Category: Announcements

“The central question that emerges is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes-the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”

William F. Buckley — American Man Of Letters
National Review, August 24, 1957

Everybody knows that Bill Buckley died Wednesday. I can’t honestly say that I was overwhelmingly influenced by Buckley, though like all conservatives, I read his columns and watched his ‘Firing Line’ production.

In many ways he was a man of subtle contradictions. On one hand he was the architect of Reagan era conservatism while on the other hand he remained a member in good standing of the Council of Foreign Relations.
On one hand he professed loyalty to conservatism, while on the other hand he gave Joe Sobran the ‘heave ho’ from National Review and embraced Trotskyites neo-cons (non-cons) such as Norm and Midge Decter (nee – Podhertz). Within his lifetime he gathered the conservative movement and within his lifetime he saw it splinter again.

Buckley will always be remembered as erudite, urbane, and witty. He still retains those character traits. Buckley could marshal those traits in defense of convictions, as can be seen above, that still lie outside mainstream America — convictions, that if were articulated today by a well placed conservative, would bring the wrath of the politically correct world down upon them.

Perhaps it is fitting that Buckley should die at the time when it seems that the Republican party, which was the ideological vehicle of ‘Buckleyism’ is officially burying that brand of conservatism underneath the rubble of the ‘conservatism’ of those people, who at the end of his career, he was unwilling to cast out of the movement and who finally took over his magazine.

Conservatives everywhere owe a great deal of gratitude to William F. Buckley, but it should be ‘eyes wide open’ gratitude. Buckley carried the conservative embers for most of his life, but at the end he passed the torch to a group, who are in many ways, the very opposite of what he contended for throughout his life.

We should thank God for William F. Buckley and pray that in our old age we will be able to finish well what we started.

Religion — A total integrated response to questions about the meaning of existence.

Education — The process by which learners are taught the means to defend themselves against the seduction of eloquence.

Metaphor — An organ of perception by which we interpret the most basic of realities.

Learning — The process of acquiring the critical skill that is able to distinguish diseased ‘facts’ from non-diseased facts.

“If some Kleagle of the Klu Klux Klan wanted to devise an educational curriculum for the specific purpose of handicapping and disabling black Americans he would not be likely to come up with anything more diabolically effective then Afro-centrism.”

Arthur Schlesinger
The Disuniting Of America — pg. 94

Hint — Waldo is the only one reading while everyone one else is in rapt attention. Also, note the smaltzy kitsch that is being offered as spellbinding rhetoric.

I mentioned earlier that over at the Bayly Brothers blog they were discussing the dangers of egalitarianism. It seems that there is some kind of push in the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) to ordain women as deacons.

What I want to post about here is only indirectly concerned to the issue of egalitarianism, or the issue of creeping feminism in the Church. Except to those who are advocates for egalitarianism and feminism it is a given that these are realities that are present in the Church. What I want to post on is the wonder of denominational church politics.

I suspect the Bayly’s and others of like convictions are beginning to realize how their concerns about the feminization of the PCA is linked to the issue of Federal Vision. It is simply a matter of votes. If the Federal Vision adherents are run out on rail from the PCA that weakens the ability of conservatives, like the Baylys, to build a firewall against encroaching feminism in the PCA, if only because many of the Federal Vision types would vote against egalitarianism. Politically speaking the removal of the Federal Vision adherents leaves the denomination (PCA) weighted in the direction of ‘men wearing skirts.’

Now the argument is presented by those who virulently oppose the Federal Vision that Federal Vision is more dangerous then the feminization of the Church since it attacks the heart of the Gospel while potential deaconesses only conveys a kind of ill health in the Church. I think there is currently truth in that observation. The only problem is that it is difficult to see how the feminization of the denomination is stopped once it is given its head. In other words, it may be the case that for now the Federal Vision is a more dangerous threat but it is not difficult to see how in the near future, with a couple of wins for the ‘men in nylons’ crowd, the denomination isn’t destroyed by feminism.

Pity the PCA. If on one hand they protect the Gospel from the attacks of the Federal Vision they are left with growing feminism. If they don’t protect the Gospel from the attacks of the Federal Vision they are left nurturing incipient Arminianism.

And that says nothing in regards to how they are harboring pagan theories of psychology in their denominational infrastructure.