Don't apologize for things you didn't do, to people who don't believe in forgiveness or redemption.
Daniel Nichols on what happened after “Congressman Ron Paul challenged the common wisdom about the Islamic militants who carried out the 9/11 attacks.” Rather than face hard truths, we choose to believe our “blindly self-flattering” lies that “madmen attacked America because they hate our freedom and our way of life” and “that we are hated because we are good, because we are free.”McCain won’t stop abortion
We’ll bring down the world economy unless you bail us out. Never mind that we paid ourselves huge bonuses using other people’s money while creating this mess.From Joshua Snyder.
I mean he’s had neither the typical white nor typical black American experience. That’s fine, but why is it this alone constitutes insight? If his history is so unique isn’t also true that he doesn’t quite share the experience of most Americans, black or white? I mean, why is it necessarily a positive? Because he says so in a hundred equally meaningless ways? Is this insight a genetic birthright? Because after the perfunctory bragging about his mixed parentage, all I hear are platitudes.He’s the best of the three contenders — which isn’t saying much and it’s in spite of not because of this game — but the game is so obvious. Who else sees a nought (zero) when they see his campaign signs with the big O?
Imagine an indulgently guilty white liberal getting to actually be black. It must be exquisite. Continual bliss. To be able to resolve this angst in its glorious reversal, to indulge in the romance of oppression not as an outsider but as its subject — as both, in supreme sanctimony, over and over! But it is kind of weird when his white half condescends toward his black half. I think if it was me I’d call it a wash and get on with business. But I’m not the ambitious sort.
None of that for Barack; no grace, no generosity. No leaving anything on the table. Just a meticulous, thorough wringing out of any and all possible political advantage from this circumstance — and then some. He lays claim to all he surveys. He claims a unique perspective on all human suffering with those artlessly exhaustive rhetorical sweeps of his, those godawful geography name-checks. It’s a kind of greed. ‘From the family crossing the Rio Grande to the hillbillies in Appalachia’, he’s feeling you. Something to go with his response to the Wright controversy which, if I’m reading him correctly, is ‘if it offends, I condemn’; call it ‘if you’re sore, I’m your recourse’. If you’ve got a claim on the collective guilt of white America, Barack Obama is your man. Barack wants his cut. Isn’t it a little presumptuous of this guy that he thinks he can coopt the very idea of collective guilt and lord it over the nation?
Barry is to be understood not as a black man but as an ambitious white man realizing the potential of his African features.
Two things need to be considered here. First, that the welfare state in whatever form it exists needs constant economic “growth” in order to support increased taxes and social welfare benefits. This is why inflationary central banking is so important to the welfare state, and also why the welfare state is essentially corporatist, whether in its leftist or rightists forms. Increases in production, productivity, income, investment and profits are necessary for business to be the engine by which the excess can be skimmed off (or extracted) and redistributed. This commitment to constant economic growth is such that modern industrial mass economies have been thoroughly rigged to “deliver” such growth as measured by the state.From the LRC blog.
Second, the big investment banks are hardly creatures of private enterprise. They are inventions of the state. Those who invest the kinds of sums these big money machines invest have been, since the 19th century at least, heavily backed and subsidized by the state, which has underwritten loans, guaranteed repayment and even ensured collection through the use of military force. The British Empire was not so much built on war as it was on foreclosure.
The fear of the social democrat, either rightist or leftist, is that the economy cannot and will not function without the state. That unless there is guidance and oversight (though maybe not full-fledged planning), we will all starve. Or foment revolution. Or both.
Looks like the Orthodox Church took a holiday and went on an acid trip in sunny San Fran!! lolSure, they’re wrong (I wouldn’t join or be in communion with them), and I think along with the promiscuity of style the real beauty of much of the service is especially unnerving to an Orthodox: liberal Protestants — IIRC hard-core heterodox, really Unitarians dressed up (do they say the creed?), gay and communing the unbaptised, which is technically not allowed in the Episcopal Church — who are so good at putting on the airs of Orthodox worship when they want to (like in the first minute of the clip).
At first it looked very Orthodox...
Sort of an “Anglo-Afro-Orthodox-Flower Child” Eucharist. I’m a politically liberal, but liturgically conservative Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian, and you know what? This is pretty interesting. Even though it probably isn’t my cup of tea, I’d be interested to see what you do for Pentecost. God bless the people of St. Gregory of Nyssa, and may the Holy Spirit be with you.
Nothing says authentic “San Francisco Episcopal Church” to me like a room full of white people trying to act multicultural.
It seems to me that whenever white people stick to traditional white Protestant worship, they’re told they’re being “boring” and “stodgy.” When they try something different, they’re accused of “trying to act multicultural” (with the implication that it’s a failure or a fake).
Great Thanksgiving Prayer for the Millennium Development GoalsI’m sorry but I can’t help thinking of that 70-year-old Nazi ‘German Christian’ Lutheran church in Berlin and if somebody wrote and used a liturgy about politics I agree with — ‘it is very meet, right and our bounden duty: that we should at all times and in all places follow the platform of thy servant Ron Paul...’ — I would run screaming from that place and never return.
... only a naïf would believe that today’s Republican Party has any real interest in overturning Roe v. Wade or that doing so now would contribute in any meaningful way to the restoration of “family values.” GOP support for such values is akin to the Democratic Party’s professed devotion to the “working poor”: each is a ploy to get votes, trotted out seasonally, quickly forgotten once the polls close.Neither Obama nor McCain
When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither. Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions.And he writes:
I want the US out of Iraq. I don’t believe that a civil war is avoidable there.Buying off the Sunnis whilst propping up a Shi’ite government can’t go on for ever.
Best thing we can do, I think, is to withdraw to enclaves and set up refugee zones, and let the violence play itself out. And offer passports to all Iraqis who helped us, and who would certainly be killed for that after we left.Saigon all over again.
... the New Deal failed to lift the U.S. out of the Great Depression. There’s also a rather shocking failure to come to terms with New Deal foreign policy with its Wilsonian arrogance, also now on display in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is no accident that George W. Bush invoked Harry Truman, FDR’s vice president [and the only world leader to use nukes, and on civilians], in a speech defending his “war on terror”.
Contemptuous of his superior, Navy Secretary [Josephus] Daniels, a pacific Methodist from North Carolina, he chafed to thrust America into the First World War.
In 1941, the FBI arrested 19 leaders of the SWP [Trotskyite communists] under the provisions of the Smith Act for having the temerity to oppose Franklin Roosevelt’s war. When asked by the prosecutor what form opposition to war to Europe would take, party leader James P. Cannon answered “we would not become supporters of the war, even after the war was declared”. For this thought crime, Cannon and the others were sentenced up to 16 months in prison.
Nazi Germany, FDR — although unwilling to offer any shelter to Jewish refugees — viewed as the resurgence of an unmitigated expansionist menace; much as did Churchill.
The bad and the good...Just by looking at the things that those right-wing guys said... I always thought that principled conservatives had as solid a reason to oppose the Vietnam War and to oppose racism as anyone within the conventional left.— Former SDS president Carl Oglesby
Wilson’s ideas in 1918 live on in the ideas of the neo-Wilsonians of our own time, especially in the worldview of President George W. Bush and his “neoconservative” supporters (who are not really conservative at all, but are rather some kind of hyper-progressive).From Joshua Snyder.
... religious faith in general, prayer addressed to “to whom it may concern”, sentiment about some transcendent dimension otherwise undefined does not have any staying power. It’s OK to have that at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning when you’re out with your friends somewhere, but in the darkest hours of life you gotta believe something specific. And that specification is the task of the creed. Because, much as some people may not like it, to believe one thing is also to disbelieve another.‘We don’t possess God; it is he who holds us’
I do not deny that there are differences between the Churches, but I say that we must change our way of approaching them.Two orthodox Orthodox quotations via Per Christum, the second from Eirenikon.
But I say, if the truth is the truth, we must not be afraid for it.
What a rich tradition it is, that yields citizens who think and vote... just about like everybody else. As the Borg might say, “You have been assimilated.” Submission accomplished.
Of course it’s appalling that millions of church-goers who claim to believe that abortion is murder are sitting around dithering over which pro-abortion Democrat, Reverend Ike or Margaret Sanger, will offer them more bleeding chunks of pork hacked off from their fellow taxpayers.
The worst candidate is undoubtedly Hillary Clinton, who pretends to oppose neocon interventionism when it suits her, but shows her true colors in her votes and in the things she doesn’t say (for instance, she won’t rule out attacking Iran).
From a policy perspective, he’s [Obama] probably the least damaging candidate. While his court appointments will be awful, they’ll be no worse than Hillary’s, and he’s much less likely (as Justin Raimondo points out) to try invading big, messy Islamic countries and bombing them into the Space Age.
McCain is the Erich Ludendorff of the race — the mentally unsound nationalist who helped us lose the last war, and promises to lose the next one on a vastly bigger scale. And I, for one, believe him. Although he claims to be “proudly pro-life,” you can almost hear him winking as he says it.
William F. Buckley was born into a republic that was fast becoming an empire. President Wilson arrived in Le Havre at the end of WWI. He came neither as a tourist nor a businessman... that is, not as an honest traveler. Instead, he came to sort out the Old World’s problems and brought 17 Points to help do it. The cynical, worldly Europeans laughed at him. Even God needed only 10 commandments, they said. Wilson was so humiliated he had a stroke and never recovered.
To their credit, the American people were slow to put on the imperial purple. The conservatives among them wanted to retain the old form of government, with its limited aims and limited means. Conservatism was a more innocent creed back then... The idea of trying to remake another country, half way around the world, into an American-style democracy, would not have been scorned; it would have been unimaginable. Back then, of course, there was no homeland. The idea would have made no sense. Americans’ interests stopped at the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel. The foreigners would have to take care of themselves. Even home-grown 100% Americans were expected to look out for their own kith and kin. “Balance the budget, protect the borders, and otherwise leave people alone” was the extent of conservative ambitions.
After the [second world] war, there was no going back. America was the leading world power. “Isolationism” became a kind of insult. A few of the old conservatives — such as Frank Chodorov, Robert Taft and Warren Buffett’s father, a US Congressman — kept wearing their old starched collars. But the fashion had clearly changed. They could vote against government spending programs...and they opposed further military adventures abroad... but they couldn’t win national elections and they couldn’t participate in the great fun of having an empire — getting to boss people around all over the world. There was no glory in being a conservative. No power. No money. No style.
Then, with the Cold War, even the old die-hards went shopping for new clothes. In their minds, it was a contest between good and evil... freedom and communism... black and white.
Indeed, the Cold War played roughly the same role as the War on Terror would half a century later — it perverted the old conservative values.
The urbane, witty, charming and cosmopolitan William F. Buckley:“We have to accept Big Government for the duration — for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged... except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.”And thus was the fabric laid out...cut and sewn... for America’s new conservative outfits. Now, they could fight totalitarians by being totalitarians.
Buckley’s contribution to American political life was that he helped bring conservatives to the levers of imperial power — but at the cost of rejecting everything important they ever believed. Henceforth, conservatives — notably George W. Bush — would be America’s most activist presidents, adding trillions to Americans financial burdens, extending domestic programs, and projecting U.S. military power to places Americans had not even known existed. And henceforth, “conservatives” would distinguish themselves from “liberals” principally on cultural issues — such as whether gay couples could marry, when to pull the plug on a coma victim, and whether it was proper for a Southern state to use elements of the old confederate banner in its state flag.
The liberals and conservatives... all Keynesians at home... and Kennedys overseas... willing to impose any burden on their neighbors... and force the next generation to pay any price... in order to enjoy bread at home and military circuses abroad.
There was even some doubt about the real source of Buckley’s money and support for his money-losing magazine. Rumors said it came directly from the military industrial complex itself — maybe via the CIA... where Buckley had been an agent.
He came not to praise traditional conservatism but to bury it.
Mike Gravel wants to be the Libertarian candidatePaul’s leave-us-alone libertarianism hasn’t fit in with a party anxious to read our e-mail, improve our values, assert American power abroad and subsidize friendly industries at home. The party’s recent mix of ‘national greatness’ neoconservatives, evangelical theoconservatives and K Street careerists has had many goals, but leaving people alone hasn’t been one of them.Read all of Michael Grunwald’s article in Time, though parts of it reek with establishment disdain.Bush’s approval ratings have been abysmal for years, but Paul was the only Republican who really campaigned for change.
Interestingly, the modern ’burb is largely a creation of the federal government and its New Deal and post-WWII mortgage-subsidizing programs, which favored only a few house designs (ranch, etc.), and unnatural, anti-commercial, all-residential neighborhoods. The better to mold and control us, of course.The last French WWI foot soldier
More than anything, he was appalled that he had been made to fire on people he didn’t know and to whom he, too, was a stranger. These were fathers of children. He had no quarrel with them. C’est complètement idiot la guerre. His Italian Alpine regiment had once stopped firing for three weeks on the Austrians, whose language many of them spoke; they had swapped loaves of bread for tobacco and taken pictures of each other. To the end of his life, Mr Ponticelli showed no interest in labelling anyone his enemy. He said he did not understand why on earth he, or they, had been fighting.‘Humane, with a very reasonable and spiritual conclusion’
Every time I see Jeremiah Wright’s name, I think of Jeremiah the Prophet, who also gave his country a good tongue-lashing and was imprisoned for being ‘unpatriotic’ and correct about impending defeat by the Babylonians.— Jerri Ward
Wright’s creed, to the extent I can understand it on the basis of broad but not particularly deep research, is an Afro-centric variation of the socialist heresy called Liberation Theology... actually a form of idolatry: creating a “God” to suit his personal specifications, which in this case would be a variant of the Golem myth — a monster summoned to smite and destroy an enemy. It is a photographic negative of the neo-Nazi “Aryan Christ” heresy.— William Grigg
... unmistakably akin to every other version of the Civil Religion — that is, a theology that supports concentration of power in a political state and the punishment, through ostracism, banishment, or liquidation, of those who refuse to make the State the cynosure of their existence.
Somewhere in the Middle East, Jesus Christ is strapped to a bench, his head wrapped in clingfilm. He furiously sucks against the plastic. A hole is pierced, but only so that a filthy rag can be stuffed back into his mouth. He is turned upside down and water slowly poured into the rag. The torturer whispers religious abuse. If you are God, save yourself you f*cking idiot. Fighting to pull in oxygen through the increasingly saturated rag, his lungs start to fill up with water. Someone punches him in the stomach.— The Revd Giles Fraser via Episcopal Café
Usually, at least outside the Bush administration and its supporters, policies that involve violating allied states’ sovereignty and risking their internal destabilisation are considered unwise — not so with Team Obama.This is a lefty hawk not a peace candidate.
Well, it’s pretty “graceless — an affront to your sense of dignity” to full-throatedly support the bombardment of a country, Lebanon, when the campaign kills 1,000 civilians and displaces a million more, putting hundreds of thousands into refugee camps for months and years afterwards, but that is what Obama did during the summer of 2006. His appreciation for human dignity is truly overwhelming.
Those who continually come back to his position on Iraq seem satisfied that Obama reached the right conclusion without concerning themselves very much with how he reaches conclusions and makes decisions. Taking the longer view, his assumptions about America’s role in the world are more significant than his view on any particular policy. Basic assumptions are more valuable for understanding what a politician is likely to do in a crisis than how he has responded to any one particular policy or event.
The “mindset” behind the Iraq war is the mindset that says the following: state sovereignty is irrelevant when Washington says it is, international law exists to be used as a justification for our policies and a bludgeon against other countries, and civilian populations of states that supposedly or actually harbour or support terrorists are essentially expendable. In his comments on Pakistan and his vote on the war in Lebanon, Obama has not only failed to repudiate this mindset, but has demonstrated his fidelity to it on occasion.Conservative endorsement either active or passive is evidence...
of how awful the GOP has become. It is so deeply distrusted, so loathed, by a significant number of conservatives that even a Democrat whom they know to be on the far left and in disagreement with them on almost everything has a better chance of winning their vote than the Republican standard-bearer.I cheerfully admit he’s the best of the three real contenders but that’s very relative.
“Woman With Plastic Surgery & Hormone Treatment Gets Pregnant.”From Per Christum.
“How does it feel to be a man and to be pregnant?” Find someone with an XY chromosome set who is pregnant and you will answer that question! Get out your lamp, Diogenes — you will be looking for one honest man for a good long time.
As the old saying goes, the American economy is — year after year — driven by two great forces, the Pentagon and Christmas. Why isn’t the greatest Christian holiday of the year more of an economic force?— Terry Mattingly
We elected a pig in a poke as President in 2000 and are paying the price today. But with George W. Bush, we at least had the excuse for not making the effort to understand him that he turns out to be not very interesting to understand — he’s Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardiner from Being There with a mean streak.
We weren’t witnessing a revival of the Emmett Till Era of lynchings, as the pundits insisted, but another example of the O.J. Simpson Age of star athletes whose off-field misdeeds are excused until they finally go too far.
Obama’s supporters like him being pompous and getting all furrow-browed.He’s Mr Spock! (What that means.)
Another problem for Obama is that his personal identity is all tied up with “race and inheritance,” and he’s too serious about himself to not be serious about race.
He needs to get some jokewriters, then go on the Jay Leno show and laugh it off.
Dubya Two, Lady Macbeth and Barry Half-White.
I like the idea that beauty and holiness are the apologia for Christianity. The beauty of Christianity needs to shine out more; this is where the celebration of the liturgy becomes central. And the goodness of Christianity, i.e. the holiness of self-giving love (the witness of charity) and of prayer, needs to be sustained and developed. And this too, certainly: that the one thing Christianity has to offer is Easter. Simply: Christ is risen!— Dom Hugh Gilbert
There is no real philosophical difference between the two. I find it rather strange that so much animosity can be stirred up between two individuals who believe the same things. And the whole race issue bewilders me because we are talking about two Democrats who are not in the least bit racist. And yet race has become an issue, mostly stirred up by the media, who love this stuff.On Ralph Nader:
I think he represents some of the Democratic principles better than the Democratic candidates themselves. And I actually believe him when he says he doesn’t want this war. Even though I disagree with him on some other issues, at least he stands for what he believes in. But he will be marginalized — he won’t be able to get into the debates, because we don’t have a true democracy in this country. The two parties are essentially the same, and a Libertarian candidate, a Green Party candidate, Ralph Nader — they are going to get nothing. Unless of course they are Ross Perot and have $10 billion, in which case they put you right in front on TV. The media isn’t really interested in issues; they are more interested in notoriety.From the LRC blog.
Not all traditionalist [Roman] Catholics today are what a friend of mine calls “Leave It to Beaver”* stylized Catholic traditionalists. As I have written before, I consider folks such as Daniel Mitsui and Moretben to be, shall we say, neo-trads. These traditionalist Catholics, and others like them, are quite sympathetic to Orthodox theology and praxis in a manner which is substantial and serious. They are also men who are not living in an insular la-la land but who engage, each in their own manner, modernity in many facets. Read their blogs. Daniel Mitsui’s writing does not strike me as the slightest bit fearful; instead it carries the ethos of a solemn requiem, a holy remembering, even, to use Orthodox language, a joyful sorrow.— Owen White
...in spite of all of the bureaucratic-love in the room, high ranking “pro-ecumenical” Orthodox again and again use rhetoric which signifies that the Orthodox Church is not going to budge on matters that divide.Or all Orthodox agree on the limits of the scope of the Pope (man-made office for the good of the church like any rank of the divinely instituted episcopate but not with universal jurisdiction) but the nice ones don’t feel like they have to exaggerate the differences and go all over the Internet calling people graceless heretics.
Can we be as precise as to say [the Crucifixion happened at] 3pm, the Jewish “ninth hour”? Four years ago, a pair of astronomers claimed to have scientifically verified this. Their computer programme looking at star activity between 26AD and 35AD found the first full moon after the vernal equinox was registered on Friday 7 April AD 30 and Friday 3 April at 3pm on 33AD. The solar eclipse, described in the Bible, was only visible in Jerusalem on the latter date.From The Spectator.
Midnight at noonWe like to attend a Byzantine Catholic service called the “Burial of Christ,” which ends with parishioners coming up in silent procession to kiss a burial shroud emblazoned with Jesus’s corpse.Those using the Orthodox paschalion will do this on the 25th April this year (Orthodox Easter is always after the Jewish Passover).
‘So is your church locally on the Western paschalion?’‘And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.’
Within Antiochian boundaries, yes; not so under Jerusalem or Alexandria (though there might be a chance that this is not the case everywhere throughout the Palestinian territories).
Oremus et pro Judæis*: ut Deus et Dominus noster auferat velamen de cordibus eorum; ut et ipsi agnoscant Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum.The only day of the year the trisagion and the Mass of the Presanctified are used in the Roman Rite.
Oremus. Flectamus genua. Levate.
Ecce lignum crucis, in quo salus mundi pependit.
Venite, adoremus.
Popule meus, quid feci tibi? Aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi.
Quia eduxi te per desertum quadraginta annis, et manna cibavi te, et introduxi in terram satis optimam: parasti crucem Salvatori tuo.
‘Αγιoς ‘o Θεóς. Sanctus Deus.
‘Αγιoς ’Iσχυρóς. Sanctus fortis.
‘Αγιoς ’αθανατoς, ’ελεησoν ‘ημας. Sanctus immortalis, miserere nobis.
The latest tape reminds, once again, of why Bush did not want to kill or capture him. Ming the Merciless is too useful. He scares the people into accepting endless wars, massive spending, Fed recessions, and the Republican police state — the whole neocon enchilada.From the LRC blog.
I am the king’s good servant but God’s first.
For conservatives, Obama represents a sliver of hope. McCain represents none at all. The choice turns out to be an easy one.The other side won’t stop abortion. That said Mark Shea notes:
Unlike the GOP, he does give a shit about abortion: he wants to do everything possible to expand and export the license up to and including legalizing infanticide. I’ll take GOP neglect over that sort of religious zeal any day. However, that doesn’t mean I can vote for McCain, who seems to me to be quite aptly described by Bacevich as dedicated to the perpetuation of war and the growth of Leviathan.I’ll probably tick the box of the Libertarian again and rejoin the LP while I’m at it. Pennsylvania will go to the Democrat anyway and seeing how active Obama’s campaign is in Philadelphia’s black neighbourhoods (they don’t care who Ed Rendell likes) persuades me there’s no reason to strategically re-register and vote for him next month. (Paul is sensibly going back to Congress — televised or not the revolution is going local and grassroots where it has a chance.) That and what used to be called the yuppie vote should push him over the top.
The more I think about it, the more I think I may just write in “None of the Above” or Ron Paul or my pastor or somebody.
Burke was liberal because he was conservative.— Russell Kirk
When a central bank lowers interest rates, it engages in an activity that is loaded with moral meaning. The jargon of the macroeconomist can be misleading. Lower interest rates are achieved by increasing the money supply, which is basically equivalent to “printing money out of thin air,” and selling it cheaply to the banking community (although technically it is now achieved by creating fictitious accounting entries).As William Grigg wrote earlier:
The moral dimension becomes plainer if we consider a private person doing that. It is called fraud. Counterfeit money enriches the fraudster at the expense of the rest of the society. Creating more paper slips does not bring about more economic resources (production or consumption goods), but only serves to redistribute them. The counterfeiter immediately acquires additional money at his disposal, whereas the purchasing power of the money balances of the rest is slowly eroded.
To create this so-called “money,” the Fed has to steal the value of what each of us has earned, saved, or invested.Faith-based economy
...rely[ing] on the Chinese, Japanese and Saudis to finance America’s life beyond its means.From Joshua Snyder.
I should preface this by pointing out an interesting definition that journalist Michael Kinsley gave years ago of a gaffe. A gaffe, he wrote, “is when a politician tells the truth.” The idea is that the truth is something few people want to hear because it upsets them.Back when mainstream Republican pols sounded conservative:
I figured it up the other day: If we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans — enough to fill the city of Detroit.— Bob Dole, 1976
Virtually everyone attacked Dole the next day, but not based on whether what he said was true or false. Did he get the U.S. body count wrong? The critics didn’t say, although, as it happens, he got it right. Were the four major U.S. wars of the 20th century up until 1976 — World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War — not Democratic wars?Wright:
We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.‘Flak means you are over the target.’
The PC brigades’ accusations of bigotry pretty much always boiled down to charges of not worshipping the state. If you oppose war, empire and the Fed, you’re a bigot.From the LRC blog.
More on Iraq five years onConservatives who are mostly, but not exclusively, Christians insist that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that the founders wanted religion to be supported by government at every level. Liberal secularists point to the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom, the lack of an official state Church, and various ambiguous comments by the early statesmen to claim that religion should have no role in public life.The country’s founding fathers were deists.
Steven Waldman, the editor-in-chief and co-founder of... Beliefnet.com, says both positions can find some support in the historical record. But each fails to account for the “radical new three-part creed” that early Americans actually hashed out. According to Waldman, figures such as Ben Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and especially James Madison believed that “religion is essential to the flourishing of a republic,” that “to thrive, religion needs less help, not more, from the state,” and that “God gave all humans the rights to full religious freedom.”The really scary part of Barack Obama’s and Jeremiah Wright’s worldview is nothing to do with colour.
“The Founding Faith,” summarizes Waldman, “was not Christianity, and it was not secularism. It was religious liberty — a revolutionary formula for promoting faith by leaving it alone.”
I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth.— Obama
For “true” religion, according to Limbaugh, is all about love, and sweetness, and making goo-goo eyes at everyone. “True” religion is nice, and bland to a degree that renders religion offensive to precisely no one. “True” religion is utterly unthreatening. It shouldn’t upset anyone, but offer only comfort and succor.A religion his kind, and the state, can use. Just like the Modernists and New Agers his fans might make fun of they believe they not God call the shots.
...a screen on which is projected many contemporary desires, anxieties and preoccupations, little to do with the past and more especially with the past of these islands.Been saying that for years.
The Mass lectionary is not supposed to be the only place where Christian people encounter Scripture. As I’ve ranted before, the Mass lectionary developed in conversation with the Office lectionary; the Office lectionary worked through the entire Bible every year while the Mass lectionary made selective engagement with the Scriptures to highlight the themes and theologies of the mysteries of redemption embodied in the Temporal cycle. We’ve lost that sense that the Mass lectionary is a pointed return to material that we already know and are re-examining from a different perspective...And:
I abhor that we seem to want to meld all of our traditions into some mushy whole...
I’d prefer the Mass selections that we used for centuries... The Sunday readings for the main seasons remained essentially the same from the 8th-century Comes of Murbach until Vatican II. There was an agenda — and it was Christ. Twelve centuries of millions of the faithful have been satisfied that they show us Christ.
Derek again:In 1940 a British officer on Dunkirk beach sent London a three-word message: “But if not.” It was instantly recognized as from the Book of Daniel. When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are commanded to worship a golden image or perish, they defiantly reply: “Our God who we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods.”Ordinary people in other times and places knew the Bible far, far better than most of us do or in all likelihood ever will.
Britain then still had the cohesion of a common culture of shared reading.
One of the reasons that I love the Episcopal Church is because its liturgical intent as described in Cranmer’s preface to the 1549 book was to restore the balance of Mass and Office for the average Christian. That’s where we came from and that’s what our prayer book contains even if that noble goal wasn’t always met and if we’re in a period of amnesia now.Cranmer and his friends hated the Mass, many places already had the daily office and literate layfolk already prayed it at least in the forms of the Little Office and books of the hours.
...my [Zmirak’s] own reasons for celebrating the utter and complete extirpation of the satanic National Socialist regime, and the presence of U.S. forces to prevent an equally evil Stalin from swallowing the Mother Continent, were not those that motivated Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I’m not a Roosevelt biographer, or even an admirer. His own bias toward mild socialism no doubt made him found the Soviet system less repulsive than the Nazi. (His vice president, after all was Henry Wallace, not Joseph Kennedy.)A commenter with the unvarnished truth of how the American élite thought and thus why they supported the British before WWII:
Fr. [Charles] Coughlin told [Farley] Clinton that the Vatican order which scaled back his activities had nothing to do with Roosevelt. Cardinal Pacelli had brought this agenda with him from Rome, and wanted Coughlin off the air at the urgent request of Germany’s [Roman] Catholic bishops — who’d observed first hand the barbarism that had been unleashed in their country. (It was only the intervention of bishops such as Cardinal Clemens von Galen which brought a temporary halt to the mass murder of handicapped children.)
His condemnations of Hitler’s ideology were sterner and more explicit than even Allied propaganda broadcasts. Pius XII assisted the conspirators (many of them devout Lutherans) attempting to assassinate Adolph Hitler, even passing messages between them and an uninterested British intelligence.
Germany and Austria-Hungary were powerhouses culturally and scientifically; I think destroying them was simply eliminating competition to Anglo/US interest.
Of course, as the war wound down, Stalin’s propaganda machine did its best to spread the outrageous lie that Pius XII had been Hitler’s pope. This lie was popularized by a German Communist named Rolf Hockhuth.
...why we buried the hatchet with the British, our traditional enemy since the Revolution not long after they finished crushing the Boers over gold and diamonds.Some of which is now called (neo-) ‘conservative’.
It suited the United States to have a declining, non-threatening “free trade” British Empire ruling the world. In the nineteenth century, at least until 1898, we had a similar view of decrepit Spain. The British kept the sea lanes and markets of the world open to American business. They took up the “white man’s burden” of policing the natives in places like India, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia; the Antipodes they colonized with their own sons. They kept the Russians in check in Central Asia, the Chinese addicted to heroin and “open,” and swaggering Prussian upstarts on the Continent in line. Basically, the British were doing all the hard work, and American industry, which was a free rider, had a lot to lose (a gigantic subsidy) by having the likes of Mussolini, Hitler, and Tojo “revising” the liberal international system which was the status quo in those days, especially when domestic markets for American production were becoming saturated and new outlets would soon be needed. There was also that thorny problem of what to do about all those millions of angry, unemployed people mired in the Great Depression which had taken a fresh turn for the worse in 1937.
Irish and German Catholics were not all that interested in suiting up to get shot at for England (they wanted peace and employment).
George Washington was right. Americans have no business dying in Europe’s stupid wars.
Germany, Italy, Hungary, Finland, Romania, and Bulgaria were hardly ever in a position to be threat to us — none had a blue-water navy.
The ONLY winners of World War II were Stalin and Communism, and a triumphant Left in the West that has been busy ever since imposing its paradigm across Europe and the United States.
...while you attach some sort of Crusader ‘mother land’ ideology to it, people like you would have been perfectly OK to sign up for the Commonwealth forces if you felt that strongly about it. No sir, I am afraid they (Taft and Lucky Lindy) were right.My late rector was a teen-aged fire-watcher atop the dome of St Paul’s during the Blitz and later a Royal Navy rating; I’ve also known (among many Russian refugees who fled after WWII) two Ukrainians who wore German grey to try and drive Stalin out of their homeland.
Democracy can be liberal or illiberal, but while an absolute monarchy cannot be democratic, it can be liberal. The monarchy of Louis XIV, who allegedly said “I am the State,” was in many ways far more liberal than a number of modern democracies. He could not require an annual income tax or conscript his subjects for military service, nor could he issue a law banning champagne from dinner tables. Conversely, many of the horrors of the French Revolution were democratic (but not liberal).Gold
In a week in which it is estimated that the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi-American War has passed 1 million...Why?
...the lesson plan is a “propaganda” exercise and makes no mention of any civilian casualties as a result of the war.
In a “Students’ Worksheet” which accompanies the lesson plan, it stresses the “reconstruction” of Iraq, noting that 5,000 schools and 20 hospitals have been rebuilt. But there is no mention of civilian casualties.
Five years after “liberation”, Baghdad still only has a few hours of intermittent power a day. Children are kidnapped from schools for ransom and families of patients undergoing surgery at hospitals are advised to buy and bring in blood from sellers who congregate outside.
In the “Teacher Notes” section, it talks about how the “invasion was necessary to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein”.
The WMD allegation, central to the case for war, proved to be bogus. David Kay, appointed by the Bush administration to search for such weapons after the invasion, found no evidence of a serious programme or stockpiling of WMDs. The “coalition of the willing” was the rather grand title of a rag-tag group of countries which included Eritrea, El Salvador and Macedonia.From Fr Methodius.
Saddam was regarded as an ally of the West while he was carrying out some of the worst of his atrocities. As for democracy, elections were held in Iraq during the occupation and have led to a sectarian Shia government.
The cost of military operations in Iraq has risen by 72 per cent in the past 12 months and the estimated cost for this year is £1.648bn.
The Iraqi security forces have been accused, among others by the American military, of running death squads targeting Sunnis. In Basra, the police became heavily infiltrated by Shia militias and British troops had to carry out several operations against them. On one occasion British troops had to smash their way into a police station to rescue two UK special forces soldiers who had been seized by the police.
Union members say they are also worried that armed forces recruitment fairs in schools glamorise the job by citing exotic countries that recruits will visit but fail to mention that they may be required to kill people.
Pueri Hebræorum...portantes ramos olivarum, obviaverunt Dominus, clamantes et dicentes: Hosanna in excelsis.A sermon from Fr Robert Hart.
Pueri Hebræorum vestimenta prosternebant in via et clamabant dicentes: Hosanna Filio David, benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.
Hosanna Filio David, Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Rex Israel: Hosanna in excelsis.
No-one could describe the Word of the Father;
but when he took flesh from thee, O Theotokos,
he accepted being described,
and restored the fallen image to its former beauty.
We confess and proclaim our salvation in word and images.
Reliable information is a bit hard to come by, but it seems as if the policy of increased Han Chinese colonisation in Tibet has finally run up against a violent popular backlash.From Eunomia.
The Economist’s correspondent reports that repression and violence against a number of monks helped spark the rioting.
The Federal Reserve’s most recent wealth redistribution plan, through which hundreds of billions of “dollars” will be created in an effort to stave off bank failures — an effort that will not succeed...From William Grigg.
To create this so-called “money,” the Fed has to steal the value of what each of us has earned, saved, or invested.
It is certainly hypocritical for Ferraro and other liberals, who have been advocating affirmative-action policies for their entire careers, to suddenly criticize Obama as not having adequate experience and only being selected because he is black.‘Progressive’ Protestants were hawks keen on destroying what was left of Catholic Europe.
The American people (or significant activist portions of them) are notorious for engaging in major potential self-damaging actions, to preserve perceptions (or in certain cases illusions) of their view of themselves as progressive, fair-minded, idealistic, etc. Witness (1) an eminently avoidable and massively destructive civil war, with destructive resonance which continues to this day; (2) expeditionary forces in WW1 when only dim notions of self-interest justified it...
(3) the Abraham Lincoln brigade as leading edge into the WW2 European theatre, to orchestrated mass-media cheer.The mainline mainstream favoured Communists over Catholic Spain, then the same people cheered and worked for the USSR in WWII. Why I am not surprised?
The racial/diversity/etc. card is always played by both parties (hardly only Democrats or liberals) when the idealism tag can easily be wedded to it.Then again silly identity politics can work for me, or why I don’t have to change my registration again and strategically vote next month for the empty suit (the ‘tolerably blank tabula rasa’) over the witch (and indirectly against the mad bomber) instead of the principled vote for Paul I’ve promised to cast:
Black Philadelphians will likely vote for Obama against their leaders’ choice.Looking on a possible bright side if the Dems win in November:
The only way that Hillary Clinton will become president is to persuade Democratic superdelegates that Obama can not win an election against John McCain. The Democratic primaries have pretty much shown that Obama garners scant support from whites over fifty years of age, even those who are Democratic in allegiance. This is Queen Hillary’s only shot and the stilleto is drawn.
Although Hillary Clinton is a repulsive woman, one should admire her audacity and willpower.
Buchanan actually differs from your typical conservative in that he tried to appeal to the average person for support and was attacked to no end. In fact any person who does so is sneered at as a populist. And its no accident that the liberals constantly pick elitists such as Will, Gergan, Hewitt, Brooks, and Kristol to represent conservatives in the media. These men are harmless since they have zero appeal to the average person.
Is it better to send McCain down in flames this November at the risk of some racial trumpmanship by Obama?Better than the mad bomber.
So many common white folk undoubtedly are being screwed far more by our War Regime than they are by any sleight-of-hand on race issues.
The neo-conservatives now in charge of the executive branch and the Republican Party might scurry back to their sewer holes along K Street and their Texas “ranch” houses, whichever the case might be. The current Wilsonian foreign policy might end. The troops may trickle home from Iraq. Fox News and The Weekly Standard might be shuttered in the manner of Detroit. Maybe [it] isn’t so bad to contemplate.
The presidential race is a farce and a joke, all fluff without substance, concentrating on some ideological, non-real world, left-wing abstraction that we have been brainwashed into believing is important. We live in the non-sensible fantasy world of TV.Identity politics are ridiculous but I can see the Hispanic vote becoming the more courted one in future.
As for the larger political sphere, blacks are only 12 percent of the population and a shrinking segment at that.
On the Sunday after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Wright said the attacks were a consequence of violent American policies.I knew that on that Tuesday morning when I realised a Cessna hadn’t hit the building by mistake. That part of the world doesn’t love the American empire.
