Buchanan: Communism Still Attacks Western Values Through the Left
by Ed Thomas
June 1, 2005
(AgapePress) - Political analyst and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan says the United States is presently in a losing battle in the culture war. Among the nation's enemies, he contends, are philosophies that have been at war with Christianity throughout history.Buchanan is the author of the book Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neo-Conservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency (Thomas Dunne Books, 2004). According to the author, the U.S. and Western civilization defeated communist philosophies politically and economically in the 1980s. But today, he says, "What I call cultural Marxism and militant secularism are clearly winning in the United States of America."
On Fox News' O'Reilly Factor, Buchanan pointed to the evidence of moral decay in Western society, such as rampant pornography and the divorce rate, to make his point about where America's cultural norms have gone. He noted that one Communist philosopher in particular, Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci, observed in the early 1900s that Marxism's best hope of defeating the West lay in undermining that society's Judeo-Christian heritage of thought.
"Western civilization is a product of Christianity," Buchanan asserts, "and Gramsci and the others realized they had to de-Christianize the culture. They had to change values." And that, the conservative commentator says, is exactly what has happened in America, where advocates of Communist philosophies like Marxism are, in his opinion, not only clearly winning but still on the offensive in the culture war.
In Where the Right Went Wrong, Buchanan examines the link between Communist-type worldviews and the counter-culture advocates of 40 or 50 years ago in the United States. He says those Leftist proponents have played a major part in steering the U.S. and other Western nations away from their Judeo-Christian roots -- a journey that he feels has unquestionably led to a sharp decline.
"I think if you take a look at the culture we have now, compared to what we had in the 1950s, you cannot say that is progress," the author contends. And that is especially true, he adds, "when you see folks that are cutting off their TVs or throwing them out," or "they're not going to movies [because] the language is filthy."
Buchanan says today's political Left, which yesterday's counter-culture has become, has made and is making significant progress. He maintains that, since the fall of the Soviet Union, the former advocates of Marxism and Leninism have switched to battling Judeo-Christian principles on the cultural front; and even if they lose some battles, he says, they may be winning the culture war.
Ed Thomas, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
