Lessons for the South from Greece’s War for Independence

 

As the South ponders ways she can throw off the Yankee/globalist yoke, let her take note of how things unfolded in Greece in her struggle for freedom from the Ottoman Turks.  The Greeks’ trust in God, and in the help of the greatest Saint before God - the Mother of the Word of God, holding on to old speechways, etc. (but perhaps a little less attention to the misguided praise for ‘democratic values and principles’), should be guidestones for Dixie:

 

On the occasion of the feast of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos and the 200th anniversary of the Greek Revolution, which began on March 25, 1821, the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church issued an epistle to be read in church by all the hierarchs of the Church.

 

 . . . 

 

“Today is a day of remembrance, honor, and hope, in memory of the saints, New Martyrs, national martyrs, heroes, fighters, teachers of the nation, clergy and laity, men and women who gave everything for the homeland,” the epistle reads.

 

“We remember those who prepared the ground, those who preserved the faith, the language, and the national conscience, those who cultivated the fighting spirit, and those who kept the burning flame of hope.”

 

The hierarchs recall the words of St. Cosmas of Aetolia, who said that freedom would come as long as the people kept their Christian faith and Greek language and education. They also honor those who fell in the pre-revolutionary movements, and all those who “shed their blood in the battles, sieges, and naval battles of the Greek Revolution.”

 

“We hope and strive. We hope that everyone will remain free from all oppression and threats, relying on the holy faith of Christ and on democratic principles and values.”

 

The Synod calls on its flock to preserve what their ancestors fought for and walk with hope for the future, “bearing in mind that the future is what gives meaning to what preceded it—a future that reveals the presence of God in our lives.” Those who fought for freedom in 1821 would never have succeeded without faith in Christ, the hierarchs affirm.

 

It was specifically chosen to launch the Revolution on the feast of the Annunciation, the Synod recalls, in order “connect their struggle for the freedom of the homeland with the Orthodox faith and life, the face of the Panagia with their salvation.”

 

The Theotokos herself appeared in 1823, promising the Greeks that liberation would come, after which the icon of the Annunciation was miraculously found in Tinos.

 

 . . . 

 

--https://orthochristian.com/138232.html

The South has long admired much about Greek culture; let her now adopt the most important element of it - the Orthodox Faith Greece received from the hands of the Holy Apostle Paul himself.  As with Greece and elsewhere, that is where she will find true freedom.

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For more on the wonder-working Tinos icon of the Mother of God mentioned above:

https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2021/01/30/100379-icon-of-the-mother-of-god-tinos

https://full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com/2009/03/miraculous-icon-of-theotokos.html

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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: ‘Equal Sovereign Republics or a Single Oligarchy?’

 

We have deep concerns about kingless/headless governments that allow the passions of the body politic to run wild (and all too often provoke such discord, disorder, etc.).  However, since a return to Christian monarchy is not likely in the near term here in the States, it is important to preserve and strengthen the good features of the governing structure that is currently in place.  Thus, our continued support for nullification:

https://thehayride.com/2021/03/garlington-equal-sovereign-republics-or-a-single-oligarchy/

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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!

Defending Monarchy/Hierarchy

 

It is not unusual to see people in the South and in other parts of the union link monarchy with tyranny.  One very recent ensample comes from Mr Gail Jarvis:

https://www.reckonin.com/gail-jarvis/america-has-become-a-monarchy

This is part of the legacy of the American Revolution, which was inspired in some measure by the beliefs of the post-Great Schism ‘Enlightenment’ that man is autonomous (ruled by himself) and not heteronomous (ruled by others):

https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/paradiseutopia/when_pagandom_was_born_again_v

But in fact, kings and other nobles are a great blessing.  Mr John Horvat explains:

 . . . People need heroic figures who can embody the best of humanity. There need to be people who set the standard. Such figures are capable of great deeds and actions. However, their main role is to unite, harmonize and elevate society by the power of their presence. Take them away, and society decays into mediocrity and sloth.

Indeed, sociologists recognize this innate need, and some identify these figures as what are called  “representative characters.” As scholar Alasdair MacIntyre writes, such characters “are, so to speak, the moral representatives of their culture and they are so because of the way in which moral and metaphysical ideas and theories assume through them an embodied existence in the social world.”

“A representative character is a kind of symbol,” writes Robert N. Bellah. “It is a way by which we can bring together in one concentrated image the way people in a given social environment organize and give meaning and direction to their lives.”

 . . .

The role of true elites is to be representative characters that engage, encourage, coax and interpret all that is most excellent out of society. As for royals, they aim at such high standards that many often take them to be the stuff of fairy tales. That is why all levels of society find fulfillment in representative characters. Far from causing class struggle, these figures serve to unify society around sublime ideals. Their role is to sacrifice themselves for the common good of the nation.

Thus, the Queen commands the respect of everyone—even the two errant royals. Despite her shortcomings, she endures well into her nineties, representing the British nation with grace and dignity. She is a living symbol of stability, self-sacrifice, and decorum in a cold, cruel, and volatile world.

 . . . contrary to the populist spirit of the times, society needs good elites who can be those representative characters that sociologists claim are essential.

Society needs models, and youth need heroes. People are tired of ideological and partisan political agendas. There must be those who sacrifice for the common good.

Above all, this kind of society presupposes the help of God’s grace to overcome the weakness of fallen human nature. That is why true elites are naturally Christian. The supreme figure is Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who embraced the Cross and died on it to provide a divinely heroic model for all ages to come.

--https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2021/03/failure-meghan-harry-monarchy-elites-john-horvat.html

It is quite out of character for the South to reject Christian hierarchy; such was always a vital part of her identity.  The sooner she jettisons the un-Christian/Enlightenment baggage of the American Founding and Lincolnian Re-Founding, the better off she (and the world) will be.

***

A related word on this comes from Mr Paul Gottfried:

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/books-in-brief--america-s-revolutionary-mind/

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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!

Paul Gottfried’s Riddle

 

Mr Paul Gottfried asks one of the most compelling questions of our day:  ‘Why does the Right fold so readily?’  (https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/17/fighting-woke-tyrants/, via LewRockwell.com)

We offer an answer with equal earnestness:  Because of her willful separation from the Orthodox Church, everything in the West is infected with the same poison of rebellion against God:  from Roman Catholic to Quaker, from monarchist to Marxist.  There is no essential difference between a conservative and a liberal/progressive/Woke tyrant in the West; that is why conservatives ‘fold so readily’:  Their ideological enemies are actually their spiritual brethren, however dim the realization may be to all of them.  Thus, when the Right acquiesces to the Left, it is only the outward manifestation of the inner reality.  Those institutions that hew closest to what remains of Orthodoxy in the West decay the slowest, but all are dying, as may be readily seen in what is considered her most conservative institution, the papacy.

To paraphrase Fyodr Tyutchev, one of the leading men of letters in Russia in the 19^th hundredyear, there are only two forces at work in the world:  Revolution and the Orthodox Church.  The West has rejected Orthodoxy for the past 1,000 years, so now she lives in throes of Revolution.

Outside the Orthodox Church, there is death; within, there is life.  Repent and find life, men of the West.

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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!

Drew Brees Retirement Hooplah (or Modern Day Religions, Part VI: Sports)

 

The uproar surrounding the retirement of New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees is another sign of the decline of traditional Southern culture.  That a sports celebrity deciding to no longer practice his ‘craft’ can draw the awed admiration of so many people, from plain folks to high government officials is an embarrassment, a mark of shame.  Louisiana’s Governor Jon Bel Edwards led this silly circus:

 

Saints Quarterback Drew Brees has announced his retirement from the NFL and many are saying thank you to number nine for the 15 years he gave to New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. Governor John Bel Edwards released a video message shortly after Brees announced his playing days are over.

 

“Thank you for putting New Orleans and Louisiana first, thank you for being a champion for our state, for our city, especially in a era that can sometimes be very challenging.”

 

 . . . 

 

--Taylor Sharp, https://louisianaradionetwork.com/2021/03/15/16877/

This statement is also very revealing:

 

 . . . 

 

Drew Brees did more for New Orleans than any other professional athlete ever had or ever could.

 

Brees raised our morale at a time when we were grasping for hope, he changed a franchise that was on a perpetual spiral of futility, he showed that greatness could sprout from the grounds of a city that has more things wrong than right, and he personified decency in a field where excessive living is en vogue.

 

Merci Beaucoup Drew.

 

--Mike Bayham, https://thehayride.com/2021/03/bayham-merci-beaudrew-to-nolas-patron-saint/

While acknowledging that Drew Brees gives some of his millions to charity, professional athletes overall do very little to strengthen the core of the societies/cultures of which they are a part.  By and large, one would be justified in saying that they weaken them, in that their mass spectacles distract from more meaningful pursuits, giving instead a cheap psychic thrill that more and more resembles a substitute for real communities and for traditional religious gatherings and practices, as some folks openly admit:

 

FAW: Now the former law school dean and distinguished legal scholar has written a most unusual book: “Baseball as a Road to God.” That’s right, baseball.

 

SEXTON: The similarities between baseball and religion abound. The ballpark as cathedral; saints and sinners; the curses and blessings. But then what I’m arguing is beyond that surface level, there’s a fundamental similarity between baseball and religion which goes to the capacity of baseball to cause human beings, in a context they don’t think of as religious, to break the plane of ordinary existence into the plane of extraordinary existence. 

 

FAW: John Sexton says that what happens here is more than just a game—that it reveals a dimension beyond the eyes and mind letting us, in his words, “see through to another, sacred space”—what John Sexton calls “the ineffable.”

 

SEXTON: “Ineffable” is the word we use for things we can’t capture in our language. The ineffable is the character of this religious dimension, sometimes labeled God. We’re talking about this place where the depth of being is.

 

FAW: And baseball can be an avenue to that?

 

SEXTON: Baseball is an avenue to that in the sense that there is this dimension that we experience in baseball of that which can’t be put into words. 

 

FAW: In baseball, as in religion, says Sexton, the seemingly impossible is part of the game: 

 

In 1956, when hard-drinking journeyman pitcher Don Larsen went from sinner to saint by hurling the only perfect game in World Series history; when Willie Mays made that seemingly impossible catch and throw in the 1954 World Series; and in 1955, when Sexton’s beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, after decades of coming oh-so-close, won their first and only World Series with an extraordinary catch made by Sandy Amaros. Those moments in baseball, like religion, says John Sexton, give a glimpse of something beyond.

 

SEXTON: The beauty and the experience in the intensified heightened sensitivity of the moment that comes with the Amaros catch, that comes with the Mays catch and pivot. The ecstasy of those moments can for some transport one to this transcendent plane.

 

 . . . 

 

FAW: Sexton says he chooses baseball over other sports because, like religion, it has its own sacred relics, prophets, and rituals. And like religion there is a kind of timelessness.

 

 . . . 

 

--https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/04/26/april-26-2013-baseball-and-religion/16067/

 

The Chicago Cubs have been around for less than 150 years. The human race has been around for several thousand years. By all accounts, there have been quite a few gatherings of human beings since 3000 B.C. With an estimated five million in attendance, the World Series parade for the Cubs on Friday afternoon tops almost all of them.

 

According to historians, the Cubs parade ranks seventh in history. The crowd was also the largest ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. The parade is also the biggest non-religious gathering in human history, although some would be more than ready to make the argument that seeing the Cubs win was a religious experience.

 

 . . .

 

Here is the list of the top-10 biggest gatherings that the Cubs and the city of Chicago have joined:

 

1.       Kumbh Mela pilgrimage, India, 2013 — 30 million

2.      Arbaeen Festival, Iraq, 2014 — 17 million

3.      Funeral of CN Annaduri, India, 1969 — 15 million

4.      Funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran, 1989 — 10 million

5.      Papal gathering in the Philippines, 2015 — 6 million

6.      World Youth Day, Philippines, 1995 — 5 million

7.      Chicago Cubs World Series parade, USA, 2016 — 5 million

8.     Funeral of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt, 1970 — 5 million

9.      Rod Stewart concert, Brazil, 1994 — 3.5 million

10.  Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, 2012 — 3 million

 

 . . . 

 

--Joshua Sadlock, https://fansided.com/2016/11/04/cubs-parade-7th-largest-gathering-human-history/

 

Also:  https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/cubs/ct-cubs-religion-met-20161010-story.html

Steering back towards Christianity, there are a number of sacred feast days on the Orthodox Church’s calendar in March.  Here are just a few that have connections with the South:

St David of Wales – March 1^st

St Benedict of Nursia – 14^th

St Alexis of Rome, the Man of God – 17^th

St Patrick of Ireland – 17^th

St Edward, King of England and Martyr – 18th

St Cuthbert the Wonderworker of all England – 20^th

The Annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel to the Mother of God – 25^th

Where are the tweets and video messages from journalists, governors, etc., in honor of any of them?  There are very few or none at all (we might perhaps see something about St Patrick every once in a while).  And yet they have done much more to shape and sustain true Western Christian culture than anything any sports athlete has ever done.

If New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana/Who Dat Nation want Drew Brees as their ‘patron saint’, they should expect the continued collapse of their society. 

It is by honoring and befriending the true saints of our forebears, the pillars who uphold real Western civilization (that which is rooted in holiness, in the Orthodox Faith of the Apostles), the exemplars of Western-ness, that will bring about any real hope of improvement in Louisiana and in the rest of the South.

 

 --Picture via https://whodat.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!