Friday BookReview: Francis X. Maier on Italy's AUGUSTO DEL NOCE

The Age of Secularization

by Augusto Del Noce

(translated by Carlo Lancellotti)


[This review appeared in First Things magazine. Mr. Maier, after serving as editor-in-chief of the National Catholic Register, became an aide to Archbishop Charles Chaput].


This spring marks the twentieth anniversary of NewTech98. Officially the "International Conference on New Technologies and the Human Person: Communicating the Faith in the New Millennium," Newtech98 was sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and the Archdiocese of Denver. It had one main achievement. It brought together in an unprecedented dialogue dozens of Church leaders from Latin America, North America, Europe, and the Vatican, and senior executives from Adobe Systems, Microsoft, IBM, and other tech innovators. Media scholars and journalists also took part.

Amid the meeting’s praise for all things techno, two men raised concerns. The first was Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris, who spoke of technology’s subversive effect on human identity and self-understanding. The second was Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly. Postman gave the most arresting talk of the three-day event. It included these words:

A sophisticated perspective on technological change includes one’s being skeptical of Utopian and Messianic visions drawn by those who have no sense of history or of the precarious balances on which culture depends. In fact, if it were up to me, I would forbid anyone from talking about the new information technologies unless the person can demonstrate that he or she knows something about the social and psychic effects of the alphabet, the mechanical clock, the printing press, and telegraphy. In other words, knows something about the costs of great technologies … 

In the past, we experienced technological change in the manner of sleep-walkers. Our unspoken slogan has been "technology über alles," and we have been willing to shape our lives to fit the requirements of technology, not the requirements of culture. This is a form of stupidity, especially in an age of vast technological change. We need to proceed with our eyes wide open so that we may use technology rather than be used by it.

At the time, sitting in the audience, I thought both men—the Christian leader and the secular scholar—were prophetic. But in fact, they were thirty years late to the party. As early as the 1960s, the philosopher Augusto Del Noce had raised the same concerns more deeply and comprehensively. And he’d written some of the best analysis anywhere of technology’s impact on Western politics, economics, and culture, and postwar Europe’s soul.

At the height of Soviet power, Del Noce predicted with stunning accuracy the collapse of Marxism-Leninism. He foresaw the sexual revolution in its weirdest forms, including the transformation of the political left from advocate of the working classes to defender of sexual "freedom." He explained the link between the fierce rejection of traditional morality in the 1960s and the same decade’s ferocious moralizing for radical change. And he described in great detail the fundamentally totalitarian nature of the West’s emerging tech civilization.
                       

A committed Catholic and one of Italy’s leading public intellectuals until his death in 1989, Del Noce is largely unknown in the United States. But one hopes that will change with the recent release of The Age of Secularization, translated by Carlo Lancellotti and published by McGill-Queens University Press. The Age of Secularization is a kind of "prequel" to Del Noce’s The Crisis of Modernity, also translated by Lancellotti and published (in 2015) by McGill-Queens. Both books are collections of essays. But whereas Modernity deals with Del Noce’s later work, Secularization covers the social turmoil of 1964–69.

Del Noce’s use of the word "totalitarian" needs some explanation. He did not mean a society run by bullyboys in jackboots. He was far more worried about a culture addicted to science and technology as the only "real" forms of knowledge; a culture hollowed out and stupefied by the material well-being its tools provide; a culture subject to the resulting philosophy of scientism that renders questions of transcendence irrelevant by confining the human horizon to the here and now.

He defined the technological society as one that, in practice,

accepts all of Marxism’s negations against contemplative thought, religion and metaphysics; that accepts, therefore, the Marxist reduction of ideas to instruments of production; [but] that, on the other hand, rejects the revolutionary-messianic aspects of Marxism, and thus what is still religious in the revolutionary idea. In this regard, it truly represents the bourgeois spirit in its pure state, the bourgeois spirit triumphant over its two traditional adversaries, transcendent religion and revolutionary thought.

Put another way, Del Noce believed that Marxism is inherently atheist—atheist at its core. It succeeded as a mass movement by combining a strong critique of economic injustice with its claim to be scientific and its "metaphysical" promises of a utopian future. It fatally crippled the old religiously informed social order precisely because of its own capacity for religious-like zeal. But the logic of Marxist atheism inevitably destroys its own metaphysical, millenarian dimension.

Thus, historically, Marxism is a stalking horse for something else. It’s a stage in the development of a fully technological civilization. By discrediting traditional moral ideals and comprehensive systems of belief—including even belief in itself—Marxism clears the way for a more effective, pragmatic materialism that has little need to attack religion directly, because it renders the supernatural useless and implausible. The more well-being technology provides, the stronger its momentum toward technocracy. And technocracy becomes technopoly—becomes totalitarian—not by gassing dissidents, but by gradually commandeering the human imagination and excluding human reason from appeals to any higher rational benchmark, any higher moral authority, than itself.

Sex plays a key supporting role in this process. Absent a higher meaning to life, what matters is feeling as alive as possible, right now. And few things impart that feeling more pleasantly than sex. For Del Noce, the sexual revolution has nothing to do with personal liberation or "healthy sex." He sees it as the ethical expression of scientism and a masked form of neo-gnostic contempt for the body. In technological terms, the human body is inefficient and awkward—it’s weak, it’s clumsy, it decays, and ultimately it dies. It’s a defective machine in need of rewiring. Moreover, if the only legitimate form of knowledge is empirically verifiable facts and data, then sexual relationships and love have no higher moral meaning. They’re reduced to mere biology and the satisfaction of physical release—in effect, a social safety valve. The rest is emotional illusion at the service of evolution.

Even more dangerously, absent a respect for permanent truths about the world and human nature, "a society stops judging in terms of true and false, [and then] it cannot but grant the right to mendacity, to insincerity, which will be regarded as licit whenever they produce a positive outcome." As Del Noce notes, the rapid "diffusion of the technological mentality has been accompanied by the disappearance of the words true and false, good and bad, even beautiful and ugly." And "the first consequence of the rejection of permanent values has been the replacement of the dyad 'true-false' with the dyad 'progress-reaction.' "

Del Noce was not a Luddite. He welcomed the obvious benefits in new technologies. Like Jacques Maritain, whom he admired, he praised the good in modernity, especially "its attention to the subjective aspect of the apprehension of truth, and thus to freedom; to the form in which truth is welcomed as such." In the words of Lancellotti, Del Noce understood that "we cannot just rely on a mechanical repetition of [religious] formulas, because what we received from our forebears is conditioned by the questions they faced, and we ourselves can only think in terms of the questions we are facing."

But Del Noce also knew how easily a respect for historical circumstances can morph into a belief that truth is culturally created and conditioned—and therefore adaptable (read: malleable) as needed. Thus, he saved some of his sharpest criticism for Catholic progressives who, in his view, served as flacks for "progressive" politics and secular irreligion within the Church herself, no matter how pure their intentions. Complaints in today’s Church, even among some of her leaders, about "fixist," "rigid," and "abstract" doctrines policed by "doctors of law" are anything but new. Del Noce knew them well in his own time and saw them as anti-intellectual and rooted in a kind of neo-Modernism.

Twenty years after Newtech98, the possibilities for human development it addressed have matured into realities—some good, some much less so. How to understand our current cultural moment and what to do about it are urgent questions. They are dealt with eloquently in recent books by Patrick Deneen, Mary Eberstadt, Charles Chaput, Rod Dreher, R. R. Reno, Anthony Esolen, and others. But Carlo Lancellotti has done us an important service by making available in English the work of a man who saw the shape of today’s world more clearly, more deeply, and earlier than many others.

Augusto Del Noce is the most important thinker we don’t know. That’s our loss—but it needn’t remain so.

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, December 30

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

THE WEEKLY BRIEF

MYANMAR (BURMA): WHERE  BUDDHIST  NATIONALISM  OSTRACIZES   ETHNIC MUSLIMS

Myanmar is a South Asian country of 53 million. (see Burma:Map on Monday at AOA profile)The largest ethnic group is the Bamar (70%). In 1989 the military government changed many English names (like Burma) to ethnic equivalents (Myanmar). 88% of the people are Theravada Buddhist. British colonization after the Anglo-Burmese wars (1824-85) brought many Hindus and Muslims from present day India and Bangladesh into Burma. (Best map explanations here). The Burmese nationalist movement in the 1920's saw the immigrants from the subcontinent as part of  British colonization. The newcomers dominated industries and the colonial government. They were never perceived as seeking a common Burmese citizenship with the locals. The Burmese nationalist movement  rooted their nationalism in indigenous precolonial ethnic identities and the Buddhist religion. A 1982 law defining Burmese citizenship deliberately excluded the Rohingya people( a Muslim ethnic group that settled in Burma during the colonization period) when defining the ethnic groups constituting the Burmese nation. They excluded as natives anyone who could not show ancestry before 1823. The 1 million members of the Northwest state of Rahkine (bordering Bangladesh) are thus considered stateless and were advised to return to their previous homeland. In the last two years close to 10,000 Rahkine Muslims have been killed and 400,000 to 900,000 have fled-- mostly to  Muslim Bangladesh. It is ethnic cleansing by exile fed by brutal whole village exterminations to threaten those who might wish to stay. It is mindful of the wholesale ethnic/religous slaughter and mass migrations of the Indian partition in 1947 (15 million displaced; 1.5 million dead). 

    The replacement of Burma's military government (ruled 1962-2011) by the NLD party led by female democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi has actually increased the ability of nationalist advocates to take to the streets and expel their Muslim neighbors. Like the Arab Spring, so called democracy movements often unleash deeper communal identities and hatreds which eventually shape the course of events. The American press has been fairly incoherent in explaining this story. The photo shots of Hillary Clinton toasting Aung Kyi attest to the poverty of the democracy plus female empowerment=progress narrative. In the 200 year struggle for Burmese nationhood, Aung San (1915-1947), the father of Aung Kyi and the Father of the Nation looms large. He was an organizer of the Burmese Independence Army(1941)  and sided with the Japanese initially in WWII as a fighting alternative to British colonialism. He was the founder of the Burmese Communist Party as well.  His assassination in 1947 left his daughter a symbolic figure of national identity. How that national identity will be formalized and who will lead the country is a work in progress. Here is one account that takes religion and history seriously in explaining the carnage and resettlement. 

     Religion, nations, and men--we must learn to speak the real grammar of history to understand these events so we might build brotherhood under God and fraternity among the nations.   

I. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

STAR WARS BETRAYED: Bishop Barron doesn't like the feminist rewrite.

THE PRIEST ANNOUNCES HE IS GAY, THE BISHOP ALLOWS HIM; THE CONGREGATION APPLAUDS: Any problem here? The campaign to make the Catholic Church more gay-friendly is not for confused teens but for well-entrenched homosexual clergy. Here is another highly popular  "gay priest " from Ohio who announced his proclivities in a slightly more dramatic way from a high hotel window in Chicago (the Midwest center for the American homosexual priest subculture).

THE POPE REFORMING THE CLIQUES OF THE CURIA: Seeking men with the universal mission of the Church over the cliques of careerists. Very well put.

II. AROUND THE WORLD R&G ROUND UP

IF CHINA ABANDONS NORTH KOREA: A Scenario.

WHAT GORBACHEV HEARD ABOUT THE EXPANSION OF NATO: After his multiple concessions, archives show he was promised no eastward expansion of NATO by multiple US leaders.

III. AMERICAN POLITICS AND FOREIGN POLICY

A QUICK ROUNDUP ON THE PLOT TO GET TRUMP: They were defending the country from a racist narcissist who was also a sexist idiot. What's a patriot to do?

GENERAL MCMASTER - HIS WORLD VIEW AND SOME SOURCES: A one hour talk from before he was National Security Advisor. The NSS document is quite faithful to his vision. He cites two major sources for his overall vision: 1) Margaret Macmillan's book and essay The Rhyme of History comparing today to pre-WWI.

Reading her essay there is nothing here other than boilerplate international order platitudes. She does have a favorable mention of General McMaster who has returned the favor. She quotes his insight that accomplishing military objectives in a situation without strategic objectives is a fools errand. The Oxford lady professor compares the US alone to the Concert of Powers pre-1914. That seems unhelpful. A real Concert of Powers would include Russia, China, and Iran. That's the idea of a concert of powers vs. a balancing act of regional allies against regional powers. Mrs. MacMillan treats religion as sectarianism and nationalism as atavistic. She does say a good leader must truly understand the "viewpoint of another nation"-either friend or foe. There is no evidence she shows of understanding the three great civilizational nations who have become the boogymen of international globalists: China, Iran and Russia.

2) The Unquiet Frontier by Jakub Grygiel and A. Wess Mitchell - Grygiel and Mitchell are the authors that introduce the language of the "revisionist nations" who are supposedly challenging the US as the keeper of the international order. Three challenged allies are Taiwan, Israel, and Poland against the regional revisionists China, Iran, and Russia. This is the three encirclements strategy (our term) at the heart of the NSS document and American foreign policy as understood by John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and George Bush. President Obama rejected the "surround Iran" part of the strategy.

Here is the blurb for The Unquiet Frontier - a synopsis of the globalist vision if there ever was one:

From the Baltic to the South China Sea, newly assertive authoritarian states sense an opportunity to resurrect old empires or build new ones at America's expense. Hoping that U.S. decline is real, nations such as Russia, Iran, and China are testing Washington's resolve by targeting vulnerable allies at the frontiers of American power. The Unquiet Frontier explains why the United States needs a new grand strategy that uses strong frontier alliance networks to raise the costs of military aggression in the new century.

Jakub Grygiel and Wess Mitchell describe the aggressive methods rival nations are using to test U.S. power in strategically critical regions throughout the world. They show how rising and revisionist powers are putting pressure on our frontier allies―countries like Poland, Israel, and Taiwan―to gauge our leaders' commitment to upholding the U.S.-led global order. To cope with these dangerous dynamics, nervous U.S. allies are diversifying their national-security "menu cards" by beefing up their militaries or even aligning with their aggressors. Grygiel and Mitchell reveal how numerous would-be great powers use an arsenal of asymmetric techniques to probe and sift American strength across several regions simultaneously, and how rivals and allies alike are learning from America's management of increasingly interlinked global crises to hone effective strategies of their own.

The Unquiet Frontier demonstrates why the United States must strengthen the international order that has provided greater benefits to the world than any in history.

BEST SUMMARY OF CHANGES IN THE TAX BILL - NOTHING BUT THE FACTS

• Increases the standard deduction to $12,000 for single filers, $18,000 for heads of household, and $24,000 for joint filers in 2018 (compared to $6,500, $9,550, and $13,000 respectively under current law).
• Eliminates the personal exemption.
• Retains the charitable contribution deduction, and limits the mortgage interest deduction to the first $750,000 in principal value. Limits the state and local tax deduction to a combined $10,000 for income, sales, and property taxes. Taxes paid or accrued in carrying on a trade or business are not limited.
• Expands the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000, while increasing the phaseout from $110,000 in current law to $400,000 married couples. The first $1,400 would be refundable.
• Effectively repeals the individual mandate penalty, by lowering the penalty amount to $0, effective January 1, 2019.
• Raises the exemption on the alternative minimum tax from $86,200 to $109,400 for married filers, and increases the phaseout threshold to $1 million.
• Reduces corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, December 23

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch 

 THE WEEKLY BRIEF
The Practical Peace of Christian Realism vs the Perpetual War of Globalism 
In this season of Christmas, Christians assert with joy that the God of the Universe has become man and is calling all nations to live as brothers. As a Christian nation let us formulate a foreign policy consistent with our spiritual nature. Let us live among the nations. We support the nation of Israel in her present defensible borders and with her ancient capital of Jerusalem. We do not however accept the foreign policy of Israel advocating war and regime change in the Shia nation of Iran. Likewise in the season of peace we must reject the hateful anti Shia ideology of the Wahhabi state of Saudi Arabia.  We reject especially the aggressive war against Shia Muslims led by Crown Prince  Muhammed bin Salman in his own Kingdom and throughout the region. As religious men we must understand the war against religious freedom at the heart of the Saudi-Wahhabi kingdom. It is directed today most virulently at Shia populations which is strangely and fatally off the radar of "religious liberty activists". We must understand the  Christians in the Mideast have much more in common with Shia states fighting the salafist Sunni jihadists than with the present war policies of  Saudi Arabia and Israel. We must also remind our allies in  Israel  that a temporary alliance with the Wahhabis will never lead to the acceptance of a Jewish nation in the lands of Islam.  American nationalists must reject the shortsighted Saudi-Israeli alliance just as President Eisenhower rejected the French-Britain-Israel alliance against Egypt in the Suez Crisis of 1956.
 We reject the globalist insistence that the US as "a sole superpower" must deny regional powers their own natural spheres of influence. We Americans constitute one nation among many nations under one God. We do not share the exaltation of our own arms that seems the organizing principle of our 2017 NSS strategy (see below). Such military overreach apart from spiritual purposes is not a Christian nationalist foreign policy. A nationalist policy recognizes that dominant nations in various regions will organize relations in their own  regions. The US is not called to be  the keeper of global order and the suppressor of regional hegemony.  This has never been the America First vision of Donald Trump proposed in his speeches (see below).  The globalization vision of America as a suppressor of regional powers often calls itself  "realism." This atheistic worldview of Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain was rejected in three Presidential elections by American voters who elected two very different foreign policy dissidents in  Barack Obama and Donald Trump. The rejected globalist policy (still very much alive in the 2017 NSS document) treats  Russia, Iran and China as "revisionist" regional powers to be opposed by the US and various "regional allies."  President Obama rejected this approach to Iran and President Trump hopes to reject this approach to Russia. We would add that the US should not contest China's preeminent role in the China Sea.  The globalist deep state, the huge military armaments industry,  Saudi Arabia and Israel are presently set against an emerging American nationalist policy in the Mideast. The largest Christian nation in the world can no longer leave American foreign policy to a toxic combo of careerists in the foreign policy establishment and the moneyed lobbyists of foreign nations. We suggest at Christmas a Christian alternative.   

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

CHRISTMAS COMES: The centrality of Christ - John Piper. To receive Christ, first humility.

A RABBI, A BISHOP, AN IMMAN, A BLACK LEADER, A HISPANIC ACTIVIST, A LUTHERAN, AN ANGLICAN AND AN ORTHODOX: Male and female He created them THEY ALL SAID TOGETHER.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

SAUDI-IRAN RIVALRY AND DECISION TO RECOGNIZE JERUSALEM AS CAPITAL OF ISRAEL: The Iranians are looking like the defenders of Muslims and Arabs.

WAR DRUMS IN THE MIDEAST - A PIVOTAL MOMENT WAS THE 1996 NEOCONSERVATIVE "CLEAN BREAK" STRATEGY AIMED AT REGIME CHANGE IN IRAQ, SYRIA, AND IRAN: This explains things well.

AFTER BEING BOMBED FOR A YEAR, THE HOUTHIS SHOT A MISSILE AT SAUDI ARABIA: This is being touted as conclusive evidence that the Houthi defense from foreign aggression by the Muhammed bin Salman-led Saudis is really Iranian terrorism. The abysmal public and journalistic ignorance of recent international history allows these fabrications.

III. AMERICAN POLITICS AND FOREIGN POLICY

ISIS IS GONE AND ASSAD IS STILL HERE. TRUMP WAS RIGHT AND THE GREAT FOREIGN POLICY THINKERS WERE WRONG: The foreign policy establishment who were so spectacularly wrong about Assad are also wrong about Iran. Reading their old quotes is chilling.

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND - SENATOR FROM NEW YORK: Getting to know her.

ROY MOORE DEFEATED: Two takes. His white evangelical vote was lowest in two decades and is what beat him. Rusty Reno at First Things goes way too far in piling on Moore. He talks about Moore as a "transgressive" because he would not take down the Ten Commandments on Supreme Court grounds and he urged judges to disobey the federal imposition of marriage between same sex couples. Were the Maccabees transgressive? Reno has been one of the few writers at First Things who has been open to a more nationalistic view political loyalties in the Trump era. This article was not insight but piling on.

THE THREE ENCIRCLEMENTS. FOR MANY REALISTS THE FOREIGN POLICY OF A SUPERPOWER SHOULD BE ORGANIZING ALLIANCES AGAINST REGIONAL HEGEMONS - CHINA, IRAN AND RUSSIA:
1) Marco Rubio leads the way organizing the region against China.

2) Everybody against Iran in the Mideast is turning into Israel, the US, and Muhammed bin Salman against Iran. Our Secretary of Defense and UN ambassador are leading the charge. From DoD News-U.S. Defense Department:

"Everywhere you find turmoil [in the Middle East], you find Iran's hand in it," Defense Secretary James Mattis said Friday. Referring to U.S. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley's briefing Thursday which included physical evidence that Iran is providing ballistic missiles to the Houthis, Mattis said, "What we are doing in that region is standing by allies and partners, and we're, on one hand, exposing, on the other hand, helping them build their own capability to reject Iranian influence."

"We find Iran actively engaged in keeping [Syrian President] Assad in power, despite the murder of his own people on the industrial scale, including the use of chem ical weapons. We see what [Iran has] done with Lebanese Hizbullah in Lebanon and the threat to peace and the support they've given to Assad and the threat to Israel, for example." Mattis added, "The reason Ambassador Haley was there, and not one of our generals, is this is a diplomatically-led effort to expose to the world what Iran is up to."

3) The failed post Cold War policy of isolating Russia continues in the hysterical anti-Trump resistance movement trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.

CHINA - DEVELOPING CREDIT AND SOCIAL RANK: Another revolution by the most dynamic economic society on earth.

FOR MANY CONSERVATIVES THEIR PRINCIPAL PROBLEM IS THEY ADOPT THE STRAUSIAN ERROR THAT THE MODERN/CLASSIC DIVIDE IS THE FUNDAMENTAL AXIS MUNDI: It isn't - the Coming of Christ is the axis mundi. That is a major theme at AOA and is alluded to in this article at Public Discourse by Paul DeHart. His article becomes a long discussion of the natural law. DeHart is on to something much more fundamental. We have argued that the fall of the Modern West is not to be grieved. Christianity lives! At Crisis magazine an English writer speaks of the ethnic origins of nations and the possibility of stateless Europeans. He is missing the fundamental insight of Christopher Dawson that Christianity is the core cult of the European nations. The discussion among most of the neoconservative Catholic world on global Christianity and the nations is pretty thin gruel. This writer is stabbing at the right questions.

AMONG CONSERVATIVES YUVAL LEVIN OR VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: A good review of two positions among conservatives.

NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY - A NATIONALIST PRESIDENT AND HIS GLOBALIZED MILITARY: A new President but this seems the old strategy. Regional analysis from the National Security Strategy of the United States of America 2017 (below):

ON CHINA: A geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order is taking place in the Indo-Pacific region. China’s infrastructure investments and trade strategies reinforce its geopolitical aspirations. Its efforts to build and militarize outposts in the South China Sea endanger the free flow of trade, threaten the sovereignty of other nations, and undermine regional stability. China has mounted a rapid military modernization campaign designed to limit U.S. access to the region and provide China a freer hand there. China presents its ambitions as mutually beneficial, but Chinese dominance risks diminishing the sovereignty of many states in the Indo- Pacific. States throughout the region are calling for sustained U.S. leadership in a collective response that upholds a regional order respectful of sovereignty and independence. China is gaining a strategic foothold in Europe by expanding its unfair trade practices and investing in key industries, sensitive technologies, and infrastructure.

ON KOREA: In Northeast Asia, the North Korean regime is rapidly accelerating its cyber, nuclear, and ballistic missile programs. North Korea’s pursuit of these weapons poses a global threat that requires a global response. Continued provocations by North Korea will prompt neighboring countries and the United States to further strengthen security bonds and take additional measures to protect themselves. North Korea seeks the capability to kill millions of Americans with nuclear weapons. Iran supports terrorist groups and openly calls for our destruction.

ON RUSSIA: Although the menace of Soviet communism is gone, new threats test our will. Russia is using subversive measures to weaken the credibility of America’s commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions and governments. With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region. Russia continues to intimidate its neighbors with threatening behavior, such as nuclear posturing and the forward deployment of offensive capabilities.

ON NATO AND THE WILLINGNESS TO GO TO WAR FOR ANY MEMBER: The NATO alliance of free and sovereign states is one of our great advantages over our competitors, and the United States remains committed to Article V of the Treaty.

ON THE MIDEAST: The United States seeks a Middle East that is not a safe haven or breeding ground for jihadist terrorists, not dominated by any power hostile to the United States, and that contributes to a stable global energy market. For years, the interconnected problems of Iranian expansion, state collapse, jihadist ideology, socio-economic stagnation, and regional rivalries have convulsed the Middle East. Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, has taken advantage of instability to expand its influence through partners and proxies, weapon proliferation, and funding. Iran continues to perpetuate the cycle of violence in the region, causing grievous harm to civilian populations. Today,the threats from jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region’s problems. States have increasingly found common interests with Israel in confronting common threats.

ON SOUTH ASIA: We will deepen our strategic partnership with India and support its leadership role in Indian Ocean security and throughout the broader region. We will press Pakistan to intensify its counterterrorism efforts, since no partnership can survive a country’s support for militants and terrorists who target a partner’s own service members and officials. The United States will also encourage Pakistan to continue demonstrating that it is a responsible steward of its nuclear assets. We will continue to partner with Afghanistan to promote peace and securi in the region. We will continue to promote anti-corruption reform in Afghanistan to increase the legitimacy of its government and reduce the appeal of violent extremist organizations. We will help South Asian nations maintain their sovereign as China increases its influence in the region. We will insist that Pakistan take decisive action against militant and terrorist groups operating from its soil.

Pursue Threats to Their Source
Defeat Jihadist Terrorists

Jihadist terrorist organizations present the most dangerous terrorist threat to the Nation. America, alongside our allies and partners, is fighting a long war against these fanatics who advance a totalitarian vision for a global Islamist caliphate that justifies murder and slavery, promotes repression, and seeks to undermine the American way of life. Jihadist terrorists use virtual and physical networks around the world to radicalize isolated individuals, exploit vulnerable populations, and inspire and direct plots. The United States also works with allies and partners to deter and disrupt other foreign terrorist groups that threaten the homeland—including Iranian-backed groups such as Lebanese Hizballah. Jihadist terrorist organizations such as ISIS and al-Qa’ida are determined to Attack the United States and radicalize Americans with their hateful ideology. Non-state actors undermine social order through drug and human trafficking networks, which they use to commit violent crimes and kill thousands of American each year.

ON REGIONAL STRATEGIES: The United States must marshal the will and capabilities to compete and prevent unfavorable shifts in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East. Sustaining favorable balances of power will require a strong commitment and close cooperation with allies and partners because allies and partners magnify U.S. power and extend U.S. influence.

PRESIDENT TRUMP'S SPEECH INTRODUCED BY VP PENCE TO MILITARY AND SECRETARIES TILLERSON AND MATTIS: The speech. ISIS caliphate has crumbled. America First. A Wall and closing lottery and chain migration. In his speech, he called Russia and China "competitive rivals" who we could cooperate with. As an example he told of recent US warning Russia of terror attack in Russia which was foiled because of our information sharing. His speech opened many more paths than the written strategy which is a repetition of the triple encirclements of China, Iran, and Russia to prevent regional hegemony. This posing of America as a rival to regional powers in Europe, the Far East, and the Mideast is the globalist strategy which needs to be countered with an American nationalist and Christian realist approach that allows other large powers to dominate their own regional relations. The hate Trump movement is stopping a sharper discussion with the President about the contradictions in his policy. Again his speech was much less bellicose and more encouraging that a truly different approach is being considered. A major problem is certain personnel like his UN ambassador are deeply entrenched in the globalist four war paradigm (stalemate in Afghanistan, organize balancing coalitions vs. Iran, vs. China, vs. Russia).

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

CARDINAL LAW IS DEAD: The former Archbishop of Boston resigned in 2002 following the discovery that he had participated in shielding predator homosexual priests in Boston since 1984. It was soon discovered that this was not an isolated practice. Read AoA's argument for the masculine anthropology and punitive approach needed to  restore the Catholic priesthood.

AUSTRALIAN SEXUAL ABUSE: 90% of the victims in the Catholic institutions were male. Certain orders of brothers were the worst perpetrators. 30% of the abusers were priests. 1 of every 14 priests was an abuser. The Royal Commission had two particular suggestions for the Catholics. 1) Get rid of celibacy laws and 2) disallow the seal of Confession. The deep infiltration of the priesthood and religious orders by active homosexuals deeply opposed to traditional Catholic codes of purity and fraternity was not mentioned as a possible source of the scandal. The final report of the Commission deals with many more institutions than the Catholic Church and the specifically homosexual preponderance in catholic institutions was present in the larger report but not as striking. The desertion of the flock by shepherds and the absence of a functioning fatherhood is a consequence of a brotherhood fatally compromised by a homosexual subculture.  .

POLITICS CRIME AND ESTABLISHING ORDER: A look at crime and punishment in pre-revolutionary Russia. Many insights from this book by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, an emeritus professor of history at the University of California. There is something about this analysis of lawlessness in Petrograd that evokes CHICAGO.

"Hasegawa draws on the founder of sociology, Emile Durkheim, to explain these changes. Petrograd was in a condition of anomie, or normlessness, that arises from a breakdown in what Durkheim called organic solidarity. Organic solidarity are the systems of belief held in common by people of complex, modern societies characterized by the division of labor and social differentiation. It enables interdependence in an increasingly individualized world. The political and economic crises that fed the crime wave caused a breakdown in norms and significantly altered the body of conventions that had previously governed social relations. The meta rules of living together that had previously allowed for peaceful coexistence were no longer relevant. The revolution swept all of that away."

Refueling above the clouds

An F-22 Raptor over Iraq

Ever wonder what's involved in refueling a military jet while in flight? Check this out.

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, December 16

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

THE WEEKLY BRIEF
STOP SEXUAL HARASSMENT.  REPEAL THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION. 
RESTORE PATRIARCHY AND BROTHERHOOD. 

     It started with overthrowing patriarchy. The rule of the father is of course grounded in the deeply Christian understanding that the Trinitarian God is Father--a loving Protector and Authority who should be worshipped, thanked and obeyed. What His Son did, we should do as well--obey the Father; submit to the patriarchy. This is how we reverse the atomization of original sin and restore our interpersonal communal nature.  "Original sin" said Pope John Paul II attempted "to abolish Fatherhood." The bumper sticker said, "Well behaved women don't make history" so the modern Eves rejected the two petitions of the Our Father saying God's will and rule should be extended on earth as it is in heaven.  Overthrow the patriarchy! Hundreds of male theologians joined the revolution  saying God has no gender. 

     Step Two was abolishing all male institutions from seminary education to the military officer schools to civic service clubs, to fire stations,  to the Boy Scouts. The all male group was seen as a social evil to be destroyed. The male female singular character of marriage could not be assailed until the all male corporate character of civic, religious and workplace brotherhoods were undermined. Patriarchy and Fraternity are the Christian forms of love that turn boys into men and teach them to be protectors of women and reserve conjugal relations with a woman only after a formal ceremony of  giving consent called a wedding. The Marian ideal of virgin, mother, and Queen evoked from Christian men the chivalry of knighthood codes, courtship rituals, and the ethos of the gentleman. Let us return to our Christian roots.

   The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in 1978  repealed the disastrous ten year social experiment called the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). It had been led by teenage rebels, Mao Tse tung and his ambitious careerist wife, Jiang Qing. The adult men led by Deng Xiaoping returned to power in 1978 after the death of Mao Tse Tung in 1976 to arrest Madame Mao and reestablish legitimate authority.

     We need an American repeal of our own peculiar era of sexual chaos that so desacralized our interpersonal relationships. The Sixties Sexual Revolution was not the completion of the Christian civil rights movement but its betrayal. We have our own Madame Mao. We must learn from the Chinese. We cannot go half way. It was a disaster. It hasn't worked-especially in our clergy, military, policing, and political institutions. We must not be overwhelmed. Let us restore first in our own language, our prayer lives and our own imaginations, the sacral order underlying sexual harmony. Drugs confuse the intellect. Prayer orders the soul.  Patriarchy, fraternity, marriage, motherhood, and virginity. Remove the feminist implant and the atheist cataract! Celebrate the fundamental categories of religious and sexual order.  No stammering and apologizing allowed.  


THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION HAD AN ALTERNATIVE TO MALE SOCIALIZATION UNDER THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD INTO THE BROTHERHOOD OF MALE CITIZENS

                                                                

                 

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

THE REFORMATION THE CHURCH AND THE EUCHARIST: Abandon the Mass and Unitarianism is right around the corner. The Eucharist is the real locus in the battle about the Incarnation.

KEEPING THE LORD'S DAY IN POLAND: A bill to limit Sunday commerce.

THE POPE: and the Our Father.

FIGHTING SATAN: Fr. Barron on the Devil.

HOMOSEXUALITY IS A SIN AND SHOULD BE OUTLAWED: Did Roy Moore say that - Yes indeed.  A messenger compromised so the message didn't quite resonate. When will a southern black Democrat like Charles Barkley make a manly Christian case for care of the poor and racial integration  without a blurring of sexual differences or a repeal of sexual morality? How did the rich urban homosexuals and college feminists  hijack the real civil rights movement for interracial brotherhood and marriage born in the Baptist Bible Belt.

FITNESS FOR THE SENATE: The Kennedy-Moore axis.

FEASTS THIS WEEK:  Hannukah :the eight day remembrance and thanksgiving for the restoration of the sacred by fighting fathers and sons after a great desecration. It certainly is not the Jewish Christmas and it really isn't mostly about the oil miracle. For North American Catholics, this is becoming a major celebration.     Our Lady of Guadalupe: Queen of Mexico and Our Lady of the Americas.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

SAUDIS, ISRAEL, AND PALESTINE A CONVERSATION WITH JARED KUSHNER AND ANOTHER WITH REIDEL AND FRIEDMAN: The "Trump team" trying to make the deal between Palestine and Israel is three Orthodox Jews and a Coptic Christian. Interesting conversation. Bruce Reidel and Tom Friedman on Saudi Arabia.

Bruce Reidel on the Saudis after his recent book. He says the legislative and judicial branches of American government are turning against the Sauds. Muhammed bin Salman is deeply unpopular in the royal family. There is high probability that he would be assassinated if the King died today. MbS foreign policy is a disaster. Yemen is Mbs signature policy. It is a military quagmire and the greatest humanitarian disaster in the present world. GCC is dead because of Qatar blockade. Saudi foreign policy is much more sectarian than anything since second Saudi kingdom in 19th century. Removing the experienced Muhammed bin Nayef as Crown Prince for a 30 year old relative substituted kin for a legitimate anti terrorist hero. The sectarian part of the Wahhabi code is being pushed harder now than ever. Parts of the Eastern provinces with Shiite opposition are being plowed under. King Salman rebuilt Riyadh from 200,000 to 7 million people as the "most Wahhabi city" in the world. The Salmans have broken all rules inside the royal family. So where is their support? Reidel hints the obvious. The religious establishment will be the young ruler's base not his enemies. Reidel understands this at a much deeper level than the NYTimes reporter Tom Friedman. When MbS told Friedman that he wasn't trying to reform Islam but return to its original moderation, that didn't strike the religiously tone deaf Friedman as the standard definition of salafism. The Friedman article calling MbS an Arab Spring reformer has made the reporter the odds on favorite for this year's Walter Duranty Pulitzer Prize Award.    

Why no Saudigate? A good historical replay of collusion with the Saudi royal family from the Bushes through Clintons to President Trump.

THE UAE AND THE SAUDIS (AND ISRAEL?): A greatly reduced Gulf State alliance. A very dangerous new ally for MbS. The US should not be pulled into this bizarre trap of the young ambitious and doomed MbS with the Iran hating Netanyahu party in Israel.

EGYPT, THE SAUDIS AND ISRAEL - WILL THE GAZA BECOME THE REAL CENTER OF A SECOND STATE? An island swap that cements Israel and the Saudis. Is Jordan becoming the odd man out?

SAUDI CROWN PRINCE BUYS SALVATOR MUNDI: It is difficult to see how this will work out for the increasingly bizarre Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. MbS is waging bloody war against Shiites to hold support of Wahhabi clerics while he does window dressing reforms to keep NYTimes columnists in the reform column. But dropping 450 million for Christian art when he has arrested a portion of the royal family for corruption can't help his case. Before MbS isolated Qatar, the Saudi Wahhabi clerics denounced the regime as not Wahhabi enough. This picture purchase is important. What it means is not clear. The museum where it will be held is in Abu Dhabi, one of the emirates not ruled by the Hanbali school of jurisprudence. The other is Dubai. MbS is becoming the most isolated Muslim in the Mideast. His increasingly public alliance with Israel won't help.

ORGANIZING SUNNI AGAINST THE SAUDIS: More on the 2016 Conference to isolate the Salafists.

ISIS ERADICATED ON THE GROUND. ISN'T THIS BIG NEWS? It is in Iraq as a national holiday declared. A month ago it happened in Syria. Could this have something to do with Mattis and Trump? The new US military strategy was important. Iran and Russia were even more important to the defeat of ISIS.

A REAL JOURNALIST - THE MOSUL EYE: The man who documented ISIS.

III. AROUND THE WORLD AND AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

A PROFILE OF A POSSIBLE ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER: He says stop the immigrants. He is Catholic and believes in God but doesn't go to Mass and confess his sins as often as he should.

INDIA: How India sees its role in the world.

IT IS HARD TO GET CHINA TO HELP US WITH NORTH KOREA IF THEY THINK THEY ARE THE ULTIMATE TARGETS OF THE US TILT TO ASIA: John Pilger film - The Coming War on China.

THE US ADVENTURES ON THE BORDERS OF RUSSIA: Remember John McCain saying "we are all Georgians now"?

NADIA SCHADLOW KEY WRITER OF NATIONAL SECURITY DOCUMENT TO BE PUBLISHED SOON: Her connections for future references. The women at NSC under Trump. This is dated but it gives more information than more recent "profiles". The "gender doesn't matter" National Security professionals are doing quite well in the NSC. There are several documents required by law to help plot overall American foreign policy. The Worldwide Threat assessment by the US Intelligence Community put out by our intelligence agencies. Here is May 2017 report. The National Security Strategy is a document to be prepared by the executive branch to outline overall strategy. The Bush administration in 2002 put out such a strategy. The Obama administration outlined their very different strategic approach in 2010 and 2015. The Trump administration will release a NSS document in the next few weeks.