The distinctive character of Americanism is that the attack against quality and personality is not put into effect by the brute force of a Marxist dictator and the mind of the State, but it happens almost spontaneously, by the ways of a civilization ignorant of ideals higher than wealth, consumption, productivity, production without brakes. Therefore, through a worsening and a reduction to the absurd of what Europe herself chose, the same patterns have taken, or are taking, form there. But primitivism, mechanism, and brutality remain so much more on one side than the other. In a certain sense, Americanism is more dangerous for us than communism, because it is a type of Trojan horse. When the attack against the residual values of European tradition is effectuated in the direct and naked forms characteristic of Bolshevik ideology or Stalinism, some reactions still reawaken, certain lines of resistance, even if ephemeral, can be maintained. Things are different when the same evil acts in a more subtle way and the transformations take place on the plane of the general customs and visions of life, as is the case for Americanism. Enduring this influence with a light heart in the name of democracy, Europe is already predisposed for the final abdication, so that it could even happen without even the need for a military disaster, but it will arrive, through “progressive” path, after a final social crisis, at more or less at the same point. Again, it doesn’t stop here halfway. Americanism, willing it or not, works for its apparent enemy, for collectivism.Source
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Americanism
Friday, July 27, 2012
Usury Condemned in Poetry
Kay, the king's steward, wise in economies, said:
"Good; these cover the years and the miles
and talk one style's dialects to London and Omsk.
Traffic can hold now and treasure be held,
streams are bridged and mountains of ridged space
tunnelled; gold dances deftly across frontiers.
The poor have choice of purchase, the rich of rents,
and events move now in a smoother control
than the swords of lords or the orisons of nuns.
Money is the medium of exchange."
Charles Williams
Belloc would be proud
I am currently reading David Brown’s Palmerston; A Biography.
In 1846 Palmerston had threatened the government of Spain with military intervention if it defaulted on its bond interest payments. Palmerston faced a Chartist candidate, George Harney, at the general election in his Tiverton constituency. At the hustings debate, Harney said Palmerston’s threat to Spain was unjustifiable:
“These Spanish bondholders are English capitalists, who lent some millions of money to the government of Spain, not, as has been represented, because they were anxious to help the people of that country to obtain “Liberal institutions”, but because they were promised a higher rate of interest than they could get at home. That money had been derived from the labour of the English people.”
Harney argued that Palmerston’s foreign policy was simply to deploy the resources of the state to defend the interests of the rich.
The Tiverton crowd greeted this assertion with “immense cheering” and Harney had a clear majority at the show of hands at the hustings, which was attended by most of the adult population of Tiverton. He withdrew from the actual ballot, however, in protest at the extremely limited franchise – only about 600 people in the constituency had the vote.
George Harney, forgotten hero. We could do with him today.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Barren Fig Tree
If Jesus was really God, wouldn't He know how to talk to trees, as well as to people (from the greater, to the lesser)?
Monday, July 23, 2012
Mystery of Death
Two very good points:
1. Those who "see God" in this life do not have to wait for a Last Judgement. So there is some huge reward for being saintly or mystical or magical enough in this life to behold the Creator.
2. Heavenly life is just a continuation of this one. This is not purely Orthodox dogma - Bo Yin Ra teaches this as well :
Overall, we must experience daily, as St. John Chrysostom says, that the present life is an “inn”. We entered this inn, we live, but we must take care to depart in good hope, without leaving anything here in order not to lose what is there. Furthermore, all of us Christians should realize that death has been defeated by the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ, that communion with Christ is a continuous transcendence of death and of the fear of death, that the exit of the soul from the body is a course towards the heavenly Church and the encounter with Christ, the Panagia and the saints, that the soul will return to the body, and the body will be resurrected and live eternally, according to the way it lived on this earth.
3. Saints do not "sleep" but are actively praying for earth in the Divine Liturgy, until they reunite with the body. There are (therefore) two kinds of saints - those who are already "judged" and see God and are in their new bodies, and those who await the Last Judgement but are "saved".
Live the way you want to, in the next life, now.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Who Looks Out With My Eyes?
Source
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Cute Nihilists
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Capricho_43%2C_El_sue%C3%B1o_de_la_raz%C3%B3n_produce_monstruos.jpg)
"The modern notion of egalitarian progress preceded Darwin, and the full implications of this progress looked quite different after Darwin. Just as some whites once considered blacks so racially distinct that sexual intercourse was considered bestiality, progress would now demand that
this stigmatization of bestiality be deemed uncivilized altogether. Bestiality emerges as the cutting edge of civilization. Discrimination against bestiality is thus barbarism. Marriage between human animals and nonhuman animals should be legalized and normalized. Despised animals of all species should emerge from their hiding corners. Ugly creatures of all species unite! At some point, the collective accumulation of rights would seem to snowball into a gargantuan interspecies orgy.
Heterosexual bestiality between humans and other animals
would be followed by the acceptance of homosexual
bestiality. The nascent gay, lesbian, transgender chimpanzee
rights movement would be followed by the liberation of
queer koalas and bestial butterflies."
Source
Sad waste of intellect - obviously "smarts" doesn't correlate to much, if it comes to this. I have more faith in the Chevalier de Sangrael. But don't laugh, these are our "elites" of America - perhaps the Slavic world can raise the banner of the suffering Christ Victor against it?
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Crucem Sanctem Subiit
- CRUCEM sanctam subiit,
- qui infernum confregit,
- accinctus est potentia,
- surrexit die tertia. Alleluia.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Don Colacho
Source
Monday, July 16, 2012
The Parties are Over
Even the conservatives are waking up to what has happened (when liberals "wake up", they either convert to traditional men, or else go into a deeper dream state worse than the first, so I hold no hope of their "grouping", but this is a promising trend, because conservatives still have some good instincts).
As I explained to my boss recently, I disagree vehemently with either liberals or conservatives - but here is a difference. If the Left lived up to its own standards, I would still be obligated to oppose them, come what may (and I'll note here that I might even include the "classical liberal" of old times in this boat of the Left, as much as I love Lord Acton). However, if the conservative party lived up to its own standards, I would be proud to denote myself a factional party man. Except of course, they can't, because factions and parties are doomed by their false foundation, which is collective, rather than built upon individual enlightenment.
In this vein of thought, I think a reworking of classical liberalism is in order - there is much to be harvested out and explained and kept, but the fundamental idea that "man is born free" is totally skewed. In fact, it is a relatively new propaganda item to even claim that this is what "classical liberals" (even men like John Adams) ever taught to begin with. Jefferson and Paine, maybe & yes, but even the Founding Father revolutionaries knew a mob-man when they saw one, or a vulgar couchpotarian.
Classical liberals were generally men of aristocratic leaning (or else they openly sided with revolutionaries like Garibaldi), who believed in the maximum amount of freedom that was possible, feasible, desirable, and useful (in Baron Ledhin's description). In an expanding world of European chivalry with industrial benefits and centuries of Christian education behind it, this may have had a rather artificially large scope. Unless we are willing to go back to the medieval village, our Empire will have to be governed by mandarins. The question is, will we qualify them by forcing them to master virtue and "useless knowledge" (read, metaphysics and a capacity for noetic appreciation of supersensible truths), or will we allow them to be the "bright and shiny calculators and self-made opportunists" which they have evolved of late?
It's quite true to say today that Democracy has become Kakistocracy (as it had to, were we to read the Greeks and Romans). There is no such thing as Large Scale Direct Democracy, except in Hell. Hell is the perfect democracy.
The entire Western process has degraded the spiritual castes (estates or levels of being) and its order into mush, all in the guise of Sweetness and Light. There will be no answer, until the virtuous defeat evil by converting it to good. Then we will have rule by those who are annointed, rather than self-annointed.
Do you want to be ruled by bankers and career opportunists, or a wise man who reluctantly rules "in the path of heaven"?
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Supernaturally Natural - the Pneumatic
— Frithjof Schuon, "Esoterism as Principle and as Way"
General Law
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Russia and the Coming Dawn of the New Era
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Napoleon & Christ
‘. . .I think I understand something of human nature, and I tell you, all these were men, and I am a man; none else is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than man. I have inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic devotion that they would die for me . . . but to do this it was necessary that I should be visibly present with the electric influence of my looks, of my words, of my voice.
‘When I saw men and spoke to them, I lighted up the flame of self-devotion in their hearts . . . Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man towards the Unseen that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space.
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‘He asks for the human heart; He will have it entirely to Himself; He demands it unconditionally ; and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of man, with all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexation to the Empire of Christ.
“All who sincerely believe in Him experience that remarkable supernatural love towards Him. This phenomenon is unaccountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of man’s creative powers.
‘Time, the great destroyer, is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame; time can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit to its range. This it is which strikes me most; I have often thought of it. This it is which proves to me quite convincingly the divinity of Jesus Christ.’”
Source
Thanks to my sister, for source
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Advice for Spiritual Combat
Lorenzo de Scopoli