Christianity And White Guilt

Christianity, English, History, Race, Religion, The West

White guilt is a Christian affliction. Not for nothing did Edward Gibbon saddle Christianity with the downfall of the Roman Empire.

Gibbon is the genius who wrote the 12 volumes that make up “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” [1776].  ( I read the 1943 version, which was “condensed for modern reading.”)

Gibbon brought upon himself the wrath of “bishops, deans and dons”—not to mention that of Dr. Johnson’s biographer, James Boswell. Boswell called Gibbon an “infidel wasp” for “the chapter in which he showed that the fall of Rome was hastened by the rise of Christianity.”

And indeed, Gibbon seems to point toward Christianity’s self-immolating, progressive nature, remarking on the courting by early Christians of criminals and women.

Willson Whitman—he wrote the 1943 Foreword to the abridged version—remarks on how “Gibbon outraged the Christians of his era by suggesting the ‘human’ reasons for the success of Christianity … Among these reason [Gibbon] noted that Christianity … attracted to its ‘common tables’ slaves, women, reformed criminals, and other persons of small importance [his words]—in short that Christianity was a ‘people’s movement of low social origin, rising as the people rose.”

I wonder: If to go by Gibbon, can Christianity be called the Social Justice movement of its day? Gibbon seemed to suggest so.

 

 

The ‘Demographic Decline’ Argument For Mass Immigration

Argument, IMMIGRATION, The West, Welfare

The “demographic decline” argument, in the context of the immigration S.O.S, has been used as an excuse to swamp—and weaken—native European populations. From the fact that a nation isn’t breeding to some state-set, desired level—it doesn’t follow that said nation “deserves” to be swamped with better breeders.

Mark Steyn used to be a proponent of this non-argument. I dissected his fallacy in “Beck, Wilders, and His Boosters’ Blind Spot”:

I am told that I don’t understand Mr. Steyn of the dooms-day demographics. So I listened to his “End of Europe” lectures, in which he vividly describes the multitudes of Muslims going forth to North America and Western Europe to be fruitful and multiply and push for Islam. Their Pan-Islamist identity trumps their new assumed identity. Because of numbers, Mark asserts, History is on the march in the Muslim direction. By 2030 much of what we think of as the developed world will be part of the Muslim world.

Here Steyn hits a brick wall. Other than making babies at home and total war abroad, he proposes nothing much at all. Oh yes, if you’re not already fighting (futilely, in my opinion) in Iraq and Afghanistan, you can show your marbles by publishing offensive cartoons, making rightwing movies, and writing right-wing text.

The “One-Man Global Content Provider” is wrong. Demographics need not be destiny. The waning West became what it is not by out-breeding the undeveloped world. We were once great not because of huge numbers, but due to human capital — people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy.

Declining birth rates?and their antidote; the mass immigration imperative?are the excuses statists make for persevering with immigration policies that are guaranteed to destroy western civil society and shore up the State.

If, as Wilders and Steyn contend, “Islam is a problematic religion; every school of Islam is basically at its core jihadist; and the religion is much closer to a conventional imperial project than to a faith” ? its religionists must be kept out. State-engineered mass immigration must be halted.

Yes, postmodernism, political correctness, and relativism hobble the West. Post-colonialism, however, affords it the opportunity to redraw the frontiers at the borders. This is the Wilders project. It has yet to be embraced fully by his American boosters. As Steyn has openly conceded, “For a notorious blowhard, I can go a bit cryptic or (according to taste) wimpy when invited to confront that particular subject head on.

When he cops to being “wimpy,” Steyn means on immigration. He and others are latecomers to the immigration S.O.S.

NEW COLUMN: Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ At 20 — Still Overrated Snoozer

Art, Celebrity, Culture, Film, Sex

In “Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ At 20,” I revisit my original review of the classic cult film and come to that same conclusion, it’s an Still Overrated Snoozer. The column, “Was Kubrick’s Iconic ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Ever Sexy?,” can be read on WND, Townhall.com Entertainment, and on The Unz Review, which now surpasses The New Republic and The Nation in traffic.

Excerpt:

Stanley Kubrick’s last film, “Eyes Wide Shut,” turned 20. I had reviewed it for a Canadian newspaper, on August 9, 1999, and found it not only pretentious and overrated, but quite a snooze.

This flick is the last in a series of stylized personal projects for which the director became known. Given the mystique Kubrick acquired or cultivated, this posthumous flop is unlikely to damage the legend.

For all the film’s textured detail, its yarn is threadbare and its subtext replete with clumsy symbolism. The screenplay consists of labored, repetitive and truncated dialogue, where every exchange involves protracted, pregnant stares and furrowed brows. “I am a doctor,” is Tom Cruise’s stock-in-trade phrase. An obscure, campy, hotel desk clerk delivers the only sterling performance. This is cold comfort considering the viewer is stuck with over two hours of Tom Cruise’s halfhearted libidinous quests.

“Eyes” is really a conventional morality play during which Cruise prowls the streets of New York in his seldom-removed undertaker’s overcoat, in search of relief for his sexual jealousy. Cruise’s jealousy is aroused by a fantasy his wife—played by then real-life wife Nicole Kidman—relays in a moment of spite, and involves her sexual desire for a naval officer she glimpsed while on holiday with their family. So strong was her passion, she tells Tom, that she would have abandoned all for this stranger.

The confession follows a society party the couple attends in which they both flirt unabashedly with others. Again, the sum total of the dialogue here consists in back-slapping guffaw-inducing genuflection to doctorness. We are treated to a grating peek at Kubrick’s view of the professional pecking order, a view which is reinforced when Cruise makes one of his house calls to a patient whose father has just died. The woman, body writhing like that of a snake in coitus—is this method acting?—throws herself at Cruise. Sex and death commingle in one of the many larded, symbolic moments in the film. The woman’s fiancé, the geek math professor, is depicted as a lesser mortal than the handsome doctor. ….

 

… READ THE REST. The column, “Was Kubrick’s Iconic ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Ever Sexy?,” can be read on WND, Townhall.com Entertainment, and on The Unz Review.

* Image courtesy E-Online.

By Blowing A Hole In Fox News, President Trump Does Deplorables A Tremendous Favor

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Journalism, Media, Nationalism, Republicans

With the exception of Tucker Carlson, who is a national treasure, Fox News has always been a mouthpiece of establishment Republicanism. This translates into the promotion of corporate cronyism and Koch-oriented views, a wishy-washy, shallow perspective on mass, unfettered immigration; capitulation to the forces of feminism and militarism; flippancy about nationalism, the natural world, as well as about all matters racial.

My own book of Trump, “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed” (June 29, 2016), elaborated on and praised The Process of Trump. It’s not so much what the president says, but how Trump, a political Samson, has pried open the American establishment for all to see, ugly entrails and all.

Fox News is establishment. Via The Hill:

Trump lashed out in a trio of tweets after a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) appeared on “America’s Newsroom.” The president cited her interview; the employment of former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile; Juan Williams, who is also a columnist for The Hill; and anchor Shepard Smith to claim the network is biased against him.

“Just watched @FoxNews heavily promoting the Democrats through their DNC Communications Director, spewing out whatever she wanted with zero pushback by anchor, @SandraSmithFox. Terrible considering that Fox couldn’t even land a debate, the Dems give them NOTHING!” Trump tweeted.

Trump blasted the network as “HOPELESS & CLUELESS” for hiring Brazile, Williams and Smith, each of whom have criticized the president at various times.

“They should go all the way LEFT and I will still find a way to Win — That’s what I do, Win. Too Bad!” Trump continued. “I don’t want to Win for myself, I only want to Win for the people. The New
@FoxNews is letting millions of GREAT people down! We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!”