Were they trying to be funny?

"Essentially, the left’s rule is that nothing bad—no matter how true—may be said about Muslims or Islam and nothing good—no matter how true—may be said of Christians or Christianity."

In the Daily Signal, Dennis Prager writes,

...Only leftists understand that one must vote left no matter who the Democrat is, no matter who the Republican opponent is. Leftists are completely interchangeable: There is no ideological difference among the 20 or so Democrats running for president. Mayor Pete Buttigieg is not one degree to the right of Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren.

...That is why it is important to understand Clinton and Obama’s tweets: to understand the left, not to understand her or him.

Here are the tweets:

Obama: “The attacks on tourists and Easter worshippers in Sri Lanka are an attack on humanity. On a day devoted to love, redemption, and renewal, we pray for the victims and stand with the people of Sri Lanka.”

...Three hours later, Clinton tweeted: “On this holy weekend for many faiths, we must stand united against hatred and violence. I’m praying for everyone affected by today’s horrific attacks on Easter worshippers and travelers in Sri Lanka.”

...As they both spelled “worshipers” the same idiosyncratic way and used the term “Easter worshippers,” it is likely they either had the same writers or Clinton copied Obama.

Here’s what’s critical: Neither used the word “Christians.” And in order to avoid doing so, they went so far as to make up a new term—”Easter worshippers”—heretofore unknown to any Christian.

When Jews were murdered at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Clinton mentioned the synagogue in a tweet. But in her post-Sri Lanka tweet, despite the bombing of three churches filled with Christians, Clinton made no mention of church or churches.

In a tweet after the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand, she wrote that her heart broke for “the global Muslim community.” But in her latest tweet, not a word about Christians or the global Christian community.

Obama similarly wrote in his tweet about New Zealand that he was grieving with “the Muslim community” over the “horrible massacre in the Mosques.” But in his tweet about Sri Lanka, there is no mention of Christians or churches.

The reason neither of them mentioned Christians or churches is that the left has essentially forbidden mention of all the anti-Christian murders perpetrated by Muslims in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and of all the Muslim desecration of churches in Europe, Africa, and anywhere else.

This is part of the same phenomenon—that I and others have documented—of British police and politicians covering up six years of rape of 1,400 English girls by Muslim “grooming gangs” in Rotherham and elsewhere in England.

Essentially, the left’s rule is that nothing bad—no matter how true—may be said about Muslims or Islam and nothing good—no matter how true—may be said of Christians or Christianity.

She made sure to condemn “Islamophobia,” but she wrote not a word about the far more destructive and widespread hatred of Christians in the Muslim world, seen in Muslims’ virtual elimination of the Christian communities in the Middle East, the regular murder and kidnappings of Coptic Christians in Egypt, and the murder of Christians in Nigeria.

She calls on “leaders everywhere” to condemn “white supremacist terrorists,” one of the smallest hate groups on Earth, but never calls on leaders everywhere to condemn Islamist terrorists, the largest hate group on Earth.

These two tweets tell you a lot about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But far more importantly, they tell you a lot about the left.

Read more here.

Where are Christian leaders in Europe and America?

Tucker Carlson's show last night focused quite a bit on the world's Christians. Where are our Christian leaders? Why have they not spoken out against the killings in Egypt on Palm Sunday? In Europe from 2010-2015 there were 5.6 million more deaths than births among Christians, while Muslims increased. Now our globe is 31% Christian, and 24% Muslim, with Muslims gaining and Christians dropping.

Tucker also is focusing all week on America's opioid problem, which is the worst drug addiction crisis in American history. Opioids kill 91 people per day in America. 4 out of 5 addicts started with prescription painkillers. 3310 people in Ohio died of heroin overdoses in 2015.

Author Christopher Caldwell reports that it escalated in the 1990s when drug companies like Purdue lobbied for the treatment of pain relief as a "human right." The Sackler family that owns Purdue have become billionaires. There are opioids called fentanyl being produced in Mexico and China that are extremely dangerous.

Here is last night's Tucker Carlson show.

Unmerited grace

David Goldman

What is the difference between Christianity and Judaism? It isn’t love versus law, or works versus faith; those are canards. It isn’t Incarnation as such; my late teacher Michael Wyschogrod showed that Incarnation is a Jewish idea, specifically that God’s presence (Shekhinah) dwells in the flesh and blood of the people Israel (Christians, he quipped, concentrate that into one single Jew). It isn’t even the different persons of God in the Trinity. Judaism teaches different attributes of God, particularly the Attribute of Justice and the Attribute of Mercy, although we do not of course regard them as different “persons.”

The great gulf fixed between Jews and Christians is the notion of unmerited grace. Unmerited grace is meaningless in the Jewish context. It isn’t that YHWH is a more demanding deity than Jesus of Nazareth. Jews are expected to be God’s partners, and Imitatio Dei for Jews means participating in the continuing work of creation. We do not wait for the Kingdom of Heaven; we build heaven into the minutia of daily life. Performance of the mitzvoth (commandments) is not a means to accumulate sufficient points to win a place in heaven; it is the construction of heaven on earth. The Sabbath is a foretaste of the World to Come, a portion of eternity separated from quotidian time.

Read the rest of "Spengler's" letter to Andrew Klavan here.

Andrew Klavan's response is here.
One excerpt:

Among the obstacles to my baptism was my deep desire never to seem to have denied my Jewish heritage. In truth, I never knew myself as a Jew at all until I knew myself in Christ. I know why that offends some Jewish people, but it shouldn't. At his call, I turned toward Christ. I never turned away from His brother and sister Jews, and never will.

Ignoring Islam, hating Christianity

Why do Leftists hate Christianity, but ignore Islam? Bookworm addressed that topic recently.

Christians as a whole, whether they belong to big churches or small ones, do not embrace or practice terrorism to achieve their political or religious goals.

Muslims, by contrast, routinely practice terrorism to achieve goals that are simultaneously religious and political, owing to Islam’s fusion of God and state. Even though it’s remarkably simple to tie Islam to terrorism (9/11, the underwear bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, the attempted Portland Christmas tree massacre, the Boston Marathon bombing), Leftists scurry around like cockroaches exposed to the light in their desperate attempt to avoid acknowledging Islam’s violent heart.

...modern Christianity and genuine Judaism (as opposed to the hard Leftism that masquerades as “reform Judaism”) are the most humane, civilizing forces the world has ever seen. With their focus on justice and grace, they rid the world of slavery, ended child labor, advanced women’s status and, in Israel’s case, fought a 60-year war without sinking to the level of her enemies. But the Left truly hates them and seeks to undermine them at every turn.

Read more here.

Christianity: Feminine or Masculine?

Brett and Kate McKay write in The Art of Manliness,

Last week we began a series which which is exploring the relationship between masculinity and Christianity — mainly, why it is that the more a man embraces the former, the seemingly less likely he is to adopt the latter.

In our first article, we laid out statistics which show that all around the world, and in almost every Christian church and denomination, women outnumber men. Women are far more likely to be involved in the Christian faith, to participate in church, and to feel that their religion is important to them. In addition, we demonstrated that this disparity is not rooted in the fact that females are simply more religious than males overall, as Christianity is the only major world religion where men are significantly less committed than women.

As we have documented in numerous articles on AoM, the traits and qualities that are considered “manly” have been consistent for thousands of years, and universal to cultures around the world. While a boy was born a male, he had to earn the title of man, and he did so by proving himself in tests of skill and self-control, developing his autonomy, self-reliance, and toughness, embracing risk, struggle, and conflict, and competing with his peers to earn status. Physical strength was valued, along with other martial virtues like courage; battlefield prowess has always been central to the code of masculinity. Overall, a male had to excel in the “3 P’s of Manhood” — Protection, Provision, and Procreation — in order to be considered a “real man.”

Manhood was never a private affair — a boy was initiated into it by his community and it had to be repeatedly re-proven in the public arena thereafter. A man was thus primarily concerned with his honor — with having a reputation worthy of the respect of his fellow men. To maintain that reputation, if he got pushed, he pushed back.

Finally, a man’s primary identity came from his membership in a tribe, and his primary social unit was the gang — a small, close-knit honor group. Honor groups were exclusive in nature — not every man could belong — and were suffused with an “us vs. them” dynamic. A man’s loyalty was intense — the willingness to sacrifice, to bleed, and even die for one’s people has always been central to the ancient code of masculinity — but such loyalty only extended to a man’s comrades and kin.

It is little wonder then that some have seen the Christian religion as positively antithetical to the central components of traditional masculinity.

From this perspective, Jesus is the paragon of the “soft,” gentle virtues traditionally associated more with women than men, like kindness, compassion, forgiveness, caring, chastity, and humility. This is the Jesus who walks beside you on the beach, and carries you through trials.

Rather than committing violence and seeking to triumph over one’s foes, he asks followers to turn the other cheek and to love their enemies. Rather than glorying in competition and status, Christians are to beware of pride, to avoid comparing themselves to others, and to seek complete humility.

The body is seen as less important than the soul and earthly status is meaningless in the kingdom of God; worldly success doesn’t make you “better” than other people, as all are alike unto God. Not only will the strong be saved alongside the weak, power and wealth are, if anything, a hindering block to salvation, rather than an advantage. Jesus promised that the meek and poor would be exalted, while the rich and mighty would be brought low.

The Christian way is open to all — it is universal, rather than exclusive. It asks believers to overcome their inherent propensity towards tribalism in order to embrace the brotherhood of man. Strangers are to be loved as much as kin, as much as oneself.

The opinions of others matter little in comparison to the judgment of God. A man’s honor is thus primarily private rather than public in nature; it doesn’t come from the approval of peers, but arises from the possession of inner integrity and a clean conscience.

Finally, Christianity is based on submission — dependence on a martyr king; followers of Jesus must kneel before their savior and rely entirely on his merits to be saved.

An argument can be made for many of the above imperatives constituting the components of human excellence, but it would be difficult to say they’re distinctly related to manly excellence. In fact, one would be hard pressed not to view such tenets as direct contradictions of the ancient code of manhood.

Christianity, seen this way, might make you a good man, but it won’t make you good at being a man.

...Defenders of the masculinity of Christianity don’t deny that many of the tenets of the Christian gospel are “soft” in nature, but argue that they are joined by an equal, if not greater number, of “hard” virtues and strenuous requirements that align with the code of manhood in many respects. In fact, there are those, like Catholic scholar Leon J. Podles who argue that the way of Christ is primarily masculine in nature — that “Women can participate in this spiritual masculinity, but men could be expected to have a greater natural understanding of the pattern.”

Podles and others say that while the loving, merciful, nurturing, gentle side of Jesus represents one part of his character, he has another, often ignored side — a lion in contrast to the better-known lamb — marked by traits like justice, boldness, power, and self-mastery. This is Jesus the carpenter, the desert camper, the whip-cracker.

The man who said to “judge not” roundly condemned his critics.

The compassionate healer who championed children, cleansed the temple in a righteous rage.

The gentle sage who spoke of lilies and sparrows, rebuked his friend as Satan incarnate, and declared he had not “come to bring peace but a sword.”

The teacher who admonished his followers to “love thy neighbor as thyself” called Gentiles dogs, and at first reserved the teaching of his message for his own people. And while those “others” were eventually able to fully adopt his message, the Christian gospel hardly disavowed its “us vs. them” ethos; Jesus had no problem drawing lines between the sheep and the goats — those who were part of his tribe, and those who had no place in it. All would be welcome, as long as they lived a strenuous code of ethics.

Sharp of tongue, deft in debate, and unafraid of conflict, challenging the status quo, or causing offense, Jesus was anything but safe and predictable. Far from hiding in private solitude, and playing it small, Jesus was a public figure, a revolutionary who rigorously confronted the establishment, and who preached such a confrontational and audacious message that he was ultimately killed for it.

...In fact, during his life critics called him a lestes — a word that meant an insurrectionist, rebel, pirate, bandit. Though the label was often associated with violent thievery, Jesus practiced what anthropologists call “social banditry” — groups of men operating on the margins of society who refuse to submit to the control and value system of the ruling elite, and who fight for the justice, independence, and emancipation of the common people. While the existing power structure considers them criminals, the exploited see these outlaws as their champions.

Like all bandits of the time, Jesus hung out with a gang — twelve comrades — and he invited others to share the same risky, subversive, challenging life with him — to become brothers in suffering and the fight against oppression and sin. Taking up one’s cross wasn’t for the faint of heart; physical courage was at times needed, and moral courage was required in spades.

While Jesus went to his death as a martyr, the ethos of laying down one’s life for one’s friends fits with the code of manhood, as does the way he bore that death (and its prior torture) with an ironclad stoicism.

While Jesus does not directly charge his followers with fighting human foes (though there have been those who have found an implicit justification for such in the name of a righteous cause), many of the faith’s adherents have seen the gospel as a call to continue Christ’s cause by engaging in another kind of warfare — one waged on the spiritual plane. The Bible is full of references both to contest — what the ancient Greeks called agon — and to war. Individuals wrestle with God (both metaphorically and literally), and the apostle Paul refers to believers as “athletes” who must “train” their souls and run the race set before them. Believers are to gird themselves about with spiritual “armor,” and wield the “sword of the spirit” in battling unseen forces and directly confronting the conflict between good and evil.

C.S. Lewis thought that Christians should conceive of the world as “enemy-occupied territory,” and of themselves as sort of secret agents. “Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”

St. Ignatius de Loyola, a Spanish knight who converted after being wounded in a physical battle, founded the Society of Jesus for “whoever desires to serve as a soldier of God” and organized the Jesuits around a martial ethos. Ignatius saw, in the call to the discipleship, something very similar to the summons of an earthly king who is assembling an army for battle, and is looking for those who will be willing to live hard and die hard in service to the mission ahead:

“Whoever wishes to join me in this enterprise must be content with the same food, drink, clothing etc. as mine. So, too, he must work with me by day, and watch with me by night, etc., that as he had a share in the toil with me, afterwards, he may share in the victory with me.”

Different scholars have lent a different order, and more or fewer steps to the journey, but its three big stages are separation, initiation, and return, and these are some of the basics contained within those stages:

Hero receives a call to adventure
Leaves his ordinary life
Receives supernatural aid
Crosses a threshold that separates him from the world he has known
Gathers allies for his quest
Faces test, trials, and challenges
Undergoes an ordeal
Dies a physical or spiritual death
Undergoes transformation and apotheosis (becoming godlike)
Gains a reward or magic elixir
Journeys back home
Shares the reward and wisdom he’s gained with others
Becomes master of the two worlds he’s passed through
Gains greater freedom

...The pattern of the hero’s journey manifests itself in the rites of passage that tribes around the world used to initiate a young man into manhood: a boy would separate himself from the comfortable world of his mother, gather with male mentors, undergo a painful test of skill and/or toughness, die to his immaturity, rise to his manhood, and return to the tribe both with greater responsibilities — committed to serve and to sacrifice — and with new freedoms.

The story of Jesus also fits the pattern of the hero’s journey. A son descends from heaven, and with the supernatural aid of his heavenly father, becomes a mortal on earth. He gathers allies for his mission, faces tests and trials, undergoes a sacrificial ordeal, dies and resurrects, returns to the earth to announce that the power of sin and death has been conquered, and then ascends back into the heavens.

...Podles argues that “For all human beings, life is a struggle, but men know that it is their duty in a special way to be in the thick of that struggle, to confront the hard places in life and strive to know, in the fullest sense, what the mysteries of life and death are all about.” Christianity then, in his view, offers precisely the kind of epic, heroic struggle that appeals to the masculine soul.

So is the Christian religion more feminine or masculine in nature? Is it inherently better suited for men or women? Is it the faith of slaves or masters? Milquetoast or heroic?

Well, that depends on how you look at it, and who you ask.

Clearly, there are two sides to the coin. Indeed, Christianity is like that optical illusion where if you look at it one way, you see a woman, and if you look at it another, you see a lamp.

Its emphasis on kindness, acceptance, forgiveness, and humility represent those traits traditionally associated with femininity.

Its requirements of suffering, sacrifice, self-mastery, conflict, and contest represent those traits traditionally associated with masculinity.

Most Christians would say that setting up a masculine/feminine contrast creates a false dichotomy, and believe that Christ represents the perfect synergy of soft and hard qualities — that in fact this harmonious blend of all that constitutes human excellence is part of what makes him a god worth worshipping.

Read more here.

h/t Grim

Pathological altruism

Ed West writes at Lapidomedia,

...as Christianity has declined in Europe, its ideas have lived on and sort of mutated into the social justice religion which still derives much of its logic from the old faith.

The transgender cause, for instance, partly rests on the idea we each have a ‘soul’, rather than just biological mechanisms.

...Anti-racism has at its heart St Paul’s idea that we are all united in Christ, whatever our ethnic group, and the anti-racist story, epitomised by Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, would not have been possible without Christianity.

This universalism is what makes European Christian countries so nice to live in, but the downside is what is called ‘pathological altruism’; that is, altruism that harms the interests of one’s own group and favours people who might not reciprocate. This did not matter while the simple fact of geography kept different parts of the world distant, and when newcomers were expected to conform, but in the jet age – and especially the smart phone age – it presents a serious weakness.

The downside of Christian universalism is that it invites settlement from people who are themselves clannish and divide the world into an in-group and out-group, often between the believers and non-believers.

And for all the sympathy one might feel for the migrants as individuals, there is no way such large-scale movement of clannish people into decadent societies will not cause social unrest.

Importing significant numbers of people from outside Europe is clearly not in our continent’s interests, yet it is hard to make the moral argument because of the logic that we should not discriminate against the outsider, something ingrained in us by Christianity.

In some ways this is a misreading of the faith, for Christianity is about voluntary altruism, whereas forcing one’s poorer countrymen to make the sacrifices (and it would inevitably fall on the poor, whose neighbourhoods would be home to the refugees), is not.

But that is a complex argument to make, and it is one that no bishop does.

In fact the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches have long campaigned for more immigration to Britain, despite the evidence that it reduces social solidarity and harms the poor they are supposed to champion; the Catholic Church even campaigned for an immigration amnesty, even though similar schemes in Spain and the United States led to a huge increase in subsequent migration.

...It is sad and strange that the country that almost destroyed Europe with pathological nationalism now threatens it with pathological altruism; but one cannot ignore the role that Christianity and the churches have played in this debacle.

Read more here.

Tis the season to be offended by Christian symbols

John Dietrich explains in the American Thinker how, under Barack Obama's leadership, various governmental entities have been involved in a program to

eradicate all mention of Christianity without drawing excessive attention to their program. Professor James Hitchcock has written, “Far from being neutral, the American government is now in the position of favoring unbelief over belief and irreligion over religion.” When there is media attention to their efforts and a strong reaction they tend to deny that they were establishing a new policy.

Dietrich gives many examples, such as:

A memo from the Salem VA Medical Center states:

…Public areas may only be decorated in a manner that is celebratory of the winter season. Displays must not promote any religion. Please note that trees (regardless of the types of ornaments used) have been deemed to promote the Christian religion and will not be permitted in any public areas this year.

Read more here.

Why are Christians letting Muslims slaughter Christians?

Is it because of our moral relativism? Is it because we believe in love and forgiveness? Can't we hate evil? Have we allowed Barack Obama and his supporters to brainwash us in political correctness, while Obama releases billions of dollars to Iranian terrorists who are building nuclear weapons with which to kill us?

I just listened to Brigitte Gabriel, who was a guest on Craig Silverman's radio talk show on 710 KNUS. When she was a little girl in Lebanon her house was burned down by Muslims, because her family was Christian. For a long time she lived in a tiny bomb shelter. Since they had no food, her childhood chore was to gather up dandelions and chickpeas. After debugging the chickpeas, she gave them to her parents and they ate, while being surrounded by snipers. As a little girl she was raped by Muslims in the bomb shelter.

She exclaims sorrowfully, "My past is America's future." Is it? She points out that Christians rarely survive in the Middle East refugee camps. The refugees Obama is bringing to America are Muslims fleeing other Muslims, but they all believe in the same book, which teaches them that Christians and Jews have gone astray and must be killed. The Jews have been nearly wiped out in every Middle East country except Israel. Now it is happening to Christians.

When Brigitte was a little girl in Lebanon, it was only the Jews from Israel who saved the Christians. Now it's the Christians turn to save the Christians in the Middle East. They are being nearly wiped out, just like the Jews were in the Holocaust.

Islam is about war. Christianity is about forgiveness. Are we going off to slaughter at the hands of radical Islamists? Is that what our loving God wants for us? I don't think so. Enough of political correctness! Enough of moral relativism! It is time for Christians to stand up and stop the slaughter of Christians!

Placating biological impulses

Are the Muslims who are causing mayhem beta losers? That is what Chateau Heartiste commenter Balmung believes. Commenter tombreck2 adds,

Their conviction is to go to heaven where they are promised 72 virgin slaves.

Islam was created as a honey pot for beta males who look forward to death so that they can finally get laid by attractive women while the Muslims who are successful with women (royalty, upper Jihadigment of terrorist groups, oil barons, etc) don’t really give a shit about becoming a martyr because they have options.

Commenter khorne adds,

Whatever any of you might think Christianity is, it certainly doesn’t try to placate the biological impulses of the masses.

Commenter Wrong Side of History wonders,

Could the homosexual agenda be at least partly aimed at a growing population of low-status males who would otherwise be shut out of the sexual market?

Commenter Peterx wrote,

Islam’s a masculine, Alpha religion. Versus a feminized, Beta Christianity.

Read more here.

A revolutionary idea: children are treasured human beings!

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry writes at The Week,

We have forgotten just how deep a cultural revolution Christianity wrought. In fact, we forget about it precisely because of how deep it was: There are many ideas that we simply take for granted as natural and obvious, when in fact they didn't exist until the arrival of Christianity changed things completely. Take, for instance, the idea of children.

Today, it is simply taken for granted that the innocence and vulnerability of children makes them beings of particular value, and entitled to particular care. We also romanticize children — their beauty, their joy, their liveliness. Our culture encourages us to let ourselves fall prey to our gooey feelings whenever we look at baby pictures. What could be more natural?

In fact, this view of children is a historical oddity. If you disagree, just go back to the view of children that prevailed in Europe's ancient pagan world.

As the historian O.M. Bakke points out in his invaluable book When Children Became People, in ancient Greece and Rome, children were considered nonpersons.

...But really, Christianity's invention of children — that is, its invention of the cultural idea of children as treasured human beings — was really an outgrowth of its most stupendous and revolutionary idea: the radical equality, and the infinite value, of every single human being as a beloved child of God. If the God who made heaven and Earth chose to reveal himself, not as an emperor, but as a slave punished on the cross, then no one could claim higher dignity than anyone else on the basis of earthly status.

That was indeed a revolutionary idea, and it changed our culture so much that we no longer even recognize it.

Read more here.

A license for unlimited coercion

Atheist Robert Tracinski writes:

As far as I know, Christ was the first to insist that even the lowest, least significant person has value and that we will be judged by how we treat him.

Islam has no corresponding idea. The news is constantly bringing us a story of some imam somewhere declaring it consistent with Islam for a man to beat his wife, and the rise of the Islamic State in Syria has provided us current examples of Islam sanctioning slavery, including the capture and systematic rape of sex slaves. This is a religion that is still very much in the “rights of the conqueror” mode, in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

...If you add up all of these things, you see what an explosive mix you get from Islam: the expectation that religion dictates everything and that their religion ought to be totally dominant here in this world, combined with the notion that religion is not open to reason and leaves no room for doubt, questioning, or debate.

Read more here.

Obama's insipidly hypocritical and perverse comparison of Christianity to Islam

Jonah Goldberg believes that

The president’s comparison of Christianity to radical Islam defies logic.

...while some rationalized slavery and Jim Crow in the U.S. by invoking Christianity, it was ultimately the ideals of Christianity itself that dealt the fatal blow to those institutions. Just read any biography of Martin Luther King Jr. if you don’t believe me.

...President Obama can’t bring himself to call the Islamic State “Islamic,” but he’s happy to offer a sermon about Christianity’s alleged crimes at the beginning of the last millennium.

...We are all descended from cavemen who broke the skulls of their enemies with rocks for fun or profit. But that hardly mitigates the crimes of a man who does the same thing today. I see no problem judging the behavior of the Islamic State and its apologists from the vantage point of the West’s high horse, because we’ve earned the right to sit in that saddle.

Read more here.

Was Karl Marx a closet Christian?

Jillian Becker explains how Communism is inspired by Christianity.

What other ideology claims the moral high ground by justifying its every deed by claiming it to be in the service of the weak, the exploited, the injured, the underdog? Or to put it another way, Justification by Compassion?

What other dogma has it that the plight of the collective matters above all? What other teaches that it is it the duty of the individual to sacrifice himself, his personal wants, talents, aspirations to the greater good of the collective?[6]

In what other ideal society is private property abolished – “so that all will be equal in worldly possessions”? Who decries “privilege”? Who holds equality as the highest ideal?

In the name of what political orthodoxy were totalitarian tyrannies established whose spies ceaselessly sniffed out heretics to be tried, imprisoned, tortured and killed?

Where do we find revered texts predicting a cataclysmic event that will change everything, after which the chosen will live happily ever after in a perfect state, under the rule of an all-powerful government, while the rejected will be excluded, condemned, punished, and destroyed?

The answer is Communism, learnt from the unquestionable authority of Karl Marx.

Marxist Communism insists that the only power must be the Communist Party.

It predicts an inevitable Revolution as its all-transforming Apocalypse. After the Revolution the faithful – those whom the Communist Party spares – will live happily ever after in a perfect Communist state.

While Communism posits no divinities, it declares that something superior to man’s will determines what must inevitably happen – an hypostasis named History.

It rejects the notions of a supernatural authority and a non-material existence. But the rest of Marxist Communism’s essential doctrine is derived from only one source – Christianity. Though neither Marx nor any of his apostles seem to have been aware of it.

Read more here.

The importance of satire to freedom and liberty

Kudos to the Drudge Report for providing us with the cartoon that enraged Islamic terrorists, who planned and carried out the attack in Paris yesterday. Here is the cartoon.

Anybody know how to translate it into English? Every news source in the free world should publish the cartoon.

The French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which was targeted yesterday by Islamist terrorists, sounds similar to our The Onion. Ivan Plis writes that the magazine has a long history of mocking religions.

The magazine also posted a cartoon of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to its Twitter feed earlier today.

The magazine has also been critical of France’s Catholic-aligned political right, often expressed through parodies of Jesus, Mary, the pope and other Catholic figures. Last week’s cover promised “The True Story of Baby Jesus,” based on infancy narratives from outside the Biblical canon. In the cartoon, the holy infant appears in a flash between the legs of his mother, spread apart as if in gynecologist’s stirrups.

I'm sure it is just a matter of time before Christian terrorists open fire on the magazine. Wait, maybe not. That may be one difference between Christianity and Islam: Christian terrorists confine themselves to blowing up abortion clinics.

One of the cartoonists killed on Wednesday, known professionally as “Charb,” had said that the magazine’s goal was to make “Islam as banal as Catholicism,” so it is acceptable to scrutinize and ridicule it.

Charb (Stéphane Charbonnier) had been under police protection ever since appearing on a “wanted” list in Inspire, the digital magazine of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. He was famously quoted during the 2012 controversy as saying “I would rather die standing than live kneeling.” Besides Charb, three other cartoonists were reportedly killed in Wednesday’s attack.

Maybe a concealed carry permit would have been more effective than police protection?

Most interpretations of Islam prohibit any depiction of Muhammad, and many Muslim-majority countries have laws against “defamation of religion.”

I might add that those laws don't seem to prohibit defamation of Christianity or Judaism, now do they?

The shooters shouted “Allahu akbar” and “The prophet is avenged” while carrying out their attack. Terror analysts also noted that they made a one-finger hand gesture, signifying Islam’s emphasis of God’s oneness, that is often featured in propaganda videos of the Islamic State terror group.

Read more here.

One thing this story makes clear to me is that I should continue to place high value on American sources of satire, such as Manhattan Infidel, Scrappleface, Iowahawk, and The Onion.

Drop the one, and pick up the other

Matt Walsh writes:

Christianity is a faith for all people, but it is not a faith for all notions and ideas. You cannot simultaneously profess the Faith while also defending the murder of the innocent. You are welcome into the church, but your belief in baby-murder is not. You cannot carry the cross and a Planned Parenthood banner at the same time.

You have to drop the one, and pick up the other.

I hope you do. I hope you start today. Now. This moment.

But until then, you cannot follow Christ while you still support the murder of His children.

You cannot be both.

You cannot be Christian and ‘pro-choice.’

Please read more here.

Where is the moderation?

Spengler writes,

The People of Christ are pilgrims en route to the next world; the People of Allah are soldiers in this one.

The Christian’s rebirth is also a vicarious death – the death of the Christian’s heathen nature – through Christ’s sacrifice. No vicarious sacrifice occurs in Islam; the Muslim, on the contrary, sacrifices himself

Where is the moderation? The Christian either joins the People of God in its pilgrimage to the Kingdom of Heaven, or he does not; the Muslim either is a soldier of the ummah, or he is nothing. Religious conversion is not mere adaptation to another tradition. It is a change of people.

Europe’s Christians could not summon up the “moderation” necessary to tolerate their Jewish neighbors until after 1945, when Europe was conquered and rebuilt by the Americans. Once the ambitions of Europe’s peoples were crushed in the world wars, European Christianity became “moderate” indeed, so moderate that Europeans no longer bother about it. They also do not bother to reproduce, so that the formerly Christian populations of Europe will disappear, starting with the captive nations of the former Soviet Union.

Islam does not know moderation or extremism: it only knows success or failure. Unlike Christianity, which prevailed only through the improbable project of abandoning its old center to create a new land altogether, Islam cannot exist outside of traditional society, which by definition knows no doubt. Nowhere else but in the United States has personal conscience rather than religious establishment succeeded as the guiding principle of Christianity. “Moderate Islam” is an empty construct; the Islam of the Afghan courts is the religion with which the West must contend.

Read more here.

Will relativism triumph over the principle of unifying civilization?

David Goldman, Spengler, writes about some history of Jews, Christians, and Chinese.

It is instructive to contrast today’s Europe with today’s China. Europe has achieved a limited degree of unification without, however, overcoming national resistance to a unified government. China by contrast contains fifty-five distinct ethnic minorities and numerous spoken languages within a single political system. Despite the occasional eruption of separatist tendencies, China is in little danger of reverting to a loose confederation of ethnicities.

For all its great accomplishments, the European project of the past thousand years has failed. The greatest achievement of the West is the creation of the United States of America, which selected immigrants from all nations in a new, non-ethnic polity defined by a Constitution inspired to a great extent by ancient Israel.

When Christianity failed to overcome the residual tribalism of the West, its universalizing message was replaced by relativism. The reigning dogma in the secular West now states that every ethnicity is entitled to its own “narrative” and that all cultures are equally valid in their own terms. Relativism refuses to consider the obvious fact that some cultures succeed while others fail miserably; it insists on the absolute right of self-definition and self-termination for every tribe.

This post-Christian ideology motivates many attacks on China in the West, and justifies Western support for breakaway movements in Tibet, Xinjiang, and other Chinese provinces. The same ideology justifies attacks on the State of Israel. Liberal relativists argue that Palestinian Arabs have the right to their own self-defining narrative, which regards the State of Israel as an alien intrusion in the Middle East-despite the thousands of years of Jewish history and the unbroken Jewish presence in the country over those thousands of years. The relativists demand that Israel abandon its character as a Jewish State, or at least give up so much land as to become indefensible.

The State of Israel was founded in one of the many population exchanges that occurred after World War II: about 700,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries, including the ancient community of Iraq that predated the Arabs, and about 700,000 Arab refugees left the State of Israel. Israel integrated the expelled Jews but the Arab countries refused to integrate the expelled Arabs, maintaining them instead as a permanent “refugee” population in token of their refusal to accept the historical rights of the Jewish people.

If Israel’s historic rights to its ancient homeland are compromised, and if Israel can be portrayed as an imperial aggressor that violates the self-definition of ethnic minorities, relativism will triumph over the principle of unifying civilization. Israel has enormous symbolic importance for the West.

Founded just 65 years ago, the modern Jewish state has become a pocket superpower in technology, business and the arts, as well as the strongest and most stable state in the Middle East. It is also the only industrial country with a fertility rate far above replacement. Not just in the abstract, but in its concrete manifestation in the modern State of Israel, Jewish nationhood remains “a paragon and exemplar of a nation.”

The ambitions of liberal relativism extend far beyond the Middle East. It is much easier to drive the thin end of the wedge into Israel, a nation of just 8 million people, than into China, a world power of 1.4 billion people. Precisely the same reasoning that proposes to carve up the State of Israel justifies ethnic separatism in China.

It is important to emphasize that this has nothing to do with the question of democracy in China. The Western liberals who support Tibetan separatism, for example, do not argue that Tibetans should have the right to vote in Chinese elections: they argue that Tibetans should have the right to restore the extremely undemocratic feudal system that prevailed before Tibet was integrated into China.

The instinctive affinity that Chinese feel for the Jewish people, therefore, is not a matter of happenstance. Nor is the fact that Chinese civilization and Jewish civilization have longer continuity than any other modes of human existence. Despite their great differences, they share a common purpose, to transcend tribalism through a unifying civilization. It should be no surprise that they have enemies in common.

Ten ways to advance the Kingdom of Christ in this world

David Warren, devout Catholic and Canadian, has

ten specific practical suggestions, on how to advance the Kingdom of Christ in this world.

The first is, absolutely refuse to give obeisance to the various idols which the “politically correct” specially define, and then demand that we worship, such as “equality,” “fairness,” “human rights,” and the other specious abstractions to which they attribute a gnostic and mystical power. And symmetrically, refuse to worship in the temples of the gods of money and power and coolness.

Second, make conscious, reverent references to God — even to God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — an audible part of our lives in the world, and love God in our hearts. Conversely, carefully avoid speaking of any divine thing in a cute or irreverent way.

Third, unfailingly attend the Mass, each Sunday, and daily where we can; and let the Mass do its work upon our souls. (Non-Catholics should likewise be punctilious in their own religious observances.) Let the enemy see our churches filled. Observe and participate in all other sacraments, which includes, for Catholic Christians, the crucial one of making a good Confession, frequently. In any event, prayerfully ask God’s forgiveness when we fail.

Fourth, defend our families, by keeping as aloof as possible from the bureaucracies of Nanny State. Do not neglect the needs of our parents in their time of sickness and old age; do not fail to instil in our children, by our own upright and sincere behaviour, the respect they owe to us as their parents.

Fifth, do not participate in any way in what a recent pope so eloquently described as “the culture of death.” Do everything in our power to streetproof ourselves and our children against its demands, and do not hesitate to spell out the basic facts of life, behind all life issues. Be sure our children understand them, and that they grasp the sanctity of all human life.

Sixth, reject sexual liberation in all its insidious forms. Do not even think about fornication and adultery. Truly respect and accommodate the opposite sex.

Seventh, be consistently honest and honourable in all business and social transactions, with everyone, regardless of race colour or creed, even when it must be at some cost to ourselves. Do not play with temptations to corruption. Yet, assiduously avoid being “holier than thou.”

Eighth, be truthful in speech, fair and even charitable in speaking of other people, and look constantly for whatever good we can find in them. Be encouraging rather than discouraging by habit, and most important, do not spread personal gossip and lies, even against our worst enemies, and even when we think they deserve it.

Ninth, be content with what we have in our family and religious life, make ourselves happy with the homes we have to return to, and do not look covetously upon the Joneses. Accept with humility our station in life; have ambitions, but make them unselfish.

Tenth, be content with our fate more generally, and trust in God to deliver His justice in the fullness of Eternity: “Thy will be done.” Take only what comes our way, including all knocks, and use what we have been given, including all talents and skills, generously to God’s glory. Indeed, give, according to our means, a little wildly. See and sympathize with need. And rejoice, always, in the life we are given, and in the knowledge that what we leave upon the face of time can only be our example.

What is the cost of being Christian?

David Warren, as it happens, is also thinking about Christians who deny Christ. He points out that 11 of the 12 disciples of Christ made themselves scarce during Christ's crucifixion. Only John and Christ's mother, Mary, remained at the foot of the cross. Yet, something happened to cause all of the rest of the apostles to die as martyrs in the name of Christ. The only one, in fact, to die of old age, was John!

What was the reason for their change of heart? The resurrection of Christ.

Warren made a journey to the Holy Land. He writes about it.

In Jerusalem, on the Dome of the Rock — sited very conspicuously right on top of what is almost certainly the Holy of Holies, within the ancient Temple precincts — is an inscription, in their earliest angular Kufic script, on what was also the earliest monument the Arabs caused to be erected in a conquered land, by impressed Byzantine labour. This inscription reads in its most significant part: “Praise to Allah who begets no son and has no associate in power and who has no surrogate for humiliations.” The point is sustained by repetition, together with the contrary assertion that Muhammad is God’s envoy and can alone provide intercession on the day when the Muslim community is resurrected; and the Muslim Jesus comes to throw all us stubborn Christians into Hell.

That is on the outside of the Dome. On the inside there is a further long inscription, which mentions Jesus and Mary by name; states that Jesus, too, was an envoy, and therefore no Son of God; declares that the religion of God is Islam, and that God will reckon with those who dissent. Nearly fourteen centuries have passed, since this direct challenge was laid down to the existence of Christianity; and indeed, we are living in the fallout of it today.

Yet we have today, at least in the more progressive and nominal Christians of North America and Europe, the curious notion that Christianity is compatible with Islam. That it is likewise compatible with all other religions. That it is compatible with a Darwinian cosmology, and therefore with atheist materialism. And that the Church becomes ever more “relevant,” the more we admit she is defunct. Defunct — and yet still outwardly turning over, and available at a discount, in the post-modern spiritual flea market. For she still has a certain decorative and nostalgic value.

The Church makes, for such people, a nice venue for a wedding; it may offer a bit of formal “closure” for a funeral. The building may be worth including on the architectural preservation list, since no one is ever going to build another like it. And that is all very nice, and it goes with sentimental thoughts on the teachings of that religion.

The whole thing may now apparently be reduced to a “bottom line.” It comes down to being nice to people, and trying not to notice if anyone is mean. It is about being open-minded, and accepting people as they are, unless of course they happen to be religious. Indeed, whatever else Christ may have done, according to this view, he reduced all the Ten Commandments to just One Commandment: that “you mustn’t judge people.”

It is true that moral relativism is a threat, that multiculturalism is a threat, along with feminism, homosexualism, environmentalism, repackaged socialism, and various other isms of the past and future. Each constitutes an attack upon, and implied alternative to, the Christian civilization that tickles under its exponents’ feet. But the reassuring thing about all of these quasi-religious belief systems, is that they are asinine. They can be used to attack, and to destroy; to express anger, and demand redress; but they cannot be used to build anything. They offer no credible inspiration; no excuse for being good or brave or honest; and finally, no truly convincing reason to get up in the morning.

To be shockingly brief, Islam suffered a major defeat some centuries ago, when it lost its superior military power. The religion has not been without real merits, and is still competitive against the atheist ideologies I have listed. Against an entirely de-Christianized West, it might well prevail, for it presents an account of the world, and a moral order, that is at least more plausible than anything the atheists have thought up. It has, for the moment, the demographic advantage of higher birthrates, and until recently fairly open immigration to a Europe which, for its part, has been intent on committing demographic suicide.

And it is quite reasonable to argue, that in the longer view of things, the very existence of anarchically violent forces within Islam, such as the death cults of Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and revolutionary Iran, are a symptom of steep decline. When little is left to hold your religion together except the threat of death for apostasy, you are not, after all, in such a good position. There are diminishing returns as you hike up the threats; but if you withdraw them you may lose everything. Bad as things may seem for Christianity, when we look at the contemporary world from the least attractive angles, things look worse for the Muslims.

Our understanding of God is such, that we expect to find causation and order and sense, wherever we look in nature. And having looked for it, we have always found it.

Christ himself goes where he is wanted, and moves on from where he is unwanted.

The purpose of politics should be entirely negative — to provide remedies against specific evils that afflict all men. We may need police, we may need courts, we may need defences against potential invaders, we may need a few by-laws, especially in towns, and some readiness to cope with natural disasters. We need laws to prevent men from enslaving each other. We most certainly do not need laws to tyrannize and goad us towards some crackerjack plan for an earthly utopia.

The politics in Christian societies of the past were minimal. They will be minimal again if a Christian society is restored. The basic scheme is to keep the government out of people’s faces, and let them get on with their lives; while similarly preserving the independence of the Church, and the sanctuary she offers. These are the politics of “live and let live.” In the well-ordered commonwealth, the State is reduced to something almost decorative, and the ancient Catholic principle of subsidiarity — that problems are to be resolved by the smallest, lowest, and least centralized competent authority — becomes a way of life.

It is to an otherworldly Kingship we owe our deepest loyalty; not to a nation, nor to a race, nor to an ethnicity, let alone some jackboot punk, “dressed in a little authority.” The Church in her nature can represent no particular worldly interest. She serves no Caesar, and answers to no Parliament — only to Christ the King.

Through history the common people have often been vexed by tyrants; and in our time the ever-growing and ever-more-intrusive powers appropriated by the Nanny State have stripped us of many ancient freedoms. Each in turn is replaced with some novel, intrinsically dubious, and invariably non-Christian so-called “right” or special privilege: ranging from a mother’s right to kill her unborn child, to the pornographer’s right to corrupt public morals, to the fanatic’s right not to have his delicate feelings hurt. Indeed, all these new rights have required Orwellian inversions of language, to make an unambiguous evil smell like a plausible good. And, each is a “group right” — the essence of true fascism — designed to obviate hard-won individual rights, often going back beyond that very medieval Magna Carta.

Will our adversaries prevail?

I am fairly optimistic, however, that they lack both the opportunities and the skills to prevail in this. Ratcheting requires the virtue of patience, and confidence in uninterrupted power. It requires that you never push too far or too fast: for the most complacent frog will begin to react, if the temperature of his water rises too quickly. Our tormentors today are too impatient. Their tactics are unsound.

Under which circumstances, all that is required of us, is to stand our own ground, with greater patience, and greater courage, than our tormentors. A Catholic Christian civilization can be restored, over time, by the same methods that were used to create one in the first place — not by violence, and not by usurpation, but by consistently refusing to deny Christ. That is the trick the disciples used, at a time when Christians numbered only in the thousands. They recognized Christ as their King, and served like soldiers.

We must stop denying Christ in our lives; stop ignoring his Resurrection; stop recognizing any spiritual authority that is not Christ’s. Stop refusing to act at His command. Stop encumbering His way.