After the events of September 11, 2001, Stephen Coughlin was mobilized from his private sector career to the Intelligence Directorate at the Joint Chiefs of Staff to work in Targeting. Thus began his education in terrorism. In the years that followed, Coughlin earned recognition as the Pentagon’s leading expert on the Islamic-based doctrines motivating jihadi groups that confront America. He came into demand as a trainer and lecturer at leading commands and senior service staff institutions, including the National Defense University, the Army and Navy War Colleges, the Marine Corps-Quantico, the State Department, and the FBI. So effective were his presentations that some in the special operations community dubbed them “Red Pill” briefings, a reference to an iconic scene in The Matrix. It’s an apt metaphor: Once the facts and doctrines are properly explained and understood, there is no going back.

Stephen Coughlin Red Pill Brief #1

Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad

We are witnessing a watershed moment in American cultural history: the sabotaging of family and marriage. Extreme-left radicals have made their arguments and tried different tactics, from the early nineteenth century to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, but at long last they have the vehicle to make it happen: gay marriage. Now, as the legal definition of marriage rapidly changes, the floodgates are open, and the fundamental transformation of the American family will take on new speed and new dimensions. Efforts to redefine the family structure have been long at work, and there have been some influential forces on the far left and communist left that cannot and should not be ignored in that process.

In Takedown Paul Kengor exposes these origins, starting with Karl Marx, and traces them through the sordid history of people like Margaret Sanger, Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, and assorted '60s radicals. What were once fringe concepts have become accepted by mainstream thought and are today welcomed by many legislators and judges. Kengor notes how in the not-so-distant past, today's leftists who are attacking traditional marriage would have loudly raised their voices but not caused any real damage. They would have been dismissed with no serious concern as left-wing cranks, crackpot German and Austrian atheistic philosophers and campus agitators. But now, with formal legalization of same-sex marriage afoot, they are getting what they’ve wanted for generations: the literal redefinition of the family.