Why America’s Culture Is Being Undermined
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

Samples of the new form accompanying the directive contained space for the entry of the name of “Mother” and a second space for entry of another “Mother.” No space for any father is provided. That’s on another form available from the state to use in registering the newly born child of a heterosexual couple.

New York State now dignifies homosexuality to the point of considering two females as the parents of a newborn. And New York State is not alone in taking such action. The bedrock of any worthwhile civilization, the traditional family, has been undermined and has now been officially denigrated.

No government bureau would have dared circulate such a directive only a few decades in the past. A solid foundation of traditional morality would have made it impossible to even consider such a departure during past millennia. But America’s culture is changing, and the gradual acceptance of same-sex “marriage” is just one example. But why is America changing?

The transformation of America’s culture has much to do with the strategy laid out by a communist theoretician named Antonio Gramsci. His plan for subverting the non-communist world is known by far too few. Yet, what he advocated is occurring.

A founder of Italy’s Communist Party in the wake of World War I, Gramsci soon became disillusioned at the party’s fortunes because of the rise of fascist Benito Mussolini. So he fled to Russia in hopes of finding a more pure form of Marxism. The paradise he expected to find, however, turned out to be a tyranny controlled by the military, allied with police-state terror. Still anxious to build Marxism, he returned to Italy but was arrested and jailed under suspicion of being an agent of a hostile foreign power. During nine years in prison, he formulated a plan for conquering Italy and the rest of the Christian West.

Instead of hoping for a spontaneous revolution of the working masses, as many communists actually forecast, Gramsci proposed attacking the West’s cultural foundations, thereby weakening the structure of those nations he wanted to conquer. If communists could undermine faith in God and love of family and country, he believed, the Christian West would become rootless and would be an easy prey for conquest. His plan called for infiltrating the cultural institutions — churches, schools, media, etc. — and converting them into instruments for change that would promote cleverly disguised Marxism and (in general) subvert the culture of the target country.

Gramsci recommended that communists should ridicule morality, decency, and virtue. He said that real heroes should be replaced by adulation of the equivalent of today’s decadent rock stars and Hollywood favorites. Especially should communist cadres work to denigrate the institutions of marriage and family. While other communist leaders believed that the route to power involved politics, labor unrest, violent revolution, even economic warfare, Gramsci worked to sap a nation’s cultural base and weaken resistance to communism’s ultimate goal.

Antonio Gramsci died in prison in 1937, an almost forgotten man. But the nine volumes of recommendations he compiled during his years behind bars were later published as his Prison Notebooks. Issued in many languages, the Gramscian strategy has been employed very effectively in many countries, certainly including the United States. Especially did Gramsci point to the importance of gaining influence among the cultural elites to bring about a piecemeal triumph of Marxism that (for a country with a strong tradition of freedom such as the United States) could not happen through an open and sudden revolution.

Consider the harmful effect on America’s cultural base of such forces as feminism, the homosexual lobby, extreme environmentalism, liberal historians who trash our nation’s founders, and jurists and legislators who operate on the false doctrine that the U.S. Constitution was written only for a bygone age and modern government has all the answers for today’s needs. Much of the attack on America’s foundations has been funded by the elitists who gained control of the fortunes amassed by such men as Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie. While it is true that many Americans shrink in horror at the erosion of culture that so marked our nation, few seem to understand why it is happening.