"It gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them." When he said this, Hitler could have been speaking about America today. The "secret" in Nazi Germany and democratic America is that minds were and are getting washed with propaganda from government and "official" channels of information and news. By mid-century, the American press was virtually a branch of government, and it was a secret only to uninformed citizens that the public was being hoodwinked.

The proletarian revolution in the United States will at once make a devastating slash into this maze of hypocrisy and intellectual rubbish. Not less than in the Soviet Union, it will usher in a profound cultural revolution[.] ... [Education] will be revolu­tionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic and other features of the bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught on the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism, internationalism and the general ethics of the new Socialist society. Present obsolete methods of teaching will be superseded by a scientific pedagogy.

Was this just a political rant, like that proliferating throughout Europe and America after World War I? Or was it the "writing on the wall" by a vanguard of dedicated enemies of America? By mid-century, the mission of Marxist activists to transform America into a Soviet-style collective was considered by many in the mainstream "a thing of the past" and all but forgotten. When war broke out in Vietnam in the 1960s, however, and violent demonstrations on college campuses and riots erupted across America, older Americans suspected that the Marxist movement had been relegated to the dustbin of history too soon. Student confrontations with police became daily news, blood was spilled, buildings were blown up, in brutal waves of protest against "the Establishment." Accused of crimes against humanity, "the Establishment" was summarily convicted and sentenced to "justice" according to Marxist rules. In their execution of "justice," the younger rebels practiced violence while their seniors engaged in planning and subversion.

Postwar activists, funded by agents in and out of government, had geared up to the wholesale trashing of Western culture, in preparation for the communist takeover planned early in the 20th century. Marxists had already begun to inject their poison ideology in public schools by the start of World War II in a program of education called "Progressive," designed to prepare the young for a collectivist society. How could such a trick be pulled off in a democratic country? Democracy, according to John Dewey, the "father of Progressive Education," is a tool, not a form of government. That's how. A twist of words converted the will of the people into the will of the State!

By the time of the 1960s uprisings, it was clear to all but the blind that America was under attack from within. Where were the news media reports of subversion? Why was the public kept from knowing, for example, that the Soviet Union provided $1 billion to the U.S. anti-war movement (AKA peace movement)?

I was aware of the deadly mixture of truth and falsehood being fed the public in the news, on campus, in the school room, in church – distortions of truth dressed in noble language that concealed the intent of political rebels "to demolish beyond hope of repair the engine of Western metaphysics" – to use the words of J. Hillis Miller, an outspoken academician of the political left.

The Vietnam War was fuel for the social firestorm breaking out across America in the 1960s, staged and started by rebels and dissenters of every stripe. The Vietnam War – let it be clear – was an excuse, not a cause for the violence on this side of the Pacific. Where were the brigades of concerned citizens to quell the skirmishes and fight the battles? – where the groundswell of voices drowning the political drivel in the press, on TV, on college campuses? In a country where part of a soldier's oath is to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" – for which they were sent to all corners of the world – such "oversight" of internal warfare amounted to treachery!

Regardless of congressional action like that of Senator Joseph McCarthy to identify communists in an effort to quash plots against the government, and despite the abundance of anti-communist commentary and calls to action from books, pamphlets, periodicals, talk programs, and church leaders, no effective measures were put in place by the government to counter the threat to the American way of life. And instead of sounding an alarm to alert the public that their way of life was being threatened, the mainstream news media continued to justify and support the 1960s social revolution and its culture-bashing aftermath.

By the 1980s, an entire new generation was disoriented. School and media had turned young minds toward an ideology at odds with America's founding principles and values. Americans progressively lost their moral bearings and their identity as Americans. Marxist activists and other crusaders for a collectivist nation had by now taken positions of leadership in academia, government, and church. Public schools were beginning to pit students against their parents and filling their heads with ideas calculated to undermine the core values of their country and heritage.

Americans who got all their news from the mainstream press or TV were unaware that a culture war had broken out across the country. Mainstream media reporters, allegedly on the side of truth, were either ignorant or complicit. Reporting the truth, never safe, was more than ever a sure way of getting fired. If you, as an honest writer or editor, didn't like what was going on, you could join the ranks of publications and organizations that were black­listed or struggling to get the word out.

As in "the invasion of the body-snatchers," America changed from a relatively free and happy land to a fretful and contentious one. The atmosphere throughout the land soured, with a slew of legally backed prescriptions for thought, speech, and behavior, facetiously dubbed "political correctness" – rules that pit oppressor class against victim class (a Marxist trick to divide and control people). Most damaging was the fact that these "politically correct" instructions were being fed to schoolchildren and reinforced in the mainstream media by groups and agencies that were not elected by or represented the people.

The left's brainwashing of American minds was accompanied by a progressive deterioration of morality, due in great measure to the failure of religious leaders to publicly condemn those in the public eye who acted amorally or immorally. "Anything goes" hoaxes against the mind (such as the so-called "sexual revolution") to detach the mind from the heart weakened the moral sense and the mental acuity of mainstream Americans. It also weakened the initiative and enterprising spirit that once formed the character of American society.

All the foregoing said, it must be everyone's hope and prayer that the long journey back to political and social sanity be conducted with honesty and love for one another.

Anthony J. DeBlasi is a Korean War veteran and lifelong defender of Western culture.

Image: FaceMePLS via Flickr.