The Return Of Scipio

Israel turns 60 this year. There is much being said and written about this. Some is laudatory, some is vile. Much of it tries to explain the root of anti-Semitism. This is a fancy though inaccurate word that simply means ‘hatred of Jews’—of all Jews everywhere whether religious or secular, but especially those Jews living in Israel. But any Jew will do.

Some of these attempts to explain Jew hatred are erudite and complex. Mine will be neither. It is simple and direct. I read it this morning in fact.

I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you. (Genesis 12:3)

These words were spoken by God to Abraham 4000 years ago. He promised to make Israel a great nation. He kept His word. We need to remember that of all the ancient peoples who once walked the earth in those days only the Jews remain. This survival is in spite of an entire host of nations who did as much as they could to destroy the pesky Hebrews. We recall Egypt under Ramses, the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Seleucids and Romans, the Soviets and Nazis in our own times. All of these cultures are gone with the wind, though they were all immensely powerful.

The Jews are still around. It sure seems like nations who persecute Jews come to bad ends. Maybe there is something to that 4000 year old promise.

What of the Arabs today? They obviously have a thing against the Jews. There are 350,000,000 Arabs whose entire lives and cultures and politics are dedicated to eliminating 14,000,000 Jews. This is beyond an obsession. It is grotesque and bizarre. There are manifest problems that beset the Arab world—poverty, disease, tyranny, ignorance, misogyny—all of which need immediate attention if the Arabs are to be anything more than a wild ass of a nation. Those words are not mine, they belong to the same Guy who made that 4000 year old promise.

He shall be a wild ass of a man,
his hand against every man,
and every man’s hand against him;
In opposition to all his kin
shall he encamp. (Genesis 6:12)

Thus is described Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar and half-brother to Isaac. The founder of the Hebrew nation had sons, Isaac who founded the Jewish nation, and Ishmael who founded the Arab nation. Mohammed himself traces his own lineage to Ishmael.

We see now that the Arab-Israeli conflict is really a kind of civil war, of half-brother against half-brother. We also see why the Arab nation is so mired in violence and grubbiness, ‘a wild ass of a man.’

One can predict with confidence that any nation that hates Jews will come to a bad end. History demonstrates this without a shred of doubt. Keep this in mind when the latest rantings of an Iranian madman appear. Keep this in mind when you read of American political figures who despise Israel.

And keep this in mind as well. It is a parable of sorts, one written two years ago.

_____

There was a certain house in a certain neighborhood. The owners of this house and his family were unpleasant. They did not keep their house very tidy. On some nights a horrible screaming could be heard coming from the house.

Sometimes the sons of the owner of the house would go into the neighborhood to rob and kill. None of the neighbors were strong enough to protect themselves.

One day that house caught fire. The neighbors were afraid that their houses too would catch fire, and so they called the firemen. The firemen arrived and almost put it out. Before they could fire-starters from two neighboring houses rushed up and threw gasoline on the smoldering house. The firemen began their task anew. The fire-starter neighbors again kept the fire going and from time to time sneaked up on the firemen and killed one of them. The firemen kept at their duty, knowing that if they failed the entire neighborhood would go up in flames.

But soon those people whose homes were as yet untouched by the fire began to complain. “Why can’t these fireman work faster?” a man said. Some said, “Those fire trucks are so noisy. Why can’t the firemen work in silence?” Others complained, “Why do those firemen waste so much water?” One was overheard stating, “Why are the firemen here anyway? Everyone knows that the fire would have gone out on its own.”

A college professor walked by and shook his head. “How good for me that I am educated and so never had to become a fireman,” he said. A skinny man with the professor remarked, “And look how they fight the fire! What idiots! Why, I know how to put out the fire better than they do!”

Soon a large group of complainers gathered around the busy firemen, squawking and yelling. They taunted them, demanding that they go home and leave their neighborhood. “Enough is enough!” they yelped. But the firemen kept at their thankless task, even though many of them had been killed.

The complainers called the fire station and demanded that the firemen be removed. The fire chief was a stubborn sort who loved his firemen. He explained that unless his men put out the fire their homes will be also catch fire. But the complainers scoffed at this, saying “There was no real problem until your firemen arrived! And look! Why, their presence has created more fire-starters!”

Some of the complainers went right to the fire house and marched around it, protesting with signs and bull horns. “Bring the firemen home!” they screamed. One of the fire-starters from the neighborhood was there too. He laughed at the fire chief, threatening that he would soon set ablaze the firehouse itself.

One of the neighbors watched all of this but did not complain. He appreciated the firemen immensely, and even from time to time would talk to the firemen and share information with them about the neighborhood.

The man was old but wise in the ways of the neighborhood. His family had lived there for so long no one could remember when it had not. On his once muscled forearm were numbers long ago tattooed there. They reminded him every hour of every day of the men who had branded him so.

The man understood. He had seen this all before. The old man went to his home. His family awaited him there. No words were spoken. They brought out an ancient book written in an ancient tongue. To the light of seven flames upon seven candles they covered their heads with cloth and began to chant in that ancient tongue.

They finished, and the old man gathered his sons around him. He had been greatly blessed, and his sons were as numerous as the stars. They embraced as their women wept. The old man wept as well, for he knew that some of his sons were living their last night on earth.

The sons left their house and slowly walked toward the fire. In their determined hands were powerful things of metal, all new and dazzling and terrible to behold. The sons were not noticed by the crowd, but one of the firemen saw them. They exchanged glances, and a grim smile appeared on the muscled jaw of the fireman.

The sons made their way to the houses of the fire-starters, walking in a darkness only broken by brilliant flashes of fiery light. But the shiny, terrible things the sons carried in their hands would soon light up the sky so brightly that nothing else could be seen but its brilliance.

Later when all was done many remembered that night. Some say that there had been a thunder in the heavens. Others swore that they had seen four terrible horses race across the sky. Still others claim to this day that there had been winged creatures flying overhead and chanting, “El Shaddai! El Elyon! El Yisrael!”

No one saw the fire-starters ever again.

Few understood the things of that night except the firemen and an old man with a tattooed forearm.

_____

Let us not forget that one of the reasons why America is great is because she protects Israel. If she ever ceases to do this she will no longer be great.

For an erudite and complex essay on anti-Semitism, see here. And a hat tip to The Belmont Club. Do not forget to read the comments.

Tags: Culture, History and War, Theology // Add Comment »

Another sophisticate has spoken out, and bravely.

I don’t want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don’t, then you’ve got the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that. It’s not as bright.

So said Stephen King. He is a writer of horror I hear, though I have never read his books. I do hope that his written prose is more literate than that evinced by his speech.

King’s bold words passed scarcely noticed, near invisibly in fact. The reason is because they are not at all remarkable. Such courageous thoughts spew regularly from those who ride booted and spurred over this tottering edifice we call ‘Western Civilization.’ There is hardly a mover and shaker residing in the ivory towers of academia or among our literati who does not share the same views as Mr. King.

From their talk, from their vast outpouring of books and articles, from their appearances in the media, from their endless self-absorption, from their spittle-flecked sputtering hatred and disdain of the common man, one would get the impression that these types are the very upholders of all that is sweet and honorable in our culture.

One would be wrong. Such men are the destroyers of civilization. Like competent parasites they take every advantage of a society created and maintained by their betters. They drain as much vitality as they can, replace it with a crude solipsism and work to crush the husk that remains. Their lives are ones of soft comfort and padded ease. For in all their degrees and learning and rhetoric and billions and billions of words they have learned nothing worth knowing. For all intents and purposes they are barbarians.

Civilization does not rest upon their shoulders, it rests upon the shoulders of men with guns.

We sleep peaceably in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.

It has always been so. Civilization and the ability to inflict violence go together, are inseparable. Our pampered elites cannot understand this and have no ability to understand this. They look upon men with guns like apes gaping at The Last Supper.

Our venerable history books speak of Western Civilization as beginning with the Greeks somewhere around 700 BC. Not so. It began with the Hebrews pushing into what they called ‘the Promised Land’ 500 years before. We forget that the most influential book in Western Civilization had its origins in the violence spread by the Israelite commander Joshua and his successors. The poetry of Solomon, the beauty of the Psalms, all rest upon the shoulders of Israelites with swords.

The contributions of the Greeks came to us through violence, of Greek against Persian and Greek against Greek. Aeschylus fought at Marathon and Salamis, Socrates at Delium, Demosthenes at Chaeronea. Aristotle tutored the future conqueror of the world, Alexander, who himself spread Greek culture as far as the Indus River. It is simply a waste of time to try and separate those Greeks who begat Western Civilization and those who used violence to promote it. Sometimes they were one and the same.

The Romans were likewise. Cicero served in the army. Caesar was a superb Latin stylist and man of letters. Horace served with Brutus at Philippi (42 BC). Virgil idealized Roman power, and both he and Maecenas were friends of Augustus. Suetonius and Pliny the Younger served under the Emperor Trajan. The emperors Hadrian and Aurelius wrote poetry. The Emperor Constantine legalized the spread of Christianity and so begat yet another facet of the spread of Western Civilization.

The Middle Ages also relied upon men of violence and men of books. Boethius worked for Theodoric the Great (520 AD). Justinian (r. 527 – 565) revised the entire Roman law code. Charlemagne built schools, began the first European Renaissance and himself spoke several languages. An entire style of troubadour poetry and epic literature, including The Song of Roland, flowed from the wars of Christian against Moslem in Spain.

The Renaissance was a time of great violence and high culture. Leonardo designed military machines. Michelangelo worked for that most militaristic of popes, Julius II. The ruthless Medici were great patrons of the arts. Dante fought at the battle of Campaldino (1289). Machiavelli undertook both diplomatic and military missions. Cervantes was with the Christian fleet at Lepanto (1571). Cortéz was a writer, and one of his soldiers was Bernal Diaz de Castillo who became a historian of the Conquest.

Many of the great Christian men of the day were not exactly shrinking violets either. The Jesuits were founded by Ignatius Loyola, who was a soldier. The gentle Francis of Assisi was a troubadour poet and mercenary. Aquinas formulated the Christian concept of ‘Just War.’ Las Casas was a historian of the Indies. Martin Luther relied upon the pikes of Protestant kings to spread his new faith.

I could go on, but you get the point. Western Civilization has always depended upon bayonets. Take away the bayonets and the culture they supported will crumble, and rather rapidly.

Let us put it another way. The Ancients wrote of the Ages of Man, first of Gold then Silver then Bronze and finally of Iron. This last Age is dismal indeed. Men are “warlike, greedy and impious. Truth, modesty and loyalty are nowhere to be found.” Hesiod (c. 700 BC) was even gloomier.

During this age humans live an existence of toil and misery. Children dishonor their parents, brother fights with brother and the social contract between guest and host (xenia) is forgotten. During this age might makes right, and bad men use lies to be thought good. At the height of this age, humans no longer feel shame or indignation at wrongdoing; babies will be born with gray hair and the gods will have completely foresaken humanity: “there will be no help against evil.”

There in a paragraph is our future. Our own nation’s Golden Age is almost ignored in our history books, our Age of Silver a distant memory. Our present Age of Bronze is itself crumbling, preparing our nation for a coming Age of Iron.

When it arrives, who will defend what remains of Western Civilization? Will the likes of Stephen King step up to the plate? Will Pinch Sulzberger and Ward Churchill and Ted Kennedy don battle fatigues and utter their cries of war? Will Bill Clinton and his minions marshal armies and command troops? Will the professors at Yale and Harvard give great speeches about the noble profession of arms?

You already know the answer. Worthless men like them will be swept away. All their works and words, seemingly so valuable in this age, will be as dust.

The coming Age of Iron will be met as such times are always met, by men with guns. When it is over, when the forces of barbarism have at last receded, the new civilization will be ushered in by these men, the men of Yorktown, of New Orleans, of Chapultepec, of Gettysburg, of San Juan Hill, of Saint-Mihiel, of Guadalcanal, of the Ardennes, of the Chosin River, of Tet, of Desert Storm, of Fallujah.

For it is those men and their guns who have carried upon their shoulders our American nation. It is their ancestors throughout time and space who created and supported Western Civilization, of which we are a part.

In 1000 years when the dust has settled, when the first glimmers of a new Age of Gold appear, men like Leonidas will still be remembered. Men like Stephen King will be as forgotten as yesterday’s papers, remembered only by worms.

Update: American Thinker was kind enough to publish this essay.

Tags: Culture, History and War // 6 Comments »

W cannot say we were not warned.

For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. (2 John 1: 7-8)

Want more?

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. (Matthew 7:15)

And again.

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. (2 Peter 2:1)

You get the idea.

So all you Christians out there need to stop bemoaning the appearance of preachers and churches who claim Christ but hold doctrines that the Carpenter never held. We were told this would happen. In other words, Christ was right—again and always. Why complain about that?

We call a heresy any practice or teaching that pretends Christianity but denies its Founder and His doctrines. Aquinas defines it as

a species of infidelity in men who, having professed the faith of Christ, corrupt its dogmas…There are, therefore, two ways of deviating from Christianity: the one by refusing to believe in Christ Himself…the other by restricting belief to certain points of Christ’s doctrine selected and fashioned at pleasure…

In fact, the appearance of Christian heresies is as old as Christ. There have been dozens and dozens of them. Some of them have hideously confusing names. Get out your theological dictionary and get to work on: Monophysitism, Aryanism, Donatism, Gnosticism, Montanism, Docetism, Manichaeism, Nestorianism, Monotheletism, Waldensianism—and so on.

Some of these heresies are extremely clever. Some are simply stupid—like Catharism.

Cathars saw matter as intrinsically evil, they denied that Jesus could become incarnate and still be the son of God. Cathars vehemently repudiated the significance of the Crucifixion and the Cross.

Alas, we have modern heresies that are just as idiotic. Here are a few examples among many. They have appeared in the West Hill United Church and the United Church of Canada. These places actually are infected with a number of heresies, like men whose blood has been corrupted with millions of malaria parasites. Their relation to Christianity goes no further than the name.

Some gems from the preachers of these false faiths:

The central story of Christianity will fade away. The story about Jesus as the symbol of everything that Christianity is will fade away.

A Christianity without Christ.

Ms. Vosper does not believe in the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the miracles and the sacrament of baptism. Nor does she believe in the creeds, the presence of Christ in communion or that Jesus was the Son of God.

Anything left of Christianity?

And my absolute favorite is this description of Jesus as a “Middle Eastern peasant with a few charismatic gifts and a great posthumous marketing team.”

Enough of that Hellish babble.

The purveyors of such nonsense are damned unless they repent. But how many others has their teaching drawn toward the gates of Hell? It would been better for the world had such teachers never been born.

Behind every heresy is one mind, a mind belonging to the Prince of the World. He desires nothing less than to dethrone Christ. Part of his work is to so diminish His teachings so as to render them harmless, ineffectual, innocuous, tame—or even ridiculous. In this the worldly prince has largely succeeded. Faiths such as the ones described above present absolutely no threat to him. They demand nothing of a believer save for gauzy and foamy thoughts of humanity and self.

Christianity however is a muscular faith. It demands everything—your life even. The job of a Christian is not to moan and wring his hands but to join Christ upon the Cross, to be a soldier for Christ.

This is not optional.

Tags: Culture, Teaching, Theology // 2 Comments »

In our depths of moral anarchy we become accustomed to speaking of sexual perversion without in any way disgorging the truth of the matter. This deliberate confusion is standard practice among the ‘homosexuality-is-normal’ crowd. One reads of the latest doings concerning the varied activities of sodomites and one must decipher exactly what is being said. With practice this becomes easy.

We can well understand why there is much that need be hidden. The unquestionable reality of sodomite life and habits is scarcely mentionable. What they do in private—and increasingly in public—involves all sorts of things in which no self-respecting barnyard animal would engage himself. Their grotesque gymnastics—‘hot lunches’, ‘golden showers’, ‘fisting’, ‘rimming’, ‘feltching’, ‘glory holes’ and some rather extreme varieties of sadism and masochism—of course lead to some frightful health problems. Not for nothing does the average American sodomite live 20 years less than men who do not pursue every passing male lower bowel.

The latest horror to emerge among sodomites is a new strain of staph infection. This bug is clever and resists treatment. The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the swath it has cut among its sodomite patrons. The article uses every journalistic tactic to avoid the obvious. Naturally, much is cloaked behind a screen and must be deconstructed.

A new variety of staph bacteria, highly resistant to antibiotics and possibly transmitted by sexual contact, is spreading among gay men in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles, researchers reported Monday.

‘Possibly’ transmitted by sexual contact? And only among ‘gay men’? Why? I wonder what these males do when they get together?

We continue:

The germ typically causes boils and other skin and soft-tissue infections…What is unusual in this case is the high percentage of infections - up to 40 percent - occurring in the buttocks and genitalia.

Could someone explain why it is ‘unusual’ that these things occur in ‘the buttocks and genitalia’ of sodomites?

And the researchers are a rather timid sort.

Although researchers have stopped short of declaring this form of staph a sexually transmitted disease, the infections are found where skin-to-skin contact occurs during sexual activity.

Why not declare this new infection to be a sexually transmitted one? Easy answer: The clarity of such a statement would indict the practitioners of anal sex as spreaders of yet another grotesque public health hazard. Now since we all know that sodomy is perfectly natural and normal we cannot assume that what sodomites perform while entangled might possibly endanger themselves—to say nothing of the society at large.

And now comes the standard Big Lie that is always and everywhere associated with writing about homosexuality.

We are nowhere near the peak. The peak will occur when it spreads into the general population.

Ah, yes. Because sodomy is just another lifestyle equally as valid as any other, whatever appears among them must of course appear among the ‘breeders’ as well. It is only a matter of time. Slight problem: We heard the same arguments about another disease that first appeared among sodomites 25 years ago. That disease is AIDS. Another slight problem: AIDS has remained almost entirely among sodomites.

And this certainly must be the punch line of the article.

Just why the new, more drug-resistant variety is concentrated among gay men is not yet known.

Oh yes it is. It is just not politically correct to state the obvious. Which is:

The diseases and manifest problems that arise among sodomites are entirely due to their ‘lifestyle’—if such a degraded existence could possibly be called such.

Update: More here if you can stomach it.

Tags: Culture // 2 Comments »

Madness overtakes nations as well as men. The 20th century is scarcely more than tales of the ravages of states that descended into lunacy. Our own time has not escaped this. We are as the Bourbons of old—we have forgotten nothing and we have learned nothing.

The history of state sponsored insanity began with Babel.

Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.

Their descendants are with us still and carry the same desires: To be as gods, to acquire worldly power and glory—‘to make a name’. There is much folly in such dreams.

A state goes mad when it believes that man is as clay, to be molded as the ruling class demands. This is nothing more than the desire to shatter and remake Creation—of men improving upon the very work of God, of men thus becoming gods themselves.

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

As God fashioned man, so the State would refashion him and do away with any idea of a human nature shared by all men. Men were to be remade not with the face of Christ but with the imprint of something—or someone—else. This is the thread that is common to every State that has fallen into madness.

Such ideas go beyond even the iron rule of a Sparta or Rome. There man was not to be remade but simply governed by brute force. There was no attempt to refashion him. In modern times so ruled Saddam. That killer ground to paste hundreds of thousands of pieces of humanity but never had any intention to change man himself. Mugabe is likewise, as is Castro. These creatures are rather limited in their desire to imitate God. Simple murder suffices.

The French Revolution was the first modern example of a nation descending into psychosis. We learn about this cataclysm as if it were just another item in the long parade of European wars, rebellions, usurpations and general mischief making. It was nothing of the sort. Every grotesque national madness that has infected and incarnadined the modern world appeared then. Gender confusion, sexual immorality, perversion, mass murder, totalitarianism, tyranny, State sponsored terror, a war against Christianity, paganism, wars civil and foreign—all were present.

The war against God was obvious—and necessary. He had to be dethroned to allow the State to change the very nature of His Creation. Everywhere Churches were vandalized, Bibles and icons destroyed, nuns forced to marry, priests murdered, the Genesis derived seven day week replaced with one of ten days, Christ substituted with a ‘goddess of Reason’. The result of all of this bizarre paganism was an orgy of bloodletting and war that spread over the entire globe, subsuming nations and continents and providing history with one of its examples of anti-Christ, that proto-Hitler and ‘disturber of the world’ Napoleon Bonaparte.

In spite of this quarter century of madness, human nature remained unchanged. The French Revolution, like all attempts to refashion man, was a grotesque and bloody failure. One would have thought that there would be no further attempts to alter human nature. One would be wrong.

We saw just that sort of thing in Lenin’s ‘New Soviet Man’, in Nazi totalitarianism, in China’s ‘Great Leap Forward’, in the Khmer Rouge, in Japanese militarism—and all these experiments ended in great orgies of blood, ruined nations and idiocy.

Even the seemingly mild socialist experiments to alter human nature have all failed. Those of Robert Owen (1771 – 1858) are typical. His views on religion were right in line with all those who would treat man as clay. Owen claimed that all religions were “based on the same absurd imagination.” A belief in religion made man “a weak, imbecile animal; a furious bigot and fanatic; or a miserable hypocrite.” Such words more accurately describe Hébert, Robespierre, Lenin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao.

Naturally this imbecile dreamer turned to pagan Spiritualism late in life. He believed that he could communicate with the dead by means of electricity. Odd, that mass murderer and failed remaker of human nature Lenin died while babbling about the marvels of electricity.

One reads of Owen and is thankful that he had no State sponsored apparatus behind him.

We must not imagine that we are free of dreamers who believe against all evidence that the nature of man is as malleable as clay. Any society that has so muddled gender roles as ours has is smack dab in the middle of a tremendous experiment with human nature.

It will fail just as all such have failed. And like them it will leave in its wake ruined men, a deranged culture and stacks of corpses.

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It happens to every man who gets joy from writing. Once in a while he will put pen to paper and nothing appears. He might scribble a few thoughts but nothing comes together or makes much sense. Writing becomes then a mere chore. If he makes his living by writing he must force the words out somehow. But such thoughts seldom have the force of imagination behind them.

That is where I am these days. If hours spent staring at a computer screen automatically resulted in something I would have written a novel by now. But there is nothing. There are ideas, true. But getting them out of my mind and into an essay has proven nigh impossible.

What is worse is that I can find no particular reason why this is so. If I could I would apply a remedy. But all is guesswork.

So I will leave it alone for a while and get back to it when it makes sense to do so—when it is impossible not to do so.

May that hour arrive soon.

Tags: Writing // 12 Comments »

Every year about this time Oklahoma City schools embark upon an entire week of standardized testing. US History, Language Arts, Math and Science are the subjects. Regular classes are effectively shut down until these exams are completed.

The students do not mind at all, as teachers give no homework during this time. Besides, they are allowed to chew gum, eat loads of sweets and spend much time outside between tests. Nice work if you can get it.

The exams themselves are demanding, the US History one particularly so. I would bet that many college types would find themselves at a loss over some of the questions.

In June all the exams are graded and the schools are rated according to how high they scored compared to all other schools. The school where I work has done splendidly in the past, outperforming many private schools. Teachers are expected to equal or better their students’ scores every year.

These exams have their share of bureaucratic requirements, which take up much time. For one, there has been little occasion to devote to things like writing. Many ideas float around in my mind with no time to put them upon cyber paper.

Testing ends more or less this Friday, when what passes for normalcy among teachers and students will resume.

Tags: Teaching // 6 Comments »

The Carpenter said that we would always have the poor with us. To insure this He allowed man to create Democrats. These folks love the poor so much they make more of them whenever and wherever they can.

The Democrats have long been in love with socialism, a style of economics and attitudes superbly designed to create poverty. Socialism is a system which is really nothing more than forcing men into a reliance upon government—that is, government controlled by Democrats. You see, Democrats are the party of government. Their philosophies and programs all depend on a large and intrusive government.

The true socialist puts no stock in individuals or in religion. His real interest is devolving to the State as much power as he can.

This was a simple thing to do in ancient despotisms like Russia or China. There the people had no habits of self government and no concept of Natural Rights. It is a bit trickier to install socialism in the US—all that stuff about the Bill of Rights, natural law, federalism and so on. And it must be said that Christianity has no patience for socialist programs, as it relies upon God and not the State. Indeed, the State is seen more often than not as an enemy of Christianity. And since most Americans practiced some form of Christianity socialism would have a tough go.

The socialist first had to numb the people’s interest in their own history. He did this by seizing control of public education and the universities. The Founders and their documents were expunged in favor of recycling and transgender studies. This done, he could work on removing all public expressions of Christianity—no prayers in school, no Bibles on teachers’ desks, no Ten Commandments.

The socialist has been wildly successful. Christianity is regularly impugned and its doctrines rendered ineffectual. And the more people have become unhooked from their faith in God, the more easily they can be hooked into a faith in government. And that is what socialism is, a substitute faith, a replacement for Christianity. The Democrats of course know this and approve of it. They themselves have been at war with God for decades. One need only look at their views on homosexuality and abortion and compare them with those of the Carpenter.

The same is of course true of the Democrat candidates for president. One can safely and accurately say that no Democrat can run for president unless he be a God hater. If you get in a froth because those words you know neither the Democrats nor God.

The Democrats believe themselves to be close to winning the presidency this year. If they do they will effectively control all three branches of government. We can get a hint where they will take us if we look at their accomplishments since they took control of the legislative branch in 2006.

Up:

Gasoline up from $2.19 to $3.35 or 53%.

Unemployment up from 4.5% to 5% or 11.1%.

National debt per capita was $27,677 then and now $31,551 or 14% higher.

Congressional pay increase.

Down:

Consumer confidence at multiple year lows.

Equity value of mutual funds down $2.3 trillion.

Home equity values down $1.2 trillion.

Congress’s approval rating at all time low.

And that is only two years of Democrat work. Imagine an Obama or a Hillary—socialists both—with a veto proof legislature and four or eight years in the White House. Time enough for much mischief.

Those who vote Democrat in November are really voting for more Americans to be poor, and thus more willing to turn to government for succor. And the Democrats will be ready to receive them. That is the point.

That is the only point.

Update: We can expect more of this after November, alas.

Tags: Culture, Politics, Theology // 2 Comments »

Some academic types get themselves into a froth when a movie based upon history is not absolutely accurate. Thus they obsessed over Gladiator. They were in high dudgeon over Troy. They yelped over The Patriot. They were apoplectic over Apocalypto. 

Memo to historians: Movies are made to generate revenue. They are not meant to be documentaries. Get over it.

The über-violent 300 drew the particular attention of historians. No doubt all those muscular Spartans running about in ancient Speedos while wringing Persian necks caused many hearts to go all a-flutter. Some scholars actually liked the film. Some thoroughly hated it. Zack Snyder made it, and he says 300 is “an opera, not a documentary. That’s what I say when people say it’s historically inaccurate.”

An opera, not a documentary. This about sums it up.

There is more. If one is conversant in the ancient texts that tell the tale of the Persian Wars and of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans, one may get the sense that the movie more accurately details events than mere words ever could. It shows the reality of the thing that goes beyond appearances and gets to the truth of the matter as witnessed and lived by the Greeks.

The Greeks saw the wars with Persia (490 – 479 BC) as the seminal event of their day. They considered Persia as a land of slaves and the Greek cities as abodes of free men. Persia was an Eastern colossus of millions of human beings, a world empire one hundred times the size of Athens and Sparta. Her king was simply called ‘the king’; everyone knew who that meant. It is an easy thing to believe that the historical Xerxes behaved exactly as the movie showed him, as a god upon the earth.

To put the matter simply, 300 was the way the Greeks themselves must have experienced the Persian Wars. It was myth and reality and fantasy all mixed up, a war where thousands of Greeks would later swear that they had seen a gigantic Greek soldier fighting by their sides and that the gods themselves had left Olympus to fight with them. We laugh at such things but to the Greeks these were as historical as WW II is to us.

Some historians get it.

Victor Davis Hanson…who wrote the foreword to a 2007 re-issue of the graphic novel, states that the film demonstrates a specific affinity with the original material of Herodotus in that it captures the martial ethos of ancient Sparta and represents Thermopylae as a “clash of civilizations”. He remarks that Simonides, Aeschylus and Herodotus viewed Thermopylae as a battle against “Eastern centralism and collective serfdom”, which opposed “the idea of the free citizen of an autonomous polis”. He further states that the film portrays the battle in a “surreal” manner, and that the intent was to “entertain and shock first, and instruct second.”

Some historians do not.

No mention is made in 300 of the fact that at the same time a vastly outnumbered fleet led by Athenians was holding off the Persians in the straits adjacent to Thermopylae, or that Athenians would soon save all of Greece by destroying the Persian fleet at Salamis. This would wreck 300’s vision, in which Greek ideals are selectively embodied in their only worthy champions, the Spartans.

I read such critiques and I get the feeling that I must have seen a different film.

We know that had Leonidas and his 300 fled before the Persian host that the other Greeks would hardly have chosen to stay. And that it was the delay of three days at the Hot Gates purchased by the stand of the Spartans that gave the Athenians time enough to evacuate their city for Salamis.

The movie praises and romanticizes the Spartans and their king Leonidas. It was right to do so. They earned it.

Will Durant said that we must deal with the past as if it were the remains of a shipwreck. We guess from the planks and canvas and detritus that wash upon the shore the type of ship and cargo, the nature of the crew, the disposition of its captain, and the reasons for and the direction of the ship’s voyage. It is clearly impossible, but we do the best we can. This is the past as historians must deal with it.

Poets and artists and filmmakers can deal with the past differently. They are not bound by words but are free to mix in myth and imagination with history. The results are movies like 300, like Troy, like Apocalypto. We can include in this category movies like Patton and Gone With The Wind—romantic myths all of them.

Such movies entertain but also create an interest in the past. A professor of ancient history might have problems with 300, but even he must admit that the movie no doubt has led many students to his classroom.

And that was exactly what happened to me. Long ago and far away I was a callow youth who came upon the movie Spartacus. That did it. I was hooked on those old Romans. It mattered not at all that the movie was riddled with fancy and error and speculation. What mattered was that I was drawn into a lifetime of study of the ancient world. I imagine that there are young adults today who were entranced by 300, and will one day become scholars of Greek history.

The proper teaching of history is not just lecturing on ancient texts but the recreating of lost worlds. This 300 has done.

Whatever part of that movie is not true certainly should be.

Update: Had not Leonidas and his 300 stayed and died at the Hot Gates, there would have been no Athenian victory at Salamis later that year (480 BC). The Persians and their Eastern absolutism would have marched through Western Europe.

The philosopher Hegel (1770 – 1831) had this to say about Salamis.

The interest of the world’s hung trembling in the balance. Oriental despotism, a world united under one lord and sovereign, on the one side, and separate states, insignificant in extent and resources, but animated by free individuality, on the other side, stood front to front in array of battle. Never in history has the superiority of spiritual power over material bulk, and that of no contemptible amount, been made so gloriously manifest.

The Spartans had only one duty, to allow the forming of Western Civilization. They did it, and did it well.

Tags: Culture, History and War, Teaching // 2 Comments »

The pope journeys to this nation as Paul journeyed to the gentiles. For ours is becoming a pagan land, and America is a prime field for mission work. And there is much work to be done.

Christians are commanded ‘to be in the world but not of it.’ This is not a suggestion. American Christians have become mesmerized by the useless baubles, bangles and beads of this world. They have for some time become indistinguishable from non-Christians. Levels of divorce, addictions to pornography, use of birth control, support of abortion, tolerance of sexual perversion—such are scarcely different between Christians and pagans here in what was once called ‘God’s Country’.

Christians have forgotten that they are not in any way to yoke themselves to the worldview of the pagans. How does one yoke the perverse to the normal? The blasphemous to the sacred? The clean to the unclean? Jerusalem to Babylon?

The pagan lands of America at their best scarcely rise above the trivial and the frivolous. At their worst they sink into absolute moral depravity and human degradation. They have sunk even farther than had Rome before Christ, for Rome had not yet heard of the Son of Man. After she knew Him she repented, and converted.

America has no such excuse. She has heard His Word and flees from it. Her avatars of culture, of government, of education, of media, of entertainment, are almost entirely pagan and anti-Christian in their outlook and behavior. They have long worked to convince that evil is good and good is evil, and have largely succeeded. The teachings of Christ are pushed aside, removed from public view, assaulted in front of millions, denied to our schoolchildren, ridiculed among our elite.

If Christ returned to walk among us He would again be crucified, no doubt to the self-satisfied acclaim of our movers and shakers.

Christians are not to be in any way dispirited, however. For they have been promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church of God. And the gates of Hell exactly describes what have opened upon our nation.

All of this is known by Benedict. He has much work to do. As much work as Paul had. Perhaps more.

Tags: Culture, Theology // 6 Comments »