The future of our civilization is under threat from those who are trying to dismantle our cultural heritage.  There is much confusion as to why we are at this point in our history and what is behind the radical social changes that are flooding our institutions.  The cause is a spiritual sickness called "socialism."

The rise of socialism has followed a curious trail through modern Western history.  Feminist, trade unionist, and eugenics movements of the early 20th century were succeeded by the "flower power"[i] generation of the 1960s.  From this hallucinogenic, shallow mindset of anti-war and free love came our original virtue-signalers and their preachy pop music. 

Today, we recognize socialism's chosen people by their overt "wokeness" and feigned moral superiority, which is their primary weapon for killing off our culture.  Their utopian goal is a dehumanized world that either bows to their will or dies, both of which options are much the same thing.  Woke virtue-signaling is contiguous with the human penchant for self-justification in that it proclaims that the cause is for the common good of all.  However, the woke cause diminishes the common good through the callous destruction of the individual and our cultural history.  It is rooted in hubris.

Taking Igor Shafarevich's four pillars of socialism, we can see more clearly how these woke political and social constructs have been driving the utopian agenda.  By comparing Shafaverich's analysis with modern culture and institutions, we are able to establish the status of Western culture in relation to socialism.  These programs attack individual sovereignty, and subsequently, they aim to reduce humanity to a homogenous nothingness. 

The abolition of private property: One of the most powerful global wealth controllers, the World Economic Forum (WEC), has openly declared its commitment to socialism under the "Great Reset."  According to the WEC, in the future, you will own nothing, and you will be happy about it.  The global electronic currency system in combination with bureaucratic and corporate big data are well positioned to make this a reality.  Governments have raised the possibility of removing physical cash entirely.

Aside from this open declaration of globalist intent, decades of pernicious taxation by Western governments have been shifting private property into the public sphere at an ever-increasing share of the economy. Putting aside debate on the productiveness of resultant public services, much of this private wealth is simply redistributed in various forms as "social security," or to fund impoverishment policies such as "anthropogenic global warming" mitigation.

Public budgets are nearly always funded through debt.This places every citizen in debt, transferring all of the citizens' private wealth into public hands.Ultimately, it is private money that must pay off loans and interest through taxation, inflation and potentially outright property theft.

The abolition of the family: Family is perhaps the most uplifting and supportive social structure for the individual, not only providing protection from the vagaries of life, but also standing as a powerful barrier to collective interference from governments and other corporate interests.  A society with strong familial structures is replete with self-reliance and suggests a community of people who feel valued and confident in who they are.  These traits are anathema for the socialist.

Feminism and the promiscuity drive have been powerful progressive social forces against the stability of the family structure within Western society, abetted by legislation that delegitimizes and communalizes family such as redefining marriage, no-fault divorce, and three-person parenting.Support for family is further weakened by abortion on demand.The marriage rate in the USA is at a historical low.

Hostility toward religion:  One of the goals of enlightenment humanism was to rid philosophy of the transcendent God and replace it with god-like man in a continuum with nature.  Both Darwinism and Marxism were flawed attempts to leverage science to invalidate the claims of God as the source of ultimacy and creativity.  Darwinism in particular, and it's Lyell-ist long-ages shadow, has proved to be universally comforting to humanists in spite of its feeble and consistently failed narrative in the face of evidence.  Darwinism is the pseudo-intellectual pacifier of humanist nihilism, but it has wrought havoc against biblical authority among the uninformed wider population.

The war against God has now come to its practical fulfillment in the West, as modern man trusts in human authority rather than the transcendent.Government and politics are now the sources of ultimate authority, meaning, and reality.As orthodox Christian church attendance has plummeted, the church's political and social influence has waned to its lowest ebb.

Anti-discrimination laws, emergency health orders, and atheistic secularism in schools and colleges all target Christianity, which is now widely viewed as an archaic superstition that is discriminatory, elitist, and intellectually indefensible.

A need for communality or "sameness": Social engineering ideologies have become standard political policy.  Multiculturalism denies the validity of value judgments among different cultures, rendering all cultures ethically "equal."  Open-border immigration is a practical solution for multiculturalism, invalidating the unique sovereignty of cultural citizenship of the USA.

The de-sexualization of individuals through "transgenderism" and homosexuality eradicates meaningful natural differences among people.

Critical Race Theory aims to undermine individual immanence and defines the person as a racial category in a common pool of meaninglessness.

Feminism undermines the ability to acknowledge natural and sociological differences between men and women and has damaged the ability of the sexes to interact sensibly, dissolving society into a communal pool of isolated individualism.

This brief analysis clearly indicates that socialism is not just a threat from the future, but the reality of our past and present.  All of these policies are individually, and in combination, pushing us farther into a life of socialist collectivism, in which the individual person becomes a valueless nothing in the cause of commonality.

The past two years of worldwide public health authoritarianism, which leveraged the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak from China, have been deliberately excluded from this summary.  COVID-19 hysteria was built on the solid foundation of socialism that was already in place, and in a much magnified and accelerated fashion, it has encompassed all of Shafarevich's four pillars.  Perhaps the best indicator America has of its descent into socialism is the general public acquiescence to this, the most overt socialist political agenda in the West's history.  The COVID-19 response has not so much been an escalation of socialism, but is instead a result of the world we already lived in.

But we're not quite dead yet.  Perhaps Donald Trump's lasting legacy may not be anything he did as president of the USA, but that he successfully galvanized the American people into action.  Socialism is a spiritual war against the soul of the individual, and Trump became the standard-bearer in a new resolve to fight back.  It is now, and increasingly, the individual's lot to uphold liberty against collectivist totalitarianism.

Philip Crossing is a pen name.