What does it Mean that Christians and Other People of Good Will must Hack the [Political] System? We must Vote Not in Order to Support the System, but as one Defensive Tactic Among Many.

In my previous post I said our side should hack the political system, not withdraw from politics as some on our side (many of whom are Christians) counsel.

The political system is hostile to us but still capable on occasion of producing outcomes beneficial to us. And the withdrawal of people of good will from politics only makes it easier for our Opponent to torment us. We must wisely apply political force where it is likely to do us good and not be misled by foolish idealism of either the anti- or pro-politics type.

The present counsel refers primarily to voting, although obviously voting does no good unless there is a candidate who is a person of good will, and governing does no good unless done by people of good will. But the vast majority of us will not hold office. We will only vote.

To “hack” the political system, then, is to view voting not as a civic duty, but as one means among many of defending ourselves. Politics as civic duty dates from the old days, when America functioned reasonably well regardless of who occupied governmental office. In those days the election of a bad party or politician was never a catastrophe, and it made sense to vote for a questionable candidate as long as his party was, in the long run, better for America than the other party.

But now all of official America is committed to destruction. To vote with the goal of supporting the existing order is to cooperate with destruction.

Instead, we must vote with the goal of protecting ourselves. And if no candidate is likely to protect us, don’t vote. That’s the way our Opponent votes, and he has been successful so far.

Why the Belief that Christians Must Not Involve Themselves in “Politics” is Wrong: The Woke are Building Anti-Christian Culture, and only Christians can Defend or Build Pro-Christian Culture

Many Christians, especially Evangelical Protestants, believe Christians should avoid “politics.” The quotes are there because the underlying concept is ill-defined. There is just a prejudice that Christians ought not to waste time on it.

The traditional Evangelical argument is this: When people become Christians they will naturally support a proper social order, so we should only do what we do best: evangelize. The presence of enough individuals having right beliefs will naturally lead to a proper social order. Politics is ruled by politicians, a slippery and deceitful lot. Better to stay entirely away from them and their craft.

This belief is mistaken. Here is why:

*

The Woke are destroying traditional American culture. By “culture” I mean everything that gives order to how we live. All the customs, traditions, habits, rules, laws and so on that govern the ways that we relate to each other. “Culture” also means all the ideas and beliefs that allow us to understand the world and that indirectly give rise to our social arrangements.

In short, culture is the way we live.

The Woke are destroying our culture. They are changing it from the traditional Christian-friendly American culture to a new anti-Christian culture.

Since mankind cannot live without culture, the Woke have no choice but to establish a new culture. The only way to destroy a culture is to replace it with a new one. Our culture is being remade and will continue to be remade.

So if Christians don’t remake a Christian-friendly culture then non-Christians will remake a Christian-hostile culture. There is no third option.

On the Intention of the Poet

Does he want to injure, or heal? Is he base, or noble? Would he transgress and so ruin his patrimony, or elaborate and so glorify it?

It is in practice pretty easy to tell, no? It is not after all so hard to parse this, or therefore to decide which side deserves your lot. Go then; decide. Which poet shall you heed?

There is in the final analysis nothing else that is in your power. Everything else, from the morning coffee to the changing of the diaper to the valor of the battlefield is a faint echo – a mighty, magnificent, immensely important echo – of this basic decision.

Is it about you, you worm? Or is it about something more? If it is about something more, then: is it about the Ultimate, or is it about something damnably less?

Let’s on with it then, brothers. Into the fray. Deus vult!

 

Traditionalism is the Reductio of Modernity

The tradition of modernity is to repudiate tradition per se. It’s right there in the term: ‘modern’ is from Late Latin modernus, from Latin modo, “just now.” So ‘modern’ means “what is just now.”

Traditionalists take the modern tradition with utmost seriousness, thoroughness, and consistency: they repudiate the tradition of modernity.

Traditionalists are the iconoclasts of iconoclasm. So likewise are they then the true postmodernists. In their hearts and in their minds, and so far as is possible in their acts, they live into whatever it is that shall inevitably ensue, once modernity has finished eating itself, and collapsed; once the people have awakened and shaken it off like a nightmare or Soviet Communism.

Traditionalists are ransacking the cupboards on the morning after Belshazzar’s Feast, looking for the coffee as the sour dregs of the Party lapse into biliary nausea, bitter existential regret, and alcoholic coma, and as the Persians begin to assemble their siege engines.

The Orthosphere Has Begun to Succeed

How can we tell that we are on the right track? When they are shooting at you, you know you are over the target. Maybe not the target you took off to destroy, but a worthy target nonetheless.

We learned over the last few days that we seem to have been shadowbanned by the orcs at Facebook. Professor Cocks and a regular commenter both tried to post links to Orthosphere essays to Facebook pages, and both got instead messages that such links to us are disallowed because they are not pc. Or something.

Terrific news, right?

They are scared of us. Yes, folks, the Enemy is scared even of the Orthosphere, with our puny traffic. We seem to have them on the run!

So, here’s to more posts on abstruse Christian metaphysics, ancient political economy, pulp fiction, folk music and 20th Century composers, Texas geography and history, aetymology, Berdyaev and Gödel, physics and the Church, and so forth.

Oh, and that stuff about monarchy and reaction. I suppose that’s how they twigged us. Or perhaps it was the rumor a few years ago that we were the rightmost site of the reactionary web. Shucks, folks; it’s not that we are *trying* to be outrageous.

The lesson seems clear. Speak the truth, *about anything,* anything at all. That will do the trick.

Onward, friends.

******

PS: if any of you have expertise or experience in replicating a site, I’d like to hear from you. If FB has banned us, I suppose it is only a matter of time until WordPress does likewise. We’ll need a fallback option. All I know how to do is download the site to my drive. More than that is needed, if we are to keep flying missions over Enemy territory.

More Knife-Edged Comedy from J. P. Sears

Calling All Evangels: Battle Stations!

So here’s a question, quite serious: have you been feeling unusually depressed in 2020? Have you been feeling more and more depressed, over the course of the year? Have your feelings of depression been far more intense than any you have ever experienced?

The question arises from my recent correspondence with an orthospherean friend of many years – of many more years than there has been such a thing as The Orthosphere (most of you would recognize her name) – in which I learned that she, like me, has been thinking about death a lot over the last few months. I learned from her also of the recent suicide of a prominent pastor. That got me thinking.

The Incipience of Irresistible Truth

Things are come over the last few days, and indeed hours, to a peculiarly acute pitch in America, and so in the wider West of which she is by historical accident – which is to say, by divine Providence – at present the head. America is now, for better or worse, the lead ram of the herd. Whither America goes, the rest shall follow. So we find that the entire West is at this hour poised on a world historical knife’s edge. If things go one way in America, the entirety of Christendom outside Russia will fall into rank apostasy, and so, into social chaos, poverty, and war. If they go the other, then might the West join with our Russian brothers in a renascence of Christian orthodoxy, and so of social health; of sanity, and so of peace, and of justice.

Green Grocer Placards, circa 2020

The Concerted Salients of Our Demoralization

The morale of the West – and, thus, its capacity to morality under pressure, so then its economic vigor and geopolitical power – has throughout 2020 been assaulted on many fronts at once, more and more acutely. It is odd that things seem to have gone so badly in so many ways, all at the same time, and as it were in concert. The question naturally arises, whether that concert is orchestrated.