LM#45--What Happened To Our Country? pt 1

Few are over the age of 35. You know that this is not the country that you grew up in. An overwhelming number of US citizens will attest to that. But a rising amount of college kids are now asking the same question what happened to the country that our parents grew up in? Let's talk about it on this Liberty Minute.

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser.

Hello, I'm David and welcome back to another Liberty Minute. This will be a three-part series where we will answer the profound question what happened to our country? Now? The short answer to that question is we are undergoing a cultural revolution. We're in the middle of it, much like in being in the middle of a hurricane it's hard to know if the hurricane will pass shortly or if we're still in the outer bands and the worst is yet to come. Now, in past Liberty Minutes we've talked about the lack of good leadership that America and the world is suffering from and has been suffering from for over the last two decades. So this cultural revolution only exacerbates our issues. It's as if the commander of the ship of state keeps circling through the hurricane instead of just pressing do straight into the storm, like most good commanders do, to get through it as quickly as possible. So to help us get our bearings on how we got here, I just finished what I regard as perhaps the most comprehensive and in-depth history of the modern left in American politics to have been written in the last two decades. Now, this accomplishment is not for the faint of heart, so let's grab our first quote, because this captures the heart of the book and helps us to begin to understand and answer this question that so many of us have been asking what happened to our country? Going to the book, americans look around at their country and no longer recognize what they see. The very category of the citizenship is denied. Millions of illegal immigrants stream across our unprotected border and are escorted into the interior of the country where they receive government welfare. Americans have learned that all of their rights as citizens can be removed, not by elected representatives, but by unelected bureaucrats claiming emergency powers. Under the authority of health, which used to mean human flourishing, americans were told that they must reduce their lives to a bare preservation. They watched their demoralized neighbors become habituated to wearing face masks and line up for endless experimental vaccines. Journalists who disagreed were censored. The assistant secretary of health and the nation's first female admiral report state media is a man who, declaring himself a woman, had his penis removed. Little girls in California schools are told to question their genders and then, without the consent of their parents, are injected with irreversible sterilizing, puberty blockers and courses of testosterone. Mainstream media outlets like the USA Today run stories to de-stigmatize pedophilia. When polled, surprising numbers of Democrats approved to fines 55%, home confinement 59% and prison, 48% for those who resisted or publicly challenged mandates for masks and COVID vaccinations. 29% approved of removing their children Under the authority of anti-racism. Americans see their leaders promote vicious anti-white racial hatred, justifying a new Jim Crow for whites. For an entire year, americans watch Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioters burn in great American cities, persecrate ancient churches, tear down historical monuments, break all laws and injure law enforcement, only to be told that the riots were peaceful and that the rioters had a right to destroy others' property and livelihoods. The government creates record levels of inflation and disrupt supply chains, and Americans are told to embrace the new standard, the new lower standard of living. In sum, the ideas that most Americans had tolerated as absurd and regulated to academia transgenderism, anti-white racism, censorship, cronyism are now endorsed and carried out at the highest levels of political power. What formerly were the ideals of the radical left are now the policies of an entire cosmopolitan class that includes much of the entrenched bureaucracy of the military, the media and government-sponsored corporations. It seems there's little that can be done. While 70% of Democratic activists those that lead the party express shame of their own country, the sentiment extends to Republicans. Leading conservative intellectuals attack the country's founding traditions and principles as a failure, to the point of rejecting Republican principles altogether. Among other conservatives there's a general uncertainty as to what Republican principles even are. As a professor of politics at Hillsdale College perhaps the most politically conservative college in the country I'm often asked by my students and visiting friends of the college how did we get here? What intellectual or cultural changes took place to bring us to this point, and what recourse do we have? This book is my answer. It is written for them. While I'm not a political insider, nor do I aspire to be a pundit, this book is also written in the spirit of the times. It is filled with both facts and controversy. It intends to be a kind of classic, especially for its conservative audience. In a world where old conservative gods are dead, those gods this book hopes to show were newer in their construction and they are experiencing a timely demise. And despite this book's dour implications, I hope the reader will share in some of its optimism. History is for the living. There is a rising generation of young conservatives who, in the face of the ruling classes, incompetence, corruption and degeneracy, is finding much worthy to conserve for all Americans. Amen, and that was part of the opening introduction to this new book out from Encounterbooks the War on the American Republic by Kevin Slack. Now, who is Kevin Slack? Well, let me read his bio from the back of the book. Kevin Slack is a professor of politics at Hillsdale College, which we shared in that opening quote, where he teaches political philosophy, american political thought, including American progressivism, liberalism and radicalism. His first book, benjamin Franklin Natural Right in the Art of Virtue, was published by the University of Rochester Press, and Kevin has scholarly articles which have appeared in journals such as American Political Thought, new England Quarterly Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, church History and American Thinker. Dr Slack earned his PhD from the University of Dallas in 2009. So Kevin is a new up and comer in the conservative political thought area in space. You can actually go to Hillsdalecom the online courses where they offer wonderful free courses you can check out. He actually created a course all around this book, so if you want to cheat, you could go there. I'll put a link in the show notes. Ten lessons I've crushed all of them and I'm about halfway through the book so far, and it was so good I just had to bring this to you guys. So much like what he says at the end of that. First quote many young, rising conservatives who look at both the radical Democrats and the incompetent Republicans, especially the incompetent Republicans in the establishment class. These rising young conservatives are finding much worthy to conserve for all Americans, mainly because they're going back to the founders values and virtues and they're relearning and refounding those true Republican principles. Because there's much, there's much worthy to conserve for all Americans. That's a spot on statement. And again, boy this author, kevin Slack. This is the first book I've read of him, but he is nailed a home run with this book. It is so good, it's a tour de force. That's a complete roadmap of how we got here in the last 50 to 100 years. Now some of this started off with very minimal changes but only accelerated in the last 20 years. And I would suggest, based on this reading and how deep it goes, that you begin to see the overwhelming changes gathering steam roughly about the year of 2000. And that makes sense. I left Washington DC in 2000. And I thought the whole town was beginning to be corrupt then. And that was only a 23, 24 year old snot nose kid. What did I know? But I had enough common sense to look around and say half these people are corrupt. Now. Democrats were becoming radical back then and the GOP was purely milk toast. They would roll over at anything. Leadership was so soft, so soft that they elected a child pedophile a speaker, as it later turned out, and Dennis Hastor. How terrible. So the GOP has been acting like the wig party for so long. No wonder we are in the shape that we are, without any real opposition to a Democratic Party that Kevin Slack, this wonderful author, articulates, has gone from the mainstream to the extreme radical Marxist end of the political spectrum. And in fact, let's pick it up there and go back to the book. The radical 1972 convention opposed the war and affirmed cultural identity. The party, the Democratic Party, going radical. Eight huge losses, with McGovern losing 60.7% to 37.5% again against Nixon, in the face of what Kevin Phillips called an emerging Republican majority. It was the end of a long standing labor alliance, with Bill Meany and, I'm sorry, jim Meany and Jimmy Hoffa refusing to endorse McGovern at the time and Ruther, another labor boss, siding with the anti-war platform. Alienated blue collar workers voted for Nixon, but the party built a new coalition. Mcgovern won 87% of non-white vote of the non-white vote and did 13% better among working women and increased support from educated elites and skilled professionals. And this in fact begins the radical turn in 1972. Yes, they lost, and they lost big. But the radicals were going to keep agitating with these new Marxist theories, coming especially from academia. Let's go back to the book to learn about these. The new constituency is quote unquote of race and gender groups and the goal of achieving the new idea of nature required institutional devices. Marcus repeated the Italian Marxist and Antonio Gramsci's theory that orthodox Marxism's focus on materialism failed to grasp the crucial role of the superstructure of ideas. Rejecting the working class as the agents of change, gramsci promoted the takeover of state institutions whereby a minority of radicals could change society by changing its culture. Sound familiar this march would take place in education, bureaucracy, social regulation and the civil society. Radical activists ensconced themselves in federal agencies and programs where they secured government funds from community organizing at the grassroots level. Sound familiar. Liberals had marked the great society's community action programs for graft, but radicals co-opted funding for the National Welfare Rights Organization in Acorn and, to liberals dismay, programs like the hate whitey liberation school in Nashville, tennessee. They secured $40,000 for Leroy Jones's black arts theater, which produced black nationalist dramas on Harlem streets and in one a parody of a radio TV Jack Benny program. Benny's black valet, rochester Robbs and conquers his white oppressors. In another, black teens beat up a white teen for his homosexual advances. Jones told the Negro Digest quote the black artist's role is to engage in the destruction of America as he knows it. His role is to report and reflect so precisely the nature of the society that white men will tremble, curse and go mad because they will be drenched in the filth of their evil. When James Farmer, who launched the 1961 Freedom Rides, proposed an adult literacy program, president Johnson personally asked it and demanded an end, to quote the kooks and the sociologist in the office of economic opportunity. And that is just a great example of slacks writing. You hear all the examples pulled from very in depth research and he pulls no punches. He gives you the real deal, in fact. Let's go back to the book, because here's an example of his great analysis. It was the end of the old embedded liberalism with its concern for class and protection of whole industrial sectors. Both parties had turned against the middle class of the industrial economy. Socially conservative and economic liberal laborers conflicted with both the new democratic base and with Republican business interests and so arose two antagonistic populist constituencies one Christian, white and traditionalist and the other an underclass of minorities and single females. Meanwhile, privileged elites held both parties leadership, but they shared increasingly less with their single or increasingly less with their basis. These embraced the new libertarianism and neoconservatism, while privileged white and minority Democrats justified their affluence and bureaucracy and education by claiming to help the disadvantaged In the new knowledge economy. A struggle of orders began among college educated baby boomers, between neoliberals and finance and radicals in the humanities. Their tensions, ideas and the eventual marriage under Barack Obama would be the subject of our next two chapters. And boy were those next two chapters very, very good. So yes, the marriage of both those radical elements of the Democratic Party under Barack Obama accelerated our demise as a country and why we're looking around now saying I don't recognize our country. And as we just learned, the radical Marxist scrum she's theory that you must take over all the institutions explains why and how a vocal, activist minority can overwhelmingly subdue a silent and passive majority in our country. Frankly, that's exactly what they've done. Radicals in education are everywhere, in fact. Here are just some bullet points about radicals in education. They began to attack the hidden curriculum in public schools and weed out the racist, sexist and Christian and even homophobic ideas that were prevalent in school curricula. Teachers now needed to make students aware of their own oppression and enlist children in the battle against oppression. Radicals in the bureaucracy and education published authoritative documents on systemic racism and endorsed anti-racist activities for school children. President of the American Federation for Teachers, albert Shanker, testified before Congress that many of these programs encourage students to become violent and to resist all authority as oppression. Many anti-racism activities taught that all white people are racist, regardless of whether they have any conscious racial prejudice. Anti-racist training activities also pushed Pat Vidal's new definition of racism as the combination of power and prejudice, and Badol's teaching this meant that only the groups with power can be the oppressors. Schools also urged white students to confess their privilege so they can become allies for the underprivileged. And actually, let's keep going. How about radicals in the bureaucracy? Here's some bullet points. In the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited, which prohibited over acts of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin. It barred the use of racial quotas. Now radicals, however, took over the agencies created by Congress to enforce this law and those laws and began interpreting the law contrary to its very own language and the federal courts often deferred to the expertise of equity and diversity bureaucrats, as laid out in the labyrinth of interpretive memos, clarifications and guidelines. This began delegating authority to agencies, for example the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to prosecute these violations. In 1978, agencies adopted the four fifths rule, which introduced quotas for race, sex and ethnicity as de facto evidence of discrimination. Bureaucracies themselves grew under racial leadership in terms of budget and personnel, and the federal hiring standards often had to be lowered to allow more minority hires in federal agencies. And lastly, radicals extended their preferential treatment and entitlements afforded to African Americans under the civil rights laws to new victim groups, mainly women, hispanics, asians, indians, the elderly, the disabled and homosexuals. And let's keep going. How about radicals and how they've transformed the administrative law? Here's some bullet points Liberal, liberal regulatory agencies were extended or intended to regulate and protect private industry for the public interest and good. Radicals rejected the idea of a quote public interest and insisted there was only the distinct interest of various groups. These groups included civil rights groups, environmentalist groups, consumer protection groups and worker health and safety groups. Elites were now able to claim they represent various unorganized and underrepresented groups. Property rights were also extended to include the rights to welfare. In order to protect those who are now receiving government aid, elites began to approach each new issue by creating an agency and granting it broad powers to set economic or economy-wide standards. Here are some examples the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Administration. Most of these agencies were primarily staffed by lawyers and not scientific experts in these respective fields. So you can see, with all these examples, how this is playing out fully across our country. Now where do we see how the direction in the future of the country is gonna go? Let's go back to the book. The pseudo-meritocracy results in democratic one-party role in states like California, which has the nation's greatest level of inequality. Democratic long-term role over cities like Baltimore, detroit and Chicago shows the country's trajectory Gentrifying cosmopolitan's drive out middle-class voters with high rents and a plan 10 cities of drug users and street defecators. Homicides in major cities rose 44% from 2019 and 20, and another 5% from 2020 and 2021. Nationwide, they rose 30%, a 60-year high. Even as the homeless filled cities like Los Angeles, the elites welcomed in millions upon millions more illegal immigrants, who bring the Mexican drug cartels wars with them. As Houston reported skyrocketing homicide. The Harris County Sheriff repamanded and reminded deputies to share their personal pronouns and introductions. No longer prosecuting property theft, cities like Dallas and San Francisco released criminals from prison to terrorize the public and only enforced violations on citizens who could pay the fines. The city of Chicago decided not to prosecute gangsters involved in a deadly public shootout because they were engaged in quote mutual combat. White hipsters who can no longer tolerate the cost of living, filth and crime move to more conservative cities like Boise, idaho and Bozeman, montana, salt Lake City, utah, sioux Falls, south Dakota, where they create the same failures revealed in declining happiness among women and increasing drug use and suicide rates among men. The loss of family and private associations and their sham replacements with online identities has brought isolation and depression among the lower classes and madness among its pseudo elites. As the middle class collapses, the US returns to an ancient politics of oligarchy and demagoguery, the perpetual vibration between tyranny and anarchy. Tyranny and anarchy is exactly what we are watching now. You can see what the future holds for us as we look towards the dysfunction of California and New York and most of our big cities with one party states, cities that used to be great beacons of jobs and education, of culture, la, san Francisco, chicago, new York City and Detroit. They look more like third world countries from the heart of Africa than first world cities in the United States in the 21st century. Many of my African friends exactly say that Logos in Nigeria is better than New York City. I had to research logos. Didn't even know it was a city. But after being here for decades upon decades they returned to their home countries and often right back. It's much better here than there. But should we be pessimistic as conservatives and, more importantly, should we be pessimistic as Americans? Well, let's hear from Kevin on this very point. But conservatives have no reason to be pessimistic. The emperor has no clothes. The incompetent, corrupt and degenerate ruling class has lost all legitimacy. Citizens no longer believe state media facts selected for political control. True science, the evidence before one's eyes, pulls back the curtain to expose the globalist American empire as a kleptocracy that has betrayed the country, outsourced its wealth and defense and degraded its very people. Progressivism is not inevitable, not on a faded right side of history, so to speak. Nor are its peddlers true believers. Most academics are status seekers who teach anything to secure their privileges. The intelligent students reject the orthodox myths of indoctrination necessary for graduation, branded as racist or sexist for merely existing. They no longer care about being called either. They sit through required classes on race and gender, the global village and climate change, calculating how to balance personal advancement with social duty. They groan at the charade of privileged professors turning their classes into awkward confessionals, pressuring students to participate in the revival, throughout which musty Pharisees sniff out every intention. Increasingly, these key political demographics for any political movement, young men has dropped altogether, and so you can see there, things are bad throughout the country and Kevin does a wonderful job of trying or I'm sorry, of tying actually tying and linking Horrific idea to horrific idea in what has happened to our country over the past 75 years, with no institution being spared. I could have given you guys over 20 to 25 quotes from this book. Again, I'm only halfway through it. It is that good and it goes that deep naming names, naming titles of books, giving you major thesis of books, so you can spend probably the rest of your life trying to understand what the left has done in its vast left, hard left turn on the political spectrum. And that's the real gem and achievement of this book is it goes so deep that you can research everything you can make, it's a class in and of itself. So the cultural revolution that we're living through today is far and wide and deep, and actually let's just grab one final quote, because I thought it was so good and it gives us some hope. And you heard a little bit of that near the end of our last nugget of wisdom. Conservatives should not conclude in discouragement or despair, but in ruthless and radical analysis and questioning, smashing the old idols, followed by hope. Increasingly, young Americans mock the incompetent, the corrupt and the degenerate cosmopolitan ruling class. They no longer believe in the conservative lies that sold their birthright. They should openly disdain the propaganda designed to convince them that resistance is hopeless, that nothing can stop the shadows of tyranny creeping over the West. However, they must awaken to the truth that they are the West, not a mere idea in musty books, but their own flesh and blood, which they can restore when they themselves flourish. Their salvation is the salvation of the West. While it's going to be no easy task, if they refuse to decline, then they will begin a renaissance, recovering their long lost religious and political traditions. Did you catch that key phrase there? They themselves will flourish. Actually, let me repeat it. Moreover, they must awaken the truth that they are the West, not a mere idea in musty books, but their own flesh and blood, which they can restore when they themselves flourish. But if that's not a bedrock nugget of wisdom for this channel and for this podcast, I don't know what is. Their salvation is the salvation of the West. While it is no easy task, if they refuse to decline, they will begin a renaissance let's call it a conservative renaissance, a conservative renaissance of flourishing and we will recover our long lost religious and political traditions. So in today's Liberty Minute, kevin Slack provides us a great service in outlining how and why and what happened to our country. He gets in the weeds, citing the books and the authors and how. Things have only accelerated since the 1960s and were very fast tracked under the administrations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden the true Marxist cultural revolutions. Both of them Remember that Gramsci quote who is the long march through the institutions? And well, that long march has happened. Every institution has been compromised and corrupted. We see it in example after example. So in terms of the path forward, Kevin gives us some hope to combat this Marxist cultural revolution. The young people aren't buying it. They roll their eyes at the indoctrination of the radical left. And so, in summary, to answer this opening question what happened to our country? We are watching up close a cultural revolution happening in the United States. Now come back next week for part two of this three part series. Kevin has done a great service for us. He was the opening batter and he is new and fresh and very invigorating to read. So it's exciting to have him on the conservative writer horizon and helping us to answer what happened to our country. Now, next week we'll tackle another good book. It's going to come from a heavy hitter, he's going to be batting clean up and then we'll have a fresh face for book number three. So next week we're going to tackle all of this and, I hope, to answer this question what happened to our country? And we will do that with a, like I said, a clean up hitter, someone you're very familiar with. But he's going to give us a different perspective. And until then, let's, as always, keep fighting the good fight, let's keep hope alive, cause that is how we flourish.