Reading Bill Muehlenberg’s post “The ‘Sexterminators’ is well worth your time, as it covers one of the biggest areas of ignorance on the part of the American political right — that’s right — Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians. Bill opens his article with this:
Anyone who knows anything about the revolutionaries bent on destroying the West will know that attacking marriage, family, morality, and especially sexual morality, is a key means of doing so. If family can be decimated and sexuality smashed, the radicals know they can easily take a nation.
They attempted this externally of course, as in the Bolshevik Revolution. One of the first things to be done after they took power in 1917 was to move against the family – a symbol of decadent bourgeois morality.
He then quotes historian Pavel A. Parfentiev, who “gives us the gory details of this war on morality and family:” (I’m only including part of the quote here):
Laying what later became the ideological groundwork for the post-1917 Communist authorities in Russia, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are widely known to have entertained largely negative views of the traditional family. According to Marx and Engels, under Communism the “bourgeois” family would have to “disappear,” just as “the capital” would. The practice of parents “exploiting” their children would be abolished, and family education would be replaced by public education.
These ideas were taken up and further radically developed into early post-revolutionary Russian ideology. The new authorities’ first steps were to “liberalize” family relationships—and thus simultaneously to undermine the influence of religious institutions such as the Russian Orthodox Church.
The year 1917 saw the Soviet government passing decrees “On Civil Marriage, Children, and Registries” and “On Dissolution of Marriages.” The decree “On Dissolution of Marriages” granted spouses unconditional freedom to a divorce, performed by a local court, at the desire of either one or both parties. “On Civil Marriage” decreed that all except civil marriage (including religious marriage) would cease to be recognized by the state, while at the same time abolishing all distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children. (It should be noted that the sole aim of introducing civil marriages was to undermine religion. Writing in 1922, one Soviet lawyer stressed that “[t]he institution of Registrars was necessitated by the fight against the Church.”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? So do the results:
As a natural consequence of the new authorities’ antifamily policy, a rapid disintegration of the family followed. Freedom of divorce led to serial polygamy and prostitution masquerading as marriage. In 1920 Petrograd (now St Petersburg), 41% of marriages lasted only three to six months, 22% less than two months, and 11% less than one month. Open prostitution was rampant.
The number of divorces skyrocketed. While in 1913 there were 0.15 divorces to 1,000 marriages for Russian couples, 1926-1927 saw 11 (almost 100 times more). In 1920 Petrograd 92 marriages out of 1,000 ended in divorce, and in 1926 Moscow it was 477 per 1000. The state widely advocated freedom of sexual relations. One can say with certainty that the period dealt the natural family a devastating blow, one from which Russian family policy is still recovering.
One more section from Muehlenberg’s article:
And the cultural Marxists, seeking to overthrow the West from within, adopted the same principles. Consider some of the stated goals of the communists in their attempt to take over America, as enumerated in ex-FBI agent Cleon Skousen’s 1958 book The Naked Communist:
-Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
-Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
-Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression.
-Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
-Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
-Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
-Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
-Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
How many Republicans, conservatives, or libertarians know and understand this? How can we win the information war when we don’t even know what it is we’re fighting against?
Read Bill Muehlenberg’s entire article here: The ‘Sexterminators.’
Image credit: fellowshipoftheminds.com.