Dawson now pursues some questions for the Christian in light of living under a totalitarian state.

1.) What then is the position of the religious man and the religious society under these new political circumstances?

2.) How far does this new political development threaten the spiritual liberty which is essential to religion?

3.) Ought the Church condemn the totalitarian state in itself and prepare itself for resistance to the secular power and for persecution?

4.)Should the Church ally itself with the political and social forces that are hostile to the new state?

5.) Should the Church limit its resistance to cases of state interference in ecclesiastical matters on in theological questions?

6.) Are the new forms of authority and political organization reconcilable in principle with Christian ideas and are the issues that divide Church and State accidental and temporary ones which are extraneous to the essential nature of the new political development?

Dawson offers a few principles to answers these questions.

1.) We must distinguish between Spiritual freedom and political and economic freedom.

Dawson insists that it is possible to be spiritually free but politically and economically enslaved while at the same time he insists that it is also possible to be politically and economically free but spiritually free.

We must agree with this. There are many Christians around the world who live in political and economic oppression but who are free because they are in Christ. Similarly there are countries which were shaped by the categories of a fading Christendom who still know something of political and economic freedom though a large segment of their population is spiritually dead.

We would qualify our agreement with Dawson by insisting that whenever a large minority in any given social order really knows what it means to be spiritually free there soon will follow a movement for political and economic freedom. Similarly we would add that wherever a social order knows economic and political freedom without a substantial minority of citizens knowing spiritual freedom that social order’s freedoms as in peril of collapsing.

So, while we concede that spiritual freedom and economic freedom do not always exist together we would insist that there is a relationship between these freedoms.

Dawson finishes this section by citing how aspects of parliamentary democracy and economic individualism were opposed to Christian principles yet managed to survive together.

2.) Distinctions must be made between different types of totalitarianism.

Communistic totalitarianism has an obvious and apparently irreducible opposition to Christianity. This is due to the philosophy that lies behind communism which amounts to a religion that is in competition to Christianity. Dawson cites a communist poster that read,

“Jesus promised the people Paradise after death, but Lenin promised them Paradise on earth.”

Analysis – Dawson begins well with this observation but he fails by not applying this observation all across the line. All totalitarian governments offer the people its totalitarian arrangement as a religion and all totalitarian governments offer the Kingdom of man in lieu of the Kingdom of God. Dawson suggests that Fascism, unlike Communism, has not always been overtly hostile to religion. Dawson seems to realize though that while Communism sought to crush Christianity through overt opposition, Fascism has sought to crush Christianity through co-opting it through a process whereby the Fascist State re-defines Christianity in the Fascist totalitarian direction.

In a paragraph worthy of being proclaimed a spot on analysis in 2009 in America, Dawson commented on what he saw of the future in 1934 saying,

“What attitude will such a (Fascist) state adopt towards Christianity and the Christian churches? I do not believe that it will be anti-Christian in the Russian sense, or that it will be inspired by any conscious hostility to religion…. The new (Fascist) state will will be universal and omni-competent. It will mold the mind and guide the life of its citizens from the cradle to the grave. It will not tolerate any interference with its education functions by any sectarian organization, even though the latter is based on religious convictions. And this is the more serious, since the introduction of psychology into education has made the schoolmaster a spiritual guide as well as a trainer of the mind. In fact it seems to as though the school of the future must increasingly usurp the functions that the Church exercised in the past, and that the teaching profession will take the place of the clergy as the spiritual power of the future.

Dawson goes on to say,

“Nor will the state confine its education activities to the training of the young. It will more and more tend to control public opinion in general by its organs of instruction and propaganda in this country….It is obvious that a Totalitarian State … cannot afford to leave so great a power of influencing public opinion in the private hands, and the fact that the control of the popular press and of the film industry is often in unworthy hands gives the state a legitimate excuse to intervene. The whole tendency of modern civilization is to concentrate the control of opinion in a few hands.”

Dawson goes on to say that here is where the danger to Christianity lies. The danger to Christianity lies not in the possibility of violent persecution but rather the danger to Christianity lies in the possibility of such a pervasive and subtle control of the state crushing historic Christianity from modern life by the sheer weight of state inspired and controlled public opinion and by the mass organization of society on a basis that is not in the least Christian.

Dawson quotes Julian Huxley who noted that the coming conflict is not one between religion and secular civilization but rather ‘between the God religious and the social religious’ – in other words between the worship of God and the cult of the state or of the race or of humanity.

Analysis – Dawson writing in 1934 has described where we have come to today. The church has been subtly put off her game and has, for the most part, become a pale reflection of the culture created by the Fascist state. Christian who now rail against the state are now in the position of having to rail against the church as well.

Dawson insists that Christians cannot combat this reality through politics. Dawson insists that Christians must combat this via a spiritual strength. Dawson suggests that the totalitarian state will only be brought down as Christians realize that their attack on the social order created by the totalitarian state must be indirect. Christians must understand the problems created by the totalitarian state can only be solved by reorienting men religiously. The Church’s essential duty towards the State and the world is to bear witness to the truth that is in her.

Analysis – The totalitarian state can only be brought to its end by introducing a King who has superior claims over men then the state does and who is sovereign over the state. One ripple effect of the Gospel successfully going forward is when men give all their allegiance to Christ as they understand that Christ has provided a full salvation that the state can only promise. Preaching the Gospel is what it means to indirectly attack the totalitarian state. If the Holy Spirit frees men from their spiritual bondage and slavery men will desire the physical shackles and slavery to the state come to an end.

A biblical evangelism then is the answer to the totalitarian state. However, it must be an evangelism that identifies the false gods and calls people to give up the false gods for the one true God. The largest idol (false god) in our age is the totalitarian state. The totalitarian state is a reified, magnified, and idealized version of the individual and when as such when people comply with the totalitarian state they are in essence worshiping themselves. Only Christ can cause the idols to fall.

Dawson ends by saying,

“A secularist culture can only exist, so to speak, in the dark. It is a prison in which the human spirit confines itself when it is shut out of the wider world of reality. But as soon as the light comes, all the elaborate mechanism that has been constructed for living in the dark becomes useless. The recovery of spiritual vision gives man back his spiritual freedom. And hence the freedom of the Church is in the faith of the Church and the freedom of man is in the knowledge of God.”

In our last installment on Cultural Marxism we noted that the new proletariat for this version of Marxism would be culturally disenfranchised. In classical Marxism the proletariat working class was to over throw the oppressive bourgeois ownership class and seize for themselves their rightful place on top in the newly reconstituted cultural order. In Cultural Marxism the same dynamic is at work with the role of the bourgeois being played by those who are instrumental in perpetuating christian culture and the part of the proletariat played by those who find Christian culture to be oppressive.

The way that this has worked out concretely speaking is a pastiche of groups that work in an interlocking fashion to advance the overthrow of a culture that is informed by Christianity. For example, Feminism takes up the attack to overthrow Christian informed culture by insisting that male and female equality means that male and female roles are artificial and thus should be eliminated. Feminism attacks the Christian notion that families, churches, civil magistrates, and business owners should be normatively men. This is said to be sexist and results in the implication that Christianity is by its very nature sexist and so must be overthrown. Another movement that is a part of the cultural Marxist proletariat is the sexual perversion movement. This movement attacks the notion that there is such a thing as sexual mores and standards that a culture should abide by. It thus, along with Feminism, attacks the paradigm of the Christian family. The result is that in a culture where cultural Marxism is being successful there are attempts to redefine what constitutes the family. A third movement that is part of the cultural Marxist proletariat is extreme environmentalism. A Christianity informed culture has always insisted that we are to be good stewards of the earth, while at the same time insisting that man is to have dominion over the earth. The Cultural Marxist environmentalists instead have instead followed a kind of nature worship where man is to be brought down to the level of animal and is to be seen as just one more species among all the species that are to be seen as having equal rights and equal value.

A fourth movement that helps form the constellation of cultural Marxist proletariat organizations are the varied minority movements. This movement becomes a bit more ticklish to deal with because of how successful the cultural Marxists have been with the issue of race. Christianity has no problem including people from every tribe tongue and nation in a culture influenced by Christian categories, but what the cultural Marxist have been successful at achieving is convincing minorities that to be part of the Christian West is the same as rejecting who they are as minorities. Cultural Marxism has convinced a large percentage of minority people that what it means to be part of a minority people is the equivalent to being cultural Marxists. This is so true that many of the organizations that exist to represent minority interests in reality represent cultural Marxist interests. This would be true of organizations like NAACP or La Raza. These groups exist to continue to enlist their people to the cause of cultural Marxism.

High percentages of minorities have been convinced that to be part of Western culture is to embrace being “white.” Being “black” or being “Hispanic” has increasingly come to mean being culturally Marxist. This is unfortunate because the end results of such thinking is the continued enslavement of minorities to a victimization mindset that cultural Marxism nurses and inculcates. This victimization mindset is wonderful for the cultural Marxist agenda but it is horrid for minorities because such a mindset means never rising out of the societal and economic underclass. And the really sad thing is that even if cultural Marxism overthrows Christianity in the West the minorities that are used as the proletariat shock troops to accomplish such a thing will not be any better off then they currently are. They will remain part of the underclass as the leveling effect of cultural Marxism will only serve to spread their misery, not relieve it.

Cultural Marxism, being an attack on Christianity and Christian culture, seeks to rid those who embrace it of all the traditional virtues associated with Christianity and Christian culture. As such the minorities and other groups mentioned that are swayed by cultural Marxism tend to eschew industriousness, frugality, a being oriented to the future, independence, chastity, and other virtues. These are often seen as being traits of being “white,” or “straight” or “Christian” instead of traits that have historically been associated with building successful and prosperous cultures.

One thing in all this that must be kept in mind is that the chief tools that cultural Marxists use to create this proletariat are the tools of envy, resentment, and victimization. All the groups named thus far have a sense that they have been taken advantage of by those who have built Christian culture. They have been ill used and take advantage of. They have been told that they would have advanced if not for the evil Western culture. This creation of a sense of being unfairly kept down is the same tool that the Serpent used in the Garden to entice Eve to throw off God’s authority. This reminds us that a criminal class, which cultural Marxism creates, is a class that will excel at accusing the social order that opposes them of being criminal.

Another part of the reason that the cultural Marxists have been so successful at creating a proletariat and at destroying the fabric of Christian social order is that Christians have lost both their nerve and the ability to overthrow the way cultural Marxist characterize Western culture. Until the West can find its voice in order to defend its culture, and until the West can find people who really do believe in the West the cultural Marxist and their proletariat will continue to own the field of discourse.

Letter to the editor

My name is George C. Joseph. I am the sole owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu, a family owned and operated business in Melbourne, Florida. My family bought and paid for this automobile franchise 35 years ago in 1974. I am the second generation to manage this business.

We currently employ 50+ people and before the economic slowdown we employed over 70 local people. We are active in the community and the local chamber of commerce. We deal with several dozen local vendors on a day to day basis and many more during a month. All depend on our business for part of their livelihood. We are financially strong with great respect in the market place and community. We have strong local presence and stability.

I work every day the store is open, nine to ten hours a day. I know most of our customers and all our employees. Sunshine Dodge is my life.

On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them. My new vehicle inventory consists of 125 vehicles with a financed balance of 3 million dollars. This inventory becomes impossible to sell with no factory incentives beyond June 9, 2009. Without the Dodge franchise we can no longer sell a new Dodge as “new,” nor will we be able to do any warranty service work.

Additionally, my Dodge parts inventory, (approximately $300,000.) is virtually worthless without the ability to perform warranty service. There is no offer from Chrysler to buy back the vehicles or parts inventory.

Our facility was recently totally renovated at Chrysler’s insistence, incurring a multi-million dollar debt in the form of a mortgage at Sun Trust Bank.

HOW IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CAN THIS HAPPEN?

THIS IS A PRIVATE BUSINESS NOT A GOVERNMENT ENTITY.

This is beyond imagination! My business is being stolen from me through NO FAULT OF OUR OWN. We did NOTHING wrong.

This atrocity will most likely force my family into bankruptcy. This will also cause our 50+ employees to be unemployed. How will they provide for their families? This is a total economic disaster.

HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN IN A FREE MARKET ECONOMY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?

I beseech your help, and look forward to your reply. Thank you.

Sincerely,

George C. Joseph
President & Owner
Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu

People,

This is a violation of the 5th amendment. This is wicked, and this is being repeated in a thousand places throughout this country.

Bret

Question – Elsewhere you have agreed that secularization opens the back door for Islamification, and that the quest for secular “freedom” will lead only to oppression. Could you explain why you believe this?

I agree with this and believe this because secularization in the West is really a project to de-christianize the West. Secularization, as it has come to be expressed in our politically correct society, is driven by the Cultural Marxist tool of critical theory but while Critical theory is good at tearing down it does nothing to replace what it tears down. As such, once the cultural Marxists are finished with their “secularization” agenda and once the West is scrubbed clean of Biblical Christianity what is left of our theologically paper thin social order, will not be vibrant or vital enough to serve as a bulwark to keep Islam out. The result of secularization thence will be the Islamification of the West.

The quest for secular freedom leading to Islamic oppression rests on similar reasoning. The pagan cultural elites are driving for a freedom that was unknown in the context of Christendom. Among the Reformers notion of “Freedom” was an understanding that did not absolutize freedom but rather was defined by forms and structures. The pursuit was for freedom inside of a Biblical context. The “freedom” that is being pursued today is the freedom of the French Revolution. It is a freedom that is in in fact really license. The inevitable outcome of all such pursuits of freedom, as we are now pursuing, is oppression and tyranny because the anarchy that ensues with absolutized freedom always is eventually met with some form of tyranny that seeks to re-establish some kind of order.