The Anti-Federalists and Article III

The death of Justice Ginsburg (may God grant rest to her soul) has brought the federal Supreme Court back to the center of attention, politically speaking.  This gives us an opportunity to take a fresh look at the Philadelphia Constitution and whether it deserves the high praise it receives in some quarters as a quasi-divine document. 

What is notable is that right from the beginning, during the ratification debates in the States, the Philadelphia charter was widely criticized over a number of issues.  Some were addressed by the Bill of Rights; others were not.  One that certainly was not resolved with amendments is the danger of the federal judiciary.  While Federalist 78 sought to calm everyone’s fears by calling it ‘the least dangerous branch’ (https://mises.org/library/antifederalists-were-right), more insightful folks saw through this posturing.  One of their leaders was the Anti-Federalist writer Brutus of New York State.  In his 11^th essay (published 31 Jan. 1788), he says of Article III,

 . . . It is, moreover, of great importance, to examine with care the nature and extent of the judicial power, because those who are to be vested with it, are to be placed in a situation altogether unprecedented in a free country. They are to be rendered totally independent, both of the people and the legislature, both with respect to their offices and salaries. No errors they may commit can be corrected by any power above them, if any such power there be, nor can they be removed from office for making ever so many erroneous adjudications.

The only causes for which they can be displaced, is, conviction of treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors.

This part of the plan is so modelled, as to authorise the courts, not only to carry into execution the powers expressly given, but where these are wanting or ambiguously expressed, to supply what is wanting by their own decisions.

 . . .

They will give the sense of every article of the constitution, that may from time to time come before them. And in their decisions they will not confine themselves to any fixed or established rules, but will determine, according to what appears to them, the reason and spirit of the constitution. The opinions of the supreme court, whatever they may be, will have the force of law; because there is no power provided in the constitution, that can correct their errors, or controul their adjudications. From this court there is no appeal. And I conceive the legislature themselves, cannot set aside a judgment of this court, because they are authorised by the constitution to decide in the last resort. The legislature must be controuled by the constitution, and not the constitution by them. They have therefore no more right to set aside any judgment pronounced upon the construction of the constitution, than they have to take from the president, the chief command of the army and navy, and commit it to some other person. The reason is plain; the judicial and executive derive their authority from the same source, that the legislature do theirs; and therefore in all cases, where the constitution does not make the one responsible to, or controulable by the other, they are altogether independent of each other.

The judicial power will operate to effect, in the most certain, but yet silent and imperceptible manner, what is evidently the tendency of the constitution: – I mean, an entire subversion of the legislative, executive and judicial powers of the individual states. Every adjudication of the supreme court, on any question that may arise upon the nature and extent of the general government, will affect the limits of the state jurisdiction. In proportion as the former enlarge the exercise of their powers, will that of the latter be restricted.

 . . .

--https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/brutus-xi/

The danger was plain to see, yet it went unaddressed even though its solution was equally evident to those who had eyes to see:  Allow the upper house of the federal legislature, the Senate, to throw out or amend federal Supreme Court rulings, a power the Framers and their generation were well aware of since the House of Lords, the upper chamber of Parliament, had this power over the courts in England (and retained it until quite recently).  How much unnecessary conflict and cultural destruction could have been prevented; how many unborn children saved; how many children could have prayed or read the Holy Scriptures in their schools; etc.; in the States if only a short clause giving such a power to the uS Senate had been added to Article III?

Yet it was not.  And this omission, along with other defects of the current federal constitution, is proof enough that it is not a Heaven-sent plan of government, that it is not the incarnation of the Ideal Form in the Divine Mind of governmental organization, which the idolaters of Americanism make it out to be.  To continue to make such outlandish claims blinds us to its very real problems, making it extremely difficult to change the current federal governing structure in favor of something better.  Unfortunately, those calling the loudest for ‘national repentance’ (https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2020/september/the-return-and-prayer-march-bathe-nations-capital-in-prayer-and-repentance; by the way, the [u]nited States ain’t ‘one nation indivisible’:  https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/was-secession-treason/) are those least likely to repent of and correct the errors of past generations contained in the 1787 constitution and some of its later amendments.

***

For further reading on this subject, please visit this page:

https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/constitutional-debates/judiciary/

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Loyalty to Faith, Land, and Forefathers

This is a fairly constant theme in the South.  One finds it fleshed out very recently in an essay by Mr Travis Holt.  Here are a couple of word-sharings from it:

Once there was a common theme among our ancestors, and it was a simple one: land is the most valuable thing a man can possess, aside from a good relationship with the Creator himself, and a healthy family. However, I have found that having land helps both these other ideals, and for good reason.

 . . .

I grew up literally across the creek from where my 4^th Great Grandfather’s house still stands to this day. Land, even before I knew the concept well, was instrumental in shaping who I am and who my people were. For generations in Newton County, my ancestors and their neighbors shared the same bond that strongly bonded Appalachia. They became tight knit communities with their neighbors, many times intermarrying and becoming kin. This true essence of community became synonymous with life in the Ozarks; small bands of people who looked out for each other and were extremely wary, if not downright hostile, to outsiders. These were people who were in tune with nature and the way of the land. And they knew the true key to independent living was one thing: land ownership.

 . . .

--https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/thirty-pieces-of-silver/

The concern now is the growing disloyalty to those types of things all across the South.  Again from Mr Holt:

Before long, the older generation had sold off huge tracts of farms to newcomers. Still-standing homesteads were left to outsiders; heritage and tradition fell behind the ‘almighty dollar’ as many locals decided that they would rather have a little more comfort than continue on in the stead of those who came before them. In a few decades, many of the founding stock’s holdings had nearly disappeared! Their children moved off to cities, many of the older folks did the same to be close to them, and the farms were turned over to people who would rebuild and modify them in ways the owners could’ve never envisioned (nor would they want to). Old homesteads were renovated or razed; fences moved; graveyards lost. All the hallmarks of progress are here in the Ozarks for the world to see. While some of the newcomers were good and true stewards of the land, many more were not.

It breaks my heart to gaze out, when I go home, and see all the new ‘rental cabins’ springing up in every once beautiful meadow and on every once-clear mountain peak. This commercialization of our heritage is lucrative, yes, but to what end would a man sell his heritage? To what would it benefit you to make money whilst forgetting the ways of your ancestors or to spit on tradition for the sake of a newer vehicle or a bigger home?

One of the early essays we put together for this site was about the close kinship of the Southern and Serbian historical experiences:

http://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-battles-of-kosovo-and.html

And once again we see this kinship being affirmed as folks in Serbia, too, are expressing what Mr Holt has written:

His Grace Bishop Teodosije of Raška and Prizren of the Serbian Orthodox Church published an appeal yesterday to his flock in Kosovo and Metohije, imploring them not to leave their homes, thereby abandoning their holy churches, monasteries, and cemeteries as well.

The Orthodox faithful of Kosovo live under the constant threat of persecution and attacks against themselves, their homes, and their holy sites.

“The Serbian Orthodox people have lived in the lands of Stara Raška, Kosovo and Metohije for centuries, where the deepest roots of our spiritual existence spread, embodied in the numerous holy sites of our Church,” His Grace opens his appeal, published by the Diocese of Raška and Prizren.

The holy sites have “shone like beacons” for centuries in Kosovo, showing that the Orthodox people belong there, Bp. Teodosije says, adding that they seek only to preserve what belongs to them. The land, inherited by the present generation through the suffering of their ancestors, is no mere land, His Grace adds.

“Following the covenant of St. Lazar … I paternally urge our faithful people to stay at their centuries-old homes and not to leave to other people the property that our ancestors saved and preserved with difficulty during the most difficult times of Turkish rule, during numerous wars and disasters. This is not ordinary land that can be sold or bought; it is land sown with the bones of our ancestors, consecrated by prayers, sprinkled with the tears of laborers and drenched in the blood of martyrs,” he writes.

The Orthodox faithful should remain in their Kosovo homes and thus become “guardians of our identity and our holy sites,” His Grace implores. The Orthodox faith has protected the people for centuries “in the whirlwind of historic events,” making them the people of God and heirs to the great saints who have shone forth in Kosovo.

All the faithful are united in Christ “as one body and one soul,” Bp. Teodosije writes, and while a family may improve its lot externally by selling its home, it makes the situation harder for those Orthodox Serbs remains, he warns. “Is this temporary consolation comparable to the consciousness and remorse that we have thus aggravated the situation of our relatives and neighbors?” he asks.

In conclusion, His Grace calls on his flock to manifest Christian patience and love, remembering the Lord’s words: For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mt. 16:26).

--https://orthochristian.com/134167.html

May the merciful Lord grant that Serbia and the South would draw ever closer to one another and uphold one another in every way possible as both peoples seek to protect all that is truly valuable in this life.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Jilted by the ‘Great Commission’ Baptists (Yes, This Is More Important Than the Supreme Court)

The SJWs within the Southern Baptist Convention have taken a fateful step:

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention are increasingly dropping the "Southern" part of their Baptist name, calling it a potentially painful reminder of the convention's historic role in support of slavery.

The 50,000 Baptist churches in the convention are autonomous and can still choose to refer to themselves as "Southern Baptist" or "SBC." But in his first interview on the topic, convention president J.D. Greear said momentum has been building to adopt the name "Great Commission Baptists," both because of the racial reckoning underway in the United States and because many have long seen the "Southern Baptist" name as too regional for a global group of believers.

 . . .

Finn said he was ambivalent about using a different name for years until this summer, when he jumped on board. "I'm not embarrassed to be a Southerner," he said. "It's about what that word conjures up for people, especially people of color. They're saying: 'That name is a hang-up. When my people hear that name, they think slavery.' God forbid we keep a name that evokes that."

 . . .

--Sarah P. Bailey, https://www.chron.com/news/article/Prominent-Southern-Baptists-are-dropping-15567758.php

Dixie has now reached a crucial point in her life.  The very word ‘Southern’ is equated with something dangerous, toxic, evil, etc., according to the reasoning of the Woke crowd.  The next move by folks like this will be the dissolution of the South as a whole, since her very existence as a distinct people and culture will always ‘evoke’ slavery, racism, etc., which is an unforgivable sin in their minds.  The South must therefore be totally absorbed into the progressive Yankee culture around her, leaving not one trace of her unique life and history within the world.

While we wholeheartedly endorse an exodus from these genocidal ‘Baptists’, the South nevertheless needs a shared religion to shelter and nurture her people and to provide much-needed unity as well.  As the Roman Catholics are too wedded to the idea of a Latin domination of the cultures they encounter, we would point to the Orthodox Church instead, which has always cooperated with the cultures it encounters, leavening them with the Gospel, translating all relevant books and services into their native tongues, incorporating their good traditions into the life of the Church, etc.  The Orthodox Church of America has, in fact, recognized the South as a distinct ethnos, establishing the Diocese of the South in 1979:

https://www.dosoca.org/parish-directory

The Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia has also been kind in recognizing a unique Southern culture.  But whichever Orthodox jurisdiction is nearby, whether Antiochian, Romanian, etc., they all preach the same Faith, the unchanged Faith of the Apostles.  Let all Southerners of who love their land and its patrimony find refuge there, in the Orthodox Church.

The vacant seat on the federal Supreme Court will get most of the attention in the days ahead because it currently does have a lot of sway over important moral/cultural matters like abortion, although this shouldn’t really be the case (neither Article III nor the 10^th Amendment seem to allow such oversight, but as we have been saying, the Philadelphia charter was a deception from the start).  State and local governments could end abortion today if they had the will to do so (simply declare its outlaw to be another ‘COVID mitigation effort’, and the edict will stand to the end of time, yes?). 

More seriously, however, there are very good justifications for Louisiana and the other States if they chose to do this vis-à-vis abortion, for instance, whether religious (‘Thou shalt not murder.’), to protect the physical and mental health of mothers, or to ensure against too sharp a decline in population.  And even were some future federal President or Congress to take harsh action against those States and localities that enacted such a ban, we should consider it a great honor to suffer for the sake of upholding the Gospel of Christ.  Sadly, the will to do that simply does not exist at the moment in the population at large or in the State and local governments.  And because of that, the importance of every federal Supreme Court vacancy is magnified far beyond what it ought to be.

Nonetheless, for the South, this issue of declaring our very name to be an object of evil that must therefore be eradicated is much more important than a Supreme Court vacancy; it involves our very existence as a people, as an ethnos.  May we not lose sight of that reality in the days ahead and act on it accordingly.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

The South Don’t Need Yo’ Broke Constitution

Neil Kumar makes the case here:

https://www.reckonin.com/neil-kumar/the-futility-of-constitutional-originalism

And even some old, crusty Yankee conservatives like Richard Henry Dana, Sr, were able to bring themselves to criticize the principles that were bound up in the Philadelphia Constitution:

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/09/toryism-richard-henry-dana-sr-michael-j-connolly.html

The South’s actual constitutional inheritance from Christian Europe (not the phony Puritan/Yankee version of it) – hierarchical, hereditary and elected officials, monarchical, guilds/corporations, stable villages, a land-holding warrior aristocracy, cooperation between throne and altar, the common law, etc. – is waiting for her to take it up again into her political life.

Furthermore, if folks in the States were really serious about living the Christian life, instead of worshipping the ‘demi-gods’ of Philadelphia and their paper idol on Sept. 17^th, they would be honoring actual Saints of the Church.  Here are just a few celebrated on the 17^th who deserve our attention, our praises, and our prayers:

--The Holy Martyrs St Sophia and her three daughters, Faith, Hope, and Love (+137)

https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2020/09/17/102638-martyr-sophia-and-her-three-daughters-at-rome

--St Lambert, Bishop of Maestricht and Martyr (+705), one of the great Saints of the West

https://www.bartleby.com/210/9/171.html

‘Little children, keep yourselves from idols’ (I John 5:21).

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘The Role of Relics in America’

Sacred relics have often been a unifying force in pre-Modern societies.  The Western historian Christopher Dawson relates one account of this phenomenon from Uganda:

‘Moreover in Ankole, at least, the state cult of Bagyendwana, the royal drums, which are the national fetish or palladium, transcends the distinction of classes and castes.  The serfs as well as the nobles can bring their offerings to Bagyendwana and appeal to it for justice.  For all the peoples of Ankole are “the children of Bagyendwana” “who is like the king only greater.  For the king is the servant of Bagyendwana” (Religion and Culture, Washington, D. C., Catholic U of America Press, 2013 [1948], p. 151)’.

Here in the States, an attempt was made at creating this sort of transcendent, unifying, sacred object.  The result has been a series of documents spelling out the revolutionary propositions the ‘American experiment’ is based upon:  the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of 1787 and its later amendments (the Bill of Rights, etc.), and the Gettysburg Address.

All of these have proven quite useless at attaining the desired end, but this should have been the expected result all along.  When one embraces the Gnostic notions of a divine individual whose own subjective experiences shape his beliefs about truth and reality, and whose personal sovereignty allows him to be in or out of the political order as his whim dictates (all principles which flow from these documents to one degree or another), then there will necessarily be a great variety of interpretations of the texts and the lessons we should draw from them regarding societal organization, morality, etc.

Said another way, when an object is sacred because of a deifying force outside of itself and outside of the will of man acting alone, that is, because it is united with the Divine, then it will have the power to overcome the divisions that beset the men and women of a tribe, country, etc.  But when sinful men who believe they are holy try to impart that imaginary holiness to an object, as the ‘demi-gods’ (Thomas Jefferson’s word) did, for example, when meeting in Philadelphia to craft the 1787 governing charter, it will be an utter failure at encouraging the oneness of the people.

What will result is what we are seeing come to pass in the States year after year, i.e., more and more strands of individual or group identity:  conservative, liberal, libertarian, socialist, straight, gay, trans, and on and on.  The latest era of ‘divided government’ in Washington City and throughout the various States is part of this ongoing process; and so too is the tremendous divide in dozens of cities between the racist BLM/Antifa rioters and those seeking some semblance of a peaceful life.

This counterfeit Political Church of America has thus shown its uselessness and harmfulness once again.  The contrast with the experience of the Orthodox Church could not be greater.  But what does that look like, particularly as it regards holy relics and the unity of peoples?

First, we should note what makes the relics of the saints so important for Orthodox Christians.  St Justin Popovich of Serbia (+1979) writes,

‘Everyone and all are set on their mystical path toward God, toward the God-Man. Inasmuch as it was created by God, the Logos, matter possesses this same theocentricity. Moreover, by His advent into our earthly world, by His all-embracing condescension as God and Man for the redemption of the world, the Lord Christ clearly demonstrated that not only the soul, but matter also was created by God and for God, and that He is God and Man; and for it, matter, He is all and everything in the same manner as for the soul. Being created by God, the Logos, matter is, in its innermost core, God-longing and Christ-longing.

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/article/role-relics-america .

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

The Saints of Africa vs BLM

A thoughtful article, and one particularly important for the South:

https://medium.com/@KalebAtlantaPrime/african-americans-look-to-orthodoxy-for-peace-in-a-violent-america-c31edfc37abd, via https://orthochristian.com/133920.html

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Rebuilding Louisiana on a Solid Foundation

Louisiana’s Attorney General Jeff Landry believes his fellow Louisianans need high school football to comfort them in their afflictions.  He said, ‘We need some enjoyment and kids need something to do.  Sports is a language that speaks to the young in ways that we can’t.’

--Kevin Barnhart, https://louisianaradionetwork.com/2020/09/01/13242/

Is this really what it has come to in post-Christian, COVID-obsessed Louisiana:  If we can’t be entertained by teenage athletes, our society will crumble? 

Dear friends, there are much better supports for Louisianans than high school sports.  As we emerge from the material and ghostly carnage caused by a destructive hurricane and the unnecessary COVID lockdown, we need to rebuild on a solid foundation, which should exclude the exploitation of our youth.  

(There is nothing inherently wrong with sports, but we need to play them for the right reasons.  Making them a balm to heal the soul of Louisiana is not one of those reasons.)

When looking back through Christian history (including Louisiana’s), we will notice that one of the key foundation stones in Christian countries is monasticism.  A group of Ursuline nuns became part of New Orleans’s life in 1726 and has remained there ever since:

http://www.storyvilledistrictnola.com/ursulines.html

However, despite this early presence, monasticism has never put down deep roots in Louisiana.  And this has been much to our misfortune.  For it is precisely the monks and nuns who show us how to live a truly Christian life, one dedicated entirely to the life in Christ.  Likewise, monasteries give the young and the old the very best way to ‘pass the time’ - in the worship and contemplation of God.  Former Bishop Jonah, in explaining the benefits of the monastery he is trying to build in Virginia, put it this way:

‘The Monastery will be of great benefit to the ministry of the regional parishes, an encouragement to the faithful in their spiritual lives. The Monastery will be a place where people can come and experience a much fuller experience of Orthodox worship, come for spiritual direction and confession, and come to change their lives. In particular, the Monastery will offer lectures and seminars on spiritual life, and provide a context for people to immerse themselves in lived spirituality. Most importantly, it will provide a context for young men to receive direction in their lives, work out their repentance, and find the healing of their souls through time spent in the monastic discipline, whether they stay for a week or their whole lives.’

--https://orthochristian.com/133440.html

As Louisiana and the rest of the South confront the decline of Christianity and the rise of demonic substitutes (violent political protests, various cults, etc.) the priest-monk Father Aidan Keller in his Pocket Church History reminds us of the indispensable role monasticism played in bringing violent, heathen Europeans into the Orthodox Church:

‘Evangelism at this time [7^th-8^th centuries] was conducted mainly by monks, and their principles were very sound and are relevant today. They would found a monastery in a lonely place, away from human habitation in a pagan area. Some among them might preach to the people, but only if they had a special gift for this. The other brethren would simply live their Gospel lifestyle to the fullest. With the passage of time, the local inhabitants would discover the true nature of the Christians' lives, and when they liked what they saw, they would be near to Baptism. The compunction and orderly beauty of the church services also warmed the hearts of these peoples, and served to convert them as much as any conversation or reasoning.’

--https://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/pocket_church_history.htm#_Toc517448427

Louisiana can live without high school sports, but not without monasteries.  As we rebuild, if we want a Christian Louisiana, we need to found as many as we can, remembering the example set by Louisiana’s illustrious Patron Saint, Martin of Tours (+397), who played a vital part in establishing the monasticism of the African Desert Fathers in France.  May he bless our efforts with his holy prayers!

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Reading along with Daniel Cameron’s RNC Speech

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s speech at the RNC a couple of weeks ago got a lot of positive reviews.  However, if one takes a closer look, there are some difficulties that need to be addressed.  We have tried to do that; our comments are in [brackets].

Daniel Cameron: Good evening, my name is Daniel Cameron. I’m 34 years old and the first African-American attorney general in Kentucky history. It is an honor to be with you, as a proud Republican and supporter of Donald J. Trump.

I was raised in Kentucky, just a few miles from Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace. Our first Republican president believed in compassion. Self-reliance. Freedom. Equality. And justice. [Actually, he stood for crony capitalism, looked down on African folks, and wanted to prevent the exercise of freedom by Southerners wishing to peacefully leave the union:  https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-problem-with-lincoln/.]

Sadly, there are some who don’t believe in this wisdom or in the better angels of our shared American history, as they tear down the statues of people like Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass, and even Mr. Lincoln himself [Grant, Douglass, and Lincoln hardly represent the better angels of ‘America’; all three had no qualms about fighting an unnecessary war against South, a war which targeted many of her civilians, and Douglass and Lincoln were certainly not traditional Christians (Douglass, for instance, admired heretical thinkers like Ludwig Feuerbach, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass#Religious_views).].

Lincoln said that “any nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.” And for Republicans, our heroes are those who propelled an imperfect nation ever forward, always striving to make life better for everyone.

But even as anarchists mindlessly tear up American cities while attacking police and innocent bystanders, we Republicans do recognize those who work in good faith towards peace, justice, and equality.

In fact, it was General Dwight Eisenhower, a future Republican president, who said: “Democracy is a system that recognizes the equality of humans before the law.” Whether you are the family of Breonna Taylor or David Dorn, these are the ideals that will heal our nation’s wounds [Behold, the Great and Mighty Healer, Democracy.].

Republicans will never turn a blind eye to unjust acts, but neither will we accept this all-out assault on western civilization.

My values were shaped by my faith, and by my parents. I worked at their small coffee shop, meeting people from all walks of life. And I realized something: everyone needs a cup of coffee.

That lesson has stuck with me because, despite our difference, we all want the same things: For our children to have more opportunities than we did; to feel the dignity of work; and to believe that if you play by the rules, you can make a good life for yourself and your family.  [The Yankee, materialist definition of success (i.e., having more than the generations before) is in sharp contrast with the Orthodox view.  St Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, North Africa, and martyr (+258), a wonderful Holy Father of the Church, is an excellent ensample of the Orthodox Way, that we should be willing to sacrifice money, status, family, etc. to obtain the Pearl of Great Price, union with Christ through His Body the Church and not make an idol of worldly success:  ‘Thascius Cyprianus was the son of a rich pagan senator, and received a fine secular education becoming a splendid orator, and a teacher of rhetoric and philosophy in the school of Carthage. He often appeared in the courts to defend his fellow citizens.  . . . He was helped by his friend and guide, the presbyter Cecilius, who assured him of the power of God’s grace. At 46 years of age the studious pagan was received into the Christian community as a catechumen. Before accepting Baptism, he distributed his property to the poor and moved into the house of the presbyter Cecilius.’  --https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2020/08/31/102443-hieromartyr-cyprian-bishop-of-carthage

By these and other actions, St Cyprian would be accounted a ‘failure’ to many Yankee-minded Americans because he ended life with LESS material wealth than his parents.  And so too would be St Paula of Rome, St Paulinus of Nola, and many, many others who renounced the world that they might be able to dedicate themselves to a single-minded, whole-hearted pursuit of life in the All-Holy Trinity.]

So the question is: will we choose the path that gives us the best chance to meet those universal desires [Who says the values/goals of classical liberalism are universal?  This is an ideology that developed only in the 1500s in a particular moment of European history:  https://mises.org/library/what-classical-liberalism.  It is not equally applicable to each and all.] Or will we go backward, to a time when people were treated like political commodities who can’t be trusted to think for themselves?  [This is a false choice; there are other civilizational alternatives.]

 . . . [We are leaving out Mr Cameron’s Litany of Fervent Execrations against Joe Biden, which aren’t of much concern when contrasted with the rest of the speech.]

And he is captive to the radical left, a movement committed to cancel culture and the destruction of public discourse. They believe your skin color must dictate your politics. And if you fail to conform while exercising your God given right to speak and think freely, they will cut you down.

The politics of identity, cancellation, and mob rule are not acceptable to me. Republicans trust you to think for yourselves and to pursue your American dream however you see fit [unless your American dream runs afoul of Republican big money donors; then you will not be so ‘free’.].

Mr. Lincoln said, “the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion.”

I believe Donald Trump can meet Lincoln’s mandate, even as Joe Biden remains trapped by his own failed record, and by the radicals who dominate his party.

 . . . [We are also leaving out Mr Cameron’s Litany of Fervent Praises for Donald Trump for the same reasons as above.]

The choice is clear.

Let me close with something my mom told me, this country’s many faces comprise a family, not separate parts to be divided against each other [America is not a homogenous ethnos, but an unnatural collection of such authentic ethnoi mashed together to create an alchemically united utopia:  Native Hawaiians, Spanish Southwest, Afro-Western European Dixie, Scandinavian Upper Great Plains, Germanic Lower Great Plains, etc.].

And like any family, we care for one another. We grieve together. We share our burdens and struggles, and we celebrate our successes. And though we fuss and fight, we are not enemies. We are Americans, united by a collective faith in our Constitution and laws and the fundamental fairness they represent [An honest statement about where American faith lies – not in the Holy Trinity but in Americanism.].

We are defenders of life and of individual liberty. And we carry the mantle of Eisenhower and of Reagan to be a force for good in this world, and one that must always be reckoned with.

That’s my Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, that believes America is an indispensable nation, an Evergreen Tree, standing tall in a turbulent world [Isn’t every nation ‘indispensable’ for a Christian?  Doesn’t each have an irreplaceable role in the working out of the history of the Church in the world (a point made by Solzhenitsyn)?  If only America and perhaps a few other Western countries that closely resemble it culturally are ‘indispenable’, does that mean most other peoples are ‘dispensable’?  Judging by the actions of Lincoln, Sherman, Sheridan, McKinley, Truman, Johnson, the Bushes, Clinton, Obama, Trump, etc., etc., vis a vis Native Americans, Philippine Islanders, Vietnam, the Balkans, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and more, the answer seems to be ‘Yes, most are dispensable’.  Such is AG Cameron’s ‘force for good in this world’; such is his phony Church of Americanism.].

And that’s why I am voting for Donald Trump for President.

Thank you and God bless.

--Transcript courtesy of Maggie Astor, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/us/politics/daniel-cameron-rnc-speech.html

Thus does the South lose yet another young, promising political leader to the idol of Moloch-America.  ‘Tis a great shame.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!