Out Of The Ashes, Anthony Esolin

https://mereorthodoxy.com/reviewing-anthony-esolens-out-of-the-ashes/

I liked the linked review. As that reviewer pointed out. Dreher's "Benedict Option" covers much of the same ground from a more philosophical vs theological angle.

A couple good quotes:

Here is a quick and generally reliable rule to follow. If people have always said it, it is probably true; it is the distilled wisdom of the ages. If people have not always said it, but everybody is saying it now, it is probably a lie; it is the concentrated madness of the moment.

We are servile for mass entertainment, when we could be free with our hearts and ourselves for the worship of God, which truly builds up a human community, rather than just herding people in an aggregate of many thousands who do not know one another, and whose only common bond is that they prefer a certain style of uniform.

I found this to be the most accurate and pithy quote I've seen on "higher education". For a longer version of this sad truth, see "Excellent Sheep".

You sink yourself in debt to discover that your sons and daughters have been severed from their faith, their morals, and their reason. Whorehouses and mental wards would be much cheaper. They might well be healthier, too.

On manhood he says the following, while I believe it is wise for Christians especially to read this book, "Fortitude" is more generally reachable, and even for Christians, it may be important to read to establish enough fortitude to make it through Esolen. 

But the boy must be made into a man; nor is it true that, once he has established himself as a man, he need never worry about it again. Manhood is risky. It must be publicly affirmed, and you can lose that affirmation by cowardice or effeminacy.

I could go on forever, however the book must be read by Christians who care -- summaries are not enough. We need to separate ourselves from the many entertainments and distractions that Satan has heaped upon us. As age advances, I increasingly believe that the Amish have it much more right than I had previously imagined!

Christians must repudiate the whole sexual revolution. All of it. No keepsakes, no exceptions. Remember Lot’s wife.

BLM, ALM, NLM -- You Are Likely A White Supremacist

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/body-cam-footage-of-floyds-arrest-leaked.php

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/08/10/ibram-x-kendi-prophet-of-anti-racism/

We know BLM -- "Black Lives Matter"
We kinda know ALM '' "All Lives Matter" is racist ... we will cover that here

I argue that in the face of BLM and the rejection of ALM, we really get NLM -- "No Lives Matter", only POWER matters.

The first link gives proof to what anyone that has paid attention knows -- George Floyd died of a drug overdose. However that does not fit the current narrative mandated by Deep State power, which is where the second link comes in. Introducing "Ibram X Kendi" and "anti-racist".

Kendi belongs to the generation of activists who understand affirmative action to be an immovable part of the U.S. Constitution — and he has reason to understand it this way, if the complaisance of the Supreme Court is anything to go by. He does not even pay lip service to neutral treatment. If practical equality for blacks is the imperative, discriminating on their behalf is going to be necessary, and Kendi grasps the nettle:

"The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. . . . The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination"

So the idea of "equality" has not produced the results that Kendi deems "just", therefore current Affirmative Action" is racist. An aid to understanding this is "Dog Whistle Politics" -- if a black person says you are racist and you attempt to defend yourself, that proves you are racist.

In African-American studies departments you can address racial problems in an atmosphere of esprit de corps and ideological unanimity. Because they traditionally had a different academic culture than other university departments, it long seemed natural to ignore them. But their very isolation has turned them into mighty bases for consciousness-raising, dogma construction, and political organizing. They are Internet Age equivalents of 19th-century Fenian Brotherhood lodges. It is from these hives of like-minded activists that the country’s human-resources departments have been staffed. That helps explain how, within hours of the first urban protests in June, hundreds of far-flung corporations had spontaneously and independently produced identical press releases and Facebook posts, identical right down to the catchphrases.

Americans were doubly stunned: First, that these intra-corporate cliques could compel one celebrity after another, starting with New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees and Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy, to endorse Black Lives Matter, which most Americans had considered a radical movement just days before. Second, that they had been asked to surrender so much that they once considered part of their constitutional heritage, starting with rights of association and speech. These limitations seem to be restricted to the relations between companies and their employees, and thus of no concern to the Constitution at all. But the ultimate cause of the restrictions is the pressure brought to bear on corporations by regulators and litigators in the name of civil rights.

As is well covered in "The Great Society", Democrats upgraded  to "Racism 3.0" via the Great Society  -- this time power is coming for YOU!  Racism 1.0 was Slavery, 2.0 was Jim Crow ... the coin is POWER!  Race is mere mechanism. Power doesn't care what color the people it enslaves are. and the "whip" is more effective when it is the Administrative/Deep State rather than packs of dogs, shotguns and nooses.

Kendi’s aim is to broaden the privileges of those entitled to fling the word “racist” around, and to extend its power to ever more marginal misdeeds.

All this requires is a few redefinitions, and here the law appears to be on Kendi’s side. With its Bostock decision this spring, the Supreme Court went into the business of policing transphobia, a word that was not even in the dictionary when Barack Obama arrived in the White House. Most Americans can’t yet spell it, but anyone can be haled into a courtroom for it. In late June, when YouTube removed several videos it described as white-supremacist from its site, everyone cheered. The Financial Times even called the move “inexplicably delayed.” But “white supremacism” is in the eyes of the beholder. In Kendi’s book — which, it bears repeating, has been for much of this summer the best-selling nonfiction book in the United States — the line between white supremacists and climate-change deniers, between white supremacists and opponents of Obamacare, is hard to draw or discern, and a harried schoolteacher who doesn’t call on enough black students is a racist abuser deserving “zero tolerance” from the law.

Can enough Americans tear themselves away from their entertainments and distractions to get this at some level?

Color me skeptical.

Fortitude, Dan Crenshaw: American Resilience In The Age of Outrage

https://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Book-Review-Fortitude-by-Dan-Crenshaw-15236296.php

First of all, a big thanks to "Seattlepi" for doing a review of this hyper excellent work for our times ... as the reviewer says --  "I recommend this book to anyone who finds the current political environment disturbing, whether you think of yourself as Left or Right or in between. Yes, Crenshaw is a Republican, but this book is not about political parties. He critiques ideas on both ends of the political spectrum." 

Indeed! 

Crenshaw is FAR more capable than me, and a much better writer  -- he weaves much of the wisdom of "The Coddling Of The American Mind", Marcus Aurelius, the Bible, "Antifragile", Zen,  and more into a "page turner" 250 page gem! 

One of the many favorite quotes: ""You have a duty to try hard to not offend others, and try harder to not be offended"!

On page 164 he talks about why it may be that suicide rates among the religious are lower than the general population. 

"The reasons for this are likely complex, but I believe that one reason is a sense of meaning that is greater than ourselves. Without it, nihilism can infect the head and the heart. and with it a sense of emptiness,  a sense of being lost. If we are truly just walking skeletons stuffed with meat and tissue, following the commands of our firing neurons, then what is the point of it all"? 

 If you are affected, SEEK HELP!  I also  highly recommend "Man's Search For Meaning" ... for the less affected. 

Page 140 has an insight that could save our culture -- although without the PRACTICE of some of the mental toughness regimes outlined in the book, unlikely. The pressure to conform to the "virtue" of outrage is huge.

"This normalization of outrage has consequences. The result is an equally extreme -- and unhealthy -- view the outrage mob as a bell shaped curve, with the most nuanced responses in the middle ("I'm sorry you took my comments that way but this is how I meant it"), the most subservient responses on the right side ("I apologize deeply for my insensitive comments"), and the most unapologetic on the left ("I'm not resigning!")" ... "Everyone has two options now: show deep shame, or show no shame. The middle option of showing a little amount of shame in proportion to the actual offence is hardly an option at all,. There is simply no reward for it. No grace is given, no outrage will subside" 

... and so we get more outraged!  Social Media and the media in general encourage outrage because it gets "more clicks", and increasingly the political parties follow the same devastating strategy -- breaking up  friendships, families, community, and our nation itself. The tough minded person will typically (not "always"!) be making amends from the middle of that curve, or just being silent. Why? Because they actually didn't mean to give any offence, and if they DID want to offend you, you would be very well aware of it! Mostly they operate from a place of "stillness" (in the book), so what they do and say is "intentional". That doesn't mean it is "right", nor is there any "all/always" -- even SEALs are human, just maybe a bit "better human" than most of the rest of us in the "stillness" factor.

Yes, respecting SEALs means a form of  "hierarchy" -- a bad word for some in our time. Only you can decide if ultimate "wokeness", or "ultimate fortitude and resilience" are in your goal set -- or if they are compatible in any way with your "identity".

In this age where "identity" is often seen as immutable, and CRITICAL at the same time, this book is a threat. It claims that there are things such as "better and worse", and that certainly, ALL LIVES MATTER ... a statement that is seen as damning as saying "I am a witch" in Salem MA in 1692.  

I've bought a number of copies of this book and I'm handing them out to some. If you get one, it DOES NOT mean that I think you are someone that really needs it. We ALL need it -- and I'm in the top 1% of the needy! 

It ends with a statement that is at a minimum a good start for creating a nation with fortitude. Perhaps to "SEAL our future?" ... 

“I will not quit in the face of danger or pain or self-doubt; I will not justify the easier path before me. I decide that all my actions, not just some, matter. Every small task is a contribution toward a higher purpose. Every day is undertaken with a sense of duty to be better than I was yesterday, even in the smallest of ways. I seek out hardship. I do not run from pain but embrace it, because I derive strength from my suffering. I confront the inevitable trials of life with a smile. I plan to keep my head, to be still, when chaos overwhelms me. I will tell the story of my failures and hardships as a victor, not a victim. I will be grateful. Millions who have gone before me have suffered too much, fought too hard, and been blessed with far too little, for me to squander this life. So I won’t. My purpose will be to uphold and protect the spirit of our great republic, knowing that the values we hold dear can be preserved only by a strong people. I will do my part. I will live with Fortitude.”

I will, with the help of God!  

Is It OK To Protect Federal Property? Barr

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/28/bill-bar-testimony-live-updates/


"Reclaiming my time".


The Barr hearing was another great example of the fact that the US government has turned into a partisan farce. The only "rule of law" is that Democrats Deep / Administrative State win ... end of story. If the real rulers -- meaning the Democrat / Deep-Administrative State declare that riots, attempting to burn federal courthouses, etc are "good", they are -- Barr was appointed by a Republican, he is a pariah! He can be treated as such! 

Barr replied that U.S. marshals and other federal agents have a duty to guard Portland’s federal courthouse from people tossing fireworks and trying to vandalize and break into the building. He said they are under siege in that building and need help dealing with a nightly barrage of fireworks, fires, and attacks. Multiple law enforcement personnel have sustained serious injuries, Barr said.

“We are on the defense, we are not looking for trouble, and if the state and the city would provide the law enforcement services that other jurisdictions do, we would have no need to have additional marshals in the courthouse,” the attorney general said.

Cancel The Democrat Confederacy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/the-confederate-roots-of-the-administrative-state/

For a bit deeper discussion on this same theme, see this NR article. 

If BLM was in any way honest, the Democratic Party would absolutely have to be "cancelled" -- name changed, symbols removed, and all democrats from history expunged. If you actually look at history, Aunt Jemima is a far better symbol to hold in reverence for blacks than the democrat jackass. 

“Aunt Jemima is representative of the countless Black women who were and are the essential workers,” she added. “Nancy Green in particular is the ideal woman to salute.”

Democrats are the party of Slavery and Jim Crow in the past, and now the Deep / Administrative State which has enslaved blacks in broken homes and crime to the point where the black family is more broken than it was in either Jim Crow or Slavery. 

However, as classic work by Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman has shown, despite the horrors of slavery, overall, during the pre-emancipation era, about two-thirds of enslaved families had two parents—far more than today. More recent revisionist work has stressed that, while forced separations were always an important part of the picture, the two-thirds figure remained dominant (Wilma Dunaway is especially handy on this). And this tendency continued into the Jim Crow era, contrary to a false sense one might have of daily life in a black ghetto of the 1930s and ’40s—think Richard Wright’s 12 Million Black Voices or Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land. Namely, it is wrong to suppose that, amid the misery of those neighborhoods, all but a sliver of children grew up without a dad. That is a modern phenomenon, whose current extent—fewer than one in three black children are raised by two parents—would shock even the poorest black folk 100 or even 50 years ago.

When "progressive" politics is your religion, "truth" IS power -- and whatever means you use to get and control that power -- Slavery, Jim Crow, Welfare, Deep-Administrative State, etc is "moral"!

Woodrow Wilson was the father of the modern administrative state, and of the theories of a “living constitution” that enable its untrammeled growth. Born in Virginia in 1856, Wilson was a child of the Confederacy, a student and at times an admirer of its governing system, a sharer of many of its worst prejudices, and an apostle of the same theories that animated its administrative innovations. His father was a preacher who delivered sermons offering biblical defenses for slavery and sided with the Confederacy even at the expense of permanently alienating his northern relations. Raised in Virginia, Georgia, and North and South Carolina, Wilson recalled in his youth seeing Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee in person. A speaker dedicating the “Silent Sam” Confederate monument at the University of North Carolina during Wilson’s first year as president of the United States recalled:

A year or two ago diplomas were given by our University to all the students who had interrupted their studies to enter the military service of the Confederacy. Mr. Wilson, then President of Princeton University delivered these diplomas. One man only of the Class [that Matriculated in 1862] wearing the Confederate uniform, came forward to receive that highly prized token. It was the humble individual who now addresses you. At the dinner, later in the day, Professor Wilson greeted me with the remark that in many years nothing had so much touched and warmed his heart as the sight of that Confederate uniform.

Deep State vs Flynn

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/07/d-c-circuit-will-rehear-the-flynn-sullivan-case-en-banc.php

Flynn has been assessed as "not guilty" by the Justice Department. In the old days, we had now abandoned idea of EVERYONE was assumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Now we have the system where if there is an R by your name, you are existentially guilty -- a stain which can't be removed even by a department of Justice, if that DOJ is reporting to a president with an R next to his name. 

Miranda needs to be re-written -- "If you are a member in good standing of "The Party" (TP-D) you are INNOCENT as long as TP affirms your good standing. If you are not affirmed as as being fully and unqualified as a member of TP,  you are GUILTY! and you will be prosecuted in any way TP desires, including death. You have been warned!" 

The link is worth the short read -- the punchline is just because the law exhonorates you, the mostly TP controlled judiciary may still convict! 

In the meantime, though, Judge Sullivan gets to continue his lawless harassment of Gen. Flynn, and Flynn’s legal fees continue to mount.

Obama Filibuster Flip -- Filibuster for Me, Not for Thee

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/barack-obama-filibuster-hypocrisy/

Old news for readers of this blog ...  one standard for Democrats, the opposite standard for Republicans. The well known totalitarian "standard" -- the "standard" is whatever power says the standard is TODAY! It may be the opposite of what it supposedly was a minute ago, however THIS minute you better bow (or maybe kneel). 

In April of 2005, Senator Barack Obama took to the floor of the United States Senate and passionately spoke out against Republican efforts to end the filibuster. Then a rising star in the Democratic Party, Obama noted that despite the pressure partisans might feel, it was imperative to “rise above an ‘ends justify the means’ mentality because we’re here to answer to the people — all of the people — not just the ones wearing our party label.”

This week, Obama made precisely the opposite argument during John Lewis’s funeral, contending that eliminating a vital check on partisan power was justified as long as Democrats got the policies they desired.

We live in a time when Orwell's rewriting of history is commonplace and most people are fully ignorant of it. Witness the Boston Marathon bomber being changed from a "refugee" to an "asylee" to preserve the fiction that "refugees" are never terrorists!  

Deconstruction, Revolution

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/protests-riots-democrats-media-blame-trump/

Having read the top linked yesterday, which in summary says "the silent majority is out there, they are just quiet". 

We are in the midst of a revolution, a cultural and racial one, that seeks to refute the past, damn the present, and hijack the future. So far, however, we have only heard from one side, the revolutionaries and their enablers themselves.

Then today, in Power Line, I see this ... 

We are approaching a very weird election in which one of our major parties is taking a stand in favor of rioting, looting, arson, destruction of federal property, and violent attacks on law enforcement. The Democrats seem to think that this is a winning formula. If it is, our republic is doomed. While we may be in deep trouble, I don’t think we are that far gone yet.

One more thing: perhaps the only non-rhetorical question in today’s hearing came from Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell: “Do you commit to not release the Durham report before the election?” Barr’s answer: “No.” Obamagate is the reason why the Democrats undertook to demonize Attorney General Barr before he was even sworn in. They know it is a chink in their armor, and they have no defense against the facts except to defame the messenger. Hence their over-the-top attacks on William Barr. Whether the Durham report and/or indictments will arrive in time to do any good is another matter.

What we see here is a repeat of the elections during Reconstruction under Grant ... 1869-1877. Now as then, Democrats wanted to defeat the federal government in enforcing the rule of law and the Constitution. From the time of the Civil War, up to and including today, the Democrats remain the party of POWER -- the whip, the lynch mob, the riot, fake elections where voters are intimidated, illegal voters are allowed to vote, or the votes are just "mailed in" to be "counted" by Administrative State Democrats, and maybe most of all, depersonalization and isolation -- be it a white hood or a mask, it is effective! 

Do I still have hope that PL is right, and the Durham report will be decisive? Certainly a tiny bit, however having already seen the fake "Russiagate" totally exposed as the greatest political scandal in American history where the Deep State aligns with the MSM and Democrats to attempt to frame a duly elected President, the scheme is exposed, and the people yawn -- just going back to binge watching
entertainment" -- that hope is very small. 

Covid Death Returns To Normal

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/07/whither-coronavirus.php

Not a lot to add ... in the real world, Covid is effectively over ... sure, like many other things, people continue to die at "a rate".

The Covid Coup, Christian Failure

https://americanmind.org/essays/the-covid-coup/

A long but worth it article on what Covid is really about. NOTE -- what I, this author, and nearly all are saying when we question things about Covid is about the RESPONSE to the Covid virus!  Yes, there IS a virus, YES, it is deadly for CERTAIN GROUPS OF PEOPLE, and YES, there are ISOLATED cases of "young healthy people" dying of it!

In my small town, a young boy died from having his tonsils out. Like all such deaths, it is likely under reported (no surgeon wants to admit that this elective surgery "caused" death). So YES, there WILL be a few young healthy people that "die of Covid".

Just as a horrible plane crash does not "prove" that flying is dangerous (just that it isn't perfectly safe), so, a few young healthy people dying of Covid is something that needs to be put in the context of magnitude. Much of what is wrong with Covid reporting and response is that the reporting and response has an agenda that is wildly different than the reporting and response to previous very similar viruses.

I personally believe we humans are quite arrogant to say that we "cause" much of anything -- life and death are in God's hands, pregnancy is a gift, death comes when and how God decrees it will. We ought not be fatalistically careless,  and we certainly would be well served to be REALISTIC in the limits of our oh so limited mortal "power"!

The article makes a solid case for the following:

What history will record as the great COVID scam of 2020 is based on 1) a set of untruths and baseless assertions—often outright lies—about the novel coronavirus and its effects; 2) the production and maintenance of physical fear through a near-monopoly of communications to forestall challenges to the U.S.. ruling class, led by the Democratic Party, 3) defaulted opposition on the part of most Republicans, thus confirming their status as the ruling class’s junior partner. No default has been greater than that of America’s Christian churches—supposedly society’s guardians of truth.

I have been so blessed to have a pastor that did not fail, in fact, he stood up courageously through the entire trial and continued to provide the blessings of Holy Preaching and Holy Communion.

The bottom line here is "Whom do you believe"? Science?  There is no such thing as a "belief in science" -- as Feynman says --  “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says ‘science teaches such and such’, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach it; experience teaches it”

To put it more simply, scientists don't believe experts or much of anything -- their domain is experimentation, EXPERIENCE!

And so is the Christian believe -- the experience of Communion with Christ through his body and blood! For believing and practicing Christians, "To live is Christ, and to die is gain"! To put our belief in "science" or "experts" rather than Christ to endanger our eternity!

Trust in the LORD!