Our problem is a lack of health care -- the moral variety

By Selwyn Duke

Originally published at American Thinker

There was, of course, nothing unpredictable about Sunday's health-care vote. It was fairly obvious that the Chicago mobsters would, using the Escobarian silver-or-lead tactic, scare up the votes needed to pass Obama's baby. It was plain that "pro-life" Democrats such as Bart Stupak would, after the requisite posturing, find the rationalization they needed to cast aside a position that was never really a principle. That it came in the form of an executive order with the credibility of the Hitler-Stalin Pact is of little consequence. It was also predictable that the Monday after would bring talk about the extinguishment of liberty and the republic, and heads hanging so low that good Americans could look up and see their shoelaces.

Yet there is a somewhat larger view a person can take here. It is one that distinguishes between symptoms — even very severe ones — and the underlying disease.

Some have asked a very predictable question: "Where were you the day the republic died?" But there is a better one: Where were you when you first knew our republic was dying? As for me, I can't tell you exactly where, only when. I believe it was the early 1980s. And I was still a teenager.

Our moral decay — or, as some would say, progressivism — which yields political decay, was not predictable a generation or two ago. It was in progress. And this was obvious. Big government programs — the great exception to the rule that it's easier to destroy than create — are spawned but hardly ever slain. Laws, regulations and mandates — which by definition are the removal of freedoms and imposition of values — are instituted but hardly ever rescinded, resulting in the true progressivism of our times: the progressive loss of liberty. And do we only now have our Tea Parties and complain about the "loss of constitutional government"? For decades our national contract has been trampled, from the separation-of-church-and-state ruling to misapplications of the Commerce Clause and General Welfare Clause. But people only start to notice when their ox finally gets gored.

Even more telling symptoms of this moral decay are the cultural shifts. Sexual mores are ever loosened, never tightened; childrearing becomes continually more permissive, education more dumbed-down, entertainment more decadent, and the media more frivolous. This is inevitable in a morally relativistic civilization, by the way. After all, a corollary of the idea that there is no Truth is that there is no morality, and, hence, no moral boundaries. And, without them, the only thing left to guide our moral decisions is emotion. Thus do we hear "If it feels good, do it." The problem is that passion is a siren; follow your heart and you'll follow it straight to Hell.

Now, we generally identify this phenomenon with euphemisms such as liberalism, leftist ideology, socialism, or cultural Marxism (yes, even that's too kind), but it is something else entirely: A philosophy of vice. It is evil.

This isn't hard to understand. Vice-ridden people are greedy, covetous, envious and slothful, so they want the fruits of others' labors; they are lustful pleasure seekers and dismissive of life, so they want abortion on demand; they are irresponsible and animalistic, so they will accept the collar in exchange for promises of security; they are wrathful and uncharitable, so playing the race and class-warfare cards can easily make them scapegoat their fellow man. Divorced from Truth, they are emotion-driven and thus easy prey for demagogues. And the "left," craving power, wants vice-ridden people.

So Obamacare was entirely predictable, even decades ago. Oh, I couldn't have told you it would pass the House on Sunday, March 21, 2010 by a margin of 219-212. But, given our decay, socialized medicine was inevitable. And, unless something upsets the rotten apple cart, so are amnesty for illegals, faux marriage, hate-speech laws and . . . well, civilizational death is the limit. Don't believe me? Know that each generation is more liberal — that is, more vice-ridden — than the preceding one, as we venture further on the road more traveled. Polls show, for instance, that while a majority still opposes faux marriage, young people do not. They will change as they age, you say? You dream. A few will, but the pattern is unmistakable: One generation put homosexual characters on TV and laughed at them, the next (today's majority) accepted civil unions, and now the new wave thinks faux marriage is a "right." And should this pattern continue, we will next have polygamy, and one day, even, pedophilia, which some are already joking about (e.g., the "Pedobear" Internet meme).

If talk of sexuality makes you nervous, another example is our departure from constitutional governance. Many scream about the unconstitutionality of Obamacare, but the next generation will be inured to it just as we've become inured to Social Security, the "greatest generation's" comfortable constitutional trespass. Hey, if it feels constitutional, do it.

So what is the solution? Is it political? Will we talk about the next Reagan when even the first couldn't halt moral decay? The "Reagan Revolution" was incorrectly named; it was only the Reagan Impedance. And will we talk only about the next election when that also is, at best, an impedance? No, we cannot understand the solution till we grasp the problem: the people. The citizenry has been, for almost a hundred years now, degraded morally — or, as some call it, pulled toward the left.

This has been effected in two ways, one of which is through the importation of socialist voters. Eighty-five percent of today's immigrants come from the Third World and Asia, and the vast majority vote for leftists once naturalized. Is this a surprise? They support socialists in their native lands (e.g., Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Robert Mugabe), and stepping on American terra firma doesn't magically transform one's ideology.

To illustrate the tangible effects of this, I'll mention just two things. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that since new immigrants generally oppose enforcement of immigration law, their population's constant growth guarantees eventual amnesty for illegals. It also, of course, ensures the eventual death of our traditions and the attendant descent into uber-statism. And if you would dispute this, just ask, why would these folks care about American culture and history? Do you care about promoting others' culture and history, such as, let's say, that of the Mayans? These new arrivals are not American. And we become less so all the time. We are being colonized.

This is where some will say it just takes time for acculturation, that immigrants always become "American." But how is this realistic when we don't even agree anymore on what it means to be American? Assimilation is impossible unless there is something to assimilate into; it's not likely unless that something is appealing. And what do we offer? Reality TV? An amorphous, whatever-works-for-you cultural blob of we know not what? What works for these folks is to retain their own culture.

This brings us to the crux of the problem and the second way in which the people have been transformed: through academia, the media and entertainment. The destroyers of civilization — or, as some say, the left — long ago seized control of these all-important agents of change. Through these vehicles they make all that created Western civilization seem wholly unappealing and toxic, thus ensuring that the native born will become anti-American and that the alien will, at best, remain un-American. After all, why preserve or adopt something seen as the bane of man?

It is this, the lack of moral health care, that is our problem. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, the teaching in the schools today is the ideology of tomorrow. As for our "entertainment" and media, Hitler's filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, only could dream of such power to twist minds. Antonio Gramsci's "War of Position," which places leftist ideologues in positions of influence in the West for the purposes of undermining its culture, is long over. And, as Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov pointed out, once the process of "demoralization" is complete, you are "stuck with 'them,'" meaning, the degraded and deluded. You cannot change their minds because, divorced from Truth and hence immune to reason, that isn't what you have to do. You have to change their hearts.

The political merely reflects the moral, and political campaigns don't shape morality; rather, they are referenda on how it has already been shaped. And he who controls the media, entertainment, academia and immigration policy molds the American mind.

Republicans may win the next election; there is even the off-chance they may repeal Obamacare or that the courts may overturn it. But these would just be movements toward the right on a ship steadily drifting left. As for how to take control of the helm, the solution isn't hard to figure out — just hard to accept and effect. And all I'll say for now is this: After years of the Gramscian corruption of America, only a third of the population would do what's necessary to protect our culture — even if armed with the correct information.

I have given you the dots. All you have to do is connect them.

© Selwyn Duke