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HISTORICAL ILLITERACY & GRAMSCI

LOSS OF CULTURAL HERITAGE

By: Albert V. Burns

We have mentioned Gramsci in a previous article. In this column we will touch on him
briefly as a lead-in to the next two which will deal with him in detail.

Many comments are appearing in the national media upon the lamentable lack of
knowledge of American history by the youth of this country. A recent column in the
Washington Times was titled: "Losing America’s Memory, Historical Illiteracy in the
21st Century." This column disclosed the incredible ignorance of American history, not
only among today’s college seniors, but even more frightening, many of the teachers,
who have been graduated in the past twenty or thirty years, are themselves sadly lacking
in knowledge of American history.

The study of the top 55 colleges and universities in the U.S. revealed that not a single
one requires a course in American history as a prerequisite for
graduation. NOT ONE! The column reported that college
seniors could not identify the American General (George
Washington) at the battle of Yorktown. Most could not identify words from the
Gettysburg Address nor even basic principles of the U.S. Constitution! And THESE are
college seniors.

Perhaps worse than this lack of ignorance is the fact that when the Founding Fathers of
this country are mentioned at all in the "educational establishment" the information
supplied is done with derision or outright misinformation. The recent television program
about the supposed liaison between Thomas Jefferson and the slave Sally Hemings is a
prime example. Was it possible that such a relationship might have existed? Yes! Is it
fact? No one knows! There is literally NO VALID scientific evidence to PROVE that
THOMAS Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings’ children. The DNA study in 1998
simply showed that ONE of at least EIGHT Jefferson males (the President, his brother
Randolph, five of Randolph’s sons and a cousin) was probably the father.

The real problem here is that the miniseries presented the possibility as a FACT! In the
process, it will have destroyed the reputation of Jefferson in the minds of many
Americans who accept the story as incontrovertible fact. There is a dangerous trend in the
entertainment industry to revise history in the interest of a "better story." A few cases
which come to mind are Disney’s "Pocahantas", Oliver North’s "JFK", and Forman’s
"Amadeus." All of these seriously distorted or falsified the true facts.
The story of the United States is, possibly, the greatest secular story ever told. The United
States was a direct reversal of the millennia long world history of tyranny. No other
nation like the United States was ever conceived, let alone brought into existence.

Throughout its history, enemies of freedom have tried to find a way to destroy us. It was
finally realized that the surest way to subvert this nation would be to separate us from our
past. The strength of this nation has depended upon our morality, our faith and our
patriotism. To a great extent those factors depend upon an in-depth knowledge of our own
history. Eliminate our past and we will have no future.

Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Socialist earlier in this century, was perhaps the best
exponent of the concept that to institute a new culture in a society it was first necessary to
destroy the old culture. Churches are changed by having age-old doctrinal and moral
teachings modernized and reduced to irrelevancy. Genuine education is gradually
replaced with extreme permissiveness, "gutted" curricula and tremendously lowered
standards of excellency. The mass media is used for manipulation of public attitudes and
for harassing and discrediting traditional standards and institutions. As theologian Harold
Brown stated a few years ago, "Culture becomes a vehicle for destroying ideals and ...
presenting the young not with heroic examples but with deliberately and aggressively
degenerate ones." Marriage and the family are continuously attacked and denigrated.
The family is increasingly portrayed as a dangerous place where violence is the NORM.

After a few decades of such conditioning, society is transformed and demoralized. The
obliteration of all memory of the old culture makes possible the imposition of a wholly
new one. As explained by Fr. James Thornton, a Catholic priest, "Just as few Eastern
European people retain any memory of what life was like before Communism, so, too,
the older America of unregulated lives, honest government, clean cities, crime-free
streets, morally edifying entertainment and a family oriented way of life is no longer
vivid in the minds of many Americans."

We have come a very long way down the road toward the loss of the cultural heritage left
to us by our ancestors. Unless Americans at this time realize what has been and is
happening, it is just a matter of time until we will have passed the "point of no return!"

"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and

hyperlink intact."

Albert V. Burns writes from Utah and is a regular columnist for the Spanish Fork Press.
He has an extensive knowledge of the conspiracy which has been working so hard to
destroy this nation and incorporate it into a one world government. He has developed an
extensive personal research library and the knowledge to find what he needs, to write his
columns. He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.

Albert V. Burns can be reached at: avburns@mindspring.com

Published in the September 3, 2002 issue of Ether Zone.
Copyright © 1997 - 2002 Ether Zone.

http://etherzone.com/2002/burn090602.shtml

ANTONIO GRAMSCI, 1891-1937

THE NEW ORDER

By: Albert V. Burns

Last week we mentioned Antonio Gramsci very briefly. Because of the tremendous
impact which his doctrines have had on the 20th century, it is imperative that society
understand exactly how and why that impact has taken place.

Gramsci was born in 1891 on the island of Sardinia. Although he came from a humble
family, he went on to study philosophy and history at the University of Turin. While
there, he was converted to Marxism and helped found the Communist party of Italy. He
also founded his own newspaper called The New Order. (Does that sound familiar?)

About this time, Mussolini came to power in Italy and it became dangerous to be an
identified Marxist. Gramsci decided to go to Russia to take part in the developing
Communist USSR. However, he soon found that this worker’s paradise was not at all
what he had expected. He found that there is often a large gap
between theory and practice. He observed that there was little or
no enthusiasm for the new regime and its "dictatorship of the
proletariat." In fact, it was obvious that the only way in which this "ideal society" was
maintained was through the use of mass murder, sheer terror and the fear of that dreaded
midnight knock on the door. It was also necessary to maintain a virtual flood of
propaganda and lies about the glorious new state. It was very disillusioning to Gramsci.

When Lenin died and Stalin took over, Stalin started a systematic elimination of his
enemies, whether those enemies were real or simply perceived so in Stalin’s imagination.
Either way, the result was immediate transport to torture chambers, slave labor camps or
the firing squad. Gramsci realized that Russia was not a healthy place for him and he
returned to Italy where he was very shortly apprehended and sentenced to a long prison
term. He spent nine years in prison before he died of tuberculosis in 1937. During that
time he spent his time examining his beliefs and the apparent contradiction between
theory and practice he had seen in Russia. He wrote nine volumes of his thoughts on
history, Marxist theory and more importantly, Marxist strategy. These books became
known as the Prison Notebooks and have been translated into many languages and
disseminated all over the world.
The importance of those notebooks CANNOT be overemphasized since they formed the
basis of a totally new Marxist strategy which made Lenin’s idea of a spontaneous
revolution totally obsolete. This new strategy envisioned a world which would
VOLUNTARILY adopt Marxian socialism and would be based upon a realistic view of
human psychology and history. Those notebooks contained Gramsci’s evaluation of
Marxism and of the very NATURE of mankind and are among the most important
thoughts put on paper in this century.

Anyone who accepts the idea that "Communism is dead" completely fails to understand
the basic nature of our enemies. Communism is not an IDEOLOGY in which one
believes. It is a criminal conspiracy in which you enlist. All over the world, Marxist
‘ideology’ has been modified to suit local situations. Both Lenin and Stalin modified Karl
Marx’s ideas to suit their own ends. In NO case has Communism ever come to power in a
country by any popular revolution. In fact, it should be noted that the ONLY popular
revolutions in the 20th century were ANTI-Marxist as in Berlin in 1954 and Hungary in
1956. Wherever Communism came to power, it was only maintained by use of force and
incredible levels of killing and terror. This inevitably caused opposition at home and
abroad making further extension of Communism very difficult because of growing
worldwide opposition.

This is, of course, easy for us to see today after some 80 years of history. However,
Gramsci realized this at the very birth of Communist hegemony. He recognized that
ordinary people had loyalties to God and family which far outweighed any allegiance to
class. He realized that civilization and Christianity were so totally bound together that a
frontal attack on that society was, at best, useless and, in most cases, counter-productive.
He stated that it would be much better to attack existing society much more subtly,
gradually transforming the collective consciousness over a period of decades, even
generations, from its predominantly Christian view into one which would be more
receptive to socialism.

This concept was expressed very succinctly, in one line, in Aldous Huxley’s book: Brave
New World. In that line, Huxley clearly embodied the concept that Gramsci tried to
convey to his fellow Marxists: "A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in
which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control
a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their
servitude." Consider how well that sentence describes the United States of today with its
hordes of bureaucrats dictating virtually all aspects of our daily lives.

Sixty years ago, outside of the few who were determined to destroy freedom in this
country, no-one in this country could have imagined a day when prayer or religious
expression was prohibited on public property, when abortion was considered a
"constitutional right," when profanity, pornography, extra marital sex, and open
homosexual activity were rampant, when private property is routinely seized on the
flimsiest of pretexts, when children are taken from their parents by the state with virtually
no recourse, etc.
In the next column, we will examine the methods used to achieve this startling change in
the minds and hearts of the American people over the past fifty or sixty years.

"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and

hyperlink intact."

Albert V. Burns writes from Utah and is a regular columnist for the Spanish Fork Press.
He has an extensive knowledge of the conspiracy which has been working so hard to
destroy this nation and incorporate it into a one world government. He has developed an
extensive personal research library and the knowledge to find what he needs, to write his
columns. He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.

Albert V. Burns can be reached at: avburns@mindspring.com

Published in the September 6, 2002 issue of Ether Zone.

Copyright © 1997 - 2002 Ether Zone.

http://etherzone.com/2002/burn091002.shtml

GRAMSCIAN METHODS
BROADLY DEFINED!

By: Albert V. Burns

Just how do you go about attempting to change a culture which has apparently been
inextricably interwoven with Christianity for some 2000 years? Gramsci recognized that
it would be necessary to do so before the Marxist-socialists could have any hope of
instituting their “New World Order.” (No, President George Bush and Brent Scowcroft
did NOT invent that term!)

Before Antonio Gramsci, the traditional Marxist-Leninist attitude had been hostile to all
non-Communist organizations, even though those organizations might, themselves, be
considered leftist such as trade unions, socialist groups, etc. Gramsci’s methods have
brought about a very broad coalition of such diverse groups as
“civil rights ” organizations, radical feminists, internationalists,
homosexuals, radical environmentalists, anti-police agitators, a bewildering assortment of
ultra liberal church groups of many different faiths, etc. Working together these disparate
elements have formed a united front working to transform our once solidly Judeo-
Christian culture into a mere shadow of its former self.
Gramsci taught that they must achieve a “cultural hegemony” even before achieving
governmental power. He believed that Marxists must win the hearts and minds of people
without their knowledge.

He went further and told the Communists that they must abandon their idea of class
hatred and work to win over elements in the very bourgeois classes that they wished to
subvert. He described this as “the absorption of the elites of the enemy classes.” He
recognized that by recruiting the best and brightest of their enemies, they would not only
gain new strength for their side, but would at the same time deprive the bourgeois
societies of their natural leaders.

To achieve these ends, Gramsci admonished the Communists that, in order to gain
mastery over the thinking of great masses of people it would be necessary for them OR
THEIR SYMPATHIZERS to gain control over the very foundational organs of culture.
These organs include churches, education institutions, newspapers, magazines, literature,
the visual arts, music, etc. He could not, in the 20's, have foreseen that a tremendous
weapon such as television and all the electronic media would come along to aid in the
control of people’s minds.

He pointed out that you would not have to control ALL the information available to a
people if you could gain control over the minds which would be interpreting and
disseminating that knowledge. Once that had been achieved, he said, people would no
longer be able to fully comprehend the arguments of the opponents to socialism and
Marxism. The world we see today gives silent testimony to the correctness of his
precepts.

The steps necessary to achieve his “cultural hegemony” were diverse but all aimed at
undermining our traditional culture. Traditional church teachings were gradually
transformed at the seminary level into “social justice” and ideas of “equality” until
worship became entertainment and age-old doctrines were modernized to the point of
irrelevancy. Our entire educational establishment was attacked, starting at the teacher
college level, to “dumb down” the educational process with curricula which were slanted
toward socialism and internationalism and with “standards” dramatically reduced or
eliminated altogether. The mass media were to be turned into instruments of mind control
of the masses and for discrediting all traditional institutions and their leaders. All
morality, decency and the age-old virtues were disparaged endlessly. Theologian Harold
Brown wrote that culture becomes a means of “destroying ideals and ... presenting the
young not with heroic examples but with deliberately and aggressively degenerate ones.”
Our greatest leaders: presidents, soldiers, explorers, thinkers, etc. are depicted as having
been racist or sexist or Fascist. Our modern youth are presented with an assortment of
socialist charlatans, leftist movie celebrities, rock stars, degenerate and incompetent
“artists,” and the like as the people they should look up to and emulate.

Marriage and the family are continually under attack. The traditional family is held up to
ridicule as being a plot by men to dominate women and children. More and more our
press tells us that the state must “protect” children from their uncaring or violent parents.
Thus the family, the most basic building block of a cohesive society is being destroyed so
that the state may take its place. Government taxation policies enpoverish the traditional
family while they subsidize the elevation of extra-marital heterosexual and even
homosexual unions. Even the word “family” is gradually being replaced in our mass
media with the indeterminate word “household.”

Finally, our entire system of law in this country has been gradually changed from being
based on English common law and on biblical Christian principles to being based on the
personal criteria of unelected federal judges. The principle of “stare decisis,” meaning
that prior precedents are used in deciding new cases, has been largely abandoned by the
U.S. Supreme Court. Revolutionary change in the interpretation of the Constitution has
become so commonplace that our people no longer pay much attention. Where or when
the Court cannot re-interpret or distort the clear meaning of the Constitution, it is simply
ignored.

Does all of this mean that all hope is lost and that we should all simply give up and
accede to the loss of our God-given freedoms? Absolutely NOT! In our next column, we
will address the question of just how we can all work to re-establish the United States, as
envisioned by our Founding Fathers, before it is too late.

Related Articles:

Antonio Gramsci, 1891-1937

Historical Illiteracy & Gramsci

"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and

hyperlink intact."

Albert V. Burns writes from Utah and is a regular columnist for the Spanish Fork Press.
He has an extensive knowledge of the conspiracy which has been working so hard to
destroy this nation and incorporate it into a one world government. He has developed an
extensive personal research library and the knowledge to find what he needs, to write his
columns. He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.

Albert V. Burns can be reached at: avburns@mindspring.com

Published in the September 10, 2002 issue of Ether Zone.

Copyright © 1997 - 2002 Ether Zone.