Obama, Marcuse and “change”

Note to readers:  This is more of my continuing mental wandering into the concept of “change.”  If you are wondering what it has to do with immigrants and refugee resettlement, you will just have to take my word for it, it does.   In fact, I believe that immigrants are the fuel for the fire in changing our system of government. 

Yesterday, our friend Richard at Blue Ridge Forum and I were discussing Saul Alinsky’s influence on Obama and he suggested I read more about the Frankfurt School and Herbert Marcuse.   He directed me to “What is Cultural Marxism?” by William Lind here.  The gist of what Marcuse and the Frankfurt School was all about is the establishment of multiculturalism as a force to destroy American government and society as we have known it.

Marcuse was a founder of the Frankfurt School:

In 1923, inspired in part by Lukacs, a group of German Marxists established a think tank at Frankfurt University in Germany called the Institute for Social Research. This institute, soon known simply as the Frankfurt School, would become the creator of cultural Marxism.

To translate Marxism from economic into cultural terms, the members of the Frankfurt School – – Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Wilhelm Reich, Eric Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, to name the most important – – had to contradict Marx on several points. They argued that culture was not just part of what Marx had called society’s “superstructure,” but an independent and very important variable. They also said that the working class would not lead a Marxist revolution, because it was becoming part of the middle class, the hated bourgeoisie.

Who would? In the 1950s, Marcuse answered the question: a coalition of blacks, students, feminist women and homosexuals. [Edit:  This is before third world immigrants].

Next, please read ‘The Mystery of Senator Barack Obama: In the wake of Herbert Marcuse’ by Prof. Paul Eidelberg here, in which he discusses the teachings of Marcuse (others) that we have no essence other than what we create for ourselves.  For those of us who believe in a higher power and that we do have God given rights this concept is extemely hard to wrap one’s head around.   The gist of this thinking is that there are no rules—not even the Constitution (but that’s a topic for another time).

I wrote about  Saul Alinsky’s view of the same concept  here in Alinskyism Day 16.  Change is disruptive, change is creativity and has value all by itself.

I don’t have any concluding thoughts because I am myself still trying to grasp this concept.

Here is a bit from Prof. Eidelberg I wanted you to see that would perhaps encourage readers to study the links provided here as a way to further understand who we have elected President of the United States. 

Lincoln regarded the principle that all men are created equal—equal in their unalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness—as a self-evident truth, absolute and immutable, indeed, the foundation stone of Republican government.

In contrast, Obama’s The Audacity of Hope rejects any absolute truth, political or theological, that binds future generations. Change for Obama is not only a political but a philosophical principle. But from this it follows that Obama can say or be one thing today and something quite different tomorrow. Recall his flip-flop regarding Jerusalem: undivided one day, and divided the next.

That all might be fine on the campaign trail—changing positions all the time—but I think it will be his undoing as President.  Hopefully he will not undo America in the process.

All of my bits and pieces, my disjointed ramblings on this concept, can be found in our category, Community destabilization here.

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