As cities descend into repeated cycles of chaos and lives are lost in Minnesota, Americans are asking a simple question: how did we get here?
Many Americans, understandably shocked, look at the protests, the violence, and the loss of life and point to immediate causes. Some cite fraud and corruption in federally funded social programs, apparently tolerated by state officials. Others point to aggressive enforcement of immigration law that sparked deadly confrontations.
But these are symptoms, not the cause.
Minnesota is not an outlier; it is a case study of what happens when institutions that once fostered moral restraint abandon that role. The real cause is less obvious because it is far removed from the tragic events we see today in the headlines. It can be traced back decades to what was called the long march through the institutions — a phrase coined in the late 1960s by Marxist student leader Rudi Dutschke. The phrase deliberately echoed Mao Zedong’s Long March, but Dutschke’s was not a military campaign. It was a cultural and ideological one, measured in decades rather than battles.
The strategy was to transform society not by overthrowing government outright, but by infiltrating its core institutions: universities, primary and secondary education, the media, the courts, and even churches. The objective was to shape what people were taught — what would be considered normal, respectable, and acceptable — so that political outcomes would eventually become inevitable.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) alluded to this reality recently before the British Parliament when he referenced a quote often attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”
That insight helps explain why the classroom has been central to this long march. Obstacles to Marxist ideology had to be removed or marginalized. It was no accident that prayer and Bible reading were removed from public schools in 1962 and 1963. When God and His word are removed as moral restraints, lawlessness fills the vacuum — and that is the fertile ground in which Marxism takes root and gains power.
Over time, that march has moved beyond institutions and inevitably spilled into the streets. Confrontations like those we’ve seen in Minneapolis — whether involving George Floyd or Alex Pretti — are becoming routine. The rule of law depends on shared moral limits; when those limits erode, force alone cannot restore order.
Yet this is not the end of the story.
We are now seeing efforts to retrace the steps of the long march and restore what was dismantled. Just last week, I sat in the courtroom of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals as officials from Louisiana and Texas argued in defense of laws placing the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. Ten years ago, leaders were routinely warned not to attempt such measures, intimidated by a distorted notion of “separation of church and state.”
But the fruits of the long march — lawlessness and chaos — are now undeniable. And so courageous parents, pastors, and public officials are standing up. With constitutional authority and the courage of faith, they are working to restore and preserve what has always been essential to our republic: if we are to be one nation — under God. Because restoration does not begin in Washington — it begins in classrooms, courtrooms, churches, and homes.
Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand. He also served two terms as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and served as Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
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