When I returned from the war in Korea (1950-1953), fought to keep communist North Korea from taking over South Korea, our nation was a freer and better place to live in than today. But that would soon change despite the increasing benefits of technology. The following overview of the last seven decades, based on observation and study, will point to the role played in the decline of general wellbeing by domestic enemies of America that I and fellow brothers-in-arms took an oath to also defend against.

Koran War Veterans Memorial, The Mall, Washington, DC (National Park Service photo)

During the 1960s, Woodstock served as a launch pad for hippies and flower children to play out their fantasies of life. Their minds sacked by phony “liberalism” and utopian mythology, they reveled 24/7 in debauchery as thousands of their peers in Vietnam faced hell and death every moment of every day and every night. When they returned, these fighters would be reviled while the Woodstock crowd would be celebrated by phony “liberals” in the media.

By phony liberalism I mean pretending to appreciate differing points of view while rejecting all that don’t fit the party line.

By the 1970s, as former dropouts from society assumed responsible roles in life, their looseness in morals and thought spread through the fabric of American life. Key aspects of life were ignored in entertainment and literature. Beauty, originality, wonder – essential dimensions of human life – were fading from view and from consciousness. Factors of civilized society were being ignored that jarred the mindset of progressive liberals. Honesty, integrity, and other fundamentals of a healthy society were being pushed out of American life. They were “outdated” and therefore disposable, right?

What was happening was not clear to most people. But it was plain to me and to observant Americans who were not completely brainwashed by the “progressivism” launched by Marxist activists after World War I. The Marxian mission to prepare Americans for life in a world where people serve the State instead of the other way around – contradicting the Constitution – was from the beginning an act of treachery.

In 1932 William Z. Foster, general secretary of the Communist Party USA, declared that our way of life was to be “cleansed of religious, patriotic and other features of bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught on the basis of Marxian... materialism, internationalism and the general ethics of the new Socialist society.” In other words, the freedoms that millions sacrificed their lives to ensure since the birth of this nation were to be denied and the Constitution of the United States was to be trashed.

The progressive education initiated by Marxists and their dupes evidently succeeded in brainwashing minds, including those of future leaders – many of whom even now display a profound ignorance of the country they inhabit and daily reveal minds bloated with Marxist propaganda.

Thankfully, and to their credit, not every young person fell for the BS and the slogans that flourished in Woodstock or got swept into the so-called “world peace/anti-war” movement funded by the Soviet Union in the 1960s. But those who would or could rally against this invasion of America by its internal enemies would soon find themselves cornered into a media-starved minority, thanks to what is now called the “deep state,” an inner circle of operatives who work to subvert our government. Twenty-sixth president Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) called this cabal “the invisible government.”  

Brainwashing from the old Marxists had done its job of replacing clear thinking with raw emotion and allowing “social justice” to mean “victims winning over oppressors,” an updated version of Marxist class warfare.  How we got to this point should not be hard to fathom, unless you believe that it is “natural” or “evolutionary” for a constitutional republic to morph into global autocracy. And if you don’t know that America is a constitutional republic, where have your teachers been all these years?

I recall some of the bumps along the road toward autocracy in America.

In New York City, the Civil Rights Movement had gone beyond block-busting neighborhoods to busing school children in order to advance “equality.” I was not the only one who wondered if jamming the races together and forcing them to live together was part of Martin Luther King’s “dream.” Was this course of action with little regard for its consequences a realistic, let alone Christian way to promote social harmony? And were those behind this mockery of justice following a Gospel that enjoins all to love their neighbors as themselves or were they following a leftist script that calls for “divide and conquer,” then take over?

King’s “dream” of blacks and whites living peaceably together had been turned by Marxists into a way to generate conflict between whites and blacks, intensifying racial division, often to explosive levels, ready for the heavy hand of government to manage. King surely turned in his grave when “the will of God” was replaced by the will of political bandits aiming to take charge of the country.

My wife and I faced raising our children where, instead of walking to the school at our corner, they would be required to ride a bus to a distant school because their skin was the wrong color. This racist departure from sanity joined other signs of increasing madness in New York City to convince us to leave New York in 1973, for the benefit of the children and for our peace of mind.

Perhaps the greatest morphing bump of all came with the washing of Christianity out of Christian churches. Since the Gospel is not “progressive” it became necessary to introduce Liberation Theology into the church services. Liberation Theology is a Marxist device to liberate Christians from their faith by “updating” it – that is, by altering the Gospel to make it agree with Marxist dogma. The deception would be carried out slowly and gently, as change agents worked to help churchgoers rid themselves of the evil of Christian orthodoxy and embrace a new orthodoxy, tainted with Marxism. This I witnessed during my years as organist in several churches.

Seminaries would become targets for “progressive” (read, Marxist) infiltration and centers for indoctrination, in much the way the public schools were used, decades earlier. Sadly, the majority of the Christian flock failed to heed Matthew 7:15: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”

It was difficult of course to see that “social justice” measures like ordaining women as priests in the Episcopalian Church or allowing girls to play in Little League baseball were in truth not the alleged righting of past wrongs but a leftist scheme to blur the actual differences between men and women and girls and boys, in order to turn “equality” into a political tool for pushing an agenda having precious little to do with actual justice.

It was plain to me early on that Americans were being bamboozled into compliance with a plan to take down America, a country founded on freedom and justice for all, with opportunity for all to prosper – a reality celebrated in the nation’s Bicentennial during the mid-seventies. Those who today celebrate the idea that America needs to be washed off the map for a “better world” – read, Godless, global dictatorship – are either totally misinformed or terribly deceived. And they who push for action in that direction mark themselves as traitors of America.

For the reader who may think that the foregoing is a conspiracy rant, consider this:

“I never thought that in America I’d experience what it was like for armed policemen to hand me an official government document, ordering our community of faithful to cease and desist worshiping on Easter Sunday and to depart the House of God.” [Jerry Waldrop, pastor of First Pentecostal Church of Holly Springs in Mississippi,]

This barely scratches the surface of what America has become since I came home from Korea. A share of the blame must go to a few “wolves in judicial clothing” and to all government officials who take oaths of office, then ignore them.

The current sorry state of America, highlighted in the mayhem sweeping the country, is clearly attributable to a politically enhanced hatred of America and hatred of a president who stands opposed to its foreign and domestic enemies. The cruelty and brutality across the land, not of police, but of mercenary thugs, should wake even the “woke” among us. 

The weight of sacrifice, blood and suffering endured by the countless many who have made and continue to make America the great country it is must give pause to those who would destroy it.

“It would be a devastating slap in the face to the brave men and women who died for our freedom to allow Democrats and fake news media to transform us into a socialist/communist nation,” wrote Lloyd Marcus recently.

Thank you, Lloyd, and thank all who have stood and continue to stand against America’s enemies, both external and internal.

It’s far past the time to vote all traitors out of office. 

Anthony J. DeBlasi is a veteran and lifelong defender of Western Culture.