Saturday, July 7, 2018

Political Reflections

Many truths well-known to our 19th Century ancestors are despised by the political Left in our time, and have been for over a hundred years. One truth is that without faith in God, the "Creator...[who] endowed... certain unalienable Rights" to us, then the faith of our American Founders - and the documents they produced - are bogus and delusional. If there is no God, there's no reason for the United States, its close allies, or their people to have any remarkable position in the world. We all must join the EU, the UN, and be happily seated with committees that govern and regulate the masses with a totalitarian, iron hand.  

It's doubly ironic that the Charter of the United Nations refers to the rights of man in language that imitates the Declaration of Independence, where they first appeared. The constitutions of the world's freest nations do this also. The only nations that don't use this foundational language are totalitarian states which believe only the "masses" have rights, which are determined by a dictatorial ruling class. 

The Left recognizes nothing as unalterable Truth. Since Marx and Nietzsche became world prophets, actual events are mere "narratives" which take the place of Truth. Good and Evil are only opinions, and opinions change at the whim of the powerful. In this way the masses are controlled and history is rewritten all the time. Permanent revolution takes the place of real life. Godless human beings know no limits and can be nothing but monsters, capable of every evil. Only an ethical, single Creator God holds the True Measuring Rod, the unchangeable secret of Good and Evil.

It's been proved that expectations are a critical factor to our happiness. The Left promises a Utopia that never existed, doesn't exist, and has failed to appear every time nations buy into the idea. Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Brazil, Argentina... the list of failed states is long. Their misery has no end. Only when individuals are free to work, buy, sell, and engage in all commerce without undue government interference, will they prosper. There is no freedom without economic freedom.

The Left will have you believe you're special, "empowered", even godlike, if you follow them. But unrealistic assessments of our talents and abilities will lead to crushing disappointment and depression when we fail. And we will fail in competition, at least sometimes. There's always someone with more talent and skill than we have. Yet we can learn from our failures, and still prosper mightily in a free society. Most wealthy and successful men and women experienced many failures. 

Truly great talent is very rare in the world, but we can be deceived by the media and social networks to believe we're geniuses. If people are taught to think the world can be molded by special, educated, and enlightened elites (and they can be one of the elite), they're further doomed. 
The world keeps recycling the same issues, tragedies, and disasters; along with a few successes. Moses, the Israelites, and their battle with Pharaoh is little different from the American Revolution, or the collapse of the Soviet Union. "There is no new thing under the sun", says the Book of Ecclesiastes. 

Israel, the U.S., and the Western Tradition 

The Israelites as a whole were not a virtuous people, but God chose them anyway. The few who chose to "wrestle with God" (the true meaning of the word Israel), were enough to earn God's blessings for all. Trump is a sinner, this writer is a sinner, and you're a sinner. Trump may be a much better person than you think. I may be, and you may be. Only God knows for sure. But what we are not is atheist and anti-theist. America welcomed Jews from its earliest days, and since the middle 1600's they have thrived and prospered. Since 1776, America's Founders embraced the Exodus, and compared the Revolution to Moses' escape from Pharaoh. Our enemies are universally anti-Semitic. For this, and for their heresies, betrayals, and lies, they are doomed. 



                          God and His Providence are the root and vine 
                                 that bear the good fruits of our life. 

"Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue." - Matthew Arnold
Hypocrites lie with a false front because their inner knowledge of what is right and good shames them. If this were not so, they would feel no need to deceive. This is the "tribute" they "pay".

"When man drops one doctrine after another in a refined skepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded." -  G.K. Chesterton

"But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often in the din of strife.
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us - to know 
Whence our lives come, and where they go." - Matthew Arnold