Aristotle said that “some men are born slaves”. Real Americans, not so much.
What we need is a “490 BC Project”. This is as opposed to the “1619 Project”.
It’s particularly galling that historical education is in such a woeful state here in America. Like pretty much everything else (even the STEM subjects and the other hard sciences), education at all levels has been basically reduced to magical thinking nowadays. Someone once said that the purpose of education was to form a model citizen. If so, then what passes for education has failed on its own merits. All one has to do is look around at the destruction of our cities if you don’t believe me. No way in hell you can call any of that good citizenship.
As someone with Greek blood in his veins, it’s the historical amnesia thing that bugs me more than anything else. One, because it’s bad on its own merits and two, because it’s intentionally bad. It’s designed to be that way. Why? To destroy our cultural memory that’s why. Shades of Orwell’s 1984.
For years now, good ole Cristobal Colon, the Admiral of the Ocean-Sea, has taken it on the chin. Someday, I’ll write something more comprehensive about Columbus but right now I’ll just say that he was a great man who deserves all of the laudations that have been bestowed on him for half a millennium now. He may not have been a good administrator of the Indies, but he was a kick-ass sailor who came from nowhere and changed history forever. To my mind, he was the Man of the Second Millennium.
Constantine the Great was the Man of the First Millennium.
In any event, I will use his cultural defenestration as an proxy for everything that is wrong with our culture.
For example, yesterday, in Portland (where else?), two statues were taken down. One of Abraham Lincoln, the other of Theodore Roosevelt. I hate to break it to the vandals but it was Abraham Lincoln who saved the Union and freed the slaves. Roosevelt was a progressive who believed so strongly in conservation that he set aside millions of acres of wilderness so future generations could enjoy them. That should put both of these gentlemen in the “plus” column if one is a progressive, no?
It should, or so one would think.
The problem, however, is not political (only). It’s not even cultural at this point: it’s civilizational. (I would go further and say it’s spiritual as well. Have you seen the look on the faces of all the Antifa/BLM “protesters” out there?)
Simply put, our establishment has so imbibed collective guilt for all that is Western civilization, and this includes Christianity, that it has allowed ill-educated, Christ-hating, yahoos full rein. The purpose of course was to dispirit the European nations, to make them ashamed of their history and culture. To what end? To defeat us. But also because they know they are inferior and as such, resentful of all that is beautiful and good.
They did this because the American republic did something unforgivable: it brought down Communism, their dream religion. So in order to make a lemonade out of this gigantic lemon, they subtly infected American culture and eventually took it over. Not just Hollywood, but the Academy, all levels of public education, and of course, pop culture. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Folks, they own it all.
Case in point: it’s clear to most by now that the “1619 Project” was bogus. Even its author admitted that it was not based on facts. You know, reality. And it was so insipid in its historicity that it even failed as good old commie agitprop. Some tried to hang that label on the present race riots, calling them the “1619 riots”, but that didn’t catch on. Even the stupidos wreaking havoc in the streets recognize vapidity when they see it.
At my age, little things like that makes me happy. A tender mercy given all the crap that we’ve had to endure since March of this year to be sure but a mercy nonetheless. It reminds me that despite all the gas-lighting that goes on, all the outright lies that our betters try to shove down our throats, all the crapulent ugliness we have to endure, eventually the truth will out. It gives me hope that despite all the Third-world glorification that we are subject to, there is a Leonidas in our future; a king who would rather die than take the knee. A hero who when told to give up his weapons said “Come and take them” (molon labe).
If you ever wondered why the Left hates the movie 300, now you know why.
I’m under no illusions that the Old America is gone. At least its glorification will have to go underground for awhile. The great monuments and statues of our Founding Fathers and yes, Civil War heroes —on both sides–are all scheduled for destruction. That fills my heart with so much sadness. Why? As someone who has traveled to Greece on several occasions, I admire well-crafted statuary and detest its destruction. As an Orthodox Christian, I abhor iconoclasm in all its forms. I also know full well that none of the heroes memorialized in bronze and stone (or the saints depicted on icons) were perfect. Far from it. As for the purposeful rewriting of history to accommodate modern nonsensical sensibilities, I can’t abide that either. That’s every bit as hurtful as destroying monuments. I can’t stand it. It causes my stomach to churn.
It’s easy to be pessimistic. The reason though is not merely the wanton destruction and Marxist revisionism but what it says about the people who allow it to happen. For all the problems that the still-homogeneous nations of Europe have –I’m thinking Greece, Italy, Scotland, France, and the Eastern European countries–I can’t see their native peoples going all berserk and tearing down the statues of their heroes. Even if their heroes weren’t all that wonderful.
Maybe someday soon, we here in America, as well as the rest of Western Europe, will throw off the intellectual shackles that have been placed on us and hold our heads up high. Maybe we will be like Leonidas. One can hope. In the end, that’s all we have.
Don’t give it up.
For an excellent summation of what I am talking about, please take the time to read the following essay by Morgan Hunter:
And yes, I hope you had a Happy Columbus Day!
The writing is on the wall. We are hearing snippets in the news with some very clear clues. There is a magazine from the left which calls for violence and revolution. It’s called “The Jacobin”. This is the name of the club that the blood thirsty Robespierre belonged to (see the French Revolution). The latest Project Veritas video features a democratic operative in Colorado who is making references to Versailles and Guillotines (see the French Revolution again). The BLM fist in a classic reference to the communist salute. Antifa is overtly socialist/communist. The signs are everywhere. This is very serious folks. The left is not going to accept a Trump victory. Be prepared to stand your ground.
See, this is more of what I mean:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/10/14/smoking-gun-secret-email-reveals-hunter-biden-introduced-joe-biden-to-burisma-executive-n1049410
Culture? Culture grows on walls in tower blocks:
‘…days after it was placed in the park across the street from the Manhattan criminal court, Medusa with the Head of Perseus has come under fire from rape survivors, who say that it offers a “revenge fantasy” that wrongly casts victims of sexual violence as aggressors.’
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/medusa-statue-at-weinstein-court-angers-rape-survivors-b8fnbk5hn
In a paper published on December 10 in Antiquity, archaeologists revealed the discovery of a Christian church building in sub-Saharan Africa that coincides with the influential Aksumite kingdom. Ethiopian church. Remember the Ethiopian eunuch in acts. Church near the time of Constantine, so christianity was more likely to reach Ethiopia much earlier.
An interesting historical fact:
The first third party in America was the “Anti-Mason Party,” formed in Upstate NY in the 1820s and considered a far-right party based around conspiracies of secret societies running the country / globe. The party funded its own newspapers, currently called 4chan.
Can someone please explain to me the cause of the war of 1812? The most sensible explanation that I’ve heard is that the first federal bank had a charter of 20 years, which expired in 1811. 20% of its stock was owned by the US gov’t, 80% by foreign investors and private individuals — though private individuals were taxed whereas foreigners weren’t, so that our bank was largely owned by the City of London. When we chose not to renew the charter in 1811 GB began to pressure the US until the “second war of Independence” was fought, which we apparently lost, with the end of the war in 1814 and our subsequent reissue of the charter in 1814 due to tremendous war debt.
I can’t find evidence of who owned stock in the first bank, so this theory might be totally bogus?
Case in point, George. It’s difficult to sift through historical information without a proper authority to guide us, and as early as 1820 we have vocalized suspicions about those who control the information and more.
Michelle, it’s not bogus. The City of London engineered a lot of wars in the 19th century.
Ever wonder why we’re still in Afghanistan? Our longest war?
Ah yess… the War of 1812:
The British were sick of war after years of life & death struggle against Napoleon, New England was sick of paying for “Madison’s War”, American merchants were sick of the British blockade and thus America began it’s tradition of starting a war, invading for no good reason, accomplishing nothing and then declaring victory and going home. Per one historian:
Michelle, history is never linear but it is interconnected. The more linear, cause anf effect approach the more biased it is likely to be. Because it is written by human beings the selection, ranking and primary connections chosen will always be the work of bias aka point of view. Always read around a topic.
There are elements of the War of 1812 that have far more importance 20 to 30 years later. Andrew Jackson and his presidency. Canada, Nullification, the Bank war, the Civil War, etc. Current race relations especially with Native Americans, freedom for Canada … The list is quite lengthy. Each one somehow has roots in the War of 1812.
Michelle, the war of 1812 was instigated, in part, by a desire for less English influence. It has long bee said that the only important battle, The Battle of New Orleans was fought after the war was over as the Treaty of Ghent was signed weeks before the battle but no one knew. It enabled US Federal troops to get footholds in the frontier south and defeat the Creeks. Andrew Jackson’s experience in the war confirmed his hatred of the British, the Creeks and central banks and his love of military solutions. Those indirectly gave rise to the Trail of Tears, the Bank War, The Nullification Crises, the Civil War and to some degree our westward expansion. The invasion of Canada failed so we had to look west.
Understanding history is always somewhat arbitrary as everything is connected to everything else forward and backward on the timeline.
https://www.redstate.com/bradslager/2020/10/15/another-election-story-spiked-on-social-media-twitter-is-fined-over-campaign-finance-law-violations/
Twitter may have a problem.
If I’m reading this puppy correctly, what it implies is that Twitter never kept adequate records about its political ad sales 2012-2019 when it was in that business. “Adequate” as in, “being in conformity with the requirements of state campaign finance laws”. When challenged on just one set of records from one state in 2019, they ceased all political advertising across the nation. A judgment just came down out in Washington about this.
https://agportal-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/Signed Twitter Judgment.pdf
I took a look at the above and it is an agreed judgment. Think of it as a settlement fining them for not keeping a relatively small number of records for a dozen or so political candidates.
Fifty states.
Number of candidates?
In Washington state, the fine is $10,000 per violation:
https://www.atg.wa.gov/enforcement-campaign-finance-laws#:~:text=The Commission is charged with,of public officials and candidates.&text=The Commission may assess penalties up to $10,000 per violation.
That would likely be transactional; i.e., per ad, per candidate.
Sorry for the redundant posts. Internet acting up
Trump is a genius. I didn’t see how he was going to get this done until I watched Giuliani on Fox talking about what he’s uncovered.
RICO
If the criminal enterprise centers on Biden, then everyone with whom he’s met or conversed in decades is fair game, possible coconspirators. This thing with Hunter and the laptop is going to be huge, on par with Spygate itself.
On a separate note, but nonetheless interesting:
JOE BIDEN UNWAVERINGLY SUPPORTS CONSTANTINOPLE AS “CENTER OF THE GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH,” SAYS CAMPAIGN STATEMENT
https://orthochristian.com/134644.html
If Joe Biden is such a “strong voice for religious freedom globally,” then why doesn’t he speak out against the ongoing persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Met. Onuphry?
What a joke, and hipocrat you are Mister Biden. I truly feel sorry for the people that will vote for you!
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/521517-censoring-the-biden-story-how-social-media-becomes-state-media
Turley is the rare honest liberal law professor. What he is saying is that the MSM are acting as the state media for the Liberal Establishment which is the real shadow government.
Glad they finally got the memo. We’ve said that here for years. NYT and WP have taken the place of Pravda and Izvestia.
“’The IC and DOJ are in lock-step on this: there is absolutely zero evidence or intel that the laptop or the information contained therein is a Russian op. Schiff and the former officials making unfounded statements or signing their names to open letters are proving themselves to be the gang who couldn’t shoot straight,’a senior intelligence official told the Washington Examiner.” – https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fbi-and-doj-do-not-believe-hunter-biden-laptop-part-of-russian-disinformation-campaign
And thus endeth the lesson.
They’d been trolling Eastern Europe and elsewhere, Giuliani and God knows who else, to dig up whatever they could, ’cause they knew from sources here it was bad. I assume when they came across this little gem they decided it was their “insurance policy”. All else fails, uncover the nest and spray.
Now the DOJ and intelligence services are saying its not disinformatsiya but “authentic” – regardless of what Brennan, Clapper and Schiff might spew.
Checkmate.
Americans learn at an early age certain lessons. One is that cherry means “stop” and lime means “go”. Another is that you do what the men in long black robes say or the other men with guns will come for you. So when the Department of Justice, the office responsible for prosecuting cases, and the FBI, the men with guns, say that Biden was selling his office for money to the highest bidder, it is safe for everyone to believe them, though it may not be pleasant for some.
I should spell it out as it may not be obvious: The FBI and IC evidently have flipped. This is an acknowledgement that Trump has the winning hand and we should see them increasingly falling in line and pruning their vine.
This is priceless:
https://spectator.org/hunter-biden-laptop-joe-campaign-polling/
I’m going to try to back away from this drama but it’s only going to get wilder up until election day.
Imagine– no RC hierarchy marched in the Marxist march next to elpi– and this should tell us A LOT! I say R C’s are going big to vote Trump–while orthodox go fringe biden…