Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, June 16

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

THE FACTS SHOW GUILT; THE CONCLUSIONS AND HEADLINES SAY "NOT GUILTY"

The Inspector General Report on the role of the FBI in the Hillary Clinton email case and the Russian collusion investigation of Donald Trump is a lot like the James Comey press conference on the initial FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private server as Secretary of State. The initial FBI investigation was full of details about crimes and then Comey made a stunning public conclusion that no prosecutor would prosecute them. The July 2016 headline in the NYTimes was  "FBI Director James Comey recommends no charges against Hillary Clinton on email."  The recent IG report documents pages and pages of animus toward Donald Trump and bias for Hillary Clinton. And yet it concludes there was no bias. The Times headline on the IG report is "Report criticizes Comey but finds no bias in FBI decision on Clinton." 

BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: BANDWAGON WITH THE BIG GUYS DON'T ENCIRCLE WITH THE LITTLE ONES

When Donald Trump took office, Barack Obama told him the greatest immediate danger to the US  was North Korea and their nuclear weapons. The Trump-Kim summit has walked back that threat in a dramatic breakthrough after direct one on one meetings between: 1) Kim Jong-un and the President, 2) South Korean leader Moon Jae-in and the President; 3) Chinese Supreme Leader Xi Jinping and the President, and 4) Prime Minister Abe of Japan and the President.  This dramatic display of nation-to-nation, leader-to-leader discussions may redraw the entire encirclement alliances of the post WWII world.  The Asian equivalent of tearing down the Berlin Wall that reunified Germany has just happened for the ancient civilization of Korea. Of course there is great uncertainty but it is the incertitude that precedes a risk for something big. Why is the minuscule so trumpeted and the profoundly significant so ignored?  This can be attributed to the stunning geographical illiteracy, religious blindness, and historical ignorance of our very good looking modern journalists. The significance of this story cannot be discovered during pillow talk with cultivated sources. It can only be recognized by one who studies and reflects on strategic perspective and historical memory.

Politics is about organizing protection. Mao Tse Tung said governance comes out of the barrel of a gun. That is a well received majority opinion. Only in a handful of developed Western lands protected by agreements forged in the blood of  their grandfathers is politics a continuation of high school student council campaigns and elections. Most leaders in a "rough world" came up rough.  It is far better for the real leaders of the true major powers to sit down with one another and talk then stay in outmoded multinational alignments that keep the principals from talking face to face. Much more is learned and much more can be settled by Donald Trump sitting down with Vladimir Putin than making toasts with the feminist "defense minister" of Sweden while she badmouths Russia. Donald Trump's breakthrough in Korea has happened because he is developing relations with all the national leaders in Asia including Xi Jinping. It is far better to meet with the leaders of China and North Korea than organize a human rights conference with tough guy Marco Rubio so he can talk against China showing us his jutting presidential jaw in its best campaign mode against the latest threat to our way of life.

President Trump is actually proposing diplomacy over war games. He is talking to a nation man about inter-national relations before lecturing on human rights. He joins Lincoln who didn't free all the slaves at his first inauguration;  Richard Nixon who didn't talk forced abortion with Mao; Pope Francis who is not lecturing the Chinese; and Ronald Reagan who spoke with the Soviets about tearing down the prison wall before listing the individual prisoners.  President Trump left the white multilateralists of G7 to talk to the nationalist strong men of Asia. The diversity media scolded the President  for talking to Asian bad boys instead of soothing the more familiar metrosexual leader of Canada. President Trump dared suggest that US troops in Korea are not forever. This is a strategic (and debt slashing) tsunami. President Trump  met with President Kim in Singapore and evoked the independent Singapore model as a new way for Korea. The greatest international thinker of our time was the Father of Singapore. This is a serious time that would benefit if a few journalists studied the biography and speeches of Lee Kuan Yew.  It would also help if religious leaders and the antiwar movement could find their old songbooks...because "All we are saying is, 'Give peace a chance'."

I. SOLZHENITSYN'S HARVARD SPEECH AT 40

SOLZHENITSYN HARVARD SPEECH - 40 YEARS LATER: An excellent speech about the speech by Peter Kreeft. The speech itself.

Solzhenitsyn sees materialist capitalist individualism and Communism as two fruits of the Renaissance then Enlightenment - "rationalistic humanism, humanistic autonomy - it could also be called anthropocentricity - that man is the center of all." These are the roots of the West - which years later will be expressed in Communism and Libertarian Capitalism. Unless man returns to his spiritual roots, he will decay. Liberty must be grounded in the understanding of man as "a creature of God with obligations as well as rights." The greatest deficit in the West is civic courage. Two years later, Ronald Reagan would answer that call with a civic courage that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. But no baby boomer President could recover from the "spiritual exhaustion" which Solzhenitsyn named that day. Thus we are meeting the other cultures and civilizations which he said are more real than the bipolar construction of the Cold War. China and the Muslim World were real then and are prominent now. How shall we meet them? But what is missing for Americans is a renaissance of Christianity as the answer to the Enlightenment and the calamity of a despiritualized humanism. Solzhenitsyn concluded, We will have to rise to a new level - there is "no way left but upwards."

"Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?" —Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in his June 7, 1978 Harvard University Commencement Address.  In the address, Solzhenitsyn encouraged the West not to lose its soul to the powerful temptation of materialism. This address was delivered 40 years ago this week. Solzhenitsyn died 10 years ago, in 2008, at the age of 90

"If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it." — Alexander Solzhenitsyn, from the same address.

"The turn introduced by the Renaissance was probably inevitable historically: the Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, having become an intolerable despotic repression of man’s physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. But then we recoiled from the spirit and embraced all that is material, excessively and incommensurately. The humanistic way of thinking, which had proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task higher than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtle and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today." — Alexander Solzhenitsyn, from the same address.

SOLZHENITSYN REFLECTS ON HOW TO TEACH THE WEST THAT MOTHER RUSSIA IS NOT THE EVIL SOVIET UNION. THE "THIRD WAVE OF EMIGRATION" FROM RUSSIA IS PAINTING THE NATION AS EVIL: "And how was I to conduct such a battle, calling for a fight to the death against Communism, yet without in any way targeting Russia? And this in a situation where wily polemicists of the Third Emigration [the wave of émigrés allowed to leave in the 1970s — NR] were not only clouding the realities of Russia with their lies, but, in an unexpected turn, were spreading the credo that the true Russia, as opposed to the Soviet Union, is a far greater danger to the West than the current benign Communist regime, which must be supported, though kept in check by maintaining adroit negotiations." -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

II. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

THE COSMIC RACE: The Americas (North and South) are meant to be the continents of the fifth race and the culmination of our human destiny as a spiritual species. The very influential Mexican thinker originating La Raza is Jose Vasconcelos (d. 1959). He wrote the Cosmic Race in 1925. With Our Lady of Guadalupe, this is the antidote to the ethnic nation.

THOSE ASIANS ARE TAKING UP ALL THE SEATS IN THE BEST SCHOOLS - FROM NYC HIGH SCHOOLS TO CALIFORNIA COLLEGES: This has to stop.

AMERICAN CULTURE IN TROUBLE: Blame it on 1968 by Steve Young. Or the assassinations of 1963-1968 by AOA.

FOR ADULTS ONLY: Daughter of sci-fi author tells her tale inside a very twisted world.

A COWARD DIES A THOUSAND TIMES, A BRAVE MAN ONLY ONCE: From William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.”

JACK JOHNSON PARDONED AND MORE ON THE MANLY ART OF BOXING: Monsignor Rutler writes.

III. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS AND AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

KOREA - PRESIDENT TRUMP AND PRESIDENT KIM JONG-UN MEET IN SINGAPORE. AN INCREDIBLE MOMENT. SOME BACKGROUND AND ANALYSIS: Christians in Korea see unification as ultimate goal. AOA on Korea: Geography. Whats at Stake? Asia, Armistice and Nations: A century of Korean Division. Korean Strategy in the Asian Context (Scroll down to North Korea and American Foreign Policy in an Asian context). A World of Nations: A truth at the Olympics.

IF THE GLOBALISTS' FAVORITE NATION IS ONLY IMAGINED, THEN ITS REFUGEES WILL BE FOREVER PERMANENT: Palestine as a nation is truly an "imagined community." The "refugees of Palestine" also have a very special status in the alternative universe of globalism and its conceits. Does this make sense given the huge refugee problem that besets a world still at war?

THE TRANSATLANTIC WEST IS NOT THE HEART OF OUR NATIONAL ALLIANCES: Should we be breaking up the old West or realigning the globe? Talking tough to Justin Trudeau and demanding respect for Vladimir Putin is a lot more realistic than thinking the center of our alliances should run through London, Ottawa, Brussels, and Paris instead of New Delhi, Moscow, and Bejiing. President Trump is not just a strong nationalist. He also has a much more reality-based view of the power relations with nations around the globe. President Trump acts differently toward strong leaders. He could realign our major alliances with much stronger countries than the confused Europeans. But he is not there yet. His policymakers are still organizing the West against the Great Powers (Russia, China, Iran). See below.

THE TRANSATLANTIC ALLIANCE IS THE HEART OF OUR NATIONAL ALLIANCES: A State Department official outlines a policy built on European nations accepting geopolitical realities - which name Russia, China, and Iran as chief dangers. What is the West? "...democracy, individual liberty and rule of law, ordered liberty, strong alliances separation of powers. The West is community of democracies - - Ukraine and Georgia are part of west." This is the three encirclement policy of the old foreign policy establishnent. Many people work for the President who still don't understand his very new approach to other nations.

JIMMY HOFFA SON AND HEAD OF THE TEAMSTERS IS WITH THE PRESIDENT: On steel and aluminum tariffs.

HATING TRUMP AND THE DEMISE OF JOURNALISM: Love is sometimes blind; hate is always blind and sometimes drunk. The widespread antipathy toward Donald Trump among media and government employees has deeply retarded the whole culture of the East Coast. There is outrage about FBI surveillance of NYTimes reporter twenty-something Ali Watkins showing her as a conduit for leaking by a 50+male staff member of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. But the outrage is about government spying on reporters and curtailing their unbridled freedom to disclose (which Alexander Solzhenitsyn criticized so eloquently 40 years ago at Harvard). Ms. Atkins' competitive advantage over other reporters has not yet been labeled "cultivating sources as the new casting couch." But we know that sooner or later some sexist will so besmirch the enterprising young lady careerist. No outrage on that as of yet.

Abe Rosenthal, legendary editor of the NYTimes, immediately fired a woman reporter once he found out she was having an affair with a politician she reported on. (Barbara Walters, call your office or at least examine your conscience.). Women reporters complained to the old man. Rosenthal answered, "I don't care if you are f--- an elephant but if you are, that means you won't be covering the circus for my newspaper." The introduction of erotic interpersonal relations in the res publica is a debilitating feature of the sexually integrated publics of the power couple era. But the discreet power couples of extra marital affairs, the hidden interests and secret information is a world unto itself. Is journalism really about cultivating secret sources to get inside tales? Maybe that is why very big stories right in front of our faces like the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11 and world wide terror are so poorly reported. It really is much more difficult to bring historical perspective, matured religious sensibility and geographical knowledge to a story than a whispered phone conversation.

ROBERT DE-NIRO AND HOLLYWOOD: A short video showing the eloquence and courage of our decadent culture makers.

POLITICS IS ABOUT CITIZENSHIP - A COVENANT OF DUTY OR A CLAMORING FOR RIGHTS: In France the debate is on as President Macron rewards an illegal immigrant with citizenship for his great bravery. Merit and duty tied to citizenship was too much for some leftists who explain things this way: "Citizenship once represented a set of rights to be demanded from the state as a form of emancipation, for example, in the civil rights and suffrage movements.”

FROM SAME ARTICLE: "Obviously, this is the polar opposite of the classical understanding of citizenship. To the ancient Greeks, and then the Romans—the latter having given us the concept of res publica, the public thing—citizenship was closely held and much prized." We would add that citizenship defined by duty was a kind of bond among men like marriage is a kind of bond between man and woman. That male bond still holds and is the real social glue under the wider citizenship shared by all men, women, and children in republics. Politics and citizenship is a religious, territorial and masculine reality especially in America.

IV. AROUND THE WORLD R&G ROUND UP

THE WAR ON YEMEN IS A WAR BY SAUDI ARABIA AGAINST NEIGHBORING SHIITES - A GOOD ONE FOR THE US TO STAY OUT OF: Blockading their last serious port to the world is going to cost a lot of lives.

ITALY FROM LEFT AND RIGHT FAVORS RELIGION AND NATION OVER EURO-GLOBALISTS: From First Things magazine. The post-WWII/post-Cold War alliances and formulations must be transformed.