The 'Invisible Hand' of Self-interest Isn't Enough to Establish a Moral Economic System

Ralph Ancil makes the case in an essay at The Imaginative Conservative.

Why We Need More Small Farms and Fewer Industrial Farms

King Obama

There seems to be quite a lot of confusion about kingship today.  Seeing President Obama mocked as 'King Obama' due to his unlawful actions regarding Libya, guns, etc. is proof of it.  Yes, a king often does possess the power to make new laws; nevertheless, if those new laws purposefully and repeatedly conflict with the canons of the Church or with good, long-held national traditions, then he forfeits the title of 'king' and can be opposed if that is what the Church counsels.

A true Christian king is not to be feared.  Dr Vladimir Moss, with the help of Nicolas Berdiaev, explains why below.  The differences between a despot like Pres Obama and a king worthy of the name (called an 'autocrat' or 'tsar' in the passage quoted) will hopefully be made more clear.

In the eighteenth century the Russian autocracy gradually developed in the direction of western absolutist monarchy or despotism. The difference between autocracy and despotism was well characterized by Nicholas Berdiaev as follows: “[In the Orthodox autocracy] there are no rights to power, but only obligations of power. The power of the tsar is by no means absolute, unrestricted power. It is autocratic because its source is not the will of the people and it is not restricted by the people. But it is restricted by the Church and by Christian righteousness; it is spiritually subject to the Church; it serves not its own will, but the will of God. The tsar must not have his own will, but he must serve the will of God. The tsar and the people are bound together by one and the same faith, by one and the same subjection to the Church and the righteousness of God. Autocracy presupposes a wide national social basis living its own self-sufficient life; it does not signify the suppression of the people’s life. Autocracy is justified only if the people has beliefs which sanction the power of the tsar. It cannot be an external violence inflicted on the people. The tsar is autocratic only if he is a truly Orthodox tsar. The defective Orthodoxy of Peter the Great and his inclination towards Protestantism made him an absolute, and not an autocratic monarch. Absolute monarchy is a child of humanism… In absolutism the tsar is not a servant of the Church. A sign of absolute monarchy is the subjection of the Church to the State. That is what happened to the Catholic Church under Louis XIV. Absolutism always develops a bureaucracy and suppresses the social life of the people.”

Source:  Vladimir Moss, Autocracy, Democracy and Despotism - Part 2: The Age of Reason (1453-1789), 2012, p. 390.

What's in Your Vaccine? Why Does It Matter?

From an important new article at Natural News:

Have you ever wondered what's really in vaccines? According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's vaccine additives page, all the following ingredients are routinely used as vaccine additives:

• Aluminum - A light metal that causes dementia and Alzheimer's disease. You should never inject yourself with aluminum.

• Antibiotics - Chemicals that promote superbugs, which are deadly antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that are killing tens of thousands of Americans every year.

• Formaldehyde - A "pickling" chemical used to preserve cadavers. It's highly toxic to the nervous system, causing blindness, brain damage and seizures. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services openly admits that formaldehyde causes cancer. You can see this yourself on the National Toxicology Program website, featuring its 12th Report on Carcinogens.

There, the formaldehyde Fact Sheet completely neglects to mention formaldehyde in vaccines. This is the "dirty little secret" of government and the vaccine industry. It does state, however, that "...formaldehyde causes myeloid leukemia, and rare cancers including sinonasal and nasopharyngeal cancer."

• Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) - A neurotoxic chemical called an "excitotoxin." It causes brain neurons to be overexcited to the point of death. MSG is toxic even when consumed in foods, where it causes migraine headaches and endocrine system damage. You should NEVER inject MSG into your body. But that's what health workers do when they inject you with vaccines.

• Thimerosal - A methyl mercury compound that causes severe, permanent nervous system damage. Mercury is highly toxic to the brain. You should never touch, swallow or inject mercury at any dose. There is no safe dose of mercury! Doctors and vaccine pushers LIE to you and say there is no mercury in vaccines. Even the CDC readily admits vaccine still contain mercury (thimerosal).

Before you take a flu shot or have your kids vaccinated for anything, ask if any of these poisons are in them.  Don't be bullied into getting a shot; too much is at stake. 

Staying Put

Contrary to what the wise men of our age tell us, it is not a great blessing that we can easily pull up stakes and move to another town in an instant.  What we need is stability, as Fr Tryphon tells us in his short commentary.

It's Not a Free Market . . .

. . . when only a handful of huge corporations direct the economic and political affairs of a country.  And that is exactly where we are today in this unfortunate union of States.  We are heading back, ever more rapidly, to the pre-Christian world of slavery which existed in the pagan Roman Empire, the very world of slavery that men like Hilaire Belloc warned us about in so many of their works.  Richard Aleman, writing in the same spirit as they, shows just how far down that path we have gone.

Hope for Deliverance

Russia in the 17^th century, much as we are today, was in the midst of a great ‘time of troubles’.  But she was delivered from them by a miracle from God, through the Kazan Icon of Our Lady.  (The story is related briefly below.) 

Seeing, then, what is possible through this wonderworking Icon, we ought to dedicate ourselves to praying before it as well.  These are the hymns the Church sings to Our Lady of Kazan.  Offer them to the Most Holy Mother of God along with your own heartfelt prayers, as often as you think best, that we might receive Her gracious help.  For Our Lady is not hard-hearted toward those who ask for Her intercessions.  (Skete.com and the Holy Trinity Monastery offer this Icon if you would like to have a copy in your home.  If you would like to order from the HTM, please read this.  Another option: Holy Transfiguration Monastery.)    

Troparion (Tone 4)

O fervent intercessor, Mother of the Lord Most High,

thou dost pray to thy Son Christ our God and savest all who seek thy protection.

O Sovereign Lady and Queen,

help and defend all of us who in trouble and trials,

in pain and burdened with sins, stand in thy presence before thine icon,

and who pray with compunction, contrition, and tears and with unflagging hope in thee.

Grant what is good for us,

deliverance from evil, and save us all, O Virgin Mother of God,

for thou art a divine protection to thy servants.

Kontakion (Tone 8)

O peoples, let us run to that quiet good haven,

to the speedy helper, the warm salvation, to the Virgin's protection.

Let us speed to prayer and hasten to repentance.

For the Mother of God pours out her mercy, anticipates needs, and averts disasters

for her patient and God-fearing servants.

(Hymns from OrthodoxWiki.)

This Christmas season, let us honor Our Lord by venerating His Most Pure Mother, Our Lady of Kazan, Protectress of the Southland, Our Hope for Deliverance.

--A short account of the Kazan Icon of Our Lady, as found in Vladimir Moss, Autocracy, Despotism and Democracy: Part 2, 2012, pgs. 213, 217, http://www.orthodoxchristianbooks.com/downloads/381_AUTOCRACY_PART_2.pdf :

“Wonderful is the Providence of God,” writes Protopriest Lev Lebedev, “in bringing him to the summit of ecclesiastical power at this terrible Time of Troubles… In 1579 he had been ordained to the priesthood in the St. Nicholas Gostinodvordsky church in Kazan. And in the same year a great miracle had taken place, the discovery of the Kazan icon of the Most Holy Theotokos. This was linked with a great fall in the faith of Christ in the new land, the mocking of the Orthodox by the Muslims for failures in harvest, fires and other woes. A certain girl, the daughter of a rifleman, through a vision in sleep discovered on the place of their burned-down house an icon of the Mother of God. Nobody knew when or by whom it had been placed in the ground. The icon began to work wonders and manifest many signs of special grace. The whole of Kazan ran to it as to a source of salvation and intercession from woes. The priest Hermogen was a witness of all this. He immediately wrote down everything that had taken place in connection with the wonderworking icon and with great fervour composed a narrative about it. The glory of the Kazan icon quickly spread through Russia, many copies were made from it, and some of these also became wonderworking. The Theotokos was called “the fervent defender of the Christian race” in this icon of Kazan. It was precisely this icon and Hermogen who had come to love it that the Lord decreed should deliver Moscow and Russia from the chaos of the Time of Troubles and the hands of the enemies. . . .

“On the advice of Patriarch Hermogen, the holy Kazan icon of the Mother of God was taken into the levy of Minin and Pozharsky.

“In the autumn of 1612 the second levy was already near Moscow. But it did not succeed in striking through to the capital. Their strength was ebbing away. Then the levies laid upon themselves a strict three-day fast and began earnestly to pray to the Heavenly Queen before her Kazan icon. At this time Bishop Arsenius, a Greek by birth, who was living in a monastery in the Kremlin, and who had come to us in 1588 with Patriarch Jeremiah, after fervent prayer saw in a subtle sleep St. Sergius. The abbot of the Russian Land told Arsenius that ‘by the prayers of the Theotokos judgement on our Fatherland has been turned to mercy, and that tomorrow Moscow will be in the hands of the levy and Russia will be saved!’ News of this vision of Arsenius was immediately passed to the army of Pozharsky, which enormously encouraged them. They advanced to a decisive attack and on October 22, 1612 took control of a part of Moscow and Chinatown. Street fighting in which the inhabitants took part began. In the fire and smoke it was difficult to distinguish friend from foe. On October 27 the smoke began to disperse. The Poles surrendered….