Unholy Alliance, Unholy Devotion

The other morning I had an email exchange with an important personage, well-known, well-connected. It was brief and to the point, and was more than cordial.

I'll spare you the details, and the personage shall remain unnamed. But I made an embarrassing gaffe in that letter, a letter with which I intended to impress (I will not reveal why, but it has to do with impressing someone with the sincerity of my gratitude). In writing, I accidently referred to David Horowitz' powerful book Unholy Alliance as Unholy Devotion. That my little gaffe should have sneaked beneath my editing radar is partly excusable, since the latter was indeed a book I read (in 1984), and was written by the dean of chapel at my alma mater. But the gaffe was made, and there is little one can do to repair the damage - no matter how slight - that such a simple mistake may cause. Besides, good editing, accurate writing, proper spelling and fine punctuation are not gross mechanical rules; they are the emblems of loving one's literary neighbor: there is hardly a less loving gift than a poorly, sloppily written letter to a fellow human being.

However, there is something truly ironic about my gaffe, I think, or at the very least, the coincidence is interesting. For the same day I made my gaffe, Mr. Horowitz's blog addressed the indoctrination of today's youth by a cultic left. At the same time Mr. Horowitz was blogging, I was labelling one of his works Unholy Devotion without noticing my cluelessness. But the ironic thing is that the real book by that title, written by Harold Busséll, was subtitled "Why Cults Lure Christians." In other words, it had to do with the targets and machinations of cult recruiters.

Horowitz writes in his blog that young people, even the very young, are targeted by leftists, and he is correct, as the Khmer Rouge (among others) proved to the world. And it is easy to see why young people are targeted: they represent the membership of the incipient new world order, and they easily submit to authority. Curiously, Horowitz's criticism is identical to Busséll's, though Busséll is referring largely to Christian young people.

If memory serves me well, Busséll lists a variety of fascinating reasons why cult recruiters, like those of the Hare Krishna or Children of God variety, are successful, particularly with older teens. In large part, they exploit the late-high school to early college student because of the normal developmental anxieties common to that cohort: Anxiety about leaving home; about career, self, direction, and even survivability; anxieties set against severing ties with mom and dad. Cults pounce on kids in this point in their lives, and cults excel at exploiting kids' distrust of, or rebellion from, their parents. In fact, cults usually succeed by categorizing parents and their parental wisdom (which is usually some form of religio-ethnic tradition), as satanic, repressive or duly unenlightened.

That any of this should sound familiar is due to the prophetic warnings delivered by people like Horowitz. For American children are indeed set against their parents and their traditions in American schools, particularly in colleges and universities. And it is the cultic left, seizing the opportunity youth provides for exploitation and redirection, which is setting son against father; daughter against mother; and student against the Church (yes, against the Church).

But Busséll describes other characterisitics of cults. For one, cults are anti-authoritarian, but nonetheless possess a new authoritarianism that is largely undetected because it is new, progressive, fresh. Another characteristic is that cults tend to replace sacred texts, deemed repressive and foolish (like the Bible), with other sacred texts (think L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology writings, for example). Yet another is that cults are almost entirely dependent on a charismatic leader, or set of leaders, who appear to transcend the common herd in which they were born and raised; and now appear to embody the powerful ideals that transform (eg. Scientology's Tom Cruise). Lastly, there is a new nomenclature, a new way of speaking, with familiar terms that take on new and almost esoteric meaning: It is secret code, perhaps; a language meant for insiders of the cognoscenti.

The parallels then, to the leftists, are quite telling. For leftists are anti-authoritarian (eg. anti-Catholic; anti-patriarchal; anti-Bush) but nonetheless are authoritarian (even more so). For they are pro-World Court; pro-matriarchal (apotheosizing feminism) and pro-Mandela (who is as dogmatic and pompous as they come). Leftists decry the hegemony of the US, but have nothing to say about the hoped-for hegemony of the UN, which is composed solely (in most cases) of only the most elite people from each member country. Leftists mock the authoritarianism of Ann Coulter's reportage by referring to Noam Chomsky's infallibility. Leftists snicker at Fox News and yet encourage each other to watch The News Hour with Jim Lehrer and to read the always infallible The Nation or always enlightened New York Times. Leftists decry the idol-worship of George Bush (which is only perceived as such by the left), but have no qualms (as U2's Bono did) of calling Nelson Mandela "The world's president." Leftists dismiss the charisma of Ronald Reagan (or they just reduce him to his charisma), but love to talk about the "handsome and charismatic" Bill Clinton (who is never reduced to his charisma by the left OR by the right, for the left adores him and the right NEVER saw him as charismatic).

Furthermore, there is leftist lingo about tolerance and freedom and patriotism, and many other things, which all sounds so innocuous and safe, until one realizes that such nomenclature is so much snarling teeth. To the left, for instance, 'tolerance' is not tolerance, and, though this fact is well known, the left's intolerance is concealed behind PC window-dressing. 'Homophobe' to a leftist does not mean that a person is fearful of his own perceived homosexuality, or his fear of homosexual behavior. For those 'in the know,' a homophobe is a hate-monger, and thus is a sub-species of human. 'Homophobia', 'tolerance', 'progress', 'conservative,' 'Abu Ghraib'; each of these are part of the left's lexicon, carrying meanings reserved solely for those who embrace the leftist faith.

But the one tactic that cults and leftists share without qualification is the power of fear, utilizing it for hidden, secret ends. For cults exploit the fear of not looking sufficiently evolved, advanced, or enlightened, describing a dark hell agape beneath one's feet for failure to make the grade. Death is paraded before them, either physical or spiritual, and the only passkey through the portals of death is found in each cult's promises, where fear is finally abated. Leftists, however, use fear (the fear of war for oil; the fear of losing abortion rights, the fear of getting bashed by vigilante homophobes, the fear of the rich getting richer, and the loss of government subsidies) to congregate the worried in rallies and protesting mobs, mobs as large as those wherein marriage is conferred on thousands by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (where men and women gather for fear that a good marriage might elude them without the guarantees conferred by an alleged earthly deity). Democrats across the country are searching high and low for a deliverer who will save them from the fearful tyranny of the Bush regime; and the repression which is the Patriot Act. But such deliverance can only come from the left, and the abatement of fear can only be guaranteed by the Democrats' removal of the bad rightists around them.

Not that the right does not use fear; not that the right does not indoctrinate. But the difference between the two is that the left conceals from the world that it uses fear and indoctrination; that it uses cult-like powers of persuasion. Instead, the left merely points at the bogey-man right, telling children repeatedly that such a monster will indeed consume them if they do not rise up against it.

Plus, the kind of indoctrination envisioned by the right is not only more transparent, it is more balanced. Horowitz's own efforts in calling for an academic bill of rights, wherein children are indoctrinated by a balanced and complete picture of the world, is a typical rightist conviction. Leftists want to tell only one side of a story. Leftists want to reject the Pledge of Allegiance and only tell about the Flag's repressions of humans; whereas the right wants to say the Pledge of Allegiance and study, in real scholarship, America's failures and successes among the countless humans knocking on America's doors. Leftists tout freethought, and then use freethought to ban thinking for oneself outside the prescribed box; rightists just want every voice to have a chance to be heard; and to set minds 'a-thinking for themselves, without some infallible leftist professor prescribing otherwise.

Both left and right are interested in indoctrination, but the left's scope of inquiry and discussion is far narrower than the right's. That I believe, firmly.

Thus, my gaffe regarding Horowitz's amazing book Unholy Alliance nevertheless speaks directly to Horowitz's point: the left wants our children - from the earliest ages and right on through college - in order to indoctrinate them like so much cult activity, all in an effort to direct humanity who-knows-where. It is the Left's wont, it is its agenda, and Horowitz is trying to stand in its way.

Who better than to fight them, since he was rescued from their cult, and knows their wily ways?

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes

PS. For a great read, check out Ann Coulter's newest essay. Man, what a great last paragraph, and that last line is just stupendous. Good for her. [Anyone interested in Harold Busséll's Unholy Devotion will have trouble finding a copy, as it is out of print, though it was reprinted under the title By Hook Or By Crook.]