Downtown White River Junction has undergone some serious upgrades in the past ten years. When I moved here fifteen years ago the Lyme-Hanover crowd lamented the sorry state of the once-bustling Vermont town.
I recall their sense of disdain for its dilapidation, not sorrow for the downtrodden denizens, but more the relative bringing down of Upper Valley property values. So it was with a certain amount of irony I found myself seated alongside the Dartmouth College Republicans (DCR) hosting Dr. James Lindsay at the Tuckerbox restaurant in the newly gentrified downtown area. Strange bedfellows with a common thread seem to be the growing theme this evening. Who is the common enemy? By the end of the evening, the answer was clear – Marxist Communists in America and Davos, Switzerland.
The evening began with warm greetings from the Turning Point USA representative in the breezeway, followed by more from the DCR team. Chloe is the energetic and able DCR coordinator for the event and was extremely grateful for those in attendance. Dan Richards, CEO and founder of Global Rescue in Hanover, extended me and my son Joshua, a Hanover High School sophomore, a gracious invitation to join him and a kindly woman [Fran Wendelboe -Skip] representing the 603 Alliance.
One of Dan’s former football teammates from Hanover who recently returned to the Upper Valley from Colorado shares some of his experiences around his work in private schools compared to his son’s who are in a public school in Connecticut. Essentially, his sons are confused not about their gender but about why their teachers seem inordinately focused on gender and all things woke instead of simple academics like science, math, and history.
Social studies have become the new most challenging subject in most schools. This is roughly the same point Dr. Lindsay began his study into the new “woke” movement.
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A brief history of James Lindsay begins with his writing “Everybody Is Wrong About God”, his foray into the new atheist movement. Here is where he partnered with Portland State University professor of Philosophy of Education Peter Boghosian and fellow atheist academic from the United Kingdom Helen Pluckrose.
The three of them shared a growing concern for the rise in student body protests over once necessary traits of college life, such as discourse, debate, and dialogue around academic topics and competing worldviews. Conversely, they noted a drop in the standards of academic literature with the inclusion of pseudo-academic studies journals focused on “grievances” such as feminism, race, queer, gender, and the like.
True to their academic calling they sought to challenge the pretensions of these methods of producing self-serving “science” and began what is now famously known as the “Grievance Studies Affair.”
After national recognition for their hoaxing and exposing the new woke vanguard, they managed to put targets on their backs, namely Mr. Boghosian who became the victim of so much harassment and threats he has since resigned from teaching. Dr. Lindsay has gone from hoaxer to hero of the silenced majority who is slowly waking up to the culture war we find ourselves in.
The clinking of glasses and roomful of conversation have silenced as he is introduced. Though he could fill a thousand-seat auditorium in many parts of the country there is room for maybe fifty people at best. Lindsay, gifted with both intellect and good humor takes us on a brief history of Marxist thought he has since claimed has all of the characteristics of a religion.
The journey begins with the mention of radical social philosophers Rousseau and Hegel, both of whom informed Marx. Lindsay highlights Marx’s theory of oppressor vs. oppressed runs throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries to today where Critical Race Theory has morphed from class-based Marxism to race-based identity Marxism.
He notes the journey it’s taken to get here and the irony of today’s woke movement now hating the working class Marx once championed. He explains the reasoning is not philosophical but religious. Marxism is a cleverly packaged new religion disguised as an economic theory. This is why despite its persistent economic failures around the world it remains popular. People, discouraged by the academic assault on God, seek meaning in Marxism. Consider the parallels to Christianity:
This comparison is not exhaustive, however, you can see the religious nature of Marxism emerges.
As with religions, there is a strong evangelical component, and the Marxists, like Christianity, are heavily funded and well organized. From kindergarten to corporations the movement is being preached via training manuals, teaching lectures, and team sports paraphernalia (NFL helmets, NBA jerseys, etc.).
Eerily absent from the Marxist religion is any moral framework. This is seen by the push to “queer” everything and accomplish the Marxian goal of destabilizing American culture. No, the LGBTQ is not a new movement that spontaneously arose via people’s innate instinct to self-identify.
This was once tried in Hungary under the guidance of one Grigory Lukacs who implemented similar queering and sexual manipulation of school kids that lasted all of a year before Hungarians grew wise to his attempt to pervert their children and summarily threw him and his comrades forcibly out of the country.
It is here Dr. Lindsay rises to his utmost disgust for these tactics. In a three-part series titled “Groomer Schools” on his New Discourses podcast, he goes in-depth at the subtly stated goal of queer theorist Hannah Dyer, essentially, create constant mental illness in children for the sake of making them pliable to the revolution. Yes, she actually put that in writing.
In case you weren’t aware, we are in the mid-stages of a Marxist cultural revolution and our future holds a violent uprising of a purposefully disenchanted youth who are being taught to hate America, their parents, our culture, and methods of faith, because Marxism cannot tolerate competition. It is a union after all.
Strangely this published atheist is now one of the primary defenders of Christianity in America. One only wonders if his views on God are changing as well. Likewise, the Hanover crowd of Republicans will lock arms with anyone in the Upper Valley, even the White River crowd, to protect their liberties and their children.
Lindsay’s admonition to all who will listen is “YOU DON’T GET TO SIT THIS ONE OUT.” [Editor Note: or as Erick Erickson famously stated: “You WILL be made to care” -Skip]. If you love your freedoms, your country, your children, and your future you will educated yourself, figure out where you best fit into the counter-revolution, and bravely go forward into your community to fight back. His suggestions include running for school board, select board, establishing community groups, pulling your kids out of public schools where they’re being indoctrinated, and otherwise offering financial support.
You can start by watching his speech here and then checking out the content on his New Discourses site. He is one of many truly liberal thinkers who are banding together to take on this, perhaps our greatest, menace in American history.
