First Principle About America; First Questions

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2020 elections, Bureaucracy, Business and economy, Elitism and Class, race and culture, Religion

Homo neanderthalensis by Thomas Vogt-Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0) [Brain volume up to 1750cc (Homo sapiens average 1270 cc) LWL Museum of Natural History, Münster, Germany]

Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills

Is America an accident? A freak of Nature?  Or, is America the product of Intelligent Design?

I don’t intend to try to answer the second half of that question here as that requires an inquiry into philosophy and theology. But by the longest list of scientific and common sense proofs, I think I can say without equivocation that America is no accident. We cannot be a freak of Nature. So you can sort of figure out the rest yourself.

This is something we no longer teach our children, but we are unique.

Now, scholars (intellectuals) for the past 200 years have had no problem ignoring this question, for they think it’s a trick question, which does not really require an answer. If they reply that Yes, America is a freak, then the obvious response from the trickster asking the question is: Then why has America survived so long? In nature almost all mutations quickly die out. They can rarely survive into a second generation, much less a third.

And America is into somewhere around its 118th generation of de facto self-governance, while, before the 1787 Constitution, there is no recorded history of a real nation (bigger than a tribe) ever making it past one. (Agreed, also prior to 1787, almost all history was written by “scribes of the kings”, the real name for “historians” for millennia, so there could have been dozens of nascent self-governed peoples who were simply squished, or gobbled up by a next-door invading king, only they were too small and insignificant to rate a page in the “annals of the king” being prepared by his historians.)

In fact, the archaeological record of pre-dynastic Egypt suggests this is how several tribes of farm people in the Nile region slowly morphed into an organized hierarchical “corporation”, with a chairman of the board king, a head priest, and every other person in the realm owing some duty to them. Subjects.

The Egyptians and a few other empires in a region from the eastern Mediterranean to the Indus Valley (India) started this process of “civilization” about 3000 BC, 5000 years ago. And they did many wondrous things, especially building things that for generations for centuries could; i.e. monuments to themselves, which was their purpose[…]

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ICYMI:

• Earth Day, April 22, 1970, the Biggest Hoax Russia Ever Perpetrated on America

First Principles- First Impressions About America

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2020 elections, America-as-Founded, Education, Elitism and Class, Immigration, millennials, race and culture, Religion

The Death of Moses, as in Deuteronomy 34:1-12, Bible card published 1907 by the Providence Lithograph Company (cropped) Source: Wikimedia Commons

Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills

Anyone, anywhere, who hears the name “America” already has a first impression about America; either positive or negative. It doesn’t matter if he/she is 18 or 80, and located anywhere in the world.

If abroad those impressions are a mixture of street talk, music, films, and of course, relatives who may have traveled there or live. One man from one village can go to America, and everyone in that valley has a impression of America that no government can conceal.

I knew such a family from Dayton whose father had come to America from a village in Slovakia before WWII, taking work in a steel mill. He left a wife and son back home. Just before the war he went back to bring his wife to America. But he had to leave his 6-year old behind with relatives to secure the family lands. Once in America, Papa and Mama Miluks started a new family, his youngest son my best friend for many years from the Army. In the late 1970s, while on duty in Germany, he was allowed to travel to Slovakia and meet his eldest brother and see the village and old home place, and of course, take gifts. When I visited his family in Dayton Mama Miluks showed me the special place she kept all her letters from her son, who she had not seen since 1940. But those letters! She wrote many-paged reports every week for over 40 years, giving a weekly account of things going on with his papa and brothers and sister, learning quickly to never speak of certain things, for by ’46 the Communists had moved in and her letters were first read and redacted by postal censors, cutting all references to the availability of consumer goods commonly available in America, especially food. Her son, in turn, would reply with heavily redacted letters. He would die in the early 1990’s of the general poor heath common to socialist countries so was never able to join his family. He never met his other two younger brothers or sister. And of course his last personal memory of his parents was when he was 6.

But I am quite sure every adult in that village had clear impressions of America because of Mr Miluks, who went to America.

I tell this story because one, it’s true, and two, it is, next to the Christian’s ideal of Heaven, an impression of America as a place that one has never been and most wants to go, which cannot be duplicated anywhere else. I have met people in several countries and four continents, including Palestinian Arabs (on an overnight sleeper in Russia) and from all I hear basically the same thing, “If only I could go to America.”

(This is not what we are seeing today on our southern border, by the way, so I won’t take this discussion in that direction, although just 30-40 years ago, down there, where I also lived, this was a common refrain, “If I can only get to America.” I deal with this subject in an upcoming conversation about Assimilation, which should be a topic of policy discussion if we can ever get fully in charge or our government again.)

So, abroad, America is viewed through two entirely different prisms, divided by two classes: 1) the political class and 2) all the rest[…]

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The Internet and Satan’s Game by Bishop Robert Barren

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Covington Catholic High School, Gestapo tactics, Progressives war on Christians, Religion, Religious Persecution

Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills

(If you like what Bishop Barren has said here, please go to the Catholic World Report, and give them and Bishop Barren an attaboy. He has provided an important link to understanding the structural phenomenon we’re encountering, which is the strategy, plowing the row, so to speak, of a new type of  authoritarian government through Gestapo tactics, as with the establishment of the Third Reich in the early days of Hitler, employed BEFORE their new kind of government is actually installed. Alinsky also had this in mind. This is not a Soviet-style strategy.

(A big difference, and it matters that we know in advance what sort of Evil we are confronting, for if it is to preempted, we have to launch the preemption ourselves. We cannot rely on government until we also plow the row.)

By now the entire country has seen a video of a supposedly racist confrontation, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, between a grinning young high school student and a Native American elder, chanting and beating a drum. The immediate and ferocious judgment of the internet community was that the boy was effectively taunting and belittling the elder, but subsequent videos from wider angles as well as the young man’s own testimony have cast considerable doubt on this original assessment. My purpose in this article is not to adjudicate the situation, which remains, at best, ambiguous, even in regard to the basic facts. It is to comment, rather, on the morally outrageous and deeply troubling nature of the response to this occurrence, one that I would characterize as, quite literally, Satanic.

When the video in question first came to my attention, it already had millions of views on Facebook and had been commented upon over 50,000 times. Eager to find out what this was all about, I began to scroll through the comments. They were practically one hundred percent against the young man, and they were marked, as is customary on social media, by stinging cruelty. As I continued to survey the reactions, I began to come across dozens urging retribution against the boy, and then dozens more that provided the addresses and email contacts of his parents, his school, and his diocese. I remember thinking, “Oh my goodness, do they realize what they’re doing? They’re effectively destroying, even threatening, this kid’s life.”

At this point, my mind turned, as it often does today, to René Girard. The great Franco-American philosopher and social commentator is best known for his speculations on what he called the scapegoating mechanism. Sadly, Girard maintained, most human communities, from the coffee klatch to the nation state, are predicated upon this dysfunctional and deeply destructive instinct. Roughly speaking, it unfolds as follows. When tensions arise in a group (as they inevitably do), people commence to cast about for a scapegoat, for someone or some group to blame. Deeply attractive, even addictive, the scapegoating move rapidly attracts a crowd, which in short order becomes a mob. In their common hatred of the victim, the blamers feel an ersatz sense of togetherness. Filled with the excitement born of self-righteousness, the mob then endeavors to isolate and finally eliminate the scapegoat, convinced that this will restore order to their roiled society. At the risk of succumbing to the reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy, nowhere is the Girardian more evident than in the Germany of the 1930s. Hitler ingeniously exploited the scapegoating mechanism to bring his country together—obviously in a profoundly wicked way[…]

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Character, a Search for Humility

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character, race and culture, Religion

Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills

(With Postscript)

Is it a sign of less character  to be vain? How about excessively vain?

Is it sign of low character to be arrogant? Or just excessive arrogant?

Is it a sign of low character to display condescension toward others? To look down one’s nose?

What if we don’t wear condescension on our sleeve, but only think it about another? Is that an act of less character in ourselves? Do we decide based on how they are dressed, where they are located, or wait til they speak?

Is it a sign of low character to brag? Even when the bragging is true, as it sometimes is?

When is bragging excessive, and when is it just socially acceptable self-promotion.

Is it a sign of bad manners to be blunt? Excessively blunt?

Are bad manners always a sign of less character, or, as Mark Twain once said of profanity, “sometimes provides a relief denied even unto prayer.”?

So, what about the use of foul language, then? Some words are gross and foul anywhere, others taboo everywhere. Blasphemies, no matter where uttered, carry their own set of penalties, (at least people of faith believe) but also carry their own largely private rules of repentance. No one else’s business.

What about locker room talk, whether recorded (probably evidentiary) or repeated (hearsay always) but only to prove another element of an offense, in this case, low character?

Is it an act of low character if I laugh at a dirty joke? Or merely stay in the room and listen?

What words are commonly used today, in conversation, blogging, and Twitter, that were once believed to be indicators of low character? Does their use today convey the same sentiment about character?

Make a list of words you believe to be exceedingly bad and which indicate low character, then compare with friends.

In measuring character. do you use a different measuring stick depending on the way a person is dressed? Or speaks, Ya’ll.

From the featured image, if Mona Lisa had had four drinks, would you think differently about Mona’s character?

What about the jokester who profaned Da Vinci’s masterpiece? Bad character? Bad taste? Or just clever?

Is draft-dodging a sign of low character? (A hindsight observation, since there has been no draft in close to 50 years, and virtually no person alive under 60 who can tell us much about what the draft really was, what it really meant to draft age young men.) (Apparently Wikipedia doesn’t either.)

Is draft dodging an act of low character or an act of conscience? Can it be both? Apparently the Left thinks it’s both, to be applied selectively by a political measuring stick. Does our side do likewise?

Was it an act of low character to be in favor of the War in Iraq? Against?

After 911 enlistments to fight Terrorism did not increase? Indifference to American security? Laziness? Simpatico with the Terrorists? Are any of these a sign of lessening cultural patriotism and a general lessening of national character?

40 years ago, people who were divorced once were considered to be of lower character on that account alone. Mostly men. Now, not so much. Since divorces have not been aired out in public as to cause for at least 40 years in most jurisdictions; infidelity, (once believed to be an act of low character, and still a sin, for those of you who read), alcoholism, infertility, (inability to produce children), just couldn’t get along, poor provider, there is no way to know what today, if any, acts of low character might have broken the marriage[…]

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What Donald Trump has not Done, But Can, and Should Do

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Bureaucracy, Constitution, Democratic Party, Elitism and Class, President Donald J. Trump, Religion

Woodrow Wilson’s sheep grazing on White House lawn to reduce grounds keeping costs during World War I, c. 1917. Source: Library of Congress (digital. id. hec.10788)

Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills

Needed: A Forty-Year Legacy

Donald Trump has broken down major barriers simply by being elected president.

In the greatest sense of the term, his election was “historic” for it represented the first time in many generations that the people of the United States, as was always their power to do, reached up and took charge of their government despite all the urgings, warnings, and finally, direct opposition from the people who had carved out a very comfortable existence inside government as the self-appointed managers for the people.

That took both courage and wisdom by the people.

How Donald Trump even got the opportunity to be allowed to take on this job is a story unto itself. But from the citizens’ perspective instead of the government class’s point of view, it was simply a matter of the people invoking a power that had always belonged exclusively to themselves, to throw down an entire government.

Call it our “nuclear option”, only it had laid dormant for so long the government class had almost forgotten we had it.

A little history: For the first half of America’s existence, to around Reconstruction, nearly a century, the people didn’t need to use this nuclear option simply because everyone in government knew the people had it, and would likely use it, so minded their P’s and Q’s.

I call that our Classic Era, when the federal government was dirt poor and the federal payroll consisted of a few clerks, customs agent and the post office, which didn’t even print its first postage stamp until 1847.

After the Civil War, for a variety of reasons; industrialization, massive immigration of poor European laborers, and the attendant rise of a government class to tend to both, by the end of the 19th century, a growing state class took shape, which began to believe this nuclear option wasn’t safe in the hands of the people. In an evolutionary process natural to all bureaucracies, if allowed to survive that long, the state class began to believe the people no longer possessed this power of the nuclear option[…]

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The Canons of Conservatism, “Those Other Guys”, and the Veterans, A Preamble

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Communist Agenda, Conservatism, Constitution, Democrats, Education, Elitism and Class, military and veterans, Progrerssives, Religion, Veterans, Veterans' Tales

The twelve Apostles receiving inspiration from the Holy Spirit and composing the Creed Illumination by Somme_le_Roy_f.10v – Date: 1295 (Wikipedia)

Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills

William F Buckley, Jr. was the founding figure of modern conservatism in America. He wrote God and Man at Yale when he was 25, and wrote many books afterward until he died in 2008.

But he had an extra dimension which seems to have been lost on the newer generations of conservatives, which I’ll discuss here.

In 1960, at age 35, in his home, WFB and several other “founders”, penned the Sharon Statement, which became the founding statement of the Young Americans for Freedom, (the YAF) which went on to become the central conservative campus organization for over 50 years.

I never joined, as I was not a conservative in my college days.

It was not until 1964, and the Goldwater campaign, that I became aware of Mr Buckley, who was then still not yet 40, 4 years younger than my dad, who subscribed to National Review that year and sent back- issues to me every few weeks or so.

By the time Ronald Reagan was elected, and I was 35, I had been a conservative for only four years, but never disagreed with National Review in all those earlier years about conservatism, just still holding onto my own brand of “Civil Rights liberalism”.

Like many liberals of my generation, my error was in believing government could do good things, which, later reading and real-life experience proved to me was wrong-headed and that the Founders knew exactly what they were doing when they designed government small, and left the people in charge.

In 1976 I had my Road to Damascus moment while in the Army, during the Ford-Carter campaign. I read a Mary McGrory column in the Arizona Republic where she stated (and I paraphrase) that “Modern Liberalism stands for the proposition that all human conduct should be subject to the political process.”

At that instant I ceased being a liberal, and never looked back.

The Sharon Statement, which I link here, while aimed at defining the YAF, is essentially the Canons of Conservatism. Virtually every conservative, including #NeverTrumpers, would agree with it, if they’d bother to read it.

So I recommend every millennial and Gen X’er to do just that.

But in 1960 it was written for college students who already possessed a core set of principles that inclined them to see threats to democracy, internal and external, and the freedom found in free markets and the uniqueness of America in the first place[…]

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