Made me think of this scene from The Shining (Language Warning):
Yep. By now only leftists, liars and lunatics don't know what it means when a liberal says they're for freedom, they're only against evil. This little duplicity is rightly condemned by anyone who hasn't sold mind, heart, body and soul to the ninety foot idol of the Leftist State.
The time for a middle ground is over, but it might be past even that. The Left holds the orb, the scepter and the crown. It has the press, education, entertainment and now Wall Street. Given the treatment Tucker Carlson received from the military for calling out their progressive policies, and given that both the military and law enforcement threw their support behind BLM, it's likely those holdouts are soon to go.
Religion? The sad history of religion is that, as far back as the Old Testament, you can always count on the faithful to bow before Moloch. The Bible itself is, after all, a minority witness. In most cases, the Word of God speaks through those rare individuals or groups who remain faithful to the Covenants even as the majority betrays them.
So those who cling to historical orthodoxy? Those who cling to the values and teachings of the historical Christian revelation, and cherish the long testimony of those who came before? Where will they be? Hard to say. How will they manage after centuries of Christianity being, for want of a better phrase, the 'easy way out'? Indeed, how many will be those who remain faithful in the face of the coming storm?
We'll see. But it's odd if you think on it. In recent generations it's been fashionable to quote Jesus almost exclusively as if there is no other source of teaching in the New Testament. When it comes to love and tolerance and diversity and inclusion, it was that one lost sheep and eating with the sinners all day. If you ever notice, however, that when the subject of 'how many will be saved' unwisely enters the debate, it's almost as if we never heard of Jesus. Then it's the letters, it's Paul, or it's a few select scenes from the Revelation of John.
That's because, if you get right down to it, Jesus' appraisal of the crowds in the end times is a rather dour one. More often than not it's many are called, but few are chosen. Or it's many will say, "Lord, Lord", but Jesus will say never knew you. Or narrow is the way that leads to life yet few are those who will find it. 'Few' seems big in the Jesus vocabulary when speaking to the faithful in the final judgment.
I think of that as the Left begins mop-up operations in preparation for the final push to abolish the Christian West and the American Experiment, along with what Truths and values emerged through Christ's revelation. We've already seen so many apostatize or jump ship or try desperately to compromise or throw other believers under the bus. But when Christ does return, or when the tribulations come, will He find faith on Earth? I'm sure He will. The question will be, among how many will He find it. Few, it would seem, if Christ's appraisal has anything to do with it.
I just thought of that as I see what is happening. It's not going to be easy, as we're seeing. Much of the Church from top down and side to side is about finding ways to make an increasingly hostile revolution compatible with business as usual Christianity. When we consider the somber appraisal of how many remain faithful and how many don't, and see how many are crumbling and acquiescing and surrendering now, it can hopefully motivate those who would remain faithful to hunker down and prepare for a long, cold night.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." -H.L. Mencken
ReplyDeleteTrue. I think for too long we allowed this 'Left' to define the terms and set the rules. So it never calls itself 'the Left'. It always just acts like the good hearted movement trying to be nice when so many who resist clearly want to be Nazis. This has allowed them to set the rules of the game and put any who resist on the defensive. It's still that way, even as the Left becomes more brazen in attacking people based on race, or attacking liberties and freedoms, or anything really. No matter how bad it gets, most who complain still do so from the defensive.
DeleteWell because they run the culture. Like I was watching "The Good Place" awhile back. Solid show, but at one point when one of the characters get a "do over" in life they count as a point against "going to chick-fli-a." (because of what the CEO said)
DeleteIt's also why they're always on offense. If someone shouts out, "Dave is a nazi!" I either have to defend you - conceding to them the premise that you could be a nazi, or I have ignore it, conceding the point to you anyway. Just look at how pernicious the "Walt Disney was an anti-Semite" rumor is - even though the man employed hundreds of Jews in his company.
The one comfort is to go to some places like Tumblr and watch what happens when leftists fight among themselves. All they can do is accuse so it becomes hilarious rounds of "Alice is oppressive because [reasons]!" and "Bob is oppressing me because [reasons]!" back and forth.
Yes, that is so true. The Left has long taken the initiative in these things. They've done well in fighting any battle on their terms, and making those who would resist have to adjust accordingly. Part of this is having the press/education/entertainment in their pocket. They can begin setting up their positions before the debate even begins. So when it starts, conservatives are stuck reacting to premises that have already been established. Usually it goes down from there.
DeleteWhat we see so far shows no signs of being able to last as a stable oppression and persecution, like the extermination of Christians and Jews from the Arabian Peninsula or the Tokugawa Shogunate, but rather a period of sharp collapse, chaos, and uncertainty. I don't think we can avoid the suffering, but the people who are saying math is racist and calling to defund the police will not be able to govern a nation for any length of time. Add in trillions of dollars of extra spending and ever-increasing minimum wages (it it's $15/hour in 2021, it will be $20/hour in 2024 due to inflation), and the economy will collapse, the goodies will go away, and Americans will start killing each other in large numbers. Out of that primordial chaos, who knows what dragon might emerge?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure, in the long run, in ages to come, this will fall as they always do. I also subscribe to the 'long defeat' principle. But for what we're seeing, I think it's only the tip of the iceberg. I've frequently cited my son's college cultural anthropology class where the discussion was about the wisdom behind human sacrifice. While most dismissed the religious justification (believing, as many their age do, that science long ago proved there is no such thing as a God), they argued for the wisdom of thinning the human herds, especially in light of Global Warming. That's just one extreme case. My son said there was a time when the Left said other cultures were superior to Christian society despite practices like human sacrifice and slavery. Today, increasingly, they say they were superior because of those practices. These are tomorrow's leaders. While I know it won't last in the long run, I think we're only in the first years of the long run.
DeleteI do not mean we will be returning to Norman Rockwell's America EVER, let alone after a short time -- any more than England will ever again be the same country it was under Richard the Lionhearted. However, I still insist that a society can refuse to conform to nature only so much if it is to survive: God and man may forgive, but nature will not. Things got very bad in Jonestown, but by its very nature it was impossible for Jim Jones to compel them all to commit suicide every Saturday for 30 years. If you think math is racist, you cannot be a superpower, and your odds of being a nation are vanishingly small (though you may not understand that, since probability is a form of math). If you really eliminate the police, you cannot govern. If you do not understand the difference between boys and girls, you will not have enough children to avoid demographic decline. The Prodigal Son did not end up in the pigpen due to his father's punishment, but as the natural result of his choices; in the same way, it will take no explicit divine punishment for the USA to have no more future than Jonestown.
DeleteWhat comes afterward I cannot guess. France got Napoleon after the worst of the Revolution, but I do not think we will be so blessed.
I absolutely think you're right. I agree wholeheartedly. Like the Communism taking over an already broken Tsarist Russia, it was only a matter of time. Decades perhaps, but it would never last. This won't either. I just think we're nowhere near the beginning, seeing only now a tip of the iceberg, as I said. What comes next, I think, will be beyond our experience. I don't think we will bear the brunt of the worst of it. We're here to see what we inherited die under our feet. Our children will get the worst of it, and it may last a long time. Eventually, assuming time continues and the Lord doesn't return, things will return. It may not be anything close to the US or even Europe by then. But people will reclaim what was lost.
DeleteYou and I, who are about the same age, will probably not see the end of this, but the odds are we will see a succession of different evils, as our equivalent of Robespierre is likely to be sent to some equivalent of the guillotine by the next wave of revolutionaries. How long this goes on is impossible to say. If parents are atheists, their children are likely to be Wiccans, because they will feel acutely the spiritual vacuum of their parents; and the grandchildren will be Muslim, because they will feel acutely the lack of spiritual discipline and moral direction of their parents; and as Hilaire Belloc pointed out, the Heresy of Mohammed is both Great and Enduring.
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