Tradition v. Truth: How to Restore without Going Backwards

Pedro Gonzalez introduced me to Samuel Francis, and from there I read his fantastic book Beautiful Losers.

Francis predicted what I have been witnessing for the last eight years, and what President Donald Trump busted up: “Conservatism” has been corrupted into a libertarian lightweight controlled opposition, abandoning the fundamentals of our nation’s identity, integrity, and idiosyncrasy.

Samuel Francis predicated the rise of “Middle American Radicals” and the populist, America-First pushback against managerial elites and globalist implications. Ron Paul fretted as far back as 2007 about the rising soft fascism in this country, in which conformity would be the rule, and non-government organizations would impose speech codes and other repressive measures against those who did not conform to the will and wishes of the elite. But Francis called out the corporate dominance long before that.

Francis’ most salient observations arise from his essay Beautiful Losers in the same-named book that he published in 1993. He called out the frequent failure of the Conservative movement to win the culture war. He pointed out how Conservatives had incorporated the Gestalt of Liberalism, in which individual liberty is the only salient feature, while culture and constitutional concerns were brushed aside. Francis correctly exposed the “neoconservatives” as the neo-liberals that they really were. Sure, they did not like the rising crime rates and plummeting test sores in the inner cities. Yet they still held onto the multicultural, affirmative-action dogma which created those problems in the first place.

To his incredible credit, Francis called out the tacit alliance of liberals and conservatives to focus on fighting communism and promote individual liberty, which in turn turned into a betrayal of true constitutionalism, Judeo-Christian conservatism, and America-First nationalism.

William F. Buckley articulated conservatism thus:

“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!’, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

Samuel Francis pointed out who the Left and other liberal interests had conveniently found ways to get around the Conservative Crank shouting “Stop!”, all while praising Mr. Stop Sign’s political convictions. Even though conservatives opposed abortion, homosexual marriage, gun control, economic restrictionism, socialism, and Marxist groupthink in the colleges, all the major institutions in our culture, community, and country have given into these forces.

Yes, conservatives need to yell “Stop!” but they also have to actually stop the nefarious elements causing harm when they don’t stop. And Francis called them out on it.

Hence, the mess we find ourselves in today, a mess which President Trump, with his Francis-Buchanan populist instincts began taking the first steps to clean up.

Samuel Francis’ thinking is making a comeback and for good reason.

He also needs to make a comeback to remind us why he disappeared, and why it made sense at the time that he went away.

Samuel Francis predicted the populist backlash to the managerial elites ruining our country.

He was absolutely correct to call out America’s growing investment and involvement in foreign wars. He was critical of the First War in Iraq, and his criticism would have aptly applied to George W. Bush’s second invasion of Iraq in 2003, which he lived to see, but not end.

He was also right to question the cult-like adherence that had cropped up around Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement as a political hegemony. Civil rights has really turned into “civic privilege” handed out by government entities, and in too man cases undermines true natural rights.

But Samuel Francis would later write:

“What we as whites must do is reassert our identity and our solidarity, and we must do so in explicitly racial terms through the articulation of a racial consciousness as whites.”

I find this statement patently offensive. More importantly, though, it’s based on abject falsehood. Dinesh D’Souza exposed these remarks and other thoughts from white-nationalist aligned individuals when he attended white nationalist Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance

What is a “white racial consciousness” anyway? Did the guy not study the Civil War? The United States was 90% white in 1861, and the country descended into a fractious, fearsome civil war, one which cost more American lives than all other American military involvements combined! White nationalists, or white racialists will argue: “That’s what happens when you have people of a different race in your country! It causes nothing but trouble!” However, most of these armchair (or should I say “Booster-Seat”) historians forget that blacks were voting citizens in some of the colonies and the states. They supported the ratification of the United States Constitution, as well.

Getting rid of all the black, Hispanic, and Asian people is not going to solve any problems. Human nature and its propensity to faction is deeply-rooted enough, that no matter how homogenous one makes a community, there can be still emerge bases for strife and conflict.

Such is the genius reflection of our Founders (read The Federalist Papers), and of the United States Constitution which James Madison basically wrote in full.

I see a similar problem with Pat Buchanan, whose populist, America-First pugilism was widely vindicated during the Trump Administration.

Except on a few points.

1.     Pat Buchanan had a relentless anti-Zionist strain in his writings and commentary. Who can forget his abortive remarks on The McLaughlin Group: “If you want to know ethnicity and power in the United States Senate, 13 members of the Senate are Jewish folks who are from 2 percent of the population. That is where real power is at….”

 To his credit (?), Buchanan doesn’t bitch and moan about Israel anymore.

2.     Buchanan literally asserted in one of his books that the reason for America’s cultural decline is that Catholics no longer recite the Latin Mass. Seriously? In Vatican city, Latin is the official language, and yet the current Pope is the most aggressive, ostentatious Marxist not just in the Holy See, but on the Italian Peninsula.

3.       There is a stunning picture that Gen Z populists love to share: Pat Buchanan wiping an old-fashioned rifle with a portrait of Robert E. Lee looking down on him, like some corrupted form of the Godhead.

On this point, I find particular analysis needed. What is it with these populist nationalist types and their lionizing hagiography of the ante-Bellum South?

Most people are not aware of this, but many of the poor Southern whites opposed the Secession movement. Many of them were too poor to own slaves, nor did they really want to. They were frequently ignored by politicians, who served at the beck and call of plantation interests while ignoring the public interest. From the 1860 secession convention of South Carolina until the final four states felt compelled to secede due to military campaigns in their own backyards, there was a considerably unionist sentiment  through the region. Even slave owners like Sam Houston opposed secession, and Confederate rebels deposed him for standing with the United States.

In one of the most neglected subjects of US History, besides the existence of black and American Indian slaveowners, there was the wide and diverse set of white Southern unionists or anti-Secessionists.

The “Southern” way of life was not just anti-black, but it was anti-white, and most importantly anti-American. Southern slave interests are a mirror image of the rapacious corporate globalists who put profit ahead of the well-being of the people. Slaveowners and plantation owners rushed 11 states into civil war to protect their own narrow corporate interests: owning people for cheap labor and enriching themselves, even though their plantation program ruined the ground, ruined the economy and hurt poor Southern whites as well as blacks. The “War Between the States” was not about honor, it was not about “restrictions on the federal government.” It wasn’t even about states’ rights, although millions of Southerners have been fed a pack of lies for decades telling them to look up to the plantation ancestors and the soldiers who did their corporate bidding.

Nationalist populists like Pat Buchanan and Samuel Francis hate eternal foreign wars and foreign forays, they hate corporate raiders putting GDP ahead of GOD, and they are definitely your “America First” archetype commentators, and yet they praise “Southern culture.”

When they talk about Southern Culture, they are talking about the aristocratic class-oriented, stratified societies which emerged through the plantation system, I would imagine.

These same southern planters and classy aristocrats whom they lionize, who defined much of ante-bellum South, were the very political, managerial class whom Buchanan and Francis railed against in Modern America.

The “Slave Power” was a globalist operation. They often plotted with politicians and other scurrilous elements to conquer other countries and turn them into extensions of their plantation program of greed.

Clearly, these Southern plantation elites were NOT America First, since they had no problem launching a Doomed-To-Fail Secessionist movement, and with that effort organizing and enforcing some of the harshest conscription and commandeering regions in the United States. American citizens witness their wealth and worth wasted away by Confederate generals and soldiers, ordered by puppeteer-politicians to take everything from them for “the cause.”

That same kind of thinking animated much of the discussion over the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush Administration, and even going as far back as World War One, in which another genteel Southern, President Woodrow Wilson, justified America’s entry into the European conflict to “make the world safe for Democracy.”

But the real question is: why do compelling thinkers and commentators like Pat Buchanan and Samuel Francis lionize an element of people in American History who were the antithesis of their political philosophy? Why does their political advocacy for putting America first and foremost while supporting a more isolationist foreign policy also lend itself to a subtle or over white nationalism?

The regressive left and their corporate media acolytes will charge that “America First” or “Domestic Focus on the United States” and “Foreign Policy Isolationism” are inherently racist. In other words, the fall for the same lazy thinking as Francis and Buchanan themselves.

I cannot offer a systematic explanation, but I will hazard one educated guess as to why there are these conflicting advocacies among nationalists and populists: the focus on Tradition as the catch-all answer to everything, rather than looking for a truthful synthesis to the data before them in the historical record.

Human thought tends to aggregate a set of propositions under one label, then wants to answer all the other policy, personnel, and fundamental questions under the same label. If you see yourself as a nationalist and a populist, then you have to support welfare for American citizens only, for example. Yet government subsidy of any kind harms the very people it claims to help (read Charles Murray’s On Losing Ground for more information).

Some nationalist-populist types are pushing for minimum wage increases, government-run healthcare (Medicaid expansions or even single-payer programs) because they want the government to “serve the people.” However, making the people dependent on the government only serves … the government, or the people who are running the government. The lack of thinking on these matters is really disturbing!

This same kind of sloppy thinking induces nationalists and populists to look at old traditions, the “Southern Way of Life,” and decide: “Why can’t we go back to the way things used to be?”

But why would we want to go back to everything the way it used to be? The technological advances of today did not exist then. There is so much research and discover that we have now, that did not exist in the past. Let’s consider a well-known quote from The Preacher in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.” (Ecclesiastes 7:10)

Buchanan and Francis seem to think that going back to a time when the nation was “majority white” would be better for the country, since there were fewer problems. They confuse skin color for culture, and they misplace national identity and borders for the common glue which held the United States together. This kind of thinking is sloppy, mistaken, and just plain wrong.

There are many things about the United States of America’s fundamental, credal heritage. The United States is a country based on the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition, the Judeo-Christian heritage, and Constitutional Republicanism. Indeed, we need to restore those values, but they are not “white values,” and restoration is not an invitation to go backwards, but rather to move forwards and improve this country.

If we want to stop The Revolution of 1917 or George Orwell’s 1984, we need to restore the Spirit of 1776! Pat Buchanan and Sam Francis, and other nationalist-populist types, lost touch with that fundamental verity.

Revisiting Reaganism with George F. Will, Fifteen Years Later

Time to move on from Reagan,
wrote George F. Will as far back as 2007

Right before President George W. Bush's administration ended, George F. Will told conservatives that they needed to move on from Reagan.

Sadly, he didn't accept that the movement voters wanted meant Trump: a nationalist, populist, more isolationist foreign policy which focused on American citizens, stopped mass immigration (legal and illegal), and stopped with the reckless, globalist agenda-setting spending.

Will's call to move on from Ronald Reagan was published in 2007:

George F. Will:Conservatives must temper worship of Reaganism

WASHINGTON — In this winter of their discontents, nostalgia for Ronald Reagan has become for many conservatives a substitute for thinking. This mental paralysis — gratitude decaying into idolatry — is sterile: Neither the man nor his moment will recur. Conservatives should face the fact that Reaganism cannot define conservatism.

Reagan is dead, and Reaganism is dead. He met many of the challenges facing the country during the 1980s, and he scored a significant win in consigning international communism to the ash heap of history.

Today, the United State is looking at a harsher fate if We the People do not tackle the domestic marxism infecting our schools, universities, and other institutions.

That is one lesson of John Patrick Diggins' new book, "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom and the Making of History." Diggins, a historian at the City University of New York, treats Reagan respectfully as an important subject in American intellectual history. The 1980s, he says, thoroughly joined politics to political theory. But he notes that Reagan's theory was radically unlike that of Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservatism, and very like that of Burke's nemesis, Thomas Paine.

Burke believed that the past is prescriptive because tradition is a repository of moral wisdom. Reagan frequently quoted Paine's preposterous cry that "we have it in our power to begin the world over again."

This notion of "beginning the world again" would re-emerge with Barack Obama. Sadly, the change that he thought he would bring would be nothing more than corporate elitism spitting on the needs of everyday Americans. Reagan cared about America, he loved the American people, but the domestic issues we face today cannot be solved by the Reaganism of yesterday.

Diggins' thesis is that the 1980s were America's "Emersonian moment" because Reagan, a "political romantic" from the Midwest and West, echoed New England's Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Emerson was right," Reagan said several times of the man who wrote, "No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature." Hence Reagan's unique, and perhaps oxymoronic, doctrine — conservatism without anxieties. Reagan's preternatural serenity derived from his conception of the supernatural.

George Will depended way too much on quotes. What a distraction!

Putting aside the stylistic problems, Will does drill down a deeper issue: conservatism without anxieties. The truth is that every human being should be in tune with the Laws of Nature and Nature's God. This repository of natural law defines and embeds the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. 

We want the Laws of Nature to be crystal clear to every American. Then would they be restored to the cultural and legal heritage of this country. So, for this part I find Will's criticism a little unfounded.

Diggins says Reagan imbibed his mother's form of Christianity, a strand of 19th-century Unitarianism from which Reagan took a foundational belief that he expressed in a 1951 letter: "God couldn't create evil so the desires he planted in us are good." This logic — God is good, therefore so are God-given desires — leads to the Emersonian faith that we please God by pleasing ourselves. Therefore there is no need for the people to discipline their desires. So, no leader needs to suggest that the public has shortcomings and should engage in critical self-examination.

I disagree with this take. The Scriptures could not be clearer regarding human direction and will in conjunction with God's will and desires:

"12Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." (Philippians 2:12-13)

Diggins thinks that Reagan's religion "enables us to forget religion" because it banishes the idea of "a God of judgment and punishment." Reagan's popularity was largely the result of "his blaming government for problems that are inherent in democracy itself." To Reagan, the idea of problems inherent in democracy was unintelligible because it implied that there were inherent problems with the demos — the people.

Human nature is flawed as well as fulsome, no doubt about that. Human nature does need to be limited, not expanded upon. This notion of human expansion and cheery optimism led to higher spending during his administration, with no real interest in tackling the massive debt that has only grown much, much worse over the last forty years.

There was nothing — nothing — in Reagan's thinking akin to Lincoln's melancholy fatalism, his belief (see his Second Inaugural) that the failings of the people on both sides of the Civil War were the reasons why "the war came."

It's essential for a president to rally and cheer up the citizenry, certainly, so I do not believe that a president should beat down on the national electorate exclusively. There is room, and much need, for course corrections among the people, no doubt. There is a fallen aspect to human nature which cannot be ignored, of course, for for that reason the United States Constitution instituted so many checks and balances on political power.

As Diggins says, Reagan's "theory of government has little reference to the principles of the American founding." To the founders, and especially to the wisest of them, James Madison, government's principal function is to resist, modulate and even frustrate the public's unruly passions, which arise from desires.

See above.

"The true conservatives, the founders," Diggins rightly says, constructed a government full of blocking mechanisms — separations of powers, a bicameral legislature and other checks and balances — in order "to check the demands of the people." Madison's constitution responds to the problem of human nature. "Reagan," says Diggins, "let human nature off the hook."

"An unmentionable irony," writes Diggins, is that big-government conservatism is an inevitable result of Reaganism. "Under Reagan, Americans could live off government and hate it at the same time. Americans blamed government for their dependence upon it." Unless people have a bad conscience about demanding big government — a dispenser of unending entitlements — they will get ever larger government.

There is a great deal of truth to this indictment. Reagan did not cut the spending, and he only slowed the growth of government. Today, forty years after the last inflation crises under President Jimmy Carter, the American public is enduring the long-term cost and consequences of printing money ad libitum.

But how can people have a bad conscience after being told (in Reagan's First Inaugural) that they are all heroes? And after being assured that all their desires, which inevitably include desires for government-supplied entitlements, are good?

Barack Obama would echo similar sentiments during his 2008 campaign and into this first and second inaugural. The cheery optimism that treats human beings as basically good, while the government and the environment are the truly flawed features, will create nothing but problems for true constitutional governance.

Similarly, Reagan said that the people never start wars, only governments do. But the Balkans reached a bloody boil because of the absence of effective government. Which describes Iraq today.

George Will was a vocal opponet of the War in Iraq, as was John McLaughlin and a number of other paleoconservatives. Strangely enough, George Will hated President Trump, who was the first President in thirty years to keep the United States out of war and scale back American military commitments around the world!

Because of Reagan's role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Diggins ranks him among the "three great liberators in American history" — the others being Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt — and among America's three or four greatest presidents. But, says Diggins, an Emersonian president who tells us our desires are necessarily good leaves much to be desired.

It depends on what the desires are, and it depends how individuals push to realize those desires. If people want to use the government to fulfill their desires, they will find and create nothing but frustration. After Reagan, we have yet to see a Republican President who has been committed to cutting the spending and shrinking the size and scope of the state.

Will Trump follow through, should he get re-elected in 2024?

If the defining doctrine of the Republican Party is limited government, the party must move up from nostalgia and leaven its reverence for Reagan with respect for Madison. As Diggins says, Reaganism tells people comforting and flattering things that they want to hear; the Madisonian persuasion tells them sobering truths that they need to know.

The American people have many sobering truths to face, like the fact that demographic demise, via births and mass immigration, is hurting the structure of the country. The excessive spending due to the reckless entitlement promises must come to an end. 

Reagan said that government is the problem, but he never stopped growing that problem. The next generation of leaders and representatives in Washington DC and around the world will have to get used to saying NO to lobbyists, grifters, and consultants, and say NO to growing government.

Human nature needs a heavey dose of NO at this time, now more than any other, and Reaganism cannot provided that needed check and balance.

Pizza Hut is Dying: So What?

Jack Posobiec went on a Twitter storm about the decline and fall of Pizza Hut in the United States.

He also showed the flourishing franchise in China, compared to its slow, zombie-like decay in the United States:

Pizza Hut in China vs Pizza Hut in America

Are you paying attention yet? pic.twitter.com/DhMml3wmx2

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) May 8, 2022

Posobiec fails to mention that tens of millions of Chinese are in unrelenting lockdown right now, as the Beijing Communist Government insists on pursuing a "No Covid" program. He also fails to mention that fast-food in general really isn't all that healthy or good for you. I should know. I used to eat out every day, and I drank the carbonated from the machines non-stop. All of that sodium and caffeine did a number on me.

When I was in high school, I went to the local Pizza Hut on Sepulveda and Hawthorne in Torrance after the football games. It was a pretty good time, hanging out with the other marching band members, and there were good times while hanging out there.

But then, as the months went by, fewer and fewer members of the band would go there. One night, it was just me, my sister, and another friend, and that was it. It wasn't much fun anymore.

The last time I went to that Pizza Hut, I remember how the tables were covered in trash, and how dirty the place looked. The current staff on site were not taking care of the place. On top of that, the cashier who took my order was really rude!

I was so digusted by the whole mess that I went up to the cashier and demanded my money back. She acquiesced, strangely enough, but asked for my phone number and signature when I got my money back. No big deal, since they never called me.

I never looked back since. I am not really all that into pizza, honestly, and it's no loss to me that I stopped going to Pizza Hut after that. In fact, so many people stopped going to Pizza Hut that that location closed down a few years later! Today, it's a Japanase-themed grocery store.

At any rate, I think that the Generation X-Millennial nostalgia for fast-food, video games, and good times needs to be tapered somewhat. Yes, there are many great memories from my high school years. But I would not trade my blessed todays for any of those good times from two or three decades ago. So glad for the good times that I had when I was playing with the Torrance High School Marching Alliance. But I am so glad that I have grown up, too, and I am doing other wonderful things.

Moreover, the larger consequences of these fast-food shut-downs is good for the United States, too. For too long, Americans have not been sitting around the table eating a home-cooked meal together. For too long, the kids in a family would go out and eat on their own, not spending any quality time with family or friends, or even next-door neighbors.

As I wrote above, I think it's a good thing that some of these fast-food chains are going out of business. The kinds of food they offered was never really that healthy, to begin with. The United States has been suffering with an obesity problem for at least twenty years. The crippling inflation, the woke corporate culture, the decline in objective standards is all working for good, in a way. People will stop eating so much food and getting all caught up in consumerism. The 1990s were good times, and those good times created weak men, and now weak men are facing hard times, so that they can become strong men.

On top of these silver linings, consider now that China is in big trouble. The culture is getting more consumerist, less dynamic. The rage of soy-boy culture and feminism has become such a problem, that the Beijing Government has begun cracking down on the unmanly madness. It's too bad the United States did not have a similar set of tools in place to accomplish similar cultural finessing for future generations.

To sum up, I do not share Jack Posobiec's bleak outlook about the decline and fall of Pizza Hut. The United States of America, her country and her people, need a spiritual revival, not more pizza. If we really want to get America back to "Makin' it Great," then it's time weak man to get through these hard times and let go of past nostalgic comforts.

Failure of Zoomer "Conservative" Populism: "Sex Should Be Illegal"

 This is a serious policy position from a Zoomer populist:

Sex should be ILLEGAL.

— Luke Kendrat (@Luke_Kendrat) June 11, 2021

Seriously?

This is the answer to the culture wars? Make sex illegal?

Even if this were a joke, it's not very funny or enlightening.

When does this madness cease?

I understand that a growing number of Zoomers, many of whom are embracing more conservative, nationalist, and populist beliefs want to take a stand for the culture wars and help win this fight.

However, these kinds of spasmatic, sporadic spouting-off sentiments are not going to help.

If younger generations want to be taken seriously in the fight for the United States, to Make America First, they need to do a better job of crafting real policy positions and shape the culture.

You cannot shape the culture by tweeting all day, and putting out ludicrous ideas like "sex shouldbe illegal."

Cut the crap, kids, and get real!

Changing the Culture: When Sitcoms Addressed Homosexuality Properly (Mr. Belvedere)

 I found this episode of Mr. Belvedere on YouTube some time ago.

This sitcom was quite funny, very witty, and charming. This kind of programming we no longer see on television, or even on social media much anymore. Most broadcast television stations have to play reruns of older sitcoms, TV shows that were actually funny.

And which oftentimes conveyed a serious message. Conservatives have to shape the culture in a real way in the United States.

In this episode, Heather Owens falls for a football player named Dwight who is also taking ballet. Every time she wants to make a move, or rather wants him to make a romantic move on her, he doesn't seem keen or interested. He likes to eat, watch sports, or play football. Finally, in frustration, Heather shouts at him: "What's the matter? Are you gay or something?"

The football player is not very bright, and he just assumes that since Heather thinks he might be gay, then he must be gay ... or something. There is a more serious undertone to this scene. Dwight is not interested in girls, throughout the segment to that point. He wants to eat or watch sports. He is not interested in kissing Heather or with making out with her.

Does that make him gay?

Not at all.

However, the plot advances with Dwight exploring his new life as "a homosexual."

At one point, Mr. Belvedere confronts Heather: "What did you do to that boy?"

That kid of a pointed push-back is needed now more than ever. Just because there are men or women who are not actively interested in the opposite sex when they are younger does not mean that they are homosexual. In fact, it's perfectly normal and even beautiful if men and women reach adulthood and choose the single life. There is nothing wrong with that at all.

At the end of the episode, Heather tries to turn Dwight on with erotic dancing on the ballet dance floor. Then Mr. Belvedere comes in, and he gives Dwight some confronting and comforting truth:

"First of all, Dwight, just because somebody tells you something doesn't necessarily mean it's so."

He then shared, "Has it ever occured to you that your lack of interest might mean that you're just not ready? Some people aren't ready for sex at 16. Some aren't ready at 20. The point is people grow and develop according to their own timetable. Sex is a normal, natural thing, but it is not automatic. It takes learning and maturity."

What's really compelling about this scene is that Mr. Belvedere did not try to normalize homosexuality. He did not try to induce the kid to "accept himself." Instead, he pointed out that just because was not sexually active or drawn to Heather, that did not mean that there was something wrong or different about him.

This episode was pretty mature for its time. It's unfortunate that similar kinds of content do not exist in the social media sphere. But there was a time when public media did not allow sexual perversion or profligacy to be commonplace.

And "Mr. Belvedere" was a great sitcom, anyway.

"OK Boomer" -- Just Another Copout By Bitter Young(er) People

"OK Boomer!"

"Shut the F--- Up, Boomer!"

"Boomer cucks!"

How many of you have heard this name-calling?

I have been hit with this name a few times, too.

And I am not a Boomer! (I am not an animal, either, but that's another story for another day, with apologies to Jerry Seinfeld)

The truth is that one generation of people is looking for an excuse to blame another generation of people.

Granted, the Baby Boomer generation has a numnber of liberals, and many of them still have an attitude of entitlement.

But one cannot paint an entire group of people in one age demographic with such a broad brush.

The truth is, the segment of the population that runs to "OK Boomer" when things get rough, or when they want to disdain the opinion of others, they just mock them for their age.

I have worked with a number of Baby Boomers in MassResistance. The President of the Organization is a Baby Boomer.

I have also heard testimonies from Boomers who acknowledge that they did nothing, or at the very least did not do enough to stop the Marxist, regressive leftism that has become rampant in damaged urban areas around the United States.

They recognize that they did not fight hard enough. Some of them are stepping up and fighting back more than they had before.

But let's cut to the chase.

Young(er) people, it is time for you to take responsibility for your lives. It's not enough for you to keep clamoring how "The Boomers" ruined your lives. Take responsibility for the problems that you see in your communities, in your country, in your culture.

Why Are Conservative Pundits Demanding Young People to “Get Married!”

In my previous article, I wrote about the growing rallying cry among conservatives, especially Dennis Prager and his fellow intellects, about the crisis in marriage. Specifically, they argue frequently that marriage is the rite of passage which young people need to engage and embrace again.

In fact, they go to great lengths to shame people that they need to get hitched, or they should be prepared to get ditched in this life. While the most enlightened conservative intellects have their opinions, the Bible is our standard for wisdom. In both the Old Testament, there are men and women who do great things for God, and they are never married (like the prophets Elijah and Elisha). In some cases, marriage or romance can hinder a man’s service to God (consider Samson and Delilah).

To recap the Biblical stance on singlehood, let’s refer back to what Paul the Apostle wrote to the Corinthians:

“Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” (1 Corinthians 7:1)

Paul encouraged everyone to be like him: celibate, unmarried, committed to God’s work rather than raising a family. (1 Corinthians 7:6, 32-35). However, he assured the church that there is nothing wrong with being married”.

“Art thou bound unto a wife? seek not to be loosed. But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned.” (1 Corinthians 7:27-28)

Also, it’s worth nothing that just because someone is not married or does not want to get married, that they are immature in some fashion. Marriage does not define or undermine adulthood.

The next question arises: why are conservative pundits determined for young people to get married?

1.       Depopulation

Decades ago, academics argued that the world would struggle with overpopulation. As far back as the late 1700’s, Thomas Malthus predicted that demands from population growth would far exceed available resources and wealth.

Then came Industrial Revolution. More bountiful harvests with less work results from agricultural reforms. Mechanical ingenuity produced and transported goods better, faster, and cheaper. Families moved into bustling, teeming cities, where a growing network of commercial activity created higher demands, more work, and so on.

Larger families were no longer crucial, whereas agricultural families had reared many children to help with work on the far. The need for larger families tapered off. Fast forward to today, there’s an unprecedented number of younger people who don’t want to marry, especially among men. As a result, populations in Western countries are declining. “Get married! Have kids!” is an understandable reaction. A better response would assess more proximate causes.

The higher suicide rate among young people should concern us. The opioid crisis is wiping scores of people. Rampant violence among gangs, drug cartels, and even terrorism are wiping out people. Yet even removing these concerns, lots of people are not getting married for selfish reasons: they want to live their lives in the present, unencumbered by demands, etc.

Death has been a fact of life since man sinned, however. Populations in decline and in growth are a more frequent phenomenon than most people realize. Would anyone expect Japanese families to birth out large numbers of children when there is so little room for all those people in that country?

What’s really animating this “marriage crisis” for these conservatives?

They want to save Western culture at all costs. Married life as an institution bolsters conservatism in general. As they witness the growing moral malaise of the modern Western World, conservatives want to retain a strong, vibrant Western Civilization, and that requires a Mom and one Dad bringing new lives into the world. Conservatives are right to see declining marriage trends with concern. However, they are treating a major symptom rather healing the disease.

Why are people, especially men, avoiding marriage? Why is the culture in such decay? It’s not because more people are avoiding marriage.

The attack on manhood has turned off men to getting married and raising children. Third Wave Feminism has shamed and demeaned men as such. Rather than commanding respect in their homes, colleges and their Third Wave feminist acolytes have been taught to see men as the enemy. Who would want to marry someone with that kind of worldview? Legal institutions have inculcated this anti-male bias, drawn from decades of progressive indoctrination in colleges and graduate schools. In courts of law, the wife/mother is automatically entitled to half of everything just because she’s the wife. Following a divorce, the woman custody of the kids nine times out of ten.

Why is Western culture in decay?

God’s reign of grace and truth has been demeaned, rejected, and excluded. The Judeo-Christian ethic which makes civilization possible, which blesses and prospers married life, has fallen into disrepute. Children no longer learn about God the Father or His Son Jesus Christ, which was long ago routinely taught in public schools. Students no longer read the Bible and receive revelation from it. In those schools, teachers have replaced school prayer with secular regression.

While conservatives are alarmed about the decline in marriage, and the decline in population which has resulted from it, they need to focus on the fundamental disregard for God and His Majesty in our public as well as private lives. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.” (Psalm 33:12)

Conservatives need to focus less on shaming men for not marrying, and they need to do more than merely promote its fringe benefits. Christ is the center of all happy marriages, and any society which wishes to foster this sacred institution must restore its sacred core and displace its secular degradation.

The cultural rot overwhelming our societies stems from national disregard for God’s grace and the Finished Work of His Son Jesus. When He is properly recognized as the Head of all Creation once again, then we will see Male and Female Great Again, and Marriages Strong and Abundant Again.

A Discussion on Diversity and Race as a Factor in Culture

The Red Elephants leader and friends helped me out big time in Berkeley last year:

They were indeed a Godsend, no question about it.

That doesn't mean that I agree with all their views or ideas. I will never shut down people's freedom of speech, and I submit that The Red Elephants have done an incredible job as free speech activists and advocates to fight for our culture.

Now then, I want to address tweets like this one issued out of their

Why are Jews always making anti-white movies? pic.twitter.com/Qw4gpb5BUC

— The Red Elephants 🐘 (@RealRedElephant) March 15, 2018

Why blame Jewish people with such a wide brush?

For the record, I had an extended and welcome conversation with Vincent of the Red Elephants on this issue. He also told me that he has many Jewish friends--who in turn have shared a sense of alarm at the number of Jewish people in Media and Academic leadership positions pushing left-wing views.

I recognize that many people in Hollywood leadership are of Jewish descent, too. But I am not convinced that Jewish elites are running--or ruining--the United States of America.

Abject liberalism certainly is, the insane securalism which is displacing, God, Country, and the Judeo-Christian ethic should concern us greatly, especially in the state of California.

That does not mean, however, that there is some kind of Jewish conspiracy, a la The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, running the entertainment industry, or worse yet that some evil Jewish cabal is trying to destroy the United States of America.

The arguments about race, political views, and culture is too complex with too many spurious correlations abounding. Some arguments I have heard on this issue state that a set of bell curves have outlined that race and IQ correlate.

I find that argument still remains quite specious and spurious. The fact is that government programs targeted black communities with welfarism and government subsidy. All of this took place post-World War II and the Civil Rights Movement, as Lyndon Baines Johnson and his racist co-conspirators looked for any means available to shore up their vote as they realized that the American South was trending Republican--and this trend was taking place since the early 1920's.

It's correlation that stands out when we see a large black population in American prisons. This is not about the genetic determinants inside of individuals. In fact, the genetic differences between a Liberian and a Spaniard are far, far more different than the genetic determinant differences between the Negriod and the Caucasoid races. What's more compelling and thus adding an element of confusion to this whole mess: people from India are also considered Caucasoid! The skin color fCtor is practically negligible for distinguishing individuals!

The fact is that culture, not race, determines whether individuals survive, thrive, fail, or die. Practices, beliefs, views, strategies for life, attitudes and fundamental beliefs make all the difference. Thomas Sowell wrote, for example, about the economic miracle of black freedman in the United States after the Civil War. The literacy rate within this population was effectively zero right after the conflict, since Southern States had criminalized teaching black slaves to read. Within a generation, however, the black literacy rate was 50%! Intellect has nothing to do with race, but everything to do with culture, and more importantly with the choices that individuals makes.

Let's stop looking at skin color or race as a major determining factor for anything. Rather, let's hold onto the principles professed by the Framers in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

There is No Such Things as a "Post-Christian" Culture

"Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure"(Isaiah 46:10)

After the voters in the Republic of Ireland voted for "gay" marriage by a landslide (much of fomented by larger donations from massive corporate sponsors), one writer suggested thatIreland had entered a "post-Christian" phase, and needs to be brought back to the Gospel and its Christian roots.

I applaud the daring of the pastors and their willingness to challenge the decadent secularism which has engulfed the Emerald Isle.

But the notion that Ireland, or any nation, can be "post-Christian" is absurd.

First of all, what do they mean by "post-Christian"?

The argument from the secular, regressive left is that Christianity, Christian doctrine, and any recognition of God and the divine are signs of a backward, regressive culture.

"We don't need GOD. We just need to try harder to fix ourselves!"

"Man is perfectible, but he needs help from others, particularly the government, to make people better."

"The state, the general will, the voice of the people is what makes us right."

And of  course, this chilling argument:

"Our rights come from the government, and the better people that we would put in charge of our affairs, the better we will all be."

There is one big problem with this line of thinking: reality.

We are creatures. We are a creation. We have a CREATOR.

We did not make ourselves, as the Psalmist gleefully declares:

1{A Psalm of praise.} Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.

2Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.

3Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. (Psalm 100: 1-3)

Furthemore, how can there be anything "Post-Christian" or more specifically, "post-Christ"?

There is no future without Christ, for He determines our paths, and has declared all things.

Notice what Isaiah prophesied, how God declares "The end from the beginning."

He can tell what will happen, and start from that point, and work backwards.

Time is just a plaything to him, like silly puddy, or any other form of matter. Time is not an inexorable force or facet of existence outside of His Power.

He is before all things, and there is nothing that will be after Him:

"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty." (Revelation 1:8)

His very name, translated YHWH that God was, is, and always will be:

"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever." (Hebrews 13:8)

What does this revelation mean to us?

We are members of the Body of Christ are not fighting from a position of weakness. We are not climbing from the bottom of a hill and attempting to retake the summit.

We already have the high ground--in fact, we have the highest because we are seated with Christ in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:4-6)

And He lives in us (Colossians 1:27)

We need to stop looking at the political landscape, our fallen world, and the deceived culture around us.

The truth is, that there are many who have not heard the truth. A Christian nation by tradition does not remain a Christian nation without Faith. And faith does not come about by osmosis. We grow in our faith in God and embrace Christian truths as we hearing and keeping hearing the Word of Christ (Romans 10:17)

If a nation does not believe in Jesus, it's not that they are "post-Christian", but rather that they are pre-Christian, and need to see Jesus and hear the Good News!ood News!