Global Power Grab by Patrick F. Fagan + William L. Saunders

Feature

Global Power Grab

The Cultural Marxists’ Strategic Assault on Religion, Life & Family

Two years ago, in an article titled “How U.N. Conventions on Women’s and Children’s Rights Undermine Family, Religion, and Sovereignty,” we considered the difficulties inherent in two United Nations conventions: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).1 In particular, we called attention to the fact that the committees entrusted to review implementation reports by state parties are acting far beyond their actual powers in what can only be described as an “ideological” manner.

Here we intend to show that the activism of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women are part of a worldwide effort to undermine the family, life, and religion. CEDAW and CRC are simply two pieces used by cultural Marxists to further their cause in the international clash of civilizations. The two sides in this clash have opposing views as to how sexuality and reproduction are structured, one seeing them as linked to, and the other as decoupled from, a sense of creation, or of the Creator. There is no reconciling these views. They clash.

Engels’s Attack on the Family

Influential intellectual roots of anti-family and anti-religious efforts can be found in the writings of Karl Marx’s collaborator, the German philosopher Friedrich Engels. Engels, in his vision of state ownership of the means of production, and of the ultimate triumph of the proletariat, was keenly aware that two institutions would stand in the way of his communist vision: the family, and organized religion. He understood that in order for the international communist vision to come to fruition, the natural primacy of family and religion in society must be undermined.

Engels saw the establishment of the family as an aberration of the proper order of history, and its collapse as a necessary element for the coming communist world order. As he wrote in his preface to the first edition of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State:The old society, built on groups based on ties of sex, bursts asunder in the collision of the newly-developed social classes.”

Engels’s rationale for the collapse of the family can be found in his materialistic view of man, in whom he understands all interactions to be products of class struggle, a struggle in which marriage plays a central role. He makes clear why monogamous marriage must be eliminated:

Thus, monogamy does not by any means make its appearance in history as the reconciliation of man and woman, still less as the highest form of such reconciliation. On the contrary, it appears as the subjection of one sex by the other, as the proclamation of a conflict between the sexes entirely unknown hitherto in prehistoric times.

And,

The first class antagonism which appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamian (marriage), and the first class oppression with that of the female sex by the male.2

Thus, the most fundamental of all “class struggles” (Engels’s overriding preoccupation) is that between male and female, in which marriage effects the subordination of woman by man.


Patrick F. Fagan is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Research on Marriage and Religion at the Family Research Council.

William L. Saunders is Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel at Americans United for Life.

• Not a subscriber or wish to renew your subscription? Subscribe to Touchstone today for full online access. Over 30 years of publishing!


personal subscriptions

Purchase Print &
Online Subscription

Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!


RENEW your print/online
subscription

Purchase
Online Subscription

Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives including pdf downloads for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!


RENEW your online subscription

gift subscriptions

GIVE Print &
Online Subscription

Give six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for the reduced rate of $29.95. That's only $2.50 per month!


RENEW your gift subscription

Transactions will be processed on a secure server.

bulk subscriptions

Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.

kindle subscription

OR get a subscription to Touchstone to read on your Kindle for only $1.99 per month! (This option is KINDLE ONLY and does not include either print or online.)

Your subscription goes a long way to ensure that Touchstone is able to continue its mission of publishing quality Christian articles and commentary.


more on family from the online archives

23.1—January/February 2010

The Audacity of the State

It’s Bent on Bringing Down the House on the Family & the Church by Douglas Farrow

24.4—July/August 2011

Global Power Grab

The Cultural Marxists’ Strategic Assault on Religion, Life & Family by Patrick F. Fagan

36.1—Jan/Feb 2023

Contraceptive Cons

A History of the Protestant Debate over Contraception by James A. Altena


more from the online archives

19.10—December 2006

God Rest Ye Merry

by Wilfred M. McClay

31.5—September/October 2018

Liberalism Occupied

The Rise of the Gnostic Liberal State After Christianity by Andrew Latham

31.4—July/August 2018

The Names of the Christian

Labels & the Ecumenism of Discipleship by James M. Kushiner

calling all readers

Please Donate

"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand

"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor

Support Touchstone

00