Who Profits from the Sexual Slave?

“Full seldom doth a man repent, or use
Both grace and will to pick the vicious quitch*
Of blood and custom wholly out of him,
And make all clean, and plant himself afresh.”

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King, Geraint and Enid (1859)

I am rereading Libido Dominandi, a fat book that played no small part in my “red-pilling” when I first read it nearly twenty years ago. It pointed me to writers like Abbé Barruel and Nesta Webster, and from there I went, as they say, “down the rabbit hole.”  The book is by E. Michael Jones, a Catholic writer with whom many of you are, no doubt, familiar. Those who know Jones know he is a provocative thinker and a good storyteller, but that he desperately needs a very stern editor.  Many of his books are far too long, and pithy encapsulations of his thesis are too often secreted in out-of-the-way places.

The Profession of Profession versus the Care of Our Young

Professors and other professional intellectuals and quasi-intellectuals (journalists, opinion writers, novelists, bloggers, and so forth) are paid to think about things – or, at least, somehow or other rewarded for doing so, or (more accurately) for *appearing* to do so. And each of them is charged with devising original insights, that, as original, warrant our attention, and then perhaps our deliberation.

There’s no other reason to have these people around.

War Against the Fowls

In the third book of the Iliad, Homer likens the battle on the plain before Troy to the legendary battle between the pigmies and the cranes. This later battle was said to occur annually, somewhere beyond the Great Desert, perhaps in Ethiopia, perhaps in faraway Ind.

Homer does not tell the story of the battle between the pigmies and the cranes, but rather alludes to it in a simile that contrasts the squawking ferocity of the Trojans and the grim resolve of the Greeks. This same simile would serve, I think, to contrast the recent battle between our squawking public moralists and the boys from Covington Catholic High School.

Morality is for victims

Some years ago, back when I would occasionally flip through cable channels, I came across a bit of a news documentary about a professional ethicist analyzing the moral reasoning of grade school students.  First the students were interviewed and said rather unremarkable things such as that cheating on homework or tests is wrong.  These interviews were reviewed by the ethicist, who pronounced himself “disturbed” at how students never question the justice of school rules against cheating “…blah blah white supremacy patriarchy structural capitalist oppression blah blah…”

As an antidote, some quotes from wise men:

…if geometry were as much opposed to our passions and present interests as is ethics, we should contest it and violate it but little less, notwithstanding all the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimedes…

                                                                             — Gottfried Leibniz

Why, Sir, if the fellow does not think as he speaks, he is lying; and I see not what honour he can propose to himself from having the character of a liar. But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

                                                                             — Samuel Johnson

The matter is quite simple. The bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

— Søren Kierkegaard

Guest Post: What is Christian Politics? (Part II)

The Creation of Adam (ca. 1512) by Michelangelo (1475 – 1564)

The following is Part II of the essay “What is Christian Politics?” by Tsoncho Tsonchev. Part I is here.

The dream of success is the narcotic of the modern age and when its dazzling effect disappears a spiritual devastation follows. We speak about personal “success” and the “national.” There is no essential difference between these two. Both “successes” require sacrifices for the achievement of an imaginary goal, and the greatest and most troublesome of all is the sacrifice of morality. Morality is tightly connected with Christianity and natural inclinations (the moral sense in the “heart” of man or the so-called natural law). When Christianity disappears from politics and social relations, and only “success” is left, competition and striving follow. Moved by desire for success and a corrupted sense of competition, Cain killed his brother. Disappointed by the “success” of Abel and by his supposed “failure,” Cain committed the greatest crime. God asked him, “Why are you so angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you refuse to do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; you are its object of desire, but you must master it.” (Gen. 4:6) Cain should not be angry, because the success of Abel was a result of his natural inclination, of a gift through which he serves the society of men and God. Cain should do what is right, that is, should accept his situation, as Paul advises, and respect the dignity of God and his brother, and continue to abide in his calling. His service would be certainly accepted, as God tells him, and it would be accepted even with a greater favor, because he would pass the test of time, and would prove that his service is perfect, that he is not under the power of sin, but masters it with his profession of “fruit-giving.” But he did not abide. He separated himself from what is right, and fell under the power of sin.

“A complete separation of morality and politics constitutes one of the prevalent errors and evils of our century,” Vladimir Soloviev writes in his introduction to the National Question in Russia (1891).[1] From a Christian point of view, the domain of morality and the domain of politics should be connected, Soloviev argues. He says that “in the common life of humanity, the kingdom of Evil and discord is a fact; but the goal is the kingdom of God, and towards this goal the intermediate transition from ugly reality is called Christian politics.”[2] Soloviev points out that there is a constant confusion in the understanding of the word “national interest.” If the national interest is considered as “supremacy,” “outward might,” “wealth,” upward “mobility” on the international stage, if it is related with the Dream for individual national success, then this understanding would “justify,” as it has been noted, “all sorts of crimes.” As a Christian, Soloviev insists that “national interest” as upward mobility towards supremacy is not the goal of state politics. He explains that “true patriotism” must be in accordance not with greed for power and influence, nor with the competitive spirit for world dominance, but with “Christian conscience.” When Satan took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world with their glory, and told him, “All this I will give you, if you fall down and worship me,” how did Jesus answer? “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.” (Matt. 4:8-10) Jesus abode in his situation and calling, and he listened to his conscience. He did not revolt against the authority of God. Christian conscience is the collective inner feeling that makes the nation abide in its service, respectful of the authority of other nations and to the will of God, and that tells the nation (or the person) what its true mission, calling, and aim are. Therefore, the interest of the truly Christian nation “does not require and absolutely does not permit international cannibalism.”[3] The slogan “My nation first!”—a cry for dominance and individual national success—is a result, basically, of daemonic temptation that would end, inevitably, in ruin. This has been proved time and again in history.

Case Closed: A Short History of the Short History of Open Debate

Not all of the food in my grocery store is healthy, but our government makes considerable effort to ensure that none of it is lethal in the short term.  Many dishes on offer by the restaurateurs of this town are unwholesome, but if rats roam in one of their kitchens, our health department will shut it down.  We do not, in other words, trust the market to punish peddlers of ptomaine poisoning, but instead ask the state to police the vendors of our food.

You might say that our food is censored, and most of us like it this way.

There was a time when we censored published notions just as we censor food, and for analogous reasons. Just as we fear that tainted food will upset a man’s stomach, so men in the past feared that tainted notions would upset a man’s mind.  Their fears were not imaginary, since every living human knows what it is like to be upset by a notion that some notion-peddler has put into public circulation.  Some of us have been so badly upset that we have never recovered.

Guest Post: What is Christian Politics? (Part I)

Cain leads his followers into the Land of Nod

The following is Part I of the essay “What is Christian Politics?” by Tsoncho Tsonchev, currently a graduate student at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he is writing a doctoral thesis on Nicolas Berdyaev. Mr. Tsonchev hails from Bulgaria, but has been living in Canada for a bit more than a decade.

“For to see your face is like seeing the face of God.” (Gen. 33:10)

Christianity is political, but does not have a “political program.” It is revolutionary, but does not call for a change of political regimes. Christian politics is not the secular politics, the politics of power competition and fight for rights and privileges. It is “unconventional” by the standards of contemporary political theory and practice. The Christian understanding of politics is neither paradoxical nor perplexing, yet many fail to admit the adequacy of its concepts and prescriptions, many would argue that to be political means to have a political program, and to be revolutionary means to strive for a change of the political order and power. These are the arguments of those that have no clear sense of the nature of politics and that have no knowledge of the nature of Christianity as the most political and revolutionary teaching in human history.

Jesus advised, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” (Matt. 22:21) What is the meaning of these words? The secular mind would quickly interpret them as a command for obedience to State and Church, as an example of the Christian social and political conservatism. This command, many have argued, asks the people to have a slavish, apolitical behavior; it legitimizes the autocracy of kings and priests. We find this interpretation in the works of great political minds like Mill, Nietzsche, and Marx, but this does not mean that we should accept it uncritically. Because, as it has been said, if Christianity is the most political and revolutionary teaching in history, then, it cannot ask for slavish obedience nor it can legitimize a regime, temporal or spiritual, that is against the freedom of personal conscience.

So, what is the meaning of Jesus’ advice, according to the Christian interpretation? First of all, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” means that man should respect authority. What is authority? Authority is the power that serves the common good. As power serving the common good, the authority should respect man. The authority has the same obligation as the man (or people) under authority. It should “render unto Man (or people) the things that are man’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” As authorities, both God and Caesar, who is a man, are servants of man.[1] The authority has no other goal but to promote justice. Authority is authority only as an act of justice. Authority without justice is autocracy—the rule, the will, and the individual good of autos kratos (self-power). Autocracy is not authority because it does not care for the common good. It is a despotic self-containment and self-sufficiency. Justice, as Aristotle says, is always about the “other,” it always includes more than one person. It is about common good. Justice is possible only in society, under authority, not under autocracy. Justice, in authority, has no other goal but to promote the equity in human society. And equity has no other goal but to defend the dignity of each person in society.

Taine on Revolutionary Intellectuals

Thomas Bertonneau’s latest post reminds me of what Hippolyte Taine wrote about the role of frustrated quasi-intellectuals in revolution. Taine describes a character you have almost certainly known, and may possibly have been.  If not, you met him in Conrad’s Secret Agent or Dostoyevsky’s Demons.

Gustave Le Bon on the Professoriate

Gustave Le Bon (1841 – 1931)

In the following extract from his Psychology of Socialism (1899), Gustav Le Bon discusses the appeal of socialism for the intelligentsia; the discussion includes Le Bon’s amusingly unsparing characterization of the professoriate — a class of people comprised, in his coinages, by demi-savants and doctrinaires, which he rightly despises.  Here, then, from Chapter IV, “The Disciples of Socialism and Their Mental State” –

It is because the half-science of the demi-savant obscures the instinctive intuitions, that its intervention in social affairs is so often harmful.

Social failures, misunderstood geniuses, lawyers without clients, writers without readers, doctors without patients, professors ill-paid, graduates without employment, clerks whose employers disdain them for their insufficiency, puffed-up university instructors — these are the natural adepts of Socialism. In reality they care very little for doctrines. Their dream is to create by violent means a society in which they will be the masters. Their cry of equality does not prevent them from having an intense scorn of the rabble who have not, as they have, learned out of books. They believe themselves greatly the superiors of the working man, and are really greatly his inferiors in their lack of practical sense and their exaggerated egotism. If they became masters their despotism would be no less than that of Marat, Saint-Just, or Robespierre, those excellent types of the unappreciated demi-savant. The hope of tyrannising in one’s turn, when one has always been ignored, humiliated, thrust into the shade, must have created many disciples of Socialism…

On a Greased Rail to Amalekite Rule

With House Speaker Pelosi publicly opining on the immorality of a fortified border, it may be timely to review a traditional doctrine of the Church to which she belongs.  Aquinas begins his discussion of just relations with foreigners by observing that these are “twofold” (Suma Theologica Q. 105, Art. 3.).  They may be peaceful or they may be hostile, and to deal peacefully with hostile foreigners is just as wrong as to receive peaceful foreigners with hostility.