Someone observed, not long ago, that the last redoubt of Marxism in the world was on the campuses of elite American universities. The statement did not come as a surprise, but it did make me start thinking about how it could possibly be so.
After all, Marxism and Communism together represent two of the greatest failures in economic and political thought in the history of man. I want to talk to you about this, but first, I need to answer the question I raised: How is it possible that Marxism still holds sway among the intelligentsia of this nation?
The answer emerged for me as I read Whittaker Chambers’ letter to his children in his book, Witness. Communism and Marxism, along with Nazism, were merely masks worn by a much greater and much older evil.
I don’t remember who it was who said that the last redoubt of Marxism in the world was on the campuses of elite American Universities. The statement did not come as a surprise, but it did make me start thinking about how it could possibly be true. After all, Marxism and Communism together represent two of the greatest failures in economic and political thought in the history of man.
From a time when many people thought that they had the answers, that communism was the wave of the future, we have lived to see the soviet system collapse, Marxism discredited as an economic system, and I think we are not so very far from witnessing the failure of China’s communist regime. That eventuality has some economists worried about the disaster that would wreak on the already weakened world economy. Communism has worked nowhere. And it has led to some of the most egregious abuses of power in the experience of man, to the cruelest destruction of life and liberty. Only after the fall did we really get to see what was being done. So why, I wondered, should some of the smartest and best educated among us still cling to something that looks very much like Marxism and communism.
Communism and Marxism, along with Nazism, were merely masks worn by a much greater and much older evil. I am reluctant to put a name on it because we have a bad habit of assuming that when we can name something, we understand it. Not so. Names are treacherous things, and we quickly become inured to them. I am not going to give you a name. I am going to hand you a key that will open your eyes to recognize this evil in its earliest forms—wherever it emerges in the political, economic, and social systems of a time. I need to also point out that there are two kinds of evil in the world: Human Evil and Spiritual Evil. For some reason, people are prone to deny both.
