Dispatches from Behind the Lines (Continued)

À propos of the news from the Lutherans this weekend, I judge it time to continue with my excerpts from an outstanding manual for our time -- How to Win the Culture War, by Prof. Peter Kreeft of Boston College.

From the report of a triumphant speech given by Satan to his assembled minions, in celebration of all their recent victories in the culture wars, as reported from behind the lines (pp. 74-81):

Our [next] principle is one that has proved effective beyond our wildest dreams. I call it "Satan's Spectacularly Successful Seven-Step Sexual Strategy." . . .

Step 1: The summum bonum, the ultimate end, is to win souls for hell. They almost always forget this -- the thing the war is ultimately about. We do not. That is our first advantage.

Step 2: One powerful means to this end is the corruption of their society. . . . You see, a good society is simply "a society that makes it easy to be good" . . . The satanic corollary is therefore also true: a bad society is a society that makes it easy to be bad. Has there ever been a society in which people have had more and easier opportunities to be bad?

Step 3: The most powerful means to destroy society is to destroy its one absolutely fundamental building block, namely the family. That's the only institution from which most of them ever learn life's most dangerous lesson: unselfish love . . . .

Step 4: The family is best destroyed by destroying its foundation: stable marriage.

Step 5: Marriage is destroyed by loosening its glue: sexual fidelity.

Step 6: Fidelity is destroyed by the sexual revolution.

Step 7: And the sexual revolution is propagated mainly by the media, which are now massively in our hands. In fact, the revolution is over, and we've won. . .

The simple tactic of getting to their hearts through their hormones has proved incredibly easy. In fact, that's been the main reason they've embraced the Big Lie, denying objective truth. They don't deny objective truth when it comes to sticks and stones, only when it comes to morality. And even in morality, they don't deny objective truth about good and evil when it comes to anything else but sex. . .

For instance, they don't defend murder, except murder in the name of sex. That name is "abortion," of course. If abortion had nothing to do with sex, we could never have sold it. If storks brought babies, there would be no Planned Parenthood. Abortion is backup birth control, of course, and birth control means the demand to have sex without having babies.

So they are even now willing to murder to defend their so-called sexual freedoms. And to murder the most innocent among them, the only innocent among them. And the most tiny and weak and defenseless of all. And in the teeth of nature's strongest instinct: motherhood! A triumph of incredible and undreamed-of proportions.

. . .

But the late twentieth century sexual revolution gave us an effortless solution to an impossible dilemma. . . It made the easiest sins to tempt them to the most respectable, the most masked by the new philosophy[:] . . . since you can't raise your practice to your principles, you should lower your principles (make them "realistic") to your practice. In this way alone you can avoid hypocrisy, which is the greatest evil.

It's amazing how easily they fell for this packet of fallacies. . . . [H]ypocrisy doesn't mean not practicing what you preach; hypocrisy means not believing what you preach. But it's easy to confuse them about that too, because they don't care much about what you believe, only about what you practice. . . .

What could have dulled their brains so much that they don't see these transparent lies? Sex, of course. So now they not only fornicate, contracept, sodomize and abort; they also justify it, sanctify it and glorify it with Perversion Pride weeks and Sin Satisfaction seminars and Daring Degenerates days. And it feeds on its own success. "Everybody's doing it" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. . . .

. . .

Our greatest worry, of course, is the Church of the Enemy's Son. But in the last half century this has been the place of our most surprising victory . . . .

. . .

[The sexual revolution has] also produced the greatest generation gap in history. Nothing more sharply separates parents and children than opposite sex ethics. And once the generation gap is widened enough, society is gonzo, without the glue of tradition to hold it together.

Finally, even their science is skewed by their sexism. . . Evolution is their new dogma because they need it to justify acting like dogs. They ape the apes they think they are. The modern Darwinians are more fanatical and closed-minded than the medieval Aristotelians were. The bishops and the scientists have changed places: it's the scientists who refuse to look through the bishops' telescopes. What fun to watch! They're standing on their heads and they think their critics are upside down.

So here we are, sitting pretty -- that is, ugly. What next? More, more, more. Nothing can stop us, and nothing can stop the mudslide, the sweet, sweet sight of civilization swirling down our sinkhole . . .

The whole point of Dr. Kreeft's little book is, of course, that something can stop the forces that are destroying civilization, and in the chapters that follow what I have just quoted, he explains just what that something is. (Hint: it has to do with fighting as the saints fought -- and never, never, never giving in.) I have probably tested the limits of "fair use" with my quotations thus far, however, and so if I have whetted your appetite for more, I urge you to buy the book and read it. Then buy some more copies (they're only ten bucks!) and give them to your fellow warriors. Saintly ammunition, indeed!