Category Archives: Christianity

Douglas Murray CAN’T Say ‘Happy, Homogeneous Hungary,’ So I Did

America, Argument, Christianity, Conservatism, Democracy, English, Europe, IMMIGRATION, Nationalism, Neoconservatism, Russia, The West

British commentator Douglas Murray proves over and over again that the American right is gulled by utterly banal ideas, so long as they are expressed in posh English.

I give Douglas Murray top marks for English oratory. From there on, it’s downhill: His writing is not nearly as good as his speaking. Once a committed neoconservative, Murray’s ideas are now wishy-washy, safe, middle-of-the-road conservatism.

Tucker Carlson took a daring trip to Hungary. The pointy heads stateside frothed and foamed at the mouth—in the same way they fulminate over Putin and Russia.

Remix News, a central European news and commentary organization, reports that “Carlson, who’s widely regarded as the most influential figure on the American Right today, has endeavored to familiarize his American audience with the widely successful policies enacted by the [Viktor] Orbán government, policies the majority of conservative Americans would like to see introduced in the US.”

Via REMIXNews:

Establishment leftist outlets are using Carlson’s trip to propagate their usual disinformation against right-thinking people. Newspapers and outlets like The Washington Post, CNN, Vox, and Business Insider continue to make outrageous and unfounded claims such as: Hungary’s democracy is in terminal decline; freedom of the press in the country has not only been eroded but no longer exists; and that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has leveraged his position to enrich his political allies and do away with the independence of the country’s judicial branch.

But despite outwardly championing the rights of historically oppressed minorities and appearing, deceptively, to be on the side of righteousness and justice, Western liberal elites – i.e., Western governments, media, activists and intellectuals – are supporting Hungary’s opposition electoral alliance, the two largest parties of which are known for their open anti-Semitism and sympathy for, or membership in, the country’s communist party.

On an August 6 segment of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Murray claimed the West had turned on Hungary around the time the latter had rejected mass Muslim immigration, the kind of invasion Angela Merkel embraced, with tragic consequences for her countrymen.

That’s a typical Murray cop-out: State a comfortable, uncontroversial half-truth. The whole truth Murray would never come out with—for he probably doesn’t grasp it; and he mostly still wants to be welcomed into polite society.

The whole truth about why the progressive West hates Hungary is the one articulated in “Happy, Homogeneous Hungary:

And it’s not just that “enlightened” western media object to “Hungary exercising its right to self-determination.” No. The media treat the sight of fruitful, happy whites as they would an aberration, a plague. Freud would have called this western attitude Thanatos: “the personification of death.” This mindset is pathological, for Hungarians look beautiful, happy and whole.

A related truth never to be spoken by the likes of Douglas Murray is in “America’s Radical, Foreign-Policy Alinskyites Destroyed South Africa!

Hungary is oh-so happy in its homogeneity and wants to keep it. But not if Washington can help it. Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s motto is, “Procreation, not immigration.” Orban plumps for closed borders, and pro-Western, Christian, Hungarian-families-first policies. Yet his ongoing campaign against George Soros, an agitator for global government, was met by Donald Trump’s State Department with a stern rebuke to … Hungary claiming that its anti-Soros law will cost the country dearly.

Going Underground For God: A Liberty-Based Approach To Worship By Ron Strom

Christianity, COVID-19, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Healthcare, Private Property

“I caught COVID at church – praise God!”–Ron Strom

That’s a peculiar sentiment, I suppose – but one that expresses my gratitude for the opportunity I have had to worship with other Christians, maskless (shhh!), over the last few months, mindful of the risk.

Despite specific and quite arbitrary restrictions the governor of my (unnamed) state has demanded of churches, and the First Amendment implications of those rules, my own (unnamed) church decided to prioritize the Word of God over the word of the State. (By the way, do you remember when we didn’t need to hide information when we expressed opinions because our government overlords had far less power to hunt us down and punish us?)

While some churches in town were either shut down for in-person worship or were meeting but with nearly unworkable COVID restrictions, my church took a simple, liberty-based approach to in-person worship: The main room has no social distancing, and face masks are optional; another room, where the service is video-fed, requires masks and social distancing; and online streaming of the service is an option for those who choose to stay at home.

The church leadership, without consulting the latest restrictions from the governor’s office, made a decision that gave the people a choice of how to participate – while still having an in-person worship service every Sunday.

Could my pastor and elders have been fined or even jailed for defying the governor’s edicts for all this time? Sure – as was a pastor in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Pastor Jacob Reaume spent five weeks in jail for refusing to close his church. And this is “free” Canada we’re talking about – not China, Saudi Arabia or Eritrea.

By “obeying God rather than men” (Acts 5:29), Pastor Reaume, my local church leadership and countless other shepherds are faithfully prioritizing God’s Word and its command not to forsake meeting together (Hebrews 10:25).

At my church, the “no-distancing-mask-optional” room, not surprisingly, is more popular than the “social-distancing-masks-required” room. So, are all those maskless worshipers irresponsible or even foolish, as the “experts” might claim? Or, rather, are they doing what everyone does every day when it comes to weighing risks and benefits and making decisions accordingly? The latter approach is what Americans had the liberty to do in many contexts – before COVID.

If you go to the grocery store, for example, you take a risk. You might slip on some spilled guava juice on the floor and crack your tailbone; you might have a store employee accidentally roll over your foot with one of those heavy-duty carts; you might suffer a spider bite from a bold arachnid hiding in the green bean bin; or you might catch a virus from another shopper, even SARS-CoV-2.

I knew the risk of worshiping close to other Christians, but decided to take that risk. I knew the risk of inhaling and exhaling in unison with other Christians as we sang praise to God, but decided to take that risk. I knew the risk of looking a brother in the eye – and, maskless, in the nose and mouth – greeting him and offering a firm handshake and smile, but decided to take that risk.

Despite the risk and despite my having endured COVID-19 after taking that risk, I would do it all over again. For me the gathering of God’s people in weekly worship and fellowship is too valuable an activity to put on the shelf for months on end. And the beauty of liberty is that other people can choose to do otherwise. Others can take different risks to participate in other activities, church-based or not. It’s called living life.

While I mentioned Christians’ struggles in Canada, we’ve also experienced some high-profile battles here in the U.S. Pastor John MacArthur has waged a consistent, admirable and successful war to keep his congregation worshiping in California, and, shockingly, a pregnant mother was cited and removed from a church recently for failing to don a mask … in Dallas, Texas.

So, why do I praise God that I caught the virus at church? Because, unlike so many, I had the opportunity to take the risk to worship corporately with the Body of Christ, and in that activity God has blessed me immeasurably. Unlike the leaders of the church in Dallas, those leading my church decided to gather in a way that respects their people, their responsibilities and, most importantly, their God. And for that I am most grateful.

*****

I caught COVID at church – praise God!” was published here with permission from the author (also my editor, since 2006).

Ron Strom is commentary editor of WND, a post he took in 2006 after serving as a news editor since 2000. Previously, he worked in politics. @RonStromWND

UPDATED: It’s All So Emotional: The Origins Of Our Degenerate, Therapeutic Culture

Christianity, Culture, Pop-Culture, Pseudo-intellectualism, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Religion

The media scrum had framed the Trump impeachment circus round II as an “emotional” affair.

Over and over again did the word “emotion” inform reporting, appear on the lips of legislators,  and culminate in an “emotional” catharsis in the Chamber, where the “affected” representatives told a captured audience how they suffered.

Where did this sick therapeutic culture originate? Where else but in America.

I recalled reviewing a book, in 2005, when London’s Jewish Chronicle was a serious magazine. What a relief it was, then, to learn that Jewish thinkers didn’t herald the therapeutic age, a fact that emerges from Andrew Heinze’s outstanding Jews and the American Soul.

In his examination of “why [between 1890 and 1945] psychology became a booming cultural industry, outstripping theology and philosophy as a guide for a literate mass audience seeking advice on how to live”, Andrew Heinze, a scholar, established that “America’s Protestant heritage yielded a powerful American interest in personal development and a massive audience for popular psychology”.

The rationality of the Enlightenment had come under fire from movements espousing mysticism, romanticism, and the occult. The ascendancy of “the psychological interpretive mode” between the 1880s and the 1920s was compatible with Christianity.

The new psychotherapies “had the drama of faith-healing”; the new psychotherapists, true to their Protestant heritage, spread the faith with evangelical zeal.

What do you know? In searching for an image to accompany this blog post, I came across what looks like a work of scholarship that affirms the Anglo-American origins of these leanings as well as the coercive, manipulative nature of the “therapeutic imperative”:

Therapy Culture explores the powerful influence of therapeutic imperative in Anglo-American societies. In recent decades virtually every sphere of life has become subject to a new emotional culture. Professor Furedi suggests that the recent cultural turn toward the realm of the emotions coincides with a radical redefinition of personhood. Increasingly vulnerability is presented as the defining feature of people’s psychology. Terms like people ‘at risk’, ‘scarred for life’ or ’emotional damage’ evoke a unique sense of powerlessness. Furedi questions the widely accepted thesis that the therapeutic turn represents an enlightened shift towards emotions. He claims that therapeutic culture is primarily about imposing a new conformity through the management of people’s emotions. Through framing the problem of everyday life through the prism of emotions, therapeutic culture incites people to feel powerless and ill. Drawing on developments in popular culture, political and social life, Furedi provides a path-breaking analysis of the therapeutic turn.

UPDATED: A fair point is made by our reader in the Comments Section. I am, however, making a philosophical, or theological, point about Judaism as opposed Christianity. Judaism is more legalistic. The supernatural, mysticism, romanticism, and the occult are more compatible with Christianity than with the rationalist morality of Judaism.

 

UPDATED (2/7/020): If Only American Jews Didn’t Forget Just How American They Are

America, Christianity, Founding Fathers, History, Judaism & Jews, Multiculturalism, The South

Unlike Muslims, Jews truly were in America during the founding. The proper metaphor for the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, America’s founding faith, is that of parent and progeny. Yet, self-anointed Jewish leadership has managed to cast Jews as a mere faction among the American, multicultural noise machine, a position lefty Jews relish.

Why? And how dumb.

Just how old and established is the American Jewish community?

Sephardic Jews settled in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (later New York) in 1654.

Mordecai Sheftall, a hero of the American Revolution, was descended from the British Jews who had settled in Georgia in 1733. Sheftall was “the highest ranking Jewish officer of the Colonial forces.”

To the Jews of America, George Washington promised peace and goodwill in a 1790 address to a synagogue congregation in Newport, Rhode Island.

Northern Jews took part in the tax-on-tea protests, while their Southern brethren joined them in opposing colonial mercantilism. Three thousand Jewish men fought in grey uniforms for the Confederacy. Why, Jews even had a Confederate colonel, Abraham Charles Myers.

UPDATED (2/7/020): Indeed, as Luigi advises, let us not forget Judah Benjamin.

Judah P. Benjamin was Secretary of State for the Confederacy. Southern Jews fought with great valor against Lincoln’s einsatzgruppen.