On Learning How To Think (Perhaps For the Very First Time)
An entire generation in the West has been force-fed a steady diet of secular leftism, moral relativism, and postmodern psycho-babble. Our schools, media, legal system and popular culture – among others – have dumbed down an entire generation, instilling in them every idiotic and puerile PC dogma and leftist tenet of belief possible.
Thus most people today, raised and reared in that system, are now becoming close to zombies, parroting the latest trendy leftwing fads and foolishness, not even aware of how little bearing their ideas are to reality, common sense, history or basic morality.
This is the very frightening legacy of years of concerted efforts to wear down the West from within. Gramsci and others fully outlined their intentions in this regard years ago, and we are now seeing the fruit of their labours. I have written about the scourge of cultural Marxism elsewhere, eg:
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2011/03/19/how-to-sabotage-a-nation/
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2010/09/28/on-capturing-a-culture/
It is not just the steady stream of indoctrination, propaganda and agenda-pushing from our schools and elsewhere that is so problematic. Even worse still is the result of all this. Not only is Western culture going down the gurgler (just what the leftist militants want), but our very ability to think and reason is being destroyed as well.
Students today are rarely being taught how to think for themselves, how to logically assess an argument, how to critically think through the issues of the day. Instead they are being spoon-fed exactly what their puppet masters want them to think.
Indeed, the last thing these cultural Marxists want is for people to actually be able to think and assess matters for themselves. They want well-heeled mobs that will unflinchingly follow the leftist dictates which have been drilled into them from kindergarten to grad school.
And of course with this neutralism of the mind comes an equally pernicious and harmful neutralising of the spirit. A loss of reason and critical thinking will always lead to a loss in basic morality. Indeed, with political correctness running amok, and kids from day one being taught that there are no moral absolutes and no intrinsic rights and wrongs, then we should not be surprised to see a widescale hardening of the moral arteries.
The rioting in Britain last week is just one clear example of all this. Plenty of other examples come to mind. One occurred last night on TV. I did not see it but was told about it. A pro-marriage advocate was basically howled down on a talk show for arguing that children need a mum and a dad, and that same-sex marriage would open the door for all sorts of other problems.
These young trendy hip TV presenters were so thoroughly steeped in their left PC indoctrination, that they all took offense at this, and said they were insulted by such outlandish remarks. Imagine being offended by someone standing up for marriage and the wellbeing of children!
When a generation of rather lost souls comes to a place like that where mental and moral firmness have disappeared, then we know that society is basically in a terminal condition. Indeed, with minds like mush and morals almost nonexistent, we can expect to see any number of new and horrendous social engineering proposals. And even more tragically, we won’t even bat an eyelid about them when they are presented.
Let me offer two brief examples. Both of these despicable matters reported in the news are just par for the course for a generation which has been robbed of the ability to think or engage in sound moral reasoning. The first has to do with a gathering of various eggheads, sexperts and academics. Now that they have managed to normalise and glamorise homosexuality, they are attempting to do the same with paedophilia.
Here is how one news report covers the story: “Researchers from several prominent U.S. universities will participate tomorrow in a Baltimore conference reportedly aiming to normalize pedophilia. According to the sponsoring organization’s website, the event will examine ways in which ‘minor-attracted persons’ can be involved in a revision of the American Psychological Association (APA) classification of pedophilia.
B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile activists and mental health professionals, is behind the August 17 conference, which will include panelists from Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Illinois. B4U-ACT science director Howard Kline has criticized the definition of pedophilia by the American Psychological Association, describing its treatment of ‘minor-attracted persons’ as ‘inaccurate’ and ‘misleading’.”
There you have it folks. After a generation of mindless and soulless brainwashing we have managed to convince ourselves that there are no longer any adult perverts running around who want to take their sexual thrills out on little children. Now they are so very politely referred to as “minor-attracted persons”.
Isn’t it interesting? Decades ago we argued that if we go down the road of normalising homosexuality, paedophilia will be next on the list. We were shouted down with abuse and ridicule at the time – and still are. But now our exact warnings are coming to pass, yet the radicals will simply keep shooting the messenger here.
Let me give you another example, also having to do with sexual madness. Consider this tragic case coming out of Sydney: “A Sydney man says he is devastated that his name has been taken off a 10-year-old girl’s birth certificate, after a legal challenge by the mother’s former lesbian partner.
“The girl was born in 2001 after the man, who for legal reasons can only be known as BB, answered an advertisement to provide sperm to a lesbian couple. The birth mother’s name was put on the birth certificate, along with BB’s. A law change in 2008 allowed lesbian couples to be listed on birth certificates, but still limited the document to two parents.”
Father? Come on, that is such an outmoded and oppressive concept. We are all so very enlightened now. We know that fathers don’t mean beans any more. As long as various adults are around that will do for parenting. Why get hung up with such quaint and unnecessary concepts such as biological mothers and fathers?
And who gives a rip about the child in question? The right of every single child to know and be raised by his or her biological parents has been stripped away by the single stroke of a pen by an activist PC judge. We have declared war on our own children, all in the name of letting adults fulfil their selfish lusts while destroying society.
Indeed, our Federal Finance Minister and her female lover have publicly celebrated their coming IVF baby, so why shouldn’t we? In fact, anyone who dares to question this move, such as Fred Nile, is immediately howled down by our elites, eggheads and intellectualoids.
We are all just so smart and progressive nowadays. C.S. Lewis said it so very well a half century ago: “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/academic-conference-seeks-to-normalize-pedophilia?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b1b95da732-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_Headlines08_16_2011&utm_medium=email
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-17/father-loses-birth-certificate-fight/2843288
[1183 words]
“C.S. Lewis said it so very well a half century ago: “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.””
The perfect counterpoint to Gillard’s cry of “moving forward”.
Dominic Snowdon
Hi Bill,
By all means fulminate against the godless and the perverted (as you see us gays and lesbians) but I think you will find that the judge had no choice because of the longstanding law that says that sperm donors are not fathers. This law is quite old and was intended to protect sperm donors from maintenance claims by mothers and biological children. The judge seems to be quite unhappy about having to make this decision from my reading of the media reports.
By law, it is my understanding that sperm donors cannot be recognised as fathers. The law requires that a man and a woman engage in a sex act to make a baby; anything else doesn’t count for legal fatherhood-even if the donor’s name is put on the birth certificate and there is a long relationship with the child. So this fellow’s status was always at risk if the mother jacked up.
My understanding is that the family court has ensured via the mechanism of considering the child’s best interest, that her ongoing relationship with the father is protected and fostered. It’s messy, but as you Christians say; that imperfect human being s for you.
Regards Angela Pollard
Thanks Angela
But this long sorry saga demonstrates that the wellbeing of the child was never a consideration to begin with. Fatherhood is more than mere sperm donation. And allowing lesbians to deprive a child of one of the two most important persons in her life is really tantamount to child neglect, if not abuse. And this latest ruling is at the very least a case of identity theft. She does not have and never will have two mothers. She has a biological mother and father, and no activist judge should rip that away from any child.
But as I said, this entire case – spanning ten years now – shows the many pitfalls of designer children, alternative lifestyles, assisted reproductive technologies, and the war against marriage and family. It all leads to another nail in the coffin of fatherhood and family, and is part of an unofficial war against children.
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
Seems Miranda Devine was lucky enough to experience gay activist ‘tolerance’ and ‘open-mindedness’;
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/jack_boot_left_gives_dads_a_kicking/
I’m afraid the internet does for leftists the same as a mob – provides them with the anonymity to attack people.
Damien Spillane
I’ve known of many instances where psychologists have proved to be mad as a box of frogs, including two instances where practising psychiatrists have committed suicide. A Psychologists association can’t be allowed to have the last word on these ethical matters, they are far too immersed in their subject to see the wood for the trees.
If our laws are indeed based on the tenets of Christianity then it should be obvious to everyone that these deviations should be forbidden. Unfortunately many of us are fast asleep while all this is going on.
Rachel Smith
I am horrified that a pedophile conference is being held, but it shouldn’t surprise me. When the APA last voted that homosexual marriage, their decision was unanimous in favoring the change in our marriage laws. It seems that people have no idea that a war is being waged on us and that the other side is winning one small victory at a time. I believe firmly though that God build in a sort of self-destruct code for societies that cross these lines. We will definitely reap a whirlwind because of this.
Robert Waite
These days the population are not aware they are being taught religion in their science classes while another religion is being fought tooth and nail to be prevented from having an airing on the same topic of origins. They know that if the students were given the option to critically think through the issues they would be easily swayed to believe in God.
Aaron Downs
Bill – ‘minor attracted persons’ – do they define this as minors attracted to each other or adults attracted to minors – or both? Shocking! Thanks,
Vickie Janson
I am a member of an organisation which represents the sports of shooting and hunting in Australia. Just yesterday I received a letter from them regarding political parties’ stands on this issue. To quote:
“the Greens have an unapologetic policy platform aimed at the ultimate banning of ALL civilian ownership of firearms as well as banning hunting, fishing and numerous …activities. The reasons …are ideologically and emotionally based and not based on fact, science, statistics…thereby ignoring any legitimate arguments… Their position is that no case that we put forward can win.”
My guess is that there are as many or more sport firearms users in Australia as there are gay people waiting to get married.
Why advocate the rights of one group and not the other. Oh wait, I think I know…!
David Williams
Hi Rachel,
Just in regards to your comments about psychiatrists committing suicide. I know that psychiatrists actually have rather high suicide rates, which seems to stem from the very harrowing and difficult issues they are grappling with on a daily basis (when treating and talking with clients). Even my wife – who is not a psychiatrist but a dietitian counseling people with eating disorders and associated issues – says that engaging with such individuals can be exhausting, both mentally and emotionally. Suicide seems to be a sad companion to the work of psychiatrists, rather than evidence that they are “mad as a box of frogs”, as you put it.
Scott Buchanan
I heard on a radio program a few years back about a study they did on Elephants. To cull herd numbers they removed the lead bull elephant. They then discovered that on doing so certain herds were having problems with young bull elephants ‘rioting’ and causing chaos amongst rhino herds. They discovered by removing the Adult dominant Male Bull they created a society of rebellious adolescent bulls. There was no Male to pull them into line and no discipline and no example to follow…how like our society today does that sound???
Ali Murphy
The trendies who have come off the straight and narrow remind me of a train engine which has come off the rails. Some of the witless, who might be highly “educated” but know nothing about trains, might think that the engine is making progress because of all the noise it makes and the hot air it generates. But no – it simply churns up what is around it, makes a nuisance of itself and makes it difficult for anyone to put it back on the straight and narrow.
Frank Bellet, Petrie Qld
Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary said, “… evolution is the great intellectual rival to Christianity in the Western world. It is the creation myth of the secular elites and their intellectual weapon of choice in public debate.”
Evolution is the underpinning of all this post-modern nonsense–it’s claimed to be science. Mohler is one theologian who understands the issue. We need such a clear voice in Australia. Sadly, so many of our evangelical stars in Australia are happy to surrender to the atheists’ creation myth and deny what the Bible says.
Does anyone know of any evangelical theological college in Australia that teaches against evolution over millions of years and promotes the fact that God created in six-days some 6,000 years ago as the Bible records? Anyone?
Tas Walker
What is so sad is that the “modern” Christian is so unaware as to their blind support of much of the PC brigade, feminist/socialist politics and emergent spiritualism, coz it “sounds right”. Marxism sounds right until you realise what it’s aim is and where it comes from. Liberal Modernist “Christianity” sounds right as well (pity that it ultimately denies the Cross and deifies all that ‘feels good’) and comes from the same place. And this culture is perpetuated through schools & universities of all shades, popularist people-centred seeker-sensitive churches, and by unthinking albeit well-intentioned parents who omit to teach their children the “way they should go” themselves (probably coz they don’t know the “way” in the first place).
Parents, like the previous generation, have given over to others the job of educating their children. How then can we expect this to be a thinking generation which knows truth when it sees it?
Garth Penglase
To Ali Murphy
Thanks so much for your lead bull elephant story. As a male in this world and a father, I have felt and thousands of others have also felt, under attack. Criticized for being or trying to be a strong male role model. Part of the cure for this dilemma or if I say what I really mean, an abomination of Gods law, is for women to stand up support the male. Instead of the male playing a strange supportive role, sort of just there for the woman (queen bee).
Daniel Kempton
How dreadful are the curses which being gay lays on those who are enslaved to it! Besides the militant frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful evolutionary fatalism. The effects are increasingly apparent in many countries. The rise in sexual violence, promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, mental instability, suicidal tendencies, drug taking, a threat to the economy, a hatred of truth, justice and righteousness, a threat to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and thought itself, a terrible threat to children, and a threat to marriage and the family exist wherever the followers of the prophets of Cultural Marxism, like Gramsci, Lukacs, Marcuse, Horkheimer and Alfred Kinsey rule or live.
A degraded and perverted sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity, sanctity and humanity. The fact that with LGBTism, gayism, queerism, homosexualism – whateverism – every woman becomes a second class citizen, simply a machine for bearing children, must delay the final extinction of sado–masochism, bondage and sexual slavery, until gay perversion has ceased have its terrible hold on men.
Individual gays may show splendid qualities. Many become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die in the cause of diversity and sexually transmitted diseases, but the influence of Frankfurt School and its cultural Marxist ideology paralyses the personal and social development of those who follow it.
Apart from Islam, no stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, gayness is a militant and proselytising ideology. It has already spread throughout Britain and other western nations, raising strutting and cavorting followers at every gay pride parade.
http://vimeo.com/25960835
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5aohq3jms8
No amount of technology, no reasoned debates, no appeal to common sense, or health and safety can stop this cancer eating away at the heart of our nation. Just as ancient Greece and Rome vainly struggled with inner moral decay so we too are condemned to fall, unless by a supreme recovery of moral courage and martial vigour we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden times.
Apologies to Winston Churchill: The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899.
http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/27711
Yuri Bezmenov a trained KGB officer gave this amazing interview back in 1985 on how the West would be won to communism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk&feature=related
The writing on the wall could never be clearer.
David Skinner, UK
Hi Bill,
I was watching a TV series called Find My Family http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286757/ and it is about people who are searching for their lost Mother or Father. What opened my eyes to it was a show about a boy who was raised by Lesbians, one of them his real Mother and he really wanted to find out who the father was. The TV show did actually find his real father to a joyous reunion but it has never left my mind that children will always want to know who their real Mother and Fathers are and to degrade men as just sperm donors is just the ultimate slap in the face we don’t deserve.
Paul Hotchkin
Hi Scott, I take your point on how mentally and emotionally draining any sort of counseling work can be. I have always had great admiration for those who counsel people with terrible life problems whilst remaining calm, non-judgmental and objective themselves and I try to emulate this skill. Psycho analysis is vitally important for understanding and rehabilitating.
It’s the intellectualising and relativism which lead to preposterous concepts becoming normalised that really get my hackles up and it was the thought of normalising paedophilia that prompted my “box of frogs” phrase I feel there must be an independent body of people who can stand back and see clearly how mad such a proposition is. Bill’s first link above contains “no one chooses to be attracted emotionally to children and adolescents” but no one seems to care about the children who are being spoken of as commodities.
Rachel Smith
“And who gives a rip about the child in question?” (BM) – indeed, no one does, they only care about themselves; promoting that kind of “value” – selfishness – was what the “sexual liberation” revolution was all about. I read an article recently which said that it’s not so much the Culture of Death that we live in (though obviously we do), it’s the culture of SELF (abortion – Convenience Killing – is first and foremost selfishness).
John Thomas, UK
As you say, Bill, many of us stood at a vantage point of that long and winding slippery slope and saw this ‘normalisation’ of pedophilia from way back. Social engineers have found that they can bring in just about anything with the right vocabulary and justification, and that’s what they will do on this earth (barring a miracle). There is no end to this slippery slope. It keeps going into a black abyss with its blind and applauding riders enthusiastically along for the ride while society crashes down around their ears. At the core of all this moronic and maddening PC applause of evil is pride. Everyone wants to be thought intelligent and progressive. Nobody wants to be the poor ‘fool’ standing on the street corner shouting ‘repent’. Well, I’d rather be a fool for Christ anyday than on that rapid descent into hell.
Dee Graf
Tas Walker is right. The heathen doctrine of evolution is responsible for so much damage to the minds of innocent children.
I keep checking this site in the hope that Bill will have set his sights on taking down this target. I’m sure someone with as much knowledge and robust skill could dispose of the flimsy “arguments” the evolutionists insist on putting forward. Then I’d be able to read them out to my son, whose mind is filled with all this rubbish.
Mrs Murray-Leach
Thanks Barbara
But I do have such articles in my science section.
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
Hi Barbara,
The site: http://www.creation.com is fantastic and has Biblical answers to every so-called evolutionary ‘argument’.
I also suggest you consider taking out a subscription to their magazine ‘Creation’ to give to your son. Even the most hardened evolutionist will have his faith in evolution seriously shaken by reading just a few articles.
Best regards,
Mansel Rogerson