Minnesota is not an outlier; it's a case study: How did we get here?

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.

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