CONTRASTING THE LEFTIST-LIBERAL MOVEMENT
WITH OUR ORIGINAL AMERICAN HERITAGE
By James M. Murk
There has arisen a way of thinking or world view in America which is alien to our original American heritage and traditions. It exploded with an irresistible force in the 1960’s from seeds sown in American academia by an atheistic and socialistic humanism which traces its roots at least as far back as the 1890’s. It has included the questioning both of traditional authorities and traditional morality, which had been essentially Biblical from the beginnings of our nation. It was promoted by the radical feminist revolution and the insurrection of the youth culture which rebelled against our involvement in the Viet Nam war. These rebellions were abetted by radical academics whose values were rooted in naturalism, Darwinism, socialism, and even Soviet style communism. The resulting radical change in our political and moral culture threatens the very foundation of our Republic.
Radical or leftist liberalism, a broad designation to identify this movement, has taken the American values of individual liberty and equality to almost drastic extremes. Radical egalitarianism was fostered by very un-American ideas which developed from Karl Marx, Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, Darwin, and Freud. This synthesis of values produced a revolutionary change in assumptions or presuppositions about human life and society which radicalized the liberal movement in America and has influenced the entire national culture.
Today the term liberal carries an entirely different connotation from the days of FDR, Truman, JFK, and even Lyndon Johnson. These political leaders would be considered at least moderately conservative today. In fact, the classical liberalism of the past was closer to what is presently considered a true conservatism.
A familiar designation for the roots of this movement and its contemporary liberal philosophy is secular humanism. Humanism was a term of the Italian Renaissance (a word meaning “rebirth”) used to describe the work of artists, writers, and philosophers who wanted to reemphasize man’s life in the real world as opposed to his preparation for the next. They drew their inspiration from the literary and artistic remains of the cultures of Greece and Rome, which they spent much time and effort seeking to recover, republish and imitate. They sought to restore a man-centered world.
Humanism, as the term implies, is an emphasis upon man. Although it originally described a reaction against the otherworldliness and superstition of the medieval church, humanism remained for centuries in the Christian tradition. There was even a movement in northern Europe which has been called Christian Humanism. Educated clerics sought to return to the ancient sources of original Christianity principally in the recovery of the original Greek text of the New Testament. This movement laid the foundation for the Reformation and the rejection of the extra Biblical teachings and medieval superstitions of the medieval church.
For humanism to become completely secularized, it had to divest itself of all the trappings of religion or a belief in God. This was partly accomplished during the 18th century Enlightenment. God was not denied as a First Cause or Creator, but was essentially eliminated as a part of human experience on earth by a view called Deism. Deism believes that God began the universe, earth, and man, and the laws for their regulation, and set it all loose to fend for itself. This freed man to make his own decisions and create his own world with no interference from the Almighty.
The French Philosophes of the Enlightenment, influenced by Isaac Newton’s then recent discovery of order in the material world governed by natural laws, did not reject the parallel belief that there must also be a general body of natural laws for the governing of human life and society. Since physical laws were absolute and immutable, the laws governing human society were probably also absolute and immutable. As a result, Biblical morality, more or less, in a generic sense was still respected.
Many efforts, however, were made to discover what was the best system and living arrangement for man, such as, the ideas of Rousseau. Traditional Christianity, however, represented by the Roman Catholic church in France, was utterly rejected.
Secular humanism, which evolved in the 19th century, drew new, revolutionary assumptions concerning man and society from Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud. It dispensed entirely with the idea of God and embraced atheism with its antagonism to any kind of revealed or supernatural religious belief. The most vigorous intellectual and political movement which arose from these ideas was socialism, including especially the Marxist-Leninist variety called Communism.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche characterized the period in the last half of the 19th century with the phrase, “God is dead.” This allowed for radical changes in thinking, which held enormous implications for proposed changes in human society. Vaclav Havel observes that the 20th century has seen the development of the first atheistic civilization in history. This is an intellectual world view which crosses national boundaries and has influenced the culture elite in all parts of the world. Nietzsche had predicted that the 20th century would be the worst the world had ever seen. As Dostoevsky noted in his The Brothers Karamazov, “If God does not exist, anything is permissible.” This includes every crime human nature could conceive, even genocide. At least 170 million people have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, worked to death, buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed or otherwise destroyed by their own governments since 1900.
In America under the leadership of educators, such as John Dewey, secular humanism was seen as a substitute for Christianity--a new secular religion to be spread primarily through education. It was originally very friendly to Communism, and is still linked closely to socialism as one of its principal political and social ideals. Most secular humanists have been Communists or socialists. We now know from Soviet KGB sources themselves that the American Communist Party received its marching orders and considerable financial support from Stalin and the politburo of the USSR. The party once had over 1,000,000 members and adherents. More of these “believers” than is admitted by liberals today were really traitors to our country. David Horowitz in his autobiography Radical Son: Journey Through Our Times. (New York: Free Press, 1997) confessed that his parents, who were dedicated Jewish Communists, actually considered themselves secret agents in the United States for Joe Stalin.
These radical ideologues wanted to overthrow the traditional American system and replace it with something like the Soviet model, which they considered more righteous and just. As a political entity the movement failed because America, in spite of the Great Depression and some social problems, such as racism, was not a socially or economically disorganized society. Also America’s traditions were still basically Judeo-Christian and thus antithetical to the basic presuppositions of Marxism. The same philosophy which undergirds Communism, however, underlies and has influenced all contemporary liberal thought. It is not wrong to say, therefore, that American Communism is ancestral to the modern leftist-liberal movement in our nation. The left wing of the Democratic Party, many of whom hold to Marxist ideals, is still loathe to admit this historical fact.
Radical liberals in America therefore must be understood as a first cousins to Communism since they share most of the same assumptions concerning human life, morality, and the world. They do not want to admit or acknowledge this, because they have divorced themselves from the reprehensible actions of Communist regimes in genocide and totalitarian dictatorships, which have sought by any and all means to enforce radical and rapid socialistic change in nations where they have gained control. Their basic goals, however, are the same as Communism; namely a powerful, collectivist, bureaucratic national government imposing socialistic programs, which will eventually join with a utopian world society and government organized and managed after the ideals of Marxist socialism. This was the ultimate ideal of Joseph Stalin, and it is still the ultimate ideal of radical liberals in America today. The only major difference is in the means to accomplish this goal.
British Fabian socialism, which advocated gradual change through the schools, the legislatures and the courts, has greatly influenced American political liberals. This movement was a direct offshoot of Soviet Communism in its effort to influence Great Britain. These ideas are still alive and active all over the earth. The former Secretary General of the United Nations Boutros Boutros Galli convened the World Socialist International organization at the UN headquarters before he resigned late in 1996. This included some professed Communists, even some known terrorists, and represents organized Marxism in the world today.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ASSUMPTIONS OR PRESUPPOSITIONS
Presuppositions are the axioms of life and culture. Every system of thinking, every way of life, every philosophy, and every religion has basic beliefs or axioms which cannot be proved entirely by either empirical verification or reason. These are the fundamental assumptions or foundation of beliefs in which each system has its roots.
Most of the conflicts among systems, ways of life, philosophies or religions arise from these core beliefs. They are ideas which we take for granted as true. They are often unspoken and virtually a matter of faith. Most people, even intellectuals, are not aware that certain unprovable assumptions underly all of their thought and actions. They are also unaware that they take what amounts to a “leap of faith” to these presuppositions. Perhaps, since they are the necessary, logical foundation for any system, they become obscured. It just seems natural to believe in them. However, if these assumptions are wrong, the whole system is suspect.
A major difference in assumptions concerning every part of the human enterprise exists today in America. It has caused a culture war between traditional religious conservatives, who believe in our original American heritage, and radical liberals who espouse secular humanism. Our American heritage was based on Biblical ideals arising from the Reformation, especially Calvinism, and British Common Law.
Contemporary liberals claim to uphold American ideals, but their core beliefs are essentially foreign to the traditional American outlook and lifestyle. As such they can rightfully be accused of being, historically speaking, un-American. This includes most of the radical liberal organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the People for the American Way (PAW), the National Organization of Women (NOW), and even the National Education Association (NEA). This is an inescapable conclusion because they are in direct conflict with the original heritage of our nation and the ideals and teachings of the Founding Fathers.
The conscious goal of these liberal groups is to subvert the American heritage and fashion our nation into an entirely different society and culture. When we examine them we find that they are not unlike the generic goals of the old American Communists. Bill Bennett, a recognized member of the ”academic club,” has said that the culture elite in America “hate” the original American heritage and tradition because it is Biblical and Christian. So what has developed today is a major culture war going on in America between atheism and theism.
Radical liberals, or leftists, have been winning in this conflict of ideas because of the control they have gained, especially in the last 35 years, over the universities, the media, the popular culture (movies, TV, and popular music), the legal profession, including a large number of judges, the leading professional educators of this nation, leaders of the mainline Protestant denominations and some Roman Catholic bishops, and the liberal core of the Democratic Party. In looking at this imposing
battalion of the power elite, therefore, Judge Robert Bork has said that conservatives have already lost the culture war. Conservatives, especially Christians, are therefore engaged today in America in what is a desperate counterrevolution.
The new assumptions of secular humanism have been spread in America by the popular music, MTV, the media, the courts, the universities, some mainline church leaders, and have even invaded the public schools. The average American, especially the youth, are being saturated with a new world view, which is absolutely contrary to our traditional American heritage.
This is what made the economist, educator, and senior fellow with the Hoover Institute of Stanford University, Thomas Sowell accuse public education of seeking to indoctrinate rather than instruct America’s school children. Every leftist liberal group, such as gay and lesbian organizations, has its agenda to reach America’s children in order to radically change the society. (Note the acceptance of the entire homosexual agenda by the National Education Association at their annual conventions.) Children are being encouraged to question the very foundations of Western civilization and American culture. This includes especially their religious heritage. Many are also being gradually indoctrinated in the concepts and agenda of socialism as if it were the American way. This is a deceitful fraud being perpetrated on the American people.
Part of this agenda in the public schools has been to minimize the study of our American heritage and revise American history. It also includes the Values Clarification program in which school children have been taught to explore morality and find out for themselves what is good and evil, right and wrong, i.e., to learn to make up their own rules. Bill Bennett called this kind of pedagogy a clarification of wants and desires rather than a clarification of values.
It is now the object of liberal professional educators to control public education from the national level and eventually impose goals and curricula which are an exact copy of much of the Soviet educational system. This includes the ideas behind “Goals 2000,” “School to Work,” “Careers,” and the new “Certificate of Mastery” programs. That this is an exact copy of the pattern of Soviet technological education recommended by Lenin has been recognized for sometime by most educators. It was explained recently to members of the House of Representatives in a letter by Representative Henry Hyde. On the one hand, we have the Ten Commandments, which were basic to our American tradition, being deleted from the schoolhouse. On the other hand, principles from the Communist and Humanist Manifestos are being insinuated into the classroom.
The National Education Association encourages teachers to get children involved in political and social issues, to become activists almost always promoting leftist liberal causes. They may be taught, for example, to support liberal tenets, such as extreme privacy, gun control, absolute separation of church and state, self-expression, explicit sex education including condom distribution and alternative lifestyles, big government, extreme environmentalism, diversity or multiculturalism, and absolute tolerance, which promotes moral equivalence. They may even be encouraged to take stands against most conservative positions, such as sexual abstinence, workfare instead of welfare, random drug testing, school choice, and academic competition.
SOME BASIC CONFLICTING PRESUPPOSITIONS
The revolution of youth and radical feminists in the 1960’s was a genuine leftist revolution. Many have displayed a deep antipathy to our American heritage and history. They have sought to permanently change American culture. Historically there had been three other leftist revolutions in Europe with the same goals to transform their respective societies; namely, (1) the French Revolution; (2) Hitler’s national socialist revolution in Germany; and (3) the Marxist-Leninist revolution in Russia, which also spread to other nations, such as Eastern Europe, Cuba, North Korea, and China. Most of the academic leftists of the 1960’s youth rebellion in America drew much of their inspiration from Marxism and the Communist movement. Some like David Horowitz had grown up in families that were part of the Communist conspiracy in the United States. A technique of Communism has always been to usurp control of revolutionary movements causing disruption in
vulnerable societies. It was no accident that radical socialists would be attracted, even in a stable society like America, to participate in and encourage a social movement like the 1960’s upheaval. This was especially true because the major focus of the rebellion was the Viet Nam war which was part of an anti-communist fervor that had gripped the nation.
The 1960’s rebellion had no single guiding genius. As it developed it borrowed ideas from some communists, some academic gurus, but primarily from its own drives for self-expression and self-indulgence in a general rebellion against organized society. Since it was initially a rejection of the political and military decisions of the American mainstream, its ideas took on a distinctly anti-American and anti-traditional flavor. The following are some of the assumptions which gained prominence partly through this latest leftist revolution, which have influenced America’s thinking and practice today. To borrow a concept from anthropological theory, we will call these themes of the new American secular humanist or radical liberal cultural tradition.
Theme One: Self-fulfillment, usually interpreted as self-expression, is the most important value for the individual. In the 1960’s youth told us they were looking for “peace and love” which ideal was translated into a search to satisfy individual instincts, passions and desires. This took the form of indiscriminate sex, nudity, raucous, loud rock music, careless dress, hygiene and long hair, the widespread use of marijuana and hallucinatory drugs, and an unstructured social and family life sometimes in a commune. The mores of traditional society were considered bourgeoisie, or hopelessly middle class, which betrayed the radical socialist influence on the movement. It exalted the primitive and the natural in the tradition of Rousseau. All of this was part of the search for self-expression and self-fulfillment. Perhaps influenced by this theme, educators today are greatly concerned for students to learn self-esteem sometimes even to the detriment of their learning a traditional core curriculum of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
The new revolutionaries placed self-expression ahead of the traditional American ideals of self-control, self-discipline, self-denial and self-sacrifice, which had from the beginning been considered necessary values for a nation with a republican self-government. Unrestricted self-expression, of course, emerges from the natural human tendency to selfishness, which is the simplest theological definition of the Biblical concept of sin. It is not a traditional American value, but rather a disvalue.
Theme Two: A man belongs to himself, not to God, not to family and not to society. This concept is consistent with the emphasis upon self in the first theme. It is also rooted in atheism which is a primary tenet of secular humanism and Marxism. It denies all transcendent ethical or moral requirements. It rejects absolutes and promotes moral relativism. Carried to its logical conclusion this assumption must lead to radical individualism and anarchy. “Every man does what is right in his own eyes.” The libertarian concept of “self ownership” is a pagan aspect of the American tradition developing out of some of the ideas of the Age of the Enlightenment. “I am the captain of my fate,” arose from a theologically agnostic mindset. It is rooted in a false philosophy of freedom.
The Christian aspect of the American ideal always emphasized, on the other hand, that man is created by God and thus has a responsibility to the Creator for his life and liberty. He cannot create himself; therefore he cannot belong to himself. He is a debtor also to his family and to his society. “No man is an island” is a familiar phrase which expresses this traditional view. As the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah wrote, “I know, O Lord, that a man’s life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps.” Jeremiah 10:23
Theme Three: Human nature is basically good, or at least potentially so. The human baby is born with a brain as a blank tablet (tabula rasa) upon which his life experiences are written determining his character and destiny. One is therefore not entirely responsible for his actions since he is a product of his environment. Corollary: If you change the environment, you can change the man. This is the basis for all liberal programs dealing with crime, welfare, and education. It is the basis of the Communist dream. If this premise is wrong, of course, all the social programs based on it will be unsuccessful. This may help us to understand today the abysmal failure of the American welfare system promoted and supervised by liberal bureaucrats and also the disastrous “soft-on-crime” policies of activist, leftist-liberal judges. Radical liberalism has a fantasy or fairy tale concept of human nature. Liberals live in a dream world of their own creation. Myron Magnet of the Manhattan Institute has named it accurately in the title of his book The Dream and the Nightmare.
The traditional American idea concerning human nature assumes the Biblical assessment; namely, that man’s natural tendency is to anti-social, even criminal behavior without considerable discipline, training and socialization. The Biblical indictment of the human condition is stated in Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure; who can understand this?” and “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) Psalm 58:3 asserts, “Even from birth the wicked go astray; from the womb they are wayward and speak lies.”
Recent studies by the Minnesota Crime Commission have come to conclusions more in line with Biblical teaching than with secularist assumptions concerning human nature. They determined, “Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it--his bottle, his mother’s attention, his playmate’s toys, his uncle’s watch. Deny him these once, and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness, which could be murderous were he not so helpless. He’s dirty. He has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a killer, and a rapist.” We are seeing this illustrated in our inner cities, where children, who come from dysfunctional single parent families produced by the welfare system, are allowed to grow up by themselves in gangs. They have no developed sense of guilt, morality, or shame or even any concept of right and wrong. Prospects for the future portend a mammoth increase in youth crime, urban terrorism, and possibly even a racial civil war.
Theme Four: Absolute privacy is a human right. This idea, of course, arises from the first two themes which exalt the human self or ego. Radical liberals are so adamant about this ideal that they have claimed to have found it in the United States Constitution. Actually there are some references to the privacy of individuals in perhaps four amendments, such as the right a man has not to testify against himself; but there is no general right of privacy to be found in the Constitution. I challenge anyone to find it. Radical liberals are so demanding that the Constitution must be interpreted this way, however, that they vehemently rejected Judge Robert Bork as a nominee for the Supreme Court, because he could not agree with this heresy.
Justice Thurgood Marshall once said that a man should have the right of complete privacy in his own bedroom where he could do as he pleased. This was an extreme statement, however, which was meant to protect an otherwise illegitimate sexual lifestyle. A man, of course, does not havea right to beat up his wife, murder his child, create child pornography or print counterfeit money in the privacy of his own home. The argument for privacy can never be a coverup for criminal behavior. No man is a law unto himself, furthermore, even if he lives alone on a desert island. There always remains a man’s accountability to his Creator. Absolute privacy may find support from atheism, but man created by God has no such right. The absolute right of privacy doctrine is not a part of our original American heritage.
Theme Five: Liberty as a right is inherent in the human being, which means that a person can do whatever he pleases as long as he doesn’t hurt anyone else. This concept of liberty is also rooted in atheism and naturalism. If God does not exist, anything is permissible. This definition of liberty was suggested by the 17th century English philosopher John Stuart Mill, who was very popular among some 1960’s revolutionaries. It is the philosophy of liberty accepted in America today by the culture elite. It was also the theme of the French Revolution and its “Rights of Man,” which wound up in anarchy and tyranny. This kind of absolute liberty, however, was never the theme of the American revolution or part of our original American heritage.
This absolute philosophy of freedom was rejected by our Founding Fathers in favor of a more Biblical, Christian concept, which said that men were “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” (The Declaration of Independence) and that "liberty was a gift of God.” (Thomas Jefferson) This indicates that human freedom is not absolute. There are two restraints on a man’s liberty: (1) The restraint of a transcendent moral law which spells out man’s responsibility to his Creator and His creation; and (2) The restraints of family, society, and the nation to whom men owe respect and allegiance. Individual liberty, however, is still very much alive in the midst of these restraints when one lives by the ideals of self-discipline, self-denial and self-control rather than by the motivation of hedonistic self-expression. Undisciplined self-expression, more often than not, results in a bondage to the destructive angels of man’s nature.
Theme Six: “It is my right; I deserve it” Our society, encouraged by neo-pagan philosophers, has created a veritable superstore of individual rights. Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg said recently that our Constitution and Bill of Rights are very weak in their declaration of the legitimate rights of man. Thus the courts have sought to expand the Constitution and declare a whole new batch of rights, which the Founding Fathers never even thought of, e.g., abortion rights, homosexual rights, rights to affirmative action, etc. The only thing wrong with this is that the courts have taken on the illegitimate responsibility of creating new laws. which should only be the prerogative of the people through their representatives in the legislatures. In making these “activist” decisions, the courts are violating the enumeration or separation of powers and the plain provisions of the Constitution which they have been called on to protect.
The belief that “I deserve it” saturates all advertising in America. Merchandisers use phrases like “you have it coming” or “you deserve it” to appeal to this prevailing cultural aura of radical individualism. The Biblical value, however, says that whatever we receive is because of the grace of God. The concept that “I deserve it” destroys humility and thankfulness and asserts the human ego and selfishness.
The new attitude toward rights is now more like that of the French Revolution and its neo-pagan “Rights of Man.” The Declaration of Independence, however, which many believe is the charter of the United States of America, and should be considered with the Constitution in evaluating the philosophy of America, echoes the Christian or Biblical philosophy of our Founders. It states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Government does not provide these “inalienable” rights. They are a gift of God. Government is to secure or protect these rights using its power judiciously considering the “consent of the governed.” In asserting special individual rights, however, our courts in recent years have often nullified popular sovereignty, the will of the people, and the “consent of the governed.” There is therefore a growing movement in this nation to impeach these arrogant, activist judges.
Theme Seven: All life, including human life, is a product of impersonal forces, or completely natural causes which can be explained by the fact of biological evolution. This should be regarded as an assumption of naturalistic philosophy today, and not a fact. The publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin in 1859, gave the skeptic, the naturalist, the agnostic and the atheist what was considered a “scientific” answer to counter the prevailing doctrine of supernatural or divine
creation and the belief in a Creator. Julian Huxley said that, as young students of science, this new theory, which they immediately accepted as fact, set them free from the restrictive Victorian sexual mores of the day. If man was just a higher form of animal, and God was not a part of the equation, then anything was permissible; and man could make up his own morality. The famed paleontologist Stephen Gould says that the “fact” of evolution demands that we must find our own answers by ourselves from our own wisdom and ethical sense. He states dogmatically, “We may yearn for a higher answer, but none exists.” This is the “wonderful hope” of the secular humanist--an emotional and spiritual desert.
Gradually what was at first called the theory of evolution began to be taught as the only alternative to the origin and development of life. It is a theory treated as a fact throughout the entire scientific world. It has come to be taken for granted in academic circles because it is the only alternative to the origin of life apart from a creation. If one cannot accept the possibility of creation, then evolution by default must be “a fact.” It becomes the only reasonable explanation and is a “leap of faith.”
The concept of evolution has had implications for culture far beyond its biological thesis. Herbert Spencer applied the idea to human society, and a belief in evolution in terms of human progress and improvement became the faith of millions. This faith was soon shattered, however, by two world wars and the human tragedies of the 20th century, but the assumption of evolution still is the official dogma of the academic community. Their world view permits them no other choice.
Darwinism, however, has come to be analyzed more accurately by many today as not so much a conclusion from facts but rather as a deduction from natural philosophy, which is the teaching that what we see and experience is all there is. As such it is a “leap of faith” from microevolution--the obvious changes seen in plants and animals in the short term--to macroevolution, which is applied to the origin of life and its development into all the 50 million species which the earth has sheltered through eons of time, 99% of which have become extinct. There are not only great gaps in the fossil record or lack of evidence from paleontology, however, but also no one has been able to explain how complex biological structures could have developed at all. Neither can the evolutionist explain why all the major categories of life appear all at once, simultaneously, with no evidence of development from lower forms or to other forms of life, in the rock strata of the Cambrian geological period.
Also we know now that all life is based on a code made up of DNA--a double helix of nucleotides in distinct and definite ordered arrangements which we call genes. The least number of genes necessary to sustain the lowest form of life has been discovered to be 256 which includes thousands of amino acids programmed together in a coded sequence. This is an example of what is called an ”irreducible complexity.” That this smallest but exceedingly complex unit of life could have happened by chance cannot be supported by any mathematical probability theory ever concocted.
For life to have arisen unaided by itself would have the same odds as a giant tornado sweeping through a giant junkyard and coming out the other side having put together a fully formed 747 airplane. (British astronomer Fred Hoyle’s illustration to the Royal Astronomical Society) No matter what the biology textbooks are still authoritatively teaching, the idea that life is a cosmic accident cannot be supported with any scientific certainty by the evidence and knowledge we have today. In all honesty, biologists should admit that they have no verifiable idea how life began, and that evolution is a matter of faith not a fact.
Honestly viewed, Darwinism is an educated guess. It should be viewed as an unproved hypothesis buttressed by naturalistic philosophy masquerading as science rooted in unsubstantiated presuppositions. As a whole system, it is based on faith in natural causes--naturalistic philosophy--not fact.
The arguments for assuming an intelligent design in the universe by a Creator, or intelligent causes, on the other hand, can be supported by just as much or even more evidence than the theory of evolution. This obvious truth and the impossible gaps in evolutionary theory have finally caused many intelligent, honest scholars, who are not all theists, to reject Darwin’s theory at the present time.
What you wind up with, or the conclusions you reach, are always dependent upon the assumptions with which you begin. When the hypothesis of evolution was accepted as a fact, it took on the nature of a premise or a presupposition to buttress a world view which has proved to be exceedingly destructive to human beings personally and to societies as a whole through- out the entire world. The principles or philosophy which supported the holocaust, as well as abortion and euthanasia or any other kind of genocide, and all the cruelties spawned by amoral atheism were born in the hallowed halls of academia. Neo-pagan liberal thinkers have produced ideas, born of their limited, corrupted human wisdom, which can be used to justify any kind of anarchy or nihilism.
Theme Eight: Traditional religion is irrelevant; there is no god. This is an assumption of many of the culture elite in America which complements the naturalism expressed in spontaneous generation/biological evolution principles. It is widely held in the halls of academia. If religion has any relevancy, it must be a humanistic religion and man is his own god. For all practical purposes this is a presupposition underlying almost all of American public education. Unstated, it supports at least what one could call a practical atheism.
This is the principal assumption behind multiculturalism, moral relativism, and globalism. It is the heart and soul of secular humanism, which is “a religious world view based on theological atheism, philosophical naturalism, biological evolution, moral relativism, legal positivism, and political globalism.” Secular humanism is the religion of both socialism and leftist-liberalism. Harold Rafton, president of the Humanist Fellowship of Boston, Inc., writes, “Humanism is a religion dedicated to the ennoblement and enrichment of human life through human effort, in accordance with the method and findings of science and the growing wisdom of man. . . Do Humanists believe in a supreme being? Emphatically yes. That supreme being is man. Humanists have no knowledge of any being more supreme.” (“What Can We Believe,” The Humanist, 1953, No. 3, p. 118) This philosophy is implicit throughout all of American secular education.
In the American history section of the Smithsonian Institution is a replica of a New England colonial schoolroom. On one wall is a large hand printed sign “FEAR GOD.” On an opposite wall is another sign reading, “GOD IS LOVE.” It was the Founding Fathers who put prayer and the Bible in the schools. This was not considered interference by the state, but a very necessary part of educating a good, moral citizen. The Founders did not believe that a Republic could exist without a plenty of good old-fashioned virtue in the population. Benjamin Franklin, for example, wrote, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.”
The Congress therefore passed the Northwest Ordinance in 1789 which laid down the requirements for a territory to become a State. Article 3 commanded that “religion and morality” should be taught in the schools in order to assure the training of good citizens.
The idea of “separation of church and state,” occurs as a phrase in the constitution of the USSR, but never appears as such in the Constitution of the United States. The extreme notion of this doctrine was introduced to Hugo Black of the Supreme Court from a brief written by the ACLU in 1947. The ACLU had had roots in the Communist movement, and several of its early leaders were professed Communists. They and other leftist liberals in our nation were certainly much enamored of and influenced by the idea of Communism and socialist government. We now know that the American Communist Party was under the direct authority of the Joe Stalin and the Soviet Politburo. There were at least 300 Soviet spies in high places in America reporting directly to the Russians.
This idea of church state separation as it is taught today by liberals and amoral atheists would never have been considered by the Founders. They sold America a “bill of goods” that this idea or this phrase is in the Constitution and is what the Founders intended even though they obviously did not practice it. The Founders belief, however, was that the State should not interfere with the churches, but this should not remove God or the influence of the church from the government or anywhere else in the society. Religion was to have free reign, and any “wall of separation” simply assured that the government would not interfere with religious practice or teaching. The Founders greatest contribution to political theory may have been this uncompromising emphasis on the freedom of religion. George Washington said that if he ever thought that our Constitution would be used to “fight against religion,” it would have died in its infancy.
Secular humanists and atheistic communists are blood brothers in much of their philosophy, and as a religions in themselves they have come to usurp most of the values in our public school system today. The goal of these leftists, whether they were humanistic socialists who followed John Dewey, or the Frankfort (Marxist-Leninist) School, which was a part of Columbia University, who espoused the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci’s methods, has been to change America into a socialist state if not from the top down, then from the bottom up. Change the culture, change the traditions, change the history, change the values, usurp the moral code, and thus brainwash the children and the youth, and America would be a ripe fruit made ready to fall into the socialist basket.
They have almost accomplished their goal. Conservatives so far have lost the culture war. The removal of any emphasis on God and the Biblical morality bequeathed to us by our Puritan forebears has created a vacuum, which has been filled with a practical atheism and moral relativism which means that children are taught to make up their own rules. This has caused a vast moral breakdown in American culture and has softened us up to accept an eventual totalitarian direction. .
HOW CAN WE KNOW THE TRUTH?
Jesus said to his disciples, “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”(John 8:32) On another occasion, he said, “By their fruit you will know them.” (Matthew 7:16) By this Jesus meant that the results would declare the truth or value of anything. We must use the pragmatic test. Does it work? What is the fruit of contemporary liberalism? Robert Bork’s recent book Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline (New York: Harper Collins, 1996) documents what the revolution of the 1960’s--modern secular humanism, atheism, and radical liberalism with all of their un-American dogmas--has produced in American society and culture. It is not a pretty picture.
The Index of Leading Culture Indicators published by Empower America shows a nation which in the last 35 years has tumbled into an immoral morass faster and deeper than any nation in history. Today America leads most civilized nations in most social pathologies, such as violent crime, teenage pregnancies, unrestricted abortion and divorce. Illegitimacy has risen from 3% to 35%. Our educational system is on the level with many third world nations. Our society from the highest levels is saturated in lies, fraud and deceit. We are deeply in debt, and for the first time in our history children will both know less and earn less than their parents.
Leftist liberalism, which prevails in the power structure of America to this very day, is directly at fault and must be held liable for our decline. Unless there is a radical moral change, America will continue to lose its viability as a strong and vital nation. The premises of secular humanism have born destructive fruit. Our original American heritage and the tradition of the Founding Fathers gave this world the greatest nation it has ever seen. Radical liberalism will continue to emasculate America, ruin its people, and assure its accelerated decay and eventual demise.
Is there an answer? Men as disparate in their views as Judge Robert Bork and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan are suggesting the same solution. Robert Novak, a conservative Jewish columnist, is agreed. None of these is a theologian nor a cleric. The first, a Protestant, the second, a Catholic, and the third, a Jew. all recognize as does Bill Bennett, and many others, that the only movement or institution strong enough to bring the sea change that is needed to save America is religion. Many believe that only a religious revival like the Wesleyan movement in England in the l8th century, which saved that nation from a revolution like the French, can restore our nation to its senses and assure a continuing prosperous and successful future. This would require a complete change of mind and attitude in America and a return to the Biblical heritage, which was the basis for American morality and the ideals which were fervently believed from its first beginnings in 1607 and 1620 and crystallized in its organic utterances from 1776 through 1789.
The United States Supreme Court after reviewing all the writings of the Founding Fathers quoted 87 of them in a decision in 1893 called The Church of the Holy Trinity vs. The United States. They said that they could have quoted as many more to support their decision that “This is a Christian nation.” They meant by this that the basic assumptions underlying the beginnings of this nation had come from the Bible, which was reflected in British Common Law. It is no secret that the Judeo-Christian world view was from the beginning the foundation of America’s political, social, and legal system.
Some historians disagree with this assessment believing that America’s roots are in the pagan Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries in France. The English philosopher John Locke, it is true, had a great influence on the thinking of Thomas Jefferson and others as did the Frenchman Montesquieu who contributed the idea of the separation of powers--executive, legislative, and judicial--which incidentally he borrowed from the British. However, no ideas from the Enlightenment, which contradicted Biblical values, were influential in America. The French Philosophes were deists or even atheists, but John Locke wrote a treatise in 1695 called “The Reasonableness of Christianity.”
Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in 1954, “I believe that no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the Savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses. . I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it: freedom of belief, of expression, of assembly, of petition, the dignity of the individual, and sanctity of the home, equal justice under the law, and the reservation of power to the people. I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country.” (Time Magazine, February 17, 1954, p. 49)
Of the first 120 universities and colleges in this nation, 108 were begun as Christian institutions in order to train missionaries, ministers and Christian laymen. This includes most of the prestigious Ivy League schools. In the last half of the 19th century secular humanists gradually captured the universities, and in recent years leftist-liberals have even prevented conservative professors from being tenured or conservative or traditional voices from being heard. Many major university departments have come under rigid liberal control and have become little totalitarian systems imposing what they consider politically correct thinking and behavior, the “new moral code” of the left wing.
A critical result of this monopoly is that these new leftist ideas are now filtering down into our public schools where teenagers are being indoctrinated. This whole scenario has prompted economist and educator Thomas Sowell to accuse American universities of being the most “intolerant institutions in America.” When Hitler was seeking to subdue the society and culture of Germany, he one day awakened to realize that he had gained the support of the academic world. He gleefully remarked, “The universities are ours; we have won!”
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