Credit Report Repair News: Digest for April 29, 2021

Credit Report Repair News ANTI-STATE • ANTI-WAR • PRO-MARKET

Table of Contents How the British Invented Globalism Are the Vaccines Responsible for Israel’s Present Low Death Covid Toll? Unconstitutional Debt and Future Generations Can War With Russia Be Avoided? The Ascendance of Sociopaths in U.S. Governance What Makes You Think You Won’t Be a Tyrant? Between Us Lincoln, Chronicles Magazine, and the Disappearance of Southern Conservatism Eastern Symphony Vaccine Hustlers Can’t Keep Their Story Straight; Evangelicals, Black People, Trumpers; Who’s ‘Hesitating?’ Jab Hands Psychopaths and Narcissists Exploit Virtue-Signaling and Victimhood

How the British Invented Globalism Wednesday 28 April 2021 11:01 PM UTC-05 MOST PATRIOTS agree that we’re fighting something called “globalism.” But what is it? First and foremost, it is a British invention. Modern globalism was born in Victorian England, and later promoted by Britain’s Fabian socialists. It is now the dominant belief system of today’s world. George Orwell called it Ingsoc. In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell foretold a future in which the British Empire merges with the United States to form Oceania, a superstate driven by an evil ideology called Ingsoc (an abbreviation for English Socialism). Orwell’s dystopia was based on his knowledge of actual globalist plans. “Federation of the World” As British power expanded in the 19th century, global dominion seemed inevitable. Imperial administrators laid plans for a world united under British rule. The key to making it work was to join forces with the United States, just as Orwell described in his novel. Many Anglophiles in the U.S. were more than eager to go along with this plan. “We are a part, and a great part, of the Greater Britain which seems so plainly destined to dominate this planet…” enthused The New York Times in 1897, during the festivities for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. In 1842, Alfred Tennyson — soon to become Queen Victoria’s official poet laureate — wrote the poem “Locksley Hall.” It envisioned a golden age of peace, under “universal law,” a “Parliament of man” and a “Federation of the world.” Tennyson’s words foreshadowed the League of Nations and the UN. But Tennyson did not invent these concepts. He merely celebrated plans already underway among British elites. Generations of British globalists have cherished Tennyson’s poem as if it were Holy Writ. Winston Churchill praised it in 1931 as “the most wonderful of all modern prophecies.” He called the League of Nations a fulfillment of Tennyson’s vision. Liberal Imperialism Another British leader influenced by Tennyson’s poem was philosopher John Ruskin. In his first lecture at Oxford in 1870, Ruskin electrified students by declaring it was Britain’s destiny to “Reign or Die” — to rule the world or be ruled by others. With these words, Ruskin gave birth to a doctrine that would soon come to be known as “liberal imperialism” —;the notion that “liberal” countries should conquer barbarous ones in order to spread “liberal” values. A better name would be “socialist imperialism” as most of the people who promoted this concept were actually socialists. Ruskin called himself a “Communist” before Marx had finished writing Das Kapital. In Ruskin’s view, the British Empire was the perfect vehicle for spreading socialism. Ruskin’s socialism was strangely mixed with elitism. He extolled the superiority of the “northern” races, by which he meant the Normans, Celts and Anglo-Saxons who built England. He saw the aristocracy —;not the common people —;as the embodiment of British virtue. Ruskin was also an occultist and (according to some biographers) a pedophile.  In these respects, his eccentricities resembled those still fashionable in certain globalist circles today. The Rhodes Trust Ruskin’s teachings inspired a generation of British statesmen. One of the most devoted Ruskinites was Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902). As an undergraduate, Rhodes heard Ruskin’s inaugural lecture and wrote out a copy of it, which he kept for the rest of his life. As a statesman, Rhodes aggressively promoted British expansion. “The more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race,” he said. In his will, Rhodes left a fortune to promote “British rule throughout the world”; federation of all English-speaking countries; and “the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.” All of this was supposed to lead to “the foundation of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity,” Rhodes concluded in his will. Thus, world peace would be attained through British hegemony. By the 1890s, most British leaders agreed with Rhodes. The Round Table Following Rhodes’s death in 1902, Alfred Milner took over his movement, setting up secretive “Round Table” groups to propagandize for a worldwide federation of English-speaking countries. In each target country —including the U.S. —the Round Tablers recruited local leaders to act as “Judas goats.” A Judas goat is an animal trained to lead others to the slaughter. In fact, the Round Table was leading people to a literal slaughter. War with Germany was expected. The Round Table sought commitments from each English-speaking colony to send troops when the time came. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa agreed. World War I pushed the world toward globalism, giving rise to the League of Nations. This was by design. British design. Generations of schoolchildren have learned that Woodrow Wilson was the father of globalism. But Wilson’s “ideals” were spoon-fed to him by British agents. War to End War On August 14, 1914 — only 10 days after England declared war — novelist H.G. Wells wrote an article headlined, “The War That Will End War.” “[T]his is now a war for peace…” he declared. “It aims at a settlement that shall stop this sort of thing for ever.” Wells released a book version of “The War That Will End War” in October 1914. He wrote, “If Liberals throughout the world… will insist upon a World conference at the end of this conflict… they may… set up a Peace League that will control the globe.” Wells did not invent the idea of a “Peace League.” He was simply promoting official British policy. Wells was a secret operative for Britain’s War Propaganda Bureau (known as Wellington House). British Agents in the White House British leaders understood that their Peace League would never work without U.S. support. For that reason, British intelligence made special efforts to penetrate the Wilson White House, which proved surprisingly easy. Wilson’s closest advisor was “Colonel” Edward House, a Texan with strong family ties to England. During the Civil War, House’s British-born father made a fortune as a blockade runner, trading cotton for British munitions, to arm rebel troops. Young Edward House and his brothers attended English boarding schools. While advising President Wilson, Colonel House worked closely with British spies, especially Sir William Wiseman, the US station chief for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). House, Wiseman, and Wilson became intimate friends, even vacationing together. The idea for a “League of Nations” came from Sir Edward Grey, Britain’s Foreign Secretary. In a letter of Sept. 22, 1915, Grey asked Col. House if the President could be persuaded to propose a League of Nations, as the idea would be better received coming from a US president. When Wilson attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wiseman and House were close at hand, guiding his every move, along with a bevy of other British and U.S. officials, all committed to the globalist agenda, and many tied directly to the Round Table. The Special Relationship Former SIS officer John Bruce Lockhart later called Wiseman “the most successful ‘agent of infuence’ the British ever had.” British historian A.J.P. Taylor wrote that “He [Wiseman] and House made the ‘special relationship’ a reality.” Many historians hold that the US-UK “special relationship” began only after World War II, with the creation of NATO and the UN. However, Taylor correctly notes that the seeds of the “special relationship” were planted earlier, at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. In Paris, US and UK officials secretly agreed to coordinate policy, so that both countries would act as one. Two think tanks were created to facilitate this, Chatham House (UK) and the Council on Foreign Relations (US). To the great distress of British globalists, the US Senate refused to join the League of Nations. It took another World War  — and the persuasive talents of Winston Churchill —to finally draw the US into global government, via NATO and the UN. Winston Churchill, Father of Modern Globalism Churchill’s vision of global government was oddly similar to that of Cecil Rhodes and the Round Table. Churchill called for a “world organisation” backed by a “special relationship” between English-speaking countries. On Feb. 16, 1944, Churchill warned that, “unless Britain and the United States are joined in a Special Relationship… within the ambit of a world organisation — another destructive war will come to pass.”  Accordingly, the UN was founded on October 24, 1945. However, the UN was not enough. Cecil Rhodes and the Round Table had always maintained that the true power behind any global government must be a union of English-speaking peoples. Churchill repeated this plan in his “Iron Curtain” speech of March 5, 1946. Churchill warned that the UN had no “international armed force” or atomic bombs. The US must therefore join with Britain and other English-speaking countries in a military alliance, Churchill argued. No other force could stop the Soviets. “Fraternal Association of the English-Speaking Peoples” Churchill stated that “world organisation” was useless without “the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States.” Churchill’s words led to the 1949 NATO Treaty and the “Five Eyes” agreement, pooling intelligence efforts by the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Step by step, Churchill drew us ever closer to the global superstate Orwell called Oceania. A self-described “Tory anarchist,” Orwell hated Soviet Communism. If he wished, he could have written Nineteen Eighty-Four as a sort of British Red Dawn, with England groaning under Soviet occupation. But that was not Orwell’s message. Orwell warned of a danger closer to home. He warned of British globalists and their plan for a union of English-speaking countries driven by Ingsoc ideology. In many respects, the world we inhabit today is the world Orwell foresaw. The post How the British Invented Globalism appeared first on LewRockwell.

Are the Vaccines Responsible for Israel’s Present Low Death Covid Toll? Wednesday 28 April 2021 11:01 PM UTC-05 “Israel records ZERO daily Covid deaths for first time in ten months as it closes hospital coronavirus wards with more than 80% of adults vaccinated,” announced a Daily Mail headline on April 24th. The article opens with the following sentence: “Israel has recorded no new daily Covid death for the first time in ten months as it continues to lead the world in its vaccination drive.” The implication of these statements is obvious: the low Covid death count in Israel is due to the country’s vaccination program, which is one of the most advanced in the world. But the implied causal relationship is misleading. This is because the strength of the pathogen that causes Covid-19 fluctuates with yearly seasons. In the northern hemisphere, this type of virus generally weakens in late spring and summer and waxes strong from late fall through winter. Being located in warm Mediterranean climate, spring comes early to Israel and with it a decline in seasonal viral infections of the upper respiratory tract. To wit, at this time last year the Covid death toll was nearly as low as it is now even though there was no vaccination program in place then. This was the death tally in Israel from Covid-19 around this period twelve months ago: April 18, 2020: 11 deaths April 19, 2020:  8 deaths April 20, 2020: 6 deaths April 21, 2020: 9 deaths April 22, 2020: 5 deaths April 23, 2020: 3 deaths April 24, 2020: 2 deaths Compare this data with this year’s figures: April 18, 2021:  4 deaths April 19, 2021:  6 deaths April 20, 2021:  4 deaths April 21, 2021: 1 death April 22, 2021: 0 deaths April 23, 2021: 0 deaths April 24, 2021: 4 deaths As you can see the death counts for this time of the year are very low in both instances. In the same week last year, there were twenty-five more deaths from Covid-19 in the whole nation of Israel. Out of a population of nearly ten million, this figure is so low as to be statistically insignificant. Also please note that last year the low Covid mortality continued throughout spring and summer, culminating in days where there were no deaths on a number of days in June. This occurred on June 10, June 11, June 15, June 18 and June 21. This zero-death scenario was likely to repeat itself in 2021 regardless of whether or not the population was vaccinated. If a journalist still wanted to spin a pro-vaccination headline, the strongest claim he could honestly make would go something like this: “The implementation of the nationwide vaccination program in Israel may have resulted in a decrease of twenty-five deaths across Israel in the third week of April when compared with the same period last year.” This, however, would not sound particularly triumphant especially given the fact that there have been numerous deaths and serious injuries reported as a results of vaccine side effects. Furthermore, there is every reason to believe that the Israeli authorities try to minimize Covid deaths at this time. In the early panic-filled stages of the pandemic, governments often reported all those who died after testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 as Covid deaths regardless of the serious co-morbidities many of the victims carried. This resulted in overstating the true number of Covid fatalities. Having implemented an expensive vaccination program on which it staked its reputation, it is quite likely that the Israeli government now seeks to understate the number of victims by ascribing their demise to other causes. Given that governments generally like to massage data to put themselves in the best light, it is, therefore, not outside the realm of possibility that more people are dying of Covid in Israel these days than were dying last year during the same period. Even though I am highly skeptical about the efficacy and safety of the hastily developed and inadequately tested vaccines, I hope – as does nearly everyone else – that these vaccines are sound and effective and that they will put an end to the pandemic. But to imply that the present low Covid death count in Israel is due to its vaccination drive is disingenuous. We will only see whether the Israeli inoculation program is a success come October or November when the virus should once again begin waxing strong. If there are appreciably fewer deaths at that point relative to what we saw last year, we may be able to conclude that the vaccination program is responsible for a drop in fatalities. But even in that case data will have to be analyzed with care before jumping to conclusions. Given that a significant proportion of Israelis have already been infected with the virus, naturally acquired immunity will also have to be taken into consideration as a potential death-reducing factor. What is certain is that we will have to wait and see before the true effect of the vaccination program is known. To make misleading statements about vaccine effectiveness in the meantime, however, is neither science-based nor honest. The post Are the Vaccines Responsible for Israel’s Present Low Death Covid Toll? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Unconstitutional Debt and Future Generations Wednesday 28 April 2021 11:01 PM UTC-05 Shop all books by Judge Napolitano Earlier this week, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. asked Congress to raise taxes and increase borrowing so his administration can spend $2.3 trillion — on top of the $1.9 trillion Congress authorized two months ago for so-called COVID relief — for thousands of projects he calls “infrastructure.” All this is in addition to the $2 trillion that the government borrows annually these days just to make ends meet. These are serious numbers of dollars, the repayment of which will have seriously unpleasant consequences for future generations of Americans. Indeed, under Biden’s administration, the feds will borrow three times what they collect in taxes. This is not a new phenomenon, but it exacerbates the modern trend of spend now and pay later. Under the Constitution, can the feds borrow as much as they want and can they spend it on anything they want? Here is the backstory. When James Madison and his colleagues wrote the Constitution, they addressed the problem of debt. They knew governments borrow vast amounts of money to address emergencies, usually wars — as the 13 colonies had just done. When Madison and his colleagues were deciding upon the powers of the new federal government, they included the power to borrow money but excluded the power to create and operate a bank. Madison understood that the Constitution limited the power of Congress to spend monies — whether obtained by taxes or debt — to the 17 discrete areas of governance delegated to the federal government in the Constitution. Thus, when Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton proposed a national bank, Madison, then a congressman, argued fiercely against it. He offered that the Constitution intentionally omitted the power to create and operate a bank because a federal bank would tempt Congress to spend money it didn’t have on pet projects not authorized to the feds by the Constitution. Madison lost the argument. The First National Bank of the United States was formed but went out of existence 20 years later. In 1816, at the end of his second presidential term, Madison had a change of heart and reluctantly signed legislation forming the Second National Bank of the United States. Yet, he never renounced his often-articulated fears of Congress exceeding its constitutional bounds by spending money nowhere authorized in the Constitution. The Supreme Court on four occasions declined to rule if Madison was correct. Then, in 1936, the court — terrified of FDR’s court-packing threats — ruled that Congress’ taxing and spending powers are essentially unlimited so long as the funds are spent for the common good. If this ruling is correct, then Congress can buy any thing and bribe any person, and the restraints in the Constitution are meaningless. This misguided ruling unleashed a torrent of federal government spending which has led us to the present tsunami of debt — $28.1 trillion. This is not an issue of Democrats wanting to spend and Republicans wanting the Madisonian approach. To Biden’s proposal of $2.3 trillion, Republicans have countered with offers ranging from half a trillion to $1 trillion. Recent history shows the bipartisan addiction to debt. George W. Bush borrowed $2 trillion in eight years for the useless war in Afghanistan that Biden just ended. Donald Trump borrowed $2 trillion in four years to pay for tax cuts and to soothe the pain caused by unconstitutional state lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, what Biden wants is the most massive peacetime transfer of wealth in the history of the world, and none of it is authorized by the Constitution. That wealth will be received by poor and middle-class folks and wealthy bankers and industrialists, all of whom will be grateful to the Democrats for the short-term cash. Who will pay for all this? If Biden’s proposed corporate and capital gains tax increases pass, fewer Americans will be employed as corporations will have less money for new hiring, and investments will suffer as the cost of their fruits will increase. And the post-pandemic economic recovery, once anticipated at the end of the government’s unlawful lockdowns, will not materialize. Add to this the near-certainty of inflation, and you will have Biden misery visited upon all. Inflation will also raise the cost of government borrowing. That means Biden’s not yet born great-grandchildren, and their unhappy generation, will be paying for Old Joe’s profligate and unconstitutional spending. That members of both major political parties favor this unbridled borrowing and spending approach to government is unconstitutional and destructive but not surprising. Giving away cash and pushing the cost onto nonvoters — generations as yet unborn — can make members of Congress popular. It can also turn the public treasury into a public trough. Thomas Jefferson warned of the dangers of this as it would become habit-forming for politicians, and voters would grow to expect it. President Woodrow Wilson borrowed $30 billion to pay for American military involvement in the useless and unjust World War I. American taxpayers are still paying the interest on the $30 billion. It now exceeds $15 billion. Only a government — heedless of basic economics and unfaithful to the plain meaning of the Constitution — would pay a 50% interest rate. But here we are paying debts that are more than 100 years old and borrowing money as if there were no consequences. How much longer can a society last with a central government that does not pay its bills? Why have a Constitution that limits the government if no person or entity enforces the limitations? Why have taxes in the first place if borrowing and deferring debt will do? Reprinted with the author’s permission. The post Unconstitutional Debt and Future Generations appeared first on LewRockwell.

Can War With Russia Be Avoided? Wednesday 28 April 2021 11:01 PM UTC-05 The Russian Free Press (svpressa) Interviewed me on the Topic of Avoiding Conflict Between the Russian Federation and the United States.  The interview in English can be found here. The film date of the interview is April 23, 2021. The Interview in Russian is here and here. Considering the level of tension between the nuclear powers, the topic deserves far more attention that it receives.  In the US it is a difficult topic to address.  The President of Russia can call for better relations with the US without being demonized by the Russian media as an American agent, but when President Trump called for better relations with Russia, the US presstitutes denounced Trump as a Russian agent and launched the Russiagate hoax.  Knowledgable American commentators who supported Trump’s call for better relations were labeled “Russian agents/dupes.” My concern is that Washington’s hegemonic attitude prevents US acceptance of Russian sovereignty and that Putin’s low-key responses to insults and provocations result in his warnings not being taken sufficiently seriously and encourages more insults and provocations. Washington could go too far and provoke a major confrontation that Putin cannot overlook.  The dangerous ingredient that could produce a conflict is Washington’s hegemonic arrogance.  Conflict seems certain if Washington cannot escape from its unilateral attitude.  The uni-polar era is over.  Washington must accept this fact if war is to be avoided. The post Can War With Russia Be Avoided? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Ascendance of Sociopaths in U.S. Governance Wednesday 28 April 2021 11:01 PM UTC-05 An International Man lives and does business wherever he finds conditions most advantageous, regardless of arbitrary borders. He’s diversified globally, with passports from multiple countries, assets in several jurisdictions, and his residence in yet another. He doesn’t depend absolutely on any country and regards all of them as competitors for his capital and expertise. Living as an international man has always been an interesting possibility. But few Americans opted for it, since the U.S. used to reward those who settled in and put down roots. In fact, it rewarded them better than any other country in the world, so there was no pressing reason to become an international man. Things change, however, and being rooted like a plant – at least if you have a choice – is a suboptimal strategy if you wish to not only survive, but prosper. Throughout history, almost every place has at some point become dangerous for those who were stuck there. It may be America’s turn. For those who can take up the life of an international man, it’s no longer just an interesting lifestyle decision. It has become, at a minimum, an asset saver, and it could be a lifesaver. That said, I understand the hesitation you may feel about taking action; pulling up one’s roots (or at least grafting some of them to a new location) can be almost as traumatic to a man as to a vegetable. As any intelligent observer surveys the world’s economic and political landscape, he has to be disturbed – even dismayed and a bit frightened – by the gravity and number of problems that mark the horizon. We’re confronted by economic depression, looming financial chaos, serious currency inflation, onerous taxation, crippling regulation, a developing police state, and, worst of all, the prospect of a major war. It seems almost unbelievable that all these things could affect the U.S., which historically has been the land of the free. How did we get here? An argument can be made that things went bad because of miscalculation, accident, inattention, and the like. Those elements have had a role, but it is minor. Potential catastrophe across the board can’t be the result of happenstance. When things go wrong on a grand scale, it’s not just bad luck or inadvertence. It’s because of serious character flaws in one or many – or even all – of the players. So is there a root cause of all the problems I’ve cited? If we can find it, it may tell us how we personally can best respond to the problems. In this article, I’m going to argue that the U.S. government, in particular, has been overrun by the wrong kind of person. It’s a trend that’s been in motion for many years but has now reached a point of no return. In other words, a type of moral rot has become so prevalent that it’s institutional in nature. There is not going to be, therefore, any serious change in the direction in which the U.S. is headed until a genuine crisis topples the existing order. Until then, the trend will accelerate. The reason is that a certain class of people – sociopaths – are now fully in control of major American institutions. Their beliefs and attitudes are insinuated throughout the economic, political, intellectual, and psychological/spiritual fabric of the U.S. What does this mean to you, as an individual? It depends on your character. Are you the kind of person who supports “my country, right or wrong,” as did most Germans in the 1930s and 1940s? Or the kind who dodges the duty to be a helpmate to murderers? The type of passenger who goes down with the ship? Or the type who puts on his vest and looks for a lifeboat? The type of individual who supports the merchants who offer the fairest deal? Or the type who is gulled by splashy TV commercials? What the ascendancy of sociopaths means isn’t an academic question. Throughout history, the question has been a matter of life and death. That’s one reason America grew; every American (or any ex-colonial) has forebears who confronted the issue and decided to uproot themselves to go somewhere with better prospects. The losers were those who delayed thinking about the question until the last minute. I have often described myself, and those I prefer to associate with, as gamma rats. You may recall the ethologist’s characterization of the social interaction of rats as being between a few alpha rats and many beta rats, the alpha rats being dominant and the beta rats submissive. In addition, a small percentage are gamma rats that stake out prime territory and mates, like the alphas, but are not interested in dominating the betas. The people most inclined to leave for the wide world outside and seek fortune elsewhere are typically gamma personalities. You may be thinking that what happened in places like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and scores of other countries in recent history could not, for some reason, happen in the U.S. Actually, there’s no reason it won’t at this point. All the institutions that made America exceptional – including a belief in capitalism, individualism, self-reliance, and the restraints of the Constitution – are now only historical artifacts. On the other hand, the distribution of sociopaths is completely uniform across both space and time. Per capita, there were no more evil people in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, Amin’s Uganda, Ceausescu’s Romania, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia than there are today in the U.S. All you need is favorable conditions for them to bloom, much as mushrooms do after a rainstorm. Conditions for them in the U.S. are becoming quite favorable. Have you ever wondered where the 50,000 people employed by the TSA to inspect and degrade you came from? Most of them are middle-aged. Did they have jobs before they started doing something that any normal person would consider demeaning? Most did, but they were attracted to – not repelled by – a job where they wear a costume and abuse their fellow citizens all day. Few of them can imagine that they’re shepherding in a police state as they play their roles in security theater. (A reinforced door on the pilots’ cabin is probably all that’s actually needed, although the most effective solution would be to hold each airline responsible for its own security and for the harm done if it fails to protect passengers and third parties.) But the 50,000 newly employed are exactly the same type of people who joined the Gestapo – eager to help in the project of controlling everyone. Nobody was drafted into the Gestapo. What’s going on here is an instance of Pareto’s Law. That’s the 80-20 rule that tells us, for example, that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your salesmen or that 20% of the population are responsible for 80% of the crime. As I see it, 80% of people are basically decent; their basic instincts are to live by the Boy Scout virtues. 20% of people, however, are what you might call potential trouble sources, inclined toward doing the wrong thing when the opportunity presents itself. They might now be shoe clerks, mailmen, or waitresses – they seem perfectly benign in normal times. They play baseball on weekends and pet the family dog. However, given the chance, they will sign up for the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB, the TSA, Homeland Security, or whatever. Many seem well intentioned, but are likely to favor force as the solution to any problem. But it doesn’t end there, because 20% of that 20% are really bad actors. They are drawn to government and other positions where they can work their will on other people and, because they’re enthusiastic about government, they rise to leadership positions. They remake the culture of the organizations they run in their own image. Gradually, non-sociopaths can no longer stand being there. They leave. Soon the whole barrel is full of bad apples. That’s what’s happening today in the U.S. It’s a pity that Bush, when he was in office, made such a big deal of evil. He discredited the concept. He made Boobus americanus think it only existed in a distant axis, in places like North Korea, Iraq and Iran, which were and still are irrelevant backwaters and arbitrarily chosen enemies. Bush trivialized the concept of evil and made it seem banal because he was such a fool. All the while, real evil, very immediate and powerful, was growing right around him, and he lacked the awareness to see he was fertilizing it by turning the U.S. into a national security state after 9/11. Now, I believe, it’s out of control. The U.S. is already in a truly major depression and on the edge of financial chaos and a currency meltdown. The sociopaths in government will react by redoubling the pace toward a police state domestically and starting a major war abroad. To me, this is completely predictable. It’s what sociopaths do. Reprinted with permission from International Man. The post The Ascendance of Sociopaths in U.S. Governance appeared first on LewRockwell.

What Makes You Think You Won’t Be a Tyrant? Wednesday 28 April 2021 11:01 PM UTC-05 A well-intentioned person who wants to change an unjust political system should keep in mind that it would be his or her personal responsibility to not be corrupted in the process, provocative thinker Jordan Peterson told RT. The Canadian intellectual, whose ideas made him an icon for conservatives and a villain for liberals, spoke to RT’s Going Underground program about his latest self-help book ‘Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life’. One of those rules is to abandon ideology, which, he stressed, is especially important for people who choose to go into politics. “If you are going to move into the political realm, you should do what you can to get your own psyche in order… You want to make yourself into the sort of person who is going to be capable of using power wisely instead of using it in the manner that you are decrying” in current leaders. Doing so is not a simple thing, and casually adopting an ideology that may have “nothing of you in it,” won’t be of much use in that regard, he warned. Those people who became tyrants when they were granted power – what makes you think they are so different from you? Peterson is a strong advocate of people doing things to improve their personal lives before taking on big causes and a critic of revolutionary movements. He also opposes generalizations and reductionist views that boil down life’s complexities to phenomena like class struggle or corruption of the elites. Some of his critics point out that such a stance is very convenient for those who want to protect a deeply flawed status quo from public pressure and thus serves those in power. Program host Afshin Rattansi challenged some of Peterson’s beliefs, particularly his view of art being detached from the political sphere. He responded by saying that genuine art by definition transcends politics. “If an artist is genuinely possessed by the creative spirit, they cannot put what they are doing into words, not explicitly. They can’t render it into a philosophy or an ideology – that’s propaganda in my estimation,” he explained. There is certainly a “revolutionary aspect” to art and it is easy to confuse it with revolutionary politics, but the two “are not even in the same category, as far as I am concerned.” Picasso was an outspoken communist, for example, but he is not remembered for that, Peterson said. The feelings he expressed in the painting Guernica, which he made in response to the Franco government’s bombing of a Basque town, can be empathized by a victim of any war, regardless of its political aspects, he argued. “Anyone who’s had a loved one hurt in a war, in a battle, in a bombing, could look at the anguish that’s in that painting and see a reflection of what’s happening in their own soul,” he said. “You could sort war into justifiable and non-justifiable wars and I know there are tyrants and noble revolutionaries. But art speaks to the universals of human experience outside of the political domain.” Watch the interview in full. Reprinted with permission from RT News. The post What Makes You Think You Won’t Be a Tyrant? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Between Us Wednesday 28 April 2021 11:01 PM UTC-05 The road led up the hill between houses until it came to the lake where it ran between the lake and the woods and the thought of people disappeared if he was lucky.  He was sick of people, especially those he saw in masks because of their obsessive fear of death. They ran in packs. They seemed insane to him, as if germs might fly through the country air and infect them with a virus in a reversal of the way the insects were starting to fly low over the water and the fish would jump to devour them. He preferred the fish and the bugs and was glad no masked bandits were on the road to rob him of the morning’s beauty. There was a young boy fishing, casting and reeling back in a rhythmic way. The boy yelled out as he reeled in his first catch of the season, a glittering rainbow trout that sparkled in the sun. Once he was twelve years-old and started out very early between the edge of night and the dawn of day.  Alone, beautifully alone, with the dew thick upon the grass and the fog still clinging to the water in the creek.  His family was at the farm.  He awoke in the dark while his sisters and his mother slept and his father snored loudly. He tiptoed through the cabin and quietly shut the door behind him, almost catching his hair in the flypaper on the way out.  He got his fishing gear from the porch.  In an old Maxwell House coffee can were the night crawlers and the other worms he had dug the previous evening under the apple tree by the bull’s pen. Now it was April and the ice on the lake was gone and the two geese he had seen last year had returned to their old nest.  Last spring he had watched them very closely for more than a month as the goose sat patiently on her eggs and the gander sailed the waters on alert for predators.  Some days he would see them swimming together near the nest.  This worried him.  He wondered if leaving the eggs unprotected for even a short time would give a predator an opening to attack.  When the goslings never appeared, he assumed a predator had seized them. The worms in the can were big and juicy.  When he moved the dirt, they gyrated to the surface and tickled his fingers.  He felt sorry for them. They seemed so alive and would soon be dead.  Maybe he should set them free. The dirt where he dug them behind the old shed between its back wall and the thick wooden slats of the sad bull’s pen was dark and wet and redolent of fallen apples.  The huge ring-nosed bull had heard the grating of his spade and had come over to the fence.  It was dark there in the enclosed space and he got the chills as the bull snorted at him through the empty spaces.  A strange vibration passed between them. The boy showed him the trout as he unhooked it.  He grasped it with two hands and gently bent and released it into the shallow water where it hesitated, as if shocked, and then swam away.  The boy turned to the man and they gave each other high fives. Something passed between them. They laughed and the man walked on wondering why people liked to kill and capture free creatures. He thought: Is it possible not to remember to forget but just to live forward in a forgetfulness that is a constantly emerging present? The road turned sharply there and a man in a mask approached him.  On an impulse, he asked the man why he was wearing a mask when he was outside on a gorgeous morning.  The man said, “To protect myself from the virus.  Why aren’t you wearing one?” “Because I don’t think pigs can fly,” he said. The other man gasped and his eyes flared in fear and he rushed away. He walked on and saw the gander standing on the beach, looking around like a proud sentry.  The goose was on her nest.  Maybe, he thought, they, at least, had learned something. Then it was raining lightly.  The only sounds were the birds and the rain and he opened his mouth for the rain and his ears for the birds and his heart for the day.  He walked down the gravel path up past the barn to the road and crossed the bridge across the creek to get to the side where the fishing was really good because the river twisted and turned over there to create little peninsulas that protected deep pools where the fish lay in wait.  It was also where the Hermit of the Esopus was said to live. His name was Billy Bush and he wondered if he was a fictional character. He had never seen him. Maybe he was asking the wrong question.  He felt in a flash that he knew the answer but couldn’t say what the true question was.  But it didn’t seem to matter now.  He felt as he walked ahead he was heading back to find his future in the present. Back in time and the city, his parents had appeared on a television show called, “Do You Trust Your Wife?”  The host of the show was Johnny Carson.  This was his first gig before he would become famous as the long-running host of “The Tonight Show” and an iconic figure in TV lore.  This is true, but he wasn’t sure back then whether the hermit was as real as Carson because he saw Carson and they talked but the hermit seemed like a legendary figure.  Carson asked him to stand up in the audience and he asked him if he felt weird being the only boy as the middle child with seven sisters.  He said, “No.”  Carson persisted, “I guess you feel like the baloney between the bread.” The boy hated baloney and he was silent. A man held up big cue cards that said applause. Carson looked like a giant cardboard cutout. The audience clapped and the show went on as it always does. A year later they changed the name of the show to “Who Do You Trust?”.  Not a bad title for the first Cold War era, but that guy in the mask probably thinks I was conspiring to infect him, that I was a Russian agent.  Maybe pigs do fly now.  Everything seems to have changed between people.  How can you trust someone whose face you can’t see?  To face the faces that you faced was once upon a time the way things were.  You had a chance to tell if the words that passed between you were true or not, but now the masquerade is complete. Deep darkness has descended.   Do we have to wait for death to see face to face? He passed the goose on her nest near the swampy end of the lake.  Although he couldn’t see her face clearly, he imagined she looked expectant, feeling urgent for the future.  He wondered what it might be for both of them. What was he looking for in the days ahead, what did he desire, where was he going?  He thought of the guy in the mask and all the people everywhere enchained by fear.  Why was it so hard for them to see that the prison gates were closing around them and the living-dead elites were devouring their futures? The path down to the river twisted through dense woods.  He could tell people had traveled it but not heavily.  The sun had risen behind him and the mist on the water had given way to glitter on the fast-running water and the wet rocks throughout it.  When he reached the water’s edge, he felt relived.  Now he could fish but had this strange sensation that he didn’t want to, now that he had reached his destination. It’s funny how when you think you want something and you are about to get it you have second thoughts.  Maybe not thoughts.  He sat down on an old log and stared at the water.  The sound of the water moving fast over the rocks and the sun hitting the water spray put him into a cataleptic state in which he lost himself. He was jolted by a voice.  He jumped.  A man with a grayish-white beard and bright blue eyes under a worn fisherman’ cap stood to his left. The man said, “I’m surprised to see you here.  No one comes here.” The boy was frightened.  He stammered, “Oh, I was about to fish.” “It’s a great spot,” the man said.  “I come here to read and meditate.” An awkward silence came between them.  The boy had an impulse to jump up and run.  Then the thought: Could this be the Hermit of the Esopus?  He’s real? Then: Am I dreaming? The man said, “My name is William Bush.  What’s yours?” Without thinking, the boy also gave his formal name, “Edward Curtin.” “People call me Billy,” the man said. “I’ve heard they even think I’m a hermit and I live in these woods by the river.”  He laughed. Past the swamp, the road curved up a steep hill that led to the local college that had previously been a Jesuit seminary.  In the woods to his left were the crumbling remains of wooden stations of the cross that the young men once followed. He thought of his father and where he was now.  He said, “Good morning, Dad.  I miss you.”  The bond between them had always been powerful and when his father died it became even stronger in a sad way.  It was such a beautiful morning that he started to cry.  Three deer were grazing in the clearing halfway up the hill.  A doe and two fawns.  They looked up, then looked down, ignoring him as they resumed eating. His father made the best pancakes.  Then there were the father and son Communion Breakfasts with the buns.  He was hungry now.  There was no end to it. “What do people call you?” he asked. “Eddy,” the boy said. “How do you spell it?” “E-d-d-y,” the boy answered. Billy Bush chuckled and pointed to a spot in the river where the fast water hit a big rock and turned back to create a whirlpool.  “There you are,” he said, “that’s an eddy. Eddys always run contrary to the main current, so you’re in good company.”  The man laughed, which made the boy laugh.  Then the man told him that he was not really a hermit but lived in the old farmhouse up the hill near Brown’s sheep farm but that he found it amusing that people created this legend about him and so he played along.  He said he had once been a philosophy professor who came from the city to his sister’s country house to be alone and think and write while his family stayed in the city.  Since he was only here off and on and loved to wander through the woods down along the river people had for some reason come to create a legend about him.  “I have found,” he said, “that people are so afraid of being alone that they create weird stories like the one about me being the Hermit of the Esopus to scare themselves to death.” He didn’t like going onto the college campus because it reminded him of being trapped in school and so at the top of the hill he turned and started down. He remembered when he was a boy how down he would feel when his mother would send him to the front door to greet his father on the threshold when he came home from work to see if his father had stopped for a drink. He hated being put between them.  He felt guilty for having done her bidding. The deer were gone and he wondered what they did all day.  He wondered what people did all day and why.  He wondered how they spent their lives and where they thought they were going in their masks.  He wondered what they thought was at the end of the road.  He wondered why they drank and why they didn’t.  He wondered so many things he wondered why he was always wondering them. The goose was still on her nest.  The gander was nowhere in sight.  He stopped at the beach that extended out into the lake and took a gander.  Nothing.  He wondered where he was, what did he do all day except stand watch for death to come flying trough the air. The boy who was fishing was gone.  Four masked people dressed in black approached him. He said, “Good morning.”  They looked away in silence as if he didn’t exist. Billy Bush said he had to go.  He asked the boy if he liked to read.  The boy said, “Yes.”  He took a book out of his back pocket and handed it to the boy and said, “It’s a good one and some of it may be difficult for you now but it will grow on you.  I’ve learned a lot from the author.  He once said to wonder is to begin to understand, and that’s why I come to the river.  It always surprises me.  But please do me a favor, don’t tell anyone you met me and I told you I wasn’t this legendary hermit people want to believe in. They love their illusions.  Let’s keep it between us. Okay?” The boy said, “Yes.”  He took the book.  Billy Bush left.  The boy sat  where he was, looking and listening to the river flow.  Sometime later he got up and left without fishing.  He told no one about the hermit. When he arrived home from his walk, the man went to his bookcase and pulled out the old, battered paperback book Billy Bush had given him years ago.  He had never read it for some reason.  He had never even opened it as if to do so was to spoil his encounter with the hermit. To break the spell.  Now seemed like the right time.  He opened the book whose title was What Is Philosophy? by José Ortega y Gassett, the Spanish philosopher.  In the front was a signature: William J. Bush, S.J.  He flipped through it.  It was unmarked except for a few lines near the end.  He read them: The future is always the leader….We live forward into our future, supported by the present, with the past, always faithful, off to the edge, a little sad, a little frail, as the moon, lighting a path through the night, goes with us step by step, shedding its pale friendship on our shoulders….the vast majority of human beings….are preoccupied with becoming un-preoccupied.  Under their apparent indifference throbs a secret fear of having to solve for themselves the problems posed by their acts and emotions – a humble desire to be like everybody else, to renounce the responsibility of their own destiny, and dissolve it among the multitude. He said to Billy Bush, “Thank you, it took me a while, but between us, that sure explains the masked desperadoes running in packs. But I won’t tell them, for as you told me long ago, they prefer their illusions.” Reprinted with the author’s permission. The post Between Us appeared first on LewRockwell.

Lincoln, Chronicles Magazine, and the Disappearance of Southern Conservatism Wednesday 28 April 2021 11:01 PM UTC-05 Abraham Lincoln has become, for most mainline conservatives, an icon, and, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., no opportunity is lost—it seems—on Fox News or in the establishment “conservative press,” to stress just how much conservatively-minded Americans owe to these two canonized martyrs. Any demurer, any dissent or disagreement, brings forth condemnations of the complainant as a “racist” or “reactionary,” or worse, maybe some Southern redneck hick who hides his old Klan robe but keeps it at the ready. During the past fifty or so years the old Southern Democratic Party has virtually disappeared, died out, as millions of conservative Southerners, many motivated by their sincere religious faith and resistance to radical and unnatural change, migrated to the Republican Party. The GOP, beginning in the Nixon years, employed what was called a “Southern strategy,” largely elaborated by consultant Kevin Phillips and spelled out most clearly in his volume, The Emerging Republican Majority (1969). GOP spokesman learned to speak a language and offer symbols that millions of Southerner found attractive, even compelling. Not only that, but early on the election of former-Democrat Jesse Helms as a Republican US senator from North Carolina (1972), with his huge following of “Jessecrats”—mostly Democrats or soon-to-be former Democrats—and the conversion of political leaders like South Carolina’s Senator Strom Thurmond, turned what had been a trickle into a kind of stampede into the ranks of what had hitherto been seen as the discredited vehicle of the Reconstruction. But this new home, this refuge from the increasingly liberal, left-leaning modern Democratic Party, would not be for Southerners a recreation of the type of familial, regional and traditional conservatism which they had been accustomed to.  Increasingly as the 1980s and 1990s progressed, the older traditional Southern conservatism, with its enduring devotion to its Confederate heritage and its illustrious catalogue of admirable statesmen and heroes, first became downgraded, then finally largely despised by both a national conservative movement and national Republican Party dominated by ideologues who were self-denominated “neoconservatives.” These former Leftists—in the main ex-Trotskyite Marxists who migrated into the conservative movement and the GOP—with their mastery of communications and conservative media, and their unswerving zeal which arguably was a carry-over from their days advocating for a kind of Trotskyite universalism, soon vanquished the older, much more inviting and older conservatism. Where once the “conservative movement”—as exemplified by a Dr. Russell Kirk—welcomed traditionalist Southerners; and where once the national Republican Party accepted a Senator Helms and or Senator Thurmond and conferred on them positions of authority; now with the zealous neoconservatives seizing control of both the movement and the party, older icons—whether a Robert E. Lee (so praised once by President Eisenhower) or a John C. Calhoun (given status as one of America’s great conservative minds by Kirk) were shown the door, even condemned as “racists,” often paralleling accusations made by those on the further Left. New heroes and models were erected, and in the place of a Lee or Calhoun, Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., were pronounced as the conservative and Republican models for Americans…and for Southerners. Indeed, arguably the specter of Lincoln had never been far from Republican mythology. But at first, as Southern traditionalists streamed into the GOP, it seemed that there might be some co-existence with the party of Calhoun and his descendants. But it was not to be. At venues such as the formerly-conservative magazine of record, National Review, brilliant Southerners like Mel Bradford were shown the door and unceremoniously removed as contributors. Gone were the days when founding editor of the Modern Age quarterly, Russell Kirk, could dedicate an entire issue to the South and an appreciation of Southern traditions (cf. Modern Age, Fall 1958 issue). Indeed, National Review led the Never Trump charge in 2016, suspecting darkly that the MAGA movement was a not-so-subtle attempt of unreconstructed Southerners and (largely marginalized) Old Rightists to regain control of what Paul Gottfried has called “Con Inc.”—both the modern conservative movement and the national Republican Party. That battle continues, and it continues not just politically since the election back in 2016 of Donald Trump (who probably didn’t realize the full import of his initial success). For it is at base a contest of fundamental ideas about what is a country—what is our country—and the role and position of the American South in (and outside) of that geographical entity we call the United States. For the most part, the neoconservatives still control “Con Inc.” Every night on Fox News or Newsmax one is likely to see a Nikki Haley, Jonah Goldberg or Victor Davis Hanson (he who praised Sherman’s blitzkrieg through South Carolina as exemplary and a “good thing for South Carolinians—they deserved it!”). Save for occasional minutes on the Tucker Carlson Tonight program, a continual drumbeat for “equality” as the central principle—the essential element in what is termed “American exceptionalism”—is heralded as undebatable. Globalism—a key tenet of neoconservative (and Trotskyite) thought—marinates conservative news coverage. And, of course, Lincoln and King have been turned into plaster, canonized “conservative” saints, untouchable, undefilable. Monuments to Confederate heroes,  indeed, symbols of most anything honoring Southern tradition are shunned and now condemned…perhaps not as hysterically or “woke” as by the demonic denizens of the far Left, but certainly the targets are the same. The words recently written by David P. Goldman ring, in retrospect, ever so true: Now under Biden the neoconservatives, partially sidelined under Trump, are back. And “their ideology is a sort of right-wing Marxism,” which definitely has no room whatsoever for defenders of a Lee or Calhoun and those who reject the idea of a “proposition nation,” those in opposition to across the board domestic and global equality and imposed universal democracy. To paraphrase the Kennedy brothers, Ronald and Donald, who in turn quote General Lee, this is the legacy of Lincoln: a country “aggressive abroad and despotic at home,” now conjoined with the evangelical zeal of the neocons. There are few print magazines left that boldly and intelligently oppose the dominant neoconservative vision of America and the world with its increasingly explicit rejection of a Kirkian Old Right conservatism that once-welcomed defenders of Southern heritage and tradition. The most significant is Chronicles magazine. In the April/May issue, the magazine took pains to answer some questions of newer readers regarding the differences between traditional conservatism and the newer ersatz neocon version, which although at times appearing to defend what Kirk once called “the verities,” is in reality exactly how Goldman described it: a warmed over, right wing re-incarnation of Trotskyite globalism, anti-Communist—yes, but inimical to the older traditions and inherited beliefs of both Southerners and other Americans, concerning not just the nature of these United States, but about the very founding and creation of it. The editors at Chronicles, in response to several letters inquiring about these differences, which, I would suggest, are fundamental to our understanding of our history as well as our current politics, have offered a somewhat detailed answer. And that answer also admirably offers a critique of Lincoln and his disastrous legacy in both America and in the world. With the permission of the Chronicles editors (Paul Gottfried and Ed Welsch), I offer their full explanation and response. I believe it is an excellent summation of what defines so-called “Con Inc.” is today, the stark cleavages that separate members of the Old Right and traditional Southern conservatives from the dominant neocon globalists, and the dastardly role of Father Abraham in unleashing successive devastation on America and eventually the world. That same issue, April/May, includes a superb analysis by the Abbeville Institute’s Dr. Brion McClanahan of both the “1619 Project” and the “1776 Commission” counter-project (initiated unfortunately under Trump). Both emit from the same fetid swamp that assures us that America is founded on a “proposition”: the principle of universal equality. The editors end their response with a gloss from Bruce Frohnen, summing up the late Wilmoore Kendall and George Carey (in Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition, 1971): “…any principle is a dangerous thing for any tradition to take as its common, collective goal. Traditions, societies, peoples, are not dedicated to principles. Ideologies are dedicated to principles. And ideologies are the motive force for armies and for campaigns to punish heretics and enforce a uniformity of life that spells death for human variety and living tradition.” The critical analysis of Lincoln and his inheritance is something all Southerners should read. A General Reply to Some Recent Letters and a Reflection on the Legacy of Abraham Lincoln, From the Editors of CHRONICLES Magazine – April/May 2021 Reprinted with the author’s permission. The post Lincoln, Chronicles Magazine, and the Disappearance of Southern Conservatism appeared first on LewRockwell.

Eastern Symphony Wednesday 28 April 2021 11:01 PM UTC-05 But Augustine lived a long way from Constantinople, and the Byzantine establishment found the more celebratory cosmology of Eusebius more to its liking. The Age of Paradise: Christendom from Pentecost to the First Millennium, by John Strickland It is not the cosmology of Eusebius that concerns me, but the political arrangement that this pointed to.  As better developed in my previous post: the emperor was to be subject to divine law; the bishops would be subject to the emperor.  This, in distinction to Augustine’s two cities. Justinian famously codified Roman law, integrating religion, culture and politics – as had to be the case given this Eastern cosmology.  He legislated nearly all aspects of Christianity, including the place of the clergy in society.  His vision of the Christian state can be defined as symphony, or caesaropapism; of these two terms, he coined the former.  As explained by Strickland: …it is not a symphony between Church and state, or even between clergy and ruler.  It assumes that the two are one, and that the purpose and identity of both groupings is identical. For the early part of medieval Europe, this was the case – changed, per Strickland, only with the reform papacy of the eleventh century: Christendom would assign the clergy a new role of supervision and earthly transcendence.  This role – and the division it allowed regarding governance – would survive until the Protestant Reformation, when it collapsed once again, with the clergy having no legitimate role in the political life of society. In theory, this Eastern symphony held that the bishops were to ensure that the emperor remained subject to divine law, but it rarely worked out this way given the power relationship.  When Justinian slaughtered thirty thousand citizens during the Nika Riots, no bishop came forward to speak truth to power.  Conversely, the emperor had no hesitation to ask the bishops for support, regardless of policy. He could be tyrannical, but Justinian also passed many new and unique laws: laws in support of women, laws against infanticide, property rights of women were increased, and women convicted of adultery were no longer under penalty of death.  Sex slavery was forbidden, and crown resources were used to help women escape prostitution. By now, Rome had been successfully invaded by the Visigoth Alaric.  Justinian, the emperor housed in Constantinople, would spend significant time and treasure in a battle for reunification.  At this time, the emperor was still “Emperor of the Romans”; official documents were still written in Latin, not Greek; and the capital was still officially called “New Rome.” This battle for reunification was a waste of lives and resources; nothing was gained, or regained.  In the meantime, the Lombards would cross the Alps into Italy.  Rome and Ravenna would remain firmly in the hands of Constantinople for another two hundred years, but much of northern Italy was lost to the barbarians. Therefore, it was Constantinople that would be the center of both the Roman and Christian world.  Even those few who remained and survived in Old Rome would agree with this.  The greatest temples and the best scholarship were all to be found in the East. Which left the Roman bishop as the sole governance entity in the West.  As the political element was disappearing from Rome, the ecclesiastical element was taking its place.  But it would go further, in the person of Pope Leo the Great… …who claimed, largely without precedent, that the papacy exercised jurisdictional preeminence (principatus) throughout the universal Church. This certainly opened up a rivalry with the emperor; even more, it dismayed Eastern Bishops: the other recognized centers of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem did not take kindly to such a notion. [Leo] was one of the first to claim that because the Apostle Peter had died in Rome, the bishop that ruled there was Peter’s unique heir. The line from this point to the Great Schism is not a straight one.  Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century, was a pope who held close ties to Constantinople – holding to the ties that bound East and West.  Gregory himself spent seven years in Constantinople, prior to his election; he had a deep understanding of Eastern Christianity.  Gregory would not claim papal supremacy, as Leo had done; in fact, he wrote against such a practice of supremacy by any of the five bishops (including his) over any of the others. Conclusion Politically and militarily, Christendom was under attack: from the east, Persia; from the south – in the Middle East, North Africa, and southern Europe – from Islam.  In the east and Middle East, much of Christendom was lost – primarily the areas populated by Monophysites, known under the umbrella of Oriental Orthodoxy, and distinct from the Eastern Orthodox. The Monophysites were given preferential treatment by the conquering Arabs, given the former’s tensions with the Orthodox Byzantines.  But clearly, these invasions would shape Christendom both religiously and politically in the decades and centuries to come. Epilogue I intend to minimize as much as possible the review of the various doctrinal points and differences in this history, staying focused on the issues that effect differences in governance.  I offer the following, however, due to its significance – for those both interested in and unfamiliar with Eastern Orthodoxy.  It regards St. Maximos the Confessor, called “the father of Byzantine theology.” At the heart of his theological vision was deification, the doctrine that man, as the biblically defined image of God, can experience direct communion with God through the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church. As Maximos would write: …[man], the image of God, becomes God by deification…. Thus God and those worthy of God possess in all things one and the same energy, or rather, this common energy is the energy of God alone, since he communicates himself wholly to those who are wholly worthy. Reprinted with permission from Bionic Mosquito. The post Eastern Symphony appeared first on LewRockwell.

Vaccine Hustlers Can’t Keep Their Story Straight; Evangelicals, Black People, Trumpers; Who’s ‘Hesitating?’ Wednesday 28 April 2021 11:01 PM UTC-05 First, let’s get this straight. The term “hesitancy” would apply to your pasty-faced nephew, who plays video games 19 hours a day, who’s dragged to the beach one summer afternoon, and is reluctant to stick his toe in the water as he stands near the last little gasp of foam breaking on the sand. Most of the people who aren’t taking the COVID vaccine aren’t hesitant at all. They’re determined to reject the shot. Most of the people who don’t want the COVID vaccine are quite sure they want to forego genetic damage, blood clots, and death. So…who are the “hesitant” ones the vaccine hustlers are going after? According to an old desiccated man who could play a mortician in an Abbott and Costello movie without a minute of rehearsal, and who happens to be the director of the largest medical research facility in the world—the US National Institutes of Health—Dr. Francis Collins… According to Collins, the prime target of pro-vaccine propaganda is the dastardly evangelical/Trumper crowd. Last week, Collins spoke with NBC’s Chuck (aging-wonder-boy) Todd, who made his original journalistic bones deftly pointing a wand at maps of voting districts on Election Night. Collins intoned, in the manner of a funeral home director expressing condolences to customers over the accident that took the life of their beloved family member, who was driving while drunk and steered his car over a cliff: “Particularly white evangelicals seem to be resistant to the idea that vaccines are something they want to take advantage of.” “…certainly Republican men in particular seem to less likely to be interested in the vaccine.” But wait. NIH head Collins—playing politics—forgot to mention that, according to a recent Harris poll, a whopping 42% of black Americans don’t want the vaccine. Oops. Well, no doubt “systemic racism” must be the reason black people are failing to see how glorious the vaccine is. They’re being kept in ignorance by white people. Actually, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. A COVID Collaborative poll discovered black Americans have shockingly low levels of trust in the FDA (29%) and drug companies (19%). I’d say those numbers reveal acute intelligence, not ignorance, on medical issues. Any group that distrusts the FDA at the rate of 71% is medically on the ball. On the other hand, white Americans are the victims of systemic “safe and effective” lying by The New York Times, CNN, NBC, etc. White Republicans are also being lied to by Donald Trump, Mr. Warp Speed, who is pushing the COVID vaccine like a lifeboat on the Titanic. Trump is fronting for the COVID shot with a fervor matched only by Biden and Fauci and Bill Gates. In an April 16 mass email to his followers (no doubt written by an aide), Trump, a major propaganda whore for Pharma, states: Vaccine resistance is “deranged pseudo-science.” “The federal pause on the J&J shot makes no sense. Why is the Biden White House letting insanely risk-averse bureaucrats run the show?” It’s “sheer lunacy” for Biden “to delay millions of vaccinations and feed fears among the vax-resistant.” “Indeed, this moronic move is a gift to the anti-vax movement.” I spoke with a born-again Christian the other day. I asked him whether God had told him not to take the vaccine. He laughed. He said, “God told me to trust my research.” “When did He say that?” “I like to think it was just before I wrote to Trump telling him to wake up.” We’re seeing hustlers on all points of the political spectrum pushing the COVID vaccine—the gene therapy that was designed, in clinical trials, to prevent nothing more than a cough, or chills and fever. The gene therapy that has never been launched on the public before. The genetic injection that has only gained FDA certification for emergency use—a far lower and looser classification than full approval. These criminal vaccine promoters deploy outrage and sob stories—whatever they think will play well—as they target various demographics. Thousands of serious adverse effects from the shot are being reported. You can multiply those figures by 10 or 100 to gain a truer estimate of what is happening; and there are NO data on long-term effects. You bet your ass people are “hesitant.” Medical authorities are telling them to accept an genetic injection that causes their cells to manufacture a protein they would never make under ordinary conditions. Speaking of gene therapy, Dr. Francis Collins, the head of NIH, made his career on the back of discovering “genes associated with various diseases.” In all the years of NIH’s existence, with a total budget in the hundreds of billions of dollars, show me ONE genetic cure for ANY disease across the board. Just one. I’m waiting. It turns out that the history of genetics reveals the following: they can ALTER humans with it, but they can’t CURE humans. Reprinted with permission from Jon Rappoport’s blog. The post Vaccine Hustlers Can’t Keep Their Story Straight; Evangelicals, Black People, Trumpers; Who’s ‘Hesitating?’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Jab Hands Wednesday 28 April 2021 11:01 PM UTC-05 People are weirdly proud of having been Jabbed; they are dying to tell you all about it. And they may well be, just that. Dying. Many already have. Thousands, actually. Many of them previously healthy. Which, naturlich, the media won’t tell the public about – at least, not over and over and over again, as per the cases! the cases! Of positive tests. That you can’t get them to stop telling the public about. It used to be old people in nursing homes who talked about nothing but their ailments – and procedures. Their hip replacements, diverticulitis surgery and various meds. But sickness-obsession has become a national cult and its members are of all ages and both sexes – bound as one by their held-in-common hypochondria. Holy achoo! Without the bless you. It is a strange thing to be an unbeliever in these times of near-universal sickness. Or rather, near-universal obsession with getting sick. It brings home what one read about what it was like to be a Catholic in Henry V’s England – or a Protestant, when his daughter Mary took over. They didn’t wear their sickness on their faces in those days, of course. But it was the same sickness, nonetheless. A belief so fragile it required everyone else share it. Lest the sight of an unbeliever cause one of the Faithful to waver. The Jabbing is of a piece. The Jabbed are not content to merely be Jabbed, themselves. Which suggests they doubt, at some level. As they also doubt with regard to the wearing of their Holy Rags. If both served the purpose purported, they would not be so worried about those who do not share their Faith. They are saved – or are they not? Why doth the Pope – Fauci XVII – wear the Rag? Hath he not received the Jab and – thus – put on the full armor of god? Or is it that he dreads the spread of Unbelief? What’s going on – with regard to both the Holy Rag and the Holy Needle – is the same thing that went on in Jonestown in ’78 and in San Diego, back in ’97 – when “Do” and his Faithful ate their pudding and “ascended to the level beyond human.” There was no getting out of line – in Jonestown. No turning down the cup of Kool Aid. Everyone took a drink. If some did not – if some were allowed to not – then it is likely not as many would have. Read the Whole Article The post Jab Hands appeared first on LewRockwell.

Psychopaths and Narcissists Exploit Virtue-Signaling and Victimhood Wednesday 28 April 2021 11:01 PM UTC-05 And if you want to follow and watch on other platforms: Rumble: https://rumble.com/register/JoeJarvis/ Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/5w5pEG84b9Rw/ Odysee/ LBRY: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@joejarvis:4 Brighteon: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/joejarvis Last September, a professor of African studies at George Washington University, Jessica Krug, admitted to faking African and Latina heritage for her entire adult life. She was apparently about to be outed as a race-faker, and decided to get ahead of the news by admitting that she was “a culture leech.” According to friends, Krug was militant and aggressive in her stances against systemic racism, going so far as to pick fights in public with other White women, and expect her Black friends to help her. Clearly Krug thought identifying as Black allowed her to claim the moral high ground from the White devils, and lend her more expertise and street cred in her career as a Professor and author of African studies. Rachel Dolezal, famous outted after years of pretending to be Black, also benefitted from her faked identity– she was the head of an NAACP chapter. And who could forget Elizabeth Warren, who was listed as a minority professor at Harvard for years because she thought her high cheekbones made her a Native American. She was later hilariously trolled by Trump, who convinced her to get a DNA test, which she actually bragged about, saying it confirmed that she is at most 1/64th Native American. This really isn’t a hard phenomenon to figure out. The more you give certain groups in society special advantages and privileges– from the moral high ground to jobs and salaries– the more this will bring the worst type of people out of the woodwork to take advantage. In the context of two recent studies, it all makes perfect sense. Here, the science confirms what we intuitively know– that bad people take advantage of other people’s good intentions to gain power. You’ve probably heard of “virtue signaling,” when someone tries to show how morally superior they are because of some cause they claim to care about. For example, the Instagram influencers caught staging pictures which showed them helping to clean up a neighborhood after a riot. Or a company that tweets out support for gay rights during pride month. They are signaling that they are virtuous, and reaping the social and material rewards of being part of the “woke” crowd. But this new research indicates that these Social Justice Warriors might not be so well-intentioned. The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology recently published a paper which analyzed the results of a number of studies on victimhood and “virtue signaling.” The paper is called Signaling Virtuous Victimhood as Indicators of Dark Triad Personalities. The “dark triad personalities” are narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. The research found that individuals with these three traits are more likely to signal virtuousness or victimhood. That means psychopaths, narcissists, and shrewd opportunists often take advantage of the social climate for their own gain. And it’s not just sympathy or social status they gain. The benefits of virtual signaling include real, tangible, gains in resources– as evidenced by the three White posers we discussed. That’s because the US is now an environment in which it is, according to the study, “increasingly advantageous and even fashionable” to be considered a victim. It is also used as a way to gain “moral immunity” for “deceit, intimidation, or even violence by alleged victims to achieve their goals.” In other words, the ends justify the means. As long as you claim to have a noble intention, then it can excuse any amount of terrible behavior in the pursuit of that goal. And that is why Black Lives Matters embeds its admittedly Marxist goals in the vehicle of racial justice. Signaling support for disenfranchised groups is a shortcut to get ahead in today’s world. This obviously doesn’t mean that every “woke” person is a psychopath. Surely some have the best intentions. But this study confirms that when society gives some people special rights and privileges, bad people will always take advantage of it. Coupled with another study which was released a couple years back, we can understand perfectly the woke threat coming out of the belly of the beast, Washington DC. The study called Psychopathy By State found that the concentration of psychopaths in Washington DC was far higher than in any state. “The presence of psychopaths in District of Columbia is consistent with the conjecture… that psychopaths are likely to be effective in the political sphere.” Psychos are drawn to power. It is not just that power corrupts, it is that already corrupt people seek power. Government is the best industry to be in for someone with no morals. The study surveyed samples from the lower 48 states and Washington D.C. to find the prevalence of personality traits which correspond to psychopathy. Of course, D.C. came in first by far. But as the author notes, that this is not exactly a fair comparison, as it is a city being compared to entire states. The study finds that urban areas, in general, correspond to more psychopathic personality traits. Another interesting finding is that a higher concentration of lawyers predicts higher psychopathy prevalence. Shocking, I know. So removing D.C. can you guess which states come in the top three for concentrations of psychopaths? Connecticut California New Jersey The least psychopathic states are: West Virginia Vermont Tennessee North Carolina New Mexico And it should not be surprising that the main correlation was that state with the lowest percentage of people living in urban areas also had the lowest concentration of psychopaths. Perhaps psychopaths need to be around more victims, or constantly switch out their friends and acquaintances as they become wise to their antisocial behaviors. It is possible that psychopaths are more easily recognized and ostracized in smaller communities and rural settings. The study concludes: Areas of the United States that are measured to be most psychopathic are those in the Northeast and other similarly populated regions. The least psychopathic are predominantly rural areas. The District of Columbia is measured to be far more psychopathic than any individual state in the country, a fact that can be readily explained either by its very high population density or by the type of person who may be drawn [to] a literal seat of power (as in Murphy 2016). Hailing originally from Massachusetts, I can attest to the highest corresponding personality trait being “Temperamental & Uninhibited.” Where did you think the term Masshole came from? If you aren’t a psychopath when you enter the state, you soon become one from the traffic alone. And I wonder if just being in such close proximity to people makes it a necessary adaptation to care a little less about how your actions affect others. The solution is to not give a single inch to these virtue signaling psychopaths. Don’t engage them. Don’t fall into their traps, don’t denounce your Whiteness, or apologize for being straight, Christian, rich, privileged, or whatever. That’s a race to the bottom, and the best thing we can do is either ignore them, or relentlessly make fun of them with memes. What you don’t want to do is go in the other direction, and become the self-fulfilling prophecy by actually becoming racist. Remember, this is a small group of people trying to make everyone else self segregate or identify with a victim group. Just keep it in mind that this narrative is being driven by elitist White liberals, some of whom will go so far as to fake being victims themselves. The other thing you can do is self-select the group you associate with, and live around. I’ve been doing this for years, and the only time I ever see these ridiculous race baiters and woke mobsters is online. Remember, the media will take a tiny minority opinion, present it as if it is mainstream, and try to build it into a movement. It’s still dangerous, since the minority can, and does in many cases, take over and set policy. You still have to call attention to the cult to make sure it doesn’t catch on. But I don’t actually know any woke mobsters in real life, which is either a testament to the power of selecting the people you surround yourself with, or it means, as I suspect, that there actually aren’t that many people who think like this. And finally, living in a more rural place, or a tight-knit suburban community– which again, you have specifically selected– can also solve a lot of these problems. Like the study says, these people concentrate in cities, so being rural does get you out of their reach to some extent. Reprinted with permission from The Daily Bell. The post Psychopaths and Narcissists Exploit Virtue-Signaling and Victimhood appeared first on LewRockwell.

from https://youtu.be/V0EQNQssk6U
April 29, 2021

from https://youtu.be/UuC5mCL9HC8
April 29, 2021 at 02:29AM