Coming from Behind

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Coming from Behind

The following is from Thomas Sowell. Barbarians inside the Gates. pp. 118 - 120

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Coming from Behind

IT IS NOT UNUSUAL FOR TEAMS in various sports to come from behind. But, in order to do that, you first have to recognize that you are behind and play accordingly. Too many conservatives, in the post-1994 election euphoria, imagined that they were ahead. But that election was like hitting a home run with the bases loaded when you are ten runs behind. It is a good start, but only a start.

The education of the next generation, from the kindergarten to the graduate school, is firmly in the hands of the political left. Moreover, unlike many conservatives, the countercultural left understands that they are in a war for the soul of this country. They do not observe any Marquis of Queensberry rules in that war. They do not hesitate to apply ideological litmus tests to everything from faculty hiring to the rewriting of history.

Nor do they hesitate to use everything from grades to the student disciplinary process, including expulsion, to punish students who say something politically incorrect. Speech codes on elite college campuses across the country are vaguely worded, not because there is no one capable of plain English, but because vagueness serves the twin purposes of intimidation and allowing the authors of these codes to deny intimidation.

Studies documenting the lopsided liberal-left political views of the media have appeared so often over so many years that this should not be in any doubt, though here too there are lofty ways of denying or evading this plain fact. However, it is not simply the personal opinions of reporters but the extent to which they are willing to slant the news in support of those opinions which is a key to the culture wars of our time. N.B.C.'s rigged "test" of a truck's gas tank, with explosives secretly planted to make it blow up on camera, is a classic example of this mindset—and its effects on journalistic ethics.

Joseph A. Schumpeter once said that the first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie. The ideologues of academe are no exception. Moreover, even scholars caught lying may be excused if it was in "a good cause" as seen by the left. In one example a few years ago, a historian who exposed and documented fraud by another historian seeking to promote leftist conclusions was denounced by many other academics for jeopardizing a young scholar's career, even though no one challenged the accuracy of the exposé.

The American Library Association sponsors an annual—and fraudulent—"Banned Books Week" in which "banned books" are defined and counted to include books that anybody can buy anywhere and which the government itself often buys by the thousands. Anyone who objects to school books which graphically portray gang rapes to classes of ten-year-olds, or which systematically ridicule religion, or which show pictures of naked adults engaging in various homosexual acts, is accused of "censorship" for opposing the brainwashing of children behind their parent's backs.

Professional associations of all sorts have in recent years become politicized by the left. The National Education Association routinely votes "politically correct" resolutions on non-educational issue ranging from immigration to environmentalism. The American Bar Association, the Modern Language Association, and other professional organizations have likewise succumbed to ideological crusades, even at the expense of professional integrity.

Above all, the political left understands the crucial importance of institutionalizing whatever political advantages they have at the moment, so that these advantages will survive long after that moment. Thus New Deal agencies created during the Great Depression of the 1930s are still alive—and growing—in the 1990s. Conservatives seem to have no corresponding awareness of a need to get rid of such programs root and branch.

Despite a majority in both houses of Congress, the Republicans have not been willing to get rid of even such small agencies as the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Legal Services Corporation, both of which have long been shock troops for the counterculture. Budget cuts for such entrenched and determined opponents of the basic values of this country are like running a lawn mower over crabgrass. If you are not prepared to root it out, you are just wasting your time and kidding yourself.

Despite the economic prosperity of the country, the indicators of social degeneracy are all around us—violent crime rates and rates of teenage pregnancy both several times higher than they were within living memory being just one example. Students' ignorance and inability to think, in even our best schools and colleges, means that they are ripe prey for demagogues—with the future of this country being correspondingly jeopardized.

We can still come from behind in the bottom of the ninth—but only if we realize that we are behind and that it is the bottom of the ninth.

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This article must have been written in the late 1990s since the copyright on the book “Barbarians inside the Gates” is 1999. That means it must have been written at least 25 years ago. The article shows what the situation was in the late 90s as compared to today. Nothing has gotten better. Things have just gotten worse and worse.

The Left has long been engaging in a great, ugly battle to destroy the values and outlooks of Christianity, certainly since at least the early 1970's. The liberals showed all of their strength with the many anti-war demonstrations and the big hippie movement with all of its drugs and free love back in the 1960s. And back in the 1950s we had the Kinsey Report and Elvis Presley. It has all been win after win for the Left and morally downhill since then. In 2015 the Supreme Court ruled that homosexual marriage was legal. The Left has been winning everywhere, not only in this country but in the entire western world. The Bible tells us that Satan rules this world and we have a seat, watching it all in action.

This is a battle between Good and Evil. Evil has been winning for years. It does seem to me like the Right has hardly put up a fight. I don’t really think most of them care much. Anyone should know that you can’t allow schoolchildren to be brainwashed without extreme consequences for the future. I am not sure that there is much that the Right can do within the constraints of the democratic system that we have. Even when the Right gains power through elections they fritter away their opportunities through stupidity or indifference.

The final result of this battle will not come in this world but in that other world — that spiritual world that all will finally realize is the real world. In that world there will be a Final Judgment and an everlasting Hell for Satan and all who followed him.

12 June 2024