What Is History? Part 29
There were false prophets among the people (whose prophecies were belly wisdom) as there shall be false teachers among you. . . . And through covetousness with feign words shall they make merchandise of you. Covetousness is the conclusion: for covetousness and ambition that is to say, lucre and desire of honour is the final end of all false prophets and of all false teachers. —William Tyndale
It has ben remarked facetiously that an intellectual is a man who can hear the "William Tell Overture" and not think of the Lone Ranger. —Odie B. Faulk
"Hell," he said, "I'm not a thinker, I'm a college professor." —the protagonist in Robert Penn Warren's A Place To Come To.
We had no law but love, and no occupation but labor. No government, no taxes, no public debt, no politics. —recollections of an oldtime resident of Tombstone AZ
Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier or gone to sea. —Samuel Johnson
The end is where we start from. —T.S. Eliot
One never knows how far the poison spit by serpents will reach. —A. Perez-Reverte
Reality often amuses itself by confirming on its own what seems to us to be fiction. —A. Perez-Reverte
The Swiss are the most free and the most armed people in Europe. —Machiavelli
A nation is never defeated until the hearts of its women are on the ground. —attributed to a Cheyenne Indian
Of what value then are paper constitutions and oaths binding officers to their preservation, if there is not intelligence enough in the people to discern the violations and virtue enough to resist the violators? —Jefferson Davis
But some said, shall Christ come out of Galilee? . . . . for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet. —response of the Pharisees to those who believed in Jesus, John 7: 41, 52
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Dr. Wilson,
Your words:
"A nation is never defeated until the hearts of its women are on the ground. —attributed to a Cheyenne Indian"
The hearts of our women are "on the ground." We create and sustain ideological movements such as feminism and fiscal and economic realities such as a devalued dollar to drive them out of the home and into the military and into the grind of the workforce, creating thereby a rapid succession of generations of children for whom marriage is alien and a dysfunctional family is "normal."
It has ben remarked facetiously that an intellectual is a man who can hear the “William Tell Overture” and not think of the Lone Ranger. —Odie B. Faulk
Wow! I made it. And all along I thought you had to know something to rise to that lofty status. Uh... Are musicians excluded??
Dr. Wilson,
Your words quoting Jefferson Davis:
Of what value then are paper constitutions and oaths binding officers to their preservation, if there is not intelligence enough in the people to discern the violations and virtue enough to resist the violators? —Jefferson Davis
No medieval king or prince had a monopoly on coercion, and none was able to define the limits of his own power, not because there were not kings and princes so inclined; indeed a few got awfully close. Authority and the commensurate power were divided among various commonwealths: the Kaiser, the Church, the free cities, the competing jurisdictions, the sheer number of principalities and kingdoms.
Though the compact of the Constitution, the thirteen republics which had seceded from the Crown, created a union of constitutionally federated republics which, each according to its tradition and custom, reserved most of the authority and attendant rights which they had enjoyed since their respective inceptions and lent in stewardship, delegated and well enumerated, some rights to the general government which was their mere agent. While within the contract, the general government was established in three branches, each with checks and balances on the other, the overriding responsibility to monitor and enforce the contract lay with the states through the instrumentalities of interposition, nullification and ultimately secession. The principals of all contracts must monitor and enforce contracts. They fail to do so at their peril . In the end, the people within their respective states must be armed if the contest between the agent and the principals or among some of the principals becomes frictious unto violence.
The Hobbesian state defeated the union of constitutionally federated republics in 1865. It is a sad fact that the Hobbesian state hides itself behind the Constitution, a document whose meaning ceased to be when the union of constitutionally federated republics ceased to be. The elites which manipulate both parties trot it out - much like the Queen of England is trotted out to start parliament - and we continue to genuflect to a dead letter while the elites plot and carry out their nefarious schemes behind the crumbling parchment.
we continue to genuflect to a dead letter while the elites plot and carry out their nefarious schemes behind the crumbling parchment.
Don't forget that after the war the re-education began that formed the subjects (formerly citizens) into nationalists. The contempt for the constitution has now trickled down from the elites in government and education to large numbers of common folk (the ones who have had all common sense "educated" out of them).
But at this point the cognitive dissonance between appearance and reality has become so great as to alarm many who would have otherwise lived their lives in the passive happiness of being a good Nationbot. The counter education has begun and many people are re-educating themselves because they understand that whatever America was meant to be it is not this present disaster. There is more interest among the founders and the Constitution than I can remember in my 60+ years...and for good reason:
The betrayal of the people by our leaders has become brazen and utterly unapologetic. Subtlety and stealth is no longer a needed concern since we have a press that is reduced to cheer leading rather than faithful reporting and thoughtful commentary.
These coming years are going to be interesting. I foresee an increasingly violent time. If the left continues to dominate all hope for restoration of constitutional proportions will be lost. ( It's a nye impossibility as it is.) I might predict a leftist "strong man" propose and jam through a NEW Constitution, one that brings appearance and reality much closer together....by forming the contents of the document to fit present practice, rather than adjusting behavior to fit the realities of the Old Republic.
It will be a repeat of the eternal dilemma of the soul having difficulty conforming to a particular set of standards. Having a hard time? No problem: Change the standards.
Once that process is done we can continue the march of the Caesars and the increasingly rapid collapse of the Empire.
There is more interest among the founders and the Constitution than I can remember in my 60+ years…and for good reason:
errata, sorry:
"There is more interest IN the founders and the Constitution among the people than I can...yadayadayada."
To reach for the Constitution as an instrument of protection from the Hobbesian state, whether it is in its national phase or imperial phase, is like unto a drowning man, on his last gasp at the surface, grabbing a sun parched and water soaked copy of said document in the hope that it will keep him afloat. Its dead and waterlogged weight clutched in his hand, he merely sinks faster into the abyss, crying as the last air escapes his lungs and the water rushes in, "It must be interpreted literally!"
#6 Mr. Peters,
You are a damn fine and thoughtful man. I enjoy almost everything you post. Thanks and may God Bless you and your loved ones.
6 “It must be interpreted literally!”
Of course, the fault with any man-made doctrine or document is that, even if perfect, it lacks an infallible interpreter. It's just sad those who wanted to pervert the intended meaning of the Constitution got so much power so early and perverted so much of it so quickly.
That notwithstanding as I understand it, having a model to return to, a standard from which to refer, is better than out and out despotism with no other point of reference except more despotism. We sin, but we don't throw out the 10 commandments as a consequence.
Things will be better when the collapse comes and things break up into local communities again. Sure, there will be horrible mistakes, and local tyrants will do some damage––so it goes with a fallen creature. That is why rule should be circumscribed and local. A fallen creature, capable of doing great damage, should only be allowed the most meager of means. But in an age that denies the Fall, despite the massive amount of empirical evidence for it, no definitivel argument can be made against big government. The best two I can think of are:
1. You can turn a canoe more quickly than you can the Queen Mary.
2. When local rulers are cruel or abusive you can cross the street and confront him, You can't do that with the Imperial Pres....not without two dozen undercover agents pointing deadly weapons at you and hauling you away.
I'm far from optimistic, but I do see small glimmers of hope in all sorts of different places. The Hobbesian state is not almighty; it will collapse under the weight of its own mad policies and actions.
A constitution - however ingeniously crafted - is utterly worthless without a vigilant, civic-minded citizenry to hold its political representatives accountable when they stray from, obfuscate, disregard or violate it. It takes a great people to do such a thing, to realize that to do as such is not a burden but a great privilege and the very essence of liberty.
We Americans are quite simply no longer a great people. We are a lazy, slovenly rabble, happy to delegate our civic responsibilities and the care of our liberties (for they are the same thing) to an elite political cabal in Washington if it affords us more opportunity to intoxicate ourselves with the opiates of entertainment and consumerism. We are sleepy, bloated, and selfish in the extreme, and like children care only for the basest sort of gratification and nothing beyond.
We're reaping what we, as a nation, have so long sowed. Simple as that.
Great Post, Toddard. Good to see you are back and still thoughful. This deserves reapeating:
"We Americans are quite simply no longer a great people. We are a lazy, slovenly rabble, happy to delegate our civic responsibilities and the care of our liberties (for they are the same thing) to an elite political cabal in Washington."
Robert @ 7,
Thank you for commending to my loved ones and to me God's blessing. It is appreciated.
Mr. Ridenour @ 8,
Your words:
"A fallen creature, capable of doing great damage, should only be allowed the most meager of means. But in an age that denies the Fall, despite the massive amount of empirical evidence for it, no definitivel argument can be made against big government."
When fallen creatures "beget" fallen creatures it is even worse. The states, defined as the people thereof acting in their authoritative capacity, created by means of the Constitution the general government. The states are the creators with a small "c" and the general government is the creature. When a creature falls, i.e. strays from its intended path and rebels against its creator, then it is the obligation of the creator to destroy or to redeem the creature. Our Lord is doing just that: His wrath and His grace are falling simultaneously on His fallen creation. Justice and redemption shall be accomplished. However, the states are not doing the same with their fallen creature. They are more like Dr. Frankenstein. If they act at all, it will be too late. The monster which they have set upon themselves and now, it would appear, upon the world has already turned on them and is devouring them.
@12, Mr. Peters: I agree with your general point, assuming that "states" is an abstraction comprising the people who make it up, and who, actually, contrive the establishment of a "general government". It follows, therefore, since man is a fallen creature, that his creations will not be perfect in structure nor in their exercise. The real point is that we fallen men can do no good without Christ; He told us so. That is the irony of the United States Constitution: it has no place for Christ, and therefore, as history has witnessed, the "supreme law" of the land has been corrupted and demeaned by its creators nearly from the beginning.
“We Americans are quite simply no longer a great people. We are a lazy, slovenly rabble, happy to delegate our civic responsibilities and the care of our liberties (for they are the same thing) to an elite political cabal in Washington.”
I find 100% agreement with this and the rest of the post. This is why my hope is almost non-existent. One thing to note is that our so-called leaders are no better than the electorate. They are cowards. Dr. Paul underlined this in the clearest of ways when he insisted the house have a formal vote to declare war on Iraq and then said he would vote against it. Apparently he is the only representative who pays any heed to the Constitution, and the duty of the congress, not the President, to declare war.
Our Legislator's selfishness and cowardice have caused them to abdicate their constitutional responsibility again and again and to, de facto, pass it on to either the Imperial Presidency or the Supremes. No doubt, we have elected leaders in our own narcissistic image. GIGO, as they say in the computer world; garbage in, garbage out.
Our age might be characterized as "the Age of Abdication" because on every level, from the family home to the Whitehouse, there is a shirking of duty––a passing of the buck of authority. We are ripe for tyranny.
So, what is a nation to do? Appoint a group of detached guardians, a la Plato? There will always be a group of parasitic rabble, self-obsessed and corrupt. To ruin things they don't even have to be a majority––they just have to be in the right places in the halls of power where they can hide their acts from a largely unconcerned, unaware, uneducated or miseducated (propagandized) people.
It seems man is beset with a paradox; he is encouraged from within to labor and prosper, but when prosperity comes he is tempted to become decadent and self-indulgent, corrupt and/or easily corruptible. Consistent detachment from what a man has labored for so hard takes true greatness. Few individuals have done it. I don't think there is any example of it in a people in all of history. In monarchies kings become decadent; in successful democracies the people become decadent. It happens over and over.
Are there examples of any nation that has fallen from its origins and returned? I know of none.
We are decadent and superficial beyond belief; a throw-away people with a throw-away culture––asleep at the wheel. Many of us are rightfully disgusted by it, but it seems our voices are drowned out. But the few who perpetuate it to the corruption of the many are in the halls of monetary and political power and are making too much money to quit.
Mr Meng,
Your words:
"I agree with your general point, assuming that “states” is an abstraction comprising the people who make it up."
We are likely meaning the same thing; however, I do not use the term "states" as an abstraction but rather as the "people who make it up" as you have said.
I, of course, agree with you about the U.S. Constitution and note that those who drafted and ratified the Confederate Constitution placed "God" in it:
"We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God — do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America."
However, the word "God" in a document again is not the same as daily taking up one's cross and following the Christ. Far too many of us far too often used God's name in vain.
no. 12: "The monster which they have set upon themselves and now, it would appear, upon the world has already turned on them and is devouring them."
I recall in Aristotle that it is said an effect cannot be greater than its' cause.
So says logic. In the abstract I don't doubt it. But by creating the "general government" the states, as cause, have managed to create a monster of an effect that can't be controlled––by them or any one or any thing else in the world––except perhaps by the monster of the almighty greenback which it created.
How true your words are! How sad it is that the states did not hear and heed them when Patrick Henry first spoke them in his prescient speeches to the Virginia ratifying committee in 1788.
After that tragedy followed on tragedy until, once again, we behold the corrupt feet of yet another statue in the image of Nabopolassar's son's vision.
@15, Mr. Peters: Yes, the Confederate Constitution went farther than our Masonic-Deist "Founders" by including "God", and the delegates in Montgomery must be commended. Yet, that is not enough, because whose God is it? Is it the Triune God of Revelation? Or is it the one Person God of the Jews and the Muslims? What is worse, what with so many false religions prowling the land of the United States, because of the deleterious idea of "pluralism", anyone can interpret the word "God" to be whomever he wishes it to be, e.g., the Great Architect of the Freemasons or Shiva of the Hindus, the god of death, or whatever. If we could re-write our Constitution, we must be explicit. If we are a Christian nation then we must incorporate, officially or formally, the Founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ, into our Supreme Law as our Guide, our Hope, and our God. Otherwise, we are what we are now, a bunch of disunited Christians going his own way; intepreting his own way and as a consequence the nation is going to the devil. Without Christ, this nation in which I was born, have lived and loved, is doomed. The State must recognize Christ as her Savior and offer Him formal, public worship and the rest of the gods be damned, including the ACLU.
Mr. Meng @ 17
You and I are, I believe, in agreement. That is reflected in my closing statement that merely mentioning "God" in a constitution is not the same as taking up one's cross daily and actually following the Christ. Even using the name "Christ" is some document is no guarantee that a society over time would not come to confess and profess "another christ" - a false christ.
@17/18 "Otherwise, we are what we are now, a bunch of disunited Christians going his own way; intepreting his own way and as a consequence the nation is going to the devil. Without Christ, this nation in which I was born, have lived and loved, is doomed. The State must recognize Christ as her Savior and offer Him formal, public worship and the rest of the gods be damned, including the ACLU."
Unity and an infallible interpretation of the meaning of the whole Christian revelation is needed for the task at hand; helping create a just society. It takes more than Christ; it takes the Church He founded and gave authority to teach the nations, as the end of Matt. clearly states. You can't claim the Head and deny the Body, and it is an incarnate Body.
That's, in a sense, another debate, so I'll leave it there.
But the fact is the Unity and infallible interpretation has been provided by God and it clearly in our midst. The real trouble and cause of the division is that the masses of people, including large numbers who call themselves sincere Christians and God fearing reject that source of Unity and infallible interpretation–––they even call it AntiChrist at times, and then divide into increasingly smaller groups, all claiming the Bible as their sole authority, and all disagreeing on it meaning, even and especially on the most fundamental of issues regarding Christ and Soteriology.
Since Luther and Descartes (actually Occam) the Devil has won many victories with his strategy of "divide and conquer." And why not? It worked so well in the Garden!
Even so, the traditional Christian view, as opposed to the Muslim, is that there should be a high degree of correspondence between the civil and sacred law, but they should not be absolutely identical. The heroic virtue demanded by the evangelical counsels ( poverty, chastity and obedience) must be freely chosen––– not mandated by some state institution acting as an arm or extension of the Church. They're traditionally called "counsels", not "commands," so that those wise enough to take them enter freely, not with some jack booted civil servant standing over them.
Trying to make Church law and civil law totally correspond would be analogous to the Muslim fanatics Sharia law. The beauty of the Church is that it invites and commends without the force or threat of civil governments. Forcing social conformity may give a good appearance, but the coercion that abrogates human freedom precludes the possibility of the exercise of virtue. Ah, welcome to Puritan Utopia.
I don't think we're going to find the kind of government and nation you're looking for, as I understand it, until the Lord comes back and rules from Zion. Until then we're going to have to struggle with the ignorance and disobedience of society as well as our own. But we're not alone. We still have His Church with us––for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see––and by its means we are lead through the darkness of confusion of the world and our own lives.
Mix civil government up in it and civil government will do what it always does; screw it up!
I'm glad to see that the evil Florentine has made his way into your library Dr.Wilson.Nothing like a little juicy,red-blooded, Italianate immorality,as a corrective for our dull,dreary,morality besotted,Atlanticist goody-goodyism.
However,this quote may easily be misunderstood by Americans as a defense,avant-la-lettre,of our Second Amendment.It is not.
Machiavelli's words;"I Svizzeri sono armatissimi e' liberissimi,"refer not to personal arms,but rather,to national militias as opposed to foreign mercenaries.
Just prior he wrote:"Stettero Roma e' Sparta molti secoli armate e' libere." Or:"For many centuries Rome and Sparta remained armed and free." Machiavelli was contrasting the ancients'(and contemporary Swiss') use of citizen conscripts,with contemporary Italians' employment of Transpadane mercenaries,to the detriment of the latter.
Il Machiavelli was pointing out that national independence is compromised and endangered by mercenary arms.The only remedy is a well-armed citizen body.
As far as modern affairs are concerned,the best way of assimilating Machiavelli's thought is by applying it more to economic,rather than strictly military,matters.The phrase "wok force" is highly suggestive in this regard.
Mercenaries;i.e.immigrants,outsourcing,and affirmative action recruits,are classic symptoms of a polity undergoing a shift from independent status to subjection.
Is there a modern "Prince" that,machiavel like,we can turn to in an effort to fend off the barbarians?
@19, Mr. Ridenour: I agree with you totally, but of course, I refer to the Catholic Church as that Church founded by our Lord, Jesus Christ. It might interest you and others to know that as of this writing, there are only two nations whose constitutions acknowledge the Triune God and stipulate the Catholic Church as the Church of the State. They are Malta and Argentina. Ireland, until recently, used to have the same stipulations in its 1937 Constitution under the great Eamon de Valera. Anyway, the point is this: the once Catholic world is now a world of apostasy and heresy and schism and secularism, ruled by its liberalistic and Masonic and Talmudic lords. Part of this problem lies within the dark, dank basements of the Vatican. Swine flu is on the point of being labelled a pandemic: if it is, know that we are receiving a divine chastisement. Our redemption is not in re-interpreting the Enlightenment influenced John Adams or Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson or John Taylor, et al., or the modern verbal effusions of Obamus or Cheney or Rush Limberger (pardon me, Limbaugh), Sean Hannity, or that big, bad bully, O'Reilly. My question is this: when are we going to learn this. Why don't we appeal to King St. Louis IX about national governance, or to St. Thomas Aquinas for the correct principles upon which a country is governed? et al.
Sempronius, if that is the case, then why does he associate 'free' with 'armed'? Also, how much difference would there have been in those days between the concepts of an armed militia and of the private ownership of arms? It seems to me that the two have never really been separate concepts throughout history until you get to the mid to late 20th century. The same would be true of the concepts of individual freedom and freedom of the people at large and of the state. They seem to be aspects of the same thing.
It seems to me to be a rather good defence of the 2nd amendment.
The connection between this and the loss of independence which occurs when rulers rely too heavily on mercenaries is obvious, and mercenaries can be used by a ruler against his own people as well.
The economic aspect of the issue is an intriguing one. One could say that only a people who are self-employed (as opposed being wage-slaves, or being undermined by the use of 'mercenary' workers') are free and only a state which relies on it's own people for labour as opposed to using foreign intruders or outsourcing is a truly independent state. So the most free and independent state would be one in which the people own their own arms, are part of militia units, and are mostly self-employed, and the state relies on these for defence and production.
Meng
THe problem might just lay with Christianity itself. Like you inferred, for the most part the Church(Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox) has been subverted from within or because of infiltration or acceptance of bad theology(dispensationalism. The Reds have been able to use Christian apostasy and heresy as a weapon to destroy the Church, and has done so quite thoroughly. I am beginning to think the intellectuals in Europe of the "New Right" are on to something, and that is to dump Christianity altogether in the fight against communism.
@23. Sorry, Robert Bruce, but "dump Christianity altogether" and you get modern Europe, with a birth rate leading to extinction and gradual replacement by Muslims, who still love having kids because Allah says so.
As Belloc put it, "Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe." No Faith, no Europe. In its place -- Eurabia under Sharia.
Jesus or Muhammad. Take your pick. There is no third choice.
"The Reds have been able to use Christian apostasy and heresy as a weapon to destroy the Church, and has done so quite thoroughly."
Mr. Bruce,
It has been so from the very beginning. First the crucifixion, then the Ebionites, the Arians, Muhammed, all the way through the Whore of Babylon, Organ Grinders, Marxists,Neo-cons, etc. ---- The Cross Stands Still as the World turns. Our biggest problem today is the same as from the very beginning, If we could eat from any tree except one, we would want that "one", If today we heard His voice, our hearts would still be too hard to recognise Him, If He came looking for us we would be hiding in the garden covering our own nakedness, or living off the husks that the swine did eat. Don't lose heart, the dragon is in all of us seeking to devour and few are the ways to slay him. The cross still stands as an invitation to adventure.
#24 There is a third choice and it called neo-paganism. We are seeing its manifestation throughout the West with the rise of secular humanism, apostasy, globalism, the global warming cult, aggressive atheism, deviant lifestyles, immoral warfare and on and on. The elites in Europe are allowing the rise of Muslims to serve a purpose to destroy Christianity and its unique place in society via pluralism. When the time is right and the carcass of Christianity has been kicked for the last time, the Muslims will then see the fury of the pagans......last seen during the Third Reich....it will not be pretty.
#23 THe problem might just lay with Christianity itself. Like you inferred, for the most part the Church(Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox) has been subverted from within
Here is the problem, plain and simple, that is the error upon which all errors are built.
There is no such thing as Christianity. It is, for all practical purposes, a meaningless word, just as "Biblical Principles" is a meaningless concept.
Examine it only a little; scrutinize it only slightly and it vanishes like the most evanescent of illusions. It is lighter than air; more ephemeral and less substantial than the smoke from my cigars.
As Belloc says in his "Essays of a Catholic": "there is only the Church". Using the Bible the Protestants say they take as their sole rule we see how She is defined, and it is not a big tent: One Bread, One Body, One Teaching; Unity, both interior and external, is Her primary feature.
As soon as we do the slight of hand and substitute the elusive abstraction of Christianity for the incarnational concreteness of the Church, the game is up. It's only a matter of time until "a Christian" translates in most minds as "a nice person"––or more recently as "a bigot". It almost never means not someone united to a Body, devoted to a Creed, seeking to live a common moral teaching, believing one doctrine and feeding off the Supersubstantial Bread of Angels the Founder of the Church Promised and died to give us.
A friend is a Lutheran of the evangelical type–––what ever that means. She is young and sincere. She expected me to readily admit that the advent of Luther and the ideas of the Reformers represented a valid source of authoritative teaching concerning the Faith and the Scripture, and that removal of 7 of the books by Luther and the other scurrilous things he said about other books were no big deal.
This is the delusional level that is common–––not among the so-called "unchurched" but among people who sincerely think of themselves as devoted Christians.
May God save us all from our ignorance and in spite of our ignorance, but the Faith is not whatever we might decide it should be, and does not include or exclude what pleases us; Our Lord did not put on a waiters apron at Calvary and deliver a Chinese menu to us from which we might select or omit as we see fit.
I have read Our Lord's words concerning the Church many times, but have never see any part He designated as "optional."
I know this is an innocent remark, but I believe it is an error to even allow yourself to think like that or speak like that, because of the illusions and errors such talk perpetuate; illusions and errors we accept today without missing a beat, but which the Church in every age prior to this found to be nothing less than madness and outrage... which leads me to Mr. Meng's fine post in which he asked:
"My question is this: when are we going to learn this. Why don’t we appeal to King St. Louis IX about national governance, or to St. Thomas Aquinas for the correct principles upon which a country is governed? et al."
My response is that it would be wonderful if we could. But I can't expect of the world and society, much of which is hostile and/or ignorant of the Revelation of Christ, what I would expect from those devoted to the Church and submitted in intellect and will to Her authority and teaching.
That would be, it seems to me, utopian.
I keep looking in the world for beginnings, and that means trying to cultivate a good will within myself (man that's hard) and looking for responses from others in kind.
I am glad for any glimmer of light, any right sense of things that corresponds to a truth that fits into the wholeness of Catholic doctrine I see in the world. I'm especially glad when I see some analogous correspondence of goodness within my self rather than the usual foul inclinations I commonly struggle with. It's better to have some religion than none, some morals than none and some truth than none. In my estimation, admittedly mixed in with error, America's founders hit a common chord with the common man, and, for whatever reasons got a lot right. The Confederate government got even more right. They gave us a good place from which to start working: freedom. They didn't give us a finished work, but created a context in which work could be done. For that I'm grateful and I can travel down the road quite a ways with people who differ from me as long as they maintain that spirit we call LIberty.
We've lost that now; that's why every one hates every one else so much.
So in the world toleration might be a good motto––but not in defining the reality and doctrine of the One, Holy, apostolic, catholic Church. There toleration is intolerable.
@22 Allen Wilson.I've got a bad case of allergies and my eyes feel like they're about to pop out of my head,so I'll be brief.I'll also be lazy and simply quote NM at length to give you an idea of his thinking on this matter and its distinction from Second Amendment concerns.
Hope that helps.Got to go,springtime pollen is killing me.