Offsite Post: ‘The Union As We Know It Is Over’

The union that the 50 sister States of North America have known since Lincoln smashed them all together by naked military force into a single entity has reached its end.  That may sound like an exaggeration, but the radical divergence of many of the States from one another over fundamental cultural/philosophical issues illustrates the stark truth of it.  A couple of examples will help make this point.

Covid Response

On one side of the divide are States like Rhode Island, that want to force people to put untested medical products into their bodies, while banning the use of safe, cheap, effective remedies: 

The legislation reads like a plank of Communism, stating:

 

This act would mandate all residents sixteen (16) years or older to be vaccinated against COVID-19. If a resident is under sixteen (16) years of age the resident would be required to be immunized against COVID-19, with the responsibility for ensuring compliance falling on all parents or guardians with medical consent powers. Additionally any person who violates this chapter would be required to pay a monthly civil penalty of fifty dollars ($50.00) and would owe twice the amount of personal income taxes.

 

Three different Doctors will have to state on record that the child is “not fit for immunization” In order for parents to receive an exemption for a minor. And the child themselves will have to sign the form. The state’s health department will have the power to investigate any petition for exemption. Bell stands by his totalitarianism claiming a survey conducted by Harvard, Northeastern, Northwestern and Rutgers Universities proves that 65% of residents support the statewide vaccine mandate.

On the other side are States like Tennessee that have outlawed vaxx and mask mandates and have granted explicit protections for drugs like ivermectin to be prescribed for covid, as well as granting other protections like these (via the first link): 

• Removes any authority of a local health entity or official, mayor, governmental entity, or school to quarantine a person or private business due to COVID-19 for simple exposure to the virus.
• Prohibits any health care provider from vaccinating a child without parental consent.
• Prohibits all use of state funding to go toward implementation of any federal COVID countermeasure.
• Allows any doctor to prescribe the monoclonal antibodies for any patient they believe needs it.
• State medical boards are prohibited from taking any punitive action against a physician for the recommendations they make about coronavirus treatment, mitigation, or prevention — including vaccination.

Abortion Policy

Some States like Illinois, Colorado, and California are attempting to make child murder as easy to commit as possible.  California in particular is ready to revert back to the brutal pre-Christian Roman practice of killing new-born children: 

California policymakers who make up the “Future of Abortion Council” just dropped a bombshell. They intend to not only codify the killing of unborn children throughout all nine months of pregnancy but to decriminalize killing newborns days or even weeks after birth. 

 

New language added to AB 2223 last week revealed the disturbing intent. The proposed legislation would shield a mother from civil and criminal charges for any “actions or omissions” related to her pregnancy, “including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.” Although definitions of “perinatal death” vary, all of them include the demise of newborns seven days or more after birth.

 

The bill from Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks additionally protects anyone who “aids or assists a pregnant person in exercising” these rights. It also allows a woman to sue any police department or legal authority which arrests or charges her for hurting or killing her child under provisions of the bill.

And once again, there is a clear push in the opposite direction from States like Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and others: 

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill into law on Tuesday that makes it a felony to perform an abortion, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as part of an aggressive push in Republican-led states across the country to scale back abortion rights.

 

The bill, which takes effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns next month, makes an exception only for an abortion performed to save the life of the mother. Abortion rights advocates say the bill signed by the GOP governor is certain to face a legal challenge.

 

Its passage comes as the conservative U.S. Supreme Court considers ratcheting back abortion rights that have been in place for nearly 50 years.

 

“We want to outlaw abortion in the state of Oklahoma,” Stitt said during a signing ceremony for the bill, flanked by anti-abortion lawmakers, clergy and students. “I promised Oklahomans that I would sign every pro-life bill that hits my desk, and that’s what we’re doing here today.”

 

Under the bill, anyone convicted of performing an abortion would face up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. It does not authorize criminal charges against a woman for receiving an abortion.

 

Sen. Nathan Dahm, a Broken Arrow Republican now running for Congress who wrote the bill, called it the “strongest pro-life legislation in the country right now, which effectively eliminates abortion in Oklahoma.”

 

Dahm said the bill would apply to any physicians in Oklahoma who dispense abortion medication to women, which accounted for about 64% of all abortions performed in Oklahoma in 2020, the most recent year for which statistics were available. There is no enforcement mechanism in the bill for women who order abortion medication online from out-of-state suppliers. Oklahoma lawmakers passed a bill last year to prevent women from ordering abortion medication online, but that measure was blocked by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

The Future

A union of such heterogeneous parts can be held together mainly through two means:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2022/04/garlington-the-union-as-we-know-it-is-over/.

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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: ‘Fighting to Remember’ + One Other Poem

 

For four grim years General Lee

And his boys in grey fought heroically

Against a ruthless foe in defense

Of the Southern land.  Many, going thence,

Died a grievous death, bodies torn by cannon shell

And musket ball, writhing in blood and spittle.

Many, also, those who survived such an encounter,

At the cost of a limb, an arm hack-sawed at the shoulder.

Knowing hunger, knowing thirst, knowing dreadful cold and heat;

Hard ground for a bed, marching often with bare feet.

For such acts of self-sacrifice, their memory

Should be forever praised by their progeny.

But across the South, corruption has set in,

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/fighting-to-remember-poetry.

***

Friend of the South Mr Thomas Riley has written a poem that Southrons should likewise consider reading:

https://flammeusgladius.wordpress.com/2022/06/07/old-marse-robert-samples-aleksandr-dugins-vodka-and-finds-it-good/

--

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: ‘Reaping What We’ve Sown’

 

Once upon a time, there was a wee bit of a diplomatic arrangement called the Monroe Doctrine, one of whose clauses went something like this:  ‘In exchange for the European powers' abstaining from Latin American affairs, the United States would abstain from European disputes.’

That arrangement has gone straight out the window with US interference in the Ukraine, and the spirit of the thing (that cultures/nations have spheres of influence that ought to be free from outside meddling) is also being rejected by the US vis-à-vis Taiwan:

Just as the the United States and its allies created an existential threat to Russia through the transformation of Ukraine into a highly militarized proxy of Western military power – so too is such a threat being deliberately and systematically created on the island of Taiwan vis-a-vis Beijing.

From 2014 onward, the United State had installed into power regimes in both Ukraine and Taiwan disrupting the status quo both territories had with Russia and China respectively.

While much attention in 2014 was focused on Nazi militants seizing power in Kiev, the US-sponsored “Sunflower movement” likewise paved the way for a US-backed political order to take power in Teipei.

Since then, the US has poured additional billions of dollars into interfering and overwriting the political structures of both Ukraine and Taiwan as well as pouring in billions in weapons. In addition to this, both Ukraine and Taiwan have hosted US forces to train the military in both territories.

While US military training in Ukraine was done more or less openly, US forces placed in Taiwan, a territory the US acknowledges is Chinese or acknowledges is perceived as being Chinese by Beijing, was done relatively quietly.

Such incendiary policies are the result of the Straussians, who dream of US global hegemony that lasts forever and who are willing to use force to see that it comes about.  Unfortunately, they never stopped to think about the consequences of their actions.  But they are here, and more are coming; and regular folks across the States and in many other countries will soon feel the full weight of them:

Medvedev said “hellish” Western sanctions not only have failed to cripple Russia, but are instead “returning to the West like a boomerang.” Confidence in reserve currencies is “fading like the morning mist”, and ditching the US dollar and the euro is not unrealistic anymore: “The era of regional currencies is coming.”

After all, he added, “no matter if they want it or not, they’ll have to negotiate a new financial order (…) And the decisive voice will then be with those countries that have a strong and advanced economy, healthy public finances and a reliable monetary system.”

The sanctions against Russia have already led to sky-high fuel prices; the same will quickly come for food staples like crackers, oats, bread, corn, etc., and other essentials as well.  The end of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency will bring even more far-reaching effects here and abroad.

And if the insane policy makers in the Biden Administration succeed in finding a reason to levy similar sanctions against China over Taiwan – well, let’s just say that a lot of pampered Americans won’t be too happy with their new economic situation.

But the fallout is happening elsewhere in our hemisphere as well.  The supposed beneficiaries of the Monroe Doctrine, the nations of Latin America, are ready to break with the US over their latest demand to ‘side with us, or else’:

But perhaps the most underreported, and indeed most dangerous defections from U.S. dominance have taken place in Latin America.  Mexico's president hails from the Party of the Democratic Revolution and has been celebrated for being the first truly indigenous leader of the tenth most populous country in the world (close to 130 million people).  You would think a man with such lefty credentials would be positively thrilled to work with a Democrat after four years of Trump...but you would be wrong.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced soon after the imposition of sanctions that Mexico would not partake in them: "We are not going to take any sort of economic reprisal because we want to have good relations with all the governments in the world."

Let us just say it is less than comforting that we have a 1,900-mile open border with a country that just announced that it wants good relations with a Russian government the U.S. has sworn publicly to crush.

The other powerhouse south of the border is Brazil, where president Bolsonaro is not playing ball with Joe Biden, either.  Besides mocking Zelensky's status as a comedian, Bolsonaro said Brazil needs Russian partnership to support its agribusiness and feed its population of over 200 million people.  As Reuters reported, "[h]e added that he was against any sanctions that could bring negative repercussions for Brazil, citing Russian fertilizers which are crucial for the country's giant agribusiness sector."

We reap what we sow, folks.  When we don’t uphold our end of agreements like the Monroe Doctrine, not expanding NATO, etc., some unpleasant consequences are going to follow eventually.  Thus, all the virtue-signalers, from Samsung’s renamed phone to the representatives of the North Carolina House who voted unanimously for a resolution in support of the Ukraine, may look mighty foolish in the not-too-distant future.

Nevertheless, it is in those very State legislatures, and governors’ offices and judicial courts, where we stand the best chance of putting into place some policies to help us weather the storms that are coming because of the lunatics on the Potomac.

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2022/04/garlington-reaping-what-weve-sown/.

--

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

Anathema to the Union!

‘Echoes of Orthodox Holiness in the Southern Novel George Balcombe’

 

In her heyday, the beau ideal for Southerners was the Christian aristocratic planter and his wife – the gentleman and the lady.  Depictions of them are found throughout Southern literature, but one in particular offers an important insight into the Southern soul.  In the Virginian Nathaniel Beverley Tucker’s novel, George Balcombe, published in 1836, the abilities of the titular character, Mr. Balcombe, display striking resemblances to those manifested by the saints of the Orthodox Church throughout her history.  Can it be that the tradition-loving South was and is grasping for something deeper, something beyond, the folkways she rightly cherishes?  Let us examine this in light of what we find in George Balcombe.

I.  Clairvoyance

George Balcombe throughout the novel manifests an astonishing intuition about people, knowing who is trustworthy and who is not, how people will react in certain situations, and so forth.  Partly this seems to be due to a natural faculty of his, and partly because of his practice of law.  A lawyer in Missouri named Shaler describes how the latter imparts a sort of second sight:

 

This may seem strange to you, as you have probably little idea of the keen insight into character, which the practice of our profession imparts.  . . . 

 

"We have to do with all sorts of people, sir," said he; "and, in this new country, inhabited by insulated individuals, no one of whom can stand sponsor for another, we must learn to know all sorts of people. Now there are some marks of the gentleman which he can never lose under any circumstances. The tones, the modulations and inflections of his voice, never can be mistaken. As to the candour you are pleased to compliment, I would not advise you to trust too much to that. A lawyer's eyes are like those of a cat. He is not obliged to keep his mouth shut; because he sees plainly, and knows that he is not seen" (Vol. I, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1836, pgs. 250, 251).

It is somewhat different with the saints.  Being healed from the effects of the Fall and united with God through His uncreated Grace through their intense ascetic efforts and the liturgical and sacramental life of the Orthodox Church, they behold things through the Holy Ghost, Who has made His abode in their hearts.  Hieromonk Damascene relates a short example from the life of St. John the Wonderworker of Shanghai and San Francisco (+1966) in a talk he gave in 2002:

 

He was a clairvoyant reader of hearts, and one who could identify and name people he had never seen before. Enlightened by the Grace of God, he could hear and answer people's thoughts before they would express them. He also foretold the future, including the time of his own death. In this way, he was very much in the tradition of the great monastic elders of the past, especially the clairvoyant Russian elders such as those of Optina Monastery.

II.  Dispassion

Balcombe shows in several instances that he is not a slave of the fallen passions – his lack of fear during a duel, his unworry over the outcome of Napier’s inheritance struggle with Montague, and others.  This is due in part to his deep trust in God’s Providence:

 

"Oh, no more of that! 'Put not thy trust in princes nor in the sons of men.' 'The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong.' Let us take care that each event has its due influence upon our own hearts, and if we do not suffer them to deceive us, our trust in Providence will not deceive us" (Vol. I, p. 265).

The actions of this Providence purify us, he says elsewhere:

 

But will you murmur at having been selected as a fit subject for a discipline that might but have been wasted upon them? or will you take merit to yourself for being a more hopeful pupil than they? Who made you to differ? Who endowed you with those qualities, which might have been spoiled by unchecked prosperity, but which, matured by the training of the last (and it may be of the next) five years, may qualify you to resume the rights of your fathers, with the capacity and disposition to be the protector, and guide, and comforter of your dependants, and not their luxurious, insolent, and heartless oppressor? My dear William, in the armory of God's displeasure against the vices and follies of mankind, there is not one shaft too many, nor is one of them misdirected (p. 262).

And through this action of God’s, he reaches the point of being unruffled by any uprising of the passions, which we see most clearly in the farewell kiss he gives to his former love interest, Miss Mary Scott:

 

When we were about to part Mrs. Balcombe kissed her tenderly, while Balcombe bade farewell to the major and his lady. Then turning to Mary, he folded her to his bosom, and kissing her forehead as usual, was about to leave her, when she held up her lips and said,

 

"Once more, dear George, This once; this last time."

 

And once more he impressed upon her lips the hallowed kiss of his pure and generous friendship.

 

"Thank God! thank God!" she exclaimed, in a tone of elevated enthusiasm. "Should we never meet again, that token of a brother's love I will carry to the grave" (Vol. II, pgs. 316-7).

We see the highest fulfilment of this once again in the lives of the saints.  The Orthodox priest Sulpicius Severus says of St Martin of Tours (+397), the great luminary of France and all the West,

‘No one ever saw him enraged, or excited, or lamenting, or laughing; he was always one and the same: displaying a kind of heavenly happiness in his countenance, he seemed to have passed the ordinary limits of human nature. Never was there any word on his lips but Christ, and never was there a feeling in his heart except piety, peace, and tender mercy’ (Ch. 27).

III.  Healer

There are a couple of significant moments in the novel when Balcombe revives people who have fallen into despair and other ailments, the most profound being his interaction with Howard, who had fallen into a fit of madness after losing a duel to Balcombe.  Here Tucker writes,

 

Indeed it was delightful to see how the mind of Howard calmed itself under the mild ministrations of Balcombe, and how the originality of his thoughts, and the vividness of his conceptions and language, took possession of the faculties of the patient, and wiled him away from all subjects of painful reflection. There was, indeed, a healthfulness in the action of Balcombe's mind, which seemed to impart itself to all he associated with, dispelling phantasies, and healing sickly sensibilities as if by magic (Vol. II, p. 245).

The ability to heal is present in the saints throughout the history of the Orthodox Church.  Fr. Damascene again speaks of St. John the Wonderworker:

‘He was a healer and miracle-worker, in the tradition of St. Martin of Tours, St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia, and others. Through his prayers, he healed people of almost every imaginable malady; and he continues to do so after his repose.’

For more detailed accounts of healings by the saints, one may easily turn to the Life of St. Martin linked above by Fr. Sulpicius, or to recent saints like St. Nektarios of Aegina (+1920).

IV.  Guide to Repentance

It is not only physical healing that George Balcombe bequeaths to others; it is spiritual healing also.  At the very end of the story, we are told of the fate of the backwoods ruffian Keizer:

‘Keizer returned with Balcombe to Missouri, and has ever since lived uprightly and comfortably under his munificent patron’ (Vol. II, p. 318).

In the life of St. Anthony the Great of Egypt (+356), St. Athanasius the Great (+373) tells how simply seeing St. Anthony was enough to work repentance in the souls of onlookers, so great was the Grace of God that overflowed from his heart:

 

Who came in anger and was not converted to friendship? What poor and low-spirited man met him who, hearing him and looking upon him, did not despise wealth and console himself in his poverty? What monk, having being neglectful, came to him and became not all the stronger? What young man having come to the mountain and seen Antony, did not immediately deny himself pleasure and love temperance? (Ch. 87)

V.  In the Church the Fall Is Overcome

The Protestant mindset has imprinted itself deeply upon the Southern people.  Some good has come of this, but one of the unfortunate drawbacks of Protestantism is its tendency to constrict the horizon of human possibilities within the limits imposed on mankind and the rest of the creation as a result of the Fall (Fr. Josiah Trenham, Rock and Sand: An Orthodox Appraisal of the Protestant Reformers and Their Teachings, Columbia, Missouri, Newrome Press, 2015, pgs. 297-9).  Characters with super-human abilities like George Balcombe are an attempt by Southrons to reach beyond these frustrating limits.  However, it is precisely in the Orthodox Church where they can find very real, not merely fictional or imaginary, deliverance from that crippling iron yoke.  Fr. Dumitru Staniloae wonderfully expresses this when he writes,

 

Baptism is the personal Pentecost of each person who enters the Church, and through baptism each can begin a new road and has become a “new creature” in a movement of continuous growth:  “After Pentecost the time of the Church is oriented towards the novissima, the new things of the Kingdom . . . Christianity, in the radiant witness of its confessors, martyrs and saints is messianic, revolutionary, explosive.  The Gospel calls for the violence which seizes the Kingdom, tears open the heavens and transforms the old image of the world into the new creation . . . The salt of the earth and the light of the world, the saints appear as the obvious and hidden leaders of humanity, those who will assume responsibility for history and accomplish it . . . The saints take the torch from the martyrs and continue to illumine the world” (The Experience of God, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Vol. 4: The Church: Communion in the Holy Spirit, Ioan Ionita, trans. and ed., Brookline, Mass., Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2012, p. 77).

To those in the South who are willing, we say, ‘Come receive this transforming Light!’

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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!