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America heard it in 2016. It was said again in 2020. As the 2024 election draws near, it will be repeated: "This election will decide the future of America. This is a battle for our nation."
While "elections have consequences," those statements oversimplify. Since its inception, the United States has survived the constant swinging of the political pendulum between conservative and liberal. Even when one party has controlled both Congress and the White House, the minority has never ceased to have a role in shaping American life and culture. Politicians overestimate their own influence and doomsayers overstate the importance of political victory or defeat.
The real battle for the future is far more subtle.
In the early 20th Century, an Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci, laid out a plan for Socialism to take control of the world without ever winning a battle or firing a shot. Gramsci suggested that Socialists take a long-term view to advancing their agenda, gradually infiltrating cultural institutions and gaining control. Gramsci believed that if Socialists could become the dominant voices in education, entertainment and the press, political power would naturally follow. Gramsci said that thought and action should be understood as "intertwined in a developmental process that can bring into being a new form of State [...] a new intellectual and moral order [...] a new type of society."
In his writings, Gramsci also insisted that the most important task in this long-term plan was for his followers to attack the notion that God endows human beings with inalienable rights or establishes absolute standards of right and wrong. Gramsci believed the State held the power to grant and control rights, and he believed that it was the State's task to educate and coerce the population about standards of right and wrong. Intellectuals, including artists, philosophers, academics, industrial technicians, managers, entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, and scientists, were to shape the thinking of society so that they could manage the behavior of society itself.
Few modern observers of the culture would question the wisdom of Gramsci's thinking; Gramsci plan has worked. Those with views very similar to Gramsci's are loud voices in the realms of education, journalism and the arts.
But don't give Gramsci too much credit; the idea of controlling behavior by controlling thought wasn't original with him. Thousands of years before Gramsci put his philosophies on paper, Satan used the same tactics to poison Creation. In Genesis 3:1 (NIV), Satan (the serpent) asked Eve, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" Notice the word "really." Did God actually tell you that you can't eat of something so beautiful and enticing? What right does God have to deprive you of that satisfaction? Why should God control you that way? When Eve replied that God had warned them that eating the fruit would bring death, Satan challenged God's integrity: "You will not certainly die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:4-5). "You don't have to accept God's standard," Satan implied, "You can be smart enough to make your own decisions about how you want to behave?"
Perhaps recognizing that he could never defeat God in a head-to-head contest, Satan chose the subtle approach. He convinced Eve (and Adam) to question God's goodness and ignore God's authority. Satan suggested that people had a right to determine for themselves what was right or wrong, and that mankind should control its own destiny.
Don't misunderstand; Gramsci probably didn't knowingly ally himself with Satan.
Gramsci simply recognized that to change a person's behavior, one must change the person's thoughts.
Jesus also acknowledged this truth in Matthew 15:18-20 - "...what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person." The battle for cultural dominance will never be won through elections or politics.
America can't build enough prisons or hire enough police officers to stop crime.
Higher taxes on the rich won't alleviate all the problems of the poor.
Anyone with a real desire to change society for the better must persuade folks to change their inner thinking, not try to coerce their behavior by outward constraints. Jesus didn't instruct his followers to win elections. He said, "Go make disciples..."
Mark Wilmoth
Pinehurst Christian Church, Marietta