Offsite Post: ‘The Spiritual Dimension of the Border Crisis’

 

The number of illegal immigrants entering the United States is at record levels, and even Left-leaning sites can’t make those numbers look rosy (though they are trying).  Inept and corrupt political leadership is a major contributor to this crisis, but it would be a mistake to stop our analysis there.

Things that happen in the physical world are reflections of the things happening in the spiritual world.  If there is a flood of immigrants at the Mexican border, there is a spiritual reason for that.  The Holy Prophet Moses in his book of Deuteronomy spells it out for us.  He writes,

A nation which you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors; and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually; . . . The sojourner who is among you shall mount above you higher and higher; and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail. . . . "Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and in want of all things; and he will put a yoke of iron upon your neck, until he has destroyed you. The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you do not understand, a nation of stern countenance, who shall not regard the person of the old or show favor to the young, and shall eat the offspring of your cattle and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed; who also shall not leave you grain, wine, or oil, the increase of your cattle or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish (28:33, 43-4, 47-51).

 

All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you, till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded you (28:45).

In brief, when we see an invasion happening, it is likely because the country being invaded has turned its back on God the All-Holy Trinity and the commandments He has given its people to follow.  A look back through history gives abundant confirmation of this.  The ancient Roman Empire fell away into hedonism, debauchery, and persecution of Christians and was afflicted for centuries by Germanic barbarian invaders.  Some years later, after Christianity had taken root in Western Europe and the peoples there were flourishing again, the heathen Vikings were a scourge upon them because of their corruption.  The same thing occurred in Constantinople/New Rome, and that Christian Empire fell to the Muslim Turks in 1453 after centuries of encroachment and warfare by the Turks.  The Serbs fell under the Turkish yoke in 1389 for similar reasons.  Kievan Rus likewise was razed by the Mongols a little earlier, in the 13^th century, for falling into various disorders after rising to a high state of Christian civilization.

The same pattern is recognizable deeper in the past, with the Medes conquering the Persians centuries before the Birth of Christ, and so on.  And now we are seeing it in the United States and in Europe:  Sinful, evil things like pornography, easy divorce, psychedelic drug use, abortion, etc., are legal and being promoted as healthy ‘freedoms;’ people are abandoning Christianity; and following in their wake is a massive foreign population resettling in the midst of them.

Because of the causal connection between disobedience to God and harmful immigration flows, Christianity must become a regular part of the policy conversation at every level of government.  There is progress at the State level, where things like requiring the Ten Commandment to be posted in schools and universities and allowing Christian chaplains in many of those same places have advanced, as well as laws limiting social media use by children and requiring age verification for pornographic web sites.  But this sort of approach needs to become the norm, not the exception.

We must be honest with ourselves:  Modernity has had a terrible effect on us.  The acid bath of the Enlightenment has destroyed our love of God and made us worship idols instead.  We have focused on freedom in the past, but there is another big one in the West – mammon, or, as it is often referred to in our constitutions and other political tracts, property:  ‘John Adams made a similar assertion years later in 1790 in his Discourses on Davila, calling property as “sacred as the laws of God.” . . . During the Philadelphia Convention, John Rutledge of South Carolina reminded the delegates that “property was certainly the principal object of Society.”’

We will be ashamed to stand before the Christian martyrs in the next life, who saw the futility of rejecting God to worship earthly things:  ‘The [Roman] judge informed them of the imperial order that all were commanded to sacrifice to the gods. Nicander replied, that order could not regard Christians, who looked upon it as unlawful to abandon the immortal God, to adore wood and stones.’

We may not adore statues of Rome’s pagan gods these days, but without a doubt we have an idolatrous fixation on materialism/mammon.  This description of a Buc-ee’s makes the point entirely too well:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/06/garlington-the-spiritual-dimension-of-the-border-crisis/.

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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: ‘Monasticism: Mystical Marriage with Christ’

 

Monasticism tends to have a bad reputation here at the South.  Marriage of man and woman, children, and ancestors have always been the focus and ideal of the Southern people.  A peak into Dixie’s literature confirms this.  In her novel The Great Meadow, Elizabeth Madox Roberts has the youthful brothers and one of their sisters exchange these lines:

 

‘Where will my land be, for my house?’ Diony asked.  It came to her now, as a sudden disaster, that Five Oaks would not be her place.  Other land higher up toward the Ledge would belong to Sam.  ‘Where mought be my place?’

 

‘You’d have to marry to get a place,’ Reuben answered her.

 

‘But suppose I mought not,’ she said.

 

‘Then God help you!  Iffen a woman isn’t married she has a poor make-out of a life,’ Sam said.  He was bending over the rope, his hands making a knot, his face earnest in what he said.

 

‘But God’s sake!  I never knew a woman that wasn’t married,’ Reuben said, as if his saying were final, half muttering, as if it were no matter.  ‘Come to think, I never knew one.’

 

‘Crazy Abbie, over at the court-house,’ Sam spoke after a moment of careful search.  ‘She carries out slops in the ordinary, the tavern place.  I never heard it said she ever had anybody marry with her’ (Hesperus Press Ltd., London, England, 2012, p. 11).

The typical Southern view of the abnormality of the single, unmarried state is flawlessly expressed.  Another Southern novelist, Margaret Junkin Preston, wrote in a similar vein.  In Silverwood:  A Book of Memories, young Edith expresses a desire for retirement from the world and wooded solitude:

 

“Doesn’t the taste of wood-life we are enjoying to-day, suggest how delightful it would be to have a rustic cottage—a permanent home, somewhere hereabouts, away from the world and all its vexations, where we could do as we please, unrestrained by the trammels of society,–happy in God, and nature, and one another?”

A very monastic sort of vision, which is summarily rejected by Edith’s mother precisely because of that feature:

 

“But to be serious,” said Mrs. Irvine—“you have need to be put into the heart of society, Edith, to eradicate your anchorite notions.  Silverwood, I’m afraid, is not the place for you.  God made us social beings, and we must not try to unmake ourselves.  The old convent life you profess sometimes to have a hankering after, apart, of course, I understand you,” as Edith was about to interrupt her with an explanation, “apart from its superstitious religion—this convent life tended to uproot all human affections from the heart of woman.  And it’s the idlest fancy, too, to suppose that those sisterhoods didn’t have constant jarrings and blickerings.  I dare say even at the period of their greatest purity, they were the hot-beds of such strifes as private households know nothing of.  So get rid of all these ideas, my daughter:  I don’t like to hear you advocate them even in sport” (Forgotten Books, London, England, 2015, pgs. 77-78, 80).

Hrmpf!  Case closed, right?  The single, unmarried state shall forever be reserved for the eccentrics and the unfortunates here in Dixie.

Well, perhaps not.  For the Orthodox Church has a few things to say in defense of monasticism, which, as we shall see, is actually another form of marriage and not a lonesome single state (though it may appear to be the latter to some).  But more on that anon.

The recently reposed Metropolitan Bishop Isaiah of Denver provides a much-needed counterpoint to the rigidly anti-monastic view of the largely Protestant South in his essay ‘Orthodox Monasticism:  A Brief Study for the Layman’.  He begins by noting the dismal view towards monasticism that exists today in many places (like Dixie):

 

We are living at a time in which the monastic life is not only considered abnormal, but is even ridiculed and condemned. Even they who profess to teach the word of God, especially within Protestant Christianity, cynically condemn the monastic life as useless, isolationist, abnormal, and not in conformity with the teachings of Christ. They teach that they who enter monasteries and convents certainly are not the ideal Christians.

He then begins to trace the origins of monasticism, beginning with St. John the Baptist:

 

Yet, history witnesses to us that the ascetic life, the life of monasticism has existed within the Church from the very beginning. Even before the Church had been established on earth, a voice came crying out of the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. That voice belonged to Saint John the Forerunner and Baptist. It is not incorrect to see him also as the forerunner of monasticism within the life of the Church. For Saint John prepared the way for a King whose Kingdom is not of this world. Monasteries and convents more than anything else are vivid witnesses of that coming Kingdom.

 

Saint John had left his home and his people early in life and went to live in the wilderness (Isaiah 40:3, Malachi 4:5). He went to live the life of an ascetic. He had been there for several years, living the life of a hermit (heremitis). During that period he prayed incessantly, having dedicated his whole being to God. When the time came for him to fulfill his greatest mission, he returned to society to prepare the way for the King. He began by calling people to repentance and proclaiming that the Kingdom was close at hand. After he baptized Jesus in the Jordan, his mission was completed and from that point Jesus took up the message: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

And the Lord Jesus Christ Himself overturns the idea expressed by Mrs. Preston in Silverwood that monasticism is contrary to human nature:

 . . .

The rest is at https://southernorthodox.org/monasticism-mystical-marriage-with-christ/.

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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: ‘States Should Listen to Justice Thomas on Redistricting’

 

Louisiana isn’t the only State that has had to walk down a ditch full of horse manure lately just to get a federal congressional map approved – her sister South Carolina has also experienced those difficulties, though the outcome of her trial was better than Louisiana’s.  The federal Supreme Court’s decision Alexander vs South Carolina NAACP upheld the map drawn by the South Carolina Legislature, which is good, but the best part of the ruling – and thus most worthy of note by conservatives/revivalists in the States – is the concurrence by Justice Clarence Thomas.

The late Rush Limbaugh once said that if he had to have someone’s else brain, he would choose Justice Thomas’s.  Such a statement becomes very understandable as one watches him roast the federal Court’s flimsy gerrymandering jurisprudence one piece of illogic at a time.  And also like Mr Limbaugh, he can do so with a bit of humor at times.  One can picture a wry smile curling his lips as he writes ‘just enough’:

As these cases make clear, this Court’s jurisprudence puts States in a lose-lose situation. Taken together, our precedents stand for the rule that States must consider race just enough in drawing districts. And, what “just enough” means depends on a federal court’s answers to judicially un-answerable questions about the proper way to apply the State’s traditional districting principles, or about the groupwide preferences of racial minorities in the State. There is no density of minority voters that this Court’s ju-risprudence cannot turn into a constitutional controversy.

But let us put that aside and focus on the main points of his concurrence.  Right away he says what is obvious from a plain reading of the federal constitution:

Determining the proper shape of a district is a political question not suited to resolution by federal courts. The questions presented by districting claims are “ ‘nonjusticia-ble,’ or ‘political questions.’ ” Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U. S. 267, 277 (2004) (plurality opinion). We have explained that a question is nonjusticiable when there is “ ‘a lack of judi-cially discoverable and manageable standards for resolv-ing’ ” the issue or “ ‘a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political depart-ment.’ ” Id., at 277–278 (quoting Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 217 (1962)).

In Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U. S. 684 (2019), we ap-plied those principles to conclude that partisan gerryman-dering claims are nonjusticiable. Partisan gerrymandering claims allege that a political map unduly favors one politi-cal party over another. We explained that partisan gerry-mandering claims therefore present questions about how to “apportion political power as a matter of fairness,” despite the fact that “[t]here are no legal standards discernible in the Constitution for making such judgments, let alone lim-ited and precise standards that are clear, manageable, and politically neutral.” Id., at 705, 707. We bolstered our con-clusion by reference to “the Framers’ decision to entrust dis-tricting to political entities” in the Elections Clause, Art. I, §4, cl. 1. Id., at 697, 701. Because courts “have no commis-sion to allocate political power and influence in the absence of a constitutional directive or legal standards to guide us in the exercise of such authority,” we held that partisan ger-rymandering claims are nonjusticiable. Id., at 721.

The same logic demonstrates that racial gerrymandering and vote dilution claims are also nonjusticiable. As with partisan gerrymandering claims, the racial gerrymander-ing and vote dilution claims in this case lack “judicially dis-coverable and manageable standards” for their resolution. Vieth, 541 U. S., at 277–278 (internal quotation marks omitted). And, they ask us to address an issue—congres-sional districting—that is textually committed to a coordi-nate political department, Congress. Id., at 277. As a re-sult, racial gerrymandering and vote dilution claims brought under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments are nonjusticiable.

He then elaborates on why courts are ill-suited to resolve redistricting controversies:

Racial gerrymandering claims ask courts to reverse- engineer the purposes behind a complex and often arbitrary legislative process. The standard developed under our prec-edents “require[s] the plaintiff to show that race was the ‘predominant factor motivating the legislature’s decision to place a significant number of voters within or without a par-ticular district.’ ” Ante, at 2 (quoting Miller, 515 U. S., at 916). In other words, “a plaintiff must prove that the legis-lature subordinated traditional race-neutral districting principles . . . to racial considerations.” Id., at 916. The Court’s focus on legislative purpose is unavoidable because “the constitutional violation in racial gerrymandering cases stems from the racial purpose of state action,” not the re-sulting map. Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Bd. of Elec-tions, 580 U. S. 178, 189 (2017) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Divining legislative purpose is a dubious undertaking in the best of circumstances, but the task is all but impossible in gerrymandering cases. “Electoral districting is a most difficult subject for legislatures,” a pure “exercise [of] the political judgment necessary to balance competing inter-ests.” Miller, 515 U. S., at 915. We have therefore cau-tioned courts to “be sensitive to the complex interplay of forces that enter a legislature’s redistricting calculus.” Id., at 915–916.

It is those same legislative branches, State and federal, to which the federal constitution has granted oversight of redistricting, not the judiciary:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/06/garlington-states-should-listen-to-justice-thomas-on-redistricting/.

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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: ‘God Is the Best Judge’

 

Who will judge the rightness of Prophet Moses

Who rejected the riches of Pharoah’s court

To wander forty years in the wilderness

And die alone outside the Promised Land?

 

Or the choice of the Apostles, James, John,

Andrew, Peter, who left their fishing nets,

And Matthew his office of tax collector,

To follow the Christ, Who had no place to lay His Head?

 

Shall the imperious, impersonal marketplace,

Which stamps a value upon beans and bread,

Weigh the worth of a man’s soul and its acts?

 

By what rule shall we measure the martyrs’ glory?

They whose beauty was broken on torture wheels,

Whose youth was crushed out beneath stones and steel,

Whose old age was honored with the scorching flame?

 

Shall the professional neo-gladiators

Show them the prototype of a great man?

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/god-is-the-best-judge/.

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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!