Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, March 24

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

WEEKLY BRIEF

MbS VISITS AMERICA 

THE FOREIGN GOVERNMENT 

THAT DID MORE THAN MEDDLE

The great charade that has confused American foreign policy since 9/11 is that Saudi Arabia is our ally. They are the protectors of the most virulent form of Sunni Islam that is wrecking terrorist havoc around the world. One of the great fears of ex-CIA director John Brennan was that a newly elected nationalist Donald Trump would come to see how our nation had been played the fool by the Monarchy-Wahhabi alliance. (Brennan from the left like Bolton from the right have been Saudi apologists for years. Each has his reasons which are very different. Their inadequate paradigms have   kept the debate about Islam and the nations superficial and confusing. ) Though Donald Trump favored the families of 9/11 victims in their lawsuit against the Saudis, he has been all in with the Israel-Saudi alliance against Iran as the prime directive in the Mideast. It hasn't happened yet but there is much greater potential that President Trump will see this  error for our nation much sooner than Hillary Clinton, George Bush or Saudi-UAE  funded think tanks will.

Muhammed bin Salman (scroll link to Islam and Mideast) has isolated himself within the royal family; he has declared war on Shiites in the Kingdom, in Yemen, in Bahrain, in Iraq, in Syria, and most pointedly against the first real Shiite nation-Iran. He has even turned against fellow Wahhabis in Qatar (getting the religious establishment to declare they had betrayed the Salafist form of Islam). Qatar's sins(scroll down under Weekly Brief)  include sharing a natural gas field with Iran, running a news service called al Jazeera, and supporting "republican" and popular forms of Islamic purification movements over the old monarchies and military despots. Only the feminized Western media could describe a man who desires to eradicate the Shiites by execution and war while letting some women drive cars as the long awaited moderate Muslim reformer.

The primary reason this story is not being told properly is the blindness of the foreign policy experts including our military leaders and journalists to the essential role of religious distinctions and motivation in understanding the Mideast. In the world of careerist and godless power couples, the allegiances of men to God and sacral brotherhoods is too much Mars for Venus.

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

CHINA AND CHRISTIANITY: A review of Ian Johnson's The Souls of China.

PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES TO ASIA - HOW THEY CHANGED AMERICA: A video presentation of several new books about how Protestant missionaries in the early 1900's became anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and less interested in preaching Christ. These new books are a huge contribution. David Hollinger (Protestants Abroad) and Melani McAlister (The Kingdom of God Has No Borders) are the authors. Andrew Preston (Sword of the Spirit and Shield of Faith) who has written the definitive work on religion and American foreign policy is a commentator in this session.

THE THREE MEALS OF THE CHURCH: Christians are to feed any man who is hungry. Christ fed those who sat and listened to him. The Eucharist though is the most restricted of the meals. Pope Francis here reiterates that the last of these meals requires for reception no mortal sin and the state of grace. Pope Francis reiterates Catholic teaching that reception of the Eucharist is not allowed in a state of mortal sin. To be clear then.  Pope Francis has not changed doctrine on the sacrament of marriage or the nature of the Eucharist. He believes many first marriages in the last century are not sacramental. He thinks there are many people in divorced remarried situations who are being too quickly judged as in the state of mortal sin. He is not exonerating anyone. He is asking his priests to go out and meet these people in their parishes and help discern their position in the presence of God and in the Church.

LIVING A COMMUNAL SUPERNATURAL LIFE: The ongoing living presence of God in the Catholic Church and the destiny of the human race. A refection on The Second Vatican Council . Thomas White OP calls Vatican II (1962-1965) the third  Council of modernity after Trent (1545-1563) and Vatican I(1869-1870). Trent and Vatican I are the stem and root of an ecclesiology which flowers in Vatican II as the visible unified Church proclaims to the nations that humanity is being configured under the authority of the Living God in the sacramental order of the Church. The Church may have lost the Papal States but the Pope and Bishops have found their deeper social purpose as a template of brotherhood conforming the human species in communion.   

FREDERICK SCHILLER ON ACCIDENTS AND DESTINY: What seems an accident or coincidence is welling up from some "deeper source of destiny."

CARDINAL KASPAR IS NOT POPE FRANCIS: Homosexual relations are analogous to marriage says the German cardinal:

“The pope does not leave room for doubt over the fact that civil marriages, de facto unions, new marriages following a divorce (Amoris Laetitia 291) and unions between homosexual persons (Amoris Laetitia 250s.) do not correspond to the Christian conception of marriage,” writes Kasper in a recently-released book on Amoris Laetitia.

“He says, however, that some of these partners can realize in a partial and analogous way some elements in Christian marriage (Amoris Laetitia 292),” continues Kasper.

“Just as outside the Catholic Church there are elements of the true Church, in the above-mentioned unions there can be elements present of Christian marriage, although they do not completely fulfill, or do not yet completely fulfill, the ideal,” adds Kasper. The statements appear in Kasper’s new booklet, "The Message of Amoris Laetitia: A Fraternal Discussion."

Now here is what the Pope actually says about homosexual relations in Amoris Laetitia, paragraph 251:

“In discussing the dignity and mission of the family, the Synod Fathers observed that, ‘as for proposals to place unions between homosexual persons on the same level as marriage, there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.’”

Here is an instance of Cardinal Kaspar deliberately recruiting the Pope to a position he does not hold. Will sons of the Holy Father expose this lie? Some people despise the Pope so deeply that they will equate Cardinal Kaspar's repugnant position with the Pope's so to better take down the Holy Father. Let us be clear. The purpose of  inserting homosexual relations in these discussions is not to 'minister" to the confused teen. It is to protect the jobs, status, access, and pensions of Catholic priests who would be expelled from the priesthood for their infamy if the truth were told and purity codes enforced.

THE GREATEST THREAT TO THE SACRED NATURE OF THE EUCHARIST IS THE DESACRALIZED PRIESTHOOD.
As we approach Holy Thursday when the priesthood was instituted by washing out a traitor, we are confronted again with the greatest threat to the Catholic Church-the acceptance of a huge subculture of homosexual priests in the episcopacy, our religious orders and the wealthy chanceries of the northern churches. The Judicial Vicar of a Diocese is a position that during the abuse crisis was often held by homosexual friendly clerics to make sure no enforcement of priestly celibacy was taken too seriously. The Judicial Vicar in Saginaw Michigan was also a pastor of a parish with his separate living quarters. He was also a very active high school chaplain. He said in a recent homily that he had "a passion for young people" and he went to the school daily with rolls and sweets where he "called the students by name."  The predator has been arrested and the Bishop's residence properly raided. The best reporting of this has been by Michael Voris and Church Militant TV.  Priests know each other in religious orders and dioceses. This story is an affront to Christ and his Apostles. It is an abomination against spiritual fatherhood and the sacral fraternity that guards the sheep in the sacramental order. It is not an anomaly in America's urban Catholic chanceries.    

II. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

MODERN LIBERTY VS CHRISTIAN LIBERTY - DEATH VS LIFE: The liberation of the individual from religion, nation, marriage and biology is license not liberty. Christians and Americans (listen to our patriotic songs) once knew this well.

JORDAN PETERSON: New Yorker essay by Sanneh. Book Review of Twelve Rules for Life at AOA by Blonigen.

III. AMERICAN POLITICS

JOHN BOLTON AT NSA   There is no commentator that AOA has disagreed with more consistently on the Mideast than John Bolton. He certainly is not bringing to the President a more nuanced view of Iran and the plight of Shiites in a Sunni dominated salafist infected region. He has no problem with the Saudi-Israel axis against Iran as the major US initiative in the region. But in this excellent interview on receiving news of his appointment, he shows a necessary restraint and understanding that his role is to implement President Trump's policies not his own. He may be just the man to defend a new relationship with Russia which is the most important Trump strategic insight not yet carried out by his subordinates. In his first year in office, President Trump needed Rex Tillerson as his Secretary of State and HR McMaster as his NSA chief to lend gravitas to a president under siege by high level renegade government workers in the FBI, CIA, State Department and Department of Justice.  Even as those men would never fully articulate the President's new approach, they afforded him protection from the mob. Mr. Pompeo at State and Mr. Bolton at NSA will be much more effective in defending and implementing the President's agenda.


WHY TILLERSON WAS FIRED: Qatar and the Neocons. A view from Qatar.

A MASCULINE DEMOCRAT WHO CALLS HIMSELF AN AMERICAN - A WINNER: That's what the country needs, the Republicans fear, and the Democrats have repressed for several decades. Conor Lamb did not win in Pennsylvania as a Republican in Democrat's clothing. He ran as a man and an American. More Democrats should try that. Ronald Reagan and Milwaukee Democrats. The great crossover remembered. A Masculine American from Pennsylvania - the kind of Catholic Democrat we need.

TRANSGENDERS WILL GENERALLY NOT BE ACCEPTED IN THE AMERICAN MILITARY-A FEW EXCEPTIONS

The Mattis Memo is clear and understated. This important protective wall would not have happened under any other President. The defense of the masculine nature of the military obligation and our Armed services cannot be left to the generals. They must be circumspect because of the overwhelming power of the sexual revolutionaries in the judicial system. This is a tiny wedge. Christians and American patriots must be much more encompassing in our defense of the masculine brotherhood character of our nation's defense. President Trump and Secretary Mattis have given us a small place to stand. Fighting fruitcakes and feminists is not taking on the Nazis or Gulags. Why is everyone so afraid? The sexual revolution is killing our country. The sacral order is built on one God and two differentiated sexes doing their respective adult duties. Is that so hard to say?

BLOODY GINA: Is it true?

AN ENGLISHMAN INTERVIEWS STEVE BANNON: Populist Nationalism and Mussolini.

MR. COMEY MEET MR. BRENNAN - THEY ARE NOT FRIENDS: They both have aspirations.

EX-FBI HEAD JAMES COMEY TO THE PRESIDENT: "Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon. And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not."

EX-CIA CHIEF JOHN BRENNAN SHOWS HIS NONPARTISAN CREDENTIALS: FBI agent Andrew McCabe was fired by the Attorney General at the recommendation of the FBI disciplinary office. We will hear more in the future of his involvement in the investigations of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The firing was less than 48 hours before his retirement and thus compromises his pension which in careerist Washington DC is a lot bigger deal than harming one's reputation. Here is ex-CIA director John Brennan trying to lend a calm response to the news. He directs this toward President Trump:

When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you.

IV. AROUND THE WORLD R&G ROUND UP

OUR MAN IN MOSCOW: The US and the President is being well served by Jon Huntsman, Mormon, previous ambassador to China.

THE MAN IN MOSCOW: Putin wins a landslide. This may be another nationalist that British intelligence can't stand. We doubt they will be as successful in casting confusion and chaos over that sovereign state as the Christopher Steele operation did over ours.

POLAND THE JEWS THE HOLOCAUST: A sympathetic article from the Jerusalem Post on the Polish Holocaust Law.

EXECUTING DOUBLE AGENTS CHARGED WITH TREASON: What a twisted web we weave. The British intelligence are in full anti-Russia mode. Christopher Steele and much of the British globalist world never wanted to see Donald Trump elected. Once elected they wanted it to be very difficult for him to realign the US with Russia.  A year after his election, we have to judge "mission accomplished" by this foreign government interfering with American politics. Presidents can make war on their own but there shall be no unilateral peacemaking.  When English speaking whites interfere with American policy, the intellectuals right and left just see "one of us". Its a great outfit for anti Americans. Let's call this the Peter Jennings costume.  Maybe the most effective racism is not from territorial nationalists. Possibly it is that cosmopolitan class of whites who in the name of "the West" or 'the special relationship" decide to save the less educated multicolored American nation from picking our own leaders.     See Five Eyes Alliance below.

THE WAR ON YEMEN: S.J. Res. 54 would pull the US out - this is the debate we need as General Mattis and the President seem to be doubling down with the Saudis. The Generals and the Congress.

BILL TO STOP US FUNDING OF SAUDIS IN YEMEN FAILS
The Russians brought ballots to the people of Crimea to assert their ancient bonds. The Saudis drop bombs on the Houthis of Yemen to enforce their ancient enmity. The US is helping the Saudi campaign.  The US Senate attempt to debate and stop this military action lost 44-55. AOA on history of Yemen with Gregory Johnson.    

FIVE EYES INTELLIGENCE ALLIANCE: The Anglosphere is an alliance of the old white dominions. It is not representative of the multi-ethnic United States. The intelligence agencies and establishments of these countries were overwhelmingly against the nationalist agenda of Candidate now President Trump.  How hard did they try to influence the American election?  After its unsettling outcome did they help "the resistance"?  Christopher Steele is not a Russian agent. He is an honest Brit still serving his country. The trouble is that he's not really here to help the USA. For several hundred years the British foreign policy has been directed against the rise of an ascendant land power in Europe/Asia.  A serious reconciliation of Russia and the United States as a new axis in international relations would be considered a geopolitical disaster by old hands of the British Empire.
An America First policy means we make alliances in our territorial nation's best interests even if it offends a White Anglo Saxon English speaking Protestant ally across the ocean.

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, March 17

By Dr. David Pence 

WEEKLY BRIEF
A Masculine American wins in Pennsylvania..turns out he is a Catholic Democrat. 
Conor Lamb did not "run as a Republican" in the Pennsylvania election for the House of Representatives that he won on March 13. He is one of a growing number of young Iraq-era veterans who are coming to Congress "to replace the people who sent them there." They are mostly Democrats. Mr. Lamb ran as a soldier who had done his manly duty, and an American who would work with the elected president to do the work of the nation. He rejected Nancy Pelosi in the same way Donald Trump rejected Jeb Bush. Been there, done that... let's try something different. The Democratic Party is the natural tribal home of Catholic warriors and workingmen. How it came to lose God and masculinity is a twisted  50 year tale of hollowing out the industrial working class, promoting middle class feminists, de-Christianizing the civil rights movement, and succumbing to the power couple opportunism of Bill and Hillary Clinton. There was a time of very different Democrats before the Clinton-Obama-Clinton era. The masculine and nationalist leadership of the Kennedy brothers(John and Robert) was stopped by the bullets of a Communist atheist and a Palestinian nationalist. Their youngest brother, Ted Kennedy was not made of the same cloth. Jack Kennedy had carried men to life out of the Pacific Ocean. Ted Kennedy left a girl to die at the bottom of a Massachusetts pond. Jack Kennedy's favorite priest was ex-soldier Philip Hannon, "the Archbishop who Wore Combat Boots." Ted Kennedy's personal prelate was the notorious Washington DC cardinal and homosexual predator "Uncle Ted" McCarrick. The corruption of the Democratic Party is a religious story of Jews who quit believing in God, Protestants who embraced transgenderism and liturgical cross-dressing with female clergy, and a Catholic priesthood of big city, mostly Irish, hard drinking Democrats that was deeply corrupted by lavender predators. Conor Lamb looks different.
President Trump has broken up the Bush-McCain careerism in the Republican party, but he may end up with the neocons running foreign policy again. We will need strong American men who accept and thank Donald Trump for his presidency, but are willing to stop him from the repeated mistake of misreading friends and foes in the Mideast. American politics will be renewed when Democrats repudiate the sexual revolution by electing God-fearing masculine leaders who, tempered by war, will lead the country to peace. The return of masculine Democrats can not come too soon.    

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

THE POPE: ...And the campaign against sex trafficking. Five surprises after five years of his papacy by Fr Raymond de Souza.

CARDINAL MARX OF GERMANY ON BLESSING HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS: This has nothing to do with marriage. It is the incest lobby emerging within the priestly fraternity.

DIVINE PROVIDENCE: ...Still guides us.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

AFGHANISTAN: Needed - A Dialogue with the Taliban and Five Countries. The near neighbors are Pakistan and Iran. The far neighbors are Russia, China and India. All of these countries have larger stakes than the US in the region's stability.

ISRAEL PRIME MINISTER TO 18,000 AT AIPAC MAR 5, 2018. THIS IS ONE VISON OF THE MIDEAST. SHOULD THIS BE THE VSION OF THE UNITED STATES? DON'T TELL ANYONE BUT ISRAEL IS A FOREIGN POWER THAT EXERCISES A LOT MORE INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN POLICY AND ELECTIONS THAN RUSSIA EVER DREAMT OF... AND FOR MANY DECADES: Benjamin Netanyahu:

"Darkness is descending on our region. Iran is building an aggressive empire: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, more to come. Now Iran is seeking to build permanent military bases in Syria, seeking to create a land bridge from Tehran to Tartus on the Mediterranean.

"And in addition to moving its army, its air force, its navy to Syria to be able to attack Israel from closer land, it's also seeking to develop, to build precision guided missile factories in Syria and Lebanon against Israel.

"I will not let that happen. We will not let that happen. We must stop Iran. We will stop Iran.

"Last week, we read in the Book of Esther about an earlier Persian attempt to exterminate our people. They failed then. They'll fail now..."

III. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

FORGET YOUR PRAYERS - WE NEED GUN LAWS: John Horvat on Prayer shaming. Cardinal Cupich of Chicago on prayer is not enough.

TUCKER CARLSON A SHORT SYNOPSIS ON THE DECLINE OF MALES IN AMERICA: He has begun a series on "Men in America" airing through the month of March on Wednesday's. His succinct spectacular beginning (aired March 8, 2018) and second episode in the series (aired March 14, 2018). Here is a Tucker interview with Jordan Peterson on the current crisis of masculinity.

ROD DREHER ON OPIODS, COMMUNITY AND END OF LIBERALISM: Great synthesis of different thinkers - "Everyone knows Something is Coming."

CONFISCATING THE NATION: The New York Times makes it clear: "nations are just made up."

FAKE NEWS ABOUT HOMOSEXUAL KILLINGS: The killing of Matthew Shepard and Shooting up the Pulse Disco aren't quite the stories we've been told.

SALVIFIC MASCULINITY: Clint Eastwood film 15:17 to Paris.

CHINA POLICY ON BOYS TO MEN: One Child policy led to "little emperor syndrome". Boys need risks not pampering. No reticence in China about official policy treating boys and girls differently.

EUROPE'S LEADERS HAVE NO CHILDREN: Startling fact from mid 2017.

IV. AROUND THE WORLD R&G NATIONS ROUND UP

THE GOAL IS ONE KOREA:  Not communism, not capitalism, but one Korea again after a century of occupation and then division. Let us untie this last knot of the Cold War. That means we cannot pull too hard on the old ropes. Let the nation emerge.

REAL HOPE IN NORTH KOREA AS KIM JONG-UN EXPRESSES HIS DESIRE: "To write a new chapter in the country's unification." In the search for status as a Korean statesman, the goal is to reassemble the nation. These men are Koreans - they are nationalists. His grandfather (Kim il-Sung) is considered the Father of the People's Republic. He ruled from the founding of the state in 1948 to his death in 1994. He almost succeeded in the 1950 reclamation invasion of the South which ended in the stalemate of the Korean War (1950-1953). Kim Jong-Un of the North has a very capable and willing partner in the South. Moon Jae-In is a "liberal" and a practicing Catholic. The Pope's initiative in China may be a diplomatic boon to this radically new opportunity. President Trump's clarity has certainly helped the new nationalist focus. Here are four AoA articles to help think about Korea. Asia and the Nations. Map on Monday - Korea. American targets for North Korea (scroll down to Korea and American Foreign Policy). A Unified Korea - not just for the Olympics (this includes a good linked profile of South Korean President Moon Jae-In).

GERMANY: Get rid of "fatherland" and and "brotherly" in national Anthem. No country needs to return to God the Father and the brotherhood of Lutherans and Catholics as a national accord more than Deutschland. The bitterest fruit of the Protestant revolution was the civil war of Christian Germany. The subsequent organization of a racial national identity was built on on hatred of the Jew and devotion to the pagan Fuhrer. Hitler argued that the Christians had lost their martial virtue and were rendering the fatherland unable to resist the atheistic materialism of Communism.

ITALY: On the left Luigi de Maio of the Five Star Movement  and on the right Matteo Salvini of the National League. Both anti immigrant Eurosceptics. A victory for nationalists against the globalists. 

V. AMERICAN POLITICS

TILLERSON OUT, POMPEO IN: There is nothing more globalist than Exxon and no one more globalist than the corporation's top executive. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson brought to his office his incredible knowledge of the physical world and a unique understanding of the relations between states and corporations that constitutes the "global economy." He was an extremely important figure of responsibility, maturation, and loyalty to the President. As President Trump said however, they were not of the "same mind." In the first year Mr. Tillerson was a model for those who were not of the same mind as the President but served him as the President. As President Trump establishes his sea legs, he will need men much more committed to his world view to effect his policies - those include openness to Russia and hostility to Iran. Enter Mr. Pompeo who is plenty hostile to Iran. President Trump stabilized his government with strong competent patriots - from his VP to UN Representative to top generals - but all of these patriots were more globalist than nationalist. All were distinctly anti-Russian. All were loyal to the office though and protected the legitimacy of the Trump Presidency against a powerful assault. The assault has failed. Now Mr. Trump is going to hire the men who will be committed to effecting his agenda. Pompeo for Tillerson is the first necessary move.

AMERICAN TARIFFS - MAY HISTORY HELP THE HYSTERICS: From Hamilton to Clay and the American System to McKinley and Roosevelt... and there's more.

Haunted by God: The Heroic Quest of Jordan Peterson. A Review of 12 Rules for Life

By Frederick Blonigen 

It’s hard to argue with Camille Paglia that Jordan Peterson is “the most important and influential Canadian thinker since Marshal McLuhan.” Dr. Peterson, especially through his You Tube lectures, has emerged as one of the pre-eminent public intellectuals of our time. A highly esteemed and much loved professor at both Harvard and the University of Toronto and a clinical psychologist who has served his clients for decades, Jordan Peterson’s major claim to fame has been his exceptional courage against the political correctness and diversity madness that is corrupting our colleges and universities. Dr. Peterson has almost single-handedly taken on the radical left who control most of higher education and has exposed their totalitarian efforts to suppress any ideas that do not submit to their ideology. In 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Mr. Peterson has written a wise, witty, and learned guide for the young to establish order and meaning in their lives.

The title of Peterson’s book is significant: the author has recognized among younger people a deep hunger for guidelines and a willingness to follow rules authoritatively delivered by someone who clearly has their well being at heart. The right rules taught by a coherent and caring adult  can make sense out of chaotic lives.

In the West, millennials are taught that there is no such thing as truth and all morality is relative. One’s group morality is nothing more than an attempt to exercise power over other groups. The paramount value is tolerance and the worst offense is to be “judgmental.” Pope Benedict XVI called this “the dictatorship of relativism.” It is a dictatorship, but the victims are not turned into obedient subjects.  Much worse: they are lost, confused, anxious and disoriented.  Dr. Peterson has proposed a sense of purpose. He is a man who believes in truth; he believes in moral order; he believes in taking responsibility for  choices in life; he believes that for human beings to be happy they must find meaning in their lives. This used to be called practical wisdom or just plain common sense. But in the present culture where relativism, emotivism, and irrationalism are dominant, an adult like Jordan Peterson stands out. A real teacher has returned amidst what Philip Rieff called "the death works."

In the opening chapter of his new book Dr. Peterson says, "It took a long time to settle on a title: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Why did that one rise up above all others? First and foremost, because of its simplicity. It indicates clearly that people need ordering principles, and that chaos otherwise beckons. We require rules, standards, values—alone and together. We’re pack animals, beasts of burden. We must bear a load, to justify our miserable existence. We require routine and tradition. That’s order. Order can become excessive ,and that’s not good, but chaos can swamp us, so we drown—and that is also not good. We need to stay on the straight and narrow path. Each of the twelve rules of this book –and there accompanying essays—therefore provide a guide for being there.’ There’ is the dividing line between order and chaos."

Mr. Peterson’s first rule is in many ways his most important: it reads, “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.” This rule, of course, does not only refer to something we do physically with our bodies but something we do with our souls. “Standing up physically also implies and invokes and demands standing up metaphysically. Standing up means voluntarily accepting the burden of Being....To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means acting to please God, in the ancient language).”

A central theme that runs throughout 12 Rules is the interplay between chaos and order. For Peterson they are the most fundamental elements of lived experience, the most basic subdivision of Being itself. Particularly important is the application of the categories of order and chaos to the two sexes, male and female. In the words of Dr. Peterson, “Order, the known, appears symbolically associated with masculinity... This is perhaps because the primary hierarchical structure of human society is masculine... It is because men are and throughout history have been the builders of towns and cities, the engineers, stonemasons, bricklayers, and lumberjacks, the operators of heavy machinery. Order is God the Father, the eternal Judge, ledger-keeper and dispenser of rewards and punishments. Order is the peacetime army of policemen and soldiers. It is the political culture, the corporate environment, and the system. Chaos—the unknown—is symbolically associated with the feminine. This is partly because all the things we have come to know were born, originally, of the unknown, just as all beings we encounter were born of mothers. Chaos is ‘matter,’ origin, source, mother; ‘materia’, the substance from which all things are made.”

According to Peterson, order and chaos are both fundamental elements of life. You need order but order is not enough. The security and stability that order brings is necessary; but also necessary is the adventure and growth that comes from mastering the chaos that life inevitably brings. Living on the border between order and chaos and managing to live with this basic duality is what gives one’s life meaning.

Other rules for life, discussed by Peterson, include “Treating yourself like someone you are responsible for helping”; “Making friends with people who want what is best for you”;
“Setting your house in perfect order before you criticize the world”; “Telling the truth—or, at least, don’t lie”; and “Being precise in your speech.” All common sense truths that allow the individual to navigate the challenges and hazards of modern life. For all of these rules Dr. Peterson provides examples, anecdotes, and personal experiences.

Jordan Peterson is a man of considerable erudition, comfortable with psychoanalysts Freud, Adler, and Jung but demonstrating as well a deep knowledge of Milton, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Orwell, T.S. Eliot, and Solzhenitsyn. Most impressive is Peterson’s knowledge and respect for the Bible, Judeo-Christian tradition, and the myths and beliefs of major world religions. When asked about God, Peterson is vague and reticent about revealing his thoughts. In his own words, he does not want to be “boxed in” by what he says about God. Religion provides stories that examine and illustrate the profoundest questions about the human condition: the hierarchical nature of the created world, including human beings; the reality of truth and falsehood; the reality of good and evil; the centrality of suffering in every human life; the human need to love and be loved; and the desire to find meaning in life.

For Peterson it is only in religion that man finds an adequate grammar and vocabulary to describe reality. His previous book Maps of Meaning, and now Rules, are profoundly anti-ideology. Ideologies are dangerous substitutes for real knowledge. Often disguised as science, ideologies use power to impose their utopian world view on the masses. To understand ideologies and ideologues, Dr. Peterson read extensively about the rise of Nazism, the Holocaust, and the Soviet Gulag. He wanted to understand how human beings in the twentieth century, in the name of ideologies such as Fascism and Communism, could become so evil, so depraved, that they would participate in the most appalling acts of cruelty and inhumanity against their fellow man. He sees the campus barbarians in the grim light of the death camp furnace. He sees them as ludicrous but his historical seriousness supplemented by his acuity as a clinical psychologist inflicts him with a duty to oppose them. This infuses his work with a moral seriousness which is compelling to the young. He is an authority, not a celebrity.

Peterson’s reading of Nietzsche and Jung most shaped his understanding. At the end of the nineteenth century the atheist Nietzsche famously declared the death of God. Unlike so many of his intellectual contemporaries, the German philosopher knew what the terrible consequences of God’s death would be. The death of the Christian God also meant the death of Christian morality. Nietzsche foresaw the nihilistic horrors of a world without God and it literally drove him insane. Dr. Peterson sees a clear connection between the rejection of God and the unprecedented evils of the twentieth century. Millions of innocent human beings were murdered at the hands of atheistic ideologies. For the professor it became clear. The campus mob could no longer be sidestepped. Evil must be confronted.

One of Peterson’s heroes is Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian novelist, who was imprisoned for years in a Soviet labor camp. Solzhenitsyn did not curse God. He did not despair over his cruel fate. Instead, he became a defender of the truth and wrote The Gulag Archipelago, a history of the Soviet prison camp system. It was a terrible, forceful book that told the truth about the Communist ideology. Solzhenitsyn’s writings were a significant factor in the collapse of the Communist regime in Russia. As Peterson says, “Solzhenitsyn’s writing utterly and finally demolished the intellectual credibility of communism, as ideology or society. He took an axe to the trunk of the tree whose bitter fruits had nourished him so poorly—and whose planting he had witnessed and supported.”

Understanding ideologies as he does, Jordan Peterson is now leading the effort to combat the present ideologies of the left: radical feminism, cultural Marxism, and the LGBT Gestapo. Peterson has been met with hysteria, hatred, and the histrionics of the mob. He has responded with civility and courage, and at other times with an extremely effective and necessary disdain. "No," he says, "I don't have to respect you." He reminds us the central truth of honor and shame cultures--that honor and respect are social currency and they should not be spent indiscriminately.  

Given the relentless attack on masculinity by the sexual totalitarians on the left, it should not be a surprise that many of Peterson’s most ardent followers are young men. They see in him a father figure who not only defends masculinity, but who embodies many of the strengths and virtues of true maleness. (The word "virtue" comes from  the Latin vir meaning man.)

Although Jordan Peterson deserves all the praise he has received as one of the leading intellectual heroes of our time, he is not without limitations. He is uncritical in his embrace of evolutionary biology: too often he speaks in apodictic terms about the assumptions of this paradigm. Another limitation, from the Christian perspective, is Peterson’s apparent agnosticism regarding the existence of God. If he is an agnostic, he is certainly an agnostic who sees the critical importance of religion. He has a great respect for authentic religious beliefs, traditions, and rituals. This respect is not simply a tolerance for individual beliefs. Peterson respects the power and truthfulness of religious traditions  in mediating reality.  It is more than a little ironic that Jordan Peterson appears more willing and effective in defending the deepest truths of the Judeo-Christian tradition while bishops, priests, ministers, and rabbis are reduced to mimicking the ethical platitudes of an NGO. This no doubt accounts for the adulation he receives from so many religious people.

Jordan Peterson is a man “haunted by God.” He is clearly searching for God—the Logos who has ordered the chaos from the beginning.  He is open to the transcendent dimension of life. And even when he does not refer directly to God, Peterson leaves many hints that God is always on his mind, and dare I say, on his heart. In the opening chapter of 12 Rules, the author describes a strange dream he had in which he is transported to a cathedral constructed in the shape of a cross, and that the point under the dome was the center of the cross. To quote Peterson, ”I knew that the cross was simultaneously the point of greatest suffering, the point of death and transformation, and the symbolic center of the world.” Indeed, the professor’s dream is true. The Cross is at the center of the world. Two thousand years ago the Son of God, in perfect obedience to His Father, died upon that Cross and in dying conquered sin, Satan, and death itself. The Logos conquered the chaos. Christ’s death on the Cross is the axis mundi -- the center of the world. Every day in the liturgical action of the Church, religious men kneel before the axis and confidently answer the question: “Do you believe in God?”  We are oriented in space and time to the ultimate Personal Authority  in the Word-Event of the Liturgy.  Swept up in the Spirit we conform with Christ to the rule of the Father. The good professor may see that as putting the worshiper “in a box.” He would see it better as a rule of a higher order transforming matter into masculinity revealed. Let us pray that Jordan Peterson will one day participate in the sacred mystery of the sacrificial cross. What was clear in his dream will be even more clear when he submits to the dominance hierarchy that Christ instituted on the night before He died. For is it not that priestly mediated religious act that allows men to share in that “point of death and transformation, the symbolic center of the world.”
(2019 Addendum: Here is a very negative critique in terms of male hierarchies-the madness of Jordan Peterson.  Peterson's war on "identity politics" in the end can be a war against Christianity, nationalism, and masculinity--three very deeply embedded group identities. Here is a more positive evaluation of Peterson and Jung as correctives to Freud))

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, March 10

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

WEEKLY BRIEF
THE AMERICAN NATIONALISM OF DONALD TRUMP:

CITIZENS AS PROTECTORS AND PRODUCERS
This week, President Trump announced steel and aluminum tariffs. The cheers of citizens in the Rust Belt were almost drowned out by the wailing and gnashing of teeth by Republican lawmakers, Fox News pundits, European bureaucrats and globalists everywhere. Trump's chief economic advisor who loved deregulation and the slashing of corporate taxes found this workingman's policy a bridge too far and resigned. (Better now than when Trump starts the real bridge building.) President Trump is not an ideological free trader. He is an American nationalist who will let American consumers pay some higher prices if it means American workers are producing again. He thinks of us as a nation of workers who must be liberated to work again. Sometimes the government has to get out of the way. Sometimes the government has to be directly involved. How very American. How unlike the two parties.
President Trump has been willing to oppose the NRA on toughening gun access while keeping their overall support. He has seriously proposed "hardening the schools" not by arming every third grade teacher but by arming those citizens in each school who are "gun adept".   There are many such protectors especially men who are waiting to be called, trained, and armed. He thinks of us as a nation of protectors.
President Trump wants both the wall and a way to incorporate the DACA immigrants as citizens. The Democrats won't give him  a wall or the ability to limit chain migration.  Republican Christians like Gary Bauer and Ted Cruz oppose a path to citizenship. They call it Amnesty. That is exactly what it is and that is what a nation which has refused so many unborn babies a place at our table should offer to the families who have come here to pick our vegetables and roof our houses. President Trump is a nationalist and he will offer citizenship to many if he knows we can establish real borders. We must "build that wall"  and severely limit all forms of immigration until we integrate the poor of our country in work and shared citizenship. This includes addressing the other great citizen socialization  failure of feminist globalism -- our bloated dark skinned male prison population.  President Trump wants a real border and then true integration of the working poor into the citizen bond. He thinks of us as a nation of citizens.  
Look to the East beyond our borders. The last nation divided by the wars of the  20th century has been divided the longest. A true American nationalist foreign policy will seek the unification of Korea and our military departure from the South China Sea.  That is the long term goal of both Koreas and China. If such an American demilitarization is proposed, the "China hawks" will emerge as a significant  obstacle to a deal with North Korea.  There are few Americans who understand the implications of an America First foreign policy. It will mean an end to the massive global military network that encircles the three major regional powers of Russia, China and Iran. Negotiation with President Kim Jong-un is an incredible breakthrough that will confront us with the necessity of withdrawing our encircling military forces to get North Korea to drop their nuclear weapons. That can only be done if we concede that  China is the regional power in the area.  Our ally from WWII has a defensive claim on the seas from which she was attacked and lost over ten million people in the last century. That kind of appreciation for the history and concerns of other nations is part of America First as well. Let us pray for the emergence of a truly new paradigm.

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

POPE FRANCIS: Romano Guardini and a new intellectual history of the Pope.
Mary, Mother of the Church - a new feast day declared by Pope for Monday after Pentecost.

THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH AND THE MARIAN CHURCH: A feast day for our Mother should be accompanied by a penitentiary for the homosexual bishops and priests who have fractured the patriarchal fraternity of the episcopacy and priesthood. They are legion. The presence of a huge homosexual subculture in the large American dioceses is a much more profound corruption of the Eucharist than debates about divorced mothers who limp in to Sunday Mass with their children trying to touch the hem of Christ amidst the crowd. It would be very helpful if  "American conservative orthodox" public intellectuals of Crisis, Catholic Thing, Big Pulpit and EWTN" would take on that living demonic  source of confusion and scandal.

MAKING WATER HOLY: We need the sacred goods in the work of renewing the face of the earth. Priests, Exorcism and Holy Water.

NT WRIGHT FINDS IT SIGNIFICANT THAT THE PAGAN PHILOSOPHER GALEN (d 210 AD ) NOTED TWO REMARKABLE TRAITS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS:
1) They believed in bodily resurrection;
2) They exercised sexual restraint.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

DECLARE WAR IN YEMEN OR GET OUT: Senators assert their constitutional duty in trying to debate US support for Saudis in their attack on Shiite Houthis of Yemen. This debate will start with a defense of the constitutional rights of Congress but hopefully mature to clearing the smokescreen of Saudi interests crippling the US policy response to 9/11.

TROOPS AROUND THE GLOBE: The globalization of our conscience. America has 800 military bases in 70 countries around the world. A 2015 map and summary by David Vine author of Base Nation.

THE SAUDI LOBBY - YOU WANT FOREIGN COLLUSION: Here is the outline of the real story of two decades of collusion and confusion about terrorism and Islam.

SAUDI JOINT CHIEFS REPLACED EN MASSE: Muhammed bin Salman consolidates power and shrinks his base.

IN SYRIA US MEDIA REPORTS THE GOVERNMENT WAR AGAINST RESIDUAL REBELS AS THE GOVERNMENT  AGAINST THE CHILDREN: Christian Patriarch disputes the uneven reporting that doesn't mention who the anti-government forces choose to target. The Saudi bombing of Yemen rarely receives this prominent visual outrage nor did the city/population bombings needed to clear ISIS from Iraq.

ISRAEL PREPARING TO FIGHT IRAN IN SYRIA? IS US SUPPOSED TO HELP?
RT news( A Russian outlet) shows the war vision of Lindsey Graham. Fight the Russians, Iranians and Syrians. Ally with Israelis and Saudis. "Never Trump" Lindsey Graham is a major voice of the failed Republican foreign policy that Donald Trump challenged in the Republican primary. He says nuclear war with North Korea is "worth it." The Lindsey Graham-John McCain wing of the Republican Party are a continual source of confusion and recklessness in our national debate. Senator Graham is one of the stranger creatures of the swamp and a peculiar favorite of the television media.

A SHORT HISTORY OF US STATE DEPARTMENT, ISRAEL AND THE PEACE PROCESS: The Middle East Forum is an Israeli advocacy group posturing as experts for America. Many of their essays however are very helpful reminding us of extremely important historical events, persons and policies. This is one.

III. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

MASS SHOOTERS AND FATHERS. THE WAR AGAINST MALES AS AN ASSAULT ON PROTECTION: Could the denigration of masculinity led to a breakdown of protection and a culture of violence.  The most stunning act against fathers is the religious war against Patriarchy as the fundamental truth of Christianity. The first "transgender movement" was the war of female theologians and minsters against the Fatherhood of God. This degenderfication of the Father(which also leads to depersonalization) was enforced by  inserting females in the Protestant male clergy and the  lavenderization of the Catholic priesthood. God cannot quit his Fatherhood and the masculine Apostolic  nature of Christian ministry cannot be discarded. Every gender bender after this religious revolution has been trickle down.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS - THE LOSS OF FAITH, THE ORGANIZATION OF HATREDS, THE RELAXING OF DISCIPLINE, THE BREAKDOWN OF PROTECTION: Anthony Esolen on schools as the target of rage. Paul Sperry on the decriminalization of school discipline in Broward County.

A NATION THAT OBEYS GOD AND PROTECTS THE SACRED:
 "If you hear my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a consecrated nation." Exodus 19. 
A "priestly people" is a nation that protects the sacred. This is not the same as promoting the autonomous individual. A nation is a sacred covenant between God and men - not a contract of individuals to protect each others interests. The first sacred good of a holy nation is to honor the name of God in Whose presence the covenant is sworn. Covenants and Oaths presume a transcendent Being or Order by which the oaths are taken.

PATRICK DENEEN'S WHY LIBERALISM FAILED: A searing analysis how democratic capitalism leads to a suicidal individualism. He is right that the liberal ideology of the West divorced from God and nation is a failure. But is he really describing the religious political covenant of our forefathers? This New Yorker article is good for its links to several better reviews.

IV. THE NATIONS OF EUROPE

CHRISTIANITY - THE HOPE OF EUROPE: Prime Minister Viktor Orban's State of the Nation speech in Hungary February 2018

POLAND: EU to The West, Russia to the East, Muslims to the South, Secularization from within - A reflection on the Polish nation.

ITALY: The leftist "Italian citizens" in the 5 Star Movement and the anti immigrant populists under Matteo Salvini emerge in a vote against the old ruling parties and the EU consensus. The European nationalist movements will have strong social welfare states at their core as well as opposition to unbridled immigration and the EU currency. A Europe of Nations is emerging. A Christian synthesis still awaits but the EU shell is molting.

MARION LE PEN OF FRANCE: "To open up to the outside, you must have a solid core. To welcome, you have to remain. To share, you must have something to offer. Without nation and without family, the limits of the common good, natural law, collective morality disappears as the reign of egoism continues."

PAT BUCHANAN AND FREDERICK LIST: ECONOMIC NATIONALISM
Buchanan on why the EU will revert to nations-from 10 years ago. Frederick List why Germany must adapt infrastructure and tariffs like the American System to become a nation. He was writing a hundred years ago before the development of the German State.  Get to know him and you get to know Hamilton and Clay and President Trump.

V. AMERICAN POLITICS

A TARIFF ON STEEL AND ALUMINUM - NOT THE END OF THE WORLD BUT THE BEGINNING OF A NEW COALITION OF REPUBLICANS THAT REPRESENT WORKING MEN WHO PRODUCE GOODS IN AMERICA: Pat Buchanan explains.

STEVE BANNON: A revealing interview.
What he understands - there is a movement against patriarchy (call it "The Time is Up") which is a protest against reality and 2-3-10,000 years of civilization. He is not part of that protest movement. He is part of a "protest" movement against the policies of the elite harming the working people and suppressing their populist grit and wisdom. Economic nationalism is one way of defining the power of the group he champions. He thinks in terms of civilizations and sees an alliance of Turkey, Iran and China forming against Christianity and some Muslim allies. He believes almost no news outlets deal seriously with the real movement of peoples and history.
What he doesn't understand and his interviewer never asked - Global Christianity and the multiple movements for nationalism which intersect with the Christian understanding of reality. Understanding the dynamism of global Christianity and the US as a Christian nation beyond the western paradigm is an insight that both Bannon and Samuel Huntington seem to overlook as ex-Christians.

HOW JUDGE BORK APPROACH TO ANTI-TRUST LAW PAVED A PATH FOR CITIZENS AS CONSUMERS: Reducing anti-trust law to questions of consumer benefit, the traditional anti-trust protection for small producers gave way to a consumer calculus. As we consider the Trump tariffs on aluminum and steel we hear from Senators like Ben Sasse who says he is a "civics advocate." But in the tradition of Robert Bork, Sasse ,the civics man ,becomes Sasse the consumer advocate. He reduces this policy to a calculus about lowering the prices for "the vast majority of Americans" who approach steel and aluminum as consumers. President Trump sees citizens as producers and protectors. Who is teaching whom the civics lesson?

TALKING WITH NORTH KOREA   
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