Monday, July 30, 2018

Moses and Elijah Challenge the Nation. AOA Pictorial Depiction of America's Culture War (link)


                             "See I have set before thee this day  life and good;  death and evil."



"And Elijah came upon all the people and said,  'How long will you waver between two opinions. If the Lord be God, follow Him. If Baal, then follow him.' And the people answered him not a word."

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday July 28

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch 


WEEKLY BRIEF

PAKISTAN ELECTION - A NEW NATIONALIST 
Pakistan has elected a national sports hero on an anti corruption platform upsetting the two major parties which have ruled Pakistan for years. 65 yo Imran Khan is a Pashtun (born in Lahore, Punjab) but he did well in the dominant Punjab ethnic areas as well.  In Pakistan the security establishment and the military are significant institutional and national players and the military sided with the newcomer. Pakistan is the 7th largest nuclear power in the world, the fifth most populous (212 million), and the third largest Muslim country. In 1947, India and Pakistan were granted Independence from Britain and underwent  a bloody interchanging migration scheme called the Great Partition. We have described Pakistan as radical jihadist Sunni power who have actually been our foes during the now 16 year old war in Afghanistan. They were our indispensable ally in the Cold War and certainly played a more pivotal role than France or Great Britain in winning that struggle against the atheist materialists who ran the Soviet State. But in the post 911 war on terror, Pakistan security services sided with their Pashtun ethnic kinsmen who dominated the Taliban. (The 1890 Durand Line marking the Afghan/Pakistan border was a deliberate British line of bisection through the major ethnic group of the region.) Osama bin Laden benefited from Pakistan hospitality after his Afghan base was destroyed in 2001.
Pakistan does not share the radical antipathy of their Saudi Arabian allies against all Shiites. They have not participated in the murderous attack on Yemen, the hostilities toward Iran, nor the isolation of Qatar advocated by Saudi Arabia's Salman family. 15% of Pakistan is Shiite. Pakistan's greatest ally is China who is helping build major infrastructure projects. Their greatest foe is India. Their most significant problem is corruption. President Khan could be the new leader needed to help assemble the near neighbors (Pakistan and Iran)  and the far neighbors (Russia, China and India) needed to end the war in Afghanistan. He will advocate a strongly religious and nationalist course but may still prove an essential nuclear armed Sunni alternative to the toxic salafists of Saudi Arabia. 






I. POPE FRANCIS & THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

POPE FRANCIS' C9 COUNCIL OF CARDINALS IS IN NEED OF REFORM AS WELL: The Pope established this council when he first took office to have a collaborative council to help him take on the daunting Curia. The coordinator of the council is Cardinal Maradiaga, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. His trusted Honduran auxiliary bishop(Juan Fasquelle) has just resigned for longstanding homosexual abuse. He had been vigorously defended by Maradiaga. Only a formal request by the Pope for an apostolic visit in 2017 uncovered the financial and homosexual works of Fasquelle.  How long will he remain on the pope's junta?

FROM SPELLMAN TO MCCARRICK - THE LAVENDER CHAINBy Randy Engel

McCARRICK RESIGNS FROM COLLEGE OF  CARDINALS
What is so encouraging(to give courage) about the McCarrick case is that real punishments and consequences are  being delivered.  This is in stark contrast to the continuing shame that Rembert Weakland is still in the College of Cardinals.


AOA ON CLEANING THE SCANDAL: Our outline of essays on Masculine Anthropology and Reform of the Catholic Priesthood

THERE IS NOTHING GAY ABOUT CHICKEN HAWKSA very good review asking about bishops' complicity in the McCarrick abuse - well known and well covered.  A penetrating expose of three cardinal-bishops Wuerl, O'Malley, and Farrell. 



II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL PASSES NATION STATE LAW: A nation for the Jewish people with the right of return for all Jews. Hebrew is the official language. Jewish settlement communities are to be encouraged as benefits to the nation. Jerusalem is the capital...and more .  This is an honest attempt to insert a corporate identity that must be protected in laws and customs. Israel is not just a "democracy of individuals".  There is a great debate pitting nationalism vs. hyper individualism of globalism. The Israeli Parliament just voted with the nationalists.

IRAN NEW GENERATION OF HARDLINERS: Ruhollah Faghihi writes: "On foreign policy, the new generation strongly opposes any sort of relationship with the West, rather emphasizing strong ties with the East, including Russia. In addition to slamming Rouhani for the nuclear deal with the West, they blame the hard-liner old guard for coming to the terms with the JCPOA. In line with their effort advocating relationships with the East, young hard-liners on social networks and on shows on state TV have been ardently portraying Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, as new members of the axis of resistance and as being influenced by Iran's revolutionary policies. In the coming years, the role of the innovative revolutionaries is likely to increase, presenting the new face of the hard-liners as Russophiles who are softer on cultural matters but more strident in political affairs and generally uncompromising."

TUCKER CARLSON ON TRUMP STAFF AND THEIR DESIRE FOR WAR WITH IRAN:
The never Trumpers can't explain his nationalist strategy but they can play on his antipathy to Iran 
Tucker Carlson is distinguishing himself as the most penetrating journalist on TV.


III. LATIN AMERICA

MEXICO'S ATYPICAL LEFTIST -  PRESIDENT IS A NATIONALIST AND ANTI-CORRUPTION: Newly elected Lopez Obrador promises a tightening of Mexico's southern border to keep out illegal influx of Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras El Salvador) refugees. Profile of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) - an atypical leftist.

POLITICS IS ABOUT "THE WELL BEING OF THE SOUL" - IS THE MEXICAN LEFT TURNING TO LOVE? Obrador describes himself in the broad sense as a Christian and received the endorsement of the evangelical party (Social Encounter Party). A telling article of how he campaigned.

It was Obrador opponents in the PRI who pushed gay marriage. He called them the Mafia elite.
Obrador named his party MORENA an acronym for Our Lady of Guadalupe as well. He announced his candidacy on December 12.  His hero is Lazaro Cardenas the leftist nationalist president (1934-40) who brought Mexican oil under nationalist control. Gay rights activists push the memory of President Calles - the viciously anti-Catholic leader who caused the Cristeros war. Cardenas was not a practicing Catholic but his right hand man and successor Manuel Camacho was.  Cardenas did not continue the hostile policies of the Calles era toward religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular. AMLO is no Plutarch Calles. He has requested the "accompaniment" of Pope Francis in his quest for Mexico's "moral regeneration".

Three quotes from AMLO: "It is indispensable that we start a new current of thought based on a moral paradigm, love for one's family, neighbor, nature and nation." "The highest goal of politics is to achieve love" "Some have said , 'Christ is love'."

NICARAGUA - THE LEFTIST TURNED DICTATOR HOLDS ON WITH INCREASING VIOLENCE: From Ishaan Tharoor of Washington Post:

“July 19 happens to mark the 39th anniversary of the victory of the Sandinistas, the left-wing revolutionary movement that overthrew the brutal, U.S.-backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. Now Ortega, a 72-year-old former Marxist guerrilla, increasingly resembles the tyrant he and his comrades once toppled. Masaya was once a Sandinista hotbed; now it's seen as a bastion of opposition.

“After returning to power in 2007, [Ortega] sidestepped the constitution to get himself reelected in 2011. He then completed his palace coup by assuming full control of all four branches of government, state institutions, the military, and police,” explained journalist Tim Rogers, a veteran Nicaragua hand. “He banned opposition parties, rewrote the constitution, and turned Nicaragua into his personal fiefdom, which he rules from inside the walls of his stolen compound, a concrete fortress he rarely leaves.”

Having long shed any pretense of Marxism-Leninism, Ortega maintained power by cultivating support among the clergy and the country's business community. Until recently, he also could count on the largesse of Venezuela. “But then Venezuela cut its aid, and the government’s fiscal problems were exacerbated by corruption,” noted the Economist.

Now Nicaragua faces its own Venezuelan moment, with a regime violently clinging to power in the face of vehement popular unrest. “The demands of the people are clear: justice for those who have been killed, a return to democracy and the resignation of the ruling family,” Dánae Vílchez, a Managua-based journalist, wrote for The Post's opinion section last month.

The duo, critics warn, is following the same tactics as leaders in Caracas. “Like Hugo Chávez, Ortega sought to remain in power indefinitely, but lately planned to hand the reins to his wife,” wrote Otto Reich, a former U.S. diplomat in Latin America.



IV. AROUND THE WORLD - NATIONS R&G ROUND UP

COMPARATIVE POPULATIONS 2017: MEXICO - 125 million, NICARAGUA - 6 million, IRAN - 82 million, CHINA - 1.4 billion, NIGERIA - 190 million, North Korea - 25 million, South Korea - 50 million.

CHINA TRADESome sobering insights from David Goldman (aka Spengler) - an insightful at times idiosyncratic thinker on international relations.

EUROPEAN UNION AND US MAKE NEW TRADE AGREEMENTS
The lack of reporting about this after the hyperbolic message that Trump had left our allies in Europe to become a Russian puppet would be stunning if we expected journalism from journalists. We are now seeing true American negotiations in the world of trade that will be combinations of tariffs and even subsidies if our productive capacities are challenged--This is the kind of national mercantilism that built the American economy.  One approach in farm production as battle lines sort out is to recall an old idea of Hubert Humphrey's:  build up a "seven year granary" as part of our national security strategy. Food, water, infrastructure, defense--all need to be tended.

KOREA - THE ROLE OF CHRISTIANITY IN RECONCILIATIONSyngman Rhee-ex marine pastor explains.

RUSSIA IS NOT THE SOVIET UNIONA comparative history lesson from Pat Buchanan. A Christian Conservative, biographer of Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Pearce looks at Russia anew 100 years after the czar and his family were murdered. He suggests, "Give Peace a Chance."

NIGERIAIs it the spread of the Sahara, the animosity of herdsmen for farmer or the spreading animosity of Sunni Jihadists who are killing Christian farmers?


V. AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY AND PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

GEOPOLITICAL THINKERS. KISSINGER ON THE DEATH OF BRZEZINSKI. JFK ON NIXON: Which diplomatic brain would he compare in today’s US establishment to himself, say, or the late Zbigniew Brzezinski — his former sparring partner, who also served as national security adviser? The mention of Brzezinski triggers something. “When Zbig died, which was a great surprise, I wrote to his wife that no death has moved me quite as much as his,” Kissinger says, again with evident feeling. “Zbig was almost unique in my generation. We both considered ideas about the world order to be the key problem of our time. How could we create it? We had somewhat different ideas. But for both of us, we were above all concerned to raise diplomacy to that level of influence.” Who is asking those questions today, I ask. “There is no debate today,” Kissinger replies. “It is something we need to have.”

Kissinger's words are a reminder of the relationship of Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. They both entered Congress in the same year after fighting in World War Two. They respected each other as the two best geopolitical minds of their generation. JFK implied if he lost the Democratic nomination in 1960 to Adlai Stevenson he would privately vote for Nixon.

THE DC CHURCH WHERE BRETT KAVANAUGH WORSHIPSBlessed Sacrament profile from Get Religion.

OBAMA IN SOUTH AFRICA: Selections from President Obama's Nelson Mandela lecture in South Africa, July 2018:                           
French World Cup –they don’t look like Gauls

And, if you doubt that, just ask the French football team that just won the World Cup. Because not all of those folks look like Gauls to me. But they’re French. They’re French.

Common humanity doesn’t preclude tribe, race or country

Embracing our common humanity does not mean that we have to abandon our unique ethnic and national and religious identities. Madiba never stopped being proud of his tribal heritage. He didn’t stop being proud of being a black man and being a South African.

Legitimate Claims of common language, citizenship, and borders

In the West’s current debate around immigration, for example, it’s not wrong to insist that national borders matter; whether you’re a citizen or not is going to matter to a government; that laws need to be followed; that, in the public realm, newcomers should make an effort to adapt to the language and customs of their new home. Those are legitimate things, and we have to be able to engage people who do feel as if things are not orderly.

A Shout out to Objective Reality

I should add: for this to work, we have to actually believe in an objective reality. This is another one of these things that I didn’t have to lecture about. You have to believe in facts. Without facts, there is no basis for coöperation. If I say this is a podium and you say this is an elephant, it’s going to be hard for us to coöperate.

Inspiration not leaders

And that’s what we need right now. We don’t just need one leader; we don’t just need one inspiration. What we badly need right now is that collective spirit. And I know that those young people, those hope carriers, are gathering around the world.

Feminism and Gay Rights are not Western Ideas but Universal Imperatives

We have to resist the notion that basic human rights like freedom to dissent, or the right of women to fully participate in the society, or the right of minorities to equal treatment, or the rights of people not to be beat up and jailed because of their sexual orientation—we have to be careful not to say that somehow, well, that doesn’t apply to us, that those are Western ideas rather than universal imperatives.

Greed and the desire to dominate have lasting holds especially on men.

We have a better story to tell. But to say that our vision for the future is better is not to say that it will inevitably win. Because history also shows the power of fear. History shows the lasting hold of greed and the desire to dominate others in the minds of men. Especially men. History shows how easily people can be convinced to turn on those who look different, or worship God in a different way.

On the International Elite

In every country, just about, the disproportionate economic clout of those at the top has provided these individuals with wildly disproportionate influence on their countries’ political life and on its media; on what policies are pursued and whose interests end up being ignored. Now, it should be noted that this new international élite, the professional class that supports them, differs in important respects from the ruling aristocracies of old. It includes many who are self-made. It includes champions of meritocracy. And, although still mostly white and male, as a group they reflect a diversity of nationalities and ethnicities that would have not existed a hundred years ago. A decent percentage consider themselves liberal in their politics, modern and cosmopolitan in their outlook. Unburdened by parochialism, or nationalism, or overt racial prejudice or strong religious sentiment, they are equally comfortable in New York or London or Shanghai or Nairobi or Buenos Aires or Johannesburg. Many are sincere and effective in their philanthropy. Some of them count Nelson Mandela among their heroes. Some even supported Barack Obama for the Presidency of the United States, and by virtue of my status as a former head of state, some of them consider me as an honorary member of the club. And I get invited to these fancy things, you know? They’ll fly me out.
But what’s nevertheless true is that, in their business dealings, many titans of industry and finance are increasingly detached from any single locale or nation-state, and they live lives more and more insulated from the struggles of ordinary people in their countries of origin. Their decisions to shut down a manufacturing plant, or to try to minimize their tax bill by shifting profits to a tax haven with the help of high-priced accountants or lawyers, or their decision to take advantage of lower-cost immigrant labor, or their decision to pay a bribe, are often done without malice; it’s just a rational response, they consider, to the demands of their balance sheets and their shareholders and competitive pressures.

THE FOLLOWING DAY  IN A TOWN MEETING IN JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA.
"Men have been getting on my nerves lately. Whats wrong with you, brothers?" ( He then corrected himself.. ) "Whats wrong with us?  We're violent, we're bullying.  I think the continent would be better off if more women got empowered."
President Obama is truly his mother's son--a white feminist atheist anthropologist. Men "get on his nerves."

Saturday, July 21, 2018

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday July 21

                                                By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

                                                                      WEEKLY BRIEF
         TRUMP AND PUTIN IN HELSINKI: TWO NATIONALISTS BEGIN A NEW ERA
                     They had a long talk with only an interpreter. President Trump has now met a nationalist who has a deeper sense of history and a more profound understanding of the geopolitical map than any member of his cabinet or the US Congress.  President Trump is a good judge of men and a willing student to those who know more about a subject than he does. Vladimir Putin is a man Trump can learn from. (That is how President Trump saw eventual Secretary of State and worldly wise Exon oil executive Rex Tillerson when they first met.)  President Trump believes America as a nation will do better in negotiating nation to nation relations rather than multilateral defensive coalitions. He believes with George Washington that those entangling alliances can allow a pretext for small countries to engage us in war with their larger traditional enemies. He is more in the "bandwagon" tradition than the "balancers" in facing large competitive regional powers. President Trump prefers dealing with the large adversary face to face rather than organizing alliances of smaller foes.
 Trump faces an hysterical media, an obstructionist Democratic Party and Republican allies who do not understand his nationalist vision. In fact what makes his work most difficult is that his conservative and Christian supporters do not have a nationalist and Christian worldview of relations among the nations. The alliance at the heart of the modern Republican Party left "social issues" to the Christians and foreign policy to the atheist globalists.  Many of Trump's most faithful Republican allies are globalist interventionists who were raised to hate "Putin as the KGB thug".  Listen to any unscripted remarks by Mike Pence, Nicki Haley or John Bolton from the last decade.
To really support the President's new strategic vision, Republican hardliners and Christians especially have to rethink their whole perspective on the relations of nations. Their metanoia (conversion-a turning of the heart) must be as radical as Pat Buchanan's rethinking free trade or Tucker Carlson's reevaluation of neoconservative foreign policy.
President Trump's new strategy has a paradoxical affinity with leftist non interventionists like Barack Obama. But Democrats in Congress who should be embracing his radical peace initiative are chanting "USA! USA!" while trying to demonize the elected Presidents of the two greatest nuclear powers in Christendom.
President Trump has very little in common with the ex-student council presidents who want to run for President by showing they are war leaders... like Marco Rubio. Mr. Rubio is similar to most female candidates for president. They have to show how tough they are by railing against some foreign country to show themselves as  potential war leaders.  Mr Trump needs no such constructed enemy to show he is a leader of men.   The baby boomer Presidents from Clinton to Bush to Obama did not know what to do with the post Cold War world given them by their elders. They had little sense of world history or geography. They knew precinct counting, fundraising and the inevitability of feminism.  Protestant New Yorker President Trump is the first nationalist leader to reach out to Russia as a nation necessary for peacemaking. The last president who thought that way was Ronald Reagan. He called the Soviets an evil empire but he called the Russians a Christian people. Is it possible the unsustainable and bankrupt US empire of the three encirclements (of Russia, of China and of Iran) is about to give way to a new American nationalist foreign policy of peace among the great powers? Is it possible this new era will be initiated by the last and most unlikely of the baby boomer presidents? Let that be our prayer.
 (See section below for articles on Russia, the US and a new strategy in American foreign policy.)

                                                1. Pope Francis and The Catholic Church

2001 DISPROPORTIONATE PRIEST DEATHS FROM AIDS
The bishops were quiet; the friends of the priests dying from AIDS saw them as modern martyrs

NYTIMES EXCELLENT REPORT ON McCARRICK--CARDINAL OMALLEY AMONG OTHERS SHOULD RESIGN
The cardinal groomed  young seminarians and rose to the top of the American hierarchy: a well known predator but no specific canon law was broken

GET RELIGION ANALYSIS
of NYTimes piece---why did the media wait so long to tell a story so many have known for so long/

THE MOST ELOQUENT ARTICLES ABOUT THE NARCISSISM OF HOMOSEXUALITY AND THEIR UNFITNESS FOR THE PRIESTHOOD CAME FROM FRENCH MSGR TONY ANATRELLA
Now we see why he understood "them" so well.

A GREAT DEFICIT IN CANON LAW AND SACRAMENTAL UNDERSTANDING
After his "gay marriage" the Italian headline proclaims he is still a priest. 

MORE ON CARDINAL TED MCCARRICK
from Rod Dreyer-July 18

SEMINARIAN ON MCCARRICK
We all knew

THE MONSTER SMILED
A short horrific new tale of America's powerful Cardinal McCormick

ANTHONY ESOLEN-THE RARE CATHOLIC WRITER WHO UNDERSTANDS SODOMY IS NOT A SIN AGAINST MARRIAGE BUT AGAINST FATHERHOOD, FILIATION AND FRATERNITY--THE NORMAL FORMS OF MASCULINE LOVE
Esolen on McCarrick and what he was perverting. 

                                                        2. US and Russia

IN RUSSIA, 75,000 RUSSIANS COMMEMORATE THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE MURDER OF THE ROMANOV FAMILY.  FROM ROBERT MOYNIHAN

 ... more that 75,000 people gathered in the street below the Church on the Blood in Ekaterinburg, Russia, to attend a divine liturgy in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the death of the Romanovs, which occurred just after 2 a.m. on July 17, 1918.

The "Church on the Blood" is so-called because it is built on the site of the house where the Romanovs were held as prisoners during the last weeks of their lives, and it includes the area of the very basement room where they were executed at about 2 a.m. on July 17, 1918, hence "on the blood."

PRESIDENT TRUMP AND PRESIDENT PUTIN MET JULY 16, 2018.  IT WAS 100 YEARS AFTER THE LAST DAY OF THE ROMANOVS
The hysteria of the godless in considering that Protestant America and Orthodox Russia may become allies again is understandable. Remembering the death of the Romanovs. (A 1928 article by Edmund Walsh in the Atlantic.)

CAN RUSSIA REMEMBER THE ROMANOVS?
Still unclear (from the Moscow Times)

TRUMP IS RIGHT ABOUT US RUSSIAN RELATIONS
David Goldman(Spengler) is no fan of Orthodox Russia but he is a student of history

PRESIDENT TRUMP IS CALLING OFF THE COLD WAR
Pat Buchanan explains why that is a very good idea
Trump stands his ground-Buchanan

RUSSIA IS NOT THE WEST: SHE IS A CHRISTIAN NATION UNIFYING EUROPE AND ASIA
From Yaroslav Trofimov WSJ article. He is critical but he is accurate about Russian identity under Vladimir Putin:

"Now Russia is increasingly looking East, toward an uneasy alliance with an illiberal and much more powerful China, and—in recognition of the country’s increasingly Muslim makeup—with nations such as Turkey and Iran. But even more pronounced is a sentiment that Russia, so unique in its vastness, must remain a world unto itself, a country that should expect kinship from no one—and that, in a motto coined by Czar Alexander III more than a century ago, can count on only two reliable allies: the Army and the Navy…
"Some Russian nationalists now herald this Mongol-Turkic state, governed by descendants of Genghis Khan’s oldest son, as the foundation of Russia’s own eternal empire. Long expunged from memory, the Horde is trending in Russia again, the subject of movies and a popular TV series. There is even a theme park at the site of the Horde’s razed 15th-century capital Sarai Batu—a former film set of faux palaces and mosques where visitors ride camels, practice archery skills and take photos in Mongol dress.
"Russia’s official historians and the Orthodox church long viewed the Horde’s rule over Moscow as a barbarian ‘yoke,’ responsible for Russia’s underdevelopment compared with the West; studying its history was banned by the Kremlin in 1944. But modern revisionists, inspired by the ‘Eurasianist’ ideology that sets Russia apart from the West, see the Russian state as the heir and beneficiary of that Mongol empire. They admire its ruthless centralism, its desire for conquest, its ability to maintain law and order—and its religious tolerance, which allowed Christianity and Islam to coexist.”

AOA ON EURASIAN RUSSIA--THEIR TRUE AND NECESSARY IDENTITY
Lev Gumilev and the Russian Soul
From three part series on Russia from AOA  Map on Monday--this is on Communal loyalties and Russia 

AOA ASKS WHO ARE WE: THE GODLESS GLOBALIST WEST OR CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS
The strategic dilemma that President Trump is solving 

RUSSIA ISRAEL AND THE US
Helsinki was good for Israel as a Syria-Iran-Israel compromise emerges.

NATO, RUSSIA AND AMERICA
Tucker Carlson asks if US sons should die for Montenegro--NATO's newest member. 

WHO IS BILL BROWDER
Bill Browder puts himself forward as a defender of liberty against Vladimir Putin. He presents himself as willing to risk his life to speak truth to power. Besides being the grandson of USA Communist Party Chief, Earl Browder, the younger Browder (b1964) renounced US citizenship in 1988 as a tax dodge. He is now a British citizen. He is Jewish, white, and speaks English.
The multimillionaire has affected US policy toward Russia especially in his lobbying for the Mignitsky Act. Sergei Magnitsky was Browder's lawyer and died in a Russian prison. Both Magnitsky and Browder were convicted in Russian courts of massive tax fraud. (Be very open- minded that they were part of the great national robbery in the name of free markets that befell Russia as the Soviet Union collapsed and Boris Yeltsin "safe guarded" the national economy.)
Mr Browder, this freedom fighter for globalism, is a staunch foe of nationalism and the heads of state who enforce such oppressive measures as tax laws. There is a movie about him directed by an anti-Putin anti-Browder journalist. If Browder had not been so successful in suppressing the film, the reasons the Russian government wanted to bring this man and his lawyer to justice might be better understood. A few reports on "the rest of the story." Here   and here.

AMERICAN NATIONALISTS BEWARE--JUST BECAUSE A MAN IS WHITE AND SPEAKS ENGLISH DOESN"T MEAN HE IS ON OUR SIDE.
The interests of the American nation and the "English speaking peoples"  are not always the same. The English speaking peoples of the "white dominions" of the British Empire are not the same as the multi racial brotherhood that constitutes the American nation. The deep seated animosity of the British toward the Russians is part of their 500 year tradition of making war with Europe's dominant land power (France, Germany and now Russia). Conservative news media and those intellectuals who think America is "an idea not a place" are especially prone to mistake a white man in a suit with a British accent as an ally and an expert.  The special irony that the "Russian dossier " to take down American nationalist Donald Trump was prepared by a foreign agent (a white English speaking Brit) has somehow escaped the journalists covering this story of foreign collusion. Beware of white men with British accents! They may not have the interests of us American country folk as their first priority.

                                                     3. A Culture of Protection is a Culture of Life

CULTURE WAR AS CLASS WAR
by Darel Paul from Willliams College

BALTIMORE CRIME SHOOTS UP AFTER POLICE ATTACKED BY PROSECUTERS
A spike in violence--police slowdown. 


THE JEWISH NATIONALIST YORAM HAZONY ON JORDAN PETERSON AND THE DEFENSE OF ORDER
"Before Mr. Peterson, there was no solid evidence that a broad public would ever again be interested in an argument for political order. For more than a generation, Western political discourse has been roughly divided into two camps. Marxists are sharply aware of the status hierarchies that make up society, but they are ideologically committed to overthrowing them. Liberals (both the progressive and classical varieties) tend to be altogether oblivious to the hierarchical and tribal character of political life. They know they’re supposed to praise “civil society,” but the Enlightenment concepts they use to think about the individual and the state prevent them from recognizing the basic structures of the political order, what purposes they serve, and how they must be maintained.

In short, modern political discourse is noteworthy for the gaping hollow where there ought to be conservatives—institutions and public figures with something important to teach about political order and how to build it up for everyone’s benefit. Into this opening Mr. Peterson has ventured.

Perhaps without fully intending to do so, he has given the dynamic duo of Marxism and liberalism a hard shove, while shining a light on the devastation these utopian theories are wreaking in Western countries. He has demarcated a large area in which only conservative political and social thought can help. His efforts have provided reason to believe that a significant demand for conservative ideas still lives under the frozen wastes of our intellectual landscape.

If so, then Mr. Peterson’s appearance may be the harbinger of a broader rebirth. His book is a natural complement to important recent works such as Ryszard Legutko’s The Demon in Democracy, Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed and Amy Chua’s Political Tribes. Representing divergent political perspectives, these works nevertheless share Mr. Peterson’s project of getting past the Marxist and liberal frameworks and confronting our trained incapacity to see human beings and human societies for what they really are. As the long-awaited revival of conservative political thought finally gets under way, there may be much more of this to come."

                                                                   4. Islam, Israel and the Mideast
ON ISLAM BY FR SCHALL
A philosophical declaration of war by Fr Schall reviews by William Kilpatrick who agrees with the author's broadside. We find this approach an intellectual's exercise in destructive polemic... here is the review.  Fr Schall has always been a favorite among Catholic intellectuals. He is quite the "warrior" against Islam. He never played that role at Georgetown as secularists stripped the classrooms of crosses. Nor has he ever looked straight or written clearly at the moral corruption which has deformed his religious order. Like Calvinism, Islam is an easy target for intellectuals. But like Calvinists, Muslims are much more complicated as men and often much more righteous, more pious and more courageous than their theology. Piety and courage seem a mixture of character traits for which university intellectuals harbor a peculiar blindspot.

SYRIA: WHERE ISRAEL WANTS TO CONTROL WHICH FORCES ARE AT THE GOLAN BORDER
The tie between Assad of Syria and Iran is long and deep. The notion that a neighboring state(Israel) can tell its neighbor(Syria) to disavow an ally(Iran) that protected it in times of danger and war is (as Russia said) totally unrealistic.

ISRAEL'S GIFT OF WATER
Let There Be Water by Seth Siegel-an interview

MAKING DISTINCTIONS TO FIGHT THE REAL SOURCE OF ISLAMIC JIHAD



Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Michael Harrington (1928-1989)


"If I spare you or spare your friends, it will not be out of fear of Zeus.                                 I do the bidding of my own heart."  (Polyphemus the cyclops to Odysseus)


Certainly one of the most famous Catholic intellectuals during the JFK era was Michael Harrington, propelled by his book The Other America: Poverty in the United States. He wrote: "If my interpretation is bleak and grim, and even if it overstates the case slightly, that is intentional. My moral point of departure is a sense of outrage."

From an Irish family in St. Louis, he received a first-rate Jesuit education. For several years he was editor of the soup-kitchen newspaper, the 'Catholic Worker.' He must have exasperated Dorothy Day more than a little, as his socialist interests eclipsed his attachment to Christ and the Church.

By the time of the Vietnam War protests, Harrington "became the elder most trusted by the students who led the New Left."


Harrington flanked by NYC pol Ruth Messinger, Gloria Steinem, and Ted Kennedy


Deacon Toner (over at The Catholic Thing) recently reminded us that Mr. Harrington became an atheist in the late 1950s, and remained one until his death.

The question that springs to mind: why did all the hype of the Second Vatican Council have no effect on his blindness to the duty of loving and worshiping God? The Church went through massive upheaval, and the only reaction from someone with the soul of a Harrington was a harumph?!

A far greater tragedy in the aftermath of the Council -- with millions praying for a true Holy Spirit renewal -- was that the number of unrepentant priestly predators should shoot upwards for the heavens.
[Take a look at this 2016 article about Teddy McCarrick receiving yet another award from Cardinals 'Hear Nothing,' 'See Nothing,' and 'Say Nothing.']

What was the sacred utterance that Americans began hearing so often in the 1960s? "Do the bidding of your own heart."

Monks such as Thomas Merton -- or the large number of Benedictines at Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota -- completely failed in providing any ballast against the raging winds of the Age of Aquarius. The famous Kentucky Trappist should have let Rembert Weakland do the Buddhist dialogues in Thailand; and, instead, gone on pilgrimage to the austere Greek Orthodox monasteries of Mount Athos.

Many Catholics now seem resigned to taking the long view: that the fruit of Vatican II won't appear for a century or two.



UPDATE: Michael Harrington was 16 years old when Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie premiered. The story is set in Depression-era St. Louis:
"To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy."


Here's a short clip of a discussion between Mr. Harrington and professor Milton Friedman.

Saturday, July 14, 2018

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, July 14

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

WEEKLY BRIEF

JONATHAN HAIDT ON THE ATOMISM OF MODERNS VS. THE LATTICE OF TRADITION: REFLECTIONS ON THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE

Three good videos from Jonathan Haidt. The first video describes how "cosmopolitan liberals live in Atom World" where morality is reduced to avoidance of bodily harm (derived from philosophers like Mill) or being fair (derived from philosophers like Kant). In contrast, traditional society  built as a "Lattice World" of hierarchies that emphasize in-group loyalty, respect, authority, purity, and sanctity. The video also includes a defense of religion as a community's primary source of social capital. Well worth the watch. The second video is longer but a real addition. It includes a helpful "moral electromagnet" analogy (see 48:00) that is tied very closely to religion. Just as a wire moving through a magnetic field generates electricity, so when we circle a sacred object - be it the Eucharist or the flag - we generate a polarity similar to electric current. Circling the sacred unifies the group and while also creating what are akin to positive and negative charges: good and evil, the sacred and the abomination. Finally, in the third, more recent video, Haidt's research helps us better understand the chaos at many universities. Haidt again approaches the problem with religion in mind, seeing the radical left as promoting a new kind of religion with its own dogmas, speech codes, and sacred classifications. It also features both an insightful narrative of how we arrived at today's victimhood culture and also a good explanation of correlation versus causation in statistics as applied to social justice issues.


I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

ST BENEDICT AND THE MONKS - REPUBLICS OF PRAYER AND LABORThe great saint, Father of Europe, and the fraternities that formed the public life of the European nations.

CITIZENSHIP, STATUS, AND INTEGRATING IMMIGRANTSSt. Thomas Aquinas should be consulted on the nature of political citizenship.

ITALIAN CLERGY ONCE AGAIN DOES NOT UNDERSTAND ITALIAN NATIONALISMThe nation needs borders or it is not a nation. Italy must be a nation. Italian clerics have a major problem with the ordered civic public of the nation.

IS HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE PRIESTHOOD THAT BIG A DEAL? Tasmanian bishop against the Jesuit head of all Australian Social Services. Phil Lawler lists a host of homosexual bishops outed by civil suits and ignored by fellow bishops. Wyoming bishops - one a homosexual predator, another a failed fatherCardinal Weinstein by Rod Dreher. To protect children, stop priests who degrade men. McCarrick - details, details. From Vesting in Lavender by Anthony Esolen:
Unlike those brothers the apostles, who went forth into the world to lay down their lives for Christ and the Church, these bands in our day have used the Church as a cover, and a means of procurement. They have turned the Church inward upon themselves and their essentially narcissistic and childish desires and deeds.

We should not then be surprised that the Church, in their hands, becomes contentedly anti-apostolic and anti-evangelistic. The leaders make common cause with ambitious women against their enemies: ordinary, healthy, self-assured, masculine men and the women who love and esteem them.

The Mass itself is made soft and effeminate – neither masculine nor feminine. I have often noted that every single hymn in vast repertory of Christian hymnody that has anything to do with fighting for Christ, hymns going back all the way to Prudentius and Venantius Fortunatus, has been banished from the hymnals, except for For All the Saints. 

That one exception we may attribute to the need to have something or other for All Saints’ Day, and even then, in many hymnals I have seen, the lyrics are made squishy, or the stanzas with the most fight in them are simply dropped.
 These leaders are simply not interested in taking on the world.

But that is the raison d’être of the brotherhood. Men who are friends, soldiers in the field, do not gaze into each other’s eyes, melting. Your drill sergeant does not call himself Uncle Ted. He does not write lovey letters to you, after he has snuggled you into a compromise. He does not engage in spiritual bribery and blackmail.

Men who stand shoulder to shoulder – you can picture them in your mind’s eye, leaning against a fence or a car or a tank – look out in the same direction, towards the world to conquer. That has been the orientation, the direction to take, of every true leader of men the Church has known, from Peter and Paul to Benedict, from Francis and Dominic to Ignatius, from John Bosco to Jose Maria Escriva.

We have the Lord’s own choice to follow, ordaining men to form that band of brothers. Men, not just anatomical males. They might get something done.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST 

SAUDI ARABIA - BEST SUMMARY ARTICLE ON PRECARIOUS HOLD OF CROWN PRINCE MUHAMMED BIN SALMAN: By Bruce Reidel.

SAUDI ARABIA, ROBERT MUELLER, GEORGE BUSH, AND THE SAUDIS: The real story of foreign collision affecting American policy may be exposed through the lawsuit of victims of 9/11 against the Saudi government.


III. AMERICAN POLITICS

THE NEVER TRUMPERS MISSED NATIONALISM AS THE DRIVING FORCE IN THE POST WWII/COLD WAR ERA: From Pat Buchanan.

A BLACK DEMOCRATIC LEADER REJECTED BY DEMOCRATS FOR HIS CHRISTIANITY: Black Christians are welcome if they leave their Christianity at the door.

HOWARD ZINN'S AMERICAHis narrative has been dominate for twenty years. When will Christian patriots tell our nation's story?

NAME ME A NATION: Jimmy Kimmel's own lackluster conception of geopolitics aside, his quiz of average Americans' knowledge of world geography is unsurprising - but the winner of the challenge is exactly who we'd hope to expect.


IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

THE COACH AND BOYS FROM THAILAND ARE SAFE - NOW ABOUT THE MEN WHO SAVED THEM AND THE ART OF CAVE DIVING: Why cave diving is so dangerous - a remarkable interview about the realities of caves vs. open water diving.

HABITS - THE GARB OF WOMEN: The feminine uniform of piety, purity, and interiority.

ABORTION - SACRAMENT OF THE LEFT. ABOMINATION TO THE CULTURE OF PROTECTION: Making Abortion the highest good - Shapiro. A culture of life is a culture of protection.

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Thomas Hart Benton



"Planting" (1939)


To travel the state of Missouri is to bump into wonderful paintings and murals. One of the top artists who made that possible is Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975).




Thomas' father, Maecenas, was a Missouri congressman. [The great-uncle of Maecenas was Thomas Hart Benton, a military aide to General Andrew Jackson; he later became the first man to serve five terms in the U.S. Senate].




Thomas, full of vim and vigor, grew up in the the southwestern corner of Missouri. This "re-created" conversation gives an entertaining sense of the man, who always retained a bit of Tom Sawyer rascality.

He honed his craft in Chicago, Paris, New York, and while serving as a sailor during World War I. He called his Navy stint "the most important thing, so far,  I had ever done for myself as an artist."


The young Abe Lincoln

"By shifting attention away from New York and towards the Midwest, Thomas Hart Benton expanded both the scope of possible artistic subject matter, and the potential public for American art."

Scornful of big business and big banks, he was also not afraid to denounce the heavy homosexualist influence within the art world.
                             

"Cradling Wheat" (1938)



UPDATE: Take a look at the mural that Mr. Benton painted in the Harry Truman presidential library at Independence (ten miles east of Kansas City). The two men came to greatly respect one another, although Mr. Truman retained his suspicion of much of modern art. He called it " 'ham and eggs' art, which meant you throw an egg at the wall and smear it around with a piece of ham."


Saturday, July 7, 2018

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, July 7

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch


I. AROUND THE WORLD R&G ROUND UP

TURKEY IS A MUSLIM TURKISH NATION: From the Muslim Empire of Ottoman to the secularist Turkish nation of Ataturk to the Muslim-Turkish nation of Erdogan. The Catholic countries of South and Central America must travel a similar religious empire-secular nation-religious nation  journey. So far-there is no Catholic Erdogan in Latin America but such leaders are rising in Eastern Europe. Islam has had to develop a theory of nationalism within their religious worldview to reconcile  a universal religion with the territorial loyalties of a military nation.  Shiite Persians and Turkish Sunnis have done this best.   Bringing Islam back to Turkey through education and electoral politics-the plan of Erdogan. (FROM AOA: 1) Geography of Turkey.  2) The Sunni Turkish Peoples.  3) Followers of Fatullah Gulen who was President Erdogan's old ally were purged in Summer 2016.)

WORLD CUP: My team, my nation. Not always the same.

UKRAINE: The two Orthodox Churches.

CHINA - WHY THEY WANT THEIR PERIPHERAL WATERS: From Proceedings Magazine June 2018; Professor James Holmes:

"...a Maoist “active defense” strategy—rebranded “offshore waters defense” in recent years—that alloys these sea- and land-based elements of sea power into a single sharp weapon to defend Fortress China and offshore waters against the United States and its allies. Goal: An Offshore “Crumple Zone”

There is an everyday metaphor for China’s “anti-access/area-denial” strategy: Think of it as an effort to construct an offshore “crumple zone” using sea- and shore-based weaponry. The engine compartment of a car’s front end and the trunk to its rear comprise its crumple zones. These are not inflexible shields. They are sacrificial components meant to collapse in a controlled manner upon impact. The chief purpose of automobile design is to protect what car manufacturers prize most—the safety of passengers inhabiting the cabin. If the crumple zone were completely rigid, the force of a crash would be transmitted straight to the cabin and to the people within—and possibly kill them. Instead, the crumple zone absorbs the energy from an impact, cushioning the blow. Anti access logic operates similarly. Security for the mainland and the near seas is what Beijing treasures most. "




SHOULD WE CONTEST THEM IN THEIR OWN WATERS OR ACCEPT CHINA AS A REGIONAL POWER: We made peace with our enemy Japan. A new paradigm for China, our WWII Ally.

MEXICO - NATIONALISM FROM THE LEFT: - a short profile of the newly elected leftist populist. A short history of Marxist, masonic anti-Catholic left in Mexican History - very worthwhile video and excellent links.

RACIAL RECONCILIATION: A black man's remarkable campaign of friendship with members of the KKK.