VIDEO Latest ‘Marketing of Evil’: ‘Life-changing’ or ‘worst book ever’?

Re-release of David Kupelian’s culture-war classic rekindles fiery controversy

Nov 23, 2019

Dear friends,

It’s been viciously attacked in leftwing circles as “hate speech,” “despicable” and “the worst book ever” – and even formally condemned by faculty vote on one college campus,  resulting in lawsuits and campus hysteria. But my first book, “The Marketing of Evil,” which has just gone through its (I think) 15th printing and is now available in paperback, is still driving some people crazy, while inspiring others to say it has changed their lives.

In case you’re unfamiliar with it, “The Marketing of Evil” basically explains why and how millions of today’s Americans have come to strongly embrace ideas and behaviors that are corrupt, destructive or insane.

As I explain in the book’s introduction, “Within the space of our lifetime, much of what Americans once almost universally abhorred has been packaged, perfumed, gift-wrapped, and sold to us as though it had great value. By skillfully playing on our deeply felt national values of fairness, generosity, and tolerance, these marketers have persuaded us to embrace as enlightened and noble that which every other generation has regarded as grossly self-destructive – in a word, evil.”

And although the book has been popular and influential – conservative marketing guru and former Heritage Foundation VP Rebecca Hagelin recently described it as “one of the most important books of the last 20 years” – unfortunately not everyone feels so warmly about it.

For example, within a few months of its release, “The Marketing of Evil” became the focal point of a national scandal when several openly homosexual professors at Ohio State University brought “sexual harassment” charges against head librarian Scott Savage, a Christian, after he recommended “The Marketing of Evil” as required reading for all incoming freshmen. The gay profs maintained that merely recommending the book constituted an act of “harassment due to sexual orientation.” (Chapter 1 documents, in LGBT leaders’ own words, their brilliant but little-known strategies for mainstreaming homosexuality and sexual anarchy in a largely Christian country.)

The rest of the faculty members were so intimidated by the angry gay professors that they either voted in agreement with them or abstained out of fear. It was so obviously bizarre and unjust that major media exposure by Sean Hannity, Brit Hume on Fox’s “Special Report,” MSNBC, the New York Post, Human Events and many others – plus stout legal pressure from the Alliance Defending Freedom – caused the university to cave and drop the absurd charges.

As a direct consequence of being publicly branded as “hate literature” and “homophobic tripe” by the Ohio State University faculty, “The Marketing of Evil” immediately became one of the hottest-selling books in the country, topping Amazon’s daily “Current Events” bestseller chart for more than a week.

‘It changed my life!’

Meanwhile, on Amazon, the controversial book has garnered over 500 five-star reader reviews. While a few nasty one-star reviews describe the book as “horrendous,” “truly despicable” and “serving the anti-Christ,” and even accuse me personally of being a “Nazi,” “scum” and “social blight,” the vast majority are much more positive:

• “Opening this book is like turning on the Sun. … Mr. David Kupelian has written a remarkable book that reveals how the American public has been taken down the slippery slope of moral relativism.”
• “I finished ‘The Marketing of Evil’ over a month ago. It absolutely changed my life.”
• “Prepare to see your world with new eyes!”
• “The way Kupelian writes is phenomenal. … Give this book to everyone you know, you’ll thank me.”
• “This book has put a powerful voice to many things that truth-loving people in America have felt in their spirits for a long, long time. … I for one am forever changed.”

Pastors fired up

As a result of such notoriety, “The Marketing of Evil” eventually lit a fire in a place where it was more welcome – the nation’s churches. From small-town churches and prayer groups to one of America’s largest Presbyterian congregations, Christian leaders and laymen started getting hold of the book, sometimes by the case, to hand out to fellow churchgoers.

The biggest single church has been that of the late D. James Kennedy, who until his death was perhaps the world’s most influential Presbyterian minister and founder of Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Calling “The Marketing of Evil” a “powerful new book that I wish every Christian in America could read,” Kennedy took the dramatic step of printing 15,000 special-edition softcover copies which he sent to thousands of supporters.

‘A magician’s secrets’

Despite the ongoing controversy, many major conservative and Christian voices have singled out “The Marketing of Evil” as essential reading:

• “David Kupelian is one of the very few must-read writers in the 21st Century.” – Dr. Ted Baehr, Chairman, Christian Film and Television Commission
• “If you really want to understand the adversary’s thinking and help turn the tide of battle, read this book!” – David Limbaugh, columnist and bestselling author
• “Like the dazzling disclosures in the final page of a gripping whodunit or the fascinating revelation of a magician’s secrets, ‘The Marketing of Evil’ irresistibly exposes how it was done.” – Rabbi Daniel Lapin, American Alliance of Jews and Christians
• “Every parent in America needs to read this book.” – Michelle Malkin, columnist and bestselling author
• “David Kupelian is one of the most thought-provoking and iconoclastic writers I know.” – Sean Hannity, host of the No. 1 rated Fox News’ “Hannity” show as well as “The Sean Hannity Radio Show”

Watch former “Saturday Night Live” star (and committed Christian) Victoria Jackson talk about “The Marketing of Evil” and its sequel, “How Evil Works.”

The big screen

In 2017, “The Marketing of Evil” was featured in the Hollywood movie “I am Michael” starring James Franco and Zachary Quinto.

Scene from “I Am Michael”

In this amazing true story, Franco, playing the lead role of high-profile “gay rights” activist Michael Glatze, is shown reading “The Marketing of Evil” during the pivotal scene in which Glatze publicly renounces his “gay” identification and reveals he wants to live for God. The real-life Glatze, who left the homosexual lifestyle in 2007 and become a happily married Christian pastor, has said reading “The Marketing of Evil” played a significant role in helping him in his dramatic personal journey.

That’s all – except to say I’ve arranged to have the price dropped to its lowest ever, lower then Amazon, low enough for anyone wanting a few extra copies to give to friends and loved ones (like maybe for Christmas).

Thank you!

David Kupelian, Vice President and Managing Editor of WND, Editor of Whistleblower magazine, author of “The Marketing of Evil,” “How Evil Works” and “The Snapping of the American Mind”

SPECIAL OFFER: Get David Kupelian’s “The Marketing of Evil” in paperback for just $9.99!

And get “The Marketing of Evil” AUDIOBOOK – read by the author – for the super-discounted price of $9.99 (reduced from $27.99)!

Also, get the acclaimed sequel, “How Evil Works,” as well as his latest blockbuster, “The Snapping of the American Mind: Healing a Nation Broken by a Lawless Government and Godless Culture.”

Follow David Kupelian on Facebook.

Original here

Stop Turning Your Yard Into A Hellscape For Halloween

No four-year-old should watch ‘Game of Thrones,’ and no four-year-old should see a severed head. Sick Halloween decorations force people to either hide in their homes or be exposed to a celebration of evil.

Oct 30, 2019

I walk with my children in our neighborhood frequently. One of the reasons we picked our neighborhood is walkability and nearness to community life. It’s been a big change for a country girl who grew up three-quarters of a mile from the nearest neighbor.

One of the things I’ve learned from moving into town is how little so many people think about others. Drivers will honk at 6 a.m. to get someone to come out of a house (Don’t you have a cell phone? Or get your rear out of the car and walk 20 feet to the door and knock.). People will blare music at all hours so loudly it shakes the windows of the houses they pass. They paint their porches fire engine red and their houses execrable shades of teal, let their cats defecate in other people’s sandboxes, and dump their fast food wrappers into the wind.

In other words, lots of people are rude, tasteless, and selfish. Of course, since I believe human nature is corrupt, this isn’t really a surprise, but what is a surprise is what appears to be an increase in these crudities along with a growing tendency to excuse and rationalize them.

Perhaps the most vivid illustration of this tendency is the grotesquery with which many people “decorate” their yards for Halloween. Within a few blocks of my house are yards full of severed heads, decomposing corpses, positively demonic-looking witches, goblins, and ghouls, and moldy skeletons coming out of the ground (some even shake!).

One entire nearby neighborhood decorated all of its streetlights with hanging severed heads that have blood running out of the eyes. Some people have fog machines and motion detectors that emit noises from Hell every time a mom walks by with her preschooler and baby, or kids of all ages go past on their way to school.

What is wrong with these people?

Your Warped Sense of Good and Evil Is Showing

This is neither tasteful nor fun. It’s ugly and selfish. Every person who uses public streets is not an adult who enjoys viewing things designed to provoke horror. Some people are old, some people are very young, some people have PTSD, some people have easily sickened stomachs, and people like emergency workers see horrific things on the job and need a break after-hours. Like other friends’ kids, my four-year-old has been having nightmares since Halloween season started and is unable to sleep alone or even go upstairs in the daytime due to fears of all the horrible things he’s seen on our streets. Thanks, neighbors.

They should not be forced to hide in their homes for eight weeks while all the demented people desecrate the streets. They deserve the common courtesy of their neighbors taking into consideration their needs, sensibilities, and desires.

People who enjoy objectively sick and horrible things should not be the measure by which we decide what to hang in public spaces. If you like something bad, you are the problem.

Some people might object that evil is a part of life and it’s brave to face it rather than trying to Precious Moments the world. I do certainly tell my children about evil, at what I think are age-appropriate times and contexts. But these decorations force such information well before small children could possibly be ready, and at a time and context of an outsider’s choosing instead of mine. It thus puts teaching children judiciously about evil at a disadvantage.

Further, none of these decorations is a sober assessment of evil, a depiction of combating it, or any other such proper treatment, as are many of the world’s cultural remembrances of the dead and the ultimate triumph over death at the end of the world, like Dia de los Muertos. These yard hellscapes are instead a celebration of, a reveling in, evil. (Sometimes the Day of the Dead trends that way too, but that is not its original or proper purpose.) That is, quite simply, wrong. Only fools make light of evil. Hell isn’t a joke.

It’s impossible not to see this delight in evil as encouraged by the entertainment people consume. It’s no secret that Western entertainment has become increasingly pornified, both in sex and violence. Like frogs in the boiling pot, people who regularly consume this get used to it, and it warps their sense of what is good, beautiful, and true. It corrupts their judgment. To hide their self-hardening, they pretend that the sensitive and less-corrupt people are the problem (“Prudes!” “You’re no fun!”), instead of them.

Safe Spaces and Public Spaces Are Both for Children

When I floated a trial balloon of this opinion on Twitter, plenty of people agreed, but others attacked me as a bad parent whose children are crybabies I’m putting in a “safe space.” Folks, four-year-olds do need a safe space. Would you let them watch “Game of Thrones”? If you would, you’re the bad parent. No four-year-old should watch “Game of Thrones,” and no four-year-old should see a severed head.

The problem with college safe spaces is that they infantilize adults. On the contrary, good parents and a good society rightly protect small children temporarily to help them grow long-term. If you can’t see a distinction between a preschooler and college student’s needs and expected maturity level, I can’t help you.

Some Twitter people pretended it was somehow a contradiction of the libertarian “do whatever you want” ethos to suggest that people restrain themselves in any manner. Even if one were a libertarian — I no longer am — the mantra, in full, is “Do whatever you want so long as you don’t harm other people.” Under that paradigm there is plenty of room for being considerate of other people.

What we do in public, which includes how we dress ourselves and our yards, ought to be different from what we do in private. I don’t poop on the sidewalk, and you shouldn’t either.

The public includes everyone, which means a huge diversity in sensibilities and preferences. Acting more restrained and tasteful in public exhibits respect for others. The public square is where we should put our best selves forward out of love, not unleash our ids and demand that everyone else put up with it or lose their ability to enjoy public goods.

That’s plain selfishness, and it deserves rebuke. We restrain people who ruin public spaces through littering, vandalism, and drunkenness, because their behavior undermines the common good. The rudest person shouldn’t win, the rudest person should be taught how to treat others properly or lose his social privileges. The best behavior should be celebrated, and the worst not ignored, but condemned.

Deliberate Disregard of Others Hurts Self-Government

I don’t think “big government” should decide how people decorate, although I do support the self-determination of local communities to put boundaries around such matters with buy-in from residents, as exhibited in zoning laws, neighborhood associations, and housing covenants. But it’s not as if our only choices for action are between either “government mandate” and “individual free for all.”

The more they push boundaries and disregard their fellow citizens, the more undisciplined people enable bigger government.

That’s not the way America was designed, because then it would have been like Europe, as Alexis de Tocqueville explained in great detail, with a great bureaucratic government meddling in every single aspect of life. It was designed with a small, constricted government whose limits depend on the people’s ability to govern — i.e. control — themselves.

A government that allows great freedom absolutely requires citizens who use that freedom responsibly. The more they push boundaries and disregard their fellow citizens, the more uncivilized and undisciplined people enable bigger government. So it is not at all an accident that as our nation has grown more lax in privately policing social mores that our government has also expanded immensely.

I don’t think we are on the verge of a giant social movement to have bureaucrats approving yard decoration schemes, and I don’t want one. But, with positively no apologies to the Philistines, I do think that this lack of courtesy, civility, and restraint in Halloween decorations is emblematic of a destructive and seemingly accelerating cultural Philistinism.

Joy Pullmann (@JoyPullmann) is executive editor of The Federalist, mother of five children, and author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids.” She identifies as native American and gender natural. Her latest ebook is a list of more than 200 recommended classic books for children ages 3-7 and their parents.

Photo Image by Don White from Pixabay

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/30/stop-turning-your-yard-into-a-hellscape-for-halloween/