Incremental Socialism: the Frog in the Kettle

For a decade already (see our 18 Dec. 2006 and 17 Apr. 2016 issues), we've used this metaphor and image to remind our readers of how depriving people of their religious freedom works. Nowadays it very likely does not come on suddenly, by throwing people into a bonfire like in the Early Church times of Christian persecution. Rather, it is brought on incrementally, by gradually increasing the "temperature" - the public pressure against free expression of our Christian faith. Some will openly rail against traditional Christians as "those people who cling to their Bibles and their guns" and "right-wing religious fundamentalists" who are lumped together with "fundamentalist Islamist terrorists" as we see in the "anti-extremism" laws in the former USSR. These kinds of laws are coming in the West too, as a result of recent terrorist attacks here.

But more often, the Leftist "Liberal" press will publicize statements by politicians who tell us that "freedom of religion" is merely the right to attend whatever church you want on Sunday morning, as long as the pastor doesn't preach anything that's not "politically correct" - see A Pastor Fights Against Government Restrictions on Political Sermons. These politicians will say you can worship as you choose, but just "Don't force your beliefs on others" - see Doctors Sue Administration for Forcing Them to Perform Gender Transition Procedures and Congress Must Protect Religious Liberty Now More than Ever.

Before my wife and I moved to Russia, we led a non-profit organization called Christian Action with a newsletter that was quite similar to Hosken-News. One of my articles was entitled "Gradualism" that explained how Socialism in the West is being introduced gradually, incrementally, by one small decree or law or regulation or executive order after another. At that time, 25 years ago, we already had Social Security, Medicare, the U.S. Department of Education, and the infamous "Roe versus Wade" U.S. Supreme Court decision. One of our Christian Action board members denied that this "gradualism" was actually happening, and he was so upset that he resigned from the board. Let's "fast-forward" to the present: now we have "No Child Left Behind" socialist education, LGBTQ rights even in the military, legalized "Gay Marriage" sodomy, and government-funded abortions mandated by the "Affordable Care Act" - illegal under the Hyde Amendment, but the current Leftist "Liberal" platform proposes the elimination of that "inconvenient" Hyde Amendment. Where did all this come from?

It didn't "just happen" accidentally; rather, it came about intentionally - its leaders use the term "incrementally." They are Marxist theorists from the "Institut für Sozialforschung" (Institute for Social Research), commonly called "the Frankfurt School" that was founded in 1923 by Felix Weil, a Marxist and the son of a wealthy grain dealer. Weil wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the practical problems of implementing socialism. Weil and his followers were confounded that attempts at communist revolutions in Western Europe after WWI had failed. Why did the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution succeed in Russia, an economically backward country, but fail in industrially developed countries in the West, as Marx had predicted?

They finally realized it was because the war had almost completely destroyed Russia's social fabric, so that Lenin could rouse up the returning peasant-soldiers with false promises of "Land, Peace and Bread" if they would join his revolutionary band. So these disillusioned Marxists set about to find ways to deliberately cause the social fabric in the West to unravel by incrementally demolishing the foundations of traditional Christian culture in the West. Felix Weil gathered other Marxist theorists, including German communists, philosophers, sociologists and psychologists. Some were still so committed to formal old-school Marxism that they couldn't bear to leave the Communist Party, but most renounced what they saw as failed Marxist theory, and set about to revise it.

The psychologists included Erich Fromm and Wilhelm Reich: "In joining what was predominantly a 'Hegelian-materialist' current of Marxists, these psychologists gave the development of Marxist theory an entirely new direction, which has left its imprint on social theory ever since. Erich Fromm ...dealt with psychological aspects of social control, delusion and conformity and became one of the founders of 'socialist humanism'. Wilhelm Reich developed his own doctrine of sexual liberalism as an antidote to political conformism and social psychosis." (source: The Frankfurt School and “Critical Theory.”) See also Critical Theory and the Cloward-Piven Strategy and The Origins of Political Correctness: Cultural Marxism.

In 1933, with the rise of Adolph Hitler to power, the Frankfurt School realized the Nazi's threat to its very existence: by 1935 they moved to Columbia University in New York City, and later established a branch in the mass entertainment industry - Hollywood - in Los Angeles, California. Now you can understand why the movies began playing up sexual liberation in the 1940s and onward, up to the present. The infiltration of Marxist philosophy into psychology is reflected in many psychologists counselling their patients to be "liberated" from conventional sexual ethics by participating in adultery and fornication (- they of course don't use those "retrograde" terms).

As I wrote in the last issue of Hosken-News, "conservative, traditional Christians who know their stuff see the state's grasping for power in all areas of public life as a form of pagan idolatry, and old-fashioned pagan idolatry often included sexual immorality (temple prostitution) with its religious ceremonies to lure people in and then entrap them by sexual addiction." This explains the drive for explicit sex education starting in grade school, continuing through high school, including positive reinforcement of the LGBTQ agenda, the use of birth control and having abortions without parental knowledge or consent.

This is why I have expanded the scope of Hosken-News to include the deliberate, organized efforts of Cultural Marxists to incrementally bring about a Socialist Revolution here in the United States. One of the recent candidates for U.S. President was campaigning on an explicit platform of Socialism, and when he dropped out of the race, he insisted that parts of his platform be included in his party's official platform.

Socialism is based on "materialism. It ranges from complete atheism that only admits to what we can see, feel and measure as having real existence, to a vague deism - 'You can believe whatever you want, maybe there's a god who started things up and then walked away, maybe Jesus existed or maybe he didn't, maybe he rose from the dead (if he even existed) or maybe not, and maybe other religions are just as valid, moral and peace-loving, so we should just play nice and get along with each other'" - as I wrote in our last issue.

It is high time for traditional, conservative Christians to stand up and speak out for religious freedom and "the free expression thereof" - as the First Amendment to our U.S. Constitution states. Concerning freedom: "Use it or lose it!" King David wrote in the Psalms, "If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?" He wasn't a limp-wristed whiner; rather, he was a military stategist, and he knew what to do: rebuild the foundations! That begins with carting away the rubble of the Cultural Marxists!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 28 Aug. 2016.)

Socialism, Crony- and Cartel-Captitalism

Most people today don't like to call Hitler's Nazi Germany "Socialist," but the word "Nazi" is actually the German abbreviation of "National Socialist." The essence of Crony-Capitalism is the merger of state and corporate power – the definition of Fascism. In Nazi Germany it was called Cartel-Captitalism, where the heads of large corporations weren't officially part of Hitler's Nazi government, but they belonged to the Nazi Party, and these cartel bosses were pledged and dedicated to support the Nazis' goals. If one of these wealthy Cartel-Captitalists decided to oppose the system, he would be immediately "eliminated" - as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky experienced in Russia.

What we have in Russia today is not "democracy," but rather Cartel-Captitalism or state-capitalism. In the U.S. and Western Europe today we have a somewhat softer, less distinguishable form of Socialism called Crony-Capitalism in which certain wealthy corporate leaders support "Progressive" (Leftist, Socialist) causes in exchange for huge government contracts and favors. The "Occupy Wall Street" protesters are upset about corporations that have way too much power, and the "Tea Party" people are upset about government that has way too much power, but neither side seems to understand the reality that large corporations lobby for the government to have more power and in return the government enacts laws and regulations favorable to those same large corporations. This is Crony-Capitalism.

None of these are true free-market economies in which freedom of religious expression and small businesses can thrive. Very often, Socialism, Crony- and Cartel-Captitalism exalt the state to an absolute authority over most or all areas of public life. They attempt to control the news media, education, religion, health care, local police and the military. Frequently, the revolutions don't come by a sudden, violent overthrow of the existing order, but rather by an incremental, stealthy takeover of the news media, education, religion, health care, local police and the military by weeding out people who oppose the "party line" and installing compliant people who will say and do anything for a paycheck or for a little piece of power and prestige.

Most secularized, gullible Americans have no problem with "Progressive" politics and social policies. They're willing to "just go with the flow" and enjoy the immediate gratification of "free sex and welfare checks." But conservative, traditional Christians who know their stuff see the state's grasping for power in all areas of public life as a form of pagan idolatry, and old-fashioned pagan idolatry often included sexual immorality (temple prostitution) with its religious ceremonies to lure people in and then entrap them by sexual addiction.

The people most often entrapped by these enticements are the poor who fall for the false promises of something for nothing: see The Abandonment of Traditional Values Has Hurt the Black Community. But eventually, when the welfare system becomes so bloated that the government can no longer support it, the state turns to eliminating these "excess categories" - see Planned Parenthood Was Created to 'Exterminate Blacks' and 'It's Working' and When Assisted Suicide Becomes Coercive. When the money runs out, so do their lives.

The essential element in Socialism, Crony- and Cartel-Capitalism is materialism. It ranges from complete atheism that only admits to what we can see, feel and measure as having real existence, to a vague deism - "You can believe whatever you want, maybe there's a god who started things up and then walked away, maybe Jesus existed or maybe he didn't, maybe he rose from the dead (if he even existed) or maybe not, and maybe other religions are just as valid, moral and peace-loving, so we should just play nice and get along with each other." And because materialism denies God as the foundation of all being and life, it is a philosophy of death. That is why it promotes abortion and euthanasia.

In contrast, traditional Christians believe with all their heart that God exists as Trinity before all eternity, that through Christ He created the universe and all things in it, that He interpenetrates the entire material universe and His Divine law is the DNA of the universe that holds it all together. We believe that Christ is fully God and fully man, born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, that He lived a virtuous and sinless life, died on the cross and rose from the dead on the third day, and that He is coming again to judge the living and the dead. We believe that the purpose of our earthly life is to strive toward holiness and partaking of the Divine nature, to be fully united with Christ in His glory, and to share His glory with others.

And those gullible people who had bought into the Socialist lies and even participated in some of the rallies and protest marches, decrying traditional values and "the system" may sooner or later find out that they've been used, they were lured into becoming what Lenin called "useful idiots" who just swelled up the size of the crowds. They still retained from their post-Christian culture a sense of "justice" and "truth," but when the revolution finds out they are no longer useful, they too can be eliminated - see "The Revolution Devours Its Own Children".

You may respond, "Aren't you being a bit too melodramatic?" To that, I must reply that I've been there, done that. I've seen the Iron Curtain up close, living next to it for over a year while in the U.S. Army. Two of my fellow-soldiers were shot at by East German border guards. I felt the very real, tangible threat of Red Army attack while serving in the Army's military intelligence HQ during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Soviet tanks and artillery were lined up on the border, ready to roll.

Then I spent my years in university studying Russian and Soviet history, political science and Russian language: I read more Marx and Lenin than most Russians ever read in their lifetimes. I've studied just about all the Socialist revolutions and attempted revolutions throughout history, and I understand how they're pulled off. Next, my wife and I spent 20 years in missionary work in Central and Eastern Europe, including 17 years in Russia during and after the dissolution of the USSR.

What can we do about this current situation? We must do more than simply wring our hands in despair and complain about how terrible it is. Like the prophet Nenemiah, we must rebuild the broken-down foundations and city walls, we must "Restore Our Broken Society." It starts with becoming informed, then it continues by getting involved in spreading the message. And it finishes by rebuilding true Christian community.

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 13 Aug. 2016.)