Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, July 16

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

MEN, RACIAL VIOLENCE, AND THE AMERICAN NATION: Is there a lesson from St Benedict? by Dr. Pence on the saint’s feast day.  Avoiding 1968 by Dreher.  Clear talk from Giuliani. Police and black shootings by the numbers. Using a robot to blow up the shooter.

ON DALLAS -- SOCIALIZING MICAH: Profile highlighting his military experience.

He went in a Christian and a patriot with no racial hatred. His mother’s take that he came out a hermit looking for a different cause than protecting his country.

We have seen this very bad deal of trading Christian American brotherhood for the thin gruel of black power. It was the beginning of the betrayal of the civil rights movement. The civic element was lost and racial identity came to the fore with disastrous effects.

His military experience became a sad saga of jilted love and humiliation instead of brotherhood. This missed socialization is not just a loss for black men but young white men as well. From an excellent review of 'Hillbilly Elegy'.

"For most boys, however, becoming a man is The Big Journey. And their needs are being forgotten today—with the result that many, not just Vance, are scrabbling. My three decades at the U.S. Naval Academy, which is part of the world of privilege Vance manages to join, have shown me that most midshipmen also arrive chasing a vision of masculinity that the Naval Academy quickly kills, leaving them burnt out and rootless at an early age.
"The military is a structured existence that still relies on its PR image of macho striving to attract volunteer recruits. That includes the upper echelons, like midshipmen. These young men, and also many of the women, like Vance, also (in my experience) long for the relentless drill instructor, the challenge to overcome insecurities, the sense of pride in challenges surmounted. What they find is an institution obsessed with a million pointless regulations that puts on parades for tourists, where physical challenges have been watered down to take account of our new gender neutrality, and where the politically correct embrace of any gender -- and sexual orientation-self identification has caused the men to wonder what happened to the macho. Most are bitterly disappointed to find themselves also-ran cast members in a taxpayer-funded military Disneyland for tourists. They came thinking it would be their Parris Island, and it isn’t. Where’s their role model?"

While the military may be losing its core message, Black hate groups are staying on point and Micah Xavier got the message.

    

THE USE OF DISGUST: Smell is a primitive instinct that protects us from certain poisons. A sense of moral disgust, like a sense of shame, is a primitive and necessary shield in responding to certain evils. Anthony Esolen is certainly one of America’s greatest contemporary Catholic writers.

BREXIT AND IMMIGRATION: "It is impossible truly to understand the Brexit vote without first understanding the significance of the changes wrought by immigration in the UK over the last few decades. The speed and scale of the demographic transformation that immigration has brought to Britain is truly remarkable. Each year, Britain takes in more immigrants than it did in the entire period between 1066 and 1950."

PAT BUCHANAN AND HIS ILL-FATED DEFENSE OF THE ETHNIC WEST: "Is it over for the West?" asks Pat Buchanan. President Obama decries nativism and nationalism and the Brexit vote. But, then, Pat Buchanan agrees it is all about defending the shrinking fates of white people. Buchanan has no sense of the burgeoning Christian southern populations and doesn’t seem to see their rise as proof of the resiliency of Christianity. He seems not to see the importance that most of America’s immigrants are Christian. He seems not to see that Christianity is growing faster than Islam worldwide. There are so many times that Buchanan writes when he seems the only voice of sanity. But on ethnicity vs. religion as the heart of culture he is persistently wrongheaded. When he defends the Anglo-white races does he not know that none of those Anglo defenders thought of the Irish as part of the advanced white race? Not at all! It was only Christianity and the peculiar American nationalism of brotherhood that allowed his forefathers into the club. He needs to learn something from those other great American Catholic Irish tribesmen -- John and Robert Kennedy.

A NEW SPOKESMAN AT THE VATICAN: American layman and Opus Dei.

CHINA AND US IN SOUTH CHINA SEA: A way to get along.

SAUDIS AND THE 28 PAGES
The pages have been released.
Why the Saudis are our enemies, and have been for decades.

TURKEY: ERDOGAN AND GULEN
One take on the Gulen movement which President Erdogan blames for the July 15th coup attempt.