I have recently come across several blogs worthy of consideration. The first is What's Wrong With the World: Dispatches from the 10th Crusade, found here. Any blog with a Byzantine double eagle on its masthead gets my attention. Their Statement of Purpose follows:What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: The Jihad and Liberalism. We are happy warriors, for our defense is motivated primarily by gratitude for what our ancestors bequeathed to us. We are hardly what the world calls “optimists,” for our sense of the crisis of our age is robust indeed; but despair is among the more fashionable sins today, and our hostility to it, too, is implacable. We put not our trust in princes, but stand on the Solid Rock, against which neither the tyranny of the Crescent nor the blank negations of Liberalism shall prevail.
Jihad is the Islamic doctrine of aggressive war waged with the purpose of subjugating all non-Islamic peoples to the political and legal authority of Islam. It covers virtually all manner of crime with the shield of piety by blessing massacre, plunder, enslavement and treachery if these are judged necessary in the cause of Allah. There is nothing like it in Christian civilization. Its roots lie in the very antiquity of Islamic civilization, and though it is surely true that not all Muslims have committed themselves to Jihad, it is also true that the doctrine is at least latent in all Islamic societies. As such, it stands as an inevitable threat.
Liberalism is a more obscure doctrine to define. Its grounding, we believe, lies in the assertion of Man’s sovereignty over his own nature and destiny, his brazen defiance of God. In political philosophy its mark is the reduction of all things to some strictly materialist standard, whether openly atheistic or more subtly economic. It collapses the mystery of Man’s dualistic nature. Christianity has taught us, in the common maxim, that man is in the world but not of it. Liberalism posits that he is emphatically of it; and by its logic even the worth of human life is made subject to the whims and calculations of worldly interest. The reductionism also issues in a deep antipathy for natural distinctions of any kind; Liberalism in the end renders men incapable of judgment.
All the world is darkened by these terrible falsifications of the nature of Man and the duty he owes his Creator. For solace we look not to the morbid optimism of the world, but to a hope which was ably captured in a statement of the man from whose short book we shamelessly take our own title, who by his great “metaphysical intuition of being” penetrated to the heart of these falsifications. His words were these: “The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.”
Jihad is the Islamic doctrine of aggressive war waged with the purpose of subjugating all non-Islamic peoples to the political and legal authority of Islam. It covers virtually all manner of crime with the shield of piety by blessing massacre, plunder, enslavement and treachery if these are judged necessary in the cause of Allah. There is nothing like it in Christian civilization. Its roots lie in the very antiquity of Islamic civilization, and though it is surely true that not all Muslims have committed themselves to Jihad, it is also true that the doctrine is at least latent in all Islamic societies. As such, it stands as an inevitable threat.
Liberalism is a more obscure doctrine to define. Its grounding, we believe, lies in the assertion of Man’s sovereignty over his own nature and destiny, his brazen defiance of God. In political philosophy its mark is the reduction of all things to some strictly materialist standard, whether openly atheistic or more subtly economic. It collapses the mystery of Man’s dualistic nature. Christianity has taught us, in the common maxim, that man is in the world but not of it. Liberalism posits that he is emphatically of it; and by its logic even the worth of human life is made subject to the whims and calculations of worldly interest. The reductionism also issues in a deep antipathy for natural distinctions of any kind; Liberalism in the end renders men incapable of judgment.
All the world is darkened by these terrible falsifications of the nature of Man and the duty he owes his Creator. For solace we look not to the morbid optimism of the world, but to a hope which was ably captured in a statement of the man from whose short book we shamelessly take our own title, who by his great “metaphysical intuition of being” penetrated to the heart of these falsifications. His words were these: “The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.”
Another is the official website of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, found here. Srdja Trifkovic is a frequent contributor, which speaks well for the site.
Finally, anyone out there who has spent any time at all trying to sort out the late 12th-century Comneni--the emperor Manuel I Comnenus, his kinsman the later Andronicus I Comnenus, his favorite mistress and cousin Theodora Comnena, her uncle Isaac, the Governor of Cyprus, their cousin, the emperor Isaac I Angelus, etc., etc., etc. will just looove this site.
4 comments:
Yep, I must agree that the two great global evils, which must be watched by a double-headed Eagle indeed, are Islamic Jihadism and Materialistic Liberalism.
But more poignantly, IMHO, only Orthodox Russia appears to have the 'stones' to fight against both (Putin recently came to the Church and kick Jihadism hard in Chechnya).
Indeed, Western Christendom seems to be succumbing to both evils at a rapid rate. The USA and EU are rapidly completing the secularization and materialization of the West, and the Western Churches are either collaborators or to weak to resist.
Of course, I only anoint Orthodox Russian as the "temporary" leader in the struggle against global evil, as the ultimate solution lies in the Second Coming, of course.
I agree with your assessment of Orthodox Russia, though down here we say "cahones."
And this was exactly the point Spengler was making in an article I cited back on 1 March 2007, when he said, "The Europeans are the emasculated remnant of a fallen civilization; for better or worse, the Russians still are real men."
In light of this, I can't tell you how frustrating it is here in the US, where our political leaders--GOP and Dems alike--still think that Russia is the enemy.
And for those of us who get too wrapped up in all this, your last point is, of course, the only solution.
"The Europeans are the emasculated remnant of a fallen civilization; for better or worse, the Russians still are real men."
Bingo!
Back in the day, Charles Martel may have had giant cajones, but each successor to the Karling Franks has progressively deteriorated in the cajones department -- the Holy Roman Empire to Enlightenment Europe to to the EU and NAFTA . . .
In contrast, Orthodox Russian has endured conquest and horror and come through with both manhood and authentic Christianity in tact (I believe the later is the key to the former).
Many years for the Third Rome!
As a pinko liberal (and proud of it) I'm not sure I agree with that.
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