OK, I’m really pissed. I didn’t get the memo. After all the heavy lifting I’ve done for Putin, I should have been informed that Russia had gone ahead and conquered America before the story broke in Time Magazine.
The least that he could have done was make me Grand Duke of something or other.
C’mon Vlad, give me something for all my efforts! Sheesh!
I have been on the road for almost a week, joyfully busy with family life.
I kept glancing at news email and, let’s see, what was there to talk about?
That would be: Russia. Russia. And more Russia. Oh, and lots more Russia.
Among my fellow Orthodox Christians, there was lots of laugh-to-keep-from-crying chatter about a certain magazine cover.
It appears that Time magazine is still publishing and that the editors really thought that they nailed the whole nasty Russia is taking over the White House media storm with one image – an image so strong, so perfect, that it didn’t even need a headline. You can see that cover at the top of this post, of course.
[…]
Read the entire essay on the Get Religion website.
I’m amused by the whole thing although I signed a petition online aimed at an apology from Time. Not holding my breath on that one though.
Yes, it is an all out war at this point. Photo-shopping out the crosses is part and parcel because what the MSM fear the most is the power of Orthodoxy revived and its cultivation of sympathizers at the grass roots of the Christian Right in America. Progressive Liberalism having begun its inevitable decline, they can see what lies ahead and perceive it as being alien and ugly and something to avoid at any cost.
So be it. They started the war. We shall finish it. War’s not about who’s right, but about who’s left. Secular humanism, despite much kicking and scratching, is going into the dust bin of history one way or another.
We will not be playing politics in the reign of antichrist because secular in-humanism will be enslaving all and killing anyone else who resists. The NWO will play it’s brand of hardball,, with Satan knowing his TIME IS UP..He knows the One who always beats him is coming back to finish him off forever. My, how time flies, and will be gone forever. Just life( pun intended) in Eternity is all that will be alive.
Why so surprised? Don’t we know the prince of this world hates us, and is the life blood of most large corporations, world governments, education, and media institutions. Orthodoxy in America is for the most part unknown, and probably for good reason. Tell most Americans your Orthodox, and the first thing that comes to their mind is Orthodox Jew. Now that might be changing slightly with all the Russia coverage we see from the msm. The Greek Orthodox church of America’s great desire to show Americans, how great Hellenism is, and how successful Greek Americans are today.(Greek festivals, media focus., parades, political lobbying, etc.) The conversion of Hank Hanegraaff to Orthodoxy is a new small step in the right direction, in regards to exposure, but we are still the great unknown! P.S. Pray for Hank’s recovery from cancer, as he has just started Chemo therapy.
Removing the crosses from the tops of Saint Basil pisses me off as well, but does not shock at all, almost expect it. What really pisses me off though is when the another Islamist terrorist kills 22, and injures at least 59, and most teenagers, the msm was more into reporting on Trump and Russian fake news, before finally giving it some small coverage, while Fox had non stop reporting on the attack on Manchester’s children. Worse, which goes back to the apathy, and ignorance most Americans have for Orthodox Christians, just the other day a bus load of Egyptian Christians were massacred by Islamic terrorists, the death toll about the same, and yes children were killed as well, yet there is not even a tenth of the coverage that the Manchester bombing received. Great way for the religion of peace to kick off Ramadan! We Orthodox Christians need to understand we low on earth’s totem pole, but thankfully high with our Lord’s! Lord have mercy on us all!
I’m old enough to remember when this magnificent Cathedral was regularly used in the media as a symbol of the Kremlin and the Soviet state. It is unfortunate that Time would reach so far back to make its point and misappropriate St Basil’s for its own purposes.
I think TIME magazine knew exactly what they were doing and saying. As Christians that should scare us and wake us up to why the msm, and the rest of the godless establishment hates Russia. They didn’t get it wrong. This should help us realize what they think of us. Lord have mercy.
As if we didn’t already know?
Far from scaring us, in a paradoxical way this should only strengthen our faith. Just what is it about the cross of Christ that so frightens them? We know that as well; don’t we?
Like the fictional lore of vampires, and real and present demons, the personification of evil and death, the cross of our savior is feared and hated. The prince of darkness has the lovers of materialism and vanity in his grip, and possession.
Lord have mercy on us all and especially to our fallen heroes today Memorial Day.
Russian culture is great for the Russians. Russian Orthodox Church is great for the Russians.
Personally, I find Russian culture totally unappealing as an American. No offense. I just don’t want to again feel compared against something I’m not or compelled to embrace a culture that is not my own. Just because I don’t want animosity between the US and Russia, doesn’t mean I want to kick it Boris and Natasha style. Too much Wolverines and Rocky IV and the actual cold war in the memory of Americans.
“Chekov? Well, this here’s McCoy. We find a Spock, we got ourselves an away team . . .”
The reason why Time Magazine used the Russian church is because it is the single most easily recognizable symbol of Russian culture (good for them in many ways, I must say). Not sure if people would recognize the actual Kremlin. It’s kinda bad all around if you think about it. This is why no culturally Russian based Orthodox church (OCA, ROCOR . . . you too, Antioch) will ever fully take root in America. Sorry, whether you like the Russians or not, the dominance of Slavic culture is not appealing to overall American culture, much based on our country’s history. Not to say that it doesn’t have a rightful place at the table. It just can’t host the dinner party.
It was acceptable for the Russian culture to overlap in Alaska due to proximity, you know, since Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house . . .
Photo-shopping crosses off of the church, though?
This is why the Orthodox mission in North America continues to fail. If we aren’t being swindled out of our hard earned cash to buy a gyro for the Greek dance group fund, we have to choke down some piroshki filled with onion domes, complex chant, stoic personalities and serf clothing.
Don’t get me wrong. Slavic culture is great in and of itself. I am rooting for them. I just want to root for the American Orthodox to be able to find our own voice and home.
Billy Jack, no quarrels here with your assessment, re acculturation. The problem is that the foreign patriarchates –not just the EP but all of them–have made it impossible for Orthodoxy to acculturate itself to North America.
Antioch more or less fell into it when it accepted the Evangelicals en masse and they’ve made a go of it (God bless them). The OCA likewise, even more so, but given what they did to Jonah and Syosset’s beholdenness to East Coast liberalism and reflexive anti-Russianism, the question remains do they even know what they’re doing?
As for the rest, why not become more ethnic if that’s what it takes to protect oneself from the low-class Big Fat Greek aesthetic of the GOA? In short, nationalism isn’t a problem so much as a symptom. And now, with the EP going off the rails and planning more ecumenistic events, the day for rock-ribbed, full-throated evangelism as happened when Gillquist and his compatriots joined the Church is pretty much over. I mean, how are we going to preach the Gospel? Talk about the Episcopal Assembly and their incessant carping on seating arrangements?
As for me, given my age and the dwindling prospects for true evangelism, I can at least look to the examples of traditionalism and concentrate on worship. Presently, the Diocese of the South still adheres to an authentic Regional American cultural ethos (here’s hoping Syosset doesn’t screw it up yet again). The Athonite monasteries of course are exemplars of this; on an international, missionary level Russian Orthodoxy serves as an example of what could be in America (perhaps with American architectural touches).
Honestly, I can’t see a united American Orthodox Church, one which “makes sense” for Old-Stock Americans (black folks included) for another generation. That used to depress me but given the raw, organic material the Lord has to work with (not just the bishops but the laity), perhaps it’s the best we can hope for.
Anyway, it’s in God’s hands.
Yes, there is more than just the golden GOARCHes of the EP. There is the franchises of the other foreign patriarchs, such as the Arbyochian, Johnny ROCORs and Serbway among others. Whether intended to or not, all have swamped the evangelization of America.
I’m disappointed with what has happened to the OCA. I wish it would have not been thwarted by the lavendar mafia. I wish it had time in it’s prime to become a culturally American Orthdox church.
It’s hard to evangelize in America. The quasi-iconoclastic culture created by Evangelical Protestantism is already an aversion to the mis-informed. On top of that, the best candidate to reach out to America – OCA – comes with some ecclesiastical and cultural baggage that is too much for the average American Joe. Then overall, lets be honest, the Orthodox faith itself isn’t always easy to explain to someone. With the complexities combined, in America, telling people about the Orthodox faith is like trying to explain string theory to an uneducated Jew in a 1930’s Munich beer hall.
I don’t want the North American mission to die
Yes we laugh and joke at how ridiculous the GOA can be, the OCA in it’s little sister role here in America. Of course what American would be drawn to ROCOR outside of marriage, and of course the other little sister churches of Orthodoxy and their culture clash with the American culture. Say what you want about the festivals but they bring the American culture to us for a couple days where the outsiders can see we are not that different than themselves.
With the current war on American tradition and Christianity all Churches should quit with the inner fighting and figure ways to combat and recruit the secular culture promoted by our Government.
“When Government abolishes God, then Government will become God.”
CK Chesterton
Billy,
We have a model of how to evangelize America. St Innocent and St Herman of Alaska (and St Jacob Netsvetov, and others!) showed us how. Orthodoxy takes root in cultures and evangelized them, “Orthodoxizes” them, essentially. That’s what they did in Alaska, and it worked and stuck.
Problem is, what is American culture? It’s a collection of lots of different cultures. South Texas is different from Dallas; Connecticut is far different from Kentucky. And California – how do we even approach that one?
We have a problem evangelizing America because we try to apply a one-size-fits-all to American culture. It won’t work, doesn’t work. And you’re right, some parishes and jurisdictions don’t even bother to try.
The Orthodox mission to a Latino culture in the Southwest can’t look the same as the mission to Anglo-Celtic culture in New Hampshire. Won’t look the same missionizing to a white Mormon culture in Utah.
What we largely have now, as Met. Jonah said, is translated Russian Orthodoxy, translated Greek Orthodoxy, etc. Some don’t even bother to translate.
The best thing to do in my opinion is to work locally, where you are. Do what you can in your city, town, work with your local culture.
The folks in Utah seem to doing a good job right now.
I don’t think you can tell the good news to folks who think they already know it. The hunger has to he there.
Michael Bauman,
Yes some folks in Utah are doing a good job right now! Saints Peter and Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church in SLC recently baptized roughly twenty five souls. The Greek Orthodox who began a mission parish, after tiring of all the Greek club mentality, and inner political fighting over two churches, one parish, and who owns what BS(God owns all) and priests treated as employees, in SLC, now have Saint Anna Greek Orthodox Church. All services are 90% English and many non-Greeks have been coming, understand what is spoken/chanted during liturgy, and do not feel like foreigners in their own country.
“We have a model of how to evangelize America. St Innocent and St Herman of Alaska (and St Jacob Netsvetov, and others!) showed us how. ”
The models we have used so far have been abject failures. Limited success in Alaska does betray the reason for the failure though. In Alaska, with native cultures, the Orthodox were not in the slightest inhibited by the notion that the native culture was Christian in any sense of the word. That being the case, the complete replacement of religious practices was the norm – not a meeting of the religious habits of the populace half way, as has been tried and failed in the lower 48.
To evangelize America, you need to do it as if it were pagan. By all means, use the native language. By all means, allow people their own cultural trappings in the form of clothing, music, foods, etc. But those things that were ubiquitous to Orthodoxy in the old countries before the 19th century need to remain as is – all of them. They are not Russian or Greek or Romanian . . . no, they are Orthodox and Orthodox is not American . . . yet.
And that is the reason. Deny it, run from it, put it off another generation, have meetings, venerate icons of St. Tikhon, etc. all you want – all to no avail unless you bring them traditional Orthodoxy.
Nothing less is persuasive and transformational to non-ethnic-Orthodox inquirers. Otherwise, at best, it’s like another Protestant denominational flavor of the day – in the front door, two years +, and out the back.
A few hours ago here in Chicago Metropolitan Iakovos passed away. Let us pray for the blessed repose of his soul and for God to bring us a good Bishop to lead us here in Chicago.
May his memory be eternal.
Peter A. Papoutsis
“It was acceptable for the Russian culture to overlap in Alaska due to proximity, you know, since Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house . . . ”
Lest we forget, you can see Russian from Alaska:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diomede_Islands
As for “Russian Orthodoxy”: Someone should be so bold as to either start naming churches simply St. Mark’s Church or St. Matthew’s Cathedral OR name them St. Mark’s American Orthodox Church or St. Matthew’s American Orthodox Cathedral.
Even the OCA stopped short of that and that’s what it will take. “Orthodox Church IN America”. “Ok, let me see if I understand the technicalities?”
Greek Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
Serbian Orthodox Church
Bulgarian Orthodox Church
American Orthodox Church
Just f’ing do it.
No pews, bonnets. traditional discipline, all (elevated) English, music from wherever (hasn’t been a problem so far, as long as the language is English), furry clergy, etc. . . .
Orthodox
I saw a copy of the magazine at the supermarket checkout aisle the other day. I picked it up and got a really good look at it. The crosses are not photoshopped or airbrushed out of the picture. They are there. The image of the cathedral is angled at such a way that the crosses are seen from their sides, as opposed to looking at them from the back or front.
So, the crosses are there, you have to pick up an actual copy of the magazine and look really hard.
Well, Billy Jack et. al. You are Orthodox and American. You can enculturate your faith. That is what Fr. Moses Berry has done.
Don’t wait for a program. Personally I don’t see anything in current American “culture” worth it.
Fast, pray, give alms with a merciful heart, attended on the Divine Mysteries, repent.
…Bauman…
Perhaps it is not American Culture that is the problem here*. Perhaps you lack any distinct connection to actual Americana, or maybe you have your own issues to sort out. There are those of us who are culturally American. No, I don’t mean the modern wave of Marxism; I mean natural culture. I’m Orthodox and culturally American, so while I don’t mind something like perogies, Mediterranean circle dancing, the blessing of baskets at Easter, or the occasional Aloha Snackbar (the non-muslim kind), it wouldn’t affect me in the least if the American jurisdictions did away with all that stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see anything wrong with some of these customs, and some I even enjoy, but at the end of the day I’m just playing along to be a good sport.
let me give you a better idea of where I’m coming from. If a parish decided to bless collards in late Fall I would be elated, but I’m also not distraught that no one has done that yet..to my knowledge. Basically there’s a lot of us out there who have an actual American/Western Civ identity and that’s just how we are despite the ability of others to grasp such a thing.
“but at the end of the day I’m just playing along to be a good sport.”
That is a very honest statement and also reflects how I feel.
We are also told we must be a good sport and go along with such things or we are ungrateful don’t appreciate anything.
A white foreigner that travels to China will eat Chinese food in China. However, the Chinese in China don’t see themselves as eating Chinese food, but only food. However, if they bring their food to America and open up a restaurant, they will be serving Chinese food, not just food. Why? Because Chinese is not the dominant culture. The dominant culture is always mostly invisible as a cultural thing to the domestic population. Now a Chinese family that comes to America will see themselves as only eating food in their own home. But a white visitor to the Chinese home will see himself eating not just food, but Chinese food.
When Americans can just see themselves as eating food at church and not Russian, Greek or otherwise, and everyone has a seat at the table and can bring their own dish to share (but overall American cuisine is invisibly present), then we will have an American church.
If I were in charge for a day:
A new American Orthodox Church would be created. There would be 1 Archbishop located in Philadelphia. The rest of America would be divided into diocese. All current bishops would be given retirement status. No oversite from any powers overseas. All American clergy and laity would elect new bishops. The elected bishops would elect the Archbishop. Symphonia as well as governmental infrindgement would not be tolerated.
All services would be sung in English.
No Russian architecture. No non-Greek is viewed as a xeno. No diaspora cultural mindset. This is America. You are an American, whether you are ethnically Greek, Slavic, Irish, Italian, Hispanic, Germanic, etc.
I would hire John Williams as a consultant to help us develop a style of American chant that is authentic to our Orthodox tradition. However the American sound is developed, it must be easily sung!
Free community BBQ’s (American cuisine + local favorites) would be the norm. Non-American cuisine ethnic foods could be included, but would not dominate (just like when you go to a community fair in your local town).
Free community Thanksgiving dinners annually
There would be a mixture of pews and free space. The church must welcome and have space for more than just the young and fit. Plus, visitors need a place. This is not watering down Orthodoxy or seeker sensitive. It’s just realistic from a practical and pastoral point of view. Many worship spaces could still be developed with no pews. Organs would be out.
This is just to start. This is not evangelism. It is just balancing our cultural medium so all can be welcome. Evangelistic planning and efforts would be further developed.
I’m sure most of you disagree and would respond quite negatively. Don’t worry, I will never be in charge. It’s just my thought experiment.
Oh yeah, I forgot to add
The Revised Julian Calendar would be out
We don’t need it
All previously existing parishes would keep their local priests/pastors who would automatically be placed under the related regionally newly elected American bishops or said priest would retire. The bishop along with the local priest would work to insure the needs of all ethnic parties would be met within reason, but not catered to. This would not be a reversal by any means to an ethnic allegiance. Such would not be tolerated. It would just to insure that the pastoral ball isn’t dropped for anyone.
No church would keep an ethnic qualifier for their parish’s name. “American” would also not appear (for example, it would be: “Holy Apostles Orthodox Church,” not “Holy Apostles ‘American’ Orthodox
Church.”
-We are also told we must be a good sport and go along with such things or we are ungrateful don’t appreciate anything. –
Don’t forget the attempted guilt trip when told that the parish does certain things because it has to be faithful to “ancient” traditions/keeping a connection with the old world ancestors.
Speaking of evangelization. There are two parish from the same city whose welcome pages sum up the conflict in American parishes.
http://stgeorgecharleston.org/
http://www.stjohnwv.org/
С праздником Святой Троицы!,
Blessed Feast of the Trinity!,
It is interesting that reason is having to fight for a seat at the table of Western discussions about Islam and terrorism.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/03/london-terror-saturday-attacks-tipping-point-in-campaign-to-destroy-west.html
Perhaps that is a kind of progress. Western elites and public seem to be loath to face the fact that Islam itself is evil, much like the cults of Shiva, Moloch, Amalek, etc. – evil, in se. It is programmed to be so from its inception. It was a challenge, from the very first, against Christianity. Designed to be a religion for the Arabs (as Muhammad thought some other tribes had their monotheistic religions), he and whatever inspired him (and it was not God nor a good angel) designed it to be aggressively expansionistic in all directions, violently intolerant of any rule other than Muslim rule, and only grudgingly tolerant of adherents of prior monotheistic religions as third class citizens at the mercy of their Muslim overlords.
The history is crystal clear. The disconnect is the problem of modernism, its incredulity toward theistic cults and the objects of their worship. Not taking the whole notion of religion seriously, they cannot shake the notion that Islam is “reformable” in the sense that they believe that “fundamentalist” Protestantism and pre-Vatican II Catholicism was reformable, developing into liberal mainline Protestantism and contemporary Pope Francis style “Catholicism”.
The problem with this theory is that Muslims themselves, both leaders and rank-and-file, have shown very little if any desire to do to Islam what Liberalism did to Christianity. In fact, they pride themselves on the fact that their religion is pure and unreformed – regardless of whether they are sympathetic to open jihad or suicide tactics.
So what we are faced with is a world wide violently expansionistic ideology believed to some degree or another by well over one billion of our cohabitants here on Earth. Many of these “gentle souls” have made their way out of their traditional homelands into heretofore Christian or post-Christian, if you will, territory. They came here for many reasons but underneath the surface it is no secret whatsoever among them in the conversation in mosques and their own kitchens that Islam is waging demographic jihad against the West, door to door, and that this demographic jihad always has the potential in every instance to become violent at a moment’s notice subject to the needs of the greater ummah and the perceived resistance of the populaces to be conquered.
It is a full blown out and out violent war of Muslims vs. Christians (and “post-Christians”) which only one side seems fully aware of.
That is a serious, serious problem, both in the short term and the long term.
I encourage all of you to inspire everyone who will listen with the need to wage counter-jihad by any means practicable (spiritual, polemical as well as material/physical when legally and morally justified) starting yesterday and continuing until the last Muslim is converted or killed OR Christ returns and settles the whole matter for us.
If we continue to believe the lie that Islamic extremism is the problem instead of Islam itself; i.e., if we continue to deny the true nature of Islam, which is a religion of terrorism and subjection of non-Muslims, we will lose. And then, in the bitter end, only divine intervention will save a much smaller number of us.
Yet it doesn’t have to be that way.
It is possible – and I have alluded to this in the past with the comparisons to the kings Saul and David – that Trump is an intermediate personality, a transition president who is simply there to hold the office and do some very uncomfortable and unpleasant things that no one will like, and then is to be succeeded by a firm hand at the wheel.
Trump may be our Yeltsin, so to speak.
To me, this is as plausible an explanation as any for what we are seeing right now. It may be that it is Trump’s mission to institute utter chaos in the body politic of governing America, a chaos to be quelled and transformed into a sustainable authoritarian state by Trump’s successor.
Just speculating.
Vergil, you are correct. The things you mention should be embraced but they are precisely the things that modern pseudo-culture rejects.
So what some suggest is that the Church embrace the modern ideas of progress and change so we can be relevant.
There is nothing in that.
Ever proposed to your priest a blessing of the fruits of the local harvest?
So many want to push the ideas of progress and change onto the Church eventhough there is a clear record of how this story ends. It also doesn’t produce an actual culture since that runs contrary to progressivism.
I have proposed such a thing to a previous priest. Here, however, it wouldn’t click because most are transplants who don’t necessarily have a connection to local farming.
This is a pretty fair assessment:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-conspiracy-mongering-now-1496792511
Wray is an interesting choice for Intelligence Director.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/us/politics/christopher-wray-fbi-director.html?_r=0
He has experience in corporate fraud prosecutions, cue Khodorkovsky:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky
Trump has a blueprint on how to deal with his domestic troubles before him in the history of Putin’s consolidation of power over the oligarchs earlier in his tenure.
I’m curious: Did anyone read my article?
An reactions to the media coverage issues in it?
Monument to Reunification of Russian Church at Christ the Savior Cathedral:
http://orthochristian.com/104464.html
https://thesaker.is/trump-and-the-bubbles-from-a-sunken-old-world/
Above is a recent assessment of the aftermath of the Trump world tour and American policy toward Europe by the Saker. It is interesting reading because he was willing to give up on Trump after the Syria thing but now seems a bit more circumspect. And it is another indication of how far from original righteousness we have fallen in the West and why.
The present spectacle in Washington is a case study in why democracy is a very, very bad idea – in fact, an evil way of governing. The Church Fathers considered it “polyarchy” and the material equivalent of polytheism, just a step from anarchy. It is so because it is nothing more than governance by the passions of the herd.
Trump is in power despite America’s democratic aspects. He did not win the popular vote. The popular media has either been uniformly against him or mixed at best (in the case of the small minority of more conservative outlets). Yet he is right and has a “populist” base who seem to be standing with him despite the waves of sh*t.
In short, the demos is yelling “Give us Barabbas!”
Yet Trump is clearly the closer of the two recent candidates for president (Trump and Hillary) to supporting Christian values and combating political correctness. His nominees are hostile to abortion. He seems hostile to feminism. He is not an economic libertarian so there is no problem with the Christian concern for the less fortunate.
Another reality has emerged in Russia after its “robber baron” period. Putin has taken charge of the media playing field by expanding and consolidating executive power. This results in a more monarchial “democracy” or what he refers to as “sovereign democracy”. It is democracy in its processes but monarchy in its actual dynamic of power.
I believe that that is what Trump is trying to accomplish here. If he is not, he should be because it is his only hope and succeeding in reforming America and America’s only hope at saving itself from the end stage decadence of a Progressive Liberal Borg hell bent on civilizational suicide.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/united-states-fury-article-1.3253791
This article gets it precisely wrong, but it is a good point of departure. Essentially, it is a plea for tempers to quell and for seeking common ground, blah, blah, blah – woof, woof, woof . . .
BS
Sure, that’s what we need. More BS.
There is such a thing as right and wrong. Actually, in theory, must of us can agree on that except for those in the wimpy middle. Neither side in the polarized polemical battle believes that all things are relative, really. It’s just that the principles are different. The values are different. Our respective lists of what is right and what is wrong differ.
So, what is necessary, finally, is for one side to win and the other to lose.
Decisively.
Permanently.
And that is what we are seeing now. It is simply not possible for the Progressive Liberal Borg (PLB) to defeat Traditional Christianity, given its own self restraints, unless it takes a page from the Bolsheviks and becomes militant.
But then they wouldn’t be Progressive Liberals. They would be Bolsheviks.
They want to have their cake and eat it too.
And that’s not possible.
You see, Progressive, Inc. has been leading and trying to take over since before WWII. And they have run the thing, not well at all, but they have run it. It has tried and tried again to say, “Enough is enough.” and end the dichotomy, leading us into a democratic socialist paradise.
But there is no democratic socialist paradise.
Economics doesn’t just go away. Politics doesn’t just go away. Religion doesn’t just go away.
Culture doesn’t just go away.
Nor does God.
The Left is finally being told, “No!” in a loud clear voice as a parent would use with a spoiled two year old and they do not like it, not one little bit.
“‘put me down!’ said the fish.
‘this is no fun at all!
put me down!’ said the fish.
‘i do NOT wish to fall!'”
But they are wrong.
There is such a thing as “wrong”.
And they can’t be allowed to destroy themselves and the rest of us.
And that’s that.
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/06/19/pentagon_us_shoots_down_syrian_su-22_111617.html
Shooting down an Su-22 that is defending the Syrian state against ISIS because it dropped bombs near US backed “democratic Syrian forces” – this needs to stop. The US is not in Syria by any sovereign’s invitation. Russia is there as a guest of the Syrian government. The Syrian war is between the rightful Assad government and ISIS, et al. and we seem to have the pathological compulsion to support “et al.” in the stupid naive mindset of believing that there is something like a Muslim Syrian democrat or Muslim democratic movement.
We created al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan by supporting the mujaheddin. We created ISIS by invading Iraq.
Better to reduce our profile in the Middle East.
You have to be a drooling idiot to believe in such nonsense and it just needs to stop before it causes any more damage.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/anatomy-of-a-witch-hunt-1497999116
The above essay has it about right. I’m sure most of the Left is conscious at some level of what it is doing. It is unfortunate that the evil of its enterprise is not self-evident or that no higher god than Progress appeals to them.
Yet that is what it boils down to. I’d rather discuss the faith or strategic international relations than all this crap about which orifice is for what.
Meanwhile, while we’re placating Adam and Steve, the barbarians are pounding on the gates:
http://www.npr.org/2017/06/20/533617455/history-of-our-time-how-americans-view-islam
I have to hand it to the author of Islamic Exceptionalism. He’s about as open and honest about it as he can be without seeming obviously anxiety provoking.
Really, the good folks at Public Orthodoxy should ask the Orthodox Syrian Christians about how liberal they find dhimmitude. They might then begin to understand that what PO suggests as a proper explication of the faith might be too weak to survive what’s coming.
For those concerned about creeping Bolshevism, two stories about renewed calls for the removal of Lenin’s body and the restoration of religious edifices and items destroyed or concealed by the Socialist enemies of Christ:
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/104553.htm
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/104585.htm
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/21/this-is-how-great-power-wars-get-started/
It may be that Trump and Putin have resigned themselves to the idea that a military confrontation of some proportion is the only way to get past the hysterical, paranoid Russia meme that’s pervading the Western Left.
From time to time, states find excuses to clean their claws, test their weapons, etc. It’s brutal and ugly, but a different type of morality prevails at that level.
But what can you do when the West exports this sewage:
http://orthochristian.com/104615.html