One of the ways that Mao Tse-Tung asserted control over every member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was through the ritual of self-struggle. Superficially similar in principle to Christian Confession, this self-struggle forces the Party member to systematically review his or her own thoughts, words, and deeds in order to recognize and reject all failures to fully live up to the Communist ideal.

As you should expect, there are of course stark differences between Christian and Communist self-criticism. Whether individually, with the assistance of a Priest/Confessor as in the Roman Catholic sacrament, or as part of a shared prayer and reflection as in the Reformed tradition, Christian Confession exists to reconcile each human sinner with our God. By critically scrutinizing one’s own choices, a Christian believer is graced with a hope to change one’s own
destructive ways while reaffirming a determination to try to live more fully as a Christian.

Beyond Christianity, reconciliation is also prized. The holiest day of the Jewish calendar is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day the individual Jewish believer systematically reflects upon his or her choices in hopes of finding a way to atone for sin and recommit to live according to God’s law.

Hindus, Buddhists, and Moslems all have similar rituals. There seems to be a universal human need to be self-critical in a process oriented to reconcile the individual with their bedrock transcendent truth.

Being itself a religion (but one without a God), it makes sense that Communists would do this also. Of course, the way they approach self-criticism is to reinforce the control of the Party leadership over the rank-and-file membership.

Self-struggle, in the Chinese Communist Party model, is done weekly and in writing. From its beginnings, every single Party member wrote a weekly self-critique and delivered it to his or her immediate superior. This continues today.

There is no week without a report, and no week without a self-confessed thought-crime. Everyone sins. Everyone confesses. Everyone incriminates him or herself. Everyone is vulnerable. At any time, anyone may be purged.

Everyone, that is, except for Mao Tse-Tung himself. He alone was adjudicator of all and was judged by none. Chou En-lai, the Vice Leader of China under Mao, himself weekly passed his written self-struggles on to Chairman Mao. Mao used these to reassert his control over Chao, and over every other Party member. Presumably, so too does Xi Jinping rule his fellow CCP leaders today.

Consider the effects of this. In the West a person is expected to have integrity within the dictates of one’s own conscience. In the traditional Confucian East, a person is supposed to faithfully conduct oneself so as to increase the “face” of one’s family and also to deepen social harmony.

But, in their travesty of self-reflection, Chinese Communists expose themselves to perpetual blackmail by their superiors within the Party hierarchy. They are required to sell themselves fully to the Party.

This is what Communists mean by Revolutionary fervor. It is how they apply Party discipline. It reveals the unlimited totality of their commitment to the Cause.

In the West, we assume that there is a human being behind everyone who wears a mask. We assume a Judeo-Christian reality that the individual always exists, and that each of us is open to love and tractable to mercy and compassion. This is not always true.

The Chinese Communist Party practices a thoroughgoing self-annihilation as one of its core rituals. It demands that every participant throw him or herself upon the nonexistent mercy of their Party bosses. It turns what might once have been independent individuals into mere components in an all encompassing Party machine. The CCP demands nothing less than the willing sacrifice of everything that makes a human being a person.

Be clear, fellow Americans, there can be no peace between a Chinese Communist Party which is defined by such a ritual and a humanitarian Judeo-Christian West. They are at war with us, and will be until they either conquer or fail.

“GOD BLESS AMERICA!” Indeed, I pray that God finds something worthy in us and in our ongoing experiment in self-government. It would be quite a lovely thing if, in many ways, God were on our side.

However, if we were both intellectually and spiritually honest, we should pray for us to be ever more on God’s side. No human being can ever conform ourselves perfectly to any ideal. We always fail to fully live up to our own most cherished ideals.

This is because human beings are not theoretical. We cannot help but be who we genuinely are, warts and all. Inspired by idealism, we might be guided by the better angels of our nature. Or, consumed by self-indulgence, we might not. In any case, our human nature’s conspicuous limitations should keep us humble.

One reason that we humans can never achieve any form of perfection is because “perfection”—as we understand it—is limited to embodying some thinker’s uncompromising ideal. These crystalline constructions can only exist apart from reality’s many exceptions, caveats, corollaries, and nuances.

Because of all of these limitations, utopian conceptions are emotionally safe. By denying the relevance of anything not specifically indicated by their ideology, a true believer hides from reality by deadening their own ability to even recognize anything objectively.

Such zealots willfully refuse to acknowledge even the existence of anything which might call their guiding philosophy into question. Others who live outside of their collective understandings, must be damned as being either mentally incompetent or spiritually malicious. To these impassioned believers, their ideology is all-encompassing and sufficient to explain life, the universe, and everything.

What I have described above is a self-reinforcing delusionary understanding of what human life is and of what human society is for. Unwilling to inhabit a world that operates according to laws and instrumentalities beyond their understanding, the true believer retreats into a secondary creation of his own making.

Sadly, this is what Communists, National Socialists, Woke Progressives, Religious Fundamentalists (Christian, Islamic, Hindu, and otherwise) all do. Here I am not speaking about devout religious believers. I am referring to those few who believe that they possess an unabridged version of God’s rulebook. Such people actually claim to know with certainty who among their fellow men are saved or are damned.

Rejecting a reality that transcends their limited human understanding, these desperate believers stridently demand that their philosophical model of reality IS reality. To them, nothing that is undreamt of in their philosophies can be acknowledged to exist.

This is why our society has fractured. This is why it is impossible to reason with certain people about anything and with many people about some things; because any pretense at being objective has been abandoned by so many of our neighbors. To them, reality beyond their ken is a lie.

A person who rejects humility before an infinite and eternal creation, which dwarfs anyone’s human understanding, cannot even want to be on anyone’s “side” except his own. Such a person certainly cannot be on God’s side, not unless God is in lockstep with his ideology.

An America dominated by such a brittle fanaticism cannot be blessed by God. People of good will and of good sense should stand against the proliferation of such a narrow zealotry anywhere and everywhere it is encountered.