OPINION:
Back in 1963, Rep. Albert Sydney Herlong Jr. of Florida read into the Congressional Record the 45 tactics communists will use to remake American society. He drew these from the 1958 book “The Naked Communist,” by former FBI employee W. Cleon Skousen.
Domestic threats to American freedom have been simmering for decades. Now they are coming to a boil. For those who refuse to believe that what they see and hear tearing at the heart of our nation is part of a larger strategy to eviscerate America, Skousen and Herlong’s early warning should change minds.
Here are just a few of the 45 points from six decades ago that prove there are no accidents or coincidences. It’s all part of a plan to conquer America from within. Understanding this strategy means there is no excuse for allowing its advance.
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
Both parties have gone soft, often unwilling to recognize that peace and freedom come through strength and the willingness to use that strength to deter oppression or maintain order.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation.
The United States has allowed China to dominate industries and markets, even giving the communist nation access to our land, energy and food supply in the name of free trade. America has outsourced manufacturing of even our most sensitive and critical products.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. … Demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.
Running to the U.N. and other multilateral organizations has been put on steroids in the era of climate change doomsdayism, population control extremism, trans rights and the dictatorship of public health.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
Today’s Democratic Party is controlled by the money and people who are driving this leftist agenda.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
Leftists have leveraged the courts masterfully to advance their agenda through activist judges rather than elected legislators. The constant cries of racism are not random. They’ve been part of the communist playbook for decades.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum.
Get control of teachers associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
Few can argue that the American Federation of Teachers and other teachers unions are far-left associations that drive anti-American messages while standards and test scores plummet.
20. Infiltrate the press.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
Be it CNN, Disney or Big Tech, leftist ideology dominates the communications platforms American use every day.
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity.
Diminishing the sacredness of both the human body and personal privacy degrades self-respect and individual sense of worth. It’s priming people for state control.
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity.
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools.
Religion is incompatible with communism and socialism’s demand for total fidelity to the state. Social religions today include the transgender movement and climate cultism. The LGBTQ lobby is breaking up the United Methodist Church. Media and companies routinely attack Catholicism.
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, and out of step with modern needs.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers.
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history.
Remember when former President Donald Trump said the left would come for George Washington? The Founding Fathers are now presented as slave-owning aristocrats rather than enlightened heroes. Alternative histories like the 1619 Project and critical race theory are imbedded in school curricula.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
The FBI has arguably been corrupted and co-opted from within for years. Now some Republicans are calling for its defunding. They should remember that communist sympathizers wanted to dismantle it.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
The left is doing this through the ESG and DEI movements that buttress its climate change religion, and radical social engineering.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.
From abortion and militant feminism to activist schools, Democrats are tearing at the very existence of the family and parental rights.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition.
Democrats have routinely excused violence, vandalism, looting, burglary and even murder as “justifiable rage” and ways to express dissatisfaction with alleged injustices. Thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa rioters will never be prosecuted.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic issues.
Democrats are big fans of giving the International Criminal Court and U.N.-affiliated organizations more authority. It should come as no surprise that the hand-picked special counsel in the Trump classified documents case, Jack Smith, worked at the ICC for years.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax and the author of “Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq.” He served as an adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from 2003 to 2004.
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