Rodin’s The Thinker
Given the increasingly destructive things that have been happening in America in recent decades, it is easy to believe that a group of people designed a single master plan to destroy America. However, what actually happened is that two separate plans for destruction were set in motion, and then a number of initiatives mistakenly believed helpful to the country enhanced the destruction.
One intentionally destructive plan is Cultural Marxism. According to the Heritage Foundation, “Cloaking their goals under the pretense of social justice, they now seek to dismantle the foundations of the American republic by rewriting history; reintroducing racism; creating privileged classes; and determining what can be said in public discourse, the military, and houses of worship.”
The Foundation goes on to cite additional Marxist strategies for changing America: Using the schools to shift the curriculum from traditional teaching to the transmission of propaganda such as rejection of the U.S. constitution. Guiding journalism, the entertainment media, employees’ and teachers’ unions, and corporations to promote communist ideas. Undermining the institution of the family. Manipulating student protests to foster the rejection of American traditions and values.
The other intentionally destructive plan, according to Xi Van Fleet, is China’s efforts to destroy America. Xi, who experienced Chinese rule under Mao Zedong in the 1960s calls the present effort a “repetition” of the brainwashing of the Chinese people that Mao Zedong began in 1949 and continued for 17 years. She says people then “were not able to think, there was no critical thinking, no thinking at all.” Furthermore, they were taught that “weak people are good, [and] strong people are bad.” The present regime in China, she explains, aims to “destroy America because America is the strongest nation on earth,” and the regime covets that strength.
The mistaken initiatives thought to be helpful to America generally arise from four beliefs: 1) that race is not natural but created by influential people; 2) that the U.S. has used race to oppress non-whites; 3) that the areas it has affected include the social, economic, legal, educational, military, and government (including the military); 4) that the only way to solve the problems is to overcome entrenched inequities.
The specific initiatives designed to overcome the inequities include allowing illegal aliens to violate border laws; defunding the police; permitting abortion on demand; eliminating educational practices and standards believed unfavorable to students of color; preventing parents from learning the focuses of school curriculums (so teachers can replace conservative parents’ values more effectively); wherever possible, using the media and government agencies to prevent anyone who disagrees with any of the four beliefs shown above from expressing their views.
I said at the outset of this essay that the two intentional plans to destroy America have been more effective together than either would have been alone, and the unintentionally destructive initiatives enhanced the effectiveness of both. Furthermore, the fact that the initiatives had no formal link to the intentional plans made those plans less noticeable. One example of this effect is the violations of the U.S. border. Religious leaders, most notably Roman Catholic bishops, have seen border violations simply as poor oppressed people seeking asylum; the bishops accordingly felt called by Sacred Scripture to endorse and support them. This perspective has blinded them not only to the weakening of U.S. laws but also to the problems and dangers caused by mass illegal migration, a blindness that Marxists and Chinese Leaders have warmly welcomed because it creates the impression that the border chaos has divine approval!
Other examples of unintentional enhancement of destructive forces include defunding the police, tolerating crime, eliminating rigor from education, preventing parents from learning what is happening in schools, and dismissing dialogue in the public square as unenlightened opposition to improving America. Each of these undermines the healthy functioning of democracy while enabling Marxists and Chinese leaders to achieve their goals without leaving their fingerprints on the actions.
To sum up, the answer to the question, “Was America’s Decline Planned?” is partly yes and partly no. It was planned by those with truly evil aims and unplanned by those who merely wished to behave nobly. The lesson is therefore that though the evil in this case leads to Hell, the road there is, as always, “paved with good intentions.”
Copyright © 2024 by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero. All rights reserved.
