President George Washington: All Praise the Patriarch

by David Pence

This Monday’s federal holiday officially commemorates the birthday of our first president George Washington (b. Feb 22, 1732). In many states this is called Presidents Day and is meant to both commemorate the men who were presidents and honor the office which they held. In five states (including our own Minnesota) those February Presidents Lincoln and Washington are the special objects of our civic honor.

Patriarchy means rule of the father. A patriarch can also refer especially to the beginning father or the founding father. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel) are called the patriarchs of Judaism. Christianity is deeply patriarchal with the model prayer taught by Jesus petitioning that  God our Father will extend His rule in heaven over all the earth. Americans have always referred to Washington as a founding father, and our most affectionate name for Lincoln came from the black tradition: 'Father Abraham.'

We honor George Washington today (Read this AOA profile as your civic duty for the holiday)  for leading our first national army to victory in winning independence from the British, for acting 8 years as our first president under the 1787 Constitution, and for giving up the office of authority establishing a tradition of peaceful succession for the commander-in-chief of the military. "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." In Washington’s farewell address to his troops, he prayed that the brotherly bonds of affection forged in war would animate the bonds of citizenship in the new republic. Men who believed in republics rather than monarchy still believed in authority, fatherhood, and God. They knew that men in protective and productive civic groups needed strong leaders with considerable discretion to act for the group. As Washington wrote:

"It is impossible to govern the world without God. It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits and humbly implore his protection and favor."

There is in our land a hatred of the father and a rebellion against authority which destroys community. It is a repudiation of God the Father and disrespect for authority figures from the local policeman to the President. Abraham Lincoln in one of his first public speeches as a young man to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield decried the mobs and hate and violence that were infecting public life and replacing the civic bonds of affection that come from men living under God and the Law together. (See Matthew Holland’s Bonds of Affection describing the twofold love of American civic life.) President Trump reminded us in his inaugural that the loyalty of patriotism by its very nature deepens the loyalty of Americans to one another. (AOA on our current President)

There can be no community if there is no authority and respect for law. The baby boomers were wrong and that disastrous party is now over. The adolescent death yelp we are hearing across the nation is a primal recognition that a certain kind of partying is coming to an end. There can be no civic peace in our cities unless there is a renewal of fatherhood in our families. But we do not have to wait a generation for the  spiritual renewal of marriage and good dads. There are city fathers in blue patrolling every city in America. A great blessing of American civic life is the republican tradition of local universal male protective duty expressed in the militia tradition and policing as a local responsibility. The local male citizens in every city, town and county can offer to young males the identity and status which comes from taking up our shared duty of protection. This is the classic definition of that much abused form of male bonding-politics. 

If the criminals are getting the upper hand in certain neighborhoods, then there are American fathers garbed in blue who can come in and take care of our spiritual widows and orphans. Politics is the communal strategy of making fatherhood available to all young males in the territory.  The anti-political forces are a strange combination of brutish predators, violence prone adolescent anarchists,  and effeminate careerists. They all would undermine a civic presence of masculine protectors. Patriarchy and fraternity are not the problems -- they are the solution. Fathers know we need a brotherhood of fathers to protect a nation or a city. We know fatherhood and duty are not based on color but they are entirely dependent on gender. We know the household is not safe if the city is not strong. The great Presidents and Patriarchs called men and their sons into a common identity as American citizens.  The founding fathers who shaped the initial bond of American citizenship and the brave men who secured that Union under Lincoln have bequeathed to American men of every color a template for civic brotherhood under the Fatherhood of God.  

Let us build our country. Let us thank our God. Let us teach our sons. Let us honor our fathers.   

                             

President George Washington: All Praise the Patriarch

by David Pence

This Monday’s federal holiday officially commemorates the birthday of our first president George Washington (b. Feb 22, 1732). In many states this is called Presidents Day and is meant to both commemorate the men who were presidents and honor the office which they held. In five states (including our own Minnesota) those February Presidents Lincoln and Washington are the special objects of our civic honor.

Patriarchy means rule of the father. A patriarch can also refer especially to the beginning father or the founding father. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel) are called the patriarchs of Judaism. Christianity is deeply patriarchal with the model prayer taught by Jesus petitioning that  God our Father will extend His rule in heaven over all the earth. Americans have always referred to Washington as a founding father, and our most affectionate name for Lincoln came from the black tradition: 'Father Abraham.'

We honor George Washington today (Read this AOA profile as your civic duty for the holiday)  for leading our first national army to victory in winning independence from the British, for acting 8 years as our first president under the 1787 Constitution, and for giving up the office of authority establishing a tradition of peaceful succession for the commander-in-chief of the military. "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." In Washington’s farewell address to his troops, he prayed that the brotherly bonds of affection forged in war would animate the bonds of citizenship in the new republic. Men who believed in republics rather than monarchy still believed in authority, fatherhood, and God. They knew that men in protective and productive civic groups needed strong leaders with considerable discretion to act for the group. As Washington wrote:

"It is impossible to govern the world without God. It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits and humbly implore his protection and favor."

There is in our land a hatred of the father and a rebellion against authority which destroys community. It is a repudiation of God the Father and disrespect for authority figures from the local policeman to the President. Abraham Lincoln in one of his first public speeches as a young man to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield decried the mobs and hate and violence that were infecting public life and replacing the civic bonds of affection that come from men living under God and the Law together. (See Matthew Holland’s Bonds of Affection describing the twofold love of American civic life.) President Trump reminded us in his inaugural that the loyalty of patriotism by its very nature deepens the loyalty of Americans to one another. (AOA on our current President)

There can be no community if there is no authority and respect for law. The baby boomers were wrong and that disastrous party is now over. The adolescent death yelp we are hearing across the nation is a primal recognition that a certain kind of partying is coming to an end. There can be no civic peace in our cities unless there is a renewal of fatherhood in our families. But we do not have to wait a generation for the  spiritual renewal of marriage and good dads. There are city fathers in blue patrolling every city in America. A great blessing of American civic life is the republican tradition of local universal male protective duty expressed in the militia tradition and policing as a local responsibility. The local male citizens in every city, town and county can offer to young males the identity and status which comes from taking up our shared duty of protection. This is the classic definition of that much abused form of male bonding-politics.
 If the criminals are getting the upper hand in certain neighborhoods, then there are American fathers garbed in blue who can come in and take care of our spiritual widows and orphans. Politics is the communal strategy of making fatherhood available to all young males in the territory.  The anti-political forces are a strange combination of brutish predators, violence prone adolescent anarchists,  and effeminate careerists. They all would undermine a civic presence of masculine protectors. Patriarchy and fraternity are not the problems -- they are the solution. Fathers know we need a brotherhood of fathers to protect a nation or a city. We know fatherhood and duty are not based on color but they are entirely dependent on gender. We know the household is not safe if the city is not strong. The great Presidents and Patriarchs called men and their sons into a common identity as American citizens.  The founding fathers who shaped the initial bond of American citizenship and the brave men who secured that Union under Lincoln have bequeathed to American men of every color a template for civic brotherhood under the Fatherhood of God.  

Let us build our country. Let us thank our God. Let us teach our sons. Let us honor our fathers.   

                             

NOVEMBER 22 -- The Maturation of Christian Manhood: John Kennedy and the Spiritual Destiny of Nations

[first published 11/22/13]

Dr. David Pence writes:

"A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket." 

         (Charles Peguy)

A half-century ago, on the feast of Saint Cecilia, an armed atheist assassinated the first Catholic President of Christian America. It was a well-aimed blast. Those ringing shots of death silenced the voice of an elected Knight who was calling his nation and other nations into an articulate and armed defense of the ordered liberty that is the hallmark of Christian civilization. 

                                       

John Kennedy was a masculine liberal. He went forth to lead the land he loved, knowing that establishing a just political order amidst the nations was an assignment that God had given the laymen of the Church that claimed him since infancy. Deep in his heart, in his mind, and in his soul he understood that our shared identity as Americans was built on a band of brothers who had fulfilled a sacred obligation. When he spoke, the timbre of his voice called men into that band of brothers. Women cheered that such a bond would protect them.

When he spoke in 1960 to the Houston Ministerial Association on the religious question, he turned their eyes outward to the atheist menace that threatened Protestant and Catholic alike in our shared nation under God. He reminded them there was a military oath that secured religious liberty in the dangerous world of tyrants and the mass armies of paganism. That same military oath drew together Catholic and Protestant men at the Alamo. Only the record of their last names would attest their ancestral faiths, for "there was no religious test at the Alamo." It was this brotherhood of battle that Washington had hoped would leaven the national feelings of affection among Americans. It was such bonds that Lincoln proposed as the sinews of a new nation baptized in the bloodshed of Gettysburg. It was such bonds that the patriarch Abraham marked in that first shedding of male blood to forge a public. All nations were blessed in Him when he fathered the masculine covenant that sustains every nation.

On that day in Houston, Kennedy reminded the religious men of duty who gathered to hear him that he, his fallen brother, and they were bound by a common civic duty. He offered himself to fill the office, which would govern the military brotherhood, which secured their liberty as ministers to fulfill their religious obligations to God. He ended his oration reminding his listeners that the presidency was an oath, and he had taken oaths before -- "so help me God."

A decade before his speech to the Protestant ministers, Kennedy explained his understanding of the person, national loyalty and the Kingdom of God to students and faculty at Notre Dame.  

“You have been taught that each individual has an immortal soul, composed of an intellect which can know the truth and a will which is free.  Because of this every Catholic must believe in the essential dignity of the human personality on which any democracy must rest… A Catholic’s dual allegiance to the Kingdom of God on the one hand prohibits unquestioning obedience to the state on the other hand as an organic unit.”

Five months before his assassination, Kennedy demonstrated his providential view of the role of nations in the destiny of mankind during his visit to Ireland.

                                                 

“For the Ireland of 1963, one of the youngest of nations and the oldest of civilizations, has discovered that the achievement of nationhood is not an end but a beginning. In the years since independence, you have undergone a new and peaceful revolution, an economic and industrial revolution, transforming the face of this land while still holding to the old spiritual and cultural values…

"Self-determination can no longer mean isolation. No nation, large or small, can be indifferent to the fate of others, near or far. Modern economics, weaponry and communications have made us realize more than ever that we are one human family and this one planet is our home.

" 'The world is large,' wrote John Boyle O'Reilly.
'The world is large when its weary leagues two loving hearts divide,
But the world is small when your enemy is loose on the other side.'

"The world is even smaller today, though… across the gulfs and barriers that now divide us, we must remember that there are no permanent enemies. Hostility today is a fact, but it is not a ruling law. The supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and our common vulnerability on this planet.

"Some may say that all this means little to Ireland... It may be asked, how can a nation as small as Ireland play much of a role on the world stage?

"I would remind those who ask that question, including those in other small countries, of the words of one of the great orators of the English language:
'All the world owes much to the little five feet high nations. The greatest art of the world was the work of little nations. The most enduring literature of the world came from little nations. The heroic deeds that thrill humanity through generations were the deeds of little nations fighting for their freedom. And oh, yes, the salvation of mankind came through a little nation.' "

John Kennedy as a Catholic man of the Irish tribe integrated the male citizenship of powerful and accomplished Anglo-Saxon Protestant America. He furthered this integrative work by proposing immigration reform no longer linked to racial ancestry quotas. He, slowly but then surely, argued the case for racial integration. Like Eisenhower before him, he sent federal troops to save black students from the fury of the huge popular protest movements against integration. The first cries of “power to the people” against authority in the 1960s were white mobs opposing integration.

Catholic Kennedy had argued that public offices could have no religious test. In his televised address to the nation on civil rights he proposed that America could not fight tyranny abroad if it was not colorblind at home. “We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution… I want to pay tribute to those citizens North and South who have been working in their communities to make life better for all. They are acting not out of a sense of legal duty but out of a sense of human decency. Like our soldiers and sailors in all parts of the world they are meeting freedom's challenge on the firing line, and I salute them for their honor and their courage.”

Always he spoke of honor, courage, and shared duty.

That November when he died had begun with the assassination of two Catholic brothers who were fighting for their Asian nation in the struggle against the armed atheism of state tyrannies. On All Souls Day the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were assassinated in a military coup inflamed by newspaper reporters, and instigated by the new US Ambassador and members of our State Department. The CIA, the US military, and the Catholic Attorney General opposed the killing. President Kennedy mismanaged the rift in his government leading to the killing he called "abhorrent." The Mandate from Heaven was removed from both Catholic Presidents that month of the dead in 1963.

John Kennedy, like King David, marred his public life by sins of infidelity. Like King David he wept at the death of an infant son; and like David, his older son would die hanging between heaven and earth. He paid for his sins against marriage with the deaths of his male heirs. He paid for his betrayal of his Asian Uriah with his own death by the hand of their common atheist foe.

An ancient Roman liturgy, which he attended on Sundays and Days of Obligation, shaped John Kennedy. He knelt to pray and went to auricular confession. He lit candles in churches all over the world for the soul of his brother killed in a naval plane crash over the English Channel. He saw religion as a public duty to the Sovereign of the nations. He saw the nation as a brotherhood of protectors, and he understood an alliance of nations as the agents of History. He had a deep Catholic sense of humanity as one, and a sailor’s view of the earth as a small ship upon the sea of the universe. He knew what Nikita Khrushchev knew and Mao Tse-tung did not appreciate. He knew nuclear war must be prevented. He also knew what both of them knew: that there was a great conflict about how mankind should be organized. He wanted the flourishing of free nations under God. The Communists would use "national fronts" to re-institute the Tower of a Globalist Atheist Babel, which needed no god and would in time dispense of the churches, nations, and families.

A hero like Kennedy has many descendants who claim his name but few men who share his heart. He tried to replace the overwhelming technology of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) with Special Forces of men who would fight on the ground and win the hearts and minds of the new national leaders of Africa, South America, the Mid-east and Asia. He would replace the fleets of nuclear bombers with Green Berets and helicopters for security; and the Peace Corps and water wells for infrastructure and education. Launching unmanned drones inside Muslim nations and bombing the Orthodox cities of Serbia as a substitute for foot soldiers countered his legacy.    

He was no stuttering king in the war against the armed atheists of state tyrannies. Archbishop Philip Hannan, the combat veteran who gave JFK’s funeral homily, built it on Kennedy’s Scriptural syntax. The celibate combat bishop and the biblical fighting liberal are men our nation needs again. Their world was one of embedded un-chosen obligations, marked by protective duties assigned by gender, and priestly piety and purity proclaiming the supernatural order. On this feast of the virgin martyr, whose sweet life made her the patron of music, let us remember the warrior king who made words beat to move the hearts of his countrymen:  

“And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” 

                                                             

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitical Review: Saturday May 25

                                                   by A. Joseph Lynch and Dr. David Pence

                                                                   WEEKLY BRIEF
    WHEN THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY IS ON THE WRONG SIDE OF NATURE

Always bet on nature to issue her correction! American public culture and foreign policy is paralyzed by two fabrications. The atheist sexual revolution is not the child of the Christian American civil rights movement. The nation of Iran is not the center of world terrorism. At a very deep level we are not thinking clearly. A milieu of deceit always points to Murder. Satan first lied and then the good son was murdered. Journalists from Fox News to the mainstream media cannot seem to get at these fundamental fault lines. This inability to tell the truth will cost us in the blood of young males. Let us return to God in public prayer and to one another in mature public dialogue. A combination of spiritual blindness, sexual confusion, religious illiteracy, and partisan hatred besets our republic. This week let us remember the blood sacrifices demanded by the sex roles of our Patriarchal Sacral Order. Let us give thanks for the masculine character of young men who for 250 years sacrificed their lives in response to their nation's call to do their sacred duty of community protection.      

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

SARAH ON ABUSE AND GOD'S ABSENCE: Cardinal Robert Sarah  May 14, 2019 in Rome on Benedict XVI's response to Pope Francis' summit of worldwide bishop leaders:

“...this evening I will not talk about this book {Sara's new book} at all.” “...the fundamental ideas that I develop in it were illustrated, presented, and demonstrated brilliantly last April by Pope Benedict XVI in the ‘notes’ that he had composed in view of the summit of the presidents of the episcopal conferences on sexual abuse convened in Rome by Pope Francis from February 21 to 24.”

“I would therefore like us this evening to allow ourselves to be enlightened by this demanding and luminous thought of his. How could we summarize the thesis of Benedict XVI? Allow me to simply cite him: ‘Why has pedophilia reached such proportions? In the final analysis, the reason is the absence of God.’ This is the architectonic principle of the entire reflection of the pope emeritus. This is the conclusion of his long argumentation. This must be the starting point of every investigation of the scandal of sexual abuse committed by priests, in order to propose an effective solution.

“The crisis of pedophilia in the Church, the scandalous and distressing multiplication of abuse has one and only one ultimate cause: the absence of God. Benedict XVI summarizes it in another formula that is also clear. I quote: ‘It is only where faith no longer determines the actions of man that such crimes are possible.’

“The theological genius of Joseph Ratzinger here touches not only upon his experience as pastor of souls and as bishop, as father of his priests, but also upon his personal, spiritual, and mystical experience. He goes back to the fundamental cause, he allows us to understand what the only way can be for getting out of the frightening and humiliating scandal of pedophilia. The crisis of sexual abuse is the symptom of a deeper crisis: the crisis of faith, the crisis of the sense of God.”

Cardinal Sarah ratified Ratzinger's emphasis: Without a profound respect for the “Eucharistic body of the Lord” there is no longer any respect for “the pure and innocent bodies of children.”

“To conclude, I say to you again with Pope Benedict: yes, the Church is full of sinners. But it is not in crisis, we are the ones who are in crisis. The devil wants to make us doubt. He wants to make us believe that God abandons his Church. But no, this is always ‘the field of God. There are not only the weeds but also the good wheat of God. To proclaim these two aspects with insistence does not stem at all from a false apologetics: it is a service that it is necessary to render to the truth,’ says Benedict XVI. He proves it, his prayerful and teaching presence in our midst, in the heart of the Church, in Rome, he confirms it for us. Yes, in our midst is the good wheat of God."

“Thank you, dear Pope Benedict, for being according to your motto a cooperator with the truth, a servant of the truth."

II. THE NATIONS

RELIGIOUS NATIONALISTS SWEEP IN INDIA: Narenda Modi is habitually depicted as the divisive Hindu leader of the BJP party in India. The world's largest democracy overwhelmingly returned him to office - the voters must not be reading the mainstream British and American press and think tanks. The history of Indian elections has been hundreds of parties and split decisions coordinated by the Nehru/Ghandi Congress Party in leading the government. ("Indians don't vote their party - they vote their caste" is an old saying describing the fragmentation.) That all ended in 2014 with the ascent of Modi and the Hindu nationalists of the BJP party. Modi has now emphatically confirmed his popularity  with an even larger majority for his party in the Presidency and Parliament. This is Modi, the great divider.

FROM BBC MAY 23, 2019. As the day draws to a close in India, we are ending our live coverage of this historic general election. Here's what you need to know:

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has secured another five-year term after his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a crushing victory
• Results so far show the party is set to win about 300 of the 543 seats in parliament, exceeding expectations and building on the commanding majority it achieved in 2014
• The main opposition alliance, headed by Rahul Gandhi's Congress party, has admitted defeat. Congress is set to win fewer than 60 seats
• Mr Gandhi has also lost his Amethi seat in Uttar Pradesh. He has held it since 2004 and it is considered a stronghold of Congress and the Gandhi family in particular
• The re-election of Mr Modi brings to a close the largest election the world has ever seen. More than 600 million people voted in the marathon six-week contest

Prime Minister Narendra Modi receives his mother's blessing before voting

QATAR - OUR REAL ALLY? The country Saudi Arabia wants blockaded to death houses our military and talks with all players in the Mideast. They were expelled as Wahhabis by the Saudi Wahhabi establishment before they were blockaded. That sounds like an endorsement for those of us who think the Saudi Salafist religious establishment is the real heart of darkness in fomenting terror as religious jihad. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was one of the calming influences when Qatar was being isolated. An illuminating article.

EGYPT LEAVES THE SUNNI ALLIANCE: Now we are left with the Saudis and UAE (two of the only three countries in the world who recognized the Taliban as a legitimate government in September, 2001.) This article is an Israeli saying Israel must reconsider its increasingly isolating alliance with Saudi Arabia. This warning goes double for the US.

IN EUROPE: The nations are coming.

RWANDA: Catholics and Ethnic Hatred.

AUSTRALIA: A coal region and workers desert the party of the Diversity professors. See below as well on Australia.

SAUDI ARABIA CALLS MAY 30 MEETING FOR SUNNI COALITION TO DISCUSS IRAN "PROVOCATIONS" - JIHADIST RELEASED FROM AMERICAN PRISON TO FIGHT AGAIN, THIS TIME AS A HERO: This meeting is another attempt by the UAE and the Saudis to depict every resistance by Shiites against foreign or Sunni rule as Iran-sponsored terrorism. They continue to confuse and misdirect American efforts in the religious war on terrorism. Liberals in America see terrorism as unrelated to religion. Conservatives have mistaken multi-national Shiite movements instead of Wahhabi Salafists as the "greatest terror threats in the world". Treating the war on terror as a matter of criminal law has led to the insanity of releasing Michael Lind to fight us again.

PHILLIPINES: Duterte family and allies win huge victories in local and legislative elections.

III. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

HUMAN RESOURCE DEPARTMENTS, JOB SECURITY, AND THE SEXUAL LEFT: The most effective weapon in the cultural ascendancy of the sexual left has been the definition of traditional views on sex roles as an impediment to working together in the workplace, This was most devastating in the US military and Catholic priesthood where belief in single male sex command chains meant a man could not lead the new diverse army or parish. The road to being an officer and being a priest was a commitment to sexual fluidity. In large corporations any traditional views that some jobs should be limited by gender or marriage was a heterosexual phenomenon are firing evidence that an employee is creating an "inhospitable work environment." Australia's surprise election results are uncovering the same strategy there. (Australia - 25 million people; 50% Christian; 22% Catholic; ETHNIC: 67% British, 20% European 4% Chinese 4% indigenous).

ABORTION AND ETHNIC CLEANSING: Almost half of black pregnancies are aborted. This is three times the rate for white women. Alabama's new abortion law could be represented by two slogans:  Stop Domestic Violence; End Abortion. or Black Lives Matter; End Abortion. The welcome voice of the retired Sheriff Clarke.

GOD AND MAN AT YALE: A rememberance of William Buckley's terrific book from 1951. Here are key Buckley sentences which tell a great truth and yet contain the seeds of destruction now manifest in so many writers at National Review and "on the right"

“I myself believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.” 

The struggle of Christianity against atheism is truly the central struggle. The baby boomers never understood why we fought and how we won the Cold War. That is why from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama they "lost the peace." There is a new line of stasis separating the Christian combatants from their atheist foe. The battle line now is: The globalist bureaucracies of Atheistic individualism vs. the religious nations. The fact that the modern atheistic West often fashions itself as the defender of Judaeo-Christian values is as much a smokescreen as Yale's presenting itself as a safeguard of Christian patrimony to its donor class. The "West " is soulless - an Anglo Empire in decadence. Christianity and the civilizational nations are living organisms maturing to come into a new harmony. It is Christianity and the Christian nations - Brazil, the US, Russia, the Philippines, and Hungary who have the depth of character to make peace with the civilization nations - China, India, and Japan.
Let us applaud and reiterate the 25 year old Buckley's first sentence. Let the second sentence remind us that 25 year old intellectuals are not always the best teachers of conservative tradition.

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitical Review: Saturday May 18

by A. Joseph Lynch and Dr. David Pence

WEEKLY BRIEF

COHERENCE IN THE CULTURE WAR: SEX, LOVE, POLITICS AND PROTECTION
The debate about religion, sex and politics is getting clearer (see Abortion Laws below). The American nation has been deeply compromised from within by the elevation of individual rights and autonomy as the highest social good. The United States is a religious nation based on an assertion that there is a Sovereign God and a sacred order which our nation must submit to if we are to endure. The God who made the Universe made humans as males and females capable of producing future life. Every male is made of millions of cells with 46 chromosomes of DNA. One kind of cell-his sperm has 23 chromosomes and is made to join with a female egg (also only 23 chromosomes and incapable of life alone) to make a new cell. That new cell (zygote) conceived in the fallopian tube seeks the uterine environment to implant and develop into a new person with a new set of tissues and organs made up of cells with a new combination of 46 chromosomes. It is the miracle of femininity that her body is not her own but she is the home and bread for another soul. Christian culture holds that the gift of human life comes not only from the union of the sperm and egg but also from the permissive touch of the hand of God. How a man and his culture treats his sacred seed and how well a woman and her culture protect her sacred interior are hallmarks of Christianity. Every human soul is uniquely called into life by God and is utterly dependent on the sacrificial and nutritive love of woman. The cultivation of a Christian female personality whose honor code elevates virginity and the protective duties of motherhood is most clearly manifested in the Catholic cult of Mary-the Blessed Virgin and Mother.
The cultivation of a masculine personality who is chaste and a social protector is the Christian knight, the faithful husband, the loving brother, the citizen soldier. Men are not male mothers. The way we protect our offspring is by establishing territorial agreement with other males to establish a larger territorial community of order, protection and provisions. This is the noble and high form of masculine public love (phileo adelphos-brotherly love) known as citizenship, civics or politics (politikos-a participating male member of the polis-city). In the political structure of the American nation, men bind in local units called cities and counties to provide police protection and in larger state units to establish criminal and civil law. This notion of a republic of brothers is as old as Israel but it was a rediscovered political insight of the Protestant Reformation lived out dramatically in the New World settlements of English, Dutch and Scottish colonials.
All of the movements of the last fifty years that elevated individual autonomy significantly undermined the authority of local citizens functioning as communities in policing and law making. In every instance the Protestant Covenant gave way to the despotic individualism of the Enlightenment. Much of this damage happened because the sexual autonomy movements masqueraded as the natural heirs of the Christian and nationalist civil rights movement.
The American interracial civil rights movement was an extension of political accord linking men as fellow citizens in towns, cities and the nation. Reverend Ralph Abernathy and Rev. Martin Luther King plotted their Beloved Community as fellow Baptist preachers in a southern city with a virile civic identity.   In Christian culture, men bind as brothers in a common city, state, or nation. Black men were not allowed to share in the duties of citizenship. This violation of the Christian command of  brotherly love  and the Declaration's assertion of natural law was a contradiction that could not endure.
 The Christian interracial movement was not just public and political. It always implied that men and women of different skin color could bind in holy marriage. It is a horrible betrayal and desecration of that movement when white males compare their acts of sodomy with interracial marriage. That is both a moral insult and a category error in logic. It is not "gay" but a sign of deep confusion when males mistake the digestive tract of another male for the interior of a female. Pleasure can be simulated if one is morally numb enough to countenance the act. But neither our language nor our marital laws have to "respect" this disoriented delusion. Such acts are more akin to incest than marriage. They are not remotely comparable to marriage. They deeply offend virtue and masculinity which is why so many cultures cannot even speak of the deed much less hold parades to celebrate.
Fatherhood, sonship and fraternity--those are the blood ties that men make holy by consecrating their  kinship to the higher spiritual claims of the priesthood and the polis. Male maturation develops wide radius trust not selective intimacy. Every Jewish male has  already shed blood for the larger group in his first month of life.  "Let all men count with you but none too much." said Kipling.  The Christian personality of a chaste man obeying the Father by living out the public brotherhood of his own nation in fraternity with the other nations is the carrier of Christian culture. Such a man is not only meant to build his own nation but speak for fraternal order among all the nations. Jesus wept especially for Jerusalem but he suffered and died for all mankind. Nationalism joining black, brown and white men in the public brotherhood of citizenship is the real son of the civil rights movement. The republic of brothers is as old as Israel but as Christian political theory was the insight of the Protestant Reformation.  If you want peace, build civic order among the adult males. "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God." The template of the nation as a fraternity of duty is Our Lord Jesus Christ who founded "a holy nation, a royal priesthood" with his Apostles. He was a loyal son of Israel. He was crucified as the King of the Jews and that was inscribed in three languages so no-one missed the point. The ultimate good of  Patriarchy-the rule of the Father was restored by the obedience of the Son. Sacred Patriarchy will be established "on earth as it is in heaven" by ordered brotherly love- the baptism of the nations. This is the Christian reality that makes America great but only when she actually lives out  the bonds of affection and ordered loves of a Christian nation.
Our children are utterly confused by the breakdown of the authoritative sexual distinctions and roles that safeguard a culture of life. They cry out for an adult culture which protects life through those distinct matured personalities of civic fathers and familial mothers. Just look at the purple haired "transgender girl/boy" who has now joined the Darwinian slayer at Columbine as a teen murderer in the drug haven of Colorado. Her plea should be "criminal insanity"--of Colorado and American baby boomer culture. God has given us the gift of life and natures meant to participate in life, love and protection.  We owe it to God, our ancestors and our children to repeal the sexual revolution and restore the civic and cultural order that reflects the Sacred Order. We are not just asking for rights to think differently than the gender confused media and educational establishment. We are proposing that the life of our nation depends on a renewed lived out Christian culture that in custom and in law downplays class and color differences but sharpens and consecrates the distinctions and duties of men and women. 

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

HOMOSEXUALS IN BRAZIL SEMINARIES: A problem still, and a large one.

TO REFORM THE CHURCH, ABOLISH THE PRIESTHOOD: Ex-priest James Carroll reiterates the strategy of the Protestant Reformation. What is good about his article is that it might force some Catholics to understand that abolishing the male only patriarchal priesthood is abolishing the Eucharistic Church. Pope Francis has directly rejected this by centering reform on a deepening of the authority of bishops. Four Strategies are before us:
1)Renew and Reform Apostolic Fraternity: defending the consecrated fatherhood and fraternity of a priesthood centered on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the authority of the Bishop in the local Church(diocese).
2) Lay Empowerment and Clericalism: Self-absorbed careerism and homosexual cliques remain in key positions of parish finances and chancery job assignments. Meanwhile promote  liturgical and teaching that strips the priesthood and altar of its deepest sacral and masculine character. The careerist priest is well paid and asked to do very little. Most of day to day parish life is assigned to his overwhelming female staff and liturgical ministers. Father is hard to reach and gone a lot.
3)Become Protestants: The James Carroll "liberal Catholics" approach. 4)Traditionalist/Rejectionist Model: Resist! Resist the Holy Father! Embrace! Embrace the You Tube purists!  Pope Francis is a heretic. The Second Vatican Counxil was a horrific failure not inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Novus Ordo is not really the Holy Mass but a desacralization of the Eucharist--avoid it. Cardinal Burke is the paragon of the masculine priesthood and Bishop Vigano is a self sacrificing truth teller.

ECUMENICAL WARFARE: The Vatican has opened its classes on Satan and exorcisms to non-Catholic clergy. This is the kind of ecumenism we need. The "ecumenism of blood" unites Christians in martyrdom while a "ecumenical warfare" unites us in combat against the Evil One.

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

ECONOMIC NATIONALISM - AMERICA, BRITAIN, JAPAN, AND CHINA: A historical reminder from Pat Buchanan.

PRAYER IN THE AMERICAN CLASSROOM: A rabbi who was shot during a synagogue shooting last month is not denouncing guns but rather calling Americans back to prayer, particularly in schools. The rabbi believes that "children when they start their day should take a moment of silence to think about themselves and to realize that they are children of God, that they have a soul, that they are created in the image of God, to value life, and to value more of life than just the materialism, that there's a spiritual dimension to life." It's not guns we should fear but rather people who don't pray and have no conception of the spiritual order.

III. THE NATIONS

NETANYAHU ON NECESSITY FOR US TO ATTACK IRAQ BECAUSE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS - FROM 2002: VIDEO - He testified to the US Congress as "a private citizen".

IRAN AND US FINANCIAL WARS OF GEORGE BUSH AND NUCLEAR NEGOTIATIONS OF BARACK OBAMA: This is the major foreign policy difference which should be discussed in the Senate now and the Presidential election of 2020. Jay Solomon author of Spy Games, Bank Battles and the Secret Negotiations that Reshaped the Mideast is no fan of the nuclear agreement but he describes it well. He gives a clear recount of 2006-2016 US-Iran relations from the intense banking wars directed by Treasury officials in the Bush White House to the "secret negotiations" which left out "allies" like the Saudis and UAE. A very clear speaker. Worth the 45 minute listen. We do not agree with his hostility toward the nature of the Iranian state but he is a very good reporter/historian/ teacher.

IRAQ AND THE SHIITE MILITIAS: When ISIS took Mosul, the Shiites of Iraq formed their own militias to protect the Shiite Holy Places (Karbala and Samarra). They welcomed Iraq Sunnis fighting against the mostly foreign Sunnis in ISIS. Iranians (90% Shiite) have a deep religious connection with the holy sites in Iraq. They come to Karbala to pray. Many extra governmental  Iraqi Shiite militias formed to fight against the Sunni targeting of their holy places, Often they would come in conflict with American troops trying to put down "sectarian violence." Without the Shiite militias(which were independent but better fighters than Iraq government troops) major portions of Shiite regions around Baghdad and Karbala would have fallen. The Iranians were effective and significant allies in defending the holy places from ISIS. Now the Shiite miltias of Iraq are being called "proxies of Iran"  just as the Houthis of Yemen have been bombed for the same crime. The Shiites of Iraq do not want the US to go to war against their closest ally. They certainly don't want to be attacked for staying loyal to the one nation with co religionists who shed blood so they could defeat the salafist jihadists who were destroying their holy sites. Making these distinctions seems beyond American policymakers and journalists. Let's keep trying to include religious literacy in the discussion.

WHO WANTS WAR WITH IRAN: It will not help the US or Iran but others push our countries. Pat Buchanan.

DUTERTE WINS BIG IN PHILLIPINES: Tough on Crime. Chinese ally; not the US. The People Vote Yes! 

ORBAN AND HUNGARY: Law and Liberty essay on the substance of politics, religion and nation vs. the procedures, individualism and trans nationalism of the EU. Why Viktor Orban of Hungary and those nations of Eastern Europe demand a more substantive basis for their public life.

BOLSONARO AND BRAZIL: Very different foreign policy from popular but corrupt leftist "Lulu".

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

ABORTION LAWS: A GIFT FROM GOD; A WOMAN'S RIGHT;  THE PROTECTIVE POWER OF THE STATE  
Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Mississippi have all passed laws outlawing abortion after a heartbeat is heard. These states have reasserted their traditional legislative and police powers which were usurped by the federal judiciary in the 1973 Roe vs Wade decision.  In Georgia, if pregnancy is from a rape or incest (verified by charges filed) abortion is allowed until week 20. In Alabama, all abortions except those to save the life of a mother or involving an ectopic pregnancy are banned with no time limits. The doctor in such a case is the only person charged with a crime-Class A felony punishable by 10-99 years in prison.
Any law that takes effect at 6 weeks, 8 weeks or heartbeat detection allows a woman time to abort after an act of intercourse in which she does not want a child. Within 6-8 days after ovulation for a blood test and 12-14 days for a urine test the presence of a hormone produced by the fetus becomes detectable. Women who know they have had intercourse and know that they don't want to have a baby can detect the presence of the new life within three weeks of the act of intercourse in well over 90% of pregnancies.  
Should a woman be punished for securing an abortion? In the law she is treated the way we treat attempted suicides. An attempted suicide is an attempted murder but the law treats self inflicted violence in a different category. The woman is like a woman who cuts off her own arm hoping to bleed to death. Will she be charged with murder? No . Will she be punished? For the rest of her life, she has no arm.
The role of  the medical profession in not banning abortion through professional ethics has been a disgrace. The consumer model of medicine in which the paying customer dictates what the "provider " shall provide has desacralized the healing profession. Medical standards dropped through the basement while medical costs went through the roof. Doctors much more than politicians are to blame for the carnage of abortion. They were supposed to be the guardians against abortion on demand. They turned it into fee for service. May good Christian statesmen overturn the doctors' money tables. Felony charges are not too severe for a shepherd who morphs into a cross between wolf and hireling.

ABANDONING DARWIN: The biological argument - good synthesis of why the untenable theory will soon collapse, by David Gerlenter.

A RUGBY PLAYER IN AUSTRALIA AND A PRESIDENT IN AMERICA: Two positions on homosexuals. The country's top rugby player (Israel Folau) loses 4 million dollars for upholding Christian teaching in a text message. The county's commander in chief (President Trump) says "great" to "gay marriage".

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitical Review: Saturday April 27

                                                   by A. Joseph Lynch and Dr. David Pence

THE WEEKLY BRIEF

COMPOUND INTELLIGENCE MISDIRECTION: 

The same officials who missed the role of Saudis in 9-11-2001 fabricated

the role of Russians in the 2016 election   

The American intelligence services for two decades were misled by American political correctness and Saudi Arabian officials about the Islamic roots of the Salafist Sunni movement which was the mother's milk for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. That Sunni movement today remains the ideological font of worldwide terror (including ISIS, Boko Haram and al Shabaab). It is based in Mecca and Medina promulgated by Wahhabi clerics and protected  by the guardians of the holy places - the Saudi royal clan. Inside Saudi Arabia, none of these groups are tolerated because military leadership stays in the hands of the Saudis. Ideologically they are bedmates but they will kill each other over who should lead the jihad. Think Stalin, Trotsky, and Communism.

When Donald Trump ran for President, many of the same American officials who missed the ideological home base of Islamic terror were misled by anti-Russian British intelligence officials about Donald Trump. These ambitious American careerists were religious illiterates. They shared the coastal elite's animus toward Trump. Once again they were manipulated by stronger men of different countries with clear views of their own countries' strategic interests. Both the prolonged Russian investigation and the Mueller era FBI non-investigation of Saudis and 9/11 came from agency careerists trying to win favor in the Washington DC baby boomer culture. That culture is enveloped by careerist power couples and blind to religion, male groups, and nations as the driving agents of history.

The Mueller Report, while unable to prove any active coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian government, showed they both had interests in defeating Hillary Clinton. She was the favored candidate of the military and security establishments of the Anglo-American alliance. That wasn't because she was a great leader but because she was utterly predictable and malleable by the bureaucrats. There is no discussion in the Report of the foreign manipulation by British and Australian agents. They expertly "recruited" the shared hatred for Donald Trump by John McCain and Hillary Clinton. The British as geopolitical actors were understandably against any new strategic alliance between the US and Russia. That would benefit the US but greatly diminish British importance in the asymmetrical Anglo alliance. Christopher Steele got paid but his motivation preceded requests for opposition research. Christopher Steele is in the best James Bond tradition of British intelligence.  He will take whatever pleasures and personal benefits come his way but in the end he wants to serve his country and hurt her enemies. He despises Russia and considered Donald Trump a foolish immature American who didn't understand the adult world of international alliances. The American politicians and intelligence officers he manipulated were no match for a man toughened as head of the Russian desk for M16 in London. The Russian dossier is a foreigner's disinformation campaign which had plenty of willing American megaphones. There is nothing so easily manipulated by foreigners as the small mindedness of party and government careerists - it's a bipartisan coastal elite character fault.

The Mueller report has laid out a case for impeaching the President for obstruction of justice. Mueller clearly explained he didn't indict Trump because of a Justice Department legal opinion that the way to charge a President is by articles of impeachment not indictments. He did say in a footnote that Trump could be indicted when out of office. The rebellion against the elected President continues. Mr. Mueller has never been a neutral. He has put forth the case and now the House is called on to impeach. The fact that many of us think the case is not only weak but ludicrous does not mean Mueller has not deliberately put forth an impeachment brief. The impeachment temptation may be irresistible for the Trump-haters. Even knowing the Senate would not remove him from office, the House Democrats could say the House patriots impeached but the Senate partisans covered up.

We need serious opposition to President Trump from the Congress about a foreign ally but it certainly isn't Russia. The disastrous foreign policy of the US allying with the Saudi perpetrators of 9/11 continues under President Trump. An alliance of Christian nations with Russia that could have taught Trump about the Salafists and reconfigured post Cold war international relations was sidelined by the prolonged Mueller investigation. Score one for the Brits. Add a cheer from the Saudis and Israelis. The Americans and international order are the losers. The small-mindedness of Trump's enemies in our own government and the brazenness of foreign leaders and operatives taking advantage of this situation present a stunning contrast. There are many powerful characters in this drama representing foreign national and "western-globalist" interests which are harmful to Christianity, the American nation, and our American President. Trump is more clear-sighted than the Bush brothers but he is blinded by his own inordinate hostility toward Iran and Barack Obama. He is missing the Saudi trickery partly because the Saudi hatred of Shiites dovetails with Israel's Netanyahu policy of demonizing Iran and fearing Hezbollah. There are very few American nationalists in either political party or the news media who can help sort out this confusion. It was one of the most substantial accomplishments of President Obama and his Iranian foreign policy team that he resisted "the blob" and made an opening to Iran. This was as significant as the Nixon Kissinger opening to China that was so crucial in the Cold War. But Obama's initiative has been swallowed by a bitter Republican partisanship and a blatant Israeli intervention. There are almost no American Christian thinkers who have enough of a geopolitical map in their heads to help sort this out and explain that the Shiites are our natural religious allies in this religious war.

Still we can take heart that things are much clearer today than before the Trump presidency. Robert Mueller will not do well in the light. Myopia and misdirection are the defining characteristics of Mueller's career in the FBI. Maybe it is some cosmic Karma that the FBI chief's stunning lack of interest in the Saudis after 9/11 was balanced by the Special Counsel's dragged out investigations of Russians after the Trump election. Mueller's inattention to the Saudis as FBI head in the decade after 9/11 is like Comey's whitewash of  Hillary Clinton for obstructing justice. The contrasts with how they treated President Trump make the ugly truth even more clear.

We are in a much better situation than the first years of the Trump Presidency. His calls were being leaked daily while his policies were resisted at every turn and level of the government. He was seriously thought of as a traitor. Those impugning his loyalty did so in the name of professionalism and "higher loyalties". Their own malfeasance was covered by the secrecy of the investigation.

May the light of this Easter season help us as Christians and American nationalists see clearly our natural allies - the Orthodox nations (esp. Russia), the Shia Muslim nations (starting with Iraq) and the Chinese and Hindu nationalists beset by Salafist Sunnis. We treat too many religious Muslim brothers as enemies. We treat our real Muslim enemies (who are much fewer) as friends.

President Trump has inherited a great intelligence and foreign policy failure that is much bigger than the Russia hoax. In the President's exuberance he is now driving even faster down a misguided path that the bipartisan foreign policy establishment initiated before he was elected. We owe him our loyalty and thanks and cooperation in securing our border and building our infrastructure. We also owe him our loyal opposition against collusion with Saudi Arabia. When he first announced for office he said we have to figure out "where the hell the hate is coming from." That question has not yet been answered. He is right it has something to do with Islam. He is misdirected that it is centered in Shiite Iran.

The two major sources of Salafist Sunni terror are 1) the ISIS caliphate of al Baghdadi which is now occult (thanks to Iran, Iraq and President Trump) and 2) the Wahhabi Saudi guardians of Mecca and Medina who operate in the wide open with our blessing. Our alliance with the Saudis betrays the 9/11 victims and shames our flag. We also must not forget the thousands of American men killed in Iraq after Salafist Sunnis funded largely by Saudi affiliates refused to allow a Shia majority government rule peacefully in ancient Babylon. The American removal of Saddam Hussein became the tragedy of Iraq when our major Arab ally undercut the establishment of an elected Shiite government. May we unveil the masks of the Evil One who slays Muslims at prayer in New Zealand, Christians at worship in Sri Lanka,  Shiite children at play in Yemen and Shiite men in protest in Saudi Arabia. None of this is our Father's work.     

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

THE LAITY AS AN ORDER: There is an important idea here. Is laicizing priests an insult?

FRANCISCAN UNIVERSITY AND SCANDAL: Like almost all male religious orders the Franciscans are full of rot - this is just beginning.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH CATHOLIC JOURNALISM: The editor of Crisis uses the death of Fr James Schall (RIP) to blast Pope Francis  Fr. Schall taught my son at Georgetown. He told him he was more Roman than Greek and we Minnesotans took that as a compliment. I thought Fr. Schall was more a Greek than Roman. He stayed at our home and a group of men I recruited went on a long trip with him. He was utterly enjoyable and instructive. To this day I remember two corrections he made about my political thinking and personality which were devastatingly accurate. Like almost all "conservative Catholic intellectuals" he missed the meaning of Donald Trump. He thought at first he was the favorite of the liberal cable news people because they thought he was the only Republican Hillary Clinton could beat. Quite the contrary he was the only man who could beat her and the media. Fr. Schall always struck me as much more a man of philosophy than prayer, of speech than action. But face to face, he bore the truth to both my son and me. He once wrote on my son's paper, "too much Pence, too little Plato." He was a phenomenal teacher. May his great soul rest in peace.

Apparently the only expert on Islam at Catholic blogspots Crisis and Catholic Thing is William Kilpatrick. We critically reviewed his very good book on Islam, Christianity and Atheism: Fighting for the Soul of the West. In his most recent Easter week contribution, he concludes from the bombing at Sri Lanka that all Muslims will cheer the killers as martyrs because of the conversion and jihad mandate in Islam. This is utterly irresponsible on his part but he is safe where he writes.
 Two groups have made our fight against the jihadists so incoherent. Those who say Islam has nothing to do with the fight and those who say Islam is metaphysically our enemy. As Kilpatrick says it is precisely the good Muslims who take God seriously who are our enemies.  Kilpatrick like Robert  Spencer at Jihad Watch and the deceased James Schall and the still breathing Cardinal Burke are all in the Islam is the Enemy camp. Their preening intellectual purity puts Christians around the world at great risk. They are right that the pursuit of the "moderate Muslim" is really a search for apostates who have become Western secularists but still carry their Muslim names from their parents. There are a lot of them in the Democratic Party endorsing abortion and sodomy while decrying Islamophobia. But that is not the whole of the debate and religious men should understand the claims of other religious traditions. The great majority of Muslims do not believe that killing Christians at prayer is doing God's Will. And because they are Muslims, the question before the house must be: what is God's Will? The secularists tell us no-one knows so ask that question in the privacy of your own house. Be realists think national interests or be globalists and spread democracy and individual rights. Religious men say we must build our national communities and international relations on our honest attempts to discern God's Will and obey Him. (Our response to the New Zealand bombing of Muslims.)

CARDINAL SARA: A BISHOP'S WARNING: An interview in preview of his new book. Excerpts:

The spiritual crisis involves the entire world. But its source is in Europe. People in the West are guilty of rejecting God. They have not only rejected God. Friedrich Nietzsche, who may be considered the spokesman of the West, has claimed: “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him…” We have murdered God. In view of God’s death among men, Nietzsche would replace him with a prophetic “Superman.”

The spiritual collapse thus has a very Western character. In particular, I would like to emphasize the rejection of fatherhood. Our contemporaries are convinced that, in order to be free, one must not depend on anybody. There is a tragic error in this. Western people are convinced that receiving is contrary to the dignity of human persons. But civilized man is fundamentally an heir, he receives a history, a culture, a language, a name, a family. This is what distinguishes him from the barbarian. To refuse to be inscribed within a network of dependence, heritage, and filiation condemns us to go back naked into the jungle of a competitive economy left to its own devices. Because he refuses to acknowledge himself as an heir, man is condemned to the hell of liberal globalization in which individual interests confront one another without any law to govern them besides profit at any price.
In this book, however, I want to suggest to Western people that the real cause of this refusal to claim their inheritance and this refusal of fatherhood is the rejection of God. From Him we receive our nature as man and woman. This is intolerable to modern minds. Gender ideology is a Luciferian refusal to receive a sexual nature from God. Thus some rebel against God and pointlessly mutilate themselves in order to change their sex. But in reality they do not fundamentally change anything of their structure as man or woman. The West refuses to receive, and will accept only what it constructs for itself. Transhumanism is the ultimate avatar of this movement. Because it is a gift from God, human nature itself becomes unbearable for western man.

This revolt is spiritual at root. It is the revolt of Satan against the gift of grace. Fundamentally, I believe that Western man refuses to be saved by God’s mercy. He refuses to receive salvation, wanting to build it for himself. The “fundamental values” promoted by the UN are based on a rejection of God that I compare with the rich young man in the Gospel. God has looked upon the West and has loved it because it has done wonderful things. He invited it to go further, but the West turned back. It preferred the kind of riches that it owed only to itself.

Africa and Asia are not yet entirely contaminated by gender ideology, transhumanism, or the hatred of fatherhood. But the Western powers’ neo-colonialist spirit and will to dominate pressures countries to adopt these deadly ideologies.

THE OLD WOOD BURNT AWAY, THE EUCHARIST WAS SHELTERED, THE STONE ALTAR AND GOLDEN CROSS REMAINED, THE PEOPLE PRAYED AND SANG AVE MARIA:

NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL IN PARIS, FRANCE, MONDAY IN HOLY WEEK 2019

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

BRITISH INTELLIGENCE AND THE TRUMP COLLUSION CHARGES: They admit they were stirring the waters in 2015 in this Guardian article from 2017. Nations are actors in politics. That shouldn't be a news flash. The British intelligence establishment like the Big Three agency heads in the US didn't want Donald Trump elected. The US chiefs had visceral deep domestic reasons to dislike Trump. The Brits were against his new ideas about foreign policy and Russia.

BERNIE SANDERS: The anti-Saudi candidate.

III. THE NATIONS

SRI LANKA: Salafist Sunnis kill over 300 Catholics at worship. Some blame "terrorists not a religion." Others blame Islam as a religion of terror. US incoherence continues in our inability to see world terror is overwhelmingly a Salafist Sunni project instigated by the Salafist Sunnis allowed to be the protectors of the Holy Sites - the real position of religious authority in Islam.

SPAIN: Will a nationalist win there April 28?

ISLAMIC GOALS IN PALESTINE DON'T INCLUDE TWO STATES: The founder of Islamic Jihad in Palestine was Fathi Shaqaqi. He was assassinated in Malta. His story is well told by Al Jazeera.

NATIONS OF SOUTH AMERICA: From Unasur to Prosur.

INDONESIA: A fresh face nationalist reformer and a top Muslim cleric prove an unbeatable coalition. The biggest Muslim country (by number for Muslims) is structuring its national life more clearly as Islamic.

EL SALVADOR: Gets a populist.

BLAME IRAN: Catholic Knights of Columbus CEO joins the anti-Iran chorus criticizing Iraq's choice of allies. Carl Anderson in the Wall Street Journal says even though ISIS has been removed, Iranian militias are preventing Christians from returning to traditional Christian towns in Iraq.

PAKISTAN AND IRAN - THE TWO NEW NEIGHBORS OF AFGHANISTAN: A remarkable new development.

SAUDI ARABIA - SAUDIS EXECUTE SHIITES: 33 of 37 are Shiites - Does the anti Shiite violence of Saudi Arabia count as terrorism or anti-terrorism? Jamal Khashoggi and the Jews. Nuclear technology to the Saudis?

WHAT THREE STATES PLAY THE LARGEST ROLE IN INFLUENCING UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY: The British, the Saudis, and the Israelis. The Russians aren't close. None of these three allies want the US to have a close alliance with the other world nuclear power. Remember that old foreign policy dictum: "No one hates a new best friend more than an old best friend." 

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

BURNING CHRISTIAN CHURCHES: Satan and Racism.

THE SACRED IN A PROFANE WORLD: A discussion between Roger Scruton and Hamza Yusuf. On images and selfies and "the given things" in nature. Islam and Christianity in deep agreement.

CHINA AND HER MUSLIMS: Cultural education en masse.

AUSTRALIA - RUGBY STAR LOSES MILLIONS AND IS OSTRACIZED: He condemns eight traditional sins - but one has a lobby so he is out. There are a lot of adulterers and alcoholics in the league - but respecting them is not league policy. Israel Folau takes one for the Lord.

KATE SMITH IN A BURQA OVER A SONG  PAUL ROBESON SANG BEST:

Statue of Kate Smith Covered on Good Friday 2019 in front of Philadelphia Sports Complex

In a freakish secular rendition of the Catholic practice of covering statues during Lent and Muslim practices of covering women in general, the Philadelphia Flyers have covered their statue of 1930's singer Kate Smith whose rendition of God Bless America was heard at Philadelphia hockey games (since 9/11/2001) as well as in the seventh inning stretch of New York Yankee baseball. Someone discovered (and reported to the New York Daily News) that Mrs. Smith (1907-1986) had once sung That's Why the Darkies Were Born. Funny - it was one of my favorite spirituals from previous days on the left. The black Communist Paul Robeson also saw the song as more a tribute to the working people than an ode to racism. Here is Robeson's rendition. A revealing obituary of Mrs. Smith.

          

The Beautiful Ballad:

Brothers/Sisters

When the world began, there was work to be done and it seems that someone… left it to the colored man. 

Brothers/ sisters What must be must be.  

Though the balance is wrong, your faith must be strong…. accept your destiny. 

Brothers! Listen to me.

Someone had to pick the cotton

Someone had to pick the corn

Someone had to slave and be able to sing

That's why darkies were born;

Someone had to laugh at trouble

Though he was tired and worn

Had to be contented with any old thing

That's why darkies were born;

Sing, sing, sing when you're weary and

Sing when you're blue

Sing, sing, that's what you taught

All the white folks to do;

Someone had to fight the Devil

Shout about Gabriel's Horn

Someone had to stoke the train

That would bring God's children to green pastures

That's why darkies were born

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitics Review: Saturday December 22

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

THE WEEKLY BRIEF
President Trump, General Mattis, and the Emergence of  a Nationalist Foreign Policy. 

President Trump is withdrawing US troops from Syria and reducing the 15,000 Afghan mission by 7000 men. (Joshua Landis from the University of Oklahoma is probably the best commentator on Syria in America. He shows the key role of Turkey in this move. We apologize that RT was the only news source for Landis analysis.)The foreign policy establishment represented by Lindsey Graham and Bob Mendenz are apoplectic. They should be. Secretary of Defense James Mattis has resigned stating his reasons in a principled letter.  General Mattis said the President deserved a Secretary of Defense who shared his policy goals. There are not many men around who will fit that bill.  Very few men who have advanced in the military or foreign policy establishment in the last 30 years advocate the Trump nation to nation approach. General Mattis was very clear in stating his own views about strengthening alliances, confronting malignant actors and being wisely wary of competitors. His positions are the conventional wisdom of the last several National Security Strategy reports. (We discussed this a year ago in Globalist Generals and a Nationalist President). These conventional "bipartisan" Western goals are not the President's.
 President Trump as a nationalist wants to establish more nation to nation relations. He understands in the Mideast that it will be nation states-Turkey, Iraq and Syria that establish order where ISIS once reigned free. His desire for strong nation states to establish order in the region is in contrast with Israel which often prefers failed or civilly divided states as neighbors.  President Trump does not agree with the last three National Security Strategic assessments which saw Russia as "a revisionist power" who along with China "want to shape a world antithetical to our values and interests." Trump does not see grand strategy as the three encirclements of Russia, China and Iran. He is unfortunately very aggressive in isolating Iran. He has Republican and military support for his aggressive anti Iran coalition joined by the Saudis, Sunni Gulf kingdoms and Israel. (Hopefully this one large contradictory emphasis will be exposed and reversed by the Khashoggi--MbS affair and more investigation of the Saudi role in the 9/11 attacks.)   Trump has never wanted to encircle Russia and he is open to a competitive great power relation with China instead of a South China Sea "containment of the emerging enemy" approach. The US foreign policy experts and the "western alliance" globalists all oppose his instincts.
Most military men have been educated in the West vs the Rest worldview.  This is also true of British and Australian foreign services who want the English speaking West to prevail over a multilingual multi civilizational alliance of the great nations. {One of the reasons Fox News is so schizophrenic in its coverage of Trump is that as a news organization, they have no cultural feel for American nationalism. Their Australian roots(and their overloaded English accented white boy commentators representing "the West") have favored a "Western values, Anglo modernist white individualistic" synthesis over a territorial American nationalistic multiracial religious working man accent.
 There are almost no Fox, CNN, ABC or PBS commentators who could explain(much less advocate) the alternative vision of China, Russia and the US bandwagoning rather than confronting, encircling and power balancing. President Trump doesn't have a Kissinger to explain the larger Nixon like realignment he is formulating. Unfortunately there are no Democratic Senators who can overcome the hate Trump movement to join him in a serious  antiwar initiative. This is the bitter fruit of partisanship that found no Republican senators aiding President Obama in his reluctance  to bomb Syria and his bold initiative with Iran.
 President Trump has resisted his own party and our failed military strategists. For his first two years in office he needed loyal military men in his top offices to protect his office even more than promote his policies. Now he must initiate or perish.  He needs fellow citizens, educated journalists and statesmen to follow his lead in learning from the history of the 20th century to formulate an American nationalist foreign policy.  It will take us all to break the stranglehold  of lobby funded careerists like Sen. Robert Menendez, ambitious presidential candidates like Senator Marco Rubio and honest but mistaken patriots like General James Mattis. This is especially true in applying nationalist perspectives to Mideast foreign policy. 
 (Addendum 12/23/2018: General Mattis in his resignation suggested late February 2019 as his departure time. President  Trump a few days later said it would be Jan 1. The media exploded that Trump was "forcing Mattis out early". When a high ranking  subordinate tells his commanding officer he doesn't agree with his policy but he'd like to stay an extra two months, no commander in chief worth his salt would comply. In a corporation the human resource department would accompany you to your desk and get your personals as you surrendered internet access and are terminated immediately.
 Ask Harry Truman about the duty of Presidents to maintain civilian control over popular generals. The Hate Trump Psychosis has the Left cheering for the globalist military network continuing unwinnable wars in Syria and Afghanistan  against  an elected  President trying to extricate us. These are wars about national governance that our military can't win... but can't bring themselves to leave. Our officers need the authority of an elected president to bring the troops home. We all need the foreign nation states of  Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria and Afghanistan to establish political compromise and military control in their respective countries. Order follows from strong nation states in agreement about their shared boundaries. Every American nationalist and every left wing anti war progressive should be singing together: "Thank God for President Trump." )    

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CHURCH

A NEW INNER CIRCLE NEEDED: Pope Francis governs by trusting top allies for advice and delegation of tasks. The effectiveness of his governance depends on how well he discerns the trustworthy. Unfortunately several top cardinals who have won his trust must be convincingly exposed as part of the problem not the solution.  In America they include Donald Wuerl and Blasé Cupich. In Honduras it is Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga. If seminarian abuse isn't enough, here is a widow.  The Honduran bishops deny. Maradiaga right hand man is out. All from July, 2018.

TURN YOURSELVES IN: Pope Christmas Message: To abusers he said, "Turn yourself over to civil authorities and prepare for Divine Judgment."  He thanked journalists for uncovering crimes. He also condemned "the infidelity of those who betray their vocation"..."they hide behind their good intentions to stab their brothers and sisters in the back to sow weeds, division, and bewilderment. They resemble Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus Christ and did not repent. They find spiritual and intellectual excuses to continue on their path to perdition."  He still concludes that the light of Christmas is greater than the darkness of corruption.

MARSHALL AND MICHAEL: Interview Taylor Marshall and Michael Voris - very interesting profile. His momma's lesson on abortion was a key and the faith of his dad and their loyalty to Notre Dame. On Pope Francis, all three of these good men are off base. Voris has an impressive  background as an investigative reporter. He is one of the very few authentic reporters on the depth and details of clergy corruption. His own grievous lack of filial piety toward the Holy Father is matched by one of the co hosts who seems to revel in the  "resist authority" zeitgeist. The EWTN hosts are also guilty of stabbing the Pope repeatedly in the back while ignoring the investigative work and crimes in their own dioceses. There is no courage in attacking the Pope while running from the local stench that cries out for expose.  It is a difficult task to combine filial piety, fraternal correction, and the necessity for an exorcism  of the huge cancerous homosexual network from within the apostolic fraternity.  It is a difficult necessary task which will  require many talented, courageous and prudent bishops, priests, and laymen. Bashing the Pope is no way to establish patriarchal fraternity. Investigating by name and offense the diocesan networks and corrupt religious orders is essential. This effort will be lay led at first.  They will have an effective place to bring evidence when serious bishops appoint diocesan Eliot Ness like promoters of justice to coordinate the inquisitions.  Michael Voris is a very wounded warrior but he is a warrior in a time of war. His betrayal of Pope Francis just when we need to unite many Catholics against our most corrupt clergy is sowing great confusion. Marshall Taylor is a good teacher swallowed by his own pomposity in betraying the Pope. Both of these men are opening to an alliance with Catacomb Catholics who oppose Vatican Two, the Luminous Mysteries, the Novus Ordo, and Pope Francis. This is the wrong coalition. These men can not  provide a glue for a priestly fraternity and a Maccabean brotherhood of laymen. Their misdirection is feeding the power of chicken hawk enablers like James Martin. The Pope must be our axis of unity not a paternal punching bag.

WHAT'S IN A NAME? The Ukrainian government nears passing a new law that would force the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to add "Russia" to its title since it recognizes Patriarch Kiril as its spiritual head and prays for him accordingly in the liturgy. Under the new law, Ukrainian Orthodox priests would be banned from visiting and ministering at Ukrainian military installations. Meanwhile the "Ukrainian Orthodox Church" title would be transferred to a schismatic church separate from Kiril. After Christmas the Ukrainian parliament will begin to consider a law that would be used to transfer church property...

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

PRESIDENT-LED REFORM: Real Criminal Justice Reform - a Trump-Kushiner bipartisan triumph. The First Step Act.   The Trump consensus in 2020 will not be forged by a plea to "suburban women". It will be a nationalist "work and protect" appeal to black, brown, yellow, and white men to come together as fellow citizens and strengthen our common identity as Americans again under God. Men bond by territory even more deeply than race, class, or party. Christianity orders us to be brothers.  Each particular nation gives men a practical historical and territorial form to express and live out the public love of brotherhood. Public interracial cross-class brotherhood is as fundamental a form of Christian love as male-female marriage. It turns out the nationalists pay more attention to the imprisoned males than the feminist lavender coalition on the left or the war party tough on crime gang on the right. This was a serious reform that made a reality out of two favorite chants: "black lives matter" and "love trumps hate".  It was bipartisan in the best tradition. There is a group of Democrats who could help him considerably in both his infrastructure building agenda at home and his empire dismantling abroad.

FAREWELL WEEKLY STANDARD: Weep not for the Weekly Standard.

NAZIS IN AMERICA? A famous German reporter for the country's largest newspaper came to America to find the rural supporters of Donald Trump. He wanted to show the Nazi specter that is alive and well in small town America. Actually the largest ethnic group in America is German if you don't lump all the Hispanics. The State of Minnesota has the 4th largest Germanic proportion (38%). The German scribe came to Fergus Falls, Minnesota and spun quite a yarn. Trouble is those Minnesota yokels found out about his fairy tale. The rural-big city divide found the truth tellers from the country exposing the big city reporter who has lost his job. There really aren't a lot of cryptic Nazis in Fergus Falls but there is a William Tell-like resistance to tyrants and liars.

APOLLO 8 AT 50: This Christmas marks the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Apollo 8 mission - the first time man orbited the moon. When three American men made the journey, they brought their Bibles with them and delivered a Christmas message the world would not have heard had the Soviets beat us there first.

III. THE NATIONS

ISIS IS GONE - TIME TO GO HOME: The US is in Syria to help Israel against Iran. Time to leave? 
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Excellent review of UAE and their young ruler MbZ who is a serious influence on Saudi MbS. The UAE is aggressively pro-monarchy, anti-populist, and anti-Muslim Brotherhood. They see Qatar and Al Jazeera as an enemy.

MORE LITTLE WARS TV: The guys from Little Wars TV teach us this week about little-known yet pivotal battle from the American Revolution at Princeton.