Opinion
Cultural ascendancy of the left
By Pat Buchanan
Rush and the New Blacklist
By Pat Buchanan
The original "Hollywood blacklist" dates back to 1947, when 10 members of the Communist Party, present or former, invoked the Fifth Amendment before the House Committee on un-American Activities.
In a 346-17 vote, the Hollywood Ten were charged with contempt of Congress and suspended or fired. The blacklist had begun. Directors, producers and writers who had been or were members of the party and refused to recant lost their jobs.
Today, movies show sexually explicit scenes that make Howard Hughes' 1944 condemned film, "The Outlaw," starring Jane Russell, look like "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm."
Where Ingrid Bergman of "Casablanca" fame had to flee the country in 1950 after an adulterous affair with director Roberto Rossellini, the media today happily provide all the salacious details of every "relationship" that Hollywood stars enter into and exit.
All of this testifies to the cultural ascendancy of the left.
Every establishment has its own orthodoxy, its own taboos and its own blacklist. And, despite its pretensions to be open to all ideas, our cultural establishment is no different.
While the Hollywood Ten have been rehabilitated and heroized, Christians and conservatives are in cultural cross hairs now.
Traditional Catholic morality is mocked, as are Southern evangelical Christians. And the new cultural establishment has erected a new regime called Political Correctness.
The new mortal sins are not filthy talk or immoral conduct, but racism, sexism, homophobia and nativism. The establishment alone defines these sins and enforces the proscriptions against them, from which there is no appeal, only the obligatory apology, the act of contrition and the solemn commitment never to sin again.
If you believe homosexuality is unnatural and immoral and gay marriage absurd, you are a homophobe who is to keep his mouth shut.
If you think some ethnic and racial groups have greater natural athletic, academic or artistic talents, don't go there -- if you do not wish an early end to your journalistic career.
If you think illegal aliens should be sent home and legal immigration should mirror the ethnic makeup of the nation, you are a xenophobe and a racist.
To control the politics of a nation, control of the culture is a precondition. For who controls the culture defines what is moral and immoral, and what is heroic and villainous. And if you can set limits on what journalists write and broadcasters say, you can shape what people think and believe.
When Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" for demanding that Georgetown Law School subsidize the $3,000 women students annually require for birth control, the media that piled on Rush objected less to the term than to the target he picked: one of their own.
Bill Maher routinely uses far more odious terms to describe Sarah Palin. Yet his $1 million gift to an Obama super PAC was welcomed by agents of the same president who phoned Fluke to console her over Rush's remarks.
Rush apologized. But the left still campaigns to have his voice stifled and censored, by threatening advertisers of his radio show with boycotts if they refuse to drop him.
Thus does the left honor the First Amendment.
As shown in HBO's "Game Change," John McCain in 2008 ruled out attacks on Barack Obama's 20-year ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago preacher of "God damn America!" fame.
Why? Wright and Obama were black, and such attacks might agitate the latent racism of white America. The Republican Party censors itself so as not to antagonize a cultural establishment that wants to see it dead.
"Beautiful losers," my late friend Sam Francis called them.
Pat J. Buchanan is the author of "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?"
Commentary
In a 346-17 vote, the Hollywood Ten were charged with contempt of Congress and suspended or fired. The blacklist had begun. Directors, producers and writers who had been or were members of the party and refused to recant lost their jobs.
Today, movies show sexually explicit scenes that make Howard Hughes' 1944 condemned film, "The Outlaw," starring Jane Russell, look like "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm."
Where Ingrid Bergman of "Casablanca" fame had to flee the country in 1950 after an adulterous affair with director Roberto Rossellini, the media today happily provide all the salacious details of every "relationship" that Hollywood stars enter into and exit.
All of this testifies to the cultural ascendancy of the left.
Every establishment has its own orthodoxy, its own taboos and its own blacklist. And, despite its pretensions to be open to all ideas, our cultural establishment is no different.
While the Hollywood Ten have been rehabilitated and heroized, Christians and conservatives are in cultural cross hairs now.
Traditional Catholic morality is mocked, as are Southern evangelical Christians. And the new cultural establishment has erected a new regime called Political Correctness.
The new mortal sins are not filthy talk or immoral conduct, but racism, sexism, homophobia and nativism. The establishment alone defines these sins and enforces the proscriptions against them, from which there is no appeal, only the obligatory apology, the act of contrition and the solemn commitment never to sin again.
If you believe homosexuality is unnatural and immoral and gay marriage absurd, you are a homophobe who is to keep his mouth shut.
If you think some ethnic and racial groups have greater natural athletic, academic or artistic talents, don't go there -- if you do not wish an early end to your journalistic career.
If you think illegal aliens should be sent home and legal immigration should mirror the ethnic makeup of the nation, you are a xenophobe and a racist.
To control the politics of a nation, control of the culture is a precondition. For who controls the culture defines what is moral and immoral, and what is heroic and villainous. And if you can set limits on what journalists write and broadcasters say, you can shape what people think and believe.
When Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" for demanding that Georgetown Law School subsidize the $3,000 women students annually require for birth control, the media that piled on Rush objected less to the term than to the target he picked: one of their own.
Bill Maher routinely uses far more odious terms to describe Sarah Palin. Yet his $1 million gift to an Obama super PAC was welcomed by agents of the same president who phoned Fluke to console her over Rush's remarks.
Rush apologized. But the left still campaigns to have his voice stifled and censored, by threatening advertisers of his radio show with boycotts if they refuse to drop him.
Thus does the left honor the First Amendment.
As shown in HBO's "Game Change," John McCain in 2008 ruled out attacks on Barack Obama's 20-year ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago preacher of "God damn America!" fame.
Why? Wright and Obama were black, and such attacks might agitate the latent racism of white America. The Republican Party censors itself so as not to antagonize a cultural establishment that wants to see it dead.
"Beautiful losers," my late friend Sam Francis called them.
Pat J. Buchanan is the author of "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?"
Commentary
Now we knew why MSNBC DNC but kissers got rid of Pat
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