Under the Pornocracy

“And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them.”

Isaiah 3:4

Most translations repeat the prophesy that God will curse Israel by placing it under the rule of children, but the Douay-Rheims translation specifies that a faithless nation will also be placed under the rule of  “the effeminate.”  The context of the verse makes clear that a government of unmanly men is part of a comprehensive moral revolution in which all natural hierarchies are inverted.  Somewhat later in the imprecatory chapter, Isaiah tells us this government by children and wimps will be equally a government by women.

On the proper attitude of whites toward black people

One’s first thought is that it would be silly to have a single attitude toward a whole race of people. Within any race, some will be admirable, some scoundrels, most unremarkable, all created for eternal glory with God but not all achieving it. However, our culture and its institutions tell us that blacks are the innocent victims of white wickedness. If we were asked to pity them for their poverty and suffering, that would not be a problem. If we were asked to admire them for their courage and resilience, that would not be a problem. One group of people can pity or admire another without any unhealthy psychic stress. Instead, blacks are held up as a rebuke to whites; we are supposed to feel guilty and ashamed of our ancestors and ourselves on account of their/our mistreatment of blacks. Because of this “shameful past and present”, we are not allowed to venerate our ancestors and treasure our culture as all healthy peoples must. Faced with such a demand, the only natural responses from whites are either 1) submission, that is to accept one’s shame, become an “anti-racist” and renounce one’s own people, or 2) resentment, at its most extreme to hate blacks as those who have robbed us of our dignity. Both responses are unjust. Our ancestors are entitled to our pious devotion, and most blacks are decent people who have never done us any harm. The black race, or rather the idea of it, is a tool of the mostly-not black ruling class that indeed hates us. Furthermore, it’s worth remembering that the most faithful branches of the Catholic and Anglican Churches are in Africa, so in ecclesiastic battles, we support the black African bishops against the degenerate heretical bishops from Europe.

So, if we’re not to grovel before blacks, and we are not to resent them, and the culture insists that we not simply judge them as individuals (deciding to ignore race is now said to be itself “racist”, and even if you don’t agree about that, the fact that everyone else is screaming about race makes it impossible for it not to be the first thing you notice about someone), what sort of attitude should we take?

New book!

I’ve been playing hooky from this site for a while, but I hope no one minds if I show up to announce I have a new book coming out, The Decomposition of Man: Identity, Technocracy, and the Church. It’s about the old identities that worked (man, woman, Catholic, American), the new ones that really don’t (Latinx, nonbinary), why the change, whence the lunacy, and what to do about it. The problems go pretty deep, and like everything else today they’re not going to get better unless we change a lot about how we live and think about things.

 

Brazos Country Rambles and Notions 6

Readers who have enjoyed earlier volumes in my series on the Brazos Country are invited to take a look at the latest installment. The quotes in this video are from history and natural history rather than literature, and in most cases refer directly to the scene in the photograph. In the introduction I touch on my idea of the pathos of landscape, quoting the early Christian father Gregory of Nyssa.

We Must Constantly Update Our Demonology

“I feel sure that this prioritizing of Western nations for the chop is a deliberate demonic strategy – happening by intent . . . . And the Western nations (their leaders and especially managerial/ intellectual classes) are not merely willing, but indeed actively keen, thus to fall in line with the demonic agenda” 

Bruce Charlton, “Destruction of Western Nations,” Bruce Charlton’s Notions (May 9. 2023)

“We wrestle not so much with man, as with devils . . . . The enemies we fight with are more than flesh and blood, more envious, malicious, furious, dangerous, numerous, more subtle, powerful, in every way fearful.”

Isaac Ambrose, The Christian Warrior (c. 1630).*

“Culture, which smooth the whole world licks,
Also unto the Devil sticks.” 

Goethe, Faust (1828-1829)

Commenter Naturboi recently demurred at the demonic theories of Orthosphere friend Bruce Charlton, describing these theories as “Manichean” and “unhinged.”  I am myself wary of the pejorative descriptor Manichean, since this word is so often used to throw sand into our eyes.  I am not saying that Naturboi is throwing sand in our eyes, but I do not think we should discard the Manichean baby with the Manichean bathwater.

Know Your Limits

“So, turn the other cheek, but you only have two cheeks, and walk the extra mile, but only one extra mile. Peace on earth to all men of good will, but Old Testament solutions are applicable to men of bad will. Christianity is not a suicide pact.”

Jim, “The Logos,” Jim’s Blog (May 6, 2023)

Christianity is not a suicide pact unless we make it a suicide pact, in which case it is a suicide pact and we all die.  We make Christianity a suicide pact when we imagine that a Christian has overcome the world and its tribulations, whereas the truth is that Christ overcame the world and we Christians remains in it.

Cain and Abel

These words came into my head as a drove to work this morning. If I could have enlisted a more accomplished vocalist to render the tune that accompanied them, I would have.

Beyond Repair but not Reparation

“The keynote of the Black Belt is debt; not commercial credit, but debt in the sense of continued inability on the part of the mass of the population to make income cover expense.  This is the direct heritage of the South from the wasteful economies of the slave regime.”

W.E.B Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (1904)*

“One such estimate laid out in the report determined that to address the harms from redlining by banks, which disqualified people in Black neighborhoods from taking out mortgages and owning homes, eligible Black Californians should receive up to $148,099.”

Kurtis Lee, “California Panel Calls for Billions in Reparations for Black Residents, The New York Times (May 6, 2023)

We are told that whites owe Blacks reparations because, long ago, wily whites loaned money to Blacks. We are told that whites also owe Blacks reparations because, some years later, even wilier whites refused to loan money to Blacks.  A world that nods to this argument is clearly beyond repair.

On Narrative Control

“We should not fool ourselves—short of alien invasion or the sudden arrival of Christ in glory, there is no longer any path from here to there, to the destruction of the Regime, and the setting of new, non-ideological, reality-based narratives that will allow the men and women of what used to be America to flourish, that does not lead through violence.” 

Charles Haywood, “Review of, The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, by Martin Gurri,” The Worthy House (April 28, 2013).

Winston Churchill is said to have said, “jaw, jaw, jaw instead of war, war, war,” although I do not know where the old warmonger said it.  This is the policy of postponement and it is undertaken in the hope, either that the casus belli will disappear, or that the postponed war will be fought under more favorable circumstances.  “Jawing” men only pretend to negotiate because they have despaired of a negotiated settlement.  They have despaired of a negotiated settlement because they see that an impasse is impassible and their opponents are implacable  Some men may still sit and “jaw,” but the others collect their papers, close the clasps on their briefcases, and leave the conference table to prepare for war.

Correcting Some Errors in Lippincott’s Culture War Essay

[JM Smith beat me to the punch, but my punch is different.]

At American Greatness, Josiah Lippincott opines that conservatives need to back off from culture war and focus on saving the country via immigration control, tariffs, no foreign wars, and law and order. These are all needed, but they’re not enough.

At a first reading, Lippincott’s thesis seems to be that conservatives must stop fighting the culture war because doing so will cause them to lose elections and therefore be unable to save the nation. A closer reading reveals that he counsels backing away from culture war at the national level, but acknowledges that cultural victories are still possible at the state and local levels.

Problem is, this nuance will be lost on many readers. The impression one gets from the article is that all conservative politicians and the voters who support them need to back off from culture war because they’ll only get crushed. That’s not right.

Also, Lippincott’s main thrust – – judging by how many words he devotes to it – – is that Christianity is too weak to win political fights over cultural issues. If that’s correct, his distinction between what’s possible at the national versus the state and local levels becomes irrelevant.  If Christendom is too weak to win then it’s too weak to win at all levels of government, in which case Lippincott should be counseling us to avoid cultural combat at all levels. And if it’s strong enough sometimes to win then his counsel needs to be more nuanced.

I have copied Lippincott’s text in full below the asterisk, with my comments in italics, preceded by AR.