The Pivotal Moment

The 1980s and early 1990s were, in many ways, the last hurrah for Heritage America. The nation, as a whole, had rejected the legacy of the 1960s and it looked as if things were getting back to normal. The Democrats, by embracing the New Left, had relegated themselves to an electoral minority, at least in presidential elections, which thanks to the nature of American politics, meant the Republicans, for all of their problems, benefited. From 1968 to 1988, they lost five out of the six presidential elections of that time period. They never won more than 13 states in that era. Twice they lost 49 states and in one case came within less than 1% of losing all 50. And that one Democratic Party presidential victory came right after Watergate, and with a candidate who worked to distance himself from the 1960s. The national Democratic Party was near death, only being saved by the refusal of state parties to go along with the zeitgeist of the 1960s New Left – hence why Congress remained controlled by the Democrats, they were more in tune with their constituency and why even until the 1990s most Dixians made a distinction between a national Democrat and an Alabama (or Georgia or Virginia or Texas) Democrat. After the rapid secularization of the 1960s, it also appeared that the United States would not follow the trajectory of most of Europe and would remain a fundamentally Christian country. At the very end of the 1980s, communist rule of Central and Eastern Europe was broken and would be driven out of Russia not long after. The great enemy of the Right was now gone and looked to be discredited forever.

This is not to say everything was great. Divorce was common in that era and the abortion rate was still very high. Heritage America also put their lot in with the Republicans; be it 1982 or 1862, the GOP has always been a horrible party and one incapable of conserving anything (with the exception of a handful of honorable men that happen to be Republicans). But, perhaps more importantly, it is this era (the 1980s and early 1990s) where the radicals of the 1960s became college professors, allowing men and women who considered Western civilization fundamentally unjust to take over college campuses, thus prepping the way for a new generation to come up thoroughly indoctrinated to that way of thinking. This is the era in which “X Studies” became commonplace (though they would not get much mainstream attention until later in the 1990s). This is important because the “X Studies” department is where ideas like “White privilege” first took root. The 1980s was also the time period when Ole Miss began the first steps to remove itself from its Confederate past and even banned professors from displaying the Confederate flag in their offices.

As a general rule, I try to emphasize process rather than events in history, change happens because of larger factors rather than a single event. But events do still matter and one event, in particular, stands out when attempting to understand why these once marginal ideas spread so thoroughly in our society – on January 15, 1987, Jesse Jackson led a march of around 500 students to protest a required course on Western civilization at Stanford University, chanting “hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go!” This is the moment in which the anti-White Left staked a claim to a university’s practice and demanded that the university administration bow to their whims.

First, for a bit of background. Up until that moment, Stanford University realized that the U.S. was part of the West and, as such, required that its students be familiar with the classic canon. It was seen as essential in understanding what made the United States and how it fundamentally worked. In response to the protest, Stanford caved and ditched the class and replaced it with a class called “Culture, Ideas, and Values.” It was a class in multiculturism designed to break the student body from the West. Smelling blood, the anti-White Left leaped into action. They were not satisfied with what they had just been handed (they never are) and soon demanded more classes and even the creation of whole new departments. This was the springboard for the “X Studies” – classes in grievances for women and racial/sexual minorities. Once relegated to the margins, the idea was to use these classes as an incubator for subversive ideas that could eventually take over more traditional fields like history, philosophy, literature, and even mathematics. Of course, that is what happened and almost every university, a system that stands as one of the crowning jewels of the West, was controlled by people that hated the West and were working to destroy it. The cultural transformation we have seen over the past 30 years, and especially in the past seven, can be traced back to that pivotal moment.

The ultimate origin of this issue goes back to the 1960s generation becoming professors themselves. Though there were exceptions, one important element that had kept the Left at bay was that many of the old professors were genuinely tough men. They were largely veterans of the Great Wars. However, by the late 1980s, these men had retired or passed away, replaced by far weaker men. Some of these newer, liberal professors and administrators were still angry that their own 1960s revolution had failed and were seeking to train the next generation to complete their own revolution. Some were just cowards. Either by malevolence or timidity, it became clear on that January day in 1987 that Stanford University no longer had any will to defend the West (or itself). There was now blood in the water and the anti-White Left went to work.

The rapidness of our recent cultural changes has been unprecedented in the history of the West. And while technological progress is part of the explanation for it, it is not the whole story. It was also accomplished by breaking a generation of aspiring elites from the foundations of Western civilization. The West was no longer the civilization of Michelangelo and Copernicus, but rather the land of chattel slavery and the Holocaust. The Age of Exploration was no longer a drive to expand human knowledge, but rather colonialism and racism. That the West ended abhorrent cultural practices, like feet binding and widow burning, was ignored. The Crusades became all about monstrous Christians slaughtering peaceful Muslims, and anyone who brought up the fact that the Crusades were trying to take back land that had once been part of Christendom was called a Christofascist.

The story of how one of the West’s own great accomplishments turned against her is a long and familiar one, one that can be traced back to the cultural fallout of the interwar period, if not even further back in history. But there are important incidents and one of those critical events occurred on January 15, 1987, in Stanford, California when it was decided that Jesse Jackson was correct, and students did not need to be familiar with the classics of the West.

Harmonica