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| Rousseau |
Later, in his book The Social Contract, Rousseau presented the solution by describing the State like a Parent. The state gives us life and the state nurtures us to maturity in her bosom, he argued. In deifying the state, Rousseau’s theory set the template for the modern totalitarian movement.
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| Antonio Gramsci |
On May 22, 1991, Mohamed Akram of the Muslim Brotherhood said that his organization “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands…. (From “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America” May 22, 1991. To learn more about this stealth jihad, click here.)
What do Rousseau, Gramsci and Akram all have in common? Though their goals greatly differed, they all agreed that Christian civilization was evil and needed to be replaced by a new order.
Rousseau’s ideas are in the process of being realized by numerous lawmakers and political theorists who have recently begun to describe the state in parental terms. Gramsci’s strategies were picked up by the Frankfurt movement and disseminated throughout American academia through disciplines such as “critical theory” and “deconstruction.” And Akram’s goal is now in the process of becoming a reality through the criminalization of certain subjects within our public discourse (see here and here).
In these and many other ways, our civilization is being threatened by hostile forces. We stand at a critical point of history not unlike that face by Alfred the Great in the 9th century. When Alfred assumed the throne of Wessex at the age of 21, his kingdom lay in ruins about him. Pagan boatmen, led by the evil king Guthrum, had destroyed crops, leveled churches and burned entire towns to the ground.
King Alfred worked to rebuild the kingdom and rescue the culture that the pagans had all but destroyed. One of the ways he did this was by training the next generation to stand firm in the Christian faith and to resist the influences of paganism.
But Alfred’s strategy was not merely defensive: he also labored tirelessly to build and expand Christendom for the benefit of future generations. He built libraries, taught people to read, translated books, and strove to create a culture rooted in the values of what is good, true and beautiful.
In order to honour Alfred the Great and continue to strive towards his goals, I started the Alfred the Great Society. The Alfred the Great Society was started not merely to defend Christendom against Barbarianism, but to contribute in a very small way towards developing a culture that will last for thousands of years. So far we have done that through our publishing and education ministry.The resources available on the Alfred the Great website are designed both to counter paganism, including many of its more subtle contemporary manifestations, as well as to promote the building blocks of a distinctively Christian culture. Towards the goal of the latter, we are devoted to asking questions such as ‘What is involved in recovering a distinctly Christian understanding of time and space?’ How do things we take for granted, such as good manners and modesty, help to strengthen and reinforce our Christian civilization? But we also remain firmly committed to debunking those who, like Rousseau and Gramsci, would seek to undermine what is good, true and beautiful in our Christian heritage.
