Offsite Post: ‘The Crescent and the Cross in the Biden White House’

 

President Biden (or his ghost-writer) released a statement celebrating the beginning of the Muslims’ month of Ramadan.  It is full of praise for Muslims and their contributions to life in the States:

 

Jill and I send our warmest greetings and best wishes to Muslim communities in the United States and around the world.  Ramadan Kareem.

 

As many of our fellow Americans begin fasting tomorrow, we are reminded of how difficult this year has been.  In this pandemic, friends and loved ones cannot yet gather together in celebration and congregation, and far too many families will sit down for iftar with loved ones missing.

 

Yet, our Muslim communities begin the month of revelation with renewed hope. Many will focus on increasing their consciousness of the presence of God in their lives, reaffirming their commitment to the service of others that their faith compels, and expressing gratitude for the blessings they enjoy—health, well-being, and life itself.

 

Muslim Americans have enriched our country since our founding.  They are as diverse and vibrant as the America they have helped build. Today, Muslims are leading in our efforts to fight COVID-19, playing a pioneering role in vaccine development and serving as frontline health care workers.  They are creating jobs as entrepreneurs and business owners, risking their lives as first responders, teaching in our schools, serving as dedicated public servants across the nation, and playing a leading role in our ongoing struggle for racial equity and social justice.  

 

But still, Muslim Americans continue to be targeted by bullying, bigotry, and hate crimes.  This prejudice and these attacks are wrong.  They are unacceptable.  And they must stop.  No one in America should ever live in fear of expressing his or her faith.  And my administration will work tirelessly to protect the rights and safety of all people.

 

On my first day as President, I was proud to end the shameful Muslim travel ban, and I will continue to stand up for human rights everywhere, including for Uyghurs in China, Rohingya in Burma, and Muslim communities all over the world.

 

As we remember those who we have lost since last Ramadan, we are hopeful for brighter days ahead.  The Holy Qur’an reminds us that “God is the light of the heavens and earth,” who leads us out of darkness to the light.  Although our White House festivities will be held virtually this Ramadan, Jill and I look forward to resuming the traditional White House Eid celebration in person next year, inshallah.  We wish your families an inspiring and rewarding month.

After reading that, one would think that Muslims were one of the largest, most influential, groups in the US.  But in reality they are only about 1% of the total population. 

Well!  If that is how Pres Biden praises Islam at the start of its holy season, surely his praises of Christianity during Lent and Easter, the holiest seasons for Christians, and its contributions to the well-being of the peoples of the 50 States will be overwhelming!?  After all, Christians actually do make up the vast majority of folks in the States, and Pres Biden often portrays himself as a devout Roman Catholic.  Let’s rush in and see!  For Ash Wednesday he said,

 

Today, I join Christians across our country and around the world in observing Ash Wednesday. As we enter into the season of Lent, we know this moment of repentance, reflection, and renewal comes in the midst of a painful winter for our nation and the world.

 

On this Ash Wednesday and every day, we hold every family with an empty place at their table in our hearts. We pray for all those who have fallen on hard times and are worried about what morning will bring. Let us find strength in each other and faith that provides us purpose. And let us look with hope and anticipation toward Easter and brighter days ahead.

That’s it?  Hmm; maybe he was just saving the good stuff for Easter.  Come on, then, out with it!  On Easter he delivered these remarks:  . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2021/04/garlington-the-crescent-and-the-cross-in-the-biden-white-house/ .

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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!

Dispelling Modern Religious Delusions

 

Glory to God, some noteworthy writers and thinkers of the West have either been baptized into the Orthodox Church or are exploring the Orthodox Faith:

Paul Kingsnorth

https://orthochristian.com/137403.html

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/paul-kingsnorth-orthodoxy-dark-chamber-baptism/

James Wilson

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/james-wilson-coyote-fork/

Bionic Mosquito

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/04/bionic-mosquito/the-history-of-the-west/

Yvonne Lorenzo

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/04/yvonne-lorenzo/eat-cicadas-or-support-your-local-farmer-and-updates-on-articles-ive-written/

May many more join them!

For more from Mr Kingsnorth:

https://www.paulkingsnorth.net/

https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/

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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: ‘We Don’t Need Crybabies and Do-Nothings, Gov. Abbott!’

 

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has sent a second letter to Vice President Harris requesting information about what the Biden Administration intends to do to secure the US-Mexico border.  We applaud Gov Abbott for launching Operation Lone Star to try to staunch some of the massive flow of illegal immigrants into Texas, but in reality this will not help all that much since the illegals they arrest must be handed over to the Biden Administration (ICE), which has been all too keen on releasing them into the States.

It doesn’t take much hard thinking to see that Gov Abbott’s effort at becoming pen-pals with VP Harris will yield even fewer good results than Operation Lone Star.  His writing to her is simply an effort to win political points for himself.  But we do not have governors so they can grand-stand; they are elected mainly to enforce laws, to protect their respective States from law-breakers.  Gov Abbott, per his letter, makes it clear that he is very much aware of the horrible crimes being committed by the drug cartels, human smugglers, etc., in his State.  If the federal government does not act to protect the people of Texas from illegal border-crossers, the responsibility falls on him to do so.  If he lacks the courage to that, let him take heart from an example from one of the States of greater Yankeedom, Ohio, which, before The War, were just as quick to invoke States’ rights as were States in the South.  Ohio in this instance was responding to the US Supreme Court’s infamous ruling of McCulloch v Maryland:

 . . . Despite the McCulloch opinion, many of the States continued to resist the bank. Georgia in 1819, and again in 1821, adopted particularly harassing enactments, designed to bar the bank from suing in Federal Courts.(63)

It was in Ohio, however, that events came to a climax. No State had suffered more grievously than Ohio from the disastrous inflation brought about by the bank’s first years of blundering mismanagement.(64) This hatred of the bank was manifested by an act of the Ohio Legislature in 1819—enacted in the teeth of the McCulloch decision—levying a tax of $50,000 per year on each of the bank’s two branches in the State. This tax was to become due on September 15, 1820, but the bank, having protested vainly against the levy, refused to pay and instead obtained an injunction from a Federal judge against its collection.

Before the injunction could be served, however, State Auditor Osborn ordered one of his deputies, John L. Harper, to collect the tax by persuasion if he could, but by violence if he must. Entering the bank’s branch office at Chillicothe, on the morning of September 17, Harper made one last request for voluntary payment. When this was denied, he leaped over the counter, strode into the bank vaults, and helped himself to $100,000 in paper and specie.(65) He then turned this over to a deputy, one H. M. Currie; and Mr. Currie, stuffing this considerable hoard into a small trunk, with which the party thoughtfully had come equipped, loaded the trunk into his wagon and set off down the road to Columbus.

The bank furiously brought suit against Osborn and Harper for recovery of the money, relying, of course, upon Marshall’s opinion in the McCulloch case. But Ohio was in no mood to regard the Supreme Court’s pronouncements as the supreme law of the land. In December of 1820, Ohio’s House of Representatives brought in a blistering report, substantially concurred in by the Senate on January 3, 1821, condemning the bank’s suit as a suit against the State itself. “To acquiesce in such an encroachment upon the privileges and authority of the States, without an effort to defend them, would be an act of treachery to the State itself, and to all the States that compose the American Union.”

Particular attention may be directed to the statement that next follows. Gentlemen, this is Ohio speaking:

The committee are aware of the doctrine, that the Federal courts are exclusively vested with jurisdiction to declare, in the last resort, the true interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. To this doctrine, in the latitude contended for, they never can give their assent.(66)

--James Jackson Kilpatrick, The Sovereign States

There is no clause in the Philadelphia constitution that requires a State to sit idly by and watch itself be destroyed while the federal government refuses to perform its duty to guard and protect the international border.  Indeed, the little-noticed Eleventh Amendment to that agreement proves rather decisively the primacy of the States in the State-federal relation.  Gov Abbott, therefore, . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2021/04/garlington-we-dont-need-crybabies-and-do-nothings-gov-abbott/ .

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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 Good Things Happening in Mexico, Part III: The Lowest Abortion Rate in the World

 

The [u]nited States and Mexico are just the opposite when it comes to violent crime:  Mexico has one of the highest overall violent crime rates in the world but the lowest abortion rate (abortion is actually illegal in all but a couple of places there); the uS on the other hand has a low overall violent crime rate but one of the highest abortion rates (and where abortion is legally acknowledged as a ‘right’).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-53584575

https://www.hrw.org/legacy/women/abortion/mexico.html

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/violent-crime-rates-by-country

Which is worse?  Grown men and women whose natural passions for necessary things like money and other possessions have grown disordered?  Or mothers and fathers and doctors, natural protectors and healers, who do what is unnatural - killing children in the womb? 

It seems likely that judgment will fall heaviest on the latter (though the first will by no means escape the attacks of the demons they have invited by their actions). 

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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: ‘Want Better Leadership? Look in the Mirror!’

‘Why are we governed by people who s-ck?’, we have been asked.  It is because most of us have become such a lousy bunch of people ourselves.  In places where elections determine the greater share of those who govern, the latter become more or less a mirror of the ones who choose them.

Not everything was rosy back then, but it is nevertheless the misnamed ‘Dark Ages’ that condemn us for our lack of virtue in a number of critical areas.  The little hamlet of Elton in England, circa the 13^th century, described in detail by Frances and Joseph Gies (Life in a Medieval Village, HarperPerennial, New York, 1991) will serve well as an example. 

First is the sense of community and cooperation that prevailed in those earlier times.  Agriculture was the main occupation of most people, but they performed the work together on land held commonly by all (the open field system).  The yield of crops belonged to those who had planted them, but there was nevertheless much cooperation with the other villagers to work out who got to plant where and when, etc. (pgs. 15-6)

Contrast this with today, when most people are so focused on themselves that their neighbor has become what Jean-Paul Sartre said:  ‘Hell is other people.’  And, tragically, COVID has made the feelings of distrust and impatience even worse.

Second is the attitude of the upper class to the lower class.  There were mutual duties shared between the two in medieval times.  Yes, the villagers had to hand over a share of their produce or labor to the manor lord of the village, but in return they received valuable things from him:  . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2021/04/garlington-want-better-leadership-look-in-the-mirror/ .

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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!