[Editor’s Note: this was originally written two years ago under the title “GOP: 1854-2013?” We can now remove the question mark and update it. I decided to repost it for those who may be new to Monomakhos. The basic take-away is this: the Globalists will do whatever they can to erase our borders, turn us into a Third-World nation and otherwise Islamify us. We never really had a chance. Perhaps in God’s mercy a new, Americanist party will arise from the ashes of the GOP. Or not. The silver lining may very well be that perhaps the permanent decline of America is God’s will, in order to prevent us from further spreading chaos throughout the world.]
INTRODUCTION
There’s an apocryphal story told about Russia as it made its way out of the wreckage of Sovietism in the 1990s. An American political consultant was asked by the Russians what kind of political system America enjoyed. The American replied “In America, we have two parties, an Evil Party and a Stupid Party. And every now and then both parties get together and do something that is both evil and stupid. That’s what we call ‘bipartisanship.'”
Thankfully, the list of truly evil and stupid things is not a long one. I guess that’s one reason our constitutional Republic has lasted for as long as it has (going on a quarter of a millennium now). Our longevity is due to several other factors as well. For one thing, the Constitution diffuses powers between three co-equal branches of government and then between the several states and the federal government. We also can’t overlook the fact that we are a continental republic separated from the Old World by two vast oceans. This oceanic isolation gave us margins for error greater than most other greater empires. Kind of like Great Britain only even more isolated. We never had to be on permanent war footing and militarize our nation, like Prussia. We never had to have a strong man at the center to keep us from being conquered (like Russia). And anyway, there’s no way that Canada wants Detroit at this point so we don’t have to worry about some provocation from that quarter.
Perhaps most importantly, there’s the fact that the historic American nation has been largely homogeneous; the ancestors of our founding stock came from Northern Europe –overwhelmingly from Great Britain. Subsequent migrations came from Central, then Southern and Eastern Europe but all were Europeans and they identified with that grand, overarching civilization known as “Christendom.” The WASPs may not have liked the Irish who populated the ghettos of the East Coast but then again, the Irish didn’t go around forcing WASPs to twist their society to accommodate them. After a generation or two, Lace Irish had no trouble joining the local country club as long as they had the money. There was none of this ethnic agitation business and in time Irish, Italian, or Greek politicians became as common as a winter cold. We were able to “keep the Republic” in Ben Franklin’s wondrous words.
Not content that we have pacific borders and no eternal enmities, the Evil Oligarchy which rules us nevertheless apparently envies the strife that is endemic to the rest of the world; like say, the Balkans. That’s the only reason I can come up with to justify their hell-bent-for-leather push for Amnesty for illegal aliens or as they like to call it “Immigration Reform.”
THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT
Of course we understand why the Democrat Party wants to legalize 11,000,000 illegal aliens (and eventually another 20,000,000 more): they want a permanent governing coalition of the desperately poor who are dependent upon the Federal government for their largesse. There’s an old Scottish saying: “He who feeds ye, owns ye.” That’s been the MO of the Democrats since Tammany Hall. What is not understandable is why the Republican Party wants to go along with this insanity. (I’ll let you guess which is the Evil Party and which is the Stupid Party.)
All good things must come to an end. The Preacher tells us that “to everything there is a time and a season…a time to live and a time to die.” We here at Monomakhos understand that concept. What is difficult to understand though is self-destruction. And make no mistake, in signing on to “immigration reform,” what the Republican Party is doing is ensuring extinction of limited government, if not itself (more on the latter below). One cannot have self-governance without self-reliance, period. Looked at another way, Milton Friedman said you can have open borders or a welfare state but not both. I’ll leave that one out for the Democrats to figure out how they’re going to handle competing claims on the public fisc.
This is crucial: many of the peoples of the Third World who are flooding our shores are fine people in and of themselves, but they are not now, nor have they ever been, devotees of limited government. The rule of law is absent from their moral calculus. This is a harsh thing to say but it is no less true for saying it. They are used to paternalistic government and are excitable when they don’t get it. Ever wonder about the longevity of tyrants such as Saddam Hussein and Moammar Khaddafi? They ladled out goodies like it was nobody’s business. As long as the peasants got their rice bowl filled at the end of the day, then they lived to rule another day.
So let us speculate on why Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Cantor, Paul Ryan and others are hell-bent on committing political suicide. Most probably two reasons: one, the hostile elites that make up the Oligarchy have pictures of them cavorting with barnyard animals; or two, they are going to get thirty pieces of silver for betraying their nation. (I’m going with “two,” Alex.) Look at it this way: Boehner’s daughter just married a dreadlocked Rastafarian who has zero prospects in life. How’s Boehner going to make sure that his grandchildren don’t wind up on food stamps and live in Section 8 housing? Cantor is carrying water for people whose main concern is honoring our promise to Israel to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. A deracinated America in which the strongest Christian groups are Zionist shills led by heretics like John Hagee are the best way to insure our continued bellicosity in favor of Israel. As for Ryan, he’s just a foolish idealist.
Just how evil is this? Consider the fact that we just learned that the Feds just released thousands of alien murderers, rapists, thieves, and other assorted violent miscreants into our midst. These convicted criminals were imprisoned awaiting deportation. How evil is that? It’s like the last Batman movie in which a villain named Bain opens up the jails of Gotham City and lets the criminals run amok, destroying everything in their path. Only what Obama just did isn’t a movie, it’s real. By the lights of every political philosophy, if a government can’t protect its people, it’s illegitimate. What do you call a government that unleashes hordes of criminals on its populace? I’d call it evil. Illegitimate left the train station long ago.
But wait, there’s more. Amnesty for illegal aliens will permanently cripple Big Labor once and for all. For the life of me, I can’t understand why organized labor leaders can’t see this. Mickey Kaus, a liberal Democrat who is keen to the interests of the working class certainly sees it. Thomas Franks though, he of What’s the Matter With Kansas? fame, doesn’t. Cesar Chavez knew what he was doing when he had his goons patrolling our southern border, making sure that “wetbacks” –his word, not mine–didn’t make it across. But then again, Chavez was a third-generation American committed to improving the lives of other Americans (like himself) who engaged in stoop labor. Ever heard of the Okies? They were migrants and they were native to America. Truth was that in most instances, migrant workers were poor whites and blacks who had fallen on hard times –the traditional voting bloc of the Democratic Party. Have the Dems forgotten this? Apparently.
I can’t let this last point go. Why? Because being of Greek heritage myself, I can’t understand why Country Clubbers, RINOs and other assorted WASPs think nothing of betraying the American Republic which their own ancestors created on this land out of the own blood, toil, tears, and sweat. But what about today’s union leaders, whose immigrant coal-mining ancestors and steel-working ancestors, suffered –and often died–to create better working conditions for the average Joe? What explains their treason?
THE MORAL CASE FOR THE GOP
It’s ironic, the Republican Party was started way back in 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin, as a moralistic enterprise by disgruntled Democrats, Whigs, and Abolitionists who were fed up with slavery and appalled by polygamy. Back then, Republicans cared about emancipating black slaves and they cared about middle America. They weren’t keen on immigration mainly because they felt that the largest immigrant population –blacks–needed to be freed, educated, and assimilated as much as possible into American culture. To do this, they enacted high tariffs in order to protect native industry. No, they weren’t perfect but they had an instinctive understanding of what it meant to be an American. They were in essence the Generic American Party and the historic American nation richly rewarded them. That’s why even though the Republican Party is fifty years younger than the Democrats, they have elected more presidents. The Democrats on the other hand were the party of the marginalized: primarily oppressed Southerners and ostracized immigrants.
Therefore, what the House leadership is planning on doing –Amnesty Light–is profoundly evil. Not only will it likely destroy the Republican Party, it will lay waste to the American landscape. California, which went for native son Richard Nixon all five times that he was on a national ticket has not gone for the Republicans in over twenty years, with no prospects of doing so ever again. Look at this another way: if America enjoyed the same demography that it had in 1980, Romney would have won an even bigger landslide than Reagan did that year. That’s all dust now, thanks to the importation of millions of non-Christian or semi-heathen Third-Worlders who have no historic ties to the Founding Fathers, the nation they founded, and the moral concepts which animated them.
For those who are sputtering at Monomakhos‘ supposed nativism, let me ask: why do you think that the invasion of non-European and/or non-Christian ethnicities will strengthen the concept of republican self-governance? How could we expect otherwise given that civility can only exist among people of common ancestry who are of like mind and temperament? Or do you think that the fracturing of this country along ethnic lines will not result in less tribalism and less violence? By what historical evidence do my critics base this utopian fantasy on? The polyglot Hapsburg Empire (whose ethnic resentments caused World War I and then not ten years later spawned a Hitler)? Or do you base it on the heterogeneous societies of Latin America which regularly erupt in violent revolution? You think Mexico is homogeneous? The Castizos are at the top, the Indios at the bottom with mestizos somewhere in the middle. It’s the same in Brazil, Peru, Nicaragua, and everywhere else in Latin America where the Iberian elite coexists with a native majority.
Make no mistake, if this monstrosity passes, America will be even more Balkanized than it is now.
GREECE: THE CANARY IN THE COALMINE
You still don’t believe me? Look at what happened to Greece, an incredibly homogeneous nation that allowed itself to be overrun by hordes of illegal aliens who had no respect for the host country. We are literally talking about savages who defecate in public squares and on the lawns of churches. You read that right. Do not get me wrong: Greece has always been corrupt but because of its homogeneity it was able to function in a non-violent fashion for most of its modern history. In the Greece of my memory and experience, somebody always knew somebody else who could get this, that, or the other thing. For the majority, there was always some close relative in North America, South Africa, or Australia who could help out in a pinch. For those not lucky enough to have a foreign relative, well, they pretty much fell through the cracks. Somebody always does. It’s inevitable. Still, all things being equal, the vast majority of the people muddled their way through, most doing very well. More importantly, violent crime was non-existent. Why? because the people viewed themselves as having a common ancestry. And they did. Truth be told, up until fairly recently, that was true of the vast majority of the European nation-states.
Now that’s all come crashing down. And why? Thanks in large part to open borders. The flooding in of hundreds of thousands of Afghanis, Pakistanis, Nigerians, and Albanians has brought the already corrupt and inefficient social services sector to its knees. Worse, crime has sky-rocketed. And I mean violent crime. Really violent crime. Like the kind you read about in the Detroit, East St Louis, and Oakland newspapers (that is when they aren’t burying them on page A-18). Crimes of a nature that were unheard of in Greece.
Things are so bad that to many, Greece’s only hope at this point is in some form of nativism as embodied in The Golden Dawn. Make no mistake: Golden Dawn is nativist and racialist. You can see it in their imagery. But it is also very popular among the ordinary Greek people. Forget the nonsense you read about that Syriza, a secularist socialist party is the stronger of the two. Syriza is the darling of the Globalists. Its so un-hellenic that its leader has chosen to not baptize his children in the Orthodox Church. To the ordinary Greek on the street, this is shocking. I know Communists who baptized their children. It’s what Greeks do.
Things are so desperate that if you put a gun to the head of the average man-in-the-street and told him he had to choose between Syriza and Golden Dawn, the Dawn would win hands down. It is Golden Dawn which runs soup kitchens (not Syriza) and more importantly, it is Golden Dawn which takes vigilant actions against foreign criminals. Golden Dawn may only get 10 percent of the vote in any given election but they get 50 percent of the votes of policemen. That’s why the Establishment is terrified of it, hence the extra-constitutional means it has used to try to bring it down. Unfortunately for the Eurocrats, it’s not going anywhere because the resentments of the Greek middle and working classes are not being addressed. Until that happens there’s little hope for a bright future.
The Eurocrats who demanded an end to Greek “xenophobia” (read: rock-ribbed Greek belief in their territorial sovereignty) ten years ago as the price of admission into the Eurozone, never foresaw what would happen. Reality is unable to penetrate their skulls, which house an egalitarian, once-size-fits-all view of humanity. “Surely Third World refugees would not act in a barbarous fashion, what are you, some type of racist?” was the invariable response a native heard from his nation’s elite. “All would be well” they were told as the Establishment types rolled their eyes.
Well, all isn’t well, and not just in Greece. This same phenomenon abounds in other countries as well: the UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party), France’s Front National, and the Vlaams Belang of Belgium are flourishing. We can also see this in the unapologetic nationalism of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. Vladimir Putin rode to a victorious third term on a wave of nationalist hysteria in Russia. In Ukraine, Svoboda and Pravy Sektor led the fight against the corrupt (but legally elected Yanukovich presidency) and they strived to consolidate their gains by harping on an exclusionary Ukrainian nationhood. I don’t like it but it’s understandable. Xenophobia has even arisen Israel where Israeli Jews have waged race riots against black African migrants, believe it or not. Many of these Africans have been placed in concentra detention camps where they are processed for deportation. So far, out of thousands of Africans asking for asylum, only one has been granted the right to stay in Israel. Say what you want about the Israelis, but they’re committed to the concept of a Jewish ethno-state.
THE GREAT RETRIBALIZATION: DIVIDE AND CONQUER
Incidents and phenomena such as these do not arise in vacuums. How do European liberals feel when African and Arab Muslims in France regularly molest and murder Jewish citizens? Are the liberal elites (many of whom are Jewish) happy with their open borders policies now? Or the reverse-Nazi salute known as the quenelle which is all the rage among the Muslims of France? Are feminists who decry the “patriarchy” they were miseducated about in their university days happy when European women are gang-raped because they had the temerity to walk near Islamic ghettos with their heads uncovered?
Not content to giving urban rioters in America a pass in the 60s (all of which ironically, occurred after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and none in the South) the Republicrats want to turn even more sections of America into Third World colonies. Victor Davis Hansen, a seventh-generation Californian from the Central Valley has seen that area go from a Norman Rockwell Midwestern landscape to Tijuana on a bad day: dog carcasses littering the streets from overnight pit-bull fights, chop-shopped cars abandoned on the side of the road, lean-tos built out of corrugated tin, and jumbles of electric wires going between houses and ersatz businesses. Litter strewn everywhere. Think American Graffiti on the one hand and Road Warrior on the other.
And it’s all so unnecessary. With Obamacare crashing and burning and even liberal Democrats running away from it like scalded dogs, the Republicans have every expectation to run the tables in 2014. All the political hotlines are showing this. Why then is the GOP hell-bent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? Why is the GOP willing to change the demographic make-up of America to the Democrats’ permanent advantage? Surely there must be more to it than money.
There is something here for everyone who makes up the Establishment: Chamber of Commerce types want an unending supply of cheap, mestizo labor. That goes hat-in-hand with Big Business which wants to permanently cripple organized labor. Secular Jewish elites with their carefully cultivated stories of past suffering desire nothing less than a heterogeneous, non-Christian (or at least secular) society. We know that. That the government is going broke supporting their gate-crashing is not their problem. Capital respects no group but will continue to flow upward to the highest quintile.
But there must be something else that animates the GOP establishment and causes them to continue drinking the Rovian Kool-Aid. And it may be this: they think that it will be easier to control a balkanized nation than a homogeneous one. Or if not outright control, then at least be able to harvest the votes of the white majority in a systematic manner. Look at it this way: demographic blocs are predictable in their voting patterns. Non-white demographic groups vote close to 80 percent Democratic. They do this consistently. The question is how do you get whites (who constitute a majority and will continue to do so for another 30 years) to go 80 percent the other way? Especially when whites vote only 60 percent Republican? At present, if the Democrats can ply off one or two percent of the white vote, then they win. If the GOP gets 60 percent plus one, they win. It’s really that simple.
Here’s where it gets interesting. GOP strategists know that whenever the white majority in any particular precinct is lessened, the Republican share of the white vote goes up. Think of the Solid South. They are betting that with Amnesty passing, and the white share decreasing to 60 percent (and then 50 percent) of the overall population in any given jurisdiction, then whites will migrate just as solidly to the GOP as blacks do to the Democrats. At that point, the GOP will then be able to count on 70 percent (or more) of the white vote. Southern Evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for the Mormon Romney, and because of their majority status throughout the South, they were able to turn the electoral votes of their states to his advantage. I call this the “Great Retribalization.” Diversity decreases social cohesion, increases mistrust and causes discreet demographic groups to look inward. The result is to self-segregate and vote in bloc patterns.
There’s some logic to this but here’s where it gets dicey. Contrary to the febrile imaginings of Karl Rove, Jeb Bush, and some traditionalists, Latinos will never go Republican. Moral Majority types have long admired Hispanic culture because of its innate family-oriented conservatism; they also think Latin machismo is an antidote to homosexuality and feminism. Unfortunately, the pathology that has destroyed the black family is proceeding apace among most Hispanic populations. Anglo traditionalists are shocked when they find out that most Latin countries embraced gay marriage long before we did (and in the US, it was always imposed by judicial fiat). Evangelicals and Mormons will wait in vain for any moral reinforcements from that quarter. The Catholic Church likewise is deluded in thinking that they will replenish their dwindling numbers as one-third of Hispanics are Evangelical (with a steady increase of Mormons). I think that both Jeb and Karl know this even though they’re preaching otherwise. My guess is that they’re Judas goats. Rove will continue to make millions peddling the Amnesty Kool-Aid and Jeb is in line to be President. That kind of makes sense: like most Third World nations, we now have two political dynasties –the Bushes and the Clintons–and they will trade out the Presidency for the foreseeable future.
[So why didn’t Romney win? Because even though he got 75 to 80 percent of the white vote in barely white-majority states (like Georgia) he only got 40 percent of the white vote in overwhelmingly white majority states (like Wisconsin). Overall, his total share of the white vote was 59 percent. In the Congressional races of 2010, the GOP got 64 percent of the white vote. Even as the white share of the populace decreases (right now, it’s 63 percent), Republican candidates can still win if they’re overall vote share increases if whites start voting en bloc. They don’t even have to approach Jewish/black/Hispanic levels of 80/20.]
BALKANIZATION: A THREAT TO THE DEMOCRATS?
Of course, what happens if solidly Red states like Texas suddenly become majority-minority, like California? I don’t think Rove has figured that one out. Things are never static however. Demographics is a two-edged sword and things get equally dicey for Democrats. Bring in enough Latinos and Muslims, and the Democrat stranglehold on Asians and Jews also decreases. If the Asian vote goes from 80/20 Democrat to 75/25 Democrat then Washington State goes into play for the GOP. At 70/30 then California starts turning purple.
Phenomena such as this make for interesting times. Recently we saw five Asian legislators in California hold up the Assembly and derail a vote on college-entry quotas which would have disadvantaged them at the expense of Hispanics. More of Hispanic spoils-system voting and Asians will start to depart the Democrat fold in earnest. Any threat to the educational attainments of their children and they’ll hold their noses and vote Republican. We can go back to history and consider how another traditionally Democratic demographic swallowed their pride and voted for a Republican: Jimmy Carter had so alienated Jewish voters that 40 percent voted for Reagan. The desertion of this significant of slice of the Jewish vote to Reagan meant that didn’t need a majority of Jews in New York (for example) to beat an incumbent Democratic president, just enough to force the Democrats to defend formerly safe electoral territory.
That’s a risk the Karl Roves of the world are willing to take. But at what price? Increased crime? Failing public schools? Clogged emergency rooms? The descent of Norman Rockwell-like vistas to Thunderdome-like landscapes?
But it’s too big a risk for the American people to take. So what if an unending horde of illegal aliens breaks the bonds of community and institutions such as hospitals and public schools? That’s a problem for the Little People, not the Oligarchy since they send their children to private schools where only token, model minorities exist, and then only in miniscule, manageable numbers. A balkanized American nation in which the majority has no ties to its founding is more manageable. It’s called “electing a new people.” A people that is not self-reliant but permanently dependent upon the Establishment.
So is all lost? Is it over the GOP and Middle America?
THE PATRIOTIC RESISTANCE
The base had fought a valiant battle keeping the leadership on board throughout all of 2013 and had carried the day. That wasn’t nothing. As tiring as that was, that didn’t mean that we weren’t ready to continue the fight throughout all of 2014 if need be. Then we heard leaks from the House Republican retreat in Maryland in February that Amnesty was in the works. Despair was palpable. But as much as the House leadership wanted them to, the majority of GOP Congressmen didn’t cave.
Why? For one thing, we didn’t get the full story. Boehner, Cantor, et al, had their talking points from Sheldon Adelson, the despicable casino mogul who enriches himself on cheap immigrant labor. But they also got an earful from the average Republican Congressman. The leadership was told that as much as they liked the millions that the Oligarchy and was preparing to throw their way, they liked the votes of ordinary, middle Americans even more. I still believe that the intrinsic patriotism of the average Republican office-holder is a principled one; that is after all the reason that the “Solid South” has gone from being the bulwark of the Democratic Party to the that of the GOP. It is easier for a Chuck Schumer (whose first love is Israel) or a Luis Guittierez (who views himself as a LaTYEENo) or a Keith Ellison (who took his oath of office on the Koran) to champion “immigration reform” since neither man has any sympathy or connection to America, its people and their folkways.
The list of American elites who disdain America is a long one and transcends ethnic and religious boundaries. It’s been said that Geraldo Rivera wants to retire to Israel and run for the Knesset. The aforementioned Sheldon Adelson is all for security fences surrounding a nation so long as that nation is Israel. Our own Church hierarchy isn’t immune: many of the bishops of the GOA are paid agents of the Greek government and others are taking on Turkish citizenship. They’re just here whiling away their time until they get tapped by the State Department to be the next Eastern Pope. Barbara Boxer believes in a “woman’s right to choose” here in America but is all for the onerous restrictions put on Israeli women which prevent them from waltzing into abortuaries and murdering their babies at the drop of a hat. People like these are in a real sense rootless cosmopolitans. To the extent that American elites believe anything positive about America at all, they delude themselves into believing that America is a propositional nation and not a historical one.
The average GOP Congressman from South Dakota, Wyoming, or Georgia doesn’t have that luxury. He or she may like to watch Downton Abbey but their bailiwick is rural, suburban, and exurban America. They see the erosion of their bases’ wages and the dissolution of the traditional family and they know that without decent jobs working men cannot keep their families intact. The selling out of manufacturing to the Chinese and the importation of millions of illegals have been twin hammer-blows that will make the recovery of the middle class improbable.
The imposition of multiculturalism is merely the icing on the cake as far as the transnationalist Oligarchy is concerned. They are “men without chests” as C S Lewis would say, having no love for kith and kin or land and liberty. Incidents such as thousands of Mexican-Americans cheering on the Mexican national soccer team as it defeats Team USA has no meaning for them. For ordinary Joes on the other hand, it is an added accelerant fueling the toxic brew that is multiculturalism. The vacuous blandishments of Jorge Ramos on Univision that America has no historical racial core can’t save the marriage of a recently-unemployed working-class white man who was able at one time to support his family. Nor will the moral preening of the mainstream media fool the middle class into believing that their children are safe on the streets when ordinary Americans know full well that predatory bands of illegal aliens regularly rape and murder little girls. (As already mentioned above.)
NEOCONS: A BREAK IN THE FIREWALL?
There is another reason that the GOP may have stepped back from the brink as well. Recently, big-hitters in the neocon establishment such as Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer have turned on Amnesty as well. This is a significant turn-around. Why the change of heart among these Jewish elites, especially since Jews have championed immigration reform, going all the way back to the 1920s? For these Republicans at least, it’s probably tactical. Thanks to Obamacare and the jobless recovery, the GOP is on track to winning big come November. Even if they don’t deserve to win, our political system is binary: if A loses, then B wins, there’s no way around that. Why throw away a winning hand? Kristol is always brushing up his resume ready to get an Executive branch job in the next Republican administration. He doesn’t have many years left to fulfill his mission of bombing Iran back to the Stone Age.
For the neocons, this is important. The ability of the Democratic Party to successfully wage war has taken a beating since Korea. More importantly, it has lost its martial edge. It very much is an anti-war party now and has been since Chicago 1968. This militaristic vigor has been taken up by the GOP. The truth of the matter is that neoconservatism requires an America with a robust military, one which can crack a few Arab skulls if need be in order to ensure the security of the Jewish state. In addition, American neocons are looking at the disastrous multicultural experiment that is Western Europe and are seeing the destruction of ancient Jewish communities by Muslim immigrants who have not bought into the Holocaust religion and could care less about universalist Western concepts such as freedom of religion. It’s possible that they have crafted their own conservative critique against open-borders zealotry for precisely the same reasons that have animated the Christian Right. If so, this will breathe additional life into the patriotic front that is presently manning the ramparts of American civilization.
THE LAST DITCH
At any rate, the common tactic of the Elites of crying “racist” or “xenophobe” has lost its sting in the face of the bitter realities of American life. Perhaps that is why the Republicans in Congress are more than willing to go toe-to-toe with Boehner and his overlords. And it has been nothing short of glorious to see stalwart conservative ladies like Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter beat the crap out of Establishment conservatives such as George Will on live TV. Perhaps that is why the GOP base is willing to go to the mattresses on this one.
Then there is the fact that Obama has been singularly untrustworthy. As gullible as Country-clubbers are regarding multiculturalism, they aren’t completely daft. They now know what the Tea Party has always known: that Obama’s word is no good. (And let’s put our cards on the table: Obama will probably pass Amnesty by Executive fiat anyway.)
We shall see what the future holds. We’ve pushed back and hard against the Adelsons and Zuckerbergs of the world. Matt Drudge has done admirable work in exposing the pusillanimity of the House GOP leadership. If it weren’t for his exposure combined with the ferocity of Middle America, the Oligarchy would have already won. In fact, they would have won back in 2006 when Bush the Younger tried to get Amnesty in its McCain-Kennedy form passed. But the inability of Boehner and his ilk to pry their lips away from Big Business’ ass is an inexorable force of nature in its own right. It’s what they do, it’s what they live for. It’s in their genetic code. I think in the end they will betray their base and America as we have known it will be over with, once and for all.
Maybe it’s impossible to dodge the Balkanist Bullet. The multiculturalist religion of Diversity uber alles may just be too preponderant. Then again, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. As the open-borders Eurozone experiment comes crashing down, as Greece slips past the point of no return, it’s possible that the Oligarchy will start to rethink this. There’s only so much capital that can come to American banks from oversees plutocrats seeking a safe haven. Especially when American corporations are seriously looking at foreign venues because of significantly lesser corporate tax rates.
And what if BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) start seriously thinking about untethering their economies from the Dollar? What if they see that the flooding of unemployable, permanently dependent aliens makes vast swaths of America unlivable? Our national debt is on an unsustainable trajectory. Arguing over which party deserves the most blame won’t stop default. At that point, the dollar becomes meaningless and we enter Wiemar republic conditions. BRIC and others will have no choice but to demand gold for their products.
The future is not bright. Enoch Powell, a British parliamentarian warned Great Britain back in 1968 about untrammeled immigration. So far the UK hasn’t collapsed to the extent that Greece has but it’s pretty much on its way. He also said that the “primary purpose of government is to stop preventable evils from occurring in the first place.” Governments don’t have to go on foreign crusades or even do positive, pro-active things; all they have to do at minimum is prevent bad things from happening in the first place. Closing our borders, being choosy with who comes here is one of those things. In a saner world, it’d be a no-brainer.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a sane world. Indeed, we live in a profoundly evil one, where our own government is releasing hordes of evil-doers in our midst.
This will not stand. Either Amnesty will break the American Republic or America will break Amnesty. There will be no middle ground.
http://www.humanevents.com/2014/05/06/is-obama-wrong-on-ukraine/
Not entirely on topic, but Pat had another good one.
I’ve been watching the establishment Republicans like those meddling from the Chamber of Commerce brag about their attempts to hold onto the party for “electable” candidates. Why should I go for Democrap lite if I could go full brain dead and vote for a Democrap?
I’m still stunned by the sheer evilness of ICE releasing 9,000 violent (convicted) criminals in our midst. That’s staggering.
George:
They are NOT “violent criminals”! They are cultural warriors, psychologically equipped, now enlisted into the international war against social injustice & right-wing totalitarian ideology. Power to the People!
You’re kidding, right?
“cultural warriors, psychologically equipped”
That’s a good parody of how many nativists perceive immigrants – they don’t change, they maintain their traditions and fling them in our faces, and we are weak and unable to defend ourselves against this perceived cultural onslaught. The fallacy here is that the experience of immigration changes the immigrants too – who can maintain some (imaginary) cultural purity while being surrounded by an alien culture? Just as we are changed, so are they.
And we should look at the broad picture. There are hundreds of thousands of Westerners living (many temporarily, some for extended periods) in Muslim nations. You don’t think the citizens of those nations change? Think again! The cultural, economic, and military impact of the West on the Muslim world has been and will remain far greater than the reverse. If you want to think in civilizational terms, we’ve been winning for centuries.
And what’s in your Kool-Aid, sir?
The cultural onslaught is very real. And for those of us who are “ethnic” Orthodox, our churches are the repositories of our respective ethnic identities–a first line defense, if you will.
Three generations ago, our grandparents eschewed the notion of the hyphenated-American. Now it is celebrated. If there can be Mexican-Americans and Chinese-Americans, then there can be Russian-Americans and Greek-Americans too.
That’s nice that terms change, hyphens are added, dropped, etc. That point concerns language, not actual relations between ethnic groups. Every non-WASP group has struggled to be accepted as a non-hyphenated American at some point. Ever heard of the anti-Greek riots in Omaha, to name but one example? You think that today’s Arabs and Mexicans – both groups with which I have much experience – wouldn’t like to be more fully included in American society as well? Every group that’s come here has changed the USA to some extent – Jews, Slavs, Italians, Irish, you name it. To think that today’s immigrants are somehow the death of our nation is simply repeating the Know-Nothingism of previous decades, the same tired slogans that have been invoked against just about everyone who’s come here.
The past was never as culturally pure as many imagine it to be (that phenomenon isn’t unique to America either).
Matt, you are right in the abstract. However today’s minorities have race hustlers for leaders and are rewarded for their separatism. A lot of these rewards are actual transfer payments as well as special classes which exacerbate their particularisms.
I am the son of an illegal alien. I didn’t speak English til I went to kindergarten. There was no way in hell my father, mother, grandparents, parish priest, or GOA archbishop would have demanded that Riverview Elementary School twist themselves into pretzels to accommodate me and the other Greek-American kids who went there (and had gone there going all the way back to the 1920s).
You missed my point. The current generation of immigrants has no intention or desire to shed their cultural affiliations.
Our grandparents were practically forced to conform, arguably by some of the precursors to today’s social “architects” who now champion multiculturalism. Old World customs were suppressed, and into that vile melting pot they went; their children came out as newly-minted “Americans” with no connection to their origins.
Now the children of those Americans wax romantically about the customs of any number of foreign cultures to which they are not even related, not having the slightest idea or interest in knowing that they, too, came from somewhere far away and had traditions of their own.
Polyglot countries can not long exist especially where participatory government exists.
Die hard multiculturalists push it because they want to do away with the evil white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture that ruled the United States for a long time.
A homogenized secular culture no matter how many hyphens and genders it contains produces nothing of last value in terms of culture as nothing can ever be allowed to offend. Neither will it tolerate any religion that offends with a call to holiness. Only the religion of the consumer will be allowed and the nihilist vision of the superman. No beauty.
A person can appreciate the culture from which they come without trying to impose it on the new country.
What needs to be realized is that the Orthodox Church is pan-cultural an supra-cultural. It can support and feed the beauty which any ordered culture produces.
Maybe, we should have a minium wage for US corporations in third world countries in trade treaties. This would helped the wage gap between Mexico and the US or some other country and slowdown immigration to the US but helped the wages in the developing country. I think the problem with the left today is that they think all people from developing countries need to come to the US or Western Europe to escape poverty, why not lower poverty in their home countries.
Unlikely. The reason the Globalists place compromised people like Hillary, Jeb, Lindsey Graham, John McCain in positions of power is so that the slave-power continues on as before. Please reread my post from a couple of weeks ago in which Hillary went to bat for sweat-shop owners in Haiti.
Expect more of the same. The capital must continue to flow upward to the Blankfeins, Buffetts and Rothschilds of the world. Chaos, war and slave wages ensures that.
George, Great read, yet very sad indeed! Not much there to disagree with. I can relate to kindergarden, myself first generation from Greece. Sad is that my children will never know what Greece was before the Euroinvasion. The greatest memories I have were traveling to Greece, and visiting relatives, and truly have a sense of where I came from, and the pride I felt. Say what you want about Greeks, but near zero crime rates speaks volumes. Honor, tradition and pride has left Greece forever. Again sadly my children will never know what America was like when I was a child. Hell, simple things, like playing outside without fear are gone forever. We must pray and have hope George, if not for us, at least for our children. If the United States can recover from the civil war, and The great depression why not now?
Unbelievable, isn’t it Dino? I first went to Greece as an 8 year old. Athens was bustling, crowded but safe! My dad’s village in the Pelepponese had dirt roads and dried donkey dung everywhere but the houses were a bustle of color, the tiny lawns had well-tended gardens, the people, though poor by our standards were cheery. Then I’d go back every so often (last time in 2000). More modern definitely, the roads paved, no donkey dung but Greece was still Greece.
Parts of Greece now resemble Mad Max’s Thunderdome.
Let us never forget or behave without Philotimo, second only to Christ in our hearts!
My mom took me to Greece for years and we would stay there in either her village or my dad’s village. Doors open, never locked, and always sage. It never crossed anyone’s mind to steal from their neighbors. Last time I was there was in 2006, and everybody’s house was locked down and shuttered, crime was up, drug use was up, cohabitation was normal, and the economy was coming unhinged. Now it’s only Greece in name only. The inside is all bought and paid for by Brussels and Berlin. What Hitler and his Nazis could not take through military force the EU and it’s Nazis gave Greece loans it could never payback and the Greeks just gave their country away to the EU/Nazis willingly because of their greed and love of the good life. Not so much of a good life now for them or for us.
Instead of leading with the Grexit, the Greeks were schooled. And rightly so by Brexit.
May we have our own Amex it from globalism with Donald Trump. The alternative is too scary to even think about.
Peter A. Papoutsis
Peter, I have always said todays Berlin Bankers are the new Nazi SS.
c’mon. the GOP doesn’t want limited government. The gov must support the military, industry and agriculture. That can’t be done by a limited government.
At one time, the GOP did want limited government (except during the Great Interstate Squabble of 1861-65). But you’re right, since the New Deal and the growth of the Leviathan state, the GOP has more or less acceded to the tyrannical paradigm.
The GOP wants limited government only when there is a Democratic administration. When the administration is Republican they write it a blank check where regulation is concerned. For instance,, they want to make every citizen have “papers”, and resent the Democratic administration for not imposing that requirement.
Your Grace, considering all of the incidences of Republican support of big government, you could have come up with far more effective examples. Instead you choose the one thing that makes sense: requiring that voters be citizens.
Voters are already required to be citizens.
I notice a change going on in American English. Many now say “incidences” where we formerly said “incidents.”
Voters “may be required to be citizens” but that doesn’t mean that all voters are citizens. As even the NY reports:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303980004579579951153008452?mg=reno64-wsj
No, Your Grace. They only need “papers” (I assUme you mean I.D.) to vote.
If they do not vote, no “papers” are required.
Isa, you look at the world through rosie glasses! Many Republicans want all citizens to have papers in order to identify “illegals” through their lack of such. Haven’t you heard of Arizona?
Well, in Arizona they don’t usually didn’t asked unless its the sheriff of Maricopia. Arizona fine employers which works better than paper work. Most Republicans have use them for cheap labor. There are only a few that penalized companies for hiring them. Texas is a growth bed for people coming illegal since there is lots of service jobs and construction jobs. Texas like California is going Hispanic because no one wanted to punished employers for hiring folks and NAFTA was stupid on farm goods. The NAFTA Treaty drove poor Mexican farmers to the US for jobs since the American Agricultural goods were dumped on the Mexican market and pricing small Mexican farms out. Republicans supported the NAFTA treaty more than Democrats.
Minimizing the voters is a right wing agenda. The NAACP sued in FL and found that 3000 eligible voters were unlawfully prohibited from voting in 2008 if I recall after being invalidly removed as felons. Far more voters are prohibited from voting than potential fraud. The right has won the charade.
Well, we don’t have to worry about that in Virginia. Gov McAuliffe just pardoned 20,000 felons just in time for the election.
Oh tell the idolater of a mythical John Wayne that English is the number one language in the world and pressing number one to choose English is most fitting, indeed.
As for the topic of American history, Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken and others have indicated that in America the most benighted and uninformed idiots are entitled to have their say. There is truly a finite number of comments appropriate to the discussion of American culture/society, and if one reads AT ALL, one learns to spot clues that make it totally unnecessary to imbibe an entire speech or essay. For example, when anyone past the eighth grade writes or utters “The Democrat Party,’ knowing full well the name of the party is The Democratic Party, we know the speaker/writer apparently thinks that some politically scientific of ideological point or score is being made and one may dispense with reading any further.
There are other such tipoffs: brandishing the President’s middle name is one..
Your Grace, whether English is the “number one language in the world” is immaterial to me. I simply want it to be the only language spoken in the United States. Otherwise lies separatism (at best).
Grammar Nazism…the surest sign of a failed argument.
Though it was amusing when Hussain insisted on pronouncing the “p” and “s” of the “Corps.”
And when Hussain said he went to all 57 states.
And when Hussain moved Charleston, Savanna and Jacksonville off the Atlantic and onto the Gulf of Mexico.
And…
Isa Almisry! You allege “grammar Nazism.’ Please, define it, and then point out any incidence of it in the post by me to which you reply. Thank you.
George Michalopulos is the kind of person that would want English to be the only language spoken in the United States. He has admitted it. Actually he “simply” wants that. Can’t argue with that!
From your mouth to God’s ear! Your Grace. What people speak in their private settings (church, home, Sierra club) is immaterial to me and always has been to the vast majority of reasonable people.
George! You wrote “only language spoken IN THE UNITED STATES.” MOW you back up and down and claim that what is spoken in PUBLIC settings, such as Church and such public social organizations as the Sierra Club (and the Lodge?) is immaterial? Can’t say, ‘I take that back?”
Read Pat’s latest: https://www.vdare.com/articles/nationalism-the-specter-haunting-europe
As usual, he hits the nail on the head.
Pat’s on a serious roll with this one. Europeans have a far more serious problem on their hands than we do. Their cultures have already largely been replaced with contemporary Western progressive liberalism which, in turn, is threatened to be replaced in the long run with Islam. It should be apparent to them that progressive liberalism is too weak to survive in the wild. They want something stronger and will find it.
Personally, I think it is long overdue. I would much rather sit down and eat with an orthodox Muslim than a progressive liberal. The Muslim and I agree on many values and actually both believe in God. Of course, Europe’s right is rejecting both, and laudably I suppose.
Misha says:
“I would much rather sit down and eat with an orthodox Muslim than a progressive liberal. The Muslim and I agree on many values and actually both believe in God.”
Having done both numerous times, I would have to agree with you.
“I would much rather sit down and eat with an orthodox Muslim than a progressive liberal. The Muslim and I agree on many values and actually both believe in God.”
Yes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend… until, as history shows, the common enemy is defeated. Then the struggle for supremacy really begins. Please don’t remain naive about this fact: Islam is a totalitarian ideology which brooks no opposition once it has achieved dominance in a society. Just ask Christians in Muslim nations which have instituted Sharia how they feel about breaking bread with their Islamic oppressors.
The Muslims are being used to facilitate our extermination at the instigation of progressive liberal elements. Once we’re gone, they’ll be after the Muslims, make no mistake about it.
I think you have it backwards. The Islamists will turn on the progressives who have supported them. If the gays have a problem with being denied Holy Communion in Orthodox churches, what will they do when Sharia law calls for their death for practicing their lifestyle?
They’ll do exactly what they’ve done to Christianity. Our mistake is that we’re getting too friendly with the progressives on account of our fear of Islam.
Our people know how to deal with Muslims. We’ve been doing that since Islam started. Westerners, on the other hand, manage to self-destruct in their presence.
It doesn’t seem like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is doing a good job of implementing sharia law, then…
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/05/the-kingdom-in-the-closet/305774/
Sodomy is tolerated in most traditionally Muslim cultures, Matt. Christianity, however, is suppressed. Go figure.
Basil, your statement that sodomy is tolerated in most traditionally Muslim cultures is misleading and cries out for qualification. In the Moslem countries run by Weatern Europeans, it is true that Western Europeans (and Americans) from allegedly ‘Christian’ cultures were abel to practice sodomy at will as long as they had money. The boys of Morocco Tunisia, etc., etc., were easy prey. They were DIRT POOR, and the “Christian’ foreigners were rich. And these noble Christian pederasts liked nothing more than to excuse themselves by saying that sodomy was “no big deal” for Muslims.
Sodomy is found in Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. cultures. Neither you nor any sane person, however, would be so dumb as to say that sodomy is tolerated in the Islamic Republic of Iran, or in Saudi Arabia!
Historically it is the GREEKS who are the most traditionally and persistently sodomitic, NOT Muslims. It’s a popular fallacy and has probably led to a horrible waking up for many whe travel HOPEFULLY to Muslim countries, thinking they can get easily what they would not dare to ask for at home.
I can only deduce that you have not travelled widely in Muslim countries, Your Grace, for anyone who does so with an observant eye will detect the sodomite culture, which is winked at. Of course, I am not saying the Koran permits sodomy, but it certainly has not had the religious power to effectively stamp out what has an accepted practice in many Eastern cultures for millenia. For example, I believe the aspect of Afghan culture that most shocked your American soldiers was the prevalence of sodomy, mostly perpetrated upon boys.
I certainly have not travelled in “Muslim countries.” Moreover, even if I had done so, I probably would be unable to detect what Basil detects, because I lack his “Gaydar”.
As far as whether Islam OR CHRISTIANITY has ‘had the religious power to effectively (sic) stamp out what has been an accepted (sic) practice for millennia,’ I leave to cultural historians and sociologists. Sodomy, Basil, is ubiquitous. Ask Pope Francis or that Pennsylvania football coach. Sodomy is about as old as Israel, and there is no reason to think its occurrence and frequency of occurrence are affected by any religious system.
Please note that YOU referred to ‘millennia.” Islam has OBVIOUSLY not been around for millennia, since Mohammad was born only in the 7th century. One millennium is one thousand years. Two millennia are two thousand years. Get it?
In times when the Ummah was under less scrutiny here in the United States, I can say that more than a handful of Muslims, especially those from Afghanistan and Pakistan, related to me stories that tend to confirm what Basil says…
I think they call them “Kandahari bacheh baazi.”
However, I think this may be more of an ethnic practice that predates Islamization.
Similarly, while alcohol is prohibited in Islam, there are some home-brewed arracks that don’t seem to meet with much resistance.
Sort of like Jews who won’t eat pork, unless it’s in Chinese food.
agha sebastian, does not “kandahari bache baazi” not mean kandahari children at play?
I suppose double entendres can exist in Farsi/Dari/Tajiki, can they not?
“Sodomy is about as old as Israel”
Alas! Not so, your grace: the earliest reference to homosexual practices dates from c. 1140 B.C. (“The Contendings of Horus and Seth”), while the Merenptah Stele mentions Israel in c. 1208 B.C.
And what Basil says is correct.
Isa attempted to correct me , but muffed it again. Here’s what I actually wrote: “Sodomy is about as old as Israel, and there is no reason to think its occurrence and frequency of occurrence are affected by any religious system.” Perhaps if I had used the more common figure, ‘as old as Methuselah”, i wouldn’t have excited Isa’s ‘gotcha’ reflex so readily! Sodomy (and other homosexual habits/practices as well) is not peculiar to any time, any culture, or any religious society although one might opine that it is Balkan in nature; (“bugger,’ or anal penetration, comes from the same roots as Bulgar and Bulgarian, even though the most popular label for sodomy is “Greek Style,’ no? I suppose if Basil had sojourned in Israel, rather than Afghanistan, he might have opined that sodomy is prevalent in Semitic or even Jewish culturea, since the Israeli armed forces were among the first to recruit homosexuals to beef up their numbers.
Isa! NAME a society or culture in which ANY religion has seriously curtailed the occurrence of sodomy, OK? Anyone who ia familiar with our modern media couldn’t possibly find Afghan sexual mores relative to boys to be a surprise! That is a staple everywhere from YouTube to National Geographic and has become a cheap weapon in the armory of right-wing nuttery. ‘Look what will happen when the muslims TAKE OVER!”a
Isa do you consider the RECORDS of anything to be indicative of time and place of origin?
‘Isa attempted to correct me , but muffed it again. Here’s what I actually wrote”
Alas! your grace forgets that the printed word is not forgotten.
As anyone can see, I quoted you correctly (cutting and pasted your words assured that). My correction was for the unwarry-I leave your grace’s correction to higher powers.
‘gotcha’ reflex? Is that like the gag reflex?
As for “there is no reason to think its occurrence and frequency of occurrence are affected by any religious system,” that assertion so devoid of fact on its face didn’t warrant a comment.
“Isa do you consider the RECORDS of anything to be indicative of time and place of origin?”
I know your grace likes to make it up as you go along, but I was taught to evaluate facts based on evidence, and I’m sticking to that method.
“Anyone who ia familiar with our modern media couldn’t possibly find Afghan sexual mores relative to boys to be a surprise! That is a staple everywhere from YouTube to National Geographic and has become a cheap weapon in the armory of right-wing nuttery. ‘Look what will happen when the muslims TAKE OVER!”a”
I don’t know what these mutterings out of the ignorance of the Left are trying to say. Is it denying pedophilia in Afghanistan, or trying to legitimize it here?
IIRC your grace confessed you had never been in the Muslim world. It would do you well to listen to those of us who have.
“Sodomy (and other homosexual habits/practices as well) is not peculiar to any time, any culture, or any religious society although one might opine that it is Balkan in nature”
Any creature with a rectum can opine as my father used to say (just not in those words). Let’s stick with facts, not indulge claims.
“Isa! NAME a society or culture in which ANY religion has seriously curtailed the occurrence of sodomy, OK?”
Any number, but why not start with Orthodoxy in the Roman Empire? All the Greco-Roman homosexuality going on, and then it wasn’t.
“I suppose if Basil had sojourned in Israel, rather than Afghanistan, he might have opined that sodomy is prevalent in Semitic or even Jewish culturea, since the Israeli armed forces were among the first to recruit homosexuals to beef up their numbers.”
Perhaps Basil would be aware of the fact that most of Jews in Palestine today come from Europe (although nearly 6,000 came from Afghanistan-no telling how many their descendants number today).
“the most popular label for sodomy is “Greek Style,’ no?”
I wouldn’t know. It’s a bit disturbing that your grace does-at least for SF. I do know that that term is pretty limited to the US. So much for ‘not peculiar to any time, any culture, or any religious society’
oh, on that-
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/where-masturbation-and-homosexuality-do-not-exist/265849/
If the choice is to take sides with the progressives against the Muslims, or with the Muslims against progressives, I would choose the latter, every time. This is in contradistinction to the the choice that most conservative Christians in the United States make. Conservative Christians in the West actively participate in their own extinction by supporting the spread of progressive ideology around the world. It is a wondrous and pathetic sight to behold.
Once progressivism is defeated, then we can deal with Islam from the position of being in charge of an economic and military powerhouse. Dealing with Islam first is a tragic mistake. We allow our enemies to remain in control of the economic and military system and thus defeat ourselves.
It would be no exaggeration for me to say that over the years I have known more than a hundred Muslims on a first-name basis and have been fairly close friends with more than a dozen of them.
Discussions of our respective religions invariably lead them to contest two (or three) things:
1. The Holy Trinity (and the divinity of Christ), which they insist is a belief in three gods.
1A: Faulty understanding of Christ as a created being rather than, as we believe, “begotten, not made.”
2. Accountability for transgression, which they do not believe exists in Christianity, presumably due to contact with those of the Evangelical crowd who suggest that salvation is some sort of carte-blanche free-for-all.
When presented with an Orthodox understanding of both, their objections are softened, and while perhaps not enough to effect their conversion, they go away knowing that we indeed believe in the One True God and that we also believe that we will be held to account for our sins at the Last Judgement. The subject is only revisited if they are exposed to someone else’s heterodox view, usually by hearing or reading something in a pamphlet or on television.
Subsequent conversations involve everyday life, political affairs, and when religion is discussed, it tends to address those who believe in no God, those who believe in multiple “gods”, or those who believe various “natural forces,” animals, or other created things are manifestations of the divine.
It’s a lot easier to discuss Orthodoxy with a Muslim than, say, with a Jehovah’s Witness–both of whose views are, in my opinion, variations on the same Arian theme.
Most interesting, and you have a very wide experience, but it is hard for me to accept that Muslim beliefs about Christian views of accountability for transgressions have arisen from contact with Evangelicals. The vast majority of Muslim contact with Christianity has been with non-“evangelicals”, for many, many centuries, up to and including the present.
You say “presumably” from contact with Evangelicals. What does this presumption rest upon?
The presumption rests upon their understanding of Christian beliefs about accountability for sin, forgiveness, and the promise of salvation, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Evangelical position that one need only to make a declaration of faith in Christ as one’s personal Savior, and a place in heaven is assured. It also rests to some degree on their impressions of Christian religious services, which they feel are lacking in reverence and restraint.
I should add that the majority of Muslims I have known have been Afghani, Hindustani, and peninsular Arabian. The latter two groups certainly seem to have the greatest tendency toward fundamentalism. Given that contact between Eastern-rite Christians and Muslims is highest in the Levantine states, Iran, and Egypt, I can’t say a whole lot about what their impressions about Christianity are. But, as an Orthodox Christian in whom the legacy of our sufferings under their yoke resonates most deeply, I can say that I mince no words when speaking to Muslims about this history. Our people should not be made to pay for their grievances against the “Christian” West. For us, the terror came from both the Catholic and Muslim worlds.
“If the choice is to take sides with the progressives against the Muslims, or with the Muslims against progressives, I would choose the latter, every time.”
Indeed. At least the Muslims will give you dhimmi status. “Progressive” stands for progressive annihilation of opposite views.
Agreed, Isa,
It’s worth mentioning also that the Russians and the Muslims within Russia seem to be coming to an understanding based on the fact that the Russians are willing to thin out the herd as much as necessary to remain dominant. Of course, they still have problems. But now Chechens are even fighting for the Red Army.
One need not accept dhimmi status if one can inspire fear in the ummah. All that is necessary is the will to do so. For some, fear = respect.
Oh, boy! If only old King George had had a Pat Robertson on his side, England would still own us! One thing about Putin’s present public policies: they call all our crypto-loyalists out from behind their blinds for the whole country to see!
Well, I have kind of given up. Republican run states are usually not much better. The top two worst states by far are California about 2.3 to 2.8 million and Texas 1.6 to 1.8 million. The other states are way behind in total numbers like Florida and New York probably between 700,000 to a million. Republicans complain about this but Praise Texas to the skies which has grown faster in this more recently than California since the economy is better for service and construction jobs. Liberal groups have discuses the high injury in the Texas construction industry which employs thousands of people here illegality. Until companies get fine for hiring them we always have the problem. In fact I think our new immigration problem is not Mexicans but Chinese There are lots of information in China on how to come to the US if China gets bad for its rich people and they have helped built up towns like Irvine in Orange County recently. In fact I predict complains about Chinese or Indians from India coming here more in 10 years than Mexicans.
http://www.humanevents.com/2014/05/27/is-democracy-another-god-that-failed/
Pat’s latest. Couldn’t have written a better title myself.
Well, George seeing ads in Mexico for engineers, tech people, part time call center, dancers in resorts, and translators for Russian I think the country is finally developing more where less of her people want to come here. In fact I think Monterrey Mexico has more going for it than Imperial Ca or Brownsville Texas for professional jobs. In Mexico of course they pay less than the US for more professional jobs More professional jobs in Mexico means more low skilled restaurant workers in Mexico City or workers at Walmart and so forth and less need to come to the US if you are from a rural part of Mexico. Its stated that cost of production in Mexico is going to be cheaper than China by 2015 because of electricity and being nearer the US market, so more goods made in Mexico. In fact an article in Pew Hispanic mention that unauthorized immigrants from Mexico have slightly dropped. US birth rate peak in 2007 when we had more Mexicans here illegality during the housing boom. In fact in 2013 Hispanic births stay the same, Asian births decline by 2 percent and white and black sent up less than a percent which means that illegal immigration is not increasing a lot since Mexican and Central Americans usually have more children than the native born.
Historically it is the GREEKS who are the most traditionally and persistently sodomitic,
Actually Bishop Tikhon is right Greeks are known for this since anicent times. It probably is more pre teen to early teen boys in Greek culture.
Persian culture owes a lot to Hellenism.
Johann Sebastian: what does Persian culture owe to ‘Hellenism?”
Daniel Fall indicated that he counts votes here and thinks them to be somehow significant! I can’t imagine why. Every day we see that many, if not all, the thumbs-ups given here mean merely “I like this person.” And many,a if not all, thumbs-downs mean, “I don’t like this person at all.” This is one reason I rarely ‘vote.” If I like a post, I’ll reply by saying so: if I don’t like a post I’ll reply by saying so. If you think these votes are meaningful, look at the two messages above, one from me, one from Johann Sebastian.
NOT ONE reader has come up with a single instance of “Hellenism” contributing ANYTHING to Persian culture. Instead, three who were apparently frustrated by their impotence in the matter, gave thumbs-downs—-and what they gave them for was a question! To me those three thumbs-downs are about as significant as repetitious breaking of wind. Your posts are usually relevant and rationale. I wish George would do away with that abhorrent practice so that those who actually disagree would be encouraged to say so and, one would hope, say why!!
Daniel Fall indicated that he counts votes here and thinks them to be somehow significant! I can’t imagine why. Every day we see that many, if not all, the thumbs-ups given here mean merely “I like this person.” And many,a if not all, thumbs-downs mean, “I don’t like this person at all.”
?Is that treading sour grapes into whine
“NOT ONE reader has come up with a single instance of “Hellenism” contributing ANYTHING to Persian culture. I
I didnt see that there was a question on that.
The influence of Hellenism is great for instance in Persian philosophy the mullahs always complaining about the influence of infidel greeks.
Isa. You refer to Persian philosophy. Please elaborate. Please also identity any mullahs or other Muslim and Persian teachers who complained of the influence of infidel Greeks. Shall we now consider that the Islaamic establishments are today irate about Western “CONTRIBUTIONS” to their culture. What WAS it that Hellenism contributed of which the mullahs complained, exactly?
Our histories have been too long hellenocentric and they are only now beginning to show something LIKE balance relative to Persianate civilization that extended from the Balkans to Indonesia in days of yore. Many didnot understand that the great Greek historian, Herodotos, found refuge from Greek “civilisation’ as a citizen of the Persian empire. Yes, Alexander the Macedonian, after the Greek city states finally united in the face of repeated invasions by the Persians was able to defeat the Persian Empire’s army, which had a HUGE Greek element in it, and although he jealously destroyed not only Persepolis, the great achievement of Persianate architecture, went on to destroy many other examples of Persian culture, but in the end, as all realized, he himself became the stereotypical Persophile (or Persomane?), causing great dissatisfaction amongst the Greeks in his forces.
Don’t forget that Persian culture is the very ingredient that changes the Hellenic to the HellenISTIC..
About all many Americans know of Persian culture is, ridiculously, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam! And about NONE Of them know that poetry was a SIDELINE of the man, a mathematician who invented the quadratic equation.
Again NO ONE has identified one contribution of Hellenism to Persian culture, especially not Isa Almisry. Contribution, ok, contribution!!! ;NAME ONE. Name a contribution of Hellenism to Persian philosophy, which Johann Sebastian brought up. It is true that Persian emperors were great patrons of the arts of literature and so forth, and encouraged non-Persian cultural leaders to attend their courts and contribute whatever of value they might. If anything was accepted into Persian culture, that was the contribution of their emperors,
not of Hellenism.
So, I repeat; “Johann Sebastian: what does Persian culture owe to ‘Hellenism?”
” Please elaborate. Please also identity any mullahs or other Muslim and Persian teachers who complained of the influence of infidel Greeks.”
For one, Muhammad Baqir Majlisi. Does that name mean anything to your grace?
I’ll wait for you reply.
Majlisi was a powerful teacher indeed! He inveighed against Sufism, Sunnism and almost anything like mysticism including HellenISTIC mysticism. He prevented Hellenistic influence rather than being “influenced” by it. (Your lingo)
Isa, isa! This was your thesis: “The influence of Hellenism is great for instance in Persian philosophy the mullahs always complaining about the influence of infidel greeks.”
You produced NO evidence of “Hellenistic” (or Hellenic)
influence in Persian philosophy whatsoever. Admit it.
You cited a mullah who also resisted, rather than accepted, any influence by the likes of Infidel Greeks and all mystics.
Still can’t come up with a contribution by Hellenism to Persian culture, eh? What I said.
no, your grace. I know what I am talking about when I speak of Persian/Iranian culture-and know you don’t.
If you grace did, you would, for instance have known that the very Khayyaam you brought up penned as one of his most influential tomes “Explanations of the Difficulties in the Postulates of Euclid,”published in ENGLISH (so there is no excuse) as “On the Difficulties of Euclid’s Definitions.”
Euclid-wasn’t he Greek?
Another Persian Iranian polymath, Ibn Sina/Avicenna, in his autobiography tells us of his program of education as a youth. After Quran and literature and devoting himself to fiqh/jurisprudence, “then [he] began to read the Isagoge.” He then moved on to logic and Euclid, and then the Almagest-of Ptolemy that is. (Your grace might be unaware that Ptolemy was Greek, although he was not, as the Persian astronomer Abu Ma’shar stated in error, a member of that royal dynasty). He tells that he was stumped by the “Metaphysics” of Aristotle even after reading it 40x, until he read al-Farabi’s commentary on it.. This, he tells us, he accomplished by the age of 18. He also gives no indication of it being an unusual reading list for the average educated Persian in Iran of the
I could go on, but I have only just so much time for invincible ignorance. Your grace might spend time otherwise wasted reading, say:
Greece iv. Greek Influence on Persian Thought
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/greece-iv
FĀRĀBĪ iv. Fārābī and Greek Philosophy
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/farabi-iv
ISFAHAN SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/isfahan-school-of-philosophy
As for Majlisi-I take it that the delay of the response was to find out who he was-of course he tried to prevent Greek influence. That is, after all, what I said. There first has to be something to prevent. Hence the source of the mullahs’ complaint-the Greek influence whose existence your grace denies. And as the Greek terms and concepts in the Talmud attest, one can be influenced by something one is resisting.
I’d give the pronouncement business a rest if I were your grace.
H-E-L-L-E-N-I-S-M. An ideology.
Please, Isa, repeat any pronouncement I made. Did I not, rather, pose questions? Like name one CONTRIBUTION of Hellenism to Persian culture? Still waiting. European adventurers brought Syphilis to the Western Hemisphere, but it was not a contribution. was it?
What did Hellenism ever contribute to Persian culture, Isa?
I did scan the article from Encyclopedia Iranica, and it seems at first reading to be perhaps problematic in parts. For example, the large section on purported borrowings of Greek words does not show any borrowing as such at all, but, rather, shows that Greek and Persian are IndoEuropean languages. It’s as if someone were to take the Persian word “abru’ and claim it is evidence of the “influence” of English “eyebrow” on the Persian language!
Do you have an reference or link to the comments of other scholars on the Encyclopedia Iranica article? i must say Mansour has an industrial strength proclivity for pronouncement.
And don’t forget, Isa, one need not be an ant to become an expert on ants.
By the way, if Chinese or German is taught in an American school, would you consider that to be a contribution of the Chinese or the Teutons to American culture?
I hope you’re not going to reveal that you think “Hellenism” contributed mathematics and philosophy to anybody!!!!
It’s a free country, and one may be a Grecomane or not as one may be pleased. I am not a polymath, I am not an expert on anything except my own views. I am not UNeducated and I’ve learned a lot about Arabo-Greco-Perso dynamics since I retired, and I can spot certain pathologies without being an accredited scholar or therapist.
As for your last cheap shot, Isa, you haven’t the slightest inkling of what you would do if you were I. You should have said, more honestly, “I’d give the pronouncement business a rest if I, ISA ALMISRY, were in your place.” There’s a difference which i think you’ll figure out.
You bring up the Talmud, an authority that came into existence like those that stimulated the Scriptures of the O.T. due to foreign influences and writings, fears that other cultures’ versions of the Flood, etc., perhaps older, might erase the Jewish insights unless they were committed to writing. I suppose that to some from that area of the world suggesting that the Hellenistic was in any way inferior to local culture was like telling American slaves that they had “culture.”
IOW, I see once again the latest manifestations of the ancient syndrome now called ‘The Stockholm Syndrome!”
If your grace can’t read English, I can’t help you, as I teach Arabic, not English.
Btw, Isagoge isn’t Persian.
As for pathologies, when I worked in the locked psych unit, the head nurse used to say that only 5% of those in psych health are psych healthy. I used to tell her she was overestimating. I’ve since learned that the rate is even lower for armchair psychologists on a keyboard.
And on the Talmud-it wasn’t supposed to be committed to writing. Hence ORAL law.
I can read English, but if I could not and needed help, I probably would not consult a teacher of Arabic.
The word, “isagogue” is, indeed, not Persian, but Persian isagogues exist, and one may find them in works by Persian writers.’
Do you bite your fingernails, Isa? Did your head nurse, no doubt, a leading authority on the “psych health” (sic) of those in “psych health” (sic), tell you any other established facts?
Did you think I referred in any way to any psychological pathology or other? Why?
I’ll tell you something now. Pathologies may be pedagogical, scholarly, sociological, and more. Arabs and/or Arabists may wax pathologic about even the idea of Persia or the idea of Persian, and they have been known to ransack Western scholarship or any scholarship, to defend their estimation of themselves or their hobby.
I’d like to express my satisfaction and congratulations at what you’ve learnt about the Talmud.
As for this phrase, dangling out there in inanition: ‘Hence ORAL law,” what did you intend to communicate thereby?
Do your students ever express some confusion, too?
“I can read English, but if I could not and needed help…”
our readers can see what help your grace needs.
Bless, Master!
I am sorry that my much delayed response has given the impression that I had no answer to your question.
“Inferential evidence” suggests that Alexander’s campaigns in Persia and Bactria left a lasting imprint on the local culture. The inference is based on concrete evidence from the local art and architecture of the period which is distinctly Hellenistic. Art does not arise in a vacuum, but is a tangible manifestation of the culture and environment in which it developed and is reflective of the values and sentiments espoused by those who created it.
Of course, much of this was obliterated during the period of Arabization and Islamization, but some habits die hard.
“Habits? Johann Sebastian, you referred to Persian culture, not to Aghan or Bactrian or Hindic cultures. Name just one contribution of Hellenism to Persian culture. I’d be very appreciative of mention of any concrete contribution, and not appreciative of any more fleeing for refuge to the Inferential. The inferential is shaped directly by the person drawing the inference, not on reality. “inferential evidence” and its “suggestions’ are a big cop-out.
Vladyka,
I relent. I can’t come up with a concrete example.
Now, let’s switch gears.
You referred to Indonesia as being part of a “Persianate” civilization. The only remotely Persian contributions to Malay culture began arriving during the 13th Century with significant Islamic and Arabic accretions; indeed, Islam came to the Malays via the Arabs, not the Persians. The process was not complete even by the 16th Century and at least in the Philippines was attenuated by the arrival of the Catholic Spaniards. Prior to that, the “civilization” of Malay society can be attributed to the Hindus–the indigenous pre-Jawi* writing systems of modern-day Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines (collectively, the ancient Srivijaya and Majapahit principalities) were of Indic origin and find their closest contemporary relatives in the writing systems of Thailand and south India.
Some Persian influence? Most definitely, but it came about relatively late in their development and is a far cry from being “Persianate.”
Now, if I may stray once again toward the inferential–slightly off-topic, but not without interest, one may speculate that Christians may have been in this part of the world long before the Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, or English. And, given that possibility, they would have been Christians of an Eastern rite–most probably Syriac or Alexandrian, but the idea that Byzantine Orthodox Christians were there before any Catholic or Protestant may be worthy of some further investigation, if it can be proven.
*For those unaware, Jawi is a modified Arabic alphabet used in former times by the Malay people. It has been supplanted by the Latin alphabet, but has currency in religious circles, as well as by a number of Muslim Filipino ethnic groups.
Johann Sebastian, a form of Persian is still spoken amongst the Chinese and it is left over from the days of Sassanid Persia, and the Catholicosate of the (Nestorian) Church of Persia. I think you will find that the Persian LANGUAGE was “official” language of government and finance far beyond the borders you assume, and that it was the chancery and official language of the Muslims that brought Islam to South Asia. Persian remained the official government language in Mughal and even British Imperial India, until the concerted efforts of the English conquerors finally drove it out by the 20th century. As the chancery language of the Ottoman court, it reached also to Bosnia during the days of the Ottoman Empire. Greek never made it anyplace except as a pidgin language i.e., “koine.’
For further knowledge in this area, I refer you and anyone interested to: ‘
“LITERACY IN THE PERSIANATE WORLD: Writing and the Social Order”, edited by Brian Spooner & William L. Hanaway. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaelogy and Anthropology. 2012.
The book compares the roles and influence of Chinese, Latin, and Persian in world history.
تشکر خیلی
khoda negahdar!
The Original Republic really only lasted until the Civil War. It was displaced by an interim quasi-national government and then that was replaced during the New Deal with a truly National Government. That government only lasted about 3 generations (75 years) until the advent of Obama. The economic damage Obama has done is irreversible. There were those who pointed this out at the time, but hope springs eternal and there are those who still want to cling onto the notion that America is not headed for a harsh decline.
It is.
No one can stop it at this point. That’s the real futility of the present election. Perhaps it is why we don’t have at least one candidate who is ready for prime time. Though I would rather have Trump than Hillary, I will be the first to state that he is a loose cannon and too arrogant to be a solid leader. Hillary, however, would be an absolute, unmitigated disaster of breathtaking magnitude. She is the classic wild-eyed, angry ex-wife on steroids and will govern accordingly. The pants suits and seasoned golden girl facade only thinly mask Grendal’s mother.
My advice is simple. It is time to give up on America and look elsewhere for living arrangements. If not now, those plans should be formulating in earnest. Also, most of the American religious establishment, including modernist Orthodox, are complicit in this abomination that is emerging as contemporary America. I also strongly encourage anyone who considers himself to hold the Orthodox faith to simply leave New Calendar Orthodoxy behind, no matter what the cost, as soon as possible.
Now is as good a time as any to set things in order. The bishops won’t do it. How could they? Those who are complicit are not going to send their flocks away. Those who are traditional will not want to start a sheep stealing war.
No need to answer me or argue against it. If you can muster the courage, now is the time. If not, God have mercy on you.
Whoever wins and loses in November, America is never going to be the same, nor is it moving discernibly toward any improvement of significant moment. It stagnates, swirls downward, stagnates, swirls downward . . . with Trump it will stagnate more, with Hillary it will swirl downward more – but that’s all one should expect.
The wise adults have left the building.
Excellent analysis! My thoughts exactly!
I would only add this: because Trump is a real estate mogul (i.e. one whose billions are in real property as opposed to complicated financial instruments), it would be very difficult to see him prosecuting a war against Russia over, basically anything.
He has said as much time and again.
Now I realize that a war could be brought to a President Trump’s doorstep in the same way that Iraq was cooked up within days of 9/11 but we’d still be looking at a reluctant warrior at worst. With Hillary it’s Slim Pickens riding the A-Bomb all the way down at the first instance to put the ultimate alpha-male, Vladimir Putin firmly in his place (allusion to the last scene in Dr Strangelove.)
Misha, George! That damn sky just keeps on falling, don’t it?
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2016/white_house_watch_oct13
Oh, humanity will survive. In more upbeat news, Rasmussen has Trump ahead again after the last debate. He also leads in double digits among independents/swing voters, evidently.
“Trump holds a double-digit advantage among voters not affiliated with either major political party.”
Having withstood the best that the left and the mainstream politicians can throw at him – i.e., his own indelicate observations about female human nature – well, this could be a rout for him.
Time will tell. But if he’s ahead in the poll of polls after the tape incident, well, that really says something. Assuming that many of the polls are skewed in favor of Democrats, which is usually the case, and that the media is largely against Trump – more so than other Republicans, even more so than against conservative Republicans – the real numbers beneath all the bs could be dramatically in Trump’s favor.
Of course, it’s hard to say. Such is the corruption we are saddled with here in this failed “republic”.
The Kennedy assassination was a socialist fascist coup de eta.We have been ruled by the military industrial complex since 1963. Or to put it clearly> NAZI< NAZI<NAZI With Harry Blackman thrown in to start a divide and conquer pro-life,pro-choice, pro slavery,pro freedom American culture.At your throats, is the order of the day.The tree will dry incredibly fast, what will these satan spawn do then. Ahh, ahh, chemtrails, thats the ticket. yep. Nano aluminum in every pot.
http://buchanan.org/blog/the-donald-lives-125811
Another winner from Buchanan, “The Donald Lives!”.
Nonetheless, I doubt the American people have the audacity, strength and courage to elect him. I’m pretty sure the country has been reduced to a land of mostly p*ssies, as Lavrov recently remarked in a quip playing off The Donald’s old remarks.
Not with a bang, but a whimper . . .
Dino (October 15, 2016 at 1:41 pm) says:
Let us never forget or behave without Philotimo, second only to Christ in our hearts!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, of course, we should honor and respect our friends.
But our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us to go beyond that which even publicans and sinners (and Greeks?) do when He tells us to love our enemies.
Perhaps philotimo and homogeneia aren’t really christian concepts.