0 comment Sunday, October 19, 2014 | admin
In my previous post, the issue of a Catholic Bishop's liberal position on illegal immigration was raised. Unhappily, there are many Protestant clergy and lay people who share the post-modern liberal interpretation of Christian doctrine.
The problem is such that it is becoming increasingly hard for the faithful Christian to answer the ever-louder voices of the critics on the right who say that Christianity is to blame, solely or in part, for the fall of the West and the threatened loss of our country.
AmRen in particular, among racial-realist websites and forums, has its insistent critics and enemies of Christianity, a couple of whom regularly post quite disparaging comments about Christianity and Christians. I can only assume that their viewpoints are agreeable to the moderators of AmRen if not also to the site owner. It's a fact that many comments in general do not get past the moderators, so those which do see the light of day are apparently agreeable to the mods and/or to the site owner.
I know some will say this is just even-handedness. It's not. Islam has its critics on AmRen, but none as insistent as the regular anti-Christian voices. Judaism is not considered fair game for criticism on AmRen, presumably because this is a group which is being courted and whose support is apparently valued more than that of Christians. This makes little tactical sense, because Christians make up a much larger demographic.
For whatever reason, Christians are now on the defensive on the right as well as on the left, and Christianity's detractors are stubbornly unwilling to listen to any defense of Christianity.
It's noteworthy, and heartening, that a British clergyman, Reverend Robert West of the British National Party, has spoken out on the issues of immigration, race, and repatriation in light of Christian belief.
Whilst the BNP is a secular and not a religious party, its views generally agree with the Bible�s own teaching that we are to live as nations, in our nations, and not to submit to a "resurrection" of the Babel thesis of one undifferentiated mass under some form of, probably dictatorial and very unstable, world governance.''
To the credit of AmRen, the issue of Christianity's culpability for the decline of the West was debated there some dozen years ago, and this piece by H.A. Scott Trask was posted there later, although I do wonder if something similar would be posted today. (Incidentally, thanks to Dr. D for calling Trask's piece to my attention once again.)
The Christian Doctrine of Nations
Biblical law respects boundaries of race and nation
by H. A. Scott Trask
In the September 1997 issue of AR there was a debate on whether Christianity is at least partly to blame for the demise of Western Civilization and the suicidal course being pursued by Western peoples. Both positions were ably argued, and on the whole I had to agree that the key to the controversy was a distinction between historical Christianity and contemporary Christianity. As Michael W. Masters ("How Christianity Harms the Race") acknowledged implicitly and Victor Craig ("Defense of the Faith") acknowledged explicitly, the two are not the same; and, as Mr. Craig argued persuasively, historical Christianity has not been indifferent to the fate of the European peoples.
The situation today is quite different. Whether Catholic or Protestant, conservative or liberal, all Western churches have embraced leftist dogmas on questions of nationality and race. The only difference appears to be that the more liberal churches openly support the multicultural and anti-white agenda, while the conservative churches ignore it. Of course, ignoring an agenda that pervades everything from politics to advertising is a form of tacit acceptance. The question is not whether Western churches are betraying their predominantly white congregations; they are. The question is whether they have doctrinal justification to do so.
It would be hard to overestimate the extent to which churches have surrendered to the leftist racial world view. Two years ago, the Pope said this about the inundation of Western countries by Third-World "refugees:" "These foreigners are above all our brothers, and no one should be excepted for reasons of race and religion." Of course, one could argue that race and religion are the two most important reasons to prevent foreigners from settling in one�s homeland. A common race is the foundation of any true nation, while a common religion is the foundation of a common moral code.
Leaving aside the race question for a moment, what kind of insanity has gripped the Catholic hierarchy that it would maintain that a Christian country should not keep out non-Christians? Whatever the answer, Protestant churches in Northern Europe and North America suffer a similar affliction. While liberal Protestants prate about the endless benefits of "diversity," conservative Protestants boast they will convert the newcomers. So lost have they become in the mists of political correctness, so effeminate has become their Christianity, they do not realize the erection of mosques, Hindu temples, and Buddhist shrines in the formerly Christian lands of the West is not a sign of progress in world evangelism but is terrible regress and defeat.
If the children of these pagan newcomers are, indeed, to be converted from the religions of their parents the contest will be between evangelicals and hedonistic liberals. Is there any doubt that the latter will sweep the field? These children�s parents came here to enjoy the good life and escape the challenges of building up their own nations. Their children will inherit this materialistic and self-seeking orientation. Christians can boast all they want about tolerance and love of foreigners, but immigration is only further marginalizing Christianity in our culture.'
[...]
Most Christians never mention, much less oppose, policies that directly harm whites: racial quotas, affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, forced busing, extortion-motivated "civil rights" lawsuits, black-on-white hate crimes, interracial marriage, and Third-World immigration. They believe Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American Christian hero who truly deserves to be the only American with a national holiday in his honor. They believe "racism" is a sin, but a sin only when it is white racial consciousness or loyalty, never non-white racial consciousness or identity. They believe whites have a moral and Christian obligation to "bridge the racial divide," integrate their churches, reach out to people of color, etc. It therefore seems a bad joke to speak of Christian conservatives or the Christian Right, for there is nothing conservative about acquiescing in a demographic revolution to turn whites into a minority.
White Christians became racial liberals mainly because the Church has been besieged by the same forces that now dominate every other Western institution. The universalistic and egalitarian ideas of the Enlightenment have now fully penetrated Western culture. Feminist and socialist values have worked their way into Western culture and have overthrown traditional ideals of manhood, patriarchy, and chivalry. Biblical illiteracy, illogic, and historical ignorance have created an environment in which the Scriptures have been perverted into a religious justification for racial liberalism.''
Trask goes on to refute the frequently-cited interpretation of Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus".
I will let you read the entire essay for yourselves. It's a very thorough job of answering the liberalized postmodern Christians who have no problem with breaking with two millennia of Christian belief to embrace the 'one-world' agenda. I often repeat this, and it doesn't seem to pierce through the indoctrination, but how do such Christians reconcile their radical departure from what their parents and grandparents and so on, as far back as you can go, believed? Our Christian parents and our forefathers did not believe there were no nations or races; they did not believe we were to drop all barriers and tear down borders and fences and become one undifferentiated mass of humanity, as today's PC pharisees have decreed we must do.
If we believe that the traditional understanding of nations, as laid out in the Bible and by centuries of custom and tradition were not only mistaken but sinful and immoral, where does that put our ancestors, who held such 'immoral' beliefs and lived by such 'hateful' customs? If today's politically correct believers are right, most of our forefathers will not enter the kingdom of heaven, having not known the 'truth' according to today's wisdom, and having lived what today's generation would call 'racist' and xenophobic lives.
As for me, I am not prepared to condemn our forefathers in that way, while assuming that today's confused Christians are the standard by which to judge.
I suppose there is little chance of exonerating Christianity from the accusations made by some nationalists and realists; I have always had the feeling that they have rejected Christianity already, and are simply looking for further reasons to denigrate the faith and to vilify Christians. So I don't think that anything will change their condemnation of Christianity.
If they are intellectually honest, they would surely at least try to explain why, as I often ask, Europe and the West generally were at their zenith when Christianity still reigned, and when it was a strong and muscular faith. And why, conversely, did the West become effete and passive and self-doubting as the Christian faith waned, and Christianity became stripped of its original power?
These questions are often touched on in various essays of Cambria Will Not Yield, such as this one.
If the ''Christianity did it'' theory of the West's demise were true, should not the West have fallen centuries ago when Christianity was at its peak of power, when the majority of people in the West truly lived their lives according to Christianity's precepts? Why did the fall of the West come only as Christianity became enfeebled and had strayed from its original truths, and when only a small number of faithful believers remain? It makes no logical sense whatsoever, yet I have never heard any of the anti-Christian critics explain why this paradox exists, if their theory is true.
I don't hold any hope of dissuading the 'Christianity did it'' sect from their beliefs. I would, however, hope that some Christians who think it is sinful and evil to close our borders, or to want to preserve our nation and our people, will rethink that position based on what Trask has to say, or better yet, what their Bible has to say, minus the politicized interpretations of our day.
The problem is such that it is becoming increasingly hard for the faithful Christian to answer the ever-louder voices of the critics on the right who say that Christianity is to blame, solely or in part, for the fall of the West and the threatened loss of our country.
AmRen in particular, among racial-realist websites and forums, has its insistent critics and enemies of Christianity, a couple of whom regularly post quite disparaging comments about Christianity and Christians. I can only assume that their viewpoints are agreeable to the moderators of AmRen if not also to the site owner. It's a fact that many comments in general do not get past the moderators, so those which do see the light of day are apparently agreeable to the mods and/or to the site owner.
I know some will say this is just even-handedness. It's not. Islam has its critics on AmRen, but none as insistent as the regular anti-Christian voices. Judaism is not considered fair game for criticism on AmRen, presumably because this is a group which is being courted and whose support is apparently valued more than that of Christians. This makes little tactical sense, because Christians make up a much larger demographic.
For whatever reason, Christians are now on the defensive on the right as well as on the left, and Christianity's detractors are stubbornly unwilling to listen to any defense of Christianity.
It's noteworthy, and heartening, that a British clergyman, Reverend Robert West of the British National Party, has spoken out on the issues of immigration, race, and repatriation in light of Christian belief.
Whilst the BNP is a secular and not a religious party, its views generally agree with the Bible�s own teaching that we are to live as nations, in our nations, and not to submit to a "resurrection" of the Babel thesis of one undifferentiated mass under some form of, probably dictatorial and very unstable, world governance.''
To the credit of AmRen, the issue of Christianity's culpability for the decline of the West was debated there some dozen years ago, and this piece by H.A. Scott Trask was posted there later, although I do wonder if something similar would be posted today. (Incidentally, thanks to Dr. D for calling Trask's piece to my attention once again.)
The Christian Doctrine of Nations
Biblical law respects boundaries of race and nation
by H. A. Scott Trask
In the September 1997 issue of AR there was a debate on whether Christianity is at least partly to blame for the demise of Western Civilization and the suicidal course being pursued by Western peoples. Both positions were ably argued, and on the whole I had to agree that the key to the controversy was a distinction between historical Christianity and contemporary Christianity. As Michael W. Masters ("How Christianity Harms the Race") acknowledged implicitly and Victor Craig ("Defense of the Faith") acknowledged explicitly, the two are not the same; and, as Mr. Craig argued persuasively, historical Christianity has not been indifferent to the fate of the European peoples.
The situation today is quite different. Whether Catholic or Protestant, conservative or liberal, all Western churches have embraced leftist dogmas on questions of nationality and race. The only difference appears to be that the more liberal churches openly support the multicultural and anti-white agenda, while the conservative churches ignore it. Of course, ignoring an agenda that pervades everything from politics to advertising is a form of tacit acceptance. The question is not whether Western churches are betraying their predominantly white congregations; they are. The question is whether they have doctrinal justification to do so.
It would be hard to overestimate the extent to which churches have surrendered to the leftist racial world view. Two years ago, the Pope said this about the inundation of Western countries by Third-World "refugees:" "These foreigners are above all our brothers, and no one should be excepted for reasons of race and religion." Of course, one could argue that race and religion are the two most important reasons to prevent foreigners from settling in one�s homeland. A common race is the foundation of any true nation, while a common religion is the foundation of a common moral code.
Leaving aside the race question for a moment, what kind of insanity has gripped the Catholic hierarchy that it would maintain that a Christian country should not keep out non-Christians? Whatever the answer, Protestant churches in Northern Europe and North America suffer a similar affliction. While liberal Protestants prate about the endless benefits of "diversity," conservative Protestants boast they will convert the newcomers. So lost have they become in the mists of political correctness, so effeminate has become their Christianity, they do not realize the erection of mosques, Hindu temples, and Buddhist shrines in the formerly Christian lands of the West is not a sign of progress in world evangelism but is terrible regress and defeat.
If the children of these pagan newcomers are, indeed, to be converted from the religions of their parents the contest will be between evangelicals and hedonistic liberals. Is there any doubt that the latter will sweep the field? These children�s parents came here to enjoy the good life and escape the challenges of building up their own nations. Their children will inherit this materialistic and self-seeking orientation. Christians can boast all they want about tolerance and love of foreigners, but immigration is only further marginalizing Christianity in our culture.'
[...]
Most Christians never mention, much less oppose, policies that directly harm whites: racial quotas, affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, forced busing, extortion-motivated "civil rights" lawsuits, black-on-white hate crimes, interracial marriage, and Third-World immigration. They believe Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American Christian hero who truly deserves to be the only American with a national holiday in his honor. They believe "racism" is a sin, but a sin only when it is white racial consciousness or loyalty, never non-white racial consciousness or identity. They believe whites have a moral and Christian obligation to "bridge the racial divide," integrate their churches, reach out to people of color, etc. It therefore seems a bad joke to speak of Christian conservatives or the Christian Right, for there is nothing conservative about acquiescing in a demographic revolution to turn whites into a minority.
White Christians became racial liberals mainly because the Church has been besieged by the same forces that now dominate every other Western institution. The universalistic and egalitarian ideas of the Enlightenment have now fully penetrated Western culture. Feminist and socialist values have worked their way into Western culture and have overthrown traditional ideals of manhood, patriarchy, and chivalry. Biblical illiteracy, illogic, and historical ignorance have created an environment in which the Scriptures have been perverted into a religious justification for racial liberalism.''
Trask goes on to refute the frequently-cited interpretation of Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus".
I will let you read the entire essay for yourselves. It's a very thorough job of answering the liberalized postmodern Christians who have no problem with breaking with two millennia of Christian belief to embrace the 'one-world' agenda. I often repeat this, and it doesn't seem to pierce through the indoctrination, but how do such Christians reconcile their radical departure from what their parents and grandparents and so on, as far back as you can go, believed? Our Christian parents and our forefathers did not believe there were no nations or races; they did not believe we were to drop all barriers and tear down borders and fences and become one undifferentiated mass of humanity, as today's PC pharisees have decreed we must do.
If we believe that the traditional understanding of nations, as laid out in the Bible and by centuries of custom and tradition were not only mistaken but sinful and immoral, where does that put our ancestors, who held such 'immoral' beliefs and lived by such 'hateful' customs? If today's politically correct believers are right, most of our forefathers will not enter the kingdom of heaven, having not known the 'truth' according to today's wisdom, and having lived what today's generation would call 'racist' and xenophobic lives.
As for me, I am not prepared to condemn our forefathers in that way, while assuming that today's confused Christians are the standard by which to judge.
I suppose there is little chance of exonerating Christianity from the accusations made by some nationalists and realists; I have always had the feeling that they have rejected Christianity already, and are simply looking for further reasons to denigrate the faith and to vilify Christians. So I don't think that anything will change their condemnation of Christianity.
If they are intellectually honest, they would surely at least try to explain why, as I often ask, Europe and the West generally were at their zenith when Christianity still reigned, and when it was a strong and muscular faith. And why, conversely, did the West become effete and passive and self-doubting as the Christian faith waned, and Christianity became stripped of its original power?
These questions are often touched on in various essays of Cambria Will Not Yield, such as this one.
If the ''Christianity did it'' theory of the West's demise were true, should not the West have fallen centuries ago when Christianity was at its peak of power, when the majority of people in the West truly lived their lives according to Christianity's precepts? Why did the fall of the West come only as Christianity became enfeebled and had strayed from its original truths, and when only a small number of faithful believers remain? It makes no logical sense whatsoever, yet I have never heard any of the anti-Christian critics explain why this paradox exists, if their theory is true.
I don't hold any hope of dissuading the 'Christianity did it'' sect from their beliefs. I would, however, hope that some Christians who think it is sinful and evil to close our borders, or to want to preserve our nation and our people, will rethink that position based on what Trask has to say, or better yet, what their Bible has to say, minus the politicized interpretations of our day.
Labels: Babel, Bible, Christendom, Death Of The West, Ethnonationalism, Liberal Christianity, Nationality, Nations, Political Correctness, Western Decline
0 comment Thursday, July 17, 2014 | admin
I happened across these two pieces, one by Kenneth Minogue and one by James Pinkerton, both of them from a while back, but they seemed like bookend pieces, and they address the very relevant issue of universalism vs nationalism or patriotism, and national sovereignty vs. internationalism or globalism.
Minogue notes that the people who are most determinedly pushing globalism and universalism are an odd collection of people who nevertheless have similar goals. He examines the different motives which lead a rather disparate collection of people to pursue similar ends. The most obvious people who advocate the universalist view are the 'humanitarian' types, the do-gooders who want to save suffering humanity, end war, and bring about some global utopia.
Kenneth Minogue on National Sovereignty Vs. Internationalism
...In arguing that sovereignty has become an irrelevant, indeed obstructive, hangover from the past, humanitarians present themselves less as assassins, than as executioners of the verdict of history.
Such is the negative element in the humanitarian project. The positive project is nothing less than that of transforming the human situation. It aims to remove the oppressions of torture and poverty so that each individual on the planet can be assured of what activists often call "a good quality of life", and what philosophers refer to these days as "flourishing". Each person must be given what one might call a "quality assured" life.
This is obviously a secular vision -- religious concerns are merely lifestyle choices within it -- and there is a sense in which one might well think it a highly desirable utopia. One could hardly say that it is a noble vision, however, because it treats the inhabitants of the globe as a set of victims who must be provided with these desirabilities. Humanity is to be the passive beneficiary of a perfection supplied by an élite of busy humanitarians.''
[A quote from H.L. Mencken comes to mind here: "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."]
Minogue continues:
Still, given the horrors that take place in many parts of the world, humanitarianism is a very understandable aspiration. And as it operates in contemporary politics, it takes the form of internationalism, since its most evident character is the aspiration to transcend sovereign national independence and replace it with rights enforced by a benign world authority. Internationalism is a political movement, and its exponents are, as it were, the patriots of a patria which does not yet exist. Since most people seem instinctively to prefer their own values to those of foreigners, our next question must be to ask: who advances the project of internationalism?
The answer is that internationalism appeals to a self-consciously enlightened public opinion, an opinion whose doctrines descend, indeed, from the movement which actually called itself the Enlightenment. This is a public opinion prone to express its preferences in terms of abstractions such as rights, peace, negotiation, equality, rule of law, inclusion, etcetera. It is evidently a rationalist cast of mind, which treats every defect in the human condition as a problem for which lawyers and experts (lawyers especially) can always find a solution.
To say this is to say that internationalist activists have commonly been trained at universities in the social sciences, but have understood their training as having transcended the academic disciplines (which recognise that every logic of inquiry has its own specific limitations) in favour of a more general ideological orientation. This orientation rejects the current world order as radically imperfect, and aims at salvation by implementing whatever the favoured abstractions currently seem to intimate. Implementing such policies commonly collides, however, with the instincts and prejudices of most of the populations even of Western countries, and this is the reason I have on occasions referred to this area of public opinion as "Olympian".
[...]
Here, then, in the Olympians we have a new class, as they have been called, consisting of academics, journalists, lawyers, teachers, clergymen, politicians and administrators. They are not only prepared to take issue with their own governments, but positively take a pride in doing so. Such dissidence is thought to express a virtue above the mere parochialities of local patriotism. But as political actors seeking to transform the world, Olympians have several disadvantages. One of them is that they are not a very warlike set of people. They are crusaders of the pen rather than the sword. Today the levers of power in Western societies give Olympians access to a military power to which (except when they need it) they are essentially hostile. Their ultimate aim is to create a world that won't need soldiers -- indeed, even now they are trying to turn warriors into a different kind of thing called a "peace keeper".
There is another problem impeding their project of perfecting the world. Almost all of them are to be found in Western countries. They are all the products of Western liberalism. Their challenge lies in presenting an essentially Western middle class view of the world as if it expressed the essence of humanity itself. On the other hand, in their doctrines of rights and their recourse to international law, they do at least have instruments capable of disrupting other societies. Their secret weapon against non-Western societies is women, who have a great deal to gain from Westernisation.
Acute readers may already have recognised a contradiction in my account of the Olympians who sustain the humanitarian movement. On the one hand they stand for humanity itself, and therefore espouse equality, but on the other hand they conceive of themselves as having a rather superior status. But we need not dwell greatly on this point, for it merely reveals that we are dealing with something entirely familiar: namely, a new version of the Marxist doctrine of the vanguard of the proletariat.
...We began with something like a mystery: who is trying to kill sovereignty and the nation state ? We have discovered that there are many suspects both within and without the state, but that the real situation is that sovereignty is to be killed in order to turn the state into something that will subserve the Olympian ambition to create a world guaranteeing a good quality of life to every individual on the planet.''
However, James Pinkerton expresses a belief that these utopian 'Olympians' do not have human nature on their side, and hence have less of an advantage than we may think.
Pinkerton notes the presence of another faction of people who are aggressively promoting globalism: the right-wing corporate interests.
Universalism vs. Nationalism
Here's a question: Why do Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and The Wall Street Journal editorial page have such similar views on immigration?
The answer is that all four of the above -- Mahony, CAIR, the ACLU, and the Journal -- have chosen universalism over nationalism. The four embrace different visions of universalism, to be sure, but each one of them is similar insofar as it seeks to transcend passports and borders. Each of the four pursues a trans-nationalizing, world-flattening globalism that regards nation-states as, at best, necessary evils -- and at worst, unnecessary evils. Far better, the universalists say, to unite the world, regardless of color and class, according to common belief. In terms of either religion or ideology, many find it inspiring to think that the whole world might be united into one big system, in which all pursue purity or prosperity. It's all pretty heady stuff, these universalisms.
But there's one big catch: Such universalizing is terrible politics -- the folks at home don't like it, and they won't vote for it. Regular people don't seem to like universalism; they like nationalism, particularism, localism. Electorates, each in their own homeland, seem to reject new world orders, preferring to organize themselves into something that many thought was dead and discredited: the nation state.''
[Note: Apropos of this, James Burnham once said]
But modern liberalism does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice and death. There is no tragic dimension in its picture of the good life . . . In their place Liberalism proposes a set of pale and bloodless abstractions - pale and bloodless for the very reason that they have no roots in the past, in deep feeling and in suffering. Except for mercenaries, saints and neurotics, no one is willing to sacrifice and die for progressive education, medicare, humanity in the abstract, the United Nations and a ten percent rise in Social Security payments."
He seems to have been right; despite what the 'proposition nation' neocons and the left-liberal do-gooders say, loyalties to abstractions are watery and thin, compared to our allegiances to kith and kin, home, and native soil.
Pinkerton describes the four universalizing forces as Christianity, especially the Roman Catholic Church, Islam, leftist internationalism, and right-wing internationalism, or globalism. Though on the surface, these groups might seem to be at odds, they are in general agreement on some things. Pinkerton continues:
All these universalists have come to agreement on the desirability of more immigration. And they have something else in common too: they are being routed in the public square by the nationalist immigration-restricters. Grand belief systems, vaulting overhead, are being shattered on the low-rising rocks of stable communities and reliable neighborliness.
The universalists have big ideas, but they are, well, too big. Albert Einstein, a big thinker if there ever was one -- who would be categorized into the lefty ACLU grouping -- disdained anything less than full internationalism: "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." But half a century after Einstein's death, it's apparent that humanity isn't growing out of its nationalism. The Kurds, the Chechens, the Palestinians, the Tamils, and the Montenegrins, to name just five groups insistently pressing for independence, would say that the full realization of nationalism has a way to go.
To the endless consternation of the globalists, most people prefer to think small: to express affection for their own, first.
[...]
To put it another way, the wind is in the face of the border-openers, such as George W. Bush.
[...]
In the long run, "normal" wins, because normal is also numerous. Which is why Bush & the Open Borderers are being beaten so badly on the immigration issue -- they are outnumbered. As we have seen, the normal mode of behavior is to be loyal to people, family, flag, and place, as distinct from distantly vaporous abstractions.
Those who aspire toward abstract universalism thus had better learn an important lesson: humility. And yet "humility" and "universalism" don't naturally go well together; after all, if one Knows the Truth about the whole wide world, it's hard to be modest.''
[Emphasis mine]
Minogue describes these 'Olympians' as people who conceive of themselves as a moral as well as intellectual elite, and Pinkerton seems to agree, adding that not only are the Olympian internationalists out of touch, but they are not likely to succeed in the long run since they are in opposition to human nature.
If Pinkerton is right, and I surely hope he is, then we who want to maintain our natural human loyalty to our people, our homes, and our faith and heritage, have the advantage of normality, of our following the dictates of healthy human nature.
The prescient Carleton Putnam said
I have already said something about brotherhood, but I will add one thing more. Love, like charity, begins at home. A man who loves all countries, and all races, as much as he loves his own, is like the man who loves all women as much as he loves his wife. He merits suspicion. I have seldom seen the matter put better than by William Massey in his article "The New Fanatics," in the section entitled "Whither Brotherhood?" To that question Mr. Massey answers: "Nowhere. The current furor over brotherhood is compounded of fallacy and foolishness. For it is fallacy to believe that men are no longer separated by enduring differences, and it is foolishness wilfully to believe this fallacy. Yet this fallacy is the basis for the present campaign for brotherhood. This is not a campaign by men who love humanity, but by men obsessed with a vision. Their vision is of a united mankind marching toward a Utopian world. It is the stylized, inhuman vision they love, not man. They do not look at man dispassionately, or even with affection, to see his condition and help him. Instead they preach a mystic brotherhood of man that is both goal and means to the goal. This brotherhood is not reached by good will, understanding and tolerance. It is a fanatic's dream, a will-o'-the-wisp that gives them the self-righteousness to vent their hatreds with a clear conscience. Better an honest enemy than so strange a brother."
Minogue notes that the people who are most determinedly pushing globalism and universalism are an odd collection of people who nevertheless have similar goals. He examines the different motives which lead a rather disparate collection of people to pursue similar ends. The most obvious people who advocate the universalist view are the 'humanitarian' types, the do-gooders who want to save suffering humanity, end war, and bring about some global utopia.
Kenneth Minogue on National Sovereignty Vs. Internationalism
...In arguing that sovereignty has become an irrelevant, indeed obstructive, hangover from the past, humanitarians present themselves less as assassins, than as executioners of the verdict of history.
Such is the negative element in the humanitarian project. The positive project is nothing less than that of transforming the human situation. It aims to remove the oppressions of torture and poverty so that each individual on the planet can be assured of what activists often call "a good quality of life", and what philosophers refer to these days as "flourishing". Each person must be given what one might call a "quality assured" life.
This is obviously a secular vision -- religious concerns are merely lifestyle choices within it -- and there is a sense in which one might well think it a highly desirable utopia. One could hardly say that it is a noble vision, however, because it treats the inhabitants of the globe as a set of victims who must be provided with these desirabilities. Humanity is to be the passive beneficiary of a perfection supplied by an élite of busy humanitarians.''
[A quote from H.L. Mencken comes to mind here: "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."]
Minogue continues:
Still, given the horrors that take place in many parts of the world, humanitarianism is a very understandable aspiration. And as it operates in contemporary politics, it takes the form of internationalism, since its most evident character is the aspiration to transcend sovereign national independence and replace it with rights enforced by a benign world authority. Internationalism is a political movement, and its exponents are, as it were, the patriots of a patria which does not yet exist. Since most people seem instinctively to prefer their own values to those of foreigners, our next question must be to ask: who advances the project of internationalism?
The answer is that internationalism appeals to a self-consciously enlightened public opinion, an opinion whose doctrines descend, indeed, from the movement which actually called itself the Enlightenment. This is a public opinion prone to express its preferences in terms of abstractions such as rights, peace, negotiation, equality, rule of law, inclusion, etcetera. It is evidently a rationalist cast of mind, which treats every defect in the human condition as a problem for which lawyers and experts (lawyers especially) can always find a solution.
To say this is to say that internationalist activists have commonly been trained at universities in the social sciences, but have understood their training as having transcended the academic disciplines (which recognise that every logic of inquiry has its own specific limitations) in favour of a more general ideological orientation. This orientation rejects the current world order as radically imperfect, and aims at salvation by implementing whatever the favoured abstractions currently seem to intimate. Implementing such policies commonly collides, however, with the instincts and prejudices of most of the populations even of Western countries, and this is the reason I have on occasions referred to this area of public opinion as "Olympian".
[...]
Here, then, in the Olympians we have a new class, as they have been called, consisting of academics, journalists, lawyers, teachers, clergymen, politicians and administrators. They are not only prepared to take issue with their own governments, but positively take a pride in doing so. Such dissidence is thought to express a virtue above the mere parochialities of local patriotism. But as political actors seeking to transform the world, Olympians have several disadvantages. One of them is that they are not a very warlike set of people. They are crusaders of the pen rather than the sword. Today the levers of power in Western societies give Olympians access to a military power to which (except when they need it) they are essentially hostile. Their ultimate aim is to create a world that won't need soldiers -- indeed, even now they are trying to turn warriors into a different kind of thing called a "peace keeper".
There is another problem impeding their project of perfecting the world. Almost all of them are to be found in Western countries. They are all the products of Western liberalism. Their challenge lies in presenting an essentially Western middle class view of the world as if it expressed the essence of humanity itself. On the other hand, in their doctrines of rights and their recourse to international law, they do at least have instruments capable of disrupting other societies. Their secret weapon against non-Western societies is women, who have a great deal to gain from Westernisation.
Acute readers may already have recognised a contradiction in my account of the Olympians who sustain the humanitarian movement. On the one hand they stand for humanity itself, and therefore espouse equality, but on the other hand they conceive of themselves as having a rather superior status. But we need not dwell greatly on this point, for it merely reveals that we are dealing with something entirely familiar: namely, a new version of the Marxist doctrine of the vanguard of the proletariat.
...We began with something like a mystery: who is trying to kill sovereignty and the nation state ? We have discovered that there are many suspects both within and without the state, but that the real situation is that sovereignty is to be killed in order to turn the state into something that will subserve the Olympian ambition to create a world guaranteeing a good quality of life to every individual on the planet.''
However, James Pinkerton expresses a belief that these utopian 'Olympians' do not have human nature on their side, and hence have less of an advantage than we may think.
Pinkerton notes the presence of another faction of people who are aggressively promoting globalism: the right-wing corporate interests.
Universalism vs. Nationalism
Here's a question: Why do Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and The Wall Street Journal editorial page have such similar views on immigration?
The answer is that all four of the above -- Mahony, CAIR, the ACLU, and the Journal -- have chosen universalism over nationalism. The four embrace different visions of universalism, to be sure, but each one of them is similar insofar as it seeks to transcend passports and borders. Each of the four pursues a trans-nationalizing, world-flattening globalism that regards nation-states as, at best, necessary evils -- and at worst, unnecessary evils. Far better, the universalists say, to unite the world, regardless of color and class, according to common belief. In terms of either religion or ideology, many find it inspiring to think that the whole world might be united into one big system, in which all pursue purity or prosperity. It's all pretty heady stuff, these universalisms.
But there's one big catch: Such universalizing is terrible politics -- the folks at home don't like it, and they won't vote for it. Regular people don't seem to like universalism; they like nationalism, particularism, localism. Electorates, each in their own homeland, seem to reject new world orders, preferring to organize themselves into something that many thought was dead and discredited: the nation state.''
[Note: Apropos of this, James Burnham once said]
But modern liberalism does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice and death. There is no tragic dimension in its picture of the good life . . . In their place Liberalism proposes a set of pale and bloodless abstractions - pale and bloodless for the very reason that they have no roots in the past, in deep feeling and in suffering. Except for mercenaries, saints and neurotics, no one is willing to sacrifice and die for progressive education, medicare, humanity in the abstract, the United Nations and a ten percent rise in Social Security payments."
He seems to have been right; despite what the 'proposition nation' neocons and the left-liberal do-gooders say, loyalties to abstractions are watery and thin, compared to our allegiances to kith and kin, home, and native soil.
Pinkerton describes the four universalizing forces as Christianity, especially the Roman Catholic Church, Islam, leftist internationalism, and right-wing internationalism, or globalism. Though on the surface, these groups might seem to be at odds, they are in general agreement on some things. Pinkerton continues:
All these universalists have come to agreement on the desirability of more immigration. And they have something else in common too: they are being routed in the public square by the nationalist immigration-restricters. Grand belief systems, vaulting overhead, are being shattered on the low-rising rocks of stable communities and reliable neighborliness.
The universalists have big ideas, but they are, well, too big. Albert Einstein, a big thinker if there ever was one -- who would be categorized into the lefty ACLU grouping -- disdained anything less than full internationalism: "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." But half a century after Einstein's death, it's apparent that humanity isn't growing out of its nationalism. The Kurds, the Chechens, the Palestinians, the Tamils, and the Montenegrins, to name just five groups insistently pressing for independence, would say that the full realization of nationalism has a way to go.
To the endless consternation of the globalists, most people prefer to think small: to express affection for their own, first.
[...]
To put it another way, the wind is in the face of the border-openers, such as George W. Bush.
[...]
In the long run, "normal" wins, because normal is also numerous. Which is why Bush & the Open Borderers are being beaten so badly on the immigration issue -- they are outnumbered. As we have seen, the normal mode of behavior is to be loyal to people, family, flag, and place, as distinct from distantly vaporous abstractions.
Those who aspire toward abstract universalism thus had better learn an important lesson: humility. And yet "humility" and "universalism" don't naturally go well together; after all, if one Knows the Truth about the whole wide world, it's hard to be modest.''
[Emphasis mine]
Minogue describes these 'Olympians' as people who conceive of themselves as a moral as well as intellectual elite, and Pinkerton seems to agree, adding that not only are the Olympian internationalists out of touch, but they are not likely to succeed in the long run since they are in opposition to human nature.
If Pinkerton is right, and I surely hope he is, then we who want to maintain our natural human loyalty to our people, our homes, and our faith and heritage, have the advantage of normality, of our following the dictates of healthy human nature.
The prescient Carleton Putnam said
I have already said something about brotherhood, but I will add one thing more. Love, like charity, begins at home. A man who loves all countries, and all races, as much as he loves his own, is like the man who loves all women as much as he loves his wife. He merits suspicion. I have seldom seen the matter put better than by William Massey in his article "The New Fanatics," in the section entitled "Whither Brotherhood?" To that question Mr. Massey answers: "Nowhere. The current furor over brotherhood is compounded of fallacy and foolishness. For it is fallacy to believe that men are no longer separated by enduring differences, and it is foolishness wilfully to believe this fallacy. Yet this fallacy is the basis for the present campaign for brotherhood. This is not a campaign by men who love humanity, but by men obsessed with a vision. Their vision is of a united mankind marching toward a Utopian world. It is the stylized, inhuman vision they love, not man. They do not look at man dispassionately, or even with affection, to see his condition and help him. Instead they preach a mystic brotherhood of man that is both goal and means to the goal. This brotherhood is not reached by good will, understanding and tolerance. It is a fanatic's dream, a will-o'-the-wisp that gives them the self-righteousness to vent their hatreds with a clear conscience. Better an honest enemy than so strange a brother."
Labels: Globalism, National Sovereignty, Nationalism, Nations, Universalism
0 comment Tuesday, May 20, 2014 | admin
In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling of nations, of the disappearance of different races in the melting-pot of contemporary civilization. I do not agree with this opinion, but its discussion remains another question. Here it is merely fitting to say that the disappearance of nations would impoverish us no less then if all men had become alike with one personality, one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities. The very least of them wears its own special colors, and bears within itself a special facet of God�s design. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, from his Nobel lecture in 1970
Labels: Mankind, Nations, Wealth
0 comment Saturday, May 3, 2014 | admin
Just a quick thought: a friend and I were discussing the fact that most of our produce, and indeed everything we need, seems to have to be imported from somewhere, mainly Third World countries. Meanwhile, we wondered, where do America's farm products go?
On this thread at AmRen, a couple of people raise the same question my friend and I were discussing.
I think it was Theodore Roosevelt who spoke against "foreign entanglements." He must have looked into the future of this country. What have we become? I looked in vain at the market yesterday for produce raised in this country. There was none to be found. Most comes from Mexico, with the Latin American countriesfollowing. Do we no longer produce our own food? Clothing comes from thirdworld countries and looks it. Our appliances come primarily from China. Are we left to be just a supplier of money for those who seek to overcome us? If the present trend continues, we will be strangers in our own land. In many states this has already happened. Yet we continue to elect those who are willing to sell out to the highest bidder. They�ve sold their patriotism and honor at the same time.''
Followed by this response:
I was told by someone in a small market the other day that most of our best produce goes to Japan and Europe because American farmers and corporations can make more money selling the produce there. Then, Americans get to have produce from Mexico and Latin America.
Whether that�s the whole story I don�t know but I have wondered for some time now why there is so little American produce in our grocery stores when we grow so much here in the United States.''
I was reading an old (early 1950s) book I just bought in which they wrote of how our country produced, then, more than half of the world's cotton. Yet, many of the fields that I remember as being cotton fields in Texas during my childhood are no longer growing cotton. Much of the corn grown is not grown for human consumption.
So why is this? Why are we now dependent on other, lesser countries for the things we need for our sustenance? Does someone have a good answer for why this is? I wonder if the first comment I quoted above is correct, and our country is meant, by these globalist web-spinners, to be nothing more than a nation of white-collar serfs
since we seem to manufacture very little and grow little of what we need to eat.
It seems to me as if the plan is to make each region of the world (I won't say 'country' because I think countries are to be made obsolete) to specialize in one area, with each region limited to certain services or products. Obviously we can't have independent, self-sufficient countries, can we? We have to be compelled to depend on each other for vital goods or services, and then we will all learn to live in peace and brotherhood, won't we?
On this thread at AmRen, a couple of people raise the same question my friend and I were discussing.
I think it was Theodore Roosevelt who spoke against "foreign entanglements." He must have looked into the future of this country. What have we become? I looked in vain at the market yesterday for produce raised in this country. There was none to be found. Most comes from Mexico, with the Latin American countriesfollowing. Do we no longer produce our own food? Clothing comes from thirdworld countries and looks it. Our appliances come primarily from China. Are we left to be just a supplier of money for those who seek to overcome us? If the present trend continues, we will be strangers in our own land. In many states this has already happened. Yet we continue to elect those who are willing to sell out to the highest bidder. They�ve sold their patriotism and honor at the same time.''
Followed by this response:
I was told by someone in a small market the other day that most of our best produce goes to Japan and Europe because American farmers and corporations can make more money selling the produce there. Then, Americans get to have produce from Mexico and Latin America.
Whether that�s the whole story I don�t know but I have wondered for some time now why there is so little American produce in our grocery stores when we grow so much here in the United States.''
I was reading an old (early 1950s) book I just bought in which they wrote of how our country produced, then, more than half of the world's cotton. Yet, many of the fields that I remember as being cotton fields in Texas during my childhood are no longer growing cotton. Much of the corn grown is not grown for human consumption.
So why is this? Why are we now dependent on other, lesser countries for the things we need for our sustenance? Does someone have a good answer for why this is? I wonder if the first comment I quoted above is correct, and our country is meant, by these globalist web-spinners, to be nothing more than a nation of white-collar serfs
since we seem to manufacture very little and grow little of what we need to eat.
It seems to me as if the plan is to make each region of the world (I won't say 'country' because I think countries are to be made obsolete) to specialize in one area, with each region limited to certain services or products. Obviously we can't have independent, self-sufficient countries, can we? We have to be compelled to depend on each other for vital goods or services, and then we will all learn to live in peace and brotherhood, won't we?
Labels: Globalism, Nations, One World, Self-Determination