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Pro-Life Training Program Series

CYCLES OF HISTORY TEND TO REPEAT

By Janet Baker

From time to time, a prominent pro-lifer will compare our current cultural situation to the downfall of the Roman Empire.  Additionally, we can look at the Old Testament and see parallel scenarios in the stories of the nation of Israel and its subsequent conquerors.  

A look at these repeating patterns of events may help us understand our current situation and deal with it to bring about the Culture of Life.

Two proposed cycles are fairly analogous with respect to each other.  Brian Clowes presents these stages of human history, in the first of these cycles:

1.  Pre-Modern Period:  When truth is sought either by faith or reason (coupled with humility).  God will be found, since God creates both faith and reason (more fully with faith, since Christianity is a revealed religion).
2. Modern Period:  When “intellectuals” claim that faith is no longer necessary to attain the fullness of truth (eliminating the revealed truths).  This leads to a rejection of Christianity.
3.  Postmodern Period:  Since Christianity is rejected, the logical conclusion is that there is no God; nature is all.  Thus, there is no fixed moral code and no absolute truth.  Morality is determined by the powers that be in the particular society.
4.  Postmodern Deconstructionism:  Nihilism reigns.  It claims that there is no hope of attaining truth; therefore, truth does not exist.  Life becomes a series of experiences.  Those claiming that absolute truth exists are silenced.  Deconstructionists believe that words are “constructed by oppressors” to buttress their power.  Therefore, deconstructionists seek to change the language to consolidate power, knowing that language shapes thought.
5. Pre-Modern Period II:  Demographics will cause the Culture of Death to die off.  The culture of Life will (hopefully) ascend.  This sorry cycle will repeat itself if we don’t learn from it.

The second cycle is found in “A Farm Boy’s Testament to the United Nations” by Larry Barnhart (in the public domain, on the web).  

From Chapter 10 of that work, we read, “The historical cycle seems to be:  from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.

“Nineteen civilizations are said to have followed this pattern, most often over a span of about 200 years.”  Consider that the United States is 230 years old.

Here are the parallels I see between the two theories of cycles:  “Pre-modern” is equivalent to “spiritual faith, courage, liberty.”  “Modern” is equivalent to “liberty, abundance.”  “Post-modern” is equivalent to “abundance, selfishness, apathy.”  “Postmodern deconstruction” is equivalent to “apathy, dependency, bondage.”

We find ourselves in the postmodern deconstruction period.  Political correctness, rather than objective truth, reigns supreme.  Those proclaiming objective truth are silenced quite blatantly.

Recall a few weeks ago, in our own Maryland, how Governor Ehrlich fired Robert Smith from the Metro board for daring to proclaim in the public forum his Catholic beliefs concerning homosexual behavior.

Recall more recently how Brittany McComb, the Nevada high school valedictorian, literally had the plug pulled on her speech because she dared to say that God gave us His Son.

We also have seen stark evidence of language-tampering lately, with the most recent attempts to redefine marriage.  Such attempts started quite a while ago.  

Call me a “conspiracy-theory” kook, but I believe there are those who intended that the critical thinking skills of the youth be compromised.  An easy way to do that is to compromise their ability to master language, the tool of thought.

A quote inscribed over the door of the library at Colorado University states, “Who knows only his own generation remains always a child.”

With that in mind, it’s helpful to point out that another sabotage of modern education is the distortion of history.  Clearly, it’s engineered to instill “politically correct” sentiments in the students.

More ominously, it appears to be engineered to rob the young of their sense of cultural and historical identity.  On this subject, I recommend Patrick Buchanan’s The Death of the West, and David Carlin’s The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.

We must consider these theories and factors so we may learn how to break these cyclic patterns that need not, and should not, be seen as inevitable realities.  

The old adage is, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  Embedded in that adage is the hope that if we succeed in learning from history, we can break that curse with God’s help and guidance.