Life Outdoing Fiction

Lane Core notes, from the New York Sun, a piece by Alicia Colon. This part is too eye-popping not to quote; it's one of those documents that sends you searching for signs of fraud or farce, even though it indicates something that you intuit could be true:

Over 40 years ago, Rep. A.S. Herlong of Florida introduced into the Congressional Record, January 10, 1963, excerpts of a book written by a former FBI agent, Cleon Skousen.

It was called "The Naked Communist," and the excerpts were "current communist goals." There were 45 in all, at least 40 of which have been achieved. These are some that need to be noted as apropos to what is going on in America today:

• Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
• Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
• Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with social religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a "religious crutch."
• Discredit the family as an institution.
• Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
• Eliminate prayer or any phrase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

After some quick research, I can't locate this portion of the Congressional Record on any Web sites in which I'm especially confident (e.g., with a .gov), but this page seems to present information according with every other instance of its mention. Here are a few more objectives that might cause a shiver:

• U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
• Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
• Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
• Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

Of course, even assuming that these were actually concerns read into the Congressional Record forty years ago, this doesn't mean that there's an orchestrated conspiracy going on. Forecasting changes that would further the cause of communism would likely lead to some hits even if there's nothing more deliberate than a sort of creeping socialism in the culture. Nonetheless, the matter is worth at least as much consideration as the question about whom the terrorists would want to win the next election — which isn't a loony or superfluous question in the least.

ADDENDUM:
Here's another little wrinkle — almost definitely just a coincidence. While looking into The Naked Communist, I came across this, from a 1998 review of the book on Amazon:

Cleon Skousen used this text for a course at Brigham Young University. ...

Now at BYU, in a required course for Poly Sci. majors, Stan Taylor methodically debunks Skousen's "Naked Communist" and Gary Allen's "None Dare Call it Conspiracy." Stan also sits on key policy-making boards for the LDS Church to determine the Church's stand regarding Communist nations.

As it happens, last night I received a highly suspicious email, with a zip file attached in the fashion of the MyDoom virus, and the text: "you are a bad writer." The email address, if you haven't guessed, was from byu.edu.