“Know thy enemy,” Sun Tzu wrote, and as we are in a holiday season with some time before the Trump administration officially begins, I want to write a historical series tracing the rise of modern Leftism for us. Given space limitations, I will only touch the major historical movements from which the more minor ones (e.g., Alinskyism) arose. There will be some gaps, of course, because this is a short series, not a book. So, please be understanding. Let’s see if we can comprehend modern Leftism’s historical roots. By such comprehension, hopefully we can become better equipped to meet and expose its horrendous fallacies and consequences, consequences we’ve already been witnessing over the past 100+ years.
Where did modern Leftism come from? How did it arise in America? What are the foundations of America’s Leftist movement? I will attempt to summarize, in these few articles, these all-important questions. Everything, including modern “progressivism,” has its history, and understanding that history can help us better combat its errors.
Get ready for a wild ride through history, one your Leftist professor never taught you.
Of course, with any historical event, we could start with Adam and Eve, so a beginning time can be arbitrary. But let me commence our journey with the fall of the Roman Empire (5th century) and its aftermath. The centuries following Rome are popularly referred to as “The Dark Ages,” which is a bit unfair. But it is true that, for several centuries after the Roman collapse, Europe had to adjust to its new “barbarian” invaders (don’t call them that to their faces), and the continent certainly needed to regroup and reformat. But beginning around the turn of the second millennium (give or take a few decades and locations), Europe began a steady movement forward. Education, commerce, and trade were growing, especially as witnessed by the travels of Marco Polo (13th century) and the subsequent explorations of the Portuguese and Christopher Columbus and his ilk. The Italian Renaissance improved art, science, and culture—and spurred further economic growth. Europe was redeploying.
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In 1517, Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation, though, as always in history, there were precursors and foundations to that sublime event. And while the Reformation decidedly produces some positive benefits, for my purpose in this series, I need to emphasize some negative repercussions, especially the horrid religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries between Catholics and Protestants. Both sides were so committed to their faith that they felt the necessity to kill each other. This was atrocious, utterly inexcusable, and no faithful Christian will defend these wars as anywhere near a 10th cousin to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and his apostles. I certainly won’t. Be that as it may, those hypocritical wars helped produce a skeptical backlash, which aided the launching of modern Leftism. Christianity had gained power in the Middle Ages, and power in the hands of anyone is a dangerous, dreadful thing.
One of the negative effects of these religious wars was the reactions in (especially) the French Enlightenment. Interestingly, there were actually two “strands” of the Enlightenment, one led by philosophers such as Diderot, Voltaire, and Hume, and was decidedly anti-religious. That “wing” of the Enlightenment led to the French Revolution, the guillotine, Napoleon, and was an ancestor to the communist horrors of the 20th century.
A second “branch” of the Enlightenment arose largely from John Locke, 18th century English political philosophy, Edmund Burke, and their kin. It happened in the American Revolution. Locke’s influence on America is indisputable. But, ultimately, in one sense, so has Diderot’s, Voltaire’s, and the anti-religious ideas of the Enlightenment which underlay much of modern Leftism.
Not all of America’s Founders were believers in the Christian religion or the Bible, of course, but most were, and even the skeptics like Jefferson and Franklin believed that Christianity (without its “rags”, Jefferson said) was beneficial for society. “A studious perusal of the Bible will produce better fathers, husbands, and citizens,” Jefferson wrote, and he also spoke of Christianity being an “enlightened” religion. This was a fundamental thought of the American Revolution. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, in the 1830s, “I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion—but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.” Only ignorant or utterly biased Leftists deny this.
The French Revolution, for any other good it might have done, followed the atheistic, or non-theistic, strain of the Enlightenment, and it is no surprise to wise men that the guillotine, mass murder, and a megalomaniacal thug (Napoleon Bonaparte) arose out of it. Indeed, since 1789, France has had five different constitutions, and at least 13 changes of government. Look at what is going on there now; they still can’t get it right. France doesn’t appear to have progressed much because, well, consider also the depraved, godless paganism it offered the world at the Paris Olympics this summer. Apparently, the spirits of Diderot and Voltaire still live in that confused, bewildered, and befuddled country.
So, the religious wars of the 16th and 17th century helped produce a radical, atheistic, skeptical backlash in Europe, mainly found in the French Enlightenment and witnessed by the French Revolution and Napoleon. Most English didn’t swallow the French brand of the Enlightenment, and neither did Americans. But that anti-Christianity was there, and would sew further seeds in the 19th century.
Then, in the late 18th century, a completely new movement swept Europe that, when coupled with the Enlightenment, produced a philosophical change that catapulted the world into a completely new vision of humanity and existence. And also underlay modern Leftism. It is this movement, and its influences, that I will discuss in my next article of this series.
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