We have mentioned Gramsci in a previous article. In this column we will touch on him briefly as a lead-in to the next two which will deal with him in detail.
Many comments are appearing in the national media upon the lamentable lack of knowledge of American history by the youth of this country. A recent column in the Washington Times was titled: “Losing America’s Memory, Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century.” This column disclosed the incredible ignorance of American history, not only among today’s college seniors, but even more frightening, many of the teachers, who have been graduated in the past twenty or thirty years, are themselves sadly lacking in knowledge of American history.
The study of the top 55 colleges and universities in the U.S. revealed that not a single one requires a course in American history as a prerequisite for graduation. NOT ONE! The column reported that college seniors could not identify the American General (George Washington) at the battle of Yorktown. Most could not identify words from the Gettysburg Address nor even basic principles of the U.S. Constitution! And THESE are college seniors.
Perhaps worse than this lack of ignorance is the fact that when the Founding Fathers of this country are mentioned at all in the “educational establishment” the information supplied is done with derision or outright misinformation. The recent television program about the supposed liaison between Thomas Jefferson and the slave Sally Hemings is a prime example. Was it possible that such a relationship might have existed? Yes! Is it fact? No one knows! There is literally NO VALID scientific evidence to PROVE that THOMAS Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings’ children. The DNA study in 1998 simply showed that ONE of at least EIGHT Jefferson males (the President, his brother Randolph, five of Randolph’s sons and a cousin) was probably the father.
The real problem here is that the miniseries presented the possibility as a FACT! In the process, it will have destroyed the reputation of Jefferson in the minds of many Americans who accept the story as incontrovertible fact. There is a dangerous trend in the entertainment industry to revise history in the interest of a “better story.” A few cases which come to mind are Disney’s “Pocahantas”, Oliver North’s “JFK”, and Forman’s “Amadeus.” All of these seriously distorted or falsified the true facts.
The story of the United States is, possibly, the greatest secular story ever told. The United States was a direct reversal of the millennia long world history of tyranny. No other nation like the United States was ever conceived, let alone brought into existence.
Throughout its history, enemies of freedom have tried to find a way to destroy us. It was finally realized that the surest way to subvert this nation would be to separate us from our past. The strength of this nation has depended upon our morality, our faith and our patriotism. To a great extent those factors depend upon an in-depth knowledge of our own history. Eliminate our past and we will have no future.
Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Socialist earlier in this century, was perhaps the best exponent of the concept that to institute a new culture in a society it was first necessary to destroy the old culture. Churches are changed by having age-old doctrinal and moral teachings modernized and reduced to irrelevancy. Genuine education is gradually replaced with extreme permissiveness, “gutted” curricula and tremendously lowered standards of excellency. The mass media is used for manipulation of public attitudes and for harassing and discrediting traditional standards and institutions. As theologian Harold Brown stated a few years ago, “Culture becomes a vehicle for destroying ideals and … presenting the young not with heroic examples but with deliberately and aggressively degenerate ones.” Marriage and the family are continuously attacked and denigrated. The family is increasingly portrayed as a dangerous place where violence is the NORM.
After a few decades of such conditioning, society is transformed and demoralized. The obliteration of all memory of the old culture makes possible the imposition of a wholly new one. As explained by Fr. James Thornton, a Catholic priest, “Just as few Eastern European people retain any memory of what life was like before Communism, so, too, the older America of unregulated lives, honest government, clean cities, crime-free streets, morally edifying entertainment and a family oriented way of life is no longer vivid in the minds of many Americans.”
We have come a very long way down the road toward the loss of the cultural heritage left to us by our ancestors. Unless Americans at this time realize what has been and is happening, it is just a matter of time until we will have passed the “point of no return!”
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”