The second chapter of Menninger’s book layers further echoes Progressive complaints.  An editor asks: “What ails the American Spirit?”  Answers come from professors of government, history and humanities.  Menninger calls them “prophets”.

Menninger recounted the French Protestant’s Declaration (1972) of the unacceptability of the present economic and political system.  “The Strong dominate and manipulate the Weak in socioeconomic activities radically incompatible with the gospel”.

Then, Menninger asked: Who is to blame?  He suggested a re-reading of the parable in Matthew where the Master’s fields were sown with weeds after the grain was coming up.  In Menninger’s re-telling, the Master himself, unconscious, in his sleep, went out and sowed weeds into his own fields.