From
Chalcedon Position Paper No. 114, October 1989
Revolution, Counter-Revolution, and Christianity
by R. J. Rushdoony
Other men recognized the failure of the revolution, and of the counterrevolution. For them, Christianity was not an option. Civilization, as they saw it, needed a new foundation. In this, they agreed with the French Revolution. Two men who were deeply concerned over this issue were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle. Both had abandoned orthodox Christianity. Emerson, in “Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England,” wrote of the new generation of men “born with knives in their brains, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, (and) anatomizing of motives.” These men with knives in their brains put the knife to Christianity. Emerson and Carlyle had seen the removal of Christianity from the center of their own being. Even among conventional Christians, faith was less and less the dominant force in their lives. God’s law was giving way to the state’s law.
Emerson and Carlyle were not as radical as men like Karl Marx, Max Stirner, and Friedrich Nietzsche, although “Carlyle did love destruction for its own sake, the attraction was mainly esthetic” (Kenneth Marc Harris, Carlyle and Emerson [Harvard University Press, 1978], p. 116). As far as ideas were concerned, their premises were very radical. Man and history replaced God and Christ in their thinking (ibid., p. 117ff.). For Carlyle, the hero, and for Emerson, the power of man and his character replaced the power of God (Robert E. Spiller and Wallace E. Williams, eds., The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 3, 1838–1842 [Harvard University Press, 1972], pp. 243–244, 276–277, etc.).
Conservatives place far too much faith in Mighty Men.
The consequences of this mistake vary between the comedic (when God shows us unearned mercy) and horrific (when God gives us well-earned wrath).
As counterrevolution developed into conservatism, its premises, despite a sometimes pious façade, became as humanistic as those on the left. Both revolution and counterrevolution, right and left, had become humanistic and explicitly or implicitly anti-Christian. Because the churches are themselves all too often infused with humanism, they have been little disturbed by these developments.
National indignation should have been aroused when it became known that, during the Reagan presidency, homosexual prostitutes and their customers were at times given private, guided tours of the White House. One wealthy homosexual in particular had much power among Republicans (Gary Potter, “GOP Homosexuals: The Reason Why ‘Social Agenda’ Gets Nowhere?” The Wanderer, July 20, 1989, pp. 1, 8). John Lofton wrote in the Washington Times (July 31, 1989) about another prominent Republican who had raped and sodomized a teenaged intern, and in another case, was convicted but given a suspended prison term for a savage five-hour rape of a young woman. A prominent conservative publisher berated John Lofton for writing against a Republican! Apparently only Democratic rapes are bad.
Well, at least John F. Kennedy wasn’t a rapist, as far as I know.
And of course, he had the entire media corps to protect his adultery.
How things change… not.
- The Left pushes forth evil:
- the Right consolidates, baptizes, and deeply roots the evil:
- the Left pushes forth onto new evil.
Well, sometimes the Right is the one pioneering new forms of oppression and perversion, and the Left is the one consolidating and protecting the filth. “It depends on who can do the greatest damage while reaping the biggest reward.”
You don’t see any Democrats standing up against the Patriot Act, or Nixon’s War on Drugs, now do you? How… unsurprising.
“Why you are still blathering on about the Patriot Act? That was 20 years ago! The time for more emergencies and more chains is today!”
As any COVID-hysteric would demand.
In the meantime… those old chains still need to go. Regardless of when they were slapped on our necks and our wrists.
Barack Obama rode a wave of bipartisan resentment into office in 2008, then spent eight years betraying the public. Obama’s assault on civil liberties, including his use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush. He accelerated the war on public education by privatizing schools, expanded the wars in the Middle East, including the use of militarized drone attacks, provided little meaningful environmental reform, ignored the plight of the working class, deported more undocumented people than any other president, imposed a corporate-sponsored health care program that was the brainchild of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, and prohibited the Justice Department from prosecuting the bankers and financial firms that carried out derivatives scams and inflated the housing and real estate market, a condition that led to the 2008 financial meltdown. He epitomized, like Bill Clinton, the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party. Clinton, outdoing Obama’s later actions, gave us the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the dismantling of the welfare system, the deregulation of the financial services industry and the huge expansion of mass incarceration. Clinton also oversaw deregulation of the Federal Communications Commission, a change that allowed a handful of corporations to buy up the airwaves.
The Silencing of Dissent by Chris Hedges
As quoted by Gary North, in The Real Reason for the Media’s Attack on Russia
Ah yes, the President Obama that carefully did nothing to stop the War on Drugs, or the War on Terror, or even punish those responsible for the destruction of Black American wealth during the Housing Bust and it’s liar loans.
But eagerly backed whatever pervert projects a tiny sliver of elite intelligentsia desired.
OK, back to Rushdoony:
The rot runs deep, not only in the body politic but in the churches. Too many churchmen are too busy warring against each other, or waiting for the Rapture (due in eighteen months, I was told today), and being generally irrelevant to know what is happening all around them.
The institutional church will be utterly worthless in this fight.
Just as she has always been, for the last 300 years.
And just as she desires to always be.
But do not fear: worthless, uncaring, craven servants in positions of authority will receive their just due.
Just don’t be counted as one of them.
Pay the price for victory.
Acrosss the Stars 