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 and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, January 20

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

THE WEEKLY BRIEF
A Culture of Protection: President Trump Builds the Culture of Life

The annual March for Life in Washington D.C. is a celebration of life meant to contrast with the Roe vs Wade Supreme Court decision of January 22, 1973. Seven judges discovered in the Constitution's Due Process Clause a woman's right as an individual to abort her child. The Court denied 47 state legislatures the police powers which they exercised at that time to severely restrict abortion. The Court elevated the powers of the autonomous individual over the natural law obligation of a mother to her child and the communal police powers of the state legislatures. Until 1800 there were few state laws against abortion because the protective embrace of mothers and the oaths of physicians were enough to protect the unborn even in circumstances of scandal.

President Trump invited this year's celebration of life  into the Rose Garden. He was surrounded by fathers, mothers and children invited to the White House. He sent a contemporaneous video of his remarks in the Garden  to the marchers filling the National Mall.

"The March for Life," he said, "is a movement born out of love. You love your families, you love your neighbors, you love our nation and you love every child — born and unborn — because you believe every life is sacred, that every child is a precious gift from God." He praised marchers "for offering friendship, mentorship and life itself to women in need of support."

"Because of you, tens of thousands of Americans have been born and reached their full God-given potential. Because of you," he said.

 President Donald Trump who during his campaign was so unfairly  lambasted by intellectual prolife leaders as "not one of us"  was pitch perfect in his Rose Garden address. He articulated his defense of life not so much as a right but as a sacred gift from God--as a miracle. Gifts are not rights to be asserted but sacred goods to be protected. Only a culture of properly ordered protection can safeguard sacred goods in a world so besot with selfishness and evil. It was the President from Playboy who perfectly intertwined the loves for child, for nation and for God that animate this movement. The movement's theme was that Love saves Lives. Honest moral men have been shocked by our own King David. But they have missed what is truly childish and of the heart about the President --the infectious  love of Donald Trump that is reorganizing American politics.

He organized his campaign around a love that had been forgotten amidst the squabbles between  liberals and conservatives,  the Republicans and Democrats, the media and party establishments. He stood as man who loved his father and family and above all loved his country as his father and brother and local minister had loved the country.  He stood as a large man unafraid to speak in a city of hardened women given to intemperate speech and very small men choosing their words. They all shrunk in his presence. His appetites and ego were large-so was his love. He talked about love in his campaign more than any public figure since Martin Luther King. The rage and hysteria of the self important elite whose status ranking he upended is still burning.  The big man from New York reminded the snarky prolife Senator from Texas that there are New Yorkers who were not media liberals but firemen and cops and construction workers and maids and janitors who saluted the flag rising over the rubble of the twin towers. He reminded the female news personality who got her job by her good looks that he wasn't kowtowing to her feigned moralism as a defender of all things female. He did all that before the general election and earned the hatred of a large part of the Fox news and neoconservative think tanks in those early primary battles. Citizen Trump did not present himself as a conservative. He reminded us of patriotic love, the grandeur of our flag and that nationalism is a form of love not hate.  He helped us love again as the mobs shrieked at him that he was a hater. His supporters were spat upon and beaten while the media said he was inciting violence. He reminded us that our nation was dissolving and it is hard to love a body that loses its fundamental form. "No border, no country." It is a principal of life that every cell and cell membrane have upheld  for the last 4 billion years. If there is no definable country boundaries and membership, then we cannot integrate the many hardworking immigrants already here who we need as fellow citizens. As part of the reparations for all those not allowed at our American table because of abortion, let us propose to President Trump an amnesty for honest workers and families to fill the chairs and places left empty by the feminist regime of abortion. Let Christians unite! The parties are dividing us from  asserting our common religion and patriotism which will conquer racism.  President Trump has always been willing to integrate the good hearted people here (like the Dreamers) if we sort out the criminals and truly wall off our borders from future illegal entry.

President Trump has inspired American men to love America as a nation again. A good deal of the hatred for Donald Trump is that he does not apologize for being a man. He is renewing the meaning of citizenship as a worker, protector and contributor. The media and elites have called him a racist for defending a patriotic brotherhood that included blacks from Georgia and Hispanics from Florida but had less to offer the white bureaucrats and journalists of the EU. If he was a racist, he would not propose an American nation animated by Christianity and limited by high border walls. Religion and shared territorial loyalty are solutions to racism not their cause. Look at the communion line in a Catholic Church on Sunday morning. Look in the stands of a pro football game on a Sunday afternoon. Donald Trump is evoking deep emotions... especially derision upon himself.   It is his unabashed maleness not his whiteness that evokes such hatred.

Our people are  awakening from the baby boomer rejection of the male duty to protect the nation and the female duty to protect her child. Performing those protective duties defined the maturation of sexual identity. Dishonoring those duties was a major part of the disastrous sexual revolution. The "vanishing adult" and the confusion of sexual identity are fruits of that bitter harvest. The fact that Donald Trump lived that revolution so exuberantly does not mean he cannot see that it must be repealed. He has come late but he has come to political life as a male protector of the nation.

A culture of life is a culture of protection. A culture of life is a culture of ordered sexual duties and  ordered loves. The cultural challenge is developing masculine and feminine personalities that love and protect. Look around at the wimpy males and coarsened females. Behind their strange alliance, there lies a baby's corpse.

God's name, the flag of national brotherhood, the covered female body and the baby in the womb--all these are sacred goods. They must no longer be defiled. To safeguard the sacred, the masculine urge to protect and dominate must be rekindled. Meet such a matchstick, President Trump. The Christians in America who are now divided by party are brothers under God and the flag. The love of God, the mutual love of brothers regardless of color but defined by territory--let those loves come out of the closet and protect the sacred gift of life. The prolife movement is political but the classical political sensibility of protective citizenship is nationalist not Republican. Purity should be honored in our daughters not our legislation. Men must come together in compromise over policies because we are brothers in citizenship. When men unite as a national brotherhood of protectors, then the father, the policeman, the soldier, the manual laborer become the honored personalities over the black thugs and white pansies of Hollywood's Lala Land. When the virgin and mother are honored not scoffed at, their personalities will replace the foul mouthed careerist who covers up the worst domestic violence of all--abortion.  Let us order our loves beginning with a renewal of public prayers to God our Father in thanksgiving for our gifts and in reparation for our sins. Let us greet and part from one another by saying "God bless." Let us ban "O My God!" and "Jesus Christ!" as everyday  exclamations. Let us order our loves because love saves lives... on the nation's borders,  in our nurseries and from the sacred heart of the Lord our God.  

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

POPE FRANCIS - HOW A VERY TRADITIONAL JESUIT APPROACHES REFORM: by Christopher Altieri. This is not an argument that Pope Francis has done serious reform yet or that he will be successful but it gives us a way to think about what his approach is and why.

THE POPE ON DIPLOMACY AND THE NEW RIGHTS OF 1968: Pope Francis see gender Ideology as "colonization". This excellent article talks about the new world order of globalization and autonomous rights that became ideology as baby boomers socialized in the ideology of 1968 came to rule the world of 1989. The multi-polar world after the collapse of the Soviet Union is the world of administrative superstates and autonomous individuals. Religion, nations, and even sexual identity are constructions too binding for the brave new world. The pope sees that. It is why diplomacy among nations is so much more central to him than the exhausted conservative vs liberal theology/morality debates that consume western Catholic scribes.

WHEN THE CHRISTIAN NANNY BAPTIZED THE DYING JEWISH BABY: The child Edgardo Mortara lived and was removed from his parents when they came to live in the Papal States (1858) and news of his Christian status was discovered. A review of the "kidnapped" child's memoirs. Fr Romanus Cessario O.P. writes a sympathetic review of the papal action. We have now found an "abomination" that Catholic university intellectuals will abhor. (Hint it isn't abortion which they politely oppose). Here is a much better argument against the Pope and Father Cessario. Nathaniel Peters bases his argument on natural law claims of the family. He also does a very good job of describing the muddled state of present Catholic thinking on the nature of the polity.

CHILE - PAPAL VISIT AND CLERICAL ABUSE: The recent papal visit to Chile (Jan 15-18 and Peru(Jan 18-21) bring us face to face with  A very depressing story of the failure to govern.
At the center of charges of clergy sexual abuse in Chile is Fr Fernando Karadima. He was a dashing figure among Chile's elite and was a charismatic teacher and spiritual father to many young men who went on to high positions in government and the Church. The Chilean left has never forgiven a certain faction of Chilean Catholics for their roles in the downfall of elected socialist President Salvador Allende(1908-1973). The charges of homosexual abuse against Karadima are irrefutable. Bishop Juan Barros was a follower of Karadima and the priest secretary to Archbishop Juan Fransisco Fresno in 1984. Parishioners brought charges against Karadima in 1984 and they blame Barros as well as the Archbishop for dismissing their claims at the time. There is one accuser of Karadima who says Barros was physically present though not participating during his abuse.  The Pope does not accept the charges against Bishop Juan Barros.   He has said, "Bring me proof and we will talk."  If charges are true the pope must act against Bishop Barros. If charges are "calumny" then the Pope must vigorously push back. This offends the "never blame the victim" mentality. The Pope knows the hard left of South America which will take any opportunity to mount vicious and violent attacks against the Church and her clerics. This is the life and death battleground in South America where a deeply corrupted clergy (with many good priests and bishops as well) is attacked by an atheist force that wants to destroy them all.

CATHOLIC SOCIOBIOLOGY AND THE CENTRALITY OF CHRIST: The essayist and fellow Inkling of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien was Owen Barfield. Here is an introduction.

THE REFUGEE BOAT TRIAL OF CHRISTIANS OVERBOARD: The story and the split verdict.

CHINA AND CHRISTIANITY: Catholics in Chinese history.

MONSIGNOR RONALD KNOX (1888-1957) SPOKE AT A RETREAT FOR PRIESTS - SOME QUOTES:

"And until a soul first looked out from human eyes, creation was only half finished. The play was there, the audience was wanting."

"The same Voice which spoke long ago and said, “Let there be light”, spoke again, and said, “Let there be a human soul”. You were, and are, as much God’s individual creature, as much the object of his unique regard, as if he had never made anything else. Nothingness gave up its prey, and you began to exist."

"But now creation had found a voice and a self-consciousness; through man, this great chorus of praise was to become articulate. Man, we say, is the priest of creation; composed of matter and spirit, he can offer to God, who is all Spirit, the gratitude of his material universe.

"Centuries later – we have no notion how many centuries later – God breathed into the face of man once more. “With that, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit; when you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven, when you hold them bound, they are held bound.” With one breath God created the whole human family; with one breath God created the whole Christian priesthood. As man is among the beasts, so the priest is amongst men; for we have called man the priest of creation."

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

MCCAIN AND KRAMER OF MCCAIN INSTITUTE: A serious role as "Republican conduits of the dossier" to the intelligence agencies in the Obama White House to keep the Democrat taint off this. One group that very much feared a Trump presidency was Saudi Arabia - a major funder of both the McCain Institute and Clinton Foundation. Is it possible we will have a real discussion of the foreign country that has played the US like a fiddle since 9/11? The Saudis are right to fear a Trump presidency because once a new administration comes to understand the Saudi Wahhabi role in terrorism, the US alliance with them will be cut in the same way we are finally understanding Pakistan is not our ally in fighting Sunni jihadists in Afghanistan. Another narrative of the dossier and GPS.

A REGIME VS. A CIVILIZATION - IS AMERICA BEING PLAYED BY THE SAUDIS? Andrew Bacevich's brilliant insights are marred by his disdain for the President... but he articulates the contradictions of our alliance with the Saudis in a far more lucid fashion than we have recently heard.    

THE NEOCONSERVATIVE MALE AND FEMALE POWER COUPLES THAT KEEP AMERICA AT WAR: An excellent review of the foundations and think tanks who have misled American foreign policy for decades. This is not who the Trump voters elected.

III. THE NATIONS & GLOBAL GEOPOLITICS

NEW "NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY" SUMMARY DOCUMENT - RUSSIA AND CHINA, NOT TERRORISM, ARE NOW THE MAIN ENEMY: An eleven page document outlining America's national defense strategy was released on Friday. Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, summarized the strategy by saying, "great power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security." The great powers we have chosen to compete with: Russia and China.

A MEETING IN CANADA ABOUT KOREA - CHINA AND RUSSIA NOT INVITED: This configuration of countries talking about Korea seems a strange unwelcome blast from the past.

FROM FRANCE - SERIOUS WOMEN WHO ABHOR THE AMERICAN FEMINISM THEY SEE AS ANTI-MALE AND A PRESIDENT WHO IS PROUD OF BOTH HIS EUROPEAN AND FRENCH NATIONAL IDENTITY: French women speak against the "me too" movement. French president Macron is certainly much more compelling than Angela Merkel as a leader of Europe. A major distinction: He is proud of his nation. Ishaan Tharoor of the Washington Post reports on Macron in China. Tharoor does a lot of interesting reporting. His antipathy to President Trump consistently diminishes the work of a reporter who has a serious world map in his head. Here is a man of one nation speaking to the people of another great nation and civilization:

The first stop on French President Emmanuel Macron's trip to China this week was, curiously, not Beijing. Macron arrived in the central Chinese city of Xi'an, a town fabled for its imperial tomb filled with terra-cotta warriors as well as its role as the historic gateway to the Silk Road. The French president was deliberately pandering to China's sense of its past.

“Our relationship is anchored in time, and in my opinion is based on civilization, in the sense that France and China are two countries with very different cultures but which both have a universal calling,” Macron told Chinese media. “They are two countries that have always been eager, across distances, to meet and recognize each other. It’s for all these reasons that I wanted to start my state visit in Xi’an — it’s a way to experience ancient China.”

PENNSYLVANIA, COAL, AND RARE EARTH MINERALS: An untapped resource?

GERMAN FOREIGN MINISTER SIGMAR GABRIEL JAN 2018 INTERVIEW FROM ONLINE SPIEGEL. GERMAN NATIONAL PACIFISM AS AN APOLOGY FOR NAZISM.  EUROPEAN IDENTITY AS A WAY TO ERASE ITS GUILT RIDDEN GERMAN IDENTITY.  

DER SPIEGEL: Are you actually certain that the U.S. still feels bound to NATO's collective defense principles as outlined in Article 5 of the alliance treaty?

Gabriel: We are pleased that Donald Trump and the U.S. have affirmed Article 5, but we should not test that trust too much. At the same time, Europe could not defend itself without the U.S., even if European structures were strengthened.

DER SPIEGEL: How do you view Germany's role in the world today?

Gabriel: We are a place many dream about today in the way the U.S. was a place all those looking for freedom, prosperity and democracy dreamed about from the 18th to the 20th century.

DER SPIEGEL: Do you mean Germany specifically or are you referring to Europe as a whole?

Gabriel: Surely the European Union as a whole stands for these dreams. But Germany, especially, because of its economic strength. Also because of its pacifism. When you think back today to a time more than 70 years ago when we were a terrible place, a place people were afraid of, it is a wonderful development that we have gone from being a terrible place to a place that people dream of. ...The truth is that Moscow, Beijing and Washington have one thing in common: They don't value the European Union at all. They disregard it.

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

THREE GREAT MOMENTS. THE THREE GREAT LOYALTIES - GOD, MARRIAGE, BROTHERHOOD: After the Viking "Minneapolis Miracle" Jan 14 playoff win: “That’s special,” Quarterback Case Keenum told Fox Sports’ Chris Myers about the 61 yard game-winning touchdown pass to Stefon Diggs as time expired . “That’s one of the most special times of my life.” “You ask me about this moment, what this moment has meant to me. It’s probably going to go down as the third best moment of my life behind giving my life to Jesus Christ and marrying my wife. And this is right there, close.”

CHARLES MURRAY: Here is brief autobiographical look back by America's most serious social scientist. He says "I missed the sixties". That's why the 75 year old is so clear about everything else. His latest book Coming Apart is a sociological explanation of the growing income and cultural separation in America. The first review linked is comprehensive but negative. This is more favorable.

SHELBY STEELE ON BLACK POWER, WHITE GUILT: ...and the failure of Black protest as the fallback black strategy in public life.

THE INTERNATIONAL LGBT CAMPAIGN IS NOT GOING WELL - IT WAS A CENTERPIECE OF OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY: Let us come back to sanity. How abortion and sodomy became the centerpieces of American human rights is a sad tale of decadence.

HOLLYWOOD AND FEMALE NUDITY: In an industry dedicated to the desacralization of sex and the stripping of the female body; sexual harassment seems a minor charge.

MODESTY AND CHARITY: Anthony Esolen on the public strategy of modesty.

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, October 1

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

HILLARY AND LESTER WIN ROUND ONE: Lessons to learn.

JILL STEIN (GREEN PARTY) - FOREIGN POLICY INTERVIEW: She is a lot more specific than Bernie Sanders and would have had a much more substantial debate with Mrs. Clinton if she had been the competitor in the primaries. When the Greens seem more practical in foreign policy than the presidential candidate of the Democrats and the Congressional leadership of the Republicans, then "Houston we have a problem."

MRS. CLINTON AND RELIGION: A righteous Methodist is a liberal Democrat and her dreams of being a lady minister after politics. There is a clear candidate of the WASPS - it is not Donald Trump.

TWO UNLIKELY AND ELOQUENT ENDORSEMENTS OF TRUMP: Trump as the anti-war candidate from RFK speechwriter, Adam Walinsky. This article is a succinct scathing overview of the failed neocon policies of most Republicans now championed by Hillary Clinton. We have been waiting for an articulate anti-war Democrat to make this case. This is the case. The article has generated tremendous heat on the liberal Left.

The two excerpts below are from an excellent article on Trump’s ideas by Professor Joshua Mitchell who teaches at Georgetown and in Qatar.  Also this analysis from a Republican representative who applauds Trump as a true alternative to the Republican elite:

1) "Michael Oakeshott, an under-read political thinker in the mid-20th century, remarked in his exquisite essay, 'Rationalism in Politics,' that one of the more pathological notions of our age is that political life can be understood in terms of 'principles' that must be applied to circumstances. Politics-as-engineering, if you will. Republicans themselves succumbed to this notion, and members of the rank and file have noticed. Republicans stood for 'the principles of the constitution,' for 'the principles of the free market,' etc. The problem with standing for principles is that it allows you to remain unsullied by the political fray, to stand back and wait until yet another presidential election cycle when 'our principles' can perhaps be applied. And if we lose, it’s OK, because we still have 'our principles.' What Trump has been able to seize upon is growing dissatisfaction with this endless deferral, the sociological arrangement which looks like comfortable Inside-the-Beltway Republicans defending 'principles' and rank-and-file Republicans far from Washington-Babylon watching in horror and disgust."

2) But do not mistake the part for the whole. What is going on is that "globalization-and-identity-politics-speak" is being boldly challenged. Inside the Beltway, along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, there is scarcely any evidence of this challenge. There are people in those places who will vote for Trump, but they dare not say it, for fear of ostracism.

THE OAKESHOTT ESSAY: Rationalism in Politics.

"The moral life is a habit of affection and behavior; not a habit of reflective thought, but a habit of affection and conduct. The current situations of a normal life are met not by consciously applying to ourselves a rule of behavior nor by conduct expressing moral ideals but by acting in accordance with a certain habit of behavior. The moral life does not spring from the consciousness of possible ways of behaving and a choice determined by an opinion, a rule, or an ideal from among these alternatives; conduct is as likely possible without reflection. Most of the current situations in life do not appear as occasions calling for judgment or as problems requiring solutions. There is no weighing alternatives or reflecting on consequences, no uncertainty, no battle of scruples. There is on occasion nothing more than the unreflective following a tradition of conduct in which we have been brought up. And such moral habit will disclose itself as often in not doing, in the taste which dictates abstention from certain actions as in performances."

FROM ANOTHER OAKESHOTT ESSAY: "Citizenship is a spiritual experience, not a legal relationship."

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

YEMEN - SHIA BLOOD COVERED BY SAUDI MONEY: It isn’t just Americans who are killed by the Saudis; then memories washed away in a river of cash.

PUTIN ALLY IN CHECHYNA - ANOTHER KIND OF MUSLIM: Re-elected in full armor - a character in the drama.

THROWING CHRISTIANS OVERBOARD: One of the more telling tales of refugees was the boat in which Christians were thrown overboard by other refugees because they were thought to be the cause of storm. In sea lore, there is a legend that if there is a JONAH on board who God wants to punish, then get rid of him or lose the whole boat. The Christians have played Jonah for along time in the Mideast wars. They may need a place of their own for serious trustworthy protection.

PAKISTAN AND INDIA: When Muslim-majority Pakistan was partitioned from Hindu-majority India, the prince of Muslim-majority Kashmir decided to go with India. Pakistan has been trying to get their fellow Muslims back in the fold ever since. A front-line in the clash of civilizations is getting hotter. More on Kashmir. And don’t forget these are two of the world's nuclear powers.

PRESIDENTIAL VETO OVERTURNED BY WIDE MARGINS - CONGRESS ALLOWS 9/11 FAMILIES TO SUE SAUDIS: Only Harry Reid voted in the Senate against it. How the House voted.
Normally the duty of our Congress would be to declare war on a country which has so organized against our people. But for the  financial and party  elites now governing our country, it still seems inconceivable to pivot and understand that the Saudi kings and Wahhabi keepers of  Islam’s Holy Cities are the enemies of America and "outlaws to Islam." The Bushes were tied to the Saudis in an old money, big oil sort of way. The Clintons are tied by the non-profit foundation schemes of the nouveau riche. King Abdullah of Jordan is the Sunni Hashemite leader who says we must fight the Salafist Wahhabis as "the outlaws of Islam."

III. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

SHOOTING, AND RIOTS - BUILDING A CULTURE OF PROTECTION BY FOSTERING AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP AS A BROTHERHOOD OF FATHERS: It is the Protectors against the Predators. We should add there are the Agitators who always blame the Protectors. The Oklahoma shooting of an unarmed black man with his arms raised by a female officer was a very different event than the shooting of a black armed man by a black police officer in North Carolina. The Oklahoma officer properly charged with manslaughter was most likely motivated by fear more than racism. She never should have been there. In North Carolina, a mob is demanding release of the police video of a shooting before the investigation has been completed. The video is an important resource to sift out testimony of eyewitnesses which is still being taken in. There is no "public right to know" that trumps the need to do a proper investigation of the use of deadly force.

The police department in Dallas did not go on a looting or shooting rampage after their men were executed by a black racist. The North Carolina riots should be treated as an equally preposterous response. Politics is about organizing protection. All black men and white men are part of the protection pact and the police are the officers of that pact. At every opportunity we have to break down the false narrative of black victims and white police killers. This is poisoning our youth and confusing some of our sports stars. What if our sports leagues culturally argued for a male brotherhood of protection instead of the ACC championing planting guys in the girls' bathrooms. The media-fed racial identity narrative of black men vs. white police officers is a dead end. All of us, including the media and especially our sports culture, need to reintroduce the language of the civil rights movement of Christian and civic brotherhood. In our war against domestic murder and against the jihadists we need a new citizen protection pact. This is what a renewed American nationalism is all about in the inner cities.

Crime and urban violence is overwhelmingly a male problem and it will only be solved by a new commitment to socialize males as communal protectors, not racial enemies. We are American brothers and that ain’t no dog whistle to racists. It is a trumpet to integrate our sons into battle formation against our enemies at home and abroad. All of the most effective anti-terror actions since 9/11 have been groups of male citizens or soldiers confronting and defeating our enemies. From the firemen of New York to the armed citizen in St. Cloud, Minnesota to the Flight 93 "Let's roll, guys!" to the SEAL team who took out bin Laden - there is a protective form which is the Christian American way to protect the homeland. Let us forge a thousand platoons of brother citizens. And let us offer protection against the real murderers of black people - the everyday and the serial killers.

AMERICAN FEMINISM - A COMMITMENT TO HUMAN SACRIFICE THAT WOULD MAKE AN AZTEC BLUSH: Meet 400K/year Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood. She opposed Donald Trump’s maternity leave bill because it only applied to women (and their husbands) who give birth.

IV. R&G ROUND UP

IN CATALONIA SEPTEMBER 11 IS NATION DAY: Is there a case for Catalonia as a separate state? During the Spanish Civil War separatists, republicans, and anarchists fought against Franco’s nationalists. They were rabidly anti-Church. The anarchists later fought against republican and communist forces that were nationalizing the opposition. The Basque region was the other site of independence movements - the Basque were much more traditionally devout while Catalonia was one of the most militantly atheistic regions.

WHAT IS NORMAL - NORMA LATIN FOR STANDARD; MEASURE; A CARPENTER’S SQUARE: Anthony Esolen - the prince bard of contemporary Catholic literature.

COLUMBIA - DID U.S. INTERVENTION HELP? Plan Columbia.

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitical Review: Saturday Jan 26

by Dr. David Pence

WEEKLY BRIEF
What a Group of Young Men from an all-Male School  Can Teach the Pro-life Movement
A black racist group yelled obscenities at a group of Covington Catholic high school students gathered by the Lincoln Memorial awaiting their school bus for their return trip to Kentucky from the March for Life on Jan 18, 2019. The Black Hebrew Israelites included pointed calls of "nigger" to a black Covington High student.  He was warned by the black elders that his white schoolmates may "harvest his organs". The students asked permission from their chaperones and began calling school chants in unison to drown out the racism and attacks. This was reminiscent of the chants and singing we sang as civil rights marchers to quiet white bigots. This time the bigots were black.  Approaching this situation was 64 y.o. Nathan Phillips chanting and beating a ceremonial drum while flanked by men who filmed the event and shouted to the white students to go back to Europe. (so much for the welcome the immigrants theme).  Philips was certainly older than the boys but that didn't make him "an Indian elder."  He did not protect the teens from the racist bile of the older men within the Black Hebrews. If Phillips had the courage to walk up to them and beat his drum within inches of their faces, we can be assured the black men would not have smiled or even smirked. Phillips got no closer to protective conflict against the Black Hebrews than he did with the North Vietnamese 40 years before. Phillips was not suddenly surrounded by the boys.  He waded into the crowd of youngsters  and most of them divided out of his way. He then locked eyes with Nicholas Sandmann and approached him beating his drum in the young man's face.  The young man looked his aggressor in the eye and did not back down. He even smiled to show he meant no violence and was harboring no panic. This was Sandmann's greatest sin. He dared look back instead of averting his shamed and guilty eyes to the floor{RE-SPECT=TO LOOK BACK}.  Young Sandmann from an all male school which had gone into hostile gyms before was in a very new kind of conflict in which his schoolmates were being insulted and intimidated. He was a white male being viciously attacked verbally by black men and then spatially confronted by an older Indian male with a partner yelling racial slurs at his classmates.(Best Video Timeline) He conducted himself as a young Catholic man because as he told his TV interviewer when she asked if they answered with racist taunts, "We are a Catholic school and it is not tolerated, they don't tolerate racism." The video clip of the teen wearing a red MAGA hat within inches of the drum beating Indian was cast as an obnoxious group of teens "surrounding an Indian elder" chanting his sacred songs. It was as if the teens saw some Indians at prayer and decided, "Lets get in their space and mock them-what a great way to end a pro-life march!" Philips told CNN news that he saw hate on the faces of the white youth who were being "educated" by older black men. They were "beasts" and had the look of "lynch mobs from the south"... they were resisting the truth they never heard in their Catholic education." The confrontation ended when the boys were called to the bus.
The boys were quickly condemned by several Kentucky bishops, the female head of the March for Life, celebrity gay advocate priest James Martin and conservative anti Trump pro life Professor Robert George. It was reminiscent of the pro-life pile on against President Trump when he was interviewed by Chris Matthews about abortion in the 2016 election. Trump too was thrown under the bus by pro-life leaders trying to virtue signal.
 A culture of life is a culture of protection. Our President understands this much more deeply than the emasculated bishops who have criticized students for wearing a hat praising our country and affiliating with the President. The fundamental form of legal and physical protection in Christian society is adult males covenanted in a sacral/legal  hierarchical brotherhood against enemies. The priesthood itself is supposed to be a sacred brotherhood of fathers. The socialization of young males is all about drawing them into this brotherhood of protectors at about the age of 13. Christian men do not try to form intimacy couples. We build wide-radius trust agreements with many males to form cities, nations, and universal brotherhood. As Kipling said in his poem on manhood, "If all men count with you but none too much." The female role in protection is grounded in the particular protection of her own children beginning with pregnancy. She begins her role by setting aside her protective temple by cultivating virginity.
The emasculation of American men has divided us from the brotherhood of shared patriotic duty which is the animating love of territorial nationalists. Emasculated men rejecting our roles as soldiers (Hell No, We Won't Go), policemen(known as the pigs), civic protectors and fathers created the adolescent milieu of the sexual revolution. This fostered a new kind of individualistic and immature female personality. The Bible asked, "...would a mother ever forget her children?" American  feminism answered, "If the child is in my way of career or education--I will forget her by extraction!"   When American men redevelop our group pride in the chants, songs and flag of America, we will reassert the culture of masculine social protection and authority needed to protect life. A different female persona celebrating the virgin and the mother will respond and emerge.
 In January 2019, homosexual clerics and tough conservative female "political leaders" all jumped the Covington High male group and their calm leader who gave no quarter to the racist attackers. In March, 2016, the same gang jumped the soon to be elected President of the United States for daring to say that "philosophically" there should be some punishment for a woman who aborts her child. {The Catholic Church automatically excommunicates a woman for this act against her very nature so the President had some company in his philosophical musing.} The American Catholic bishops are the largest covert gay lobby in America. They are not PROTECTORS. Can anyone who understands the funding of social services deny that the huge homosexual subculture in urban Catholic chanceries is a big reason the Democratic Party went from John Kennedy Catholics to  Barney Frank Democrats in the last fifty years. The deeply compromised bishops and the sexually confused media hate masculinity and face to face straight talk. Nicolas Sandmann and Donald Trump make them very uncomfortable indeed.
There is much to be learned from this incident for the pro-life movement. Life is not really a "right". It is a sacred gift which must be protected by mothers in particular and countrymen in the public realm.  Let us give praise and glory to God who is the Author of Life and the Father of Authority. Let us reassert the natural relations of males and females by which almost all cultures protect life. Let us start blaming females for killing their babies and doctors for violating their sacred profession. Let us praise men who protect our borders and our cities. Let us invite all brown, black and white men within our borders to share in citizenship as fellow American nationalists. There could be no greater cultural force for the protection of life than interracial masculine Christianity expressed  as reformed nations from Honduras to the USA.  Teen age boys and President Trump know that in their bones. The revived pro life movement should celebrate these men who stand up against "the Liar and the Murderer from the beginning".  Let's hope the professional pro-lifers will learn lessons from the viscerally protective, straight-talking male group and stop coddling the forked-tongue professional Indian(see below on Phillips). Victims will not protect babies-- protectors will.   Sew on a black and white cross to a MAGA hat and fight for a Christian interracial America that will be great again because we bring her brotherhood back under God. 

              

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

MORE ON HOW AND WHY VIGANO WROTE HIS LETTER: An interview with the Italian blogger, Marco Tomasatti, who helped Vigano get his document into Spanish. Tomasatti who calls Pope Francis "Pope Bergoglio" has multiple contacts in the world of Italian journalism.   In this video interview the section about Vigano starts at 47:30. Someone at Vatican Insider wrote that the apostolic nuncios and Benedict knew about McCarrick's behavior. This infuriated Vigano who correctly felt he was being implicated in not stopping the predator. He had already been criticized and investigated for his role in aborting the investigation of homosexual Archbishop John Nienstedt.   Vigano had a friend of his call Tomasatti to set up an interview.  After the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, Vigano thought it would be an opportune  time to go public. He decided on a long letter (his "testimony")  rather than an interview with Tomassati. Vigano wanted simultaneous Spanish and English translations. Tomasatti said he would ask Pentin(of National Catholic Register) to translate Vigano statement in English (Ed: we have not verified if Pentin played this role as first English translator of the accusations against Pope Francis and call for the papal resignation).

Tomasatti says all attending his talk at a Pius X society  were praying for Vigano. The strategy of implicating Francis as much as possible is close to Tomasatti's heart. Vigano knew this when he sought him out as a  media savvy bullhorn.
In this interview Tomasatti talked about the resignation of 57 y/o bishop Juan Pineda Fasquelle the Vicar General of one of Francis' closest men, the thoroughly corrupt Honduran Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga. He thought Maradiaga was an important advisor to Francis about potential  North American bishops and cardinals. {ed: This is much more believable than some huge role of McCarrick in influencing the very bad personnel decisions Pope Francis is making with American bishops.}  Tomasatti thinks Vigano is in hiding to avoid being served Vatican papers to summon him for a possible disciplinary proceeding. These kind of summons must be delivered in person. One of the great disservices of the anti-Francis crowd is we lose focus on exposing his most malignant counselors. Maradiaga is a good start.

CARDINAL MAHONEY WILL BE PUBLIC SPEAKER AT EDUCATION CONFERENCE: More evidence that the homosexual clerical subculture still rules the American Catholic Church.

AUTHORITATIVE BISHOPS, NOT LAY COMMISSIONS, WILL CLEANSE THE PRIESTHOOD: The personalities necessary.

DAVID CARLIN AT CATHOLIC THING - HOW ORTHODOX BELIEF AND SENTIMENT FADES:
"William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), often called “the father of American Unitarianism,” once wrote that Calvinism went into decline in and around Boston, not because Congregational ministers sermonized against Calvinist doctrines, but because they no longer preached in support of these doctrines. The anti-Calvinists didn’t preach against the doctrines of predestination, total depravity, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, etc. They just remained silent about these matters. And then one day the best people in Boston woke up and realized that they were no longer orthodox Christians and had become Unitarians.
Something not very different from this is happening in American Catholicism with regard to homosexual behavior (not to mention other elements of Catholic sexual ethics). Perhaps no priest is preaching against the traditional Catholic teaching. But not many are preaching in support of it either. As a consequence, the moral disapproval of homosexual conduct that should be found and used to be found in the hearts and minds of Catholics is withering away."

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND THE AMERICAN NATION

BRUCE OHR ON SOURCING THE RUSSIAN DOSSIER - THE ANIMUS OF CHRISTOPHER STEELE, THE BRITISH PATRIOTISM OF STEELE: The real foreign agent who tried to influence our elections did it not by rigging the vote but by convincing our predisposed intelligence agencies that Donald Trump was a danger to "our western values."   The career British intelligence Christopher Steele had spent most of his life at the Russia desk for the Brits. He despised Trump because he loved his own country and he considered any desire by the Americans to begin a friendly relationship with Russia as tantamount to treason against the "special relationship" with the British.  Steele knew that an alliance of the US and Russia would greatly diminish the role of Britain in world affairs. To understand this story, we must understand the opposition to Trump is not all about Hillary Clinton's campaign team. A much better organized and well-connected foe to the election of President Trump and an American nationalist policy was involved. It is very hard for the British-Australian-Canadian news culture of Fox news to see that English speaking white guys are FOREIGNERS who oppose the Trump nationalist initiative. The other hate-Trump networks are to blinded by their animus to grasp the unfolding story. But somewhere there is a journalist - who will see the complex interplay of national and partisan loyalties and lies is the most compelling story of all.

MORE ON BRITISH INTELLIGENCE, JOHN BRENNAN, AND THE SECURITY AGENCIES WAR AGAINST PRESIDENT TRUMP: Names and Pictures. We can't cleanly and clearly tell the story yet but the outline is in place.

ROBERT CARO RESEARCHING LYNDON JOHNSON: A spectacular  essay by Caro that tells about LBJ and about journalism. "Turn every page."

NOTRE DAME WILL COVER COLUMBUS: Columbus brought Christianity to America. For America's Catholic University to hide our Latin heritage that led to the Cosmic Race of South American history and the miracle of Guadalupe is a pitiful display of how an emasculated priesthood cannot defend our Christian heritage from the diversity mob. Christopher Dawson said the religious historical destiny of the Americas is to bring a convergence of Anglo Protestants and Hispanic Catholics. In the heart of protestant America, it doesn't help tell the continent's story by making the Catholic explorer some kind of villain whose image must be veiled.

III. THE NATIONS

GENERAL STANLEY McCHRYSTAL ON IRAN'S QASSEM SULEIMANI: Above all he is a fervent nationalist. A telling tribute to Iran's most important military strategist.

WHILE SAUDI ARABIA GOES AFTER THE HOUTHIS, THE UAE IS ESTABLISHING A SOLID BASE IN SOUTH YEMEN. ARE THEY REALLY TWO DISTINCT ENTITIES? Could the UAE be helping a separatist movement. Here is an old map that still lives in many hearts. The UAE may start a Sunni protectorate in the South. Give the Houthis the North. Tell the Saudis to go home.

VENEZUELA: History and Map of South American Nations. 32 MILLION POPULATION. NOV 2018, 3 MILLION REFUGEES. JUAN GUAIDO RECOGNIZED BY US AS LEADER - AN INCOMPLETE PROFILE. The Church against Maduro. Russia and China say "Hands off Maduro". 

A brief video history of the current crisis.   Elliott Abrams Assigned to Venezuela.

BRAZIL NO LONGER AN ALLY: Brazil and Venezuela from article in Foreign Affairs by Roberto Simon and Robert Winter:

“Under the [leftist] Workers’ Party, Brazil was a strategic ally to Venezuela’s former presidents, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. Yet following Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016, diplomatic coziness between the two governments gave way to overt antagonism, as her more conservative successor Michel Temer took a somewhat harder line. Now Venezuelan refugees are pouring across Brazil’s northern border—37,000 have requested asylum since January— and the crisis in Venezuela has entered Brazilian domestic politics and become critical for public opinion.

"Under Temer’s tougher approach, Brazil played an important role in the creation of the Lima Group, an informal alliance of Latin American countries committed to reestablishing democracy in Venezuela. The country contributed to regional efforts at the OAS and elsewhere to isolate the Maduro regime. At the same time, Brazil refused to support any U.S. or European sanctions against Venezuela or Venezuelan authorities, sticking to its decades-long principle that only the United Nations Security Council can impose such penalties. When Trump publicly flirted with the idea of taking military action against Maduro or supporting a military coup in Caracas, Brazil made clear that it would never support such actions.

"But under Bolsonaro, ‘never’ is a big word. The far-right candidate favors imposing sanctions and establishing refugee camps for Venezuelans along the border. Speaking with voters from the state of Roraima, where most of Venezuelan refugees are, he made a promise: “You can count on me, I will do whatever is necessary to defeat that government.” In the first round of voting on October 7, Bolsonaro received almost 70 percent of the votes in the state capital of Roraima, Boa Vista. The Workers’ Party got only ten percent. The possibility of Brazilian support for, or even participation in, military action against Venezuela—unthinkable until recently—will be on the table under Bolsonaro."

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

BURN TRASH, BURY TREASURE - ANTIGONE, THE SOUL, AND HUMAN BURIAL: by John Horvat.

FRANCIS FUKYAMA NEW BOOK ON IDENTITY--REVIEWED IN THE NATION

SINGLE NATURE ANTHROPOLOGY - ULTIMATE FEMINIST ARGUMENT AGAINST MALE PRIESTHOOD: This really is the heart of the debate which Catholic Sociobiology must answer. Phyllis Zagano raise questions which have not been adequately answered by defenders of the male priesthood. There are theological and anthropological answers to be given.

FALSE FEMINISM: by Katherine Kersten.

NATHAN PHILLIPS: An elder for peace after a youth of military service in the Vietnam War? Maybe Not.
Disrupting Mass with the beat of drums.
Philips interview with CNN - including parts not played on TV but obvious falsehoods.
His military service by liberal and honest Washington Post. In his own words - two videos.
Statement by Catholic student and our annual MLK day reflection on Selma.
                   
                            On Philips from Rod Dreher at American Conservative:
"From a lifelong left-liberal: “My cousin’s friend had a 15-year-old daughter attending the March. Apparently Phillips and his crew first approached her with the chanting, in your face drumming, and screams about leaving America. The child reacted with fear which was not, apparently, the desired optic. They quickly left her and went over to where the boys were chanting, where they did the whole thing over again.”

THE SINS OF COVINGTON HIGH AND THE SINS OF THEIR ACCUSERS
by Anthony Esolen

Saint Augustine: Authority, Politics, Covenants and Virtue

"General religion is in fact no religion at all." 

(John Henry Newman)

A discussion of Augustine's CITY OF GOD

A 2003 work by Robert Louis Wilken, "The Spirit of Early Christian Thought," has had a deep impact on many people. We decided to use the book's 8th chapter as a framework of discussion with David Pence.

I was glancing recently at the Declaration of Independence. Here is an excerpt from the final paragraph:
"We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions... 
"And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

Dr. Pence: Our Founding Fathers were noble souls who made their covenant under a Sovereign God. From the Scottish National Covenant of the first Presbyterians (1638), to the Solemn League and Covenant between English and Sottish (1643), to the Mayflower Compact (1620), to the Declaration of Independence (1776), this form of all-male unanimous blood oaths under God was the way Protestant Christians ensured their body politic would be a city of God. The universal rights we quote so often in the second paragraph of the Declaration are insured by the male covenant which comprises the final paragraph. The second paragraph celebrates liberty and equality. The final one explains fraternity.   

Their God was the Lord, correct -- or can they be faulted on that score?

The tendency of American leaders to drift off into 'general religion,' to prefer their own gods, came much later in our history. The Founders believed their activities had to be in accordance with the one true God who rules nature and history. He was a God who ruled over nations. He was the Living God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He could be prayed to, and He spoke through the Bible. They often spoke of "true religion" which was Biblical and distinguished from the priest-craft of the papists.

Professor Wilken says that Augustine (354 - 430), unlike Plato, wasn't sketching a pie-in-the-sky city -- but an actual one. A social and religious reality existing in time and space, that worships the one true God.

Yes, Augustine saw that the Church built on God was a living organism and the Roman Empire built on man was going down. In his situation the City of God was the social reality of the Apostolic Church. There were no living nations at that time built on the God of Revelation. Today we are in a very different situation. There are two billion Christians, five continents shaped by Christian evangelization, a hundred Christian nations, and a billion Muslim monotheists trying to shape their political identities. And by the way, Israel has reappeared in the land of Jerusalem. Today's nations are not in the same darkness of ancient Rome. There is a light for the nations. Theocentric social organization is becoming more prevalent, not less.

We are not in a post-Christian era. The atheistic globalist project of the modern West is our crumbling Rome. Like Rome, the West tried to extend its rule and institutions and suicidal individualism apart from the Sovereignty of God. Augustine admired the glory that once was Rome and there is much we can fondly recall of the West, but the weeping and gnashing of teeth should cease! Communism was the crowning achievement of the Enlightenment and the modern West. That city of man is now disintegrating. Christianity and the nations are alive and well. The City of God lives. As Pope Francis says, "Put away the dour face."

The great saint argued that true peace was marked by order, law, and justice. And that a structured family life "contributes to the ordered harmony concerning authority and obedience obtaining among the citizens." 

Augustine's language is always social, not individualistic: we have a mutual fellowship in God. As Wilken puts it: "Augustine's controlling metaphor for the new life that God creates is not, for example, being born again, but becoming part of a city and entering into its communal life." The family, the city, the nation and the Church are all hierarchical communal forms of life which are perfected when founded on the spiritual foundation of God. The speech that John Kennedy never gave that evening in Dallas [November 1963] was to remind us: "Unless the Lord builds the house, the laborers build in vain." He was talking about our nation.

                                           

        

Augustine contends that peace among nations is always going to be fragile and unstable.

That realistic sensibility seems quite at odds with today's ethos.

The bishop of Hippo insisted that good men cannot withdraw from their public duties. Worries about getting our hands "dirty," or whether we have the wisdom and insight for making life-and-death decisions, are not grounds for shirking responsibility.

I think most of our 20th-century presidents saw their protective duties in this light. The more they made life and death decisions, the more they saw their office in terms of religious duty and Divine Providence. I would say that was especially true of FDR, Harry Truman, Woodrow Wilson, and John Kennedy. There are too many Christian intellectuals today who see all of these men as failed Christians, not measuring up to the character perfection attained in faculty lounges or conservative think-tanks.

Augustine had a friend who was an army general in north Africa, who started thinking about retiring to a monastery upon the death of his wife. The bishop urged him to stay at his post on the frontier; that defending the public safety was his top duty.

A culture of life is a culture of protection. The pro-life movement has been too centered on "the right to life" of embryos and even stem cells. This is not the best religious political formulation. A religious culture of life treats life as a sacred gift from God—not a right. We build our social system to protect the gift. The culture of protection is a sexually ordered culture based on gender identity and duty. For men that means soldiers, policemen, brotherhoods, and fatherhood. For women it means motherhood. We must quit treating women who have abortions as victims. We must treat them as serious moral agents in a corrupted society. They are failed protectors and, with Augustine, we must urge them to return to their posts.

As the percentage of Christians in the Roman Empire kept climbing (more than half the population at the time of Augustine's birth), the Church realized the huge stake it had "in the rule of law, in stability, in order, and in civic concord." Augustine knew that these goods are not possible without coercion. When was the last time you heard a bishop say good things about coercion?

This is the great deficit in the Christian personalities of the modern West. We got used to living with abominations that should call forth anger and coercive suppression. So the Christian personality became identified with  niceness -- the Charmin man -- soft and white. The civic personalities who emerge ready to act with coercion in this environment may not come from deeply churched backgrounds. I think of the president of the Philippines who is violently cleaning up the drug cartels there, as well as fighting the salafist Muslims. What he got from his Catholic upbringing was a priest who abused him and fellow clergy who looked the other way. He believes in punishing evil. Men like him will have their faults. Their shortcomings will be magnified by a dishonest media, and thin-chested Christians will be recruited by liars and murderers to disqualify the sinful warrior who emerges to challenge Deceit and Murder. There is no community without authority, and no authority without the willingness to exercise force. You need Mother Teresa and you need a pope who has put away the sword -- but you also need the Christian kings and knights. Or else, the virgin mothers will be ravaged by the evil ones who will never let them feed and nurse the poor.

The earthly city is our imperfect temporary home -- but as long as it allows Christians to honor and venerate the one true God, the modus vivendi retains enough vibrancy to endure.

Amen! Civic concord is an essential form of brotherly love. There has been a huge deficit in Church teaching in recognizing the personalist communio of fraternity at the heart of the male movements for nationalism, citizenship, and what was called "manhood suffrage."

Augustine stressed that justice is not only between men, but must include the justice and worship due God -- the God of the Bible, the very opposite of a private deity. "A commonwealth that does not serve God cannot be a genuine republic... Justice can be found only where God is worshiped."

There must be a transcendent understanding of man as a spiritual being in order to sustain the nation as a spiritual organism. The thread that links citizens in a covenant must be tethered to the Father of all nations: the Lord and Giver of Life. The group tied only to itself (no matter how tightly bound in its self-referential clasp) will eventually be destroyed. "Unless the Lord build the city..."

Professor Wilken paraphrases the bishop: "If men have no sense of God, they have no sense of themselves... For virtue is not simply a matter of behaving in a certain way; it has to do with attitudes and sentiments as well as deeds, with loves as well as with duties and obligations."

In 1818 John Adams wrote: "But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations." Matthew Holland's book, Bonds of Affection (2007), is a compelling argument that the American Covenant is based on two loves: love of God and love of neighbor as expressed in civic charity.

The City of God argues that "it is life outside the Christian community which fails to be truly public, authentically political. The opposition is not between public and private, church and world, but between political virtue and political vice."

In the end, a society with no place for God will be enveloped in darkness. Our nation must be under God. Separation of Church and State does not mean that the nation can be a community without God. If we try to build a nation without God, it will be a city of men and it will perish. Men are meant to be brothers under God, and nations are the territorial expressions of that religious brotherhood. Public life, political life perfects man’s nature. Theocentric citizenship is the attentive protective formation in which men await the coming of the Lord. Except for worship, there seems no human activity as central as politics to mankind's spiritual destiny.

Augustine of Hippo by Caravaggio

Augustine emphasized the importance of the angels to us on our pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem: "With us [the angels] make one city of God... They help us on our way."

The great gift that religious men can bring society is a glimpse, however fleeting, of the invisible realities missed so often in the sensory barrage of modernity. Reality is dominated by the interpersonal union of the triune God, but another invisible spiritual reality are those beings we know as angels. There is a long Christian tradition, not only of guardian angels, but protective angels of corporate bodies, especially of each nation. Spiritual intuition and sight is attentive to these powerful spiritual beings. And, of course, the great Liar and Murderer -- the destroyer of brotherhood and nations -- is an angel himself.

UPDATE: Here is a reading plan for those who have unsuccessfully butted heads with the Bishop of Hippo's magnum opus.

"Jesus Christ is not valued at all until He is valued above all."

(Saint Augustine)