Odds and Ends

As I offer on occasion, a grab bag.

What’s Up, Trump?

Russiagate, Clinton corruption, FBI and various spooks working to undermine US elections, etc.  Trump has the authority to declassify any and all documents that shed light on any of these.  Yet he hasn’t.

Why?  Is it possible he is ignorant of this power?  I doubt it.  Do the classified documents counter the suspected truth?  No chance of that.  Is it possible Trump has a different plan in mind?  Maybe.

If Trump does have a different plan in mind, I can think of two possibilities: first, with all of his enemies focused on the non-scandal scandals, Trump is able to have a freer hand in other things he wants to get done.  If he did more draining of the swamp in the last year, I would put more credence in this as the reason.

The second possibility: he is waiting for the right time to drop the bomb.  What do I mean?  If there is some real truth to these scandals – and these truths implicate various democrats and other enemies in the spook agencies – when would be a better time to declassify documents, give a speech in front of the nation, etc., than about a week or two before the mid-term election?

What do Open-Borders Libertarians and Neocons Have in Common?

A desire to see western civilization destroyed…oh, and also to refuse to apply their open-borders suicide to Israel.  From an email to Max Boot:

              

Hello, friend.  We’d like to invite you to join the Open Borders for Israel campaign.

You can imagine the rest of the email.

Max’s reply (I bet you can already guess):

The anti-Semitic emails….

I think it is Max and the open borders libertarians who refuse to advocate for open borders for Israel who are anti-Semitic.  After all, if it is so good for the economy and cultural diversity in the west, why keep these blessings from the Jews in Israel?

I am just asking; I am not advocating.

Civilization and Its Enemies

From a piece by Paul Krause (HT Charles Burris):

Western civilization, for all of its imperfections, is, nevertheless, Christian in its inheritance and still Christian in its current state of composition (needing to be awakened to be sure).

Krause points to one of the gifts of the late Enlightenment, bestowed on us by “everyone from Rousseau to the German romantics—albeit for very different reasons”: the venomous attack on western civilization that is by now quite obvious for an even semi-conscious being to notice.

Rousseau, the “spiritual godfather of the postmodern movement,” wanted to destroy western civilization entirely; as western civilization cannot be separated from its Christian tradition, this meant destroying the Christian tradition as well. 

The German Romantics are more specific – being anti-nihilistic, they were only interested in destroying “the materialistic, hedonistic, utilitarianism of Anglo-French liberalism.”  They looked fondly on the civilization of the Middle Ages, albeit without the Christianity.

For the romantics the new dichotomy was one between authentic civilization (pure, free, and fertile) and nihilistic civilization (corrupt, decadent, and oppressive). For the Germans, unlike with Rousseau, they still wanted to defend their version of authentic civilization while Rousseau saw all civilization is bad.

This desire to destroy Christianity explains the alliance of the radical left with Islam – the enemy for both is the same.  Whether consciously or subconsciously on behalf of the voters, it also at least partly explains Trump; their clergy do not agree:

Christian support for Donald Trump has recently been excoriated from clerical leadership of all stripes (Protestant and Catholic).

Because clerical leaders such as these value diversity and equality more than they value civilization.

President Trump may not know what he is doing in all things. But that is not altogether important. On the critical issues, he is, knowingly or unknowingly, acting as a katechon against those who seek to tear down the edifice of what remains of Western Civilization and its Christian inheritance.

Trump, as katechon, is holding back this anti-Christ.

The German Romantic – in looking back to the time of the European Middle Ages for authentic civilization – held part of the answer, but apparently only a part:

The German anti-nihilist brushed aside Christianity as a possible answer to the crisis they saw and concerned themselves with. Nietzsche, in saying yes to life, ultimately said no to life.

I have come to understand that Nietzsche, via his infamous “God is dead,” was not making a joyous announcement, but instead offering a somber warning:

When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands.

In giving up the right to Christian morality; western man gives up the right to his civilization.  Man killed God; Nietzsche was merely warning us of the consequences.  We are living those consequences.

America is an Idea?

Even if one grants this as true, what happens when the people populating America don’t hold the same idea?

This American “idea” came from somewhere – ideas cannot exist absent the people who hold these.  I have written often enough from where this idea comes.  It grew on a specific soil – a specific cultural and civilizational soil.  It hasn’t been demonstrated, to my knowledge, that it can grow on any other soil for any extended period of time.

So what happens when the elite work to replace the soil?  Why is it that open-borders libertarians join the likes of open-borders Soros in this endeavor?

The Aim Around Which a Community Should Congregate

According to Jordan Peterson (and not a direct quote):

There is a rule for belonging to a community – that you have to act in a manner that sustains a community and increases its competence.

Otherwise, quite frankly, what good are you?  You might be a perfectly good libertarian, but otherwise useless to your community.  Which kind of supports the idea of immigration based on certain qualifications and expectations.

You know…what Trump said.

Conclusion

Now if Trump would just stop doing stupid stuff in the Middle East.