DEATH OF A CULTURE

Spend a few minutes flicking through the TV guide at any time morning, noon or night, watch or listen to the main stream news at any time, spend a small fortune going to a movie and you will see why the radical Islamists have such an easy time recruiting jihadi' martyrs.

Spending time on the above makes me want to go out and bomb someone as well.

Thankfully I can take a breath, sit myself down with THE good book and realise that we are but frail and fallen losers, all of us, and were it not for the Grace and Mercy of  Almighty God we would all be squashed.

I only wonder how much time before He invokes Genesis 5>7.

A WASTELAND; THE TERRA AFFIRMA

T S Eliot writing in 1938 on the developing culture of the West was convinced (as was Chesterton writing at the same time) that what he termed liberals (left-wing progressives today) were always walking away from something as opposed to building towards an ideal.

"....because liberalism was largely a negative force; Eliot saw that it wasn’t a comprehensive philosophy but a limited movement that defined itself by its rejections. It wasn’t so much going somewhere as not going back to something else. It persuaded itself that it was going forwards—Progress is its motto—but with no defined destination and with only glances backwards to its point of departure to ensure that whatever the direction, at least it was moving reassuringly away from what it condemned. This negativity and the vagaries it generates are liberalism’s main inadequacies". [G Furnell]

He also thought that the logical result of such 'progressive' thinking would tip the culture towards totalitarian rule because the only way to build a Utopian society given the natural obstreperousness of human nature was by manipulation and coercion.

"His prophesy: 'We shall have regimentation and conformity, without respect for the needs of the individual soul; the puritanism of a hygienic morality in the interests of efficiency; uniformity of opinion through propaganda, and art only encouraged when it flatters the official doctrines of the time'"

Gary Funell states it thus:

"Eliot repeated, so we wouldn’t miss the point or the irony, that liberalism would inevitably result in deep and widespread social ills and then it would of necessity become punitive and controlling in a vain attempt to restrict the social mess its own policies had created." 

The entire essay is worth a read. Very important and rather prescient.

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2017/12/t-s-eliots-vision-totalitarian-democracy/

DOOBY DO

Do as I say not as I do is the operational mantra of the 'elite a**holes' (french) who populate the media:

"In that use of [the intended put-down] ‘suburban’, Schama showed something a lot of us had suspected – which is that for a certain type of globe-trotting international celebrity, any concern for borders, national identity and cultural continuity are not just beneath them, but actively ‘common’. Of course, like so many other advocates of mass immigration, Simon Schama can live pretty much where he wants. And if the area around him goes somewhat downhill because the neighbours all start to come from the rougher corners of Eritrea then Simon Schama can move. And he will probably move to a very nice area. But not everybody has that choice. And one thing we can all be certain of is that Simon Schama will never choose to live in Bradford, Malmo or any of the (dare I say it) ‘suburbs’ outside Paris. Yet all the time he will urge other peoples’ neighbourhoods to more closely resemble those great success stories, and look down at people from an ever-loftier height when they dare to object.

Mr Schama currently lives in Briarcliff Manor, an affluent, very white village in Westchester County, New York. The kind of neighbourhood that has genteel regulations regarding alcoholic beverages and the public use of amusement devices." [D Murray]

STRENGTH IN ADVERSITY

The main stream media are assaulting our ears and eyes on a hourly basis with their Trump Derangement syndrome.

Anything the 45th President says or does is subject to hours of false analysis, mockery, talk show idiocy, Hollywood buffoonery, and snowflake personalities crying into their tiaras.

Bullies call out bullying from Trump, liars call out lying from Trump, idiots call him an idiot.

Trump is actually exposing the 'ruling elites' true agendas left, right and centre. It could be the greatest thing any politician has ever done for the 'normal's' of society.

I like Roger Kimball's take on the current hypocrisy:

Roger Kimball marvels at the reaction to President Donald Trump's observation, admittedly vulgar, that migrants from some cultures are preferable to those from what might more politely be termed the septic tanks of civilisation:
... was the president right to question the desirability of accepting immigrants from places like Haiti? Let’s leave his colorful language to one side. That was just a bit of rhetorical salsa on the burrito. The coarsening of language in the public square (and the private hearth) means that virtually anyone not cloistered hears and/or utters much ruder language almost daily.

As one who inhabits said 'agora' I can indeed report that the language I experience in sensurround on a minute by minute basis is disgusting. I have trained myself and my children to bear it with humility and solicitude but to try hard not to absorb and be infected by it, for it is indeed (IMHO) an infection that leads to affliction.

Musing further I was watching a TV program where the parents of a teen who has tragically committed suicide (I can imagine no harsher life-time punishment for a parent) are trying to make sense of it all. Unfortunately they appear to be treading the well-worn path of blaming everyone and sundry for their awful predicament. And most distressing of all, (though completely understandable) they are setting up an organisation in their teens name to lead the charge to 'stamp out cyber-bullying'.

One might as well try to eradicate every ant on earth...it ain't going to happen. As sympathetic as I am to their plight and as in agreement as I am with any attempt to minimise bullying behaviour I am also a realist.

American president Bush illustrated his ignorance/naiveté when he called the drug issue a 'War on drugs'. It is not a war, it can never be a conflict with an end, it's a constant and forever struggle against human weakness and like bulling the best way to combat it is not to try and eradicate it completely, but teach your children, the members of your community, the people of your country how to stand up to the scourge.

How not to fall victim. How to be strong in the face of adversity and not try to take the easy way out.
How to persevere, to overcome and in doing so become strong.

Instead we are teaching them to be snowflakes, gingerbread men and women who crumble at the first sign of opposition. 

TRUE TRUTH OFFENDS

On the face of it this 'advice' from Christopher De Groot might not be deemed 'Christian':

A person should not have to answer to others about matters that do not concern them. Yet in order for this commonsense truth to be widely understood again, we must, as I say, be willing to offend others. People, indeed, must be offended so much that their very sensibility changes. For this is a matter of shaping perceptions and, therefore, emotional responses and value judgments. It is essentially irrational, the sort of thing against which mere reason is quite weak. So, let us offend the precious busybodies. They can whine all they please. They are their own burden. We will laugh at them, but not be troubled in the least by their silly indignation. Fools are, at best, amusing. When we elect to yield to their opinions, we are no longer a people worth preserving.

 However, I would argue that true truth is offensive.
 Jesus was offensive, so much so that he was crucified for it and therefore to 'give offence' is not only inevitable but de jure if we are to walk in The Way.

I remain open minded to the fact that I might be quite wrong, therefore read the article and correct me if needs be.

http://takimag.com/article/giving_offense_or_how_to_overcome_mass_media_morality_christopher_degroot/print#axzz53ZDMH99Q

AIM HIGHER

What is it about these 'academics' whose self-hatred spills over into misanthropy and outright racism? Many media and academic personalities are saying things about the 'white people' that would be horrifying is the word white was replaced by the word black.
Have people become too stupid to see the absurdity of race hatred?
Lilly white academicians who propose the elimination of the 'white race' are like the filthy rich Hollywood tycoons who hate 'capitalism'. I think it's called cognitive dissonance!

Noel Ignatiev, who publishes the deranged journal Race Traitor and whose students learn that “whiteness is a form of racial oppression” and should therefore be “abolished,” and that “treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.” Ignatiev and his Race Traitor colleagues declare their refusal to “limit themselves to socially acceptable means of protest,” and find it “hard to believe” opposition to their ideas could come from anyone except “committed white supremacists”. After all, who but a “committed white supremacist” could possibly take exception to the cultural and psychological eradication of the “social construct known as the white race”? And who else could possibly be concerned that these enlightened beings “reject in advance no means of attaining their goal”?

I am truly intrigued by the personality types that inhabit the academic realm these days.
Intrigued but also worried because these are the people who are shaping the minds of the young leaders of the future and therefore the world to come; if Francis Schaeffers thesis that philosophy/academics comes first, then the ideologies arising from these 'centres' are filtered into society through the arts and the media, is true.
And I believe it is.

Academia is in a bad way. It has imploded as a result of the Post Modern ideologies of deconstruction and 'socially constructed' philosophies.

Thank goodness my faith is in someone far above politics, academics and the absurdity of social engineering.