My brother served in World War 2. In 2017 he “checked out of the grand hotel,” a phrase he coined for leaving this world, having left his “kid brother” (me) a wealth of good counsel, encouragement, and files enough to fill a basement. During my high school days he wrote a poem that hit hard and deep at the evil he sensed in his day. The sharpness of it stunned me, all the more since I was a tenderfoot in matters of such weight. That was over 70 years ago, when America still proved to be “the land of the free and the home of the brave” − for which the “Great Generation” is still venerated. While his poem reflects the tyranny of two world wars, the second of which called my brother to arms, it could have been written today as an outcry against the tyranny of globalists preparing us for their “Great Reset”:

THE LITANY

by Salvatore R. DeBlasi

[1946]

The vultures tear the flesh with savage relish;

The winds beat back the hairs and turn them thin,

While something deep within they serve to nourish:

An untouched, indomitable will to win.

A heart that hurls the earth when strength is seeping;

A mind that does not bow to bestial blow,

Must soon or late desert the painful weeping,

To conquer dreams still fast and full aglow!

The bosom of this spinning mass doth keep

The shells of its beleaguered specks.

Unconquered spirits travel o’er the deep,

Sparking resistance to this monstrous wreck.

Doomed to disillusion and a sword,

Children of inequity must die;

Unless that faith within moves toward

The capture of all hearts that cry.

So move that ailing hide—

Sing loud the Litany!

Stirring against the tide

Is Homo Sapiens’ Destiny!

Sal’s clap of thunder against tyranny was hard for me to grasp at first, but the source of its wrath became more evident as I watched what happened to America after my return from the war in Korea in 1955. America’s decline from a free and vibrant nation to one of encroaching dictatorship from a federal government colluding with unelected NGOs was getting hard to ignore.

My brother had gotten things wrong, early on. Like other teens wiser than their parents he dropped his religious training to become a staunch atheist. He kept his nose in books and his eyes and mind wide open, however. And so, as a layman scholar and indefatigable observer of the times, he returned to the tenets of Christianity, aware finally of its vital importance to humanity.

It was not long before Sal, back to the religion of his forebears, back to the God and the culture that made him, picked up his cross of atrocity against Christians, threw himself into the fight to keep unborn children from being slaughtered at abortion clinics, and in 1982 ran for state senator of New York under the Right to Life Party.

Bitter though his political defeat was, Sal did not stop fighting against injustice, even after he retired, as so many culture warriors have. The love of truth and the love of humanity permit no retreat from constant vigilance. against wolves in sheep’s clothing. The play of evil among people of good will is something the founders of America were fully onto, having struggled for their freedom from oppression to a degree that few today can fathom, and having poured everything they had, including their blood, into establishing a country where people could live and pursue their happiness, free of oppression from dictatorial government.

Looking back over the many years since Sal wrote his entreating “litany,” I wonder if it was simply a cry against fiends like Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo, whose roles in the war he fought exceed any measure of infamy? What has transpired on my watch over the past century convinces me that his passionate outcry was aimed at injustice from any source of corrupted power.

Concern for the future of humanity, vividly expressed in “The Litany,” was shared by famous authors of the time. Aldous Huxley had sounded an alarm in 1932 for technology gone mad with Brave New World. Still more terrifying was George Orwell’s 1984, published four years after Sal wrote his poem, the story of a future in which Big Brother controls everyone with brainwash and fear, cancelling history and current events at will, altering the language and destroying every vestige of the past. Today’s political leftists believe this is “progress.”

It’s hardly a coincidence that the 1930s and 1940s produced an abundance of mad-scientist horror movies. Spun out of science/technology gone awry, these shockers were not to be taken seriously, of course, not even Frankenstein, exhumed from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. It was utopian fantasies of the future like James Hilton’s Lost. Horizon (1933) and H.G. Wells’ Things to Come (1936) that were to be taken seriously, not projections of future dystopia like Brave New World and 1984.

My big brother had reason to see deep trouble ahead for America if the love of truth and justice were to be politically hijacked by leaders without a conscience and the people made to commit political suicide – something hinted as early as1835 by Tocqueville in Democracy in America.  

A growing number of souls are finally seeing how far down the “slippery slope” we have come. Is it too late for a saving “course correction”? Can every American of good will, regardless of color, background, or beliefs get back to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? This outcome requires every leader to square his/her conscience with true justice and act upon it as though their life is in danger. Those for whom this is too much to ask should not aspire to positions of leadership.

A middle school teacher – her name was Helen Drew – reminded me in 1946 of the importance of courage. In my graduation album she wrote: “How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a wayward world.” A teacher quoting Shakespeare today could face a symbolic beheading. Do you wonder why?  

At a 1975 National Day of Prayer breakfast held where my brother worked, Sal concluded his prayer to God, saying “You send prophets to remind us that the poor and hungry are also your children, that your love knows no bounds of race, class, language, or geography. Send us men and women with hearts ablaze with Thy love − patient, courageous, strong and true. These are the patriots our nation needs − those brave enough to do Thy Will. Amen.”

Graphoc credit: Frederic Guimont Free Art Licnese

Anthony J. DeBlasi is a Korea War veteran and lifelong culture warrior.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.