We’ve had a couple threads lately about the Jews, that have prompted a lot of comments voicing bitter complaints about them (and about those who don’t complain about them!). I have been forcibly struck by an analogy, that I cannot gainsay, between those complaints about the mean Jews who are not very nice to us poor goyim and the complaints of the MRM about the mean women who are not very nice to us men. They aren’t fair!
I recently replied to a commenter complaining about how mean and unfair women are these days that he had four choices (here I use “strong” instead of “lethal” as I did there):
1. Be weak and vicious (gamer).
2. Be weak and virtuous (beta loser).
3. Be strong and vicious (alpha cad).
4. Be strong and virtuous (True Knight).
It strikes me that the same goes for relations with Jews, or for that matter with any challenge we apprehend in life. No matter what you’re worried about, you have only these four choices [by “you” I mean people in general – especially men - indeed, especially me!]. Which of these sorts of man, then, do you want to be? Do you want to spend your days worrying about how the Jews or women or liberals or bankers are supposedly keeping you down, and fashing yourself about conspiracy theories, or do you want to just go ahead and live heroically into the new age in which you, and those whom you care about, triumph in the service of the Good, or – gloriously – die trying? Do you want to spend your days feeling threatened and victimized and resentful, or do you want to just live your Quest, live a good and virtuous life, come hell or high water, without apology or complaint?
What are you about? Are you about being oppressed by women or Jews or whatever, or are you about prevailing in battle, or else, mayhap, dying in battle? If the former, please tell me how, in finding yourself, lo and behold, oppressed by women or Jews or Muslims or liberals, you are not getting exactly what you set yourself up for?
Analyse your adversaries, to be sure; understand them. But don’t complain about them. Don’t resent them, for heaven’s sake. Resenting them is simply inapposite. They are after all only doing what comes naturally, indeed just what any self-respecting, sensible person very much ought to be doing: trying their best to win at the game, in service of their own vision of the Good. Just like you. The Blackfeet didn’t resent the Cheyenne, or vice versa. Indeed, they admired each other. Each tribe made the other great.
Is your adversary really smart, really talented? Well; shall you live a courageous and virtuous life, regardless of who might be stronger or more intelligent or talented than you, or shall you let the thought that there are millions of men who are somehow or other better than you defeat you before you even get started? Is the system rigged against you? Well; shall you just give up, then? Or, recognizing that the world is not fair and that you would in any case have faced stiff challenges, shall you forge ahead? If the latter, what earthly good are complaints? Do you complain about the weather? All right: then why should you complain about history, and where it has landed you?
You know – you know perfectly well – that it’s not the Jews that are keeping you down, or feminists, or whatever. It’s mostly, firstly, just life and its accidents, the hand you’ve been dealt; and secondly, how you’ve played it. You can’t control the hand you are dealt. No one can. The only thing you can control is how you play. So, stop worrying about the hand you’ve been dealt, and live into Glory.
Are you feeling intimidated by the Jews or the Muslims or the liberals or the women? Why the hell waste your life’s blood on that? Why focus your emotional energy on stuff you can’t control, can’t do anything about, when the only thing that can really help you is to work harder, be better yourself? Feel outclassed by someone? Feeling envious and resentful? Hit the books, hit the gym, get on the phone, get to work, get to confession and Mass. The only way to feel really good is to be really good. So be really good, and you will find, magically, that you *just don’t care* about the Jews or the feminists or whatever, anymore, because you have left all that behind and are about something larger, something new and different altogether; something noble, and good.
If you find yourself focusing on the Jews or the Muslims or the bankers or the feminists or the cafeteria Catholics or whatever, you are focusing on the dead past, and allowing it to control your present moment and determine and constrain your notions of what it is possible for you to achieve. Never mind the past; never mind those others. Ask yourself only this: what do you want to achieve? Then, what are the concrete obstacles that stand in your way? No, not the society-wide stuff; you can’t do anything about that. What, are you going to get rid of the UN, or change the way Hollywood works? Forget that stuff. I mean the concrete, nearby, small stuff that you can actually do something about. That’s what you should focus on. Nothing else is worth worrying about; everything else that you worry about is just an excuse for not having gotten started. It’s not about the Jews, or women, or your parents, or that nasty man who abused you when you were 13, or the fact that you got bad grades. It’s about right now, and what you will now do. Don’t let the dead past kill this moment. Leave the dead to bury the dead. We have no time for modernity. Let it be forgotten, at least in your own life – you know, the one you have some power to influence.
Having trouble forgetting the past, shaking off its dull influence? Try going to confession.
If you are a True Knight, then you aim in the final analysis at Heaven. You aim at the highest thing. In so doing, you simply define yourself as more noble than anyone who aims at less. That’s all. And, if you keep at your Quest, it will more and more form you to be just that. As noble, you will find yourself obliged to act nobly toward those who aim at less. Indeed, you’ll find that you want to. This is the true meaning of noblesse oblige. It is also the true meaning of Christian charity. The two precepts are not different. Chivalry just is loving your enemy.
In what sense are you using the word “weak”?
Physical? IQ? Looks?
Confidence?
Absolutely right.
But (as the above comment shows, and as you use elsewhere in this piece) the correct words are ‘courageous’ not ‘strong’; and ‘cowardly’ not ‘weak’.
The fact is that nearly everybody is weak, and if you are not yet weak and live long enough, then you soon will be. And the strong may be, usually are, cowards.
Nonetheless, everybody – whether weak or strong – must be courageous; because without courage we cannot be virtuous.
As CS Lewis famously said (albeit from the mouth of the demon Screwtape!): “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”
Quite right. I actually used “weak” with “wicked” in mind, for they derive from the same root – as so does “vicious,” actually, so that “weak and vicious” is redundant. But I was informed by Lewis’ dictum. A man whose courage is not strong – who is cowardly – will be weak in his virtue, and prone to wickedness. How well I know this!
Similar considerations hold for “strong” and “courageous.” Courage is strength of virtue, such as it is possible for a man to express – such as lies within his capacities. A paraplegic cannot be strong the way an athlete is strong; but he may indeed be very strong in a different way, and both sorts of men, in order to be strong in their different ways, must be brave.
I originally was going to disagree with you. My thought process was that at one point yes, it was advantageous for a man to be chivalrous in regards to women, as it benefitted both parties. Today, such a thing isn’t necessarily the case.
But as I was extrapolating this to other issues, I realised that so what if we don’t benefit in this life by being men of virtue? Our chivalry is no longer about the physical world, but our soul instead.
Good insight man, love it.
You have a perverse notion of chivalry Kristor. The knight’s purpose was to slay dragons, and protect the weak from marauding invaders.
Your knight makes a virtue of his cowardice, and goes about scolding others for daring to speak out in order to take action against those who threaten our kin.
Jewish perfidy is very real, well documented, and getting worse. You refuse to acknowledge it, and build straw men to beat up instead, as if they were us. You mock a make believe absurd caricature which you assert is the epitome of those who point out this very real, and actual, Jewish agitation and undermining of our nations and traditions. Effectively, you have no argument to offer, just shaming derision.
You can run from your duty, others won’t. It’s not merely a shame but an absolute disgrace that genuine, courageous, Catholics are being led to ruin by your treachery.
Bless you, Pat. I’m afraid you haven’t really read what I’ve said. You seem to be churning away in your own vat, and unable to extricate yourself. I hope that this may change. Try to think of something else.
Remember: hatred is slavery *and* idolatry.
Pat, Kristor’s advice for us pertains to what we should do after we agree with you that there is a problem, there are problems, we need to act.
There are many dragons.
At one of the Ecumenical Councils, the assembled bishops received a certain “Tome” about our Lord, and, having prayerfully considered it, they declared: “The Holy Spirit has spoken by Leo.”
I remember the Trinity Sunday when I returned to a Confessional Lutheran church after having been elsewhere for a while. I listened to a fine sermon. Afterwards I had to say to the pastor, “The Holy Spirit has spoken by Michael” (Michael Langlais). Yes, I was kidding him a little, but I meant it too.
I won’t quite say “The Holy Spirit has spoken by Kristor.” But that came to mind after I considered how his posting above is largely a restatement (whether he knows it or not) of passages from the for sure inspired words of Psalm 37, the first verses of which I will quote below in the New King James translation/Orthodox Study Bible:
I’ve read many brilliant essays by you, Kristor, but I’m afraid this isn’t one of them. While your overarching point is sound, and you urge us to “analyse” and “understand” our adversaries, you destroy your argument at the outset with a tendentious analogy that attempts to define all analysis (in the case of the Jews or the MRM) as unmanly whining.
The truth is, I didn’t see much difference between what bonald wrote in his earlier post, and some of the things that Larry Auster, Laura Wood, Proph, or Bruce Charlton have written. I thought that bonald was incorrect (and possibly blasphemous) in tracing Jewish activism back to the prophetic tradition, and he could have phrased himself more judiciously, but I thought he WAS attempting to analyse and understand the nature of Jewish group behaviour, which appears to have common points (and has provoked common host-society backlashes) going back several centuries, at least.
When Auster writes about black violence and its liberal enablers, is he merely complaining? When he argues that we should separate ourselves from Muslims, is he being resentful? When Wood takes on the feminist movement, is she envious? When Proph criticizes a homily he recently heard, is he “focusing on the dead past”? When Charlton labels modern society as evil, is he feeling “threatened and victimized”. No? So what’s the difference?
I don’t hate Jews as a group, and believe it or not, I don’t know any Jews, but it hasn’t escaped my notice that they do appear to be mysteriously off-limits, even to reactionaries. We’ll fearlessly take on racial differences, gender politics, religious liberalism, popular culture, and the homosexual movement, but woe to you if you point out that Jews are wildly over-represented in the vanguards of all these movements! I wonder: is it because they’re smart, is it because they’re near-monolithically liberal, or is something else at work?
You claim to desire analysis and understanding, Kristor. How about adopting some of that fearlessness and nobility towards the people who (with honesty and charity) attempt to understand the nature of Jewish group behaviour through history? I agree that bonald’s first post fell short, but that’s a long way from arguing that the entire topic should be off-limits, as you seem to wish.
Murray: I urge you to read more carefully what I am saying. The post isn’t really about the Jews at all. The discourse about the Jews in the several comments of late got me thinking about things more generally. Read it in that spirit.
No, I got it, Kristor. You start with the Jews, liken any critics of Jewish behaviour to the cartoonish wing of the men’s rights movement, then embark upon a homily which, if consistently adhered to, should result in you immediately ceasing to post your opinions in public from here on in. After all, why engage in all this pointless Orthospheric complaining and resenting about the causes and symptoms of societal decay when we have our own gardens to tend, confessions to make, enemies to love, and so on?
In the process, you demonstrate a dishonesty and lack of charity which honestly surprises and disappoints me. I’ve been reading your essays in various places over the years. You’ve often been a source of great inspiration, and it’s clear that your intellect soars high above my own. But here you go badly astray. Sure, you throw in a few other isms along the way, but it’s pretty obvious that you would really like people to just shut up about the Jews, already. After all, as I pointed out before, you’ve never written anything remotely like this in response to Auster’s, Wood’s, Proph’s or Charlton’s condemnations of the many and varied evils of the modern day, and you yourself have written tens of thousands of words on the same subjects. But someone brings up the (hypothetical) role of the Jews in destructive social movements, and all of a sudden it’s time to stop talking about all that stuff! Just love your enemy! Be better than them! Go to confession! Tend your own garden!
You can see, can’t you, that this is precisely how people start to get paranoid? Bonald writes (to my mind) a slightly ill-judged post about the role of Judaism in social movements in the course of history, but not in itself worse than the kinds of things Auster writes about blacks or Muslims, or Wood writes about the women’s movement, or Proph writes about religious liberals, or Charlton about secular modernity. Then the post disappears, and all of a sudden we’re told that people who criticize Jewish behaviour are weird cranks fixated on grievances, and exhorted to acts of charity instead. Hmmm.
I shouldn’t need to say this, but I honestly carry no brief for anti-Semitism. I’m not particularly comfortable with sites like Occidental Observer or writers like Kevin MacDonald who seem to cross the line a little too often. But I can’t help observing that Jews are very often among the leaders, intellectual apologists, and/or propagandists of those movements that have been most destructive to and subversive of Christendom, and it seems too consistent to be coincidental. Why shut down inquiry into this issue?
Murray: Do you know Auster’s First Law of Majority Minority Relations? The worse a minority behaves, and if the majority notices, the more racist it is.
Murray, there’s a difference between analyzing and understanding your adversary and resenting or hating him. Likewise, there’s a difference between naming evil, calling it what it is, and allowing one’s attention to become so focussed on it that one is distracted from the Main Thing: the pursuit of the Good. We can’t let evil become scandalous.
This is a difference that Lawrence Auster is extremely careful to bear in mind. He regularly reminds his readers – and, I feel sure, himself – that liberals and Muslims don’t do what they do *just to be horrid,* but because they sincerely believe what they believe; and because, futher, they believe that what they do, and advocate doing, is good. Aquinas and Augustine both make the same point. No one acts toward what he considers mostly evil ends, mutatis mutandis; hate the sin, love the sinner. Auster’s respect for his adversaries never prevents him from indicating, and brilliantly analyzing, the errors of their ways. Nor does their evil obscure their virtues from his notice.
This all goes for Laura Wood, Bruce Charlton, and Proph, too, so far as I have read him (I discovered Collapse only a few months before Orthosphere began). None of them are loath to name the evil that perverts our adversaries, or for that matter our allies, or indeed themselves; but neither do any of them hate those adversaries. How many times – how many hundreds of times – has Lawrence bitterly inveighed against the perfidy of this or that writer, only to remind his readers of their virtues? He has been admiring Derbyshire in just this vein over the last few days.
It is a very tricky thing, having an enemy and maintaining that properly noble attitude toward him which prevents you from falling into the trap of stipulating to his definitions of the terms of your discourse, so that you become subject thereto, and ensnared therein. One must resist falling into mere hatred of one’s adversaries, for this is in the first place to treat the conflict as constrained ultimately by their nature, rather than yours – it is a form of moral surrender – and in the second it is to make yourself as ignoble as they are.
More than anything, what prompted this post – which began as a comment to bonald’s orginal entry on the Jews – was a feeling of grief that so formidable a mind as his is evidently *deeply bothered* by the feeling that he is inferior to the Jews.
I don’t mean to shut down rational, honest inquiry. I mean to encourage us, all: first, to combat; second, to gallantry. We should be laughing together at our good fortune in our adversaries.
Kristor says:
So, I wandered over to Auster’s website and was greeted with this on the first page in a piece titled “A RACE WAR AGAINST WHITES—LED BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT”
I don’t read Auster very often any more, but, when I did, this sort of over-the-top, emotive, negative language was somewhat common against blacks and Muslims. Are you saying you would have no problem with similarly, errrr, enthusiastic denunciations of Jews? ‘Cause that ain’t the sense I get.
Auster is a Jew. He has said so enough, and he has declared his allegiances enough. For that he is to be praised. He is loyal beyond truth.
You though Kristor.
Pat, you seem to be saying that my urging us all to cope with adversaries without falling into the traps of feeling intimidated by them, or of obsessing over them, or of allowing our concern about them to distract us from our primary objective, constitutes treachery of some sort.
This makes no sense.
It appears that you, with a number of other commenters on the thread, are absolutely determined to interpret my post as a rejection of discussion of the Jews, and *as nothing else whatsoever.* But on the contrary it was explicitly aimed, not a proscribing any discussions of anything, but rather at framing any such discussion – whether of Jews, or liberals, or feminists, or whatever – in terms of our overarching, transcendent, long term objectives. Several times I listed several items from the traditional list of traditionalist shibboleths, so as to make clear that I was not talking only about discussion of Jews; that the recent discussions of Jews at the Orthosphere had been nothing more than a point of departure for my deliberations.
The idea is that if we make ourselves *merely* reactionary, and fail to limn an alluring vision of a traditionalist society, we’ll have nothing to sell. We should indeed be against certain things. But, if we are merely against stuff, and not for anything, then we run the risk of defining ourselves in terms of our antagonists. That would tie us up in desperate rear guard actions, when what we ought to be doing is racing around the enemy’s flank to occupy the high ground. And that would allow them to determine the shape of the discourse. By forming our actions in their terms, and thereby presupposing their understanding of things, it would reinforce the prevalence of their understanding, while frustrating the propagation of ours.
Your apparent alabaster determination to interpret all of reality in terms of your enmity with the Jews provides an apt example of what can happen to an intellect that has been determined by an adversary. Lawrence Auster has often argued that anti-Semitism, like other reductionist notions (materialism, Marxism, and libertarianism being all palmary examples) makes its adherents stupid, in that it prevents them from an honest confrontation with reality in all its complexity and nuance. If it is indeed true, as it seems, that for you simply everything boils down to the Jewish question, then that is what your obsession has done to your mind: it has made you stupid.
I am not saying that you are in fact obsessed. But you do seem to be. You talk in the absolutist, enraged tones of an obsessed man.
Nor am I saying that you are natively stupid, at all. Indeed, monomaniacal reductionism is something to which the extremely intelligent are especially prone (because only they are fully capable of the rococo intellectual gymnastics that are often required to fit reality into a reductionist interpretation)(reductions being, by nature, prone to inadequacy (this being why they are called “reductions”)).
Does any of this make sense to you? Can you see that I am after something completely different than what you have been thinking I am after? Can you switch your anti-semitic setting to “off” for a moment and interpret things in other terms, so that you can meet me where I am, instead of where that hated philo-semitic traitorous straw man stands in your overall scheme of things? If you can’t, then I encourage you to spend less time at the Orthosphere, where you are likely to find discussions of theology, music, architecture, politics, and all sorts of other subjects that, mirabile dictu, have *nothing to do with Jews,* and more time on websites that are especially devoted to the subject of your monomania. There are plenty of them out there, and I see no reason to add a superfluity to their number. I myself find them monotonous, and am bored with the prospect of that particular project. It’s been done to death.
Can we talk, as reasonable men? Or are you just going to splutter and hurl imprecations, rendering yourself a rhetorical vacuity, and a waste of information processing resources? If the former, you might appropriately begin by apologizing for insulting me on the basis of your own misapprehensions.
I’m new around here, and new to all this stuff, but I think really the only thing that concerned me, and maybe Kristor, about Bonald’s original post, was his spirit. I told him to quit being such a beta male. Kristor went further and told us how, and in a Godly manner.
I do not see Kristor saying the topic should be off-limits.
“Chivalry just is loving your enemy.”
No it isn’t. Chivalry is courteous behaviour – especially towards women, the weak, etc. Christian chivalry covers more ground but doesn’t include loving your enemies.
There’s no point in confounding chivalry with charity.
Courtesy toward the weak is an important part of chivalry, but there’s lots more to it. When I say that chivalry is loving your enemies, I don’t mean that chivalry is lying down and showing your belly to your enemies and singing cumbayah with them. I thought that was obvious. I meant that chivalrous, knightly courtesy towards one’s adversaries, as one chopped them into steaming gobbets oozing on the grass, was the practical form that loving them takes when they have made it clear that combat is the only way they will agree to be dealt with.
E.g., a courteous knight will spare an adversary who cries “uncle,” and will then tend his wounds carefully, and treat him honorably. This is how we treat our POW’s.
I am just beginning to explore this notion of chivalry as a really practical form of Christian charity towards one’s enemies, and while I am still unclear where the exploration will take me, I find myself fascinated.
This reads as a ringing endorsement of the sin of pride. Our job is not “to win at the game, in service to [our] own vision of the Good.” Our job is to submit in obedience to the order of good that God created and to help others do the same.
You sound like Joel Osteen, but I already said that.
What if after I’ve submitted and obeyed and shared the gospel with my neighbors and built a strong community– I want to move forward into fellowship, art, leadership, and worship? What if I want to worship with my neighbors, as we offer up our whole community in submission and obedience? What are the rules as I go about doing all that stuff? Chivalry.
Chivalry was a code of behavior for aristocrat-warriors. Unless you are an aristocrat-warrior, it does not pertain to you. I understand Kristor is trying to speak metaphorically, but he is making a hash of it.
If something-like-chivalry pertains to someone today, it pertains to people with significant power, not to peons like me (I won’t say “and you” because I don’t know what power you have). The people I do have power over, in my case only my children, I do have special obligations to, but those obligations are not called “chivalry.”
Oh, there you go bringing class into it again. Let me get back to stabbing at the filth and beating a cat against the wall in my anarcho-syndaclist commune.
Bill, are you saying that you don’t *want* to be noble? Are you saying that you don’t *want* to behave nobly? Are you saying that you *want* to be mean, vile, base?
Why not be an aristocrat in your heart? Nothing is more likely to earn you outward recognition of your inward knighthood.
Kristor, yes, that’s what I am saying. I am part of the 99%, and I accept my station in life. I want to be a good peasant: to be mean, base, and vile (though, in each case in the old, original senses of those words not in their modern meanings as synonyms for sinful). I do not admire The Great Chain of Being by implicitly imagining myself near the top.
Again with the Puritan / Prosperity Gospel agitprop. Or is it Opus Dei agitprop? Why would I want outward recognition?
I want to do what I am here to do: cooperate where I can in getting myself and my family to Heaven. Recognize the Divine where His face is especially apparent in creation. Obey as best my fallen nature will allow God and His Church. Contribute what I can to making it possible for as many people as possible to do the same. Little would make this harder than to have a bunch of people applauding at me—not that that is at all likely, thank God.
Earl: Cum and see the violence in’erent in the system!! ‘elp, ‘elp I’m bein’ oppressed!
Bill, would you happen to be Scotch-Irish? Not that we would want to characterize tribal tendencies or anything like that . . .
Kristor,
I am not sure I agree here. The battle we are waging is not on the field of honor. It’s not your champion against mine. There are not uniform set of rules. Even in the Crusades, when the crusaders were fighting infidels, there was a sense of honor between the opposing armies. I don’t see this here. Our enemies are fighting for the annihilation of humankind. They don’t understand the secularism and liberalism only leads to self-destruction. Reason without faith is death. If had to put this in movies/literature, you are trying to frame this as El Cid, I see this like War of the Worlds or Independence Day. Better get Will Smith on that alien ship.
This attitude seems to me a little similar to the Catholic Emperor, Charles V, and subsequent successors in Austria and Spain during the birth of Protestantism. They felt that responding to their enemies’ propaganda and lies propagated through the printing press was beneath them (which it was), and that they should confront them in the field of honor, where they would triumph (and they did). However, the perniciousness of the propaganda proved to be more powerful. It wasn’t until St. Ignatius of Loyola, that some real push back happened. But, by then, the damage was done, and France and the Austrias were using Protestants in each other’s territories to pursue their national policies, and the Peace of Westphalia would ensue.
Regarding our enemies, we can discuss as to who they are. To me, putting them in ethnic terms doesn’t help, but distract me from the main enemy: eternal death, that despicable offspring of Protestantism: Liberalism. The rest, while they may have a mention, are so far below in my priorities, that I apply that simple rule: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Ralph, I don’t disagree at all with what you say here. Nor, I think, do you disagree with what I said in my post. I, too, see our present conflict as more like Independence Day than as like, oh, Hastings. But think then about Will Smith’s character in Independence Day. Would you describe him as a True Knight? I sure would. It’s not the nature of the enemy that is dispositive. I can’t believe that Smith’s character would have been less noble if his adversary had been human, or Western.
If we are to be true to our faith, true to our patrimony, we must not stoop to defining ourselves in terms of our enemies. We must define ourselves in terms of the Good that we serve, and seek. Our lives must be first and foremost about that, and our enemies and adversaries nothing more than stumbling blocks in our path.
“Reason without faith is death.” Great line.
Kristor, I read Bonald’s original post but not the comments, so perhaps I missed some extraordinary expressions of hatred or vilification towards Jews, to which your response was aimed. If so, I agree that these are unacceptable. But from what I have read in his subsequent thread, I didn’t see anything too far outside the bounds of normal (i.e. normal Orthospheric) discourse. It’s also true that Bonald was a little too insistent on his own inferiority, to the point where it distracted from his main point, but I saw that as more of an unfortunate idiosyncrasy than a critical issue.
Keeping in mind that I may have missed somebody saying something noxious, you still seem to be assuming without warrant that it is necessarily an act of hatred or resentment to point out that Jews have been uniquely influential in many of the movements that are tearing our civilization apart. But once you start noticing how often Jewish names come up in the leadership of destructive anti-Western, anti-Christian movements, or that prominent Jews are often openly contemptuous towards traditional values (take a bow, Hilary Rosen!), it’s hard to avoid wondering why that is. Consider, for example, the many Jews prominent in the entertainment and pornography industries (but I repeat myself), and their often-commendable frankness about their intention to undermine and destroy Christian morality. When such observations confront the omerta that we are apparently required to maintain in relation to Jews (and that you seem to be advocating, albeit sotto voce), it’s not surprising that only the bravest and the craziest speak up.
My broad opinion on the Jews is informed by Pascal: By their very obstinacy in continuing to deny Jesus Christ, they bear witness to the historical truth of the messianic promises made to the Israelites, and are therefore indispensable to our mission. And (of course) we should take individuals as they come, with the goodwill and dignity befitting every human being. Nevertheless, there is an interesting question here, and I’m sorry that it seems to have gotten to such a bad start.
A brilliant pithy summation Murray. Really I think it comes down to cowardice on the behalf of Kristor.
Oh, good: an ad hominem argument, the easiest to demolish. Clyde, the ad hominem is the last resort of the man who has no substantive argument to offer. However elegantly expressed, it is the equivalent of the four year old’s, “yeah, well you’re just a poopy head!” And it is just as informative and compelling, too.
Bless you, Clyde; you’re going to have to come up with something solid, if you’d like to be taken seriously.
Kristor,
I do not think it is just to characterize the men’s rights movement as so much whining about “mean women who are not very nice to us men.” What about men who have been frivolously divorced and whose lives have been destroyed? Here are a couple of posts with individual cases:
http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/a-case-for-anger/
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2012/04/05/comment-of-the-week-a-life-not-worth-living/
As far as chivalry is concerned, I do not think it will gain many adherents nowadays. I have heard such language used before by devout Christians. Take, for example, the blog maryvictrix.wordpress.com which is run by a Franciscan Friar of the Immaculate. I recall, also, hearing talk about knights and chivalry from Catholic professors in college. But to them it is only a metaphor.
Aegis, I think you are correct in your criticism. I didn’t mean to indicate that the men’s rights movement is *nothing but* pitiable whining, but I think what I wrote comes across as indicating that I think it is. It isn’t. I am, believe me, alive to the immense catastrophe that has been visited, and is now being wrought, upon millions of families by the twin gorgons of feminism and sexual liberation. They have cut wide swathes of devastation through the ranks of my own relatives, and I am myself a child of frivolous divorce. I should have expressed myself more carefully.
Chivalry may not, indeed, gain many adherents. That does not mean it is a bad idea. It does not mean that it should not gain many adherents, nor does it mean that we should not try to be chivalrous. Finally, while chivalry is indeed a most compelling metaphor, it is far *more* compelling as a proposal for a life as concretely lived. Tell a young man that his life is and ought to be a dangerous, difficult, glorious adventure in Quest of a high and noble end, with maybe some damsels thrown in along the way, and he is far less likely as he goes to be the victim of mere damsels – and far more likely to enjoy them.
Unfortunately I was distracted by real life and missed the discussion of bonald’s post. Now I can’t find it. It is not listed here. Has it been purged?
It still shows up for me in full in the summary view of Google Reader, but it’s gone from the home page. Bonald explained why he took it down in his subsequent post “Dealing with Inferiority.”
Oops. I meant Bonald’s subsequent post to his subsequent post, this one titled “More on Inferiority.”
Got it. Thank.
Then this seems like the attempted pursuit to discussion of an adversary that has already taken down his flag and decamped. Not only is the resentful and complaining post gone, but resentment and complaint are to be ruled out altogether.
Or at least they are when it comes to Jews and Judaism. Because the bar on adversarial thought, feeling and talk that is proposed is so sweeping that if it wasn’t really only to be brought out to bar realistic discussion of the Jewish problem, it would make any kind of traditionalist stand impossible.
“We’ve had a couple threads lately about the Jews, that have prompted a lot of comments voicing bitter complaints about them (and about those who don’t complain about them!).”
Links?
You blinked, now they’re gone.
Why is criticism of Jewish influence like Batman? Because it vanishes suddenly, often in mid-conversation.
Hi Daybreaker,
Here’s the summary of my removed post (the one that supposedly proves what a sick mind I have). The standard story about Jewish-Gentile relations needs to be revised. It claims first that people pick on the Jews for no reason and no provocation, and second that the Jews are a people who boast a unique passion for “social justice”, for criticising allegedly unjust structures in their host societies. I claimed that this second point, the Jews’ “prophetic witness” is bound to seem like a provocation to the host society, who don’t think of themselves as riven with iniquity, and thus that the antisemite’s resentment is understandable, even if we don’t endorse it.
The ensuing conversation proved this post to have been a mistake. My major points were all but ignored, while the discussion focused on my warped and hateful soul and whether or not the Orthosphere has “jumped the shark”. Now, it turns out that I am a selfish, sinful, and uncharitable man, meaning that I was not pleased when the subject of the discussion moved to my own faults. So I tried to reset the conversation with a new post about the need for Christian self-respect, even in the face of admitted Jewish superiority. That doesn’t seem to have worked either, since Kristor has put up another post on the warped and hateful souls of people who write the sort of things I wrote. Well, bless him, he wants to help me, but it means the focus of the conversation moved away from what you’d probably be interested in.
Hi bonald,
Thanks. And I think your points are good.
bonald, either you have completely misconstrued what I have been trying to say, or else I have somehow managed to say the opposite of what I intended to say. Or both. I don’t think you have a sick mind, or anything like that. Quite the opposite. The main thing that distressed me about your post was that it seemed to me that your brilliant, healthy mind was oppressed by the existence of people more intelligent than yourself – or who appeared to you to be that way (since I doubt there really are too many people who are more intelligent than you).
Mostly I meant to say, hey, so what if the Jews are more intelligent than Caucasians, on average? That needn’t be dispositive of anything, unless we allow it to be. Certainly it needn’t provoke you to feeling personally beset.
It distresses me greatly that you feel as though my latest comment was directed at you. It was directed only at Pat. I plan to reply to other commenters in the thread who misinterpreted my post as proscribing all discussion of Jews at the Orthosphere, each in turn.
Hi Kristor,
It seems I also have been unclear. What I was getting at in my last post wasn’t a sense of personal inferiority–I realize my intimations of personal inferiority aren’t of general interest, and I try to keep them to myself–but of the inferiority of my group. Despite our numbers, we Christians seem to be more-or-less absent from the upper levels of every measurable type of excellence. That does bother me.
By the way, Kristor, I’m sorry if I gave the impression in my last comment of being offended. (I realize that would be a natural impression to get.) I expect Orthosphere contributers to dispute each other from time to time. I agree with your main point. It can be very tricky to draw the line between analyzing one’s enemies and emotional venting about them. This is especially the case when an important argument on our side (made especially by Proph and Bruce) is that our enemies really are in some ultimate sense in league with the devil. I will try to set a better example from now on.
“I have been forcibly struck by an analogy, that I cannot gainsay, between those complaints about the mean Jews who are not very nice to us poor goyim and the complaints of the MRM about the mean women who are not very nice to us men. They aren’t fair!”
This forcible un-gainsaybable striking is nothing but empty sneering, and the preliminary for a lot of cheap shots, condemning those with other opinions as weak, vicious and cowardly with no other basis than what “strikes” you. That’s unimpressive.
I guess I should found all my opinions instead on what forcibly strikes you, eh, Daybreaker? I should form myself according to your notions of pc for trads, and otherwise keep quiet?
Pish.
Look, if you express yourself reasonably, and tell us about the analogies and other thoughts that force themselves on your attention, then we’ll listen respectfully and talk. But don’t tell us that no one is allowed to have thoughts that disagree with yours. You haven’t thought of everything yet.
“Analyse your adversaries, to be sure; understand them. But don’t complain about them. Don’t resent them, for heaven’s sake. Resenting them is simply inapposite. They are after all only doing what comes naturally, indeed just what any self-respecting, sensible person very much ought to be doing: trying their best to win at the game, in service of their own vision of the Good. Just like you.”
There is no basis for you to tell anybody not to complain, except that you too are just doing what comes naturally. That is what it comes to when you say that “self-respecting, sensible person very much ought to” be ” trying their best to win at the game, in service of their own vision of the Good”. Once you say that they ought to be pursuing whatever seems to them to be good, instead of saying that really they ought to be doing what actually is good, you have cut the ground from under serious criticism.
Complaining is often effective. The enemies of White societies, including and not limited to Jews, have complained vociferously for decades, and they have been winning for decades. I have not noticed that Jews or any other segment of the anti-White (and often anti-Christian) coalition has sworn off resentment either.
There’s no moral or practical basis for you to condemn those who resent organized evil and engage in speech acts that are likely apposite to its defeat.
Comments and thoughts like these do nothing to advance “The Good.” You’re corrupted by emotion.
Ben: “You’re corrupted by emotion.”
What an amazing accusation in reply to an obvious logical point.
Well, *of course* all men ought to do what is really, objectively good. But if a man is not even trying to do what is good, so far as he is able to ascertain it, that can’t happen, right? So, you can’t be meaning to say that you think Jews or Muslims ought not to try to do good, by their own lights. Can you? For that would be to say that you think they ought to do evil.
Serious criticism of a man’s acts, then, must presuppose they are intended as good. If they were not thus intended, however erroneously, criticism would be just nonsense; like criticizing a rock for its lousy performance of chamber music. So in order to criticize the acts of Muslims or Jews, you are forced to presuppose that the act in question is trying to be good, and either succeeding or failing thereat.
Hm, yeah. As are you; so that you have no basis to tell me that I have no basis to tell anybody not to complain.
Look, if anybody is going to say anything, they must first think that what they are saying is worth saying, insofar as it is the product of a process of searching for the Truth about what is Good. This goes for the Jew, for the Muslim, for me in urging that a focus on complaint is debilitating, and for you in saying that I’m wrong about that. So, shall we stipulate to that? Shall we, that is, stipulate to the notion that you, I, the Muslim, and the Jew are all doing what comes naturally? Shall we stipulate further that it would be perverse and evil for any of us to do what comes unnaturally? Stipulating all those things, we may then proceed to a discussion of what is truly good to do, and what is not. But if we don’t stipulate to all those things, then any such discussion is, strictly speaking, impossible, and all that we shall then be left with is a Nietzschean war of untrammelled amoral wills.
Kristor, you write as though what is happening in the world was like Chaucer’s recounting of the knight’s tale, minus the unhappy and instructive ending.
It’s not. It’s genocide. And it’s genocide carried out in a particularly horrible way, including not only chronic mass immigration into all White countries and only White countries plus forced mixing so that the Whites will vanish away through though the Wright Island model, but also a culture war that degrades everything precious and lovely and good, above all in family life. It is genocide carried on by things like the systematic promotion of divorce and perversions. It is a war in which every White child howling in inconsolable grief because mummy and daddy are splitting up is a victory, in which the establishment of an abortion mill is a victory, in which the degradation of taste in art and music is a victory, in which the enthronement of awful, nihilistic and materialistic lies is a victory.
There is no honesty or magnanimity in this war on the Whites. There is a filthy, awful, cruel, degrading death for a race that was once about a quarter of the human race, and historically a part that was notable for its strict monogamy (with the aid of a religion that in this respect at least is clearly a good thing) and for every sort of brilliant accomplishment.
Nobody is or ever could be too noble, too fine and fancy to resent this, lament it and oppose it.
To Hades with your fake chivalry.
It’s total war, scorched earth, no quarter given, they offer nothing but unconditional surrender. If we lose they put our wives and daughters in their brothels and turn our sons into Janissaries.
I don’t live chivalry. When I take out the trash it’s with both barrels blazing!
I fire myself up with Flight of the Valkyries first.
No, Daybreaker: you *read* as though I was saying that the world is like the knight’s tale. I never argued that it would be courteous for us to surrender to our adversaries. I have argued, rather, that there is a warrior’s courtesy in war, which needn’t make him less lethal, but may indeed make him far more lethal than he might otherwise be. This, because the True Knight’s ultimate dedication to an end that is holy – that transcends and subsumes all worldly ends – must ceteris paribus make him far more willing than a worldly man to give his life for his cause. Such total dedication is the acme of lethality, and fearsomeness. It informs the mother cat who in her rage intimidates and drives away a bear.
I have myself felt, and wielded, that rage. Almost nothing can stand before it.
Even a beta loser (and a nihilist @bgc) like me can see that this is an excellent post, Kristor.
I like this post very much. There is an excelent post about the MRM that says much the same – Self-pity. And I have been thinking about these issues and recently wrote Choosing Your Battles.
Nonsense. If it is self-pity just to point out disproportionate Jewish influence in poisonous social and cultural movements, then it is EVERY BIT as craven and self-pitying even to acknowledge the following facts:
- High levels of black hatred and violence directed against non-blacks;
- Feminist antagonism towards men and families;
- Homosexual attempts to subvert and redefine normality;
- The anti-Christian agenda of religious liberals.
- The reconquista agenda of Latino immigrants.
- The quisling nature of mainstream conservatism.
- The inherently nihilistic and evil nature of secular modernism.
…and many other favourite topics. There is not one shred of difference between discussion of these favored Orthospheric mainstays and that of Jewish influence, except that the latter is mysteriously off-limits, even for fearless reactionaries.
When I questioned Kristor on this higher up this thread, his uncharacteristically feeble response was to insinuate that Bonald’s original post (and/or its subsequent comments) was in some unexplained sense hateful, and to claim that this “distracted” from the proper object of discussion, whatever that is.
(Notice how, all of a sudden, Kristor is using the vocabulary of liberalism, of “hate” and “distractions”? This is usually a clue that an untruth is close by.)
The problem with Kristor’s position is twofold: First, we are (conveniently) unable to review the comments to Bonald’s original article, but if those on his subsequent article “More on Inferiority” are representative, then there is simply no hate to be found at all. Go have a look. There’s a debate going on, people asking questions, people politely disagreeing. From Kristor’s response, you’d think the site had turned into Stormfront overnight.
Secondly, reactionaries on this and other sites employ much stronger language every day than did Bonald, who hedged and qualified his article in so many ways that he almost got lost. The difference is that the other reactionaries did so on one of the allowable topics, while Bonald had the temerity to mention the forbidden J-word, and so he got Lowryed.
[This is too long already, so I'll conclude in the next post.]
Finally, consider Kristor’s implicit chronological snobbery (a term coined by C.S. Lewis). This is the fallacious argument that the knowledge of the past is inherently inferior to that of the present. Reactionaries encounter it all the time, and 90+% of the time we have no problem identifying it as false. On the contrary, we cherish tradition and recognize that in a great many ways, our forefathers were wiser than we moderns.
Well, for two thousand years (and possibly much longer), our gentile ancestors viewed the Jews with great ambivalence: on one hand, they are a highly admirable, high-achieving, God-fearing people, with great traditions of law, justice and mercy that go back to Moses and the Patriarchs. On the other, they are a uniquely unassimilable group who have often adopted an antagonistic position to their host culture, and who have used their power and influence to undermine and subvert the morals and values of that culture.
Are we to adopt the reflexive liberal position and say, “Well, our ancestors were several centuries stupider than we are, we know better, end of discussion”? If so, we surely need a better reason than Kristor and his defenders have thus far furnished. So tell us: What new and astonishing things have we learned that would render void the wisdom of our ancestors vis-a-vis our Jewish cousins? What unprecedented social conditions have come into being in the past few decades that would transform a centuries-long mutual unease into a harmonious coexistence?
Tell us, if thou hast understanding!
‘Then, what are the concrete obstacles that stand in your way? No, not the society-wide stuff; you can’t do anything about that. What, are you going to get rid of the UN, or change the way Hollywood works? Forget that stuff. I mean the concrete, nearby, small stuff that you can actually do something about. ‘
Well, actually, if the UN were at the top of my list of problems, I *would* try to get rid of it. As it happens, there are other issues that demand my attention.
Getting rid of Hollywood is potentially doable, but not all at once.
The thrust of the article seems to be that personal spiritual salvation always takes priority over material, mundane political activism. Maybe that’s true for the author, but I don’t think it’s universally true.
I think we can agree that we should focus our efforts on achievable goals. The question is whether those goals only serve salvation and admission into Heaven, or some other goal.
As a Jew myself, I can tell you that traditional Judaism supports the ortho sphere. To think of Jews in general as being part of neo atheism is mistaken. The atheist Jews you see in the media, in the brainwashing academy and in commerce are just the loudest. Some are good, some are bad. There’re a lot who are good though.
@Ben
While I agree that orthodox Christians can make common cause with traditional Jews, it doesn’t seem likely that they can be other than strategic alliances of convenience. While modern Christians tend (rightly or wrongly) to be at least somewhat philosemitic, these warm feelings do not seem to be requited by most Jews. On the contrary, a great many Jews (from the Orthodox to the secular atheist variety) seem to regard Jesus Christ and his followers with loathing and contempt. I have encountered too many such incidences (especially among Jewish converts to Christianity) to view this as coincidental.
“The atheist Jews you see in the media, in the brainwashing academy and in commerce are just the loudest. Some are good, some are bad. There’re a lot who are good though.”
OK. Others in the comments sections here have made similar claims, along the lines that the main problem with liberal Jews is liberalism, with Judaism as incidental (or even irrelevant) baggage. But this doesn’t even begin to account for the historical question: Why is it that we find the very same patterns, the same accusations, the same mutual antagonism, going back centuries before the advent of liberalism?
All of us have been brought up in modernity and subjected to modern indoctrination, according to which our forefathers were slack-jawed halfwits prone to frequent outbursts of unprovoked persecution, much like the witch-burning peasants in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. So it’s tempting even for Christian reactionaries to fall back on liberal propaganda and explain away historical gentile-Jewish tension in terms of ignorance and irrationalism.
But this option simply isn’t open for reactionaries, at least not without an excellent reason. We believe that our forefathers were at least as wise and observant as we, and were probably a great deal more clear-sighted. So we can’t simply fall back on facile excuses and hand-waving to explain away uncomfortable historical truths. And one of those truths is that uneasy gentile-Jewish relations predate liberalism by between 1,000-3,000 years. Why is that?
By the way, I can guarantee that the recent exercises in (self-?) censorship here at the Orthosphere have backfired in several major ways:
- They have provided hardened antisemites with even more ammunition, thus rendering it impossible to have a civil, rational inquiry into the matter on this blog.
- They have spurred ambivalent philosemites (like me) to inquire more deeply into the historical question. I have begun reading Hilaire Belloc’s 1922 book “The Jews”, which is widely available in free eBook format on the internet, and so far I’d recommend it highly for those who are interested in the question. (Since it’s a scanned book, there are numerous formatting and OCR errors, and I spent an hour or so using the free Sigil eBook editor to clean up the most glaring variety.)
- They have kept the issue alive. Had Bonald not been forced to remove his original post, we’d probably all have moved on by now.
On the positive side, we now know that the Orthosphere’s claim to eschew political correctness is, at root, a lie. If I was a contributor, I’d be decamping back to my own blog.
Hi Murray,
Nobody pressured me to remove my post. I would like to have a discussion on Christian-Jewish relations, but it quickly became clear that this is an issue that sets reactionary Christians off easily, and so the subject has to be broached delicately. Thus, I’m afraid that I’ve spoiled the chance for a reasonable discussion for some time. On the one hand, there are some writers for this blog who will not tolerate any criticism of the Jews. On the other hand, there’s me, someone who’s gotten sick of this one liberal clientele being off limits and who gets an iconoclastic thrill out of speaking of “the Jews” disapprovingly. This is an itch I shouldn’t have indulged, and I apologize to everybody. It’s not a question of whether I should be able to criticize Jewish anti-Christian prejudice and do so harshly. We say worse things on this blog about other PC-protected groups every day. The question is what will happen if I do so. No one has been enlightened by it. At best, some readers and contributers have dismissed the whole incident as a sign of my personal spiritual sickness; at worst, some reactionaries have turned against this blog completely. An utterly pointless mess. If only I had been more careful and added more qualifications, perhaps none of it would have happened.
Thanks, Bonald.
Kristor, allow me to apologize for so badly misreading your argument. It is clear to me now that you had no intention of censoring or blackballing discussion of Jewish influence. So the way seems clear for us to proceed with the civil, rational discussion that Bonald seems to have wanted all along.
Bonald, how about recalibrating your original post, removing those things that Kristor found resentful or uncongenial, and reposting the altered version? Or, if you do not wish to make yourself a target again, feel free to edit my questions from this thread into something resembling a guest post.
Unfortunately, all the fuss seems to have drawn out some unpleasant outbursts of anti-Jewish feeling, which I reject. But this blog has distinguished itself by an atmosphere of civility and goodwill since it began a couple of months ago, and since this is, after all, an inquiry into truth, I’m sure we can rise above those.
Thanks, Murray. Apology accepted.
Murray, thank you for your posts here. You argued better and more succinctly than I could have done my objections to comments that I perceived to be reductions of a serious issue to unfair psycho-analyzing. I know that people fear baiting Jew hatred, but I don’t think that sidestepping around these issues is, in long run, “good for the Jews,” as you also mention.
Kristor, I appreciate your Boethian advice, and I thank you for the ever cordial spirit with which your clarify your position to not always amiable interlocutors.
Thanks for your kind words, Joseph A.
It is ironic, isn’t it? Reactionaries are accustomed to bargain-basement psychoanalysis at the hands of liberals (Racist! Homophobe! Theocrat! Islamophobe! Epistemic Closure-ist! And so on.) and we rightly treat it as the bullshit that it clearly is. So you’d think we’d avoid using such low tactics ourselves, if only to preserve our self-respect.
But hey! Someone has the unforgivable cheek to raise the question of Jewish influence, and all of a sudden, why, you’re just “threatened and victimized and resentful”. Intimidated and outclassed! Making excuses!
But Murray, surely it is permissible to try to understand ourselves, no? Surely it is permissible to try to do better than liberals, by not falling into the trap of demonizing our adversaries, as they do – no? Surely it is a good thing to criticize ourselves, so as to root out the residual traces of our chthonic liberalism. Or is that not pc?
Kristor, I should apologize again for reopening my complaints after apologizing the first time!
But yes, of course I agree that we should understand ourselves and refrain from demonizing our adversaries. I hope that my comments in this thread–critical as they are–demonstrate my good faith as far as that goes. What I found problematic about your approach here is that it veered too far in the opposite direction, by treating certain topics (and only those topics) to the same kind of superficial psychoanalytic approach that our adversaries use against us. It really does read as if you’re saying that all discussion of Jewish influence (or MRM activity) is motivated by an unchivalrous blend of fear and resentment. The effect is unfortunately enhanced by the fact that your post takes place in a contextless vacuum, since we can no longer read Bonald’s original post and its comments and judge for ourselves.
Hm. Very frustrating, when this was the opposite of what I intended. But also illuminating. In the post itself I say:
Now it seems quite clear to me that the presence in this pair of sentences of the phrases I have emphasized extends the analogy very broadly indeed – to “any challenge we apprehend” – and states explicitly that I number myself among those to whom its questions are pertinent: I, the one who has in this thread been crassly psychoanalyzed as cowardly or dishonest, the one who has been categorically demonized as a liberal and a traitor.
Yet again and again, commenters responded as if the post was *only about the Jews,* providing clear examples of just the sort of reflexive demonization that the post was intended to highlight and warn against. They read too quickly, or with heads too hot, and automatically jumped to, “Kristor is proscribing all criticism of Jews because he thinks it is ipso facto insane and evil.” To me it is astonishing that my post was read in that fashion.
Case in point: even in your most recent comment, and having already graciously apologized for having misinterpreted my post in just this way, you say:
In pointing this out, I don’t mean to harp, but only to show what I’m talking about. Even with your awareness of such misinterpretation fully alerted, it still seemed to you that the post was about the Jews.
Right. I understand your frustration, I guess, but context is everything. And consider that the context here is that two recent posts on one particular topic have been disappeared–apparently under some duress–and that your post arrived shortly after the first disappearance, thus appearing to be an attempt to lay down the rules for further engagement. Furthermore, you mentioned the ostensibly forbidden topic in its first sentence, then immediately went on to make a false and inflammatory analogy that only served to strengthen the impression that you were attempting to frame all discussion of that subject in a particular tendentious way. I accept your explanation that you intended nothing of the sort, but you really should be able to comprehend why people responded as they did. As a rule, if I find that I am repeatedly required to clarify something I’ve written, it’s a strong indication that I’ve expressed myself poorly.
And look, I’m sorry, but I just re-re-re-read your post again in full, and … it’s just spectacularly bad. It’s vaporous, abstract, and platitudinous; it says nothing substantial at great length; and it repeatedly projects a variety of negative emotional responses onto people you’ve never met. Worst of all, it proposes no workable metrics by which one might be able to distinguish the “bad” type of commentary (resentful, envious, excuse-making complaints) from the “good” (whatever it is that Auster, Wood, Kristor, Proph, Roebuck, Kalb, and Charlton do several times a day). When read in a broad sense, the post disappears up its own fundament, as it exemplifies the very tendencies it decries.
I’m truly sorry, Kristor. As I said at the beginning, I’ve long admired your work, and expect to do so again. I bear you no ill will, and it was not my intention to demonize you (rather, I meant to illustrate the fact that none of us can completely free ourselves of liberal tendencies). May God bless you.
I appreciate the feedback. Thanks, Murray, for the time you have lavished on such a sub-par post.
I should note for the record that, so far as I know, there has been no duress of any kind exerted upon any Orthospherean editor by any other.
In fact we barely talk to one another; I practically slept through this whole exchange — only noticed it a day or two ago!
Murray: “On the positive side, we now know that the Orthosphere’s claim to eschew political correctness is, at root, a lie.”
This.
The ability to think and write radically from traditionalist perspectives in the modern world is not there. At a certain point, modern pseudo-traditionalism buckles. It cannot face vital issues.
That means that in understanding Jewish influence and its problems the Darwinian perspective of Kevin MacDonald’s evolutionary psychology is the only game in town.
I think that’s the best view anyway. I respectfully disagree that rooting non-liberal morality in evolved human nature rather than in a traditional (Christian) concept of morality is a weakness.
But it’s not best because it inches ahead on a point by point comparison. It wins against a no-show.
Traditional thinkers (both pagan and Christian, with the Christians better informed on the Jewish problem) might have said, “if you let Jewish influence go as far as you have you are in a lot of trouble, and you will have to struggle to overcome that influence or things will get even worse,” but the Orthosphere trembles too much to firmly agree.
While Mephistopheles beguiles the clever sillies into riding straight into Hell, the Orthosphere’s best advice is something like “whistle a cheerful tune and never look behind you. Ride on!”
I have a question for all you Christians. Who exactly are you willing to work with? I mean you have rejected both Muslims and Jews, the two other Abrahamic religions. And of course you reject Liberals, as you should. Do you also reject Buddhists, Hindus, and everyone else?
I personally would be happy to work with anyone against what I consider to be the greatest threat to human decency, namely Liberalism. I would be glad to work with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or anyone else who is willing to cooperate against Liberalism.
I’d be curious to know how you came under the impression that “all [we] Christians” completely reject cooperation with Jews and Muslims. We’ve certainly had posts critical of both groups, but as I’ve said before, the Orthosphere has no editor. An opinion expressed by one of our bloggers is not neccesarily the opinion of all of our bloggers, still less the editorial opinion of the website as a whole. (In fact, beyond the stuff on the “About” page, the website takes no official editorial positions.) The only one of the groups you mention with which I would completely reject the dea of cooperating is Muslims, given the violent, anti-Western nature of much of modern orthodox Islam. I would, as I think I’ve written a couple other places, certainly be willing to cooperate with “ultra-Orthodox” Jews, Hindu nationalists, Neo-Confucians, etc.
We’re unwilling to work with these groups by-and-large because they’ve sold out to liberalism and therefore hate us. The exception to this is Muslims, who hate us precisely because they *haven’t* sold out to liberalism.
I’m sure we would all be happy with even a temporary, tactical alliance with the Jews against liberalism. But it isn’t going to happen, and it’s not because of us.
So, understand the entire world and all the challenges it offers, but do not let yourself go down the rabbit whole of endlessly running to nowhere on a treadmill of emotional angst formed by disgust, fear, etcetera that said challenges could inspire in you if you lose control of yourself and thereby render yourself a slave to a demonic hatred of your fellow pilgrims in this vale of tears, who were made in the image of God himself, and who we should and must love if we are to fulfil our mission: the knightly quest.
Striking down said challenges will include opposing the erroneous beliefs and actions of those we love and will be at its most effective – and thus most worthy of our attention – when we focus on what is within our ambit, such as actually removing sins from our own life, home educating our children and making sure our own local neighbourhoods are well tended. Obviously, if you can take on some of the big dragons – whatever they might be – and not just dream about doing so, then we should launch ourselves at with the full fury of a Holy Crusader.
Is that about it?
Exactly. Would that I had stated it in the way that you have just done …
The original was best:
Indeed. Since I wrote this post, I have been mulling over that very passage almost continuously, and considering its relation to chivalry. I have been pondering the effect on one’s social life of its full-blooded practical implementation.
If you love God with everything you have, and are, *nothing else can really trouble you,* so that you become, not just free and hale, but *immensely powerful,* terribly dangerous – and attractive.
A wonderful meditation.
I love that someone such as yourself can paint a picture of a way of life, by thinking on such verses prayerfully, that can help yourself and others understand and walk the path to holiness.
What I love even more is that someone of more modest abilities can, by following the simplest, most humble interpretation of the same verses and despite lacking any of your laudatory, deep and helpful insights, lead a life that would perfectly mirror, and potentially exceed, what your spiritual vision can reveal to us about the good, the beautiful and the true.
Deo gratias.
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