I am far from a fan of Babygravy9, but he is undoubtedly one of the most influential voices in edgy right-wing circles, and as long as you are reviewing books with similar titles, it would make sense, even if it is a bad review
Seed oils: Marcella Hazan's (PBUH) recipe for risotto calls for a judicious addition of sunflower oil to the melting butter before coating and just beginning to brown the riso superfino arborio. I think that closes the discussion.
Inability to understand the efficacy of the contemplative life is, well, it's, like, protestant, you know?
Well, all I meant was what I said, that it was protestant (see the theological discussion at the Misses Morkans' Christmas Party in "The Dead" by Mr. James Joyce), and this guy is a Calvinist. Let's just remind everybody that "weird-ass" is your contribution to the discussion. The sectarian squabbling that goes on in these boxes is distasteful. There isn't much of it, but it really ought to stop.
Nothing sectarian about it. ANY combination of legalism and antinomianism is bound to be out-to-lunch, regardless of which ecclesiological persuasion it appears in, Orthodox and Catholic included. I spent almost half my adult life as a fundamentalist/evangelical and the other half as an Orthodox. Trust me, I've seen it from both sides now.
Jon, please distinguish between MAGA world and the Christian one, okay? I've come to believe that the coming of Trump down a staircase if not on a donkey in 2015 was one of the Devil's brightest moves since the tide of the demytholygizers took the German seminaries in the 19th century.
Seed oils are natural in origin-- which doesn't mean they're OK, since poison ivy and belladonna are natural too. But is seed oils were causing the trans thing we should see it in animals that include those seeds in their diet.
If there's a chemical factor involved in the increase of trans my money is on the ersatz hormone mimic in the many plastics we've filled the environment (including our own homes) with.
Seed oils are not seeds, though. They are no more "natural" than a vegan burger. The chemical and mechanical processes involved in extracting oil from the seeds creates an almost entirely man-made product that is terrible for the human body. I don't know if there's a connection between the rise of trans kids and the top-down imposition of seed oils (and corn syrup) on the population (especially on the lower classes), but there is an undeniable link between that imposition and the rise of obesity and all kinds of major health problems.
I agree that plastics are messing with us on the hormone level. They might go a long way to explaining low sperm counts--that and all the estrogen in the tap water. We have created a toxic soup...
I'm skeptical on the estrogen in tap water claims. Estrogen is a natural hormone excreted by humans and animals. In ages past water supplies were far more polluted with human and animal effluvia that they are now, but of all the harms that caused, sexual confusion seems not to have been a major one.
Not fair, Ted. I don't know how anyone in my Presbyterian church votes. I do know there is a growing preoccupation coming close to obsession with communal prayer and life in the church. I miss out on a lot of it because I'm usually falling asleep at about 6 AM, when the men's prayer group meets on Tuesday mornings, and I'm similarly disadvantaged in schedule for the small groups we have. But believe me, the interested and the able don't have a shortage of opportunities for communal prayer.
How efficacious was the contemplative life for the Catholic Church?
Also, I was talking about principles, not performance. This is why I try never to mention denominations besides my own in these boxes because people may take offense.
As for the Catholic Church, it's a smoking crater.
He implicates women’s suffrage in the outbreak of child transgenderism.
I don't care for democracy and so don't care about voting, but is this wrong? I get that this is offensive and generally goes with thinly veiled misogyny which is ugly. But is it wrong? I don't think so. I think it's offensive.
"I don't care for democracy and so don't care about voting..."
I get this a lot and it drives me crazy. What are you going to replace it with? It's a little like my saying, "I wish I looked more like Cary Grant." Yes? So?
I'll replace it slowly through the beatitudes and pursuing truth and living towards excellence and enduring attendant sufferings. The twin masters of Western Civilization, Jesus and Socrates, are in agreement on this
If you feel called to abstain from political activity, by all means follow the call (just make sure it's coming from the right source). But do be clear that this is a personal choice, nothing you have any business forcing on the rest of us.
From Plato with Dionysios of Syracuse to Voltaire and Catherine the Great, the quest for enlightened despotism has always been a great failure.
How could I possibly force others to abstain from political activity except by politics?
When did I endorse enlightened despotism?
We've talked before under an alias of mine. I basically think that the ideological regime of this country is cruel, evil and immoral and there are two ways to push back on it, politics or let's say living the gospel and conformity to goodness, truth, and beauty. I chose the second option, to be the grain of wheat that willingly falls to the ground and dies. I'm not sure how this is threatening to anyone, in fact it seems that my enemies ought to rationally encourage it along, which is fine by me, because taking a broad historical view this is a disgusting time period full of indecent people and I'm here out of duty and not enjoyment.
Edit 1: Also I'm a complete reject and outcast with no loyal friends by my side. Hard for me to force anything.
Women aren't going to lose the franchise and even eighteen years olds won't give up the right to vote although I would raise the voting age to at least 25 if I was a dictator. We must muddle through the world in which we must live however disgusting many things are.
I'd not be opposed to raising the voting age to 25. The people who wouldn't like it would have to explain why not, and a lot of junk science about the maturation of the brain would finally get a brutal airing.
On a practical level, yes, the only reason for the child transgender push is because women support it. It's not even close--actually the only reason any liberal or Democrat wins elections is because of female voters.
However, there's the ethical question of whether you can block someone from voting just because they vote incorrectly. And furthermore, there are plenty of women who don't follow the trend and vote against this nonsense. So banning women from voting is punishing good women because of how the majority acts
I'd absolutely and willingly give up my right to vote if it prevented every Democrat, 'progressive' white woman from enabling all the trans nonsense - in a heartbeat, I'd do it!
I've been wondering that myself. As a woman, and someone who considers herself a responsible voter, I want to believe it's not true. But it really might be.
Check out Janice Fiamenco on YouTube and her Substack. She's all about the history of feminism and it's not what you think.
It’s easy to fall into, the world is Sodom and Gomorrah and we are Lot and company, waiting on God’s destruction. Very easy to do, I have four children and live outside of Boston so you can imagine what goes down in the public schools. We have to keep in mind, God loves and God died for everyone in Trashworld. Not the righteous, not the few, but the worst of us, even me! I expect my kids to be salt in the world, but not in a whimsical way. In a sober and serious way, and we have these cultural conversations often about the fallen world and our duty to remain faithful to God, pray for our neighbors and our society. Not with an eye toward renewal, there’s really no possibility of that. Not waiting for the right combination of right wing politics and Churchmen to take over, that would be a disaster and it’s not going to happen anyway. Maybe to live through the collapse. Hell, we are already living through the collapsing, in my estimation. And keep our faith, God willing. Also, it’s important to keep in mind that God put us in this place and time, that He knew we would be living in Trashworld and He has a plan. It’s not anything we can see, but He is Sovereign.
But we only have the time we are given, the kairos in which to choose. What else could Catholics in 1930s Spain have chosen but Franco's side, unless they were to choose to stand apart from all sides (or unless they were Basques)?
Earlier this week we had a special Liturgy to commemorate St. Moses the Ethiopian. His life was read aloud in church. The saint began as a bloodthirsty bandit. He found Christ and became a monk. And at the end of his life when his monastery was in the path of marauding bandits he still eschewed bloodshed and let himself be slain, thereby gaining a crown in Heaven.
Now, there, Jon, you guys have such an advantage on us. I think most of our historical attention goes to matters of the Reformation.
If I had my way, we Presbyterians would be celebrating the older saints, as you do. Special days, feast days. I alluded to the following sometime in the last twenty - four hours of the Dreher Comments Section which has become my home: I am ashamed of the starkness of our sanctuary. I'll leave it there because I'm ashamed to go into details. Oh, yes, an irenic F*ck the Iconoclasts.
The local PCA minister, predecessor to the current one, who is busy stripping his church of its liturgical ("lite") worship and putting an end to weekly communion, got his D.Min. from St Vladimir's Orthodox seminary. He told me about a decade ago that he would like to have been able to become Orthodox "except that what they call the Seventh Ecumenical Council mandated idolatry."
I know this because the wife of a friend I mentioned in another comment, himself a former PCA elder and now an Orthodox reader, a loyal life-long Presbyterian, has just left her PCA church and joined the local Missouri Synod Lutheran congregation.
Indeed, the Basques were for the most part devout Roman Catholics. Thus, the entire generalization falls apart. During the 1980s, there was a made for TV series on communism today (then). The episode on Italy features a good Communist Party member who, like any good Roman Catholic communist, gets married in his Catholic church. A lot of Catholics did choose for the Republic. How could any Catholic choose to side with a brutal mass murderer like Franco?
Now, you are going to come back and say that Franco's brutal mass murdering was necessary to restore order and avoid even greater levels of mass murder. Assuming arguendo that this is so, we are still a long way from 'How could a Catholic choose any side but Franco?
>> Franco's triumph ended up being a long-term defeat for the Catholic Church in Spain.
Well, the Catholic Church has been defeated in Spain, no disagreement there, but can blame be laid at the feet of Franco? I think that Franco just delayed what was the inevitable, and in that delay he gave Spain some marvelous decades.
Yes. Having defeated the radicals and stabilized Spain, Franco should have prepared for a Democratic republic right after WWII (or maybe a constitutional monarchy though Juan Carlos was not yet available) and ridden off into the sunset like Cincinnatus or George Washington. He could have made a deal with the US for a democratizing Spain to enter NATO, which would have left the US to make sure the Communists did not return to power.
Same criticism I increasingly have of Viktor Orban-- he too is overstaying his hour-- and did have of Vlad Putin before I had much more serious issues with him.
I'm thinking of Brent Bozell and Reid Buckley, two prominent USA Catholics that moved to Spain in the 50s/60s, the height of Franco's reign, to experience an integrated Catholic life, Bozell declaring that "one could taste in one's mouth the Catholicism" of Spain 1960s. Both returned to the USA by the late 70s, clearly dissapointed in the developments in Spain. One must be prepared for utter futility in life. Be like Saint Boniface, go off into the wilderness into an unknown territory, thick with contempt, hostility and danger, knowing that you and all that you have built over decades can be destroyed in an instant, but no matter, having the faith that others like you will follow, to start anew, until the ends of time.
And that no work done for Christ's glory, however blasted to ruin by war, apostasy, or indifference will be unacknowledged and unrewarded when we stand before Him who bought us with His life.
The indispensable man problem rears its head from time to time. FDR, Orban, W in 2004…not to mash things up too much, but keeping the good thing going has been in my mind a lot recently. I find it frustrating that guys like this Isker fellow seem unaware of things like Boniface’s martyrdom and the power of personal sacrifice, including the knowledge that one will never see the outcome of one’s sacrifice.
"God loves and God died for everyone in Trashworld" -- my guess is that Isker would not agree with this. He would say God loves the elect and Christ died for them, but that the rest were intended for hell from the foundation of the world.
Jon, if I have been correct in saying that Calvinists have held this (but don't take my word for it; I have almost no firsthand knowledge of Calvinism), I think they might reply: "For His greater glory, because He really is God, and who are we, His creations, to question Him?" You would be referred to Romans 9-11.
Jesus told us to question all things. Well, he meant all human things-- and that definitely would include people making claims about God since false teachers and prophets is very much a danger. IMO, John Calvin strayed very far into error.
To quote the malodorous David Heartily Bent, the Calvin who began writing the Institutes at 26 was a theological "idiot," untrained in both Greek and Hebrew. Bent has more in common with Isker than either would admit or probably any of us would like to contemplate, but he gets some things right.
Yes, and Dale, there are books by scholars with at least as much weightiness as those of the House of Doug who have written books which take the Calvinistic interpretation of those verses through an exegetical woodchipper. A huge weakness which the Calvies have always had against the Baptist boys is that those good old boys learn their koine Greek. The Calvies do not like to discuss those chapters with them.
Can you point me to a few of those books? I’d love to read them. I have a few young, angry Christian friends getting sucked into Isker-esque LARPing and contemporary theo-bro Calvinism is a big part of that.
Odgie, the truth is that I had to take so much sleep medicine ( a euphemistic way of explaining that I had to triple the prescribed amount ) to get to sleep that my goal is to remain conscious today. Just scroll on through until you find Eve's recommendations for me.
There is some indication that suicide rates - not that we have statistics - were higher in 16th/early 17th Century Europe in regions where Calvinism was the established form of Christianity. See:
Oh, Eve, I wish that were true. Instead, Five Pointers tend to live lives of intermittent, covert panic attacks. You've heard of Imposter Syndrome, maybe?
It's a psychological syndrome, undoubtedly some kind of anxiety disorder, in which a person who does have unmistakable abilities for a particular thing becomes suddenly possessed of the certainty that he's a fraud, a con artist, a no - talent hack who at any moment will be caught out as such.
John Lennon was subject to it. Whether he was made more susceptible to attacks by his drug use isn't known, though when you read his description of himself as a teenager and a young man as perpetually terrified, you might wonder.
I think it was George Martin who wrote that when Lennon was hit with an attack, he, Martin, would sit with Lennon and remind him, "Now, John, you wrote 'Please, Please Me,' the band's first #1, entirely on your own, remember?...and when Paul was stuck on finding a bridge for 'Michelle,' you grabbed the perfect one out of the air, remember that? And for pity's sake, man! You wrote most of the entire score for 'A Hard Day's Night' entirely by yourself, and do you remember that I thought your demo of 'Strawberry Fields Forever' was perfect, and that we ought to release it as is, and..."
Martin wrote that as he would talk, Lennon's anguish - distorted features would begin to relax, he would smile a little, say, "Yeah, I did, didn't I?" and begin to come out of it.
I know a guy who has Imposter's Syndrome. Several years ago, about twenty of us got an email from him in which he denounced himself as a fake, a fraud, a con, a shyster, a grifter, fit to be spat upon and howled out of the company of able people, etc. It was F hilarious.
The guy's father is a doctor, but it was I who had to explain, "Hey, Mike, you have a recognized syndrome of psychological illness, Imposter's Syndrome." He had never heard of it, and was much relieved by my explanation. ( I regret this now. While not an evil man, he has since proven himself one for whom it would be easy for me to have contempt, a person who betrays others for what he imagines will be personal gain. Charity obligates me to see this as another sign of his consuming insecurity, but what he betrayed one person over shows a thick core of stupidity about people in him which makes me think he's liable to fail. He remains the single best argument against homeschooling I know of. )
I think it's relatively few Calvinists who don't have their version of Imposter's Syndrome.
"Am I really saved? I would have to be one of the Elect, and it seemed to me that I did believe, but - what if it was evanescent grace?! And if I did believe, and I'm not elect, it wouldn't matter anyway!! Oooooohhhhhhh..."
Soteriology 101 on YouTube is a likeable channel whose host is a former Calvinist, and there are several videos about this which you can find there. It just occurred to me that we're seeing more of this at a time when it's common for young people to be uncertain about gender, and I wonder if there's a connection beyond the to - be - expected diabolical one.
I'm not making fun of these people who are riven with terror about the genuineness of their salvation, because in my view, they are victims of trauma, caused by the terrorism of a soteriological system which they have been taught, but which is far more eisegeted than exegeted. There are recent books by Protestants whose scholarship no one questions which annihilate Calvinism, and I can only wish they find their way to the people who need them.
Fifteen years ago, I was listening on the radio to the late erudite Protestant nitwit, R.C. Sproul, who was preaching about evangelism. This is a quote within 98% exactness: "The Gospel has not been properly preached unless the doctrine of unconditional divine election has been fully explained to the listeners."
I didn't scream, I shrieked.
If I didn't do it earlier, thank you very much for the reading suggestions, Eve.
>> Not with an eye toward renewal, there’s really no possibility of that.
Bingo. This is a hard pill to swallow, but if you want to retain any semblance of sanity and hope (yes hope when there is no hope) you must acknowledge and face this, and live accordingly.
Yes, read Ultimate Things- very clear that while we should and must live this life as Christ would have us do, looking for an earthy shining city on a hill and a “sustainable” paradise ruled by wise and fair leaders is nothing but a fantasy.
This is the path of life. Passion comes before wisdom. Impulsiveness before restraint. The book of Psalms is full of guidance for young, passionate, impulsively inclined young men. Hopefully with time, Millennials like this pastor will seek wisdom, and then he will get to play the role of the wise patriarch. He isn't there yet. But when (if?) He does, he won't be preaching winsomeness - he will preach repentance.
The trouble with hatred is that it's like resentment: it's drinking poison and believing the other person will die. Plus it doesn't convert anyone who doesn't already have a low boiling point and is looking for someone / something new to rail against. Nobody who needs it has ever been converted or changed by someone yelling at them that they're evil globohomo bugmen (or the equivalent). I have volunteered at the pen for years, and I can guarantee that the one thing that will not work with hardened criminals is to yell at them about what miserable sinners and horrible people they are: they already know that. What they want to hear is that there is still, somehow, some kind of hope, and how to make that happen.
What works is love. "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use and persecute you." (Matt. 5:43-44) Highly unpopular among a certain set today (such as "The Bon Op" author) but that's the rules - if you believe that Jesus knew what He was talking about and really meant us to do what He said. And it's hard, oh, is it hard. But it's the only thing that works. Not always, and often not in the person's lifetime (see St. Boniface). But that's irrelevant. As long as we're walking the Way, we're doing something worthwhile.
PS - "What happens when all the bugmen have been exterminated, so to speak?" Well, then there will be a new war, with new purges (generally starting with the earliest sign-ons, who have slacked off), because once you start on a hate-fueled quest to purify the world... well, you find out that no society and no one is ever pure enough. Except for the leader. For a while. Because sooner or later, even Robespierre isn't pure enough... Societies built on hate and anger always dead end.
The BonOp seems to also be a control freak's manifesto: This is the way I want the world to be ordered and anyone who disagrees with me is my enemy and must be eliminated. As you said, that's not a recipie for a lasting society.
Nor there. Calvin was very strict: there was a kind of religion police was empowered to inspect people’s houses to make sure everyone behaved:
no rosaries or relics, it was illegal to name children after saints. “Immoral” or Catholic books were proscribed; art, music with instruments, dancing, and theater were no longer allowed. The colors of clothing, hair styles, and amounts of food permissible at the table were regulated. Gambling, drunkenness, adultery, promiscuity, immodest dress, profane songs, idolatry, heresy, and speaking ill of the clergy were punished, often by exile or execution. Fines for not attending worship. About the only thing you could do was eat and make money. The result was that, as people dedicated themselves to making money, over the next 100 years Geneva became much more of a bank-centered oligarchy than a theocracy. Corruption always sneaks in...
Then there's Philip Schaff's, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 8: § 107. The Exercise of Discipline in Geneva. More even handed.
Two books that would be very informative (and you could probably get at a library) are:
The Registers of the Consistory of Geneva at the Time of Calvin: Volume 1: 1542-1544 Paperback – April 11, 2002 - by Mrs. Isabella M. Watt (Editor), Mr. Robert M. Kingdon (Editor), Mr. Thomas A. Lambert (Editor)
"Supplies primary source documents- the great bulk of which have remained unknown to most modern researchers- are of capital importance for study of this seminal period in church history. Volume 1 records the activity of the Consistory between 1542 and 1544. Arbitration of disputes, surveillance of morals, repression of the vestiges of the Catholic cult, promotion of the Reformed mode of living, resolution of matrimonial cases- this is a general sketch of the Consistory's work during its earliest days. Rich in details pertaining to daily life and piety in Geneva, these noteworthy historical documents testify to the immense role played by the church in society at the beginning of the Reformation."
AND
Puritan Papers: 1963-1964 Paperback – April 28, 2021 by J I Packer (Contributor)
Which spotlight John Calvin. (Very pro-Calvin, but...)
Jeanne de Jussie, The Short Chronicle, ed. Carrie Klaus (2009)
This last is an account kept by an aristocratic Carmelite nun in a Geneva convent of the arrival of Reformed preaching, the harassment of the nuns by local Protestants, attempts to force them to get married, and finally their expulsion from Geneva.
Your righteous jab at Warhammer made me laugh! But you're right. People on the left have done the work, and anyone who's worked in academia, the arts, cultural institutions, or human resources has seen it.
In the 1980s, I had a job where one of my co-workers was a summer intern from an expensive Northeastern liberal arts college. The company worked often with the disabled, but she lectured all of us and insisted on calling them "the DIFFERENTLY abled." The rest of us weren't forced to use that language, but the company let her use it if she wanted to, even though the disabled people we worked with didn't understand it and thought she was a loon. But she persisted, as righteous as any would-be martyr. That was 35 years ago. And people like her are now running everything.
I haven't been a "gamer" (tabletop or video) for 20+ years, but I've recently learned through friends and acquaintances that as the strategy and roleplaying game worlds have gotten super-woke, Warhammer is considered a refuge for "fascists," which I take to mean "middle-of-the-road people who don't endorse wokeness." Apparently people can no longer even play a goofy strategy wargame without having their motives and politics policed.
I am disabled, and have always loathed the term, "differently abled." I suppose I'm "differently abled" if you're looking for someone whose right hemispheric I.Q. is 45 points below that of his left hemisphere, but my injury at seven sure as Hell took me out of the possibility of pursuing several things I love. As you understand "differently abled" implies that it's brought me intellectual advantages I might have had otherwise.
Well, yeah, if you consider general feralness a break, I guess.
You mean you never developed the ability to fly, or read minds? Not even infravision? Dang.
Joking aside, this girl's use of the term "differently abled" was baffling to 100% of the disabled veterans we worked with. She always had to explain to them that it meant "disabled." Yet she persisted, with the righteousness of a missionary, because someone at the expensive northeastern liberal arts college told this affluent white girl that it was the desired term to use, and she accepted the dogma wholesale. I was maybe 19, and this was the first time I saw that elite colleges foster an unthinking ideological zealotry that was completely alien to the pragmatic state-college culture I came from.
You’re right, but to the Christian control-freak, their own ideas never call for self-examination. Christians who disagree “just don’t love Jesus as much as I do” or, in the eyes of the control-freak, aren’t even Christians at all.
The truth of your first paragraph is borne out by the fact that any time I've seen or heard about a violent white supremacist finding his basic humanity, it was because someone showed him love, over and over again until he knew it was real. All these lefties who think they can "smash white supremacy" (whatever that even is) by scuffling in the streets with the Proud Boys are fools; and Isker is likely just their ideological mirror image.
We're a violent society - everything's a "war" (war on drugs, war on poverty, war on this, war on that), and most of our entertainment revolves around conflict / war / violence, not peace / resolution. So we have a lot of people who believe that violence is the only answer. Sooner or later, bad things happen.
In prison, I lead Alternatives to Violence Project workshops, and I've seen members of violent gangs of all races learn to coexist. But it takes time and nurturing.
I am a regular user of the Quora web forum, pretty liberal, and I am struck by the irony of people there who assume we (conservatives) are haters of gays, trans people, etc and somehow think telling us we are idiots etc will make us better. How will hating me motivate me to love another?
Exactly. And it works the other way, too. If conservatives want "libtards" to change, they need to quit calling them "libtards", "pedos", "commies" etc. It helps if we turn off all op-eds (TV, radio, etc.) because they're just trying to stir the pot and make more money.
They aren’t trying to change anyone’s opinion. They just like having people to look down their noses and scream at. It allows them to feel like they are Doing Something.
Eve, your comment is a tonic to my soul, and a great encouragement to me. I'm ashamed of my hatred of my psychopathic cousin. I must refuse passion when he occurs to me, and ask God for dispassion toward him, always. Thank you.
Rod, I suppose you should be flattered (somewhat) by the BonOp - you know you're on to somethng when people take the time to parody your ideas. But it's a thin parody because it's all about (and only about) winning; "I'm right, you're wrong, so f*** you". No one ever has been convinced by that type of argument.
I see that thinking in the legal world all the time, especially among young attorneys (sadly, it's become more common among those older folks who should know better by now). Every little dispute gets turned into an opportunity to not only prove your opponent wrong but to rub his nose in it. The problem with it is that while you may win the battle, it may cause you to lose the war, or else plant the seeds for a future war (now when in history have we seen this happen?)
I wonder whether that behavior is due to the pervasiveness of entertainment culture. What plays well on a screen is quite different from what works best in the real world, but people really do pick up behaviors that are modeled in entertainment. Goes for politics too, maybe a reason people now are so extreme.
Well, yes, you can-- because this world is not all there is. "Be in the world, but not of it" is sound advice in every age. It is indeed what St., Benedict and the other monastic saints sought. Also, "What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul?" That is true for those who wish to "gain" the world in anger as well as in avarice.
You note that this Isker is a Calvinist and in his rage I can see the defects of Calvinism which jettisoned so much of the older tradition of Christianity, creating a truncated version of Christianity which was almost wholly preoccupied with the world because they had lost awareness of the richness of Creation well outside the merely temporal and immediate. This is why Calvinist-inflected societies birthed Puritanism and ultimately secular leftism with its implacable and totalizing focus on the here-and-now after dispensing with God (who fades away from our thought our easily when one succumbs to the Tyranny of Now.
Also, we don't need to "save the world" and to right all wrongs in order to do good. That lies beyond pretty much everyone. Just say no to grand crusades-- which all too often end up being about our own aggrandizement. Focus instead on the small and humble. And there is room for courage even in the minutest virtuous act. I am fascinated by the role of contingency in life-- how a small, even trivial, act may have vast consequences, good or ill, far beyond our knowledge. So a simple deed of kindness or mercy may well become part of a cascading chain that, in fifty or five hundred years saves millions from ruin. It isn't given to us to know such enormities, but it is mandatory on us to live with faith and hope and love and to do such good as lies within our space. and ability. God does not require us to save the world (that's His job) but he does expect us not to make it any worse.
"creating a truncated version of Christianity which was almost wholly preoccupied with the world because they had lost awareness of the richness of Creation well outside the merely temporal and immediate"
Well, sort of. Calvinism as it worked out, in the English world at least, was actually almost wholly preoccupied with individual members of the predestined elect coming to an awareness of their own election - and then, individually and as "God's chosen flock" carrying out God's will and "executing his righteous judgments" in the world. Oliver Cromwell was the perfect, almost "superhuman" - exemplification of this; cf.:
an amazingly good little book! In the longer run, as Jon rightly points out, it led in secularized form to a militant crusading of the "Elect" of the Left.
I find myself wanting to ask Isker: When have we *not* lived in Trashworld? The directories for upstandin' Southern cities around 1900 usually included business listing for all the whorehouses, making sure citizens and visiting businessmen could have their choice of black women or white women. Unlike you, I do think we live in palpably worse times right now than we did 50 years ago, but Trashworld is ever with us, and even the Christian Nationalist world Isker dreams of would have its own Trashworld....
I agree with your main point however. On the question of whether 50 years ago it was better or worse-- that depends on what you value most. It's easy to be blase about the past (especially one that is not in personal memory- I was just a young child in 1973). But at that time we were just coming out of the civil unrest and political violence of the 60s, we were in the midst of Watergate and the denouement of Vietnam both of which were the engines of destruction for public trust in government, divorce and crime stats, along with inflation, were rising, while today those at least are, albeit fitfully, falling. I was old enough by the late 70s to be aware of the gloom-and-doom that era embraced, from Carter's "malaise" speech to The Late Great Planet Earth, to predictions of Soviet victory in the Cold War, to "The Limits of Growth" to predictions of looming economic meltdown ("The Crash of '79").
What was distinctive was that we could have greater distance from events. Our everyday lives were not fragmented by technology and the internet; so life felt different in a qualitative way. We were a bit more human.
Some things were better than now: a young man could graduate high school and if not sucked up in the draft he could find gainful employment and make plans to marry and start a family within a very few years.
TrashWorld, ie, the fallen world, is always with us. But it ebbs and flows, depending on when you look at it. But of course, Jon is wrong, in that we are not to be passive before it, and just look to Heaven for relief. We ARE to fight. But we must be gentle as doves, wise as serpents, be smart in our fight. And remember that when we oppose the Fallen, we were once Fallen, too. And still have our sin nature, always waiting to have its way with us.
We may be fraternal twins, Jon, though Mom held onto you much longer than she did me. Your summary of contingency is as cogent yet concise a presentation of my own obsession with it as I've ever seen.
I would add that we don't live in Trashworld, we live in our own souls. If our soul can be kept in order (not easy) the world will seem a better place.
Granted I reside in a nice Western city (Seattle) and might feel differently in Afghanistan or some such.
What is it with these manosphere types wanting to take away women’s right to vote? Of all the reasons put forward the idea that women’s suffrage led to transgenderism is the most ridiculous. Who suffers the most? Women who have men who think they’re women ruining women’s sports, invading our locker rooms, shelters & prisons, & stripping us of our identity so we’re not women, we’re “non-men” or “birthing persons” or “egg producers.” I’m post menopausal & don’t produce eggs anymore, am I not a woman? Some of the biggest opponents of this stuff are TERFS, trans exclusionary radical feminists. They’ve gotten death threats & hate.
Besides, women got the vote 103 years ago & even earlier in some states, like Wyoming (1876). If us voting caused all this, it took a damn long time to happen. “Taxation without representation.” Why should I pay taxes levied by, or obey laws passed by, people who I had no say in electing to represent me? These guys can’t stand uppity women & they would do well to remember Robert Heinlein’s observation that women & cats will do as they please & men & dogs need to relax & get used to it.
Jesus told Pontus Pilate “My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my followers would fight.”
It first glance it does seem ridiculous. But it's not entirely if you look at the history of the feminist movement. Suffragettes (feminism's "first wave") simply wanted (long overdue) property and voting rights. But then Radical feminism started up in feminism's "second wave", during the 1960s. Sadly there is a generous amount of overlap between some parts of Radical feminism and that of today's gender identity ideology. Radfems disavow evolutionary biology and attribute feminine aptitudes and behaviors to learned "socialization" alone. Nurture. Imposed by "the patriarchy" of course. Radfems believe that "gender" is a "construct". And should be "abolished" in society. (Sound familiar?) Both camps feel that (false and oppressive) gender roles and gendered behavior can (and should) be fluid. Radfems think men should be free to paint their nails and wear dresses. As long as they don't actually insist that they're women, that's ok. That's acceptable "gender non conformity". It's not a big leap from there to gender identity ideology, where the body that you're born into means nothing compared to your inner perception of yourself and how you want to express your "gender". Radfems also felt that becoming a lesbian was a good option to dodge the inescapable inequality (and violence) of heterosexuality. Extreme radfems (like Shulamith Firestone) declared that women's liberation would never occur until women were freed from the oppression of gestating, birthing and raising offspring. (Abolishing the natural family is another overlap.) Firestone is considered an early transhumanist now because she wrote about using artificial biotechnology to free women from motherhood and family raising. (Biolibertarianism is another overlap.)
The later 3rd and 4th waves of feminism, especially Liberal feminism, are "intersectional", "sex positive" (pro porn, promiscuity and fetish) and firmly embraces LGBTQWERTY. Trans identified people, the LGB, POCs, and females should unite against the oppressive white cisheteronormative "patriarchy".
Most people have forgotten (or are simply unaware) that during the 1970s, in the name of "equality", some women started suing for entry into men's colleges, social clubs, organizations, etc. They won their court cases and turned what were previously male exclusive spaces into unisex ones. (Some men's clubs simply closed.)
The whole de-sexing of women's reproductive language is to make trans identified females comfortable as they impersonate men. Being reminded that they are still females in female bodies performing what are ultimately female behaviors triggers their dysphoria. Which makes them uncomfortable and unhappy. So ordinary men are not behind the changing of the language there. Organizations and institutions giving in to trans rights activists are. And some of those TRAs are Liberal feminists.
I'm sorry this got so lengthy but there were (and still are) alotta weeds to wade through.
TL;DR: the manosphere wants to turn back the clock to before women got the vote because Radical and Liberal feminist inspired voting has changed society and politics. And not for the better for many men in many legitimate areas.
I’ve heard that. And it wouldn’t surprise me if it were true. But whether or not (or how much) 2nd wave feminism was astroturfed by the CIA doesn’t matter much now. Its ideas were embraced and built upon in the following 3rd & 4th waves.
"TL;DR: the manosphere wants to turn back the clock to before women got the vote because Radical and Liberal feminist inspired voting has changed society and politics. And not for the better for many men in many legitimate areas."
"First Wave" feminism of the mid-19th century was all about women being able to care for themselves and their children when their husbands either deserted them or drank up anything they earned that was meant to support their families. The temperance movement was exactly parallel to the women's suffrage movement, and was supported by most of the same people (Frederick Douglass as well, IIRC) - who were also anti-abortion. Women having the vote was seen as a major answer to alcoholism and the misery it caused women and children, especially since women had no property rights. One proof of this is that nearly the first thing that happened when women gained the vote was voting in Prohibition. Our answer as a society to what we think is evil has nearly always been to try to legislate it away; that goes back to the Puritans and continues with the Puritans of both the extreme Right and the Extreme Left, only that the latter are more prominent now.
You're right that there are a lot of weeds to wade through. I don't know how old you are, ned, but I remember a time not so long ago when many of those you lump together as "radfems" had some legitimate complaints. They were overwhelmed by the general unrest of the '60s that encouraged more immoderate expressions of outrage. There are lots of sociological factors in the mix of the 2nd wave. Some of that ideology has been carried forward, no doubt. But to put so much into women getting the vote in and of itself is way too simplistic an explanation.
Of course it’s simplistic. It’s coming from the online “manosphere” which isn’t exactly known for its nuance, depth or unbiased views, LOL. All because I sketched it out for Martha there doesn’t mean I agree wholeheartedly with it.
There is a tremendous amount of misogyny in transgenderism and I agree with you that allowing women to vote did not lead to transgenderism, but I feel compelled to share that, according to polls I’ve read and my observations, for some reason women are far more supportive of the ideology than men. Sometimes people don’t vote in their best interests.
If it makes you feel less pissed off, I think a good case can be made that 90% of residents north of the Rio Grande shouldn't have full voting rights. And no matter how you make the case otherwise, already, we don't have equal representation rights. Sure we go through the motions of democracy but we all feel that something isn't right. That's part of the reason we are all here. $$$$$ talks more than anybody wants to admit, and the power of $$$ gives factions so much more leverage than they deserve in influencing the commonweal .
The closer it gets to home, the more rights should be extended to everybody (the way they have been, at least through custom, for thousands of years), but as regards macro policy, can we be well served by mass enfranchisement? The old Romans extended voting rights to all free men, but the franchise was weighted, based on the caste of the individual. It wasn't a bad system. Endured for 100s of years. The wheels fell off as Rome's reach extended beyond the confines of the old city state. Rome of the imperial age gained a huge part of the world but simple representation was lost to the common Roman citizen.
Think of how insane macro politics are in the USA. Even the cucks are aware at this point that no matter what support they may gain among the people, any and every policy, no matter how sound and agreeable (regulating, curtailing porn, for instance) could be nullified by the command of nine, unaccountable individuals, a nullification based on nothing more than the whims and bigotries of these nine individuals. (It's got little to nothing to do with law. These individuals come to a conclusion based on their whims and bigotries and assign their flunky clerks to come up some casuistical argument for consumption.) this is something to be proud of? The American experience makes the absolute worst case for mass democracy. I say the worst case be cause other basket cases such as Argentina, Venezuela, South Africa, UK (they won't admit it, but it's true) etc. have taken their cues from the USA. What a joke.
Left out of your analysis is the utterly malign effect of money on politics. That was a huge problem in ancient Rome too. "In Rome all things are for sale," scoffed Jugurtha after buying enough senators to escape serious legal charges.
My take is that it feminized society and it’s pretty evident in the way every dam issue is dealt with primarily by emotion. Women get upset about their exclusive spaces but fail to remember that they griped and sued their way into men only spaces for years so now there’s essentially nothing left for them. Even the boys choirs in England are no longer assured. I like having the vote however I really don’t know if it’s been a net positive.
An enlightening, inspirational, and insightful post. Unlike Dunkirk, Christians cannot flee from the battlefield to fight another day. We dig in where we are, strengthen our defenses, pick our battles, and honor God by our actions and sharing his Word in support of the Great Commission.
Our tactics will vary. In my Dunkirk, I leverage the interrelationship between Christianity, Citizenship, and Quality Management. Quality management is all about reducing variation from the ideal – the ideal being a standard of perfection where all needs are met such as was the case in the Garden of Eden.
The secular quality profession has validated that the closer any product/service gets to the ideal (Taguchi Loss Function), the higher the quality (more needs met) and the lower the cost to the individual and society. Costs include the effects of unmet needs. Thus, quality either gets better or worse, making continuous improvement a moral imperative.
It is interesting that the typical response from the Christian community is that quality management is a “business thing” and the business world chooses not to see the connection between Quality and God. And, in America, “We the People” lack the knowledge of the methods and tools needed to continually work towards the " more perfect Union.”
How? He's funny in his vinegary way. In my church, one of our finest is a close associate of Wilson's, and as far as I can tell, he has failed to move our elders in the slightest. We tend to refer to Wilson as "the man who must not be named."
I am curious if you have ever seen "The Eggs Benedict Option"?
https://twitter.com/Babygravy9/status/1558520318842601478?s=20
I am far from a fan of Babygravy9, but he is undoubtedly one of the most influential voices in edgy right-wing circles, and as long as you are reviewing books with similar titles, it would make sense, even if it is a bad review
A friend says The Bon Op reminds him of the Doctor's speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJP9o4BEziI&ab_channel=DoctorWho
One finds wisdom in the strangest places, eh?
Seed oils: Marcella Hazan's (PBUH) recipe for risotto calls for a judicious addition of sunflower oil to the melting butter before coating and just beginning to brown the riso superfino arborio. I think that closes the discussion.
Inability to understand the efficacy of the contemplative life is, well, it's, like, protestant, you know?
Truth. Get rid of actual asceticism and you end up with either legalism or antinomianism. or some weird-ass combination of the two.
Well, all I meant was what I said, that it was protestant (see the theological discussion at the Misses Morkans' Christmas Party in "The Dead" by Mr. James Joyce), and this guy is a Calvinist. Let's just remind everybody that "weird-ass" is your contribution to the discussion. The sectarian squabbling that goes on in these boxes is distasteful. There isn't much of it, but it really ought to stop.
Nothing sectarian about it. ANY combination of legalism and antinomianism is bound to be out-to-lunch, regardless of which ecclesiological persuasion it appears in, Orthodox and Catholic included. I spent almost half my adult life as a fundamentalist/evangelical and the other half as an Orthodox. Trust me, I've seen it from both sides now.
Re: Inability to understand the efficacy of the contemplative life is, well, it's, like, protestant, you know?
Thanks for saying quite concisely what I tried to get at with many more words in a comment below.
Jon, please distinguish between MAGA world and the Christian one, okay? I've come to believe that the coming of Trump down a staircase if not on a donkey in 2015 was one of the Devil's brightest moves since the tide of the demytholygizers took the German seminaries in the 19th century.
Seed oils legitimately are terrible for you.
I would not be surprised if they are a large contributor to the rise of trans kids
Oh. I see.
Seed oils are natural in origin-- which doesn't mean they're OK, since poison ivy and belladonna are natural too. But is seed oils were causing the trans thing we should see it in animals that include those seeds in their diet.
If there's a chemical factor involved in the increase of trans my money is on the ersatz hormone mimic in the many plastics we've filled the environment (including our own homes) with.
Seed oils are not seeds, though. They are no more "natural" than a vegan burger. The chemical and mechanical processes involved in extracting oil from the seeds creates an almost entirely man-made product that is terrible for the human body. I don't know if there's a connection between the rise of trans kids and the top-down imposition of seed oils (and corn syrup) on the population (especially on the lower classes), but there is an undeniable link between that imposition and the rise of obesity and all kinds of major health problems.
I agree that plastics are messing with us on the hormone level. They might go a long way to explaining low sperm counts--that and all the estrogen in the tap water. We have created a toxic soup...
I'm skeptical on the estrogen in tap water claims. Estrogen is a natural hormone excreted by humans and animals. In ages past water supplies were far more polluted with human and animal effluvia that they are now, but of all the harms that caused, sexual confusion seems not to have been a major one.
Not fair, Ted. I don't know how anyone in my Presbyterian church votes. I do know there is a growing preoccupation coming close to obsession with communal prayer and life in the church. I miss out on a lot of it because I'm usually falling asleep at about 6 AM, when the men's prayer group meets on Tuesday mornings, and I'm similarly disadvantaged in schedule for the small groups we have. But believe me, the interested and the able don't have a shortage of opportunities for communal prayer.
How efficacious was the contemplative life for the Catholic Church?
I was talking about monks and nuns.
Also, I was talking about principles, not performance. This is why I try never to mention denominations besides my own in these boxes because people may take offense.
As for the Catholic Church, it's a smoking crater.
Larry Chapp on "the Potemkin Synod:"
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/08/31/the-false-front-is-showing-on-this-potemkin-synod/
Thanks.
He implicates women’s suffrage in the outbreak of child transgenderism.
I don't care for democracy and so don't care about voting, but is this wrong? I get that this is offensive and generally goes with thinly veiled misogyny which is ugly. But is it wrong? I don't think so. I think it's offensive.
"I don't care for democracy and so don't care about voting..."
I get this a lot and it drives me crazy. What are you going to replace it with? It's a little like my saying, "I wish I looked more like Cary Grant." Yes? So?
I'll replace it slowly through the beatitudes and pursuing truth and living towards excellence and enduring attendant sufferings. The twin masters of Western Civilization, Jesus and Socrates, are in agreement on this
If you feel called to abstain from political activity, by all means follow the call (just make sure it's coming from the right source). But do be clear that this is a personal choice, nothing you have any business forcing on the rest of us.
From Plato with Dionysios of Syracuse to Voltaire and Catherine the Great, the quest for enlightened despotism has always been a great failure.
How could I possibly force others to abstain from political activity except by politics?
When did I endorse enlightened despotism?
We've talked before under an alias of mine. I basically think that the ideological regime of this country is cruel, evil and immoral and there are two ways to push back on it, politics or let's say living the gospel and conformity to goodness, truth, and beauty. I chose the second option, to be the grain of wheat that willingly falls to the ground and dies. I'm not sure how this is threatening to anyone, in fact it seems that my enemies ought to rationally encourage it along, which is fine by me, because taking a broad historical view this is a disgusting time period full of indecent people and I'm here out of duty and not enjoyment.
Edit 1: Also I'm a complete reject and outcast with no loyal friends by my side. Hard for me to force anything.
Edit 2: My idea of a throne is the cross
Apologies if I misread your comment.
No problem :)
I do look like Cary Grant. My wife of 30+ years lives in a state of constant anxiety.
Is there any truth to the rumors that while you LOOK like Cary Grant, you SOUND like Gilbert Gottfried?
May Mrs. Lonigan's next three decades be nothing else but total bliss!
Women aren't going to lose the franchise and even eighteen years olds won't give up the right to vote although I would raise the voting age to at least 25 if I was a dictator. We must muddle through the world in which we must live however disgusting many things are.
I'd not be opposed to raising the voting age to 25. The people who wouldn't like it would have to explain why not, and a lot of junk science about the maturation of the brain would finally get a brutal airing.
That would be fine by me. Maybe 40 would be better.
The legitimate argument against it would be that anyone who can serve in the military ought to be able to vote, a legitimate objection.
It's the practical vs ethical question.
On a practical level, yes, the only reason for the child transgender push is because women support it. It's not even close--actually the only reason any liberal or Democrat wins elections is because of female voters.
However, there's the ethical question of whether you can block someone from voting just because they vote incorrectly. And furthermore, there are plenty of women who don't follow the trend and vote against this nonsense. So banning women from voting is punishing good women because of how the majority acts
I'd absolutely and willingly give up my right to vote if it prevented every Democrat, 'progressive' white woman from enabling all the trans nonsense - in a heartbeat, I'd do it!
I've been wondering that myself. As a woman, and someone who considers herself a responsible voter, I want to believe it's not true. But it really might be.
Check out Janice Fiamenco on YouTube and her Substack. She's all about the history of feminism and it's not what you think.
Helen Andrews on "women against suffrage" is classic:
https://herandrews.com/2015/03/01/women-against-suffrage/
It’s easy to fall into, the world is Sodom and Gomorrah and we are Lot and company, waiting on God’s destruction. Very easy to do, I have four children and live outside of Boston so you can imagine what goes down in the public schools. We have to keep in mind, God loves and God died for everyone in Trashworld. Not the righteous, not the few, but the worst of us, even me! I expect my kids to be salt in the world, but not in a whimsical way. In a sober and serious way, and we have these cultural conversations often about the fallen world and our duty to remain faithful to God, pray for our neighbors and our society. Not with an eye toward renewal, there’s really no possibility of that. Not waiting for the right combination of right wing politics and Churchmen to take over, that would be a disaster and it’s not going to happen anyway. Maybe to live through the collapse. Hell, we are already living through the collapsing, in my estimation. And keep our faith, God willing. Also, it’s important to keep in mind that God put us in this place and time, that He knew we would be living in Trashworld and He has a plan. It’s not anything we can see, but He is Sovereign.
Exactly.
If you were a Christian in 1930s Spain, what would you have counseled then?
Franco's triumph ended up being a long-term defeat for the Catholic Church in Spain.
But we only have the time we are given, the kairos in which to choose. What else could Catholics in 1930s Spain have chosen but Franco's side, unless they were to choose to stand apart from all sides (or unless they were Basques)?
Stand aside and trust in the Lord.
Earlier this week we had a special Liturgy to commemorate St. Moses the Ethiopian. His life was read aloud in church. The saint began as a bloodthirsty bandit. He found Christ and became a monk. And at the end of his life when his monastery was in the path of marauding bandits he still eschewed bloodshed and let himself be slain, thereby gaining a crown in Heaven.
Now, there, Jon, you guys have such an advantage on us. I think most of our historical attention goes to matters of the Reformation.
If I had my way, we Presbyterians would be celebrating the older saints, as you do. Special days, feast days. I alluded to the following sometime in the last twenty - four hours of the Dreher Comments Section which has become my home: I am ashamed of the starkness of our sanctuary. I'll leave it there because I'm ashamed to go into details. Oh, yes, an irenic F*ck the Iconoclasts.
The local PCA minister, predecessor to the current one, who is busy stripping his church of its liturgical ("lite") worship and putting an end to weekly communion, got his D.Min. from St Vladimir's Orthodox seminary. He told me about a decade ago that he would like to have been able to become Orthodox "except that what they call the Seventh Ecumenical Council mandated idolatry."
I know this because the wife of a friend I mentioned in another comment, himself a former PCA elder and now an Orthodox reader, a loyal life-long Presbyterian, has just left her PCA church and joined the local Missouri Synod Lutheran congregation.
Churchill said much the same thing.
Indeed, the Basques were for the most part devout Roman Catholics. Thus, the entire generalization falls apart. During the 1980s, there was a made for TV series on communism today (then). The episode on Italy features a good Communist Party member who, like any good Roman Catholic communist, gets married in his Catholic church. A lot of Catholics did choose for the Republic. How could any Catholic choose to side with a brutal mass murderer like Franco?
Now, you are going to come back and say that Franco's brutal mass murdering was necessary to restore order and avoid even greater levels of mass murder. Assuming arguendo that this is so, we are still a long way from 'How could a Catholic choose any side but Franco?
>> Franco's triumph ended up being a long-term defeat for the Catholic Church in Spain.
Well, the Catholic Church has been defeated in Spain, no disagreement there, but can blame be laid at the feet of Franco? I think that Franco just delayed what was the inevitable, and in that delay he gave Spain some marvelous decades.
Re: can blame be laid at the feet of Franco?
Yes. Having defeated the radicals and stabilized Spain, Franco should have prepared for a Democratic republic right after WWII (or maybe a constitutional monarchy though Juan Carlos was not yet available) and ridden off into the sunset like Cincinnatus or George Washington. He could have made a deal with the US for a democratizing Spain to enter NATO, which would have left the US to make sure the Communists did not return to power.
Same criticism I increasingly have of Viktor Orban-- he too is overstaying his hour-- and did have of Vlad Putin before I had much more serious issues with him.
I'm thinking of Brent Bozell and Reid Buckley, two prominent USA Catholics that moved to Spain in the 50s/60s, the height of Franco's reign, to experience an integrated Catholic life, Bozell declaring that "one could taste in one's mouth the Catholicism" of Spain 1960s. Both returned to the USA by the late 70s, clearly dissapointed in the developments in Spain. One must be prepared for utter futility in life. Be like Saint Boniface, go off into the wilderness into an unknown territory, thick with contempt, hostility and danger, knowing that you and all that you have built over decades can be destroyed in an instant, but no matter, having the faith that others like you will follow, to start anew, until the ends of time.
And that no work done for Christ's glory, however blasted to ruin by war, apostasy, or indifference will be unacknowledged and unrewarded when we stand before Him who bought us with His life.
The indispensable man problem rears its head from time to time. FDR, Orban, W in 2004…not to mash things up too much, but keeping the good thing going has been in my mind a lot recently. I find it frustrating that guys like this Isker fellow seem unaware of things like Boniface’s martyrdom and the power of personal sacrifice, including the knowledge that one will never see the outcome of one’s sacrifice.
Put not your trust in princes, I suppose.
"God loves and God died for everyone in Trashworld" -- my guess is that Isker would not agree with this. He would say God loves the elect and Christ died for them, but that the rest were intended for hell from the foundation of the world.
So true. The cigars and alcohol don't come across as Christian.
And their hate for and imagined superiority to non-Christians.
These people give the Christian faith a bad reputation.
Yeah, and the constant discussion of "my judo class". Some of them seem to be fighting their inner female a bit too hard ...lol.
Why would God create anything or anyone only to predestine it to Hell?
Jon, if I have been correct in saying that Calvinists have held this (but don't take my word for it; I have almost no firsthand knowledge of Calvinism), I think they might reply: "For His greater glory, because He really is God, and who are we, His creations, to question Him?" You would be referred to Romans 9-11.
Jesus told us to question all things. Well, he meant all human things-- and that definitely would include people making claims about God since false teachers and prophets is very much a danger. IMO, John Calvin strayed very far into error.
To quote the malodorous David Heartily Bent, the Calvin who began writing the Institutes at 26 was a theological "idiot," untrained in both Greek and Hebrew. Bent has more in common with Isker than either would admit or probably any of us would like to contemplate, but he gets some things right.
Calvin was superbly educated in Latin and Greek; I don't know about the Hebrew.
Yes, and Dale, there are books by scholars with at least as much weightiness as those of the House of Doug who have written books which take the Calvinistic interpretation of those verses through an exegetical woodchipper. A huge weakness which the Calvies have always had against the Baptist boys is that those good old boys learn their koine Greek. The Calvies do not like to discuss those chapters with them.
Can you point me to a few of those books? I’d love to read them. I have a few young, angry Christian friends getting sucked into Isker-esque LARPing and contemporary theo-bro Calvinism is a big part of that.
Odgie, the truth is that I had to take so much sleep medicine ( a euphemistic way of explaining that I had to triple the prescribed amount ) to get to sleep that my goal is to remain conscious today. Just scroll on through until you find Eve's recommendations for me.
The main hilarity about Calvinism is that no one who believes in predestination ever believes that they're not among the elect. A dead giveaway.
There is some indication that suicide rates - not that we have statistics - were higher in 16th/early 17th Century Europe in regions where Calvinism was the established form of Christianity. See:
https://dokumen.pub/origins-of-the-puritan-concept-of-despair.html
Oh, Eve, I wish that were true. Instead, Five Pointers tend to live lives of intermittent, covert panic attacks. You've heard of Imposter Syndrome, maybe?
It's a psychological syndrome, undoubtedly some kind of anxiety disorder, in which a person who does have unmistakable abilities for a particular thing becomes suddenly possessed of the certainty that he's a fraud, a con artist, a no - talent hack who at any moment will be caught out as such.
John Lennon was subject to it. Whether he was made more susceptible to attacks by his drug use isn't known, though when you read his description of himself as a teenager and a young man as perpetually terrified, you might wonder.
I think it was George Martin who wrote that when Lennon was hit with an attack, he, Martin, would sit with Lennon and remind him, "Now, John, you wrote 'Please, Please Me,' the band's first #1, entirely on your own, remember?...and when Paul was stuck on finding a bridge for 'Michelle,' you grabbed the perfect one out of the air, remember that? And for pity's sake, man! You wrote most of the entire score for 'A Hard Day's Night' entirely by yourself, and do you remember that I thought your demo of 'Strawberry Fields Forever' was perfect, and that we ought to release it as is, and..."
Martin wrote that as he would talk, Lennon's anguish - distorted features would begin to relax, he would smile a little, say, "Yeah, I did, didn't I?" and begin to come out of it.
I know a guy who has Imposter's Syndrome. Several years ago, about twenty of us got an email from him in which he denounced himself as a fake, a fraud, a con, a shyster, a grifter, fit to be spat upon and howled out of the company of able people, etc. It was F hilarious.
The guy's father is a doctor, but it was I who had to explain, "Hey, Mike, you have a recognized syndrome of psychological illness, Imposter's Syndrome." He had never heard of it, and was much relieved by my explanation. ( I regret this now. While not an evil man, he has since proven himself one for whom it would be easy for me to have contempt, a person who betrays others for what he imagines will be personal gain. Charity obligates me to see this as another sign of his consuming insecurity, but what he betrayed one person over shows a thick core of stupidity about people in him which makes me think he's liable to fail. He remains the single best argument against homeschooling I know of. )
I think it's relatively few Calvinists who don't have their version of Imposter's Syndrome.
"Am I really saved? I would have to be one of the Elect, and it seemed to me that I did believe, but - what if it was evanescent grace?! And if I did believe, and I'm not elect, it wouldn't matter anyway!! Oooooohhhhhhh..."
Soteriology 101 on YouTube is a likeable channel whose host is a former Calvinist, and there are several videos about this which you can find there. It just occurred to me that we're seeing more of this at a time when it's common for young people to be uncertain about gender, and I wonder if there's a connection beyond the to - be - expected diabolical one.
I'm not making fun of these people who are riven with terror about the genuineness of their salvation, because in my view, they are victims of trauma, caused by the terrorism of a soteriological system which they have been taught, but which is far more eisegeted than exegeted. There are recent books by Protestants whose scholarship no one questions which annihilate Calvinism, and I can only wish they find their way to the people who need them.
Fifteen years ago, I was listening on the radio to the late erudite Protestant nitwit, R.C. Sproul, who was preaching about evangelism. This is a quote within 98% exactness: "The Gospel has not been properly preached unless the doctrine of unconditional divine election has been fully explained to the listeners."
I didn't scream, I shrieked.
If I didn't do it earlier, thank you very much for the reading suggestions, Eve.
Why I Am Not A Calvinist.
>> Not with an eye toward renewal, there’s really no possibility of that.
Bingo. This is a hard pill to swallow, but if you want to retain any semblance of sanity and hope (yes hope when there is no hope) you must acknowledge and face this, and live accordingly.
Yes, read Ultimate Things- very clear that while we should and must live this life as Christ would have us do, looking for an earthy shining city on a hill and a “sustainable” paradise ruled by wise and fair leaders is nothing but a fantasy.
This is the path of life. Passion comes before wisdom. Impulsiveness before restraint. The book of Psalms is full of guidance for young, passionate, impulsively inclined young men. Hopefully with time, Millennials like this pastor will seek wisdom, and then he will get to play the role of the wise patriarch. He isn't there yet. But when (if?) He does, he won't be preaching winsomeness - he will preach repentance.
Isker strikes me as someone who is smart, sometimes insightful, but lacking in wisdom.
The trouble with hatred is that it's like resentment: it's drinking poison and believing the other person will die. Plus it doesn't convert anyone who doesn't already have a low boiling point and is looking for someone / something new to rail against. Nobody who needs it has ever been converted or changed by someone yelling at them that they're evil globohomo bugmen (or the equivalent). I have volunteered at the pen for years, and I can guarantee that the one thing that will not work with hardened criminals is to yell at them about what miserable sinners and horrible people they are: they already know that. What they want to hear is that there is still, somehow, some kind of hope, and how to make that happen.
What works is love. "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use and persecute you." (Matt. 5:43-44) Highly unpopular among a certain set today (such as "The Bon Op" author) but that's the rules - if you believe that Jesus knew what He was talking about and really meant us to do what He said. And it's hard, oh, is it hard. But it's the only thing that works. Not always, and often not in the person's lifetime (see St. Boniface). But that's irrelevant. As long as we're walking the Way, we're doing something worthwhile.
PS - "What happens when all the bugmen have been exterminated, so to speak?" Well, then there will be a new war, with new purges (generally starting with the earliest sign-ons, who have slacked off), because once you start on a hate-fueled quest to purify the world... well, you find out that no society and no one is ever pure enough. Except for the leader. For a while. Because sooner or later, even Robespierre isn't pure enough... Societies built on hate and anger always dead end.
You made the point much better than I!
Thank you.
The BonOp seems to also be a control freak's manifesto: This is the way I want the world to be ordered and anyone who disagrees with me is my enemy and must be eliminated. As you said, that's not a recipie for a lasting society.
I totally agree. I would not want to live in the author's house, that's for sure.
Geneva in Calvin's day?
Nor there. Calvin was very strict: there was a kind of religion police was empowered to inspect people’s houses to make sure everyone behaved:
no rosaries or relics, it was illegal to name children after saints. “Immoral” or Catholic books were proscribed; art, music with instruments, dancing, and theater were no longer allowed. The colors of clothing, hair styles, and amounts of food permissible at the table were regulated. Gambling, drunkenness, adultery, promiscuity, immodest dress, profane songs, idolatry, heresy, and speaking ill of the clergy were punished, often by exile or execution. Fines for not attending worship. About the only thing you could do was eat and make money. The result was that, as people dedicated themselves to making money, over the next 100 years Geneva became much more of a bank-centered oligarchy than a theocracy. Corruption always sneaks in...
Eve, can you suggest some books which are a fair, comprehensive overview of this devout hellscape?
I'll get back to you on that - I'll have to do some research.
Bobby, you could start off here, which provides a general (positive) overview:
https://www.monergism.com/john-calvins-geneva
Then there's Philip Schaff's, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 8: § 107. The Exercise of Discipline in Geneva. More even handed.
Two books that would be very informative (and you could probably get at a library) are:
The Registers of the Consistory of Geneva at the Time of Calvin: Volume 1: 1542-1544 Paperback – April 11, 2002 - by Mrs. Isabella M. Watt (Editor), Mr. Robert M. Kingdon (Editor), Mr. Thomas A. Lambert (Editor)
"Supplies primary source documents- the great bulk of which have remained unknown to most modern researchers- are of capital importance for study of this seminal period in church history. Volume 1 records the activity of the Consistory between 1542 and 1544. Arbitration of disputes, surveillance of morals, repression of the vestiges of the Catholic cult, promotion of the Reformed mode of living, resolution of matrimonial cases- this is a general sketch of the Consistory's work during its earliest days. Rich in details pertaining to daily life and piety in Geneva, these noteworthy historical documents testify to the immense role played by the church in society at the beginning of the Reformation."
AND
Puritan Papers: 1963-1964 Paperback – April 28, 2021 by J I Packer (Contributor)
Which spotlight John Calvin. (Very pro-Calvin, but...)
Hope this helps.
E. William Monter, Calvin's Geneva (1967)
and, for the other side:
Jeanne de Jussie, The Short Chronicle, ed. Carrie Klaus (2009)
This last is an account kept by an aristocratic Carmelite nun in a Geneva convent of the arrival of Reformed preaching, the harassment of the nuns by local Protestants, attempts to force them to get married, and finally their expulsion from Geneva.
Yes.
It's as if mentally, Isker is 5, and lining up battalions of toy soldiers.
Your righteous jab at Warhammer made me laugh! But you're right. People on the left have done the work, and anyone who's worked in academia, the arts, cultural institutions, or human resources has seen it.
In the 1980s, I had a job where one of my co-workers was a summer intern from an expensive Northeastern liberal arts college. The company worked often with the disabled, but she lectured all of us and insisted on calling them "the DIFFERENTLY abled." The rest of us weren't forced to use that language, but the company let her use it if she wanted to, even though the disabled people we worked with didn't understand it and thought she was a loon. But she persisted, as righteous as any would-be martyr. That was 35 years ago. And people like her are now running everything.
I haven't been a "gamer" (tabletop or video) for 20+ years, but I've recently learned through friends and acquaintances that as the strategy and roleplaying game worlds have gotten super-woke, Warhammer is considered a refuge for "fascists," which I take to mean "middle-of-the-road people who don't endorse wokeness." Apparently people can no longer even play a goofy strategy wargame without having their motives and politics policed.
I am disabled, and have always loathed the term, "differently abled." I suppose I'm "differently abled" if you're looking for someone whose right hemispheric I.Q. is 45 points below that of his left hemisphere, but my injury at seven sure as Hell took me out of the possibility of pursuing several things I love. As you understand "differently abled" implies that it's brought me intellectual advantages I might have had otherwise.
Well, yeah, if you consider general feralness a break, I guess.
You mean you never developed the ability to fly, or read minds? Not even infravision? Dang.
Joking aside, this girl's use of the term "differently abled" was baffling to 100% of the disabled veterans we worked with. She always had to explain to them that it meant "disabled." Yet she persisted, with the righteousness of a missionary, because someone at the expensive northeastern liberal arts college told this affluent white girl that it was the desired term to use, and she accepted the dogma wholesale. I was maybe 19, and this was the first time I saw that elite colleges foster an unthinking ideological zealotry that was completely alien to the pragmatic state-college culture I came from.
You’re right, but to the Christian control-freak, their own ideas never call for self-examination. Christians who disagree “just don’t love Jesus as much as I do” or, in the eyes of the control-freak, aren’t even Christians at all.
The truth of your first paragraph is borne out by the fact that any time I've seen or heard about a violent white supremacist finding his basic humanity, it was because someone showed him love, over and over again until he knew it was real. All these lefties who think they can "smash white supremacy" (whatever that even is) by scuffling in the streets with the Proud Boys are fools; and Isker is likely just their ideological mirror image.
We're a violent society - everything's a "war" (war on drugs, war on poverty, war on this, war on that), and most of our entertainment revolves around conflict / war / violence, not peace / resolution. So we have a lot of people who believe that violence is the only answer. Sooner or later, bad things happen.
In prison, I lead Alternatives to Violence Project workshops, and I've seen members of violent gangs of all races learn to coexist. But it takes time and nurturing.
Amen
I am a regular user of the Quora web forum, pretty liberal, and I am struck by the irony of people there who assume we (conservatives) are haters of gays, trans people, etc and somehow think telling us we are idiots etc will make us better. How will hating me motivate me to love another?
Exactly. And it works the other way, too. If conservatives want "libtards" to change, they need to quit calling them "libtards", "pedos", "commies" etc. It helps if we turn off all op-eds (TV, radio, etc.) because they're just trying to stir the pot and make more money.
They aren’t trying to change anyone’s opinion. They just like having people to look down their noses and scream at. It allows them to feel like they are Doing Something.
Hate, anger and with the underlying premise being vengeance for all injustices, real and imagined.
Eve, your comment is a tonic to my soul, and a great encouragement to me. I'm ashamed of my hatred of my psychopathic cousin. I must refuse passion when he occurs to me, and ask God for dispassion toward him, always. Thank you.
God bless you and keep you. It's hard, but just remember - the hatred is poisoning you, not him.
Rod, I suppose you should be flattered (somewhat) by the BonOp - you know you're on to somethng when people take the time to parody your ideas. But it's a thin parody because it's all about (and only about) winning; "I'm right, you're wrong, so f*** you". No one ever has been convinced by that type of argument.
I see that thinking in the legal world all the time, especially among young attorneys (sadly, it's become more common among those older folks who should know better by now). Every little dispute gets turned into an opportunity to not only prove your opponent wrong but to rub his nose in it. The problem with it is that while you may win the battle, it may cause you to lose the war, or else plant the seeds for a future war (now when in history have we seen this happen?)
AMEN!
I wonder whether that behavior is due to the pervasiveness of entertainment culture. What plays well on a screen is quite different from what works best in the real world, but people really do pick up behaviors that are modeled in entertainment. Goes for politics too, maybe a reason people now are so extreme.
Re: You cannot run and hide from Trashworld.
Well, yes, you can-- because this world is not all there is. "Be in the world, but not of it" is sound advice in every age. It is indeed what St., Benedict and the other monastic saints sought. Also, "What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul?" That is true for those who wish to "gain" the world in anger as well as in avarice.
You note that this Isker is a Calvinist and in his rage I can see the defects of Calvinism which jettisoned so much of the older tradition of Christianity, creating a truncated version of Christianity which was almost wholly preoccupied with the world because they had lost awareness of the richness of Creation well outside the merely temporal and immediate. This is why Calvinist-inflected societies birthed Puritanism and ultimately secular leftism with its implacable and totalizing focus on the here-and-now after dispensing with God (who fades away from our thought our easily when one succumbs to the Tyranny of Now.
Also, we don't need to "save the world" and to right all wrongs in order to do good. That lies beyond pretty much everyone. Just say no to grand crusades-- which all too often end up being about our own aggrandizement. Focus instead on the small and humble. And there is room for courage even in the minutest virtuous act. I am fascinated by the role of contingency in life-- how a small, even trivial, act may have vast consequences, good or ill, far beyond our knowledge. So a simple deed of kindness or mercy may well become part of a cascading chain that, in fifty or five hundred years saves millions from ruin. It isn't given to us to know such enormities, but it is mandatory on us to live with faith and hope and love and to do such good as lies within our space. and ability. God does not require us to save the world (that's His job) but he does expect us not to make it any worse.
That's a great post.
"creating a truncated version of Christianity which was almost wholly preoccupied with the world because they had lost awareness of the richness of Creation well outside the merely temporal and immediate"
Well, sort of. Calvinism as it worked out, in the English world at least, was actually almost wholly preoccupied with individual members of the predestined elect coming to an awareness of their own election - and then, individually and as "God's chosen flock" carrying out God's will and "executing his righteous judgments" in the world. Oliver Cromwell was the perfect, almost "superhuman" - exemplification of this; cf.:
https://www.amazon.com/Oliver-Cromwell-Very-Interesting-People/dp/019921753X
an amazingly good little book! In the longer run, as Jon rightly points out, it led in secularized form to a militant crusading of the "Elect" of the Left.
I find myself wanting to ask Isker: When have we *not* lived in Trashworld? The directories for upstandin' Southern cities around 1900 usually included business listing for all the whorehouses, making sure citizens and visiting businessmen could have their choice of black women or white women. Unlike you, I do think we live in palpably worse times right now than we did 50 years ago, but Trashworld is ever with us, and even the Christian Nationalist world Isker dreams of would have its own Trashworld....
I agree with your main point however. On the question of whether 50 years ago it was better or worse-- that depends on what you value most. It's easy to be blase about the past (especially one that is not in personal memory- I was just a young child in 1973). But at that time we were just coming out of the civil unrest and political violence of the 60s, we were in the midst of Watergate and the denouement of Vietnam both of which were the engines of destruction for public trust in government, divorce and crime stats, along with inflation, were rising, while today those at least are, albeit fitfully, falling. I was old enough by the late 70s to be aware of the gloom-and-doom that era embraced, from Carter's "malaise" speech to The Late Great Planet Earth, to predictions of Soviet victory in the Cold War, to "The Limits of Growth" to predictions of looming economic meltdown ("The Crash of '79").
What was distinctive was that we could have greater distance from events. Our everyday lives were not fragmented by technology and the internet; so life felt different in a qualitative way. We were a bit more human.
Some things were better than now: a young man could graduate high school and if not sucked up in the draft he could find gainful employment and make plans to marry and start a family within a very few years.
TrashWorld, ie, the fallen world, is always with us. But it ebbs and flows, depending on when you look at it. But of course, Jon is wrong, in that we are not to be passive before it, and just look to Heaven for relief. We ARE to fight. But we must be gentle as doves, wise as serpents, be smart in our fight. And remember that when we oppose the Fallen, we were once Fallen, too. And still have our sin nature, always waiting to have its way with us.
We may be fraternal twins, Jon, though Mom held onto you much longer than she did me. Your summary of contingency is as cogent yet concise a presentation of my own obsession with it as I've ever seen.
Also, preservation as much as we can of all that is true, good, pure, and noble. Draw a line against those who would seek to destroy them.
Fantastic comment.
I would add that we don't live in Trashworld, we live in our own souls. If our soul can be kept in order (not easy) the world will seem a better place.
Granted I reside in a nice Western city (Seattle) and might feel differently in Afghanistan or some such.
FYI, it seems he wrote more directly about the Benedict Option here: https://bonifaceoption.substack.com/p/the-boniface-option
It isn't hostile to Rod's ideas, but he thinks there should be something happening after the training and defensive stance.
What is it with these manosphere types wanting to take away women’s right to vote? Of all the reasons put forward the idea that women’s suffrage led to transgenderism is the most ridiculous. Who suffers the most? Women who have men who think they’re women ruining women’s sports, invading our locker rooms, shelters & prisons, & stripping us of our identity so we’re not women, we’re “non-men” or “birthing persons” or “egg producers.” I’m post menopausal & don’t produce eggs anymore, am I not a woman? Some of the biggest opponents of this stuff are TERFS, trans exclusionary radical feminists. They’ve gotten death threats & hate.
Besides, women got the vote 103 years ago & even earlier in some states, like Wyoming (1876). If us voting caused all this, it took a damn long time to happen. “Taxation without representation.” Why should I pay taxes levied by, or obey laws passed by, people who I had no say in electing to represent me? These guys can’t stand uppity women & they would do well to remember Robert Heinlein’s observation that women & cats will do as they please & men & dogs need to relax & get used to it.
Jesus told Pontus Pilate “My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my followers would fight.”
I completely agree.
He sounds juvenile.
It first glance it does seem ridiculous. But it's not entirely if you look at the history of the feminist movement. Suffragettes (feminism's "first wave") simply wanted (long overdue) property and voting rights. But then Radical feminism started up in feminism's "second wave", during the 1960s. Sadly there is a generous amount of overlap between some parts of Radical feminism and that of today's gender identity ideology. Radfems disavow evolutionary biology and attribute feminine aptitudes and behaviors to learned "socialization" alone. Nurture. Imposed by "the patriarchy" of course. Radfems believe that "gender" is a "construct". And should be "abolished" in society. (Sound familiar?) Both camps feel that (false and oppressive) gender roles and gendered behavior can (and should) be fluid. Radfems think men should be free to paint their nails and wear dresses. As long as they don't actually insist that they're women, that's ok. That's acceptable "gender non conformity". It's not a big leap from there to gender identity ideology, where the body that you're born into means nothing compared to your inner perception of yourself and how you want to express your "gender". Radfems also felt that becoming a lesbian was a good option to dodge the inescapable inequality (and violence) of heterosexuality. Extreme radfems (like Shulamith Firestone) declared that women's liberation would never occur until women were freed from the oppression of gestating, birthing and raising offspring. (Abolishing the natural family is another overlap.) Firestone is considered an early transhumanist now because she wrote about using artificial biotechnology to free women from motherhood and family raising. (Biolibertarianism is another overlap.)
The later 3rd and 4th waves of feminism, especially Liberal feminism, are "intersectional", "sex positive" (pro porn, promiscuity and fetish) and firmly embraces LGBTQWERTY. Trans identified people, the LGB, POCs, and females should unite against the oppressive white cisheteronormative "patriarchy".
Most people have forgotten (or are simply unaware) that during the 1970s, in the name of "equality", some women started suing for entry into men's colleges, social clubs, organizations, etc. They won their court cases and turned what were previously male exclusive spaces into unisex ones. (Some men's clubs simply closed.)
The whole de-sexing of women's reproductive language is to make trans identified females comfortable as they impersonate men. Being reminded that they are still females in female bodies performing what are ultimately female behaviors triggers their dysphoria. Which makes them uncomfortable and unhappy. So ordinary men are not behind the changing of the language there. Organizations and institutions giving in to trans rights activists are. And some of those TRAs are Liberal feminists.
I'm sorry this got so lengthy but there were (and still are) alotta weeds to wade through.
TL;DR: the manosphere wants to turn back the clock to before women got the vote because Radical and Liberal feminist inspired voting has changed society and politics. And not for the better for many men in many legitimate areas.
Did you know that Gloria Steinham was a CIA operative?
And many feminist groups and magazines were funded by the CIA?
I’ve heard that. And it wouldn’t surprise me if it were true. But whether or not (or how much) 2nd wave feminism was astroturfed by the CIA doesn’t matter much now. Its ideas were embraced and built upon in the following 3rd & 4th waves.
I prefer to think of Gloria Steinhem as a Playboy Bunny, nothing more.
"TL;DR: the manosphere wants to turn back the clock to before women got the vote because Radical and Liberal feminist inspired voting has changed society and politics. And not for the better for many men in many legitimate areas."
"First Wave" feminism of the mid-19th century was all about women being able to care for themselves and their children when their husbands either deserted them or drank up anything they earned that was meant to support their families. The temperance movement was exactly parallel to the women's suffrage movement, and was supported by most of the same people (Frederick Douglass as well, IIRC) - who were also anti-abortion. Women having the vote was seen as a major answer to alcoholism and the misery it caused women and children, especially since women had no property rights. One proof of this is that nearly the first thing that happened when women gained the vote was voting in Prohibition. Our answer as a society to what we think is evil has nearly always been to try to legislate it away; that goes back to the Puritans and continues with the Puritans of both the extreme Right and the Extreme Left, only that the latter are more prominent now.
You're right that there are a lot of weeds to wade through. I don't know how old you are, ned, but I remember a time not so long ago when many of those you lump together as "radfems" had some legitimate complaints. They were overwhelmed by the general unrest of the '60s that encouraged more immoderate expressions of outrage. There are lots of sociological factors in the mix of the 2nd wave. Some of that ideology has been carried forward, no doubt. But to put so much into women getting the vote in and of itself is way too simplistic an explanation.
Dana
Of course it’s simplistic. It’s coming from the online “manosphere” which isn’t exactly known for its nuance, depth or unbiased views, LOL. All because I sketched it out for Martha there doesn’t mean I agree wholeheartedly with it.
There is a tremendous amount of misogyny in transgenderism and I agree with you that allowing women to vote did not lead to transgenderism, but I feel compelled to share that, according to polls I’ve read and my observations, for some reason women are far more supportive of the ideology than men. Sometimes people don’t vote in their best interests.
Women here in the UK are fighting like hell.
We're trying to get husbands to help us. If real men are absent, the trans activists are noticably more violent.
If it makes you feel less pissed off, I think a good case can be made that 90% of residents north of the Rio Grande shouldn't have full voting rights. And no matter how you make the case otherwise, already, we don't have equal representation rights. Sure we go through the motions of democracy but we all feel that something isn't right. That's part of the reason we are all here. $$$$$ talks more than anybody wants to admit, and the power of $$$ gives factions so much more leverage than they deserve in influencing the commonweal .
The closer it gets to home, the more rights should be extended to everybody (the way they have been, at least through custom, for thousands of years), but as regards macro policy, can we be well served by mass enfranchisement? The old Romans extended voting rights to all free men, but the franchise was weighted, based on the caste of the individual. It wasn't a bad system. Endured for 100s of years. The wheels fell off as Rome's reach extended beyond the confines of the old city state. Rome of the imperial age gained a huge part of the world but simple representation was lost to the common Roman citizen.
Think of how insane macro politics are in the USA. Even the cucks are aware at this point that no matter what support they may gain among the people, any and every policy, no matter how sound and agreeable (regulating, curtailing porn, for instance) could be nullified by the command of nine, unaccountable individuals, a nullification based on nothing more than the whims and bigotries of these nine individuals. (It's got little to nothing to do with law. These individuals come to a conclusion based on their whims and bigotries and assign their flunky clerks to come up some casuistical argument for consumption.) this is something to be proud of? The American experience makes the absolute worst case for mass democracy. I say the worst case be cause other basket cases such as Argentina, Venezuela, South Africa, UK (they won't admit it, but it's true) etc. have taken their cues from the USA. What a joke.
Left out of your analysis is the utterly malign effect of money on politics. That was a huge problem in ancient Rome too. "In Rome all things are for sale," scoffed Jugurtha after buying enough senators to escape serious legal charges.
I say we let all women vote EXCEPT Martha Moyers.
Tough luck pal, I’ve voted in every election since 1972 when I turned 18. Town council, board of supervisors, county sheriff, the whole deal.
My take is that it feminized society and it’s pretty evident in the way every dam issue is dealt with primarily by emotion. Women get upset about their exclusive spaces but fail to remember that they griped and sued their way into men only spaces for years so now there’s essentially nothing left for them. Even the boys choirs in England are no longer assured. I like having the vote however I really don’t know if it’s been a net positive.
Memes are ephemeral. So tilting against memes, with memes? Good luck.
Holy Scripture is eternal because it is from The Spirit. And is, in fact, the “Sword of the Spirit”. Choose your weapon wisely.
An enlightening, inspirational, and insightful post. Unlike Dunkirk, Christians cannot flee from the battlefield to fight another day. We dig in where we are, strengthen our defenses, pick our battles, and honor God by our actions and sharing his Word in support of the Great Commission.
Our tactics will vary. In my Dunkirk, I leverage the interrelationship between Christianity, Citizenship, and Quality Management. Quality management is all about reducing variation from the ideal – the ideal being a standard of perfection where all needs are met such as was the case in the Garden of Eden.
The secular quality profession has validated that the closer any product/service gets to the ideal (Taguchi Loss Function), the higher the quality (more needs met) and the lower the cost to the individual and society. Costs include the effects of unmet needs. Thus, quality either gets better or worse, making continuous improvement a moral imperative.
It is interesting that the typical response from the Christian community is that quality management is a “business thing” and the business world chooses not to see the connection between Quality and God. And, in America, “We the People” lack the knowledge of the methods and tools needed to continually work towards the " more perfect Union.”
Perhaps you should reexamine your trashing of Doug Wilson. I am a different flavor of Christian than he is, but I do find him helpful.
How? He's funny in his vinegary way. In my church, one of our finest is a close associate of Wilson's, and as far as I can tell, he has failed to move our elders in the slightest. We tend to refer to Wilson as "the man who must not be named."
Excellent. Thank you Rod.