Books in the Bubble -- Architects of the Culture of Death (guest post by my husband!)

We all know that the Culture of Death comes from the dark pit of hell, but of course humans are always complicit in the evil we see here on earth.

In the spirit of my recent overpopulation post, and in the spirit of blogger husbands emerging from the shadows, I have asked my husband Dean to write this post on one of the most important books we've ever seen, profiling the people who actually built the Culture of Death brick by brick.

Hi! This is Dean, Leila's husband. Welcome to my first guest blog post.

The Architects of the Culture of Death, co-authored by Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker, sheds light on the morally bankrupt philosophies of 23 influential thinkers. These thinkers were no dummies. They were highly intelligent over-achievers, and, interestingly, had the common experience of being from deeply dysfunctional families. 

The roster includes Ayn Rand, the intellectual hero of libertarians, who advocated extreme individualism whatever the outcome; Charles Darwin, the man credited with formulating the theory of atheistic evolution; Karl Marx, the founder of godless communism who hated organized religion; Alfred Kinsey, the legendary and oft-quoted sexual liberation crusader who based his "ground-breaking" research on the sexual responses of children, prisoners, and sexual deviants (including himself); Margaret Sanger, the humanist (“no gods, no masters”) who advocated contraceptive rights as a means to liberate women’s sexuality and eliminate “undesirable” populations; and Peter Singer, a current tenured Princeton professor who espouses the dubious “quality of life” ethic to justify the killing of born children up to three months old (!) and “mercy killings” for the elderly. 

Wow, these people are really downers! However, their beliefs pervade every aspect of our society and creep into the mindset of many people, including Catholics. In fact, modern society places these people on pedestals to admire and emulate. In each chapter, De Marco and Wiker, who are both professors at Catholic colleges, contrast the writings of these sorry folk with the dignified and hope-filled tenets of John Paul the Great’s Culture of Life.

If you want to understand the psychology of the Culture of Death, it’s important that you read this book. I don’t know of any other book out there like it. The "architects" reject the Judeo-Christian worldview and replace it with a new frightening image -- the image of humanity as the unintended result of blind natural forces rather than a creation of a loving, personal God Who made man in His image. They hold Modernity, Materialism and Relativism (the unholy trinity) as their salvation. They reject the notion of human transcendence, they reduce sexuality to a reflex of instant gratification, and they place comfort as man’s highest good. As Catholics, we are called to combat the Culture of the Death. Understanding the wretched, wounded souls who drew its blueprint is a crucial step in accomplishing this call.

Thank you, Dean! You are welcome to contribute to the Bubble anytime! This book you described is unique and its information presented clearly. And you know me -- I’m all about clarity!  Here is a rundown of all of the folks profiled in this book:

The Will Worshippers

• Arthur Schopenhauer
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Ayn Rand

The Eugenic Evolutionists

• Charles Darwin
• Francis Galton
• Ernst Haeckel

The Secular Utopianists

• Karl Marx
• Auguste Comte
• Judith Jarvis Thomson

The Atheistic Existentialists

• Jean-Paul Sartre
• Simone de Beauvoir
• Elisabeth Badinter

The Pleasure Seekers

• Sigmund Freud
• Wilhelm Reich
• Helen Gurley Brown

The Sex Planners

• Margaret Mead
• Alfred Kinsey
• Margaret Sanger
• Clarence Gamble
• Alan Guttmacher

The Death Peddlers

• Derek Humphry
• Jack Kevorkian
• Peter Singer

Concluding this amazing resource is a chapter on Pope John Paul II’s Personalism and the Culture of Life.

So it ends on a real upper!  :)