Category Archives: History

Who destroyed Western Civilization?

Asks Paul Craig Roberts.

His answer:

I once offered this explanation:

The liberals’ stress on social purification flows from an inconsistency in the intellectual foundation of Western civilization.  The Enlightenment had two results that combined to produce a destructive formula.  On the one hand, Christian moral fervor was secularized, which produced demands for the moral perfection of society.  On the other hand, modern science hammered epistemology into a critical philosophical positivism that is skeptical of the reality of moral motives.  From the one we get moral indignation and from the other, moral skepticism.  How can two such disparate tendencies be reconciled?

The answer seems to be that this inconsistent combination is held together by their joint attack on existing society.  One pre-empts existing society’s defense, while the other focuses moral indignation against it.  Together, they support a social and political dynamism that seeks to achieve progress by remaking society.

Affirmations of society’s achievements run into this dynamism, which mows them down with skepticism and indignation.  People who are motivated by moral purposes  find that they have a safe outlet only in accusations of immorality against existing society, and the West’s morality becomes immanent in attacks on itself.

Others, such as Richard Knight, believe Western civilization was destroyed by German Jewish cultural marxists whose march through the institutions discredited every institution of Western civilization. I don’t disagree that this has occurred, but I think Cultural Marxism is itself a product of the inconsistency in the Western intellectual foundation that I described. 

It seems unlikely that the West’s intellectuals can escape the destructive dynamism of moral indignation and moral skepticism.  When civilization is destroyed, nirvana is not standing ready to take its place.  The replacement is barbarism into which we are already descending.

How Inflation Poisoned Our Food

Video interview (54 min) that Tom Woods conducts with Matthew Lysiak.

Description:

Matthew Lysiak discusses the various interests that combined to substitute cheap, fake food for the real food Americans used to eat. A key driving force: trying to conceal the effects of inflation on food prices by persuading Americans to consume cheap — and, it turns out, unhealthy — alternatives.

Government and Science: A Dreadful Mix

Tom Woods interviews Terence Kealey

“In one of the strongest episodes of this show ever (see also here), Terence Kealey, professor emeritus at Buckingham University and a research fellow of the Cato Institute, makes a stunningly powerful case for the separation of science and state.”

Here is an article by Kealey on the same subject:

Governments Need Not Fund Science (at Least, Not for Economic Reasons)

From the conclusion of the above:

The evidence that governments need not fund science for economic reasons is overwhelming, and it is ignored only because of self‐​interest: the scientists like public funding because it frees them to follow their own interests, companies like it because it provides them with corporate welfare, and politicians like it because it promotes them as patrons of the public good (witness Bill Clinton’s leading the celebrations over the mapping of the human genome.) So the empirical evidence is ignored in favo r of abstract theories.

There are, of course, non‐​economic reasons, such as defense or the study of pollution, why a government might want to fund science (and a democratic polity, moreover, might not wish to be dependent only on private entities for its expertise in science) but in this document I cannot pronounce on these non‐​economic justifications for the government funding of research: only democratically‐​elected representatives have that competence. Here I can make only the technical argument that there is no credible evidence that governments need fund science for economic reasons.

But we can nonetheless note that in his own farewell address (known for its regrets for the “industrial‐​military” complex and for the “three and half million men and women directly engaged in the defense establishment”) Truman’s immediate successor as President lamented the effects of the federal government’s funding for science. He lamented the effects on the universities:

In the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery … a government contact becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment … is gravely to be regarded.

And he also lamented the effects on the federal government itself:

We should be alert to the … danger that public policy could itself become captive of a scientific‐​technological elite.

And here is another:

Don’t Be like China: Why the U.S. Government Should Cut Its Science Budget

“The Western World Is Now a Tyranny”

Writes Paul Craig Roberts (emphasis in the original):

America’s reputation as “the land of the free” is rooted in the Anglo-Saxon legal and political tradition, not in diversity and multiculturalism.  Law as a shield of the people instead of a weapon in the hands of rulers is a British achievement that Britain’s American colonies inherited.  It was the accomplishment of a specific ethnicity known as Anglo-Saxon. Bringing rulers to the same accountability to law as the lowest peasant was a centuries-long process beginning with Alfred the Great in the 9th century and culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1680.

In this legal tradition law is based in the customs and mores of the people, not on edicts issued from rulers,  government bureaucrats, regulatory agencies, and activist judges.  Obviously, this conveys an ethnic basis to law.  A Tower of Babel–the fate of all diminishing white countries today–has no common customs and mores and no basis for law other than rulers’ edicts enforced by power.

Throughout the Western World today the people have lost the protection of  law as a shield and suffer under rulers who wield law as a weapon. In the United States today demonstrators and rally attendees are turned into “insurrectionists” and sentenced to prison.  Even US President Donald Trump is being subjected to four fake felony prosecutions in order to prevent him from being elected president.

[. . .]

In my book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions published 23 years ago, I pointed out that “law and order conservatives” enabled government to set aside protective aspects of law in order to easier and more certainly convict the Mafia, drug users, child abusers–whoever the target was at the specific time.  I said that the law that is set aside in the interest of easier conviction is also set aside for the rest of us who are not Mafia, drug and child abusers, and that this conversion of law into a weapon would destroy nine centuries of Anglo-Saxon accomplishment in shielding people from arbitrary prosecution by rulers.

This has now happened.  The British who created civil liberty and the Americans who inherited it have lost the protection of law.  

“Law and order conservatives” determined to incarcerate criminals,  “patriotic conservatives” anxious to protect “national security” from “the Muslim threat,” and  woke ideologues determined to demonize and even criminalize white people as racists, while overrunning the ethnic basis of their countries with  immigrant-invaders, together brought about the destruction of law as a shield of the people.

[. . .]

You can see the lawlessness everywhere in the US and its Western puppet states.  A British journalist was arrested for exposing the despicable Trudeau applauding a member of the Nazi SS.

American parents are arrested, even beaten, for protesting at school board meetings that their kids are being brainwashed that they are racists and their daughters are being sexually assaulted in rest rooms by males claiming to be transgendered females despite still having the male sexual apparatus and lusts. 

[. . .]

William Blackstone wrote that weaponized law is tyranny and that when executive power weaponizes law, it is incumbent upon Parliament to impeach and punish the conduct of the government’s “evil and pernicious counselors.”  The US Congress has taken no such steps, which means the legislature has abdicated its responsibility and assented  to the establishment of tyranny.

The Empire of Lies has deep-sixed William Blackstone’s “rights of Englishmen” embodied in the US Constitution as the Bill of Rights.

[. . .]

In the framework of Identity Politics imposed on us by liberals and the Democrat Party, the inculcation of hate is the most important element.  Hate is inconsistent with objective law.  There can be no hope for a rule of law until Identity Politics is purged and unity among the people restored.

Interesting quote from Charles Darwin

In his "Journal of a Voyage Round the World", he praised Christian culture and the work of missionaries.

In his book “The Mission of God” (Wilberforce Publications, London 2016), the author Joseph Boot quotes Darwin. On page 381 of that book, he introduces the quote thus:

On his world voyage on the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin, despite his growing agnosticism and deistic religious confusion, found himself unable to overlook the profound impact of Christian missionaries in Tahiti and the Pacific Islands. In the first work he ever wrote, before the implications of his theory gripped and ruled him, Darwin’s Christianized background caused him to rain praise on the evangelical missionary.

There follows this quote, which, according to the endnote, is from

Charles Darwin: Journal of a voyage round the world (London: T. Nelson and Sons, Paternoster Row, 1890), 496-947.

This is it:

It appears to me that the morality and religion of the inhabitants are highly creditable. There are many who attack … both the missionaries, their system, and the effects produced by it. Such reasoners never compare the present state with that of the Island only twenty years ago, nor even with that of Europe at this day; but they compare it with the high standard of gospel perfection … [T]hey forget, or will not remember, that human sacrifices, and the power of an idolatrous priesthood – a system of profligacy unparalleled in any other part of the world – infanticide, a consequence of that system – bloody wars, where the conquerors spared neither women nor children – that all these have been abolished, and that dishonesty, intemperance, and licentiousness have been greatly reduced, by the introduction of Christianity. In a voyager to forget these things is base ingratitude; for should he chance to be at the point of shipwreck on some unknown coast, he will most devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary may have extended thus far … [T]hose who are most severe should consider how much of the morality of the women in Europe is owing to the system early impressed by mothers on their daughters, and how much in each individual case to the precepts of religion. But it is useless to argue against such reasoners; – I believe that, disappointed in not finding the field of licentiousness quite so open as formally, they will not give credit to a morality which they do not wish to practice, or to a religion which they undervalue, if not despise. 

NATO Chief Openly Admits Russia Invaded Ukraine Because Of NATO Expansion

Writes Caitlin Johnstone:

During a speech at the EU Parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Thursday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg clearly and repeatedly acknowledged that Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine because of fears of NATO expansionism.

His comments, initially flagged by journalist Thomas Fazi, read as follows:

The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.

So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.

Stoltenberg made these remarks as part of a general gloat about the fact that Putin invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO expansion and yet the invasion has resulted in Sweden and Finland applying to join the alliance, saying it “demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he’s getting the exact opposite.”

Stoltenberg’s remarks would probably have been classified as Russian propaganda by plutocrat-funded “disinformation experts” and imperial “fact checkers” if it had been said online by someone like you or me, but because it came from the head of NATO as part of a screed against the Russian president it’s been allowed to pass through without objection.

In reality Stoltenberg is just stating a well-established fact: contrary to the official western narrative, Putin invaded Ukraine not because he is evil and hates freedom but because no great power ever allows foreign military threats to amass on its borders  —  including the United States. That’s why so many western analysts and officials spent years warning that NATO’s actions were going to provoke a war, and yet when war broke out we were slammed with a tsunami of mass media propaganda repeating over and over and over again that this was an “unprovoked invasion”.

Continue reading here.

Interview with Rvd. Dr. Joseph Boot

Author or The Mission of God

Boot was recently interviewed by Revelation TV.

Here are my notes:

How do we address the culture we’re living in?

JB: In the Western World, the objections to Christianity have been changing. 27 or so years ago, the focus was still on questions such as “does God exist”, “what about evil and suffering”, “is Jesus the only way to God”. Objections have changed, in university, media etc, people are not literate in theological points to ask these questions any more. The challenges are now civilizational. Christianity is deemed imperialistic, colonial, oppressive, anti-choice, misogynistic, transphobic etc. These are the kind of questions the pagan world asked Christians in Augustine’s time. He in turn wrote as an answer to these questions the tome “The City of God”.

We need a cultural apologetic to the challenges of our time.

The challenge to Christianity now is that Christianity itself is deemed evil.

What we’re facing now is radical de-Christianisation, it’s a revolutionary movement. It began in Europe with the French Revolution, which was the political expression of the philosophy of the enlightenment. Reason leading to the autonomy of man. Existence precedes essence. We’re not image-bearers of God, we are merely a choice, standing on the edge of the abyss. Everything’s about me. Then there was the neo-Marxist movement, the Frankfurt School which gave us Critical Theory, everything is socially constructed. The male Christian is the oppressor. The oppressed must become the oppressor.

The opposite movement to that has been the retreat of the church.

The Ezra Institute is trying to put some backbone back into the church. What does it truly mean to be a Christian? Great Commission. We’ve retreated from externalising the faith. Culture is religion externalised. We’ve left the various institutions of cultural life to the forces of secularism, humanism and paganism. We’ve sent our children to Caesar to be educated and are shocked that they return as Romans.

We’ve reduced Christianity to personal salvation and neglected that we pray “Your Kingdom come, your will be done ON EARTH as it is in heaven”. We’ve surrendered Jesus’ Lordship over all life.

The temptation for the church has always been to be synthesised with the culture around it. This happened when the pagan elites became Christianised. They wanted to synthesise their culture. Roman Catholicism was a synthesised culture. Then the Reformation came along. And with that the rediscovery that Jesus is the king of kings. Meaning that in economics, law, education, political life, in the arts etc. we must bring to bear the claims of the Lord Jesus.

What we’re saying in the West now is that we like the fruits of Christendom: Freedom, the rule of law, economic prosperity, peace and stability, etc. But we don’t want the root, which is Christ. We thought we could retain those things without the Gospel of Jesus Christ and submission to his word. We’ve been living off the energy of Christendom for a long time. We now find the Christian capital so eroded we’re in a crisis spiritually.

What principle markers should we be looking for in the path to recovery?

We need to recognise that Jesus is not just our saviour, but also our Lord. Christ is not just redeemer, he is also creator. He is Lord over all areas of life, not just in the church and a little bit in the family.

Our situation is like in a double-decker bus. Where in the upper deck we do the spiritual disciplines. In the lower deck we have the “secular area” which can be governed by the neutral forces of reason. Problem: That’s where the driver is. And it’s driving off a cliff. Paul says be transformed by the Holy Spirit and present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

That means take off that upper deck altogether. Just have one deck. It’s called the Kingdom of God. No area of life is outside the Kingdom rule and reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We’ve lost the Christian life view. Human existence is in every area a response to the Word of God. You can’t have Christian action if you don’t have Christian thinking. Young, enthusiastic Christians who want to do something end up doing things with are “Karl Marx baptised” or some other world-life view sprinkled with some Christian name. We’ve got to recover a Christian world and life view so we can act and live Christianly.

We’re currently not the salt and light of the culture.

There’s the elements of Prophet, Priest and King. It’s the King element that’s missing. My father was told “we shouldn’t be interested in property”. He said: “Well the devil is.”

Every square inch of the universe is contested between Christ and the Enemy. People want to stay on the mountain, have the sort of monastic life. No, you have to come down from the mountain and deal with the boy possessed by an evil spirit.

Jordan Peterson on Canada and the West in general

In this 25 minute video interview with a journalist from the Telegraph, he says, among other things, that the predictors of “left-wing authoritarianism” are: 1. low verbal intelligence, 2. being a woman, 3. having feminine traits, 4. having taken part in a “political correctness” course.

The traits of such people are the “dark tetrad”: 1. narcissism, 2. Machiavellianism, 3. psychopathy and 4. sadism,

There is always a small number of psychopaths, about 3 percent, in every society. If they rise to 5 percent, people realise there is a problem (“we have to beat back the snakes”) and they beat them back. If they fall to 1 percent, people lose their guard and become “too nice”, which the psychopaths exploit, so they grow back again to 3 or more percent.

We’re in a post-Christian era. He also talks about Covid, climate change and “group rights” (which are an oxymoron because there is no such thing as group responsibilities).