Reflections At the Close of the Twentieth Century

The twentieth century has been an era of dramatic and worldwide changes, revolutions, and upheavals. The world is always changing, but the changes made in the twentieth century have been particularly great.

Let us examine the powerful influence of two men, perhaps the most revolutionary in their work, and in their evil impact. These two men were Benito Mussolini and John Dewey, the one in politics and the state, the other in education and the state.

Mussolini made socialism palatable and even attractive to millions of peoples. A Marxist, he recognized that the abolition of private property did not appeal to the vast majority of peoples. His solution was a system, fascism, which gave the appearance of private property, the “entitlements” of socialism, and the facade of a free country. The appearance of private ownership and capitalism was retained, but, by taxation, the properties became state-owned, with the taxes virtually equal to a rent paid for living in one's home, or for operating a farm or business. To cite an example of this, a house built in 1960 (in California) was taxed in the years 1971-1975 for an amount slightly more than its original cost. Things like this led in California to Proposition 13, a tax revolt now being slowly eroded.

People were allowed to retain the dream of private ownership while becoming in effect renters from the state. The situation in business has become worse.

What Mussolini did was to “provide a means whereby socialism could be made acceptable to modern man. It has become routine for our statists to use the term “fascist” as an abusive title for others while retaining or advocating it in practice.

In education, John Dewey was the high point in the belief in statist education as salvation. Horace Mann had introduced this idea into American thinking, looking to German socialist models. It was Mann's belief that statist education would abolish poverty and crime. Dewey saw it as the key to the building of the Great Community, or, the Great Society.

The best application of this hope was in Sweden. In 1972, Roland Huntsford's remarkable work. The New Totalitarians, first appeared. As against the Soviet Russian model, socialism by means of a total terror, the Swedish model was the creation of a new totalitarianism by means of education and mind control. Sven Moberg, then deputy Minister of Education in Sweden, said, “We are aware of the abuses of this system, as in Fascist Italy, and we intend to avoid them. But corporatism has succeeded on the Labour Market, and we believe that it is the solution for the whole of society. Technology demands the collective” (Huntsford, p. 121). Moberg was unusually honest. Most fascists use the term to abuse their critics.

In the thinking of Mussolini and Dewey, salvation is by man through statist action and statist education. Dewey used the term “democracy” and “democratic” freely, but, in A Common Faith (1934), he described Biblical Christianity as radically incompatible with democracy because Christianity divides man between the saved and the lost, between good and evil. For Dewey, democracy allows no division of any kind among men. For Dewey, apparently, the only evil was to affirm that there is such a thing as sin, or to believe that some men and some acts are evil. We see the development of Dewey's implications all around us.

The world of Mussolini and Dewey, the world of fascism, is all around us, and it prevails in most of the world. The old totalitarianism of Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev is giving way to the new totalitarianism of Mussolini and Dewey, which is more insidious and dangerous.

Sadly, the many churches are oblivious to this menace all too often. The Christian and home school movements are major reactions to John Dewey and his humanism, but the political threat of fascism is not recognized. The major political parties of the Western world are in most cases fascist, and the term applies to the Left and the Right usually.

Christians should be providing the direction for the future, and there are major signs that this is beginning to happen. It is necessary for Christians to recognize that their Faith involves more than salvation from hell but is the application of the whole counsel of God for the establishment of God's Kingdom. None who are truly saved will be simply waiting for their eventide commuter train to heaven! They will be obedient to the Lord's order, “Occupy till I come” (Lk. 19:13). The position of our humanistic world order is simply this: “We will not have this man to reign over us” (Lk. 19:14). The issue for us is a simple one: “Does He reign over us, and are we obeying Him?”