The Fruits of Intervention
If we had it to do over, would we send an army into Afghanistan to build a nation?
Would we invade Iraq?
While these two wars have cost 5,200 dead, a trillion dollars and a divided America facing an endless war, what have we won?
Gen. Stanley McChrystal needs 40,000 to 80,000 more troops, or we risk "mission failure" in Afghanistan. At present casualty rates—October was the worst month of the war —thousands more Americans will die before we see any light at the end of this tunnel, if ever we do.
Pakistan, which aided us in Afghanistan, now has a war of its own to fight. Its army is in a battle in South Waziristan, while the country is wracked by terror bombings, the latest in a Peshawar bazaar that specialized in women's clothing and jewelry and toys for kids. So horrific was the toll even the Taliban and al-Qaida denied any role in it.
The 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are, after almost seven years, to begin pulling out two months after January's election. But a hitch has developed. Iraq's parliament missed the deadline for setting the rules. At issue: Will voters be allowed to choose individual candidates, or will they be allowed only to vote for slates of candidates?
Gen. Ray Odierno implies that postponement of the election may mean postponement of U.S. withdrawals.
Ominously, in August, terrorists bombed the foreign and finance ministries in Baghdad, and last week blew up the Justice Ministry and Baghdad Provincial Governorate. And the Kurds are now claiming their control of oil-rich Kirkuk is non-negotiable, which crosses a red line in Baghdad.
Next door, a terror attack by Jundallah (God's Brigade) in Iran's southern province of Sistan-Baluchistan killed 40, including two senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guard.
An enraged Tehran pointed the finger at the United States, as there have been charges the CIA has been in contact with Jundallah as part of President Bush's destabilization program to effect "regime change."
But Barack Obama has been in office for nine months—and he would never authorize such an attack on the eve of a critical meeting on Iran's nuclear program. Moreover, the State Department condemned the Jundallah bombing as terrorism and offered public condolences to the families of the victims.
But if we didn't authorize this, who did?
Was the timing of this attack coincidental? Were these just freelance secessionists on an operation unrelated to the U.S.-Iran talks? Or is someone trying to torpedo the talks and push Iran and the United States into military collision?
For this was a provocation. And whoever carried it out and whoever authorized or abetted it wishes to dynamite the U.S.-Iran negotiations, abort a rapprochement and put us on a road to war.
Speculation is focusing on the Saudis, the Gulf Arabs and the Israelis, who have been accused, as has the United States, of aiding PJAK, a Kurdish faction that has conducted raids in northern Iran.
If we have any control of these organizations, we should shut them down. With U.S. armies tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, and America conducting Predator and cross-border attacks in Pakistan, provoking a war with Iran would be an act of madness.
Looking back, how has all this fighting advanced U.S. national interests? We have a "democratic" Iraq that is Shia-dominated and tilting to Iran. We have an open-ended war in Afghanistan that will likely do for Obama what Iraq did for Bush. But we can't pull out, it is said, for if we do, Kabul falls and Afghanistan becomes the sanctuary for an Islamist war to take over Pakistan and its nuclear weapons.
And if that should happen, it would indeed be a crisis.
And so, how has all this intervention availed us?
We ran Saddam out of Kuwait and put U.S. troops into Saudi Arabia. And we got Osama bin Laden's 9-11. We responded by taking down the Taliban and taking over Afghanistan. And we got an eight-year war with no victory and no end in sight. Now Pakistan is burning. We took down Saddam and got a seven-year war and an ungrateful Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Turks, who shared a border with Saddam, have done no fighting. Iran has watched as we destroyed its two greatest enemies, the Taliban and Saddam. China, which has a border with both Pakistan and Afghanistan, has sat back. India, which has a border with Pakistan and fought three wars with that country, has stayed aloof.
The United States, on the other side of the world, plunged in. And now we face an elongated military presence in Iraq, an escalating war in Afghanistan and potential disaster in Pakistan, and are being pushed from behind into a war with Iran.
"America rejects the false comfort of isolationism," said George W. Bush in his 2006 State of the Union. And we did reject that false comfort. And now we can enjoy the fruits of interventionism.
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Don't worry America. Little Smoking Barry of Hyde Park has assured us our lads will not be placed in harm's way unless it's absolutely necessary. Necessary to protect the Turkish-Israeli heroin-smuggling diplomats, that is.
We had troops in Saudi Arabia well before the first Gulf War. I was there in 1984 and the largest overseas American base was outside of Riyadh. This stuff about Osama Bin Laden attacking us because he was offended by the presence of US troops is hog wash. The person who was offended by the presence of US troops was then Crown Prince and now King Abdullah. Please do a Google search and you will see a Worldtribine.net about a Missle base in Saudi Arabia stocks with 57 North Korea missles that no one know about only until the Iconos Satellite showed it. When I was there, I met the US military attache. He told me that we signed a treaty with Saudi Arabia that the Landsat sattelite would not photograph the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia, so he had to ask people like me what was going on in the country. Figure that one out.
Hey Mr. Buchanon - You claim in your book, "The Unecessary War" that Hitler didn't want war with Britain or America. What about his second book which was unpublished, featured on the BookTV Channel about his ultimate enemy and target being America?
I agree with Mr. Buchanan, but would like to ask one question that seems to me the unacknowledged heart of the matter. Who is the "we" mentioned in the first three paragraphs?
Matt @3: Buchanan's tome is imperfect, but the general thesis is correct. The war to defeat Hitler did nothing but make the world safe for a much greater evil and threat than fascism: the iron communist fist of Stalin and his puppets in Eastern Europe. Not to mention bankrupt Britain and empower the already-corrupt American Empire.
Dr. Wilson @4: Good point. It is an offense to what remains of the American people, such as ourselves, to confuse "us" with the imperial state which rules over us.
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Gestapo Muller hang 100 Czechs in the town square of Prague and soon as Hitler took over the remaining part of Czechoslovakia? Did not the SS immediately go about rounding up the leading member of Polish society upon overrunning Poland and killing them all off, including priests, nuns, lawyers, intellectuals, government leaders, etc.? In fact, in his harange to his generals upon commencing the war, he told them "Be hard, be merciless, all Europe must tremble in horror!" and also,"First will kill all the priest."? In fact, was not the Nazi plan, that after killing off all of the Jews, the Nazi's were going to exterminate the Slavs?
In fact, how many conservatives and America Firsters cheered the Nazi's on when they attacked the Soviet Union?
In fact, did a Nazi or Fascist defector in China in the 1930's warn the world about the premeditated plans of the Nazi's & Jap's to start another world war? Didn't these warning collaborate Hitler's statment in Mein Kampf that he and his fellow minions conspire to plan a new war as set forth in the Nuremburg trials?
Although I agree with Mr. Buchanon in most matters, Hitler and the Nazis were a greater evil than Stalin and his minions at the time. It is to Western Civilizations enternal credit that it almost sacrificed everything to stop them. Even it overseas colonial empires which had become immoral.
From tone of many authors on this website and it contributors, America is the greatest evil in the world. The fact of the matter it this attitude is reflective infantile temper tamturm than serious intellectual discourse and the worse features of pre-Pearl Harbor American Firstism, which at heart, like the 1960's hippyism and pacifism, is only an elaborate justification for narcissistic cowardice.
This out look on America is like stating there should have never been and American Revolution because it did not immediately bring the end of slavery. The Second World War brought about the vision of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt of a world of democratic states that were consumer economies basin peace on world trade and an international legal order.
@6 Matt
And the communists laid their hands against God's anointed as they committed regicide at Yekaterinburg -- shortly before they rounded up 100,000 priests and monks in order to slaughter them wholesale. Furthermore, Stalin starved millions of kulaks by appropriating their seed corn. Will you please stop flogging the nazi dead horse? Anyway, since when did deaths in Prague concern the US? Murders in Baltimore and South Central Los Angeles barely raise an eyebrow these days.
And I find your line of questioning to be like that of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, "Did God not say ...?"
Ah, how delightful to have a good Marxist neocon (but I repeat myself!) as a guest. Our friend Matt sure is a good little servant of the American imperial establishment. At least half of the goals of the Communist Manifesto have been realized here on our shores, their ranks have killed several times more people than the buffoon Hitler did and the body bags are still piling up in North Korea and Cuba, here at home the U.S. Constitution is a dead letter and the warnings of our Founding Fathers to resist the forbidden fruits of imperialism are laughed at on the Beltway . . . but Matt and his friends Bush and Obama are worried about the dangers of "isolationism." Not a surprise, of course. For those captured by the imperialist ideology such as good little Matt are quite threatened by barriers to ultimate power, such as written constitutions that governments are sworn to protect and obey. Oh and Matt, I would not expect one such as yourself to know any better, but there WASN'T an American Revolution. There was an American war for INDEPENDENCE. Keep serving Marx, Hegel, and Rousseau if you wish. We at Chronicles prefer to serve God.
#4 Clyde Wilson question :"Who is the “we” mentioned in the first three paragraphs?"
Why, Professor, it is folks like Matt @#6, who illustrate why a little learning is a dangerous thing and why buying their magazines,tuning into their talk shows or electing the candidates from the party they support, is worse than dangerous, it is utterly suicidal and destructive of all things human and divine. Matt is smart, quick, crafty and shallow. He probably graduated with distinction in his university class and is always in a hurry to make or remake history and save civilization as he knows it. Maybe a yankee, maybe not, definitely not a lover of the South. A man of our times and the "we" of Pat's people.
Dear Mr. Wilson, Brock H. & the late Etienne Gervaise - I am a lawyer in the Cleveland Metropolitan area. Cicero said, when in trial if the facts are against you, argue the law. When the facts and law are against, attack the opponent.
First Mr. Wilson - You are obviously a professional Confederate irridentist. I have news for you. The Confederacy lost the war! All of mankind, except certain swathes of the third world have arrived at the conclusion that slavery is evil. In other comments regarding Lincoln that we have made to each other, you and your ilk refuse to state that slavery is evil and a sin against God. You and your ilk wax poetically about the Homeric valor of the confederate soldier. Whenever others of your ilk have been asked about slavery being evil, you call me a Marxist and a Yankee. Well, half of the confederate states that left the Union were hijacked out by the Southern equivelant of the Wall Street Robber Barons - the Southern Planter. A guerilla war was waged by the pro-Union natives in the South on behalf the legitimate government in Washington, D.C. Jefferson Davis was at his wits' end because the Confederate Army desertation rate was sky high. During the Vietnam War, it was only 2%. During the Civil War, the Confederate rate was probably ten times that amount. That's why the Southern cause, that was so glorious, had to institute the draft first. Most people didn't want to fight. To conclude, the negro slaves originally spoils of war in Africa. When the Yankees prevailed, the South got a taste of its own medicine.
Mr. Brock H. - Obviously you attended an intercity public school, since you are evidently unaware that the reason the US entered the Second World War, was because it was attacked at Pearl Harbor, and then two days, later, despite the American people not wanting to go to war with Germany, your beloved Furher, Adolph Hitler, declared war against the USA. Did you know that Mr. Brock? As for all this garbage about US Imperialism, etc., as is apparent to anyone but peopel with hysterical opinions, such as you and your friends, US Imperialism has brought about what may described as the Golden Age of mankind. Never in history has mankind in general had such a high standard of living or freedom. This is because of the vision of Woodrow Wilson, FDR and in the end, the efforts of Ronald Reagan and George Bush the Elder. Please recall that even Ronald Reagan was a democrat until the Berlin Crisis in 1962. As for the Constitution, being a scrap of paper, why have the Feds come by an arrested you while watching Dynasty or Savannah in your bomb shelter, still wondering why Jesus did not fly over on December 31st, 1999, and Rapture your brainess carcass up into heaven?
You also exhibit historical Boole-ism. Boole was the Irishman who dreamed up base two numbers on which computers run. Everything in base 2 numbers are either a 1 or a 0. So in your world, either agree with your narrow opinions, or they are are commies. From my viewpoint, your opinions are like one of Salvador Dali's Surealist paintings, at least some things are recognizable, but your still out there in the Twilight Zone. As for there being no America Revolution just a war for independence, the revolutionaries at the time were fighting for their rights as Englishmen. Althought there was slavery in most, if not all the colonies, which subsequently became states, they were fighting their individual liberties as well. After the revolution, no where in the world, with the possible exception of some Cantons in Switzerland, were political freedoms so great at the time. In fact, in New York State, blacks and women were allowed to vote in the 1800 election. [Women's right to vote in that state, sadly was subsequently revoke.]
Finally - As to Mr. Etienne Gervais, who are you really? You comment all over the internet. People I know, don't even thing you are a real person, but front name for various foreign organizations. Didn't the real Etienne Gervais die several years ago and this is some collective's nom de plume, nom de internet? It's time for your people to come clean.
Since none of you counter facts with facts or reasoned opinion, but crack pot rants, you will simply remain wolves baying in the wind.
Please forgive the numerous mistakes in grammar and diction in the above missive. I do have a question for Mr. Wilson on a separate historical subject.
Do you think that Robert E. Lee should have been subjected to court martial for Pickett's charge? How impaired was the Confederacy's command at Gettysburg by Stone Wall Jackson's absence because he was killed previously? I believe there is a novel, which I have not read, entitled "The Court Martial of Robert E. Lee".
Do you share the opinion of a recent work that the Pickett's charge was to be a co-ordinated assault with an end around attack by Jeb Stuart's Calvary, which was foiled by Custer's defeat of Stuart at Harrison?
Do you think that there was a possibility, that since Stone Wall Jackson was such a disciplinarian, that he was in fact deliberately murdered by the sentry rather than accidently? In other words, in Vietnam War terminology, he was fragged by his own men?
Matt, while some of my friends here on this website might feel a little too afraid to state outright that no, they do NOT believe slavery is or ever was evil in any way, I don't. Consider it said. Don't recall God ever saying otherwise. My God is the One in the Bible by the way, not Marx or Lincoln or Trotsky. It is typical of the Yankee mindset to believe that they are the enlightened half of the American people, that all stodgy old unprogressive segments of the population must have guns and bayonets pointed at them to make them comply with all the new revelations they have concerning what old customs and institutions need to be torn down. Those silly uneducated Southerners want to leave our revered government as the 10th Amendment allows them? No problem! We just trash that silly old consti-whatcha-ma-call-it and invade their country! They won't amalgamate other blacks and other races of people with themselves? Well, we just roll our tanks and guns back down there and make them do it!
Oh and by the way yes I knew each of the things you claimed I didn't know about WWII. On the subject of freedom, do American families have the freedom to educate their children using whatever methods they wish, or has the federal government almost completely taken over that area of life? Do we have the freedom to operate our institutions like businesses and churches by admitting whoever we want into them, or are we legally obligated to associate with certain people? How about our financial house? Is it in order? Or are we forced to pay taxes to pay off $10 trillion of debt? That last little tidbit would have gotten the guilty parties such as Messrs. Bush and Obama convicted of treason against the Republic and perhaps the death sentence, were this a real country.
If freedom is bringing about Marx's world social democratic revolution, then yes Counselor Matt, we have freedom today. No, I don't immediately think you are a communist just because you are glad the empire fought Hitler and sided with Stalin - but it speaks volumes about your ideology. Between a tyrant who wishes to expand a revolution to destroy Western civilization eventually across Europe and beyond, and one who is simply a misguided uber-nationalist fascist, I'll take the uber-nationalist. But that's just if I had only that choice. Personally I believe we should have stayed true to our Founding Fathers' advice and stayed on our own turf, not to mention look at our OWN government and institutions to make sure it was free of the influence of wicked ideologies, God rest Sen. McCarthy's soul.
Matt @10
"A guerilla war was waged by the pro-Union natives in the South on behalf the legitimate government in Washington, D.C. "
'Legitimate' government? Do you believe the US is some kind of monarchy, with the God-President being anointed from heaven?
"US Imperialism has brought about what may described as the Golden Age of mankind. Never in history has mankind in general had such a high standard of living or freedom"
Do you worship the US Federal government?
Mr. Brock - Thank you for denouncing slavery. Others on this website have refused, claiming that my request that they do so makes me a commie,Yankee etc.
Mr. Daniel Maxwell - I do not believe that the Federal Government created the universe, was responsible for the miracles at Lourdes, although an agent of the Federal Government, such as the IRS, may have to audit me to make sure that I paid all of my taxes before letting me pass into Heaven. No. I am not a Scientologist.
Another Question Mr. Wilson - It stated on a documentary on the History Channel that in his march from Atlanta to Savannah and then up north through the Carolina's, Sherman only suffered about 475 dead. That means the resistance that he encountered was about as meager as the US Army's initial run up to Bagdad in the recent War in Iraq. What happened to the Confederate Army?
Matt, you misunderstand. Read the sentences in my comment carefully. I said I am not afraid or intimidated to say to you that slavery is NOT evil or wrong, because I DON'T believe it is evil or wrong. God never had a problem with it, so neither do I, not as an economic institution, anyway. I would not want to own a slave, though, because yes, I PERSONALLY have a problem with owning another human being. That slavery is morally wrong and should be abolished from the world by force, however, is a product of secular humanist ideology such as yours. I will have no part of it. You and your friends can comfort and congratulate yourselves for being the gods of humanity who had the knowledge and foresight to know better than those unprogressive Southerners what was good for them. Take it to a Democratic Socialists of America meeting, or ACLU or SPLC, whatever vile and wicked clubs you frequent, and away from here.
Brock H. @ 15
Slavery, racism, gender bias and homophobia are constructed manifestations of the faux fall foisted on us by the modern gnostics trying, as the late Eric Voegelin said, to immanentize the eschaton, i.e. to create a "utopia" in history by offering a faux salvation from their construct of the faux fall. They want an artificially produced fall from which man can save himself through government intervention and force. They also want, in that context, to have a group who can claim to be "good," i.e. having practiced no slavery, no racism, no gender bias and no homophobia, so that they can lord over the rest of us. They cannot accept the Biblical truth that we are conceived in sin and that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Ultimately, they want God out of the picture.
Slavery, racism, gender bias and homophobia are also weapons with which they continually and continuously attempt to overthrow the order of being, engendering a perpetual revolution against the established order of God, family, Church and local commonwealth.
Brock:
You are more solid than I had thought. You've said what needed to be said to the brainwashed neocon "Matt" (who needs to take a breather from his PC-ventilations - how challenging the necessity of the War of Northern Aggression and the Crusade to Save the Soviet really upsets the pseudo-cons!! - and, if not learn a bit of history, at least engage in a bit of proofreading).
Of course, you're still fooling yourself if you think that traditional Americans can somehow survive the coming savagery, or at least the onrushing of socialist democracy, without an effective political voice, and united within a political party (and that party, friend, will be the GOP, like it or not). There can be no retreat to any private sphere of family, church, profession, and community, because the Federal Govt is progressively invading and coopting what little private 'space' is left in those institutions (as you should well know).
In the 80s and 90s I used to inveigh against what I called 'libertarian retreatism', the ridiculous notion that somehow one could find 'private liberty' (ostensibly to be based on anonymity and concealment) within the belly of the state socialist regime. In recent years I find myself inveighing against 'paleoconservative quietism', the equally ridiculous notion that somehow minding our own business, abjuring the political realm, and "leading good lives" will stop or slow the accelerating annihilation of America and the West. It will not. There is no neutral observer place where one might sit out the world-struggle. Men of the West must become totally (c'est le mot juste) politicized - but obviously in a radical traditionalist cum racial nationalist direction. We must gather up however many of our people, wherever they are to be found, as we can, inculcate within them a hard ideology of Occidental survivalism, and then set about confronting and we hope dismantling the hegemonic, globalist regimes which have attained rule in every Western society. We must be ideologized, radical, and militant, and we must persevere in that politicization for at least one generation AFTER the traditionalist reconquest and politico-ethno-cleansing of Europe and North America.
I know that's not the world that you or most paleos would want, but "them's the cards you been dealt". How we play them is what matters in life. To reiterate my earlier comment (until it sinks in): THERE IS NO ESCAPING THE HARD BURDENS OF POLITICAL CHOICE.
I should have added at the end: AND OBLIGATION.
Why has "Matt" brought up the War to Prevent Southern Independence and attacked the late Confederate States in a discussion of the present-day interventionism of the U.S.? Surely only for a chance to malign better people. Most of his comments about The War amount to ignorant drivel unworthy of attention. The level of his knowledge is indicated by the comment about the "sentry" shooting Stonewall Jackson. That shows total ignorance about what happened during the night after the first day of the Battle of Chancellorsville along the opposing lines in the Wilderness. I fear if Matt is really an American and really comes from Cleveland he has confirmed my distaste for that unfortunate city.
Lone racer, just how do you expect to accomplish this amazing feat with an already deracinated people and a corrupt GOP that is evil beyond redemption?
How many years would it take, how much life wasted only to find the GOP still in the clutches of the power elites and perhaps also find your entire movement betrayed by a manipulative leader? How many years of senseless effort wasted until you find your grand schemes bogged down or diverted into sideline causes, or producing results you never anticipated? How long until the next crop of sociopathic politicians move their way up in the movement and use it for their own shortsighted personal ends? How many agents provocateur can you unknowingly entertain and not get burnt?
I have no faith in the white race. Just look at how they have let themselves go. My, what superior humans they are! They dont even have enough sense to preserve their own land for their childrens' sake if they dont abort them anyway, and you want to use miserable creatures such as these to save the ruins of an already dead civilisation? Go and do your worst, Lone Racer, but spare us the insults and GOP redemption nonsense you have been throwing out.
Dr. Peters @ 16, great post! It sums up perfectly our elite's whole, absurd, sick source of power. But I wonder: When do the 'commoners' wake to the reality of the pathetic charade? I mean, when someone deliberately creates problems for no other reason than to suddenly, magically appear with the solution, how long can this continue before those being duped catch on? It has already exceeded beyond anything I would have imagined possible. And it grows more and more absurd by the day. A case in point: pornography was made legal because the suppression of it was considered in violation of the First Amendment; yet, on Friday, our benevolent leader can sign into law a hate-crime bill that will limit what a preacher can say. This obvious contradiction is impossible to understand from anything but an anti-Christian perspective. It also tells us that the meaning of the First Amendment (or any other law for that matter) is a case of interpretation and can mean anything you need for the retention of power.
Matt: "US Imperialism has brought about what may described as the Golden Age of mankind. Never in history has mankind in general had such a high standard of living or freedom. This is because of the vision of Woodrow Wilson, FDR and in the end, the efforts of Ronald Reagan and George Bush the Elder."
It is the obvious things you cannot see. The high standard of living, (like eating fast food soaked in catsup with your hands?) reading history backwards (shouldn't Lee have been court martialed for Picketts charge?)and moral superiority ( I hate slavery!!! Boy, I really hate slavery!!! Slavery is evil, evil, evil!!!! Oh, excuse me I will be right back, my boss is irritated and I must go and see what he wants and try and satisfy him as I own nothing of my own ---car, home,and credit cards are all borrowed, I need a job, I mean I gotta keep this job, my wife needs to work too just to keep the kids in clothes, cell phones and Ipods, etc.. But I hate slavery, those planters were beast of men, I am so happy the South lost and goodness entered the world through the North, through good men like Sherman, total war, the total destruction of a million of our people to be sure, but they were the worst of people, etc. etc, etc,
Dear Mr. Brock - If slavery is OK as an institution in the Bible, then isn't OK for others to enslave you?
Dear Mr. Wilson - Please tell me how Stonewall Jackson really died. I'd be interested to know. I very re-assured that you believe me to be an American and from Cleveland.
I call upon all you true believers against the evil Federal Government to stop collecting or availing yourselves of you Social Security Checks and Medicare coverage, and start to crusade against the evil government subsidies to farmers which surpasses aid to the auto industry by several times.
It is also gratifying that some of your readers of this beknights website know who Eric Voegelin is. However they need to re-read "The New Science of Politics" to accurately understand what the man really said.
P.S. - Start a campaign with your local counties to send back the aid they received to establish a functioning 911 system in your area. Please boycott 911 until they do. Yes - if your house go on fire or there is a medical emergency, don't use the fruits of the marxist federal government's aid and become dependent upon the government, thus assisting in the demise of Western Civilization.
The true reason that I elicit such irrational, if not violent reactions from the other readers of this website, is that none of you have resolved your Oedipus complexes. You wish to murder your father figure, the federal government and marry Oprah Winfree.
Then you wish to guide your lives by following a collections of stories put together by the Roman Catholic Church in the 300's AD at the behest of the Emperor Constantine and ratified by the Pope, called the Bible. Although some of you follow the Jewish version of the Old Testament, put together by fanatics in 138 AD that murdered 6,000 christian, which excluded seven books,[including the book that recites the story about Hanekak] but was included in the Roman Catholic Bible.
But do any of you really follow Jesus? I doubt it. When the rich young man was told by Jesus to give away all his belongings and follow him, the young man refused. I am sure none of you have. Jesus and St. Paul also expressly told people that they must pay their taxes to the the Roman Government. Do you? I would be surprised.
Jesus in the Book of Revelation, St. Paul in the Letter to the Romans, St. Peter in one of his Letters and St. James all state that you will judged by your works. Beware the coming of the Lord!
What a ridiculous character this "Matt" is. Why is anyone responding to this drivel?
My mother has long been a firm believer in the system, trusting everything she’s told through the T.V. as though the gospel truth. But this has changed in the last few months. Now she sighs and says, “We’ve lost our country.” She fails to understand this isn’t recent. It happened long ago when Lincoln and the Radical Republicans destroyed the Constitution and reordered the very nature of the Republic, all under the phony pretense of ‘freeing the slave”. As Lee predicted, we have long since become a nation despotic at home and aggressive abroad.
Allen Wilson:
Again (sigh), you, like all others defending defeatism here, fail to address my points. I'm starting to get a bit embarrassed for you people (well, perhaps really for myself, as I have purchased several gift subscriptions to CHRONICLES, touting the magazine as the best rightist opinion journal bar none, and am concerned that some of my recipients might be reading the inane comments of so many of you, and not just those of the mentally disintegrating neocon called "Matt", and would be unimpressed with the intellectual quality of the magazine's readership).
Our civilization is dying, but it is hardly dead. That is the statement of someone who doesn't wish to roll up his sleeves and do the hard work of preserving it. Please don't try to mask your laziness, foolishness, and perhaps cowardice with alleged 'realism'. You and others of your ilk seem as though you're looking for excuses for political passivity. Your meager strategy is to exaggerate the hopelessness of our situation. You remind me of that arch-"realist" Kissinger vis a vis Reagan. The K-man thought the communists would maintain their grip on power forever. Reagan had a different perspective: "We win, they lose." Who turned out to be more realistic?
Oh, well, it takes all kinds. Perhaps you're a conservative, but please don't pretend you're a patriot. And stay out of the way of the real fighters for the West.
You might also wish to reflect upon the fact that despair is a mortal sin for Christians.
Matt,
What's Hanekak? Do you have any idea what your talking about?
Maybe Matt was right after all to bring up the War to Prevent Southern Independence in a discussion of U.S. interventionism. That was the first example. The U.S. government intervened,committed a lot of "collateral damage," overthrew the legal governments of 15 states, and replaced them with puppet governments during ten years of military occupation. Until you understand that, you will understand little about the subsequent history of the U.S. government.
I think Professor Wilson is accurate. Are there statues of Lincoln in the South? I saw a rather humorous news story today. Our former War Criminal in Chief was in Pristina to be honored with a statue of his likeness. The 11 foot tall monstrosity of Clinton could only be described as Soviet in style. (One envisions a future news story in which Serbs are toppling it much like the East Germans toppled similar looking markers of Lenin.) The curious thing is that while Abe's war was ostensibly to end slavery, Bill's was to continue the Albanian trades in slavery (and organ harvesting, and heroin, and etc.).
Prof. Wilson,
I am sorry to read that you don't like my hometown. I like it quite a bit, and would not want to live anywhere else. In addition to being the home of family and friends, Cleveland has an outstanding cultural infrastructure, thanks to the foresight of the industrialists who made their fortunes here. Cleveland in fact is a wonderful city, if you can find a job here. That's the rub, since the manufacturing economy that used to sustain us has been badly hurt by our nation's foolish embrace of free trade.
Cleveland wonderful? Hardly. My business partner and very close friend is a born and bred Clevelander (is that what they're called?). Grew up in "Red River" (does that sound familiar? something like that; I'll have to ask him), where his parents and sister still live, attended Baldwin-Wallace college, started his career at 3M, first wife was a local girl, etc.
I've never been there, but from what my friend has told me, the suburbs of Cleveland are filled with good Middle Americans - but the city proper is basically a violent if contained black ghetto. When was the last time you elected a white mayor? And isn't Cuyahoga County a paradigm of Democrat corruption?
I know the paleo crowd has this weird fetish for "localism", but when Mr. Piatak says he "would not want to live anywhere else" (anywhere?!), that's really carrying the pre-approved script past all bounds of credibility!
Tom,
I liked the old blue collar Cleveland too. The Browns when Marty Shotenhiemer was coaching them and the dog pound was full of amateur fans and people still had jobs, if very little culture, was by no means a "golden age" but was a helluva lot better than what exists today after decades of Republican "pre-emptive wars and free trade." They have done the same to my home town. The B. F. Goodrich comapany shut their plant down here, sold the equipment to the Chinese, opened a new plant in Mexico, etc. On the other side of the equation is the fact the plants most productive week in decades was after the company announced it was closing. The union fellows though that if they worked better and were more productive,maybe they would keep it open. They did but no way they could compete against wage slavery down south and acroos the pacific. T'is all in pieces now.
Lone Racer,
By Cleveland I am referring to Greater Cleveland. And no, I would not want to live anywhere else.
#32 What large American city is not a violent ghetto or paradigm of Democratic corruption?
Robert,
I had season tickets in the Dawg Pound in the now demolished Municipal Stadium. It was a fun place to watch a football game. Unfortunately, the Browns haven't been fun to watch for a while.
It was a fun place to watch a football game. "
Not only that but at certain times of the year it was a tough place to watch, given the weather. Climate has alot to do with a people and their character. That Nort wind is a sobering experience in itself yet, you folks go, live, paly and work in it as just another fact of life. Heat and Wind is what we are famous for down here and it has its charcter building aspects as well. Keep up the good work that you are doing here and over at TAki MAg. I always enjoy and read your columns.
I also live in Ohio, but in the more Kentuckian-dominated southwestern part of the state. Cleveland is a classic rust belt city with much decay, but alot of charm as well. It also unfortunately has a long running Yankee streak, an attitude which our dear matt exhibits so well.
"I know the paleo crowd has this weird fetish for “localism”
Great Scott. Please go back and read your posts, Lone Racer. Do they not read to you like the rantings of an insufferable bore? If you don't understand the importance most of us place on the people, traditions, places and institutions that are nearest and (therefore) dearest to us, if you find the idea "weird", then I cannot guess what you are trying to conserve and why you're here, of all places, trying to conserve it.
Toddard,
Lone Racer is an old aggravated racist and fallen away Catholic that is mad at God. I admire his courage and willingness to stand up for his own folks and can even excuse his pre-judgement that most of them are better than the rest on average. What I don't like is his contempt and condescenion to the habits and customs of those very people he pretends to represent. He is like the incarnation of the dream of August Comte who loved humanity and hated individuals. Or he is like the man visiting Chartres Cathedral on a cloudy day and stomping home murmuring that he didn't see what all the big deal was about color and light. He hates poloticians and therefore wants all his friends to be political. He is disguted with religion and wants all his friends to join him in isms of race, he hates Free Republic and silly blogs, so he drifts over to ours to disrupt and poke fun, etc. He is harmless, quite intelligent, repetitive and easily ignored. He is the one trick pony at the local carnival that kids just love and the adults wish would take a rest.
Lone Racer,
There is no such place as "Red River" in Greater Cleveland. My wife has two degrees from Baldwin Wallace, a lovely college near where we live. We recently got to hear "Anonymous 4" at B-W for the price of ten dollars a ticket. It was a great concert of medieval Church music, but great music is readily available here, with the Cleveland Orchestra, an outstanding baroque orchestra, Apollo's Fire, and several first rate conservatories, including Baldwin Wallace, Oberlin, and the Cleveland Institute of Music.
"He is like the incarnation of the dream of August Comte who loved humanity and hated individuals"
Indeed. Or like a man whose son can't read, but instead of teaching his son to read he leaves his home and family to campaign nationwide against illiteracy, all the while berating those at home teaching *their* sons to read: "Quit lazing about and come help me fight illiteracy!"
Toddard @42
You got it!!I once knew a man who refused to pay his taxes because they funded abortions. He went to prison for failure to pay taxes while leaving a large family to fend for themselves for two years. I knew another woman who put her kids in daycare while she campaigned for W. Bush of all people!!!! The list is endless and restless because folks nowadays are beginning to realize that something must be done, they just don't know what it is. So what we have is an endless chorus of "Well, this is something so let's do this, that or the other ... We forget the words of Plato (and since echoed by St. Benedict and other wise men) "it is no chance topic that engages us, for our subject is: How shall a man order his life?" Thank God for men like Tom Fleming, Clyde Wilson and the other brave paleo souls who have spent a lifetime pursuing the authentic answers instead of the vapor trails of hype,silliness and shouting heads.
As a one-time resident, I will second Mr. Piatak's assessment of Cleveland. It is remarkable what the industrialists of a by-gone era funded and left Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. The average American has been conditioned to sneer at these once economically distingusihed centers of industry as rust-belt ghettos. But the museums, art collections, universities, symphonies, and other cultural markers still in many ways exceed what some of the country's bigger metropoli have to offer. Yes, the cities have deteriorated in many ways, but do not judge what their true underlying character is from afar.
I don't know if it is still the case, but during my years there Cleveland's symphony orchestra was almost universally acknowledged by the experts and afficionados as the best on this continent. Even so, on Saturday mornings I could take my young son to join a raucous group of pre- and primary-schoolers to watch select members of the orchestra demonstrate instruments for children. High culture combined with affordable family access.
Whatever else these industrialists may have been, the Fords, Carnegies, the Mellons, et al were concerned about leaving a positive cultural influence on the cities in which their industries were centered. Today's entrepreneurs and financiers - wealthier many times over than the mentioned predecessors - have left their mark also as they've moved production and engineering overseas.
Eagle, #44: "As a one-time resident, I will second Mr. Piatak’s assessment of Cleveland. It is remarkable what the industrialists of a by-gone era funded and left Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit."
I was raised in a Detroit suburb and sometimes wish I had never left, despite 75 degree weather out here in Southern California today. (You have permission to be envious; also to pay my record high state taxes.) The industrialists did a lot of great things, such as, in Detroit, the Symphony, the Museum or Art, hospitals, research institutes, and many beautiful buildings.
But they also funded the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, dozens of other left-wing foundations, left-wing universities, and left-wing think tanks -- all of which have assaulted America for decades, and continue to assault us. Somebody should write a book on how the Ford Foundation destroyed Detroit, the city Henry built, with its support for "urban renewal."
Meanwhile, the Christian churches, which should have upheld the culture and been a bulwark against the foundations and universities, themselves became left-wing, or took off on tangents such as supporting wars in the Middle East so as -- they believe -- to provoke God to bring on Armageddon, leading to the believers' instant rapture.
Mr. Seiler:
Yes, but John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford would not have approved of the uses to which their money has been put by their foundations. Their mistake was in failing to attach enough strings to their gifts.
Eagle's assessment is correct. The industrialists in places like my native Cleveland laid the foundation for a remarkable cultural infrastructure, and their sagacious philanthropy in this area puts the efforts of today's billionaires to shame.
I am also grateful to Cleveland's old leadership class in another area. Thanks to their foresight, the city is ringed by an excellent park system, a veritable "Emerald Necklace." Scarcely a weekend goes by that I don't take advantage of those parks.
Instead of denigrating Mr. Piatak's hometown, perhaps we should all take a breather and listen to Jim Reeve's wonderful voice or something along those lines. Ferlin Husky might work too. As Christians and traditionalists we should not be attacking one another for silly reasons.
I will leave you fine gentlemen with a scripture from 2 Timothy 2:23-25 "Have nothing to do with stupid, senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to every one, an apt teacher, forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth."
@10 matt
Etienne Gervaise is my given name. I do not comment "all over the internet," only on this site since Takimag accepts no more comments.
But there you go with the questions again. Are you some sort of sayan gathering infromation for your masters? And furthermore, I assure you that I'm still alive. Perhaps you'd better check your facts, as well as your grammar, from now on.
In truth I know Dr. Piatak is a Cleveland-based attorney so I think I'll have him check you out.
Toddard @39: No, I'm someone you might actually learn something from, or, at least, with whom you could have an intelligent conversation about matters of genuine importance. I am ideologically serious; let us say, a 'non-infantilistic' but also non-defeatist conservative. Looking back over some recent posts, here is one you might wish to consider (of course it was in response to another thread's meanderings, but, yes, some things cannot be repeated too often):
19 Comment by Lone Racer on 28 October 2009:
Robert and Chris @15-18:
I actually agree with both of you, and that is no contradiction. The West is indeed the product of the white race (biology), with, now, the overlay of the Christian, especially Catholic, faith (being Catholic myself, I admit to being biased here; I really do believe, however, that Protestants are deeply wrong, even – especially? – the ones with whom I am in general political agreement; I include here both the strict Calvinists, whose views I consider monstrous, even as I have friends amongst them, and the evangelicals, who are just silly to me). Of course, we need to be careful about overemphasizing not race (as most Chronicles writers and blog commenters strangely might aver), but faith, as The One True Faith is a potential gift for all men, but the pre-Christian ancients, undeniably part of our civilization (just ask this site’s editor), are ours alone. Indeed, I argue there would be every bit as much deep psychological compatibility between an ancient Roman, and at least a paleoconservative white man, as between two contemporary Christians of different races.
Both the West and Christianity are larger than each other.
Muslims are infinitely more dangerous immigrants than Mexicans, as my own mother has been saying for years, and for the very reasons above (true, she also says the same thing about all-non-Christian immigrants, including the Chinese – and Jews). The Muslims represent an alien and mostly antagonistic civilization, with a very strong and confident worldview in opposition to our own, both metaphysically as well as temporally (politically and culturally). They have a deep history (and historical memory) of conflict with us. Allowing them to immigrate en masse into Europe over the past half-century was a series of acts of world-historical treason on the part of European “leaders”, and someday, there must be Nuremberg-style trials and punishments for them.
Although there is a radical and racist fringe (”Aztlan”) to the Mexican ‘reconquista’ of the American southwest, I do not think that most Mexicans are either as profoundly oppositional, or as ideologically radicalized, as Muslims (though our own treasonous liberal multiculturalists certainly don’t help matters!). I’ve employed, worked with, etc, many of them, and most are just concerned with bettering themselves (though such betterment can be effectuated by welfare for many of them as much as by work). The point, though, is that, taken as a whole, they are racially inferior to whites – less intelligent, less capable, less entrepreneurial, less rectitudinous, and, of course, still racially mostly incompatible. I’m not sure Mexicans constitute a mortal civilizational threat, but they do lower what used to be called in saner times our “national quality”.
Mr. Piatak: Perhaps I meant to say "Rock River"? I'll have to ask my friend. Anyway, my point was simply that Cleveland, like many old American cities, may have been founded by ingenious, disciplined, and at least reasonably God-fearing white men, but seems to have been ruined by postwar racial integration. Certainly this was the case with Detroit, which my family over several generations helped to build, but which is now a literally dying city (eg, they keep shutting down city services to formerly inhabited municipal areas). There is an obvious lesson to be drawn from these examples.