← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Okiereddust
Thread ID: 6288 | Posts: 114 | Started: 2003-04-22
2003-04-22 23:54 | User Profile
by Aaron D. Wolf
"If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. "-Mark 3:25
American evangelicals, according to former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "are the Israelis' best friend in the whole world." In return, they dubbed him "the Ronald Reagan of Israel." That so many are still surprised by those statements indicates that, by and large, those happy to be called evangelicals or even fundamentalists have been largely ignored by most of the dominant American mass culture, though a few outside the fold who have stopped ignoring this "sleeping giant" have reaped tremendous rewards: election victories, foreign policy directives, and undying political loyalty.
Republicans, driven by such key evangelical leaders as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, have, at least since the Reagan Revolution, made use of the "Christian Right" during election season, parroting such shibboleths as "pro-life" and "pro-family" to the soul-stirring delight of the world-weary faithful; those who are the most interested in being "best friends" with the evangelicals, however, are the Israeli political right, whose political objectives are the unlimited expansion of Israeli territories and the subjugation (if not deportation or even elimination) of the Palestinians. Neoconservatives in Washington and New York City, together with those evangelicals who have entered the realm of politics (from Robertson to James Dobson to Lindsey Graham) with a view to advancing the Christian Right's agenda on a national level, demand that every evangelical's chad be punched "Republican: Straight Ticket" for two reasons: The GOP is pro-life; the GOP is pro-Israel. (For faithful evangelicals, the argument that Israel, not the United States, is threatened by Saddam's alleged "weapons of mass destruction" only makes the case for total war against Iraq stronger.)
That Paul Wolfowitz or Bibi Netanyahu may merely be using the evangelicals' faithful support to advance an agenda incompatible with the American interest or the principles of justice does not occur to faithful believers who love "Zion." They are driven by a theology that is as ingenious as it is unbiblical. When they watch Bibi as he extends the hand of friendship, they look beyond him to the New Jerusalem, the coming Millennium. When the liberal media mocks their "rigid biblical literalism," they cling to their Bibles: "All Israel shall be saved"; "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings"; "Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved"; "as much as ye have done it unto the least of my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Every time they approach the voter's booth, they know that they have but one choice: Support the candidate who supports God's chosen people, or face divine judgment ("I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee").
Christians familiar with the historic interpretations of the biblical prophecies concerning "Israel" (the Church) axed the latter days may find it easy to dismiss the biblical claims of evangelical Zionists. The blame, however, for this eschatological aberration must be laid at the feet of the Main Lines and their clergy and scholars for failing, at a crucial moment in American Church history, to articulate the genuine, historic, Christian doctrine of Christ so beautifully and succinctly rendered in the Nicene Creed: "He shall come again in glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end"; and, again, "We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come."
The fact that evangelical Christians can countenance a belief that the Judge of the Quick and the Dead could return to the earth for a thousand-year reign only after which "all things will be put under his feet" is more a reflection of a deficient Christology and soteriology than a misguided interpretation of one or two proof-texts. Christians who understand that Christ's matchless glory is expressed chiefly in that He "took on the form of a servant" and "humbled himself unto death, even the death of the cross" will never be able to accept the notion that He will one day rule from His Jerusalem headquarters as a mere dictator over a world in which all is not completely subject to Him. Nor is it fathomable that the Rider of the White Horse, Whose Name is Faithful and True, could appear in the clouds "with all the holy angels" and "ten-thousand of his saints," without the consummation of all human history occurring immediately. Yet these positions (and many other theological non sequiturs) are part of the end-times dogma to which the evangelical world is so completely devoted - dispensational premillennialism.
Dispensationalists (all of them are "premillennial") think themselves conservatives and biblical literalists, but the view they hold is less than 200 years old, and the hermeneutic they employ is, at best, selectively literal. (As they read the Bible, Israel always means "the Jews," yet the seven-headed dragon of the Apocalypse has neither scales nor a tail but is made up of the nations of the "revived Roman Empire," of late identified as the European Union.) Contrary to the dispensationalists' "literalism," the sensus literalis, which Martin Luther championed as the first principle of biblical hermeneutics, demands that the "letter" of Scripture be interpreted within the context of its genre: poetry as poetry, history as history, and apocalyptic literature as apocalyptic literature. Thus, those who would interpret the last book of the Bible have, as their guide, both the prophetic literature of the Old Testament (chiefly concerning Christ's First Advent) and its fulfillment in the Gospels and the Epistles of the New Testament.
The success of dispensationalism in America is proof that Jesus was right when He warned that kicking out a demon is dangerous if the Holy Ghost does not take his place: If the house remains vacant, the demon will return and bring seven of his friends with him. In the case of American evangelicalism, the demon was old-fashioned millenarianism ("postmillennialism"), the notion that God was using America to make the world better and better, thus inaugurating a secular "Kingdom of God" on the earth. This idea was first advanced in the New World by the Puritans, many of whom believed Boston to be the New Jerusalem. As the fires of the First and Second Great Awakenings raged in New England, many of the denominational barriers (Congregational, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Baptist) melted away and Yale's New Divinity School -emphasizing revival and "heart religion" over any sort of confessional orthodoxy-took center stage. Despite their aversion to dogma, however, these believers retained the eschatology of the Puritans: The great "revivals," they reasoned, were proof that the Holy Ghost was at work in America, bringing about the Millennium-the reign of Christianity over all the earth. Be-ing a Presbyterian was not as important as being an evangelical (though many remained within their formal churches); and, chances are you were "converted" quite apart from a church, in an open field where Charles Finney and his contemporary (early-19th-century) Christian musicians were holding their traveling meeting.
What, in the absence of parish life and doctrinal catechesis, would be the chief outward expression of this apocalyptic "heart religion"? As the fires of revival spread from New England to the Upper Midwest in the urban centers built by Yankees, campaigns against alcohol and for female suffrage (too many men were drunks, and teetotaling women hoped to rock the vote) combined with abolitionism to produce a visible evangelical piety.
When Dixie seceded from the "sacred" Union, evangelicals knew what was at stake: The departure of the South would tear apart the Kingdom of God and uninaugurate the Millennium. While power-hungry Republicans pulled the strings in Washington, evangelicals rallied to the Union cause and beat down the traditionalist Southerners, who were less enamored of the world-vision of the New Age. Hymn writer Philip Bliss, inspired by General Sherman's determined admonition to General Corse to "hold the fort" at Allatoona Pass, penned the following evangelical standard, which conflated the Union's mission with Christ's parousia: "Hold the fort, for I am coming' / Jesus signals still. / Wave the answer back to Heaven, /By thy grace we will."'
By 1865, however, it seemed to many that the Millennium had been lost. The sheer carnage of over half a million dead gave second thoughts to those eager to believe that America was the harbinger of the Kingdom. As Yankee chaplain Dwight Lyman Moody would confess, many men had simply lost their heart religion on the battlefield. In addition, the Main Lines (having made themselves easy targets) were being penetrated by an imported Schleirmachian liberalism, which argued that heart religion need not have an historic resurrected Christ at its foundation. Perplexed, D.L. Moody took up the mantle of Finney, hired Ira Sankey to be his soul-stirring musician, and hit the sawdust trail. When he did, however, the notion of America-as-God's-Kingdom was left behind. American Christianity was soon divided into two camps: the liberals and the fundamentalists. The liberals retained the idea of American exceptionalism-recast as manifest destiny and the Social Gospel-but jettisoned everything fundamentally Christian. The evangelicals, conversely, retained the "fundamentals" but jettisoned the millenarianism of their forebears in favor of an eschatological vision that expected things to get worse and worse, not progressively better. Dispensationalism, first brought ashore by John Nelson Darby (of the Irish dissenting group known as the Plymouth Brethren) during the 1860's, had enjoyed a small following among Adventists and maverick evangelicals before the Civil War. When the tide turned, however, dispensationalism became very attractive, and evangelical eschatology was reconstructed to reflect the "growing apostasy" in worldwide Christianity.
Unaware that they had imbibed the same sort of Baconian rationalism and historicism that their liberal opponents had, the dispensationalists were convinced that a commonsense reading of the Bible would reveal that God had divided all of human history into seven dispensations. In each of these, God would test mankind, man (save for a remnant of true believers) would fail, and a great disaster would follow. The sixth dispensation ("Law") had ended with the Jews' rejectior of Jesus as their Messiah, after which Jesus began the disperisa of "Grace" (the seventh), also called the Church Age. During the Church Age (sprawling across the last two millennia), men would be saved by faith in Jesus Christ, and, at the end of this age, these Christians would be caught up into Heaven in a "secret rapture" and escape the disastrous "Tribulation" to follow. And, contrary to the Social Gospel of the liberals, no amount of social engineering would change the degenerative course of history: "When they say peace and safety, then cometh sudden destruction."
The "Great Reversal," as it came to be known, meant that evangelicals increasingly withdrew from the sinking ship of mainstream American culture. It was pointless to hope for any lasting cultural renewal at the end of the Church Age. In fact, the signs of the times pointed to widespread degeneracy: Darwinism, liberal theology in the old universities, the failure of Prohibition, effeminacy (prohibitionist preacher Billy Sunday, the original Promise Keeper, championed "manliness" and decried wire-rimmed glasses), and illegitimacy. During the early 20th century, evangelicals began to hole up in their own denominations and schools and hold mass meetings to promote "the fundamentals" and dispensationalism. No one could attend such a spectacle as the International Prophecy Conference and walk away unconvinced that all who take the Bible seriously must agree with dispensational ism.
If not to American culture, where, then, would evangelical believers look to find visible signs that the end draweth nigh? The answer, first conceived by Darby in the absence of all earthly hope, was Israel and the Jews. God, having chosen the Jews to be His own- an ethnic group, not the spiritual descendants of Abraham, who could be raised up, if necessary, "out of stones"-would not abandon His people, despite their error. Thus, the dispensationalists taught that the Age of Law was not really completed during the first century A.D. but merely postponed. After the Church Age, circumscribed by the "great parentheses" of Providence, the Jews were to return to center stage in the divine drama and accept the Christ Whom they had rejected. With the Christians raptured and the Holy Ghost no longer restraining the forces of evil ("he who now letteth will let until he be taken out of the way"), a political leader (the Antichrist) would arise who would, over the course of seven years (the Tribulation) first broker a peace with the Jews, then turn on them and pursue them to destroy them, culminating in the Battle of Armageddon. Then, just as all hope for Israel seems lost, the Jews will "look up, for their redemption draweth nigh," as Jesus and the raptured believers return to destroy all their enemies. Here endeth the Tribulation and beginneth the dispensationalists' Millennium, during which Jesus shall reign over all the earth from Jerusalem and the raptured believers (in glorified, supernatural bodies) will share in His dominion, each according to his reward. This thousand-year reign will then close with (another) judgment, at which the Devil and all unbelievers will be consigned to Hell.
At the time when Darby, Rueben A. Torrey, C.I. Scofield (of the dispensationalist "Scofield Reference Bible"), and W.E. Blackstone were winning mass converts to dispensationalism, there was no nation of Israel. Hence, Blackstone, a resident of Oak Park, Illinois, and a friend of D.L. Moody, began holding "Christian Zionist" conferences in Chicago during the 1890's. His book, Jesus Is Coming, was a bestseller, and, in 1891, Blackstone drafted a petition demanding the creation of an Israeli state in Palestine, which was subsequently signed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; the speaker of the House, the mayors of Chicago, New York, and Boston; and such prominent figures as Cyrus McCormick, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan.Blackstone, in 1918, was hailed "the father of Zionism," and, in 1956, the Israeli government named a forest after him.
After the Balfour Declaration (1917) and the demise of Ottoman rule in Palestine, the dispensational ists were all the more convinced that they had been right all along. Even the Nazi murder of so many Jews during the latter part of World War II was, ironically, seen by the dispensationalists as the work of God, preparing the way for the worldwide acceptance of an Israeli state in Palestine. Fundamentalist preacher Harry Rimmer said that, "by driving the preserved people back into the preserved land, Hitler, who does not believe the Bible . . . is helping to fulfill [it]."
In 1948, all doubt among evangelicals was eliminated, as Israel had, once again, entered her historic territory. Then, Jesus' words in Mark 13 rang true in the minds of the evangelical faithful:
Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near: So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.
In the midst of a hostile culture in which Bible-believers were mocked and marginalized, one thing was certain: The fig tree (Israel) had budded; therefore, the rapture was near. Evangelist Louis Talbot called the establishment of Israel "the greatest event, from a prophetic standpoint, that has taken place within the last one hundred years, perhaps even since 70 A.D. [sic], when Jerusalem was destroyed." Since 1948, dispensationalist leaders have praised every subsequent military action of the Israelis, no matter what it was or how it was conducted. After the Six-Day War of 1967, Christianity Today proclaimed that current events give "a student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible."
The single-greatest-selling book of the 1970's was dispensationalist Hal Lindsey's end-times novel The Late Great Planet Earth, in which the European Common Market was first fingered as the realm of the coming Antichrist. (The threat of Russia (Gog) and Moscow (Magog) was also factored in, and "fire and brimstone" was code for nuclear detonation.) Evangelical filmmakers at Mark IV Pictures began to produce end-times movies for evangelicals about the rapture, the Jews, and the Antichrist, with such titles as A Thief in the Night, A Distant Thunder, and Image of the Beast. These films were circulated among Christian youth groups and prophecy conferences, urging viewers to turn to Christ or miss the rapture. (Larry Norman, a pioneer of the genre that came to be known as "contemporary Christian music," penned the theme song for Thief. "I Wish We'd All Been Ready.")
Beginning with the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957, Washington had supported Israel with aid and weapons, in an effort to counter the Soviets' influence on the Arab states of the Middle East, which, it was argued, could lead to the spread of communism throughout the region and the cutting off of the oil supply from Arab states. Washington's support for Israel had its political side as well, since it pleased Jewish voters in America. And, as more and more evangelicals began to be drawn into the fringes of the dominant American culture during the 50's and 60's, politicians took note of another voting constituency: Christian Zionists. Richard Nixon, under the influence of Henry Kissinger, agreed to support Israel for geopolitical reasons, though it only meant that the Israelis "would be even more impossible to deal with than before." At the same time, he concurred, in the presence of dispensationalist evangelist Billy Graham, that, while neither of them particularly liked Jews, support for Israel was essential. He nodded along while Graham lamented (in the recently disclosed 1972 Oval Office meeting) that "all-I mean, not all the Jews, but a lot of the Jews are great friends of mine, they swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I'm friendly with Israel. But they don't know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country"
A growing number of Republicans began to see the need for a presidential candidate who could translate the evangelicals' earnest theological commitment to Israel into an electoral victory. Ronald Reagan had said in 1971 that, "In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, it says that the land of Israel will come under attack by the armies of the ungodly nations, and it says that Libya will be among them. Do you understand the significance of that? Libya has now gone communist, and that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off." Bolstered by popular dispensationalist televangelists-Falwell, Robertson, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, all of whom had led pilgrimages to Israel-Reagan was able to bring the evangelicals into the Republican Party for good while securing his victories in 1980 and 1984. In the process, American evangelicals were able to add the old Pu-ritan commitment to American exceptionalism to their apocalyptic theology. The United States, upholding her godly heritage, would be the protector of God's chosen people, while the Soviets and the nations of Europe conspired against them,* bringing the world to the brink of the rapture.
Since then, dispensational ist fervor has only increased. In 1993, popular evangelical author Timothy LaHaye, along with Christian fiction writer Jerry B. Jenkins, published a new rapture novel, Left Behind, which topped the New York Times' best-seller list. Since then, there have been nine more novels, with the 11th, Armageddon, scheduled to be released on April 8. Over 42 million of these books have been sold; two film versions, starring evangelical Hollywood actors, have been made, and a third is currently in production.
Evangelicals are now fully enmeshed in Republican poli-tics, and-no matter how many times the GOP lets them down when it comes to abortion, homosexual rights, or cloning-they will always return to the party that most visibly and vocally supports Israel. In October 2002, Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition held its Christian Solidarity Rally For Israel in front of the White House, and, in addition to the mayor of Jerusalem, many Republican politicians came to deliver five -minute speeches. The schedule included numerous senators and congressmen: Dick Armey, J.C. Watts, Strom Thtfmond, Jesse Helms, Tom DeLay, James Inhofe, Lindsey Graham, Ernest Istook, Roy Blunt, Bob Goodlatte, Sam Brownback; Orrin Hatch, Robert Aderholt, Dave Weldon, Henry Brown, and Walter Jones.
Not all Republican politicians are cynical manipulators of the evangelicals' love for Israel. Lindsey Graham, himself an ardent dispensationalist, declared at the October 2002 rally, "There are people in the world today who want to destroy Israel. Those people will be my enemy forever. Those people who want to bring about peace-come join us." Graham, along with his dispensational brethren, knows that Israel is Part of God's plan and is, therefore, indestructible, a delusion that is highly dangerous, considering Israel's geopolitical situation. Thus, he called on the United States to "send a signal that's undeniable, unquestionable to all the forces of evil that you will not destroy the state of Israel. If that is your goal, you will lose."
Dispensationalist House Majority Leader Tom Delay shares Graham's belief: "I've been to Masada. I've toured Judea and Samaria. I've walked the streets of Jerusalem, and I've stood on the Golan Heights .... And you know what? I didn't see any occupied territory. What I saw was Israel!" In other words, since God has given the land of Israel to the Jews, there can be no Palestinian state. The Palestinians simply do not have any claim to the land on which they have lived for 2,000 years. And anyone who disagrees will suffer the wrath of God.
Divided loyalties such as these are nothing but a recipe for disaster in the realm of foreign policy. "Best friends" Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon do not have the American interest at heart: Instead, they (rightly) have their own. Then again, the Republicans, by and large, do not have the dispensational ists' best interests at heart, either. They have their own geopolitical goals, which, thanks to the overwhelming influence of the neo-conservatives, happen to coincide on the surface with the evangelicals'. These sincere Christians will never be awakened from this eschatological nightmare by politics. They must be led back to the path of orthodoxy by Christians immersed in the traditions of the Church, which teach that the next event on "God's calendar" is the Judgment, for which we all must be prepared. On this, the Fathers, Augustine, Thomas, Luther, and Calvin agreed. But are there enough Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Catholics left who are sufficiently familiar with this rich heritage to explain it, lovingly and patiently, to their brethren? Or, in Jesus' words, "When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the earth?"
Aaron D. Wolf, a Church historian, is the assistant editor of Chronicles.
[url=http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org]Chronicles - April 2003[/url]
2003-04-23 17:23 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@Apr 22 2003, 17:54 ** But are there enough Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Catholics left who are sufficiently familiar with this rich heritage to explain it, lovingly and patiently, to their brethren? Or, in Jesus' words, "When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the earth?" **
A critical question this wavering born and raised Southern Baptist has earnestly been asking himself lately. Key issues arise invariably. 'Sola Scriptura' with Catholics and Orthodox. Episcopalians? Their church near me has a woman pastor, so not much more needs to be said there. Presbyterians throw me off with their position on pre-destination. That leaves the Lutherans and I am warming to the Missouri-Synod, one of their many flavors here in the U.S., but still struggling with infant vs. believer's baptism.
Sigh. :(
Good article, Okie. Thanks for posting it.
2003-04-24 00:47 | User Profile
An excellent article. Wolf does a great job summing up dispensationalism; he also makes this piece a glove across the face of both ethnic neocons and the Christian Zionists. I'm thinking this is the real response to Frum and others; Taki can mutter and spew but this article puts it on the table.
This will be interesting to watch as it escalates.
Is there an actual link to this story, Okie?
2003-04-24 01:50 | User Profile
Tex,
Farbeit for me to confer unsolicited religious advice, but it seems to me like you're not really looking for a fundementally different theological system. You may be happiest by sticking with the SBC and hoping to change the outcome or at least you can carve a peaceful niche within it. Of course, the Baptists, Evangelicals, Holiness and Pentecostal movements seem to be heading toward total theological fusion and most of its members are very militant so that position may be unfruitful in the long run. My recommondation is to visit each of the churches you listed, attend one or two services, talk to the minister/priest and let them attempt to address your concerns. You'll be much better informed when and if you decide to bolt the SBC.
2003-04-24 02:33 | User Profile
Originally posted by weisbrot@Apr 24 2003, 00:47 I'm thinking this is the real response to Frum and others; Taki can mutter and spew but this article puts it on the table. Actually I don't think this is a response to the neocon agnostics such as Frum, Kristol and probably most of the others per se as it is to the dispensationalists whose political and even spiritual goals have been absorbed by these secular Zionists so as to become indistinguishable.
It will become very obvious to most perceptive believers that in the "Christian-Zionist" fusion the Zionism comes to completely eclipse the Christian component.
This will be interesting to watch as it escalates.
It would be nice to see it escalate beyond the pages of Chronicles. I suspect though the neocon establishment will go back to its usual tack of ignoring paleodom.
Is there an actual link to this story, Okie?
No, I had to scan it in.
2003-04-24 03:01 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@Apr 23 2003, 22:33 ** Actually I don't think this is a response to the neocon agnostics such as Frum, Kristol and probably most of the others per se as it is to the dispensationalists whose political and even spiritual goals have been absorbed by these secular Zionists so as to become indistinguishable.
It will become very obvious to most perceptive believers that in the "Christian-Zionist" fusion the Zionism comes to completely eclipse the Christian component.
This will be interesting to watch as it escalates.
It would be nice to see it escalate beyond the pages of Chronicles. I suspect though the neocon establishment will go back to its usual tack of ignoring paleodom.
Is there an actual link to this story, Okie?
No, it had to scan it in. **
Of course you're correct. But I do see this article as at least a response to Frum-style attacks on the Paleos. While not being specifially aimed at the secular Jews it exposes their attempts to use fundamentalists and seed doubts in all Christians. Kristol, Frum and other non-believing Zionists may not be the actual targets, but they will certainly see this as an attack on the strongest leg of their support in the U.S.
I supposed it isn't too hard to overestimate the reach of Chronicles, but the tone and language of the article makes it seem likely that the Rockford Institute is drawing a line in the sand. This might or probably will sink without a murmur, but I don't think that it will be ignored. Having Frum lead with an attack on the Paleos in a cover story, just as war was beginning in Iraq, shows that there is some justifiable concern in the neocon camp. Even if Chronicles is the pipsqueak of conservative/"conservative" publications, neocon and paleo alike do take some direction from it's observations. Who could have predicted the effect of Buchanan's "Whose War"?
I'm printing copies of the article to distribute. Thanks for the scan.
2003-04-24 04:12 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Apr 23 2003, 17:23 **A critical question this wavering born and raised Southern Baptist has earnestly been asking himself lately. Key issues arise invariably. 'Sola Scriptura' with Catholics and Orthodox. **
Orthodox are something actually you definitely need to look at. They aren't the same here as Catholics.
**Episcopalians? Their church near me has a woman pastor, so not much more needs to be said there. ** Well the main-line denominations are largely penetrated if not dominated by liberalism as the article notes.
American Christianity was soon divided into two camps: the liberals and the fundamentalists. The liberals retained the idea of American exceptionalism-recast as manifest destiny and the Social Gospel-but jettisoned everything fundamentally Christian.
Presbyterians throw me off with their position on pre-destination.
Beg your pardon, but isn't the conservative champion of the SBC, R. Albert Mohler, an ardent Calvinist? He's probably more Calvinist than the vast majority of Presbyterians.
**That leaves the Lutherans and I am warming to the Missouri-Synod, one of their many flavors here in the U.S., but still struggling with infant vs. believer's baptism.
**
Well it does seem like your choices are pretty limited as a Protestant, if you reject both liberalism and dispensationalism. There are some mainline denominations like the Missouri Synod who reject liberalism, just as there are some fundamentalist denominations like the Church of Christ who reject dispensationalism. But your choices are pretty limited, especially if you don't limit yourself to these criteria alone. The SBC, while its Christian Zionism is regrettable, is still the group with the most positive political stance overall, standing up for the pro-life movement and against Disney homosexuality the way no other Protestant groups do.
The difficulty of the problem may be seen in the path taken by Francis Schaeffer, who basically the theological father of the Moral Majority with his "dominion theology" ( a slightly less obstentatious form of the Calvinistic "Christian reconstructionists" [url=http://www.chalcedon.edu]Chalcedon Institute[/url]) His son Franky completely gave up on Protestantism and joined the Orthodox Church in America. For those who know the Schaeffer's that's sort of like Pope John converting to Lutheranism.
The Orthodox Church seems to be a haven for rightwing activists in general, although to me it still seems extremely Catholic, at least in its basic liturgy and "feel".
Anyway I don't view the SBC as incurably apostate or evil. It is just their theology is not robust enough to take the corrupting temptation and influence of political power. If it wasn't for their high political profile I doubt their dispensational theology would really have taken the hard-line turn toward Israel it did - and the fact it did was as can be seen directly due to clever manipulation by the most unsavory elements of the Israel lobby, including direct and undisputed intervention by the Mossad itself.
That said, I admit I had not really fully realized how deeply and irreversibly this pro-Israel tendency had become imbeded in the SBC and allied "Christian Right" forces such as James Dobson. Politically it appears to be almost beyond redemption, although I'm pretty certain that an awful lot of the Jerry Falwell types in private probably express sentiments more like Billy Graham. But what does that imply about their sincerity? I can understand your confusion. It just would be nice if we could reach those many good SBC lay people who privately share similar misgivings about the path zionist dispensationalism has led them to politically.
2003-04-25 02:56 | User Profile
Not only did Jesus Christ make miracles, such as raising Lazarus from the dead, feeding 5000 people with one loaf of bread and one fish, cast out demons, walk on water, calm the storm, make the blind see visually, among other miracles, but he Rose from the dead after dying horribly. I don't want to hear any more bs about the Jews, Christianity in America, or anything else. Christ will return to this Earth when it is TIME.
2003-04-25 21:39 | User Profile
I went to a funeral mass recently. The inside of the Church looked splendid. I liked the arched interior. I felt uplifted by the stained glass. It was a nice collection of folk -- the priest was effeminate, most likely homosexual, he maintained a proper solemn air befitting death. At some point in his sermon he referenced some famous rabbi, when he did so he had a beatific expression that made me a little sick --- like you feel at work when so and so kisses up unashamedly to the boss. Looking at this homosexual in priestly skirts I decided he probably believed all the politically correct bull (no pun intended) and felt comfortable with it -- him being a perv and all.
Excuse me guys but Christianity is just so passive, so essentially feminine and submissive that I cannot fanthom how any of you otherwise fearless heterodoxes can stomach it.
Perhaps Christianity was good for a robust phyical people tending toward warlust and cruelty but for our people today -- office workers and consumers of crap--- Christianity is a recipe for complete slavery.
Anyway, it is good for women -- post menopausal ones.
2003-04-26 02:04 | User Profile
Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Apr 25 2003, 16:08 **From a purely practical standpoint I think your assessment of the role of Christianity in our society is misguided. Eliminate Christianity in America, and what you get is not a Renaissance of freethinkers or a warrior ethos. What you get instead is soulless, hedonistic consumers strung out on trash television, pornography, recreational drug use, and promiscuous sex.
**
Yes Christianity has positive aspects. I agree with what you say so far as it goes. But what of the Catholic church's immigration stance? It throws its considerable weight behind open borders, especially borders that open onto the rio grande. The Catholic church is pro-immigration, and that subtracts mightily from whatever benefit they might play counteracting the judeo-liberal culture of sleeze. I find small solace in the fact that Mexicans and Salvadorans tend to be more conservative than the whites they are marginalizing.
What of mainline Protestant churches? Liberals through and through. To find Protestant conservatives in the pulpit we have to trek all the way to fundamentalism, and we all know what that is: Judeo-Churchianity (tm Hoffman).
From a purely functional point of view I like Mormonism. The Mormons are the fastest growing group of Whites in the world, even faster than the European muslims of the Balkans, but that does not mean that I would not be surprised to find any original dissenters professing a fondness for Mormon thought.
But then this is a paleo-conservative site and not a paleo-fascist site, right? :rolleyes:
2003-04-26 02:41 | User Profile
Your ignorance is evident. Your blasphemy is fact. Your SIN is killing you. The facts are not a mystery, but the denial of your mentality at this point will damn you to hell forever. You want to talk about Christianity as a tool ? You want to look at the way it makes people behave ? You insult your God. You shall pay.. today. Who do you think you are, both of you......
ANd for you, with the lazy black and white icon. I don't believe a word you've said. You are a LIAR. You have no conception of what manhood is. You are inhabited by the will of Satan. REPENT.
2003-04-26 02:58 | User Profile
Originally posted by Bardamu@Apr 26 2003, 02:04 Yes Christianity has positive aspects. I agree with what you say so far as it goes. But what of the Catholic church's immigration stance? It throws its considerable weight behind open borders, especially borders that open onto the rio grande. The Catholic church is pro-immigration, and that subtracts mightily from whatever benefit they might play counteracting the judeo-liberal culture of sleeze.
Well the Catholic Church here is doing a number of things, but basicaly it is just doing what Catholics, do, looking out for Catholics first. Its stance is different in countries where immigration is predominantly non-Catholic.
I find small solace in the fact that Mexicans and Salvadorans tend to be more conservative than the whites they are marginalizing.
Huh?
**What of mainline Protestant churches? Liberals through and through. To find Protestant conservatives in the pulpit we have to trek all the way to fundamentalism, and we all know what that is: Judeo-Churchianity (tm Hoffman).
From a purely functional point of view I like Mormonism. The Mormons are the fastest growing group of Whites in the world, even faster than the European muslims of the Balkans, but that does not mean that I would not be surprised to find any original dissenters professing a fondness for Mormon thought.
But then this is a paleo-conservative site and not a paleo-fascist site, right? **
It is. We have discussed this issue at length, so you might go through this section. For that matter you might go through the article at the head of it. It notes dispensationalism is just a 100 years old.
Overall, although the leadership equivicates, stances of religious people on issues like immigration, world government, let alone religious issues like homosexuality and drug use, is much more conservative than non-religious or non-Christian people. So you might want to review the threads here in this section too, but overall Christians are the most conservative and nationalistic group in America, even if their leadership equivicates sometimes, not wishing to be tied narrowly to the hard political right.
2003-04-26 03:46 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@Apr 25 2003, 20:58 ** Well the Catholic Church here is doing a number of things, but basicaly it is just doing what Catholics, do, looking out for Catholics first. Its stance is different in countries where immigration is predominantly non-Catholic.**
In this country immigration from the south of the Rio Grande is Catholic and non-White. Are you saying the Catholic church in the USA is nationalistic? Would that it was but I don't see it. They stand to benefit mightily from the growing immigrant Catholic presence here. And mainline Protestant churches. Conservative? Nationalistic? You mean like a minister speaking out for the interests of Whites from the pulpit? What I see is an embrace of multiculturalism from mainline churches.
Approaching it from a different direction do you mind if I ask you whether you are a believer in Christianity?
2003-04-26 04:03 | User Profile
Originally posted by Exelsis_Deo@Apr 25 2003, 20:41 **Who do you think you are, both of you...... **
Both of us? You mean me and Bebert, my cat?
2003-04-26 04:27 | User Profile
Originally posted by Bardamu@Apr 26 2003, 03:46 ** In this country immigration from the south of the Rio Grande is Catholic and non-White. Are you saying the Catholic church in the USA is nationalistic? Would that it was but I don't see it. They stand to benefit mightily from the growing immigrant Catholic presence here. And mainline Protestant churches. Conservative? Nationalistic? You mean like a minister speaking out for the interests of Whites from the pulpit? What I see is an embrace of multiculturalism from mainline churches.**
Churches I would argue do tend to import the cultural/political tradition of their constituency, first of all. If there is a political note in them, it usually reflects this constituency, if you check it out. You are being somewhat unreasonable in expecting Churches to have independent well thought out positions on politics different from their culture, at least in the sense you judge them negatively for it. Both the views of Catholics on immigration and mainline Protestants on multiculturalism, to the extent they are true, reflects these respective cultures.
**Approaching it from a different direction do you mind if I ask you whether you are a believer in Christianity? **
No secret there, as a casual perusal of threads in this section will indicate here which of us are and aren't. I am with the Christian group here.
2003-04-26 21:47 | User Profile
Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Apr 26 2003, 12:38 ** As an off-the-cuff observation, it has always struck me that Eastern Orthodoxy has never sought converts in the way that Catholics or most Protestant denominations have, so as such Orthodoxy remains largely a Greco-Slavic phenomenon (similarly, the Orthodox Churches of Armenia, Syria, and Georgia have always been ethno-national phenomena). Does anybody know whether this is indeed the case, and if so, what about Eastern Orthodox theology leads it to be less "missionary" in scope than its Western counterparts? Or does this simply reflect the more collective and anti-universalist mindset of the peoples who practice these faiths? **
That's an interesting observation. The Orthodox Church is inherently nationalist, while being open to converts and tolerant to other religions. One can only speculate about the origin of the difference; perhaps the Orthodox Church has more of a siege mentality, due to the countries where it spread being attacked by the outsiders much more than the Catholic ones.
2003-04-26 23:03 | User Profile
Originally posted by madrussian@Apr 26 2003, 21:47 That's an interesting observation. The Orthodox Church is inherently nationalist, while being open to converts and tolerant to other religions. One can only speculate about the origin of the difference; perhaps the Orthodox Church has more of a siege mentality, due to the countries where it spread being attacked by the outsiders much more than the Catholic ones.
Missionary activity and active prosyletization is actually not as ubiquitious an activity among Christian Churches as you might think. There were certainly times of active missionary activity, such as in the first 200 years and the post renaissance period. However there were also long periods of time in the Catholic Church when such actvity was low, such is in the middle ages (save for conquering a few remnant heathen tribes in Scandanavia and the Baltic states, etc.)
I think you could argue it is tied to a certain extent with an individualist view of the world. (characterstic of the general ascendency of western culture) Periods of time, in regions of the world, where society is locked into impermeable, collectivistic groups, characteristic of Greece and Russia where both faced continuing and strong external threats from non-western cultures, don't seem to be conducive to a strong missionary mentality. The Church is preoccupied with looking after its own.
It is interesting along these lines to se the difference in Christianity in areas at the heart of the western world vs. areas at its periphery, such as Byzantinium and Russia. As our society becomes less western and more eastern, maybe that's where we're headed also.
2003-04-30 03:00 | User Profile
Orthodox churches are like extended families. You are part of a community by birth and it is not that important that you actually believe the supernatural stuff or have a "personal experience" with a non existent being. Just like in judaism, ritual observance is emphasized. Protestants may find this strange but it is very practical for building group solidarity. Needless to say, individualist religion is a disaster for group solidarity.
I doubt also that bible thumpers lead more moral lives than yuppie agnostics and atheists. Blacks are probably the ultimate example of the correlation between over the top religion and vicious living.
2003-04-30 23:02 | User Profile
AY:
as a general rule those individuals who are genuinely (as opposed to nominally) Christian and have internalized Christian values tend to be much more civilized than their non-believing counterparts..
No true Scotsman fallacy--
No true Scotsman would do such a thing, but there's a Scotsman who just did. Ah, then he is not a true Scotsman.
The people who are already inclined to behave morally are more likely to pass your test of being genuine Christians. :nerd:
2003-05-01 04:07 | User Profile
Originally posted by W.R.I.T.O.S@Apr 30 2003, 03:00 I doubt also that bible thumpers lead more moral lives than yuppie agnostics and atheists.ÃÂ Blacks are probably the ultimate example of the correlation between over the top religion and vicious living.
Javelin, usually I am not inclined to waste time on one's doubts. Anyone can doubt. If a person doesn't have the mettle to step forward and advance a thesis, true or false, it usually isn't worth one's time arguing with him.
Similarly I try not to get involved in anecdotal accounts or stories. It's a game anyone can play.
However if you want to look at one positive correlation between religiousity and moral virtue though, you might check out
[url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?act=ST&f=6&t=4517&hl=south,and,charity]Southern Generosity, Yankee Stinginess[/url]
where they note
Relatively poor Bible Belt states, headed by Mississippi, retain their lead in the latest "Generosity Index," a survey measuring the disparity between what residents of each state earn and what they give away.
2003-05-02 00:42 | User Profile
that was meant for Bardamu, Anti-Yuppie. I was inscensed over the whimsicality which Christianity was discussed at the beginning of this thread. Historical fact ( not re-written neo-fact ) is evident, and when hundreds or thousands die as martyrs, they don't just do that for their health. The other tendency I abhor is the rejection of Christ by some White Power folk, who simply cannot believe that God would choose a descendant of David to become man for His Reasons. Bardamu was the main target of that lashing, I found his posts both self-centered and foolishly wrong. The lesser gripe was with the tendency to over-talk issues which do not need to be over- analyzed.
2003-05-09 15:59 | User Profile
The Japanese, arguably the world's most civilized people, are pagan.
The West should have developed its own religion out of its own organic elements. Instead we imported a Jewish religion -- like a virus containing all the contentiousness of the world's most contentious people.
The power of religion is the power of a corporate body of humans congregating, with all the generations present, the screaming babies all the way through to the bent over elders, coming together in ritual -- which is nothing less than a dialogue with eternity or God or the highest most soulful part of our brains, appreciating physical eternity. We didn't need the Jew's religion to do this, and considering the anti-humanity nature of Jewish people, it is a damn shame that we grafted it into our national psyche.
Christianity distilled represents the essence of the West's death wish. It is exactly the case that we Europeans as a body are acting out the crucifixion all over again --- we are going to be sacrificed to redeem the sins of the world, and to add insult to injury, our sacrifice will not usher in a better world.
Liberalism-- the American variety, is nothing other than secular Christianity, the same way that communism is secular Judaism.
It is abominable to love one's enemies. From that idea derives the notion that racism is bad. It is like saying it is wrong to protect yourself from your enemies. That is exactly what we find in our media culture today.
The problem is if one regects Christianity one regects religion, but if one accepts Christianity one either regects nationality or one becomes a sophisticate, which is another word for compromising hypocrite.
2003-05-09 17:27 | User Profile
Originally posted by Bardamu@May 9 2003, 15:59 ** The Japanese, arguably the world's most civilized people, are pagan. **
Argue then. They certainly aren't by my standards.
2003-05-09 17:49 | User Profile
You don't believe the Japs are civilized or the most civilized?
Who do you think are the most civilized, the Swiss?
2003-05-09 17:58 | User Profile
Originally posted by Bardamu@May 9 2003, 17:49 ** Who do you think are the most civilized, the Swiss?**
Yes, the Swiss would have to rank at the top of anyone's list. In addition to the other standard virtues, the achieve it without substantial restrictions on civil liberties - they have universal gun ownership for example.
You don't believe the Japs are civilized or the most civilized?
**
The Japanese question is very involved and difficult, even when I have lots of time to get into it, which I don't now. Japanese society is so different than ours, its hard to even compare them with us. But I think any Pacific theater WWII vet would be willing to enthuisiastically debate the subject with you, if he was able to restrain himself from punching you out.
2003-05-09 18:05 | User Profile
The idea that Christianity is responsible for the civility of Europeans is wrong considering that Europeans, and our broader family of Indo-Europeans, not to mention proto-Europeans such as the Minoans, were civilized before Christianity occured in the head of any disgruntled rabbi.
Learning civilizes people. Economics civilizes people if they are smart enough to know what to do with leisure time. The questing after truth, which is not an element of Judaism or Christianity, civilizes people because of its byproducts like clocks and washing machines.
2003-05-09 18:12 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@May 9 2003, 11:58 ** But I think any Pacific theater WWII vet would be willing to enthuisiastically debate the subject with you, if he was able to restrain himself from punching you out. **
Leave intimations of violence out of the conversation please. It is beneath you considering your verbal skills, which are better than mine, and considering my street fighting skills, which are probably better than yours and most people on this board, not to mention WorldWar 2 vets.
Personal emotions do not trump truth in my book. The fact that Japanese soldiers committed atrocities during WW2 does not reflect on the state of their civilization during peace time. If it does then where does that leave White people, considering no one comitted more atrocities during WW2 than us.
2003-05-09 18:25 | User Profile
Originally posted by Bardamu@May 9 2003, 18:12 ** Leave intimations of violence out of the conversation please. It is beneath you considering your verbal skills, which are better than mine, and considering my street fighting skills, which are probably better than yours and most people on this board, not to mention WorldWar 2 vets. **
You misunderstood me. I don't feel that way, but I know a lot of WWII vets do. Talk to them, you might learn something you don't get in modern PC textbooks that say all cultures are equal.
**Personal emotions do not trump truth in my book. The fact that Japanese soldiers committed atrocities during WW2 does not reflect on the state of their civilization during peace time. If it does then where does that leave White people, considering no one comitted more atrocities during WW2 than us. **
I enthuisiastically disagree that considerations of war time conduct and peace time civilizibility can be severed from each other. And yes, our war time conduct is on the table, if you want to get into that. I'll get back with you.
2003-05-09 18:30 | User Profile
First, religion should not be followed because it is functional for a society or culture, but rather because it is true or not. Indeed, that is what gives Christianity is uniqueness. As Kierkegaard aptly put it, it did not arise in the heart or mind of any man. If it did, then it would be mere paganism.
The idea that Christianity is responsible for the civility of Europeans is wrong considering that Europeans, and our broader family of Indo-Europeans, not to mention proto-Europeans such as the Minoans, were civilized before Christianity occured in the head of any disgruntled rabbi.
Forgive me, my historical knowledge is severely lacking, but was not one of the main reasons Luther made his break with Rome because the German folk were mired in ignorance? The German rulers had their own political issues with Rome and therefore supported Luther, who got translated Bibles into the hands of everyday Germans, helping to educate them and build widespread literacy.
2003-05-09 21:01 | User Profile
Orthodox churches are like extended families. You are part of a community by birth and it is not that important that you actually believe the supernatural stuff or have a "personal experience" with a non existent being. Just like in judaism, ritual observance is emphasized. Protestants may find this strange but it is very practical for building group solidarity. Needless to say, individualist religion is a disaster for group solidarity.
Yup. My in-laws are Romanian Orthodox and it does seem to be more of an ethnic-cultural based church than spiritual religion based.
As someone coming from a Protestant background who married into a Romanian Orthodox family, I find this an interesting point.
2003-05-09 23:16 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@May 9 2003, 11:30 ** First, religion should not be followed because it is functional for a society or culture, but rather because it is true or not. Indeed, that is what gives Christianity is uniqueness. As Kierkegaard aptly put it, it did not arise in the heart or mind of any man. If it did, then it would be mere paganism. **
Everyone believes their religion to be the true one. Society makes an impression on the religion, and is using it to form their identity. A religion detached from the society or country starts losing its cohesion and risk branching out into cults/sects, as it happened to Protestanism. There is just too many ways to interpret a teaching, and that's the reason for splits and why the cultural factor is important.
2003-05-10 00:48 | User Profile
**The Japanese, arguably the world's most civilized people, are pagan. **
Oh really. The number one comic there is "RapeMan", in which the superhero rapes a victim every week. Men openly read pornography on the subways.It has one of the most extensive red light districts in the world. Just because everything is neat and orderly on the surface doesn't mean that there isn't something boiling underneath. And, in case you haven't heard, their ecomony is in shambles.
**The West should have developed its own religion out of its own organic elements. Instead we imported a Jewish religion -- like a virus containing all the contentiousness of the world's most contentious people. **
I don't see too many Jews calling themselves Christians. If Christianity were truly a Jewish religon, then the Jews would not have plotted to murder Christ.
2003-05-10 01:49 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@May 9 2003, 12:30 ** First, religion should not be followed because it is functional for a society or culture, but rather because it is true or not. Indeed, that is what gives Christianity is uniqueness. As Kierkegaard aptly put it, it did not arise in the heart or mind of any man. If it did, then it would be mere paganism.
The idea that Christianity is responsible for the civility of Europeans is wrong considering that Europeans, and our broader family of Indo-Europeans, not to mention proto-Europeans such as the Minoans, were civilized before Christianity occured in the head of any disgruntled rabbi.
Forgive me, my historical knowledge is severely lacking, but was not one of the main reasons Luther made his break with Rome because the German folk were mired in ignorance? The German rulers had their own political issues with Rome and therefore supported Luther, who got translated Bibles into the hands of everyday Germans, helping to educate them and build widespread literacy. **
Amen to your first paragraph TD. A fully Americanski'd girl of Ukrainian heritage once asked me about the "best" church to join. She wanted to do something on the weekends. No religion please. Just a nice building with accepting people. I couldn't even relate to what she was asking for. Why waste time like that? The point of service is to worship the Creator, not to feel good or accepted. If I didn't believe I'd sleep til 1:00 every Sunday.
As to your second para. :rolleyes:
In the interest of ecumenical unity of the front, and in fear of in any critiquing someone who is assuredly a better Christian than me, I'll leave my guns holstered. I will point out this, however: most of the "political" differences had to do with the fact that the Kings disagreed that Rome shold have all that juicy property. Change the state religion, and presto, nationalize all the Church's holdings.
2003-05-10 01:52 | User Profile
Edana, MR:
Its only really Prots. in Anglo (Sorry I hate using that term- I sound like a belligerent mestiza) countries which have atomized churchs and members. Prots in Continental Europe are VERY community oriented.
I think the problem is lack of community in America in general, not Protestantism.
2003-05-10 02:38 | User Profile
**The number one comic there is "RapeMan", in which the superhero rapes a victim every week. Men openly read pornography on the subways.It has one of the most extensive red light districts in the world. **
There are 20 times the number of actual rapes in the US than in Japan. Nevermind the comic strips. If rape is the index we are using to determine civility the yellow monkeys win and we lose.
The men openly read pornography on the subway. In the US internet pornography is a multibillion dollar industry. What is the difference? Does the openness of the Japs cause pornography to be an index of uncivility?
Just because everything is neat and orderly on the surface doesn't mean that there isn't something boiling underneath.
You are implying that the Japs are not civilized because something is boiling underneath?
**And, in case you haven't heard, their economy is in shambles. **
Once again what you are naming is not an index of civility. Just because their economy is depressed does not demonstrate a lack of civilization on their part.
**If Christianity were truly a Jewish religon, then the Jews would not have plotted to murder Christ. **
Christianity started out as a Jewish heresy like Lutheranism started out as a Catholic heresy -- and the Catholics plotted Luther's death.
Plenty of Christian sects have murdered each other yet they remain Christian. What you say is strictly true, Christianity is not Judaism -- but it is certainly Judaic, especially Protestantism. They share Holy Books after all. Or rather the Christians appropriated the Old Testament for their own usage. Christianity originated as Judaism for gentiles.
2003-05-10 02:59 | User Profile
Originally posted by madrussian@May 9 2003, 17:16 > Originally posted by Texas Dissident@May 9 2003, 11:30 ** First, religion should not be followed because it is functional for a society or culture, but rather because it is true or not. Indeed, that is what gives Christianity is uniqueness. As Kierkegaard aptly put it, it did not arise in the heart or mind of any man. If it did, then it would be mere paganism. **
Everyone believes their religion to be the true one. Society makes an impression on the religion, and is using it to form their identity. A religion detached from the society or country starts losing its cohesion and risk branching out into cults/sects, as it happened to Protestanism. There is just too many ways to interpret a teaching, and that's the reason for splits and why the cultural factor is important.**
I don't see how the word truth can be associated with Christian doctrine unless you qualify it with some word like "poetic" or "figurative" truth, because "truth" left alone implies literal truth, and Christian doctrine is not literally true. I venture to say no one around here believes in an eternal hell. Think of the implications of that concept: God creates sentient beings and then hides himself and insists that on the written words of an old text these sentient creations of his must believe in him, and if they don't then he consigns his own creations to everlasting torment. :thd:
2003-05-10 03:32 | User Profile
Oh no! At this rate we will have to name you "rban to the Japanese"! :lol:
I am slightly curious actually what gave you the idea of linking civilization to something you apparently presume is good, and your ideological basis for doing so, and also your moral/philosophical basis for assessing whether a society is "civilized" anyway. (The concept of "Civilization" is very value specific - if you do not state your moral/philosophical basis, its difficult to come up with a basis for evaluating the level of "civilization" in one society versus another.)> Originally posted by Bardamu@May 10 2003, 02:38 > The number one comic there is "RapeMan", in which the superhero rapes a victim every week. Men openly read pornography on the subways.It has one of the most extensive red light districts in the world. **
There are 20 times the number of actual rapes in the US than in Japan. Nevermind the comic strips. If rape is the index we are using to determine civility the yellow monkeys win and we lose.
The men openly read pornography on the subway. In the US internet pornography is a multibillion dollar industry. What is the difference? Does the openness of the Japs cause pornography to be an index of uncivility? **
As to rapes, I would think people like you would be the first to bring up the race factor. What is the difference between the japanese and white American rape rates? That is the factor of true significance. You must realize here of course that foreign crime rates are often underreported to a much greater extent than American crime rates, as a number of studies have shown.
Especially in patriarchial, samuri Japan. Besides reading pornography, japanese men are renowned for doing other things on subways of a misogynist nature, such as ubiqitious groping and fondling of women. That puts a little different light on the pornography. Also of note is the ubiquitious sexual harassment in the Japanese workplace, and of course as mentioned the particular emphasis on S&M in Japanese pornography.
I'm not sure what your point really is on pornography, whether you deny it is a negative factor or deny the differences. In the later event, which you seem to lean to, pornography in America is less available than anywhere else in the western world and pretty much the world period, with the exception of course of the Muslim countries.
> Just because everything is neat and orderly on the surface doesn't mean that there isn't something boiling underneath.**
You are implying that the Japs are not civilized because something is boiling underneath? **
And what are you saying? That the mentality and psychological stability of people is not important to being in "civilized". Do you feel mental asylums are "civilized" places (after all everyone is drugged and under control).
> And, in case you haven't heard, their economy is in shambles. **
Once again what you are naming is not an index of civility. Just because their economy is depressed does not demonstrate a lack of civilization on their part. **
And you are saying economic develoipment is not an important factor in considering a country civilized, and why you chose to extol the civility of Japan rather than Botswana?
> If Christianity were truly a Jewish religon, then the Jews would not have plotted to murder Christ. **
Christianity started out as a Jewish heresy like Lutheranism started out as a Catholic heresy -- and the Catholics plotted Luther's death.
Plenty of Christian sects have murdered each other yet they remain Christian. What you say is strictly true, Christianity is not Judaism -- but it is certainly Judaic, especially Protestantism. They share Holy Books after all. Or rather the Christians appropriated the Old Testament for their own usage. Christianity originated as Judaism for gentiles.
**
Lots of religions started out based on other religions, but evolved into generally and properly acknowledged separate systems of belief. People who get into compartive discussions of religion should really know this. However
Since you and other Christian bashers on this forum constanty discount the legitimacy of Christianity for its Jewish origins, I'd personally like to know why you never put Islam under the same microscope. Is Islam also a Judaic fraud in your opinion? It after all has the same Jewish origins as Christianity.
In any event, I am tempted to ask the moderators lock this thread. At least until you and rban resolve the burning question "who aer the true asiatric ubermenschen, the Japanese pantheists or Indian Hindu's"? One rban is bad enough :lol:
2003-05-10 03:37 | User Profile
Originally posted by Bardamu@May 10 2003, 02:59 I venture to say no one around here believes in an eternal hell. Think of the implications of that concept: God creates sentient beings and then hides himself and insists that on the written words of an old text these sentient creations of his must believe in him, and if they don't then he consigns his own creations to everlasting torment. :thd:
Oh no, now we have a cross between Wintermute and Rban? What else could be more representative of hell? :rolleyes:
Far from disproving the existence of Hell, you seem determined to prove its eminent plausibility. :P
2003-05-10 04:44 | User Profile
**Oh no! At this rate we will have to name you "rban to the Japanese"! **
My point was that a culture does not have be Christian to be civilized. I was using the Japanese as an example of a non-Christian civilization. Are you saying that the Japanese are not civilized? We could just as easily reference Roman or Greek civilization to support the argument. Or Chinese. But then within each of those examples you can point out examples of their barbarity, and be correct; but then so can I point out examples of barbarity in Christendom. I do not think in the end you can deny that Roman, Greek, Japan, and China are all civilizations without the aid of Christianity, which is to support my basic contention that Christianity wasn't a precondition of Western civilization, especially considering Western civilization preceeded Christianity.
(The concept of "Civilization" is very value specific - if you do not state your moral/philosophical basis, its difficult to come up with a basis for evaluating the level of "civilization" in one society versus another.)
It does help when terms are defined doesn't it?
civilization
civilization (sîvôe-lî-zâôshen) noun 1. An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions. 2. The type of culture and society developed by a particular nation or region or in a particular epoch: Mayan civilization; the civilization of ancient Rome. 3. The act or process of civilizing or reaching a civilized state. 4. Cultural or intellectual refinement; good taste. 5. Modern society with its conveniences: returned to civilization after camping in the mountains.
Excerpted from The American Heritageî Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition é 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation; further reproduction and distribution in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United States. All rights reserved.
Is that good enough for you? I think Japan qualifys.
You must realize here of course that foreign crime rates are often underreported to a much greater extent than American crime rates, as a number of studies have shown.
I concede the point. There are of course lies, damn lies, and statistics
In the later event, which you seem to lean to, pornography in America is less available than anywhere else in the western world and pretty much the world period, with the exception of course of the Muslim countries.
Now really! How can someone on the internet make such a statement? :D
Do you feel mental asylums are "civilized" places (after all everyone is drugged and under control).
They are also locked up. :1eye:
And you are saying economic develoipment is not an important factor in considering a country civilized, and why you chose to extol the civility of Japan rather than Botswana?
Why do you feel the need to re-phrase my words? Answer: because you want a straw man to demolish. The word I used was "depression", not lack of economic development, which hardly describes Japan.
Since we both know the huge difference between Japan and Botswana it is apparent you are arguing in bad faith. At least you were honest when you conjured the image of my face being punched. I won't waste much more time with you because it is just an exchange of bad feelings on your part.
Since you and other Christian bashers on this forum constanty discount the legitimacy of Christianity for its Jewish origins, I'd personally like to know why you never put Islam under the same microscope. Is Islam also a Judaic fraud in your opinion? It after all has the same Jewish origins as Christianity.
In a way I am a Christian basher but it comes from honest dissent. I am not doing it to troll, as it were. I am most certainly not a religion basher. I just mourne that Christendom has the roots that it does, because as I said before the West is playing out the crucifixion collectively because we made it our myth.
I find your point about Islam meaningless. We do not live in a Muslim country. Muslims do not control the media. I think that all Muslims in Europe should be deported yesterday, if that makes you feel better.
**In any event, I am tempted to ask the moderators lock this thread. **
Go ahead I don't care. But are you not the same fellow who dismisses Jim Robinson for the same tactic?
2003-05-10 04:53 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@May 9 2003, 21:37 > Originally posted by Bardamu@May 10 2003, 02:59 I venture to say no one around here believes in an eternal hell. Think of the implications of that concept: God creates sentient beings and then hides himself and insists that on the written words of an old text these sentient creations of his must believe in him, and if they don't then he consigns his own creations to everlasting torment. :thd:**
Oh no, now we have a cross between Wintermute and Rban? What else could be more representative of hell? :rolleyes:
Far from disproving the existence of Hell, you seem determined to prove its eminent plausibility. :P**
It is not by accident that you avoided the substance of my statement. :sm:
2003-05-10 05:33 | User Profile
Originally posted by Bardamu@May 10 2003, 04:53 It is not by accident that you avoided the substance of my statement.ÃÂ :sm:
What substance?
I think your question is an old rephrase of the old "how could a God of Love also be a God of Judgement". If you're such a deep religious thinker, maybe you could tell me some of the standard retorts great thinkers throughout the ages have used to answer the questions of the scoffers, and why you disbelieve them or if that strains you, even who they were, great expert on culture and civilization.
2003-05-10 06:16 | User Profile
Originally posted by Bardamu@May 10 2003, 04:44 > Oh no! At this rate we will have to name you "rban to the Japanese"! **
My point was that a culture does not have be Christian to be civilized. I was using the Japanese as an example of a non-Christian civilization. Are you saying that the Japanese are not civilized? We could just as easily reference Roman or Greek civilization to support the argument. Or Chinese. But then within each of those examples you can point out examples of their barbarity, and be correct; but then so can I point out examples of barbarity in Christendom. I do not think in the end you can deny that Roman, Greek, Japan, and China are all civilizations without the aid of Christianity, which is to support my basic contention that Christianity wasn't a precondition of Western civilization, especially considering Western civilization preceeded Christianity.** You left out the Hindu's. :D
Seriously the debate over Christian vs. pagan civilization used to be a lively one, until dogmatic secularism and multiculturalist suspicion of western civilization in general, much of it of Jewish instigation, surpressed the topic.
Real lovers of western civilization will reproduce the means of intelligently discussing it, not mimic Jewish tactics in constantly subjecting it to radical and unfair criticism.
> (The concept of "Civilization" is very value specific - if you do not state your moral/philosophical basis, its difficult to come up with a basis for evaluating the level of "civilization" in one society versus another.)**
It does help when terms are defined doesn't it?
civilization
civilization (sîvôe-lî-zâôshen) noun 1. An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions. 2. The type of culture and society developed by a particular nation or region or in a particular epoch: Mayan civilization; the civilization of ancient Rome. 3. The act or process of civilizing or reaching a civilized state. 4. Cultural or intellectual refinement; good taste. 5. Modern society with its conveniences: returned to civilization after camping in the mountains.
Excerpted from The American Heritageî Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition é 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation; further reproduction and distribution in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United States. All rights reserved.
Is that good enough for you? I think Japan qualifys.**
No. These are all value judgements, as any student of anthropology would tell you. 1. What is "advanced" 2. Does not define what "uncivilized" would be. Cavemen or cannibals would fit this criteria. 3. Civilization is the proces of civilizing - this is not a definition 4. What is "refinement" . What is "good" (obviously value judgements) 5. "Modern refinements" Purely technocratic and meaningless. Any ghetto drug pusher with a fancy car could claim this.
> You must realize here of course that foreign crime rates are often underreported to a much greater extent than American crime rates, as a number of studies have shown.**
I concede the point. There are of course lies, damn lies, and statistics**
I assume you are concede the initial argument against Japan as a misogynist coutry therefore has substance.
> In the later event, which you seem to lean to, pornography in America is less available than anywhere else in the western world and pretty much the world period, with the exception of course of the Muslim countries.**
Now really! How can someone on the internet make such a statement? :D **
Simple. The internet is available al over the world, equally.
> Do you feel mental asylums are "civilized" places (after all everyone is drugged and under control).**
They are also locked up. :1eye: **
If they were not locked up would they then be civilized?
> And you are saying economic develoipment is not an important factor in considering a country civilized, and why you chose to extol the civility of Japan rather than Botswana?**
Why do you feel the need to re-phrase my words? Answer: because you want a straw man to demolish. The word I used was "depression", not lack of economic development, which hardly describes Japan.
Since we both know the huge difference between Japan and Botswana it is apparent you are arguing in bad faith.**
Interesting. You apparently think faith and goodness is necessary for civilization?
> Since you and other Christian bashers on this forum constanty discount the legitimacy of Christianity for its Jewish origins, I'd personally like to know why you never put Islam under the same microscope. Is Islam also a Judaic fraud in your opinion? It after all has the same Jewish origins as Christianity.**
In a way I am a Christian basher but it comes from honest dissent. I am not doing it to troll, as it were. I am most certainly not a religion basher. I just mourne that Christendom has the roots that it does, because as I said before the West is playing out the crucifixion collectively because we made it our myth.
I find your point about Islam meaningless. We do not live in a Muslim country. Muslims do not control the media. I think that all Muslims in Europe should be deported yesterday, if that makes you feel better.**
Just curious. Why do you think Muslims should be deported. They are not Christians and not Jews. Logically I'd think you'd want more of them.
> In any event, I am tempted to ask the moderators lock this thread. **
Go ahead I don't care. But are you not the same fellow who dismisses Jim Robinson for the same tactic?**
Yes, we put up with rban and we put up with you, although some don't think we should put up with rban. And rban also says "I am not a troll" :rolleyes:
I'll give rban credit. Instead of the atheists, he at least has some positive ideas and notions of what to replace western culture with. I can't determine the disposition of threads on religion, but it does occur to me that nextr to you guys rban looks very good, if you think at all about it. You guys simply radically criticize western civilization as we know it (like one group we know of) without any alternative. I think you guys make rban look like a serious thinker.
2003-05-10 08:10 | User Profile
Originally posted by madrussian@May 9 2003, 18:16 **Everyone believes their religion to be the true one. **
True, but that doesn't mean one is not in fact, The Truth.
Society makes an impression on the religion, and is using it to form their identity.
No argument there.
A religion detached from the society or country starts losing its cohesion and risk branching out into cults/sects, as it happened to Protestanism. There is just too many ways to interpret a teaching, and that's the reason for splits and why the cultural factor is important.
There are many ways to interpret a specific teaching, but Christian Orthodoxy is well-established. Personally, I don't have a problem with numerous denominations within the greater Protestant tent. That is, of course, as long as they are true to the Orthodox, essential Truths of historical Christianity. Discounting continued Orthodoxy in fear of a branching out or dissipation of essential Truth doesn't say too much for faith in the transcendent God and his written word, much less the individual who takes it upon himself to learn, study and exist in accordance to the Truth. Ultimately, true Christianity is a solitary exercise.
2003-05-10 08:16 | User Profile
Originally posted by Campion Moore Boru@May 9 2003, 20:49 ** As to your second para. :rolleyes:
In the interest of ecumenical unity of the front, and in fear of in any critiquing someone who is assuredly a better Christian than me, I'll leave my guns holstered. **
Don't do that, brother. I wrote that my historical knowledge on this subject was poor. I was really just stating my basic understanding and putting the question out there for one of our learned members to hopefully expound upon. I'm here to learn as much as anybody, if not more so. I did not mean to sound contentious, so I hope it did not come off that way.
2003-05-10 08:33 | User Profile
Originally posted by Bardamu@May 9 2003, 21:59 **I don't see how the word truth can be associated with Christian doctrine unless you qualify it with some word like "poetic" or "figurative" truth, because "truth" left alone implies literal truth, and Christian doctrine is not literally true. **
In your opinion. And that really opens up a whole new can of worms that a few of us have gone round and round here previously. What is truth and how can one really know it? Deep, deep questions.
I venture to say no one around here believes in an eternal hell.
:unsure: :ph34r:
Seriously, I know you're having a bit of back and forth with my good friend, Okie, and indeed, he is much more learned on these matters than I. But I do want to say that I appreciate your comments. We can't learn if we don't have dialogue and hammer out some kind of understanding on these fundamental issues. Further, as free white males, we ought to be able to discuss such things without rancor or ill-will. At least the optimist in me believes that, even though he seems to raise his head with much less frequency these days. :)
2003-05-10 09:22 | User Profile
Originally posted by Campion Moore Boru@May 10 2003, 01:52 **Edana, MR:
Its only really Prots. in Anglo (Sorry I hate using that term- I sound like a belligerent mestiza) countries which have atomized churchs and members. Prots in Continental Europe are VERY community oriented.
I think the problem is lack of community in America in general, not Protestantism.**
That of course was the history of religion and culture in America. Americans were the first nation in the world to lose the establishment of their church, and the formal ties between nation, community, and Church that lasted much longer in the old world. It was part of our frontier identity, leaving the sheltered world of the parish or village church behind, and looking for truth on our own.
Madrussian is of course right when he said that > A religion detached from the society or country starts losing its cohesion and risk branching out into cults/sects, as it happened to Protestanism. There is just too many ways to interpret a teaching, and that's the reason for splits and why the cultural factor is important.
When each man starts to look for truth on his own, people will find a lot of different truth's. That is why America acquired so many different denominations. But from a religious point of view that has certainly been a good thing in America. It's the essense of the free enterprise, capitalistic system, every Church and every faith for itself, and may the strongest faith win. It keeps Churches on their toes. In a lot of European countries preachers get paid whether anybody comes to their Church or not, so not surprisingly, parishes fill up with lazy preachers who don't care if anyone comes to Church.
American religion/Protestantism has its downside, but at least its setup forces forces Churches to keep their eye on the bottom line. Churches that don't keep in touch with their members get weeded out fairly quickly. There are a couple of down sides of course.
Firstly Churches easily can be filled up with a certain type of populist charlatan's, like the dispensationalists. Secondly, Churches often have a great deal of difficulty cooperating, on matters that would seem to suggest the advisability of unified action, such as coming up with an organized, effective, and integrity filled political strategy. Being politically naive, they are vulnerable to manipulation, of which Mossad's expolitation of their dispendsationalist tendencies is just the most recent example.
Presbyterian Francis Schaeffer is considered the intellectual father of the Christian Right, but his son Franky became so disillusioned with the political efforts of the Christian Right that he converted to Orthodoxy. That's why I think a fair number of really serious politically aware conservative Protestants are also moving into the Orthodox Church I think.
2003-05-10 12:03 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@May 10 2003, 08:10 ** There are many ways to interpret a specific teaching, but Christian Orthodoxy is well-established. Personally, I don't have a problem with numerous denominations within the greater Protestant tent. That is, of course, as long as they are true to the Orthodox, essential Truths of historical Christianity. Discounting continued Orthodoxy in fear of a branching out or dissipation of essential Truth doesn't say too much for faith in the transcendent God and his written word, much less the individual who takes it upon himself to learn, study and exist in accordance to the Truth. Ultimately, true Christianity is a solitary exercise. **
a-HEM, cough, cough . . .
How's the water here, boys?
Tex, what did you mean by "true Christianity is a solitary exercise?"
Actually, from an historical perspective, true Christianity is a profoundly communal exercise.
Regards,
Walter
2003-05-10 12:10 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@May 10 2003, 09:22 ** Presbyterian Francis Schaeffer is considered the intellectual father of the Christian Right, but his son Franky became so disillusioned with the political efforts of the Christian Right that he converted to Orthodoxy. That's why I think a fair number of really serious politically aware conservative Protestants are also moving into the Orthodox Church I think. **
Could you point me in the direction of this fellow?
I heard about this movement of steeped-in-the-Word Protestants to Orthodoxy, and I have to say it's one of the more exciting developments in recent memory. I just don't know much about it.
I have an Orthodox colleague who subscribes to a monthly magazine on this. My colleague was born into Orthodoxy (father is a priest, or Russian extraction) and they're all just dumbfounded by the evangelical zeal of these converts. Orthodoxy thereby gets a much-needed infusion of new blood, as it were.
And the Protestants are thereby brought back to the Sacrifice of the Mass and the fullness of the Church's sacramental life.
Maybe someday, God willing, the Church "will again breath with both lungs" as JPII put it.
Walter
2003-05-10 14:30 | User Profile
Okiereddust:
You quibble. You really expect me to argue with you about whether people in insane asylums are civilized?
Communicating with you reminds me of two things, right off the bat. One: breaking rocks into smaller rocks, ad infinitum. :y .
Two: I remember an argument over at FreeRepublic by some fellow who contended that the HIV virus did not cause AIDS. Observing the argument I noticed that by twisting every little word and meaning, and making use of the inherent complexity of biology and language, the fellow managed to hold his own in the debate. One can do this with any complicated subject. I consider it arguing in bad faith. This is what you are doing. Quibbling over anything and everything. I am not going there with you, pal.
Japanese high civilization is self-evident. I do not have to prove to you self- evident things. I don't have the time or the inclination. Pointing fingers at their involvement in pornography, from an American, is over the top. We have a huge pornography industry all our own. The fact the internet is world wide does not alter whose companies these are or what culture the girls come from. We also have a per capita crime rate that no doubt dwarfs that of Japan. For an American to point the holier than thou finger at the Japs over this issue is absurd. You set out to be tiresome and you succeeded. :rock:
2003-05-10 15:02 | User Profile
We have a Japanese version of Rban, do we? The question is not whether or not Japan is "civilized", for the same can be said of the Aztecs or Mayas, but whether their civilization is superior to the classical West. It is not by any stretch of the imagination insofar as Japan now only apes Western cosmopolitan consumerism in all of its degenerate "glory". Were do we get these guys?
2003-05-10 15:45 | User Profile
Originally posted by Oklahomaman@May 10 2003, 09:02 ** The question is not whether or not Japan is "civilized", for the same can be said of the Aztecs or Mayas, but whether their civilization is superior to the classical West. **
Of course it depends on your definition, but I would not call the Aztecs civilized. I was going to say how can a culture be civilized while ripping out hearts atop ziggurats? but then I realized that we do the same to unborn children -- so damn! Oh that is right, we keep it hidden and call it choice. Is it omerta that makes us civilized? The instant we have cheering crowds around abortion clinics is the instant we cease being civilized. Obviously, the wars of the 20th century prove that civilization is no more merciful than barbarism.
2003-05-10 15:55 | User Profile
Originally posted by Oklahomaman@May 10 2003, 09:02 **The question is not whether or not Japan is "civilized", for the same can be said of the Aztecs or Mayas, but whether their civilization is superior to the classical West. **
The classical West was pre-Christian. Watch out fella, you are supporting my argument that civilization is not dependant upon Christianity.
2003-05-10 16:13 | User Profile
Originally posted by Oklahomaman@May 10 2003, 15:02 **We have a Japanese version of Rban, do we? **
He has an unintentional sense of irony though
**You set out to be tiresome and you succeeded. ** :lol:
2003-05-10 16:22 | User Profile
Originally posted by Bardamu@May 10 2003, 14:30 I consider it arguing in bad faith. This is what you are doing. Quibbling over anything and everything. I am not going there with you, pal. ** Sounds to me like everyone thinks that's where you started this thread yourself.:sm: > Japanese high civilization is self-evident. I do not have to prove to you self- evident things. I don't have the time or the inclination. **
A college professor once said that when one cannot prove his point, and says it's "self-evident", it usually isn't. You're the perfect example. :lol:
2003-05-10 16:30 | User Profile
Originally posted by Bardamu@May 10 2003, 15:45 Of course it depends on your definition, but I would not call the Aztecs civilized. I was going to say how can a culture be civilized while ripping out hearts atop ziggurats? but then I realized that we do the same to unborn children -- so damn! Oh that is right, we keep it hidden and call it choice. Is it omerta that makes us civilized?The instant we have cheering crowds around abortion clinics is the instant we cease being civilized. Obviously, the wars of the 20th century prove that civilization is no more merciful than barbarism. **
First you say the Japanese are self-evidently civilized, as civilized as us, then you seem to say that you can not see the difference between civilization and barbarism yourself. Either you yourself were arguing in bad faith to begin with, or you are just so hopelessly confused you can't tell the difference.
2003-05-10 16:57 | User Profile
**The classical West was pre-Christian. Watch out fella, you are supporting my argument that civilization is not dependant upon Christianity. **
Classical West = High Medieval Europe or Byzantine social and cultural order but not necessarily Monarchism. Of course you can't escape your own logics concerning the West and Christianity. The West's self-destructive tendencies also predate Christianity. Whatever the ancient Romans and Greeks made they were prepared to piss away until Christianity stepped in and saved the West from itself.
2003-05-10 17:01 | User Profile
**First you say the Japanese are self-evidently civilized, as civilized as us, then you seem to say that you can not see the difference between civilization and barbarism yourself. Either you yourself were arguing in bad faith to begin with, or you are just so hopelessly confused you can't tell the difference. **
Nice catch Okie. This guy is a clown of the first order. Notice in previous messages he claims the Aztecs and Mayas aren't civilized but in the very next post he appeals to the idea of Aztec and Mayan civilization to attack Christianity.
2003-05-10 17:09 | User Profile
Originally posted by Oklahomaman@May 10 2003, 11:01 > First you say the Japanese are self-evidently civilized, as civilized as us, then you seem to say that you can not see the difference between civilization and barbarism yourself. Either you yourself were arguing in bad faith to begin with, or you are just so hopelessly confused you can't tell the difference. **
Nice catch Okie. This guy is a clown of the first order. Notice in previous messages he claims the Aztecs and Mayas aren't civilized but in the very next post he appeals to the idea of Aztec and Mayan civilization to attack Christianity.**
Do you suck up at work too?
2003-05-10 18:52 | User Profile
I dunno. Do you always display such militant jackassery?
2003-05-10 19:44 | User Profile
Originally posted by Octopod@May 10 2003, 13:26 ** > Originally posted by Walter Yannis@May 10 2003, 06:03 **a-HEM, cough, cough . . .
How's the water here, boys?
Tex, what did you mean by "true Christianity is a solitary exercise?"
Actually, from an historical perspective, true Christianity is a profoundly communal exercise.
Regards,
Walter**
You're right, Walter.
"Christianity as a solitary exercise" is not traditional Christianity, as understood for thousands of years. Not so coincidentally, this kind of radical "Christian" individualism has worked hand in hand with liberalism to undermine the very pillars of Western civilization.
Whether Luther originally intended it or not, the Reformation had profoundly destructive consequences. It was one of the best things to ever happen to liberalism.
That said, I do not support a revival of sectarian religious wars. I recognize Protestants as Christians, albeit (IMO) misguided. Protestantism doesn't have to be radically individualist; it can have its own reformation of sorts and change for the better. (At the very least, they need to dump the dispensationalists and social gospel crowd!)
We need to set aside our theological differences and move toward Christian power and unity. That's what the Jews and Moslems and other enemies of the West fear most of all. **
Thanks, Octopod.
I'd only add that the Reformation was one of the causes of Liberalism, not the other way around.
There's another long thread on this. I have my suspicions that the West's problems run a tad deeper than this - perhaps back to the Great Schism.
I'm no expert. Wish I had the time to think about this stuff.
Walter
2003-05-10 20:21 | User Profile
As with the Jews, and as we see here, the Christian Kattle insist upon an unrealizable Government of God - with a choice of the Papist or the Millenarian variety.
We remember that, "No King but God," was the ancient cry of the Jews of Judea - and, "We need a God World," has been its modern equivalent.
So we realize here that hypertrophy of the theocratic impulse is the distinctive Judeo-Christian disease.
Then why don't we forget about these pathological alien regimes and bring back a healthy National Socialist autocracy - and with it the government of our own men.
2003-05-10 20:58 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 10 2003, 20:21 ** So we realize here that hypertrophy of the theocratic impulse is the distinctive Judeo-Christian disease.** You seem to have never heard of the Muslim world.
Then why don't we forget about these pathological alien regimes and bring back a healthy National Socialist autocracy - and with it the government of our own men. **
Sorry. Your man Saddam is gone for good I'm afraid. :sm:
2003-05-10 22:27 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@May 10 2003, 03:22 ** > Originally posted by Campion Moore Boru@May 10 2003, 01:52 **Edana, MR:
Its only really Prots. in Anglo (Sorry I hate using that term- I sound like a belligerent mestiza) countries which have atomized churchs and members. Prots in Continental Europe are VERY community oriented.
I think the problem is lack of community in America in general, not Protestantism.**
That of course was the history of religion and culture in America. Americans were the first nation in the world to lose the establishment of their church, and the formal ties between nation, community, and Church that lasted much longer in the old world. It was part of our frontier identity, leaving the sheltered world of the parish or village church behind, and looking for truth on our own.
Madrussian is of course right when he said that > A religion detached from the society or country starts losing its cohesion and risk branching out into cults/sects, as it happened to Protestanism. There is just too many ways to interpret a teaching, and that's the reason for splits and why the cultural factor is important.
When each man starts to look for truth on his own, people will find a lot of different truth's. That is why America acquired so many different denominations. But from a religious point of view that has certainly been a good thing in America. It's the essense of the free enterprise, capitalistic system, every Church and every faith for itself, and may the strongest faith win. It keeps Churches on their toes. In a lot of European countries preachers get paid whether anybody comes to their Church or not, so not surprisingly, parishes fill up with lazy preachers who don't care if anyone comes to Church.
American religion/Protestantism has its downside, but at least its setup forces forces Churches to keep their eye on the bottom line. Churches that don't keep in touch with their members get weeded out fairly quickly. There are a couple of down sides of course.
Firstly Churches easily can be filled up with a certain type of populist charlatan's, like the dispensationalists. Secondly, Churches often have a great deal of difficulty cooperating, on matters that would seem to suggest the advisability of unified action, such as coming up with an organized, effective, and integrity filled political strategy. Being politically naive, they are vulnerable to manipulation, of which Mossad's expolitation of their dispendsationalist tendencies is just the most recent example.
Presbyterian Francis Schaeffer is considered the intellectual father of the Christian Right, but his son Franky became so disillusioned with the political efforts of the Christian Right that he converted to Orthodoxy. That's why I think a fair number of really serious politically aware conservative Protestants are also moving into the Orthodox Church I think. **
Okie,
We see this same heretical influence in the American Catholic Church.
Capitalism's gift of competition is not fruitful when applied to a divine search for the Truth. Reiterating TD's comments, the Truth ** IS or IS NOT**. No amount of huckstering will change its nature.
It has a profoundly heretical effect on the Church. To those of a conspiratorial nature, we have TV evangelists outbidding each other on the "secret" nature of the scripture- e.g., the passages misunderstood for 2000 years before Rev. Jimmy was struck by an epihany on the "real" meaning of Gal 3:2.
For those who beleive in a completely effeminate Christ, we have priests competing at who can promote a female priest the fastest, who can promote subversion of the country's laws by encouraging and sheltering illegals the most with no attempt at punishment or repentance, who can be more tolerant of Man-lovers.
This competition, which promotes the theory of "31" wonderful flavors of Christianity has also directly led to the demonic Zionist Christian heresy.
2003-05-10 22:34 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 10 2003, 14:21 ** As with the Jews, and as we see here, the Christian Kattle insist upon an unrealizable Government of God - with a choice of the Papist or the Millenarian variety. **
Huh?
Am I take understand your term Christian Kattle = Christian?
The only Chrisitans I know of who would tepidly support the above are the Judeo-Christian Zionist "Christians."
I want no part in a human run "government of God." Render unto Caesar and all of that. In common parlance, Your soul belongs to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the state (whether or not libertarians appreciate the reality of that statement).
2003-05-11 00:01 | User Profile
Originally posted by Campion Moore Boru@May 10 2003, 22:27 We see this same heretical influence in the American Catholic Church.
Capitalism's gift of competition is not fruitful when applied to a divine search for the Truth. Reiterating TD's comments, the Truth ** IS or IS NOT**. No amount of huckstering will change its nature.
It has a profoundly heretical effect on the Church. To those of a conspiratorial nature, we have TV evangelists outbidding each other on the "secret" nature of the scripture- e.g., the passages misunderstood for 2000 years before Rev. Jimmy was struck by an epihany on the "real" meaning of Gal 3:2.
For those who beleive in a completely effeminate Christ, we have priests competing at who can promote a female priest the fastest, who can promote subversion of the country's laws by encouraging and sheltering illegals the most with no attempt at punishment or repentance, who can be more tolerant of Man-lovers.
This competition, which promotes the theory of "31" wonderful flavors of Christianity has also directly led to the demonic Zionist Christian heresy.**
Well that is the nature of freedom and democracy. As the people get to choose their political leaders, they also get to choose their spiritual leaders. And just as in politics, you have elements of potential instability built in. Just as in politics, there is a tendency for politicians to get into bidding wars to give their constituents the most benefits, so in religion there is a tendency for spiritual leaders to attune their transendent message to the temporal psychological physical state of their parishioners or prosylites.
Just as in the political realm, where the electorate is ultimately responsible to ensure that decent men are govern, so in the spiritual realm the Churches membership are responsible to ensure that decent men minister.
I think our western society is basically capable of doing a responsible job in both sectors, given a fair chance to do so. Of course however the process can be subverted or manipulated, especially by those who do not respect the rules of the game, such as allowing free and open debate.
It is my opinion that just as the lack of free and open debate concerning Jewish questions has subverted the political environment, it has also subverted the religious environment. Just as you cannot come up with reasonable policies on many political issue when honest criticism and discussion over Jewish related issues are not allowed, so you cannot have a fair debate on many Israeli oriented religious issues when honest criticism and discussion of Jewish issues is not allowed, or at least takes place in a hostile societal context. Therefore it is little wonder that Israeliphilic ministers, doctrines, and organizations have come to increasingly dominate Christianity, especially politically oriented groups like the Christian right and maybe to a somewhat lessor extent the Catholic Bishops. Christian ministers, especially when they enter the political arena, are subjected to the same pressures everyone else is, in some cases even greater pressures.
Given an opportunity to attend huge political events like the AIPAC conference attended by all the leading politicians and figures, and being consigned to outer darkness (in the political sense), as a "bigoted enemy of Israel, "anti-semite", or even "Christian Indenticist" its not surprising that many ministers yield to the all to natural temptations of power over the nagging inner spiritual voice that must tell them something just isn't right.
Especially when the pro-Israel lobby is so much more politically articulate and powerful, and has mginalized so much legitimate debate on the isssue.
2003-05-11 00:08 | User Profile
Originally posted by Octopod@May 10 2003, 17:18 > Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 10 2003, 14:21 As with the Jews, and as we see here, the Christian Kattle insist upon an unrealizable Government of God - with a choice of the Papist or the Millenarian variety.
We remember that, "No King but God," was the ancient cry of the Jews of Judea - and, "We need a God World," has been its modern equivalent.
So we realize here that hypertrophy of the theocratic impulse is the distinctive Judeo-Christian disease.
Then why don't we forget about these pathological alien regimes and bring back a healthy National Socialist autocracy - and with it the government of our own men.**
As with the Jews, as we see here, "NeoNietzsche" hates Christianity and wishes to remove it from the face of this earth.
Funny that the NSDAP platform stood for positive Christianity. Without the support from Christians, the Nazis would have made little headway in Germany. "NeoNietzsche's" writings remind me of the kinds of things I see painted, nail-polished, Marilyn Manson clones babble to one another as they trade ecstasy pills.
"NeoNietzsche's" suggestions seem to boil down to the following:
Dump Christianity, the historic faith of both America and Europe. Embrace an atheistic form of so-called "neo-Nazism." Join the Jews in denigrating Jesus Christ (repeating many of their exact same lines). Lambast Christians as "foreign" and "weak", ignoring that Christianity is integral to Western civilization, while Jewish anti-Christianity is inimical to it. Jettison any meaningful understanding of politics, in favor of kosher-stamped black-nail-polish "Rebellion"[tm] against Mommy and Daddy.
Clearly, these points are :dung:. This kind of "thinking" is more at home on MTV than with the great tapestry of Western Civilization - which has been woven by devout Christians.**
As with the Jews, as we see here, "NeoNietzsche" hates Christianity and wishes to remove it from the face of this earth.
This is incorrect. It is a good religion for women and slaves.
Funny that the NSDAP platform stood for positive Christianity. Without the support from Christians, the Nazis would have made little headway in Germany.
Qualifiedly correct. This was a concession to electoral expediency. The Nazis hoped ultimately to ditch the Church.
"NeoNietzsche's" writings remind me of the kinds of things I see painted, nail-polished, Marilyn Manson clones babble to one another as they trade ecstasy pills.
Probably untrue.
**"NeoNietzsche's" suggestions seem to boil down to the following:
Dump Christianity, the historic faith of both America and Europe.**
As we would dump the presently-imposed alien faiths of Liberalism/Marxism/Communism/Egalitarianism.
Embrace an atheistic form of so-called "neo-Nazism."
Or worship Huitzilopochtli - any God of War will do.
Join the Jews in denigrating Jesus Christ (repeating many of their exact same lines).
Incorrect. "Jesus Christ" is the best savior ever invented.
Lambast Christians as "foreign" and "weak", ignoring that Christianity is integral to Western civilization, while Jewish anti-Christianity is inimical to it.
Incorrect. See my remarks concerning "Morons".
Jettison any meaningful understanding of politics, in favor of kosher-stamped black-nail-polish "Rebellion"[tm] against Mommy and Daddy.
Nonsense.
**Clearly, these points areÃÂ :dung:. **
Clearly, since "these points" are largely an "Octopod" excretion.
2003-05-11 00:31 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@May 10 2003, 14:58 > Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 10 2003, 20:21 ** So we realize here that hypertrophy of the theocratic impulse is the distinctive Judeo-Christian disease. You seem to have never heard of the Muslim world.
Then why don't we forget about these pathological alien regimes and bring back a healthy National Socialist autocracy - and with it the government of our own men. **
Sorry. Your man Saddam is gone for good I'm afraid. :sm:**
You seem to have never heard of the Muslim world.
The Muslim world has not, in comparative historic terms, been inordinately governed by a priesthood, as have the Jews and Christians. There has never been a Muslim equivalent of Innocent III.
Sorry.ÃÂ Your man Saddam is gone for good I'm afraid. :sm:
He and Jesus, gone for good. ;)
2003-05-11 00:52 | User Profile
The Muslim world has not, in comparative historic terms, been inordinately governed by a priesthood, as have the Jews and Christians. There has never been a Muslim equivalent of Innocent III.
Kaliphate anyone? Thought not.
He and Jesus, gone for good.
Glad to see you and the Jews agree that Christianity must be stamped out. At least you two groups agree on something. Maybe you and the Zhids have a lot more in common than you realized. You sure have aped their primitive world view.
2003-05-11 01:10 | User Profile
Originally posted by Octopod@May 10 2003, 19:18 "NeoNietzsche's" writings remind me of the kinds of things I see painted, nail-polished, Marilyn Manson clones babble to one another as they trade ecstasy pills.
How closely do you associate with the Marilyn Manson crowd to be able to see the ecstasy pills exchange?
**"NeoNietzsche's" suggestions seem to boil down to the following:
Dump Christianity, the historic faith of both America and Europe.**
One has to keep in mind that the identification of any "historic faith" of the West depends upon which sector of history one examines. Before the name of Christ was ever uttered in Europe, the names of Odin and Thor could be heard throughout the sleepy villages and wild forests. It took quite a while to fully conquer/convert those pagans, and the Christianization process was weakest and the latest in the farther reaches of Scandinavia.
In a past thread, NeoNietzsche once made an interesting point that:
The Saxons who resisted Charlemagne and the Germans who resisted Roosevelt are the true West, which refused the pushers' narcotics and retained a short-lived health and honor.
Regardless of the current religious disposition of most Westerners, one has to not only admire the awesome resolve of the Saxons, but also feel a certain sense of loss when considering their fate. The West became lesser and weaker and poorer, in some ways, without them. Perhaps their native, defiant spirit may yet burst aflame once more to save the West, one last time.
Join the Jews in denigrating Jesus Christ (repeating many of their exact same lines).
I understand your point, that this is what we've seen played out in the U.S. as far as the "social issues" realm is concerned these past few decades, but the comparison of NN with the anti-Christian Jews is quite a stretch. You see, the Jews form a united front when they deal with the goyim, but in "safe" moments when exclusively among themselves, the Jews are well known for bickering with and backstabbing each other, often over the most trivial ["Talmudic"] affairs. It would come as no surprise to find one sect of Judaism battling it out with another sect. Further, in such intramural squabbles, one could expect that some of the accusations they hurl at each other as verbal weapons might be objectively true. Jews would have no qualms about airing each other's dirty laundry in public as a way of getting the upper hand. Notions of restraint, dignity, and "fair play" are exclusively the weakness of the goyim, and it shows.
Jettison any meaningful understanding of politics, in favor of kosher-stamped black-nail-polish "Rebellion"[tm] against Mommy and Daddy.
In these times, rebellion against an Establishment dominated by egalitarian (degenerate) forces is quite called for, there's nothing immature or freakish about that. Our politics should not be overly determined by concerns about popularity and marketing, but about truth and principle, as brutal as that may seem to we moderns.
2003-05-11 01:49 | User Profile
Originally posted by Oklahomaman@May 10 2003, 18:52 > The Muslim world has not, in comparative historic terms, been inordinately governed by a priesthood, as have the Jews and Christians. There has never been a Muslim equivalent of Innocent III.**
Kaliphate anyone? Thought not.
He and Jesus, gone for good.
Glad to see you and the Jews agree that Christianity must be stamped out. At least you two groups agree on something. Maybe you and the Zhids have a lot more in common than you realized. You sure have aped their primitive world view.**
Kaliphate anyone? Thought not.
The Caliphate was not an ecclesiocracy, as is the point. It was a "godly" government - but not a government of god.
Glad to see you and the Jews agree that Christianity must be stamped out. At least you two groups agree on something. Maybe you and the Zhids have a lot more in common than you realized. You sure have aped their primitive world view.
Sorry to see that you still haven't learned to pay attention. Please review the exchange in full.
2003-05-11 02:28 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 11 2003, 01:49 He and Jesus, gone for good.
I'm glad Saddam Hussein wasn't my Christ. Although to tell the truth, I'd much prefer Saddam Hussein to a lot of you people.
The Muslim world has not, in comparative historic terms, been inordinately governed by a priesthood, as have the Jews and Christians. There has never been a Muslim equivalent of Innocent III.
> Kaliphate anyone? Thought not.**
The Caliphate was not an ecclesiocracy, as is the point. It was a "godly" government - but not a government of god. **
I can imagine what you'd say if Falwell or Robertson tried that line :lol:
The simple fact of the matter is that religious tolerance in the most moderate muslim country makes the most extreme and historically very unusual Christian authoritarianism in Inquisition Spain look like an oasis of tolerance. It is astounding except for the fact I know you how your anti-Christian prejudice can go so far as to make you a Muslim apologist.
Can Judaism be far away? After all Orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist Islam are quite similar in a number of ways, as Spengler observed.
2003-05-11 03:13 | User Profile
Originally posted by AntiYuppie@May 11 2003, 02:45 > Your man Saddam is gone for good, I'm afraid. :sm: **
Surely you don't think things in Iraq will be any better under [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?act=ST&f=5&t=7759&hl=]William Bennett's[/url] control, do you? I'd prefer to have a Hussein in Baghdad over one of William Kristol's good buddies any day.**
I don't know. Guess I'm just a weakling when it comes to grisly torture stories.
Now Kristol himself or his men would never do things so unsubtly, but you're perfectly right, for a lot of people in Iraq things may be worse after we came than before. Especially when the Shihite fundies take over Of course the neocons as usual will have a good excuse for it, and probably blame people like us.
No, I'm not a kneejerk Saddam basher by any means, but it does stick in my throat when people try to make him a great hero.
2003-05-11 03:37 | User Profile
As a sorta-aside, aren't those the same reaches where white racial consciousness is weakest in Europe? It seems to me that Germany, Austria, France, Italy and other countries with powerful Christian roots also "just happen" to have the strongest rightist traditions. Scandinavia, on the other hand, is decidedly weak in that area.
That's an interesting observation. I'd forgotten about that aspect of it, but you're quite right, the Scandinavians seem to be the most inclined toward racially suicidal behavior these days. I don't know what it is about the Scandinavians that makes them that way. I take it you ascribe their deeper pagan roots (brought on by their distance from Rome) as the reason? In that case, what is it about powerful Christian roots that predisposes one to preserve their people and culture, in your opinion?
Being someone of substantially Italian descent yourself, you might should be careful when defending the anti-Christian neopagan crowd. Quite often, they support Nordicism rather than a broad Euro-based racial consciousness. I've seen quite a few who compare Italians to Arabs, Jews and even Negroes. These people are nothing less than sworn enemies of pan-European consciousness.
You must be one of those Legion Europa types that's always worried about Nordicism. People who whine about this sort of thing help create the very problem that they claim to be fighting. The "pan-European" advocates who spend a substantial amount of time looking for "Nordicism" in the Movement are their own worst enemies, because it reinforces the idea in the casual observer's mind that maybe there is some sort of division within the White race. I've found that those Southern and Eastern Europeans who worry that they will be "excluded" from a future White state are their own worst accusers. Legion Europa adherents claim that the Nordicists are the ones who are creating divisive sects, but it takes two to tango, and many pan-European advocates seem to engage in their own form of "minority activism."
Your reference above about my Italian descent suggests that you're trying to appeal to potential insecurities about my racial identity, yet I can assure you that no insecurities exist on my part. Do you really think I would engage in this sort of politics if I were that manipulable as to worry about questions about my heritage? The Legion Europa crowd seems rife with that kind of insecurity, though. I think some of the Legion Europa people are too sensitive, and they have "guilty consciences." If someone makes a general remark about potential communists in the room, and a guy is the first to suddenly shout out, "Liars! I'm no commie," then it's a good bet that he's the commie. "Methinks he doth protest too much," and all that. Hint: if you're worried that people think you're not White, you probably aren't.
The lesson you should take from this is that the more you defensively talk about "pan-European" concepts and loudly condemn the Nordicists, the more attention you'll draw to yourself as a potential "racial Other." I once tried to explain all this to the head of the LE in an e-mail, but I don't think I made much of an impact.
I do have an answer to the whole Nordicist vs. pan-European issue that I find satisfying. If you're familiar with James O. Pace's text, Amendment to the Constitution, there's a section in his proposed Constitutional amendment that might be useful. I'll quote it below.
"No person shall be a citizen of the United States unless he is a non-Hispanic white of the European race, in whom there is no ascertainable trace of Negro blood, nor more that one-eighth Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or nonwhite blood, provided that Hispanic whites, defined as anyone with an Hispanic ancestor, may be citizens if, in addition to meeting the aforesaid ascertainable trace and percentage tests, they are in appearance indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is the British Isles or Northwestern Europe.ÃÂ Only citizens shall have the right and privilege to reside permanently in the United States."
I'm sure that the same ascertainable trace and percentage tests can work for Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially when coupled with the "indistinguishable appearance" tests. LE doesn't like this standard much since they want to know why the British Isles and Northwestern Europe get to set the standard. The answer is that those areas of Europe are where the founding core of the country originally came from. Shouldn't they get to call the shots? Look at our language--we speak English, and the Southern and Eastern Europeans who came here were expected to conform to that and learn English and conform to Anglo-Saxon standards. I'd hope that any notions of "pan-Europeanism" would take this into account, otherwise "pan-Europeanism" will be "multiculturalism" smuggled in through the back door.
As far as the neopagan aspects that interface with apparent Nordicism, I don't think the situation is as grim or "exclusionary" as you seem to suggest. One of the most influential neopagan scholars of the day, Edred Thorsson (his real name is Dr. Stephen Flowers and one of his books is sold in the National Vanguard Books catalog) is quick to point out about those Germanic cultures that
**they left their indelible mark on the cultures of the French, Spanish, and Italian nations, as they founded the first true states in those lands after the fall of the Roman Empire.
The Ostrogoths and Longobards (in Lombardy, northern Italy) founded early medieval kingdoms in Italy. The Visigoths formed kingdoms in southern France and in Spain...The region in southern Spain known as Andalusia is derived from the name of the Germanic people who set up a medieval kingdom there, the Vandals...In all of these instances the Germanic tribes gave a sense of national identity to the regions in question after the destruction of the Roman Empire.
The Teutons not only had a tradition of religion and mythology unique to themselves, although closely related to their other Indo-European brethren (Celts, Slavs, Romans, Greeks, Persians, and Indians)."**
Of course, we're all "Indo-Europeans," and that's just a contemporary, "politically correct" term meant to stand in for "Aryans." Now, before rban jumps in about the Indians, keep in mind that they are not considered to be part of our folk, and on one of these threads around here somewhere there's a table of genetic distances posted that shows how far removed India is from "the core." I don't know where the thread is, but pulling a book off my shelf (Anthology of Racial Issues, Charles A. Weisman) that has the table of genetic distances from the English people, I'll give a few examples (the higher the number, the greater the distance):
Dutch 17 German 22 French 24 Norwegian 25 Irish 30 Italian 51 Icelandic 76 Iranian 197 Greek 204 Indian (India) 280 Tibetan 873 No. Amer. Indian 947 Filipino 1117 So. Chinese 1152 Japanese 1244 West African 1487 Bantu Negro 2288
Also, you should remember that contrary to the misguided claims of some VNNers, Nietzsche was a philo-Semite. Indeed, one can make a case that his philo-Semitism went hand-in-hand with his anti-Christianism.
I've heard that said of Nietzsche, and have not enough information to make any statements about this issue one way or the other. I didn't really argue anything about Nietzsche in my earlier post.
Western civilization, in its full organic form, is a peculiarly Christian phenomenon. Prior to Christianity, there was no pan-European racial consciousness and no unified Western superculture. HilaireàBelloc said it best: ââ¬ÅEurope is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe.ââ¬Â
That's the way it is now, yes, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. Revilo Oliver made the comment to the effect that White Europeans can be defined as whoever was Catholic before 1492.
**There are serious problems with such an "analogy." The Germans who resisted Roosevelt tended to be deeply Christian people, while Roosevelt was in bed with both atheistic communism and secular international finance. If the Germans were more Western and racially conscious, that was because they were more traditionally Christian.
Charlemagne was most certainly European and Western, through and through. The Saxons you mentioned, like the heathen Celts, were strikingly similar to African and Indian tribes before their civilizing conversion to Christianity. These pagans painted themselves blue and practiced human sacrifice. Nonetheless, I will concede that there is more to admire about them than in, say, Bantus or Aztecs. Their racial stock was superior to that of the Negroes and Indians, for example, but their culture certainly improved once its best components were synthesized with Christianity.**
So by discussing the similarity of pre-Christian Europeans to the African tribes, you believe that belief/behavior is what most defines the essence of the West, and not biology?
It is clear that Jews have been the main force in opposition to Christianity, past and present. They have been instrumental in practically every anti-Christian movement. To point out that NN is taking their side on this issue is hardly a stretch. While it is true that certain Jewish sects quarrel among themselves, overall they enjoy a staggering level of unity and cooperation. And their common great enemy, without exception, is traditional Christianity.
Or at least it was the great enemy of the Jews, since the Jews these days seem quite happy with many Christians' pro-Israel stance, as well as the products of Vatican II (which no longer blames the Jews for the death of Christ and seeks "reconciliation," etc.)
2003-05-11 05:24 | User Profile
I hold that Christianity is the catalyst that unified the different nations and sub-races of Europe into one civilization.ÃÂ One will note that before Christianity, there were no notions of a unified Western civilization. That is a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Since the Scandinavians are, so far, the least Christianized, it stands to reason that many of them might have less fervor when it comes to the Western cause.
Sometimes very similar peoples will overemphasize their minor differences, and sometimes that "unity" can only be born out of necessity--an outside threat.
If Christianity was the Grand Uniter of the West, does this mean that only Christianity can accomplish that function in the future, for all time?
> You must be one of those Legion Europa types that's always worried about Nordicism. No; I simply reject it as a wrongheaded ideology that we would be better off without.
You know, the existence of Nordicism never crosses my mind or becomes apparent to me until I hear someone lament its existence. You make it sound as if it's some giant millstone oppressively overshadowing everything. I think that some people just go around looking for problems, looking to be offended.
There may be truth to some of that (i.e., some Italians or Greeks, like some Irish, trying to hop onto the "oppressed" bandwagon), but that does not absolve the Nordicists of wrongdoing.
I'm not aware of any "wrongdoing" on the part of the Nordicists. I've read McCulloch's books and find nothing "wrong" about his arguments--he simply wants to establish a legal and political order aimed at preserving certain genetic characteristics of a certain kind of people that he identifies with as his own. He's pursuing his personal and racial self-interest, as he defines it. No one can be criticized for that. He's doing his job--defending something he cares about.
The people who criticize him and his fellow Nordicists do so because they fear that they'd be deported in the event that "faction" were to take political power in the U.S. In my opinion, that fear is a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I stated earlier.
> Your reference above about my Italian descent suggests that you're trying to appeal to potential insecurities about my racial identity ** Not at all. It doesn't make sense for you to jump to that assumption.**
Mentioning that I was Italian serves no other function in your argument except as a lever to induce me to cleave to your point of view, out of fear that the Nordicists might "kick me out of the clubhouse." It makes me laugh to see that sort of argument used--honestly, I always crack a smile at my monitor over that one. Usually pro-White posters don't use that argument on me, I usually get that argument from people on FR, or from liberals, who buy into the propaganda/stereotype that "only Germanics need apply" in nationalist circles.
Once again, I'm not a member of that organization. I'm just a White man who'd rather White people unite than allow Jews the delight of watching (and financing) endless White-on-White wars. I'm of Northern European descent myself; I just happen to accept that people from other parts of Europe are, indeed, European. No less than I. There's nothing shocking about such a concept; it's just commonsense.
You need not be a member of LE to espouse LE-like doctrines. My apologies if I made it appear you were associated with LE. I was using that label as sort of a loose shorthand for the "anti-Nordicist" position. LE, to my knowledge, is the most prominent "anti-Nordicist" or "pan-European" organ out there. They actually put out some high-quality material, it's just that I wince whenever I see their "lack of self-confidence," so to speak, that I discussed earlier.
Actually, I completely agree with you. Europeans are Europeans are Europeans. And they're all White. I guess I am a "pan-European," at least in terms of the situation in United States, since Americans are basically "European-Americans," probably more than they are any one particular European ethnic group. The difference between myself and LE (and perhaps with you) is that I'm not necessarily "anti-Nordicist." I don't feel the need to tell Nordicists what to think, or what they can't believe in or love or fight for. If they happen to come to power, I don't think I'll be at any disadvantage merely because of my Italian heritage, especially since you can't tell I'm not from "the British Isles or Northwestern Europe" just by looking at me. Hence, I meet the criteria of "assimilability," and that's all it takes. Incidentally, the vast majority of Europeans are assimilable. The whole issue is contrived and overblown, in my opinion. I think there's a lot of hype and propaganda and hostility aimed at the Nordicists, mainly by people who are insecure about who they are. I also suspect the "anti-Nordicist" position is being used as cover by racial marginals who really aren't White. As the population becomes more miscegenated, more and more people are going to claim they're White in the U.S., and thus "define Whiteness down."
Who suggested waging a White-on-White war, btw?
> The lesson you should take from this is that the more you defensively talk about "pan-European" concepts and loudly condemn the Nordicists, the more attention you'll draw to yourself as a potential "racial Other."ÃÂ I once tried to explain all this to the head of the LE in an e-mail, but I don't think I made much of an impact. It would be silly for me to take that "lesson" from this or anything else. Ironically, those very Nordicists would accept me, but not necessarily you, as White. Try convincing them that I, as a man of wholly Teutonic descent, am a "potential racial Other." Odd that you brook no criticism of those divisive types.
By "you" I wasn't referring personally to "you." I meant it rhetorically, in general, for "people" or "the reader," etc. My apologies for being unclear. I wasn't suggesting that you were a potential racial Other. My point is that what drives the whole Nordicist defensive reaction is the defensive reaction of some Whites who seem worried they won't "make the cut" because they're from Southern or Eastern Europe. If these people make this much of a fuss and a scene over it, then that only gives Nordicists, or objective observers as well, reason to scrutinize the whiners even more. See my point? If a person seems that worried, it begins to look as if you have something to worry about. Hence, they convict themselves as being guilty--it's not the Nordicists who passed that sentence. That's what I meant about the pan-Europeanists being "their own accusers."
> So by discussing the similarity of pre-Christian Europeans to the African tribes, you believe that belief/behavior is what most defines the essence of the West, and not biology? I believe that both elements are crucial. Before Christianity, there was no Western civilization. But only the White race is capable of benefiting from Christianity to the fullest. Indeed, other races (especially Negroes) seem for the most part congenitally incapable of following the moral strictures of the religion, let alone understanding the theology. As you've noted elsewhere, "fair play" (i.e., practice of the Golden Rule) is European and White in nature. Thus without Christianity there would be no West, but without Whites there would be no Christendom.
There was no Western civilization as we know it today before Christianity. Slight difference, maybe. But what's "Western civilization" without Whites? To swipe a phrase from your own camp, I suspect you're "worshipping the Creation rather than the Creator" by not giving due privilege to race. You have to ask, "where did Western civilization, those beliefs/behaviors come from?" Who makes (or originally made) the West Western? The race had to exist first.
By the way, that whole "fair play" aspect of Whites, I'm becoming convinced, is a flaw. Christianity seems to value it as some sort of asset or strength, but it's killing us, because it induces us to welcome aliens as "our neighbors." Remember, "neighbor" is the word that begins with N and ends with R that you never should call a Black person.
Jews remain just as opposed to traditional Christianity as they ever were. The ACLU, essentially a Jewish organization, is a case in point. Do you think it's any coincidence that Jews do all they can to weaken and destroy Christianity, and their considerable success in this is totally correlated with the decline of White Western consciousness?
Jews overturn any Order they find, and that would have happened whether the old order was Christian or something else. Believe it or not, I'm not arguing for all this as some sort of "anti-Christian," in fact, I just don't think it's relevant one way or the other. Christianity is not a factor, because Whites were "racists" and slaveholders and all that when they were Christian, and they're still Christians when they preach universal love and diversity and all that BS. Christianity can coexist with any social order, because all its adherents have to do is change their interpretation of the Scriptures to yield a justification of the kind of society they want to have. In the 19th century, they said the Bible permits slavery. In the 20th, the Bible condemns slavery.
As I said, I'm not explicitly anti-Christian, especially when those Christians are closer to the 19th c. version than the 20th c. My whole purpose of my engagement in this thread is basically to show that there is nothing necessary or logical about the connection between Christianity and politics. It's really just historical accident at the civilizational level, and personal belief on the part of some posters.
2003-05-11 15:25 | User Profile
Octopod: "NeoNietzsche's" writings remind me of the kinds of things I see painted, nail-polished, Marilyn Manson clones babble to one another as they trade ecstasy pills.
NN: Probably untrue.
PaleoconAvatar: How closely do you associate with the Marilyn Manson crowd to be able to see the ecstasy pills exchange?
Octopod: I don't associate with such people. Driving down an urban street and having 20/20 vision is quite enough.
Octopod is to be congratulated upon his extraordinary, yea, incredible, lip-reading ability.
Western civilization, in its full organic form, is a peculiarly Christian phenomenon. Prior to Christianity, there was no pan-European racial consciousness and no unified Western superculture. Hilaire Belloc said it best: ââ¬ÅEurope is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe.ââ¬Â
This does not argue in its favor, since "Western Civilization" is now a peculiarly Jewish phenomenon in terms of supercultural unification. Pan-Europeanism and superculturalism do not command implicit endorsement.
The Germans who resisted Roosevelt tended to be deeply Christian people, while Roosevelt was in bed with both atheistic communism and secular international finance. If the Germans were more Western and racially conscious, that was because they were more traditionally Christian.
The resistance to Roosevelt was, of course, led by the crypto-atheist Nazis, who fought the Communists in the streets and had to drag the good Christians into the fight once Germany was mastered.
Charlemagne was most certainly European and Western, through and through. The Saxons you mentioned, like the heathen Celts, were strikingly similar to African and Indian tribes before their civilizing conversion to Christianity. These pagans painted themselves blue and practiced human sacrifice. Nonetheless, I will concede that there is more to admire about them than in, say, Bantus or Aztecs. Their racial stock was superior to that of the Negroes and Indians, for example, but their culture certainly improved once its best components were synthesized with Christianity.
As with the elements mentioned above, "civilizing conversion" does not command implicit endorsement. Present Jewish mastery of the West has enhanced its "civilization," as compared with its precedents, according to objective criteria. Charlemagne was "European and Western" in the same sense that Roosevelt was - in the service of an alien entity with which his predecessors and he had started making deals.
NN's nasal whines about "intolerance" are so inconsistent and bizarre as to stretch credulity. That he wants paleocons to abandon the faith of our fathers is bad enough. That he now sucks up to a historical enemy of the Christian West speaks volumes.
The game is about up when "Octopod" has to invent his interlocutor's argument. Reviewing the record, Octopod will find no repetitive mention of "intolerance". And to speak of correction of Okie's consistent historical errors as "sucking up" is to collaborate in ignorance.
Both [NN and Jews] will talk about Christianity (read: the West) as being "oppressive," "intolerant," "theocratic," and so on. At the same time, they will heap praise upon non-Western religions that truly fit all of those descriptions. The result, of course, is to increase Western guilt. 'Oy vey, you Christians are such bad people--you may as well open your borders and let those nice Moslems and Third Worlders import their enlightened, tolerant cultures and teach your children a lesson!'
Again, no reference, by NN, to "oppressive" and "intolerant" will be found in the record, nor will we find a "heaping of praise" - but we do find a pattern of intellectual dishonesty or inexcusable incompetence in this repetitive false attribution. I would have expected better of self-professed "Christians".
Hussein's government tolerated Christians; indeed, Christians even served in high government positions. Funny then that "Neo-Nietzsche," whose anti-Christianism rivals that of the Jews, has claimed to support Hussein.
And, of course, there is no inconsistency here in NN's support of Hussein, as this imputation of NN's sentiments is mendacious or inept, as explained above.
2003-05-11 16:15 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@May 10 2003, 20:28 > Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 11 2003, 01:49 He and Jesus, gone for good.**
I'm glad Saddam Hussein wasn't my Christ. Although to tell the truth, I'd much prefer Saddam Hussein to a lot of you people.
The Muslim world has not, in comparative historic terms, been inordinately governed by a priesthood, as have the Jews and Christians. There has never been a Muslim equivalent of Innocent III.
> Kaliphate anyone?ÃÂ Thought not.**
The Caliphate was not an ecclesiocracy, as is the point. It was a "godly" government - but not a government of god. **
I can imagine what you'd say if Falwell or Robertson tried that line :lol:
The simple fact of the matter is that religious tolerance in the most moderate muslim country makes the most extreme and historically very unusual Christian authoritarianism in Inquisition Spain look like an oasis of tolerance. It is astounding except for the fact I know you how your anti-Christian prejudice can go so far as to make you a Muslim apologist.
Can Judaism be far away? After all Orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist Islam are quite similar in a number of ways, as Spengler observed.**
I can imagine what you'd say if Falwell or Robertson tried that line :lol:
You play Falwell and deliver the line you have in mind - I will give you my reaction so that you need not continue to self-servingly exercise your imagination.
The simple fact of the matter is that religious tolerance in the most moderate muslim country makes the most extreme and historically very unusual Christian authoritarianism in Inquisition Spain look like an oasis of tolerance. It is astounding except for the fact I know you how your anti-Christian prejudice can go so far as to make you a Muslim apologist.
I will simply note that you persist in an inversion, lest I be drawn in to the position of an "apologist". I have not argued the issue in terms of "tolerance". See the Jews on that point.
Can Judaism be far away? After all Orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist Islam are quite similar in a number of ways, as Spengler observed.
Octopod is ahead of you with the inept and/or mendacious attributions. Do we attribute this merely to the greater frequency of his contributions?
2003-05-11 17:23 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 11 2003, 16:15 > I can imagine what you'd say if Falwell or Robertson tried that line :lol:**
You play Falwell and deliver the line you have in mind - I will give you my reaction so that you need not continue to self-servingly exercise your imagination. OK> I, Jerry Falwell and the my friend Pat Robertson with the Christian Coalition do not desire a theocracy or "government of God" (as the ADL and ACLU etc. often slanderously assert) just a godly government.**
What do you think? Are you ready to pick up your Christian Coalition card? (I almost remember saying words onetime to almost that exact effect).
> The simple fact of the matter is that religious tolerance in the most moderate muslim country makes the most extreme and historically very unusual Christian authoritarianism in Inquisition Spain look like an oasis of tolerance. It is astounding except for the fact I know you how your anti-Christian prejudice can go so far as to make you a Muslim apologist.**
I will simply note that you persist in an inversion, lest I be drawn in to the position of an "apologist". I have not argued the issue in terms of "tolerance". See the Jews on that point.**
Let's look at your exact words again.
So we realize here that hypertrophy of the theocratic impulse is the distinctive Judeo-Christian disease. If you weren't arguing in terms of tolerance, then you aren't even understanding your own arguments.
2003-05-11 17:58 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@May 11 2003, 11:23 > Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 11 2003, 16:15 > I can imagine what you'd say if Falwell or Robertson tried that line :lol:
You play Falwell and deliver the line you have in mind - I will give you my reaction so that you need not continue to self-servingly exercise your imagination.**
OK
I, Jerry Falwell and the my friend Pat Robertson with the Christian Coalition do not desire a theocracy or "government of God" (as the ADL and ACLU etc. often slanderously assert) just a godly government.
What do you think? Are you ready to pick up your Christian Coalition card? (I almost remember saying words onetime to almost that exact effect).
> The simple fact of the matter is that religious tolerance in the most moderate muslim country makes the most extreme and historically very unusual Christian authoritarianism in Inquisition Spain look like an oasis of tolerance.ÃÂ It is astounding except for the fact I know you how your anti-Christian prejudice can go so far as to make you a Muslim apologist.**
I will simply note that you persist in an inversion, lest I be drawn in to the position of an "apologist". I have not argued the issue in terms of "tolerance". See the Jews on that point.**
Let's look at your exact words again.
So we realize here that hypertrophy of the theocratic impulse is the distinctive Judeo-Christian disease.
If you weren't arguing in terms of tolerance, then you aren't even understanding your own arguments.**
I, Jerry Falwell and the my friend Pat Robertson with the Christian Coalition do not desire a theocracy or "government of God" (as the ADL and ACLU etc. often slanderously assert) just a godly government.
Falwell and Co. desire a godly government, one day to be displaced by the Second Advent and the government of their god. The Caliphate was, as was the point, merely a "godly government" - not a Papist ecclessiocracy nor to be displaced one day by an apocalyptic immanentization of the eschaton. It is true that certain of the Muslim sects had a "hidden" imam, one day to return, but this was neither scriptural nor apocalyptic and thus central as is the case with Christianity.
> Let's look at your exact words again.
So we realize here that hypertrophy of the theocratic impulse is the distinctive Judeo-Christian disease. **
If you weren't arguing in terms of tolerance, then you aren't even understanding your own arguments.**
I believe that I am at liberty to tailor an argument as I see fit, rather than to adopt a stereotypical position such as will facilitate a thoughtlessly reflexive refutation. My objection to theocracy is directed to its rejection, displacement, or subordination of martial monarchy.
2003-05-11 18:23 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 11 2003, 17:58 > I, Jerry Falwell and the my friend Pat Robertson with the Christian Coalition do not desire a theocracy or "government of God" (as the ADL and ACLU etc. often slanderously assert) just a godly government.**
Falwell and Co. desire a godly government, one day to be displaced by the Second Advent and the government of their god. The Caliphate was, as was the point, a "godly government" - not, however, to be displaced one day by a hypertrophic immanentization of the eschaton. It is true that certain of the Muslim sects had a "hidden" imam, one day to return, but this was not "scriptural" and thus central as with Christianity.**
Rather than respond in practical terms to the real world situation we were trying to discuss, such as the necessity of applying Islamic law to the Muslim Fundamentalist, you seem to want to concentrate on obscure historical arguments of the governments in the 8th or 9th centuries, using words ("immanentization", "eschaton") that aren't even in the dictionary. You seem to be trying to avoid the question by hiding in obscuritanism
> If you weren't arguing in terms of tolerance, then you aren't even understanding your own arguments.**
I believe that I am at liberty to tailor an argument as I see fit, rather than to adopt a stereotypical position such as will facilitate a thoughtlessly reflexive refutation.**
Certainly. Just as I am at liberty to point out when your arguments are bull.
2003-05-11 18:30 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 11 2003, 11:58 I believe that I am at liberty to tailor an argument as I see fit, rather than to adopt a stereotypical position such as will facilitate a thoughtlessly reflexive refutation. My objection to theocracy is directed to its rejection, displacement, or subordination of martial monarchy.
And this addresses the central challenge of the WN "movement" - the identification of its God of War, its King, its autocrat.
The form-of-economy argument is a misguided diversion.
2003-05-11 18:42 | User Profile
Rather than respond in practical terms to the real world situation we were trying to discuss, such as the necessity of applying Islamic law to the Muslim Fundamentalist, you seem to want to concentrate on obscure historical arguments of the governments in the 8th or 9th centuries, using words ("immanentization", "eschaton") that aren't even in the dictionary. You seem to be trying to avoid the question by hiding in obscuritanism
I guess I have to remind you that the point, rather, was your objection to the exclusion of Islam from the Judeo-Christian "hypertrophy of the theocratic impulse" which I alleged. Your objection was based upon the "Kaliphate" as a supposed counter-example to this exclusion. My brief remarks concerning the Caliphate have been pointedly and dispositively responsive to your objection.
> I believe that I am at liberty to tailor an argument as I see fit, rather than to adopt a stereotypical position such as will facilitate a thoughtlessly reflexive refutation.**
Certainly. Just as I am at liberty to point out when your arguments are bull.**
That will be an interesting development, when one day you are justified in so doing.
2003-05-11 19:15 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 11 2003, 18:42 > ** You seem to be trying to avoid the question by hiding in obscuritanism ... Your objection was based upon the "Kaliphate" as a supposed counter-example to this exclusion. My brief remarks concerning the Caliphate have been pointedly and dispositively responsive to your objection.
**
:huh: I guess Zarathustra has spoken. Retreat back into thy solitude. :hit:
2003-05-11 20:09 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@May 11 2003, 13:15 > Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 11 2003, 18:42 > ** You seem to be trying to avoid the question by hiding in obscuritanism**
... Your objection was based upon the "Kaliphate" as a supposed counter-example to this exclusion. My brief remarks concerning the Caliphate have been pointedly and dispositively responsive to your objection.
**
:huh: I guess Zarathustra has spoken. Retreat back into thy solitude. :hit:**
Class dismissed.
:rock:
2003-05-11 21:24 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@May 11 2003, 14:23 ** Rather than respond in practical terms to the real world situation we were trying to discuss, such as the necessity of applying Islamic law to the Muslim Fundamentalist, you seem to want to concentrate on obscure historical arguments of the governments in the 8th or 9th centuries, using words ("immanentization", "eschaton") that aren't even in the dictionary. You seem to be trying to avoid the question by hiding in obscuritanism **
That's not obscurantism. Actually, old conservatives will remember the phrase "immanentizing the eschaton," because that's what liberals seek to do.
The phrase can be taken in two ways. One way to interpret it is that it is the attempt to (forcibly or artificially) bring heaven to earth, installing a Utopia.
Another way to take it, and I think NN meant it in this way, is that it is when the "end of the world" is brought about. The Eschaton is the end of the world, or I guess the Apocalypse, as the title of this thread indicates. To immanentize means to bring into the here and now, and to make a thing present within this world.
NN seemed to be discussing the Second Coming of Christ as part of this immanentizing the Eschaton, which is why he compared that concept to a similar concept certain Muslim sects have about the return of the "hidden imam."
2003-05-11 21:44 | User Profile
Originally posted by PaleoconAvatar@May 11 2003, 15:24 ** Actually, old conservatives will remember the phrase "immanentizing the eschaton," because that's what liberals seek to do.**
PA, do I correctly recall that WFB long ago took that one from Eric Voegelin?
And didn't Voegelin yak alot about "Gnosticism" as the evil thread running back through ideological misbehavior?
2003-05-11 22:13 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 11 2003, 17:44 ** > Originally posted by PaleoconAvatar@May 11 2003, 15:24 ** Actually, old conservatives will remember the phrase "immanentizing the eschaton," because that's what liberals seek to do.**
PA, do I correctly recall that WFB long ago took that one from Eric Voegelin? **
Yes, WFB printed up some buttons for people to wear which bore that phrase. Of course, I wasn't there to witness that since it was well before my time, I've only read about it.
And didn't Voegelin yak alot about "Gnosticism" as the evil thread running back through ideological misbehavior?
That I do not know.
2003-05-12 03:54 | User Profile
Originally posted by PaleoconAvatar@May 11 2003, 21:24 > Originally posted by Okiereddust@May 11 2003, 14:23 ** Rather than respond in practical terms to the real world situation we were trying to discuss, such as the necessityÃÂ of applying Islamic law to the Muslim Fundamentalist, you seem to want to concentrate on obscure historical arguments of the governments in the 8th or 9th centuries, using words ("immanentization", "eschaton") that aren't even in the dictionary.ÃÂ You seem to be trying to avoid the question by hiding in obscuritanism **
That's not obscurantism. Actually, old conservatives will remember the phrase "immanentizing the eschaton," because that's what liberals seek to do..... NN seemed to be discussing the Second Coming of Christ as part of this immanentizing the Eschaton, which is why he compared that concept to a similar concept certain Muslim sects have about the return of the "hidden imam."
.......Yes, WFB printed up some buttons for people to wear which bore that phrase. Of course, I wasn't there to witness that since it was well before my time, I've only read about it.**
:lol: Excuse me, how could I have been so wrong? Mysterious terminology borrowed from the master of verbal obstufication, WFB, applied to various theories about the "hidden Imam" could not possibly be obscuritan. :rolleyes:
Not that I don't admire the rhetorical effort to mystify what really was a rather straightforward question, i.e. which is more prone to theocracy, a.ka. "immanentizing the eschaton," Islam or Christianity. B)
2003-05-12 04:28 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@May 11 2003, 23:54 ** :lol: Excuse me, how could I have been so wrong? Mysterious terminology borrowed from the master of verbal obstufication, WFB, applied to various theories about the "hidden Imam" could not possibly be obscuritan. :rolleyes:
Not that I don't admire the rhetorical effort to mystify what really was a rather straightforward question, i.e. which is more prone to theocracy, a.ka. "immanentizing the eschaton," Islam or Christianity. B) **
You know, when you put it that way, come to think of it, you're right. I guess I need to take a step back and remember just who and what WFB is....yeah, it is obscure, in general. I've been too immersed in this stuff. I guess I took it for granted that OD readers would probably be conversant with that sort of conservative movement esoterica.
I can only imagine what casual lurkers from the outside coming across these threads must think about what they're reading. :lol:
2003-05-12 18:54 | User Profile
Originally posted by Octopod@May 12 2003, 16:50 ** I believe race and culture are both crucial to the definition of Western civilization. Take Whites out of the equation, and there would be no West worth saving. But without Christianity there would be no White racial consciousness to begin with... **
This will come as a serious shock to the ancient Athenians. Wasn't one of the reasons given for their collapse a declining population because they refused to mix with barbarians?
Protecting bloodlines started way before Christ. Trying and failing to protect bloodlines is a hallmark of Western Civilization going back to Sumer. In fact, Sumer's innundation by Semetic-Akkadian immigration seems to have set the tone for the next 5000 years.
With or without Christianity, Westerners build and and lose civilizations as a matter of course.
We are nothing if not predictable. :o
2003-05-13 05:16 | User Profile
Originally posted by Octopod@May 12 2003, 16:50 ** > ** If Christianity was the Grand Uniter of the West, does this mean that only Christianity can accomplish that function in the future, for all time? **
Well, I wouldn't hedge my bets on the World Church of the Creator.
Seriously, since Christianity was and is the only proven Great Uniter of the West, it's hardly a good idea to alienate Christians and join the Jews in attacking their faith.
** You know, the existence of Nordicism never crosses my mind or becomes apparent to me until I hear someone lament its existence. You make it sound as if it's some giant millstone oppressively overshadowing everything. I think that some people just go around looking for problems, looking to be offended. **
I never claimed nor even implied that Nordicism "is some giant millstone oppressively overshadowing everything." Nor does Nordicism "offend" me personally; I just regard it as tactically foolish in addition to ideologically silly. By "Nordicism" I refer not to being pro-Nordic, which I am myself. Rather, I refer to the doctrines espoused by a few that regard only Nordics as "true Whites" while labeling other Whites as part of some different race.
And that's really all I have to say about this topic. I think we agree on most things, and to emphasize this issue is, at this point, rather pointless.
** There was no Western civilization as we know it today before Christianity. Slight difference, maybe. But what's "Western civilization" without Whites? To swipe a phrase from your own camp, I suspect you're "worshipping the Creation rather than the Creator" by not giving due privilege to race. You have to ask, "where did Western civilization, those beliefs/behaviors come from?" Who makes (or originally made) the West Western? The race had to exist first.**
I'm not sure you're putting me in the right camp there! I believe race and culture are both crucial to the definition of Western civilization. Take Whites out of the equation, and there would be no West worth saving. But without Christianity there would be no White racial consciousness to begin with. Thus, just as both a husband and wife are necessary for marriage, race and culture alike are vital to our civilization's existence. And while only Whites are capable of fully understanding and implementing those Christian cultural principles, from whence did they originally come? God, not man.
I'm nothing if not an opponent of egalitarianism and proponent of healthy and classical hierarchical order. At the top of that order sits God. If God is not recognized as the ultimate ruler, you have a kind of spiritual anarchy that leads to the watering down and ultimately the dissolution of earthly hierarchy and traditional institutions. Secularism prefigures democracy, liberalism and the cultural anarchy that fuels their engines.
**By the way, that whole "fair play" aspect of Whites, I'm becoming convinced, is a flaw. Christianity seems to value it as some sort of asset or strength, but it's killing us, because it induces us to welcome aliens as "our neighbors." Remember, "neighbor" is the word that begins with N and ends with R that you never should call a Black person. **
"Fair play" is only a problem if we apply it to those outside of our racial/religious group. Doing so is not Christianity, but a perversion thereof. In the Christian Middle Ages, Europeans were taught to treat one another fairly, but to treat Moslems, Jews, etc. as unwelcome out-groupers and cultural pathogens.
This brings up another problem with rejecting Christianity and worshipping race as the be-all and end-all. If you do that, in principle you will need to welcome "White" Moslems (not to mention "White" converts to Judaism) into Europe. That, of course, would be insanity. This is another reason why both the racial and spiritual aspects of White Western identity are symbiotically crucial.
Octopod **
I agree with everything you say, Octopod.
Man, it's like talking to myself. Very eerie!
Walter
2003-05-13 18:59 | User Profile
Originally posted by Octopod@May 12 2003, 19:22 ** I said that there was never a pan-European racial consciousness before Europe became Christian. Nor was there a unified Western civilization... **
There was never a "unified" West. Not before Christianity, not in the "13th greatest of centuries" and not now.
Pythagorian cosmopolitanism tried to create such a consciousness, it failed. The early Christians appear to have borrowed the general idea from the Neoplatonists, and they failed too. Butchering each other for 17 centuries is not the sort of pan-Europeanism we all have in mind. Christianity was always too divisive.
Jefferson had it right: Divorce politics from religion.
2003-05-14 06:37 | User Profile
Originally posted by Ragnar@May 13 2003, 18:59 ** > Originally posted by Octopod@May 12 2003, 19:22 ** I said that there was never a pan-European racial consciousness before Europe became Christian. Nor was there a unified Western civilization... **
There was never a "unified" West. Not before Christianity, not in the "13th greatest of centuries" and not now.
Pythagorian cosmopolitanism tried to create such a consciousness, it failed. The early Christians appear to have borrowed the general idea from the Neoplatonists, and they failed too. Butchering each other for 17 centuries is not the sort of pan-Europeanism we all have in mind. Christianity was always too divisive.
Jefferson had it right: Divorce politics from religion. **
I respectfully disagree.
The West was profoundly and organically united.
All culture springs from religious belief and practice. The religion of the West was unified - all recited the same Creed and participated in the same Sacrifice of the Mass. The commonality throughout the West of the Caucasian race, Latin language (and even more fundamentally the overwhelming predominance of the Indo-European family of languages), Roman law, Catholic religion, Greek philosophy, fuedal social organization, and trans-national political/religious institutions (however imperfect) such as the Papacy and the Empire allow only one conclusion: the West of the 13th century was indeed a unified racial and cultural whole.
And in a slightly broader sense, this unity extended even to the Orthodox lands of Byzantium to encompass all of "Christendom." As Belloc pointed out in his "Crusades", all Europeans considered themselves to be citizens of Christendom, and felt some sort of kinship to all Christians. This was reinforced by the outside pressures of the day: their enemies were the Turk and the Moor, who were Muslims and racial aliens. Since the Turks and the Moors were of different race and religion, and since in those centuries "Christendom" was essential co-extensive with "white race", defense against Islam meant defense against genetic incursion by Africans and Asians. As a result of these outside pressures, the unity of European racial and cultural identity were extremely strong in the minds of our Medieval ancestors. Race and religion meant the same thing.
Thus, we were unified in the West, and indeed in a fundamental way in the East - one Caucasian gene pool defended by a cultural wall raised on the mighty plinth of the Mass.
The Reformation attacked the Mass and destroyed this cultural-protective wall that maintained the integrity of our genetic boundaries. It was thus was a self-inflicted wound that may yet kill us.
Walter
2003-05-15 14:13 | User Profile
Originally posted by Walter Yannis@May 14 2003, 00:37 All culture springs from religious belief and practice.ÃÂ The religion of the West was unified - all recited the same Creed and participated in the same Sacrifice of the Mass.ÃÂ The commonality throughout the West of the Caucasian race, Latin language (and even more fundamentally the overwhelming predominance of the Indo-European family of languages), Roman law, Catholic religion, Greek philosophy, fuedal social organization, and trans-national political/religious institutions (however imperfect) such as the Papacy and the Empire allow only one conclusion:ÃÂ the West of the 13th century was indeed a unified racial and cultural whole.
Were the Spanish Conquistadors, of slightly later date, Catholic?
Were the Amerindians, objects of their conversion efforts, White?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And what sins has our racially and culturally unified Walter committed such that The One God of the Whole Universe must be involved in their consideration?
If significant Walterian sinning has taken place, is it not encumbent upon Walter to disclose and disclaim these before his colleagues in his "corporate" WN enterprise?
And if Walter's sins are insignificant, what need has he of the shameless fabricators, they of no natural allegiance or appetite?
2003-05-17 20:42 | User Profile
Were the Spanish Conquistadors, of slightly later date, Catholic?
Yes.
Were the Amerindians, objects of their conversion efforts, White?
No.
Of course, neither of these questions address my main thesis; i.e. that Christendom was a unified religious and racial whole in the 13th century. The Conquista was not a "slightly later date" - more like 3-4 centuries, dude. Your grasp of history is apparently as weak as your general ability to stay on point.
The question then arises what happened that caused the spiritual/racial unity of the 13th century to shatter in the Reformation and the contemporaneous Age of Discovery in the 16th century. The fact that the Spanish and Portuguese Catholics of the Reformation era mongrelized in the New World (but not in the home country) tend to prove the main point that something terrible happened to the spritural integrity of Europeans at that time. I don't claim to know what that is, although I suspect that Belloc is on track in laying the blame with the Reformation's attack on the Mass, but much remains hidden on that point.
And what sins has our racially and culturally unified Walter committed such that The One God of the Whole Universe must be involved in their consideration?
No sins are necessary. We avail ourselves of faith in the One God because He is the necessary ingredient to our group success.
You fail to grasp the very simple fact that man needs religion. Man will worship something - there is no escaping that. Evolution hardwired us for religious faith, and we're stuck with it. Period. We can't NOT BE religious. The wise man will accept this most basic fact of life and move on with life. Since Evolution decreed that man's life is tribal life, this means choosing the religion most conducive to his tribe's survival.
Some choices work, some don't work.
Marxism-Leninsim was a clear failure in a Darwinian sense, at least when viewed as a unifying ideology for the Soviet peoples (it no doubt succeeded to some extent as an offensive Jewish construct). I had the opportunity to witness first hand the Soviet Union in the early 1980's. I visited Lenin's tomb. I saw the placards on the Kremlin walls for May Day. I experienced the mind-numbing invocation of Lenin's name at every public event, large and small, and the ritual genuflections to the ruling ideology in every book, film, newspaper and television show. Marxism-Leninism was most definitely a religion - but one that foolishly thought it could expel with impunity the One God of the Universe from its rites and cult and replace Him with a mummified mongrel midget. The humanist religion of Marxism-Leninism lasted a mere 70 years - significantly the lifespan of a single man. Marxism-Leninism crumbled before the might of the Islam of the Taliban and the Catholicism of the Poles.
Of course, your own Nazism suffered an even more pathetic fate than Marxism-Leninism, itself having been defeated by the loser Maxism-Leninism. I'm reminded of a line in the truly fine film "Trainspotting," when the Scottish protaginist cries out in anguish: "I don't hate the English. They're just wankers. But what about us Scots? We were BLOODY COLONIZED by wankers!" Marximsm-Leninism was a weak substitute for real religion, but it kicked the living snot out of the intellectually and spiritually unviable Nazism.
But I digress. The main point is that religion is inescapable. We will worship something because that's the way our brains have been hardwired. Thus, the choice is not whether to believe but what to believe. The choice of what we worship is the most basic one we can make. We must choose wisely - and that means the One God of the Universe - not some Austrian con man or Khazar dwarf.
Here are some basic scientific facts you should consider next time you decide to read something other than Zarathustra (does that ever happen?):
Religion plays an essential role in the Darwinian struggle of one human group against the other. The tribe is the evolutionary unit of selection, and religion cements the tribe into a single fighting unit in its struggle against other such units. Man needs to believe that his tribe is somehow special - the Chosen, as it were, and the tribe that forges the strongest identity will have a suvival advantage over those who don't. Having the One God of the Whole Universe as you put it in any enterprise is therefore the very thing that makes the social-religious cement strong. Clearly, this is why monotheism won out over polytheism in the Darwinian struggle of history - it's more inspiring to fight for the Whole Cosmic Enchilada than only the local Burrito. Allah is to the Muslim Umma what Yahweh is to Jewry what the Incarnate Logos is (was) to Christendom. It was/is precisely this Ultimate religious element that empowered these movements to pass the grueling, Darwinian test of history and to prosper in their own ways over long periods of time, mowing down the various forms of paganism before them in great swaths.
It is the same for any movement. To the extent that WN's believe that that their cause is directly connected to the Ultimate Working Out of the Universe they will be strong - and conversely to the extent they doubt that God is with the WN's they will be weak. This is why Christianity and Islam advanced to the title fight while Nazism and Communism are pathetic and spent third-rate chumps, but again I digress.
The Abyss that you offer is thus not a viable option; to embrace the Nada is in fact the worst counsel anybody could possibly give any movement as it can only lead our tribe to despair rather than inspire it to greatness. The Soviet god crushed the Nazi god in the semi-finals (albeit with an assist from the Christians), just as the Muslim God and the Catholic God whopped ass on the third-place Soviet god. That much must be obvious even to you, yet you remain enamoured of one of the shortest lived loser-god chumps of recent history.
Your disastrous counsel raises the reasonable suspicion that you are in fact an ideological enemy to the White cause. However, I don't believe that. I think that your heart is in the right place. As I said in previous posts, Evolutionary Psychology reveals your own digereedoo one-note Nietscheanism as an adolescent pose - a way to display your rather quotidian intellect to impress the girls. Not that that's a bad thing - it just fails to impress other middle aged men of equal or indeed superior abilities.
If significant Walterian sinning has taken place, is it not encumbent upon Walter to disclose and disclaim these before his colleagues in his "corporate" WN enterprise?
"Walterian." I like that. I have my own school of thought now.
And if Walter's sins are insignificant, what need has he of the shameless fabricators, they of no natural allegiance or appetite?
Please see the foregoing.
As I have shown, there is nothing quite so natural as the quintessentially human appetite to fabricate - the instinctive appetite to construct belief systems that support human groups in their struggle for survival. Evolutionary Psychology reveals this fact beyond reasonable doubt. Everywhere in every age man has had a religion. It is inescapable. Strongly religious groups like the traditional Mormons, Catholics, Muslims, Hindus and Budhists survive the long haul, the weakly religious groups like the German Nazis and the Jewish/Russian Bolsheviks are rotting on history's trash heap after only briefest fret and strut on the history's stage.
Clearly, any "unnatural appetite" or "fabrication" here is your own. To believe that you can somehow rise above the "herd" as you put it and join a "pack" (man, ya gotta love the telling Cub Scout imagery) that boasts its (oooo so masculine!) denial of the Ultimate and its embrace of a purely fabricated Nothing is the most "unnatural" and "fabricated" thing imaginable.
Get over it, man. Get over yourself. Leave your Cub Scout "pack" (one blushes for you) and join our tribal "herd" wallowing around down here in its humanity. Your pubescent posing is as unbecoming as it is counterproductive. Dig the fact that if we are to survive we must have God on our side, and that every knee must bend to that God for the good of the group.
I'm actually much more of a facist than you are, NN, because unlike you I have achieved clarity as to our true existential predicament, and have Made the Choice for group survival - the choice to believe in the God of our heroic ancestors, the God of El Cid and Sobieski, the One True God of the Universe in His Son our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ - and to raise white children in the same.
This while you're still trying to impress some imaginary high school girl in a cashemere sweater with your intellectual "daring."
Walter
2003-05-17 21:19 | User Profile
Originally posted by Octopod@May 17 2003, 20:55 ** Walter Yannis wrote: Of course, your own Nazism
Walter, you know I agree with most of the things you say. Even so, I should point out that NN's pseudo-"Nazism" has nothing to do with the actual Nazism of the 20th century regimes, or even credible "Neo-Nazi" movements of today (most of these are in Europe, obviously). Consider the following:
Traditional Christianity, for the most part, aligned itself with the Axis. Whether nations (such as Mussolini's solidly Catholic Italy) or movements (such as Degrelle's Catholic Rexists) or the Church herself, Christian forces tended to side with the Axis. At the same time, secular humanist and atheist forces were squarely on the side of the Allies.
The Nazis, made up of many avowed Christians and supported overwhelmingly by the same, came to power at the head of an alliance composed of various Christian conservative parties. It's true that some Nazis were pagans, but the majority were Christians. Almost all of their supporters were Christian, and without Christian support they would have gotten nowhere. NN's brand of faux-nazism (as seen on Faux News) will never get anywhere, because it attacks the very Faith that defines the West.
Personally, I'm not a Neo-Nazi, and I agree with you that some Nazis had certain odd and wrongheaded beliefs (anti-Slav bias, for example). But given a choice between the Nazis and Communists, it's obvious which I would choose to support. **
Nazism and Facism were very different systems of belief.
One cannot reasonably conflate Franco's Fascism to Hitler's Nazism - although that absurdity is much in currency nowadays. Franco's movement was profoundly traditionalist and Catholic - Hitler's movement was just as profoundly modernist and pagan. In Franco's Spain the killing stopped after Franco consolidated power, and his ambitions stopped at Spain's borders. In Hitler's Germany, the real fun began only in 1939.
It's baffles me how in the popular mind Nazism could somehow became synonymous with Fascism. But there you have it.
I agree with you that NN's Nazism isn't the real McCoy, because Nazism was all about the superiority of the German nation - blood and culture - over all others in the world. It would appear that our friend NN, like all of the neo-Nazis (outside Germany at least) is attempting to fit a failed 20th century German supremicist philosphy to the needs of a pan-white movement. This is patently unworkable, and speaks volumes about the childish emotional impulse underlying such an attempt.
Walter
2003-05-17 22:15 | User Profile
Of course, neither of these questions address my main thesis; i.e. that Christendom was a unified religious and racial whole in the 13th century.ÃÂ The Conquista was not a "slightly later date" - more like 3-4 centuries, dude.ÃÂ Your grasp of history is apparently as weak as your general ability to stay on point.
My math appears a mite stronger than yours, in that the difference between the 13th and 15th Centuries is but 200 years. But this, of your failings, is beside the point. A "unified religious and racial whole" is not to be credited of an enterprise which periodically slaughters its racial bretheren and "converts" aliens. Nothing mysterious about this characteristic behavior.
Here are some basic scientific facts you should consider next time you decide to read something other than Zarathustra (does that ever happen?): [earnest deliberations follow at great length]
Poor Walter, you have wasted your time composing a sermon to a point with which I already agree. Evidently, my tiresome repetition of the question "What is the name of the Christian/WN God of War?" failed to penetrate somebody's skull.
As I said in previous posts,ÃÂ Evolutionary Psychology reveals your own digereedoo one-note Nietscheanism as an adolescent pose - a way to display your rather quotidian intellect to impress the girls.ÃÂ Not that that's a bad thing - it just fails to impress other middle aged men of equal or indeed superior abilities.
I had not considered this potential aspect of my participation in OD, Walter. Are there any girls around to impress? Are there any girls around worth impressing? Makes me wonder why this issue occurs to you. Are you here to "impress" someone?
Get over it, man.ÃÂ Get over yourself.ÃÂ Leave your Cub Scout "pack" (one blushes for you) and join our tribal "herd" wallowing around down here in its humanity.ÃÂ Your pubescent posing is as unbecoming as it is counterproductive.ÃÂ Dig the fact that if we are to survive we must have God on our side, and that every knee must bend to that God for the good of the group.
I see that I have touched you, Walter. I know that you say these things out of love.
I'm actually much more of a facist than you are, NN, because unlike you I have achieved clarity as to our true existential predicament, and have Made the Choice for group survival - the choice to believe in the God of our heroic ancestors, the God of El Cid and Sobieski, the One True God of the Universe in His Son our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ - and to raise white children in the same.
Interesting redefinition of fascism there, Walter. [I assume that you were not comparing our "facist" credentials - can't rightly say that I have any.]
This while you're still trying to impress some imaginary high school girl in a cashemere sweater with your intellectual "daring."
Again with the girls, Walter. You protest too much.
Hugs and Kisses
Neo :rock:
2003-05-17 23:03 | User Profile
Originally posted by Walter Yannis@May 17 2003, 14:42 The Soviet god crushed the Nazi god in the semi-finals (albeit with an assist from the Christians), just as the Muslim God and the Catholic God whopped ass on the third-place Soviet god. That much must be obvious even to you, yet you remain enamoured of one of the shortest lived loser-god chumps of recent history.
But the loser-god is my god, Walter.
If your point is: join history's winners - then joining the Jews in the spirit of triumphalist collaboration is indicated.
2003-05-18 03:55 | User Profile
**Walter: As I said in previous posts, Evolutionary Psychology reveals your own digereedoo one-note Nietscheanism as an adolescent pose - a way to display your rather quotidian intellect to impress the girls. Not that that's a bad thing - it just fails to impress other middle aged men of equal or indeed superior abilities.
Neo: I had not considered this potential aspect of my participation in OD, Walter. Are there any girls around to impress? Are there any girls around worth impressing? Makes me wonder why this issue occurs to you. Are you here to "impress" someone?
Walter: This while you're still trying to impress some imaginary high school girl in a cashemere sweater with your intellectual "daring."
Neo: Again with the girls, Walter. You protest too much. Neo asked me to drop in here to address Walterââ¬â¢s (odd) suggestion that Neo is discussing Nietzsche to impress girls. IF** we discount the total impracticality of appealing to girls by exposing the hard straight truths (in preference to the lies our society is presently herded with), then I guess we are left with Walter wanting to disparage Neo without having solid ground for it.
Neoââ¬â¢s world view is NOT a comfortable one, and there are not likely many ââ¬Ëgirlsââ¬â¢ who would find it a good ââ¬Ëmating display.ââ¬â¢ (And before you suggest that merely because it doesnââ¬â¢t WORK with girls doesnââ¬â¢t mean he isnââ¬â¢t trying to use it to attract them, well, I can only assure you he is not. He doesnââ¬â¢t discuss this material with most people because most people find it unacceptable, and he is quite aware of that...)
Women like smart men, but not Nazis, and Neo knows it! ;)
2003-05-18 07:03 | User Profile
Originally posted by Octopod@May 17 2003, 21:25 ** Agreed, they had their differences. However, note that the Fascist regimes were generally allied with the Nazis. Although the Nazis and Fascists were different, they had far more in common with one another than either had with Communism or Liberal Democracy. **
Oh, I'm not so sure of that.
War makes strange bedfellows, and all that.
America at the time had the least in common with Stalin. And I say this understanding full well the influence in the States of the Inner Party. Stalin was busily pushing out the Jews from positions of power at the time, just like the Nazis. In fact, the Nazis and CPSU signed recently-published secret protocols on cooperation in fighting Zionism.
Franco's regime was much closer to the liberal democracies of the United States and Britain of the time than to either of the totalitarian regimes of Berlin and Moscow. Indeed, Franco sat out the war and played one side off against the other beautifully, rather like the Irish regime of De Valera.
The fact that may Christians supported a pagan movement like the Nazis goes to proving the weakness of Europe's Christian identity of the time, rather than to any similarity with Nazism.
Walter
2003-05-18 07:52 | User Profile
**My math appears a mite stronger than yours, in that the difference between the 13th and 15th Centuries is but 200 years. **
The 13th century began in 1200 - the Age of Discovery and the Reformation began around 1500 (1492 and 1517, respectively). That's 300 years, give or take a few. The Wars of the Reformation and Conquest lasted another 100-150 after that. As I said, we're talking 3-4 centuries, depending on how you want to slice it. It would appear that you are arithmetically challenged.
But that's not the main point here. You said the time frame was "slight." 200 years ain't "slight" in anybody's book - except for maybe for God and the Chinese, what either of us ain't, hey (as we say in Wisconsin).
**Interesting redefinition of fascism there, Walter. [I assume that you were not comparing our "facist" credentials - can't rightly say that I have any.] **
Agreed on the definition of "fascist." I should have written "authoritarian."
I had not considered this potential aspect of my participation in OD, Walter. Are there any girls around to impress? Are there any girls around worth impressing? Makes me wonder why this issue occurs to you. Are you here to "impress" someone?
Nietzshceanism as sexual display is covered on another thread called Nietzshe's Virtues. Your one-note participation in OD is an unfortunate side effect of the sexual display aspects of your philosophy. As I've written previously, Evolutionary Psychology explains Nietzscheanism empirically, just as the art of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky anticipate and contain Nietzsche esthetically. Indeed, while I'm aware that scholars debate this point strenuously, it's hard to imagine that Nietzsche was not influenced significantly by Fyodor Mikhailevich's high art, but that's a point worthy of its own thread.
You've read Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, I presume?
Anyway, your pubescent fascination with Cub Scout "Packs" and Power Ranger "gods of war" ruling over the "herd" (of jocks no doubt, with you sulking at the Trekkie table in the cafeteria) tend strongly to show that you've adopted Nietsche's writings for reasons of sexual display, as alluded to by Professor Miller and others. You're a clear case of arrested development.
A "unified religious and racial whole" is not to be credited of an enterprise which periodically slaughters its racial bretheren and "converts" aliens. Nothing mysterious about this characteristic behavior.
No Nazi can rightly accuse Christians of slaughtering their brothers, who managed to kill untold millions of whites in just a few years. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
But the loser-god is my god, Walter.
Thank you for FINALLY admitting that your Nazi god is a loser. Now let's talk about winning strategies.
**If your point is: join history's winners - then joining the Jews in the spirit of triumphalist collaboration is indicated. **
Poppycock. The point is to devise a strategy that will win for whites, and NOT to surrender to our enemies. We've agreed that your god is a loser, so clearly then you are the one who is counseling despair and defeat by recommending him for your Cub Scout "pack." My God is the One Who inspired the Inquisition, and upon whose flesh I hungrily feed. That God is still and always shall be a vital force, because that God, unlike your own moribund Nazi scarecrow god, is Reality Himself.
Join us, NN. We all have things we need to grow out of, I'm certainly no exception. To paraphrase St. Paul, become a man and put away childish things. Enough with the He Man and Masters of the Universe short pants. Put on the manly gown of Christ.
I see that I have touched you, Walter. I know that you say these things out of love.
And true love it is, my Aryan brother.
Warmest regards,
Walter
2003-05-18 15:18 | User Profile
[NN]: My math appears a mite stronger than yours, in that the difference between the 13th and 15th Centuries is but 200 years.
[Walter]: The 13th century began in 1200 - the Age of Discovery and the Reformation began around 1500 (1492 and 1517, respectively). That's 300 years, give or take a few.
[NN]: The 13th Century of the unification you touted ended in 1300, thus 200 years is our number to the end of the 15th, when conversion began.
[Walter]: The Wars of the Reformation and Conquest lasted another 100-150 after that. As I said, we're talking 3-4 centuries, depending on how you want to slice it. It would appear that you are arithmetically challenged.
[NN]: Then let's grow up and grant you the height of your unification at the beginning of the 13th, under Innocent III - and take a poll of how many WN's want a restoration of his bizarre hegemony and its pointless European civil war. I suppose the precipitate decline into Boniface's parlous fate at the end of the century is yet another mystery for the Papist apologists.
[Walter]: But that's not the main point here. You said the time frame was "slight." 200 years ain't "slight" in anybody's book - except for maybe for God and the Chinese, what either of us ain't, hey (as we say in Wisconsin).
[NN]: Your claim would be that, in between the end of the 13th and the end of the 15th Centuries, Catholic doctrine reversed, to command the conversion of non-whites. It is not credible that this was the case - and even granted the case, the implication for us would be a repellent reproduction in essence of the declension to Boniface and the subsequent so-called Babylonian Captivity, which you are not prepared to prevent.
[Walter]: I'm actually much more of a facist than you are, NN,...
[NN]: Interesting redefinition of fascism there, Walter. [I assume that you were not comparing our "facist" credentials - can't rightly say that I have any.]
[Walter]: Agreed on the definition of "fascist." I should have written "authoritarian."
[NN]: I'm confused, Walter. Does this mean that you are still actually much more of facist/fascist than I am? Or are you now conferring upon me your fascist bragging rights around these parts and claiming primo "authoritarian" status? Or...?
[NN]: I had not considered this potential aspect of my participation in OD, Walter. Are there any girls around to impress? Are there any girls around worth impressing? Makes me wonder why this issue occurs to you. Are you here to "impress" someone?
[Walter]: Nietzshceanism as sexual display is covered on another thread called Nietzshe's Virtues. Your one-note participation in OD is an unfortunate side effect of the sexual display aspects of your philosophy. As I've written previously, Evolutionary Psychology explains Nietzscheanism empirically, just as the art of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky anticipate and contain Nietzsche esthetically. Indeed, while I'm aware that scholars debate this point strenuously, it's hard to imagine that Nietzsche was not influenced significantly by Fyodor Mikhailevich's high art, but that's a point worthy of its own thread.
[NN]: Walter, let's be honest, all of this analysis is merely self-projection. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I dimly recall someone here confessing their indulgence in this sort of activity as a squirt, and I believe it was yourself. Your analysis as applied to myself must be adjudged inept and inapt, in any case, as evidenced by your attribution to me of things I have neither written nor entertained as my own sentiments. You have still to account for this misattribution on another thread, to which I will direct you, if you would have me credit your intellectual honesty.
[Walter]: Anyway, your pubescent fascination with Cub Scout "Packs" and Power Ranger "gods of war" ruling over the "herd" (of jocks no doubt, with you sulking at the Trekkie table in the cafeteria) tend strongly to show that you've adopted Nietsche's writings for reasons of sexual display, as alluded to by Professor Miller and others. You're a clear case of arrested development.
[NN]: As seen by the intellectual residents of Beaver Cleaver's neighborhood, where references to the "Pack" and the "God of War" elicit no more than images of Cub Scouts and Power Rangers. And evidently mine was a more upright and edifying institution, since I recall noticing none of the "sulking" and the "Trekkie tables" of which you seem to have had memorably unfortunate experience.
[NN]: A "unified religious and racial whole" is not to be credited of an enterprise which periodically slaughters its racial bretheren and "converts" aliens. Nothing mysterious about this characteristic behavior.
[Walter]: No Nazi can rightly accuse Christians of slaughtering their brothers, who managed to kill untold millions of whites in just a few years. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
[NN]: Nordicist Nazism did not consider Slavs "racial bretheren". Other Nordics died having declared war on Germany. On the other hand, are Protestants considered Christian by Catholics?
[NN]: If your point is: join history's winners - then joining the Jews in the spirit of triumphalist collaboration is indicated.
[Walter]: Poppycock. The point is to devise a strategy that will win for whites, and NOT to surrender to our enemies. We've agreed that your god is a loser, so clearly then you are the one who is counseling despair and defeat by recommending him for your Cub Scout "pack." My God is the One Who inspired the Inquisition, and upon whose flesh I hungrily feed. That God is still and always shall be a vital force, because that God, unlike your own moribund Nazi scarecrow god, is Reality Himself.
[NN]: Is old Reality Himself a Jew? Has he any racial identity at all?
[Walter]: Join us, NN. We all have things we need to grow out of, I'm certainly no exception. To paraphrase St. Paul, become a man and put away childish things. Enough with the He Man and Masters of the Universe short pants. Put on the manly gown of Christ.
[NN]: Who commands you to come to him as a little child. Yes, a growing-out-of is certainly called for.
> I see that I have touched you, Walter. I know that you say these things out of love.**
And true love it is, my Aryan brother.**
More Hugs and Kisses,
Neo :rock:
2003-05-18 15:48 | User Profile
**Walter (from a page ago): The religion of the West was unified - all recited the same Creed and participated in the same Sacrifice of the Mass. **
That would be throughout the DARK AGES?!?! That 'same creed' was management (by the Church) by murder and astonishingly massive dumbing down! When the 'good christians' were scrabbling holes into the Coliseum walls to pry out the iron rebar because they had LOST the recipe for iron?! And that is the unifier you think can manage our future? Or is it because the Church has finally 'cleared' Copernicus of all charges that you think they are ready to lead us into the future?!
The commonality throughout the West of the Caucasian race, Latin language (and even more fundamentally the overwhelming predominance of the Indo-European family of languages), Roman law, Catholic religion, Greek philosophy, fuedal social organization, and trans-national political/religious institutions (however imperfect) such as the Papacy and the Empire allow only one conclusion: the West of the 13th century was indeed a unified racial and cultural whole. A Church-controlled corral-full of illiterate, filthy, and group-worshipping people is not REALLY a "unified racial and cultural whole," except in the sense of domesticated animals. We have 'bred down' our domesticated animals, but I doubt we think of them as a racial whole... we think of them as food! Did not the Renaissance -- when the Church LOST its stranglehold on the populace -- create the efflorescence of pan-european civilization? They all became "free" together? I guess joint 'capitivity' by the Church COULD be considered a melding function... but I wouldn't recommend it as a way to create a pan-white future!
2003-05-18 16:15 | User Profile
Walter again: I'm actually much more of a facist than you are, NN, because unlike you I have achieved clarity as to our true existential predicament, and have Made the Choice for group survival - the choice to believe in the God of our heroic ancestors, the God of El Cid and Sobieski, the One True God of the Universe in His Son our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ - and to raise white children in the same. Walter, I actually agree with a lot of what you've said about humans needing a religion, needing a 'god' to worship and to become united by that belief. You have "have Made the Choice for group survival" but on the basis of YOUR choice, you have declared that the 'thing' you CHOOSE to believe in is therefore actual, real, and... what? Immanent? Why is the object of 'your choice' any more "real" than the object of anyone else's choice?!
Choosing to believe in "Him" doesn't MAKE "Him" real. It makes your belief real, and the fact that millions of others have 'bought in' (or, as you would describe it: also "made the choice") does NOT make 'your' 'god' any more real.
I (unlike Neo?) think that religion is a GREAT management tool for herding sheeple -- and I support Christianity for that purpose more so than, say Islam, or our traditional enemy's judaism -- I just happen to disagree (rather strongly) with the guys running it. I DON'T think they have our best interests at heart, or the Church WOULD be standing up for whites, and not importing african animals to destroy us and helping to open borders for different herds of immvaders...
The problem with declaring that your chosen belief makes a difference in actual existence of the object of your belief, and that therefore others should make the same choice, and that your chosen belief system is the ââ¬Årightââ¬Â one for the future (is that because so many others also choose to believe in it, or because there is a historical ââ¬Åsuccessââ¬Â in herding masses with that particular version of belief system?), is neither of those is a compelling rationale, except to those who buy it...
The problem, as I see it, is always WHO IS DRIVING THAT BUS? You trust and believe that the Church hierarchy is working on your behalf (or do you?). I don't! I can't! Their 'history' doesn't lead to confidence, unless you 'choose" to believe it does. On what basis is that choice to be made?!
2003-05-18 17:37 | User Profile
Most refugees come to Maine in two ways: with the aid of Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement Services, or as "second-wave" immigrants ââ¬â people who came to another U.S. city first and chose to relocate to Maine. ---from MaineToday.com
Can someone explain why the Catholic church uses church funds from Catholic members to fund the importation of Muslims?
2003-05-18 18:54 | User Profile
Originally posted by Bardamu@May 18 2003, 11:37 **Most refugees come to Maine in two ways: with the aid of Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement Services, or as "second-wave" immigrants ââ¬â people who came to another U.S. city first and chose to relocate to Maine. ---from MaineToday.com
Can someone explain why the Catholic church uses church funds from Catholic members to fund the importation of Muslims?**
It has to do with ecumenism: Where the church "reaches out" to the other religions by altruistic behavior straight out of Macdonald. There is no quid pro quo involved here: The Catholics get nothing in return when they "reach out" to Jews and Moslems. The most they get are talking points the next time the Jewish secular press levels a charge of political incorrectness at them. The real bill is picked up by the American taxpayer, and those who have to share a neighborhood with Moslem Bantu tribesmen. Charles the Hammer where are you? But then even Martel had to forcibly tax the church for the funds to fight their own deadliest enemy.
2003-05-18 22:33 | User Profile
Ragnar wisely wrote this on another thread (http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?act=ST&f=14&t=7881&st=60&hl=):
**Given that whites are sheep, how does Linder's take on Christianity factor in?
Fairly OK, really. Despite his off-putting style, he's basically agreeing that when Euros join the flock, they become more docile and uniquely vulnerable. Old Europe took this vulnerability to heart and kept Jews out. New Europe has not. That's really all of it.
European elites found a pal in Jesus. He helps control the mob. But this comes with a high price tag: Jesus atomizes the masses and softens them up for any elite. As long as we had our own elite, okay, they watched our backs more or less. But an alien elite will not even do that.
The problem is not Jesus, it's our own traitor elite. As usual.**
Neo always says that ANY nation will end up run by an elite -- the trick is to make sure the ruling elite is YOUR elite! The Church is what Walter suggests should be the elite to run our nation in the future... But IS that "our" elite? For Walter and Octopod maybe; for MOST Americans, it is NOT.
And if, as Linder says, Christianity softens up the group for ANY elite to run (and I agree with him), then I don't think it's sufficient to say 'well, THIS time, the elite running us will be ours... WHO is now the preponderance of Catholics -- Africans and South Americans?! That's NOT our group!
2003-05-18 23:13 | User Profile
I've posted (what I think is ) a fascinating chapter from a book on the 'formation' of Christianity on the Linder and Christianity thread:
[url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?act=ST&f=14&t=7881&st=60&#entry40257]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...=60&#entry40257[/url]
2003-05-18 23:13 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@May 18 2003, 09:18 **[NN]: If your point is: join history's winners - then joining the Jews in the spirit of triumphalist collaboration is indicated.
[Walter]: Poppycock.ÃÂ The point is to devise a strategy that will win for whites, and NOT to surrender to our enemies.ÃÂ We've agreed that your god is a loser, so clearly then you are the one who is counseling despair and defeat by recommending him for your Cub Scout "pack."ÃÂ My God is the One Who inspired the Inquisition, and upon whose flesh I hungrily feed.ÃÂ That God is still and always shall be a vital force, because that God, unlike your own moribund Nazi scarecrow god, is Reality Himself.
[NN]: Is old Reality Himself a Jew?ÃÂ Has he any racial identity at all?**
This point requires further treatment:
The point is to devise a strategy that will win for whites, and NOT to surrender to our enemies.
We are already in the hands of our enemy - or hadn't you noticed.
We've agreed that your god is a loser, so clearly then you are the one who is counseling despair and defeat by recommending him for your Cub Scout "pack."
I am not "counseling despair and defeat" - I am acknowledging the circumstance. I am calling to the dispersed members of the Pack, so that they might come home - even though that home is under occupation.
My God is the One Who inspired the Inquisition, and upon whose flesh I hungrily feed.ÃÂ That God is still and always shall be a vital force, because that God, unlike your own moribund Nazi scarecrow god, is Reality Himself.
This is more of your bizarre promotion of the "my Daddy can kick your Daddy's ass" approach to ideological recruitment. This, I say again, is essentially the collaborationist's argument. At least Nazism is identifiable as and with White Nationalism - Catholicism rightfully is not and never will be. As soon as Catholicism outgrew its continental confinement, in confrontation with a people it could completely dominate, it violently imposed conversion on those racial aliens, putting the lie to the congruence of faith and race as more than a mere accident of demography and geography. Reality Himself as your god makes you a Pantheist, rather than a Catholic, Walter - and the Church, according to your own account, is the arbiter of what "god" is. One refers neither to "reality" nor to scripture, but to the Magisterium. Get with your own program, brother Walter.
Hugs and Kisses as always,
Neo :rock:
2003-05-19 12:44 | User Profile
You need to read some basic history, Avalanche.
The events you describe were not the Church's doing, but rather were caused by a collapse of Roman civilization and the invasion of pagan (and Arian) barbarians. The Dark Ages were an assault on the Church by the forces of darkness that the Church survived.
The Medival period was when Europe became great again. 13th century France was a sight to behold, a towering acheivement.
As an introduction may I suggest you read the very entertaining [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385418493/qid=1053347413/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-5146557-2066362?v=glance&s=books]How the Irish Saved Civilization.[/url]
**A Church-controlled corral-full of illiterate, filthy, and group-worshipping people is not REALLY a "unified racial and cultural whole," except in the sense of domesticated animals. **
Don't know where that came from. The Church built the schools and staffed the hospitals to serve these illiterate and filthy decendants of the pagan locust. The Church picked them up out of the dirt.
Did not the Renaissance -- when the Church LOST its stranglehold on the populace -- create the efflorescence of pan-european civilization? They all became "free" together? I guess joint 'capitivity' by the Church COULD be considered a melding function... but I wouldn't recommend it as a way to create a pan-white future!
The Church contained the Renaissance, Avalanche. It didn't happen outside the Church, as you seem to imply. All of the great minds of that age worked within the framework of the Church. Mistakes were made, of course, but the Renaissance happened only because the Church had done centuries of yoeman's work preparing for it. Do you include Michalangelo in your imagined filthy group? Who taught those geniuses to read? The fact is that everybody was a Catholic in the West. There was unity. The Renaissance was a Catholic thing.
I detect a certain amount of anti-Catholic brainwashing at work here. No shame in it, our culture is full of the stuff.
May I suggest that you read Hillaire Belloc's [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/089555464X/qid=1053347998/sr=1-8/ref=sr_1_8/104-5146557-2066362?v=glance&s=books]Europe and the Faith[/url], I think you'll find it enlightening.
Walter
2003-05-20 03:28 | User Profile
Walter: You need to read some basic history, Avalanche. Could be... I AM, after all, a product of American schools...
** The events you describe were not the Church's doing, but rather were caused by a collapse of Roman civilization and the invasion of pagan (and Arian) barbarians. The Dark Ages were an assault on the Church by the forces of darkness that the Church survived. The Medival period was when Europe became great again. 13th century France was a sight to behold, a towering achievement.**
Just as Christianity connived in the destruction of the Nazis, so they were involved in the destruction of Rome, yes? Not the main agents, but they helped push.. (If youââ¬â¢re saying the Devil was assaulting the Church... I canââ¬â¢t answer that! :lol: !)
And 13th century France was secularized to the point where the King of France could take the Pope hostage -- and then install his OWN Pope in competition with the Roman one! 13th century France, that towering achievement, was where the Papacy had LOST control.
** The Church contained the Renaissance, Avalanche. It didn't happen outside the Church, as you seem to imply. All of the great minds of that age worked within the framework of the Church. Mistakes were made, of course, but the Renaissance happened only because the Church had done centuries of yeoman's work preparing for it. Do you include Michalangelo in your imagined filthy group? Who taught those geniuses to read? The fact is that everybody was a Catholic in the West. There was unity. The Renaissance was a Catholic thing. **
Hmmm, and we could tell because all those great minds were either rebelling AGAINST the church or ducking and trying not to be excommunicated, tortured, and burnt? The fact that the Renaissance occurred nearby does NOT mean it occurred IN the Church!
2003-05-20 03:53 | User Profile
**The Medival period was when Europe became great again. 13th century France was a sight to behold, a towering acheivement.
As an introduction may I suggest you read the very entertaining How the Irish Saved Civilization.**
> I admire the writings of both TD and FWI. But whether or not they see your reasoning as "sound" isn't really relevant. Their brand of conservatism is dead and it is never coming back.**
Clearly on the decline, yes. But kaput, not yet, in spite of the best efforts of the managerial class, including a few on this forum.
[url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?act=ST&f=7&t=7834&st=40&#entry40526]Klan vs. Nazi's[/url]**
Reading threads like these gives true rebuttal to the assertion that traditional conservatism is dead. In the political sense its true, as Charlie Brown said once > **We might not win many ball games, but we have some interesting discussions B) **
2003-05-20 06:42 | User Profile
Originally posted by Avalanche@May 20 2003, 03:28 ** > Walter:ÃÂ You need to read some basic history, Avalanche. Could be... I AM, after all, a product of American schools...
** The events you describe were not the Church's doing, but rather were caused by a collapse of Roman civilization and the invasion of pagan (and Arian) barbarians. The Dark Ages were an assault on the Church by the forces of darkness that the Church survived. The Medival period was when Europe became great again. 13th century France was a sight to behold, a towering achievement.**
Just as Christianity connived in the destruction of the Nazis, so they were involved in the destruction of Rome, yes? Not the main agents, but they helped push.. (If youââ¬â¢re saying the Devil was assaulting the Church... I canââ¬â¢t answer that! :lol: !)
And 13th century France was secularized to the point where the King of France could take the Pope hostage -- and then install his OWN Pope in competition with the Roman one! 13th century France, that towering achievement, was where the Papacy had LOST control.
** The Church contained the Renaissance, Avalanche. It didn't happen outside the Church, as you seem to imply. All of the great minds of that age worked within the framework of the Church. Mistakes were made, of course, but the Renaissance happened only because the Church had done centuries of yeoman's work preparing for it. Do you include Michalangelo in your imagined filthy group? Who taught those geniuses to read? The fact is that everybody was a Catholic in the West. There was unity. The Renaissance was a Catholic thing. **
Hmmm, and we could tell because all those great minds were either rebelling AGAINST the church or ducking and trying not to be excommunicated, tortured, and burnt? The fact that the Renaissance occurred nearby does NOT mean it occurred IN the Church! **
Could be... I AM, after all, a product of American schools...
Me too. Reading is the remedy.
Just as Christianity connived in the destruction of the Nazis, so they were involved in the destruction of Rome, yes? Not the main agents, but they helped push.. (If youââ¬â¢re saying the Devil was assaulting the Church... I canââ¬â¢t answer that! :lol: !)
What in the world are you talking about? How did the Church assist the barbarians to overrun Rome? The Church was the only institution that offerred any resistance to the barbarians, for Heaven's sake.
Was St. Augustine helping the babarbians at the gates of Hippo as he lay on his deathbed? How about Gregory the Great - was he secretly working with the German barbarians? Your words betray a fundamental ignorance of history.
Of course the Church helped to bring down the Nazis, but what would one expect? This is all of a piece with their proud history of resisting barbarism. The Nazis were German pagans, not unlike the 5th century invaders who destroyed Rome.
See a pattern?
And 13th century France was secularized to the point where the King of France could take the Pope hostage -- and then install his OWN Pope in competition with the Roman one! 13th century France, that towering achievement, was where the Papacy had LOST control.
13th century France "secularized"?!!
Note that the whole unhappy episode that you refer to implicitly recognized the supreme importance of the Church and the office of the Papacy in the minds of the men of that time.
Hmmm, and we could tell because all those great minds were either rebelling AGAINST the church or ducking and trying not to be excommunicated, tortured, and burnt? The fact that the Renaissance occurred nearby does NOT mean it occurred IN the Church!
Nonsense. The great men of the Renaissance considered themselves Catholics, and indeed it could not be otherwise because at that time the Church and European society were almost c-extensive.
Again, you appear to have imbibed deeply the many calumnies heaped upon the Church by the Reformation. I urge you to look into the matter further.
I do not doubt that after cafeful consideration you will come to see the Church as the champion of Western Civilization and Naziism for the pagan and barbarian atavism it was.
Warmest regards,
Walter
2003-05-21 01:43 | User Profile
The Eastern Orthodox is an affront to Catholics. It is fundemeantally a racial divide which occured hundreds of years ago, and when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, there were Christians in those areas who rejected Roman rule because of base reasons. It has nothing to do with the Faith at all... in Faith, we are one and the same. Reality is one thing, the fake reality scientists of our time justify their paychecks with is another... The Orthodox Greeks are indeed our Brothers. But even their main Priest will tell you that he pales to the Pope. The Pope is the direct descendant of Saint Peter. Who are you to conjecture upon the correspondence in dreams they share ? Shut all your mouths and respect Holiness.
2003-05-24 20:34 | User Profile
Originally posted by Exelsis_Deo@May 1 2003, 18:42 ** that was meant for Bardamu, Anti-Yuppie. I was inscensed over the whimsicality which Christianity was discussed at the beginning of this thread. Historical fact ( not re-written neo-fact ) is evident, and when hundreds or thousands die as martyrs, they don't just do that for their health. The other tendency I abhor is the rejection of Christ by some White Power folk, who simply cannot believe that God would choose a descendant of David to become man for His Reasons. Bardamu was the main target of that lashing, I found his posts both self-centered and foolishly wrong. The lesser gripe was with the tendency to over-talk issues which do not need to be over- analyzed. **
You believe that god is a jew. I don't believe that god is. End of story.