Watching the memorial services for George Floyd today, I am most moved by the example of his family who spoke about their brother with great affection and as part of a big family that seemed
to have been raised in love and goodness and traditional American values even if they did not have much materially. All of it spoken with a smile, spontaneously, remembering a loved one and what
they loved about him, without any of the rancor and bitter anger that has marked many of those who have been protesting and rioting in his name all these past nine days... Almost as sickening
as all the senseless vandalism, rioting, thuggery and murderous intent that have been on show are the endless hypocrisies about justice, against racism, against police brutality preached nonstop
by those who encourage all of the above by sanctioning them in the protestors while protesting against the American way of life they ought to be upholding.
Yes, majority of the protests and protestors have been 'peaceful', which is a relative adjective, and really refers to 'contained rage' by those who do not dare to directly provoke the agents of the law
as their more aggressive fellow demonstrators do. But are you a peaceful protestor when you are out on the streets with a virtual mob defying curfew hours after it is supposed to be in
effect? How much of the turnout in the streets is genuinely out of grieving and outrage for Floyd, but rather in the spirit of adventure, defiance of authority, and freedom regained
after the forced inactivity of the past two months?
I do not discount that some of the protestors may be fuelled by youthful idealism, but what concrete ideals are they standing for - other than the abstractions of justice (Many of them want instant
'justice' for the Evil Four who killed Lloyd, and how is that different from lynching? Impatience does not serve due process, which does take time but can and should be expedited in this case)
and 'peace' (which in this case means, "We can do what we want to disturb the peace, even shooting and beating up the agents of the law, because we are the good guys and all policemen and government
officials are evil").
In the following article, Dale Ahlquist goes back to the real roots of all these unnatural inhuman happenings in a refreshing reflection...
Racism is a real problem, but
it’s part of a much bigger problem
by Dale Ahlquist
June 3, 2020
Right now we need some good news. Fortunately we have it. [Of which, more later].
But right now it seems that no one even wants to hear good news. It is a difficult time to think clearly. Passions are high. It’s such a complicated mess. A sickening video of police slowly killing an unarmed black man. A horrible outbreak of violence – widespread and unimaginable – an explosion not only of
racial tension, but of the frustration of being locked down for two months under the threat of an invisible microbe. A nation polarized and spewing vitriol at each other. Civilization falling apart.
It has been surreal to witness these things, especially since the flashpoint was right in my own hometown, just minutes from where I live. In Minnesota, we are much more accustomed to being ignored by the rest of the world. To suddenly have the whole world gaping at us through every news outlet has made it all the more freakish.
Painted on the walls across the city is the name of newly canonized George Floyd. But also terse verse for the cameras consisting mostly of the once unprintable vulgar word that is now used as verb, noun, and adjective. And also everywhere is the phrase, “No peace without justice.” This last one is absolutely true.
But vandalism is not justice. Looting is not justice. Arson is not justice. Vengeance is not justice.
And the armed law enforcement officials and National Guard soldiers who came in to quell the violence did not bring peace. They only stopped the rioting. G.K. Chesterton says, “Peace without love is only a still panic.”
Let’s make signs that say that. Let’s put them everywhere.
Peace without love is only a still panic. Hate will make you a monster. As long as everyone keeps hating and blaming each other, there will be no peace. There will only be fear and eventually more violence, whether it is white against black, black against white, or any group against any other group.
Racism is a real problem, but it’s part of a much bigger problem. Sin.
And until we admit that problem, we will only have more problems. Consider the fact that every day thousands of innocent people have the life violently crushed out of them. But would a video of a late term abortion, hideous as it is, go viral, cause outrage? And why not? Why are the very peaceful pro-life activists the ones who are villainized?
There will be no justice in a nation where abortion is legal and where those who attempt to expose its evil are considered criminals. A nation where people routinely kill babies because they are babies will kill blacks because they are black, and will throw firebombs and break windows because it is instantly gratifying. Justice cannot be founded on sin.
There will be no justice in a nation where churches are not considered essential. The Church is where you confront your sin, confess your sin, and find peace. No peace without God.
We need God to forgive us, and we need to forgive those who have sinned against us. That will bring peace. Peace without love is only a still panic.
But there is another problem that no one wants to talk about. It is difficult to say it, but unless we recognize it, we will just keep spinning our wheels, and our society will continue to decay.
The institution that has done more than anything else to cause the present chaos is the public school system.
G.K. Chesterton says that
education is supposed to be simply truth in a state of transmission. It is passing the truth from one generation to the next. But if a school is not teaching the truth it is not teaching anything, and we are witnessing the catastrophic consequences of generations that have not been taught the truth. Neither have they been taught goodness and beauty. That is why they are so unhappy and angry and hopeless.
- The state-sponsored, state-imposed schools are factories of fashionable fallacies.
- Students have been formed by a pervasive materialist philosophy. - They have been taught that humanity itself is simply a lucky combination of chemicals, man is just another beast on the spectrum, economics is just a battle for bread, love is just sex, literature is just ranting, civilization is just a prison of oppression built by white Christian males.
- But Evolution means everything is getting better. Anything that stands in the way of progress and efficiency is bad. The past is the culprit. Old is bad. New is good.
The philosophy of progress, however, has been steadily stumbling for the last two hundred years. It keeps encountering what Chesterton calls a “healthy shock” which is “the whole philosophy of the Fall of Man.”
Our schools don’t teach the truth because they don’t teach the fundamental reality of sin. It is that reality that unravels every political and social philosophy. Sin has only one solution. The Incarnation. The Truth that informs every other truth. But this is the Truth that has been locked out of our compulsory education, and the minds of our children and our citizens have been formed without it. Behold the results.
But I said there is good news. The very night my city was burning, I was hosting an online open house for the Chesterton Schools Network. Hundreds of people had signed up from all around the country (and Canada). The good news is that next fall twelve new Chesterton Academies will be opening, and there will be 30 schools in the network, all stemming back to our humble beginning with 10 students 12 years ago sitting around one table right here in the Twin Cities.
The good news is that we heard great excitement and encouragement and hope as the different headmasters talked about the good things that were happening in their schools, stories of tremendous faith and joy and light in the darkness. The good news is that there are more people who want to start a Chesterton Academy in their city.
This growing network is part of a revival in education at the grassroots level that is already starting
to restore truth, goodness, and beauty to a world that is starving for it. We have begun rebuilding civilization even as it crumbles around us.
And may many more such creative minorities spring up everywhere to instill the values of truth, goodness and beauty that are to be found in good solid Catholic education!
Riots, technocrats, and normality
We are fallen; we are in desperate need of salvation;
we cannot manufacture such salvation for ourselves,
no matter how talented we are at programming code,
creating vaccines, and 'fixing' things.
by Carl E. Olson
May 30, 2020
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already, in the ages before us. — Ecclesiastes 1:9-10
Yesterday afternoon, the weather here in Eugene, Oregon, was perfect: warm, with a breeze, inviting. The tennis courts at a nearby high school were finally unlocked, and so I was able to hit with a friend for an hour while two of my kids walked our new puppy on the nearby walking paths. It was, in short, idyllic and peaceful, with a welcome sense of normality to it.
Early this morning, just as the sun started to battle the clouds on the horizon, a fierce thunderstorm commenced. While most thunderstorms, in my experience, have a certain sound and feel, this one was quite different. At first, my wife and I thought people were dragging something metallic in the streets; then it sounded like gunfire and heavy artillery. It was completely natural, and yet seemed quite unnatural.
Then, checking the news soon afterward, we learned that there had been riots in downtown Eugene, less than three miles from our house, involving several hundred people. A number of businesses, including some we occasionally frequent, were looted and destroyed.
“What began as a peaceful march hours earlier Friday,” reported a local news outlet, “had by early Saturday morning ‘morphed’ into violence and vandalism.” What began as peaceful protests (and Eugene has protests constantly in response to all sorts of events and people) in reaction the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis soon became ugly, nasty, and unnatural. And, yet, it also seemed, in a way, quite natural.
I say that in the context of the past three months, but also with an eye to the decades (and even centuries) prior, both of which have provided plenty of instances and evidences of social schizophrenia, moral incoherence, and a bewildering array of double standards.
Like many others, I thought that the initial responses to the coronavirus by local and national governments were generally understandable and within reason. But it was almost inevitable, given the technocratic mentality and control-freak nature of so many in the elite and ruling classes — with a direct nod to the insights of Angelo M. Codevilla — that serious problems would arise. As Dr. Codevilla told me in a 2016 CWR interview:
Above all, the ruling class defines itself by a set of attitudes, foremost of which is contempt for those outside itself. This contempt stems from the rather uniform education that the ruling class’s members absorbed from universities and which they developed by living in their subculture.
Believing themselves intelligent apostles of scientific truth, they regard others as dumb and in the grip of religious obscurantism. Religion is the greatest of the divides between the ruling class and those it deems its inferiors.
Whereas they believe themselves morally good and psychologically sound, they regard others as suffering from psychological dysfunctions and phobias — effectively as bad people. The ruling class does not believe that those outside itself have the right or capacity to conduct their own lives.
All of that can be applied easily to the past few weeks and to the growing tensions over the loosening of pandemic restrictions, religious freedom, and simply making sense of what we really know (and don’t know) about the coronavirus.
As for “intelligent apostles of scientific truth”, consider the rhetoric of software magnate Bill Gates, who wrote in late April that we will only “return to normal” when we “develop a safe, effective vaccine.” Humankind, Gates asserted with disconcerting confidence, “has never had a more urgent task than creating broad immunity for coronavirus.” Never! Never? Those are words from a man who is either a stranger to history and reality, or who thinks history and reality can be bent to his will.
The inanity and insanity of what has been transpiring was summed up well by Michael McHaney, a judge on the Illinois Fourth Judicial Circuit Court, in a May 23rd ruling on a lawsuit brought by a Clay County small business owner against Governor J.B. Pritzker, contesting Pritzker’s shutdown order:
Since the inception of this insanity, the following regulations, rules or consequences have occurred:
- I won’t get COVID if I get an abortion, but I will get COVID if I get a colonoscopy.
- Selling pot is essential, but selling goods and services at a family owned business is not. Pot wasn’t even legal and pot dispensaries didn’t even exist in this state until five months ago and, in that five months, they have become essential, but a family-owned business in existence for five generations is not.
- A family of six can pile in their car and drive to Carlyle Lake without contracting COVID but, if they all get in the same boat, they will.
- We are told that kids rarely contract the virus and sunlight kills it, but summer youth programs, sports programs are cancelled.
- Four people can drive to the golf course and not get COVID but, if they play in a foursome, they will.
- If I go to Walmart, I won’t get COVID but, if I go to church, I will.
- Murderers are released from custody while small business owners are threatened with arrest if they have the audacity to attempt to feed their families.
These are just a few of examples of rules, regulations and consequences that are arbitrary, capricious, and completely devoid of anything even remotely approaching common sense.
Along similar lines, Dr. Edward Feser, who has written several times for CWR, argues with his typical rigor and clarity that the lockdown “is no longer morally justifiable.”
The lack of common sense noted by Judge McHaney and the failure of clear logic pointed out by Dr. Feser are, however, part and parcel of the modern technocrats, who are simply disciples of what the French philosopher and Catholic intellectual Rémi Brague calls “The Kingdom of Man” and the “Modern Project”.
The Judeo-Christian heritage, Brague explains in his most recent book, understood that man was created by God and was ordered by nature to God; the goal of the modern project, which really hit its full stride in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the West, was expressed in the 1700s by the French Enlightenment thinker Raynal, who said,
“The human race is what one wants it to be; it is the way one governs it that decides it for good or evil … Human beings are what the government makes them.” Man does not have a universal and objective nature; his nature is mere subjective putty in the hands of the enlightened elites.
Much more could be said on that topic, but what does this have to do with looters and “protesters” destroying eateries and other businesses in Eugene, Oregon?
A key part of the answer is that those who are deeply invested in the modern project — whether as leaders or disciples or propagandists — are either clueless about or openly antagonistic to the truth about human nature.
- They insist (rightly) on denouncing racism as evil, but then (wrongly but without a hint of hesitation) live and act as though “evil” is just an outdated religious construct created to control the masses, as people are actually inherently good.
- But, of course, “good” is not really fixed or certain; in fact, it is a continually moving target, depending on the whims (or what Christians would call “the passions”) of the enlightened few. Gender ideology, as Dr. Douglas Farrow recently and brilliantly explained here at CWR a few weeks ago, is a prime example.
As Brague notes,
the Enlightenment sought, “explicitly or implicitly, the goal of rehabilitating human nature”. Salvation is no longer a concern, especially since it posits a transcendent horizon, “but rather of showing that man is already fundamentally good and, as a consequence, has no need of salvation.” In the words of Rousseau: “There is no original perversity in the human heart.” Put another way, there are simply errors or flaws that must be fixed, corrected, adjusted, tweaked, and so forth, all with scientific precision and scientistic bias.
What has happened, in short, is that words which once had substance — justice, for instance — have been stripped of their metaphysical and, ultimately, theological moorings. Most people know, instinctively (via synderesis, to use the traditional term) that murdering someone because of their race or opinion or money or any such thing is wrong. Period. They want justice.
But what does justice mean to people who are locked in the secular cocoon, insulated from objective truth and eternal perspective? How can they keep from from devolving into a passionate mob seeking revenge — or simply seeking a thrill and a pile of loot under the auspices of “revenge” — when they believe (rightly or wrongly) that “the system” is against them and so they must act?
Without any link — by way of family, or culture, or social interaction — to a sense of supernatural vocation, they act naturally, as fallen creatures seeking to be, to belong, to battle— but fall more deeply into base passions and evil pathways, what Proverbs describes as “the way of error”
(Prov 12:28).
And this in fact is normal. There is, as the author of Ecclesiastes wrote so many centuries ago, nothing new under the sun. We are fallen; we are in desperate need of salvation; we cannot manufacture such salvation for ourselves, no matter how talented we are at programming code, creating vaccines, and “fixing” things.
Medicine for the body is wonderful; medicine for the soul is priceless and eternal. Only the Son — ”The wounded surgeon” who “plies the steel”, in the words of T.S. Eliot — who came below from above (
cf Jn 3:13), can make things new, destroying the power of sin by His death, crushing the power of death by His Resurrection, and gifting the power of divine life when the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father in the Son’s name
(Jn 14:26).
But, just as peaceful protests do not actually “morph” into violent riots, we must actively and consciously choose the grace offered, take up the Cross before us, and seek the Kingdom of God.
How the Church abandoned the inner cities
And US bishops censure Trump for visiting the JPII shrine and
holding up Bible in front of rioter-damaged 'church of the Presidents'
by Kevin Wells
June 5, 2020
One Sunday morning, during the summer of 2018, when much of America had come to regard the Catholic Church in America as a decaying organization beset by hidden evil, Baltimore auxiliary bishop Mark Brennan paid a visit to my former parish to celebrate Mass.
I was an altar boy for Bishop Brennan and knew him to be a good priest. He always seemed humble to me, devoted to prayer, and sincere. He took the CCD kids to Baltimore Orioles games, chaperoned retreats, and stopped by my St. Pius X classroom to offer catechism. He was also an intellectual. In fact, my deceased uncle, Msgr. Thomas Wells, who was in Bishop Brennan’s class in seminary, once said, “Mark Brennan is the smartest man I know.”
So when he stepped behind the ambo to give his homily at Our Lady of the Fields, I knew he’d oblige his shepherding mandate. He was dispatched by Archbishop William E. Lori, I figured that day, to address the disillusionment and outrage parishioners felt over the predator McCarrick, the Pa. grand jury findings, and multitudinous other Church scandals. American Catholics were beginning to flood out of the Church, and Bishop Brennan, I hoped that day, was asked by Archbishop Lori to help stem the tide.
Then he spoke, and his homily was centered on racism.
Heartbreakingly, I understood. This humble priest, who has since replaced the disgraced Bishop Michael Bransfield in West Virginia, was told what to preach.
I approached my childhood friend after Mass. “Why would you preach on racism at this time, during this awful summer in the Church?” I don’t recall his answer, but I do remember his look. It seemed to be one of embarrassment and, even more tragically, confusion.
Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory recently said he found “reprehensible” two recent actionsof President Trump. What he and we should find more reprehensible are those actions by the Catholic Church that have contributed to racial disharmony and the tragic abdication of the black community in the U.S.
Gregory condemned President Trump and leaders at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine for his Tuesday appearance with the First Lady. Trumps’s visit had been planned long in advance “as an event for the president to sign an executive order on international religious freedom.”
[Which he did, effectively appropriating $50 million to advance the cause of religious freedom around the world.] Gregory used the opportunity to make Trump seem like an opportunist just a day after he was lampooned for holding a Bible in front of Saint John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House.
Various media sources and those in proximity to St. John’s claim that peaceful protesters were aggressively cleared out for Trump’s photo op, which if true, warrants rebuke. No peaceful protester should be moved an inch from his locale. A sincere apology by an administration would be in order whenever this happens.
[Park police have since explained that they used smoke bombs after the demonstrators had refused three requests for them to move back from the area in front of the White House and some started throwing miscellaneous projectiles against the police. The MSM has ignored that explanation while not offering plausible evidence against it.]
Why, though, waste a precious archbishop bully pulpit on an opportunity to condemn a man for obliging an already scheduled commitment? There are enough hordes of willing participants to condemn Trump.
What has Archbishop Gregory said that has brought people back to Christ and into the understanding of the unique role played by the Catholic Church in this endeavor?
The murderous event that took place on the street in Minneapolis is an unforgettable dark stain, an American evil. Eric Garner’s plea in 2014 on a New York city street for breath before becoming asphyxiated by a police officer seared the consciences of millions. Anger from the black community, and all faithful Christians
[and any person who has any basic decency] is understandable.
Much of their grievances should be directed at the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Archbishop Gregory, perhaps better than anyone as the first black bishop in Washington, D.C., should know why.
During the seismic upheaval in the Catholic Church in the 1960s, as the Black Power movement ascended into societal prominence, a large portion of Catholic leadership abandoned — or heavily divested itself of — its Christ-directed duty to feed, house, and care for the inner-city poor to the federal government.
Sixty years later, the question must be asked: are the souls of multi-generational welfare families closer to God? Has government welfare assistance for blacks in inner cities helped to promote virtue or holy priests like Venerable Augustus Tolton or Sister Thea Bowman?
More than 80 churches and schools have closed down in the Baltimore archdiocese over the past half-century, the majority of which were from inner cities.
- They closed because few Catholic leaders gave the community even a heartbeat’s chance to survive — they left their once tender care of the inner city mostly to the government.
- They closed because bishops said they didn’t have the money. Meanwhile, bishops continue to have personal drivers, personal secretaries, personal chefs, and personal multi-million-dollar residential accommodations.
Many have postulated about the merit or lack of merit of government programs. Yvonne Warren has lived within it the last half-century.
“Once the government came into the community with the welfare system, everything changed,” said Warren, an elder stateswoman at a Catholic inner-city parish, who attended segregated Masses as a child. “Folks in the city lost their ambition and stopped setting goals. Things became disordered.”
Having worked in the construction industry for 17 years, I’d spent many hundreds of hours in poor communities in Southeast Washington, D.C. Over and over, I paid witness to horror —
- drug use in the open, murders and shootings on job sites, a pandemic of theft, stressed-out moms shouting vulgarities into their too-young children’s ears if they’re dawdling on their walk to school.
- Abortions rage, drug lords rule neighborhoods, few dads are at home, and there are killings every night.
Are souls closer to God because of government assistance? [And what has such government assistance done concretely - to outweigh the unhealthy and undesirable entitlement mentality it has encouraged and abetted among those who can avail of whatever government assistance is available?]
Why did the Catholic Church [i.e., the bishops responsible for dereliction of duty] seemingly aid and abet the secular world’s approach to meeting the needs of the poor and then abdicate its unique role? The government doesn’t do charity of heart very well. The Catholic Church does. Or does it anymore?
Just for starters, it’s simply not charitable to leave unaddressed the scandal of modern-day Catholics’ vanishing belief in the Eucharist.
- In the aftermath of Pew Research pollsters reporting that 70 percent of Catholics no longer believe in the Real Presence, little was done by Church leaders or pastors to steer laity to the Catholic crime of their disbelief.
- It was a whitewashing of the most alarming news to rear up since McCarrick.
["Whitewashing? No, it has been plain indifference to something most of them have long taken for granted without doing anything about it, perhaps because in their heart of hearts, they share that apostate unbelief.]
- Without devotion to the actual Body of Christ, we might as well not be Catholic. The hell with it, as Flannery O’Connor said.
Accordingly, at this dark inflection point in history, there is a linear symmetry as to why so many hundreds of Catholic churches remain closed for Mass.
-
If the Eucharist — the source and summit of our faith — has been relegated to a symbol by 70 percent of Catholics, why would bishops care to open up Masses and the Eucharist as a curative for the hate, destruction, and racial tension Americans awaken to each morning? The majority of Catholics don’t know of its salvific weight anyway.
Has our 2,000-year-old choir of shepherds forgotten its melody — or have they just decided to change it?
- Once, all bishops seemed to know that the cure for every single form of societal cancer was the Eucharist and the blazing furnace of the Gospel (even the thornier parts). But the Truth of the Gospel, too, has been constrained by Church leaders.
-
While it was simple for Archbishop Gregory to find his Baptist-like prophetic voice on the social media topic of the day — the scoundrel Trump — he’s been muted on “transgender” genital mutilation, injecting sodomy into marriage, perversions, the secular zeitgeist, Fr. James Martin’s blasphemous rampage in the Church, and Catholic politicians who fight for the murder of a child at nine months in the womb.
That Archbishop Gregory and his confrères refuse to open Masses fully everywhere now — daily, Sunday, midnight, 5 A.M., round-the-clock, whenever — as this pandemic continues to wane speaks clearly to a lack of supernatural faith and compassion for the growing laity who hunger for the sacramental energy and restfulness found in the Mass.
If folks choose to remain home due to concerns over COVID-19, so be it. But the doors should be opened now, and Masses celebrated everywhere throughout a shaken and dispirited America. The Eucharist is the balm.
The question must be asked: have the USCCB and bishops decided to covertly re-engineer the Church’s shepherding mandate? God desires that He be slaughtered, if necessary, for His flock; Jesus said as much at the Great Commission.
The bishop is the slaughtered lamb — the martyred apostle whose lifelong burden it is to steer souls to sanctity and to Heaven. It is easy to present a homily, dispatch a tweet on racism, or hold up a placard stating #BlackLivesMatter. What is not easy is obliging one’s identity to die to self — or to dig up the tomb of
an abdication of spiritual and temporal care to a black community passed on to a welfare system in the 1960s.
The paternal deficiency of bishops and priests has been the foundational reason for the stack of lawsuits, the spiritually drained and fallen away Catholic laity, the subculture of grievous evil and shuttered parishes throughout a forlorn Catholic landscape. Perhaps because clergy have so poorly understood the essence of fatherhood the past half-century, they paid no mind to what would unfold from fatherless homes in inner-city neighborhoods.
One more vital question must be asked:
Has a half-century of priestly avoidance of homilizing on the tougher aspects of Catholic teaching been the reason for what is going on in America at this grave hinge point? This dark hour in American history has little do with President Trump. It has everything to do with the ailing soul of America and the ominous place to which it’s lurching.
It’s been said that obliging Natural Law means being rooted in reality and that being rooted in reality grazes up against God’s heart. What does it say about ourselves when we abandon Natural Law — that we’ve attained a new kind of enlightenment? That we’ve progressed past antiquated cultural norms? That we’ve evolved? Well, maybe we have evolved, but God has not.
Why are Democrat mayors allowing killing,
maiming and burning in 'heavily black areas'?
June 3, 2020
The burning, looting and killing riots are not about George Floyd’s killing. Both Floyd’s girlfriend and brother have said that he would have opposed them as they oppose the riots.
The riots are pure evil.
Every sane person is against the killing of an unharmed man by a policeman and more so against mobs that are burning, killing and maiming blacks, minorities and whites in these riots against the wishes of the Floyd family.
If the riots are not about George Floyd’s killing, what are they about?
It is obvious that the riots are about giving criminals and evil groups such as Antifa the license to kill, maim and burn in “heavily black areas” at will as the Democrat mayors tell their police forces to stand down and allow the debauchery. The
Washington Times reported:
Minneapolis and other major cities have finally re-opened, at least to looters and arsonists. For three days, police in Minneapolis and St. Paul were ordered to stand down as rioters destroyed their cities. In New York City and Washington, D.C., on Monday night, police stood by as looters destroyed parts of those cities.
The same politicians who ordered police to stand down and released prison inmates are the same people who want to ban guns. These politicians prevent citizens from protecting themselves, at a time when police protection cannot be depended on.
For three days, police in Minneapolis and St. Paul were ordered to stand down as rioters destroyed their cities. Sadly, so many of the victims of this violence have been blacks. Black store owners have lost their businesses. In these heavily black areas, blacks will lose their jobs.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/3/liberal-politicians-who-order-police-to-stand-down/ ]
Why are Democrat stronghold mayors giving their police forces orders “to stand down as rioters destroyed their cities… In these heavily black areas”?
Lawyer Scott Lively tells us why the Democrat mayors are destroying their own cities:
“The main purpose of the rioting, as was true of the now-waning COVID-19 Plandemic, is to spread fear. Fear is what keeps a sizable portion of the American people “sheltered-in-place,” and that phenomenon of social destabilization is the key to preventing economic recovery. An orchestrated economic depression is, of course, the cornerstone of the elites’ plan for taking down President Trump (which I again predict will fail).
That’s what this season of Psy-Ops, with all its disinformation, propaganda and political intrigue, has always been about from its very beginning, when Barack Obama first began to realize that Trump could actually beat Hillary, thanks to the sabotage of the HRC campaign and the DNC by Bernie zealot Seth Rich, the Wikileaker whistleblower who was (I opine) murdered in broad daylight for that act of treachery.
[After more than 3 years of constant lying (as we have now found out how the FBI, with the full knowledge and obvious consent of Barack Obama and now Democratic presidential wannabe Joe Biden, framed Michael Flynn for colluding with the Russians despite their investigations having found nothing derogatory about his calls to the Russian ambassador in his capacity as incoming national security adviser for the new President, in an all-out effort to hamper the new President whose election they could not accept and still cannot accept]) about the Trump 2012 campaign having been run in collusion with Russia - since debunked by the Democrats' own machinated Mueller investigation, whose findings they chose to ignore because it was against their BIG LIE - but despite all that, an inherently rigged impeachment of Trump last January by a Democrat-led House of Representatives. But no one in the MSM, or even in conservative news outlets like Fox - in fact, not even Trump himself - is blaming the Democrats as forcefully and insistently as the situation demands, for having spent three years, going into the fourth year, of relentless Trump-bashing, with all the waste of government time and resources it has entailed, to discredit his presidency since they have been able to subvert the election results of 2012 to invalidate his election.]
The timing of the rioting, and his immediate, highly inflammatory public statement, betrays the hand of Barack Obama behind it all… Lastly, I am also offering a different take on the significance of the riots. Yes, the fearmongering agenda is still in play, but I think there’s a new target for that fear added to the mix: Democratic leaders who now realize heads will likely roll for the Obama team’s actions and want to distance themselves as much as possible without being too obvious about it.
I think that’s why the race riots and Antifa aggressions are taking place in Democratic strongholds and not places like Ferguson and Charlottesville. They are reminders that pain can be inflicted on potential “traitors” as well as established enemies by the ones who wield the real power on the left.
And, call me crazy, but if that’s true, I predict master deal-maker President Trump may actually flip some Democratic leaders to his side by the time of the election. It’s a rare group of crooks that doesn’t turn on each other when actual prosecutors (as opposed to media pundits) start to draft actual indictments of their known associates.
[https://www.wnd.com/2020/06/obamagate-race-riots/]
To sum it up, the coronavirus hysteria and the riots have only one purpose which is to take down President Donald Trump and make the United States into one big hellhole like New York. Rush Limbaugh explains:
I want to go back to one point I made also at the bottom of the previous hour, the end of it. We had a caller who thinks that the governors, California and New York, do indeed want Trump to call out the military because nothing good can happen there. Military gets called out and somebody gets killed, somebody gets hurt, and that looks bad for Trump, and then the states are gonna have to be apologized to and all that. I don’t think that’s gonna be the case.
In fact, I think what these governors are actually hoping for is — they may be hoping for the military be deployed so that something happens that can harm Trump, but I think what they really are angling for is an economic bailout. Many of them, California particularly, still much more attached to things with the virus story than they are with George Floyd. They’ve got their share of protests and they’ve got their share of property destruction, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Rodeo Drive, I mean, they’ve had their share of it, but the virus is still a dominant subject there.
And it wouldn’t surprise me if both Cuomo and J.B. Pritzker in Illinois and Newsom are doing what they’re doing angling for a federal bailout. A federal bailout to wipe out every debt they’ve got, including unfunded pension liabilities and all that. And I hope Trump doesn’t do it. I do think — you remember Kent State, remember the song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Four Dead in Ohio, four dead and Nixon’s come? Remember all that?”
“I think they’re hoping for something similar here. I think they’d love for the military to take out some innocent citizen if they’re deployed in New York or California. But I hope what really happens — I hope Trump leaves ’em alone. If you want a preview of what awaits this country if Democrats win the presidency, look at New York. Look at Minnesota. Look at California. Look at anywhere the Democrats run the show with no opposition. From nursing homes to riots, everything in between.
Everything that’s happened in these states was avoidable. The governor New York, the mayor of New York, they’re wannabe little, you know, almost miniature dictators. And they don’t like each other, and there’s none of this we’re in this together stuff. There’s, no, we’re stronger together stuff.
These two guys don’t like each other at all, de Blasio and Cuomo. Both of these guys, de Blasio and Cuomo, both of them botched the coronavirus response big time. They both botched the lockdown of the city and the state.
It was not necessary. They have destroyed so much, restaurants and other businesses that will never come back. These cities, if these people don’t get a handle on things, these cities in these states are gonna end up being unlike anything anybody remembers. There’s gonna be no reason to move back to them. With telecommuting having been a success, there’s no reason now that you have to live in New York to work there. There’s no reason you have to live in Connecticut and pay those exorbitant rents and commute to New York. Ditto, New Jersey. There’s no reason anymore.
It’s not an accident New York is imploding. It’s not an accident that people in New York are destroying it. It’s not an accident that Macy’s was looted with people holding the door open for ’em, in and out. And Joe Biden is just as incompetent as Cuomo and de Blasio. The sad thing is, voters get what they want, and voters in New York voted for what they’ve got. They got exactly what they voted for.
Now, I made mention of the fact that it may be tough to have a genuine nationwide economic recovery if we don’t get New York and California on board, that they are a large percentage of the American economy, and we need them rejuvenated economically if there is to be a national economic recovery.
I had some people say, ‘I don’t think you’re right about that, Rush. You say the U.S. economy has to have New York and California, but I think we’re about to see, Rush, that we don’t need New York or California. And here’s why I think so, Rush. New York City’s a war zone. New York City is over. New York City is done. Who in the world is gonna move back there now? Who in the world is ever gonna feel safe there? Who is gonna ever want to go back to that city and pay what it costs to live there when nobody is gonna lift a finger to protect you or your property? Now we got barbed wire, Rush, protecting Saks Fifth Avenue. Who in hell wants to live in a place where that’s required, Rush?’”
“Barbed wire at Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s looted on all of its floors with the looters holding the doors open. And in one case the looters arrived in a $350,000 Rolls. Did you see that? Or Bentley? The looters arrived in a $350,000 Bentley. The looters get out, hold the door open, some looters go in. A forklift was used to get rid of some window plywood. No leadership to be seen.
"The thing you don’t get, Rush, New York was dying and sick before the China flu and the riots. The only thing different now is New York has no pulse. Just pull the plug. We’re gonna have to figure out how to live without them. And we will.”
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/06/03/new-york-is-whats-in-store-for-all-of-us-if-trump-loses-the-presidency/
Rush is telling President Trump to follow the Abraham Lincoln strategy.
- Lincoln never attempted to abolish slavery directly, before the war, because he knew if he limited its spread like a disease so that it was only in the South, then it would die a natural death.
- The Democrats- the slavery party- knew this too. That is why they started the Civil War.
- The Democrats of New York and elsewhere- the party of death and riots- also know also that their socialistic death policies will die a natural death if limited to their Democrat strongholds. They will not start a civil war because they are cowards and have no moral high ground.
If the Democrats of New York and elsewhere want killing, maiming and burning then let them have it and let their failed states go down in flames. As Rush said:
“The sad thing is, voters get what they want, and voters in New York voted for what they’ve got. They got exactly what they voted for.”
Maybe the voters in New York and other Democrat strongholds may wise up and kick out the party of death and riots.
For the rest of the country: New York going down in flames will be the prime example and reason to vote for Trump, again, as Rush said:
“New York Is What’s in Store for All Of Us If Trump Loses the Presidency.”[dim]
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Mass and the Church as well as for the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart of the Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of the Mary.
Please, pray an Our Father now for President Trump and our country now because this is the important fork in the road for the United States. Please, keep this intentions in your prayers.
And what's with the stupid, deliberately thoughtless slogan that has become the name of a movement, 'Black lives matter"?
ALL LIVES MATTER! EACH LIFE MATTERS! but all the young people marching out there - feeling themselves all virtuous because they are marching in lockstep with the dominant liberal one-thought that has been imposed for decades on the US educational system - cannot possibly bring themselves to even think that 'All lives matter', because they could not care less for the lives of Trump and Republicans and conservatives and anyone who does not share their world view. And they obviously cannot say 'Each life matters' because they believe abortion is an inherent human right and the baby in the womb is not a life at all!
I will close this omnibus post with words from the ever-enlightening Fr. Rutler...
Who will guard the guardians?
by FR. GEORGE W. RUTLER
June 4, 2020
Six or seven centuries “are like an evening gone” when tracing the course of common sense, and so James Madison found no anachronism in conjuring the shades of Juvenal and Cleon, more than six centuries apart, to make a point about the perils of the right and wrong manipulation of human will.
He asked with Juvenal, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The dilemma— Who will guard the guardians? — was the same dilemma that conflicted the Athenians during the Pelopponesian war when their better instincts for peace were compromised back in the fifth century B.C. by the seductive propaganda of Cleon.
In this thesis, Madison was joined by Hamilton and Jay in The Federalist Papers, which were not expected to be the daily reading of farmers and merchants, but which could easily be understood by them and anyone bound by human nature. The matter at hand was “a rage for paper money, for abolition of debts, for an equal division of property.” That rage resulted in Shay’s Rebellion, and occasioned reflection on mob rule.
People can indulge contrary instincts to riot or to stay calm, because their will is free to do so. It is a principle denied by those who excuse moral anarchy by saying, “The devil made me do it.” That is the theological version of the behaviorist’s impulse to blame disordered behavior on external influences.
The rage now inflaming our cities is taking place between Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, although it is unlikely that those enraged are liturgically sensitive to that.
Celebration of the Most Holy Trinity follows Pentecost, because it is through the Holy Spirit that the sublime truth of God as Three in One expands the limits of human intelligence. The perfect harmony of the Triune God is like music whose sound frequency cannot be registered by unaided hearing, but it reverberates in the systematic order of nature, evident in those things we take for granted: health, happiness, and peace.
The peace that Christ gives is not a human fabrication (John 14:27). But as the Creator has entrusted the care of His creation to humans as His most complex creatures, we are responsible for promoting what Saint Augustine called the tranquilitas ordinis — the tranquility of order.
When the human mind works in harmony with the indications of the Holy Trinity, great things can be accomplished. For example, this past week two astronauts on the SpaceX craft docked perfectly in outer space. In a devilish irony, this was accompanied by simultaneous rioting in our streets, nihilistic in its destructiveness.
As many of the bomb throwers and arsonists were middle-class suburbanites turned terrorist, this was a commentary on the collapse of family life and the abandonment of serious education in the schools, but essentially it was a specimen of the misuse of free will. Among “Millennials” grown dependent on forces that suborn conscience, who have never outgrown the need for a nanny, 70 percent favor socialism and one-third see something hopeful in communism.
The desecration of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral with graffiti was not a display of adolescent erudition in the etymology of four-letter words rooted in German cognates and Old French. It was the screech of young people who for various reasons and from various sources had come to think that the Divine Word of Life is an incomprehensible whisper.
It is my lot to be the pastor of a parish in the middle of my city’s riots, just as New York has been an epicenter of the viral pandemic. Last night a shop next door was attacked. My parish has had a long experience of mobs, and the city records claim at least 34 riots of significance.
The first pastor of my parish, who served for thirty-four years, intervened in the 1863 Draft Riots to save a Presbyterian church nearby from burning, an act that anticipated the modern ecumenical movement but with more practical benefits. His efforts were not permanent: later in his tenure, in 1873, the Orange Riots nearby saw 63 killed.
Just days ago, I watched Macy’s department store being boarded up, to little effect since looters with impunity used crowbars to break in and steal jewelry and other expensive things in what much of the media said was an expression of their desire for social justice.
By the careful orchestration of mobs, and the systematic delivery of bricks and bats, it was clear that sinister plottings were at work, and that our President was right to call it terrorism. Not every authority was as acute.
Our mayor, Bill de Blasio, who for years has functioned like one of Job’s unhelpful condolers, said he was proud of his daughter who was arrested as a rioter. Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a CNN interview: “Those were not thugs and looters. These are young people who still have idealism and want to make this nation better. And that’s a good instinct, and it should be encouraged.”
From our hierarchs, there has been little in the way of prophecy, save for occasional virtue-signaling bromides. But that is the consequence of a gradual emasculation of their moral influence.
So far, our prelates have not emulated the three archbishops of Paris — Denis-Auguste Affre, Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour, and Georges Darboy — who were killed respectively in 1848, 1857, and 1871. Affre and Darboy died in riots, while Sibour was shot by a cleric who thought celibacy was an imposition. All wore the same pectoral cross.
This week, as a church burned behind him in Washington, D.C., one television reporter, reminiscent of Iraq’s famous “Baghdad Bob,” insisted that there was no burning and that the “protesters” were peaceful. The disinclination of so many governors, mayors, and other social guardians — along with the media — to acknowledge that their perception of reality is unreal brings to mind W.E.B. Du Bois and Walter Duranty calling Joseph Stalin “a great man” and “the greatest living statesman.” This is much like George Bernard Shaw, who added panegyrics on Mussolini and Hitler, and John Kenneth Galbraith’s immoderate flattery of Mao Zedong.
Those not averse to objective reality still have voices. The president of the New York State Troopers Police Benevolent Association, Thomas Mungeer, in a genuine protest, said that Governor Cuomo had given his men “zero support.”
He explained to Cuomo:
“Peaceful protesters do not arrive with hammers and Molotov cocktails, burn police cars, smash the windows of businesses or spray graffiti on St. Patrick’s Cathedral — criminal opportunists and vandals do.
Peaceful protesters do not start fires in the streets or to businesses — arsonists do.
Peaceful protesters do not gather en masse to openly disregard laws, create havoc and impede on the rights of the general public —rioters do.”
So there sounds once again, whether in New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, Seattle, or any other city where the acoustics of tradition can hear the voice of Joshua along the Jordan: “And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve…”
This week, the contrast between astronauts and anarchists is a model of the blessings and dangers of free will. “For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want” (Galatians 5:17).
This simply and artlessly boils down to the choice between Christ and chaos, challenging the human mind to be rational or irrational. The human will is not bound to some arbitrary fate, but as John Milton put it: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven…”
It has been said one way or another that the gates of Hell are locked on the inside.
By choosing misrule, distorted reason prefers Hell to Heaven. The gates of Heaven are opened by choosing the tranquility of divine logic. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me"(Rev 3:20).
To appropriate Rudyard Kipling, the destiny of souls depends on what people do with the “if” of their moral freedom: “If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.”
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/06/2020 09:51]