Monday, December 30, 2013

Nationalism vs Patriotism

Father Andrew takes a close look at the good and bad of these two ideas and others in ‘On Conquering Nationalism and Globalism’:

Introduction: Patriotism

We define patriotism as the love of our country in its God-created beauty. This has nothing to do with the blindly fanatical promotion of man-created States, institutions and menacing armies as ‘better’ than others; patriotism has nothing to do with hatred for other countries, for in patriotism there is nothing negative, only positive. We have always maintained that love for other countries, inter-patriotism, is a virtue, but that it comes from love for one’s own country, where it was God’s will for us to be born. Indeed, we say that he who does not love his own country cannot love other countries, just as he who hates himself also hates others. This we can see throughout history in the stories of one pathological and self-obsessed ruler after another, from pagan Roman Emperors to Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, Napoleon, the Kaiser, Lenin, Hitler and those more recent.

The Origin and Spread of Nationalism

We define nationalism as a secularist lack of love for other countries, which originates in ignorance of them and arrogance with regard to one’s own country. Modern nationalism was born in 16th century Western Europe as a secular reaction to the oppressive centralism of Papist Europe. Nationalism was thus born in the Protestant countries of Europe, the classic case being England, whose greedy ruler made himself head of his own national ‘Church’, a department of state, a secular institution or ‘establishment’ with a religious exterior. However, nationalism soon spread outside Protestant England, Holland, Scandinavia and Lutheran German principalities to Roman Catholic countries like Spain, Poland, Ireland and France which were soon infected. Ultimately, the evil of nationalism, evident in Western European nations, small but powerful through their technological superiority, was to result in the Satanic, inter-tribal slaughter of the First and then the Second World Wars.

Nationalism in the Orthodox World

However, it was not only the Protestant and then Roman Catholic world that underwent the inherently secular process of nationalism. Later, in the 18th century in Russia and in the 19th century the Orthodox world also underwent the same process, especially in the Balkans, thus repeating the ‘Balkanisation’ that had already affected Western Europe, causing warfare and strife there. As a result, a Council in Constantinople on 10 September 1872 qualified such nationalism, or ‘phyletism’, as a heresy: the Church, it said, should not be confused with a single nation or race. . . .

The rest, including the answer to globalism and nationalism, is available here:  http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/on-conquering-nationalism-and-globalism/

Friday, December 27, 2013

A Nearly Flawless Agrarian Poem

From the inward life of the creation to criticism of commercialism to commentary on the poet’s vocation, Sidney Lanier’s poem ‘Corn’ is a wonderful introduction to agrarian thought (and beautiful in its own right) and deserves a wide reading.  It is presented in full below.

Corn.

To-day the woods are trembling through and through
With shimmering forms, that flash before my view,
Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.
 The leaves that wave against my cheek caress
 Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express
    A subtlety of mighty tenderness;
 The copse-depths into little noises start,
 That sound anon like beatings of a heart,
 Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.
 The beech dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song;
 Through that vague wafture, expirations strong
 Throb from young hickories breathing deep and long
With stress and urgence bold of prisoned spring
    And ecstasy of burgeoning.
 Now, since the dew-plashed road of morn is dry,
 Forth venture odors of more quality
 And heavenlier giving. Like Jove's locks awry,
        Long muscadines
Rich-wreathe the spacious foreheads of great pines,
And breathe ambrosial passion from their vines.
 I pray with mosses, ferns and flowers shy
 That hide like gentle nuns from human eye
 To lift adoring perfumes to the sky.
I hear faint bridal-sighs of brown and green
Dying to silent hints of kisses keen
As far lights fringe into a pleasant sheen.
 I start at fragmentary whispers, blown
 From undertalks of leafy souls unknown,
 Vague purports sweet, of inarticulate tone.
Dreaming of gods, men, nuns and brides, between
Old companies of oaks that inward lean
To join their radiant amplitudes of green
 I slowly move, with ranging looks that pass
 Up from the matted miracles of grass
Into yon veined complex of space
Where sky and leafage interlace
 So close, the heaven of blue is seen
 Inwoven with a heaven of green.

I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence
Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense,
Contests with stolid vehemence
 The march of culture, setting limb and thorn
 As pikes against the army of the corn.

There, while I pause, my fieldward-faring eyes
Take harvests, where the stately corn-ranks rise,
    Of inward dignities
And large benignities and insights wise,
    Graces and modest majesties.
Thus, without theft, I reap another's field;
Thus, without tilth, I house a wondrous yield,
And heap my heart with quintuple crops concealed.

Look, out of line one tall corn-captain stands
Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands,
 And waves his blades upon the very edge
 And hottest thicket of the battling hedge.
Thou lustrous stalk, that ne'er mayst walk nor talk,
 Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime
 That leads the vanward of his timid time
 And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme —
Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow
By double increment, above, below;
 Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee,
 Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry
 That moves in gentle curves of courtesy;
Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense,
    By every godlike sense
Transmuted from the four wild elements.
      Drawn to high plans,
 Thou lift'st more stature than a mortal man's,
Yet ever piercest downward in the mould
    And keepest hold
 Upon the reverend and steadfast earth
    That gave thee birth;
 Yea, standest smiling in thy future grave,
    Serene and brave,
 With unremitting breath
 Inhaling life from death,
Thine epitaph writ fair in fruitage eloquent,
    Thyself thy monument.

      As poets should,
Thou hast built up thy hardihood
With universal food,
 Drawn in select proportion fair
 From honest mould and vagabond air;
From darkness of the dreadful night,
    And joyful light;
 From antique ashes, whose departed flame
 In thee has finer life and longer fame;
From wounds and balms,
From storms and calms,
From potsherds and dry bones
   And ruin-stones.
Into thy vigorous substance thou hast wrought
Whate'er the hand of Circumstance hath brought;
 Yea, into cool solacing green hast spun
 White radiance hot from out the sun.
So thou dost mutually leaven
Strength of earth with grace of heaven;
 So thou dost marry new and old
 Into a one of higher mould;
 So thou dost reconcile the hot and cold,
    The dark and bright,
And many a heart-perplexing opposite,
      And so,
 Akin by blood to high and low,
Fitly thou playest out thy poet's part,
Richly expending thy much-bruised heart
 In equal care to nourish lord in hall
    Or beast in stall:
 Thou took'st from all that thou mightst give to all.

O steadfast dweller on the selfsame spot
Where thou wast born, that still repinest not —
Type of the home-fond heart, the happy lot! —
 Deeply thy mild content rebukes the land
 Whose flimsy homes, built on the shifting sand
Of trade, for ever rise and fall
With alternation whimsical,
 Enduring scarce a day,
 Then swept away
By swift engulfments of incalculable tides
Whereon capricious Commerce rides.
Look, thou substantial spirit of content!
Across this little vale, thy continent,
 To where, beyond the mouldering mill,
 Yon old deserted Georgian hill
Bares to the sun his piteous aged crest
    And seamy breast,
 By restless-hearted children left to lie
 Untended there beneath the heedless sky,
 As barbarous folk expose their old to die.
Upon that generous-rounding side,
    With gullies scarified
 Where keen Neglect his lash hath plied,
Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil,
And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil.
 Scorning the slow reward of patient grain,
 He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain,
 Then sat him down and waited for the rain.
He sailed in borrowed ships of usury —
A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea,
Seeking the Fleece and finding misery.
 Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance
 He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance
 Should plough for him the stony field of Chance.
Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell,
He staked his life on games of Buy-and-Sell,
And turned each field into a gambler's hell.
 Aye, as each year began,
 My farmer to the neighboring city ran;
Passed with a mournful anxious face
Into the banker's inner place;
Parleyed, excused, pleaded for longer grace;
 Railed at the drought, the worm, the rust, the grass;
 Protested ne'er again 'twould come to pass;
 With many an `oh' and `if' and `but alas'
Parried or swallowed searching questions rude,
And kissed the dust to soften Dives's mood.
At last, small loans by pledges great renewed,
 He issues smiling from the fatal door,
 And buys with lavish hand his yearly store
 Till his small borrowings will yield no more.
Aye, as each year declined,
With bitter heart and ever-brooding mind
He mourned his fate unkind.
 In dust, in rain, with might and main,
 He nursed his cotton, cursed his grain,
 Fretted for news that made him fret again,
Snatched at each telegram of Future Sale,
And thrilled with Bulls' or Bears' alternate wail —
In hope or fear alike for ever pale.
 And thus from year to year, through hope and fear,
 With many a curse and many a secret tear,
 Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear,
      At last
He woke to find his foolish dreaming past,
 And all his best-of-life the easy prey
 Of squandering scamps and quacks that lined his way
    With vile array,
From rascal statesman down to petty knave;
Himself, at best, for all his bragging brave,
A gamester's catspaw and a banker's slave.
 Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest,
 He fled away into the oblivious West,
    Unmourned, unblest.

Old hill! old hill! thou gashed and hairy Lear
Whom the divine Cordelia of the year,
E'en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer —
 King, that no subject man nor beast may own,
 Discrowned, undaughtered and alone —
Yet shall the great God turn thy fate,
And bring thee back into thy monarch state
    And majesty immaculate.
 Lo, through hot waverings of the August morn,
 Thou givest from thy vasty sides forlorn
 Visions of golden treasuries of corn —
Ripe largesse lingering for some bolder heart
That manfully shall take thy part,
      And tend thee,
      And defend thee,
With antique sinew and with modern art.

____ Sunnyside, Georgia, August, 1874.

Source:  http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/579/pg579.html, accessed 27 Dec. 2013

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

A Christmas Sermon from St John Chrysostom

From around the latter part of the 4th century A.D.

‘Chrysostom’ means in English ‘Golden-Mouthed’, so named because of his eloquent, wise, and soul-saving preaching. 

This particular sermon of St John begins in the following manner:

I behold a new and wondrous mystery! My ears resound to the Shepherd's song, piping no soft melody, but chanting full forth a heavenly hymn.

The Angels sing!
The Archangels blend their voices in harmony!
The Cherubim hymn their joyful praise!
The Seraphim exalt His glory!

All join to praise this holy feast, beholding the Godhead here on earth, and man in heaven. He who is above, now for our redemption dwells here below; and he that was lowly is by divine mercy raised.

Bethlehem this day resembles heaven; hearing from the stars the singing of angelic voices; and in place of the sun, enfolds within itself on every side the Sun of Justice.

And ask not how: for where God wills, the order of nature yields. For He willed, he had the power, He descended, He redeemed; all things move in obedience to God.

The rest is available here:

Merry Christmas to you all.

Monday, December 23, 2013

‘It’s Later Than You Think!’

Father Seraphim Rose, a California convert to Orthodox Christianity, was ever trying to open the eyes of his generation to this - that is, the nearness of Christ’s return and all the events that must precede it.  It is something we, being later in time than he, must be aware of, too.  In his lecture given in 1981, ‘The Future of Russia and the End of the World’, Fr Seraphim gives us a fairly good idea of where we stand in world and Church history.

Here is a portion from the latter part of the address:

    Archbishop Theophan of Poltava summed up in the 1930’s the prophecies which he had received from such elders as these:  “You ask me about the near future and about the last times.  I do not speak on my own, but give the revelation of the Elders:  The coming of Antichrist draws nigh and is very near.  The time separating us from him should be counted a matter of years and at most a matter of some decades.  But before the coming of Antichrist Russia must yet be restored — to be sure, for a short time. And in Russia there must be a Tsar forechosen by the Lord Himself.  He will be a man of burning faith, great mind and iron will.  This much has been revealed about him. We shall await the fulfillment of what has been revealed.  Judging by many signs it is drawing nigh, unless because of our sins the Lord God shall revoke, shall alter what has been promised.  According to the witness of the word of God, this also happens” [The Orthodox Word, 1969, no. 4, p. 194].

    Thus we may see in the prophecies of these God-inspired men in the early part of this century a definite expectation of the restoration of Holy Russia, and even of an Orthodox Tsar, for a short time not long before the coming of Antichrist and the end of the world. This will be something miraculous and not an ordinary historical event.  But at the same time it is something that depends upon the Russian people themselves, because God always acts through the free will of man.  Just as Ninevah was spared when the people repented, and Jonah’s prophecies about its destruction proved false, so also the prophecies of the restoration of Russia will prove false if there is no repentance in the Russian people.

    Archbishop John Maximovitch of blessed memory, whose tomb is in the very cathedral where services were held this morning, reflected deeply on the meaning of the Russian Revolution and the exile of so many Russian people.  In his report to the All-Diaspora Sobor in Yugoslavia in 1938 he wrote:

    “The Russian people as a whole has performed great sins which are the cause of the present misfortunes:  the specific sins are oath-breaking and regicide.  The public and military leaders renounced their obedience and loyalty to the Tsar even before his abdication, forcing the latter from the Tsar, who did not desire bloodshed within the country; and the people openly and noisily greeted this deed, and nowhere did it loudly express its lack of agreement with it....  Those guilty of the sin of regicide are not only those who physically performed it, but the whole people which rejoiced on the occasion of the overthrow of the Tsar and allowed his abasement, arrest and exile, leaving him defenseless in the hands of the criminals, which fact in itself already predetermined the end.  Thus, the catastrophe which has come upon Russia is the direct consequence of the terrible sins, and the rebirth of Russia is possible only after cleansing from them.  However, up to this time there has been no genuine repentance, the crimes that have been performed have clearly not been condemned, and many active participants in the Revolution continue even now to affirm that at that time it was not possible to act in any other way.  In not expressing a direct condemnation of the February Revolution, the uprising against the Anointed of God, the Russian people continue to participate in the sin, especially when they defend the fruits of the Revolution” [The Orthodox Word, 1973, no. 50, p. 91].

    Of course, regicide — the killing of the anointed Tsar — is not the only sin that lies upon the conscience of the Orthodox Russian people.  This crime is, as it were, a symbol of the falling away of Russia from Christ and true Orthodoxy — a process that took up most of the 19th and 20th centuries, and only now is perhaps beginning to be reversed. It is most interesting that in Russia itself today the question of the glorification of the Tsar together with the other New Martyrs is bound up with the lifting of the literal curse which has lain upon the Russian land since his martyrdom.  Father Gleb Yakunin — who is now suffering a cruel imprisonment precisely for making statements like this — has written a letter to the Orthodox Russians of the Diaspora, signed also by several of his fellow strugglers, that expresses the same ideas about the Tsar that Vladika John has expressed.  At the end of this letter he writes:

    “The meaning for world history of the martyr's death of the Imperial Family, something that likens it to the most significant Biblical events, consists of the fact that here the Constantionopolitan period of the existence of the Church of Christ comes to an end, and a new, martyric, apocalyptic age opens up.  It is begun with the voluntary sacrifice of the last anointed Orthodox Emperor and his family.  The tragedy of the Royal Family has lain like a curse on the Russian land, having become the symbolic prologue of Russia's long path of the Cross — the death of tens of millions of her sons and daughters. The canonization of the Imperial Martyrs will be for Russia the lifting from her of the sin of regicide; this will finally deliver her from the evil charms” [La Pensee Russe, Dec. 6, 1979; no. 3285;p. 5].

    It is too simple, of course, to say that the glorification of the New Martyrs, including the Royal Family, will bring about the restoration of Holy Russia.  But if the Orthodox people, both in Russia and in the Diaspora, would receive this act with all their hearts, and use it as an opportunity to repent deeply of their sins, there is no calculating the impact it might have on Russia.

    One great prophecy of the future of Russia was known to only a few before the Revolution; t was so daring that the church censor would not allow it to be printed.  It was found in the same collection of manuscripts of Motovilov that gave the world the famous “Conversation” of St. Seraphim on the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.  This prophecy, which has now appeared in several printings in the last decade, concerns the literal resurrection of St. Seraphim before the end of the world.  Here is what St. Seraphim told to Motovilov:


Though our histories (especially apologists for the American Empire, but at times Southern apologists as well) often puff us up with pride, and though our popular culture makes us awfully shortsighted; we must do what we can to overcome these dark tendencies, or we will fail to see the importance of other countries and peoples in God’s redemptive work, especially that of much slandered and misunderstood Russia.  And we will be the less able to discern false christs from the True Christ, false doctrine from true doctrine, and be unsure of just how to live our lives in a God-pleasing way.

We thus encourage all to set aside time to read and meditate on Fr Seraphim’s lecture.

Friday, December 20, 2013

President Putin: Culture Warrior

What a difference a couple of generations make:

. . .

President Reagan once called the old Soviet Empire “the focus of evil in the modern world.” President Putin is implying that Barack Obama’s America may deserve the title in the 21st century.

Nor is he without an argument when we reflect on America’s embrace of abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood values.

Our grandparents would not recognize the America in which we live.

. . .

Peoples all over the world, claims Putin, are supporting Russia’s “defense of traditional values” against a “so-called tolerance” that is “genderless and infertile.”

While his stance as a defender of traditional values has drawn the mockery of Western media and cultural elites, Putin is not wrong in saying that he can speak for much of mankind.

. . .

While much of American and Western media dismiss him as an authoritarian and reactionary, a throwback, Putin may be seeing the future with more clarity than Americans still caught up in a Cold War paradigm.

As the decisive struggle in the second half of the 20th century was vertical, East vs. West, the 21st century struggle may be horizontal, with conservatives and traditionalists in every country arrayed against the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite.

And though America’s elite may be found at the epicenter of anti-conservatism and anti-traditionalism, the American people have never been more alienated or more divided culturally, socially and morally.

. . .

He is seeking to redefine the “Us vs. Them” world conflict of the future as one in which conservatives, traditionalists and nationalists of all continents and countries stand up against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent west.

Source:  Pat Buchanan, ‘Is Putin One of Us?’, 17 Dec. 2013, http://buchanan.org/blog/putin-one-us-6071, accessed 20 Dec. 2013 (thanks to lewrockwell.com for the path).

Supporters of Phil Robertson (however crude his comments were and however silly his TV show is, which generally serves only to mock what is genuinely good in Southern culture, whether of the plain folk or of the gentry), and anything else traditional and Christian in the South and elsewhere, take note:  Orthodox Russia and not Puritan America is your ally in the culture war (which is a religious war at its root).

And the more we worship the idol of economic growth (a Puritan offspring), offering our toils and labors and children and old customs and institutions and countryside to the fires of this new Moloch; the more we enrich the so-called ‘job creators’ of Dow, Chase, Microsoft, etc., rather than local communities with their family farms & shops and small craftsmen; the more do we empower the very Elite who are tyrannically imposing upon us this New Morality we say we despise and oppose.

As Russia begins to resume her role of Christian opposition to this Elite (a role interrupted by the Communist takeover for much of the 20th century, the effects of which have not been completely purged from her), we can do few things better than to pray for her - most fervently to pray for her - and to reproach ourselves for our own sins.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Avoiding One-Sidedness

We have stressed here the dangers of technology, but one must be vigilant:  The devil can use anything to destroy a man - food, knowledge, false spirituality, and so on.

This is a point brought home forcefully by Rassophore-monk Vsevolod in his essay, ‘Count the Number of the Beast: “666”’:

Many people think that the seal of the Antichrist will be something like a stamp or brand, or an electronic chip implanted under the skin. The basis for such thinking lies in the fantastically rapid development of science and technology in this direction. Most likely, however, this scientific development is designed to distract mankind's attention from the real mark of Antichrist, which will have nothing to do with the advances of science, technology or medicine. At a time when people's suspicions and anxieties are fixed upon some innovation of progress-the implantation of computer chips in humans, for example-the real seal of Antichrist will be imprinted quietly, without any particular commotion.

Source:  Orthodox America, Issue 153, Vol. XVII, No. 5, Jan. 1998, http://www.roca.org/OA/153/153f.htm, accessed 18 Dec. 2013.

So continue to guard yourself and others against the evils of technology, but remain watchful also for attacks from other quarters.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Toppling the Food Pyramid

What should you eat to optimize your brain's ability to function? Dr. David Perlmutter suggests that there are many lifestyle changes we can make today to preserve our mental capacity into the future. You might be surprised that one of the first, even for people who do NOT have celiac disease, is avoiding dietary gluten as well as sugar and other foods that raise blood sugar and make insulin spike. What kind of diet should we follow to reduce inflammation throughout the body, and especially in the nervous system? Has cholesterol been falsely demonized?  

In the book Grain Brain, Dr. Perlmutter argues that a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet promotes brain health and can help stave off depression and ADHD as well as dementia. How do medications harm the brain? How can we balance exercise, sleep and diet to optimize brain function?

Guest: David Perlmutter, MD, is the President of the Perlmutter Health Center in Naples, Florida, and the co-founder and president of The Perlmutter Brain Foundation. He is a board-certified neurologist and a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. His book is Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers. His website is GrainBrainBook.com


You may listen to the interview with Dr Perlmutter on The People’s Pharmacy radio program by mashing this address:

Monday, December 16, 2013

The Pilgrims - Founding Fathers of Heresy

Writers of American history often try to impress on the reader the idea of the Pilgrims/Puritans of New England as pious, right-believing Christians whose beliefs became and remain the moral, political, and cultural norm of the American Republic.  As with so many other areas of history, however, the official story is not quite right.  But to arrive at the truth, we must first look back briefly to the time before the Puritans left England and came to North America.

The areas of England which were inhabited most heavily by the Puritans (the eastern coastal counties, mainly) were for centuries beforehand embroiled continually in political rebellions (David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 1989, pgs. 44, 46).  Religiously, they were of the same disposition.  East Anglia, one of the Puritan strongholds, was described by Archbishop William Laud as ‘the throbbing heart of heresy in England’ (p. 47).

The Puritans of course saw things differently.  ‘The Puritan leader John Hampden said of Essex that it was “the place of the most life of religion in the land”’ (p. 47).  Thus one catches a glimpse of Yankee pridefulness in its crib in the mother country.

De Tocqueville’s observation of colonists held true:  The Puritans’ distinctive traits were by no means diminished by their journey from Old England to New England, but rather strengthened.  Religious and political disagreements in the original Pilgrim settlement in Massachusetts led to the formation of other colonies (Rhode Island, Connecticut, etc.):


And from the Puritan spirit would later flow all manner of heretical ideas:  Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, atomistic individualism, industrialism, and eugenics.

Dr Clyde Wilson goes into detail about some of this in his essay ‘The Yankee Problem in America’:

The highflying Yankee rhetoric of Emerson and Hillary Rodham Clinton has a nether side, which has its historical origins in the "Burnt Over District." The "Burnt Over District" was well known to antebellum Americans. Emersonian notions bore strange fruit in the central regions of New York State settled by the overflow of poorer Yankees from New England. It was "Burnt Over" because it (along with a similar area in northern Ohio) was swept over time and again by post-millennial revivalism. Here preachers like Charles G. Finney began to confuse Emerson's future state of perfection with Christianity, and God's plan for humanity with American chosenness.

If this were true, then anything that stood in the way of American perfection must be eradicated. The threatening evil at various times was liquor, tobacco, the Catholic Church, the Masonic order, meat-eating, marriage. Within the small area of the Burnt Over District and within the space of a few decades was generated what historians have misnamed the "Jacksonian reform movement:" Joseph Smith received the Book of Mormon from the Angel Moroni; William Miller began the Seventh Day Adventists by predicting, inaccurately, the end of the world; the free love colony of John Humphrey Noyes flourished at Oneida; the first feminist convention was held at Seneca Falls; and John Brown, who was born in Connecticut, collected accomplices and financial backers for his mass murder expeditions.

It was in this milieu that abolitionism, as opposed to the antislavery sentiment shared by many Americans, including Southerners, had its origins. Abolitionism, despite what has been said later, was not based on sympathy for the black people nor on an ideal of natural rights. It was based on the hysterical conviction that Southern slaveholders were evil sinners who stood in the way of fulfillment of America's divine mission to establish Heaven on Earth. It was not the Union that our Southern forefathers seceded from, but the deadly combination of Yankee greed and righteousness.

Most abolitionists had little knowledge of or interest in black people or knowledge of life in the South. Slavery promoted sin and thus must end. No thought was given to what would happen to the African-Americans. In fact, many abolitionists expected that evil Southern whites and blacks would disappear and the land be repopulated by virtuous Yankees.

Source:  http://archive.lewrockwell.com/wilson/wilson12.html, accessed 16 Dec. 2013

The Pilgrims, whatever they and their ancestors have claimed for themselves, were not a lamp of pure Christian light.  This is not to say that all of them were evil men; there were no doubt many good-hearted men and women among them.  But the Puritan-Yankee obsession with outward righteousness - law and works and so forth, an over-inflated view of their importance in the world, and their conception of a wrathful God led them perforce away from the True Faith.  (One wonders how the admixture of pagan Scandinavian Viking culture within the Puritan homeland influenced their religious beliefs (Fischer, p. 44)).

That New England does now have the political and cultural primacy among the regions of the American Union should not be taken to mean that it is superior to the cultures of the other regions of this Union, nor that it alone is the ‘true American culture’. 

Rather, the troubles it has manifested throughout American history (Salem witch trials, War Between the States, Indian massacres, etc.) should make the other regions all the more eager to throw it off.

Works Cited

Fischer, David Hackett.  Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York, Ny.: Oxford UP, 1989.

Friday, December 13, 2013

The Technological Noose Tightens II

Google engineering director Scott Huffman says that within five years people will have microphones attached to their ceilings and microchips embedded in their brains in order to perform quicker internet searches.

In an interview with the London Independent, Huffman said that Google was working towards a concept based around microphones hanging from the ceiling that would respond to verbal queries.

“Like a great personal assistant, it will interrupt you and say ‘ you’ve got to leave now’. It will bring you the information you want,” said Huffman, adding that “five years from now….Google will answer you the same way a person would answer.”

. . .

“Google believes it can ultimately fulfil people’s data needs by sending results directly to microchips implanted into its user’s brains,” states the report, a concept which Huffman welcomes.

Although the idea of embedding a microchip inside the brain is a horror for some, there is a whole movement of people who call themselves transhumanists that will openly embrace such a scenario. Those who refuse to adopt the technology will eventually be seen as luddites and technophobes.

. . .

As we have previously highlighted, Google’s mission to become all pervasive to the point where it is listening to conversations in our own homes is part of the wider move towards the ‘Internet of things’ where every device is connected to the Internet and by extension becomes a de facto surveillance hub.

From so-called “smart” street lights that use microphones to record conversations, analyze voices and track people, to Xbox and cellphone devices that do likewise, our entire environment is being turned into what former CIA director David Petraeus hailed as a boon for “clandestine statecraft.”

According to whistleblowers like William Binney , the NSA is already recording our conversations, via email, phone and VOIP, and analyzing them in real time. Once our homes and our streets are festooned with microphones, the last refuge of privacy will be completely eviscerated.


Here again the satanic pathway to man’s perfection is glimpsed:  Through technology, and without God, man can rise above his limitations to become something new, something better, and can achieve the deeper, more meaningful union with his fellow man and surroundings that has proved so elusive through the years.

But as the true pathway to man’s deification lies in his participation in Christ’s divine-human Body through His Orthodox Church, and, as many men and women have already attained to the wondrous and blessed state of deification in Christ even while in this world, this former way must be nothing other than a monstrous lie and an unqualified perversion.

And yet the drift of society in much of the world is in the direction of the first-mentioned path.  How many Christians and how many churches are enamored with technology (to say nothing of those who do not claim to be Christians) - computers, video screens, disc players, etc.?  How many Christians check their smart phones constantly, never turning them off, no matter what the occasion? 

This kind of behavior is already very much akin to having a chip always at work in one’s brain. 

Furthermore, if the average Christian began to be teased or ignored by his friends and family (or by other popular figures in his country) because he refused to have a chip put in his head or elsewhere in his body, would he have the fortitude to go on refusing one?

Enough with slavish adoration for every new advance in the material sciences.  Many of these wind up doing more harm than good.

What mankind needs is for the Church to call it back to simplicity of living, to struggle against the passions (through fasting, prayer, hospitality, manual labor, almsgiving, and other such ascetic labors), to rising above the need for very many external material things by finding fulfilment in interior, noetic communion with the Most Holy Trinity.

But is this what one hears from pastors and priests and bishops?  Or is it rather a dim echo of Satan’s call for each person to live life on his own terms - to define and achieve salvation on his own, apart from God?

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Christ’s Body, His Church, Is Still Being Tortured around the World

The “coming persecution of Christians” has already begun.  It is already here.  So why is the mainstream media in the United States almost totally silent about this phenomenon?  When some politician somewhere around the globe inadvertently offends homosexuals or Muslims, it instantly makes headline news. 

But very few Americans are even aware that it has been estimated that 100 million Christians are currently facing persecution and thatapproximately 100,000 Christians die for their faith each year.  As you are about to see, Christians all over the world are being burned alive, beheaded, crucified, tortured to death and imprisoned in metal shipping containers just because of what they believe.  This persecution goes on year after year and it is steadily intensifying.  But the governments of the western world and the mainstream media are almost entirely ignoring what is happening.

The information shared below is extremely graphic.  Some of the websites that normally run my articles may want to think twice before posting this one.  The reason why I have included such graphic information is because I believe that it is very important to accurately communicate what is truly going on out there.  People need to know the reality of the holocaust that is happening.  The following are short excerpts from news stories about incidents of Christian persecution that took place in 12 different countries around the planet.  Sadly, the vast majority of Americans have never even heard about any of these stories…

. . .

[One example out of twelve: - W.G.]

#8 Angry Mob Of About 1,000 People Destroys A Church And Beats Christians In India: Shouting religious slogans, a mob estimated at 1,000 people has destroyed a Christian church under construction in northern India, according to a report received from church leaders in the region. The attack occurred Sunday.

With the building demolished, the mob began to beat the pastor, his mother and church members, who were able to flee and went into hiding for the night. The extent of their injuries is not known.

. . .

For the moment, things like this are not happening in the United States.  But you would have to be extremely naive to think that it never could happen here.

Animosity toward Christians is rapidly rising in this country.  Anyone that spends much time cruising around the Internet can see that very clearly.  In fact, some bloggers recently suggested the castration and murder of Christians here in the United States.

It might seem easy to dismiss those remarks as the ramblings of a few deranged individuals, but the truth is that our own government is now labeling Christians as “extremists” and “potential terrorists“.  For a large number of examples of this phenomenon, please see my previous article entitled “72 Types Of Americans That Are Considered ‘Potential Terrorists’ In Official Government Documents“.

All over the planet, the persecution of Christians is growing.  And our own government is now demonizing us and characterizing us as a “threat”.

The years ahead are going to be very challenging for those who choose to be Christians.  If you are a Christian, I hope that you are getting emotionally and spiritually prepared for that.


If this is all happening under the watchful eye of the Most (Self) Righteous Nation on Earth, the American Empire, and perhaps will soon begin within that very Empire, to whom can Christians turn for help?  To Russia.

Our Russian Orthodox Faith, our ideal of Rus, is our international response to globalisation. No other part of the Orthodox Church is large enough or strong enough or free enough to resist the tide of globalisation and provide such a response. Other parts of the Church are responsible for only one nationality; there is no Orthodox response to globalisation other than Rus. No other part of the Orthodox world has been crucified for the sins of the world and for faithfulness to Universal Orthodoxy as have we. This is why Rus is the meaning of world history and world destiny, the key to salvation in the last times.

This is why we who have come out of the White Cause continue to further the process of healing inside Russia, the independence of the Church from State interference and from secularist, Western ideologies, and seek the continuing canonisation of all the New Martyrs and Confessors, led by the martyred Royal House. The Church inside Russia is Lazarus, the miracle of the Resurrection, the Four-Day Dead, dressed in Soviet rags, but still the Friend of Christ. Now together we make ready and pray and hope and wait for the restoration of legitimate authority in Rus, the Orthodox Tsar restored by the Sovereign Mother of God.


The [Russian] Empire stood above and united East and West; it was universal, which is why our own salvation is in her salvation.

Source:  Fr Andrew Phillips, http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/the-world-that-was-lost-in-1917/, accessed 11 Dec. 2013.

As we have said before, so we say again even now:  Pray for Russia, and for the restoration of the Tsar in Russia.

Monday, December 9, 2013

‘The Past’ by Henry Timrod

To the modern man (or the momentary man, as Andrew Lytle preferred to call him because his roots in the past have all been severed, and because he hasn't much thought for the future), history is little more than meaningless dates and names in a textbook; or curious pieces in a museum to puzzle over for a short time before returning to sterile office life or pointless entertainment. 

The South Carolina poet Henry Timrod (and the pre-War South in general) saw things differently.  In his short poem ‘The Past’, Mr Timrod tells us life is quite meagre unless we know and embrace history.

‘The Past’

TO-DAY'S most trivial act may hold the seed
      Of future fruitfulness, or future dearth;
Oh, cherish always every word and deed!
      The simplest record of thyself hath worth.
 
If thou hast ever slighted one old thought,
      Beware lest Grief enforce the truth at last;
The time must come wherein thou shalt be taught
      The value and the beauty of the Past.
 
Not merely as a warner and a guide,
      "A voice behind thee," sounding to the strife;
But something never to be put aside,
      A part and parcel of thy present life.
 
Not as a distant and a darkened sky,
      Through which the stars peep, and the moon-beams glow;
But a surrounding atmosphere, whereby
      We live and breathe, sustained in pain and woe.
 
A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss,
      Each still to each corrective and relief,
Where dim delights are brightened into bliss,
      And nothing wholly perishes but Grief.
 
Ah, me!—not dies—no more than spirit dies;
      But in a change like death is clothed with wings;
A serious angel, with entrancèd eyes,
      Looking to far-off and celestial things.

Source:  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/845/845-h/845-h.htm#link2H_4_0028 (edited to conform more closely to the 1899 Hougton, Mifflin & Co. edition of his poems)