Back in the salad days of Buckley Conservatism, it was largely understood that the butch wing of the coalition was the so-called religious right. These were the people willing and able to muster big crowds for pro-life marches and organize grassroots support for local candidates. The free market types and foreign policy hawks lived on campus and in the bureaucracy. As a result, they were always apologizing to the Left, over their alliance with those disgusting dirt people in the Bible Belt.
That was a long time ago in a different country. Official Conservatism no longer has a religious right and they no longer care about social issues. National Review, the flagship publication of “movement conservatives” is edited by a homosexual activist who champions the gay agenda on the site. Occasionally, someone from this crowd will make some noises about social issues, but it is mostly nostalgia. Gentry Conservatives talk about abortion to be reminded of better days.
It is not just a matter of the Official Right dropping social issues and social conservatives from their thing. It is more that the religious right has become infected by the same parasites as the rest of the old Reagan coalition. In the 1980’s, Christian organizations decided to fully join the political system and as a result they became political organizations themselves. This opened them up to infiltration. The religious right is now full of cucks.
This week, while campaigning in an Alabama church — as a Bible-believing Christian, I’ll note that this story is already off to a questionable start — Judge Roy Moore, the state’s embattled Republican Senate candidate, faced down a rather spirited heckler. “The entire time, all the girls are lying?” the man shouted, right before he was escorted out of the event. “Why would they lie?” If you’ve been following our very depressing national news cycle, you know the story: Moore, age 70, has faced multiple accusations of sexual misconduct dating back four decades, two of them involving underage girls, including one alleged assault of a fourteen-year-old. No charges have been filed, and that’s unlikely to change; the statute of limitations on any potential crimes stemming from the allegations appears to have long ago expired. Moore, for his part, argues that his accusers are part of a coordinated hit job orchestrated by Washington-establishment insiders. “They don’t want to hear about God,” he declared this week. “And they don’t want to hear about the Constitution of the United States and its foundational principles in God.”
We’ll get back to the Constitution — and Moore’s understanding of it — in a moment. But for now, let’s hear what the pastor of the church said, his doughy chin raised high, once the heckler had been neatly dispatched: “I would remind everyone,” he sniffed, “that this is a worship service.”
The opening two paragraphs reads like something you would find in Mother Jones or The Nation. It is the sort of framing that the Cult of Modern Liberalism has used against Christians for generations.
I’ll get this out the way: If you’re in Alabama and you want to vote for Roy Moore, vote for Roy Moore. But let’s at least try to keep things real: If you vote for Moore, you’re doing it because he’s not a Democrat, rather than because he’s some holy soldier on a special mission for God.
I would be willing to wager that the first draft of this was something like, “If you’re voting for Roy Moore, you’re doing it because he is not a Democrat. Just don’t call yourself a Christian.” That was the tone of the piece and the underlying message. To come right out and say it would require something resembling courage and that is a mortal sin in the land of the cuck. After all, the merchant wing of the movement is going to be peddling Jesus themed wine and cheese baskets as part of the next fundraiser.
The fact is, there can be no interpretation of the events in Alabama that would lead a committed Christian to support the Democrat over Moore. Moore is staunchly opposed to abortion. The Democrat is willing to install Planned Parenthood approved abattoirs in the nation’s grammar schools. Even the most isolated “Bible-believing Christian” can understand the difference between a venal sin and a mortal sin. Moore’s sins, whatever they were, are trivial, compared to supporting wholesale baby murder.
In fairness to “Bible-believing Christians”, the authoress of the NR piece is just some bubblehead hired to write down what she is told. Still, many of the people now claiming the mantle of leadership in the religious right are more concerned with their relationship to Washington than their relationship with Jesus. That is because party politics is always about compromise. If you choose to get in bed with one party or the other, you are going to get up with their fleas, or worse. That is what happened to the religious right and the GOP.
The Southern Baptist Convention being overrun by howling lunatics is the most recent example. A generation ago, the sorts of people hooting about white supremacy would have burst into flames if they walked into a Baptist church. Today, they feel perfectly comfortable walking the halls of their well appointed offices of the SBC. It is because the people in charge now feel more at home with Progressive loons than they do with the people in the pews of their own churches. These churches are run by cucks now.
It goes back to the old line from Robert Conquest. “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” In the case of American churches, they stopped being explicitly Christian. Once they diluted their purpose by getting into politics, they were made vulnerable to infiltration by Progressives, who naturally seek to corrupt the organic institutions of a society. Once the religious right went exclusive with Northern conservatives, they were open to infiltration by Northern Liberals.
I consider myself a Christian but haven’t been to a church service that wasn’t for a wedding or a funeral in four decades, until recently. When the UCC ministress paraded the “environmental justice” committee in front of the congregation for accolades, I realized I haven’t missed much in those forty years.
OT: Z-man, why no comment on the deep-state coup that’s underway? Of have I missed it?
Parasites flourish when the host becomes diseased. That is the phenomenon that you are describing with respect to the Progressive infiltration of church organizations. As with buzzards circling overhead, their presence reveals the location of a dying carcass.
Those of you “down” on Christianity I’d like to challenge you to spend 45 minutes listening to a very good Catholic apologist, Patrick Madrid.
https://relevantradio.com/listen/our-shows/the-patrick-madrid-show/
I’ll add one more thing. While driving I no longer listen to talk radio (yes, even Rush) because when the news rolls around it’s definitely Cuck Time. Relevant Radio is a refreshing change from the usual garbage.
To be fair, there is nobody at these churches anymore. I almost always go running on Sunday morning in my rural county and the average ages at these churches is like 80. I never see people my age and it seems like there are way too many churches per block for the demand.
While the liberal churches are pure cancer, I think even the so called conservative churches are also declining at a realtively rapid rate in the latest pew study. It leaves the altright with the biggest question, how to have a right wing movement in a nonreligious or post religious society. It’s at least as big a question or problem as demographics.
Not like that around here. Most people – all ages – go to church.
Some younger folks wear crosses or have some kind of Bible verse tattooed on their wrists, and it’s relatively common to have clerks in stores tell you to “have a blessed day.”
No one bats an eye around here at people – again, all ages – saying grace over food in fast food restaurants.
Spot on. And why I no longer go to church.
“Most mainline Protestant churches are, to one degree or another, post-Christian. If they no longer seem disposed to converting the unbelieving to Christ, they can at least convert them to the boggiest of soft-left clichés, on the grounds that if Jesus were alive today he’d most likely be a gay Anglican bishop in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally friendly car with an “Arms are for Hugging” sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams.” ― Mark Steyn
Great quote. He also said about the “Coexist” bumper stickers, that if not for the “C”, you wouldn’t need the sticker.
Modern Christianity sowed the seeds of its own destruction when it went all-in at becoming a universal faith, rather than sticking to its core congregation of European people. The theological and intellectual compromises necessary to welcome into the faith everyone from polygamous African tribesmen to Buddhist Asians have so diluted the core tenants of the faith that there’s little serious theology left in the faith. Most of what has filled the void left by the abandonment of theology is little more than modern, left-wing psychobabble.
It’s no coincidence that the (formerly) Christian countries are now being overrun by immigrants. If your faith informs you that all humans are equally deserving of God’s salvation and brothers and sisters in Christ then there isn’t much reason not to import the entire population of Somalia to Minnesota. After all, those Somalis are no different than the Nords who used to inhabit those neighborhoods.
Christians could learn a thing or two from the Jews. Their faith makes no effort at being universal. It’s no coincidence that Israel has a wall.
Absolutely. Christianity is a White thing.
It’s values mutate elsewhere, because the conditions that formed others and their traits are different.
They aren’t withholding or denying- they simply CAN’T. It is not in them. They cannot return what they do not have.
The question is two words: Even, and Only.
My people and children will not die that theirs may live.
My people and children will live, EVEN IF-
Not ONLY if- theirs do not.
This is the only way. There is none other, not in this world.
PS- yes, I know where it was said to have originated, but the Levantine “Jewish cult” (as it was known for the first 300 years) was marginal, overwhelmed by local tendencies, until the Whites adopted it and made it theirs.
Of course that article quoted above also purposely leaves out that the so called “heckler” was nothing more than one of Jimmy Kimmel’s stooges, Jake Byrd, sent down to the church to cause the disturbance on purpose.
Not a local yokel who is against Roy Moore as the disingenuous writer would try to lead you to believe.
Why is Christianity so screwed up in the Occident, yet muscular once you get past the Atlanticist block and examine Greek and Russian Orthodox Christianity? One theory I’ve heard is that because Luther created a schism (when attempting his reform) he undermined not just the existing church, but the whole religion (regardless of his intent). In this reading, Luther is basically using proto-critical theory to wreck Christianity (which may be a stretch). The counter-reformation and Catholic resistance seemed to stave off the rot (Jesuits train men who are both warriors for Christianity and tough intellectuals, like Pat Buchanan or you), but it looks like Catholicism got cucked after Vatican II, and after you had a non-Italian pope and grovelling apologies about Nazi collaboration, the die was cast and now you’ve got a pope literally on his knees washing Muslim feet (if he didn’t have a vow of celibacy, he’d probably be using Vatican gold to pay the barbarians to fuck his wife while he masturbated in the corner of the room). I’d prefer to get back to some kind of muscular, non-suicidal Christianity rather than donning wolf hides and carrying swords like the neo-pagan larpers, but if Asatru or other Vikangz cults are the only alternative to dykes in dalmatic robes, black metal, weight-lifting and Odin might be the only way to go (though I’ve heard Jack Donovan is a homo and I still think Richard Spencer has some sugar in his tank).
In a way the cucked church is the result of the moral majority stuff. The MM bought the liberal argument that it’s OK to use government to get things done that are not the essential business of government. Once that idea got into the mainstream of evangelical thought, that particular tenet remained while the churches drifted leftward. Now the former right wing churches are leftist, and the idea of using government to impose salvation remains.
Amen to that. Progressivism itself is the idea that God works too slowly, we need a little government muscle to hurry the Social Gospel along. From nudge to shove.
Totally agree. Jesus never asked the government to do anything. His ministry was directed at individual human souls.
Here’s a link to an article on Dreher’s Benedict Option, and I think of even more interest, Anthony Esolen. Search the latter’s name for how an ostensibly Catholic college went into the dumpster.
http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/new-life-to-a-dying-world/
Myself, my original church was United Church of Christ. Now, there’s a true dumpster fire of Marxist nonsense. I’m just at present contenting myself with actually reading the Bible, and listening to commentaries by J. Vernon McGee.
Robert Conquest’s famous adage, while quite true, as events show, is also a kind of cancellation of the ideas that inspire a Christian perspective on life.
When applied to churches, the dictum should read “any Christian community not explicitly Christian sooner or later becomes explicitly left-wing.”
Leftism isn’t a point of view as such; it has no doctrines that can be written down and consulted like scripture (distinguishing it, I might add, from classical Marxism, which can be studied and analyzed). It is the cultural tendency toward entropy, a solvent, a regression to the mean of Mankind’s 100,000 years of collective experience, most of which is not pleasant. It is indeed, as Michael Savage called it years ago, “a virus of the mind”.
We give ‘progressivism’ too much credit by calling it a religion, or a cult, or indeed a “philosophy”. It’s just the social expression of what Freud identified as “the death instinct”.
We’re all biological realists here. Well, what has more weight in the balance, the last few hundred years of western enlightenment, or the last tens of thousands of years of biology? Cut the power via an EMP or even a repetition of the Carrington event, and we’ll find out much, much more about the true state of our “actually existing” biology.
Christ offered us a way out of this built-in tendency to chaos and disaster. That’s the Christian view. It’s not “explicitly right-wing”. It’s not even a ‘program’. It’s something to shoot for in what is otherwise a bleak quest toward mirages.
Coolidge 1926
“About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”
I like Coolidge, but do we have equal rights now? And if we do not, how final are those words now, nearly 250 years after they were written?
Is the Declaration a dead letter?
“All men are created equal” is the foundation of Lefty belief; and of course, they think doubling down, pushing it far beyond it’s natural limits will somehow make it magically work better.
I have no problem with “all men are created equal” and should have equal opportunity. The leftists extend that to government mandated equality of results, which inevitably leads to the gulag. Perhaps you are right that equal opportunity leads to mandates, but I hope not. It seems hard to be Christian without the former.
Yup, that’s the difficulty; equality under the law and as God’s children have become “WE say who’s more equal than you!”
The phrase means they are not created as royalty or nobles.
Nailed. It.
I’m so stealing that!
No, I’m still stunned by it.
The sheer genius of that one single line.
Something we all once were taught, and have since forgotten.
You do realize you have repudiated the entire Leftist ethos, their entire culture?
For aristocrats is precisely what they strive to become.
The “philosophy” is OUR philosophy – turned upon us, exaggerated, distorted and weaponized. Marxist progressivism (previously known as liberalism) purposely uses the beliefs of the Judeo-Christian West against itself. Read Alinsky.
Some examples:
– The fundamental equality of mankind – which leads to a political doctrine of equal opportunity – has been distorted into an impossible demand for equal outcomes.
– The quasi-Judeo-Christian sounding, self-righteous slogans such as “No human being is illegal” that is used to sidestep realistic discussions.
This is how postmodernism made such destructive headway before its motives were noticed.
“Planned parenthood approved abattoirs”
Good one
Speaking of the “evolution” of current Christian thought:
‘In a blog he reposted after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced their engagement, the Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth, a senior member of the Scottish Episcopal Church and prominent gay rights campaigner, said Christians who support same-sex marriage in the Church of England should pray for the young prince to be gay.’
‘Reverend Holdsworth said English people interested in advancing LGBTQ rights could: “pray in the privacy of their hearts (or in public if they dare) for the Lord to bless Prince George with a love, when he grows up, of a fine young gentleman. A royal wedding might sort things out remarkably easily though we might have to wait 25 years for that to happen. Who knows whether that might be sooner than things might work out by other means?”’
https://www.thecut.com/2017/12/priest-says-we-should-pray-for-prince-george-to-be-gay.html
I guess it is a sign of intellectual and moral “right thinking” to pray for God to make someone into something he considers an abomination. In today’s America, mainstream denomination Christianity has nothing to do with Christ. The Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian, the Methodist, the Christian, and the Lutheran Church all allow for ordination of homosexuals. And yet, the Bible is quite clear in its condemnation of homosexuals. So now, in a religion whose writings forbid women pastors, you have carpet munchers as ministers and even Bishops. It is de rigueur for mainstream denominations to champion transgender policies, open borders, and muslim immigration into the US and Europe. Woe to them which call evil good and good evil.
I know an Army Chaplain who teaches at West Point. He started raving about how white evangelicalism is opressing blacks. White evangelicalism apparently meaning all churches and traditions familiar to Christians for generations. The very act of going to church embraces racism and all those crackers need to hit the streets for BLM I guess.
I’m not sure if I’m more embarrassed for the Army or the church for having such a raving lunatic associated with them.
Trump should go hot and heavy against the (usually Lutheran) so called Christian organizations sponsoring immigration from the Middle-East/Africa.
Every immigrants crime should be traced back to the sponsoring organization, they should be held accountable to the letter of the law i.e. that the immigrant will not become a ward of the state, no further sponsoring should be allowed, the leaders should be visibly picked up on the steps of their churches and the local cops should start posting pictures of the sponsors and sponsees along with the crimes they are jointly responsible for.
That’s what the left would do.
Oh Lord, don’t pick on just the Lutherans. The USCCB is into the public trough up to their immigration-loving eyeballs. Only one in four “Catholics” now attend Mass; that’s a whole lot of empty collection baskets.
You know it’s coming
NRO publishes “The Conservative Case for Gender Pronoun Legislation”
Answering the question “Is the Pope Catholic?” is no longer as obvious as it once was.
There has been considerable discussion of alt-right vs. libertarianism in this blog. The way I see it, there is two kinds of libertarianism. The first is what I call political libertarianism. The second (which is more relevant to me) is what I call personal libertarianism, which is essentially where I have the freedom to live the life I want in terms of my career choices, whither I choose to have kids or not, where I go on holiday, and how I manage my physical self (e.g. DIY biohacking, home-based gene therapies, radical life extension, etc,).
I’ve read the 16 points of the alt-right. Although they may not fit with political libertarian ideology, I see absolutely nothing in them to suggest any conflict with the exercise of my personal life choices (particularly the DIY biohacking part). Is this correct?
If my assumption on this point is correct, I can tell you that as a libertarian minded individualist, I have no problem with alt-right and, if it helps save western civilization, I’m all for it.
Proper libertarianism, 10th Amendment solutions or Constitutionalism, apparently can only work in a white majority.
Blank slate is where libertarianism (and conservatism) went wrong. Equality under the law doesn’t hold in a nepotistic or tribal society. A tragedy of the commons occurs.
(Also, the borders are not a 10th Amt matter- tarians shouldn’t support globalism, especially since Senators no longer represent their state (17th Amt) against the Feds.)
It’s either blank slate or biological realism-
Z makes this a clear standard.
I get your point about immigration. I might even agree with it. However, that was not the question I asked. Since you did not directly answer my question, I will take you comment as suggestion that alt-right is specifically a political thing that concerns itself with issues such as immigration, borders, and the like.
As such, I am going to assume that the alt-right, being inherently political, is completely orthogonal and irrelevant with regards to my personal choices and, more specifically, my strategic long term choices. I will also assume that this is also true for other alt-right figures such as Vox Day and others.
Wouldn’t surprise me if the same rural / urban split shows up amongst the Southern Baptists, where many of the rural churches affiliated with the SBC, decide to withdraw and go independent. The SBC after all, is a loose federation of churches that can pretty much leave whenever they want. It’s not top-down like the Catholics, where it’s all vertically integrated.
Pretty broad brush strokes there…
No argument that many conservative Christians and Christian churches have pursued political solutions to moral problems, and have gotten the results – had they been more circumspect – that you would expect: this has gone nowhere good. The mainline churches are a lost cause; more conservative Christians are beginning to wake up the fact that the political realm is completely secular and intractably hostile, and ultimately the blowback against their political involvement will be far worse than the original problems they hoped to solve by getting involved in the political process. The only battle left in the religious culture wars is the right of conscience, the ability to practice your faith in the public square. This is rapidly disappearing, and the Christian bakers and wedding photographers are the tip of the iceberg. See Rod Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option” for one eye-opening perspective – he’s essentially looking for ways to re-institute the Monastic movement of the dark ages and early middle ages, somehow adapting it to the Internet age, which strikes me as wildly optimistic given the pervasiveness of our intrusive intelligence gathering and privacy destroying digital environment.
The Christian church is an anvil which has broken many hammers, and surely will endure – But western civilization which Christianity made possible has now turned on its parent with a vengeance. This will not turn out well either for civilization or for the Christian church.
I’m waiting for a church where it’s ok to be White. Until then, I’ll continue reading my bible at home and absent myself and my family from SJWs parading in Christian skin suits.
As a Baptist Sunday School teacher, keep in mind that Jesus had zero (0) to do with politics, which is all the flesh. (Matt 4:8-9)
If anybody wants to offer *Biblical* criticism of Moore, look to 1Cor13:1-3.
Maybe the Messiah had nothing to do with politics, but he sure had a lot to do and say about governance.
The Bible does not tell people not to judge. It tells people to use judgement.
(I say that as an out house semi-Christian that is actually reading the Book).
From the looks of your avatar, I can safely assume your church will not be a good fit for me.
The Evangelicals never had the numbers or funds to elect one of their own guys to high office. But they did have the moral high ground among white Christians & plenty of zeal.
So no Republicans could get elected without getting their approval.
That veto power position is the next phase for the Alt Right.
Already any Cuckservative running on the usual GOPe anti-American globalist faggotry will have a very tough time getting through their primary, much less general.
Bush is an Evangelical and he won largely on the support of Evangelicals. He was the arguably the worst president in American history. That’s pretty solid proof that getting “one of your own” into power is not the answer. Pro-life people, for example, let themselves be ghettoized by going all in with the GOP. They should walk from the GOP and start supporting the least crazy Dems in order to drag the Overton Window slowly back in their direction.
This is why the NRA is so successful. They don’t see party. They never lose sight of who they are and why they exist.
You could make the argument that the SJWs were a reaction to the right wing theocrats that Dubya cynically used. But as usual, the extreme opposite of a bad thing, is generally a bad thing too.
The problem is that there never was any sudden emergence of RW theocrats anywhere in the U.S. even under Bush. The thing is Christianity has been on the retreat since 1947 when it got thrown out of public schooling.
The rise of the SJW has more to do with the power boost the Left got from Obama’s regime and their control of the media, education establishment and culture in general.
Think of the SJW’s as a expression of that strength.
That said, what Bush did was use the Evangelicals like a pair of socks. Bush at his core was a open borders, war-mongering, globalist supporting half-wit. He supported economic policies that just hammered the blue collars and middle-class into the ground.
The damage he and Clinton did to the country was incalculable.
W is Exhibit A of my point.
He was a Skull & Bones + Harvard MBA WASP elite ex-President’s scion who had built in establishment GOP support, then adopted some Evangelical Texan beliefs & mannerisms & used them to get elected.
Exhibit B is Bob Dole, John McCain & Mitt Romney. They were establishment guys but never got the evangelical nod, so failed.
Exhibit C is Pat Robertson & Mike Huckabee. They were true product of the evangelical movement but never got establishment support & got nowhere.
The evangelicals were necessary but not sufficient piece of the Republican coalition. That’s a pretty good place to be.
And even if being a party-neutral power player is a better choice, I doubt that the Alt Right has that option. The Democrats have gone full Anti White Man now.
Despite the deranged lunacy of Bush’s detractors during his two terms, it’s getting more and more difficult to deny that man was an utter disaster for not only conservatism, but anyone who just doesn’t want to be consumed by the poz and cultural Marxism.
Other than the Middle East, spending and immigration, Bush had okay policies. Wow having said that, I realize how awful he really was. The biggest problem I had with him was he never fought back. He mistook his Christian mission to mean that he should turn the other cheek to his lunatic political rivals. He completely misunderstood his personal mission from his professional one. If I call the police to come to my house I don’t want them turning the other cheek. That’s not what they’re hired to do. He was effectively a pussy doormat for 8 years, and allowed the left to not only tar him but the entire conservative movement. The uninformed of the country believed the worst of what they were saying, because no one contested it. After his presidency, he showed his true colors and revealed how he had been playing the right for suckers all along. Just like his father before him, and certainly Jeb after him.
Name ONE “Okay policy” espoused by W. just one.
You have to keep in mind it’s relative to the policies we would have gotten under Gore and Kerry, who were deeply strange, creepy people, as well as liberal McCain, who was his primary opponent. He kept overall taxes low, bailed on the Kyoto treaty, Alito is great, Roberts a disappointing moderate, though better than Gore/Kerry would have appointed. His treatment of terrorists was good (enhanced interrogation, Gauntanamo Bay), albeit in the middle of his incredibly naive and destructive overall mideast policy. He did not do anything to stop the debt bubble from brewing, but no one wanted to do anything there, and TARP was at least a decent response (at least enough for Obama to take all the credit for it). I am not defending him. His presidency is much worse in hindsight than it seemed at the time. I basically view Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama to be one long indistinguishably bad presidency. Thank God the Bush/Clinton run was ended by Trump.
The conservative movement tarred itself pretty well when it refused to recognize that the enemy was inside the gates.
“Neoconservatism” was never conservative – but if you had to go head to head with a typical conservative during the Bush era and make the argument that getting involved in optional wars in the Mideast was going result in an utter disaster – you would have never known the difference.
I’d estimate the self proclaimed “conservatives” I ran across during the Bush era who recognized Neocons for what they were as down in the 5% range.
“Conservatives” bitch endlessly about all the immigration from shit areas of the world know – but that crap really got going during the Bush era. Seems like nobody can recognize one of the immigration patterns for people coming into the US. Whenever the US gets involved in some area of the world – large amounts of immigrants from that region follow quickly on the heels of the involvement.
War in the Mideast directly equals immigration from the Mideast. War or military involvement in Africa – directly equals immigration from Africa.
This explains in large part the general frustration of the dirt-people, writ large. The GOPe figures they’ve got this demographic locked up, since being the only anti-democrat vehicle will be enough to hold their support. So there’s no reason to ever address their interests, or as it increasingly appears, even publicly humor them. And as cynical as that might sound, they’re probably right. I voted for McCain in 2008 knowing full-well he’d make a terrible president. But to do anything else further enabled Obama, and that was out of the question.
Then again, I suppose the Democrat establishment, whatever that is, could be accused of taking the same approach with black voters.
“Bush is an Evangelical ”
Couldn’t prove it by his murderous wars and police state actions, could you?
It looks nothing like the Christianity I was raised in.
Z Man;
It saddens me, but I now have to agree with you about W. My excuse, FWIW, is that his enemies were so despicable that I was driven to defend him thru-out his term. Even so, he was the less bad choice than the Prog. alternative then on offer (or now, for that matter).
For example, even at the time right after 9/11, I went all WTF incredulous about his ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ utter nonsense. But within days his enemies (and ours) were going on about ‘we need to understand why they hate us’. So it was an easy enough choice of sides to make at the time.
Re W being an evangelical:
– First, there is no such thing as *the* evangelical position on almost any *political* (or related) subject. It’s different in the sphere of religious doctrine, where there is broad agreement on general principles.
– It is fair to say that W portrayed himself as an evangelical. Whether or not he *is* one, only God, who searches the hearts of all men, knows for sure.
– It must be said that W strove to conduct himself personally as a Christian man, often to his detriment politically (as many others have observed hereabouts).
– It is also fair to say that mainline conservatism, of which W is an exemplar, conserved almost nothing, most particularly in the realm of social policy. As People’s Exhibit A, all Trump had to do to gain the evangelical vote was to promise to take the Prog. boot off our necks.
So should we take W, an ineffectual supporter, over Obama, an active enemy, given the choice_? Not so clear.
To me, the lesson now should be ‘put not your trust in princes’.
A significant chunk of us became Alt Right because of Bush. Most of us learned our lesson about the GOP never being serious about abortion or the borders from Jorge Arbusto. Bush paved the way for Trump as much as Obama did. Evangelicals also had sons who served in Bush’s wars and some were maimed or killed. Look at the demographics of the combat deaths in Irag and Trashcanistan – it’s mostly white males. There are many Christians in the military just as there were many CHristians in the Roman army after one of the Roman emperors legalized Christianity.
And its precisely why the Progs hate hate hate the NRA with a white hot heat. The NRA is pure and sticks to its knitting, and is successful because of this. That. drives ’em nuts.
A lot of the NRA supporters also see losing their gun rights as an existential threat to their existence. Not all of them – but if you follow the gun rights debate for long enough (l’ve been involved for 20 years) – you pretty soon figure out that the pro-gun side watches ANY and ALL infringements and sends up a flare whenever they detect even the slightest effort at more restrictions.
There is a wide range of people within the “gun rights” community – some of them are VERY hard core. There’s a not insignificant portion of these people who see the NRA as a sellout. When they see lefties whine and scream about how “radical” the NRA is – it’s seen as laughable. The NRA has rolled over on all sorts of anti-gun legislation in the past. If I remember correctly – they rolled over on the recent bump stock kerfluffle almost immediately.
The NRA says they have 5 million members. I can tell you that among gun owners I know – probably only 1 in 5 is an NRA member. There’s a large unseen constituency for “gun rights” – and more people than you know that are on the “radical” end of that spectrum.
How often does the left bring up another anti-gun push? It’s utterly predictable every time there’s some sort of shooting. It’s also utterly predictable that there is an upsurge in gun and ammunition sales every time the Feinstein/Pelosi/Schumer crowd start whining about more gun control
Point here is: I don’t see any other “conservative” area of politics that has been winning as much as the gun rights segment has. Part of that probably has to do with the dynamics of the situation. When Feinstein says ” I’ll come take them away ” – the hard core gunnies say ” Come and take them “. The cops soon realize that people will get shot – and everybody calms down and nothing happens. CT a few years back demanded people register their firearms. Last I heard there was a very low compliance rate. Here in MA – the AG *retroactively* banned AR style rifles and told us that we were all in violation of the law even though we ostensibly legally purchased them at the time. So far nothing real has happened to persecute anybody over that abomination of legal interpretation. So there’s two instances from very left wing states where the politicians tried to impose more gun restrictions – and the response was basically : “that’s nice that you passed that law – but what you are REALLY going to do about it?”
The problem with a lot of other “conservative” areas of interest (abortion, taxes, war – etc) – IMHO, is that the “conservatives” aren’t willing to pay the price for their principles. It’s far too easy for them to roll over when their teenage daughter gets pregnant and needs an abortion, they’re scared of the ISIS blue water navy so they support high taxes and massive defense spending, or their socialist security payments are threatened.
I’m seeing more and more independent churches around. I wonder if that is not the response to all of these church hierarchies being infiltrated by the progs. If there is no organization to corrupt, then you can’t be corrupted.
I would also guess there are more independent churches in the rural areas too.
Five churches within a couple of miles of me, on the outskirts of a town of < 12,000 in a rural southern county. Four of them are nondenominational.
But not all denominations are completely pozzed. While I am not a believer, I listen to the thoughtful daily internet podcast news commentary of Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also broadcast around here on one of the three Christian radio stations.
The Baptists may not be ideologically race pure, but they are holding the line hard against the LBGTQ2A@*^%(!) etc. ad infinitum agenda, and they don't care what anybody has to say about it.
Seems they read the Bible and take what it says literally, unlike their "love is love and Jesus loves everybody" cousins in some of the other denominations.
El B & S. C.;
My personal observation from my part of the world is that you’re both right. New independent churches spring up in unlikely venues such as school auditoriums, theaters, strip malls, etc. Old and young people attend. Some fail and some grow out of their unlikely venue and take over now-unused mainline church buildings. Some few eventually build their own mega-edifices.
The pastors are largely non-denominational. There are many non-denominational seminaries about that offer an acceptable level of training. If a man has call to ministry, he’ll get ‘enough’ training. Training alone doesn’t make a man a pastor, after all.
I’ve even seen this happening in NY & LA where my kids live/used to live.
Evangelicalism and non-denominational Protestantism sprang up at the turn of the 20th century due to the collapse of mainline Protestantism. Presbyterianism – until its demise in the early 20th century documented by J. Gresham Machen *in “CHristianity and Liberalism” – was the dominant religion in the country. Recall that Calvinists were the first settlers of North America. The Southern Baptist Convention supposedly never turned ‘liberal’ in the sense that the PCUSA did. It always held to the inerrancy of Scripture. Now, the SBC led by Russell Moore and others is getting on board with SJW causes. If D. Martin Lloyd-Jones is to be believed, social justice partially caused the collapse of English Protestantism.
Independent Protestant churches may be conservative theologically but are only a temporary solution to the problem. Churches cannot really be independent as there is no way for church members to escalate theological errors with leaders if one of them such as the pastor goes off the deep end. That’s why the book of Acts documents the Council of Jerusalem as a pattern for presbyteries/classes and synods to deal with doctrinal error.
*Machen was a prominent intellectual and Presbyterian minister in the early 20th century. He testified before congress on numerous matters and was a pen pal of HL Mencken though the two never met in person.
I am now flirting with Christianity (I have never been remotely religious before, and was raised in a liberal family). My wife already got baptized in a small chapel outside of town. Their religion is based on the Bible, and the idea that the Bible says what it means and means what it says. The people are wonderful – they’re mostly older, but there are some younger ones showing up and I have yet to see a queer, or a single mommy or any other failed liberal social experiments. I try to be humble and respectful – but no way am I going to take shit off of degenerates and phonies.
Let us know how it goes – seriously.
I’m doing alright, D. Here’s the way I see it, as a piker from the pew: Christians, by their Maker are commanded to be humble, and not to judge others harshly lest they be judged unfairly themselves. That’s the entry point for SJW’s; they’ve perverted that to mean ‘Don’t judge others’. The Bible doesn’t say that; anyone that has read it knows that the Bible insists that people use judgement. That wedge turned into a massive breach and we started getting tripe like “Love the sinner, hate the sin…”. There’s a fine line between loving sinners, and enabling and encouraging their sins. The SJW’s rolled over congregation after congregation that way. If they ever over run mine, we’re done.
I was driven to the church first by my wife, and the sins of others in our hopelessly pozzed proggie families. Now I am able to see my own sins a little clearer too – and begin to address them. Right now I have my hands full trying to improve myself, and leaving my family to their ways and fate. There’s a lot of emotional baggage there and trying to let go of it is… difficult. Faith has helped a bit.
Glen;
Delighted to her that you are on the right path as shown by your humility. But neither you nor I can ‘fix’ our past sins or change our inherently sinful nature by ourselves. It’s hopeless, we can’t.
But there’s great news. We don’t have to. All we need to do is accept the free gift of Christ’s finished work of atonement on the cross on our behalf: Accept His unconditional offer to cast all our sins on Him.
Once you do this, you will find it incredibly freeing, like stepping into a new dimension.
I can verify that phenomenon- not that someone forgives you, but that you find it in you to forgive yourself.
Heady and exhilerating, every breath a prayer of thanks, every sight, gratitude, as if I were an empty vessel suddenly filled with pouring release. Lasted about six hours. Christians have often witnessed about the sense of freedom they feel after that the burdens are lifted from their shoulders.
Don’t know how to trigger or replicate it, as various religious phenomena seems rather hit-and-miss. Practice would help, I’m sure. That and group practice, the shekinah.
Still studying, that’s my main interest in fact. Remarkable that an idiot like me can make such astonishing headway- and I have- leaving me great hope that the alt-right is groping it’s way to a new religion, to counter the other new faith that is currently tearing down the temples.
Someday this will all be condensed to a line in a book, like Zeus’ Olympians casting down the Titans, or like an angel with swords of fire driving man from the Garden of the earth goddess and her paramours, the snake and bull.
Oh, specifically what I did:
The time seemed right; I awoke very early, and thought, “Let’s be really brave, and try it”- all previous attempts to let go pride or intellect and just let it happen were futile. I recited a traditional formula, “Lord, let me be a vessel, and fill me with thy will”- and was astonished at the sudden outpouring of release.
This, from a born atheist.
The second time I’ve experienced the evangelical’s “reborn” phenom. The first time I experienced the Presence, the I Am, vast as worlds.
They are talking about Something, difficult to put into words. I realized ‘not crazy at all’- merely aphasic, as the hemisphere that deals with the non-physical uses a different form of information processing. Holographic, not linear-verbal.
Forgive the off-topic, but this is what I study. Hoping to integrate it usefully into what we need: a way to survive the growing onslaught.
The line in the King James Version is actually
“Judge not, that thou be not judged”.
At least it was when I read it 40 years ago.
Only Jesus addresses sins. You can only add to them.
http://www.heidelberg-catechism.com/en/lords-days/5.html
You are right about SJWs encouraging sin. By promoting Marxism and discontent – both violations of the 10th commandment – they are calling good evil and evil good which is a heinous sin.
Read the Bible daily. Read it from the perspective of the Author. Too many Christians do not follow the Word, and accept a man’s version of what God wrote, rather than God’s version. I was once asked, “Which version of the Bible should I believe?”
I said, “God’s.” The Book was written by God, period. If you don’t believe that, then your faith is like the shallow seed and will wither fast, or you will be derailed into heresy. Believe there is one author, God, and he used men as scribes to communicate to humanity. Every time you sit to read, ask the Lord to show you something you need and He wants you to know. If you do this, God will enlighten you and you will get to know Him. Can’t go wrong doing that.
Yes, even in urban areas. My son’s family goes to one which, while of course liberal in a big city, has a male pastor who is relatively hard nosed about things.
That is exactly why there are more independent churches. Many of the denominations are directly contradicting scripture and their focus is forever on the ghastly praise bands and whatever the current social issue is. Want to change all references in the Bible from “Him” to “Her”? Want to show how open the church is to supporting homosexuality? These denominations are happy to spend entire sermons and bible studies showing how God and the Bible actually support these things.
I don’t a single congregant of an independent church who support official conservatism. They may be out there but I haven’t met one.
“Official Conservatism no longer has a religious right and they no longer care about social issues.”
Oh, but they do! They are just not the social issues that true conservatives support. “Official Conservatism” has no problem with the LGBQTUVWXYZ agenda, anti-White racism, support for whatever vaginal discharge the feminist movement is promoting this week, or with gun control. No, “Official Conservatism” is full SJW. Never go full SJW.