Homosexual Behavior is Slavery

The West held that freedom, liberty, is the opportunity for a being to express its essential nature, not to do things that corrupt or contradict it.  Homosexual behavior being an obvious denial of what is true about the essence of human sexual nature, the “freedom” to act out homosexual desires is akin to the freedom of a dog to fly like a bird.  The dog can jump off a balcony, but his passage through the air could never be called “flight.”  To the Western Mind, then, there is no “freedom” in acting to betray one’s essential being.  This is, in fact, slavery, because once your will has taken you outside your nature as a human being, you cannot exercise true freedom.  You can’t be true to your nature, because you have chosen to do the opposite.  And the longer you practice such betrayals, the more likely you are to become addicted to them, deepening your enslavement; the more you think you are practicing “freedom,” the less truly free you are getting.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.144-145

When America Saved Europe From Islam

Thomas Jefferson fought back, and ended Moslem piracy in Europe.  It was the first time America saved Europe militarily, and no one seems to remember, least of all the Europeans.  Although our people don’t remember, they do speak about it whenever they sing or hear the first words of the Marine Corps Anthem:  “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country’s battles on the land and on the sea….”  Why don’t we teach our children about the wars these words refer to?

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.203

The Pill and Sexual Anarchy

It is now hard to remember the huge controversy that surrounded the invention and introduction of the birth control pill.  Never before had it been possible for young women to become sexually promiscuous without fear of pregnancy.  This was the early 1960s, and the co-called “baby boom” generation (children of the W.W.II generation, born in the 1940s) was just reaching sexual maturity.  The mentors of that pivotal generation, the so-called “beatniks,” were young adults in the 1950s who had turned their backs on the social norms that had always prevailed before them.  Part of it had to do with the newly ubiquitous automobile, which gave young people unprecedented freedom to roam from home.  A youth culture, distinct from the adult world, emerged for the first time.  Rebellion became a virtue, and a “generation gap” became widely obvious.  It will perhaps be impossible to convince New Civers that there has never been a “generation gap” prior to the 20th century, but it’s nevertheless a fact that young people had always been regarded as “miniature adults.”  Marriage came early, and adult responsibilities were taken on in the teen years. What the baby boom generation learned from the beatnik generation was that youthful immaturity can be prolonged well into adulthood.  And an immature adult has one plaything children don’t: sex.  Hugh Hefner saw this coming in the beatnik world of the 50s, and with the active encouragement of Alfred Kinsey, triggered a cultural nuclear weapon that he called the “Playboy philosophy,” the idea that men could and should refuse the tyranny of marriage; serial sexual encounters and the swinging bachelor lifestyle were elevated beyond the ultimate dream to the ultimate virtue.  The fact that the birth control pill was now available, in essence removed any practical limits on the male conscience in this regard.  And because existentialism had already penetrated our civilizational Mind, it had already started to seem “right” that nothing is real but existence itself; the only point of life, it could be argued, is what the beer commercial eventually told us: “gusto.”

What this means, two or three generations later, is that newspapers now simply assume that teenage girls engage in sexual behavior, and that naturally, young women are expected to have a “usual birth control method.”  It’s been a long, long time since everyone knew that “good girls don’t.”  And since good girls in the New Civ[iliation] do (that is, if we actually share in common with our ancestors the idea of what kind of person is this “good girl” who “doesn’t”), pregnancy is often not prevented.  Since boys are no longer expected to do “the right thing,” what’s a girl to do?  (Now, don’t say she shouldn’t have done what it takes to get pregnant in the first place, you prude.)

All the rest follows predictably: abortion, fatherless children, irresponsible, predatory boyfriends, children raising themselves because mom is at work all the time.

And children who raise themselves, quickly discover that the pleasures of adulthood can be had by them, too.  Drink, drugs, sex.  Children having children.  Drug addicted children.  Gangster children.  Violent thug children, with absolutely no respect for any authority.  Vast numbers filtering in and out of prisons, places one movie cop called “gladiator academics.”  A prison culture that spills out across society, and bleeds into the popular music, computer games, television, movies.  And all of this starts to look attractive and natural; kids look forward to participating in things the Western Mind would have regarded as repulsive.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.190-191

Without Truth, All Religion is the Same

The New Civ[ilization]…is a kind of religious smorgasbord, where everyone can cheerfully pick and choose from a vast array of spiritual elements, gradually building his own religion.  Inside the New Civ Mind, every idea is equally true.  For them, this premise is the real value, the ultimate meaning that can be apprehended: the acceptance, the nonjudgmental “tolerance” of all ideas, all definitions.  How does one persuade a person that one definition is superior to another, when his highest values deny that such a thing is possible?  Thus, in the New Civ, at least for now, there can be as many religions as there are human beings, every possible one of which is regarded as equally valid, all exactly as efficacious in saving one’s soul—because the concept of salvation itself is arbitrary, just as true or invalid as any individual decides it is.  In the New Civ, we fulfill Satan’s promise to Adam: we are our own god.  Whatever we believe is “true,” and whatever we don’t believe is not “true,” because there is no eternal standard of Truth, no supreme God as the Bible describes the idea.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.153

Thoughts or Feelings?

The West grew out of a firm grounding in thought, the realm of philosophy and logic.  This New Civilization is completely different; it is a world view sloshing around in the squishy realm of feelings.  This difference changes everything.  If you doubt what I’m saying, there is an easy test that anyone can use to demonstrate that it’s true: simply ask a random sampling of young people what they think about, say, the war in Iraq, or the future of Social Security.  My guess is that at least 90% of the time, their reply will be a report of how they “feel” about these issues.  It is so unconscious that they are unaware that they can’t distinguish between thoughts and feelings.  This is a linguistic indicator of the larger, internal reality that marks the New Civ.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.93

Socialism is Tyranny

In the modern era, whenever socialism has come to a society it has always been regarded as irreversible, and the new regime has always demanded complete submission.  This is true across the entire range of degrees of socialism, from outright communism to the milder forms, programs like the National Health Service in England, or Social Security in America.  Yet the idealists who have consistently defended and rationalized even the horrors of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Viet Nam and all the rest of the nightmare regimes of the 20th century, never seem to notice the contradiction.  Socialism is by definition tyranny, and a tyrant who can’t be overthrown and who demands that every individual abjectly submit, can in no way be characterized as representing a civilization with “a passion to throw off tyranny.” 

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.89

“Capitalism” Is A Corruption of “Free Enterprise”

[S]tarting in the late 19th century the intrinsically good and purely Western idea of “free enterprise” was transmogrified into the very unpleasant phenomenon of “capitalism.”  Unbridled development, being a symptom of this, is thus a hallmark of the New Civilization that has overtaken the West.

But just try to convince a young idealist of the New Civ persuasion that “capitalism” and the cult of consumption are betrayals of Western ideals made possible only because the West has been defeated.  Good luck.  For the enthusiastically New Civ youth, the reckless remaking of the landscape, the suburban sprawl, the reinvention of farm life in the image of faceless global mega-corporations, these are all expressions of the evil Western civilization that enslaves its victims’ physical life, just as its Christian religion enslaved their minds.

It is part of our task to learn how to show these innocent victims of the thought-system of our times that the ugly expressions of “capitalism” are evidence of the disaster that will inevitably result when internal moral constraints are removed from the culture, when people are freed to pursue profit without any trace of a conscience.  In other words, to somehow get them to see that they are sawing away at the limb they are sitting on.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.73

The Betrayal of the West

It is tremendously difficult to convince modern people that the America the world sees on television and in the movies is a post-Western civilization, that it is not Western civilization at all, any more.  That thing, that thing America had become by the end of the 20th century, is a clear betrayal of the West. 

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.55

More Socialism?

More socialism will inevitably produce more tyranny; dumping truckloads of money into the hands of tyrants will only increase and prolong the agony of the victims.  It is anything but compassionate.  What these places need is missionaries, not dollars.  They need the Bible, to teach them how not to allow corruption to steal their dignity and humanity, not advice from the IMF or the World Bank.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.49

We’ve Given Up Freedom

We have come to substitute civil government for God.  It has happened almost imperceptibly.  We gave away our freedom in exchange for earthly satisfactions that really can’t satisfy, and now we’re fundamentally changed.  We now really believe that civil government exists to save us. … tyranny must inevitably result, and the true liberty that is Christianity will come under attack. … We are rushing headlong into world government, a world religion and a world economic system complete with a one-world currency, and people who expect to enjoy the freedoms the West once provided are going to learn another way of living.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.48

About Patrick Michael Murphy

I’ve previously posted a few citations by Patrick Michael Murphy’s book, “How the West Was Lost,” and will be posting more.  However, I want to have a caveat about his theology.

Murphy’s work on social and historical issues are right on the money, which is why I like to cite him, but his theology is a wee bit off, especially when it comes to Satan and the demonic realm.

First, he refers to Satan as “Lucifer,” which really bothers me.  Satan’s name was NEVER Lucifer, and yet people like Murphy claim that was the name he had prior to becoming Satan.  I prove otherwise in my article on my apologetics blog.

Murphy also teaches the false idea that Adam first owned the earth and then transferred the “title” to Satan when he sinned, and then Jesus had to get the title back.  Scripture says God owns the earth, and always has (Exod. 19:5; Lev. 25:23; Deut. 10:14; 2 Chron. 19:11-12; Ps.24:1; Ps 50:10-11; et al).  In his chapter, “Eternal Pathology,” he says that everything else we know about Satan and the demonic realm comes from experience, but experiences should NEVER be the source of our theology, because we easily deceive ourselves.

Part of Murphy’s misunderstanding is that he believes demons may not be the same thing as fallen angels, so he ends up with a whole new category of spiritual beings.  Then he thinks that God would cast such creatures into Hell, “given the opportunity” —  as if God needs an opportunity?!?! 

Murphy’s belief about the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 being fallen angels is fine as far as I’m concerned, but where he goes with it is bizarre.  Whether or not the Nephilim are the offspring or just “giants” and spoken of in the same text (the text does NOT say the Nephilim were the result of the mating, rather it just says they were there in those days), they were certainly human  or half-human and would die in the Flood, yet Murphy says that at the Flood they had no place to go at death and so went into the “air” as disembodied spirits which are now looking for bodies to inhabit!  This is so extra-biblical!

His other bizarre idea has to do with sex and God.  Now, all through Scripture God uses the analogy of marriage to describe His relationship with Israel or the Church, in that He is the husband and Israel/the Church is the wife, and to worship idols is analogous to adultery.  However, the analogy never implies that sexual intercourse is a type of our relationship with God, as Murphy claims. His whole chapter, “Sex & Eternity” runs in this fashion to where it becomes really creepy.

In this book Murphy also states that God took a risk creating man, but that makes God to be more human-like; God never took risks because He KNEW what would happen — He knows the end from the beginning.

Finally, some of his ideas seem to come from the Hebrew Roots Movement.

SO, while I cannot recommend Murphy as a teacher on any theological subject, his book does a really good job of explaining how the Christian worldview came to collapse and be replaced by the horrible humanist worldview our culture now lives (the book was written in 2005 before same-sex fake marriage was forced on this nation, and before the whole “transgender” movement brought in even more sexual corruption — it would be interesting to see an update to include these movements).  I will link his name to this article in all my citations from the book.

Invasive Civil Government

Throughout its history, America was the place people fled to when they wished to escape from invasive government.  When faced with a social or cultural problem, Americans did not think of civil government when solutions were being sought.  What attracted people to these shores was the fact that we governed ourselves.  Because civil government has undergone such monstrous expansion in our time, we have forgotten this.  Most people don’t even know that family and church are governments, tasked to handle social problems, because their roles have been handed over to civil government.  We used to know this, though, and throughout our history charity was always a natural outgrowth of the Biblical morality of private citizens.  When confronted by the social ills brought on by poverty, people banded together and created hospitals and schools and every other kind of charitable institution that could possibly help.

All of this changed when the South was destroyed.  The very fabric of American life was torn by the War Between the States, and it could not be repaired: a new garment would have to be made, and civil government would be doing the making.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.39-40

Government-Created Rights

When civil government creates a new category of “rights” that cost money, and the owner of the “rights” has none, this can mean only one thing:  the government must force unwilling citizens to finance those new rights.  Which implies the evocation of the state’s ever-present threat of violence: the doctors and pharmacists will either be pressed into service by force, or the sick guy’s neighbor’s will be taxed to pay his medical bills.  There is no third way. . . .  

Everyone knows what governments do to those who defy their commands:  they seize your assets and confiscate your house, and if you refuse to be forced out of your home, they will send in the police.  If you refuse to be arrested, they will escalate the use of force.  Ultimately, if you stand your ground long enough, they will kill you.

This is why we should be very, very careful about calling nice ideas fundamental rights.  Civil government, ultimately, is violence.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.33-34

Right to Medical Care?

Anyone who examines what a “right” to medical care implies will immediately discover that it’s really a demand for forced labor.  Medical care requires other people to provide goods and services: doctoring, medicine, hospital stays and laboratory tests.  All these things cost money.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.33

Rights

The astonishing thing about God-given rights is that they cost other people nothing.  We all have them, at no cost, and no action is required to activate them.  When another person presumes to usurp them, it is called “sin,” because we cannot lose rights bestowed by God; to be murdered or enslaved, or tormented or robbed, is not to lose the right to pursue happiness, to property, liberty, or life.  The rights remain ours even after some sinner has impeded our ability to exercise them, because only God has the authority to revoke rights He has given.

The New civilization we occupy has transformed the concept of “rights,” and it all began with the denial of the right to private property.  All the new “rights” our society has “discovered” in the last century depend on other people giving up their rights.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.32

The Slavery of the Slums

One last comment before moving on: slavery was bad.  But what we have today is worse.  The slum districts of our big cities are much worse for the individuals in them than the typical slave’s life was in 1830.  We have vast numbers of employed and underemployed and unemployed citizens who are slaves of the dehumanizing forces that have ruined America….

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.25.