Dakota Beacon

Shakespeare said, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” This line appears in “Hamlet” (Act I, Scene IV). Specifically, this refers to political corruption and uncertainty. Curious? Let readers check the context for themselves.

See what reputable authors are writing about the state of America’s cultural decline.

“America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything” by Christopher F. Rufo published in 2023 by Broadside Books. Revolutions are not always bloody and violent. Sometimes they are far more subtle and serpentine-like. Rufo traces today’s social and political chaos to Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), his teachings, and his thoughts on critical theory (CT), a major component of modern and postmodern thought. CT aims to dismantle structures of “oppression” and “exclusion.” Rufo’s book is the account of the radical left’s long march through the institutions. He shows how ideas formulated by the Weather Underground, Black Panthers, and the Black Liberation Army were adopted by universities and business in their board rooms.

An incisive reading of the American cultural transition must include “The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America” by Roger Kimball. Kimball is the Editor and Publisher of The New Criterion. Additionally, Kimball is the President and Publisher of Encounter Books. His book, published in 2000, took its title from Mao Tse-Tung’s so-called Long March to power.

Kimball has no patience with nostalgic sentimentality regarding the decade of the ‘60s. He sees it as the decade initiating the transformation of American culture. He states that transformation included “… high culture as well as everyday life in terms of our attitudes toward self and country, sex and drugs, and manners and morality.”

After the failed political revolutionary fantasies of the ‘60s and ‘70s, student radicals and professors urged their followers to start “the long march through the institutions.” Radical professor Herbert Marcuse viewed this effort as working within the institutions in order to work against them. It worked. Look and see.

Next comes “NextGen Marxism: What It is and How to Combat It” by Mike Gonzalez and Katherine Cornell Gorka (wife of Sebastian Gorka) published in 2024 by Encounter Books. Americans no longer identify their country as what it used to be. People must recognize others by their race, ethnicity, or gender identity. Children receive indoctrination rather than education. More people accept antisemitism. “Soviet communism…lost its grip on the American Left, but knowledge of its tools…were firmly planted among America’s radicals…Even after Soviet communism proved its cruelty and bankruptcy, what remained behind were the tools it had once so effectively used: the exploitation of grievances, the changing of the narrative through propaganda, the manipulation of the population through grassroots organizing, and the use of violence in an attempt to bring about revolutionary change…We have seen this vision brought to life in wave after wave: by Alinsky, by SDS, by the Weather Underground, by the critical race theorists, by ACORN, by BLM. These are the movements of NextGen Marxism.”

For those wishing to stand firm against the Marxist tide, Rod Dreher’s book “Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents,” might be worth perusing. Published by Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Random House, the book was released in 2020. Identity politics encroaches on every aspect of our lives. Progressives marginalize conservatives, traditional Christians, and other dissenters by refusing to apply the same ideals of civil liberty equally in all cases. Dreher published testimonies from survivors of Soviet totalitarianism by way of warning to the US. His book’s title came from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1974 essay by the same name and offered to the Russian people as his valedictory.

Finally, Victor Davis Hanson published a recent book released in May 2024 titled “The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation” and published by Basic Books.

This book is not about the Evangelical theme of “end times.” Rather, as military historian Hanson asserts, human nature over the millennia remains unchanged and that modern societies are not immune to the horror of wars of extinction. To illustrate, Hanson discusses a series of sieges and sackings from antiquity to the conquering of the Americas. In doing so, he shows how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration. He sees America’s decline in the light of Thebes, Carthage, and Constantinople.

Hanson’s last chapter warns readers not to be naïve about the wrath imposed on the vanquished thereby justifying mass slaughter. Bluntly speaking, he refers to a list of nuclear flash points: Iran and Israel, Pakistan and India, Russia and Ukraine, North Korea and the US, China and the US. Turkey has raised the issue of going nuclear even arguing the “shared” status of the American arsenal of B-61 nuclear bombs stored at Incirlik Air Base. Turkey also has bones to pick with the Kurds and Greeks. “But these chapters show, what is moral or logical bears no relation to the obliteration that may follow. Between a stronger attacker and a weaker attacked, the ancient Melian laws of ‘the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must’ prevails. And thus, there is no such thing as reciprocity, proportionality, symmetry, or the ‘laws of war.’”

Shakespeare again: “’Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.” “Pericles” (Act I, Scene II). He gives fair warning about deceptive appearances and hidden threats from those in power.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).