Friday, August 14, 2026

‘Before Ukraine, Georgia Was The Trial Run At A Globalist Proxy War’

 

You’ve got to hand it to the globalists:  They are dedicated ideologues who never lose sight of their goals nor tire in their pursuit of them.  Most folks probably don’t realize it, but their effort to humiliate and subjugate Russia is one of those goals.

Many analysts looking at the current Russia-Ukraine war fail to look into the history underlying it.  They do not look back any further than the day the war appeared to begin in 2022, which leads to a distorted view of it.  To gain a proper view, we must look back beyond 2022.

The globalists in the West view Russia like they do every other country and people:  as a collection of resources (both human and otherwise) to be dominated and exploited.  Their conquest of a country can involve a number of tactics.  One of them is the poisoning of relations between Western countries and the targeted country.

We have seen this utilized many times over as it regards Russia.  One of the most glaring is the now infamous Russia hoax, in which the globalists claimed that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 United States presidential election.  The fallout from that continues, as yet another Deep State CIA actor has recently been fired for her part in the hoax.

But that was hardly the final try at creating enmity between the two countries.  The Leftist media were aghast that President Trump would meet with President Putin in Alaska to try to broker peace in the Ukraine.  Putin should have been persona non grata, in their view.  This, despite the fact that US and Russian leaders never stopped talking to each other during the Cold War, during which the leaders of the Soviet Union were godless communists.  How much more should the leaders of the two countries be in communication today, now that Russia has rejected communism and her government leaders are openly Christian?

An extension of that Leftist reporting bias was also seen in President Putin’s meeting with the Orthodox Archbishop of Alaska, Alexei.  Abp Alexei faced harsh denunciations for the friendly meeting, seeing it as giving tacit approval for Russia’s actions in the Ukraine.  But the meeting wasn’t meant to be political; it was much more about the spiritual ties between Russia and Alaska, which was once a part of Russia.  Michael Davis had a good write-up about the unfairness of the denunciations of Abp Alexei:

‘On August 15, 2025, among the snowy peaks of Anchorage, Alaska, a moment of profound spiritual significance unfolded as Russian president Vladimir Putin met with Archbishop Alexei of Sitka and Alaska.  . . .

‘The meeting occurred on the Feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, one of the most important feast-days in the Orthodox Church. Abp. Alexei, who had just led a three-day prayer initiative for peace in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, welcomed Pres. Putin in Anchorage, where he was attending a summit with U.S. president Donald Trump. The setting was St. Innocent Cathedral, a spiritual beacon tracing its roots to Russian missionaries who planted Orthodoxy in Alaska centuries ago. The exchange, described by an Alaskan Orthodox priest as “spontaneous yet warm,” was marked by a mutual gift-giving that carried deep symbolic resonance.

‘ . . . For an American Orthodox bishop to engage with an Orthodox head of state, even one as polarizing as Putin, is a recognition of the Church’s universal mission to bear witness to Christ in all nations. The Orthodox Church in America, with its 80 Alaskan parishes, stands as a living bridge between East and West, and Abp. Alexei’s willingness to meet Putin reflects the Church’s call to be a peacemaker, not a partisan. The meeting’s focus on spiritual unity, not political endorsement, aligns with the Orthodox Ethos, which seeks to heal wounds rather than sow division.

‘The exchange of icons was the heart of the event. The St. Herman icon gifted by Putin, now housed at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Sitka, is expected to draw pilgrims, reinforcing Alaska’s role as a spiritual hub. Alexei’s gift of the Athos-painted icon, prayed over for years, was a profound act of reciprocity, honoring the Alaskan faithful’s Russian roots while affirming their independence.

‘While no ceasefire emerged from the Trump-Putin summit, Abp. Alexei’s meeting with Pres. Putin was a spiritual triumph. As Alaskan Orthodox continue their prayers for peace, the St. Herman icon stands as a symbol of hope, urging reconciliation in a fractured world. For the faithful, this meeting reminds us that while kings may wield power, their hearts remain in the Lord’s hands—a truth that sustains our hope for peace, however distant it may seem.

‘Of course, the meeting was not without its critics. In a letter responding to this detraction, Abp. Alexei wrote (in part):

‘ “When I expressed gratitude in that public moment, it was not praise for present politics, but a remembrance of the missionaries of earlier generations—Saint Herman, Saint Innocent, Saint Yakov, and others—who brought us the Orthodox faith at great cost. Their sacrifice is our inheritance, and for that spiritual gift we must always give thanks.

‘ “As for the icons exchanged, some have condemned me for that, but I must be clear: the veneration we give to holy icons is directed not to the one who gives them, but to the saint or feast they represent. I cannot apologize for kissing an icon of Saint Herman or of the Dormition of the Mother of God. Even if the greatest sinner were beside me, the honor passes not to him but to heaven itself.

‘ “I know that sacred gestures can be misunderstood, and I grieve if this has caused confusion or scandal. But our vocation in such moments is not to join the anger of the world, but to keep the lamp of Christ burning, to obey His commandments to pray even for enemies, and to open whatever small door may be given for a pastoral word of peace.”

‘Amen. May God continue to bless peacemakers such as Abp. Alexei’ (‘Icon of Peace: The Meeting of Abp. Alexei and Vladimir Putin,’ uoj.news).

The globalists want Westerners to think that anyone who says a kind word about Russia or her leaders is a ‘Russian stooge’ or a ‘Putin lackey’, to keep the decades-long bitterness of the Cold War running so they can launch attack after attack on Russia until they have subjugated her to their power.  Those ‘stooges’ would necessarily include gentle, meek Christ-lovers like Abp Alexei, the Eskimo grannies in Alaska who are part of his flock, and Orthodox parishioners belonging to the Patriarchate of Moscow anywhere in the West.  It may sound absurd, but that is what is being promoted, as a story in French media makes abundantly clear.

It is worth pointing out in this respect that traditionalist Russians are some of the biggest supporters of the MAGA movement in the US, seeing it as a force that could dramatically weaken the globalists who threaten normative, Christian cultures all over the world.

The end goal of all the propaganda of the globalists against their enemies, as we said up above, is usually to start a big, blazing war that would see globalist puppets placed in power of the recalcitrant countries.  The globalists tried this with Russia in 2008, using the neighboring country of Georgia as the proxy of choice:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2025/08/garlington-before-ukraine-georgia-was-the-trial-run-at-a-globalist-proxy-war/.

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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!

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

‘Kosmas the Liberator’

 

The monk-martyr Kosmas of Aitolia (+1779) may appear at first glance to be an unlikely source of inspiration for Dixie, but a closer look reveals him to be a radiant source of hope.

He was born in 1714 in a rustic mountain village named Mega Dendron (Great Tree) to good Christian parents.  When he came of age, he left his home in search of deeper knowledge and wisdom.  We still have his own words about his education:


Later, in his teachings, he refers to the education he acquired: "My Christians, I wore out my life in studies forty to fifty years. I read the works of priests, and of the impious and the atheists and the heretics. The depths of wisdom I researched."

 

Elsewhere he said: "I learned many languages: Hebrew, Turkish, French, and from all the nations many things did I read."

His desire for God became so great at one point that he left the world and became a monk on the holy mountain of Athos:


Then he went to Philotheou Monastery. There he became a monk and took the name Kosmas and was ordained a priest. As he says himself: "I went, and on the Holy Mountain I wept for my sins for seventeen years."

But love for God overflows and becomes also love of neighbor.  This is what happened with St Kosmas; his heart broke for his fellow Greeks, who struggled under the heavy Turkish yoke.

Since the fall of Constantinople/New Rome in 1453, the Greeks had been ruled by the Muslim Turks, who did what they could to suffocate the Christian Faith amongst the Greeks and convert them to Islam.  Southerners should understand this tactic very well and sympathize with the Greeks, for the Yankees have done the same to Dixie:  They conquered our people in 1865 and have slowly tried to kill our love for Christ, to eradicate our Christian culture, and to replace them with the idol of Yankee Americanism (thanks to Fr Peter Heers for mentioning this similarity in a talk he gave recently).

Father Kosmas saw all that was happening to his fellow Greeks, and the Lord called him to act:


In studying the Gospels he thought by this he could help his brethren in the best manner. He prayed and he consulted with spiritual fathers and elders. He felt that he had to leave his beloved Mount Athos, to help the suffering people. St. Nikodemos continues: "The Nation was in danger of the following: On the one hand the Turks, on the other hand the Enlightenment - the atheistic Enlightenment - of France. The faith was constantly diminishing. Islam was in triumph. The Greek language was disappearing. Whole provinces forgot Romeik [Greek] and some spoke Turkish, others Slavic, others Arvanite and others Vlach. There was also foreign propaganda.  . . .  The Saint understood the risk. The pessimistic messages had arrived at Mount Athos. He received them. He had to interrupt his asceticism in the Monastery. The Nation, the Church of Christ, awaited him.  . . .

 

At Philotheou he felt the call from God to undertake this great work "of enlightening and regenerating his Christian brethren. The Greeks had fallen into ignorance in regards to their religion, and this resulted in much wickedness, with large numbers changing their faith from Orthodoxy to Muhammadanism. Kosmas felt this deepest. Therefore he requested and received the permission of his elders to undertake such a mission. Leaving the Holy Mountain, he went to Constantinople, met with Patriarch Seraphim (1757-1761) and received from him written permission to preach throughout Greece.

The superabundant humility of St Kosmas attracted the Grace of God to him, which endowed his preaching with great power:

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/kosmas-the-liberator.

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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!

Friday, August 7, 2026

“The Elvis Connection to the Orthodox Church”

 

We assume that even in these times of vanishing historical memory that Elvis Pressley still needs no lengthy introduction.  Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1935 and later migrating to Memphis, Tennessee, his mixture of various strands of Southern music (blues, Gospel, country, and so forth) produced the rock-and-roll genre that he overshadowed for many years.  Or we might go so far as to say that he ‘ruled’ it, for Elvis is The King of Rock.  In this way, he is the other half of Southern royalty, the consort of Lucy Pickens, who was named the Queen of the Confederate States.  Like her, he was wealthy, handsome, talented, and had Christian leanings.

Which is all fine and good, you might be saying, but how does any of this relate to Orthodoxy?  We’re mighty glad you asked.

The name Elvis is the English spelling of the Irish name Ailbhe, which, by the wonderfully arcane rules of the Irish Gaelic language, is pronounced Al-vee.  And the peculiar thing about the name Ailbhe is that there was an extraordinary Irish saint of the Orthodox Church who bore that name, St. Ailbhe of Emly (+6th century), and one of the alternative spellings of his name is precisely . . . Elvis.

St. Elvis was a disciple of the famous missionary to Ireland, St. Patrick, who ordained him the first archbishop of Munster, with his see established at Emly.  In some ways, both he and Dixie’s Elvis are quite similar.

Both were Christians from their early days.  A couple of stories circulate regarding St. Elvis’s Christian birth:

“Saint Ailbhe was converted by British missionaries. Some traditions say that he was baptized by a priest while a boy in northern Ireland; another that he was baptized and raised in a British settlement in Ireland.”

For Dixie’s Elvis, the account is a little more straightforward:

“Raised in the charismatic Assemblies of God denomination, Presley went on to have a complex relationship to faith. He did identify as a Christian, and described Gospel music as 'the purest thing there is on this earth'.”

And though there is some ambiguity in Elvis’s later life regarding his faith in Christ (as there was about St. Elvis’s baptism), he had enough clarity and conviction to say in response to the title others had given him, the King of Rock-and-Roll, “'There's only one king', he said, 'and that's Jesus Christ.'”

It was also said of St. Elvis,

“He made frequent retreats and engaged in habitual recollection. Saint Ailbhe especially loved to pray in front of the sea.”

Dixie’s Elvis had a similar inclination:

“We do two shows a night for five weeks. A lotta times we'll go upstairs and sing until daylight – gospel songs. We grew up with it...It more or less puts your mind at ease. It does mine.”

. . .

The rest is at https://southernorthodox.org/the-elvis-connection-to-the-orthodox-church/.

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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!

Tuesday, August 4, 2026

‘The Religion of Americanism’

 

Mr Joe Haines recently wrote an excellent essay for the Abbeville Institute detailing President Lincoln’s destruction of the voluntary union of free States and his creation of a new, indissoluble, and unitary nation from the wreckage.  We hope folks will read it if they haven’t already.

It is a well-constructed essay in its historical and political aspects, and yet there is one aspect that we felt was underdeveloped – the religious.  Mr Haines set the table with some provocative dishes at the outset of his essay:

‘I am not a “Lincoln Scholar.” And I will fight any man who accuses me of being one. Not that being a Lincoln Scholar isn’t good business. Thanks to these folks, who recycle the Lincoln myths like a perpetual motion machine, Lincoln is surpassed by only Jesus Christ in our national pantheon of deities.

‘Challenging the Lincoln myth is viewed as unpatriotic at best and heretical by those who make a living praising his name. The irrational behavior by Lincoln Scholars was commented upon as far back as 1931 by writer H.L. Mencken, who wrote;

‘“Lincoln has become one of our national deities and a realistic examination of him is no longer possible.”’

But he took them away after that; the rest of the piece veers away from any examination of those religious themes, leaving the reader’s mind quite famished.  That is unfortunate, for the religious dimension is vital to understanding the longevity of the new American union that Lincoln established, which, at first sight, would seem too large and diverse to be held together for very long.

The author David Gelernter is helpful in this regard.  His book, Americanism:  The Fourth Great Western Religion, explores the religious dimension that Mr Baines does not.

There are some things to note at the outset.  The dishonesty of the Lincoln cult is rather notorious, and Mr Gelernter is no exception to the rule.  His book contains notable distortions, such as his labeling of the colony of Virginia as a ‘settlement’ with ‘a Puritan flavor’ (Americanism, Doubleday, New York, 2007, p. 51) –transforming the staunchly un-Puritan Cavalier settlers of Virginia into the opposite is quite a feat of historical alchemy; his ascribing the first representative body in North America to the ‘Puritan colony’ of Virginia (p. 72); and his claim that aristocratic, Cavalier Maryland ‘soon had a Puritan majority’ after her establishment (p. 53), which is as non-sensical as his oxymoronic pairing of Puritan Virginia.

That is shameful, but it gives the reader an idea of the darkness he is confronting with Lincoln and Americanism.

And into that darkness we now step.

Mr Gelernter is quite open about his belief:  America is a new world religion with its own particular creed.  It grew out of a dying Puritanism, and its central religious figure is none other than Abraham Lincoln.

He provides some of the central tenets of this new religion early on:  ‘No religion had ever before laid out these three political ideals as its creed:  Liberty.  Equality.  Democracy.  The great achievement of Americanism is to proclaim these three principles and their biblical origins, to proclaim them in America’s own new scriptures—especially Lincoln’s presidential speeches—and to make them real in a functioning nation.  But Americanism goes further, to declare that these principles are not the exclusive property of Americans or Christians or believers in God or descendants of white Europeans.  According to the American Religion, they belong to all mankind, and Americans have a duty not merely to preach but to bring them to all mankind’ (pgs. 3-4).

It is noteworthy that the three elements of the American Creed are contradictory.  Liberty tends to be stifled by a focus on equality and democracy (the latter two tend to promote a stifling uniformity).

Furthermore, the odor of heresy and blasphemy is quite strong.  Asking Jews and Christians who have received revelations from God Himself to accept a new religion is audacious and foolhardy, to say the least.  But Mr Gelernter is not bothered by this in the least, gently chiding them for their concerns instead:  ‘Christians and Jews ought not to see Americanism as a blasphemous replacement for Christianity or Judaism.  . . .  The American Religion is traditional religion’s response to modern political reality.  It is an extension to the structure of Judaism or Christianity, an extra room out back’ (p. 11).

It would seem to be a bit more than that.  If one can be an adherent of Americanism without believing in God at all (per his statement further above), then this new religion is nothing at all like traditional Judaism and Christianity.

The duty to institute the contradictory American Creed in countries all over the world (and not simply to preach it to them) Mr Gelernter calls ‘democratic chivalry’.  From whence comes this duty?  From Puritan America’s chosenness:  ‘They were a new chosen people in a new promised land, blessed far beyond their deserts.  They were grateful to God and indebted to God.  They owed Him.  Americans took up chivalry to pay a debt to the Lord—and to reassure themselves that they too deserved their blessings on account of good behavior’ (p. 36).

Notice the uniquely Puritan psychology at work here:  Americans must be constantly intervening in other countries’ affairs to assure themselves that they remain in God’s good favor; they are always anxious to never appear un-chosen.  They are thus unable and unwilling to obey the Apostle Paul’s commandment to ‘lead a tranquil and quiet life’ (I Timothy 2:2).

The spiritual delusion at work in Americanism is so strong that actual Christian commands like St Paul’s are ignored while fatuous assertions like the following are accepted without question:  ‘Americans started lecturing the world on right and wrong long before the United States was born.  (That’s one reason the world loves us so much.)  . . .  willingness to butt in on the side of right is what America is all about’ (pgs. 35, 68).  We would be awfully curious to see what an actual poll of people in countries where the Yankee American Empire has ‘butt[ed] in on the side of right’ – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, just to name a few – think of those so-called chivalric interventions.

But none of this fabulous work at home or abroad would have been possible without the singular figure of Abraham Lincoln.  Mr Gelernter says plainly, ‘Lincoln and the Civil War completed the American Religion.  It was Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, who said that “with Lincoln the Union rose to the sublimity of religious mysticism [better said, perhaps, that it fell deep into the black pit of idolatry—W.G.]”’ (p. 103).

 . . .

The rest may be read here

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/the-religion-of-americanism/

Or here:

https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/i-believe-america-false-religion-americanism

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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!