , just do not read their comments. I must say I really had a great laugh when Gooper wrote Pete’s comments were vapid, yesterday. Good thing I had not taken a swig of coffee just before I read the comment.

32. JoAnn. Don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re all different. Annoying sometimes but much less boring than all the same.

    Embrace diversity. It keeps things real and entertaining.

    And if it exceeds your attention span – just move on.

33. Pete; some of us are more different than others. You are super intelligent and well-spoken (or written). I assumed you had enough sense of humor to pick up on the tongue-in-cheek spirit with my comment was written. I expected an attack from Gopper:)

34. Don’t ever interpret what I say as an attack. I love the fact that we’re different. All of us. I don’t want to change or diss anyone. I just want to find what people are made of and why. Then test to see how well considered and defensible it is.

    We all speak for ourselves and listen to the stories that we hear from others. Then we decide on credibility.

    That’s where the word in-credible comes from.

35. JoAnn, perhaps we could lock them in a room and let them duke their differences out with a massive food fight — using red meat, bacon, and other unhealthy processed foods of course; we wouldn’t let them waste locally-sourced, cage-free, antibiotic-free meat!

36. That’s funny, pete. I see you didn’t doo to much research. Wikipedia used to have a page devoted to Cultural Marxism, but in 1984 Marxist fashion, they deleted it, and dropped it down the memory hole.

    I found an archived copy:

    https://archive.is/YzkIS#selection-2533.0-2539.0

    Cultural Marxism
    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Jump to: navigation, search
    Part of a series on
    Marxism
    Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
    Theoretical works

    The Communist Manifesto
    A Contribution to the
    Critique of Political Economy
    Das Kapital
    The Eighteenth Brumaire of
    Louis Napoleon
    Grundrisse
    The German Ideology
    Economic and Philosophical
    Manuscripts of 1844
    Theses on Feuerbach

    Concepts

    Dialectical materialism
    Economic determinism
    Historical materialism
    Marx’s method
    Overdetermination
    Scientific socialism
    Marxian socialism
    Technological determinism
    Proletariat · Bourgeoisie ·

    Economics

    Capital (accumulation) ·

    Capitalist mode of production ·

    Crisis theory ·

    Commodity · Exploitation ·

    Means of production ·

    Mode of production ·

    Law of value ·

    Socialist mode of production ·

    Surplus product · Surplus value ·

    Value form · Wage labor ·

    more… ·

    Sociology

    Alienation ·

    Base and superstructure ·

    Bourgeoisie · Class ·

    Class consciousness ·

    Class struggle ·

    Commodity fetishism ·

    Cultural hegemony ·

    Exploitation · Human nature ·

    Ideology · Immiseration ·

    Proletariat ·

    Private property ·

    Relations of production ·

    Reification · Working class ·

    History

    Historical materialism
    Historical determinism
    Anarchism and Marxism
    Socialism
    Dictatorship of the proletariat
    Primitive capital accumulation
    Proletarian revolution
    Proletarian internationalism
    World revolution
    Stateless communism

    Philosophy

    Dialectical materialism
    Democratic Marxism
    Libertarian Marxism
    Marxist autonomism
    Marxist feminism
    Marxist geography
    Marxist humanism
    Marxist literary criticism
    Marxist philosophy of nature
    Philosophy in the Soviet Union
    Situationist International
    Young Marx · Open Marxism ·

    Variants

    Classical · Orthodox ·

    Marxism–Leninism ·

    Libertarian · Revisionism ·

    Western · Analytical ·

    Neo-Marxism · Post-Marxism ·

    Instrumental · Structural ·

    Movements

    Council communism
    Democratic socialism
    DeLeonism
    Impossibilism
    Left communism
    Leninism
    Revolutionary socialism
    Social democracy
    Trotskyism

    People

    Karl Marx · Friedrich Engels ·

    Karl Kautsky · Eduard Bernstein ·

    James Connolly · Georgi Plekhanov ·

    Rosa Luxemburg · Vladimir Lenin ·

    Leon Trotsky · Chen Duxiu ·

    Joseph Stalin · Ho Chi Minh ·

    Che Guevara · Mao Zedong ·

    Louis Althusser · Georg Lukács ·

    Karl Korsch · Antonio Gramsci ·

    Antonie Pannekoek ·

    Rudolf Hilferding · Guy Debord ·

    more… ·

    Portal icon Socialism portal
    Portal icon Communism portal
    Portal icon Philosophy portal

    v · t · e ·

    Cultural Marxism refers to a school or offshoot of Marxism that conceives of culture as central to the legitimation of oppression, in addition to the economic factors that Karl Marx emphasized.[1] An outgrowth of Western Marxism (especially from Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School) and finding popularity in the 1960s as cultural studies, cultural Marxism argues that what appear as traditional cultural phenomena intrinsic to Western society, for instance the drive for individual acquisition associated with capitalism, nationalism, the nuclear family, gender roles, race and other forms of cultural identity;[1] are historically recent developments that help to justify and maintain hierarchy. Cultural Marxists use Marxist methods (historical research, the identification of economic interest, the study of the mutually conditioning relations between parts of a social order) to try to understand the complexity of power in contemporary society and to make it possible to criticise what, cultural Marxists propose, appears natural but is in fact ideological.
    Contents

    1 Explanation of the “Cultural Marxism” theory
    1.1 Frankfurt School and critical theory
    1.2 Birmingham School and cultural studies
    1.3 Use by current conservatives
    2 See also
    3 References
    4 Further reading

    Explanation of the “Cultural Marxism” theory[edit]
    “ We are, in Marx’s terms, “an ensemble of social relations” and we live our lives at the core of the intersection of a number of unequal social relations based on hierarchically interrelated structures which, together, define the historical specificity of the capitalist modes of production and reproduction and underlay their observable manifestations. ”

    — Martha E. Gimenez, Marxism and Class, Gender and Race: Rethinking the Trilogy [2]
    According to UCLA professor and critical theorist Douglas Kellner, “Many 20th century Marxian theorists ranging from Georg Lukács, Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and T.W. Adorno to Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton employed the Marxian theory to analyze cultural forms in relation to their production, their imbrications with society and history, and their impact and influences on audiences and social life.”[3][4] Scholars have employed various types of Marxist social criticism to analyze cultural artifacts.
    Frankfurt School and critical theory[edit]
    The Frankfurt School is the name usually used to refer to a group of scholars who have been associated at one point or another over several decades with the Institute for Social Research of the University of Frankfurt, including Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Wolfgang Fritz Haug and Jürgen Habermas. In the 1930s the Institute for Social Research was forced out of Germany by the rise of the Nazi Party. In 1933, the Institute left Germany for Geneva. It then moved to New York City in 1934, where it became affiliated with Columbia University. Its journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung was accordingly renamed Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. It was at that moment that much of its important work began to emerge, having gained a favorable reception within American and English academia.
    Among the key works of the Frankfurt School which applied Marxist categories to the study of culture were Adorno’s “On Popular Music,” which was written with George Simpson and published in Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences in 1941. Adorno was worried by signs of conformity in contemporary mass society and also at the conversion of individual artistic expression into the mass production of standardised commodities. He argued that popular music was, by design and promotion, “wholly antagonistic to the ideal of individuality in a free, liberal society”,[5] Adorno and Horkheimer’s “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”, originally a chapter in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), which argued that culture reinforced “the absolute power of capitalism”,[6] and “Culture Industry Reconsidered”, a 1963 radio lecture by Adorno.[7]
    After 1945 a number of these surviving Marxists returned to both West and East Germany. Adorno and Horkheimer returned to Frankfurt in 1953 and reestablished the Institute. In West Germany in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a revived interest in Marxism produced a new generation of Marxists engaged with analyzing matters such as the cultural transformations taking place under Fordist capitalism, the impact of new types of popular music and art on traditional cultures, and maintaining the political integrity of discourse in the public sphere.[8] This renewed interest was exemplified by the journal Das Argument. The tradition of thought associated with the Frankfurt School is Critical Theory.

    Birmingham School and cultural studies[edit]

    The work of the Frankfurt School and of Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci was particularly influential in the 1960s, and had a major impact on the development of cultural studies, especially in Britain. As Douglas Kellner writes:

    Cultural Marxism was highly influential throughout Europe and the Western world, especially in the 1960s when Marxian thought was at its most prestigious and procreative. Theorists like Roland Barthes and the Tel Quel group in France, Galvano Della Volpe, Lucio Colletti, and others in Italy, Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton, and cohort of 1960s cultural radicals in the English-speaking world, and a large number of theorists throughout the globe used cultural Marxism to develop modes of cultural studies that analyzed the production, interpretation, and reception of cultural artifacts within concrete socio-historical conditions that had contested political and ideological effects and uses. One of the most famous and influential forms of cultural studies, initially under the influence of cultural Marxism, emerged within the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, England within a group often referred to as the Birmingham School.[3]

    Use by current conservatives[edit]
    In current political rhetoric, the term has come into use by some social conservatives, such as historian William S. Lind, who associate it with a set of principles that they claim are in simple contradiction with traditional values of Western society and the Christian religion. In this usage, political correctness and multiculturalism, which are identified with cultural Marxism, are argued to have their true origin in a Marxian movement to undermine or abnegate such traditional values.[9]
    See also[edit]

    Anti-capitalism
    Constructivist epistemology
    Cultural hegemony
    Cultural Studies
    Culture War
    Frankfurt School
    Freudo-Marxism
    Marxist film theory
    Marxist literary criticism
    Neo-Marxism
    Paleoconservatism
    Political correctness
    Western Marxism

    Pete, if you believe in everything the Frankfurt School/Cultural Marxism advocates, how are you not a Cultural Marxist?

37. My pointy finger and my scroll-down option are exhausted; started to emit smoke so I backed off.

38. There’s a Reddit discussing the removal of Wiki’s Cultural Marxism page and the redirection of that page to the one Pete cited.

    I don’t think this cite will let me link to Reddit.

39. Gopper:

    “Wikipedia used to have a page devoted to Cultural Marxism, but in 1984 Marxist fashion, they deleted it, and dropped it down the memory hole.”

    They still do. I shared the link from the subtopic Frankfort School/Cultural Marxism.

    I told you what I believe in: I believe in the American Constitution, democracy as the only true source of freedom, science as our provable insight into reality, and culture as explanation for common societal behavior.

    If that’s Cultural Marxism to you then in your mind I must be a Cultural Marxist. In my mind It describes a typical American and a displaced Republican like so many.

    As long as we maintain traditional American democracy and therefore freedom at the polls you and I can duke it out there.

    I’m betting that the conspiracy theory around Cultural Marxism will get rejected soundly thereby proving my claim to be a typical American.

40. “I told you what I believe in:

    1. I believe in the American Constitution,

    2. democracy as the only true source of freedom,

    3. science as our provable insight into reality, and

    4. culture as explanation for common societal behavior.”

    You’ve said nothing. You’re scared and defensive, so you’re hiding behind that amorphous blob and hope nobody catches you chickening out.

    Let’s try to get you to admit something concrete. Just one small thing.

    Do you outright reject Marxism and all of its teachings?

    Every True American can answer that question without hesitation of qualification.

41. Here are the two appropriate clauses of the Constitution:
    “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
    or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
    This is pretty clear; there will be no state religion and all religions can be practiced. Thus any one who wants Christianity, in any of its forms, to become law are out of luck and Muslims, Hindus, etc. are free to practice.
    If you read the letters of some of the founding fathers, like Jefferson, (it was the Enlightenment after all) they were very anti religion.

42. Desperate Gopper:

    Like most Americans I see socialism as the only viable economic system when competition is not possible or practical.

    I believe that socialism is one of the tenants of Marxism (although capitalism, which I believe in also as long as competition can be and is maintained is not).

    I believe that capitalism inherently redistributes wealth up which is self destructive unless controlled by regulation and offset by progressive taxes. (Marxism does not address that as it does not accept capitalism.)

    Other than that overlap I do not believe in Marxism.

    The real question is do you believe in our Constitution and democracy?

43. Of course Gopper is forever stuck in between wars Germany where people were told their choice was between only Fascism and Communism. Americans thought that they would realize that democracy was also a choice but a few millenniums of monarchy had them convinced that the common citizen needs the leadership of the elite in order to live.

    So they chose Gopper’s favorite, Fascism.

44. Pete:

    You’re playing with words and concepts you don’t understand. There can be democratic communistic governments. There can be democratic fascist governments.

    You don’t understand political theory at all if you think “democracy” is the antonym of “fascism,” “communism,” etc.

    You’re also sadly mistaken in thinking “democracy” describes a type of government. “Democracy” has been diluted, to be sure, but it essentially describes who gets a say in who runs the government, not necessarily how the government runs. All too frequently, democracies are merely plebiscites, giving the appearance of legitimacy to false and narrow choices.

45. “The real question is do you believe in our Constitution and democracy?”

    Of course you would avoid answering this question by claiming that the meaning of the word “democracy ” is ambiguous to you. That’s fully expected.

    Of course there is not that ambiguity in the minds of most Americans. A democracy is a government in which all of the ruled hire and fire the rulers based on voting. The details of how the government works specifically are not important. The ability of the ruled to hire and fire is essential and contrary to the practices of oligarchy, theocracy, aristocracy and monarchy.

    People like you who believe that the common citizen is unqualified to decide who runs government, and feel that they are entitled to more power than average, are easily confused by the concept.

    So, no surprises here. You have clearly defined why you are at odds with America. You feel qualified and entitled to decide for other people the details of their behavior.

    The good news is that you are free to hold those beliefs here. My point in engaging you is to make sure that other voters understand your beliefs and use that insight in deciding who rules and who doesn’t.

46. I’m with you, Sheila! Thank you for putting this in print for all to see. Both my retired pastor husband and I are sick to death of Christians feeling put upon by those of us who supposedly ignore their cries for the ten commandments in city halls, etc., or, in other words, their brand of religion which means we are supposed to bow to their every wish. Poppycock! I will vote for Freedom From Religion!

47. ” A democracy is a government in which all of the ruled hire and fire the rulers based on voting.”

    Try that with the Supreme Court, sport. Try that with the Federal Reserve. The real rulers of America never stand for election.

    Your hard-left pals in Marion County want to ensure that the local judges never encounter a voter, either.

    “People like you who believe that the common citizen is unqualified to decide who runs government, and feel that they are entitled to more power than average, are easily confused by the concept.”

    No worse than you, I suppose, who wants to impose Communism on America and force every American to vote for the dictator or be killed, calling the entire thing ‘Democracy.’ See? We can each write nonsense positions that we want the other to be labeled with, but my cast of you might be closer to the mark.

    “So, no surprises here. You have clearly defined why you are at odds with America. You feel qualified and entitled to decide for other people the details of their behavior. ”
    And you have clearly stated that you want foreign troops to go house-to-house in America, executing your political opponents. I oppose you now, and I’ll fight for freedom in America, no matter how much you want to kill Americans.

    “The good news is that you are free to hold those beliefs here. ”

    The good news is that Real America will always stand with me in opposing your plans to kill and imprison everyone in this country who disagrees with you. Your threats of force and mass executions will not be implemented without a fight from THE PATRIOTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

    You’ll not commit genocide in America on my watch.

48. You miss the point of democracy. And our Constitution. They work as designed. They put the governed in control of the government.

    If you want to continue to try to sell to others the conspiracy theory that was sold to you, have at it. I have confidence in Americans and our institutions. Enough of them to ensure our survival and future.

    Democracy is not for everyone as we’ve learned from our adventures around the world. It’s not perfect either. But because it’s our government and most of us are committed to progress we take on problems like you and we solve them.

49. Please stop encouraging the insane posts to this blog.

50. So, Groper, you copy and paste War and Peace, and expect all of us to set aside our lives to read this thing unedited because YOU posted it? Sorry. You aren’t that important, nor are some of the ideas you spew. Delusions are cheap.

Comments are closed.