The news of late has been filled with stories about election wins here in the United States for socialist (aka, communist) candidates.
It wasn’t that long ago that a majority of people in our country would have considered it preposterous for a major American political party to openly advocate Marxist governance.
But here we are.
Many in our nation were already aware of how detrimental such policies were and where they would eventually lead.
Additionally, we had generations of refugees here in our country to remind us of the misery that awaits when the crooked path to communism is taken.
Plenty of folks in the country are now in the state of shock, trying to figure out how the unthinkable has happened. A look behind the curtain may provide insight.
A major factor in the societal equation is the collapse of several of our country’s foundational pillars. The pillars were actually displaced over time by a distinctly different worldview known as moral relativism.
Moral relativism is the philosophical notion that “right” and “wrong” are not the same for everyone. When a society adopts a morally relative worldview, what is considered morally acceptable is wholly dependent upon whatever a person, family, culture, or system deems so.
This is untenable for any society in the long run. With regard to individuals as well as the population at large, moral relativism creates confusion. Confusion creates instability. Instability creates anxiety. Anxiety creates the inability to function. The inability to function results in a breakdown.
Truth be known, a society can actually endure a great deal of hardship if people share a belief system based on absolutes. If not, a breakdown becomes inevitable.
In a morally relative belief system, everything is relative. Consequently, nothing is for certain.
“Ball of Confusion,” The Temptations’ 1970 hit song (written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong), aptly expresses the thinking and feeling of the times. The basic precepts of our society were systematically being removed from our collective conscience.
“Evolution, revolution, gun control, the sound of soul
Shooting rockets to the moon, kids growin’ up too soon
Politicians say more taxes will solve everything
And the band played on”
If you take a listen, you’ll likely find that the tune sounds as if it dropped this morning. That’s not just because the music remains contemporary. It’s because the writers of the song were able to capture the historical experience and put it to music. And the musical artists were able to convey the cognitive dissonance and intense emotion that our people were suffering through.
Society was in an attenuated heated argument about what was right and what was wrong. It was evident that moral relativism had already taken root in a significant portion of the country.
Back before things went wobbly we generally shared a common pop culture. We watched the same TV programs, read the same books, went to the same movies, and listened to the same songs. These weren’t just trivial details. They were some of the specific social components that helped form a bond between us and hold us together as a nation.
We keep hearing now that people are so divided, so polarized, so incapable of coming to an agreement on any major or minor issue. That’s because moral relativism foments disharmony. And disharmony produces more of the same.
Peaceful co-existence requires shared norms. When norms are declared optional, something else will swoop in to fill the vacuum. The “something else” that swooped in was communism.
Founding father of communism Karl Marx contended that those who revolt against capitalism are the ones who get to define what morality is.
After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the communists didn’t just change the form of government. They changed the moral manual.
Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin surmised that formerly-held morality was essentially a ploy that was used by the affluent in society to maintain their status and wealth. The communist regime ended up slaughtering tens of thousands of people who were tagged with the label “enemies of the working class.”
Lenin argued that the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” (i.e., the dictatorship of the working class), must show no mercy in crushing the old ruling class. And Russian dictator Joseph Stalin went even further, intentionally starving to death millions of his own people. Officials at the time characterized it as a necessary step toward socialism.
Moral relativism is the prelude to communism. Asserting that some things are simply wrong is the minimum condition in preventing the slide from moral confusion into systematic coercion.
In the 1970s, we resonated to the music and lyrics of “Ball of Confusion.”
Same ball today. Just a different decade.
James Hirsen 