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Gramsci Never Warned Them About This

By Robert Stacy McCain on 5.10.10 @ 9:53AM

Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci famously urged the Left to overthrow bourgeois hegemony by infiltrating and subverting the major institutions of society. The remarkable success of so-called "cultural Marxism" has, however, encountered an unexpected obstacle. Many Americans have stopped passively cooperating, and this annoys Mark Lilla to no end:

[W]e need to see [the Tea Party movement] as a manifestation of deeper social and even psychological changes that the country has undergone in the past half-century. . . . [I]t has given us a new political type: the antipolitical Jacobin. The new Jacobins have two classic American traits that have grown much more pronounced in recent decades: blanket distrust of institutions and an astonishing-and unwarranted-confidence in the self. . . .
A million and a half students in the United States are now being taught by their parents at home, nearly double the number a decade ago, and representing about fifteen students for every public school in the country. . . .
We are experiencing just one more aftershock from the libertarian eruption that we all, whatever our partisan leanings, have willed into being. For half a century now Americans have been rebelling in the name of individual freedom. . . .
They don’t want the rule of the people, though that’s what they say. They want to be people without rules . . .

Lilla's remarkable tantrum prompted me to remark:

What was the point of the Left's "long march through the institutions" if, having captured those institutions, they can't use them to tell everybody else what to do?

View all comments (5) | Leave a comment

Ken (Old Texican)| 5.10.10 @ 11:29AM

Mr McCain, thanks.

Mr. Lilla does go on a bit doesn't he? Heh, now I know one of the sources of the talking points we see re-gurgitated here by the obfuscators each day.

Couldn't he have come to a clearer (and much more concise), conclusion?

My conclusion is that the "gubmint institutions " have simply lied to us too many times and on too big a scale. (ie medicare costs projections).

Not only that, but we can't even get an "oops, we made a mistake" from them.

Question:
You might have the answer at your fingertips...how many kids k-12 are in private schools across the country?

They are certainly getting a different slant on things than kids in many public schools.

Tim| 5.10.10 @ 11:57AM

An ongoing debate in my home: Can we afford to send our son to private school/ Can we afford not to?

Ken (Old Texican)| 5.10.10 @ 12:28PM

Tim,
I hear you loud and clear. My son hit school about the time the Oil industry collapsed here and I found myself over extended. I finally decided that he could do OK until 7th grade. (heh puberty).

I honestly believe our kids are going to be divided into two groups as they grow up. Sadly, I am afraid we are slipping into the British paradigm public/private (with names reversed of course).

As people move here...and begin talking about "good school districts", I tell them to forget that, but buy a smaller home in a nice area, or rent smaller in a nice area and use the extra money for private school.