I Reject, I Affirm. ''Raising the Black Flag'' in an Age of Devilry. - Page 32 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15126979
I find this to be generally the case;

''In every doctrine which wins men over to it, the sophistry it contains is less potent than the promises it makes; its power over them is greater through their sensibility than through their intelligences; for, if the heart is often the dupe of the head, the latter is much more frequently the dupe of the former. We do not accept a system because we deem it a true one, but because the truth we find in it suits us. Political or religious fanaticism, any theological or philosophical channel in which truth flows, always has its source in some ardent longing, some secret passion, some accumulation of intense, painful desire to which a theory affords an outlet.''


From Hippolyte Taine's ''The French Revolution''

It's still centered in the self, these political drives, based on the needs and desires of our disordered passions.

Therefore, what seems reasonable to many is abject superstition and ignorance to others. So to even form a modern society one must place a high level of trust in the civic virtues of other people, that despite or because of their stated expressed beliefs one can count on their moral rectitude and competence that they will accept the results of elections which place them and their ideas out of power.

Is this ''rational'' system even workable?
#15127039
Today is a day in which 528 years ago, 1492 AD, the beginning of the Age of Antichrist and the Great Apostasy, in the 7000th year of the World, the New World/the Americas stayed discovered and were ever after a factor in the councils and turmoils of the geopolitical ''World Island'' (Eurasia and Africa).

A world forever changed.

In 1492 AD, the world appeared to men like Christopher Columbus (a man whose generation saw the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks) as if Islam truly was threatening to conquer the world. He wanted to find new trade routes not controlled by Muslim powers and reach to the Non-Muslim countries of the East-of course knowing he could sail West and find them. It was a spiritual imperative, infused with the belief that man had entered a time closer to the End Times proceeding the Second Coming of Christ.

So here's to Christopher Columbus, who if nothing else, clearly saw the time and the space beyond other mortal men, beyond the mere discovery of new lands to explore.
#15127621
annatar1914 wrote:I find this to be generally the case;



From Hippolyte Taine's ''The French Revolution''

It's still centered in the self, these political drives, based on the needs and desires of our disordered passions.

Therefore, what seems reasonable to many is abject superstition and ignorance to others. So to even form a modern society one must place a high level of trust in the civic virtues of other people, that despite or because of their stated expressed beliefs one can count on their moral rectitude and competence that they will accept the results of elections which place them and their ideas out of power.

Is this ''rational'' system even workable?


I think that my answer would be ''no'', there has to be some system of accountability that balances the immorality of a demotic mass with an authority that refuses to buckle under a majoritarian tyranny and still be able to effect the common good and welfare of all. A Constitutional authority that is above the Constitution, to save the Constitution.

And not all peoples are able to live under such a scheme as the modern one of representative democracy as it is. But an illiberal republic however... Concerning the Romans, Scripture (Maccabees chapter 8:13-16) writes;

13Those whom they wish to help and to make kings, they make kings; and those whom they wish, they depose; and they were greatly exalted.
14Yet with all this, none of them put on a diadem or wore purple as a display of grandeur.
15But they made for themselves a senate chamber, and every day three hundred and twenty men took counsel, deliberating on all that concerned the people and their well-being.
16They entrust their government to one man* every year, to rule over their entire land, and they all obey that one, and there is no envy or jealousy among them.


Seems like an endorsement to me.
#15127643
''Foolishness'';


''For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. –1 Corinthians 1: 19-25''




The problem with mankind these days is that we are like Nietzsche said; ''men without chests'', ''we'' have no heart. And in this, that poor man was right to blame Socrates as their spiritual father, and unfortunately the false ''Christ'' that really was a Socratic Antichrist.

William Blake and Friedrich Nietzsche and Blaise Pascal, Soren Kirkegaard and Fyodor Dostyoevsky and Leon Bloy, knew more of the truth about the modern era and it's sickness than all the ''rationalists'' put together.

Can a Constitution protect the community that lives by it against ultimate evil? What can possibly inform a democracy about the reality of original/ancestral sin? Will technology and science protect everything that is human from... Technology and Science?

Sure, i'm stupid and inconsequential and irrelevant to the larger political discourse-thank God. But perhaps there will be some vindication in what I say, and surely I've learned more from this PoFo experience more than perhaps anyone else.
#15128134
Robert Louis Dabney was one of those rare but insightful American reactionaries, who was often right even if he was sometimes right for the wrong reasons;

American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader…


Does this have a spiritual root? Sure it does. The American ''Conservative'' believes in the same forms and methods of government (with an almost quasi-spiritual reverence) which American Liberals use against them. It's a race to the bottom to Satan's kingdom.
#15128259
@Potemkin , and others;

Spirituality discussions on a political discussion forum often take the form of Eschatology, and i'm sure it's a well known phenomena even to those who are not particularly religious or spiritual, and thus possibly not very edifying to those who do not have the cultural interpretive keys to fully understand the discussion.

For me it then comes down to worldview almost universally; not just how people understand, but what they understand and how. As an Orthodox Christian, I live in the same universe cosmologically as the Muslims, although I reject Islam and it's theology. Therefore, I know that it comes down to them and theirs, and the Faith of Jesus Christ which I hold with my brothers and sisters. The Western world is just the empty vessel into which they are pouring, and it always was thus in reality once it broke from the Living Vine.

Does anyone in the West not see that this is exactly what's going on? That a Joe Biden/Kamala Harris win of the US Presidency means mass immigration into the United States of Muslims, millions and millions of Muslims, among others? Is it mere ''Islamophobia'' to say or think that, or just an honest assessment of the facts regardless of what one personally believes?

The Muslim too must feel a vindication for their own worldview seeing this triumphal march going on into the heartlands of the Western world.

So to bring it down to a mundane level for a moment, I must say then from a Socialist viewpoint that this is ironically a ''Right Wing'' and ''Reactionary'' development overall. And that the Global Capitalist Elites must likewise believe that also, based on their actions regarding immigration worldwide.
#15129260
Neither the real Pagan nor the real Christian or real Muslim for that matter believe in ''Progress''.

People aren't getting ''better'' and more ''evolved'' with time, all people gradually progressing consciously in collective moral perfection; this is a conceit of and from the Liberal West.

Therefore, I hold to my more Communitarian beliefs because of their long held traditional righteousness, not out of any sense that people become innately ''better'' because they have more innately just material and social conditions.

And since people do not become truly better with the moral envelope constantly being pushed by the Bourgeoisie decadence and rot produced by Liberalism, what happens to the Liberal?

They get replaced by the Pagan, the Christian, or the Muslim. In America, Liberals thus are being replaced by Pagans, in Europe, by Muslims, and these are trends which might change slightly, but never in the Liberals favor.

Trump is a Pagan. If I described to him what a Pagan was, I'm sure he'd smile and nod in a vague agreement that I was right. Liberal unease about Trump is a unconscious fear that he is just the vanguard of a larger and greater historical force at work.

Which he is. He represents the basis or foundation of the Faustian West in the Pagan worldview, called earlier by Christian writers as that of the ''Hellene'', the ''Gentile'', or ''Heathen'' mindset, material and polytheistic, sensual and bounded by that which can be perceived by the senses, a matter-of-fact relation to higher powers-as with all things-that is like a business transaction, a ritual formula like a legal contract. Shame and Honor and Glory are the primary drivers, not the Christian Guilt or Sin.

So the basis of Western civilization, the Greco-Roman, is coming back to the forefront.
#15129458
One is bound to make a number of precarious assumptions in the course of writing out one's thoughts and beliefs, and so frequently I've revisited my assumptions on a fairly regular basis. I owe it to myself and to those who do read and interact with me to be honest and also practice due diligence.

Christian end times ideas revolve around the cities of Rome (and the Roman Empire) and of Jerusalem, symbolically and otherwise. If it isn't connected to them, it's too far afield to be true and useful.

America of course is not central to those times and places of the End, whenever those places come back to the forefront. Discussions of the end times are almost always conditioned by the historical circumstances of the times a particular writer is living within, and therefore not particularly true or enlightening.

But the original writers about these things in the early Church wrote from the perspective of ''putting on the Mind of Christ'' as st. Paul says. And recalling what they had been told by the Apostles, if anything, about these matters. Even when they did write about the subject, they themselves wrote in a style that requires a certain level of spiritual enlightenment to begin with.

''Babylon'' is code for ''Rome'' in Apocalyptic literature, there's no getting around that and the conclusions that might follow.
#15130720
@Political Interest , @Wellsy ,@Potemkin , @Rancid , @Black Consequense , @Tainari88, @Blackjack21, and others;

I'm posting this article from Conservative Evangelical pastor John Piper, because it raises some timely points for Christians to consider when voting;

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/po ... hs-to-ruin


This article is probably as close as you will get to an answer on how I will vote in the upcoming presidential election.

Probably?

Right. Only God knows what may happen in the next days.

Nothing I say here is intended to dictate how anyone else should vote, but rather to point to a perspective that seems to be neglected. Yes, this perspective sways my vote. But you need not be sinning if you weigh matters differently.

Actually, this is a long-overdue article attempting to explain why I remain baffled that so many Christians consider the sins of unrepentant sexual immorality (porneia), unrepentant boastfulness (alazoneia), unrepentant vulgarity (aischrologia), unrepentant factiousness (dichostasiai), and the like, to be only toxic for our nation, while policies that endorse baby-killing, sex-switching, freedom-limiting, and socialistic overreach are viewed as deadly.

The reason I put those Greek words in parentheses is to give a graphic reminder that these are sins mentioned in the New Testament. To be more specific, they are sins that destroy people. They are not just deadly. They are deadly forever. They lead to eternal destruction (2 Thessalonians 1:9).

They destroy persons (Acts 12:20–23). And through persons, they destroy nations (Jeremiah 48:29–31, 42).



Persons

Forgiveness through Christ is always possible where there is repentance and childlike trust in Jesus. But where humble repentance is absent, the sins condemn.

The New Testament teaches that “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21) and that “those who practice such things deserve to die” (Romans 1:32).

To which you may say, “So what? Rejecting Jesus as Lord also leads to death, but you are willing to vote for a non-Christian, aren’t you?” I am, assuming there is enough overlap between biblical uprightness and the visible outworking of his character and convictions.

My point so far is simply to raise the stakes of what is outwardly modeled in leadership, so that Christians are given pause. It is not a small thing to treat lightly a pattern of public behaviors that lead to death.


Nations

In fact, I think it is a drastic mistake to think that the deadly influences of a leader come only through his policies and not also through his person.




This truth is not uniquely Christian: “A little leaven leavens the whole lump” (1 Corinthians 5:6). “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33). Whether you embrace that company in your house or on social media, it corrupts. There are sins that “lead people into more and more ungodliness” as “their talk [spreads] like gangrene” (2 Timothy 2:16–17).

There is a character connection between rulers and subjects. When the Bible describes a king by saying, “He sinned and made Israel to sin” (1 Kings 14:16), it does not mean he twisted their arm. It means his influence shaped the people. That’s the calling of a leader. Take the lead in giving shape to the character of your people. So it happens. For good or for ill.


Policies and Persons

Is it not baffling, then, that so many Christians seem to be sure that they are saving human lives and freedoms by treating as minimal the destructive effects of the spreading gangrene of high-profile, high-handed, culture-shaping sin?

This point has a special relevance for Christians.

Freedom and life are precious. We all want to live and be free to pursue happiness. But if our freedoms, and even our lives, are threatened or taken, the essence of our identity in Christ, the certainty of our everlasting joy with Christ, and the holiness and love for which we have been saved by Christ — none of these is lost with the loss of life and freedom.

Therefore, Christians communicate a falsehood to unbelievers (who are also baffled!) when we act as if policies and laws that protect life and freedom are more precious than being a certain kind of person. The church is paying dearly, and will continue to pay, for our communicating this falsehood year after year.

The justifications for ranking the destructive effects of persons below the destructive effects of policies ring hollow.

I find it bewildering that Christians can be so sure that greater damage will be done by bad judges, bad laws, and bad policies than is being done by the culture-infecting spread of the gangrene of sinful self-exaltation, and boasting, and strife-stirring (eristikos).

How do they know this? Seriously! Where do they get the sure knowledge that judges, laws, and policies are less destructive than boastful factiousness in high places?



What About Abortion?


Where does the wickedness of defending child-killing come from? It comes from hearts of self-absorbed arrogance and boasting (James 4:1–2). It comes from hearts that are insubordinate to God. In other words, it comes from the very character that so many Christian leaders are treating as comparatively innocuous, because they think Roe and SCOTUS and Planned Parenthood are more pivotal, more decisive, battlegrounds.



I think Roe is an evil decision. I think Planned Parenthood is a code name for baby-killing and (historically at least) ethnic cleansing. And I think it is baffling and presumptuous to assume that pro-abortion policies kill more people than a culture-saturating, pro-self pride.


When a leader models self-absorbed, self-exalting boastfulness, he models the most deadly behavior in the world. He points his nation to destruction. Destruction of more kinds than we can imagine.

It is naive to think that a man can be effectively pro-life and manifest consistently the character traits that lead to death — temporal and eternal.



Word to Pastors

May I suggest to pastors that in the quietness of your study you do this? Imagine that America collapses. First anarchy, then tyranny — from the right or the left. Imagine that religious freedom is gone. What remains for Christians is fines, prison, exile, and martyrdom. Then ask yourself this: Has my preaching been developing real, radical Christians? Christians who can sing on the scaffold,

Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill:
God’s truth abideth still;
His kingdom is forever.

Christians who will act like the believers in Hebrews 10:34: “You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” Christians who will face hate and reviling and exclusion for Christ’s sake and yet “rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, [their] reward is great in heaven” (Luke 6:22–23).

Have you been cultivating real Christians who see the beauty and the worth of the Son of God? Have you faithfully unfolded and heralded “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8)? Are you raising up generations of those who say with Paul, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8)?

Have you shown them that they are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11), and that their “citizenship is in heaven,” from which they “await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20)? Do they feel in their bones that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21)?


Or have you neglected these greatest of all realities and repeatedly diverted their attention onto the strategies of politics? Have you inadvertently created the mindset that the greatest issue in life is saving America and its earthly benefits? Or have you shown your people that the greatest issue is exalting Christ with or without America? Have you shown them that the people who do the most good for the greatest number for the longest time (including America!) are people who have the aroma of another world with another King?



Election Day

Where does that leave me as I face a civic duty on November 3? Here’s my answer. I do not require anyone to follow me (as if I could) — not my wife, not my friends, not my colleagues.


I will not develop some calculus to determine which path of destruction I will support. That is not my duty. My calling is to lead people to see Jesus Christ, trust his forgiveness for sins, treasure him above everything in this world, live in a way that shows his all-satisfying value, and help them make it to heaven with love and holiness. That calling is contradicted by supporting either pathway to cultural corruption and eternal ruin.

You may believe that there are kinds of support for such pathways that do not involve such a contradiction — such an undermining of authentic Christian witness. You must act on what you see. I can’t see it. That is why I said my way need not be yours.

When I consider the remote possibility that I might do any good by endorsing the devastation already evident in the two choices before me, I am loath to undermine my calling (and the church’s mission) to stand for Christ-exalting faith and hope and love.

I will be asked to give an account of my devotion to this life-giving calling. The world will ask. And the Lord of heaven will ask. And my conscience will ask. What will I say?

With a cheerful smile, I will explain to my unbelieving neighbor why my allegiance to Jesus set me at odds with death — death by abortion and death by arrogance. I will take him to Psalm 139 and Romans 1. And if he is willing, I will show him how abortion and arrogance can be forgiven because of Christ (Ephesians 1:7). And I will invite him to become an exile — to have a kingdom that will never be shaken, not even when America is a footnote in the archives of the new creation.


With some emphasis on the parts i've bolded.

I know President Trump will be re-elected, and re-elected by a crushing margin which the Democratic Party of the Liberals richly deserves. And he will be elected by very good people, people who have been monstrously maligned by vile and abjectly feckless Liberalism for a very long time. I know, I get that.

But President Trump is not a good man himself, unfortunately, although I do pray for him as I do for all earthly leaders. He can be used for good but the things in his character that are bad are and will be terribly corrosive of good people in America in the longer term.

We should have had alternatives, but Western culture and thinking has deprived us of those. In the long term, these people's choices will come back to haunt them. I will choose a third choice, satisfying my conscience and my civic duty.

EDIT; Furthermore, I think that these public behaviors only bring out the same kind of toxicity or worse in the side that is opposed to him, likely because they came out of the same swamp of diseased cultural life in America, and like calls to like.

The fact that his neuro-linguistic programming, his art of being a master persuader works is not besides all that, because the first one who was re-programmed and persuaded of his marketing brand and persona was and is himself. Sure, he'll win because he has the right marketing persona, but what happens after his victory? Things will get measurably better in a material sense, they really will. But spiritually?

2nd EDIT; and here is a kind of postscript by another Conservative writer to Piper's article;

https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/a ... -believers

John Piper revives Christian convictions of the recent past.

David French
Oct 25
251

830


“Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.”

Southern Baptist Convention, June 1, 1998


“Is it not baffling, then, that so many Christians seem to be sure that they are saving human lives and freedoms by treating as minimal the destructive effects of the spreading gangrene of high-profile, high-handed, culture-shaping sin?”

Theologian and pastor John Piper, October 22, 2020


One of the sad realities of the present moment is the extent to which many millions of Americans have to be convinced that some rather foundational civilizational values are in fact true and good. In the constitutional context, for example, no longer can one simply say, “Your plan will violate the First Amendment” and hope to win an argument. Instead, one often has to go back a step, and first convince an audience of the virtue of free speech before one can even begin to create any concern for a violation of a person’s legal rights.


Similarly, we’re no longer in a position (especially in parts of the American Christian community) where one can point out a political leader’s serious moral defects and expect believers to think there is any serious problem with those defects—unless and until one can tie those defects to specific poor policy choices. The leader, in this conception, is essentially a producer of specific laws and policies, and it’s the laws and policies that then shape the nation, not the character of the man or woman in power.

Interestingly, I’ve never really seen this principle applied outside of politics—and I never heard it strongly argued before the age of Trump. In the world of business, for example, we see even CEOs or managers who run profitable enterprises fired and even disgraced for personal scandals that are completely unrelated, say, to their plans for a new product line.

Moreover, outside of politics, we don’t even think twice about these character tests. Why? Because their necessity is self-evident. In a company, in a church, in a military unit—everywhere, really—leaders are culture-makers. They’re culture-shapers. And they have an immense impact on the institutions they lead, the people they lead, and the communities they influence.


And this brings me to John Piper and the two quotes above. Last Thursday, hours before the final presidential debate, Piper became one of the most prominent Evangelical leaders in the United States to speak as plainly and clearly about the power of character to shape a nation as Evangelicals did in 1998, when Bill Clinton was in their crosshairs. It was an important moment, not least because he took the trouble to explain not just that “character counts,” but why it counts so very much.

His essay, published on the Desiring God website, begins with an explosive claim, that the sins of “unrepentant sexual immorality,” “unrepentant boastfulness,” “unrepentant vulgarity,” and “unrepentant factiousness” aren’t just deadly for an individual’s soul (absent repentance), they’re deadly to a nation.

Wait. Deadly to a nation? Can he be serious? Here it’s worth quoting Piper at some length:

It is a drastic mistake to think that the deadly influences of a leader come only through his policies and not also through his person.

This is true not only because flagrant boastfulness, vulgarity, immorality, and factiousness are self-incriminating, but also because they are nation-corrupting. They move out from centers of influence to infect whole cultures. The last five years bear vivid witness to this infection at almost every level of society.

More:

There is a character connection between rulers and subjects. When the Bible describes a king by saying, “He sinned and made Israel to sin” (1 Kings 14:16), it does not mean he twisted their arm. It means his influence shaped the people. That’s the calling of a leader. Take the lead in giving shape to the character of your people. So it happens. For good or for ill.

Piper is absolutely correct. We see the power of leaders in scripture, and we see the power of leaders in our own lives. That power emanates from leaders at the smallest scale (our own families) to the largest scale (our president).

In my career I’ve been in institutions that were led well and institutions that were led poorly, and one of the cardinal characteristics of good leadership is that the leader creates an environment where he or she models and rewards virtue and excellence.

Virtuous leadership is a great gift to the people you lead and influence. It’s an act of love. If you’ve ever gone from a dysfunctional environment to a place where character truly counts, it’s as if an immense weight is removed from your shoulders. It’s liberating. It’s invigorating. It’s life-giving.

Let’s put it this way: While even healthy institutions are never perfect, in a healthy institution, virtue is rewarded and vice is the rebellion. In unhealthy institutions, the opposite is often the case—vice is rewarded and virtue is rebellious. And that reality creates a radiating set of pressures that place immense strains even on good men and women.


I’ll never forget, for example, watching Mitt Romney—a wealthy and powerful man in his own right—deliver his speech explaining his decision to become the first senator in the history of the United States to vote to convict an impeached president from his own political party. The difficulty of the moment was evident from his delivery. It is hard to defy those with more power, even if you possess considerable means and influence.

We know this to be true. We feel it in our own lives in those times when we are faced with the terrible choice—defy or comply. When dysfunction reigns, destruction often follows. When vice is the path of least resistance—especially when that vice permits us to indulge in our own temptations—then sin can spread like a virus.

In 1998, Christian leaders knew this. They watched, aghast, as some secular cultural leaders began excusing or minimizing adultery for the sake of defending a powerful man. They were stunned when the avatars of pop culture hounded and mocked Monica Lewinsky for her role in the affair. Other leading figures mocked Clinton’s critics as puritanical. These words might sound strange in the #MeToo era, but I was there. I remember.

What were the lessons radiating from the Oval Office? Marriage is not sacred. Lies about sex are of little importance.

What are the lessons radiating from this Oval Office? Marriage still isn’t sacred. Lies about anything are of little importance. Cruelty can be a virtue.

Are those lessons having an effect? Undoubtedly, yes. Moreover, it’s remarkably easy to adopt the ethos and methods of the world’s most powerful man. Imitating Clinton required finding a Monica. Imitating Trump requires merely opening your Facebook app, hurling insults, and hitting “enter.”

But wait, you might object. Those sins are serious, no question, but they are nothing compared to the sins that Trump fights—including mainly the sin of abortion. But where do those sins come from? As Piper says, they come from “the very character that so many Christian leaders are treating as comparatively innocuous, because they think Roe and SCOTUS and Planned Parenthood are more pivotal, more decisive, battlegrounds.”

Trump cannot end abortion. Even if SCOTUS overturns Roe, it will not overturn abortion. That will require a culture that emphasizes love, selfless sacrifice, and mutual support. If a “pro-life” president uses his immense power to flaunt “boastfulness, vulgarity, immorality, and factiousness” even as he purports to modestly change policy, he is ultimately destructive to the culture Christians seek to create.

Piper puts it more bluntly: “It is naive to think that a man can be effectively pro-life and manifest consistently the character traits that lead to death—temporal and eternal.”


Some of my own emphasis in bold.
#15131157
annatar1914 wrote:Technology and the ''civilianization'' of political government have exacerbated that trend, whereas in earlier times political leaders either led the troops into battle, or had experience previously that proved their leadership ability.


This is very true. Hardly any of our politicians have ever served in the armed forces. They think wars happen in far away countries. These politicians really are the product of the latter half of the 20th century in their thinking, mentality and perception of reality.

annatar1914 wrote:I try to draw a balance between the perception of my free actions and the knowledge of the benign sovereignty of an Almighty but all-good and loving God.


We can try and work as hard as we like but in the end fate is ultimately in the hands of the Lord.

annatar1914 wrote:Most anyway in this modern age, it's true. But i'll have to admit that not being Moslem and adhering to what I consider the proper Monotheistic faith, I can't help but have some concerns.


Perhaps I am too young to remember but the world did not seem very concerned with the so called clash of civilisations before September 2001.

annatar1914 wrote:I have found that to be the case primarily in both ''conservative'' and ''liberal'' camps in the West alike. It's bound to be rather frustrating obviously.


If we recall historical examples it is often the barbarians who end up ruling the civilised peoples. The Germanic tribes destroyed the Western Roman Empire and the Mongols conquered the Chinese and Koreans.

Didn't Gumilev comment on the loss of passionarity in the West? I think he also said that the Arabs still had a high level of passionarity. This is of course not to call the Arabs barbarians but in the mind of the Western liberal exporters of civilisation anyone who is not like them is a barbarian.

annatar1914 wrote:The 15th to 18th century, sure I think that's the point at which the transformation began.


Can there be any actual real change in bourgeois countries? When we consider that most countries have somewhat immutable characteristics that are noticeable through the trajectory of their histories it leads me to be pessimistic about reform.

annatar1914 wrote:That is why the secular political world is in such sad shape, with few to honestly be able to turn to a spiritual leader for moral guidance. I still pray for them though, all of them.


Even those who profess to be religious do not seem tormented by their behaviour which contradicts that which they profess to adhere to, or at least not publically. I've never understood leaders who follow religion but who can then order mass aerial bombardment or start imperialistic wars, impose economy crippling sanctions etc. Even the Allied carpet bombing of Dresden I can't accept.

annatar1914 wrote:It's the election process and term limitations I think that help to inhibit thinking deeply. We have designed highly rational and logical political structures and mechanisms that are in reality highly irrational and coldly unwieldy in effect, that do not serve anyone well even the 1 or 2% who financially benefit the most from the process, it distorts even their reality.


The result is that the press and media do the thinking for people instead. We live in a time where people are getting very political but don't seem to have original ideas. They just attach themselves to ideological tribes and schools of thought that are current and which have enough adherents. Social media and video sharing websites contribute tremendously to this. Pundits and talking heads as well.

annatar1914 wrote:That's true also, it comes from a person's heart good or bad, not their head so much.


Very much. Religion can come only so much from one's head, belief from the heart is also needed to believe in a religion.

annatar1914 wrote:Joseph de Maistre or Juan Donoso y Cortes said once that Protestantism is the ''sliding inclined plane from Christian belief to Atheism''. And despite their Papist views, I'm still one to agree with them on that point.


There are different Protestant currents however. I do not think that such a statement could be made of all of them. When Protestant confessions remain robust and true to their foundational principles they can be a firm basis for religious life but one of their weaknesses is how easily they change their dogmas, theology and practices. A lot of Protestant churches, and most worrylingly the established churches in Northern Europe, have become so watered down as to be non entities.

annatar1914 wrote:Yes, I think we all should. Even if all you can do at first is groan and mumble, that's a prayer and He hears you if it's heartfelt.


Thank you, I will start praying more. It is a matter of discipline maybe.

annatar1914 wrote:I agree, just as in the 1950's when they were more inclined to be more like the West but greatly supported the Nationalist-Populist Mossadegh.


Good point.

annatar1914 wrote:It could literally be possible anywhere, in my opinion.


This prospect terrifies me. I remember in 2014 or around 2015 having the thought that they could overrun Turkey one day. The problem with such an ideology is that it is not limited by geography, nationality or language. Anyone is susceptible, even non-Muslims.

I still maintain however that a lot of people who might have flirted with such an ideology were put off by the events of 2014, 2015, I think it scared them. The Muslims in Britain were absolutely terrified of them.

annatar1914 wrote:Along the Sunni/Shia fault line, highly likely.


There especially.

annatar1914 wrote:I'd not so much as say ''wrong'' to worry, but look into things and pray always with trust in God in your sincerity and He will guide you rightly along the winding journey.


It is important to trust in Him.

annatar1914 wrote:From Hippolyte Taine's ''The French Revolution''

It's still centered in the self, these political drives, based on the needs and desires of our disordered passions.

Therefore, what seems reasonable to many is abject superstition and ignorance to others. So to even form a modern society one must place a high level of trust in the civic virtues of other people, that despite or because of their stated expressed beliefs one can count on their moral rectitude and competence that they will accept the results of elections which place them and their ideas out of power.

Is this ''rational'' system even workable?


Funnily enough I have been thinking this many times in the past few months. We are motivated, perhaps even on a subconscous level, towards certain beliefs and ideas. Our reasons for doing so very often cannot be properly understood or quantified.

And that is indeed why, as you mentioned, the reason why people differ so much politically. Each person has different subconscious motivations and inclinations. There is even some suggestion that political inclinations may be genetic and inherited.

annatar1914 wrote:I think that my answer would be ''no'', there has to be some system of accountability that balances the immorality of a demotic mass with an authority that refuses to buckle under a majoritarian tyranny and still be able to effect the common good and welfare of all. A Constitutional authority that is above the Constitution, to save the Constitution.


It could be possible to reform democracy and create a system where there is some type of authority to ideologically check the choices of the legislature and executive branch. As it stands now most upper houses do not appear to be particularly ideologically inclined other than to enforce the basis of the liberal democratic process.

From the scripture you have quoted from Maccabees it appears that the system described therein gave extensive executive powers to one leader for a short period of time. Is this an accurate reading? I wonder how much power this leader had.

annatar1914 wrote:The problem with mankind these days is that we are like Nietzsche said; ''men without chests'', ''we'' have no heart. And in this, that poor man was right to blame Socrates as their spiritual father, and unfortunately the false ''Christ'' that really was a Socratic Antichrist.

William Blake and Friedrich Nietzsche and Blaise Pascal, Soren Kirkegaard and Fyodor Dostyoevsky and Leon Bloy, knew more of the truth about the modern era and it's sickness than all the ''rationalists'' put together.

Can a Constitution protect the community that lives by it against ultimate evil? What can possibly inform a democracy about the reality of original/ancestral sin? Will technology and science protect everything that is human from... Technology and Science?

Sure, i'm stupid and inconsequential and irrelevant to the larger political discourse-thank God. But perhaps there will be some vindication in what I say, and surely I've learned more from this PoFo experience more than perhaps anyone else.


Too many people fail to understand. I by no means profess to be some type of intellectual or spiritual authority but why do so many fail to grasp essential truths?

annatar1914 wrote:With some emphasis on the parts i've bolded.

I know President Trump will be re-elected, and re-elected by a crushing margin which the Democratic Party of the Liberals richly deserves. And he will be elected by very good people, people who have been monstrously maligned by vile and abjectly feckless Liberalism for a very long time. I know, I get that.

But President Trump is not a good man himself, unfortunately, although I do pray for him as I do for all earthly leaders. He can be used for good but the things in his character that are bad are and will be terribly corrosive of good people in America in the longer term.

We should have had alternatives, but Western culture and thinking has deprived us of those. In the long term, these people's choices will come back to haunt them. I will choose a third choice, satisfying my conscience and my civic duty.

EDIT; Furthermore, I think that these public behaviors only bring out the same kind of toxicity or worse in the side that is opposed to him, likely because they came out of the same swamp of diseased cultural life in America, and like calls to like.

The fact that his neuro-linguistic programming, his art of being a master persuader works is not besides all that, because the first one who was re-programmed and persuaded of his marketing brand and persona was and is himself. Sure, he'll win because he has the right marketing persona, but what happens after his victory? Things will get measurably better in a material sense, they really will. But spiritually?


The articles are very well written and they address an issue with Trump's leadership that I think is fundamental to why so many find him offensive, his delivery and his personal manner. The man does not convey humility or diplomacy, he's not a particularly agreeable person.

The American people should not be forced to settle with two inadequate choices. The culture should change and there should be a better environment and better leaders.

From a religious point of view Trump does in many respects fail to uphold Christian behaviour and decorum. It is not really appropriate or suitable to present him as the ideal Christian candidate.

Yes, as the articles seem to suggest, there needs to be a reform of the culture to bring it in line with Christian decorum and away from a culture that has unfortunately overcome the West, and not only the West.

That American religious leaders are beginning to divorce themselves from corrupt politicians and doing their best to uphold and preach the true Christian faith is a highly positive development. American Christian opinion should not be confined to the current parameters of American political life.
#15131195
If we recall historical examples it is often the barbarians who end up ruling the civilised peoples. The Germanic tribes destroyed the Western Roman Empire and the Mongols conquered the Chinese and Koreans.

Didn't Gumilev comment on the loss of passionarity in the West? I think he also said that the Arabs still had a high level of passionarity. This is of course not to call the Arabs barbarians but in the mind of the Western liberal exporters of civilisation anyone who is not like them is a barbarian.

Alexander Blok
The Scythians
(1918)

‘Panmongolism – fierce the word may seem, yet how I love its sound' - Vladimir Solovyev

Millions are you – and hosts, yea hosts, are we,
And we shall fight if war you want, take heed.
Yes, we are Scythians – leafs of the Asian tree,
Our slanted eyes are bright aglow with greed.

Ages for you, for us the briefest space,
We raised the shield up as your humble lieges
To shelter you, the European race
From the Mongolians’ savage raid and sieges.

Ages, yea ages, did your forges’ thunder
Drown even avalanches’ roar.
Quakes rent Messina and Lisbon asunder –
To you this was a distant tale – no more.

Eastwards you cast your eyes for many hundred years,
Greedy for our precious stones and ore,
And longing for the time when with a leer
You’d yell an order and the guns would roar.

This time is now. Woe beats its wings
And every adds more humiliation
Until the day arrives which brings
An end to placid life in utter spoliation.

You, the old world, now rushing to perdition,
Yet strolling languidly to lethal brinks,
Yours is the ancient Oedipean mission
To seek to solve the riddles of a sphinx.

The sphinx is Russia, sad and yet elated,
Stained with dark blood, with grief prostrate,
For you with longing she has looked and waited,
Replete with ardent love and ardent hate.

Yet how will ever you perceive
That, as we love, as lovingly we yearn,
Our love is neither comfort nor relief
But like a fire will destroy and burn.

We love cold figures’ hot illumination,
The gift of supernatural vision,
We like the Gallic wit’s mordant sensation
And dark Teutonic indecision.

We know it all: in Paris hell’s dark street,
In Venice bright and sunlit colonnades,
The lemon blossoms’ scent so heavy, yet so sweet,
And in Cologne a shadowy arcade.

We love the flavour and the smell of meat,
The slaughterhouses’ pungent reek.
Why blame us then if in the heat
Of our embrace your bones begin to creak.

We saddle horses wild and shy,
As in the fields so playfully they swerve.
Though they be stubborn, yet we press their thigh
Until they willingly and meekly serve.

Join us! From horror and from strife
Turn to the peace of our embrace.
There is still time. Keep in its sheath your knife.
Comrades, we will be brothers to your race.

Say no – and we are none the worse.
We, too, can utter pledges that are vain.
But ages, ages will you bear the curse
Of our sons’ distant offspring racked with pain.

Our forests’ dark depths shall we open wide
To you, the men of Europe’s comely race,
And unmoved shall we stand aside,
An ugly grin on our Asian face.

Advance, advance to Ural’s crest,
We offer you a battleground so neat
Where your machines of steel in serried ranks abreast
With the Mongolian savage horde will meet.

But we shall keep aloof from strife,
No longer be your shield from hostile arrow,
We shall just watch the mortal strife
With our slanting eyes so cold and narrow.

Unmoved shall we remain when Hunnish forces
The corpses’ pockets rake for plunder,
Set town afire, to altars tie their horses,
Burn our white brothers’ bodies torn asunder.

To the old world goes out our last appeal:
To work and peace invite our warming fires.
Come to our hearth, join our festive meal.
Called by the strings of our Barbarian lyres.

30 January 1918


The Scythians by Alexander Blok
#15131231
@Political Interest , wow, a very comprehensive and thoughtful reply! I will do my best to give you the best replies I can muster in return. You said on military service and the civilianization of the political class in the West;

Hardly any of our politicians have ever served in the armed forces. They think wars happen in far away countries. These politicians really are the product of the latter half of the 20th century in their thinking, mentality and perception of reality.


Unfortunately so. They think of the soldiers as ''suckers'' and ''losers'' unlike themselves.


We can try and work as hard as we like but in the end fate is ultimately in the hands of the Lord.


Indeed, we run the race to the end.

On the struggle between the West and Islam;

Perhaps I am too young to remember but the world did not seem very concerned with the so called clash of civilisations before September 2001.


It was still in transition from the Cold War period from roughly 1989 to 2001.


If we recall historical examples it is often the barbarians who end up ruling the civilised peoples. The Germanic tribes destroyed the Western Roman Empire and the Mongols conquered the Chinese and Koreans.


Perhaps that's a good thing in disguise? I'm looking more into the whole ''civilization versus barbarism '' idea, and maybe my premises are incorrect in some respects regarding that.

Didn't Gumilev comment on the loss of passionarity in the West? I think he also said that the Arabs still had a high level of passionarity. This is of course not to call the Arabs barbarians but in the mind of the Western liberal exporters of civilisation anyone who is not like them is a barbarian.


They do, as well they and other peoples should. Related to my reply above, if Western civilization is the default setting for civilization and it's mores both personal and social, then by God make me a ''Barbarian''.


Can there be any actual real change in bourgeois countries? When we consider that most countries have somewhat immutable characteristics that are noticeable through the trajectory of their histories it leads me to be pessimistic about reform.


Then like Sodom and the ''Cities of the Plain'', perhaps they are doomed through their own faults to destruction. And those people of God within them must get out.


Even those who profess to be religious do not seem tormented by their behaviour which contradicts that which they profess to adhere to, or at least not publically. I've never understood leaders who follow religion but who can then order mass aerial bombardment or start imperialistic wars, impose economy crippling sanctions etc. Even the Allied carpet bombing of Dresden I can't accept.


''Over Civilization'' I'm beginning to think. People become abstractions in an overly rationalistic worldview characteristic of an excess of Civilization, easily exploited and then disposed of, and not only in the context of a war. These people have no sense of honor or shame, of sin or of guilt. They have embraced the lie of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden.


The result is that the press and media do the thinking for people instead. We live in a time where people are getting very political but don't seem to have original ideas. They just attach themselves to ideological tribes and schools of thought that are current and which have enough adherents. Social media and video sharing websites contribute tremendously to this. Pundits and talking heads as well.


I think people in civilized societies have always been prone to that, being spoon fed their ideas and beliefs, just that today technology makes it ever easier for the Elites to do so for people.



Religion can come only so much from one's head, belief from the heart is also needed to believe in a religion.


The Heart of human beings since the Fall has become semi-dormant and darkened by ignorance and sin, but we can train it to awaken by humility and trust in God I think.


There are different Protestant currents however. I do not think that such a statement could be made of all of them. When Protestant confessions remain robust and true to their foundational principles they can be a firm basis for religious life but one of their weaknesses is how easily they change their dogmas, theology and practices. A lot of Protestant churches, and most worrylingly the established churches in Northern Europe, have become so watered down as to be non entities.


I have hope for individuals in the Protestant currents, as you say. They were a reaction to certain things, and as such they were right to do so.


Thank you, I will start praying more. It is a matter of discipline maybe.


Not a problem, and be patient with yourself.


On groups like ISIS taking over the Middle East and elsewhere;

This prospect terrifies me. I remember in 2014 or around 2015 having the thought that they could overrun Turkey one day. The problem with such an ideology is that it is not limited by geography, nationality or language. Anyone is susceptible, even non-Muslims.

I still maintain however that a lot of people who might have flirted with such an ideology were put off by the events of 2014, 2015, I think it scared them. The Muslims in Britain were absolutely terrified of them.


A larger discussion on that issue alone would be worthwhile. I've got to do some more thinking about the larger issues, viewed through the prism of changes in my concepts of ''Civilization'' and ''Barbarism''.




Funnily enough I have been thinking this many times in the past few months. We are motivated, perhaps even on a subconscous level, towards certain beliefs and ideas. Our reasons for doing so very often cannot be properly understood or quantified.

And that is indeed why, as you mentioned, the reason why people differ so much politically. Each person has different subconscious motivations and inclinations. There is even some suggestion that political inclinations may be genetic and inherited.


We seem to be moved to will freely what we will, a bit of a paradox.


It could be possible to reform democracy and create a system where there is some type of authority to ideologically check the choices of the legislature and executive branch. As it stands now most upper houses do not appear to be particularly ideologically inclined other than to enforce the basis of the liberal democratic process.

From the scripture you have quoted from Maccabees it appears that the system described therein gave extensive executive powers to one leader for a short period of time. Is this an accurate reading? I wonder how much power this leader had.


The Book of Maccabees didn't go into great detail, but the Roman Consul was such with a partner every day switching off between themselves, if I remember correctly, but one man was named ''Dictator'' during emergencies with absolute powers delegated to him.


Too many people fail to understand. I by no means profess to be some type of intellectual or spiritual authority but why do so many fail to grasp essential truths?


I'm not sure that they fail to understand in some cases as they don't want to know sometimes. I was a victim of that thinking myself at times, I knew I was probably wrong but made no effort to inform myself one way or another either.

The articles are very well written and they address an issue with Trump's leadership that I think is fundamental to why so many find him offensive, his delivery and his personal manner. The man does not convey humility or diplomacy, he's not a particularly agreeable person.

The American people should not be forced to settle with two inadequate choices. The culture should change and there should be a better environment and better leaders.


Oh Lord, do I ever agree with that!

From a religious point of view Trump does in many respects fail to uphold Christian behaviour and decorum. It is not really appropriate or suitable to present him as the ideal Christian candidate.

Yes, as the articles seem to suggest, there needs to be a reform of the culture to bring it in line with Christian decorum and away from a culture that has unfortunately overcome the West, and not only the West.

That American religious leaders are beginning to divorce themselves from corrupt politicians and doing their best to uphold and preach the true Christian faith is a highly positive development. American Christian opinion should not be confined to the current parameters of American political life.


That's why once more I'm going to find a Third Party to vote for that better reflects my conscience.
#15131232
Potemkin wrote:Alexander Blok
The Scythians
(1918)

‘Panmongolism – fierce the word may seem, yet how I love its sound' - Vladimir Solovyev

Millions are you – and hosts, yea hosts, are we,
And we shall fight if war you want, take heed.
Yes, we are Scythians – leafs of the Asian tree,
Our slanted eyes are bright aglow with greed.

Ages for you, for us the briefest space,
We raised the shield up as your humble lieges
To shelter you, the European race
From the Mongolians’ savage raid and sieges.

Ages, yea ages, did your forges’ thunder
Drown even avalanches’ roar.
Quakes rent Messina and Lisbon asunder –
To you this was a distant tale – no more.

Eastwards you cast your eyes for many hundred years,
Greedy for our precious stones and ore,
And longing for the time when with a leer
You’d yell an order and the guns would roar.

This time is now. Woe beats its wings
And every adds more humiliation
Until the day arrives which brings
An end to placid life in utter spoliation.

You, the old world, now rushing to perdition,
Yet strolling languidly to lethal brinks,
Yours is the ancient Oedipean mission
To seek to solve the riddles of a sphinx.

The sphinx is Russia, sad and yet elated,
Stained with dark blood, with grief prostrate,
For you with longing she has looked and waited,
Replete with ardent love and ardent hate.

Yet how will ever you perceive
That, as we love, as lovingly we yearn,
Our love is neither comfort nor relief
But like a fire will destroy and burn.

We love cold figures’ hot illumination,
The gift of supernatural vision,
We like the Gallic wit’s mordant sensation
And dark Teutonic indecision.

We know it all: in Paris hell’s dark street,
In Venice bright and sunlit colonnades,
The lemon blossoms’ scent so heavy, yet so sweet,
And in Cologne a shadowy arcade.

We love the flavour and the smell of meat,
The slaughterhouses’ pungent reek.
Why blame us then if in the heat
Of our embrace your bones begin to creak.

We saddle horses wild and shy,
As in the fields so playfully they swerve.
Though they be stubborn, yet we press their thigh
Until they willingly and meekly serve.

Join us! From horror and from strife
Turn to the peace of our embrace.
There is still time. Keep in its sheath your knife.
Comrades, we will be brothers to your race.

Say no – and we are none the worse.
We, too, can utter pledges that are vain.
But ages, ages will you bear the curse
Of our sons’ distant offspring racked with pain.

Our forests’ dark depths shall we open wide
To you, the men of Europe’s comely race,
And unmoved shall we stand aside,
An ugly grin on our Asian face.

Advance, advance to Ural’s crest,
We offer you a battleground so neat
Where your machines of steel in serried ranks abreast
With the Mongolian savage horde will meet.

But we shall keep aloof from strife,
No longer be your shield from hostile arrow,
We shall just watch the mortal strife
With our slanting eyes so cold and narrow.

Unmoved shall we remain when Hunnish forces
The corpses’ pockets rake for plunder,
Set town afire, to altars tie their horses,
Burn our white brothers’ bodies torn asunder.

To the old world goes out our last appeal:
To work and peace invite our warming fires.
Come to our hearth, join our festive meal.
Called by the strings of our Barbarian lyres.

30 January 1918


The Scythians by Alexander Blok


I find myself a Scythian, and cannot deny what I am. There are healthier cultures that affirm from their youth the values that make them endure and remain young and vital. There are other cultures that slip into rottenness and insanity, into decadence and degeneracy, that need to be pulled down and set on fire by the hand of God.
#15131241
Been thinking about ''Passionarity'' as Gumilev explains it for some time, aside from my musings on Civilization and Barbarism. I had the ideas right but the terms I used for each wrong.

You see, it is with Civilization that we see a degradation of the sense of the common good of all, of a destruction of all ethnos, of degradation of human and other natural ecology, of artificial migration into unnatural landscapes we call ''cities''. Cities are more related to the seas and to trade, thassalocratic rather than telluric, and with civilization we have the familiar model of the deracinated, the irreligious while increasingly superstitious cosmopolitan, liberated through their ''reason'' from organic and moral sexual development, from natural roles in a society, from what it truly means to be human at all. Lives organized increasingly as machines, as economic units. Servile, heeding only a hedonistic rational calculus of means and ends. Increasingly suicidal and nihilistic, without ''Passionarity''. Artificial, deadening, petrified and ossified, symbolism divorced from meanings.

Thus it is with Barbarism that we find anything free and worthwhile, youthful and vital and full of ''Passionarity'' no matter the personal age, indeed marked by personal and communal relations contrary to the very concept of the ''individual'' we find in the hyper-civilized age. Aware of Ethnos and Religion and of both the horizontal and egalitarian as well as the vertical and heirarchical of power relationships. More in touch with the natural and the sacred, the organic and the spiritual as one holisitic environment, as one single way of life shaped by vital and numinous forces.
#15131249
annatar1914 wrote:Been thinking about ''Passionarity'' as Gumilev explains it for some time, aside from my musings on Civilization and Barbarism. I had the ideas right but the terms I used for each wrong.

You see, it is with Civilization that we see a degradation of the sense of the common good of all, of a destruction of all ethnos, of degradation of human and other natural ecology, of artificial migration into unnatural landscapes we call ''cities''. Cities are more related to the seas and to trade, thassalocratic rather than telluric, and with civilization we have the familiar model of the deracinated, the irreligious while increasingly superstitious cosmopolitan, liberated through their ''reason'' from organic and moral sexual development, from natural roles in a society, from what it truly means to be human at all. Lives organized increasingly as machines, as economic units. Servile, heeding only a hedonistic rational calculus of means and ends. Increasingly suicidal and nihilistic, without ''Passionarity''. Artificial, deadening, petrified and ossified, symbolism divorced from meanings.

Thus it is with Barbarism that we find anything free and worthwhile, youthful and vital and full of ''Passionarity'' no matter the personal age, indeed marked by personal and communal relations contrary to the very concept of the ''individual'' we find in the hyper-civilized age. Aware of Ethnos and Religion and of both the horizontal and egalitarian as well as the vertical and heirarchical of power relationships. More in touch with the natural and the sacred, the organic and the spiritual as one holisitic environment, as one single way of life shaped by vital and numinous forces.

This was precisely Blok's point, @annatar1914. And he saw the true Scythians not as an external force invading 'civilisation', but as always-already dwelling at the heart of our civilisation, as both its dark shadow and its true heart - the proletariat, the ordinary toiling masses. It is they - the 'barbarian' within - who will liberate and rejuvenate our decadent and degenerate civilisation. This is why Blok sided with the Revolution, with that tidal wave of passionate destruction, of library books trampled beneath horses' hooves, of cavalry horses stabled in art galleries, of the joyous democratisation of culture. "With your whole body, with your whole heart, with your whole conscience, listen to the Revolution....This is the music everyone who has ears should hear."
#15131275
Potemkin wrote:This was precisely Blok's point, @annatar1914. And he saw the true Scythians not as an external force invading 'civilisation', but as always-already dwelling at the heart of our civilisation, as both its dark shadow and its true heart - the proletariat, the ordinary toiling masses. It is they - the 'barbarian' within - who will liberate and rejuvenate our decadent and degenerate civilisation. This is why Blok sided with the Revolution, with that tidal wave of passionate destruction, of library books trampled beneath horses' hooves, of cavalry horses stabled in art galleries, of the joyous democratisation of culture. "With your whole body, with your whole heart, with your whole conscience, listen to the Revolution....This is the music everyone who has ears should hear."


That about sums it up, yes. The Proletariat both external and internal to modern Western civilization.

However, i'd add that questions of good and of evil run through the idea of Revolution contrary to the mere human and provisional concepts of our miserable civilized and secular ethics and morality. Evil is done, and Good is done, in Revolutions, that so obviously run contrary to ethics as a secular Western philosophy.

It's a bit like a secular humanist bourgeois person looking back in incomprehension at the stories of the Flood in Scripture, or of the miracles of Moses in Egypt, or the destruction of the cities of the plain. And for the same reason, he cannot grasp the meaning of the American, French, and Russian Revolutions, because they all come ultimately from the same unseen sources and wills leading up to the mysterious workings of Divine Providence itself.
#15131278
annatar1914 wrote:That about sums it up, yes. The Proletariat both external and internal to modern Western civilization.

However, i'd add that questions of good and of evil run through the idea of Revolution contrary to the mere human and provisional concepts of our miserable civilized and secular ethics and morality. Evil is done, and Good is done, in Revolutions, that so obviously run contrary to ethics as a secular Western philosophy.

It's a bit like a secular humanist bourgeois person looking back in incomprehension at the stories of the Flood in Scripture, or of the miracles of Moses in Egypt, or the destruction of the cities of the plain. And for the same reason, he cannot grasp the meaning of the American, French, and Russian Revolutions, because they all come ultimately from the same unseen sources and wills leading up to the mysterious workings of Divine Providence itself.

A revolution, like a miracle, is a rupture in the smooth continuities of the bourgeois rationalist worldview. As such, they are seen as being, at best, embarrassments or, at worst, abominations. In neither case are they understood. "For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength."
#15131280
Potemkin wrote:A revolution, like a miracle, is a rupture in the smooth continuities of the bourgeois rationalist worldview. As such, they are seen as being, at best, embarrassments or, at worst, abominations. In neither case are they understood. "For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength."


Exactly so. And thus we have Fascism which strives to seal over those ruptures in both the seen and unseen realms (note I do not say; ''material and immaterial realms'', lol) with fire and blood, but also with writing over and abolishing the past, and creating false history and pre-history in it's place.
#15131654
@Potemkin , and @Political Interest , and others;

Today in Orthodoxy is the feast day of St. Luke the Evangelist, but in the West, it's Halloween, and so I thought it appropriate especially in these times to post from a now-defunct blog called the ''Mad Monarchist'', something he wrote that resonated with me and still does, any day of the week and not just on Halloween;


Confessions of a Creepy Christian

This is an “off topic” post, which I don’t do anymore but, because it is Halloween, I am making an exception, ignore it if you please. Halloween is hands down my favorite holiday and has always been so. It is the one time of the year when I’m considered “festive” and “in the holiday spirit” rather than just being “creepy”. My immediate family always celebrated Halloween but, going to a private, religious school most of the time as a boy, I became aware that some Christians have a problem with it. Not everyone does and no group seemed to be entirely consistent on the subject. At my school, when I was very small, Halloween was okay, to an extent, then later it was banned as being completely evil. There were Protestants who were okay with it, some who opposed it and I can remember one Catholic priest saying it was completely evil only to be replaced by another priest who said it was good and only anti-Catholics thought it was evil. Take your pick. My late mother always said, “it is what you make of it” and whether it was good or bad was entirely up to you.


What always bothered me though was the idea some Christian fundamentalist types have that Halloween is too “dark” to be compatible with Christianity. This bothers me because I want to be Christian but the Christianity of sunshine, light and happiness seemed to exclude me. According to my parents I’ve had my days and nights mixed up since the day I was born, the light hurts my eyes and, well, “happiness” is just a word that no one has ever associated with me. It also struck me as extremely bizarre given my understanding of Christianity. Here you have a religion that has as its symbol a method of execution, a religion based on God becoming man, being killed, having people poke their fingers in his gaping wounds and who commands you to eat His flesh and drink His blood. All of this, and you think **I’M** too “creepy”!? I wonder sometimes if people are reading the same Bible I have because, as I have often said, Christianity is a Lovecraftian death-match, not a hippy religion.

Some of this I have touched on before so I will not go through it all again but it seems to me that authentic Christianity is, to put it mildly, not for the faint of heart. The Bible describes eternal, celestial beings of another plain of existence locked in a cosmic struggle for domination, giant monsters, a witch summoning a ghost, dragons, people and animals being possessed by demons, people being raised from the dead and I could go on at length about the angels, as I have somewhat before on these pages. Some of them do or can look like us, sure, but the description of them in their own habitat is terrifying. Some have bestial bodies, three heads, lots of wings, others are constantly engulfed in flames, some are giant wheels covered with eyeballs and so on, real nightmare fuel. They kill children, slaughter armies by the thousands and, you will notice, even when appearing on a happy occasion, always start by telling the person they are appearing before to stop being afraid. They are not chubby, flying babies folks. If you ever see an angel that is not ‘under cover’ you will most likely drop to your knees in mind-melting terror.


It does not stop with the scriptures either, then you get into the traditions of the early Church and there are plenty of horrifying stories to choose from there. Ever heard the story of St Margaret of Antioch? She was eaten alive by a dragon, used a cross to tear her way out of its stomach, was drowned, survived, burned alive, survived and then finally beheaded. The apostle St Bartholomew was skinned alive, St Christopher became a sort of godly wolf-man, St Denis had his head chopped off and just went on preaching, carrying his cranium around with him and I know someone is thinking, ‘well those are just stories, they cannot possibly be true’. To which I say, is any of it any more impossible to believe than Jesus spitting in the dirt and curing blindness with the mud, raising a man from the dead who was already half rotted away or there being a colossal sea serpent at the bottom of the ocean that God is going to come down and kill with a giant sword at the end of the world? Because all of that stuff is in the Bible and I should think any Christian would have to believe that.


Authentic Christianity, as I understand it, has nothing to do with this modern day collection of churches full of “nice” people who are all about sunshine and social justice, who think demons are just metaphors and God is so loving that He would never actually condemn anybody. Yes, God does love everyone but in a way that is far beyond our understanding. As far as being so loving as to never punish anyone, ever, all I can say is to tell that to the population that drowned in the flood or the parents of all the dead Egyptian children wiped out by an angel because their Pharaoh would not release the Israelites from bondage. God is not your BFF in the sky, God is not your “copilot” and God is not your ‘buddy’. God is beyond our comprehension, God is unfathomable to us and His ways are not our ways. God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-seeing) and omnipresent which, to put it in an unusual way but one which I prefer, is to say that God is so huge that He fills the entire universe and is everywhere at once. God is fair, God is just but if you think he’s too nice to punish you, just remember that when Jesus Christ died on the cross the sun was blacked out because God the Father turned His back on His own Son because he had just taken on the sin of every person to ever exist.


Yet, people who presumably believe in all of that, people who will walk around every day with a tiny image of a dead man nailed to a cross hanging around their neck, will tell me I’m “creepy” or “morbid” or some such thing. It really is incomprehensible to me other than that the vast majority of people do not really believe what they claim to. Perhaps I am totally wrong and it really is just me that does not fit and cannot accept it, however I cannot help but think we must be reading from two completely different playbooks when it comes to the Christian religion. They are in the Christianity of Joel Osteen and I’m in the Christianity of church buildings made out of dead people.


This surely must sound like a rant at this point but, I promise, I am not going off-topic today merely to vent my frustrations. I do have a story to tell which, I have found out lately, does not seem to be very well known even among life-long Christians. Yet, to explain how we get there, I did want to put this background in place and also call to mind a previous explanation I have given on these pages. My late grandfather was in the habit of giving people very distinct nicknames and these nicknames, in my immediate family anyway, tended to impose on us a certain “theme” if you like. My oldest sister, for example, had a nickname which caused the cartoon character of Tweety Bird to become her sort of mascot and over the years she accumulated as gifts just about every imaginable collectible featuring the sharp-tongued yellow canary. My nickname, on the other hand, caused me to accumulate over the years a similar assortment of things like skulls and skeletons and this also came to include items of a religious nature.


Although rare today, once upon a time it was fairly common to see crucifixes with a skull and bones at the bottom of the cross. Eventually, these were, I think, most often used only to place on the coffins of the deceased prior to burial but I doubt they are even used for that anymore. In any event, I have about four or five crucifixes like this and anytime anyone sees one it usually prompts a reaction such as a comment about it seeming morbid or macabre (which, again, I would think the dead deity hanging above it would take the prize for but, apparently that is just me). Today, I admit, it does stand out but this was not always the case but because it has effectively fallen out of use, people do not seem to understand the symbolism of it and the story behind it which, I think, is a beautiful one. There is, of course, the general symbolism of the skull and bones being a symbol of death and being shown at the bottom of a crucifix because the sacrifice of Christ defeated death, He triumphed over death and gave to all the chance of eternal life. That is simple enough to understand but it actually goes deeper than that.

Those of you who have read the Bible will likely be aware that the hill upon which Christ was crucified was called Golgotha and you might also be aware that this name translates as, ‘the place of the skull’. What you may not know, however, is how that hill got such a name. It was called that because the people of that time believed that beneath that hill was buried the skull of Adam, the originator of the human race, the man crafted by God’s own hand. Is this story true? Certainly, I cannot say for sure but I like to believe it as not only do I find it beautiful but I also think it makes a sort of sense. The beauty is that Christ, the perfect man who redeemed humanity, was sacrificed at or near the spot where Adam, the fallen man who condemned humanity, met his ultimate end. There is a sort of completion and perfection in that which I find impossible to resist. Whether the skull of Adam was actually down there or not, I have no idea but I do think the belief that it was is something not ridiculous to believe. After all, it was obviously called that before Christ was crucified there and so it had to have been the Jews who named the hill “the place of the skull” and the Jews would certainly not have invented such a story which would fit so perfectly with Jesus being the Son of God, something which goes against their entire being as they are. If anything, they would have had every reason to re-name the place and suppress such a story.


That is my story for today and I will leave you with this; God is beyond our comprehension and we cannot put the Almighty in a box, we cannot have borderlines around the infinite. Much of what scares us usually comes down to death and as someone who has had to say goodbye to most of my family by now, I can tell you that it is sad but the whole point of Christianity is that it should not be frightening in and of itself. The dark things that so many ‘sunshine and lollipop’ Christians would shun are things which are at least not bad, sometimes quite beneficial and important up to a point to at least teach us that evil exists because the real harm from demonic forces comes when people no longer believe they are real. I would ask you to think on that and, if you ever happen across one of us who prefers candle light and chanting in dead languages to guitars and clapping, be tolerant of the “creepy” Christians that are still out there.

Happy Halloween from
The Mad Monarchist


With some emphasis in black, of course...

I guess I'm one of those ''creepy'' ones, who rather insist on it all being true.

Happy Halloween!
#15131866
Potemkin wrote:Alexander Blok
The Scythians
(1918)

‘Panmongolism – fierce the word may seem, yet how I love its sound' - Vladimir Solovyev

Millions are you – and hosts, yea hosts, are we,
And we shall fight if war you want, take heed.
Yes, we are Scythians – leafs of the Asian tree,
Our slanted eyes are bright aglow with greed.

Ages for you, for us the briefest space,
We raised the shield up as your humble lieges
To shelter you, the European race
From the Mongolians’ savage raid and sieges.

Ages, yea ages, did your forges’ thunder
Drown even avalanches’ roar.
Quakes rent Messina and Lisbon asunder –
To you this was a distant tale – no more.

Eastwards you cast your eyes for many hundred years,
Greedy for our precious stones and ore,
And longing for the time when with a leer
You’d yell an order and the guns would roar.

This time is now. Woe beats its wings
And every adds more humiliation
Until the day arrives which brings
An end to placid life in utter spoliation.

You, the old world, now rushing to perdition,
Yet strolling languidly to lethal brinks,
Yours is the ancient Oedipean mission
To seek to solve the riddles of a sphinx.

The sphinx is Russia, sad and yet elated,
Stained with dark blood, with grief prostrate,
For you with longing she has looked and waited,
Replete with ardent love and ardent hate.

Yet how will ever you perceive
That, as we love, as lovingly we yearn,
Our love is neither comfort nor relief
But like a fire will destroy and burn.

We love cold figures’ hot illumination,
The gift of supernatural vision,
We like the Gallic wit’s mordant sensation
And dark Teutonic indecision.

We know it all: in Paris hell’s dark street,
In Venice bright and sunlit colonnades,
The lemon blossoms’ scent so heavy, yet so sweet,
And in Cologne a shadowy arcade.

We love the flavour and the smell of meat,
The slaughterhouses’ pungent reek.
Why blame us then if in the heat
Of our embrace your bones begin to creak.

We saddle horses wild and shy,
As in the fields so playfully they swerve.
Though they be stubborn, yet we press their thigh
Until they willingly and meekly serve.

Join us! From horror and from strife
Turn to the peace of our embrace.
There is still time. Keep in its sheath your knife.
Comrades, we will be brothers to your race.

Say no – and we are none the worse.
We, too, can utter pledges that are vain.
But ages, ages will you bear the curse
Of our sons’ distant offspring racked with pain.

Our forests’ dark depths shall we open wide
To you, the men of Europe’s comely race,
And unmoved shall we stand aside,
An ugly grin on our Asian face.

Advance, advance to Ural’s crest,
We offer you a battleground so neat
Where your machines of steel in serried ranks abreast
With the Mongolian savage horde will meet.

But we shall keep aloof from strife,
No longer be your shield from hostile arrow,
We shall just watch the mortal strife
With our slanting eyes so cold and narrow.

Unmoved shall we remain when Hunnish forces
The corpses’ pockets rake for plunder,
Set town afire, to altars tie their horses,
Burn our white brothers’ bodies torn asunder.

To the old world goes out our last appeal:
To work and peace invite our warming fires.
Come to our hearth, join our festive meal.
Called by the strings of our Barbarian lyres.

30 January 1918


The Scythians by Alexander Blok


Dear Alexander Blok who helped to promote Sergei Yesenin's career in his early days. Truly a great Russian persona.

What I like about this poem is that through it is a constant appeal, the appeal for brotherhood. It was these barbarians who saved Europe in 1945. We must never forget this, along with the Americans, who themselves for the most part were once upon a time also barbarians.

Europe must rediscover its barbarian self. Not to plunder or destroy but to learn to be itself again, to go back to the roots. All of Europe's errors and mistakes arose after it became fully civilised and became what it is today.

annatar1914 wrote:wow, a very comprehensive and thoughtful reply! I will do my best to give you the best replies I can muster in return.


I'm sorry to keep replying so late in the piece. Thank you for your very detailed and interesting response in kind.

annatar1914 wrote:Unfortunately so. They think of the soldiers as ''suckers'' and ''losers'' unlike themselves.


There is most certainly a class element to such disdain, where it exists.

And perhaps there is just sheer naivety, naivety that exists along with sincere respect for soldiers but which blinds them to the real human costs of these wars.

annatar1914 wrote:It was still in transition from the Cold War period from roughly 1989 to 2001.


That was a sort of honeymoon period where we were all meant to become good neo-liberals.

annatar1914 wrote:Perhaps that's a good thing in disguise? I'm looking more into the whole ''civilization versus barbarism '' idea, and maybe my premises are incorrect in some respects regarding that.


The 'barbarians' seem to revive declining civilisations. I can't comment about the state of China or Korea at the time of the Mongol conquests but the Western Roman Empire was certainly in a state of rapid decline.

annatar1914 wrote:They do, as well they and other peoples should. Related to my reply above, if Western civilization is the default setting for civilization and it's mores both personal and social, then by God make me a ''Barbarian''.


I believe Western civlisation today is completely alienated from its true self. It does however need some frame of reference from the east to rediscover what it is and what it could be, how to free itself from the unfortunate trajectory it has taken. The West could benefit for example from Confucianism.

annatar1914 wrote:Then like Sodom and the ''Cities of the Plain'', perhaps they are doomed through their own faults to destruction. And those people of God within them must get out.


Maybe the 'barbarians' can save the West.

annatar1914 wrote:I think people in civilized societies have always been prone to that, being spoon fed their ideas and beliefs, just that today technology makes it ever easier for the Elites to do so for people.


It is also comfortable to go along with what it is popular and to accept the consensus.

annatar1914 wrote:The Heart of human beings since the Fall has become semi-dormant and darkened by ignorance and sin, but we can train it to awaken by humility and trust in God I think.


Yes, I think so too.

annatar1914 wrote:I have hope for individuals in the Protestant currents, as you say. They were a reaction to certain things, and as such they were right to do so.


I think Protestant traditions are very rich, even if I am not a Protestant.

annatar1914 wrote:Not a problem, and be patient with yourself.


Thank you, I will try.

annatar1914 wrote:A larger discussion on that issue alone would be worthwhile. I've got to do some more thinking about the larger issues, viewed through the prism of changes in my concepts of ''Civilization'' and ''Barbarism''.


Certainly. I look forward to hearing your thoughts one day.

annatar1914 wrote:We seem to be moved to will freely what we will, a bit of a paradox.


Very much.

annatar1914 wrote:The Book of Maccabees didn't go into great detail, but the Roman Consul was such with a partner every day switching off between themselves, if I remember correctly, but one man was named ''Dictator'' during emergencies with absolute powers delegated to him.


Very interesting. I'm always looking into alternative forms of governance that we could apply in the West.

annatar1914 wrote:That's why once more I'm going to find a Third Party to vote for that better reflects my conscience.


I hope you find some better alternatives.

annatar1914 wrote:I find myself a Scythian, and cannot deny what I am. There are healthier cultures that affirm from their youth the values that make them endure and remain young and vital. There are other cultures that slip into rottenness and insanity, into decadence and degeneracy, that need to be pulled down and set on fire by the hand of God.


And the cultures which have started down the road of perdition don't realise that they are not going to gain much from their errors, only torment and suffering.

But this is not my West. This is not who we really are!

annatar1914 wrote:Been thinking about ''Passionarity'' as Gumilev explains it for some time, aside from my musings on Civilization and Barbarism. I had the ideas right but the terms I used for each wrong.

You see, it is with Civilization that we see a degradation of the sense of the common good of all, of a destruction of all ethnos, of degradation of human and other natural ecology, of artificial migration into unnatural landscapes we call ''cities''. Cities are more related to the seas and to trade, thassalocratic rather than telluric, and with civilization we have the familiar model of the deracinated, the irreligious while increasingly superstitious cosmopolitan, liberated through their ''reason'' from organic and moral sexual development, from natural roles in a society, from what it truly means to be human at all. Lives organized increasingly as machines, as economic units. Servile, heeding only a hedonistic rational calculus of means and ends. Increasingly suicidal and nihilistic, without ''Passionarity''. Artificial, deadening, petrified and ossified, symbolism divorced from meanings.

Thus it is with Barbarism that we find anything free and worthwhile, youthful and vital and full of ''Passionarity'' no matter the personal age, indeed marked by personal and communal relations contrary to the very concept of the ''individual'' we find in the hyper-civilized age. Aware of Ethnos and Religion and of both the horizontal and egalitarian as well as the vertical and heirarchical of power relationships. More in touch with the natural and the sacred, the organic and the spiritual as one holisitic environment, as one single way of life shaped by vital and numinous forces.


Some time ago I saw a video of a Russian expert, I think it may have been Andrei Fursov, who said that he saw cathedrals in Europe and it occurred to him that Europe would never build anything like that ever again.

And speaking of cathedrals, could it be that for a civilisation to keep progressing (if you will permit me to use this word, in perhaps the most ironic of senses) it must be driven by some spiritual or religious life, some type of transcendental foundations?

Potemkin wrote:This was precisely Blok's point, @annatar1914. And he saw the true Scythians not as an external force invading 'civilisation', but as always-already dwelling at the heart of our civilisation, as both its dark shadow and its true heart - the proletariat, the ordinary toiling masses. It is they - the 'barbarian' within - who will liberate and rejuvenate our decadent and degenerate civilisation. This is why Blok sided with the Revolution, with that tidal wave of passionate destruction, of library books trampled beneath horses' hooves, of cavalry horses stabled in art galleries, of the joyous democratisation of culture. "With your whole body, with your whole heart, with your whole conscience, listen to the Revolution....This is the music everyone who has ears should hear."


Who are the proletariat in our civilisation today would you say?

annatar1914 wrote:Today in Orthodoxy is the feast day of St. Luke the Evangelist, but in the West, it's Halloween, and so I thought it appropriate especially in these times to post from a now-defunct blog called the ''Mad Monarchist'', something he wrote that resonated with me and still does, any day of the week and not just on Halloween;


That is a beautiful article, thank you for sharing it.

I have previously been called morbid as well and all through my life I have had people ask me why I don't smile much, even why I look morose.

Perhaps what people don't understand is that life is not always about being happy. Sometimes you are not in the mood to be happy. The way in which you approach religion may not be in a happy mood. Who said that religion's purpose was to make us happy?

When we cry it is not always because we are happy. But often when we cry it is because we see that which moves us to tears. Is this provoked by love? Till today I do not know the answer. I hope I can understand the spiritual implications of this.

I don't understand what this is where I see something that is not happy but yet it provokes me in some way.



Many years ago I could listen to this composition and it would make me feel tearful. I am not ashamed to admit it. The music is not happy music, but yet it is beautiful.

I have also felt moved to tears looking at icons, especially the icons depicting Christ and the Virgin Mary.

There is a Russian movie about the last days of the Romanovs and at the end we see them depicted in an icon. There is a church service, perhaps the icon is in the church. The music and the icon in which they are depicted, as well as the service are extremely powerful to watch. I do not think I could watch it in public.
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