Book Review

by Sylvia Thompson

Sylvia Thompson Delivers Book Review at The Conservative Forum

The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom, by David Kupelian, speaks to the issue of a progressive rotting of our nation’s moral core. This rotting process is instigated and propagated by the ideological Left using tactics of skilled, successful marketers. In a phrase, they sell us on evil and corruption.

In his book, Kupelian reveals how we have been taken in—big time—by some of the boldest and most brilliant marketing campaigns in modern history. He shows how much of what Americans once almost universally abhorred has been packaged and sold to us as though it has great value.

Selling of “Gay Rights”

The AIDS epidemic of the 1990s forced a need for homosexual activists to assess how they could change their image in the public eye. In 1988, a group of leading activists met in Warrenton, Virginia to hold what they called a war conference. The goal of that meeting was to devise a plan to do just that—change the image of homosexuality in this country. Strategies from that meeting are what played in the 1990s.

The game plan was to use the AIDS crisis to establish homosexuals as “a victimized minority deserving of America’s special protection and care.” Here is a quote from the designers of the plan.

“The campaign we outline in this book (After the Ball, by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen)—depends centrally upon a program of unabashed propaganda (emphasis added), firmly grounded in long-established principles of psychology and advertising.”

One marketing expert, Paul E. Rondeau of Regent University, described the tactic this way: Kirk and Madsen’s goal was to force acceptance of homosexual culture into the mainstream, to silence opposition, and ultimately to convert American society.

Kupelian summarizes that it is not about rights but about redefining truth and censoring all criticism. In so doing, militant homosexuals can be comfortable in their dysfunctional “lifestyle” without being disturbed by reality.

Myth of Church-State Separation

This marketed myth, according to Kupelian, is one of the truly outrageous, malignant—and provably false—“Big Lies” of our generation.

The phrase “the separation of church and state” is very familiar to Americans, but just as with commercial and political marketing, widespread familiarity with a slogan does not mean that the message is true.

For 150 years, the establishment clause “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” was interpreted to mean that, in the context of the First Amendment, the federal government would not impose a national church, a particular denomination, on states. As a result of the constant campaign for the twisted version by the Left, we have come to believe that the phrase means there is to be no mention of such things as God, Christ, the Bible, the Ten Commandments, and prayer in the public arena.

Further, the clause has been morphed into “a wall of separation between Church and State,” text taken out of context from an incidental letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802.

Unrestricted Abortion

In one of the most successful marketing campaigns in modern political history, the “abortion rights” movement—with all of its compelling catchphrases and powerful political slogans—has succeeded in turning what once was a crime into a fiercely defended, so-called, constitutional “right.” Since the Supreme Court’s controversial Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, American doctors have killed well over 40 million children through abortions.

Kupelian points out that even though polls consistently show that by three to one Americans disapprove of unfettered abortion-on-demand, the movements well-crafted slogans, which appeal to our inclination toward tolerance, privacy, and individual rights, have provided a powerful weapon with which to fight efforts against it. In marketing wars, the party that frames the terms of the debate usually wins.

Two of those powerful slogans remain to this day, and they are

- Freedom of choice
and
- Women must have control over their own bodies

Bernard Nathanson, M.D., cofounder of the pro-abortion vanguard group NARAL (national abortion and reproductive rights action league), had this to say about the slogans:

“I remember laughing when we made those slogans up… We were looking for some sexy, catchy slogans to capture public opinion. They were very cynical slogans then, just as all of these slogans today are very, very cynical.”

Kupelian provides interesting detail from Nathanson on what went into the planning and creation of NARAL, which was formerly called the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws.

What is most fascinating is that after Nathanson and his group had thoroughly duped the public, he became a convert and left the organization and the abortion business. He attributes this change of heart to technology. There was nothing religious about it, he explained, it was the technology’s enabling him to see what a fetus really is---a person. He came to see these “persons” as his patients.

The abortion chapter goes into a well documented discussion of other physicians who left the business and the issue of counseling women on alternatives. It also addresses how the practice has harmed women who have aborted their babies.

A Solution

These are other crucial issues that have felt the hand of deceptive marketing, according to Kupelian:

Selling sex and rebellion to children
The madness of multiculturalism
The campaign to destroy marriage
Hijacking America’s education system

Kupelian emphasizes the power of Judeo-Christianity in this fight (and I fully agree). He thinks a solution lies in the awakening of American Christianity. Christians—the literal followers of Christ (those who take seriously scriptures and Bible principles)—are the real hope for America. They are the reason America has not fallen completely into the socialistic, post-Christian, secular decadence and deadness that already grips Europe. Not all professed Christians fit this bill, but enough do to provide hope for America.

He focuses specifically on sexual morality, by quoting from an award-winning essay by Dennis Prager, “Judaism, Homosexuality and Civilization.” Prager contends that human sexuality, especially male sexuality, is “utterly wild.” Men have had sex with women and with men, with young girls and young boys, with a single partner and in large groups, with total strangers and immediate family members, and with a variety of domesticated animals. There is little that has not excited somebody sexually.

Among the consequences of the unchanneled sex drive is the sexualization of everything—including religion. Thus the first thing that Judaism did was to desexualize God— “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” by His will, not through sexual behavior. This understanding breaks with all other religions, and it alone changed human history, according to Prager.

Kupelian’s book is well worth reading and absorbing. It is my hope that the book will compel others like him to speak out and alert Americans to the con games to which we all have been exposed and through which we are being manipulated.

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