Covid And Truth

Watching this if you don't have a Daily Wire subscription is like watching network TV ... the commercials are infuriating, but I think worth it.  

It covers a lot of facts about the strange response to Covid, the main one in my mind is "Why doesn't anyone seem to be curious about how Covid got started"?  (in fact they want desperately to close the case that it was not). The circumstantial evidence is very damning ... viral gain of function research was being done in Wuhan, Fauci was funding it, we know there was a conference call on which Fauci and a set of virologists were very concerned about this being a lab leak, and how they could "verify" that it was not. (they claimed they had found a "very similar" virus in a pangolin), however when guys like Ridley looked, it wasn't. 

If you take the time to look at the early part of the video, you will learn about protein spikes and ACE2 receptors, and why it is so difficult (thanks be to God) for nature to produce a virus that does human to human transmission. Is it "possible" that it can happen randomly? Certainly, someone does win the lottery after all. Occam would be skeptical. In this case, the Wuhan lab was specifically inserting genetic code to allow the virus to be highly transmissible to humans. 

This "Gain of Function" research was criticized as being likely to create the specific problem it was allegedly trying to prevent. An analogy used in the video is that it was like looking for a natural gas leak with a lighted match. 

I've long been convinced that Covid was a lab "leak" at least, if not an intentional insertion into the environment. Remember that just prior to Covid, our economy was booming, energy prices were low, and Trump was looking like an absolute lock for re-election. Trump was a huge thorn in the side of the Administrative State, Chinese world dominance, exposing Democrat weaponization of the "Great Reset", open borders, and many other things. From the POV of the global elite, defeating him was an absolute requirement from day 1 of his administration, and failure was not an option. 

Covid enabled the measures like massive mail in "voting" that averted what the woke viewed as an existential threat. 

In a world were killing millions of babies is considered to be a "moral good", as well as the destruction of the middle class and families, it is imperative that ALL means be used to prevent that disaster if you look at it from the POV of the global elite. Millions dying is just collateral damage. 

The last hour of the video discusses what Jordan and Matt think is even a more dangerous "virus", the rise of the woke authoritarian state, and the end of open inquiry. There is also some excellent discussion of how Christianity relates to the search for truth.  

I strongly suggest taking the time to view ... subscribing to the Daily Wire is not a bad idea either. 

"The Ruling Class": How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It

 https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8253-0558-0

A quick and worthy read, especially based on it's concise analysis of our current divide. 

Anyone that has set eyes on this blog, knows who "The Ruling Class" are. They are "the Swamp",  Mass Media, the Democrats and the RINOs, the Administrative State, Social Media, the Ivy League brats, etc

"Excellent Sheep" gives a nice overview of the educational  element of our rulers. As the book says; "The top schools select for compatibility, not excellence". I've read way too many books of this ilk, and as our recent "election" shows, we continue to accelerate toward the abyss.

While the Ruling Class thinks that Americans are unfit to run their own lives, most Americans have noticed that our Ruling Class has lost every war it has fought, run up an unpayable national debt, and generally made life worse.

Well, they have made life worse for anyone not in the upper 10% of income/wealth, and increasingly for anyone not in the top 1%. 

The counterpoint to "The Ruling Class" is labeled in the book as "The Country Class". It is hard to really out a label on this class because it is so diverse, but the big issues are religion, family, freedom, being a good neighbor (especially knowing who they are), respect for people beyond (or sometimes in spite of) their "credentials. "The salt of the earth". As they continue be attacked, The Country Class  is "losing it's savor" (especially in religion), but at least in the red states, there is a lot of salt left.

The book says of the Country Class that; "... its most distinguishing characteristics are marriage, children, and religious practice." I would be tempted to add guns. 

The ruling class has put a lot of labels on them ... the deploreables, bitter clingers, deniers, racists, fascists, etc. Humans are prone to label their perceived enemies negatively ... the Country Class is no exception, and anything bad they say about the Ruling Class is a "vicious attack". 

"... Rather, the sense of intellectual and social superiority over the common herd is arguably the main component of millions of people’s self-conception. Such people can no more believe that a Christian might be their intellectual and moral equal than white Southerners of the Jim Crow era could think the same of Negroes."

A quote which those of us of minimal intelligence and attention to current affairs see as obvious;

Since marriage is the family’s fertile seed, government at all levels, along with “mainstream” academics and media, have waged war on it.

The difficult part (isn't it always?) is what to DO about our rather pitiful situation? The book is painfully honest on how hard this will be. One would HOPE that the Republican Party could be the vehicle for this, but can it be? As is said early in the book ... 

Republicans are the way they are in Washington because Washington is a culture and a place that is run and dominated—not just politically, but socially—by Democrats, by the left. They’re the big clique. The Republicans also live there. Everybody wants to get along with those you live next to, ...

As I personally feel, and  I think the Trump phenomenon proves, faith in the Republican party to fight these natural tendencies is low: 

That’s because while most of the voters who call themselves Democrats say that Democratic officials represent them well, only a fourth of the voters who identify themselves as Republicans say the same about the Republican officeholders.

 As 2022 shows, the "Country Class" is divided and rudderless. There is a significant core that is Trump Forever (and nobody else), a significant number that are Never Trump (and will stay home if he is the nominee), and another (I think largest group) that are "I don't care about a party, just represent my Country Class rather than a person (Trump) or certainly not "Ruling Class lite". 

We have a long tough road ahead if we want a decent country again. We need to reverse totalitarianism's  (Communism, Fascism, Oligarchy ... or whatever we label the Ruling Class) "long march" with a march of our own.  

First we MUST get some election integrity.  Why does the Ruling Class fight election integrity tooth and nail? The fact that apparently a significant number of Americans can't figure out why, is not a good sign at all.

 

Woke Culture, Nick Cave

 https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Hope-Carnage-Nick-Cave/dp/0374607370

I subscribe to the American Spectator because it challenges me in especially arts, music, wine, food, travel, and architecture. It is considered to be "conservative", but in the classical sense of the word "liberal", meaning free markets, radical free speech, civil liberties under the rule of law, limited government, and some sense of  "enlightenment". 

It often covers people and topics that are "out of my lane", which I find to be important.

I would likely have never ran into Nick Cave, save for a review of the linked book from the current issue of the Spectator. I would normally have just done an incomplete blog and waited for Spectator online to catch up with my paper copy.

I didn't, because Nick lost his15 year old son Arthur in July 2015 when under the influence of LSD, he walked off a cliff and died. I have not had that exact experience, however there were times I could see something like it as somewhat likely.

The second reason is that although I'm going to have to do some typing rather than cut and paste, I didn't want this one to be semi-misplaced among the 100's of incomplete blog entries on my account.  I'm blessed to not have felt all of that pain,  but I have some of the pain of cancel culture. It seems nearly universal, though as Nick mentions, to some of the cancel purists, it is ecstatic.

A quote from the article:

For a man who by his own admission, spent much of the Eighties and Nineties in a miasma of heroin addiction, he is admirably clear-sighted about the greater hypocrisies of our age. He describes woke culture as:

... akin to to a fundamentalist religion impulse ... it may reflect on an unconscious desire to return to a non-secular society, and talks angrily of the "performative aspect to the theater of cancel culture that is essentially vindictive ... it's as if autocratic ideas of virtue and sin have come into play, and as a result, prohibitions and punishments have been put in place, enforced by a kind of callousness that, in my view, is akin to the very worst aspects of religion -- the fundamentalist, joyless, aspects of religion that have nothing to do with mercy. Cancellation is a particularly ugly part of it's weaponry and can end up as a kind of sadism dressed up as virtue"

I've been struggling through Durkheim's "The Elementary Forms Of The Religious Life". Durkheim is considered one of the main, if not THE experts on "why religion"?  In every human culture, no matter how primitive in time and space, and how similar at the base, every manifestation is ... sacred/profane, spirit(s), a creation myth, symbolic totems,  and how critical it is for every tribe/family/community/team/culture it is for a "social imaginary" to be shared for the health of both the individuals and the "group". 

I recently reviewed "The Rise And Triumph of the Modern Self" which gives some good insight as to why the woke culture came about.

Having just attended a wedding at a very fundamentalist church, it is clear that "joyless" is not a common experience of all "fundamentalists", and the Durkheim book shows that rigorous standards, prohibitions and punishments" are an integral part of obtaining the solid community and "joy" -- belonging, comfort, camaraderie, the feeling of being happy ...

Think Navy SEALs. The initiation is brutal, the bond approaches unbreakable, the sense of joy, pride and accomplishment is palpable. We can't all be SEALs, but we can be a member of SOME group of "like minded people". To "work" it has to be something "real", where you know each other F2F, have some "rituals" (like maybe just breakfast after church). The more rigor in the connection, the more likely the group will be significantly helpful.

Like exercise, training, ritual, symbols, rules, etc, there are parameters that have to be carefully aligned and calibrated  in order for the danger of the flame of faith can be properly respected and utilized. This takes decades, lifetimes, sometimes  millennia. We know that cars are dangerous, and we accept the danger (minimizing it as much as possible), in order to reap the benefits they provide. Life is often a tradeoff between risk and reward. To be real, it involves sacrifice.

 

We WILL all have a "worldview" that is either explicitly or implicitly a "religion" ... how much "choice" we have in what that is,  given genetics, family,  the probable existence of "spirits" -  Holy, Totemic, Tao, daemons, etc, along with community, mental health, physical health, etc, the range of "choices" (or enlightenment)  is a matter of little agreement for those that believe that the examined life is the only real life. 

While not a popular path today, the examined life seems like something worthy to give at least a cursory examination. 

I hope to get around to the book ... my stack is a bit deep and esoteric at the moment though.

Asimov's Guide To Shakespeare

 I couldn't find a good review of this book, and I believe I understand why ... Book 1 is 670 pages, Book 2 is 790. 

In the intro there is a reference to a fairly well known tale of a woman who read Hamlet and remarked "I don't see why people admire the play so, it is nothing but a bunch of quotations strung together". That is much less true of this book, however the lack iof general public comprehension of what they are reading is probably similar.

This book is much more history than "Shakespeare", although it does have a significant number of the more famous lines in it.  It focuses on the context of the period, what real or literary/legendary person the lines are likely referring to, and why.

Shakespeare was writing for both the common man as well as the wealthy aristocracy and royalty.  What a "commoner" needed to know about Greek, Roman, Italian, the Bible, English history, etc gives a little insight as to why even the "educated" our day, being "experts" of only their iPhones and the latest Netfix binge watch, have a hard time understanding why throwing a trillllion dollars into an "Inflation Rediuction Act" might cause some brows to raise. "Common Sense" is far from common today.

Also, if Shakespere had put in any obvious snark like I just did, he would likely be "cancelled" by literally losing his head. He was marvelously subtle with his little jabs. 

On Page 9, a helpful map of the Roman and Greek gods, with their role is presented. To cover a few of the more popular ones, in Greek we have Zeus, chief of the gods, Athena, goddess of wisdom, Ares, god of war. 

In the Roman version we have the corresponding Jupiter, Minerva, Mars ... you need to understand these references to keep up between the Roman and Greek plays. 

A very helpful page for those of us that don't have the memory of our youth, and received at best a very cursory understanding of the ancient world. Volume 1 covers the Greek, Roman, and Italian plays. The Italian plays are probably the most familar ... Love's Labor Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlermen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing,  As You Like It, Twelfth Night, All's Well That Ends Well, Othello, Measure For Measure, The Tempest. 

The book is loaded with inline cross references to where subjects are covered in the other plays, in order to better understand what is being covered ... the audience at the time of writing had a common understanding of the world they lived in, including the history, and had good memories ... uncluttered by shallow media entertainment.  

Asimov made a number of desisions as to how to present this vast environment to the modern reader, largely unaware of the world of Shakesphere. I think of it a bit as a kalidiscope of "worlds", with sometimes definite and sometimes completely fictional references to real, mythological, current, recent historical, fictional charachters invented for the story, etc. 

Asimov is in a way trying to put us into the Shakespere world  ... a BIT like todays "Marvel Universe", "Star Trek Universe", "Star Wars Universe", etc Think of a reference to "Captain Kirk" 500 years in the future. Yes, I know, that is shallow ... maybe "Winston Churchill", or maybe "Dostoevsky" would be a better example. 

The big differece is that while Shakespere is "fictional entertainment" it has much more connection to thew reality of the time. Maybe something like "The Crown" today. 

Do I recommend the book? To the common reader of today, I really can't, because they are likely to just be frustrated and lost. Certainly there are a decent number of people FAR more qualified than I to read and enjoy the work. Perhaps I'm an arrogant pessimist, I just don't think the audience to actually read it is very wide ... it does however look good on a shelf, unless it is full of tabs like mine is. 

Message To Christian Church (Jordan Peterson)

This just needs to be watched! 

 

Going Under With the Overclass

 https://newcriterion.com/issues/2022/4/going-under-with-the-overclass

Alonng with reading a lot of books, I tend to subscribe to somewhat esoteric periodicals ... to wit, the "New Criterion". One of my many woeful lacks is broader culture ... art, music, poetry, syphon, poetry, etc

I have no illusions of "catching up" at this late date, however, some exposure is at least humbling, and civilization/culture are certainly related. I find the linked article to be a worthwhile summary of our plight is more of an intellectual vs polemic tone. Some excerpts: 

We don’t often hear about the plight of the overclass, but our progressive elites have a problem. They have become too successful, and their success is starting to show poorly. Over the last decades, these elites have experienced the traumas of contemporary life very much in reverse to most Americans. Our difficulties have been their triumphs. Our restrictions have become their liberation. With ever greater efficiency, they have become the creditors to our debts, the marketers of our drugs, the title-holders of our homes, and the sellers of the fruits of our industry. They have risen as many others have fallen. They are good at what they do, and for this they have been handsomely rewarded. No one would deny a payment for a job well done. Yet these victories have demanded ever greater tribute from the vanquished. Progressive elites have taken their successes out on the rest of us.

From later in the article":  

“There has always been a privileged class,” said Lasch, “even in America, but it has never been so dangerously isolated from its surroundings.” Contempt now replaces elite obligation and noblesse oblige. “Simultaneously arrogant and insecure,” Lasch wrote, “the new elites regard the masses with mingled scorn and apprehension.” They now despise their countrymen, especially those who do not pay tribute to their superiority. Meanwhile, “ ‘Middle America’—a term that has both geographical and social implications—has come to symbolize everything that stands in the way of progress: ‘family values,’ mindless patriotism, religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, retrograde views of women.”

While "wealth" isn't all it is cracked up to be since it is short, often painful (meaningless, guilty, ageing, physical ailments, loss of loved ones, etc), it does however tend to isolate and give a view of "power" that can lead to finding out that the elites heads can be removed too. 

 

Twenty-five years ago, at the time of Lasch’s writing, America’s richest 20 percent controlled half of the country’s wealth. As of 2021, the top 10 percent control 70 percent of the country’s wealth. The top 1 percent alone controls nearly a third of the country’s wealth. The top 50 percent hold 98 percent of the wealth. That leaves the bottom 50 percent with but 2 percent, a division that has only grown more stark through the pandemic as inflation, crime, and learning loss now add to the disruption.

Way back in 2017, I wrote on 8 billionaires that owned half of the world wealth. At that point, they all met yearly in Davos Switzerland, and I'm quite certain that they and the new class of same continue to meet virtually, What could say "10" men that own by now well over half of the total wealth of the world. In this age where power is "ethics", what might they do? We are relying on their godless "morality" to not take severe actions to remove any threat from the "deplorables",  

If you applaud the killing of over 60 million babies and are willing to support violence to prevent a SCOTUS from putting even minor limits on your "right to death", where might you boudareies be? 

Would engineering a global pandemic that killed millions of elderly (they can be expensive to keep alive) cratered the economy of the lower class, allowed you to remove your greatest threat (Trump), while enriching you with further billions of dollars be beyond your "morality" ? 

The whole article is well worth the read. 

After Birth Abortion

 https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/now-a-california-bill-to-permit-infant-death-by-neglect/

People are busy and distracted these days, so what happens if you really wanted to kill your baby, but just didn't get around to it? As long as  murder in some states right up to the point the baby is coming out of the birth canal, why would anyone be so cruel to force a woman to care for a screaming, demanding baby until it can survive on its own?  When the comfort and convenience of women is your prime goal and you have no set of fixed moral values, why not? 

Thankfully,  the "progressives" are working hard to help you get rid of this inconvenient oversight. 

A little while ago I highlighted a shocking Maryland bill that would essentially decriminalize neglecting an infant to death in the “perinatal” period — i.e., through the first 28 days after birth — by preventing investigations and prosecution of such deaths that resulted from “a failure to act.”

Shocking? Let's face it, all life is "tissue", why be restricted by any arbitrary distinction like "birth"? We don't even know what a women is,  it MAY be a "birthing person",  midwives are being taught how to deliver a baby from a biological man. (I would prefer not to know the details of how this might be done)

The thing about "progressivism" is that it MUST "progress", or it would no longer be a valid ideology.  As with gay "marriage", Democrats will proclaim loudly that killing babies in the first 6 weeks or so is is "just talk",  it will NEVER happen. You can trust them. 

Here are BO and Hillary in 2008.

So post birth "abortion" up to 6 weeks is under consideration. It's simple progress! If you support and even celebrate the killing of 60 million plus in the mother's womb, why not kill them 6 weeks after birth? Moloch has always liked to hear some screams as humans are sacrificed on his alaer -- the post born will be even more to his liking. 

Even if the unconstitutional horror of Roe is overturned, that just sends it back to the states. The blue states may well have "kill your kid" trips with federal funding (age is really hard to determine)  -- or maybe greenies will just fund it. Kids are bad for the environment after all, and we have a planet to save while we enjoy cocktails and maybe a few underage children and our beachfront palaces. Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, etc have already shown us how that works. 

This quote is a bit off since Nazi Stands for "National Socialist", but the progression is what is important. 

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

I'd rewrite it today as: 

First they came for the babies in the womb, but I was born so I did not speak out. 

Then they came for the recently born, but I was an adult, so I did not speak out. 

Then they came for those who stood up for any sort of morality, so I did not speak out. 

Then they came for the Christians, and I decided I was not a Christian. 

As Christians, we are to be faithful even unto death. Might it not behoove us to stand up a bit earlier? Is there NOTHING that shocks us enough to get angry and ACTIVE! 

Rest assured, the Democrats are set to go to GREAT lengths to protect their sacrament of abortion ... they are already encouraging violence by publishing the addresses of SCOTUS justices likely to return the country to a Constitutional Republic (prior to Unconstitutional Roe). The beat goes on ... packing the court, abolishing the Filibuster, etc ... so far they haven't murdered Clarence Thomas, but it would not surprise me at all. 

Is there any point where Christians and people who have any idea of morality declare NO MORE, or at least "This Far and No Farther"?  

Is Man Good By Nature?

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/04/20/jane-goodall-finds-chimps-alas-share-human-savagery/f8620298-67f8-4ca7-ae45-32d5ede3d588/

One of the core tenets of  leftism is that man is basically "good" -- "The noble savage".  The assertion is that society that corrupts, and if society lets "nature take its course" ... usually focused on the goodness of removing sexual mores ("repression"), we would basically get back to "The Garden". 

Religions say that man is "fallen / not enlightened / etc" and needs religion, family, and society to be moulded into being "civilized" rather a violent savage.

The link is to Jane Goodall's observation that chimps were very violent forced a lot of the left to realize that there was a snake in the drug fueled "garden" postulated by many 1960s leftists. 

"Make love not war" turned out to not be as "natural" as the mostly wishful thinking "humanists" thought. 

Perhaps man needed to accept his fallen nature, and be Baptized and led by the Holy Spirit to actually experience love. 

QAanon

 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-nothing-can-stop-what-is-coming/610567/

The article is maybe a good summary about what the elites think of Q and QAnon. 

I like to think of myself as a skeptic with an open mind. My mind is closed relative to the basic teachings of the Bible and the teachings of the LCMS ... that is my religion, and everyone's mind is closed relative to their word view / faith, and our world view/faith colors everything we see ... is is the "glasses" through which we "see" the world. 

"Moral Believing Animals" is a great way to understand this. 

The elites see Q as a "conspiracy theory", and there are certainly elements of that in it. 

We need to keep in mind that over 50% of Democrats believed that 9/11 was an "inside job" ... on that, they are probably unified with a significant number of Q believers. To oversimplify, Gallup says around half of Americans trust the government, however only 37% trust the legislative branch ... it would be interesting to know how many of them realize that the giant Administrative State which is really the practical "government" is supposed to be under legislative oversight, but largely isn't - it is a law unto itself. It wasted 2 years iinvestigating a sitting president on the basis of fake "evidence" obtained by the opposing candidate in the election (Hillary), which naturally was NOT investigated! 

Things like the constant changes of position on Covid as well as the totalitarian "mandates" are not conducive to trust. Biden declared in September 2020 that if he had been president, nobody would have died of Covid . I agree with him that he shouldn't be president. I think his assertion about "no deaths" was strong evidence either senility, or putting politics FAR over country ... probably both. Oh, he is the "adult unifier",  saying it was a "Time to HEEL" for those not woke to the superiority of the left. 

Conspiracy theories are as old as humanity -- we all want to have "secret knowledge of what is REALLY going on". If you have the Holy Spirit within you, you know Ephesians 6:12 "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."

If we are in Satan's kingdom, we have lost the battle, and Satan is pulling our strings. Since he is the father of lies, he may make us seem hyper reasonable in the modern sense -- "progressive", atheist, materialist, hedonistic, etc

As I read the article I was struck by the similarities with Global Warming, Russian Interference, the Ukraine telephone call, Hunter. Biden, The Great Reset, the world being "out of oil" in the 1970's, Teddy Kennedy and Chappaquiddick, and a host of other things that are part of "the standard narrative" that nobody would call a "conspiracy" because they are often completely out in the open, yet mostly or totally false. If something is part of "The Narrative", can it be a "conspiracy"? 

Certainly not to the folks that believe and drive the narrative.

Like "The Davinci Code", nearly everyone loves a good conspiracy. 

The article is interesting even though totally biased -- "know your enemies". 

The Treason Of The Intellectuals

https://newcriterion.com/issues/1992/12/the-treason-of-the-intellectuals-ldquothe-undoing-of-thoughtrdquo

The linked is well worth the read, there is no need to understand the relationship of the classical personnages referenced to get the point. 

In its crassest but perhaps also most powerful form, this desire led to that familiar phenomenon Benda dubbed “the cult of success.” It is summed up, he writes, in “the teaching that says that when a will is successful that fact alone gives it a moral value, whereas the will which fails is for that reason alone deserving of contempt.” In itself, this idea is hardly novel, as history from the Greek sophists on down reminds us. In Plato’s Gorgias, for instance, the sophist Callicles expresses his contempt for Socrates’ devotion to philosophy: “I feel toward philosophers very much as I do toward those who lisp and play the child.” Callicles taunts Socrates with the idea that “the more powerful, the better, and the stronger” are simply different words for the same thing. Successfully pursued, he insists, “luxury and intemperance … are virtue and happiness, and all the rest is tinsel.” How contemporary Callicles sounds!

Or to put it simply, "might is right!". 

To succinctly explain "why the the title"?  

This is not simply to say that there are many anti-intellectual elements in society: that has always been the case. “Non-thought,” in Finkielkraut’s phrase, has always co-existed with the life of the mind. The innovation of contemporary culture is to have obliterated the distinction between the two. “It is,” he writes, “the first time in European history that non-thought has donned the same label and enjoyed the same status as thought itself, and the first time that those who, in the name of ‘high culture,’ dare to call this non-thought by its name, are dismissed as racists and reactionaries.” The attack is perpetrated not from outside, by uncomprehending barbarians, but chiefly from inside, by a new class of barbarians, the self-made barbarians of the intelligentsia. This is the undoing of thought. This is the new “treason of the intellectuals.”

Again, well worth reading the linked ... it gets a little esoteric in spots, but the key points are easy to pick out.  

The Unbroken Thread, Discovering The Wisdom Of Tradition In The Age of Chaos

 https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/07/01/a-guide-for-recovering-the-wisdom-of-the-past/

The book was of course irresistible to me. While the Bible talks of the foolishness of building your "house" (life) on sand, the modern West has decided that building lives on materialism, pleasure, career, technology, etc is a worthy goal. Solomon knew this is vanity long ago, and we are just proving it yet again. (Eccl 1:2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.He who has eyes can see that Solomon is still right) 

If you are only going to read one of the Sohrab Ahmari books, this would be my pick. If you think you want more, or if your objective is to come to faith rather than save the culture, I'd go with "From Fire By Water" which is a prequel.  

The Chinese, even in a Communist state, respect their elders and their tradition. Even in the US, those of Asian, Indian, Korean, etc are vastly surpassing those raised in the desolation of American "culture". The fact that ivy league schools have to limit their admission of these nationalities or the schools would be primarily "minority". Such has been the case for Jews forever ... they have been discriminated against because they were successful, because they had a specific culture, passed on from generation to generation that included a tradition of reading, education and adherence to religion. I also believe they are especially blessed because they are Gods chosen people -- and time has verified that. 

On page 78 he quotes rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: 

"He [man] must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man". Today, we must add, ANY work ... worship, study and reflection on our creator are required to be human. 

Page 97, "... rather ritual and religion are really at the core of the human matter",  As "Moral, Believing, Animals" makes clear ... we all have our morality, beliefs and religion, even though Western civilization is in tragic denial of this obvious fact, and the denial is causing painful breakage - in ourselves, in our families, in our communities, and in our cultures. 

Page 140, "Augustine provided the Catholic church with what in future centuries it would need so much: an oasis of absolute clarity in a troubled world ..."  "City of God" is a timeless treasure. 

Page 173, Related to John Henry Newman, "The individual soul was called to submit to the authority of an apostolic body tracing to Christ's first followers, and that body's judgements couldn't be wrong". 

I could spend and likely will spend a lot of text on this statement in the future. It comes down to "the Bible or the Pope"? Given the history of the church, it seems impossible to accept that the pope/church is "infallible".  Just on the issue of celibacy alone, which was not a requirement until the Second Lateran Council held in 1139, one can only assume that the church was wrong for a thousand years (Peter was married), or God changed his mind. Based on the homosexuality of priests, abuse of children, and inability to get priests, one tends to look to the Apostle Paul saying it is better to marry than to burn, than to the "infallibility" of the church.  

We need authority, and it is critical that the authority be correct and eternally reliable. As Hebrews 13:8 says "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and forever." 

So is our authority the unchanging word of God, or that of a human pope? 

The Bible is a much better foundation than even tradition. As the book makes clear, tradition is VERY important, however it is not God. 

My biggest concern with the book and with Catholicism is that "whatever the church says" is dangerously close to "whatever the culture says".  The church is seems close to approving abortion, gay "marriage", and who knows what else on that slippery slope. 

It is thorny if you are Catholic. Do you follow tradition or the Bible? 

Matthew 10:34-35 "Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law ..." 

The Christian church, and Christians are to be "the salt of the earth". Matt 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its flavor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled on by people."

Going along to get along is really not an option. Can a pope allow Joe Biden to strongly support abortion, gay "marriage", and transgender, yet still be the salt of the earth? 

Anton, Modern Machiavelli

 https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-art-of-spiritual-war/?fbclid=IwAR0412Bi_iXQ9zKBraOeWiTg23-vCzlRloalwLCyx9S9Amj8D2UecGeIWOI#null

The link is to an excellent, though maybe a little esoteric article by Michael Anton, the esteemed author of the "Flight 93 Election". 

Machiavelli has a poor reputation in Christian circles for obvious reasons, however, just because you don't agree with a lot of a person's thinking is no reason to trash all of it.  

Machiavelli faced a challenge so startlingly similar to ours that it almost seems as if history does repeat itself. To put it as succinctly possible, he sought to liberate philosophy and politics—theory and practice—from a stultifying tradition and corrupt institutions.

The following quote can be thought of as somewhat equivalent to the idea that Christians may need to use "unsavory tools" (like violence)  to protect their families, the weak, and the eternal souls of billions.  This is also dangerous, but possibly necessary. One of my mottos -- "safety first when lighting fires with gasoline"!

They had to admit in other words that in an important respect the good has to take its bearings by the practice of bad cities or that the bad impose their law on the good.

A quote directly applicable to our times; 

Our institutions are rotten. For those needing details on how, I lay it out in chapter 3 of The Stakes. For two fresher examples see, first, the way the government colluded with hedge funds to crush small online investors trying to block an all-too-typical financial sector wealth-extraction power play; second, look at Anthony Fauci’s transparently false denials of having funded COVID research in China, and the media’s (and government’s) shameless attempts to cover it all up. There is really not one institution left in America that is not corrupt in both senses: borderline incompetent, but also venal, self-serving and lawless.

Here is my review of "The Stakes".

As a conservative technologist this really hits home: 

The classics were for almost all practical purposes what now are called conservatives. In contradistinction to many present-day conservatives however, they knew that one cannot be distrustful of political or social change without being distrustful of technological change.

 The discussion of "sophistry" vs "propaganda" is illuminated in "The Ethics of Rhetoric". Basically, sophistry is "fake news", and "propaganda" is more like "long term marketing speech", normally linked with institutions once trusted, and for the uninformed, still trusted.  

Whereas sophistry is the art of persuading a particular democratic assembly on a given issue on a specific day, propaganda aims to shape public opinion broadly and, if not permanently, for as long as humanly possible. Strauss is saying that the classics’ reluctance to innovate—their dispositional conservatism—made them vulnerable to conquest via this new weapon. The conquest happened. Christianity waged a spiritual war against the classical world which the latter proved unable to resist

Machiavelli played the very long game ... which Christians likely need to play today, but with a completely different foundation. 

He proposes to do this via a popular-philosophic alliance in which the people are convinced by a new type of propaganda, disseminated by Machiavelli’s successors, to allow the philosophers to rule (indirectly) in exchange for philosophy providing what the people most want: material plenty and a modicum of security (P 25). Fat and happy, they will forget God, or at least bestow their gratitude on others. (Though there’s a lot more to it than just this.)

So philosophy begat science/technology which caused the masses to forget God and worship science.  Like most best laid plans of man, it is doubtful that Niccolo thought that philosophy, and even the concept of metaphysical truth, would be buried under the "stuff" and entertainment heaped on man in unbelieveale (at Machiavelli's time) plenty. 

A worthy read. 

The Distraction Curtain

 https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/the-distraction-storm/

Our age is one of distraction, denial, diversion, drift, deflection, and a host of other such terms of avoiding being here now, in the present. 

"Pay no attention to that man(reality) behind the curtain"  is the defining  metaphor for our time. 

Let's ignore trillions of dollars in debt, unfunded liabilities, and deficits TODAY, and rather focus on climate, "Critical" Race Theory, etc 

What is necessary to understand in the present is that our current cultural convulsion — the constant, distracting storm of outrage and panic and hatred and denunciation that plays out over social media and in real life every day — is being used as moral camouflage for failing institutions, from city governments to federal agencies and from the college campus to the commanding heights of media and technology. The burghers of the Bay Area won’t be around to comment on the weather in 100 years, and they’d much rather not talk about what’s happening down at the corner drugstore right now.

It is important for governments to look to the future and to understand history — planting trees under the shade of which we never will sit and all that. But governments at all levels also have a responsibility to the here and now, to the clear and present, to the local and the ordinary — a responsibility to see what is in front of their noses and, when necessary, try to do something useful in response to it.

The Symbolism Of Masks

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/the-mask-is-an-outward-sign-of-inward-things/ 

The masks are a wonderful symbolic statement of being a pious follower of Scientism, so don't expect them to exit quickly. Expect other symbols of being part of the "illuminati" to follow in their wake.

 Secularists have been lacking in iconography for their faith, and as humans, that is important -- no matter how pointy your head may be. The Darwin Fish tended to indicate an evolution focus rather than general materialist/scientist faith. The rainbow is too gay, Che Guevara tees can just confuse people, and body piercings, tats, etc don't really invoke "science", but rather paganism. 

The KKK liked hoods, but while a rainbow hood might catch on and be even more materially effective than masks (especially if it had a respirator included), it would be unwieldy, and as the linked column points out, it was never about "effectiveness". 

The use of masks as a social signifier is hardly new to the COVID-19 era. Face-coverings and head-coverings have featured in the social and religious life of Muslims (hijabs and kufis), Christians (mantillas, wimples, zuchettos), Jews (tichels, kippahs), Hindus (ghoonghats), and many others for centuries. The head-covering and face-covering impulse is partly rooted in modesty (both sexual modesty and modesty before God), but it also has a community-building aspect. When the Sikh spiritual master Guru Gobind Singh ordered his male followers to forgo cutting their hair and to wear turbans, he did so in order that, as he put it, his “disciples will be recognized among millions.” Outward signs of community and solidarity inevitably take on, to some degree, a depersonalizing role, as with the military uniform, which makes soldiers exactly what the adjective promises.

The Covid mask primarily screamed "I'm a follower". 

While the media worked overtime to claim that MAGA hats indicated the person was a brainless sheep, they were uncommon enough in most quarters to take some level of backbone to put one on. Like a Trump sticker on your bumper, there was a not insignificant chance wearing one could get your car keyed, or even physically attacked. Nobody keys a car for a Darwin or rainbow bumper sticker -- primarily for the same reason you see very few demonstrations by the "deplorables" (they are working). In the nearly unique case of the Capitol "riot" -- which was not a "riot" since the only person killed was an unarmed white woman veteran, nobody got a free tv, and nothing was burned, Democrats had to label the demonstration as an "insurrection". 

A worthy and thought provoking column. Do I need to start wearing a cross? 

This column also does a good (and simpler) job of explaining mask "virtue". 

But masking while fully vaccinated entails a baffling contradiction. We’re simultaneously to believe: 1) everyone must get vaccinated; 2) vaccines don’t work. Wrap your head round that. Because if your vaccination overwhelmingly prevents both transmission and disease (meaning it works), even unvaccinated people present no danger to you. So you don’t socially distance. You go to restaurants. You see your friends. And you don’t wear a mask. Yet, bizarrely, in surveys vaccinated Americans express far less willingness than the unvaccinated to resume once-normal activities like hopping on a bus, often by a factor of two. Calling that ‘cognitive dissonance’ may be too generous. Let’s go for ‘state-induced mass hysteria’ instead.

It is a delusional age on so many fronts that sanity is abnormal. From wind and solar are going to replace fossil fuels, printing trillions won't cause inflation, voter id suppresses voting, the Russian hoax, to Jeffrey Epstein himself, it is truly a mad mad world. 

The Horror Of America

 https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/a-pennsylvania-lawmaker-and-the-resurgence-of-christian-nationalism

The left is very concerned about any hint of patriotism. They have made it clear that when there was an "America", it was "institutionally racist", founded on whiteness, sexism, and noxious combination of horrors like patriotism, Christianity, the nuclear family, rule of law, capitalism, etc. 

The rather long linked column lays these threats to Wokeistan out very clearly using the example of a fairly obscure Pennsylvania legislator, Doug Mastriano. The following gives some idea of the horror of seeing Muslims as a threat. 

By the nineties and two-thousands, many white evangelicalshad come to understand Islam to be the primary threat to America. “White evangelicals were already worried about the growth of Islam, especially beginning in the seventies with the Arab-Israeli war and the rise of oil,” Sutton told me. “What 9/11 shifts is that Muslims are no longer just a threat to Israel but a direct threat to the United States.” This hostility also turned on Muslim communities in America. At megachurches, pastors preached about the spread of “sharia law.” Secular liberalism and movements for social justice were also seen as threatening. “In the early two-thousands, among conservative pastors, you’d often hear that the gays are softening up our society in preparation for Islam,” Michelle Goldberg, the author of “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism,” told me.

The Cadaver In Chief (Biden) has labeled "White Supremacists" as the greatest terrorst threat to Wokeistan.  Apparently in the past, he was deluded to thinking that Islamic extremis were a threat, but he is woke now. 

The idea that that old tired nation of "America" was as recently as the early 2Ks considered to be "exceptional", or even (horror!) "under God", is abhorrent to the woke elite like the New Yorker. 

As BLM states, "Silence is Violence". If you fail to speak out against the vanished "America", you are an enemy of Wokeistan. 

Get your mind right!

Hillsdale, Faith And The University

 https://blog.hillsdale.edu/online-courses/faith-and-the-university

Excellent podcast from Good Friday on the proper role of the university in culture. I enjoyed the message on Catholics and Protestants getting along especially. 

The Culture of Black Guns

 https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/in-defense-of-the-ar-15-cult/

Yes, "black guns" look mean. So do chopped, ape hanger, no muffler Harleys. So do lots of muscle cars. Lots of tattoos intentionally look mean. The list could go on.

As an owner of one full sized AR style gun, and one pistol style black .223, I can say that like a lot of "hot/mean" looking objects, these guns are both fun and functional. They are the most popular for a reason ... they are light, accurate, reliable, and maybe most importantly, readily customizeable. They are the "Barbie of the gun world" ... only they are real, and they really work. WELL.

The linked is worth a read.

The AR-15’s versatility and adaptability has made it the rifle of America’s militia, which is nothing more or less than America’s responsible gun owners. It is within the AR-15 cult that gun owners are likeliest to get the best education in gun safety, the best training for being a responsible gun owner at home, traveling, or on a range. It’s there that they may get the best understanding of where the gun fits into America’s tradition of republicanism. A country of determined men who have arms like the AR-15, or even significantly less-capable rifles, is almost impossible to rule without consent. Just take a look over at Afghanistan.

ARs, shotguns, and pistols are the core of America's "gun culture". In order to shoot, most serious gun owners are members of a gun club, which is a social activity. 

One of the fastest growing shooting sports is Practical Shooting, a challenging and fun activity where you will really learn how to safely handle a gun around others. 

American gun ownership is somewhat like golf ... although the adult beverages have to wait until after the shooting is done! 

The True And Only Heaven, Progress And Its Critics

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/27/books/where-has-progress-got-us.html 

The linked is a rather good review. The book pulls together MANY threads on the origins and criticisms of the secular religion of "progress". The fact that our modern conception of progress is "more, more, more ... easier, more pleasurable, more choice, etc. An attempt to even sample the underlying material would be a work of a year or more even for a dedicated rapid reader. 

The main assertion of the book is that "more, more, more" doesn't work because of limits ... specifically environmental limits. Curiously, Malthus, the secular god of limits is never mentioned. 

The book does cover the now increasingly well known fact that the destruction of the family, church, community, etc, even with lots of wealth, entertainment and sexual pleasure is a hollow life that often leads to suicide, or addictions that have the same early death effect. (see numerous rock and other "stars" who follow the creed of "Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse"). 

Having seen too many young corpses, I can attest that young corpses are not beautiful. I'm not a mortician, so I really do not know why, but my guess is that the old corpse looks much more natural, since the body was getting close to death anyway. For the young, once the radiance of youth is extinguished, the remaining husk is rendered ugly. 

I tend to disagree with Malthus and Lasch on the material limits. Human ingenuity is rather amazing, and necessity remains the mother of invention. This is covered rather well by Matt Ridley in "The Rational Optimist" which I have read, but for some reason failed to review and blog on. The linked Gilder review seems pretty accurate. I see the earthly limits of the human spirit without God to be much more troubling than material limits. Fusion, nanotech, mining asteroids, and probably much more mundane technological solutions have a way of "cropping up"  ... see Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution. 

The spiritual limits are much more problematic. It seems increasingly obvious that the "God is dead, let's kill the family and community as well, and then we will be free" idea has failed rather miserably, although bad ideas are a bit like zombies ... they often stagger along on momentum long after they should be in the grave. 

Mass Shootings, Whiteness, Media Playbook

https://spectator.us/topic/mass-shootings-colorado-presumption-whiteness-ahmed-al-aliwi-alissa/ 

The outcry of Whiteness, racism, etc was was immediate and loud when it was assumed that the Boulder shooter was "White". "If he had been black, he would be dead" was one of the instant memes. 

When it was discovered he was Syrian, Muslim, and likely mentally ill (not that the mental illness would have mattered if he was white), it was basically "never mind" ... oh, Gun Control! 

Certainly we would not need any sort of AI to replace the MSM. A simple table lookup would do ... I'm not going to do anything extensive here, but enough to get the idea. 

• White police shoot black man ... armed, unarmed, etc it really doesn't matter. (media) GO CRAZY! 
• Back police officer kills black man? (media) We will have to carefully (and quietly) look into this. 
• Police shoot and kill a white unarmed woman veteran when she was not a threat to the officer? (media) Not only is there no outcry, we don't even know the officers name, and no charges are recommended. It appears the officer is black (not that in a sane world, that would matter). 
• White man, shoots and kills a 8 sex workers, 2 of which were  Asian? (media) Not a lot of outrage, little finger pointing because he may be "christian", and a little murmur of "sexism". 
• Comfortably wealthy white man shoots and kills 60 mostly white Country Music fans in Vegas, with no known motive? (media) Short lived coverage (it is a record after all, but in this case it counts for very little. No real interest from MSM ... after all, most of the victims were white, and likely a high percentage of Trump supporters! 
• Black man kills another black person? Crickets. 

Naturally there will be bunch of demands for "Gun Control". If you factor out large Democrat controlled cities, the US would be on par with Switzerland. Even as it is, we just barely make the top 100 (94th). If you want to take the time to look at the rankings, you might just consider cultural difference as a factor. Russia is 56th, Jamaica is 3rd. 

As Solzhenitsyn sadly said, "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being".

Can mass shootings be stopped? Probably, at least private ones if we go totalitarian as we seem to be heading. Then the mass killings will be buried in trenches dug with backhoes, and the victims will just be "disappeared". So no outcry! Progress! 

Humans have always killed each other, and always will until Christ returns. When we broke our culture in the 1960's, the mass killings increased ( although they are still a tiny percentage) ... most likely. as we continue break our culture, they will continue to increase. 

"Civics Secures Democracy Act" Secures CRT

 https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-greatest-education-battle-of-our-lifetimes/

"CRT" Is "Critical Race Theory" ... BLM, Intersectionality, "Be Less White". etc. 

So we have a bill to attempt to make CRT the standard curricula for US students. 

In effect, we are looking at an effort to impose a new federal Common Core in the politically explosive subject areas of history and civics. Worse, the program in each of these areas does more than just lean a bit toward the left side of the political spectrum. Instead, it sharply breaks with fundamental assumptions in American education, first by promoting illiberal Critical Race Theory, and second by turning what should be a politically neutral classroom into a training ground for leftist advocacy and lobbying.

Another term we need to understand is "Action Civics" ... essentially teaching how to protest America. 

Action Civics conceives of itself as a living laboratory in which mere civic theory is put productively into practice. Students, it is held, best acquire civic know-how through direct political action, for example by protesting in favor of gun control or lobbying for legislation to address climate change.

You must "teach your children well" to hate their own country.