I Reject, I Affirm. ''Raising the Black Flag'' in an Age of Devilry. - Page 21 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15079424
@Wellsy , @Potemkin , and others;

I am in debt to Vladimir Soloviev for this post, and I'd like to think @Wellsy , for reminding me of Soloviev which actually helped resolve a conundrum I have been having for a while.

Although Soloviev is problematic in some of his thinking, he's spot on in this area...

Grace is received as I believe, through the ministration of the sacraments or mysteries of grace. They are not earned, and among Christians they fall like the rain, on the Just and the Unjust alike. But over the centuries, they have had their effect on the larger society, like leaven in the dough;

The first, Baptism, is the Mystery of Liberty.

The Christian redeemed by Christ is a free man indeed, and no slave. Therefore, he and no other son of man should be a slave either in the world, in a Christian society. The external relationships and social condition of man should be in conformity with this free Gift of God.

The Second, Confirmation, is the sacrament or mystery of Equality

The Christian is anointed a priest and king, all equally sovereign in their dignity before God. Therefore, being anointed with the Holy Spirit, this mystery is profaned by inequalities of birth and fortune.

The Third Mystery or Sacrament, is that of Holy Communion, the Mystery of Fraternity

This Mystery Unites all true Christians with God, possessing Him and His life, bringing all true Christians together as One Body. Therefore thus should it be with all men, brothers and sisters.

The Fourth Mystery is that of one of man's duties, that of Marriage, the Mystery of human mortal sexual Love

This is the agency by which Society itself exists, in particular and universal family, which is made sacred by the union of man and woman.

The Fifth Mystery is that of Holy Orders, the triumph in Christ of Social Love

This means of grace is that by which certain men function for the good of the Whole and entirely for the Whole, to act as channels of this grace for not only themselves but for all.
#15080533
So the spiritual issue with Socialism with me is, as far as I'm concerned it's not ''how can I be a Christian and a Socialist?'' but more ''How can I not be one?''.

However, in saying that, I don't want to give the wrong impression. Truly Christian saintly lives are such that to call them ''Socialist'' or ''Non-Socialist'' for that is almost obscene, widely missing the mark of what the Gospel is. The ''Socialist'' aspect of it is an earthly economic and social justice outgrowth or premise of a community living the Christian life in this world.

It almost doesn't matter what economic system you begin with in a society, if you have people who love one another, who give everything they have to each other and work hard and are honest and moral and trustworthy and dependable, who do not lie or cheat each other and voluntarily give to each other what the other needs, treat each other like family... You're going to have everything the secular Socialist needs and then some in practical effect.

So, what develops has to be an organic development. Even if it still hypothetically takes a Revolution to carry it out, if it isn't really rooted in the truths that the People know in their hearts and minds, if it isn't a living and spiritual foundation that is being built upon, it isn't going to last, it's going to fall eventually and not very long after it is built either, in the larger scheme of things.

Aside from the spiritual aspect of it, it seems that we post-Soviet Union Old Left/Real Left guys out there are traversing the narrow line between that collapse of the USSR and Utopian dreams that are ''even more'' un-realizable.

Is it possible then that in a way we can ''go back to 1917'', and start at the beginning with the Soviets themselves, before we force Socialism on people? That is, is the better to set up the People with Soviet/Council Democracy, and have them implementing the measures they think best and trusting that judgement? It could be done even within the framework we have in America with the US Constitution as it stands today, with minimal adjustment.

I'm just wondering that society would adopt Socialism is there was genuine responsive and popular representative democracy first to begin with, that people really do see their interests when the political power is closer in their hands directly, including in the workplace.
#15080536
Unthinking Majority wrote:This forum is filled with radical fools. Communists, fascists, and now proponents of theocracy. You guys need to get out of your bedrooms and go get jobs and girlfriends.


Don't be an ignorant ass. I have a job and a wife and daughter, whom I love very much. I'm no ''radical'', I just want a better society more in keeping with my Christian beliefs than the dog eat dog Egoism of Capitalism
#15080732
annatar1914 wrote:Don't be an ignorant ass. I have a job and a wife and daughter, whom I love very much. I'm no ''radical'', I just want a better society more in keeping with my Christian beliefs than the dog eat dog Egoism of Capitalism


You stated that the world is 7000 years old and the earth is the center of the universe and I'm the ignorant ass?

The great thing about liberal democracy is you're able to believe whatever you want even if it's wrong. You have a right to practice your religion, nobody has a right to have society believe what they do. But if you want this traditional Christian society, you can move to Tennessee or Alabama if you want.
#15080757
You stated that the world is 7000 years old


We're in the year of the world 7528 from the creation.

and the earth is the center of the universe


I won't belabor you with a discussion of the null results of the Michaelson-Morely Interferometer experiments, or the experiments of Airy or Frizzeau, Sagnac, Di Palma, anomalies like ''Olber's Paradox'', etc... But yes, based on these and other things I do. I don't beat anybody over the head about it and don't debate it, but it's what I ''affirm'' hence the name of the thread. I'm willing to wait until eternity to be shown that I'm right, or that I'm wrong.



and I'm the ignorant ass?


Yes it sadly appears that way, by your hostile tone right off the bat, which is a primary sign of an Ignorant Ass when faced by beliefs contradictory to their own.

The great thing about liberal democracy is you're able to believe whatever you want even if it's wrong.


Or even when you're right, too...


You have a right to practice your religion, nobody has a right to have society believe what they do.


On the contrary, I have the full freedom to wish that society believe as I do, whether they do or not.


But if you want this traditional Christian society, you can move to Tennessee or Alabama if you want.


I live where I live and how I live as I wish, aren't you being contradictory a little in asking me to move?
#15080799
Some time back, we had a discussion on this thread about Libertarianism as the new Feudalism. I'd say, the new Fascism (or the vehicle for the same), which like Nazism engulfs and at the same time privatizes the notion of the State.

This is because those behind these dark reactionary forces are not interested in the concept of the Nation-State as laid out in the Modern Era, they are in their own way, Globalists of a sort.

What they are interested in, is in the human race as the seedbed for the growth and development of a new species that will transcend and then exterminate man, a magical mutation that will bring back the gods and giants and heroes of old. A new Cycle of the Ages and turning of the wheel in an essentially pagan conception no matter if it might possibly have a ''christian'' veneer... I am increasingly of the mind that it will not have such a veil about it.

Liberalism, thankfully, will disappear fully by the advent of the Reaction it spawned. Those who remain to fight it will be changed themselves.
#15081744
Interesting interview from an defecting Leftist;



And of course, most of it is a valid critique of Western Liberals/Progressives throwing out the baby with the bathwater, of jettisoning the family and moral principles derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition.

But there is a Socialism on the Right, as Engels even admitted, and Spengler talked about in his book; ''Prussianism and Socialism'', and even goes so far as to say this, that Marxists are not the real Socialists;


''People who aim to change the word continually fall into the error of confusing what ought to be with what shall be. Rare indeed is the vision that can penetrate beyond the tangle and flux of contemporary events. I have yet to find someone who has really understood this German Revolution, who has fathomed its meaning or foreseen its duration. Moments are being mistaken for epochs, next year for the next century, whims for ideas, books for human beings.

Our Marxists show strength only when they are tearing down; when it comes to thinking or acting positively they are helpless. By their actions they are confirming at last that their patriarch was not a creator, but a critic only. His heritage amounts to a collection of abstract ideas, meaningful only to a world of bookworms. His "proletariat" is a purely literary concept, formed and sustained by the written word. It was real only so long as it denied, and did not embody, the actual state of things at any given time. Today we are beginning to realize that Marx was only the stepfather of socialism. Socialism contains elements that are older, stronger, and more fundamental than his critique of society. Such elements existed without him and continued to develop without him, in fact contrary to him. They are not to be found on paper; they are in the blood. And only the blood can decide the future.

But if socialism is not Marxism, then what is it? The answer will be found in these pages. Some people already have an idea of what it is, but they are so diligently involved with political "standpoints," aims, and blueprints that no one has dared to be sure. When faced with decisions, we have abandoned our former position of firmness and adopted milder, less radical, outmoded attitudes, appealing for support to Rousseau, Adam Smith, and the like. We take steps against Marx, and yet at every step we invoke his name. Meanwhile the time for fashioning ideologies has passed. We latecomers of Western civilization have become skeptics. We refuse to be further misled by ideological systems. Ideologies are a thing of the previous century. We no longer want ideas and principles, we want ourselves.

Hence we now face the task of liberating German socialism from Marx. I say German socialism, for there is no other. This, too, is one of the truths that no longer lie hidden. Perhaps no one has mentioned it before, but we Germans are socialists. The others cannot possibly be socialists.''


Oswald Spengler's ''Prussianism and Socialism'' can be found here for a fuller read;

http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaste ... ialism.htm

But as far as i'm concerned, this is just fake as hell and essentially Fascistic, despite my interest in Spengler and the insightful things he had to say. After all, he did influence both Nazism and the ''Conservative Revolutionary'' movement in post-1914 Europe, that the German Revolution occurred in 1914 and was the counter to both ''1789'' and ''1917'', that is the French and Russian Revolutions. I believe that there's some truth to that...

So why am I mentioning both of these things in the same post? It's important that when rejecting the trajectory of the modern ''Left'', one does not fall into an essentially hyper-capitalistic Right that slaps a label on itself as being a ''Socialistic'' phenomenon.

But as John Lukacs noted, Socialism and Nationalism are both Populist and Mass Movement in their appeal. And there are ''Leninists'' on the Right as well as the Left, with October 1917 being a model of a coup-de-etat, a revolution, from either political cluster of ideologies.

Therefore, it goes back to what I've written before, that the real divide that I accept as more real is between not the ''Left'' and ''Right'', but a Right composed of what the Objectivists and Libertarians and Anarchists call ''Statists'', and a Left essentially composed of the previous mentioned, shading into those of the Liberal and Classical persuasions...

I say, ''persuasions'' rather than ''ideologies'', because at heart, I think most Liberals are Libertarians at heart, who when in power are feckless and confused and when out of power, are almost Anarchist or at least Minarchist when it comes to social issues.
#15082386
I've given what I'm about to say a lot of thought, even before the present world crisis. Blaise Pascal once wrote that ''the whole of Philosophy was not worth a single hour's pain'', and in this I have come to believe that he was right. And that includes political philosophy. Men order the political system they wish for the earthly City (''Politeia'') in a manner which seems good to them, and I have looked at them all in depth, out of my own vanity.

I have concluded that I can come to no conclusion as to what is the best way in which to order and govern mankind, political-system wise, because the longest lasting and most stable is also the most paradoxical to men's reason; Monarchy. But there are a lot of hidden realities that are paradoxical and seemingly contrary to human reason. Miracles, God...

So again, as smart as I am I can't make heads or tails of it, and leave it to others to expend all the fire and fury and everything else that goes with the tumult of modern politics. I am therefore decided to take a leave of politics and looking from the theater seats at the spectacle, because it does me no good and I suspect it does most of us no good either. The reality of power is such that one man in society holds the Sovereignty in any case, where ever one may go, and there is nothing wrong in that in itself. I'll obey the earthly rulers in all things except a command that is sinful, I have no reason not to, and there is a Heavenly Ruler to which I will render an account in any case.

I wish everyone the best and God bless you all, but for now this is goodbye. I'm going to live life now more fully and enjoy each day to the fullest possible, and leave the rest to others to figure out if they feel they must.
#15093393
annatar1914 wrote:I've given what I'm about to say a lot of thought, even before the present world crisis. Blaise Pascal once wrote that ''the whole of Philosophy was not worth a single hour's pain'', and in this I have come to believe that he was right. And that includes political philosophy. Men order the political system they wish for the earthly City (''Politeia'') in a manner which seems good to them, and I have looked at them all in depth, out of my own vanity.

I have concluded that I can come to no conclusion as to what is the best way in which to order and govern mankind, political-system wise, because the longest lasting and most stable is also the most paradoxical to men's reason; Monarchy. But there are a lot of hidden realities that are paradoxical and seemingly contrary to human reason. Miracles, God...

So again, as smart as I am I can't make heads or tails of it, and leave it to others to expend all the fire and fury and everything else that goes with the tumult of modern politics. I am therefore decided to take a leave of politics and looking from the theater seats at the spectacle, because it does me no good and I suspect it does most of us no good either. The reality of power is such that one man in society holds the Sovereignty in any case, where ever one may go, and there is nothing wrong in that in itself. I'll obey the earthly rulers in all things except a command that is sinful, I have no reason not to, and there is a Heavenly Ruler to which I will render an account in any case.

I wish everyone the best and God bless you all, but for now this is goodbye. I'm going to live life now more fully and enjoy each day to the fullest possible, and leave the rest to others to figure out if they feel they must.


I'm back, after a fashion. All of what I said here is true, remains so, but given that Modernity has transformed all moral/spiritual/ethical traditional stances and ways of life into ''political'' issues with a ''political'' dimension, just the fact of living one's personal way of life puts one back firmly into Politics and the socio-economic ramifications of what Modernity has wrought.

To take an example;

Image

This is very ''political'', a Muslim woman in a traditional Hijab.

But is this ''political''? Observe the similarity, and the possible disparity;

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ad/52/55/ad525551bf02af6fbceb2f679d470af7--old-believers-russian-orthodox.jpg


Orthodox Christian (''Old Believer'') women singing in Church...

I would say that they are both ''political'' symbols and stances to the Modern mind, in that there is a power relation involved with the antagonisms between the Modern and Western and the Traditional and Non-Modern. No truly Modern-Age individual really wants these external signs of an inner reality to exist, do they?

Much of what's going on that is reported in the Global media is a tempest in a teapot compared to this ongoing struggle, for Modernity and Modernism is an Ideology, a worldview, and only partly does it overlap with genuine work and use of technology and the arts and sciences as developed to today. I've said plenty that indicates that It can be considered synonymous with the Western and ''Faustian'' worldview.

So did these thoughts bring me back to posting here, and how so?

The pandemic and the perception of the pandemic, within the Western world and outside the Western world. I noticed the differences not only in outcomes in dealing with the spread of the viral epidemic, but the profound differences even within nations, as those less assimilated to present iterations of Modernity respond differently to the crisis and related clusters of crises only slightly related to it in reality but still associated together; i.e. the issue of Donald Trump and the COVID-19 pandemic) than those who are absolute symbols within themselves of Modernist ''life''. Hong Kong is Western and profoundly different than Mainland China. ''Red States'' are very different than more urban ''Blue States'' in the USA, etc... All are Modernists, some are more complete Modernists, more Western/Faustian, than others.

I knew these things already, but the Crisis is revealed to me as being so much more than this present and passing pandemic, much more. I think it's important to suggest possibilities why this is so, with some help from thinkers like Franz Fanon and Jean Baudrillaud.
#15093420
I sure don't disagree with you, on this aspect.

Look at the people who wanted to ban the burkini. Yet, a woman in a wetsuit would have been perfectly acceptable. Political? You bet! It has nothing to do with the woman's right to wear what she wants, but a political perception.

Burkini:
Image

Wetsuit:
Image

Those same people should be very angered at this! (My wife going to cut some rice with family)

How dare she cover up!!! :lol: (NOT Muslim)
Image
#15093446
@Godstud ;

Howdy :D . You said;



I sure don't disagree with you, on this aspect.

Look at the people who wanted to ban the burkini. Yet, a woman in a wetsuit would have been perfectly acceptable. Political? You bet! It has nothing to do with the woman's right to wear what she wants, but a political perception.


Indeed, with a possible caveat about ''rights'' I agree. But is this not the hidden totalitarianism of the Modernist way of life, that a denial of traditional modest attire for men and women is an absolute imperative, that people are to have ''liberty'' (as a Western notion universalized) even against their will?
#15093470
What does the Bible say about capitalism?

While the Bible doesn’t mention capitalism by name, it does speak a great deal about economic issues. For example, whole sections of the book of Proverbs and many of the parables of Jesus deal with economic matters.

Jesus refers to it in his parables as the economic system in the kingdom of heaven.

In Genesis 1:28, God says we are to subdue the earth and have dominion over it. One aspect of this is that humans can own property in which they can exercise their dominion. Since we have both volition and private property rights, we can assume that we should have the freedom to exchange these private property rights in a free market where goods and services can be exchanged.

Historically, capitalism has had a number of advantages. It has liberated economic potential. It has also provided the foundation for a great deal of political and economic freedom. When government is not controlling markets, then there is economic freedom to be involved in an array of entrepreneurial activities. Capitalism has also led to a great deal of political freedom, because once we limit the role of government in economics, we limit the scope of government in other areas. It is no accident that most of the countries with the greatest political freedom usually have a great deal of economic freedom.

Though there are some valid economic criticisms of capitalism such as monopolies and the byproduct of pollution, these can be controlled by limited governmental control. And when capitalism is wisely controlled, it generates significant economic prosperity and economic freedom for its people.

Critics of capitalism contend that this system makes people greedy. But then we must ask whether capitalism makes people greedy or do we already have greedy people who use the economic freedom of the capitalistic system to achieve their ends? In light of the biblical description of human nature (Jeremiah 17:9), the latter seems more likely.

The goal of capitalism is not to change bad people but to protect us from them. Capitalism is a system in which bad people can do the least harm and good people have the freedom to do good works. Capitalism works best with moral individuals. But it also functions adequately with selfish and greedy people.

It’s important to realize that there is a difference between self-interest and selfishness. All people have self-interests which can operate in ways that are not selfish. For example, it is in our self-interest to get a job and earn an income so that we can support our family. We can do that in ways that are not selfish. By contrast, other economic systems such as socialism ignore the biblical definitions of human nature. As a result, they allow economic power to be centralized and concentrate power in the hands of a few greedy people. Those who complain of the influence major corporations have on our lives should consider the socialist alternative where a few governmental bureaucrats control every aspect of our lives.

https://www.gotquestions.org/capitalism-Bible.html
#15093602
Godstud wrote::lol:

What do you think of that, @annatar1914?


Well, not much :lol:

I will be brief and say that what is stated in the article @Hindsite used, it's either not true, or partly true but irrelevant and beside the point, and some aspects of it rather beg further questions...

Central to my renewed discussion is an ''ought/is'' question; are we supposed to accept things as they are, or as we think they should be? Do we Christians try to change the society to reflect God's will for mankind, or do we let people live as they wish and cede the public sphere to the enemies of the Christian life? Is it even possible either way?

No, @Hindsite is a Modernist, enshrining the common social beliefs of a certain phase of American life as universal and valid for all time, and clashing with those who go even further beyond and also those faithful to traditional values today.

He's probably of the sort of folks who have pictures of Jesus Christ in their living rooms but curse people who look like Him wearing beards as ''filthy hippies''. The kind of people who have pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of God in modest traditional attire, but mock Muslim women for wearing the same thing, etc...

Modernism as I define it though encompasses but also goes well beyond this stage Hindsite and the like are at, and people like brother Hindsite do not have the resistance to It that others do, for that reason.
#15094092
If the Pre-Modern is what can be considered as normative for that which is traditional, organic and natural human experience, and the Modern can be considered as a reaction against what had previously been the normative and the natural, I hesitate to absolutely cast this dualistic struggle as that of Good versus Evil, as easy as that might appear to do so at first glance. Just because something ''Is'' at a certain point in present time, does not declare It to be ''Is Right''.

However... Central to the Modern experience is the external realization of the idea that there are no fixed and absolute eternal principles in this life, and this is something few before the 1500's (no matter their personal worldview or persuasion) held to. Copernicus, Galileo, Machiavelli, Decartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel...all laid the foundation for this present era, culminating in Darwin, Marx, Einstein, and Freud.

Again, a Western phenomenon, peculiar to and only understandable cast into the context of the ongoing drama of Western/Faustian Civilization. To a few within It, and for many more or less outside It, it is a Promethean or Luciferian drama which is intolerably alien to their experience.

''One small step for man, a great step for mankind''

''They hate us for our freedoms''....

...''grab them by the pussy...''

''ISIS''

Neo-Confucian Mainland China has trouble re-digesting Westernized and Liberal Hong Kong....

Syria is in the grip of a Civil War largely between Islamists and Secularized Baathists...

Russia rejects the West with the crisis in the Ukraine, the Donbass and Crimea...


''Red Staters/Deplorables/Conservatives'' and ''Blue Staters/Liberals'' in the USA look at each other in profound incomprehension from either side of a COVID-19 lockdown, a politicized Pandemic...


And so forth.

What the Hell is really going on? I'll offer my suggestions in the upcoming posts. Recall that as a yardstick of sorts I will be looking at external signs of interior realities like burkas and bath-houses, guns and anti-viral masks, terror attacks and television, with which to identify who and what is involved on either side of the cultural and spiritual divide.
#15094127
Godstud wrote:Change is always happening, and there's always been debate on whether it's better or worse, but I think in the end we normally end up better, for it.


I think we end up better for it in some cases, or by being against the change, in others. What I have seen in many people (as I've harped on before many times I think) is this modern politicization of every aspect of life. And as my personal life is patterned as an attempt to live it in a complete holistic way, the potential exists for constant attack, constant struggle, upon that way of life. This was not a feature of life lived throughout most of human history in a systematic and organized sense.

See, in my opinion the French secularists who have tried to ban the Burqa (to go back to that :D ) are right in a significant way. The Burqa is a symbol of a whole traditional way of life that is not compatible with the secular ideals of the French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and so forth.

It's a concrete symbol of a patriarchal, hierarchical, and Theistically-infused system of being. And while I cannot agree with many of the tenets of Islam, my way of life and belief is more in sync with theirs, than with the Ideals of the French Revolution.
#15094128
Well, I disagree a bit with you, regarding the "burkini", since being modest isn't that bad a thing, when you consider some of the bathing suits women wear.

You saw the wetsuit, and yet no one would say a word about that, would they? Religious prejudice is at play.

Also, what if it's their choice to wear a bathing suit that covers most of their body? The truth lies somewhere in the middle as per most things.

I think the "Pendulum effect" is at play, most of the time.
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