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The Spectacle Blog
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?
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More Blog Posts by Robert Stacy McCain
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/05/10/gramschi-never-warned-them-abo
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Pingback| 5.10.10 @ 11:02AM
Twitter Trackbacks for Gramsci Never Warned Them About This [spectator.org] on Topsy links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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.
Tim| 5.10.10 @ 3:57PM
Amen bro.
ECM | 5.10.10 @ 4:01PM
...an astonishing-and unwarranted-confidence in the self...
This comment, alone, says all you need to know about Mr. Lilla.