Tony G's Color War

Thursday, March 12, 2009 6:16 PM

Anybody reading this has heard of the "culture war" being waged between conservatives and "liberals." Lately I've been reading about the "culture war" and learning that it's the public face of an intellectual battle which has been going on since the 1930's. I've given that war a name: Tony G's Color War. I will explain why. Those of you have been to summer camp probably remember Color War. I hated it but I hear that some campers loved it. In any case, Tony G's Color war does not involve a summer camp, but the whole USA and much of the Western world.

Before I get to this fellow named Tony G, however, I should point out that the color war is not Black vs. White or Green vs. smokestack gray, but Blue vs. Red, the colors of the electoral map. There are Blue States like Massachusetts and California, and Red States like Georgia and Montana. Democrat pundits boast of converting Red states to Blue States, or making Blue inroads into formerly Red areas. Unfortunately much of their boasting is based on the fact that they have done just that, and in order to understand why I have looked into the history of the worldwide Marxist movement, and discovered the historical figure I call Tony G, an Italian communist who died in 1937. His name was actually Antonio Gramsci, and he spent years in prison for being an auto workers' union organizer at a time when there were threats on the life of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

However, Tony G's contribution to world Marxism was not so much what he did before being sent to prison as what he did in prison. Freed by incarceration from the demanding life of an activist, he spent his time making notes in a prison notebook, and it was these notes that have led directly to the culture war between the Blue and Red states, and ultimately to the electoral victory of the US Congressional Progressive Caucus and their presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama.

According to Internet sources, Marxists before the time of Antonio Gramsci assumed that the workers of the world would rise up against capitalism in a world-wide revolution, that such a revolution was historically inevitable, and that it was only a matter of time that it would happen. The opportunity, so the Marxists thought, would be the result of World War One, a horrendous massacre of millions of young men, which could be blamed on the turf battles of European and American capitalists. But the revolution didn't happen anywhere but in Russia, which became the Soviet Union, and by Gramsci's time, Stalin was resorting to mass murder to try to keep the "workers and peasants" in line.

Gramsci, being Italian, developed a theory centered on a Greek word for leader, hegemon, expanding the idea of leadership to a form of domination which he called "hegemony" (egemonia in Italian.) Gramsci focused explicitly on what was is now called "cultural hegemony," and is a core idea in the left-wing university curriculum which has infiltrated all but a few colleges in the USA. Gramsci, considering the almost static trench warfare of World War One, described a "War Of Position" which was not to be fought on a battlefield, but elsewhere.

In the USA, the elsewhere, it turns out, was the public schools, the universities, and the mainstream media, the creators of the Blue State.

What are the big guns, we must ask, in the arsenal of the Blue State "cultural hegemony?" It's not hard to find answers: the race card, an all-out attack on conservative Western religious tradition (Muslims are exempt because they are allies in the battle against capitalism), suppression of state sovereignty, of the right to bear arms, and of the right to free speech if such speech is "politically incorrect." There are many more. And they imply another question: what are in fact the principles, the big guns, as it were, of Red State Americanism?

In a previous blogpost I have suggested an answer to that last question which I call the Three C's: Constitution, Currency, and Capitalism. The forces of cultural Blue State hegemony do not dare attack these directly, but by twisting words and rendering the Three C's meaningless. The Constitution? Of course they are for it, but not the "extremist" version, which is the Constitution as conceived by our founding fathers. Our currency? Of course the Obamacrat Marxists are in favor of dollars: as many as they can print and spend. Capitalism? Of course they are in favor of it, just not the "unbridled" kind. When they get their way, which is happening now, the poor old workhorse not only gets a bridle, he gets painfully tight reins, hobbled forelegs and hind legs, a gag bit, a monstrous saddle, and a rider so heavy that sooner or later the doomed beast of burden's back will break.

There is a hope that Republicans will take back Congress in the 2010 elections, or at least gain seats, and I share that hope. It is not enough, however. If the Republicans in Congress represent the "cultural hegemony" of the Blue States, the Marxists will be that much closer to total victory in Tony G's so-called War of Position. We already have a shining example, the Pine Tree State, otherwise known as Maine. Incidentally, Wikipedia tells me that the Maine state motto, is "dirigo" the Latin equivalent of the Greek word from which Tony G's beloved "hegemony" is derived.