58 directly. Farrell: The other thing that it does is as- sumes God is no longer an abstraction; it’s not a metaphysical concept. It’s actually something very human because that is the complete meaning of that doctrine. It’s also the linchpin for much creativity, also, that this culture has produced. You can’t think of Western art without that being the central inspiring core. By the same token, that also invites its own critique. That brings us to the third element of Western culture, which is the humanist critique and the right to disagree with that doctrine, and to subject everything to the very same sort of superintending reason. So there has always been this creative tension in Western culture that is very unique. It has a religious root, but it can manifest itself in very nonreligious ways, which is very peculiar. It’s almost unique in human history. So if we look at these culture wars, the way I’m looking at it, we see these social justice warriors really challenging each of those three pillars. What they’ve done is marched through the institutions. They have captured the churches, captured the academy, captured the media, captured the public discussion about the family, and so on. In other words, they have done that, and in addition, it appears that they have specifically moved onto a phase where, confident that they have captured the institutions, they are looking at various demographics in society – male versus female, black versus white, purple pol- ka-dotted versus black and whites, and all of this nonsense to divide everybody. By the same token, they are ripping people away from tradition and from history and this is the ultimate key. Fitts: So what you’re doing is stripping away every source of power to the indi- vidual. For example, let me talk financially. The greatest risk management device ever created – particularly financially and economically – is the family unit. We know that the family unit has a very, very powerful spark, energetically, between the male and female to have and protect children. And the greatest political force has been the mother wanting to protect children. That was essentially what made homeschooling impossible to bust. When you see mothers and parents pro- tecting their children, that is an unstoppa- ble political force. Farrell: There is no question that much of this has been a war on women, just as it has been a war on men. There is no question in my mind. The thing that stands out in terms of these culture wars – and I say this as an observer from the sideline because I don’t have children – in looking at the current leadership class is how many of them are childless. With the exception of President Trump, I cannot think of any major world leader right now who has children. Merkel doesn’t, Macron doesn’t, and I don’t think that Prime Minister May does. We’re dealing with a leadership class that is not invested in their future because they don’t have children. They are thinking in a completely different framework. This is a product, I think, of this complete progressivism tendency that we’ve seen emerge in the last century in the West. It’s ultimately a suicidal one because what they’re doing is stripping people away from their tradition; they’re stripping people away from their history. Without that cultural matrix to guide you, you end up creating confusion. The only thing that is substituted in its place are the new meanings for old words, and those have to be ultimately imposed by force. This is what we see happening now, particularly in this country, with Charlottesville and things like that. They are going to impose their agenda by force and shout you down if you disagree with them. Fitts: I told you earlier that Daniel Webster said that the reason he created Webster’s Dictionary was because he was terrified that they were going to try to change the Constitution – not by chang- ing the Constitution, but by changing the meaning of the words. Farrell: Exactly and this is the old agenda. I bring up Gnosticism in this respect be- cause, if you study the history of Gnosti- cism in the early church, and if you study it not as a set or system or systems of belief but rather as techniques of cultural change, this is precisely what they were trying to do. Once you strip out the religious compo- nent and realize that you’re dealing with a manual of institutional and cultural subversion, then you can apply it to al- most any institution that you come across – the church, academia, financial markets, Constitutional law. Pick the subject and it works. The goal of it is to create confusion, and here is the other important point that we need to remember: This is an entirely ar- bitrary system. If you look at the writings of the Italian Marxist philosopher, Anto- nio Gramsci, a hugely important person, along with people in the Frankfurt School, like Theodor Adorno or Herbert Marcuse, people who actually came to this country and injected this entire philosophy into American academia. For them, the crucial component is the process itself. In other words, it’s a system of belief, if you will, that has no core doctrine. It ultimately only has core processes. It’s the process itself that they live for because there is no end to the process. I repeat, there is no end. Fitts: There is no price and there is no performance. It’s only going through the process. This is how the entire Federal government works. Farrell: It’s only going through the pro- cess and you have to understand that, for these people, there is no end to their social justice projects because the process of the project itself is what they are all about. It’s that process that empowers them. This is why talking to them is so frustrating. Ultimately, they don’t believe anything. They don’t have any core values, they don’t have a core epistemology, and they don’t have a core project, so I also call this epistemological warfare. That is not my term, incidentally. Fitts: If you’ve ever tried to negotiate and finalize a contract, let alone get it to stick with these people, it’s hopeless. It’s similar VI. News Trends & Stories with Dr. Joseph Farrell