The Way We Are, No. 3
"Police protection" is an oxymoron. —Bernard Theursam
Lincoln: A new book has discovered yet another inadequately appreciated aspect of genius in the great founder of America. Lincoln and His Admirals tells the story of how Lincoln became a naval genius. As far as I know, there is no book about how Abe walked on water and healed the sick. Come to think of it, there probably is.
President Bush I proclaimed his creation of a New World Order. Then why are people who talk about the existence of such a thing still characterised as dangerous right-wing extremists?
Say what you will about the shortcomings of the American people, but we are a whole lot better at being people than our leaders are at being leaders.
In my observation, the vast American welfare system does very little for the working and deserving poor. It mostly subsidises well-to-do politicians and bureaucrats who pretend to look after the undeserving poor. The deserving poor are largely left at the mercy of the taxmen, the capitalists, and the government/medical complex.
The other day I had a revelation about how naive a large part of the public is. A local radio man was complaining, in reference to the big compensation being paid from government funds to the failed bank and speculator executives. They just don't understand the problems of the "average Joe" and how he lives, he said. This fellow really seems to think that if only the politicians and money men knew about our hardships, they would behave better and things would be different.
This is a part of that vague, widespread sentiment that "we" Americans are all one big happy family belonging to the same well-meaning government. Whereas people who value freedom have a natural suspicion of government.
Do you ever think that you live in a country where illegal alien criminals get free medical care and hardworking families descended from pioneers are bankrupted or do without medical procedures and drugs for serious illnesses?
Does it ever occur to you that you live in a country where in the final analysis the only thing that really counts is money and who has it? Such is the celebrated triumph at Appomattox.
Mr. Steele, the new chairman of the Grand Old Party, remarked recently that the party had to adjust its appeal to minority groups or else it will be seen as "the party of the Old South." There are so many things wrong with this statement, in fact, judgment, and morality, that it would take a book to unravel them.
Meanwhile the New Black Panthers parade city streets brandishing heavy weapons and declaring intent to kill every white man, woman, and child. There is no police interference and pundits wring their hands and wish that the Panthers would find more "positive" things to do. Unless you are prepared to deal with an FBI swat team, I suggest you don't try anything similar.
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"Meanwhile the New Black Panthers parade city streets brandishing heavy weapons and declaring intent to kill every white man, woman, and child. There is no police interference and pundits wring their hands and wish that the Panthers would find more “positive” things to do. Unless you are prepared to deal with an FBI swat team, I suggest you don’t try anything similar."
In the name of an abstract "equality", we get government sanctioned inequality. Go figure.
"the party had to adjust its appeal to minority groups or else it will be seen as “the party of the Old South.”
This is unfounded fear. The Republicans are the party of the New South -- patriotic, globalist and oligarchic. Democrats are the party of the Old North -- internationalists, socialists and destroyers. The rest of us are just part of the problems.
Robert, my take on the GOP is that it is being presented as the party of the new south, as you said, but it remains very much the party of the old northeast. The problem with the democrats is that their party has been infiltrated by New England interests to the point that the difference between the two parties are indiscernible.
The South has no place in American politics and is viewed as one big briar patch where the locals marry their sisters. This new head of the GOP must have been brainwashed into forgetting the treatment that black Americans have always gotten from the party of Lincoln.
Forget the Republican and Democrats and whatever comes out of their lying mouths. Both parties are controlled by the plutocracy (Old Yankee and British money) and their oligopolies. If Jefferson were alive today, he wouldn't be either given the lust for empire and greed.... "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing" for America. Unlike other leaders of The Republic, Jefferson felt that the people had a right to express their grievances against the government.........Remember 1776 and 1861.
FTA: "Does it ever occur to you that you live in a country where in the final analysis the only thing that really counts is money and who has it? Such is the celebrated triumph at Appomattox."
Clearly, the dead of Gettysburg did die in vain.
"Clearly, the dead of Gettysburg did die in vain."
It seems so in recent history, sure. But the powerful memory created by far outnumbered southern soldiers and how they often spanked their hapless foes cannot possibly be kept down forever.
Meanwhile the New Black Panthers parade city streets brandishing heavy weapons and declaring intent to kill every white man, woman, and child.
Can you say, "Double standard?"
My father was fond of saying something very much in line with common sense; "Two wrongs don't make a right."
This point of view does not seem to be a part of the reality of the Linconian "proposition nation" presently displacing the original form of American government––the one people actually chose by debate and voting. In the delirium of its egalitarian lovefest there seems to be no room for a single law governing both goose and gander.
Could such duplicity be rationalized by our self-proclaimed omniscient politicians claiming a transcendent vision of Macro-justice and fairness?––a visionary balancing of the scales??
Or...could it be pandering---nahhhh. Couldn't be that.
We have one "Janus" political party in this nation (Janus was a two-faced demi-god of ancient myth). Anyone who believes that the Republicans at any time as a party represented truly conservative ideals should look back at how the party hacks treated Ronald Reagan. First, they did everything they could - including getting Gerald Ford to renege on his promise not to run from his "appointed" position in 1976 - to prevent Reagan from getting the nomination. In 1980, that failed and they had to live with him but the party machine fought Reagan for 8 years almost as much as the Democrats did. Indeed, Reagan got help from Southern "blue dog" Democrats like Phil Graham of Texas while he got stabbed in the back by most "moderate" Republicans in Congress. When Bush I was elected - on the strength of being Vice-President to the most popular President of recent history - he spent his ONE term denigrating his former boss and kissing the collective backsides of the liberal Democrats.
Our elections are a joke. They had more honest contests in the old Soviet Union where at least they made no bones about there being only ONE ideology represented. No wonder it never matters who is elected - they are all the same or, like some of the newly elected Congressional Republicans in 1996, they are soon co-opted by the establishment.
The boys in gray didn't die in vain for they continue to serve as an example of the courage and values upon which this nation was founded. Furthermore, they were merely the first blow struck against what Lincoln started that now has come to full fruition under another bogus, corrupt Illinois politician. Sadly, they didn't prevail, but at least they didn't submit either - which is what far too many folks are doing today.
I think Chairman Steele should rename the GOP "The New Black Pander Party".
@9 Bryan -- That's funny! LOL!
@8 Valerie
True, it's getting to the point that the US of A will need to change its name to the United Socialist States of America, or maybe the United Fascist States of America. Washington DC is decorated with enough eagles and faggots to lead the observant tourist to think he's walking the strees of an imperial city.
I'm going to follow Alexander Zinoviev's book The Yawning Heights and call my adopted home "Ibansk," or in English -- Screw Town. In Ibansk the religion which nobody really believed in was called Soc-ism, or simply the Ism. The Party, which always touted progress, was a front controlled by the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood depended on a network of parasites, informers and careerists to strangle the population at large. This masterpiece from 1976 might well become America's survival manual.
I commonly refer to the two shams in DC that call themselves "National Parties" as Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber. They're two flavors of the same confiscation scheme, the difference being only which way the tax payer confiscated funds flow to buy their voter patronage network. Follow the money both in and out of these parties and you'll see almost nothing done or appropriated benefits those from whom the money has been forcibly taken. The Janus, the sign of Gemini, is an apt symbol on the one hand; on the other it has more intellectual dignity than either of these mobs deserves or most can comprehend. For instance, can you imagine that empty-headed, ruthless, power-hungry, manikin that calls herself a "statesman"...Uh, I mean, statesperson, Nancy Lugosi grasping the implications here?
I should not complain. After all, if someone is stupid and corrupt they generally won't do as much damage than if they are cleaver. If John Gotti had been much dumber he would have been just another two-bit street thug. But as it was, he reportedly had slightly above average intelligence. Let us thank God Pelosi does not have like gifts.
Right, too, Valerie, about Reagan. People have such short memories and so many talk show hosts who cling to the GOP (the Greedy Old Party) act as if Reagan was the RNCs shining knight, universally beloved. Not so. I was not politically concerned at all in Reagan's years, but even oblivious me recalls how much resistance he got from his own party, both before and after his election. It was scandalous. It was plain that he was soundly hated on both sides of the aisles––even to me, and all I wanted to do was teach my students and root for the Mets...they won.
The Black Pander Party––now that's a hoot. Lordy, I'm getting some mileage from that one.
Dr. Wilson,
Your words:
"Mr. Steele, the new chairman of the Grand Old Party, remarked recently that the party had to adjust its appeal to minority groups or else it will be seen as 'the party of the Old South.'"
Perhaps Providence is working for us in this. Maybe Mr. Steele will himself free us Southerners from the thrall of the Republican Party cast upon us by Nixon's "Southern strategy."
In 1972, the South was effectively thrown out of the Democratic Party, save for the party hacks of the South who have now put on the liberal cloak. It could be, if Mr. Steele has his way, that the Republicans will do the same. Southerners who still have some vestige of Southern character might then see that we as a region have no place and no future in the "new" America. The difficulty is, of course, that the South has been, particularly in its urban centers thoroughly Americanized. Now, we are being internationalized as thousands of legal and illegal immigrants pour into our land. The remnant with that last vestige will likely be small and isolated. Just maybe, however, those who have endured will be stronger in the character by which we were once and should be known.
I repudiate the notion that the men of Gettysburg died for nothing. They most certianly did not! They died to make the country safe for leftist totalitarianism. Their sacrifice was not in vain.
Did the soldiers die in vain at Gettysburg?
We all know the result of the war; a Yankee victory and increasing consolidation of government, leading to our present nightmare of Progressive seizure of virtually all the mechanisms of the central power.
We also know the South resisted the centralizing for 70 years, fighting off the Hamiltonians as much as they could. Once the southern statesmen resigned their positions and returned to their respective seceded states the Northern centralizers had virtually carte blanch to set policy––and they did it with a vengeance.
My question is this: What might have been the result if the South had not seceded, but chose to dig their heels in and continue to fight and resist in the government? How might the nation look now? Would such a choice have put off the growth of central government and subsequently restored constitutional proportions?
Can anyone take a stab at this?
I think the end result would've been the same although taking a lot longer. The zeitgest of that time was moving inexorably in a leftist, totalist direction and had been since before the time of Calhoun and nullification. The South was culturally and intellectually despised by the northern avant garde, just as it is today, and that vanguard was desperately seeking an excuse to nip any spirit of independence and break the "slave power" by whatever means necessary. In that sense, the southern fireaters were a gift from heaven to people like Garrison and Seward. Dozens of John Browns would have sprung up in dozens of places effecting more slave revolts. The quashing of the revolts would have caused outrage in the North and ever increasing campaigns of vilification. The federal govt under any President or Congress would have legislated an end to slavery, changing the Constitution and vastly strengthening the northern/New England power and economically strangling the South in a bloodless but ongoing anaconda campaign. Once the Constitution was changed,the new territories and states coming into the Union would have been much the same as they were in actuality with the North calling all the political shots. But, because the South would not have been physically laid waste, it would have resisted politically for many decades ensuring constant turmoil. The North was to determined to prevail in the rivalry and had the power to so.
The question holds tremendous fascination.
Ron, my own conclusion grudgingly agrees with yours, but thanks for fleshing out the reasons so well. I say grudgingly because I don't like to think that the Zeitgeist can't be resisted and that souls so committed can't go against its pull, not just as individuals but as a society. I guess because I don't like to think we're effectively dead. To explain, Chesterton says a dead body floats with the stream; only a live body resists and swims against its force.
Some how I like to think that it would have been possible to have life after Lincoln. There was a reaction against John Adams, his pomp and the alien and sedition acts, Jefferson was elected and the ill effects were reversed and cancelled. If the South had been more patient with Lincoln's administration, dug in a fought legislatively history might have repeated itself.
It seems to me we were in what is called a feedback loop that escalated hatred and fear on both sides, and Lincoln was by far the worst possible person to assume office at that time.
After Lincoln there might have been a more reasonable solution and peaceful secession could have resulted; one that assuaged many of the fears that sparked the conflict.
I know it's useless in some sense to speculate on this, since only one thing could happen. Belloc says the greater a movement of an age is the more mysterious and inscrutable it is. I don't dispute that. What concerns me is the fatalism so often associated with such thinking...the idea that we, as both a people and as individuals, don't really have a choice and the Zeitgeist is irresistible.
Tom,
While you're right that it's useless to speculate on what might have been, it's great fun. History is replete with what-ifs. I disagree with you, though, that the zeitgeist can be resisted. There aren't enough people with strong enough counter-ideas to resist it; if there were, it wouldn't be the zeitgeist but something else. For me, the trend toward Leftist totalism in the West began after the Reformation and, with a few hiccups, has proceeded in a uniform way to where we are now. Leftism is seductive, has great psychological appeal, although that's another subject for another day. But I like your ideas.
Ron,
It seems to me if the Zeitgeist is irresistible we are just puppets, both individually and collectively.
Chesterton says when a man stops believing in God he's ready to fall for anything. I think that is the key; holding on to Orthodoxy.
I see the trends of history, the great movements, the rulers that have come and gone and it seems to me the only entity that has consistently resisted and been persistently counter-cultural is the Catholic Church. Her doctrine has provided the remedy for the ills of every age, including the ills affecting those within the Church in particular times––witness the Counter Reformation, for example.
By inference we'd have to admit those individuals in those various ages who clung to the Church and its orthodoxy effectively resisted the Zeitgeist. They were either persecuted and/or executed by the leaders of the Zeitgeist, such as St. Thomas More, or they found a way to navigate around it and survive it–––but resist they did.
One might say, "Well, the Reformers believed in God too. They were spiritual leaders in the Zeitgeist and cooperators with the civil leaders that would establish the new order as well."
My response to that is simple; the God of the Catholics, with the Analogical, incarnational understanding of the Supernatural, and the god of the Reformers, who had accepted Occamist/Scotist nominalism, with its exaggerated transcendence, its absolutely unknowable God, its arbitrary God (Occam's term)–– is NOT nor can it be the same God. The paradigm shift of understanding from St. Thomas' analogia entis to Occam's equivocal vision means the understanding of who God is undergoes a qualitative change, and requires a completely redefining and reinterpreting of doctrine and scripture.
This absolutely transcendent, unknowable god of the Reformers provides the perfect Bobo to knock around for the philosophical skepticism and agnosticism that quickly followed the revolt of the so-called Reformers. Bad theology lead to bad philosophy: Luther and Calvin provided fuel for a Cartesian critique and a whole new philosophical approach to mining truth, beginning with the certitude of the self and working outward, while doubting all else. St. Thomas' approach had been essentially Aristotle's "acceptance of actuality."
Such an approach as Descartes cannot help but end in skepticism and the mind being hog-tied by absurd questions like "Is truth knowable?" and more absurd conclusions, committing the fallacy of self-exception, such as "There is no truth." (In effect, there is the suicide of reason by means of reason, accomplished by asking reason to bear a greater burden than God created it to bear.)
Put more simply, reject the understanding of God implicit in the Analogia Entis and you begin sliding down one of two slippery slopes; one leading to atheism, and other leading to a radically existential, individualistic, solipsistic understanding of God and a radically personalized interpretation of Scripture; ergo the 25,000 denominations of Protestants in America and counting.
So, I submit to you the Zeitgeist is resistible and has been effectively and repeatedly resisted by the Church, with her 2000 year and counting unchanged and consistently developed teaching on faith and morals. But the Zeitgeist has been resisted effectively by more than the Church. If I were historically more astute I'm sure I could provide numerous examples. One comes immediately to mind: Switzerland.
Switzerland, in the midst of the madness of European politics and wars in the past two centuries, has resisted. To-day they have a Calhounian republic, and the Cantons retain considerable sovereignty and provide effective resistance to the machinations of their central government. They have done this surrounded by totalitarian regimes. Without this effective resistance from the Cantons der Schweitz would already be a part of the European union.
My own sense is that in the midst of large forces pushing for world-wide consolidation there is a break-down and an equally powerful movement towards localism, and the empire's are collapsing, gradually yet inexorably. My sense it they will collapse a little at a time and them a lot all at once. This is my hope anyway. The Church forms a considerable support to those who would raise the banner of the patriotism so characteristic of localism.
Counter response???
I think that if the had South remained in the union and tried to get through the Lincoln years, there would have been no political weathering of the storm because too many powerful people in the North wanted war, since that was the only way that destruction of Southern political power, and total power and control over the South, could be accomplished. Lincoln would have rigged up a war to matter what.
Mr Ridenour, your last paragraph @ 18 rings true. What the consolidators - ensconced way up at the top of huge organisations - dont see is that the foundation, way down there at the bottom, rotten like the moldy, musty foundation of an old rustic house, is beginning to crumble (they wouldn't come down far enough to look at the foundation anyway). Not only are they blind to the coming collapse of the edifice, but they also dont see that since the foundation is crumbling, it may only take a strong wind or a push from someone or something unexpected to send them toppling even before the inevitable collapse. The current economic troubles are the portent of things to come.
Localism eats away at the foundation, dividing brick from brick, eating into mortar, creating it's own niches.
#20
We have a Chesterton reading group here in Dallas. One of the gentlemen in the group believes that the demise of the American Empire will begin openly and in ernest with the humbling of the American President.
At first I rejected that notion. But the longer I think about it the more wisdom I see in it. The Imperial power of America is rooted, since the progressives Roosevelt and Wilson, in the Imperial presidency. Humiliate that office and you go a long way to laying the ax to the roots of this poison tree that threatens any hope of restoring our original republic.
A humbled Emperor. That is a good thought.
Re: #14, Mr Ridenhour wrote"My question is this: What might have been the result if the South had not seceded, but chose to dig their heels in and continue to fight and resist in the government?"
My view is that the Yankees would have found some other pretext than secession for murdering 200,000 Southern men, women and children, black and white. The Northeast, particularly Massachussetts is some sort of accursed ground, as theorized by Lovecraft and King. The adversary is especially strong there, as evidenced by the short span of time it took for the original protestant pilgrims to morph into early 18th century unitarians.
Evil and infulential people among the Yankees serve satan and have done his bidding on this continent for 300 years at least. Southern Christians have so far resisted the urge to commit the foul deeds needed to match the Yankees evil for eveil. It's to our credit that our ancestors didn't revert to assasination, even though that may seem in retrospect a reasonable enough methhod of defeating the early radicals who sneaked into power with Lincoln.
Fighting the Yankees directly was never a real option. We struggle against powers and principalities which delight in seeing Christians mistakenly carry the fight to other humans as was done in Lincoln's war.
"The Northeast, particularly Massachussetts is some sort of accursed ground, as theorized by Lovecraft and King. The adversary is especially strong there, as evidenced by the short span of time it took for the original protestant pilgrims to morph into early 18th century unitarians."
You may certainly be right about the land being cursed. In fact, I don't have the slightest doubt of it. Evil stalks the dark hills of New England, and not just the dark hills only, but they remain in the towns that displaced them.
But there's always a correspondence to our natural state in the operations of evil––in that way they ape the divine. As the Church says, Grace builds on nature; grace perfects nature.
The Puritans were fatalists and self-righteous, eaten up with pride, and they were that way before they ever arrived on those bone chilling shores with the long winters and oppressive summers. I know it well. I lived there 17 years. No doubt the Devil was waiting them there.
They had no respect for free will and no taste for freedom or human dignity; their preachers operated like tyrants in their communities.
All they needed was the slightest taste of the so-called Enlightenment and their dogma fell away, leaving only their tyrannical, impotent fatalism eaten up with avarice.
The present liberal fascism we suffer with today is nothing more than their sick, twisted and vicious child on steroids. Just witness Perez Hilton's vile rantings because he could not coerce a public confession from Miss California that his particular psychological, emotional derangement is normalcy and should be raised to the sacred status of holy matrimony.
Nothing is holy to that pervert except his own wretched lust. And can you believe people are tolerating this! That there is no outcry-–no decency to be found.
I hate to repeat myself–––but can anyone seriously think the God-hating, infanticide crazed Republic is not long past the point of no return?
It is easily forgotten that the South was initially an ally of that evil place.Furthermore,that alliance was crucial in allowing that evil to first survive,and then thrive.The South had a hand in its own destruction.And the destruction of others as well.
25 It is easily forgotten that the South was initially an ally of that evil place
The alliance was accidental–––not one a choice, but an unfortunate circumstance of mere geography. Both were escapees. Unfortunately they escaped to the same place.
The Southerners were fools for thinking that which was unworkable for a thousand years on the Islands would finally be workable here––Alas, where ever you go, there you are. The English and Puritan fanatics sucked there, they wreaked here. As Dr. Wilson has observed, Southerners made the fatal mistake of thinking the Yankees were honorable men.
A costly mistake.
By the way, they still suck. One thing you can say in their favor; they've been consistent.
"It is easily forgotten that the South was initially an ally of that evil place.Furthermore,that alliance was crucial in allowing that evil to first survive,and then thrive.The South had a hand in its own destruction.And the destruction of others as well."
My view differs somewhat; The early New Englanders exhibited a belief in their own exceptionalism and were never actually allied with anyone. Though their mouthy leaders and the naturally violent New England citizenry first resorted to violence against the Crown, it was the mid-Atlantic colonies of New York and Pennsylvania and the Southern colonies who actually carried the fight and produced the soldiers and officers who saw the war through to its conclusion.
By the time there was any common enemy against which the colonies could ally themselves, the evil in New England was in full bloom and managed to benefit from the war and assume control of the government within a generation.
The stabbed in the back theme lives on...it's almost absurd comedy, but one has to appreciate the difficult position of orchestrating a narrative that clings to the Revolutionary Myth, Southern Nationalism, and those Damn Yankees. The war was over by '77-'78, peace was at hand... until the French (foolishly for her interests and the worlds) intervened with encouragement from Ben Franklin (didn't he dabble in the Hellfire Club after the Unpleasantness?) --hmmm, but the New Englanders are the bad guys?