( In the aftermath of World War II, America stood alone a...)
In the aftermath of World War II, America stood alone as the world’s premier military power. Yet its martial confidence contrasted vividly with its sense of cultural inferiority. Still looking to a defeated and dispirited Europe for intellectual and artistic guidance, the burgeoning transnational elite in New York and Washington embraced not only the war’s refugees, but many of their ideas as well, and nothing has proven more pernicious than those of the Frankfurt School and its reactionary philosophy of “critical theory.” In The Devil's Pleasure Palace, Michael Walsh describes how Critical Theory released a horde of demons into the American psyche. When everything could be questioned, nothing could be real, and the muscular, confident empiricism that had just won the war gave way, in less than a generation, to a central-European nihilism celebrated on college campuses across the United States. Seizing the high ground of academe and the arts, the New Nihilists set about dissolving the bedrock of the country, from patriotism to marriage to the family to military service. They have sown, as Cardinal Bergoglio―now Pope Francis―once wrote of the Devil, “destruction, division, hatred, and calumny,” and all disguised as the search for truth. The Devil's Pleasure Palace exposes the overlooked movement that is Critical Theory and explains how it took root in America and, once established and gestated, how it has affected nearly every aspect of American life and society.
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Michael Walsh was born near Cork, Ireland, and was brought to America in his childhood. His father, Michael Welsh, owned a mahogany yard in New York City, and young Mike, as he always called himself, in a turbulent boyhood on the city streets and as a runaway apprentice acquired a realistic knowledge of life among the poor.
Learning the printer's trade, he traveled to New Orleans, but in 1839 returned to New York to set up in business for himself. He worked for a time as reporter and Washington correspondent for the Aurora, and tried unsuccessfully to found a paper of his own. Proclaiming himself the champion of the "subterranean" democrats ignored by political leaders, he organized young laborers of the city into the Spartan Association, with a view to exemplifying democratic principles by destroying Tammany control of the local Democratic organization. This aim was reached most simply by forcibly removing the enemy from ward meetings, and as the method was soon copied, the organized gang became a new feature in political practice. In 1843 Walsh founded his own paper, the Subterranean, as a means of rousing the working class against the capitalists and politicians who exploited them. His vigorous and denunciatory editorials, for which he sacrificed advertising, pictured vividly the darker side of city life, and at least twice caused his imprisonment for libel. Agreeing with George Henry Evans on the ills of society, he accepted the National Reform program, in 1844 merged the Subterranean with Evans' Working Man's Advocate, and became a frequent speaker at National Reform Conventions; but his bitter and direct attacks on individuals were an embarrassment to Evans, and the partnership lasted only three months. Walsh then revived the Subterranean, conducting it for two years more, and renewed his activity in local politics. Social reform, however, was losing ground before the anti-slavery issue. As the New York Democrats split over the free-soil controversy, Walsh joined the Hunkers, and denounced the abolitionists who neglected the wage slaves of the North for the cause of the remote Negro. He served three uneventful terms in the state Assembly (1846, 1847, 1852), and in 1852 was elected to Congress. There he won some reputation as a ready debater, supported President Pierce's territorial policy, and urged higher pay for enlisted men in the army. He was defeated by John Kelly in 1854, in an extremely close election. When Walsh charged fraud in the count, Kelly made the counter accusation that Walsh was the son of an unnaturalized alien and consequently ineligible. Walsh then visited Europe, reputedly to get contracts from the Russian government for George Steers, whose shipbuilding skill he had praised in Congress. He returned penniless, and next visited Mexico on a similar mission. Back in New York, discredited by growing intemperance, he made another unsuccessful venture into journalism. After a convivial night, he was found dead in an area-way, with some suspicion of foul play.
( In the aftermath of World War II, America stood alone a...)
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He married Catherine Riley and they had two children.
