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Introduction
Speaking of history, as we often do here at Revolution 2.0™, what do you know about the Cultural Revolution in China? This 10 year long socio-political purge under Chairman Mao, 1966-1976, The Cultural Revolution damaged China’s economy and traditional culture, along with incurring a death toll estimated to have been in the millions.
We are deep into the dangerous beginnings of our own cultural revolution, a culture war, with its intention of establishing one party rule.
That is the subject of today’s 10 minute episode.
Continuing
Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from its founding in 1949 until his death in 1976, was well practiced in mass killing in pursuit of his goals. His ill conceived Great Leap Forward, a five-year plan of forced agricultural collectivization and rural industrialization, 1958-1962, resulted in the deaths of up to 40M people, making Mao the greatest mass murderer of all time–even greater than Joseph Stalin, the Russian dictator from 1927 until his demise in 1953. Hitler and Naxi Germany take a distant third place when it comes to mass murder. Mao and Stalin claimed to have been Marxist-Leninists, and Hitler labeled his party Socialist. What they were all really up to was seizing and holding power in their one-party states. Their announced political philosophies were for convenience only; their real tools were rhetoric, centering around passionate misinformation, and ruthless intimidation, including mass incarceration, murder and torture on a stunning scale.
Today in America, the Gang of Four, the pollsters, the Left, the Mainstream Media and Big Tech, are pushing to have one party rule here in the US. Their tools are rhetoric, centering around passionate misinformation, and ruthless intimidation though cancelling and shaming. The Goal of the Gang of Four, is to manipulate elections in a way that no Republican is ever again elected to national office–and very few to state office.
The most subtle, yet the most powerful, way for the Gang to succeed in its mission is to support and encourage the less concerned, less involved, unmotivated and generally unknowledgeable voters to take a few minutes every four years to cast a ballot. These are the voters who know little or nothing about either our unique purpose or history as a nation. Few of them could answer basic civics questions, or even identify key political leaders. Most importantly these voters grab onto appealing cliches and sound bites instead of doing any checks-ins with opposing opinions and policy recommendations. The Gang works to create the false impression that if anything in life is hard, is not what is wanted or is merely inconvenient, then it is unfair and needs to be remedied by government. And the Democrats, they claim correctly, will provide those remedies for you through the government, while Republicans won’t.
At its core, America was built on a culture of hard work over time, faith in a higher power, respect for authority and a high regard for education. Today, hard work is slowly beginning to be replaced with taxpayer dependency, the higher power is the government, authority is disrespected simply because it represents authority, and education and knowledge are being replaced with indoctrination and certificates. I remember being taught in school that the family is the basis of the state. That made immediate sense when I first heard it in Junior High. Stronger families make for stronger societies, and logically stronger societies make for a stronger state. Today, it is inverted; the family needs the approval of and support from the state for almost everything from financial assistance to the remaining freedoms that individuals and families are free to exercise.
The American economy, guided and fortified by free markets, hard work over time and ingenuity and creativity, is by far the strongest the world has ever seen. And that continues, e.g., Walmart was founded in 1962, Amazon in 1994 and Tesla in 2003. Our national character was memorialized long before in 1776 and 1787 with the signings of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Yet our national character, currently under heavy assault, can die in one or two generations. Our economy, also under attack from dangers like massive and mounting debt and government subsidies that discourage work, will remain strong, though continually weakening, far longer. And if we repair, resurrect and even improve the national character, and there is certainly room for improvement, the economy will take care of itself. And we will be better as people, and as a people.
I want to share some personal stories that fit quite well here. Two of my sons went to a wonderful private preK-5 school, Belmont Oak Academy, not surprisingly in Belmont, CA. While the Asian Moms there were asking for more homework for their kids, other Moms were asking for less. A friend of mine, Bill G., lived in a high rise condo building in Cupertino, CA. The units were owned mostly by Asians. Bill, an excellent CFO for hire, worked late into the evening. He noted that many other units also had their lights on late as the kids studied well into the night. My eldest attended Carlmont HS, a public school for his Freshman year before transferring to Serra High, a nominally Catholic private school. He summed up the difference by saying to me, “Dad the academics are not all that different. What is different is that at Carlmont if you do your homework you need to do it on the down low for fear of being ridiculed. At Serra, if you do not do your homework, the reaction from the students is, ‘Hey, what’s up with that?’”
My point in recounting these stories is that we are busy creating a society where hard work and accomplishment are being punished and even ridiculed. A growing number of school districts and colleges are ending or simply ignoring standardized tests simply because they don’t like seeing certain groups consistently succeed. Harvard is being credibly accused of tilting the admittance process away from Asians despite their superior qualifications because they value diversity over merit. As I was growing up, Horatio Alger stories were still spoken of with respect. These juvenile novels share essentially the same theme: a teenage boy improves his circumstances by virtuous behavior. Today, these stories would be angrily criticized as examples of white privilege and an unfair playing field.
But the evidence does not support that claim. Less than a month ago, on May 28th, I published an episode which in part observed that there were 8.1M job openings, then a record. Today the number of jobs going begging has soared to 9.1M, all while the number of job seekers falls. To top it off, workers are quitting at the highest level in two decades. In April, the share of U.S. workers leaving jobs was 2.7%, according to the Labor Department, a jump from 1.6% a year earlier, over at 50% increase, to the highest level since at least 2000.
It does not take an Horatio Alger to apply for and get a job, certainly not in this job market. It does require pride and a measure of personal responsibility. But those essential personal characteristics are being undermined as part of the culture war by increased jobless payments, overall welfare increases, and most perniciously, a culture shaped and driven by much of the media and many politicians that declares that if you are non-white, and worse, also not male, that you are a victim worthy of being supported by the taxpayers.
The Brooking Institute announced the results of a study well worth noting. If someone at least finishes high school, gets a full-time job and waits until age 21 to get married and have children, there is only a 2 percent they will be in poverty and a 75 percent chance they will be in the middle class. There were no qualifications or exceptions about race, gender or political affiliation.
Today’s Key Point: One party rule states like Russia, China (neither have ever been democratically ruled) and Nazi Germany did not first go to their political, military and economic extremes and then bar political competiton. They first established one party rule, then went to their extremes. A good example is Nazi Germany. Hitler began his active political career in 1923, became the democratically elected Chancellor in 1933, and declared himself Führer, essentially dictator, in 1934. The horrors started in 1938 with Kristallnacht, the widespread destruction of Jewish property and violence against Jews, and the opening of the Auschwitz death camp in 1940. Remember that earlier we said that the Gang of Four, the pollsters, the Left, the Mainstream Media and Big Tech, are pushing to establish one party rule here in the US.
Where do you stand? What are you going to do? Remember, it does not matter where you stand if you don’t do anything. You can start by subscribing to these episodes, and encouraging others to subscribe with you.
As always, whatever you do, do it in love. Without love, anything we do is empty. 1 Corinthians 16:14
Contact
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Will Luden, coming to you from 7,200’ in Colorado Springs.
